“Is she wearing…?”
“Fake pregnancy belly,” said Lucy, with a scowl. “Big enough for twins.”
“The police report says eyewitnesses saw a pregnant European woman escape the building after the shooting started, along with dozens of other people.”
“Let me guess,” Marc broke in, “and then she disappeared.”
“She walked out with what they stole under her dress.” Lucy sneered. “Like a goddamn shoplifter.”
“What happened to the shooter?” said Marc.
“A police officer found him on the factory floor. Dead from a self-inflicted head wound.”
“Self-inflicted,” repeated Lucy. “Sure.”
Marc put the narrative together. “So the Lion’s Roar either paid or coerced the sacked bloke into doing his shooting spree and spiking the cameras. But Axelle goes in first to find what they need for the bioprinters. In the chaos she blows the poor sod’s brains out so he can’t talk, makes it look like a suicide.”
“They’ve been planning this for a while,” noted Lucy. “Assim, I bet you dig some more, you’re gonna find evidence that VdG Acquisitions shipped out something small and fragile from Manila on the same day, to Belgium and Libya.”
“Already working on it.”
Marc’s attention was drawn back to the cameras and he moved to the window. A black Mercedes taxi with a yellow checkerboard trim halted in front of the gallery, and a tall, thin, well-dressed man climbed out, adjusting his tie as he was buzzed in through the front door.
“Van de Greif is in the building.”
Lucy nodded. “If we had time and the resources, I’d say we snatch the guy and sweat him some, but we don’t.” She turned back to Marc’s phone. “Assim. He’s not going to be happy about it, but let Delancort know we’re taking the direct approach on this. And for crying out loud, tell him we need to get the Belgians on board.”
“Understood.”
Assim cut the call and then it was just the two of them.
“How do you want to do this?”
Marc checked the Glock pistol, then snapped the gun’s paddle holster inside his waistband at the small of his back.
“High speed and low drag.” Lucy looped the MP9’s sling to hang from her shoulder, shrugging on her jacket to cover it up. “Follow my lead.”
* * *
The apartment was tiny, it was cold, and it was always noisy. From the constant rattles and bangs of the bare pipes that ran up the walls to the other floors, Meddur had hoped hot water would flow through and give his family a little heat, but the opposite seemed true.
They had been here for weeks now, but this apartment, this city, this entire country was still cold to them. Not just from the gray rainy skies and the chill of the nights, but from a coldness that showed in the faces of the Belgians who looked at them with hooded, judgmental gazes. The icy manner wasn’t limited to the Europeans, either. The other Middle Eastern immigrants who lived in the building’s adjoining rooms, the hard-faced Sunni who owned the place, the people who ran the cramped little supermarket on the corner—all of them looked at Meddur and his family without an iota of warmth.
When they first arrived, the children were excited. It seemed like Brussels would be the end of their long odyssey from across the sea, arriving here after they had fled Khoms, down the Libyan coast from ravaged Tripoli.
Meddur knew he was one of the lucky ones. Many of their fellow immigrants had lost members of their family on the treacherous crossing, but he had managed, Allah willing, to keep his wife Sakina by his side, and his children whole and safe. Tadla, the eldest at twelve, had barely spoken during those hard months, while her brother Aksil had celebrated his eighth birthday sneaking out of the confines of a refugee center on the Italian coast. The boy refused to be frightened by his circumstances, embracing the changes in a way that made Meddur love him all the more. He had been the one singing songs as they drove through Brussels, in the back of a rusting minibus owned by the traffickers, the men who had taken his mother’s and sister’s gold bracelets as payment.
But then they crossed the bridge over the canal and entered Molenbeek, the borough that would be their new home. Aksil’s singing trailed off as they saw the armed policemen patrolling and the locals with their haunted, distrustful faces. That first impression had never gone away.
Meddur had come far in search of a better life and a safe place to live, only to arrive here and discover the same grim reality his family were running from. In Khoms, the echoes of the civil war and the internecine conflicts between old enemies had made life there almost impossible. Every day felt like a gun was at their heads. Here, the constant dread was different but it was no less corrosive. Molenbeek might not be under threat from daily bombings, but another cloud of fears lingered amid the crushing poverty and the suspicions. He soon learned that the district was notorious for crime, and considered a no-go zone by many.
Meddur, Sakina and the children were illegals. They lived in terror of the strident knock at the door. The traffickers told them stories of how the black-masked Belgian Politie were ready to gun down anyone with a brown face unlucky enough to draw their attention. They told Meddur that ever since a gang of violent Islamists from Molenbeek had gone on a shooting spree in France a few years earlier, the Belgians saw everyone who lived there as a potential jihadi. When he tried to reach out to friends he knew who had made it to Antwerp, a city on the northern coast, the traffickers forbade it. They warned him never to use a cell phone, because government agents listened in on all calls.
We will keep you safe, they said, as long as you pay us.
Meddur had been a fisherman. A lifetime ago, he had captained his own boat. Now he was cleaning floors in a reeking warehouse for a pittance that barely kept his family fed. He wanted to find work driving trucks, but those jobs were jealously guarded. He would need to pay his way toward being considered for such a thing.
He rose and dressed, getting ready to go to the mosque. Through the ceiling, he heard the thuds and scrapes of movement from the people in the apartment above. They were an older family, and the husband argued constantly with the wife and the mother-in-law. Already, Meddur could pick out the man’s hacking cough and the indistinct grumble of their peevish conversation.
Sakina brought him some tea. Like her husband, she had hoped to seek honest work here. Sakina was a trained nurse, but the traffickers had laughed at her when she told them. For now, she stayed in these three tiny rooms, looking after Aksil and Tadla, hoping for better days to come.
Sakina seemed uneasy, and Meddur reached up a hand to touch her face. Her deep brown eyes were troubled.
“What’s wrong?”
The question seemed foolish. So much was wrong.
“Last night, while you were fast asleep, I found Tadla watching the television.” She nodded at the aging black-and-white portable in the apartment’s tiny kitchenette. “She saw the news from Benghazi and she was weeping.”
Meddur let out an exasperated grunt.
“Did Aksil…?”
Sakina nodded. “Yes, he knows about it too.”
“I don’t want them exposed to that,” he hissed. “We left that behind us!”
“We can’t hide it, husband. People on the street are talking, the others here…” Sakina gestured at the walls, indicating the other families living as they were in the rooms surrounding them. “It’s all anyone is thinking about!”
A great weight pressed down on him, and Meddur felt the burden of every grave possibility on his shoulders.
“When are we going to be free of this?”
It was a moment before he realized that he had asked the question aloud.
Sakina blinked back tears and drew her husband into an embrace.
“We have endured everything put in our path,” she told him. “We have love and strength. We will endure what comes next, inshallah.”
The weight lessened, and Meddur felt a swell of affection.
“With
out you my life means nothing, wife. You and the children are my world.”
As if on cue, Aksil called out: “Father? Can you come here?”
The boy’s voice filtered out of the narrow, box-like hallway that joined the room to the corridor beyond. He sounded frightened.
Meddur gave Sakina’s hand a squeeze and crossed the room. The door to the hall was half shut, but as he opened it all the way, he felt a breeze. The front door was wide open.
Aksil stood rooted to the spot in the cramped space. Towering over the boy was a woman in a dark military jacket, trousers and boots. Two more men dressed the same way were standing out in the corridor behind her. Each of them wore a mask of soft black material that enveloped their heads, turning them into wraithlike, monstrous shadows. Close to their chests they held pistols with long barrels.
Meddur’s instincts kicked in and he grabbed his son, snatching the boy up, putting himself between the intruders and the child. The woman’s reaction was unhurried, raising a gloved finger to where her lips would be, the gun rising with it.
“What happens next,” she began, with a cruel smile in the words, “is up to you.”
* * *
The security door gave its characteristic buzzing hum and Van de Greif heard the heavy thud of the automatic bolts racking open.
Standing in the main floor of the gallery, he was in the middle of inventorying a series of brass castings, with Agatha dutifully taking notes, and the sound caught him completely off guard. The remote control for the door was up in his office, behind the glass partition, and the only other way to get it to open was with one of the gallery’s RFID fobs. He had one, and the other was in Agatha’s possession.
His first thought was that Verbeke had come back, that his oily, acne-scarred computer geek Ticker had somehow gained access to the building; but the two people who entered were unfamiliar to him. A scruffy-bearded white man in a baseball cap with a wary look in his eyes pocketed a cell phone as he entered, holding the door open for an athletic black woman wearing huge sunglasses that covered half her face. Both of them were quite ordinarily dressed and certainly did not display the fashion sense of his typical clientele.
“Nee, nee,” Van de Greif said, in his nasal Dutch, wagging his finger at the new arrivals as if they were disobedient children. Americans, he guessed, too stupid to read the sign. He switched to English. “We are closed.”
“Door was open, darling,” said the black woman, with a Hepburnesque drawl. She made a show of looking around at a display of jade carvings. “Delightful. But a tad shabby. Where do you keep the good pieces?”
Van de Greif gave Agatha a dismissive look and she stepped away, moving toward the wide stairs leading to the office.
“Do you have an appointment?” he demanded.
“Darling.” The woman pulled those ridiculous glasses down her nose so she could look at him over their rims. “Do I look like the kind of person who makes an appointment?” She shot the bearded man a look, pointing a finger at one of the larger bronzes. “That one for the villa in Tuscany.” She looked back at the jade. “The fishy one is cute. That for the town house.”
“I really must insist,” said Van de Greif. “Your name, please!”
“He doesn’t recognize me,” said the woman, sharing the comment like a joke with the watchful young man. “But then this is Europe. So far behind the curve.”
Van de Greif hesitated. Now he looked again, the black woman did resemble an actress he had seen in one of those noisy, brightly colored blockbuster films. Was it her? He couldn’t be sure, but his innate avarice took over. Sales to Americans were always lucrative, and like the Arabs, they were too arrogant to admit they didn’t know quality when they saw it.
“The mistake is mine,” he said smoothly.
The antique dealer changed gears, affecting a cool smile as a part of him began to calculate by how much he would overcharge her.
She pointed at the office.
“Is that where you hide your best pieces?”
The woman didn’t wait to be asked, climbing the stairs. She kept her arms draped over her body, as if she were hugging herself.
Van de Greif followed her in quick steps, and her companion trailed behind him. There was something untrustworthy about the bearded man that the dealer immediately disliked. He kept staring, and it was becoming bothersome.
Inside the office, Van de Greif smartly stepped around the woman in the sunglasses and pulled out a chair for her, before taking his own seat on the far side of his desk. The woman didn’t exactly sit, though, preferring to perch on the arm of the chair while her man stood in the doorway.
“What are you looking for?” he began, switching to his standard pitch for new clients. “Tell me the mood of the place you have in mind for these pieces.”
“You have a storehouse next door?” The man spoke for the first time, betraying a British accent.
“Yes.”
Van de Greif’s reply was terse. He didn’t like it when the hired help addressed him directly.
“Let’s see what’s in there,” said the woman.
“It is not open to the public,” Van de Greif replied.
“Oh, honey…” The woman pulled off her sunglasses and her voice hardened. “We’re not the public.”
With a flick of her thumb, she unzipped her jacket all the way open and her hand came back with a gun in it.
Agatha stifled a shriek and grabbed at the telephone, but the Britisher already had a pistol of his own drawn and he aimed it in her direction.
“Hands flat on the desk, where I can see them,” he ordered.
His assistant let the handset drop and did as she was told. The man pulled the entire telephone out of the wall, cord and all, before moving to Van de Greif’s desk and repeating the act.
The salesman smile was immediately replaced by a fear-fueled but indignant arrogance.
“You come to steal? Do you know who I am?” Van de Greif snarled at the black woman. “I have connections! They’ll cut your throat, you mongrel bitch!”
“Where have I heard that before?” said the woman, glancing at Agatha even as she lazily aimed her gun at his head. “Hey, girl. You know what kind of man your boss is? Who he runs with? Sure you do.” She wandered across to the other desk. “Look at you. Blonde, all that farm girl firmness. Real Aryan queen material.”
“I don’t understand…” said Agatha, blinking tearfully.
“Not too bright, though.”
The Britisher looked past the tray of expensive vodkas and single malts on the desk, to the security monitor screens mounted discreetly on the far wall’s bookshelf.
“Here we go. Storehouse is through there.” He pointed at the door in the arch. “Can’t see anyone inside.”
“Where’s Verbeke?” The black woman tossed out the question, turning back to Van de Greif. “Listen, trust-fund, you do not wanna test me today. Where’s he at?”
“Who?” It took an effort to show no reaction to the name.
“Is he in there?” The woman nodded in the direction of the storehouse. “Are you holding something for him?”
The man walked to a tower display of vases and carelessly pulled the top one off the shelf.
“I heard you can tell if these are the real deal by examining the cross-section of the ceramics.” He bounced the vase in one hand, and it slapped against his palm. “Of course, you have to smash it first to check.”
The vase came flying at Van de Greif and he barely caught it, a jolt of panic screaming through him.
“Clumsy oaf!” he shouted. “This is worth a hundred thousand euros!”
Hands shaking, he gently put the piece down on his desk.
“What about this one?”
The man grabbed another vase and tossed it heedlessly into the air. Van de Greif let out a pained howl and lunged, grabbing at the ceramic. It was slippery, and he lost his grip. Ice filled his belly as he fumbled, desperately trying not to drop it.
In the e
nd, he found himself sprawled over his desk, both hands barely clasping the second vase. His heart hammered against his ribs.
“Stop it!” he yelled. “All right. I’ll show you.”
With a physical effort, Van de Greif calmed himself, and he pressed a brass button on a panel inset on his desk. Back in the gallery, the security door in the arch unlocked.
“There’s nobody in there,” he added, watching for the moment he needed.
And it came. For a fraction of a second, both of the intruders looked away, toward the arch. Van de Greif used their distraction to jab at another brass button on the panel. There was no sound, no indicator that the silent alarm had been sent.
The black woman saw his surreptitious movement from the corner of her eye and rounded on him. Her arm shot out and she grabbed his wrist, twisting it with enough force to make Van de Greif fold and fall to the elegant rug on the floor.
“Sneaky,” she admonished, applying steady pressure to his wrist. It hurt so much he was afraid she was breaking it. “That for the cops?” She nodded at the button, then answered her own question. “Nah. Guy like you wouldn’t want the police in here, would ya?”
Van de Greif was forced into a kneeling position at the woman’s feet, and his anger finally won the struggle against his fear. He spat a string of venomous profanities at her in gutter Dutch. In all the years he had been secretly assisting the Lion’s Roar in their activities, Van de Greif had rarely been anywhere close to the violence. Now he was, the sudden opportunity to drop his mask and show his defiance to this foreigner was too great to resist, and he snarled at her, baring teeth.
“You worthless animal! You and your race traitor are going to bleed for this!”
“You first,” said the woman, and she cracked him across the face with the butt of her gun.
Van de Greif’s nose broke with a sickly snap and hot blood spewed out of his nostrils as he fell to the floor.
“Where’s the bioprinter?” she demanded.
He managed a shaky, defiant sneer.
“Long gone.”
* * *
Shadow Page 31