U.S. Male

by Kristin Hardy

  “When’s the handoff?”

  Joss hesitated and his radar went up. “A couple of days. It’s not exactly a handoff. We’ve got to go pick them up.”

  “Where?”

  “Amsterdam.”

  He considered it. “You’re looking at a one hour flight. It’s not the end of the earth. We can do it the same day.”

  Joss looked down at the ground. “It’s not that simple,” she told him.

  He had a bad feeling he wasn’t going to like it, not a bit. “What’s the catch?”

  “I’m the one who’s got to go get them.”

  “ABSOLUTELY NOT,” Bax thundered.

  Joss stared at him. A moment before, he’d seemed like he was releasing the whole control thing. Now, he was back to telling her what she could and couldn’t do. “I’ve got to go. We’ve don’t have a choice.”

  “You’re talking about walking into God knows where with a fistful of cash. You don’t know these people, you’ve got nothing to trust but the word of a man Ray Halliday doesn’t like very much. What if they try to rob you? What if it’s all a scam? You don’t have the experience and training to deal with it.”

  “I dealt with being tailed, didn’t I?” she retorted. “And you taught me self-defense.”

  “I taught you a few emergency moves. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you can deal with a professional. I don’t want to see you get hurt,” he said abruptly.

  That was it, she realized. He was scared for her. It was just coming out as anger.

  “Then tell me what to do. Get me as prepared as possible. If you stay here, or if you go out, even, Silverhielm’s men will be busy watching you. It’ll be easier for me to slip out alone than if we were together. You’ve got to let me do this,” she pleaded. “If I don’t, it’ll screw everything up.”

  It took fighting every instinct he had for him to say yes, she could see that. The fact that he nodded, finally, meant that he put an enormous amount of trust in her.

  Now all she had to do was pull it off.

  PELIKAN WAS warm and dark, a hall lit with overhead clusters of luminous globes. It wasn’t a restaurant so much as a beer hall, with heavy, square pillars that held up the twenty-foot ceiling. The walls above the walnut wainscoting were dark gold, some of them painted with jungle scenes, some merely darkened with a patina of age. Parquet tile covered the floor, making the room ring with a hubbub of sound.

  Bax scanned the crowd, looking across the ranks of tables. “He’s not here.”

  “What about the bar?”

  On the other side of the wall lay Kristallen, the bar part of Pelikan. The two shared an entrance, but little else. Crowded Kristallen focused on electronic DJ music for the hip crowd. Cigarette smoke spiraled upward toward the ceiling. A shout of laughter erupted at the far corner and Bax looked over to see Oskar.

  The young boat mate scrubbed at his hair as he leaned over to whisper to a pretty blond girl next to him. She turned in mock anger and punched him in the shoulder. He laughed again, and murmuring to her, he leaned in to steal a kiss. A flush stole over her cheeks.

  Bax could tell the minute Oskar saw him, his gaze sharpening as he set down his beer mug. He said something to his friends and rose to walk down the bar toward them. The blond girl followed him with her eyes.

  “Hej. So you have come to enjoy Pelikan. Welcome. Come have a drink with us.”

  Bax shook his head. “We were hoping to talk. Can we buy you a beer?”

  “Of course.” Oskar glanced down the crowded bar. “Let’s go next door and get a table. It will be easier to hear.”

  They were able to get a table, that much was true. If anything, though, it was harder to hear in the echoing hall of the main room. Then again, Joss thought as the waitress led them to a table in the corner of the restaurant, that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. A blanket of sound made it difficult for anyone else to hear what they had to say.

  It was a cozy spot. Bax immediately pulled a chair around so that they could sit, heads together. Expertly, he flipped a five hundred kroner bill onto the table in Oskar’s direction. “We need to talk and we need to know it won’t go further. Are we agreed?”

  Oskar moved his hand away from the bill without touching it. “It is a question of what the talk is about. I don’t break the law.”

  “This is not about breaking the law.”

  He relaxed fractionally. “What is it about?”

  “Will it remain between us?”

  Oskar gave Bax a long, searching look. Bax looked back at him impassively, seeking neither to convince or to intimidate. Finally, Oskar gave a slow nod. “It will.”

  “Good. We need a boat.”

  Oskar laughed. “All this secrecy over a boat?”

  “There’s more but we can start with that.”

  The waitress appeared and they ordered beer.

  “We need a speedboat,” Bax resumed, “one that can do sixty or seventy kilometers per hour.”

  “Such speed can be dangerous. Do you know anything about piloting such a boat?”

  “I’ve got experience and I know how to navigate. I don’t know the archipelago, though, so I’ll need charts.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “A private island.”

  “Ah, yes, I remember. Beyond Bullerö. Which one?”

  “It’s called Silverholmen.”

  For a moment, Oskar was perfectly still, then he leaned back and studied Bax. “So you want to go to Silverholmen. Are you invited?”

  “We are, though I want to go out there a day or two before our invitation to check out the area.”

  “Karl Silverhielm is a formidable man.”

  “How do you know that it is Silverhielm’s island?”

  “I have heard stories. And are you a friend of his?”

  “Would I be renting a boat to spy on a friend?” Bax asked softly.

  “No.”

  The waitress appeared with their drinks. For a moment, they were occupied with the ceremony of beer mats and distributing mugs, but finally she was gone. Oskar gave Bax a frank look. “Are you sure you understand who you are dealing with?”

  “I think so.”

  “He kills those who interfere with him.”

  Bax took a drink of his ale. “I’ll take that chance.”

  “Are you willing to risk Josie, too?”

  “I’m not his to risk,” Joss spoke up. “It’s my choice and I’m ready to do it.”

  “You don’t understand what he’s like. He is dangerous.”

  “You seem to know him awfully well,” Joss observed, looking at the tense lines of Oskar’s body.

  Oskar stared at them. “You say I am not to talk of this conversation. What of you? What is your interest in Silverhielm?”

  “He has something of ours, something we want to get back.”

  “And you’re willing to cross him for it?”

  “I’m eager to cross him,” Joss said. “I want to get it back and I want it to hurt him.”

  Oskar shook his head. “You are both crazy, you know?” He circled his finger by his temple. “My advice to you is go home. Do not do this.”

  “That’s not an option,” Joss returned.

  Oskar stared at them both moodily. “Let me tell you a story and see if you are still of this mind. I worked for Silverhielm, or rather I worked for a delivery company that brought goods to him. For a while.”

  “How was that?”

  There was no humor in Oskar’s smile. “It worked out as you would expect. Silverhielm was the barracuda and we were the herring. In the beginning, we delivered once a week, groceries, mostly. Some fuel for his generators. Then he offered to invest in the business, to help it grow, he said. A service for the archipelago. My boss was so eager, falling down to say yes.” Oskar shook his head, an expression of pity mingled with contempt on his face. “You don’t give a man like Silverhielm anything. My boss did not understand that. Not so smart, you understand? Or maybe too greedy.”
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  Bax knew what happened to small, greedy players when they got involved with the Silverhielms of the world. “When was this?”

  “About three years ago. At first, everything was just as Silverhielm said. My boss bought more boats, advertised to hire more pilots.” He looked from Joss to Bax. “But you can guess, I am sure, what happened. Silverhielm sent over some people. Hire them, he said, and hire my dispatcher. Soon, we were making many more deliveries…and pickups.”

  “Smuggling.” Joss said aloud. “They were smuggling.”

  “Congratulations. You are very fast. My boss did not believe for six months, until he saw one of the pilots hand off a package. He complained to Silverhielm, told him to stop or he would go to the police. They found him a week later in Lake Mälaren.”

  “Silverhielm?” Bax asked.

  Oskar shrugged. “No proof. No proof of the smuggling, no proof of the murder. People saw him that night with a stranger in a bar. The bartender said he had only one drink but the police said that tests of the body showed he was very drunk. Maybe he stumbled into the water, police said.” Oskar took a swallow of his beer. “Maybe not. Silverhielm bought the rest of the business.”

  “Didn’t you tell them what you knew?”

  “I had left the company by then. My statements were not enough to help, they said.”

  “Why did you leave?” Joss asked.

  He gave them an opaque glance. “In the beginning, I made the deliveries to Silverholmen.”

  It was the foot in the door Bax had been hoping for. “Did you get into the house?”

  “Not at first. His people came to the dock and took everything.” Oskar moved his mug in small circles on the table, making little patterns on the scarred wood. “After a couple of months, though, they gave me a handcart and had me take the boxes up to the house.”

  “How much did you see?” This was what they needed, a layout of the house and the island. They needed to know what they were walking into.

  “Mostly the kitchen, but sometimes I had to bring office supplies.”

  “Silverhielm has a home office?”

  “With a desk the size of Gamla Stan. There is a fax, computer, copier, everything.”

  “A safe?” Joss asked.

  “Probably, but I never saw it.”

  “Did you ever see him?”

  “Oh yes. On the day I quit.”

  It was there in his voice. This wasn’t the story he’d set out to tell them, but it had become the story they needed urgently to hear. “Why did you quit?” Bax asked.

  For a moment, he was silent. A noisy group of students at the table behind them clanked glasses and shouted in a boisterous toast.

  Oskar shifted. “I usually made my runs at the end of the day, when the office was empty. One day I arrived earlier than usual. I put the groceries in the kitchen and started to deliver a box of printer paper to the office. There is a back passage there from the kitchen. I was by the door to the office when I heard loud voices. There is a peephole in the door and I looked.”

  He stared down into his beer, swirling the glass around. “Silverhielm was in the room along with some of his men. One very tall and blond. His eyes are flat, you understand? They were holding a man in a chair with his leg propped on another chair. And then Silverhielm said to the blond man ‘Show him, Markus, why he should not have held back from me.’ And Markus used a club to break his knee into small pieces.”

  Joss drew a breath in through her nose. Bax didn’t move.

  “That was the day I quit.” Abruptly, Oskar looked up at them. “These are the men you are dealing with, do you understand? They are not to be trifled with.”

  “Neither am I,” Bax said quietly, holding Oskar’s gaze.

  A second passed, then two. “I believe you,” Oskar said finally. “So you are determined, it seems. How can I help you?”

  “We need to know the layout of the house.”

  “Very well. Hand me a napkin.” With a pen, Oskar began to sketch on the soft paper. “I can mark the charts to show you the way across the archipelago. You will require perhaps forty-five minutes to get there.”

  “And you can help me rent a boat?”

  “I will supply you with my own. She is very fast.” He pointed to the sketch with his pen. “The coastline of the island is curved, with a little inlet here. That is where the dock is, to one side of the house. A line of rocks stops the waves. What is the word?”

  “A breakwater?”

  “Yes. There are other rocks, maybe thirty meters out. Watch for the buoys. They mark the channel.”

  Bax nodded.

  “The island is rock that rises steeply. From the dock, you must climb stairs to reach the level of the house.”

  “Can you see the house from the dock?”

  “Only the roof. At the top of the stairs, a stone path leads to the house. It passes the main entrance here,” he drew an X on the side nearest the dock, “and continues to a yard on the side away from the sea. The generator shed stands behind the main house. A door, here, goes to the kitchen.”

  “How far?”

  “From the dock? A hundred and fifty meters, maybe more. Behind the house is grass down to where the rocks fall away to sea, you understand? And that side of the house, all windows.”

  “How about the inside?”

  “I know only the kitchen and the office.” He sketched them in. “The office faces the ocean. All windows on one side.”

  Bax nodded. “We’ll need the boat on Friday during the day and Saturday evening, both. And can you mark charts for me to get out to the island?”

  “Yes. Be careful. Silverhielm has a racing boat he uses to travel to the island. Do not think you can outrun him.” Oskar tapped his fingers restlessly on the table. “I cannot take you out on Friday. I have work, you understand. In the daylight, you should be okay. The archipelago looks very different at night, though. I can pilot you Saturday, if you choose.”

  “Would you go back there?” Joss asked him.

  “If it might ensure your safety, yes. They have no reason to be suspicious of me.”

  “Think about it. If you have not changed your mind Saturday, we would appreciate it,” said Bax.

  Oskar looked at them soberly. “Be careful. I do not want to see you dead, my friends.”

  16

  JOSS THRUST a handful of kroner to the cab driver and got out, checking her watch as she walked into the SAS terminal. Her flight was in less than an hour, which was pushing it as far as the timing went. Then again, she was flying without luggage within the European Union and they’d bought her ticket online the night before. All she had to do was get a boarding pass and go to the gate.

  Whoever was following her—and she assumed someone was—wouldn’t know what flight she was on, couldn’t tell without following her to the gate. To pass security, they’d need a ticket of their own. The line for purchasing new tickets was satisfyingly long, Joss noted as she walked to the check-in kiosk. Even if they were smart and bought the ticket by phone, she’d still be through the security gates before they could turn it all around.

  All in all, a job well done, she congratulated herself as the kiosk printed out her boarding pass. She might be an amateur, but she was learning to ditch tails with the best of them. Now all she had to do was track down her forger.

  “HELLO?”

  Joss stood in the Amsterdam airport, watching a trio of KLM stewardesses walk briskly by with their wheeled bags. “Is Mr. Kant there?”

  There was a short silence. “Where are you?” A man spoke in heavily accented English.

  “The airport.”

  “Good. Make your way to a tavern named Polder. Be there at one. Sit at the bar. Someone will contact you.”

  She tried to guess his age, but it was impossible to tell from the clipped sentences. He was not old, not young. Just a man.

  “Who should I look for?” she asked. “Is there a name?”

  “Do not worry. We know you already.” />
  “But I—”

  He disconnected with a click.

  The whole venture might have been risky but rather than being nervous, she was actually fairly calm. Better than calm. They were finally doing something besides watching and waiting. It was exhilarating, finally taking action. So what if it was risky walking into a meeting with total strangers, wearing a money belt stuffed with a small fortune? She could take care of herself. She had the self-defense moves that Bax had taught her and a squared-off steel rod about the size of a felt tip pen that could be used for a variety of interesting purposes. More than that, she had painfully earned street smarts that had gotten her out of more than one pickle in the past.

  She was going to make it work, Joss vowed. No matter what.

  BAX RAN. He ran across Gamla Stan, through Stortorget square, past the Nobel museum without noticing. He crossed the bridge to Slussen on Södermalm and fought off the memory of standing at the Katarinahissen with Joss their first day in Stockholm. She was in Amsterdam, out of his reach, out of his ability to protect.

  To have gone with her would only have brought attention to them both, attention they couldn’t afford. He hadn’t liked it a bit, but he’d had to let her go. Now she was there and there was nothing he could do but wait for her to return.

  And so he ran.

  He’d always thought best when moving. Something about working his body pitilessly let him focus more completely on the task at hand. And the task currently at hand was getting the one-penny Mauritius back from Silverhielm.

  Today, though, running didn’t help. It just sent his thoughts moving in circles. They had entrée to Silverhielm’s home, they had bait in the form of the Blue Mauritius. They had his trust, to a certain measure, or Markus wouldn’t be recruiting Bax. The problem was getting the one-penny Mauritius out of the safe and into their hands. It would take the forgeries, inspiration and a fair amount of luck.

  Inspiration, would come eventually. Luck, Bax could make. The forgeries were the big question, which brought him back to Joss.

  She was resourceful, he reminded himself. The impromptu self-defense lesson he’d given her had taught him that. She knew enough dirty tricks that she had at least a fighting chance if anything funny started coming down. She’d promised to have her cell phone at hand. There was little more she could do to be prepared, nothing more that he could do save be with her, and this time he couldn’t. He had to trust that she could manage the situation and come safely away with the goods.