Absinthe

by Guido Eekhaut

  He didn’t need to convince himself of the obvious. This apartment was going to be his real home, probably for the rest of his life. He was born in Leuven and he was never going to leave, at least not for any real length of time. He would have to leave behind too much personal history if he did.

  He grabbed a small bag from the wardrobe and stowed some items in it. He closed the wardrobe and replaced the plastic sheeting. Then he hurried out of the apartment again. He had already spent too many long evenings here. That’s why he hadn’t minded the move to Amsterdam. Teunis had done him a favor.

  He parked the Porsche in the hotel garage and took the elevator to the second floor. His room was nice, airy, modern, and practical. He stowed his gun under his pillow, undressed, and took a long shower. Then he went to bed. He hadn’t eaten but didn’t care. He slept almost immediately.

  42

  DARK CLOUDS HAD FORMED over Amsterdam. It started raining by 7:00 p.m., indicating it would rain all night. Prinsen left the hospital, looked up, took off his jacket, and draped it over his head. He never bothered with an umbrella. But then, of course, he would get wet all over. He observed the street, people scurrying past him like characters in a shadow play. They all seemed hurried. Shoulders hunched. He hoped to find a taxi, because it was a long walk back to his place. Veneman had left earlier, after their conversation. By then, Van Gils had been returned to his room, drowsy and weak but more or less fixed up. Prognosis, so the doctors said, was good. No vital organs were hurt. He would be spending a bit of time in the hospital, which Van Gils started complaining about right away.

  “We’ll keep an eye on him,” the doctor said. Prinsen left as soon as he felt he could. He wasn’t good at speaking to doctors.

  The investigation would be temporarily suspended, Veneman told him. Too few leads and no information from contacts. Other things were happening. Things that needed urgent attention more than an armed assault on two police officers.

  “You be ready when I call, even tonight,” Veneman had told him. “Anyway, you need to report to the office tomorrow morning.”

  “And what about the Keretsky business?”

  “There is no Keretsky business. Not at the moment, there isn’t. The man returned to the motherland, and we let the case rest. It’s frustrating, I know, but there’s not much we can do at the moment. We’ll tackle Keretsky some other time.”

  He noticed Prinsen’s reaction. “What? Did you assume I wouldn’t want to get that scum behind bars? We won’t allow our people to be shot at. So we’ll get them later.”

  No taxi in sight. Prinsen walked down the street and ended on a small square with a coffee bar. He stepped in, ordered an espresso, and took out his cell phone. Van Gils was always on his mind, Van Gils who had been shot. And the possible link with Keretsky. And whatever else. It seemed every criminal activity was linked. He told himself he was overreacting.

  He called a taxi and drank his espresso. The taxi arrived. He was home twenty minutes later.

  The only sound he heard in his apartment was the dripping of water. The neighbors conspired to keep him surrounded by silence. He unfastened his holster and tucked it and the gun away in a drawer. It felt strange to have a weapon in the apartment. It would need cleaning now that he’d used it. He would do that with the usual care, but not tonight. He couldn’t bring himself to handle the gun now. He feared his hands might still shake. Too many bizarre thoughts went through his head. The gun might have an all too fatal attraction.

  He sat at the table. These sorts of thoughts would have to be kept as far away as possible. He sat in the dark apartment listening to the rain. A rational part of his mind told him it would be a good idea to leave the weapon at the office. That same part told him to rationalize what had happened to him and Van Gils. But this dark mood of his wasn’t about the life-threatening situation they’d experienced. It wasn’t about Van Gils in the hospital.

  He had no idea, however, what it really was about.

  Even during his schooling, he had been warned: it is difficult to deal with sudden, extreme violence. People will say they’re all right, but they aren’t. It’s mainly about reflexes: heightened adrenaline level, tensed muscles, increased heartbeat, and so on. The body knows how to deal with a sudden threat. The mind doesn’t. The mind can’t cope.

  They tell you what to do about the voices in your head, the rational and irrational ones. You should see a specialist about that. So much for their advice.

  I shouldn’t sit in the dark, Prinsen thought. That’s not a brilliant idea. I should switch on the lights. Nobody can cope sensibly in the dark. People aren’t meant to live in the dark, wear dark clothes all the time, and see nothing but the unnatural straight lines and corners of a city around them. People can’t live with the idea of being damned forever on account of something like original sin, cast out by a vengeful God and awaiting eternal punishment in hell.

  That was exactly what people do to each other: convince each other that they’re doomed, that humankind is rotten to the core, that there is no salvation except in death.

  He got up and switched on the lights.

  The apartment looked dreary even then. Chilly, lonely.

  Especially lonely.

  People fled loneliness, usually for the company of others, with friends, with family, in a pub. At work. He had fled from precisely these things because all of them confronted him with his past.

  And he couldn’t handle his past. He couldn’t handle the insistent voice of the rector, the hands of his mother, the eye of God, and the eternal punishment. None of these would ever be out of his life, never. Not as long as he permitted them to linger on.

  As a child, he’d been convinced that the eye of God and the hands of his mother guaranteed a fair life. Sinners were punished, the guilty condemned. God saw everything. Even his mother seemed to possess a supernatural power. She knew everything he’d done, saw through every little lie. She called him the black sheep of the family, and he never could understand why. No sin of his was important enough to have any adverse effect on the family.

  When he glided from childhood into adolescence, his biological urges became urgent, then unbearable. He allowed himself erotic dreams while strolling the dense fields during the summer, or lying about doing nothing. He learned how to masturbate and enjoyed what must have been the most heinous sin of all. Girls were strange, distant creatures, only to be observed in the wild, sometimes naked in the deep pools hidden in the woods, but mostly fully clothed and withdrawn. Fear and sex were constant companions.

  The rational part of his mind told him that nothing he did was a deviation, a sin. Already at that time, he saw through the lies, the religious inventions that chained people to a heavenly despot. But his experiences precluded a regular and normal sexual relationship. And a deeper, darker part in him warned him: even in adult life, you will never experience love or normal sexual relations. You were not conditioned for either.

  And so he would leave the gun in the office next time. Because of what that older, deeper part of his mind whispered.

  Maybe he fell asleep after that thought. He woke and found his watch. It was four thirty. And then he realized he had been woken by his phone. He answered. It was Veneman. “Sorry to drag you out of bed at this hour, kid, but the boss needs us. And urgently. Grab your gun and put on some clothes. I’ll wait for you at the office. We’re going on a hunting trip!”

  43

  TARKOVSKI CLOSED THE DOOR of the BMW. He looked worried. He tried to hide his emotions, but he knew he sometimes could be read like an open book. “They’ve taken rooms in the hotel,” he said.

  Parnow ignored him.

  “But I don’t have their room number,” Tarkovski continued.

  “Ask at reception,” Parnow suggested as if it was obvious.

  “They won’t give us the room numbers.”

  “Of course they will. It’s how you do it.” His Russian was short and to the point. A military man’s Russian. He didn’t need
diplomacy in dealing with Tarkovski.

  “No violence,” Tarkovski warned. “We can’t have that. We’re not in Amsterdam.”

  “I don’t speak English,” Parnow said. “You have to ask.”

  Tarkovski looked at him. “Aren’t you listening? They don’t give room numbers to strangers just because they ask. Maybe they do where you come from but not here.”

  “Where I come from, people treat me with respect. I expect the same from you.”

  Tarkovski shrugged. You’ll be finished, he thought, after I’ve talked this through with Keretsky. When I tell him you fucked up this case, he’ll have no respect for you anymore. He’ll kick your ass back to Russia where you’ll end up as the bodyguard of some third-rate mafioso. Or with a gunshot wound in a dirty, rotten city, somewhere far away from any decent medical help. That’s your fate.

  But he kept these thoughts to himself. Sharing them with Parnow would not be a good idea. He was afraid of the man. He was the sort of man who had no interest in the quality of other people’s lives. Parnow would strangle him on the spot. Or shoot him, except that it made too much noise.

  Parnow reached into his pocket and produced a card, which he handed to Tarkovski. It was a Dutch police card.

  “How did you get this?”

  “You’re an idiot,” Parnow said. “Go to reception, show them the card, tell them you’re a colleague of Dewaal, and ask for the room number. It is simple.”

  Tarkovski got out of the car again. “They’ll hear I’m not Dutch.”

  “Do you speak Dutch or not?”

  “A little. But maybe not enough. They won’t believe I’m Dutch.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Just ask.”

  They walked into the hotel and turned left toward reception. A young man with a minimalist hairdo smiled at them.

  Andreï showed him the police card. “Dutch police,” he said, trying to sound formal. “I have an urgent message for Chief Superintendent Dewaal, who’s staying with you. This is important. What is her room number?”

  The young man looked at the card, wide-eyed. “I really don’t know if I can give you …”

  “Quickly,” Tarkovski snapped, trying to embody the role of an impatient police officer on an urgent mission. “We have no time to lose.”

  “Twenty-five, second floor,” the young man said. “Shall I—?”

  “No, you don’t call her. You don’t do anything at all. We will wake her. No phone.”

  He and Parnow turned toward the elevators. The young man remained behind the reception desk, immobile. The elevator doors opened and both men stepped inside. Tarkovski pushed a button. A moment later, they exited on the second floor. The corridor was empty.

  “Left,” Parnow said. In Russian. It sounded ominous.

  Room twenty-five was at the end of the corridor. Tarkovski hesitated. Parnow drew his gun and screwed the silencer on. He nodded at Tarkovski, who looked unhappy with the situation. It was all too clear what Parnow’s intentions were. And he didn’t agree. “Please,” he said. “A Chief Superintendent of the AIVD. We can’t do this. Mr. Keretsky will be furious.”

  “We want the list,” Parnow said. “Nothing more. After that, we leave.”

  Tarkovski knew that wasn’t going to happen. He knew Parnow wouldn’t hesitate to shoot, even if he wasn’t provoked.

  Parnow produced a small metal object from his pocket, slid it in the lock and pushed, and the lock opened. He pushed against the door. Dark inside. A short corridor, door to the bathroom on the left.

  Parnow held his gun in front of him. He stepped over the doorstep.

  Two flashes accompanied by two loud bangs welcomed him from inside the room. Bullets struck the wall next to Parnow.

  He stepped back. Cool and efficient. And fired his gun. Two, three times.

  He banged into Tarkovski, who backed down the corridor. A new shot from inside the room. Plaster shattered.

  “Parnow!” Tarkovski said. “Let’s go!”

  Parnow squatted down, aimed again, and fired two more times. The muzzle fire from the gun lighted up the room. Tarkovski was too far away to see details.

  He stepped back some more. “Parnow!” he warned again.

  Another door opened. A man stepped into the corridor. He wore slacks and had a gun. The gun pointed at the Russians.

  Parnow fired at the man. Splinters and plaster exploded. The man stepped back, finding cover. Tarkovski ran down the corridor, toward the elevator. Parnow followed him, shooting once more in the direction of the man with the gun. No fire was returned. The elevator door opened. The Russians stepped in, went down, and exited the hotel. The lobby was deserted. There was nobody outside the hotel either. A moment later, they drove off.

  THURSDAY

  And Back Again to Amsterdam (with Some Difficulty)

  44

  “AND ONLY BECAUSE THE kid at the desk felt something was suspicious and phoned my room,” Dewaal was explaining. “I guess he saved us. We would have been dead. They would have shot us in our beds, just like that.”

  It was crowded in the room and the corridor. Much too crowded for so little space. The air smelled of sweat and of people who had gotten up in the middle of the night and hadn’t had time for a shower.

  Dewaal and Eekhaut were both dressed. All told, three plainclothes detectives and seven uniformed police officers were in attendance, along with three men in white coveralls. And a police photographer. And then, finally, the local prosecutor, also fresh out of his bed and not happy. He was a tall man, balding, large-nosed. He frowned deeply. He didn’t appreciate when foreigners made so much trouble in his city. He didn’t appreciate them bringing hired killers.

  “So you tell me, Chief Superintendent,” he said, “that you’ve been conducting an investigation over here without having formally contacted local law enforcement. Without even a warrant from your own prosecutor. And then you have a shoot-out with two gangsters in a hotel, endangering other guests. All this to protect a witness and recover documents.”

  He cast a quick glance at Eekhaut but didn’t comment on his presence at the scene. He wasn’t going to say anything concerning firearms and permits. At least not for now. Eekhaut assumed the matter would be discussed later. There would be a long stretch of discussions later.

  “That is more or less the gist of the matter, Prosecutor,” Dewaal said, professional and to the point. She was not going to make excuses. “The investigation suddenly evolved so quickly that we weren’t able to obtain the necessary permits. And we had only the safety of the witness in mind. She wasn’t arrested, by the way.”

  “Which means there’s going to be even more paperwork in the wake of this,” the prosecutor said. “Post-factum, so to speak. And I don’t wish to add the fact that you’ve brought firearms into the country without a permit.”

  “We have been lax concerning certain details,” Dewaal said. “And a few things have gone wrong. But a life was at stake. A young life.” Eekhaut hadn’t seen that side of her: the way she suddenly moved her body and nearly fluttered her eyelids, and the graceful movement of her slender hands while speaking. It was almost hypnotizing. She was trying to influence the prosecutor, who suddenly seemed less assured of himself, less severe.

  “Local police could as easily have protected the witness, ma’am,” he said. But his heart wasn’t in it anymore. “Right, we’ll straighten things out one way or another. At least there were no casualties.”

  Dewaal kept her mouth shut. Her strategy had worked. She had given him the full treatment, and he had backed off.

  “But what about the damage to property?” the prosecutor asked. “The management of the hotel isn’t going to be happy with all these bullet holes.”

  “I will see to it that compensation is arranged,” Dewaal said.

  “More paperwork,” he complained. “My people will be very busy with this, Chief Superintendent. And why is there a Belgian officer on your, eh, team?”

  “He’s been seconded to my team as
an international intermediary, through Belgian Federal Headquarters,” she said. As if this were merely a detail. And it was, her eyes said. A detail. “And I like having him around, as if that would matter to anyone. He is familiar with this city.”

  “Oh, well, everything matters, ma’am. Certainly, the presence of Chief Inspector Eekhaut, whom we know well.” He looked at his watch. Three uniforms were left. The technical people were ready.

  “I’ll talk to the management,” Dewaal offered. “It’s my responsibility.”

  “They’re your rooms, so you better do that,” the prosecutor said. He turned to Eekhaut. “Chief Inspector, it’s been a while. Really, I had hoped never to meet you again in any official capacity.”

  “The pleasure is mutual,” Eekhaut said. But he wasn’t going to antagonize the prosecutor.

  “And certainly not under circumstances like these. Your use of a firearm: I’ll let that slide, but only because you work for them, not for us. You realize this could have been much worse?”

  “It could have,” Eekhaut admitted. “But my objective was to protect the witness.”

  “Well, that’s clear then. Take your precious witness back to Holland and be so kind to send me a full report later on. I’m sure it will be read over here attentively. And, by the way,” he said to Dewaal, “do you need further protection on Belgian soil? I don’t have to remind you that the aggressors got away. They’ll try again, I assume. Or am I wrong?”

  “Your conclusion is correct,” Dewaal said. “But the chief inspector and I are capable of getting the girl safely back to Amsterdam. Nevertheless, I appreciate your concern.”

  “Good. Well. We can close up here, then.”

  45

  PARNOW PLUCKED THE WOOD splinters out of his lower arm. His face didn’t betray any pain, only concentration. He was clearly familiar with wounds. They hardly meant anything to him. Painful, probably, but nothing compared to what he might have endured before. He dabbed the wounds with a piece of cotton drenched in alcohol from the car’s first aid kit.