Dutch I could see and guess at from their photos in life. The Russian was the man reaching for the newspaper display when the bomb detonated. I backed up, a frame at a time. He stepped back from the newspaper display. He was in profile, his face turned slightly away. He backed toward the magazine display. And then I saw his face.
I know him. It can’t be.
37
Behind me, in the hallway, a door opened. Feet shuffled on hardwood.
“Nic? Ben je wakker?” Are you awake?
“ Ja,” I called in my best impersonation of Nic. I couldn’t stay. I pulled the drive from the port. I could hear the bathroom door shut and then water running in a sink, the flush of a toilet. A shower started. And beyond that, I heard the front door open.
Nic was home.
No way out the front. I tapped carefully on the computer, making sure I was not leaving traces of my time there. I logged out and the screen returned to its prompt page. I put it to sleep.
I put my leg out over the window. I could still hear the crash of the water in the shower and I hoped Nic wasn’t heading straight back to his room. I pulled myself out, standing on the sill.
I couldn’t go down: I looked up. There was a beam extending from the brickwork several feet above my head. Most of the buildings in Amsterdam had them; I presumed they were used to haul large pieces of furniture up to the homes, given the narrowness of most Dutch stairwells.
It was quite a jump. I waited for someone on the street to notice me but no one was looking up. I gathered my thoughts; let the muscle memory of hours of parkour training settle in. I could do this. I raised my eyes to the beam. I jumped. I extended my hands to catch the beam.
I missed.
I fell. I reached and barely seized, with my palms, the brick ledge below the windowsill I’d been standing on. My body hit against the brick and pain lanced up my arms. My fingertips burned like fire but I didn’t dare cry out. I used my feet to muffle the impact and that gave me leverage to strengthen my hold on the brick. Parkour hardens the hands and the arms and the abdominals, but I was too out of serious practice. I glanced down. The street was mostly empty. A woman walked out of the cafe, past the bright yellow awning, didn’t look up.
I heard the door open. Nic, inside his room. Whistling. I was screwed. I heard a clatter on his desk; he was probably only a foot away from me. He might even see my hands if he looked out the window. I heard him speaking rapid Dutch to his mom, annoyed, telling her he didn’t have time to chat.
Thank God. I risked a pull-up and saw through the window that he was walking away from me, down the hall. But he’d left the bedroom door open.
Parkour is about effective movement from place to place. Efficiency. I made my mind a knife. I cut the problem into small steps that could be done in one fluid movement. I had been hanging on to the windowsill for less than ten seconds. I had no time to spare.
I pulled myself up cleanly. I managed to get a foot on the sill and I stood the rest of the way. Nic’s mom called to him from her room, complaining about him not bringing her breakfast. Nic told her to piss off and go back to bed until she was sober. His voice got louder, walking back in the direction of the bedrooms.
I had to make the jump again. I jumped, and this time I closed hands around the beam. I swung my legs up quickly, hearing Nic’s voice berate his mother and her answering bray. I heard a shout from the street-I’d been seen. All I could do was to vanish quickly, before the police were summoned. I moved to the top of the beam and eased myself out of view onto the roof. On the roof no one could see me. I lay and I stared at the sky and I caught my breath. Slowly, I slithered off Nic’s roof onto the neighboring one. I made my way, carefully, silently, staying out of the street’s sight. It seemed to take forever.
A little girl in one of the attic apartments watched me, goggle-eyed, as I reached the end of the block, a dozen buildings away from Nic’s house. She was maybe four, bright-eyed, apple-cheeked. I waved and she waved back. Then I put a finger to my lips and so did she, laughing. I pantomimed cranking open the window; she did.
I slipped through the window into her room. She stared at me. I patted her head and pantomimed silence again. She laughed again. I slipped out of her room, heard bedroom noises that sounded like a mom getting dressed, bathroom noises of a shower. In moments, I was out of the apartment and heading down the stairway.
38
You know the dead Russian? How?” Mila said. She’d plugged the portable drive into her own computer and was looking at what I’d stolen from the thief Nic.
My voice felt thick. “The day of the bombing in London… I gave a presentation on a guy who we believed was tied to financing for international crime rings, ones that even reach into governments. We called him the Money Czar, a guy no one could put a finger on. Nothing on him, he was a blank slate; we only had the one picture and mentions of him by a couple of informants who ended up dead. This is the guy. This is the guy I was hunting, that I wanted to catch. I thought the scarred man might have been working to protect the Money Czar. Instead, the scarred man kills him.” I could hardly breathe, my chest felt cut from stone. “They killed my target. Who the hell are these people? What are they after? Why did they take my wife?”
Mila stared at me.
“This was no ordinary bombing,” I said. “This was a hell of a lot more. This was a murder. I need to go through everything we lifted off Nic’s laptop. I have to find a reason for him to bring me into the operation.”
“Then let’s find you one,” Mila said, leaning over the computer.
39
I don’t think I can bring in new people right now,” Nic said on the phone. I suspected he’d gotten a lockdown order from Piet. They were in panic mode over the attempt of the Turk to infiltrate them. Or, a scarier possibility, he figured out someone had been in his computer or his room. No one new was going to be trusted; the Turk had soured my chances.
But I had no options. I had to sell him on me.
“Listen, Nic. That’s cool. But you got to get me some money, man, because I have some information that’s worth real money to you and your boss.”
“I doubt that, Sam, but-”
“Before you got to the Grijs Gander, the Turk was talking about moving a valuable shipment for you. To the United States. I don’t think you should trust him, mouthing off in a bar. You need delicate goods moved, I can do it. Fast and safe and cheap.”
“He talked about a smuggling route. In the bar.” Nic’s voice rose slightly.
“He said it all in Turkish to his friends and I picked up enough,” I said. I glanced at Mila, who was listening in. “He said he’d make Piet pay if he didn’t get his money. He said he’d phone in an anonymous tip to the cops if Piet didn’t give him what he wanted.”
“I… I can’t have this talk on the phone.” The nervousness in his voice increased.
“But it didn’t mean anything to me until they started going off about your friend.” Of course, if they’d tortured the Turk and he’d told them a different story from mine… I could be in very great danger. But such were the risks. “Well, I will give you a better and more secure route than that Turk and I know to keep my mouth shut. I need steady work, Nic.”
