Choke Point

by Ridley Pearson

  “The longer your assailants remain at large, the longer you are at risk. Help us find them, and your trouble is over.”

  “Once started, trouble is never over. That is a myth.” He returns her phone. Then he’s off into the departing passengers, putting a wall of flesh between them.

  You owe me, echoes in her ears.

  Behind him follows a man walking a twenty-year-old bicycle.

  The bicycle’s rear wheel squeaks on each revolution, its rhythm steady as Knox keeps his distance behind Fahiz. He, and a few hundred others in and around Centraal Station, wears stereo earbuds on white wires. His are connected to an iPhone zippered into his Scottevest windbreaker. But Knox is not listening to Coldplay; he’s waiting for the call from Grace. He slings the camera bag over his shoulder.

  Fahiz circumnavigates the station, rather than taking the shortcut through it. An interesting choice that puzzles Knox. Fahiz arrives at the outdoor tram platforms. Riders crowd the stops. Jiggering the camera bag, Knox mounts the bike and rides ahead of Fahiz and stops at a crosswalk, looking back to see Fahiz board the number 5. Knox knows the line. He can get a jump on the trolley and beat it to its first stop if the lights are favorable.

  His ring tone purrs in the earbuds and he reaches into the windbreaker to connect the call, though he doesn’t answer at first.

  “Clear,” comes Grace’s voice.

  “Got it.”

  Grace has executed a series of procedures to determine she’s not being followed and Knox trusts her. She’s as good as—or better than—him in the field, having spent a year in Chinese Army Intelligence.

  Knox hangs up and dismounts the bike. The number 5 passes. He likes the bike too much to ditch it. He walks it across the pedestrian crossing, over another grouping of multiple tram tracks, and follows up a sidewalk, the bike off the curb. The island to his right is a vast construction site and parking lot behind wire fencing. Its top boundary is Prins Hendrikkade. The neighborhood is coffee shops, T-shirt stores and restaurants, all aimed at tourists. At the next light he hits speed dial and mounts the bike and rides straight.

  “Go ahead,” answers the deep voice of David Dulwich.

  “I’m shorthanded.”

  “I arrive this evening. I’m at the Sofitel Grand on Oude-zijds Voor . . . burgwal.” The Dutch words come out sounding like a soap brand.

  “I was thinking of someone half your age and twice your speed.”

  “Tell me how you really feel.”

  “A lot of balls in the air.”

  “So hire a juggler. You have a sizable expense account.”

  “Two men. Maybe three.”

  “Not going to happen, unless you agree to waive half your fee.”

  “Our client is rich.”

  “Every client has limits. My job is to see there’s something left for Brian Primer to put on the P side of the P-and-L.”

  “One more man, then.”

  “You’re talking to him.”

  Knox dodges a taxi and runs a red light. The street narrows a hundred meters ahead. Knox pinches the iPhone through the fabric of the windbreaker and kills the call.

  —

  THE TUDOR ALE HOUSE Knox has named as the meeting place has a view across the Leidsegracht canal. The magnificent canal houses are out of the nineteenth century. A slim waitress serves him. She has a platinum bob and black ceramic ear gauges the size of buffalo nickels. Without her to interrupt his fantasy, he might have been time traveling. He might have been spying on Vermeer or Jan van Goyen across the dimly lit room, with its heavy, exposed wooden beams, plank tables, wrought-iron candelabra. He can imagine a big-breasted woman wearing too much rouge delivering warm dark beer. Instead, he gets a scene-kid waitress smacking chewing gum in a room filled with people in T-shirts.

  “I have caught you in meditation perhaps?” The older man with the scrubby white beard speaks his English with a Dutch accent so thick he’s hard to understand. His nose is cratered with acne scars and spiderwebbed with broken blood vessels. His ice blue eyes study Knox from behind wire-rimmed glasses. His meaty hand is inhumanly cold as they greet each other. He sits down slowly, perhaps painfully, and looks as if he could use help pulling closer to the table, but Knox fears humiliating him by offering.

  “I was wishing for a different waitress,” Knox says.

  “I can procure for you any girl you want. Certified clean.”

  Knox’s jaw muscles knot. “I’ll pass.”

  “Pussies soft as lambs. I can arrange it. Not the window girls. Much classier. Any age, any skin color.”

  Knox struggles to relax his fist, which has tightened beneath the table. He blames himself for starting the conversation. For an instant he visualizes the other man’s bulbous nose pushed through his face and into his brain, his blue eyes lifeless.

  Gerhardt Kreiger can procure anything. Knox knows this; he has purchased a variety of goods from him for nearly three years, one of his longest business relationships. But this is the first time Kreiger’s offered to pimp. Knox wonders if the wholesale business is that bad.

  He’d wanted to start with pleasantries but is reminded how unpleasant Kreiger can be. Instead, he jumps in, hoping to network his way into the rug business.

  “We need another gross of the Delftware dinner plates and salad plates, a gross of the beer steins and a half gross of the glass yards.”

  “So send me an e-mail.” Kreiger cleans the wire rims with a checkered cloth napkin, blowing on each lens. He orders a Grolsch as Knox’s Heineken is delivered. “Not that I do not enjoy you buying me a beer. And the company, of course.”

  Knox keeps his voice low despite there being no one within earshot. “Rugs,” Knox says.

  Kreiger studies him pensively. “Turkey. North Africa. I realize the quality Afghans have dried up temporarily, but that’s your country’s fault, not mine.”

  “Too many middlemen,” Knox says. “Prices are too high. Government’s too unstable. I need quantity and quality and not six Turks between me and the manufacturer.”

  Kreiger fights off a devilish grin and shakes his head. He waits for the beer to be delivered. They clink steins. He makes sure the waitress is another five strides gone. “I didn’t know you read Dutch.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “No, I am sure of it,” Kreiger says. He savors the beer and licks his mustache. He eyeballs Knox again, a mixture of cunning and respect. “You impress me, Knox. Such ambition.”

  Knox says nothing.

  “I do not picture you as the type to condone the manufacturing methods.”

  “Gerhardt, these are trying times. The euro zone is in recession, so it’s a buyer’s market. At home, we’re stuck with customers wanting everything for less, if they want anything at all. If I buy from the Mideast, the margins will kill me, and between the shrinkage and the bribes to longshoremen, there go the profits. By the time I see my container—hopefully sometime this millennium—I’m looking at pennies on the dollar. To hell with that. I need that ratio reversed. Your city’s got one of the biggest shipping ports in north Europe. If there are rugs being manufactured here—hand-tied, natural dyes, high-quality wool—and I buy from a single agent, as in you, I can trust the container to arrive with its original count and contents on time. Clean and simple, just as I like it.”

  “You do make a girl blush,” Kreiger said. “But who says the article was accurate? You know journalism these days.”

  “Hypothetically speaking,” Knox says, “there must be others like me . . . a market for high-end knockoffs.”

  Kreiger wipes foam off his mustache and grins wryly. “There’s always the UK. And you’d be surprised: the Russians will pay these prices. So much goddamned money there now. All of them wanting to be as Western as money can buy. St. Petersburg is a gold mine for these rugs. Anything north of Prague is a viable market at these prices.”

  Knox hears price mentioned and thinks only of the girls. Kreiger reads him.

&
nbsp; “Who says I would know anything about such a despicable place? I happen to like children. I have seven grandchildren. Did you know that? Four boys, one named for me.”

  “Congratulations.” Knox works on the beer, but can’t keep up with Kreiger, who signals for another. “Maybe you could ask around.”

  “For you? Anything.” He leans closer. “Hypothetically speaking, what count and cuts are you interested in?”

  Knox gives him an overall number and the breakdown in sizes. Kreiger rolls his eyes, exaggerated by the spectacles. He scratches out some numbers onto a napkin. “This number would occupy three-quarters of a full-sized container. You can’t be serious.”

  “I take delivery once. If I have to wait a few months before you ship, I can live with that. My experience says that manufacturers like this don’t stay in business all that long. I won’t get the chance for a repeat buy, much less establish regular shipments.”

  “No. I would agree.”

  “So I’m front-loading inventory. Stocking up.”

  “You are looking at”—he refers back to the napkin—“a hundred thousand euros minimum. Cash, you understand?”

  “Fifty. And you handle the port costs on this end.”

  “You have become a comedian. The act needs work, I’m afraid. Ninety-five.”

  “Sixty.”

  “Eighty, and it is final. Also, I must check with the supplier first.”

  “Seventy-five is my limit.”

  “I will look into it.”

  Knox writes a phone number on a napkin. He’ll have to remember to swap the SIMs a couple times a day and check for messages. He pushes the napkin back to Kreiger.

  “I need to see the work. All three sizes, various dye lots,” Knox says. “You decide the where and when. I am at such an advantage knowing someone like you, only one middleman, not three.”

  “Someone like me.” Kreiger hoists his beer stein, and the dull clank that sounds off Knox’s half-empty stein sounds to Knox like a judge’s gavel lowering.

  A damp settles over the city, an impenetrable gray mist thick enough to taste. It hovers and swirls but does not dissipate. Grace has waited until evening to catch those heading home from work. By early evening, the market on Ten Katestraat is thick with bodies moving from one tented stall to another. Fruit and vegetable vendors compete by turning their displays into colorful art worthy of still-life photography. Merchants offer athletic clothing, bedding linen, office supplies and kitchenware.

  She joins the crush and sets her sights downstream. She is carried in a clot. Manages to reach the edge of the flow and grabs a tent’s corner pole to check her progress. She takes hold, appreciating the diversity of faces. Indian, North African, French, Italian. Yet she’s the only Chinese. She hears Russian, Yiddish, Dutch, English.

  “Yes?” The vendor addresses Grace as he punches a calculator. A young woman stands before a variety of vegetables collected onto the portable table.

  Grace pulls out the newspaper article and photograph—the young girl’s sullen face appealing to the camera. She shows it to the vendor, whose eyes stick to it before rolling up to find Grace’s.

  “She lives around here,” Grace says with authority. “I am looking for her.”

  His eyes are angry and deeply suspicious. “Who is next?” he says, calling out to his patrons.

  Grace moves back into the thick of the crowd and bullies her way forward, wondering what to make of the look the man gave her. She’s almost certain he knew the newspaper article or recognized the girl from the photograph. This tells her the neighborhood knows about the girl’s story. They expect people like Grace to nose around. They assume her to be police. She must overcome their initial distrust.

  She spins fully around once, as if looking back at a missed buying opportunity. Of the hundreds of heads and faces shining in the glare of bare bulbs, one stands out. Grace does not linger on it, but sweeps her gaze past it and alights on a tent across the crowded street. A tall woman of Mediterranean or Middle Eastern heritage, a light-colored scarf worn over her head. Her attention was fixed on Grace—that she turned away convinces Grace—thrills her, if truth be told. She’s been followed. Identifying a tail has nothing to do with luck; it is a skill set taught, an instinct developed and developed until second nature. Grace moves on without so much as a crease to her brow or break to her step, leaving no trace of her detection.

  She’s on alert now. Ready. For what, she’s unsure. Twice more she inquires with vendors or their helpers, this time displaying her EU credentials. Her third effort is to a middle-aged woman selling kitchen supplies. The woman suddenly won’t make eye contact. She straightens stacks of dishes that don’t need straightening. Grace loves it. Feeds off it. When she turns to move on, the tall woman in the scarf is gone. Grace carefully checks around her as she crosses through the melee for a fruit stand. Not only is the woman with the scarf nowhere to be seen, but she hasn’t been passed off to another surveillant. Grace bounces between several more stands, her guess confirmed. No one.

  Two stalls later she asks a younger woman with a lip stud and a plump mouth. She takes one look at the photo and motions Grace to the side of a table bearing bedsheets, towels, lace tablecloths. Her action is deliberate and carries authority; she wants Grace out of the way, but she doesn’t want her to leave. It’s a full five minutes before she comes to Grace’s side of the stall. She doesn’t look at Grace, but neatens a stack of folded items. Grace takes the hint and rummages through a pile for the right color.

  The vendor’s lips don’t move, like a ventriloquist. She throws her voice softly. “Van Speijkstraat. North. You will see a blue sign for the Mall De Baarsjes. Be careful.”

  “Talk to me,” Grace says.

  “Not possible.”

  “Later. Name the place.”

  “Not possible.” The vendor moves back to a waiting customer.

  Grace feels a rush of heat flood through her. She’s addicted to this work. Only breaking through a firewall comes close to the thrill of fieldwork. She wants to prolong the moment, but it’s not to be and she knows it. The vendor acts as if she no longer exists. A reluctant Grace moves on, her pulse elevated, her breathing excited. She barely notices the crush of people surrounding her as she moves wraithlike among them. By the time she reaches the end of the market street and the horde thins, she realizes she has neglected to keep an eye out for the tall woman in the scarf. She makes a passing effort at it, but she’s coming down from a high; almost impossible to focus.

  She wants to return to the vendor’s stall and live it all again.

  —

  KNOX RECEIVES A TEXT from Sonia’s number.

  I have reconsidered.

  It names a tram line, direction and time.

  The woman is out of her element; a tram is out of the question. He returns a text:

  I’m pleased. No tram. meet @ “chow fun” in rl district. 1 hr.

  —

  IT’S A CHINESE RESTAURANT that offers pizza and video games, a place where people their age will stand out, which is just the way he wants it. There are three exits—the front door, another by the restrooms and another that connects to a head shop by day but is closed by night. Knox takes a table next to this door. He has sight lines to the street entrance thanks to a mirror behind a small drinks bar, and to the corridor housing the restrooms.

  Sonia turns a few heads with her entrance but then takes a place at a table and orders a beer, never looking in Knox’s direction but instead concentrating on the pedestrians passing by the front windows. Smart, he thinks, a fast learner. When she’s satisfied, she joins him. Most women would sling the strap of a purse over the back of their chair, but Sonia steps her right leg through the strap as she sits down and places the satchel at her feet. He wonders at the contents of that bag.

  “Think of a tram as a trap,” he says. “You can’t get off until and unless it makes a stop. It gives the enemy time to identify you, physically reach you and detain you.”

/>   “The enemy,” she says, scoffing. She thinks of him as a little boy. “Photographers think like this?”

  “This photographer does,” he says. “I’m here at your request.” He waits for her to say something. “You have a shoot for me?”

  “It is possible.” She works her phone and slides it across the table to him. He reads. It’s an e-mail in English. The message is brief. A woman has been reported as missing. Knox recognizes the name from Sonia’s article. Another of her sources.

  “From the police?” he asks.

  “A contact. Reliable.”

  “And then there were three,” he says.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You quoted six different people in your article. This leaves three remaining. There’s an old black-and-white movie. You like movies? Ten Little Indians. ‘And then there were three.’”

  She nods mournfully. “I must find Berna. The girl in my article.”

  “The chances of that are slim,” Knox says, gloating that he now has the girl’s first name. She’s not asking for a photographer, but a bodyguard. He feels relief. He will maintain the pretense.

  “I don’t expect a shared byline, but I do expect you to fight for my photographs to run along with the article wherever it’s published.”

  “You know I have no say over that.”

  “You have influence. You’re well known. I am not.”

  “My editor and I will do what we can.”

  That’s out of the way, allowing them both to tackle the unmentioned: that Knox brings other skills and qualities to the table.

  “You must warn the other people you interviewed.”

  “I tried to do this, following the car bomb. Of course I did! Several were unreachable, including this woman.”

  “I forget her role in the piece.”

  “A teacher. Not Berna’s teacher,” she says. “When a young girl failed to enroll in school this year, her teacher from the previous year thought the family must have left the district—moved residences. She then encountered the girl’s mother at a local market and confronted her. The mother shunned her, refusing to speak with her. I believe the school records are filled with such missing children.”