He was glad he had taken a taxi to the woman’s house until he realized that the police could already have tracked down the driver, who may have been able to describe him. His face could already be splattered all over the television, in newspapers: Houston Woman Murdered, Baby Kidnapped, Artist Rendering of Suspect! If so, surely the police had passed his likeness to Houston and Amsterdam Immigration.
First he had to ditch Isaac’s car, rent another one and get the hell out of town. The documents in the glove box showed that the car had been rented from Hertz near the airport. Ariel called other rentals nearby. They didn’t take cash, he would have to pay with a credit card. It was 1980, they said. Firm policy for the past five years. Ariel panicked. He didn’t have one; no one he knew in Amsterdam used them. Finally he located a small company a block away from the Hertz lot. They told him they would take cash if he put down a three hundred dollar deposit.
When the sun fell over the towering Houston skyline, he woke a now-quiet Rose, put her, his suitcase and her small stroller into Isaac’s car, and drove to the rental company. Rose looked up at him. He hated to do it, but he couldn’t run the risk of taking her into the office. Even if they didn’t have a description of him, the first thing the police would have done was to send Rose’s photograph everywhere. Surely they would have alerted all rental offices to be on the lookout for a foreign man traveling with a six-month-old. Holding Rose with one arm, he put his suitcase on the front seat, zipped it open and snuggled her into his clothing. It wasn’t a car seat, but it would have to do. He lowered the windows a bit to let the warm breeze in. She looked up at him, her blue eyes wide and curious. He kissed her again. “Be good,” he whispered. “I’ll be right back.”
He pulled the brim of his hat low on his forehead and got into line. Someone at the far end of the counter was not happy.
“I don’t give a shit what that machine of yours says,” bellowed an angry young man in a white starched shirt, jeans and cowboy boots. “I reserved a Cadillac and a Cadillac is what you’re goddamned well gonna give me.”
The older female agent glared at him, pulled out a reservation form and pointed to a few lines of text. Her voice was sharp as cactus needles. “There it is—in black and white. We said we’d give you the car of your choice if it was available.” She crossed her arms and smiled at him as if pleased to give him the news. “And it ain’t.”
The cowboy’s face turned purple. “Listen, lady. I got a sweet little Mexican girl waitin’ for me down in Nuevo Laredo and then we’re hoppin’ a plane to Acapulco. How do you expect me to drive that far in some shitty little compact?”
The woman looked him square in the eyes, held up a set of keys and shook them. “Guess you better get goin’ then. You got about a six hour drive ahead of you to Laredo. Once you get there, you can just walk over the border, you know.”
It was Ariel’s turn. The young man facing him at the counter barely noticed him. His eyes were riveted to the argument. Ariel mumbled his request for a car—any car. The man nodded, looked at Ariel’s drivers license and didn’t seem to notice that it was foreign. When Ariel asked to pay cash, the agent waved the manager over. He glanced at Ariel’s passport and then his face. “Three hundred deposit. You got that?”
Ariel fanned the cash on the counter, his heart pounding.
The manager turned to the agent. “Okay.”
Ariel signed the rental papers quickly and had a sudden thought. “Where is Nuevo Laredo?”
The young agent looked at him curiously. “Not from around here, are you?”
“No,” he mumbled.
The agent stamped the first page of the rental form, ripped it off and gave Ariel the copy and a set of keys. He reached under the counter and handed Ariel a map of Texas, and pointed. “It’s a lousy town on the Mexican side of the Texas border. All it’s got is booze, bad food and easy hookers.” He jerked his head toward the cowboy, who was still arguing with the woman behind the counter. “Anybody can walk across the border and get some of what he’s after.”
“Without a passport?”
The clerk shrugged. “Nobody gives a damn who goes into Mexico. We just care who comes back. Lots of wetbacks tryin’ to sneak in.”
Ariel collected the rental papers and rushed back to Rose. Was she still there? Was she all right? He unlocked and opened the car door. There she was, sleeping, a soft smile on her face. Incredible relief shot through him. Before he lifted her out of Isaac’s car and walked to the one he had just rented, he had a final thought. He used Rose’s blanket to wipe off his fingerprints from the steering wheel, car handles and the keys, which he then threw under the driver’s seat. “I am a criminal,” he said softly to himself. But there was no time for moral reflection now.
Once in the car, Ariel turned the key and drove into the night. Just before they arrived in Laredo, he used a pay phone to make a reservation on the next Aeroméxico flight from Nuevo Laredo to Amsterdam via Mexico City. He would pay for the tickets at the airport.
The clerk had been right. He and Rose had just walked across the bridge from Laredo into Mexico with the other pedestrians. It was crazy. After the hour-long flight to Mexico City, they arrived at the airport. While he waited for the flight to Amsterdam to board, he placed a collect call to Leah.
“Ariel?” He heard the hysteria in her voice. “Where are you? Why haven’t you called me?”
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart. God, I’ve never been so happy to hear your voice.”
“Are you all right? What has happened?”
“God, Leah, I don’t know where to begin.”
“Did you find Isaac?” Her voice lowered to a fierce whisper. “Amarisa is frantic! She made me tell her where Isaac went and why.”
Dread filled him. “Where is she now?”
“Here, in the other room,” she said. “She says she’s not budging until Isaac comes home. God, Ariel—hurry. You know how she is.”
“Don’t tell her anything.”
“But you’re bringing Isaac back with you?”
“He’s—dead.” The word choked in his throat. “Dead?” He heard the terror in her voice. “But how—”
“He killed—”
Ariel turned. A short young woman with two noisy toddlers in tow stared at him, her black eyes wide. She had obviously wanted to use the telephone but thought better of it and scuttled away as quickly as her entourage would permit. Ariel lowered his voice and whispered into the receiver. “I can’t talk now—it isn’t safe. I’m sorry, I know you’re worried.”
“But murder? Oh, God—”
Rose began to whimper. Ariel hoisted her higher on his hip. “Niet huilen, schat.”
“Who is that? A child?”
“Yes,” he said quickly. “I have to catch my plane. Will you pick us up? Eight tomorrow morning.”
“Us?” she cried. “Who is us?”
“Leah, I’ll explain it all later, I promise. Whatever you do, don’t say anything to Amarisa. Just tell her I’m coming home and you don’t know anything else.”
“But—”
“Please, darling, do what I say. I’ll handle her when I get back.”
“I’ll try, but—”
He heard his flight announced over the loudspeaker. “I have to go now, sweetheart. See you tomorrow.”
“Just come home!”
He hung up. How could he explain any of it? Leah would freak out when he showed up with Rose in his arms. He hurried to the gate, struggling with his carry-on and jostling Rose, who seemed to think it was all very exciting. She gurgled and laughed. He glanced furtively around, expecting the police to intercept them at any moment. God, just get me home! He almost tripped in his haste to make it to the jetway. The stewardess relieved him of the stroller and he barreled down the aisle. Only when he and Rose were settled in and the plane pulled
away was he able to take deep gulps of air.
After liftoff, the smiling stewardess offered him a refreshment. He ordered three tiny bottles of Scotch, poured them into a plastic cup with trembling hands and knocked them back before she fetched Diet Cokes for his seatmates. Her disapproving look was unmistakable. A sweaty drunk slamming down drinks with a beautiful baby to care for! He shut his eyes and let the fiery alcohol course through him.
During the flight, Rose alternately cried and slept, but quieted quickly after her bottle or a diaper change—no easy feat in the minuscule bathroom. He was grateful that the baby aspirin had seemed to work and that she was too young to stay awake long.
Ten hours later, they arrived at Schiphol. Bleary-eyed and exhausted, Ariel walked from the gate down the paths he knew so well and collected his luggage. His back and arms were killing him from holding Rose during the long flight. He realized he had forgotten to collect the stroller from the stewardess before deplaning. He felt so exhausted he thought he might collapse. Rose was awake and seemed to be taking in everything she saw and heard. His heart thrashed in his chest as he stood at the red line waiting for the next Immigration agent, hoping it wouldn’t be anyone he knew. He gripped Rose tightly. Surely they hadn’t come all this way only to be discovered now. He closed his eyes and prayed to God for the first time in years.
“Mijnheer?”
Ariel opened his eyes and looked at the agent waving him over to his cubicle. Fortunately, Ariel didn’t recognize him. It was only then that he started to breathe again. He juggled Rose as he reached into his coat pocket and produced his passport. It felt as if the agent took years to examine it. The young man looked at the photograph and then up at him—twice. Oh, God, he thought. It’s all over. They must have found out who I was and put my name on the list.
He knew that agents were provided daily with a list of passengers to be denied entrance. Most were wanted criminals. Ariel saw the young man pull the list out of a red folder. At that moment, his telephone rang. The agent picked up and spoke quietly. “Ja, die is hier,” he said. “Kom maar.”
Ariel felt sick. Who was coming? And why?
A few torturous minutes later, two burly security guards walked up. He waited in dread. They would arrest him here and now. He would be deported and stand trial in Houston. They would take Rose away. He held her closer.
The agent handed the list to one of the men who ran his finger down the page and nodded to the other guard. Ariel shut his eyes. At least it would be over.
“We’ve got one on row ten,” said the security guard to the agent. He turned to the other guard. “Let’s go.” They walked off.
Ariel almost wept with relief. The young agent shook his head and stamped Ariel’s passport. “It’s always something,” he muttered. As he returned the passport to Ariel’s trembling fingers, the agent nodded at Rose.
“Beautiful child,” he said.
Ariel took a deep breath and managed a small smile.
“Mijn dochter,” he said. “Jacoba.”
11
Nora watched impatiently as Richards sat on the sofa. It was six in the evening. Early that morning, she had sent him all the documents she’d found yesterday by courier, including her translation. Richards called around nine. In a harried voice, he said he had just been called out on a double murder of a couple in River Oaks. He would come over when he could grab a few minutes. Nora called the police station around three to find out why he hadn’t shown up. The intake officer told her that Richards was still at the crime scene.
So Nora cleaned the house. Then cleaned it again. Marijke went to the grocery store, she thought, to escape Nora’s manic behavior. Not to mention that they had both been cooped up for a week now, tethered to the house. All Nora could do was to keep moving. The minute she stopped, fear for Rose filled her. Or she thought about her job and her patients. Had Bryan, an eight-year-old with a medulloblastoma in his cerebellum, come through his surgery all right? Bryan had held her hand and smiled when she told him not to worry, she would be there during the entire operation. She had promised to keep him safe. How could she have promised such a thing? She couldn’t even keep her own daughter safe. She should call and find out, but did not. She couldn’t handle more bad news.
Nora watched as Marijke brought Richards a cup of coffee. He thanked her and took a sip. Nora drew a deep breath, trying not to panic. She had racked her brain all afternoon to make sense of the awful things she’d found in the attic. She still could not believe it. Richards finally put his coffee cup on the table and sat back. His dark brown eyes met hers. They seemed preoccupied. How much had the new murders diverted his attention from Rose?
She couldn’t stand it anymore. “Well? What did you find out?”
“Not a lot. Not yet, anyway.”
Nora felt as if her entire body was a strung wire, rigid with fear and fatigue. She motioned to Marijke for a cigarette, something she had never done. Marijke raised her eyes, but pulled one from her pack, lit it and handed it to Nora. She nodded her thanks, stood and paced around, almost gagging as she drew the harsh smoke into her lungs. Six days of no Rose and no sleep had made her feel out-of-her-mind crazy. If she didn’t find her baby soon, she wouldn’t make it—she just wouldn’t. “Who have you contacted about the information I sent you?”
“It’s not as if we haven’t done anything, Nora.” She saw the frustration in his face. “Here is what we know so far. The FBI has conferred with the Dutch National Police, the KLPD, and notified the Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice, as well as the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” He took a deep breath. “We talked to Amsterdam Immigration about the false passport in light of the new information. The FBI’s legal attaché to the U.S. Embassy in The Hague is also in the loop.”
Why in hell didn’t anyone realize that they had to act now—immediately!—or she might never find her Rose! She felt panic consume her. “And you sent everyone the documentation I gave you?”
“Yes, we did.”
Nora stalked to her chair, sat and stubbed out the cigarette in Hans’s blue ashtray on the table. Her father, the murderer. She shook off the thought. “What did they find out?”
Richards looked at her with his dark eyes, his voice calm. “Nora, you have to keep in mind that it’s still very early in the case. I know it doesn’t feel that way to you, but we’re still processing the information from the crime scene and the FBI has taken both the murder and Rose’s disappearance very seriously. Even though we don’t have any hard leads yet, we can’t simply drop that investigation and focus all of our energy on the documents you sent us.”
“What do you mean?” She spit her words out as if shot from a machine gun. “Nathan, this is the first real evidence anyone has found that might link the murder and the kidnapping! Obviously that Dutchman—whoever he was—went to a lot of trouble to forge a passport and come here and kill my mother. He might even have been an assassin hired by someone to settle an old score. Or maybe he was an operative with one of the Israeli organizations who track war criminals.” She stopped to take a breath.
She could tell that neither Richards nor Marijke seemed to embrace her logic, but she went on. “The real link here must be related to whatever my mother did as a Dutch Nazi and my father’s murder of a Dutch Jew.” Richards and Marijke listened in silence.
She spoke louder. “We have to find out who Abram Rosen was, if his family is still alive, how my father knew him, why he would kill him, if my mother was really a Dutch Nazi, what she had to do with Rosen’s death and how all of that may be connected to why she was murdered and why Rose was kidnapped—”
Richards held up his hand. “Nora,” he said sternly. “You have to slow down—and calm down.” Nora could tell he was waiting for a signal from her that she understood. To placate him, she took a deep breath and nodded. She had to appear rational. She sat on her hands
to keep them from moving.
Richards continued as if he were teaching a child the first letters of the alphabet. “We have to think about this logically,” he said. “You’re talking about information that is over thirty years old involving people and events that occurred in a foreign country during wartime. Those records won’t be easy to find, if they can be found at all.”
“So you haven’t found a single thing that might help us?” She dropped any pretense at being calm.
Richards’s left eye began to tic. “Although the Dutch have promised to give the matter their attention, they told us that any records relating to Abram Rosen are probably long gone, packed away in archives or lost in the confusion after the war.”
Nora felt stunned. “They have no way of tracking down who he was, where he lived or if he had any family we could try to contact?”
“They told us that there were too many Rosens in the Netherlands for them to move quickly. That it would take time.”
“What about just in Amsterdam?” She could hear the flint in her voice. It was the way she spoke when a nurse handed her the wrong surgical instrument in the operating room. “Surely they can narrow it down and start from there.” She picked up an empty wineglass and watched her hands shake as she poured claret into her glass.
Richards said nothing, but she felt him study her. He had to notice the trembling of her fingers and the black circles under her eyes. “They will,” he said quietly, “but we have to be patient. We also contacted Dutch Immigration to see if there is some way to trace your parents’ immigration into the U.S. They had nothing. Neither did U.S. Immigration. We’re not even sure how they got into the country. And, again, I don’t know how pertinent that information is to the murder or the kidnapping.” Richards leaned forward. Nora noticed that his tic had stopped. She saw him watch as she took another shaky sip from her wineglass. He believed she had become unhinged.
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