by Greg Rucka
I pulled out the BlackBerry again. “Give it to me. Now.”
“I can't remember!”
“Try harder, Arzu Bey.”
He closed his eyes, struggling to recall the number, then slowly recited a string of digits. I punched them in, dialed, then put the phone to my ear, waiting for it to connect. It rang twice, and then a man's voice answered me in Dutch.
“Hallo?”
“I'm looking for Theunis,” I said, in English. “Theunis Mesick.”
“He is not here now,” the man said. “You leave a message, a number, I will tell to call you back.”
“I'll try again later.”
I hung up, began replacing all of my things in the carry-all, all the tools, the laptop. I removed the remaining envelope of money, put the handcuff key inside it, then dropped it on the ground. All the while, Arzu was shouting at me.
“You got what you want? You fucking have what you want, you happy, you fucker? You motherfucker! You fucking stay away from my family! You stay away, you stay away from my boys, I will kill you! I will kill you myself, I will fuck your corpse you touch them, you go near them again!”
I zipped the carry-all closed, hoisted it onto my shoulder, and turned to face him. He was breathless, going hoarse in his outrage.
“You fucking stay away from my fucking family!”
There was nothing that I knew about the man in front of me that I liked. Nothing about him that I could think of worth preserving. He kept, bought, and sold slaves. He had sent men to my home to murder me, and in so doing, had nearly cost me Miata, Alena, and a child I hadn't known existed.
What I needed to do now, I knew, was kill him.
“Arzu,” I told him, “if I have it my way, you'll never see me again.”
I left him there to shout in the darkness, screaming threats and promises that I hoped he'd never be able to keep.
CHAPTER
Twenty-five
The number Arzu had given me was for a fuck factory off Marnixstraat. It took two phone calls and almost exactly twenty-four hours to arrange a meeting with Theunis Mesick there. I was in a hurry to make up for the time I'd lost in Trabzon, and went directly from the airport in Amsterdam to meet him.
Mesick was another of the thug brigade, big the way Vladek Karataev had been big, but blond and younger, maybe in his early to mid-twenties. He wore leather pants and a muscle shirt that showed off full-sleeve tattoos on both arms, elaborate skin art that had been thrown together without rhyme or reason, with naked women and death's-head skulls and bleeding roses. I dropped Arzu's name along with two hundred euros, saying that I'd been told he could help me find “the right girl.” The combination was enough to buy a trip across town in his company, to a houseboat moored just off the Nieuwe Herengracht canal.
Things were going well, or at least I thought they were, right up to the moment we stepped into the living room of the boat. Then Theunis Mesick turned on me with a knife in his hand.
I was jet-lagged and feeling ragged already, and I paid for it in reaction time. His first cut caught me high on my right forearm, going deep as I tried to get out of the way. The arm went numb with shock for a second as I backpedaled. I was still carrying the small duffel full of my belongings on my shoulder, and I swung it around with my left to block the next stab, and it worked, but he batted the bag away and then I had nothing left.
Knives suck, and fighting someone who has one sucks even worse, because there's no way to survive without getting cut, and I already had one to show for it. For some reason, people think of knives as somehow less dangerous, less lethal than firearms, and it's a bullshit and very dangerous assumption, because, like guns, knives are lethal weapons. Knife fights are something that happen between the Sharks and the Jets, that's it.
Everywhere else, it's not a fight, it's just someone trying to goddamn kill you.
I stumbled backward, trying to backpedal to the door, the way I'd entered. He didn't give me the time, slashing repeatedly for my throat with sharp, quick cuts. It wasn't a particularly long blade, maybe two inches at the most, but two inches of steel will kill just as easily as six. I knocked over furniture, scrambling to the side. There was a vase of tulips on the coffee table, and I kicked that at him as I went past, and it missed, and he drove forward at me again, jabbing repeatedly. He knew enough about using the knife to keep it moving. I managed to grab one of the cushions off the couch, put it between us as a shield. The cushion was purple.
“What the fuck?” It came out of me as a gasp.
“Arzu doesn't give out my name,” Mesick answered, and he came at me again.
I used the cushion, tried to catch the knife with it, but again he kept the blade moving, refusing to let it sink. He punched with it repeatedly, and I put a kick out, hit one of his legs, but I missed the knee, and the most I got out of him was a readjustment to the side. I moved right, trying to get away from the blade, losing the cushion as he swiped the knife beneath its edge. The tip caught me on the left side of my abdomen, and I felt the pain of my skin peeling and separating.
It had been maybe six seconds, and already I was bleeding from two separate wounds. He was going to cut me to pieces.
This is why I fucking hate knives.
There was a table, maybe for dining, the only thing on it an ashtray. I threw it at him, and it missed, but I followed the ashtray with the table itself, and he had to move to avoid it. Then I followed the table, trying to keep my arms in to protect my vitals, leading with my left hand extended. The knife came around again, split my palm, but before he could bring it back I was inside his guard, my right hand gripping the wrist holding the knife, pinning it against him as I slammed my body against his. We crashed back into a bulkhead, and I smashed my forehead into his face twice, and the second time felt my glasses snap at the bridge. I followed with a knee between his legs, and he still wouldn't let go of the fucking knife. He brought his free hand up to my throat, driving a thumb into my Adam's apple, and I got my bleeding left to his face, hooked my thumb in his nostril, pushing a finger into his eye. He howled, moved off my throat, trying to break my grip where I was threatening to tear his nose from his face, and that put his hand in front of me.
I bit him, hard, breaking the skin at the back of his hand, feeling my teeth meet.
He screamed.
He also dropped the knife.
I let him go, stepped back, hoping that would be enough. It wasn't. He was going for the knife again, bending to reach it, and I let him try, then kicked him in the face. He rocked back, dazed, and I kicked him again, and then once more for good measure.
He slumped and stopped moving.
I kicked the knife clear, then thought that wasn't going to be enough and picked it up myself. My hand was shaking, and I fumbled the grip the first time, had to steady myself before I could actually do it. Oddly, I wasn't feeling too much pain at the moment. Once the adrenaline ran itself out, that would change.
Before that happened, I needed to take care of Mesick.
The houseboat, it turned out, belonged to him. The way I figured it, he'd planned to kill me and then maybe take a little journey by boat to someplace nice and dark and secluded where he would be able to dump my body. I'm not sure he thought he'd get away with it or not, but then again, the way he'd come at me with the knife, he hadn't seemed the type to really think these kinds of things through.
I went through the boat as quickly as I could, starting with the room furthest from us and working back toward the living room we'd entered. The furthest room was the bedroom, and I got lucky in there, finding a roll of duct tape in a bureau drawer, along with some other heavy bondage equipment, including manacles for the wrists and ankles. I bled my way back to Mesick, still lying on the carpeted floor of the living room, and secured him with them, setting his wrists behind his back.
I gathered the two halves of my eyeglasses, took them and the duct tape to the bathroom. It was off the single hallway, to the left, and I stumbled into it, droppe
d them on the counter, and began yanking out the drawers and opening the cabinets, searching for a first aid kit. The best I managed was a bottle of rubbing alcohol, and it popped out of my grip when I tried to take it, my hands now thoroughly coated with my own blood. I sat myself on the closed toilet and tried to stop the bleeding.
The cut on my right forearm, his initial cut, seemed the worst of the ones I'd received, had split skin and fat and muscle, almost to bone. I could still move my fingers, and I figured that counted for something, that I'd been spared major nerve and tendon damage. The cut across my left palm was messy, but I'd gotten very lucky, and it looked like all that hit was the tip of the blade, and that just barely. A fraction deeper and I could've lost the use of the hand. The abdominal slash I couldn't be sure about, and didn't want to risk the required twisting for a further examination. Nothing seemed to be spilling out of my guts other than blood.
I used the rubbing alcohol first, pouring it straight over my wounds to wash and, maybe, hopefully, sterilize them, at least somewhat. Then I tore strips of duct tape and tried to put myself back together. I had pretty good luck on my arm, able to use my left hand to pinch the wound closed as I lay the strip down, then drawing it tight. It was harder going with my palm and side.
When I was finished, I just sat there, leaning against the wall. The delayed pain had begun creeping in, and for several minutes it felt as if I was doing nothing but sinking in it. Spots of light danced about in my vision, and I knew I was close to passing out, realized I was hyperventilating. With effort, I got my breathing back under control.
There was noise coming from the living room, the sound of Mesick, conscious again, thrashing against his restraints.
With effort and the aid of the bathroom counter, I pulled myself back to my feet. The dancing lights returned as soon as I was upright, and I froze, drawing controlled breaths. They passed faster than they had before, but I took the warning seriously, and when I started moving again, I kept it slow and deliberate.
He was worming his way toward the kitchenette, using his bound feet to push himself along on his back. When he saw me, he froze, shocked, and I knew he'd thought I'd gone, that he was alone.
I stepped over Mesick without a comment, to where I'd set the knife on the countertop of the kitchenette. Then I turned to him and, knowing it would hurt, bent and took hold of the restraints at his ankles, using them to haul him back to the middle of the living room floor. I did everything I could to keep the pain I was causing myself from my face.
I looked down at Theunis Mesick with his knife in my hand and said, “You were wrong about Arzu.”
It was a complete non sequitur as far as he was concerned. His mouth worked for a moment, trying to process my English, perhaps. “What?”
“You were wrong about Arzu. You said he didn't give out your name. Remember?”
He nodded, just the barest tilting of his chin. I had him confused, and worried, which was exactly what I was hoping for.
“He gave it to me,” I said, running my thumb lightly along the edge of the knife for added effect. It was theatrical to the point of farce, but if I was going to play the part, I figured I'd best play it to the hilt, as it were. “He gave it to me just before I killed him.”
Theatrical it may have been, but it sure as hell worked. Theunis Mesick's eyes snapped open enough to give me a generous view of their whites, my blurred vision making them appear to have no iris at all. His mouth worked even more frantically, and he tried the worm-crawl again, pushing himself backward. I smiled while I watched him do it. After a few seconds, I began to follow him, taking my time.
It didn't take long for him to realize there was nowhere for him to go.
“What?” he shrieked at me. “What do you want?”
“I want to kill you,” I told him. “I'll settle for information.”
“Anything! Anything, don't kill me!”
“Arzu sent you a girl, almost a month ago. A Georgian girl. Black hair, skinny. Young. Fourteen.”
“Ja, her, ja! I remember!”
I looked at the knife, made a point of studying its curve in the light. I asked the question softly, loading it with menace. “Where is she?”
“I don't have her anymore! I don't have her!” He looked at me hopefully. “I give you another girl, fine, ja? I give you another girl, a younger girl!”
Still with the blade as before, I stared him into silence.
“I don't want another girl,” I told him. “I want that girl.”
“She's gone! I don't have her!”
“You know where she went.”
“America! I take her there, give her to a man there!”
“Someone you've dealt with before?”
“Ja, for Arzu I have done it before, two, three times! Same man!”
“Then you'll know where I can find him,” I said.
Misery crossed the fear in his face. “I don't know where he is! I call a number, get a message where to be meeting, when to do it!”
“You know where you took the girl. You're going to tell me that.”
“I can't,” Theunis Mesick said. “I can't.”
“You can,” I told him. “If you want to live.”
CHAPTER
Twenty-six
It was still dark when I reached Schiphol Airport. The darkness had served me well on the way, hiding me in the back of the too-expensive cab I'd hired to take me out of Amsterdam, but once inside the airport, there was no such luxury. I zipped my windbreaker closed before subjecting myself to the lights, and my jeans were dark enough that the blood on them maybe wouldn't look too much like blood.
As a connoisseur of airports—by necessity, if not by choice—Schiphol was one of the best I'd ever encountered, at least where amenities were concerned. The problem was the hour; nothing would open until seven in the morning, which meant a wait before I could resume further repair work on myself. The duct tape was doing a reasonable job holding my forearm closed, but I was still leaking from my side and hand. Of the two, my palm was faring better, but the cut in my side was beginning to really worry me.
I made my way to a very clean and frighteningly well-lit bathroom, locked myself into one of the stalls, and once more found myself seated on a toilet. Using what was left of the duct tape, I tried to repair my eyeglasses, and ended up with something that looked like a nerd cliché. When I put them on, they sat at an angle, and threatened an immediate headache.
With the BlackBerry, I called into the mailbox of the singles' service in London. There was a message from Alena, left in Georgian. They were safely in Ireland, she said, and left a contact number. I did my best to commit it to memory, then hung up and switched to the laptop. Schiphol had wireless available, and the signal, though weak, penetrated the bathroom. I searched up a flight, booked Anthony Shephard on Aer Lingus to Dublin, departing in four hours.
Then I put everything away and struggled to keep from falling asleep until the shops opened.
At seven, I was waiting outside of a store called Etos in the Schiphol Plaza. Mostly Etos seemed to sell perfumes and other beauty supplies, but they had a selection of first aid items, and I pretty much bought one of everything that I thought might be useful, and a small pack of what passed for superglue in the Netherlands. There were several stores selling clothes on the plaza, as well, including an H&M that catered only to women, and a Nike store. Nike wasn't going to work for me; the way I was feeling, and, no doubt, the way I was looking, I'd need more help than that.
I went with a shop specializing in menswear, called Paolo Salotto, used Anthony Shephard's American Express card to get myself a complete makeover—suit, slacks, penny loafers, two ties, and two dress shirts. Then I took everything I'd bought back to the bathroom, hanging the new clothes on a stall door. I stripped off my shirt and worked at the sink with the mirror there, and it was still early enough that I had a fair amount of privacy. The abdominal cut had split further apart, and I used some of the sterile gauze I'd bought to exami
ne the site. Mesick had gone deeper than I'd realized; I only hoped he hadn't broken the muscle wall. I bathed the wound again, this time with some of the Betadine I'd purchased, packed fresh sterile gauze into the wound, then taped everything down.
I cleaned the incision on my palm much the same way, but this time used the superglue to close the incision.
While I was working on my forearm, a fellow traveler came in to use the facilities. There had been a few before him, but this time, while he was washing his hands off to my right, he made a comment to me in Dutch, clearly as concerned as he was curious.
“It was a rough night,” I told him with a big smile.
He laughed, shook his head.
I'm pretty sure he called me a tourist.
I packed my bloodstained clothes in the plastic bag that had held my Etos purchases, then dumped it in a trash can in the plaza, on my way to the gate. Well before hitting the security checkpoint, I removed and stowed my broken glasses. Between that and my expensive new suit, no one stopped me.
Waiting to board, I called the number Alena had left, got Bridgett before the first ring was out.
“I'm arriving Dublin, Aer Lingus, flight 603,” I told her. “Flight gets in at a quarter past eleven.”
“Bully for you,” she said. “We'll see you when you get here.”
“I'm not good to drive,” I told her. “I need someone to pick me up.”
“Oh Jesus.”
“It's not that bad,” I lied. “I'll see you when I get there.”
I managed to stay awake through boarding, even into my seat.
I was asleep before the plane left the gate.
CHAPTER
Twenty-seven
Most of the Logans, I had been told, came from the North of Ireland, County Antrim, but at some point before Bridgett's great-great-grandfather had voyaged across the water to New York, a handful had made their way to the South, to County Galway. That was where Bridgett had taken Alena, to a farmhouse still owned by a distant cousin, south of Ballygar, some 130 kilometers west of Dublin.