“Brute,” I muttered.
His grin was menacing. “You have no idea.”
Fear paralyzed my brain, raised goosebumps on my skin, and set my heart pounding like an engine piston. Under the strong white lights, Max’s features became sharp angles. He rested his pale eyes on me for a few seconds as though considering what to do to me. Then he shrugged. “Get up. Let’s go.”
A few deep breaths helped to clear my mind, just enough anyway, to take note of our route as we passed through the cabinet-filled room to yet another keypad-protected door. My knee ached but I tried hard not to limp. I didn’t want to give Max the satisfaction of seeing I was hurt.
Once we were through the door, and it had clanged shut behind us, Max let go of my arm. “Follow me,” he said.
Overhead, a bare bulb hung from a wire, forming a puddle of light rimmed by dark shadows. It took time for my eyes to adjust to the semi-darkness, but Max marched on. On heavy and unwilling legs, I followed, peering through the gloom, gauging the size and shape of the space. We must be in a series of cellars under the house, and this one was massive, I soon realized, mirroring the spacious rooms of the apartment and the empty expanses of the upper floors. It was rough and unfinished, the stone walls exposed, and it reeked of damp and mold.
Max stopped at a small door of dark wood with iron hinges. No keypad here, just a rusty old bolt which he slid open. He pushed me inside. A single bulb hung from a low brick ceiling, casting an anemic light over the cramped space. The walls and floor were made of stone and there were no windows.
It was a prison cell, and it already had an inmate. To my astonishment, Henk was there, his aura rotating rapidly over his thin grey hair. He sat hunched over on a bed that was pushed against the back wall. He glanced up with an expression of shock when he saw us, but he didn’t speak.
“What’s going on?” I projected more assurance than I felt. Even when Sam contacted the police, they’d have no way of finding me down here.
“From you, I need information and then you can leave,” Max said, which I knew was a lie from the way his eyes shifted when he said it. He had no intention of letting me go. “And for Henk here, well, it’s the end of the road. He betrayed us and from that, there’s no going back.”
“Betrayed you how? What did he do?”
Max tilted his head. “Oh, come on. He told you about the upper floors, about the vault.”
“No, he didn’t. He never said a word. Just the opposite. Even when we asked him questions, he didn’t say anything. And we think he staged a number of… pranks, in an attempt to scare us out of the house.”
Max smiled. “Really?” He turned to Henk and spoke in Dutch. Henk nodded once or twice.
“Well, you’re right about the incidents,” Max told me. “He was indeed trying to get you out of the house, out of harm’s way. So very noble of him. Now, tell me where the others are.”
“No.”
“Okay.” He grabbed Henk by the arm and pulled him to his feet. “Both of you come with me.” He frog-marched Henk out of the cell and across the gloomy outer chamber. “Keep up,” he warned me.
Max prodded Henk along as the old man’s breathing grew more labored, making me worry he might have a heart attack. Once or twice he glanced at Max with an expression of hatred on his face. Even in the dim light, I could see the air over his head swirling madly. Things were not looking good for the old man.
When we came to a stop in front of an arched opening on the right-hand wall of the chamber, Henk held his hands out in front of him as though warding off some unseen horror. Seeing his distress, I moved closer to him, ready to help him if I could.
The arch formed an entry into an alcove about four meters deep and built of brick that glowed red in the light from a small LED torch that Max was holding. He dragged the caretaker inside, all the way to the back, and played the beam across the walls. Many of the bricks were marked with scratched letters, but they were impossible to read from my position at the entrance. I had no intention of going in there. It smelled of damp stone and decay.
Henk, clearly agitated, pulled himself free of Max’s grasp and put both hands over his face. When Max laughed and spoke to him in Dutch, the elderly caretaker sank to his knees and bent forward, his forehead on the stone floor. What the hell?
Max turned to me with that sardonic smile etched on his lips. “I was reminding Henk of the history of this place. Come over, take a look for yourself.”
I took a reluctant step forward. The air inside felt heavy, saturated with despair. Up close, the letters looked like sets of initials, roughly etched into the brick.
“It’s a burial chamber.” Max pointed. “See here? These are the initials of those who died, the early ones at least. Later on, no one bothered to record the names.”
I felt faint, horrified by Max’s words.
“What people?” I asked. “How did they die?”
Henk started shuffling backwards out of the alcove. Max grabbed his arm, making the old man stop. Trembling, Henk bowed his head.
“People who betrayed us.” Max traced a letter with his finger. “Including Henk’s grandfather.” He gave a deep sigh. “Now, we have other ways to punish traitors, using computers. That works too, but sometimes we have to do things the old-fashioned way.”
My legs shook so badly that I crouched down, hoping to mitigate the damage to my head if I fainted and fell. Pain shot through my temples. Max was more dangerous than I’d even imagined. He was a psychopath.
Still, his comment about computers cast some light on the presence of that high-tech office upstairs. But how was Henk’s grandfather involved in all of this?
Max talked to Henk for what seemed like a long time, his voice growing louder by the second. The old man spoke occasionally, but none of what he said seemed to please our captor. He yanked on Henk’s elbow and turned back towards the cell.
As I slowly got to my feet, hoping for the dizziness to pass, Henk came to a sudden halt, planting his feet on the stone floor. Max muttered at him in Dutch, but Henk refused to budge, instead twisting his head to look back at me. He said something I didn’t understand. Whatever it was, it made Max angry. He swung his fist and punched Henk violently in the stomach. Henk doubled over, clutched at his chest, and sank to the ground. The noise of his head connecting with stone took my breath away.
After a few seconds of being paralyzed by shock, I bent down beside him. His eyelids fluttered, his breath rasped in his chest. I held my fingers against his neck and felt a faint pulse. It faltered and, seconds later, it stopped.
“Come on, Henk,” I shouted at him. “You’re not going to die down here. Do you hear me?”
In horror, I saw the spinning air over his head slow and fade. He was dead. I unbuttoned his jacket, ready to start chest compressions, but Max grabbed my arm and dragged me to my feet.
“Leave him.”
“You killed him.”
Max shrugged. “He deserved it, believe me. Just like his grandfather, who told the authorities the house was being used to store weapons destined for delivery to the Nazis. No one betrays Zeckendorf and lives to talk about it. Henk’s father was allowed to stay on, though. He was only too aware of the risk of crossing the organization. He was loyal. And I’d thought his son was too, but he obviously changed his allegiances.” Max glanced back at the dreadful tomb. “We need to keep moving.”
He marched me back to the cell, where he shoved me inside and made me sit on the cot. The fact that he hadn’t already killed me made me feel a bit better. Still, my situation was dire. No one knew where I was, and there were steel doors with passcodes between me and freedom.
Standing over me, Max asked where Sam and Karen were. I was thinking it was interesting that he didn’t mention Alex when he pulled his knife from his jacket and waved it in front of me. “Tell me where they are.”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t want to hurt you, Kate.” He gave me his serpent-y smile. “Actually, th
at’s not true. Nothing would give me more pleasure. But there’s a lot at stake here so I need you to cooperate, right now.”
“Tell me why. What is it that you want? We’ve already told the police about the tunnel and the secret office and the vault. It’s too late to stop us from talking about what we’ve found.”
“I want the documents you found in the safety deposit box. And I want your friends to bring them to me.”
“We showed the police photos of those too. There are no secrets left to protect.”
Max thrust my phone back at me. “Show me.”
I opened the phone and noticed there was no signal. Not surprising, given the mass of stone and concrete between me and the outside world. I pulled up the photo of the letter to Tomas.
“That’s it,” I said. “I showed it to a detective earlier.”
Max contemplated the photo for a few seconds. “What else did you find?”
“Eline’s mother’s jewelry, a copy of the house deed and a note from Eline to Karen.”
“What did it say?”
I thought back. “Something about being worried that Tomas was being hounded by Zeckendorf. Why? What were you and Tomas fighting about?”
“Nothing you need to know about. Was there anything else in the box?”
“A platinum signet ring, like the one you’re wearing. What does that mean? Is it like some sort of weird club thing?”
Was Pieter wearing one? I couldn’t remember, yet I was sure I’d seen another one in the last few days.
“You ask too many questions, Kate. Shut up and listen to me. This is what will happen. I’m going to send a message from you to Sam. Tell me your passcode.”
I refused, but that earned me a slap across the face that made me think my jaw had been dislocated. I tasted blood in my mouth. “It’s 5886,” I said finally. My birthday. It struck me that I might not live to see the next one.
Max started scrolling. “I found Sam’s number. And I see Karen’s too. Thank you. So, this is what will happen next. I will send a message, from you as far as they know, telling Sam and Karen to meet me with the contents of the safety deposit box. The message will go out as soon as I’m upstairs. From that moment, they have one hour to comply. If they don’t turn up at the specified place and time, you will die. I hope your friends care about you enough to save you, Kate. If you’d rather not take that risk, just tell me where they are, and I’ll go pick the stuff up myself.”
I took a surreptitious glance at my watch. How long before Sam would realize I wasn’t coming back to the boat? It had only been ninety minutes. I wasn’t certain that I’d been gone long enough yet for him to worry, to move on somewhere else. I looked up to see Max watching me.
“Your choice. Tell me where to find them and, when I have what I need, you’ll all go free.”
“You killed Henk. I can’t trust you. I think you’ll kill us all once you have what you want.”
Max held his hand over his heart. “Not trust me? I’m wounded, Kate, I really am. But if that’s the way you want to play it…”
He turned and walked out, bolting the door closed behind him.
23
After Max left, the silence in the cell was palpable. It hung over the cot and mingled with the shadows in the corners. I doubted I had ever heard absolute silence before. Even on occasions when I’d been alone, there had been traffic noise, or wind in the trees, or the call of an owl or songbird. In the void, my ears rang.
My blood pressure seemed to plummet, leaving me light-headed and dizzy. I gripped the edge of the cot, fighting off nausea and trying to order my thoughts. What would Sam do when he got Max’s text? I hoped he’d realize it was a trap and just call the police. Karen and Alex would surely be able to persuade him not to rush over here, and it was obvious that Max didn’t know where they were. For now, they were safe.
I got up off the uncomfortable cot and examined the cell. The solid walls of stacked stone were blackened with mildew and slimy with moss. It felt like a dungeon from the Middle Ages, only missing lengths of thick rusty chain and instruments of torture. The floor was laid with slabs of the same grey, mold-mottled stone.
I tapped my way along the walls, looking for a gap, a loose stone that might be pried out. But the walls, centuries old, were unyielding. Then I attacked the door, first yanking on the door handle, then throwing myself against the old wood, hoping it would be rotten and give way under my weight. But the door remained sealed shut, an impossible obstacle. In a final desperate attempt to find an exit, I tried to slide the cot away from the wall, visions of a trapdoor dancing in my head. But the bed was immoveable, and when I wriggled under it to check, I found it was bolted to the floor.
Disheartened, I sat down on the cot and rubbed my knee, which was sore from when I’d fallen on it. My jeans were torn, revealing a glimpse of abraded red skin. I hated Max.
I wondered why he hadn’t made a run for it when I told him about the police investigation. It wouldn’t do him much good to kill me now the police already had the information about Zeckendorf. But he was still looking for something that had been in the safety deposit box. What had we missed?
I jumped up and paced to the door and back, fighting off the urge to scream. I was desperate to talk to Sam and Karen, to tell them to examine everything again. Was it the platinum ring? A document we’d overlooked?
A shortened version of my usual stretching routine did nothing to dissolve the muscle knots in my legs and the tension in my shoulders. I yawned, gulping in dank air. My watch showed five p.m. The day had started at dawn after a long, sleepless night. No wonder I felt exhausted. And thirsty. Fear and adrenaline had sucked up every drop of fluid in my body. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, my lips were strips of sandpaper, the skin on my arms itched.
I dreamed of a jog through St. James Park, breathing fresh air, enjoying the spike of endorphins that would wake me up and clear my brain. The cell was barely ten steps across, though, so I stretched some more, determined to stay awake even though my eyelids were heavy.
But it was a losing battle. Perhaps if I lay down for a few minutes, a nap would help to fight off the exhaustion. I settled on the thin mattress and huddled under a damp-smelling blanket. After rubbing my sore knee for a minute, I soon fell into a troubled sleep.
My watch showed seven when I woke up, far later than I’d intended. I bolted upright, panicked. Max hadn’t reappeared. What did that mean? That Sam hadn’t responded to the text Max had sent?
Selfishly, a wave of self-pity engulfed me. If Max didn’t get what he wanted, he would kill me. Or maybe he’d leave me here to starve slowly to death. I really didn’t want to die in this godforsaken prison, cold and alone. Josh might never know what happened to me. My dad and my brother would be devastated.
Unwanted tears gathered in my throat and I swallowed them down. I pushed away the musty blanket and stood up, welcoming the twinge of pain in my knee. It was time to focus, to come up with a plan. Maybe I could outwit Max, take him by surprise. The bare bulb that cast its feeble light on the room was within reach, suspended from the low ceiling. I could unscrew the bulb and hide in the dark, then jump on Max when he opened the door. But a quick search for a weapon of any kind was fruitless. None of the stones in the floor and wall were loose enough to pry up. The bolts holding the bed together had fused into a rusty mess. I doubted I could overcome Max with my bare hands.
Just as I was sinking into further despair, a noise in the outer chamber sent a bolt of electric fear through me. Max was back. I didn’t have time to think before the bolt slid back and the door opened. Alex and Sam were pushed into the cell, their auras eddying in the dim light.
Max remained at the door as Alex rushed forward to hug me. “Thank god you’re still alive. He wouldn’t tell us what he’d done with you.”
“Such a touching reunion,” Max commented with a sneer. He turned and closed the door. I heard the bolt being rammed back into place.
“What happened? How
did Max find you?” I asked. “Where’s Karen?”
Sam sat down heavily on the cot. “She’s safe. She was going to get in touch with Nouwen while Alex and I went to meet Max to do a deal. We decided we would give him everything from the deposit box if he agreed to release you. We’d even chosen a hand-off location.”
“That went well,” Alex said. “As you can see.”
“Did you ring Detective Nouwen?”
“No, but Karen will have told him everything by now. We didn’t know for sure where Max was holding you, but she’ll tell them to start with this house, as that was a likely option.”
“You shouldn’t have gone to meet Max.” I crouched down in front of him. “Why put yourself in danger? What if Max had been keeping me somewhere else, where the police would never find us?” I looked around the dismal cell. “As if they could ever find us down here anyway.”
“Water under the bridge. We did what we thought was right.” Sam bowed his head. He looked and sounded defeated.
“Chin up.” I reached up to give him a hug. “I’m sure the police will find us. Karen will tell them about this place. We’ll get out of here.”
I straightened up and moved to sit next to him on the bed. “Did you look through all the papers after I left? Did you find anything else? Because Max is obviously looking for something we either don’t have or don’t know we have.”
“You saw everything we did.” He checked off the items on his fingers. “The white envelope containing the addendum to Tomas’s will, adding Pieter as co-inheritor. The copy of Tomas’s letter to Zeckendorf requesting that they allow Eline to stay in the house. The return letter from Zeckendorf agreeing to the arrangement as long as Pieter inherited the estate if anything happened to Eline.” He looked at Alex. “Anything else?”
“Tomas’s platinum ring,” she added.
Assignment in Amsterdam Page 20