She startled him when she reappeared. She had his hand luggage with her and a plastic cup with water. She sat down beside him.
‘Please understand … I don’t usually react like this,’ he mumbled.
‘I suspected as much,’ she said.
She stuck out her hand.
‘Sandrine.’
He dropped the cup he was holding.
‘Sorry, Paul.’
‘You’ve got to stop that!’
‘What?’
‘Constantly saying sorry to me.’
‘Okay. Sorry.’ He smiled a second time, more effectively than before. Sandrine still had a concerned expression on her face.
‘That looked pretty serious out there,’ she said.
‘It’s a long story,’ replied Paul.
She nodded. ‘It always is.’
7
Waking up was never a slow, slumbering affair for Farah. Usually she propelled herself out of bed as soon as she opened her eyes, pulled on her jogging gear and ran along the canals for forty-five minutes. Back home she’d jump in a cold shower, drop wedges of grapefruit and a banana in the blender, get dressed, down an espresso and leave the house.
This time, however, she’d stayed awake all night. She’d put Raylan Chapelle’s love letters away. They overshadowed her memories of Parwaiz.
At the first light of dawn, she retreated into the bathroom and rubbed her body with a sea-salt and coconut-extract cleansing scrub. She wouldn’t be drawing a subtle line on her upper eyelid, wearing black mascara or even applying a slick of nude lipstick. Islamic law doesn’t allow any form of make-up at a funeral.
Knowing how much Parwaiz appreciated discreet elegance in women, she took a sleeveless jacket out of her wardrobe. It was sober and black and reached way down her thighs. She’d team it with a light-grey silk blouse and loose-fitting black trousers. A coarsely woven black shawl would serve as a headscarf.
She pictured Parwaiz smiling at her proudly, the way he used to do whenever she visited him.
The early-morning TV news blared through the apartment. The meteor shower that had been visible in the night sky received a lot of coverage. A foreign correspondent reported on the election of a new Turkish president, the eleventh in the country’s history. This was followed by news of the death of Nicolas Anglade, the French chairman of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition. Anglade had taken his own life after a Belgian tabloid published documents and photos linking him to paedophile practices.
Intrigued, Farah walked into the living room. While inserting an earring, she heard that Anglade had been leading a preliminary investigation into potential anti-competitive practices at AtlasNet. The company was suspected of driving up prices and hindering fair competition in Eastern Europe. If found guilty, it could face a penalty of up to ten per cent of its annual turnover. Anglade’s death set the investigation back several months. Next up, the weatherman pointed to a storm front heading for the Netherlands from the Atlantic.
Farah heard the procession of dragons approaching from a distance. Eager to be gone before the jumping jacks and firecrackers started going off on the square, she quickly stuck a printed photo of Lavrov in her bag and hurried downstairs. When she swung open the front door, the tantalizing smell of wonton soup, spring rolls and steamed buns wafted towards her. She dashed across the square to the spot where Edward’s anthracite-coloured Saab was waiting, double-parked, and ran smack into some kid. It gave her a shock since the young guy, dressed completely in black, stared at her without any hint of emotion. He had a pale, drawn face and a nasty scar across his left cheek. She thought of saying something, but changed her mind and walked off briskly. Some people carry death in their eyes. Establish contact with them and you run the risk of contamination.
Edward drove off as soon as she got in. Farah tried, but failed, to put the kid’s cold stare out of her mind.
8
At three o’clock in the morning, after a flight from Russia, a Moscow Fly Airbus landed at Munich Airport. Dimitri was one of the passengers who disembarked. His fake passport got him through Immigration without a problem. At the designated car rental company he was given the keys to a black Volkswagen Touareg with, as promised, a loaded Zastava M57 with silencer under the driver’s seat. Dimitri was impressed with the efficiency of the whole operation. His uncle Arseni’s anonymous network was a perfectly oiled machine. It was a huge honour for Dimitri that his uncle now thought he was good enough for an assignment.
He set off for Amsterdam. Everything had to be perfect. You only had one debut. He’d prepared the entire operation in minute detail and after studying a map of the Dutch capital he knew exactly where the key downtown locations were. And to top it all, he was rigged out in new clothes. Black jeans. Grey shirt. Charcoal trench coat.
Before getting dressed he’d doused himself with Alain Delon’s Shogun eau de toilette. It was more than a symbolic deed, it was an initiation rite. He was about to become somebody, just like the French actor. And all thanks to his uncle Arseni. He’d seen Delon’s film Le Samouraï nearly a dozen times. What had stuck with him most was the isolation of the contract killer, holed up in a back room where everything was so drab and decrepit that it looked as if the movie had been shot in black-and-white. The samurai’s sole companion, the yellow canary bird, hopping apathetically around its cage, was the only thing to suggest otherwise.
Every day, samurai Delon pulled a new pristine white shirt from a warped grey drawer. Even that routine was done with the clinical precision he brought to bear on his job. That precision was also the trademark of the assassin Dimitri would become today.
He habitually raised his right hand to the horizontal scar on his left cheek. It was the outcome of a brawl in Moscow’s Poor People nightclub. Dimitri was a regular there, but more importantly he was the nephew of Arseni Vakurov: a name that ought to instil fear and respect in everybody. But for three guys who turned up one night to flaunt their newly acquired wealth, it didn’t. They’d shown great contempt for a good-looking guy who happened to have a provincial accent. When they started mocking him he’d beaten them up and eliminated them in cold blood. But not before one of them managed to slice open his cheek with a broken bottle.
Uncle Arseni had said that if he carried on like this his impulsive nature would one day cost him his head. ‘Any idiot can kill. You must learn to get rid of your animal instincts and related base passions. Only then will I be able to depend on you.’
Dimitri had done everything he could to encourage his uncle to build on him. He had assisted, learnt and toughened up and his uncle now trusted him to carry out his first job abroad. Unsupervised. Dimitri solo. A master in control.
At an average of 170 kilometres per hour, he zipped along the German motorways. He’d arrive in good time for his morning appointment in Amsterdam.
He left the Touareg in an underground car park and walked along a canal in the direction of the ominous noise of drums.
Dimitri pondered his uncle’s words of encouragement spoken to him over the phone. ‘This is a one-man mission. Your first. Make me proud.’
He’d been trained to kill. That training started the day he got to be present at one of his uncle’s favourite pastimes: taking people who’d tried to screw someone from the organization, who’d been disloyal or tried to steal, and making them talk. Uncle Arseni had told him about the wondrous elasticity of the human skin and demonstrated with clinical precision how to fillet it. This is what he did to those he suspected of disloyalty, thievery and other crimes against the organization. Dimitri thought it was fascinating, apart from the victims’ screaming, that is. But his uncle usually stuck some tape across their mouths after he’d suspended them naked from a butcher’s hook, and then carefully tackled a particular part of the body with a scalpel.
Following the treatment, Dimitri got to put them out of their misery with a bullet.
The next step in his training was the hunt. It always happened in som
e forest where men who’d incurred the wrath of the organization were set free. Dimitri had to chase them and shoot from the front, not in the back, and from as close as possible. Fatally. With a single bullet. Great exercises in skill they were. Quite different from practising on the shooting range. The ultimate training took place in urban environments and consisted of shooting armed opponents who’d been forewarned he was coming.
And now, having been initiated into all these stages, he was here in the Dutch capital. Get the job done and then get the hell out again before the whole thing blew up in his face.
Someone bumped into him. A fashionable Arab chick with blue eyes. She turned away and hurried off.
Meanwhile the place was teeming with Chinese. Firecrackers were lit. On the off-chance, he turned into a narrow street and a moment later found himself opposite a pagoda-style building. He was staring at the incomprehensible symbols on the ochre-yellow wall when he heard a deep voice behind him speak to him in Russian.
‘Going to a funeral, young man?’ Dimitri spun on his heels and looked into the steel-blue eyes of a tall man with a steroid-pumped body, which seemed close to bursting out of a light-grey, custom-made Italian suit. He had his left arm in a sling. His head was shaved on both sides, and with the long jet-black strands of hair on top of his crown tied into a ponytail he vaguely resembled a Siberian monk with karate skills.
‘Your uncle has called on me to pull you out of the swamp of your ignorance.’
Dimitri felt Ponytail’s large hand press against his shoulder blade to indicate he had to walk up the stairs.
‘Your first target is a boy. He’s in a hospital and probably guarded. I have no further details. Small, Middle-Eastern, dark hair. Once you’ve dealt with him, you’ll continue your work in the medical sector.’
He showed him a photo of the second target. An attractive woman in her mid-thirties with confident grey-blue eyes. Her short blonde hair was fashionably tousled. Dimitri visualized her body as equally firm. With apple-shaped breasts that didn’t need a bra, a flat stomach and smooth thighs that would be very accommodating. The fantasy instantly generated a fair bit of testosterone in his body.
‘A doctor who needs to be put out of her misery.’
Dimitri took another look at the photo. What could a doctor from the Netherlands have done to attract the evil eye?
‘Why kill her?’
The man took a deep breath and sighed in a way to suggest that he’d just committed a serious blunder. Dimitri grew impatient.
‘You mean I’m not killing her? Shall I screw her into submission instead?’
Ponytail smiled pityingly.
‘How old are you, kid?’
‘Eighteen,’ Dimitri said with a shrug of his shoulders. ‘I know why I’m here,’ he added as arrogantly as possible.
The man chuckled.
‘You’ve got a thing about death, my boy. I can tell by looking at you. You even dress like death. In broad daylight!’ He wrapped an arm around Dimitri, a seemingly friendly gesture, which was anything but. The steel grip that followed made it clear that the man could crush him on the spot should he wish to.
‘Your uncle has sent you to take care of things. But you’re taking care of them on my turf, and in my way. First you deal with the boy. Quickly, efficiently, if you know what I mean. Then it’s her turn. The doctor. Do whatever you want with her before you eliminate her. Got it? But take care of the boy first.’
9
Even unshaven and suddenly awoken from a deep sleep, Calvino still looked like a Sunday’s child. Marouan saw the surprised face of his partner appear behind the porthole window after he’d banged on the door of his houseboat for several minutes.
‘The boy is going to die,’ was the first thing he said when Calvino opened the door. The second was, ‘tomorrow!’ But as he was saying it, he realized he was mistaken. Because ‘tomorrow’ was actually now today: it was five a.m.
Marouan waddled through the sparsely lit front part of the houseboat examining the meteorological equipment and cloud paintings while Calvino took a few minutes to get dressed.
‘Who’s your source?’ Calvino asked when he reappeared a minute later.
‘The same person who tipped me off about the cocaine at Schiphol years ago. I can’t say more, only that it’s going to happen today and it’s a young Russian acting alone.’
‘I arranged extra security last night,’ Calvino said.
‘Police guard at the door?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Then the threat assessment needs to be updated as soon as possible.’
‘What are you saying? That we need to call out a SWAT team? That we should let snipers in bulletproof vests parade around the ICU?’
‘No! That’s exactly what we shouldn’t do.’
Marouan threw Calvino a stern look. Due to lack of sleep he had little patience for Calvino’s sarcasm. ‘I want the bastard alive, understand? So we can question him. With a bullet through his head, he won’t be able to tell us much of anything about who ordered the hit. We need him to talk. His info will also shed more light on the case of the burnt-out station wagon.’
Calvino’s expression changed. ‘You know more than you’re telling me,’ he said with a smirk.
Half an hour later they were already sitting down with Tomasoa. Their boss poured them some coffee. In the time that elapsed between Calvino’s phone call and the discussion they were now having, Tomasoa had, without any discussion, devised new positions for Marouan and Calvino.
‘You’ll continue to be part of the MIT, but as a unit within a unit. From now on, you’re responsible for everything directly related to the boy. And you report only to me. Clear?’
Marouan felt like a phoenix rising from the ashes.
‘What’s your plan, Diba?’ Tomasoa inquired.
‘A trap, chief,’ said Marouan. ‘A snare, or whatever you want to call it. The police guard stays outside the boy’s room. And perhaps some extra hospital security patrolling the main entrances. It should look like the boy has run-of-the-mill protection: that it’s a low-priority case. While in reality, there’s a cordon of armed men from the arrest team ready to swoop in when necessary.’
‘The cop is bait?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Risky plan, Diba, because what if our guy still manages to get to the boy?’
‘We don’t run any risk if we secretly move the boy to another location and meanwhile act as if he’s still there. If our guy succeeds in getting into the room, he only finds an empty bed.’
Tomasoa had his Yul Brynner-eyes fixed on Marouan the entire time.
It was now 6.30 a.m.
The next time Marouan looked at the clock again was in the office of the head of Intensive Care at the WMC. It was already after seven. The day shift was just coming on. He was practically high on adrenalin. He felt reborn.
‘I’m sorry,’ he heard Calvino say soothingly to the head of the ICU after he’d briefly explained their plan, ‘but for safety reasons it’s important that the boy is moved to another hospital as soon as possible.’
Fifteen minutes later the critical care physician on duty had contacted several hospitals and Marouan soon realized their backs were up against a wall. As the clock kept ticking, it became increasingly clear that not one hospital was prepared to take on a patient who from a medical standpoint didn’t need to be moved, and who was apparently a criminal target.
While the medical residents did their rounds, the day-shift nurses were brought up to speed about the presence of three armed men from the special squad disguised as ICU staff. It was becoming painstakingly clear to Marouan that without valid medical reasons there was no way the boy would be moved elsewhere.
In the meantime, Calvino had found a spot at police central dispatch in front of a wall of surveillance monitors. From there, he could keep in touch with all the guards stationed at the WMC. Despite the fact that there were no suspicious movements or visitors that morning, Marouan was getti
ng more and more agitated. Following the advice of the special squad he also put on a white doctor’s coat and let Mariska convince him to do rounds with her and two of the ICU nurses.
Around midday it became clear that there were slight complications with the boy’s spleen. Mariska explained that children’s organs, which of course are still growing, react differently to those of adults and that the boy actually needed to be under the care of a paediatric intensive care specialist. That was the key to getting him transferred. Given the expertise that he needed wasn’t available at the WMC, he had to be taken to a hospital with a Paediatric ICU.
Within half an hour a new home was found for the boy in the Maaspoort Hospital in Rotterdam. A relieved Marouan asked how soon an ambulance could be arranged, only to be confronted with the next problem. A normal ambulance wasn’t a good idea. Given his precarious condition, the boy had to be moved by special transport. It was three o’clock in the afternoon when Mariska phoned the central switchboard to arrange this, and it was five minutes past three when Marouan almost threw a fit upon hearing there were three hospitals with requests for special transport ahead of them, and the boy would have to wait until the early evening.
It was time to call on Tomasoa’s services.
10
The sun cast perpendicular strips of light through the windows of the mosque and threw long shadows across the simple coffin in which Parwaiz’s ritually washed body had been placed, wrapped in a white linen cloth.
The mullah led the prayer.
‘Innaa liIlayhi Wa Innaa Ilayhi Raaji’oon.’ Verily we belong to Allah and will return to Allah.
Farah looked around. All the women sitting close by were dressed in grey or black. They had wrapped white or grey scarves around their heads and weren’t wearing any make-up on their faces. They sat together on one side of the aisle, the men on the other. Farah was pleased that Edward was just across from her and noticed him keeping a watchful eye.
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