pretend not to see the grotesqueness of a grown man in this ridiculous misshapen child’s-size body. The only women I’ve ever been with are whores. So who should I love? Tell me, who should I love if not the most beautiful, most innocent, young, tall, slender, gentle, exquisite creature who ever lived?! It was my fate.”
“One of Allah’s ironies,” Scorpion said, glancing around the apartment. He had searched it before the dwarf came home. He found nothing except a photo of Tassouni with a tall young woman wearing a hijab in a park, and in the trash, two torn night train tickets on successive days from the Amsterdam Central Station to Utrecht.
“She had come to an exhibit where my work was appearing. I didn’t know why she was there. It is haraam for Muslims to make images, so of course they despise me, and yet there she was, in a hijab no less. But we spoke and she was so gentle and her face was like an angel. So beautiful, like Christ’s mother in her perfect youthful moment of illumination. I had to have her. I had to paint her. Can you understand? It was beyond idolatry. She was more than art. She was the thing itself. The thing that art in its clumsy, self-glorified way tries to get at.”
“You were obsessed.”
“Obsession is a small word. She was my soul. Until I met her, I didn’t believe in souls or any of that kak, but there she was. She talked to me. We held hands. We walked and talked in Vondelpark. I couldn’t imagine what she could possibly see in me. I was too old, too small and grotesque, too ugly, not pious. It was impossible, but I didn’t care. I dreamed of her. I thought of nothing but her. Her face, her smell, her touch. I had to have her. I would have done anything. Murder, anything. And then they told me what they wanted.”
“Who was it?”
“Her uncle. Her father’s brother. An elder in the mosque. And another. I never knew his name.”
“Why you?”
“Exactly,” Tassouni said, pouring them both glasses of Dutch jenever gin that he had gotten from the refrigerator. “Sante!”
“Sante,” Scorpion toasted, and sipped the gin. The little man swallowed his in a gulp, poured himself another and downed that as well.
“I asked them. They said the mosque had been infiltrated by informers for the Dutch. They needed someone no one would ever suspect. Someone not religious or who even gave a kak about the Muslim community. What difference did it make?”
“You would have done anything.”
“Anything. If they had told me to put on a suicide vest and kill half of Amsterdam, I would have done it.”
“They promised her to you.”
“Suggested. They said they would not object. For a Muslim girl, that is much.”
“And she-what was her name?”
“Salima. They killed her,” Tassouni said, staring into space.
“For ikram?” Family honor?
“I don’t know. For being defiled just kissing me on the cheek once that day in the park. For knowing too much. What difference? They’re coming for me now,” the little man said, emptying the glass and pouring himself another.
“How do you know?”
“What do you think? They’re going to kill her who was so innocent and leave me alive?”
“I can help you,” Scorpion said.
“How? By bringing her back to life? That’s the only way you can help me,” he said.
“What did you do for them?”
“Carried messages. I would pick them up in a place and leave them in another place. I would put them behind a loose brick in an alley wall or under a specific seat in a cinema, places like that.”
“Dead drops, they’re called. Did you go to Utrecht?”
“So you know already. I wasn’t even good at that,” Tassouni said.
“Where in Utrecht?”
“Different places. Once near the university. Most were in the Kanaleneiland district.”
“Muslim neighborhoods?”
“Obviously,” Tassouni grimaced.
“What were they? Moroccan? Turkish? Farsi?”
“Maghrebi. You could smell the cinnamon and cumin in the streets.”
“What did the messages say? Did you read any of them?” Scorpion’s cell phone vibrated.
“I don’t know. They were all in some kind of code,” Tassouni said.
His phone vibrated again. He took it out and looked at the text message. It was from the default number and read: 000. It was in response to his Internet cafe query to the International Corn website on Najla Kafoury. It meant they had come up empty. They would have run checks on her through all the U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies, Interpol, the German BND and Bundespolizei, and the response indicated they had found no alerts or evidence of criminal, intelligence, or radical Islamic connections. Too late, he thought. He had let her go.
“I have to go. You have to come with me. You’re not safe here,” Scorpion said, motioning with the gun.
“No, I’ll stay here. You can shoot me,” Tassouni said. “Do it now. Without her…” He looked at Scorpion. “Better to shoot.”
“I can make you come.”
“Then I stop talking. It’s not worth it for you. A man who doesn’t care if he dies can be very difficult.”
“They’ll kill you.”
“They kill me, you kill me. What difference?”
“I have to take care of something, but I’ll be back. Keep the door locked. Don’t let anyone in till I return,” Scorpion said, getting up. He had to find out about Najla. He had left her in the hotel room, washing her hair in the bathroom.
“Why should I trust you? I don’t know you. You come in with a gun-and listen to a fool’s story.”
“Because I’m the only one, including you, who wants you alive.”
“Then that makes two of us who are fools.”
“Lock the door. If anyone comes, no matter how well you know them or what reason they give you, don’t let them in. I’ll be back soon,” Scorpion said, opening the door.
He left the dwarf staring into his drink, and waited in the dimly lit hallway till he heard the door lock. He pulled a hair from his head and wrapped it from the doorknob to a screw he loosened in the doorjamb as a simple trap. He left his bicycle by the apartment house rack to help discourage anyone who might show up, by letting them think Tassouni had company, and caught a taxi back to the hotel. On the way, he tried calling her cell phone-he had taken the number off the phone in her purse in the morning before he got breakfast-but she wasn’t using it and it went immediately to voice mail.
He thought about it in the taxi. Langley had cleared her, but he didn’t buy it. Najla had earned her chops as a TV reporter, yet according to the BND and Bundespolizei, she didn’t have a single questionable contact. He’d been with her. She was smart and tough and hadn’t done it all on her looks. And it still didn’t explain why she’d followed him after staking out the mosque in the middle of the night. Langley was missing something. Being a reporter was classic cover for an operative, he thought. He had made a mistake letting her go. The sex had colored his judgment. He had to find her again, and if he were honest with himself, wanted to see her again.
Night had fallen, the lights of the city blurred by a drizzle. He could smell the canals. Going by the Dam Square in the taxi, the Royal Palace with its cupola, the Nieuwe Kerk church and the tall pillar of the National Monument were brightly lit. They gleamed wetly in the rain. The restaurants and the brown bars were open, and despite the weather, the streets were filled with people out having a good time. Back at the hotel, he raced back up to the room. The prive card he had put into the card key lock was gone. When he opened the door, the room was empty.
There was no sign of Najla. He searched the room carefully. There was nothing of hers, and so far as he could see, no bugs or traps left behind. She had gone through his carry-on; the way he’d arranged the location of things, like his disposable razor and toothbrush, had all been moved. She couldn’t have found out anything about him anyway. His important things-passports, money, laptop, extra cell phones, and such-were all locked in the roll- on carry-on he had taken from the BMW and put into a locker in the train station before moving the BMW to the station’s car park. The room was clean and the bed was made, so the chambermaid had come in. The sexual restraints he had used to tie her up were gone. She was really gone, he thought, acknowledging that he’d been
