“Bert asks me the same question. I don’t answer him either.” She waved a hand in the direction the car was pointed. “Go to the corner and turn right. The Café Ebertus is beyond the drawbridge.”
The afternoon sun did nothing to lighten the dingy exteriors. Erika expected me to walk down this gloomy street, past all the lurking dangers. Then I was supposed to march boldly into Bert’s and remain there as if I hadn’t a care in the world. And let the world watch me throughout.
“Go on,” Erika said, leaning across me to open the door. “Nobody’s going to bother you now.”
Erika claimed she’d saved my life. Claimed my best move now was to sit inside the Café Ebertus like a tethered goat. Claimed doing that was the only way to help Stefan. I didn’t like her. Worse, I didn’t trust her. But I couldn’t prove my suspicions unless I first did what she’d told me to do. Until I let her sabotage me again. I rubbed a bruise on my calf.
Erika. I seemed to be joined to her with the sailor’s knot that only grows tighter as you struggle against it.
13
White light flashed like a strobe on the street outside. I smelled gunpowder. The café windows vibrated, but the thick glass muffled the sound of the explosion.
Bert slid the geneva bottle across the floor. “Happy New Year,” he said.
I checked my watch. “You’re two hours early.” I refilled my glass. The liquor smelled as vile as the fumes seeping in under the door.
We were sitting on the floor behind the bar. The doors were locked and the lights out, except for the glow from the television mounted at one end of the bar. Bert was far less sanguine than Erika about the possibility of attack. He’d picked this drinking spot because it offered the most protection. But so far, the only assault had been on my ears, from the people outside celebrating the end of the year.
Low-volume cheering came from the television. UNN gave us a shot of the crowd in Red Square. Fireworks blossomed over the Kremlin. Ten o’clock in Antwerp. Midnight in Moscow.
Like an echo, another rocket exploded in the street outside. Bert peered at me across the rim of his glass. His chin dipped in a nod of approval. “You didn’t blink,” he said. He sounded like a doting father, his voice thick with geneva-enhanced affection. He emptied the bottle into his glass. “Now you’re acting like a soldier.”
“This stuff has paralytic effects.” I stared at the bottom of my glass. Shots with beer chasers. I should’ve passed out hours ago. But nothing could silence the insistent pulsing in my head. RUN-RUN-RUN, my blood drummed, as gunpowder exploded all around me. But we were at the critical moment now. At the beginning of that four-hour time period on Thursday night, when Stefan’s informant was willing to be approached. Only because of that was I willing to sit where all of Krüger’s people could easily find me. And only because of the half liter of geneva inside me was I able to stop myself from crawling away.
Flames engulfed the television screen. A building ablaze somewhere. The camera panned the watching crowd. A mix of bundled men and near-naked women. Standing in front of a ship chandlery. Then another shot of the burning building. A neon sign that looked as if it were melting. The numbers “2” and “1” running down the bricks.
I staggered to my feet and fumbled at the volume control. I heard “Antwerp.”
“What happened?” I asked Bert.
He was standing beside me, clutching the neck of the empty geneva bottle in his fingers. The camera showed an ambulance waiting beyond the fire trucks. Doors open, the gurney empty. Bert’s forehead creased as he concentrated on the voice-over. He said, “Explosion inside The 21 Club.”
“Lots of casualties?” I asked, my throat suddenly dry.
Bert shook his head. “Don’t think so. They interviewed someone who’d been working out front. Blast mostly blew the girls out their doors. A few scrapes, nobody killed. The hooker they talked to said there were no customers inside the bar. The owner showed up around six and threw everybody out. Told the girls they couldn’t use their back exit through his premises.”
The rooftop flames subsided under the steady stream of water from the pumper truck. Only a thin ribbon of smoke came out the front door. A pair of masked firemen shouldered their way through the opening. The voice-over grew more somber.
I asked Bert, “What about the owner?”
“Girl thought he was having a private party in there tonight.” Bert stopped and frowned again at the television. The two firemen came out and held an inaudible conference with the paramedics. Then one of the white-clad attendants slammed the rear doors of the ambulance. The camera panned back to the blackened building before cutting to an on-the-scene reporter. Lura Dumont’s vulpine features filled the screen.
“The charred remains found inside are believed to include the body of reputed arms trader Sándor—”
The translator’s voice cut in, the Flemish version drowning out Lura’s English-language report. I heard my name. Global. Lockerbie Two. Then the news report ended. And we were back with the cheering crowds in Red Square.
I said, “She makes it sound like I had something to do with it.”
“Plenty of witnesses know you were here all the time.”
“You and that bunch outside will give me a great alibi when the cops show up.”
“I wasn’t thinking of the cops,” Bert said. “But some of the Hungarian’s pals are probably out there. They know you weren’t downtown blowing him away.” He paused, then reached up and clicked off the television.
Two down. Fouad al-Nemer first. Now Sándor Biczó. My enemies were dying like flies. New ones would hatch like maggots.
I heard nothing. But Bert must have. In a single fluid motion he set the bottle on the floor and a pistol appeared in his hand. He slid through the curtain and into the kitchen.
I flattened myself on the floor. My fingers curved around the neck of the bottle. I was too drunk to shoot straight. But I could do some damage with jagged glass.
“The major,” Bert said softly.
I felt a draft of cold air, but the locks and hinges were so well oiled that there was no sound as Bert opened and closed the rear door.
Van Hoof spoke from the curtained doorway. “Upstairs,” he said to me. “Harder for them to spot me up there.”
I released the empty bottle and sat up.
Running footsteps slapped on the cobblestones outside. Beyond the glass of the entry door, a burning fuse sprayed sparks across the pavement. Then I heard a pop-pop-pop like small-arms fire. My body trembled as I fought the overwhelming desire to slither on my belly into the darkest corner of the room. The geneva coating my tongue took on the taste of tin. I couldn’t move. The firecracker colored the air outside a smoky chartreuse, then sputtered out.
“Please,” van Hoof said. “Please come now.” His voice was thin. And I’d never heard the word “please” from him. I had to see his face. I had to find out what had gone wrong. By the time I got to my feet, my face was filmed with sweat and every muscle ached.
As I came through the curtain, Bert’s fingers brushed my arm, a gentle pat. “I’ll keep watch,” he said, speaking to me like a comrade-in-arms.
I realized that was what we were now, Bert and I. The idea made me feel braver.
“Get the lights on up here,” van Hoof growled from the top of the stairs. “Make it obvious you’re in this room, as if you’ve only now awakened.”
I shoved past him and through the unlocked door. “I know the drill.” I went to the east wall and pressed my face to the window, counting to five as I rubbed my forehead. I reached up and tugged the curtain over the glass. Then I turned to face van Hoof, who’d seated himself on the cot, out of sight of the window. Beside him, the wooden door hung open, a wedge of staircase illuminated to old gold by the triangle of light falling through it.
I folded my arms and leaned back against the wall. “What’s happened?”
Van Hoof grunted. “Stefan’s informant was supposed to be on holiday, cross-country ski
ing in the Ardennes. Meeting Stefan under cover of a big party tonight. Stefan went yesterday. But the man never arrived.” He sighed. “Seems that when you surfaced in Antwerp, Krüger insisted his associate come here.”
“Here? You mean the associate is hunting Stefan?”
“No, he’s not an assassin. More what you call a right-hand man. Follows Krüger’s orders. Goes where he’s sent.”
Now it all made sense. How else could Stefan have warned Erika so quickly about Fouad al-Nemer? “Stefan’s in Antwerp, isn’t he? He followed this guy here. Did he make contact with him?”
Van Hoof shook his head.
Air escaped my lungs in a gusty sigh. “Just as well. Antwerp is way too hot now, for all of us. Stefan can’t go near this guy while he’s in this town.”
Van Hoof sat hunched at the edge of the cot, elbows on his knees, eyes on the floor, a foot soldier who’d marched fifty kilometers over cobblestones. The weak light turned his cheeks a sickly yellow beneath the powdery growth of beard. “The opportunity to reach this man has passed,” he said in a flat voice. “Stefan can’t get anything from him anywhere.”
“Then it’s over.”
Van Hoof raised his head. “For Stefan. Not for you.”
“Me?” I wasn’t interested in hearing what more he thought I could do. “I’m through. I can’t guess what Erika did to ruin things for Stefan. I’m not going to let her set me up again.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Everything—and I mean everything—has gone wrong. Can’t you see? Erika’s the only one who could have sabotaged me so effectively.”
“No—”
I cut him off. “Maybe you should listen to Bert. He doesn’t trust her. And why should I? Look at what’s happened. She brings me here on Wednesday morning. Then she’s supposed to go off and let her contacts know I’m in town. She tells me she figures it’ll be twelve, maybe eighteen hours before the bad guys show up. But they were in place before noon. Right from the start, I was off stride. I’ve been playing catch-up ever since.”
“But that speedy response may have worked to our advantage—”
“You weren’t out there dealing with the consequences. And then, when I got to The 21 Club, someone had tipped off UNN to look for me there.”
“Erika didn’t—”
“Who else could it have been?”
“Fairly obvious,” van Hoof said in that weary voice. “Krüger did it.”
I needed a second to absorb the suggestion. The chair creaked as I lowered myself into it. I rubbed at my forehead. “Why?”
“A test. Sensible on his part. Were you truly a fugitive?” He glanced up at me, his eyes dull. “You did well. After that performance, Krüger’s interest in dealing with you increased significantly.”
“Interest in dealing with me? He let the Hungarian sell me to the al-Nemers.”
“Krüger didn’t instigate that.” Van Hoof pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “More likely, all the attention made Biczó nervous. Then Fouad al-Nemer offered to take you off his hands—and sweetened the deal with cash.”
“I still think Erika—”
“No. I have thoroughly investigated Erika Berger. Her credentials are unimpeachable.”
“Credentials?”
“Like me, she is seeking justice for a crime committed by the Abu Nidal Organization.”
I waved my hand in a gesture of disbelief.
Van Hoof said, “You recall how active Abu Nidal’s people were in Europe in 1980 and 1981?”
I recalled. I was still at the Foreign Service Institute in Rosslyn then, one of thirty brand-new junior officers preparing for a first assignment. We learned quickly that large European cities had become killing zones. Most of the hit-and-run attacks on synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses had occurred in Paris and Vienna, but no European country had escaped.
Van Hoof said, “Erika Berger was a schoolgirl in 1980, a student at a private Jewish academy in Antwerp. One July day, the teachers took their pupils on a field trip.” He inhaled a deep breath. “Two grenades. Those animals threw two grenades into a busload of children. Twenty-one lived to wear the scars. The twenty-second bled to death. Erika’s older sister died in her arms.” Light flared in his eyes, the dullness burned away by anger. “So don’t talk to me of sabotage by Erika.”
A plaintive note floated through the open doorway, the noise as soft as a mouse moaning in its sleep.
“Don’t miss your cue, Erika,” I said loudly. “Or does the script call for you to stay out there?” Only one squeak to signal her approach. She must have known those stairs intimately.
Her head appeared, her shining hair momentarily haloed as she came silently up the last few steps into the triangle of light. I’d been ninety percent certain it was Erika. No one else heading for the major could have gotten past Bert so soundlessly.
“There’s no script,” she said, coming into the room to stand beside van Hoof. She put her left hand gently on his shoulder. He glanced up at her and she murmured something in a consoling tone as her grip on his shoulder tightened, then relaxed. His left hand rose to his shoulder, so that his solid fingers covered her slender ones.
The gesture made me think suddenly of my father. An inexplicable sadness welled up in me, followed swiftly by a flash of indignation so sharp, my own hand rose with the fingers together, palm out. A slap heading for Erika’s smooth cheek. I stopped myself. Where had that sudden fury come from?
Erika gave me an appraising look. “I had nothing to do with the deal between Biczó and Fouad al-Nemer.”
Van Hoof added, “As soon as Stefan warned her of the danger from al-Nemer, Erika put the rescue plan together.”
I said, “As soon as Stefan warned her? You mean she didn’t act until he told her to. If he hadn’t found out . . .” I shook my head. “Nothing you say will convince me to work with her. I’m through with this operation.”
“Not yet,” said van Hoof. “Not when you have positioned yourself perfectly to deal with Krüger.”
“I agreed to do this much only in order to distract Krüger. Give Stefan a chance to reach his informant, find out what he knows about Krüger’s plans to blow up another airliner. Now he’ll have to find some other way to contact him. I’m finished. All I want to do is clear my name so I can go home. How you go about extracting what you need from that informant is your problem.”
“The problem has changed,” said van Hoof. “That change makes it your problem, too.”
“I don’t think so.”
Van Hoof said, “Stefan’s informant has disappeared.”
“He has been found.” Erika stepped over to the table and dropped so gracefully into the rickety chair that it made no sound. Van Hoof and I sat silent, waiting for her to finish. She pulled out a cigarette. The flame on her lighter wavered in the air as though her hand were trembling. She inhaled deeply. “Krüger’s associate was in the club with the Hungarian. Both of them were waiting for a third party who never appeared.”
“Krüger set them up,” I said slowly, taking the chair across from her. “Killed off his major snitch along with Biczó.”
“Yes,” Erika said. “Stefan says he will not find anyone else willing to talk to him. Not in time to prevent another attack.”
Van Hoof shifted his gaze to me. “But you have a chance to get to Krüger before the next airliner blows up.”
For a few seconds no one spoke. Something exploded outside. The window glass rattled and took on a greenish cast. Van Hoof’s eyes stayed on me, an old cat too tired to pounce on the mouse he’d cornered.
Erika was watching me, too, her gaze sharper than van Hoof’s, as though she were carefully measuring my reactions. “Krüger dealt so severely with Biczó’s interference as an object lesson for the others. To demonstrate that you’re under his protection. That’s how eager he is to hear your offer.” She inhaled deeply on her cigarette. “Krüger wants you to come to him.”
“I can’t do that. I’ve had too little training in fieldwork.”
“You have an aptitude for it.” Erika blew a cloud of smoke toward me, then dropped the cigarette stub to the floor and ground it beneath her shoe. “You were successful in Poland.”
“That was a long time ago.”
Van Hoof said, “Stefan called you a natural.”
Had he? Consider the source, I reminded myself. Both van Hoof and Erika would tell any lie they had to. “Stefan was the key to any success I had. Professional planning and backup.”
“You’ll have that,” van Hoof said.
“Oh?” I let my skepticism lengthen the syllable to two.
Van Hoof’s voice was impatient. “I will direct the operation. Ebertus Wouters and Erika Berger will be the core of an excellent support team.”
“Not of my team,” I said. “You can’t be certain that Krüger is interested in my offer. Maybe he only wants me. Maybe he’s setting another trap for Stefan and wants me for bait.”
“Possibly.” Erika lit another cigarette. “But there is reason to believe his greater concern now is his personal safety.”
“What reason?”
“He paid off on the contract.” She leaned across the table. “As of a half hour ago, they’ve stopped watching you.”
I rubbed at my forehead. “Biczó said that Krüger still wanted proof that Stefan was on board Global 500.”
“Maybe your behavior was proof enough,” Erika said.
I shook my head. “Not likely. Something odd about the man’s change of opinion. Maybe he’s trying to get Stefan to drop his guard.”
“Then Stefan must be doubly careful,” Erika said. “But I think Krüger has decided it’s important that no one keep watch on you. That there be no witnesses for his meeting with you. In case you are bringing him an offer of safe haven.” She leaned toward me. “He’s ripe, Casey. Ready for picking. By you.”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“This was your idea,” said van Hoof. “Why are you now so negative?”
“In the last two days, I’ve moved way up on the Most Wanted list. I can’t contact anyone in D.C. to set this up. I’d be arrested before I could make a move. And I can’t approach Krüger without some evidence that the U.S. will give him the deal he wants.”
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