He put them all down on the delicate, modern glass table in front of the couch.
“Een achteloze mens kan een dode mens zijn,” he said.
Walter had heard his Dutch friend say that very thing before, the first time many years ago in the jungles of Laos. He knew he was right. In English, it meant, “A careless man can be a dead man.”
“Holy shit!” said Harry, actually jumping backward. “How did you get a gun in Holland?”
Aat van de Steen looked at Harry like he was crazy, looked at Walter in disbelief, then broke into uproarious laughter. Walter couldn’t resist. Soon he too was laughing. Poor Harry stood there wondering what was so funny.
Tucker Poesy landed at Schiphol long before Walter’s plane got in from Frankfurt. Before she left London, she read his file, the one she picked up from the Indian. The material faxed to The Standard by Devereaux included a recent photo of Walter Sherman, taken outside a restaurant in Atlanta called Il Localino. He was attractive, she thought, for an old man. She had Walter’s flight information and a dozen pages with the details of one of the more interesting lives she had read about. The pages about Vietnam contained things that might have frightened some people. It intrigued her. As she often did when studying someone else’s exploits, she imagined herself in the same circumstances and wondered what she would have done. Some of what she read about Walter Sherman had happened many years ago. He was near sixty now and not quite so imposing. Yet, something about him stirred fear in Ms. Poesy’s belly. One thing was certain. Walter Sherman was not a man to be taken lightly. That was a mistake she would not make.
As she waited for Walter’s flight to land, she thought about her earlier fuck-up with Harry Levine. She was angry with herself. Her frustration was more than a little out of control. What a mess she had made in London. Quite rightly, she took the blame for it when she called Devereaux. But now, with ample time for self-protective rationalization, her pride was winning the battle against her sense of responsibility.
“Fuck you,” she told herself she should have said to Devereaux. “I’m not a goddamn babysitter.” Her job was killing people and most of the people she’d killed she’d never even spoken to-not a word. Now, she was being told to pick this guy up and hold on to him until she could get her hands on some document, a document Devereaux wanted so badly. “Bullshit!” she told herself. “Not my fucking job!”
She followed Walter Sherman downstairs in Schiphol, to the trains. She joined him on the train to Rotterdam, sitting two seats behind him. She changed trains, as he did, and traveled on with him to Bergen op Zoom. In Rotterdam, before getting on the train to Bergen op Zoom, she went to the restroom, removed her dark blue jacket, turned it inside out and it became a red one. She piled her hair on top of her head and pushed it under a small cap. She quickly rubbed off all her face makeup. Then she boarded the train and again sat two seats behind Walter Sherman.
She watched him walk into the Mercure de Draak. She waited across the square on which the hotel fronted. Ten minutes later she spotted him again, this time with her old friend Harry Levine. The two of them approached the front of the hotel coming from around the corner. They must have gone out through the back, she thought. When they took a cab, so did she. At the train station, she stood far enough back from them that she could be unseen. The two men bought tickets and started toward the tracks. Tucker Poesy ran up to the ticket window just after Walter and Harry walked away.
“Oh!” she said, trying very hard to make the ticket agent think she was catching her breath. “I missed them! My uncle and my cousin-they just left your window. They probably think I’m not coming. Please,” she said with her best helpless young girl smile, “give me a ticket too, just like theirs.” With her ticket in hand, she saw they were headed for Amsterdam Central Station, end of the line. She didn’t even have to ride in the same car. Not this time. They were all headed for the last stop. Not only that, she could actually close her eyes and get some sleep. When they arrived in Amsterdam, she didn’t need the sort of sweet technique she used buying her ticket in Bergen op Zoom. She trailed Harry Levine and Walter Sherman to a small food shop inside the station, watched as they bought some sandwiches and drinks and followed them outside to the cab line. When they took off, she jumped in a taxi and calmly told the driver, “Follow that cab.” The cabbie, a young man who looked distinctly Middle Eastern, glanced backward with some suspicion, but as soon as he caught the look in Tucker Poesy’s eyes, he quickly faced forward again. He never again looked in his rearview mirror after that. She frightened him.
“Keep going,” she said when they stopped behind the cab in front of them, the one letting Walter and Harry out at 310 Heerensgracht. “Go around to the other side of the canal. Now! Hurry!” They made a quick left and crossed the bridge at the next corner, turned back in the direction they had just come, and finally rolled to a stop directly across from the building Walter and Harry had gone into. She got out of the cab and sternly told the driver, “Go to the next corner and wait for me. You’ll be well taken care of.” As the cab pulled away, she stood on the narrow cobblestone street, just inside the bike lane, looking across the icy canal. She recognized Walter Sherman standing in the window. That was all she needed, for now. She walked to the corner, got back in the cab and told the driver to take her to the Hotel Estherea on the Single.
The sound woke Walter, a sound he knew he’d heard before. It was the sound of a door opening, the door at the front of the building. Someone from upstairs, he thought. Second or third floor. Coming home late. After all, it is Amsterdam. Must be alone because he heard no voices. Two or more people, they’d be talking, wouldn’t they? Laughing, maybe giggling, urging each other not to wake the neighbors. The door had opened. He waited for the sound of it closing. It never came. Someone must have grabbed the heavy wooden door just before it thundered shut and then silently slipped it into place. An act of consideration at-he glanced over at the small clock he always traveled with-2:53 am? Perhaps. He listened for footsteps. One, two, three, and they stopped. It was seven steps to the stairway leading to the upper floors. It was three to the door of their apartment. Someone was standing just outside, on the other side of the door. Someone was right there, an inch or two away. Walter lay on the couch, in the darkness. Reaching down to the floor beneath him, using only his left hand, he found the pistol Aat had given him earlier that evening. He held it aimed at the middle of the door just left of the latch. If it opened, whoever came in would walk directly into his sights. Then he sat up, moving his body slowly, trying to keep the couch from making noise while he shifted his weight. When both feet were firmly on the floor, he stood in one quick move. The. 9mm held its aim throughout, now leveled at what he figured to be chest height. Gliding on the balls of his bare feet, Walter reached the door in two long steps, flipped the latch, turned the doorknob and threw it open. Instantly, the barrel of his weapon was jammed against the forehead of the man standing in the hallway.
“Not a sound,” Walter said. “Just follow my lead.” With that he pushed the gun forcefully against the man’s head to the left as he stepped to the right. This placed the man inside the apartment with his back to the couch, the one Walter had been sleeping on. Now, closing the door, he pushed him harder, into the apartment. As he did so, he flipped the light switch. “Put your hands on top of your head,” he said, very quietly, very calmly, almost reassuringly. “Get down on your knees and lay flat on the floor, face forward.” The man did as he was told. “If you make any movement or gesture,” Walter went on, “anything at all that disturbs me, I’ll shoot you. Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” the man said in a voice muffled by the fact that his face was flat on the floor and he was unable to raise his neck with his hands on the back of his head as they were.
“Good,” said Walter. “I’m going to search you and then ask you to remove your coat. Don’t be alarmed. I will not hurt you, unless you make me. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” said the man.
With the gun pushed against the back of the man’s head at the base of his skull, Walter ran his free hand down and across the man’s body, his arms and legs, looking for a weapon, including any small ordnance that might be hidden in his socks or hitched on his ankle, around his waist and belt, under his armpits and into his groin. He was unarmed. Walter removed the man’s wallet from the left breast jacket pocket, opened it and dropped it on the floor next to the man’s head.
“I’m going to ask you to do something, Sean,” he said. “When I do, do exactly as I say. Take as much time as you need. Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” said the man.
“Good. Roll over on your back. Take your hands from your head and unbutton your coat. Then remove the coat, one arm at a time, without getting off the floor. Do it now.” Walter stepped back a pace and watched the man turn over and begin unbuttoning his long overcoat. “If you make a move other than with your buttons, I’ll shoot you. You understand me?”
“Yes,” said the man.
“Good,” said Walter.
