The Rapids

by Carla Neggers

  “Een man…”

  A man.

  Maggie picked out another word. Gevallen… Fallen. Fell.

  “A man’s fallen into the river,” Rob said tightly.

  There were more screams, excited words in Dutch that all ran together to Maggie’s untrained ear.

  Rob obviously spoke enough languages that he was able to make out the basics. “They think he’s dead.”

  “Not Tom—”

  She didn’t know why she said his name.

  When they got to the fence and looked down at the river, they could see the body of a man floating facedown in the shallow water, drifting downstream.

  The balding head, the stocky build, the rumpled clothes.

  “Hell,” Rob breathed. “It’s him. Kopac.”

  Maggie turned away and took in a breath, pushing back a rush of emotion, then forced herself to look again at Tom’s body.

  Blood.

  His head…

  The images she was seeing came together, registered. He’d been shot at the base of his neck, the bullet going upward into his brain.

  Tom. My God.

  There was almost no hope he was alive.

  Rob pounded down the stairs to the waterway, and Maggie jumped after him, a man yelling to them in Dutch. From the tone of his voice, she knew he was worried about them.

  She understood his fear. “A shooter. Rob, if there’s a shooter—”

  But another look at Tom confirmed, at least in Maggie’s mind, it hadn’t been a sniper attack. There was no one hiding on a rooftop—or in the bushes, as the gunman who’d shot Rob had done in Central Park four months ago.

  From what she could see, Tom had been shot up close and personal. She felt a sense of revulsion, anger and grief, even as she forced herself to pull back from her emotions and focus on the problem at hand.

  Rob pushed out to the edge of the dock. “Someone will have called the police by now.”

  As he spoke, Maggie heard sirens. Neither she nor Rob had authority as law enforcement officers in the Netherlands. Given the circumstances, they weren’t even armed.

  But they had to make sure there was nothing they could do for Tom.

  Rob knelt down and grabbed Tom’s arm. His body was snagged on a support post, and Maggie helped, taking hold of Tom’s belt. His skin was warm, water pouring off his clothes as they managed to get him up onto the platform.

  He was dead. He’d probably died instantly.

  “I just saw him,” Maggie said. “It wasn’t, what, even five minutes ago? The killer can’t have gotten far. Someone must have seen something, someone—”

  Rob glanced up at the frightened and horrified people along the fence. “At least we know one of us didn’t kill him.”

  Maggie nodded. At least they knew that much, if not a damn thing else. Like why Tom was here. If he’d spotted her, heard her. If he’d taken off because he didn’t want to talk to her.

  If he’d known his killer.

  And if his killer had anything to do with the American fugitive who’d been picked up in Den Bosch two days ago.

  “Come on,” Rob said. “The Den Bosch police are going to want to talk to us.”

  A dead American in their small city?

  The local police most certainly would want to talk to the two U.S. federal agents who’d pulled him out of the river.

  “He was the kind of guy who got homesick for Krispy Kreme doughnuts,” Maggie said, realizing her front was soaked with river water.

  “A nice guy,” Rob said.

  “A very nice guy.”

  It was four o’clock before Rob and his DS escort left the police station, their clothes finally dry, every question asked of them answered. Maggie pushed ahead on the narrow, sunny street. “I need to walk,” she said.

  Rob didn’t object. It was a hot, still afternoon. The city seemed quiet, almost as if it were mourning the violence that had taken place there a few hours ago.

  An exhaustive search hadn’t produced a single lead on Thomas Kopac’s killer so far.

  No one saw anything. No one heard anything.

  Except for Maggie Spencer.

  Rob said nothing as he walked alongside her. She seemed preoccupied. Not, he thought, that she was an easy woman to read.

  Various Dutch and American authorities had swarmed the Den Bosch police station, including the FBI and Regional Security Officer George Bremmerton, Maggie’s immediate boss. All of them grilled both her and Rob about what they’d seen that morning, what Maggie had talked about with Kopac in recent days, why he’d shown up at Rob’s hotel last night.

  Although she knew Tom Kopac well enough to consider him her first real friend since she’d arrived in the country, Maggie had been straightforward and professional with her answers. She’d also had her own questions, namely, if there was anything about Tom Kopac that she hadn’t been told.

  Rob had that same question himself.

  Den Bosch police were trying to locate people who’d been in the vicinity of the boat tour that morning, interviewing the café’s wait staff and manager—anyone who might have seen the American who’d turned up in the Binnendieze. Maggie’s sighting of Kopac and the subsequent commotion along the river pinpointed the approximate time he’d been killed.

  Apparently someone had walked up to him, shot him and disappeared.

  Not an easy feat to pull off.

  The brutal, calculated murder of an American diplomat had taken Dutch and U.S. authorities by complete surprise. They had Nick Janssen in custody. The killing was supposed to stop.

  “Another American in trouble on Dutch soil,” Maggie said as she and Rob walked across the street to Den Bosch’s market square, crowded with booths and shoppers. She was obviously spent, taken aback by Kopac’s death, the loss of a friend. “The second American murdered in less than a year.”

  “Nick Janssen ordered Charlene Brooker’s murder,” Rob said unnecessarily.

  “No one had a clue that she was on to him. He was still a fairly low-priority tax evader then.”

  “Has there been any sign of Ethan Brooker since Janssen’s arrest?” Rob asked.

  After his wife’s death, Ethan, an army Special Forces officer, had made finding her killer his personal mission. It’d taken him to Tennessee, where he’d posed as the Dunnemores’ property manager. After helping Sarah Dunnemore, Nate Winter and Juliet Longstreet stop their Central Park shooter—a loose cannon with a crazy scheme of his own—Brooker had simply disappeared.

  When things exploded in Night’s Landing, Rob was still recovering from his gunshot wound in his New York hospital.

  “It’s not as if Brooker’s kept the embassy informed of his whereabouts,” Maggie said.

  “Could he have given you the tip on where to find Janssen?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose it’s possible. But nothing suggests he’s anything but one of the good guys—he couldn’t have killed Tom.” Her voice cracked, and she turned away, fixed her gaze on a nearby food booth. “Damn.”

  “Are you going to be all right?” Rob asked.

  She nodded. “I’d like to offer up a prayer.”

  A prayer? “Okay.”

  She lifted her chin, squinting against the late afternoon sun. “It’ll only take twenty minutes or so. Do you mind?”

  “No, of course not.”

  She smiled faintly. “You can try the fresh herring. It’s a Dutch favorite.”

  “It’s raw.”

  “Yes, but it’s good. You salt it, then more or less drop it down your throat as if you were a seal. I like it. The tradition is to chase it with a shot of genever. Dutch gin.”

  “I’ll take the gin without the herring.”

  Her turquoise eyes went distant again. “Twenty minutes.”

  Rob nodded. “I’ll be here.”

  He saw her relief, as if she’d expected she’d have to fight him for a few minutes on her own. She started through the square, the strong afternoon sun lightening her deep red hair.

>   Normally he was good at reading people, a combination of training, experience and instinct. But Maggie wasn’t easy to read.

  Still, as he winced at the lineup of raw herring on ice, all his alarm bells were going off.

  Special Agent Spencer had something up her sleeve.

  “Prayer, my ass,” he said under his breath, deciding he’d try raw herring another day.

  Six

  St. John’s Cathedral was cool and dark, a sharp contrast to the afternoon heat and sunlight on the streets outside. Its massive interior seemed quiet for a summer Saturday. Maggie suspected word of the brutal murder of an American had prompted at least some tourists to change their plans.

  Tom…I’m so sorry.

  Why didn’t you answer me when I called you?

  She wanted to believe he hadn’t heard her, but, as she’d told the Dutch and American investigators, she didn’t know for sure one way or the other.

  She tried not to think of his easy manner, his smile. With physical effort, she pushed back the personal regrets—the grief—she had for the death of a new friend and focused on the job she had to do.

  Could Tom have been the caller who wanted to meet with her? Had he disguised his voice and played on her father’s death to lure her to Den Bosch?

  Why?

  But that made no sense.

  She hadn’t mentioned the call to anyone. It was a long shot that the lead was legitimate, and there was no reason to believe it had anything to do with Tom’s death. The Dutch police would probably be irritated with her for withholding any information, but Maggie had no evidence it had been anything but a crank call.

  She hadn’t told her boss or the FBI about the strange call, either, or, certainly, Rob Dunnemore.

  If it’d been Tom, there’d be no meeting.

  If it was a nut, either there’d be no meeting or he’d show up and she’d find out that he was crazy soon enough.

  If it was a legitimate informant, she’d get what she could out of him and proceed from there.

  She felt the uneven stone flooring under her feet. And if it’s whoever shot Tom in the back of the head?

  Then, Maggie thought, she’d kick herself for not having opened her mouth.

  And she’d deal with it.

  Bringing Rob along for extra security wouldn’t have worked. If her caller was still at the cathedral, he’d realize she wasn’t alone—and Dunnemore would have quickly figured out she wasn’t there just to pray.

  Maggie made her way along the outer aisle of the huge cathedral, aware of shadows and the silence. People were buried here. For eight hundred years, people had worshiped in this place. Its thirteenth-century tower and some of its interior were Romanesque in style, but its more ornate Gothic features from later expansion and rebuilding dominated.

  Brochure in hand, Maggie pretended she was a tourist, peeking at the baptistery and the Passion altar, checking out the seven chapels that ringed the cavernous interior, staring up at the medieval figures of saints and the religious reliefs depicting the life of Christ and John the Baptist. There were enormous flying buttresses, and beautiful stained-glass windows let in just a thin filter of light.

  She could feel the weight of the centuries, the inevitable flow of history, and thought about how much the world outside the cathedral’s thick walls had changed.

  She pictured Tom’s body in the Binnendieze and wondered how many deaths its waters had seen. Conquerors had come and gone. Liberators, wars, floods, people. Maggie was aware of her own impermanence. Perhaps that was part of the purpose of such a place, part of why it endured.

  A few people here and there were kneeling in silent prayer, as if to remind her the cathedral was a house of worship.

  Most of the pews in the center nave were empty. Maggie made her way into one near the outermost aisle, with a good view of the major entrance and exit. When she sat down, she felt chilled, suddenly isolated and very tired. Tom.

  A white-haired man worked his way into the pew and sat next to her.

  Five aisles, dozens of pews. He picked hers.

  She could smell the stale cigarette smoke that clung to him. Glancing out of the corner of her eye, she saw his yellow-tipped fingernails and the blue veins bulging in the skinny hand on his thigh.

  He didn’t kneel or pull out rosary beads.

  Hell. It’s him, Maggie thought

  “Where’s your marshal friend?” he asked.

  His East Coast prep school accent didn’t fit with his down-and-out appearance. “I don’t have a lot of time,” she said, not giving him a direct answer. “I need to know who you are. Your name. Why you sought me out. Why Den Bosch. Start now.”

  She spoke in a whisper, but her urgent tone—and her skepticism—didn’t seem to bother him. “My name is William Raleigh,” he said. “I was in the foreign service once.”

  Oh, God. A nutcase. Some threadbare old guy who thought he was a spy or a diplomat. “For the U.S.?”

  “Yes. Then I went out on my own. My specialty is economics.” He smiled. “As much as it’s anyone’s specialty.”

  Although he sounded lucid, Maggie knew he could just be playing the part, trying to persuade her that he was the real thing. “I was never any good at economics.”

  “No one is, even the experts. It’s just that the experts know it and the rest of us hope it’s not true.”

  There was a hint of humor and irony in his whispered words, but Maggie wasn’t willing to bet yet whether he was legit or a mentally ill drifter determined to reel her in to his delusions. “Mr. Raleigh, I need to know what this is all about.”

  He faced the front of the cathedral, not looking at her. “I’ve had an interesting life. I’m an economist. I’ve traveled all over the world, doing what I could to bring fairness and prosperity to others, first in my work as a foreign service officer, then as an economic consultant. That sounds lofty, but I don’t mean it to. I did what I could. I think that’s what we all do, don’t you?”

  “No.”

  He smiled. “So young to be a cynic.”

  “It hasn’t been a good day.”

  “No, it hasn’t. I’m sorry about your friend.”

  Then he knew about Tom. Of course, Den Bosch was a small city, and news traveled quickly.

  “I’ve met everyone from small-time warlords to the last five U.S. presidents,” the man next to her said. “Not the current one yet. Poe.”

  Yet. Maggie wondered if Raleigh had brought up Poe’s name deliberately, if he knew the marshal with her was Rob Dunnemore. Was Rob’s connection to President Poe, ultimately, what this meeting was all about?

  She shifted in the pew, studying Raleigh. He wasn’t much taller than she was, and he was thin, dressed in a blue madras shirt that must have seen him through at least one of his decades of supposed travels. She noticed that he’d let the hem out of his khaki pants, as if they’d shrunk in the dryer.

  Maggie checked for drool and dried fried egg or something on his shirt, and hated herself for doing it.

  His belt wasn’t pulled too tight or hanging too loose.

  His fly was zipped.

  He had on sports sandals, a definite surprise. No socks.

  He smiled faintly at her. “Do I look dotty?”

  “Let’s just say you don’t look like a retired economist. How old are you?”

  “Not as old as I look.”

  “What kind of economist are you, the kind for or against tax cuts?”

  He gave a small laugh. “That’s a very American question.”

  “I’m a very American diplomatic security agent. Come on, Mr. Raleigh. Who are you, really?”

  His eyes, a pale grayish blue, focused on her a moment, emanating a warmth and affection—a familiarity—that made Maggie edge away from him.

  “My father…”

  She didn’t know if she’d spoken aloud.

  “What about your father, Maggie?”

  Her chest tightened, and she turned abruptly from him and stared up towar
d the pulpit. She had to stay focused, on task. She couldn’t lose control.

  “Did you know him?” she asked.

  “I can’t say I knew him well. We ran into each other in Prague a few weeks before his death. He told me about his DS agent daughter. He was so proud of you. He called you his Magster.” Raleigh’s tone was formal and very correct, almost without emotion, incongruent with his tattered appearance. “I believe it’s fate that our paths crossed.”

  “Fate or bullshit.”

  He didn’t respond.

  “Thomas Kopac—”

  “I had nothing to do with his death. It’s a terrible shame. I know he befriended you.”

  Maggie noticed red veins in Raleigh’s eyes, bulging veins in his nose. A drinker. “That wouldn’t be hard for you to find out. It’s not as if we kept our friendship a secret.”

  “No doubt.” Raleigh went very still next to Maggie, staring down at the bony hand on his thigh. “So many of the people I’ve met in my day were forgettable. Shallow, venal, selfish, arrogant—I don’t want to remember them in my retirement. Others weren’t. They were the best. They had honor and integrity. Not all of them went on to live to an old age the way I undoubtedly will, if only because I’m destined to be the one to remember what they were.” He didn’t raise his voice or ramble. “I’m often haunted by the good people I couldn’t save.”

  Jesus.

  “Who are you talking about? Why am I here?”

  He inhaled through his nose. “I can feel the presence of the dead here, can’t you? Eighteen months. It doesn’t seem that long ago—”

  “If you’re using my father’s death to try to manipulate me, it won’t work. If you were responsible in some way for what happened to him—”

  “He wouldn’t have wanted me to put you in danger.”

  “I have a job to do. I intend to do it to the best of my abilities. That’s not up to you.”

  “It wasn’t up to him, either.” Raleigh’s tone lost its moroseness, became firmer, more serious. “He knew you were like him. You’re capable of breaking a few dishes, Maggie.”

  “I’m a professional—”

  “You’re a self-starter, an independent thinker. And, yes, a professional. You won’t cross the line. But you’ll put a toe over it.” His tone had lightened, but only momentarily. “You can’t tell anyone about me, Maggie. No one. That’s very important for your own safety. You have good instincts. Trust them.”