‘Get in the van, Sam,’ he said. ‘Let’s talk.’
‘That might be an illegal action. You aren’t supposed to be operating on American soil.’
‘Go get yourself a coffee,’ August Holdwine said to the woman. ‘We’ll talk later back at the office.’
‘Your earrings,’ I said to her. ‘The blue is a shade too bright against the gray of the street and the buildings. Too memorable. But they do set off your eyes.’
‘Don’t be a punk,’ she said and she turned and vanished into the river of people.
‘Get in,’ August said. ‘Please.’
‘That would be stupid if the point of following me is to grab me.’
‘It’s not. It’s to talk to you.’
‘You could walk up and say hello.’
‘Not while you’re with that woman. Mila.’ He tossed his headphones on the computer keyboard in the back of the van.
‘No one’s here, August. Don’t lie to me. Are you thinking I’m going to lead you to her?’ But I needed to know why August and the CIA were interested in Mila. I needed to know now. So I got into the van. August moved up into the driver’s seat.
‘Where to?’ August said.
‘What about your guy?’
‘He can find his way home. Where can we go and talk in private?’
‘I know a bar.’
5
Amsterdam
Jack Ming couldn’t sleep. He watched the clock tick toward midnight. He remembered reading once that there were eighteen million cellular phones in the Netherlands, and it frustrated him that not a single one was within reach. With one call he could be out of the hospital, his bill settled, safe under arms. He should have asked Ricki to leave him hers. But her showing up had surprised him too much, and she’d left before he’d thought to ask.
August. That had been the muttered name of the kind CIA officer who’d grabbed him, the one who stopped the others from beating him further. That was the name he was going to use when he phoned the CIA. He would call and ask for August. That was his ticket to safety, to money, to freedom.
Ten minutes after Ricki left, Van Biezen reappeared in his doorway, looking tired and rumpled, looking ready to go home. ‘Your story checked out about being grabbed from the cafe. I thought you would want to know.’ He raised an eyebrow to see if Jack would speak.
‘Am I going to be released now?’
‘From the hospital or our protective custody?’
‘Both.’
‘I cannot speak for the doctors. But I think you should be careful. These smugglers were apparently part of a much bigger criminal enterprise.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘On ten Boom’s laptop we found evidence he had been hacking into police databases, downloading classified documents relating to far-ranging investigations. The sort of information that a criminal network would like to buy.’
‘I know nothing about whatever this man was doing,’ Jack said. ‘And if you are going to question me further along these lines, I would like to see someone from the embassy and I would like a lawyer.’
‘I wasn’t questioning you. I was warning you. These are dangerous people, Mr Jin.’ Van Biezen’s voice was measured and careful, sleek as a diplomat’s. Just like his mother. ‘Are you planning to return to Hong Kong? I understand you have not given the doctors a clear answer.’ Just a bit of a sarcasm in his tone.
‘I haven’t decided. I am already ruined for this semester. I have much work to do.’ He paused. ‘You said you were giving me a warning. Do you think I’m in danger?’
‘We have kept a guard by your room. He’s not for show.’
Immediately after Van Biezen stepped out, a polite functionary from the Chinese embassy stepped in, now that he was speaking; to be sure that he was all right, and that there was no issue of embarrassing the motherland with the police. It was frightening to Jack because he had no desire to be shipped off to Hong Kong and the fact that a bureaucrat was here so late at night made him nervous. But his false identity held. Yes, he said as Jin Ming, his parents and his grandparents were dead, he had no family back in China. He had been careful to craft an identity without family. The Chinese diplomat was concerned for his wellbeing and Jack reassured the man he was the innocent victim of a crime. He thanked the embassy visitor and when the man had left Jack stared at the window.
He wondered if his mother was looking for him; he thought not. She didn’t want him. He had been lucky, too lucky, and it was time to place a surer hand on the reins of his own fate.
He couldn’t sleep. He got up for a walk.
Each day, the doctors had encouraged Jack to walk to stretch his leg muscles, even if it was just around the floor for five tottering orbits, ambling past rooms and equipment in the hallway. His mind full of Ricki and his rapidly unraveling situation, he was walking back to his room and as he turned the final corner he saw, from down the hallway, a man he didn’t know in an orderly’s uniform enter his room.
His police guard was gone.
Jack stopped. The man looked short, thickly built. He shut Jack’s door behind him. He knew the night-shift orderly; he had seen him on the opposite side of the floor, during his walk.
If Ricki could steal a uniform…
He can see I’m not in the bed, Jack thought. He must think I’m in the bathroom.
He ducked back behind the corner, keeping one eye focused on the door.
After thirty seconds, the man stepped into the hallway. Heavy eyebrows, pale skin, a soft mess of a mouth, a bottom lip long ago disfigured in a fight.
You’re a loose end, Jack thought. And now either someone who knew Nic, or someone who knows Novem Soles has come looking for you. They know you’re alive. They’ve either waited for the guard to go to the bathroom or they’ve paid the guard off. They want to be sure you can’t talk.
And if he was wrong, then no harm done. But if he was right…
The man saw Jack. The twisted lip smiled. He raised the eyebrows as if in greeting. Like he was a friend, come by to talk to Jack.
Jack ran.
Or, rather, Jack stumbled in a loping run. He wasn’t entirely recovered from the bullet that had grazed arteries and windpipe. He wore a bathrobe and the hospital gown and flimsy slippers the nurses had given him. He saw a stairway and he hit the door, leaning out into the cool slightly stale air of the concrete staircase. His mind moved as fast as it did when he was crafting a software program. If the guy was here to silence Jack he would expect Jack to try and escape.
Most immediate escape meant down, toward the ground floor.
So Jack headed up. He wasn’t used to physical exertion and little black clouds dotted his vision. His breath sounded loud in the stairwell. He hit the next floor, opened the door, stepped out into the unit. More recovery rooms but this floor was less crowded. He was on the opposite side of the floor from the main nurses’ station.
An old man in a brown bathrobe walked past him, ambling with an insomniac’s shuffle, carting an IV feed on a wheeled pole. Jack moved in the other direction. He had to hide. Get to a phone, get Ricki to come and pick him up at a nearby pub or cafe. He couldn’t stay out on the streets of Amsterdam dressed like a patient; even in the world’s most laid-back city around midnight, it would attract too much attention. He looked like someone who might have wandered away from the hospital and needed help.
He opened the door of one room, saw an elderly woman sleeping inside. He eased it shut.
