PART THREE
“Systems do collapse, and are replaced by others. The state is only here because people choose to believe in it-because they trust its systems… This, then, is the threat of crime to modern society: not that it will overcome civilization with violence, but that it will undermine trust in, and thus the viability of, the system.”
72
Piet Tanaka opened his eyes and blinked away blood. He took a hard, shuddering breath. The hiss of air over ruined teeth hurt so sharply he jerked up. A weight lay atop him. He shoved the form away. A man. One of Edward’s thugs, shot, unconscious.
Piet pulled himself up from the concrete. He could hear the shattering sounds of gunshots inside the brewery.
It was time to leave. The job had gone very wrong. He didn’t care who was winning on the inside: that fool who’d tricked him so badly or Edward’s people.
He saw the van’s keys, stuck in the driver’s-side door. He lurched into the van, started the engine, and accelerated into the night. When he realized his sword was gone, he felt a feverish rage take hold of his heart. Sam, you rotten bastard.
Two kilometers down the road he had an idea. He needed a safety net. Sam worked for someone. Fine. Sam’s bosses would want information. They could hide him. It was time to defect.
It had been a bar in Brussels where the manager got Sam his gear; well, Sam had used another bar manager in Amsterdam to establish his bona fides. De Rode Prins. The bars must be connected, and there he could look for Sam’s bosses to make a deal. He blinked through the pain-his tongue kept probing where his front teeth once were and his gums gave off a hard throb-and he headed for the Prinsengracht. The bar would be closed. But he could break in, find out who Peter Samson worked for.
73
Pain – from my head to my shoulder to my back-forced open my eyes. I slowly sat up. Everything hurt. Dried blood on my head, my cheek, drool stuck to my lips. I was in a small stone room. No bed; file cabinets. My shirt and jacket were hiked up.
Then I saw Lucy, sitting across the room from me.
I blinked at her.
“Hello, Sam.”
“You cut your hair,” I said. My voice sounded thick, heavy, broken.
“I’m supposed to kill you,” she said. Five words to end a conversation before it started. I could hear a truck’s engine rumbling in the distance. The plonking sounds of crates being moved. I heard those sounds and I couldn’t wrap my head around the words she had just spoken to me.
“Lucy-”
“I told Edward I would take care of you, but take care has a whole range of meanings.”
“Lucy. Where is the baby?” My mind swirled with a thousand questions, but that was the one that knifed through the shock.
“Sam. You’ll die if you don’t listen to me.”
I looked at the flat of her stomach. Her dark blouse was neatly tucked into blue jeans. “Where is our son?”
“He’s not your concern, Sam.”
“He’s my only concern. Now that I know what you are.” Hello, anger, boiling up in my chest.
“Will you please listen, monkey? I am trying to save you.”
Her use of her old term of endearment made my stomach twist. But I kept my voice steady. “You. I don’t even have the words for what you are.”
“You’d rather argue with me than live?”
“What you are. I know what you are now,” I said.
“Smarter. Quicker. Stronger. Richer. You could try those on for size.”
The woman I loved. I thought I loved. She sat there, wearing the face and the body that I knew so well, that I’d treasured; she spoke with the voice that had murmured love into my ear; she regarded me with the intelligence that sealed the deal to spend my life with her. But she was a stranger. I hadn’t known her.
Let me say that again: I hadn’t known her.
She had been a complete and utter lie and she had stolen far more than three years of my life. The scale of the lie staggered me. She had stolen my sense of who I was, and what I knew in the world. The marriage was done and I didn’t even have time to grieve for it. All this flashed through my head in a second, not even in words, just a coldness that covered me.
“All right, smart and rich,” I said. “Where is our child?”
“Don’t you want to know why?”
“No. I’ll ask and you’ll lie, or you won’t tell me. You’ve done what you’ve done and that’s it,” I said. “I don’t understand it but I don’t need to understand it. I only need to stop you.”
“Well, that’s not going to happen.” Now she showed me a half smile, the one when I used to tease her and she’d tease back.
“Fine. We’ll play it your way. Tell me why. You’re clearly dying to,” I said. “You seem to have a reason for keeping me alive. Just to taunt me?”
“I’m not heartless, Sam. I do have… feelings for you. You were a good cook. Good in bed. Thoughtful company. You were a good husband.”
“I was good camouflage,” I said. “I was a good pawn.”
“I’ll bet you insisted to the Company that I was innocent. Very chivalrous.”
“Very naive.”
“No. I’m just very good at fooling people,” she said. An emptiness seemed to hollow out her words.
I got to unsteady feet, my head rocking. “What is going on here, Lucy? Who are these people, what are you doing?”
“Sweet mystery,” she said. “I’m supposed to find out what you know and shoot you. But I can’t. I can’t just shoot you in cold blood, Sam. I think…”
I took a shambling step toward her and she raised the gun. “It’s not cold blood if you attack me. Then I do what I have to, Sam. And I assume you don’t want to die.”
I stopped. “Yes.”
“I’m glad I didn’t wreck your will to live, then.” I couldn’t read the emotion in her face. She wasn’t smug, despite her earlier words about being smarter and richer. She looked unsure. Like she wasn’t used to seeing consequences staring back at her.
“I want to know where our son is.”
“You say nothing to the police, to the Company, that I’m alive. You don’t mention me and, in a week or so, I’ll
