by Stuart Safft
“Thank you,” said Whittaker. “While you were in Russia, did you and Ms. Van den Broeck make friends with any Russians?”
“Yes, a few. But I haven’t been in touch with any of them for years.”
“Can you give us their names?” prompted Whittaker.
“No, I really can’t remember any of their full names. I’d have to dig out my old photos and scrapbook. Their names are probably buried someplace in there.”
“Great. Can you do that for us now?” asked Goossens.
“No. I can’t. I’m sorry,” responded Luk.
“Sir, this is really quite important,” pointed out Whittaker.
“Sorry. Please don’t misunderstand. I want to help. But I can’t do it now. First of all, if I don’t leave very shortly, I’ll be late for work. And, more important, my photo albums and scrapbooks aren’t here in this small apartment. They’re in the attic at my mother’s house, and she lives in Antwerp. If it’s really urgent, I could go there after work this evening.”
“That would be most appreciated,” said Goossens. “In fact, if you don’t mind, we’d like to meet you at your mother’s house this evening and take a look at what you have.”
“Uh, OK,” said Luk. “Why don’t we say 18:30 this evening. My mother’s address in Antwerp is Friedalaan 107. It’s a few streets north of the N49, on the west side of the river.”
“OK, we’ll find it. See you there at 6:30. Here’s my card in case you need to contact us. And thank you,” concluded Goossens.
“You’re welcome.”
Goossens and Whittaker walked back to the train station and caught the next train into Brussels.
“Well, he seemed to be quite willing to help,” said Whittaker.
“Yes, he did. He clearly didn’t seem to have anything to hide. I’m hopeful that we’ll learn more from him this evening.”
“So am I,” responded Whittaker. “Thanks for switching so quickly into English with him. I’m still trying to get better at Flemish, and it’s rather embarrassing, since nearly everyone here speaks such good English.
They agreed to meet again at the Brussels central train station at 4:30 that afternoon to take the train to Antwerp. After arriving back in Brussels, they each went to their own offices. Goossens planned to spend a good part of the rest of the day trying to locate the five classmates who traveled to Russia with Ellen and Luk and to try to speak with them in person or by phone.
When Whittaker got back to his office in the embassy, he knocked off a quick e-mail to Martin in Cincinnati:
Good morning, ASAC Martin.
We just returned from speaking with one Luk Claessens. He was the boyfriend who traveled to Russia with Ms. Van den Broeck, aka Ellen Sanders. He seems to be fully cooperative, but cannot remember the names of the Russian friends they made. We are meeting him this evening; he and we will go through his photos and scrapbook from back then, hopefully giving us more info.
Inspecteur Goossens of the Belgian Federal Police is trying to locate and speak with the five fellow students who went to the Soviet Union with Ms. Van den Broeck and her boyfriend.
Will keep you informed.
Best, SA Henry Whittaker
With the time difference, Whittaker didn’t expect a reply for several hours. One arrived from Martin in the early afternoon:
Henry,
Many thanks for your help and for the status report. Sounds encouraging. We await hearing more after Goossens’ efforts and your visit this evening.
Best regards,
Dan
At 4:30 that afternoon, Whittaker and Goossens met at Bruxelles Central, one of the main Brussels train stations, very close to Grand Place. They checked the monitor, purchased two roundtrip tickets, found the train sitting at the indicated track and boarded it.
“How did you make out with finding the five co-travelers the boyfriend named for us this morning?”
“Pretty well,” answered Goossens. “Of the two for which he gave us contact information, I spoke with one in person as he worked only a few blocks from my police station. I spoke with the other one by phone. As for the other three, I located and spoke by phone with one of them, located but only left a voice mail message for the second one, but I haven’t been able to find any trace of the third.”
“And what did you learn?”
“Unfortunately, not much,” responded Goossens. “They all pretty much confirmed what Luk had told us. They had no idea about any Russian friends that the couple met as Luk and Ms. Sanders pretty much did their own thing once they got to Russia. I did tell them all that I might be back with more questions, and they seemed all right with that.”
Fifty minutes later they were walking off the train into Antwerpen Centraal, the main train station in the center of Antwerp. Goossens led the way, and 15 minutes later they were knocking on the door of Luk’s mother’s house. Luk opened the door and let them in.
“Good evening,” said Luk. “My mother is out with a few friends this evening, so we have the house to ourselves. Let’s go into the kitchen. I pulled the stuff out of the attic, and it’s spread out on the kitchen table.”
“Fine. Thanks,” said Goossens as they walked through the small and dark, but well kept, living room and entered an even smaller kitchen with a heavy wooden table and four chairs taking up most of the room.
“Sit down, please,” said Luk. “Would you like a beer?”
“Thank you, but no. We’re still on duty,” replied Goossens.
Luk offered coffee. A few minutes later, they all sat around the table, each with a cup of black coffee in their hands.
The next 90 minutes felt like torture to Whittaker. He barely had the patience to sit through various photograph shows put on by friends or his own family. He surely had even less patience for those of a stranger. Nonetheless, Luk managed to come up with the names of three Russians whom he and Ellen had become friendly with during their year in Russia. He said that he hadn’t been in touch with any of them since he returned from Russia. He doubted that Ellen had either, but since he and Ellen broke up shortly after their return to Belgium, he didn’t really know. “Vasily Maklakov” was one of the three names Luk came up with.
Whittaker and Goossens thanked Luk for all his help and headed back to Brussels.
Early the next morning, Whittaker sent another e-mail to Martin.
Hello Dan,
Good meeting last evening with the boyfriend, Luk Claessens. He came up with the names of three Russian friends: Galina Bolotin, Vasily Maklakov and Mikhail Pyzik. I have requested assistance from our legal attaché in Moscow. May take a few days as it’s Russia, not Belgium. Will let you know what we learn.
Inspecteur Goossens spoke with three of five fellow student travelers. They confirmed what Luk told us but added no new info.
Henry
CHAPTER 29
First thing in the morning, three days later, Martin walked into Florio’s cramped office and sat down in one of the two metal chairs in front of Florio’s desk.
“Shit!” said Martin.
“And good morning to you, too,” responded Florio.
“Sorry. Please excuse my French. Or my Flemish. Or my Russian.”
“Huh?” asked Florio.
“When I got in, there was an e-mail from Whittaker. We hit a dead end in Moscow. The Russian authorities were — surprise, surprise — less than fully cooperative with our guy over there wanting to interview the three friends that Ellen Sanders made during her year in Russia.”
“Why am I less than shocked?” said Florio.
“The Russians said that they contacted the three, but they all refused to speak with our legal attaché over there. And the Russians said that since no Russian crime had been committed, they couldn’t force them to.”
“Or so they sa
id. Who knows if they really contacted, or even tried to contact, the three?”
“Yeah, well our hands are tied. We can’t do anything over there without the Russian police, so it looks like we’ve come to the end of this road.”
“Too bad,” said Florio. “I was starting to get my hopes up.”
“That’s the way the cookie crumbles. I don’t have to tell you, those damn Russians are never interested in helping us, unless, of course, there’s something in it for them. And especially if any of these three people were or are spies for them.”
“So, where does that leave us now?” asked Florio.
“No place pleasant. We’re basically done. Tracing the ransom money led no place, we found nothing damning on Sanders’ phones or laptop, tracking down her old Russian friends led to a solid brick wall. I’m out of ideas.”
“We’re basically no further along than we were right at the start of the case,” said Florio. “She had many opportunities to hand over secret information, but we have no evidence that she did. The kidnapping may have been real or fake, but we don’t know which. The husband may or may not have been involved in the real kidnapping, the fake kidnapping or even her murder, but, again, we have no evidence indicating any of this.”
“The only good news in all of this,” said Martin, “is that you haven’t again suggested that the crime was committed by aliens.”
“Yeah, well, I was thinking of it, but I had a hunch you wouldn’t go for it. Give me a day or two to wrap up the report on this, and then you can sign it. We’ll then send it to the basement for storage. Or is ‘burial’ a more appropriate term?”
“Yes, ‘burial’ is probably the right term. Fortunately, human nature being what it is, we’ll continue to have more than enough other cases to keep our little minds occupied.”
“That’s good,” concluded Florio. “It sure beats unemployment.”
CHAPTER 30
“Buongiorno, Aldino,” said Steve Sanders as he was handed his croissant and cappuccino along with a two-day-old issue of the International New York Times.
“Buongiorno, Signore Johnson.”
By now, Steve was getting used to being addressed as Charles or Signore Johnson. He took his breakfast and newspaper to one of the small outdoor tables and sat down for his daily one-hour ritual. Since arriving at San Garvazio di Puglia 18 months ago, Steve had done this almost every morning. He usually rode his Vespa scooter on the two-kilometer journey from his villa’s 10-acre property up in the hills overlooking the town to the town center. In bad weather, he called the local taxi company. Once or twice a week, Ellen joined him for a quick breakfast, and then she went food shopping while Steve lingered over his cappuccino and newspaper. This ritual was broken only during periods when Steve and Ellen were traveling, usually starting out by train to Naples, about 90 miles away.
Steve enjoyed this hour of early morning solitude. He couldn’t believe the beauty of the small town, coupled with the superb weather most of the time. His life of few deadlines and demands was easy to get used to. Yet he was often unable to cast aside his growing feelings of guilt and concerns of getting caught, destroying his pleasurable coffee break.
When they first purchased the villa, it was the talk of the small, mostly agricultural town for days. The villa had been unoccupied for several years, and the locals were pleased that someone would finally again be living in it. The new buyers had a great deal of renovation work done, including installation of a state-of-the-art security system, over a four-month period.
As Steve said to Ellen shortly after moving in, “I’m glad I only speak a few words of Italian and very few people here speak decent English. I can just order my food, and say ‘hello,’ ‘good-bye’ and ‘thank you’ without having to have any in-depth discussions.”
“Yes, that’s true for you. In my case, speaking French lets me stumble through speaking rudimentary Italian. Fortunately, I understand a lot more Italian than I can speak, and they don’t realize it.”
“Great. So you’re like a secret bugging device.”
“Something like that.”
“So what have you heard them saying about us?”
“So far it’s all positive,” replied Ellen. “They’re glad that we bought and fixed up the villa; it was beginning to become an eyesore to many of them. They’re also glad that we’re paying property taxes to the town. They know that we’re retirees from western Canada, but they remain curious as hell about where you or I had worked to amass what to them is a huge fortune.”
“Anything over 10 euros would seem like a huge fortune around here. The people seem sweet and hardworking, but they are clearly mostly poor farmers.”
“Yes, but since they’re all in the same boat, they don’t think of themselves as poor. Rather, they see us as super-rich and mysterious.”
Most of the townspeople, in fact, did view the new residents as mysterious. They often left for one- or two-week trips at a time. They didn’t speak their language, and they had almost no social interactions with anyone. And they installed a massive front gate and a sophisticated security system in the middle of this rural and virtually crime-free area.
“I imagine they view us as big criminals or drug dealers who are here hiding from the authorities,” said Steve.
“Probably. But these people are very independent and believe in living as they want and letting others do the same. They’re very unlikely to mention us to the authorities. Unless we do something seriously wrong, even the local police force, such as it is, has no desire to investigate or report us. And this will continue to be the case so long as we stay out of trouble and continue supporting the village’s local fund-raising efforts.”
“I must say, I’m amazed at how often they’re raising money for something. It seems like every other day is a saint’s birthday or a national holiday or just a charitable event. And how very appreciative they are when we donate even 50 or 100 euros.”
“That’s true. And it’s an inexpensive way for us to stay on their good side. I get a laugh out of how easy it is to please them, just a few euros, for whatever lame cause they keep coming up with.”
“I agree. Although I don’t think we can ever do enough good or contribute enough money to make up for the crimes we’ve committed. In fact, for the crimes that we continue to commit everyday just by living here.”
“Steve — I mean Charles, of course — I think you’re being overly harsh on yourself. And on us. What we did didn’t really hurt anyone. Some big, fat insurance company paid the ransom, we collected prematurely on some of my stock options and grants and, perhaps someday, we’ll collect some life insurance money.”
“Yeah, but that was all done illegally. I keep looking over my shoulder, expecting the FBI or those Jasper Creek detectives to be coming for us.”
“Darling, you’re being paranoid. As long as we continue to be careful and maintain a low profile, I don’t think they’ll ever find us.”
“I don’t know where you get your confidence, much less your motivation and determination to have planned and pulled off this whole thing, but you surely don’t seem like the sweet, well-meaning lady I married.”
“Yeah, well, I guess I finally grew up. In any event, no more of this gibberish. Let’s not discuss this again, and let’s try to enjoy what we have here.”
“OK, we won’t discuss it again. But I’m not sure how successful I’ll be at trying to put it out of my mind, or at trying to make peace with it. I can’t seem to shake either my fear or feelings of guilt. In fact, if anything, they seem to get worse as time passes.”
“Well, give it your very best shot, Charles. Now, how about a walk through the gardens?”
CHAPTER 31
“I’ll get it, hon,” yelled Steve as he walked to the front door in response to the knocking.
As he opened the door, t
hree handsomely dressed Carabinieri policemen were standing there. Their distinctive black and blue uniforms, with thick red stripes on the outside of the pants legs, silver braid on the collars and cuffs, and a broad white band running across their left shoulder and down to their right hip, made them immediately recognizable.
“Buongiorno. Il mio nome è Il Sergente Nazzari.”
“Buongiorno.”
“Il tuo nome Signo…?”
“Hold on,” interrupted Steve. “’Hello’ and ‘Good-bye’ is about the limit of my Italian. Do you speak English?”
“Scusate. Scusate. Yes, I speak some English. Are you Mr. Steven Sanders?”
“Who? No. You must be at the wrong house. My name is Charles Johnson.”
“Is your wife at home?”
“Uh, uh, yes. One minute.” Turning to the inside of the house, he yelled “Hon, you’d better come here.”
A moment later, Steve watched as Ellen walked through the hallway to the door — tall, attractive, her dyed-black hair shorter than she’d ever worn it in the States, a pair of black, thick-rimmed glasses accenting its deep color. “What is it, Dear?”
Before Steve could respond, Sergeant Nazzari jumped in, “Buongiorno, signora. Are you Ellen Sanders?”
“What? Heavens no. I’m Edith Johnson, Charles’ wife. What is this about?”
“Si. Si. I am here with two sets of arrest warrants. One set is for a Steven and Ellen Sanders. The other set is for a Charles and Edith Johnson. They both have this for the address. So I can arrest you with which name you like. You can choose. You have to come with me.”
“This is crazy!” said Ellen. We moved here from western Canada almost 18 months ago and have been peacefully living here, not disturbing or hurting anyone.”
CHAPTER 32
Three months later, as they passed through Passport Control at Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci International Airport, Joe said to Ginny, “This is a helluva lot better than going to Detroit to pick up a suspect. I could handle these assignments more often. If only they gave us a few days off for vacation while we’re here in Rome.”