The horror scenario she’d discussed with Paul: it had become reality.
Half an hour later, they arrived in front of the gate of the Waringin Shelter. It was unusually dark and quiet. As they walked through the passageway to the courtyard, they caught a smothered sob. They stopped dead in their tracks. It was so quiet Farah’s own heartbeat sounded like heavy footsteps, her breathing like a man’s wheezing and the chirp of a cricket like the click of a revolver.
But when she felt the cold metal of a gun barrel against her temple, she knew that all those sounds had been real.
Part Five
* * *
BETRAYAL
1
With the two prepaids they’d found now safely sealed in plastic bags, Radjen and Esther drove from the Lombards’ Blaricum villa directly to the station in Amsterdam.
In Laurens Kramer’s digital workspace they sat down in front of a computer screen displaying the homepage of an Indian hospital that specialized in complex bone fractures.
‘One of Kovalev’s last searches on his home computer,’ Kramer said.
‘I understood that Kovalev erased all of his files?’ Radjen asked.
Laurens Kramer laughed. ‘When someone erases their hard drive, only the data in the index is removed. The rest of that information actually remains. Compare it to ripping the table of contents out of a book and believing that you’ve rid the book of all the chapters as well.’
‘In any case,’ said Radjen, who’d developed a strong dislike for the know-it-all Kramer, ‘enlighten me: what’s so interesting about the webpage of an Indian hospital?’
Kramer pointed to flight information for an Indian air-ambulance that had landed at Schiphol Airport less than an hour before Sasha Kovalev hijacked the MICU transporting Sekandar to a safer location.
Radjen didn’t need to know more than that.
The air-ambulance had apparently been booked to fly Sekandar to Goa, where he would have received further treatment in a specialized hospital.
‘This man ordered that jet,’ Kramer said, pointing to the photo of a good-looking Indian man you’d implicitly trust to borrow your car. ‘Bikram Shaw, until fairly recently Armin Lazonder’s financial adviser. He disappeared right before Lazonder hit rock bottom financially.’
Esther leaned towards Radjen. ‘We suspect that Kovalev, together with Shaw, had elaborate plans in India to enjoy all the money he’d undoubtedly accumulated defrauding Lazonder.’
‘I see,’ Radjen said. ‘But that Kovalev wanted to play happy families with Sekandar is what finally cost him his head.’
‘Spot on,’ Kramer said. ‘But there’s more, Chief.’
Kramer’s fingers flew across the keys of the laptop in front of him.
Radjen saw some of Kovalev’s financial transactions whizz by. Kramer pointed to a transfer of twelve hundred dollars for a one-way business-class airline ticket to Haiti. In the name of D. Bernson.
Danielle Bernson. The doctor who had saved Sekandar’s life. She’d been richly rewarded by Kovalev, who, on top of that, donated twenty thousand dollars to a children’s hospital in Port-au-Prince, where she could have anonymously picked up her life again. However, Bernson never made it to the airport in Amsterdam. She was raped and murdered only a few kilometres from where Sekandar had been found in the woods. There was a sign of tyre marks made by a four-wheel drive at the crime scene. But the rain storm that night had washed away just about everything else.
There’d been a mega pile-up on the A9 the night Bernson was murdered. A four-wheel drive was apparently the initial cause of that accident. A black Touareg had sailed over the railing, plunged into oncoming traffic, only to land on top of a taxi and explode. In what was left of that wreck forensics discovered a Zastava M57 – and the bullets that killed Bernson had come from a Zastava M57.
The face of the man driving the Touareg was burned beyond recognition. What was left of his passport was undoubtedly false. The man was wearing a locket. With a photo of three men. One was identified as Arseni Vakurov, another as Valentin Lavrov. There had to be a much larger organization behind Bernson’s murder.
Radjen was still absorbing all the new information he’d just received when his phone rang.
It was Kemper. His boss sounded like he’d just choked on an expensive steak dinner.
‘I heard you went back to Lombard’s place this afternoon,’ he said reproachfully.
‘You heard correctly,’ Radjen said.
‘I’ve just had word: he’s dead!’
2
The gun was pressed against her temple, while a blinding light was shone in her face. A man shouted that it was her, ‘the terrorist’.
She heard children crying as she was handcuffed, blindfolded and forcefully shoved into the back of the jeep. One man sat down on each side of her. She caught a whiff of their pungent sweat through the fabric of their khaki uniforms. Her skin was tingling. Before she had a chance to react to Aninda’s screams, she was jolted back against the seat, as the vehicle suddenly drove off.
During the drive, she couldn’t stop thinking about what Satria had said. You’re on a mission. And you’ll have to complete it, however impossible it may seem. It was something to hold on to. The only thing.
The jeep slowed only to take sharp corners. The men beside her barely moved. Helicopters flew overhead, their noise mingling with that of breaking waves. They came to a halt in front of what must have been a gate in the process of opening electronically. The sound was vaguely familiar to her. When they drove down a ramp, she knew for sure.
She was back in Gundono’s compound.
One of the men snarled that she had to get out. A lift door opened and closed, followed by electric whirring. Her breathing was ragged. She tried to keep calm.
The space they pushed her into smelled musty and damp. The relief of having the cuffs removed lasted mere seconds. Almost immediately men grabbed hold of her and placed her on a wooden board. She tried to resist, but it was no use. They strapped down her upper body and hips and then tilted her, board and all, backwards into a diagonal position.
Before he ripped the blindfold from her face, she’d already smelled his musky body odour with hints of mint, lavender and bergamot. The scarcely lit space they were in had a low, vaulted ceiling and was crammed full of dusty Hindu–Javanese statues. Valentin Lavrov’s grey-green eyes betrayed a cold-hearted kind of pity.
‘The boy in the pickup was easy to trace to you, moya milochka. Too easy, really. And a bit insulting, my dear.’
He grasped the bottom of the wooden board and tilted it so Farah toppled backwards at a downward angle, and her head ended up in a wooden container filled with water.
She tried to raise it, to gasp for air, but all she took in was water. Adrenalin surged through her body. She wanted to flail her arms and kick her legs, hoping to free herself with those reflexes. Impossible. What followed was blind panic. A desperate struggle to survive. And as she thrashed about, caught in her own spasms, she saw his figure looming over her, monstrously distorted by the splashing water above her.
The moment she thought she might suffocate the board was forcefully raised from the water, back to its original diagonal position.
She tried to gasp for air again, but threw up water instead.
‘Being dead is easy enough,’ he said calmly. ‘But dying, that’s quite a challenge. Dying can be hell. Seriously, it will get worse every time you’re down there. You never get used to it. Who knows how long you can keep it up … spare yourself that hell.’
He slowly leaned towards her. ‘Journalists usually refuse to reveal their sources. But I’d advise you to give me the names of your contacts, the names of those you worked with. Then I’ll make this easy on you.’
She could hear herself stammer. She seemed to have no control over it.
‘You’ve got … You’ve got …’
‘I’ve got what?’
She heard Satria’s voice in her ear. Never let on, never reveal
a thing. Be as elusive as water.
She was shivering all over, shivering with fear, yet she looked him straight in the eye and kept her mouth shut.
‘You’re too predictable,’ he taunted, and tilted her back into the water.
Her fear of dying was even more intense this time. As were her reflexes. It was an instinctive physical reaction. It was her body fighting to survive. It took over. She lost all control and felt her bladder emptying itself. She kicked, lashed out, swallowed water, thought she’d go insane with panic and was about to lose consciousness when she was unexpectedly tilted back out of the water yet again.
Gasp for air. She needed air. Spit out the water. Her laboured breathing was coupled with heart palpitations. And then there was the fury. Raging fury.
But she wasn’t dead yet.
‘You and me. We’re so similar. And yet … We’d be so much more effective if we cooperated. Why you stubbornly persist in refusing to talk is a mystery to me. I don’t get it. Enlighten me.’
She shook her head.
‘You’re more afraid than you look. More afraid than you care to admit. You’re afraid to do great things. It’s your fear. It holds you back. The world is a scary place. Has been since your childhood. And still is. There are no more walls to protect you, Farah.’
He slid his hands over her wet body. ‘Names, names, names …’
How long would she be able to stand this? She didn’t know. Paul and Anya’s work mustn’t be in vain. She had to sacrifice herself. The thought filled her with despair. She started to cry. She wanted to remain silent. It would spell her death. But she had to do it. Remain silent.
‘You’re nothing but a scared child,’ he said. ‘With so much to lose.’
He produced a mobile phone and said casually, ‘That girl who was with you. What’s her role?’
This came as a shock. ‘Leave her out of this.’
‘Impossible. We’ve got her as well.’
He pressed a key. ‘Is she there? Hand her to me.’
He brought the mobile to Farah’s ear. When she heard sobbing, she said Aninda’s name.
‘Farah?’
She tried not to let on that she was crying.
Aninda sounded just as fearful as Farah felt, but she could tell her friend was trying to control her emotions.
‘Do you remember what I told you, that night? About how to act?’
‘Do as your heart tells you, not as your fear dictates.’
‘Do that.’
Lavrov pulled the phone away. ‘I can make her howl in pain as she’s raped over and over again. I can also be merciful and have her killed quickly. It’s up to you.’
‘No,’ she exclaimed. ‘Let her live. Kill me, but let her live.’
She was screaming now, cursing him in Dari through her tears. But he just stood there and smiled, waiting for her to finish.
‘Anya Kozlova. What’s her role in all this?’
‘How do you know –’
He flew into a rage. ‘What’s Kozlova’s role?’
‘She … She hacked Gundono’s computer … She knows how you concluded the deal.’
He seemed beside himself with fury. He yelled into the receiver.
‘Shoot the girl!’
She begged, screamed, cried out. She’d tell him everything, she’d … Then came the tinny sound of gunfire and she froze. She couldn’t believe it. Lavrov kept barking into the speaker, but when no response was forthcoming he hurled the phone across the room.
Life had lost all meaning. She wanted to be dead.
Dead like Aninda.
He came and stood in front of her. In his raised hand she recognized a golok, a large, razor-sharp knife.
All she felt was a gust of wind when his arm came down like the sail of a windmill.
With surgical precision, he slit the blade through the straps that bound her upper body. Then he cut loose those around her hips and thighs.
‘I can’t stand it when defenceless people are executed. You ought to die feeling you had a chance to fight for your life.’
After wriggling free from the straps she stood before him, still reeling. She was acutely aware of the urge to flee, but a voice inside told her to keep an eye on the knife.
It will seem like an impossible challenge. You’ll need to be well prepared if you want to survive.
She opened the palms of her hands, as she’d practised with Satria. Not fists, but open hands.
She’d die without fear.
Aninda was with her again, lying beside her like before, and reassuring her.
You’re fleeing what’s chasing you, but the more you flee, the more it comes after you. And one day … one day it will catch up with you. And then you’ll have no choice but to turn around and look it straight in the eye.
And with Aninda’s voice came the realization that she mustn’t die. Not now. Not yet. He had to die first. The man in front of her. The man with the knife.
He was well trained. She stood little chance. In fact, she didn’t even want a chance. All she wanted was revenge. His death for that of Aninda. It was the least she could do. With the anger surging through her body, she failed to heed Satria’s warning: Anger is an energy, but feed it too much and it will destroy you.
Her first task was to fend off any attack. By moving around him in circles, she could catch her breath and recover her strength.
But he was already charging at her.
She managed to duck, surprised at the speed of her reaction. Aninda was giving her strength. Satria was giving her good council. There were three of them present now. He was alone.
As she continued to move around him, she realized it intimidated him. He must have anticipated her fear, not the apparent calm with which she fixated on him and tried to second-guess his every move. She’d wait for a moment of inattentiveness. She kept circling him, ducked, avoided another blow and noticed that his moves were now driven by anger, whereas she’d recovered her composure.
With the voices of Satria and Aninda in her head, she began to create her own reality. It wasn’t Lavrov who’d gone looking for her so he could eliminate her here. No, she’d sought him out so she could fight – and defeat – him right on this spot.
She could tell his concentration was waning. His movements were now driven by a growing lack of confidence. He tried to camouflage it, but she could tell by the look in his eyes and his breathing, which he now did through the mouth rather than through the nose.
She began to anticipate what was coming, to predict his lunges, to estimate the speed and dwindling force with which he lashed out. And each time she took a step closer.
She lured him into an imaginary circle.
Quite unexpectedly, she countered the sideways chopping motion he made by grabbing his wrist and aiming an elbow punch at his sternum, which he managed to block.
He pushed her elbow away and lashed out again, this time from above.
She met his blow with her arms crossed and grabbed the wrist of his slashing arm with her left hand before ducking underneath it in a hapkido motion, yanking the limb towards her and pinning it behind his back. With her right fist she punched him hard in the gut. She heard him groan in pain.
He dropped the knife.
It wasn’t enough.
She put him in a headlock and, by kicking his lower calf, swept his right leg from under him. Then she stepped back, pulled him towards her in a stranglehold and felt all resistance fade.
She let go and stood before him. The look she gave him seemed to signal goodbye.
His eyes were turned inward. He looked like a broken man, as defenceless as a child.
She hesitated.
But it wouldn’t be over until his life was over.
She had to finish it.
She had to finish him.
Then came the sound of rapid, heavy footsteps on concrete stairs.
Do it.
The entrance was being battered down.
Do it. Now!
&nb
sp; She rotated her hips so she could deliver the fatal blow.
They emerged from the half-light: figures with laser-guided guns. A male voice shouted: ‘Jangan!’ ‘Don’t!’
But she was already halfway through her rotation.
Red laser beams skimmed her body.
She pulled in her right leg to launch the deadly kick.
The laser dots hovered over her heart and her forehead.
‘Don’t do it!’
3
The low country by the North Sea was once again in the international news – and for all the wrong reasons. First, because of the Dutch journalist of Afghan origin who had become a celebrity terrorist with her jihad statement on YouTube; and now, because of the way the Dutch minister under investigation, Ewald Lombard, had very publicly met his demise.
In particular the modus operandi of the Amsterdam MIT was questioned. Why were these detectives rigorously investigating a government minster when there wasn’t a shred of evidence to prove him guilty? And why did this same team of detectives back Lombard so far into a corner that they were possibly complicit in his death? A number of striking examples were used to illustrate just how disastrous the work of the Amsterdam police had been.
There was the unparalleled way Detective Marouan Diba had disrupted a popular live TV show by barging into the studio, grabbing the host, Dennis Faber, by his collar and dragging him away like a serious criminal, all in front of the cameras.
Then there was the fanaticism that drove his partner, Detective Joshua Calvino, in a break with police protocol, to travel to Moscow and, behind closed doors, attempt to have Minister Lombard arrested during his stay in the Russian capital.
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