Turning around on the dirt track wasn’t easy, the rutted tracks were filled with mud and the rest was slippery wet grass, but the scooter was powerful enough to spin in the mud. She puttered back onto the road and rode the Burgman to the cemetery. After she parked her scooter on the sidewalk and stowed her helmet and gloves in the top case, Katla took her fedora and pulled it low over her eyes. Begraafplaats Sint Barbara was in an isolated area of Westerpark, but because the cemetery was visited regularly it was easy to reach with public transport. Katla walked down the road back to the Transformatorweg, sat down on the bench at the bus stop and removed the motorcycle cradle from the GPS. She fished the car cradle from the bag and fixed the car cable to the GPS, then put it in her bag as the bus arrived to take her back into the city.
-o-
Almost ten at night. Katla sat at the window of Italian restaurant San Giovanni, watching the taxi rank at the Stopera on the other side of the road and waiting for taxi 234 to arrive. Thooft had to be approached by now by the Chinese, or he wouldn’t be contacted. She could’ve called him, but she wasn’t as attuned as Bram to reading intonation and inflection—she’d rather watch the micro-expressions on his face to see if he’d betrayed her.
The waiter came by and snatched up her used espresso cup, raising an enquiring eyebrow to check if she wanted to order anything else. Just then taxi 234 pulled up at the rank. Katla left a generous tip and buttoned her black trench coat up high against the rain. With her fedora pulled low over her eyes, she stepped into the shade by the MacBike and watched a black Lexus head up to the Blauwbrug, make a U-turn and drive back, passing at a distance of five meters from where she stood before turning into the Turfsteeg. The tinted windows didn’t give any clue to the occupants or their ethnicity, but it seemed to be too much of a coincidence.
She crossed the road to the taxi rank and got into taxi 234.
Laurens Thooft half turned as she got in the passenger seat.
“Whereto—”
“Hi Laurens.”
“Hey. I thought you’d call. They left me a business card with—”
“Better start driving, Laurens.” Katla pointed at the nose of the Lexus at the Nieuwe Amstelstraat. “They’re staking out the taxi rank. I guess they’re looking for you.”
“For you,” Thooft replied as he put the Mercedes in gear. “Where do you want to go?”
Katla planted the GPS on his dashboard. “Just follow the directions.”
“I think—”
“Drive, Laurens.” She pointed at the Munt. “We have to shake them off first, then go to a quiet spot where we can talk.”
As the Mercedes sped away in the direction of the Munt, Katla looked through the rear window and saw the Lexus four cars behind. To be that close, they’d crossed the tram lane illegally. Thooft headed toward Dam Square and rode the taxi lanes where the Lexus couldn’t follow, then sped down Rozengracht and followed the GPS directions into the heart of the Jordaan quarter.
He halted the car at the waypoint. “We can talk here. They can’t follow me here.”
“No?” Katla opened her door. “Get out of the car.”
Thooft got out and she limped to the rear bumper. “Check around the corner. I think you will see the black Lexus waiting. Don’t let them see you.”
While he went to check on their pursuit, Katla inspected the rear of the Mercedes with her flash light. The tracker would’ve been placed at the harbour, when Thooft had been inside the taxi, so the rear bumper made the most sense, out of sight of the rearview mirrors.
The tracker was a flat square the size of a cigarette pack, stuck with industrial strength double sided tape to the inside of the rear bumper. Katla had just pried it loose as Thooft came walking back. He was about to speak when she showed him the tracker.
“They can follow you at a distance. Get in, we will drive on.”
Katla held the tracker in her lap, wiping it clean of any fingerprints. They halted at a traffic light and she rolled down her window. A truck rumbled up and she reached out and stuck the tracker to the truck. The light turned green and they turned left while the truck went straight ahead.
“Follow the GPS.” Katla pointed at the display. “It will take us to a quiet spot where we can talk.”
-o-
Thooft halted the taxi at the beginning of the dirt track. “I just washed my car.”
Katla put a fifty euro bill on the dashboard. “Have it washed again.”
He peered into the darkness. “This is not a four-wheel drive.”
“You won’t get stuck, Laurens. Trust me. Drive on.”
He looked at her speculatively. “There is nobody here.”
“That’s the idea. If I didn’t get all the trackers, they’ll stop at the edge of the dirt track and wonder where you went. Now drive on slowly. You can turn up ahead.”
Shaking his head Thooft switched on his high beams and drove the Mercedes onto the dirt track, turning the taxi around where the track widened. He turned off the engine and the lights and they were enveloped in almost total darkness.
“They approached me the morning after.” Laurens switched on the interior light and fished a business card from his glove compartment. “Gave me this.”
Katla reached up and switched off the interior light. She took off her safety belt and sat sideways on the passenger seat, her legs pulled under her. She took the business card and held it down between the seats, illuminating it with a shielded flashlight. After memorising the information she tossed the card on the dashboard. “Did you tell them about KNSM Laan?”
“Of course. He swallowed it straight away.”
“What else did he want to know?” Katla asked. “Did he ask you if you stopped at Artis?”
Thooft shook his head. “No, he asked if I went straight back to the rank and I told him I had.”
“That was a mistake,” Katla said. “They put that GPS tracker on your taxi at the harbour, so they knew you stopped at Artis. You should’ve told him you picked up a fare there.”
“But you didn’t want them to know you lived in that area.”
“Where did you go after you dropped me off?”
“Back to the rank,” he said and gave her an embarrassed smile. “I know I was supposed to stop at a few more spots, but I got a call that there was a fare waiting at the rank…”
“So you went back to the rank, picked up another fare. Where did you go?”
“The fare had gone with another taxi, so I stayed at the rank.”
Katla nodded. “You gave them limited options where you dropped me off, Laurens. And by omitting Artis from the conversation you posted a neon sign on my head…”
“Ah, jeez. I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
Katla put a hand on his arm. “Not your fault, could happen to anybody. You have to be ready for when they come back, though. Maybe get yourself a gun.”
“I have a gun.” Thooft reached under his seat. “It’s just a—”
Using his downward motion, Katla grabbed his neck and slammed his head into the steering wheel, while her free hand drew her tactical folder. The tanto blade snicked out and locked in place. Leaning on his back with her full weight, Katla slipped her knife hand around his neck. Plunging the knife into the carotid artery on the left side of his throat, she twisted the blade in the wound, both to bleed him as quickly as possible and to thwart knife identification.
Thooft grunted and tried to rear up, but Katla braced her left hand on the steering wheel and ripped the blade from the wound. The taxi driver coughed and shuddered under her, while warm liquid soaked her hand and arm.
“I’m sorry, Laurens.” He made a high keening noise, like a wounded animal, but Katla could feel his death spasms. “They’re staking you out, you’re a liability.”
When Thooft stopped shuddering, Katla slowly disengaged herself. Her right arm was coated with blood. She took the bottle of water and the towel from her backpack, poured water over the knife and her hand, ignoring the bloody sleev
e of the trench coat. After she cleaned her hand as well as she could, Katla closed the tactical folder and rolled the blade in the stained towel, put the messy bundle in her backpack and took out two oversized sneakers. The interior light came on as she opened the door. She switched it off, slipped her shoes into the sneakers, and stepped out into the muddy track.
She noticed Thooft’s wallet in the driver side door and fished it out, emptying the contents in her backpack. The Chinese business card was still on the dashboard, but Katla took the card and wedged it in the taxi driver’s mouth. She put the fifty euro bill and the GPS back in her pack and got out of the Mercedes.
The mud sucked at the oversized sneakers as she trudged back to the road. The Mercedes taxi was just a dark blob in the distance. It would be found in the morning, probably. She walked to her Burgman scooter parked at the cemetery, stamping to dislodge as much mud as possible from the sneakers.
Astride her Burgman, Katla took off the muddy sneakers, put them in a plastic bag inside her backpack for later disposal. The scooter started at the first crank of the starter and she rode away, back to the city. Back to Bram, to warm the chill in her heart.
-o-
At two o’ clock in the morning, Bram sat cross-legged on his futon bed in the dark unlit basement of the Japanese club, Jutta Hipp with Zoot Sims playing on his record player. Over the jazz music Bram could hear Katla snoring behind him.
Katla been taciturn and distant when she arrived shortly after eleven, not interested in conversation, but undressing in silence and washing her hands for a long time, while she told him about killing Thooft. Told him how she wished she could’ve explained to the taxi driver that the Kau Hong would grow frustrated from their inability to find her. How the Kau Hong would seek out the taxi driver and torture him for every scrap of information before they’d end his life. Not that there’d be much solace in the knowledge. Either way, he’d end up dead.
After their lovemaking Katla had fallen asleep, but Bram had drowsed for an hour, unable to join her. In the end he gave up sleep and put on some music, at a volume just enough to drown out the soft clicking of his new ALVA Braille display, hooked up to a new Apple laptop with the latest screen reader software.
The Braille equipment had been provided for free by Bartimeus Foundation, but the ridiculously expensive laptop was a gift from Katla. Although she hadn’t presented the computer as a gift. ‘Research tools’ is what she called it. As her strategic advisor, he had to keep abreast of the latest news. To do that, it wasn’t enough to read the newspaper. Or, the way Bram did in the past, have the newspaper read to him by his sister Bianca.
He wasn’t doing any research now, though. The fascinating aspect of internet was the communities—and not particularly the communities of the blind, but more the communities where you could play online Go. Until Katla hooked him up to the internet, Bram had been taught Go by Tetsuo, who had been his sole opponent for years now. Since Tetsuo was a master at the game and serious about teaching him the intricacies of Go strategy, the years hadn’t been wasted, but now he found he could play Go online worldwide. There was always someone available in another time zone, who was up for a game, to broaden his experience as a well-rounded player. And, unlike in his games with Tetsuo, his opponent didn’t know anything about him apart from his moves on the board.
Right now, his opponent was someone called ‘atarinyc’. Atari was the term for ‘capture threat’, moving your stones in a way that forces the opponent to follow your lead in order to avoid stones being captured. His opponent had been defensive almost from the beginning, playing conservatively, allowing Bram to take the lead and control the game. Bram finished him off with a crushing victory and checked his ranking. He’d shot up two more ranks on the online Go server’s ranking system. Not bad for two months of playing online Go, but if he wanted a real rank, he’d have to enter a regular club tournament. He didn’t know if he really wanted to go public, preferring the anonymity of the online community.
Katla turned over, mumbled sleepily, and resumed snoring again.
Before he met her, Bram had been quite content to live in his own little world—playing music, listening to jazz records, working as a shiatsu masseur, training aikido and playing Go. The Japanese club was situated at the edge of the Amsterdam Red Light District, but despite the availability of all the vice and temptation, he’d lived like a monk—no television or radio; no cell phone, internet or email account.
His watch beeped. Half past two. He’d better get some sleep.
Bram brushed his teeth and slipped under the covers. Shutting down wasn’t easy, he tossed and turned for at least half an hour, because he could hear his watch signal three o’ clock.
In the haze between waking and sleeping, Katla appeared to him out of the fog, her head that of a wolf. A wolf with blood on her jaws. She beckoned him to follow, turned and walked away. Her silvery fur made her hard to distinguish in the fog, but he followed her as well as he could. They passed under huge metal structures on wheels that rolled over cobblestones. Chains jangled petulantly overhead.
Something else stalked through the fog as well, something dangerous. Katla halted and put a finger to his lips. Her lupine ears switched back and forth, pinpointing the malevolent presence. Again she beckoned him to follow her, but he didn’t want to.
Without looking back, Katla moved away from him, following the malevolent presence. Bram hurried after her, terrified of being alone in the fog. He heard something behind him and glanced over his shoulder.
Nothing.
He looked in front of him, but Katla was gone.
Bram stopped, listening. The fog dampened the sounds around him. This wasn’t good. He couldn’t call out for her. The malevolent presence would hear him. The fog grew dense and he couldn’t even see his feet anymore.
Why had he followed her? This wasn’t who he was. Suddenly he felt like he was being observed. In the fog, just out of view, someone studied him.
Gauged him.
He was a Judas goat.
Katla would look for him. And whoever observed him waited patiently for Katla to come back for him. And when she appeared, the presence would pounce. And she would be killed, because of him.
INTRUSION
Katla switched on the Sphinx phone and found the police had called again. She rang back, asked for detective Goedhart.
Goedhart came on the phone breathlessly and asked straight away, “Have you been to Mr. Vermeer’s office?”
“Quite often,” Katla replied. “It’s on the Prinsengracht, opposite the Anne Frank Huis.”
“Yesterday, the security company got a burglary alarm.” Goedhart sounded like he read her a report. “The responding security guard came upon three Chinese men who had keys to the office, but they were not inside the office yet. Apparently, the rear window leading to the courtyard gardens was open and a bird was flying about in the office.”
“So why didn’t the Chinese men switch off the alarm?”
“The security guard switched it off, when he entered the office.”
Katla paused briefly. “Was the office burgled?”
“Apart from the open window and the bird, nothing seemed out of order. The Chinese men said they would lock up and reset the alarm.”
“Let me guess,” Katla said. “They didn’t. And when the security guard went back to the office, the office was burgled.”
“Exactly,” Goedhart replied. “So—”
“So, Pascal disappears, his car’s abandoned and now his office burgled by three Chinese who had keys, but no security code.”
“Or didn’t feel inclined to use it.”
“Doubtful,” Katla said. “Using the security code would be preferable to using the ruse with the window and the bird.”
“You missed your calling,” Goedhart said. She could hear the admiration in his voice. “We figured the bird and window was a ruse too. Leaving your window open when you have motion detectors is stupid.”
“And
Pascal wasn’t. Thanks for the update, detective.”
Goedhart cleared his throat. “I hoped you’d like to have lunch? To discuss the case? You have great instincts.”
“Regretfully, I have my hands full at the moment, but I wish you good luck with your investigation.”
“Thank you,” Goedhart replied and rang off.
All she needed, a detective hitting on her. Maybe she should be less charming.
Katla shook her head and switched off the Sphinx cell phone.
SCRUTINY
Police detective Pieter Kouwenoord looked up as Gene Zhang was ushered into his office.
“Mr. Zhang.” Kouwenoord rose and shook Zhang’s hand, which lay in his palm like a dead fish. “Good of you to come.”
He sat down and gestured for Zhang to take the seat on the other side of his desk. Kouwenoord resisted the urge to wipe his hand on his trouser leg—he knew the handshake was weak because the Chinese don’t like to shake hands, but that didn’t mean he liked shaking hands with them.
“I was told my firm was under investigation?” Zhang inquired. “I’m not aware of any wrongdoings that would require a police investigation.”
“Do you know a Mr. Thooft?”
“Should I?”
Kouwenoord took the evidence bag with the business card from the file in his drawer and put it on the desk. Zhang studied the card without touching, then reached in his pocket and produced a flat silver box. He placed a business card on the table next to the evidence bag. Apart from the flawless quality of Zhang’s card, the crumpled card in the bag had another lay-out.
Peccadillo - A Katla Novel (Amsterdam Assassin Series Book 2) Page 14