Think. Van der Lans had driven her past the red-light district and also her hotel. She thought she could find the bed-and-breakfast at the very least, and there would certainly be a phone there.
She checked both directions, didn’t see anyone, and got up. Teeth chattering, she walked casually away from the car she’d been hiding behind, buttoning her too-thin blazer, trying to blend in, look like a local—not that there were any locals out in this weather. Only when she was out of sight did she quicken her pace, tucking her freezing hands beneath her arms. After several minutes, she figured she might be somewhere in the vicinity of the hotel Carillo had recommended.
A frigid gust sent a flurry of snow into Sydney’s face. She closed her eyes against the sting. When she opened them again, she turned, saw a dark figure racing toward her. She didn’t stop to see if he was after her, or just someone in a hurry. She ran, darted around the first corner. And ended up on a street with a few windows lit by neon lights. The red-light district. The street appeared nearly deserted, the snow came down faster. She pounded on the first door she came to.
The window was lit, but the curtain drawn.
No answer. Syd tried the door, found it locked. She moved to the next door. And then the next. As she pounded on the fourth door, she looked up, saw a dark-haired woman, dressed only in a white lace bra and thong underwear, staring down at her. Sydney waved, beckoning her to answer the door.
She waited, turned back to the street, hearing a boat’s engine echoing down the canal. Through the blur of snow, she saw a low-slung barge chugging her way. As peaceful as the boats moored in the canal appeared, she had completely overlooked that the water might be an avenue of danger.
In desperation she turned, pounded on the door again. “Hello? Anyone there?”
The door opened slightly and the woman who’d been watching her from the window peered out, looking amused. “My customers are usually male.” Her accent was thick.
Sydney looked over her shoulder, heard the boat engine nearing, then someone shouting. She turned back to the door. “I need help. Please.”
Chapter 11
One hour later
December 5
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Griffin parked his car around the corner, then approached Petra’s house, squinting against the snow, which was falling in near whiteout conditions. He’d heard through Tex that Detective Van der Lans had called to say that he was going to be delayed. Tex thought it might be a good chance for Griffin to drop in, see the sketch before Van der Lans returned. Griffin only hoped he could get in there without Sydney asking questions about a case that he wasn’t ready to talk about. He’d heard that she’d nearly declined to do the sketch. And though he didn’t think Sydney was the sort to hold a grudge, he wondered if her reticence had to do with him failing to show up for Thanksgiving.
He tried to ignore the fact that if he’d simply called her, things might be different. But the anniversary of his wife’s death had taken a larger emotional toll than he’d expected. Explaining the reason he’d dropped off the grid was not something he was ready to do either then or now, he thought, as he took the porch steps two at a time, about to reach for the brass knocker. His hand froze midair. The door was slightly ajar.
He listened. Heard absolutely nothing. Drawing his gun, he pushed the door open with his foot. He stepped in, eyed the hallway, then the staircase. Empty. Tex would have called if they’d finished. He would’ve sent a copy of the sketch to his cell phone. Or at the very least mentioned that it was on its way to the police station. Whatever was going on, he didn’t like it.
The first door on the left was open. He stopped at the threshold, gun at the ready. After a quick glance down the hall, still empty, he entered the room. Saw the sketchbook on the table. The woman’s body on the floor, a fallen chair in front of it, blocking his view. And next to the body, a black canvas case, its contents dumped out, scattered. He recognized Sydney’s bag and the coat lying beside it.
He entered, scanned the room, saw the paneled door that had been kicked in. He walked toward the body. His pulse thundered as he pulled the chair away from it to see the face.
It wasn’t Sydney . . .
They had murdered Petra. A bullet between her eyes. He turned back to the room, looked around. His gaze landed on the sketchbook. He flipped through a few of the pages. No drawing.
He examined the splintered panel door. Walked down the short hallway. Saw the bathroom at the end, the open window. He checked the rest of the house and was descending the stairs when his cell phone vibrated.
It was Tex.
“Whatever it is,” Griffin said, “I don’t have time. Petra’s dead and Sydney’s missing.”
“I’ve already heard. It’s partly why I’m calling. You’ve been burned. Blacklisted. Your operational status has been pulled. And if you don’t get the hell out of there soon, they’re likely to add murder to the charges. The police are en route to your location, because they’ve heard you’ve gone there to kill Petra.”
Griffin stopped in his tracks. He shouldn’t have been surprised, especially since the man he was sure was responsible for Faas’s murder had tried to pin it on Griffin at the scene. If not for Petra decrying his innocence, Griffin wouldn’t have escaped the mob from the tram. And now Petra—the only one who saw the man’s face—was dead. Griffin reached down, scooped up Sydney’s things, piling them onto the table on top of her sketchbook. “How long do I have?”
“Less time than you think.”
“I’ve got to find Sydney.”
“She’s fine. She called me at the Recorder. She thinks she was followed, but managed to lose them. I’m about to send a team in after her.”
“I need her, Tex. You know what this means to me.”
“Can’t do it, Griff.”
“The sketch is missing. I only saw the guy from across the street, and not even his face. If she finished it, she may be the only person alive who knows what he looks like.”
Tex didn’t answer right away.
Griffin heard sirens in the distance. “Tex?”
“She’s in the red-light district.” He read off the address. “I’ll give you fifteen minutes’ lead time.”
“Thank you.” He grabbed Sydney’s things, shoved them into her bag, then picked up her coat.
“Look, Griff. You don’t get her to an airport ASAP, that entire country will be crawling with operatives looking for you. McNiel won’t be happy if he has to explain to the Bureau how it is we lost an FBI agent in the Netherlands, before we even got approval to bring her there—and at this rate, I don’t see them green-lighting this. It’ll be one more nail in your coffin. I don’t know who it is, but they’re out to get you on this. That case was closed two years ago, and you were told to leave it alone.”
“I did leave it alone. For two years.”
“Like hell you did.”
Now wasn’t the time to waste in a useless argument. The last thing Griffin needed was to be on the wrong side of the jailhouse door with no way out. “You promised me fifteen minutes. Gotta go.”
Griffin was halfway down the block when the first patrol car, siren blaring, zipped around the corner, its wheels sliding on the icy paving stones. Grateful for the snow that covered his escape, Griffin continued at a brisk pace to his car. His eye on the mirror, he drove a circuitous route in hopes of avoiding any possibility of surveillance. It took him minutes longer than he would have liked, but with an international warrant, he couldn’t take any chances. The snow was coming down heavily when he finally knocked on the door, trying to imagine how it was that Sydney came to be holed up in a prostitute’s house. Many of the windows on the street were dark, the street itself empty.
Someone pulled a curtain aside from the above window. A moment later, the door opened. Sydney stood there, a sight for sore eyes. “Petra. She—”
“As friendly as ever. This is Ivana,” Sydney said as she put her coat on. “I think you should pay her for her time. She’s lost business taking me in.”
He looked past her, saw a young woman dressed in a thin robe, sitting on a cot-sized bed in a small narrow room just beyond the entryway. She was in the process of lighting a cigarette. And though he doubted that all but the most desperate would come out in this weather, Griffin pulled out his wallet, dropped a hundred euros on the table just inside her room. That done, he opened the door, saw two men walking in their direction, then shut the door again. “I don’t suppose you have a back way out of here?”
Ivana rose from her seat, picked up the money. “Down the hall, third door on the right. The door next to the stairwell. But it leads only to a common garden.”
He handed her another hundred euros. “If someone comes looking for us, take your time answering the door.”
She smiled. “I can be very slow.”
Griffin grabbed Sydney by the hand, led her down the hallway to the back of the house. When he reached the stairwell, he stopped. “Plan B,” he said. “We’re going up.”
“Up? I thought you wanted to get out of here.”
“I do. But first I need to know if we’re being followed.”
The staircase was narrow, steep. He took the stairs two at a time, and heard Sydney keeping pace behind him.
“I don’t suppose you want to tell me what’s going on?”
“I’m trying to figure it out myself,” he said. “What happened back at the house? Did you finish the sketch?”
“Only one. Of the woman. Someone came in while I was in the bathroom. I got out through the window right after they shot Petra.”
“So you think you can reproduce it?”
“The sketch? Not perfectly, but close enough.”
“Good. I’ll need you to do that. Soon.”
“After you tell me what’s going on.”
“When I can,” he said, pausing, holding his hand out for Sydney to stop, listen. He heard nothing. Yet.
“Hurry,” he said, and they continued up to the fourth floor, where a skylight, currently covered with snow, provided access to the roof. Griffin unfastened the latch, shoved the window open. “Stay here,” he said, handing Sydney her bag before he climbed out. A small table and chair stood to one side of the rooftop balcony, which was currently buried in about a foot of snow. He waded through it to the railing at the front of the house, looked down, saw the two men standing in the doorway of the establishment next door. Farther down at the opposite end of the street, two more men approached another door.
Griffin backed up, took out his phone, called Tex. “Tell me those are your men searching this street and not the thugs who killed Petra?”
“They are.”
“What the hell happened to the fifteen minutes you promised?”
“Apparently someone had the bright idea to track your cell phone. Basics, Griff. How am I supposed to fight that?”
“I’ll be in touch.” Griffin hung up, stared at the phone. He should’ve pulled its battery. He hadn’t for the simple reason that until he found Sydney, he wanted to make sure Tex could reach him with any updates. He returned to the skylight. Sydney had climbed out, was standing next to it. “I’ll have to get back to you on that drawing,” he told her. “The men downstairs have been sent here to extract us. They’re here to protect you. They know about Petra.”
“That’s good, then.”
“Yeah. About that . . .” He removed the battery from his phone, dropped both pieces in his pocket, then took her hand in his. Her fingers were warm, soft. “Those men out there. They tracked my cell. If you could stall them. Give me a bit of a head start.”
“A head start? What the hell is going on?”
He looked down, realized he was still holding her hand, and reluctantly let go. “I have to leave,” he said as she glanced back at the stairwell at the sound of someone knocking on the door below, the sound carrying all the way up.
He took a step back, then another, distancing himself. He figured he had maybe two, three minutes before they converged on this rooftop. “I’m sorry. For everything. For not calling you at Thanksgiving to say I couldn’t make it. For dragging you into this.”
“Dragging me— What are you talking about?”
“I wish I could tell you, Syd.”
And then he turned, started across the rooftop, and didn’t look back.
Chapter 12
December 5
Washington, D.C.
Miles Cavanaugh got up from his desk and crossed the room to the liquor cabinet. Just one drink, he thought, eyeing the bottle of vodka when his aide, Stephen Severin, interrupted him. “A slight problem, sir.”
“What sort of problem?” he asked, pouring himself a glass of water instead.
“The package we were hoping to recover is not there.”
“Not there?” Miles turned, faced his aide. Severin, a slight man with brown hair, stood in the doorway, looking far too calm for a person who knew the consequences if they failed to recover the package. Of course, that was precisely why he’d hired the man, wasn’t it? His ability to remain calm in situations of crisis? “What do you mean it’s not there? Where the hell is it?”
“It wasn’t delivered to the office we thought it would be. By the time the mistake was realized, it had already been moved.”
“Does Griffin have it?”
“We don’t believe so, but we’re keeping an eye out.”
Miles looked at the bottle of vodka, thinking that one small drink would go far toward soothing his frayed nerves. He walked away from the cabinet, took a seat at his desk, stared at the gleaming mahogany surface for several seconds. “This isn’t happening.”
His aide said nothing, merely waited for instruction. And what instruction could he give? All he’d wanted was one man out of the way. To be so close . . .
He leaned back in his chair, glanced over at the liquor cabinet. In that moment, he understood why certain highly placed individuals throughout history had succumbed to the temptation of taking their own lives. Getting into things that were complicated.
Getting caught.
That the very thought occurred to him right then told him he needed to slow down, think about this. Not do anything rash.
Rash.
That’s how he’d ended up here, wasn’t it?
But he was through with rash decisions and he reached for the phone.
“Who are you calling?” his aide asked.
“Bose.”
“I don’t think the CIA will appreciate that.”
“It’s their goddamned fault I’m in this mess, and he’s in Amsterdam right now, which means he can be there within the hour.”
Bose picked up on the third ring. “Yeah.”
“It’s me. The package has been lost.”
“Sounds like a personal problem.”
“And it’ll be your personal problem if it’s not recovered. So think of something clever that won’t point to either of us and get it back. I do not want it falling into Zachary Griffin’s hands.”
Chapter 13
December 7 (two days later)
Foreign Counterintelligence Office (FCI)
FBI Headquarters
Washington, D.C.
“Make yourself comfortable,” the secretary told Sydney, indicating she should sit in one of two chairs facing the unoccupied desk of supervising special agent in charge of the FCI squad, Brad Pearson. “He should be back in just a moment.”
“Thank you.” Sydney settled in the right chair and focused her attention on the framed print of J.
Edgar Hoover, hoping to empty her mind of the million thoughts swirling through it. There was probably a perfectly logical explanation as to why she’d been called into the FCI office, even though Foreign Counterintelligence was not a part of the Bureau she had ever personally dealt with before. She, unfortunately, couldn’t think of one reason why she was here—unless it had something to do with her trip to Amsterdam.
She’d been back two days, the whole time wondering what had happened to Griffin. Whatever he was working was not the normal case for him. But what the hell was it? Why had he taken off before his team arrived to bring her in?
The ATLAS operatives who came to get her had been tight-lipped. Granted they’d treated her with fairness at the debriefing, trying to determine who had killed Petra and why. All she could tell them was that she didn’t recognize the two men’s voices, and yes, it appeared they were looking for something—what that might be she didn’t know. What concerned her inquisitors the most was Griffin’s involvement, and all she could tell them was that she had no idea what Griffin was about or where he’d taken off to, only that he seemed in a hurry to leave before they’d arrived.
Was there some other connection to ATLAS? She couldn’t imagine one. When the ATLAS agents had debriefed her in Amsterdam, they had informed her that all aspects having to do with the sketch and Petra’s murder were on a need-to-know basis—and no one at the Bureau needed to know. Her cover story, provided by ATLAS, was that she’d gone to Amsterdam for a simple sketch, because the reporter who’d witnessed a murder needed an artist who spoke English. It didn’t matter that English was widely spoken throughout the entire Netherlands; this was the story they were sticking to. Nothing was to be revealed about her involvement with ATLAS to anyone outside the organization.
The Dark Hour Page 6