information from Leather Jacket about contacts, he might as well make certain the man didn't get another chance to kill him.
Lang waited another full five minutes before leaving the concealment of the shadows. With his hand behind his back on the butt of the SIG Sauer, he approached the boat. Since there had been no lights on before the man's arrival, it was a near certainty that the boat had only the single occupant. But how to get aboard? The craft's narrow beam ensured that even the lightest step onto the deck would produce telltale rocking. And even if he could surprise the man on board, sounds of a fight or gunshots in this peaceful neighborhood would surely draw police, who, sooner or later, would figure out that the dead man back at the university had not been shot with his own weapon.
Lang would have to think of something other than forcing his way aboard.
He watched two boats pass, neither wake sufficient to cause as much motion as climbing aboard would. He watched the sluggish current until it gave him an idea.
There was no power line from the craft to shore, no pigtail connection that would have acted like a third mooring line. The boat's electricity, then, was provided by a generator-powered battery. The lights would stay on whether or not the vessel was tied up.
Silently he crept to the stern of the boat, untying the line that moored it to the bollard at the edge of the canal's embankment and letting the rope slide into the listless water. As yet another craft passed, he did the same for the bowline, this time holding on with one hand and keeping the other on the gun butt.
Slowly, ever so gently, the sluggish current moved the boat from the space it had occupied along the embankment and pushed it along at a pace Lang's slow walk could easily match. The first bridge presented a problem: Lang couldn't both hold the line and let the craft continue. He let go, following the narrow ship along the canal.
After what seemed a mile or so, Lang saw rows of bright lights ahead and perpendicular to his path. That, he guessed from what Louis had said and the brief reading he had done on the train, would be the Amstel, the river that crossed all canals and was the route of much of the city's commercial and industrial transportation.
The man inside was blissfully unaware he had gone from a tranquil residential canal to one of the busiest waterways in Europe, a highway of commerce that operated twenty-four hours a day.
Running ahead, Lang found a spot not occupied by another craft and leaned over, catching the trailing bowline. Gently he slowed the craft until it was stopped at the intersection of canal and river. From his right Lang could see a string of barges pushed by a smaller vessel, something resembling a tugboat. Patiently Lang waited until the relative positions seemed about right.
Then he let the rope go.
The canal boat edged tentatively into the river, gaining speed as the stronger current turned it abruptly to port. The sudden motion must have alerted its occupant. His head suddenly appeared through the hatch on the upper deck just as the tug saw the smaller vessel and let go a warning blast from its horn.
There was no way the multiple barges could stop in time, and the canal boat was not under power to maneuver. Lang felt the crunch of steel cutting through wood all the way to his bones.
Lang waited for nearly an hour, watching the multitude of light-flashing police craft until the divers surfaced with a limp form that was immediately zipped into a body bag. The crowd along the banks and the nearest bridge dispersed, returning to restaurants and bars.
Lang hoped he could remember the way back to the university. He was fairly certain he couldn't pronounce it well enough to ask.
As he walked, the tension of pending action was replaced by a sour taste, bile that rose in his throat at the thought of killing. In all the years he had been employed by the Agency, his most violent act had been jostling someone on the Frankfurt U-Bahn, his greatest peril, other than one foray behind the Berlin Wall, an accident on the Autobahn. Since his retirement to what he and Dawn had anticipated would be a much safer civilian life, Lang had suffered a half dozen or so attempts on his life and been forced to defend himself with deadly force.
It was, perhaps, by divine scheme that Dawn had not lived to see the ordinary American lifestyle she had so longed for become a game of life and death.
The thought gave him little comfort.
The memory of his wife, their dreams of a family, and a domestic life enjoyably dull was largely illusion, he admitted to himself. Realistically, the day-to-day predictability would have led to a tedium even spirited court battles could not have entirety dispelled. Life among normal people would have become monotonous.
On one level, he knew these truths to be evident. On another, in the place he reserved exclusively for Dawn, he refused to admit their existence. He was certain that even ennui with her would have made him happy.
Quite another compartment was reserved for Gurt, the second love of his life. He doubted she would long have tolerated a life where the only excitement was the weekly installment of 24 on television. Indeed, the prospect might well have been the reason she left despite his overtures of marriage.
So much for tripping down Memory Lane.
Lang had the present to worry about. There was no way to know who wanted the foundation's project halted, even if it meant murder. Nor could he be sure how many killers might be in Amsterdam.
He could, however, make several informed guesses.
The uniformity of armament, the Heckler amp; Koch automatic rifles, the silenced pistols, suggested organization. These were high-quality weapons and almost impossible to procure by civilians in the firearm-paranoid European nations. AK-47s would have been unremarkable. The most easily obtained gun on the continent, if not the world, it was a version of the Russian assault rifle once manufactured in almost every former Iron Curtain country and still plentiful on the arms black market. The variety of knock-offs carried an assortment of problems, such as jamming, misfires, and unreliable parts.
Instead, someone had the means and knowledge to acquire quality weapons.
The fact that he had been met at the Brussels airport suggested organization also. Either the group had the ability to hack into Europe's air traffic control or they had a network that extended back into the United States, where someone had reported his departure.
Once again he was the target of some ill-defined association whose chief purpose at the moment seemed to be eliminating him. Although the feeling was becoming familiar, it was far from comfortable.
EIGHTEEN
University of Amsterdam
Thirty Minutes Later
By the time Lang had returned to the university, only a couple of uniformed policemen remained in the ruins of what had been Benjamin Yadish's laboratory.
Louis stood to one side, anxiously smoking a cigarette.
'You have spoken to the police?' Lang asked pointedly.
Louis nodded. 'I told them we knew we were about to die and how you threw something to divert their attention. I was not sure what happened next.'
About as good as Lang could have expected.
He looked at the cigarette in the Belgian's fingers. 'I didn't know you smoked.'
'I quit ten years ago.'
Lang Reilly: the antidote to Nicorette.
In addition to the cops in the room, a distraught little man in a seedy sweater and wrinkled corduroys was walking over. Lang didn't fully understand Louis's introduction, only that the man's name was Pierson, a professor and some sort of official at the university.
'I hope, Mr. Reilly,' Pierson began in accented but understandable English, 'I hope you will accept a great apology for what happened tonight. This is not a normal, er, thing to happen in Amsterdam.'
'I'm sure,' Lang said.
'Amsterdam is a peaceful city…'
It should be. Everyone was either stoned, just laid, or both.
