Choke Point

by Ridley Pearson

  Knox now divides his attention to include two smaller windows open on the laptop screen. The first scrolls code he doesn’t understand. The second shows a map where a red line stretches from Amsterdam to Berlin and back to Amsterdam.

  “I captured these screen shots,” Sonia says. The resulting screen shots play out like a slide show. The last shows a district in Amsterdam as an island of pink. Knox studies it long enough to get its street boundaries.

  He tests the temperature of the coffee and then drinks down half the cup. He can feel her watching him.

  “You are not going to tell me,” she says.

  He passes her the duffel. “To help Berna and the other girls. I’m assuming the hard drives will give you a story worth publishing, including human trafficking. Enough evidence to bring down Kreiger. Hopefully, Fahiz. That’s a work in progress.”

  She unzips it, peers inside at the cash and gasps. Zips it back up. “I cannot,” she says, aiming the strap back at Knox. Her eyes stray to the bag repeatedly. She consumes a good deal of the wine as it arrives. “Jesus! It’s so much, John.”

  He studies the laptop one more time to make sure he has it right. The Dutch street names drive him nuts. Alphabet soup. He enters several numbers from Grace’s contacts into the new phone: Primer’s direct office number; the tech center; Dulwich’s mobile; the Rutherford Risk emergency number. Some of these he has memorized, but the mind does strange things when juiced on adrenaline. Knox knows what’s coming.

  “I want to help you,” she says. He won’t look at her. Knows the power of those eyes.

  “Then get as far away from me as possible. Go to ground. Write your story. The pen is mightier, and all that.”

  “And you are the sword?”

  “I’m dull, but I’ll have to do.”

  “Not dull,” she says, “just not honest.”

  He nods. Finishes the coffee. It’s not as good as the earlier cup.

  —

  KNOX DROPS THE LAPTOP into the canal as he crosses the bridge. Feels its loss in his chest for it signals the endgame, a point of no return. There might be a dozen routes to the same end but he can only think of the one. Having started it in motion there’s no going back, even if he wanted to. This is what he tells himself, though a voice of conscience suggests otherwise; there’s always time to change plans. But he’s robotic, preprogrammed. His pace increases, his demeanor intensifies. He passes the curious and the creeps, the Indiana innocents and the perverts. The full-length windows are alight with wan skin and scant underclothing, navel rings and wigs. The air reeks of marijuana, tobacco and perfume. Of Indian food and motorboat exhaust. A dozen songs compete, Euro-rock to The Fray. Oddly enough, it’s the perfect place to hide—all attention is on the window girls and the promise of depravity.

  He reaches the front door to Natuurhonig. Thinks back to his and Grace’s entrance. The receptionist, the gorgeous Tarantinoesque blonde. Doesn’t recall a male bouncer, but assumes that he—or they—blended in with the customers. But Kreiger is a cheap son of a bitch: there will only be the one bouncer.

  “Good evening,” he tells the attractive receptionist, as he hands her fifty euros. Perhaps she remembers him. But his sour smell and sweat-stained face and hair must set off an alarm, along with the fact he doesn’t wait for her to admit him.

  Knox is facing the stairs when a wide body in designer jeans and a mock turtleneck crosses toward him.

  “Nice shirt.”

  An amateur, the guy reaches out to grab Knox by the forearm. Knox pins the man’s thumb to his wrist and drops him to his knees. Crushes his nose with his own kneecap, then toes him in the solar plexus. The bleeding man collapses to the floor unable to breathe. Knox has barely broken stride. He climbs the stairs, two at a time, turning right at the top.

  He shuts and locks Kreiger’s door and is behind the man’s desk before Kreiger has the desk drawer open that contains what turns out to be a .45. Unloaded, after Knox handles it.

  He strips the man’s sport coat partially off his shoulders, pinning Kreiger to the office chair. Ties the man’s hands with phone cord. Pulls up a chair and sits cross-legged facing Kreiger.

  Hears heavy footfalls coming upstairs.

  “Tell him everything’s fine,” Knox advises.

  Kreiger has only now begun to process what’s happening. The smell of pot smoke alerts Knox to the man’s dulled condition. Following the discovery of his empty safe, he blew a blunt.

  The one in the hall sounds intent on bringing the door down. Kreiger calls out and assures him everything is okay. It takes two tries. The man calls back that he’s not leaving. He’s waiting outside the door.

  Knox shakes his head at Kreiger, who then instructs the man to wait downstairs.

  “I will get you the rugs,” Kreiger says pleadingly.

  Knox offers a winsome smile.

  It takes an inordinate amount of time for Kreiger’s stoned brain to process what’s happening. “Oh, shit.”

  “Now you’ve got it,” Knox says. “You know that e-mail you just sent to Fahiz—or whatever name he goes by?” Knox smiles a shit-eating grin. “He called himself ‘Fahiz’ to the police. He’s a clever one. But you just gave him up, Gerhardt. He’s done. Which means you have one, and only one, play. You work with the police and maybe they protect you. Maybe, just maybe, they save your life.”

  Kreiger is green. It’s a bad high. He’s wishing he hadn’t taken those last two tokes.

  “Work with me,” Knox says.

  Kreiger’s eyes wander to the open safe.

  “I have the hard drives.”

  Kreiger shakes his head.

  “We know each other, Gerhardt. We’ve done business together for what, four, five years?”

  Kreiger can’t speak, or knows he shouldn’t.

  “And I am the guy you think I am. A simple businessman like yourself. Right?”

  Kreiger rattles off a string of profanities in Dutch. Knox doesn’t know them all, but recognizes one as a piece of female anatomy.

  “Stop me when I’m wrong,” Knox says.

  Kreiger simply stares back at Knox.

  “Gerhardt?”

  Kreiger pretends he doesn’t hear.

  Knox takes a stapler off the desk, bends Kreiger’s head back while cuffing the man’s mouth. He punches a staple into the man’s forehead.

  Kreiger’s cry sounds like a cough.

  “Nod,” Knox says, placing the stapler to the man’s nose.

  Kreiger nods vehemently.

  “Better?”

  Kreiger nods again.

  Knox settles, straddling the ladder-back chair. Kreiger is crying.

  “Oh, please,” Knox says. “Let’s skip the good parts, shall we?”

  Kreiger nods obediently.

  “You recruit some of your girls from the pot shops. The good-looking ones who are out of money.”

  Kreiger hesitates. Knox reaches for the stapler.

  “Yes,” Kreiger says.

  “Provide them work.”

  “Yes.”

  “Get them off the streets.”

  “Exactly!”

  Knox is no stranger to such interrogations. A graduate of the Navy’s SERE course—Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape—one of just a handful of civilians to take the course, he knows both sides of the chair. He works to loosen up Kreiger by establishing a rapport. Surprisingly, even though this man knows what Knox is up to, the offer of camaraderie will overpower other instincts.

  “What benefits one, benefits all,” Knox says.

  “I couldn’t have said it better.”

  “The man who runs the knot shop . . . the rugs . . .” Knox waits for Kreiger to supply the name. Allows his eyes to wander to the stapler.

  “Berker Polat,” Kreiger says.

  “Spelled?”

  Kreiger spells it out for Knox.

  “You . . . what? . . . Agent his goods.” It’s a statement.

  Kreiger nods.

  “You ship hi
s rugs. You agent them, and ship them.”

  “Correct.”

  Knox weaves his fingers together to keep himself from using his fists. Feels his throat dry. “Polat uses child labor.”

  “I don’t ask. Never have. Don’t want to know.”

  “Of course you know,” Knox says. He seizes the stapler and sinks two staples into the man’s thigh. The sound of Kreiger screaming brings Rudolf-the-red-nosed bouncer banging on the office door. A perspiring and terrified Kreiger tells his man to go away and stay away.

  Knox is feeling insanely good. He cautions himself, wondering if it’s the pot smoke hanging in the air. Knowing better.

  “The girls, yes,” Kreiger says. “I have never been inside his shop. I have no knowledge of the conditions or the—”

  “You sell the girls for him.”

  Knox hadn’t noticed the ceiling fan, but the resulting silence emphasizes its lazy rotation, suspended from the overhead ridgepole.

  “Careful,” Knox says, withdrawing the gun from the small of his back. “No more stapler.”

  Kreiger tries to swallow. Between the marijuana and terror he doesn’t have a drop of saliva. He sounds like a toilet refusing to flush.

  He nods.

  “As sex slaves,” Knox says, his finger absentmindedly finding the trigger.

  Kreiger’s shock is authentic. Knox knows this by how quickly it transforms into wide-eyed alarm.

  “Is that what you think?” Kreiger would have spit if his mouth wasn’t so dry. “Sex? No! No!”

  “You’re a charitable organization, I suppose. Putting those girls onto the ship so they can pursue higher education.”

  The first takeaway is that Kreiger is surprised at the depth of Knox’s information. The second is that he’s determined to resist any admission of guilt given the gun in Knox’s hand.

  “I’m a little short on time,” Knox says.

  “I abhor child pornography, the kiddie sex trade. Berker does as well. In this we are together, he and I. It is true: some of the girls he takes against their will. I do not deny this. Others, many others, are recruited with their parents’ agreement. He runs a business. I do not deny this. I do not ask. But as to the girls—”

  “The auctioning to Asian buyers.”

  Kreiger’s astonishment is manifest by his sudden hyperventilating.

  Knox is a glutton. Loves shocking him like this. Wishes Grace were here to share it with him. Thoughts of her and Dulwich remind him of the clock. He must keep a step ahead of Fahiz or the man will flee the city.

  Knox makes a buzzing sound. “Time’s up.”

  Kreiger rushes his words. “The girls who come of age, the girls who menstruate—Polat can’t abide them. He weeds them out—I don’t know how! I swear!—and removes them from his shop. Says the hormones and the mess are bad for business. Ten-to-twelve-year-olds—that’s his stable. The castoffs . . . Yes, it’s true. I auction them. Asian buyers. Yes. How you can possibly know this . . . but yes. But not for what you think! These buyers have been carefully vetted! It’s a very, very small list. The girls go into work as laborers, with the caveat they will never be sold into the sex trade.”

  “That’s horseshit.”

  “I swear it.”

  “You can’t possibly know what becomes of them. You, of all people! You’re in the business.”

  “Not children, not ever.”

  “You sack of shit. This is how you justify it? Do you seriously have yourself fooled into believing this?”

  “I vet these—”

  “How? You follow up, I suppose. Visit Indonesia often, do you?” Knox realizes it doesn’t matter: inmates take a dim view of crimes against children.

  “You have much of it right, Knox. I swear you do. But not this part!”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Not the girls.”

  “Right.”

  “They leave here as skilled laborers. They are moved to the sewing shops. Athletics. Knockoffs. Good positions. Decent treatment!” He sucks in a lungful of air.

  “The saddest part,” Knox says, “is if you actually believe that.”

  In attempting to match addresses from the stolen GPS to the area to which Kreiger’s message was sent, Knox has two possibilities. He conducts drive-bys of both. Amsterdam’s homogeneity doesn’t help any: both are nearly identical four-story brick apartment buildings that make up the thousand city blocks west of Singelgracht canal.

  Knox must pick one. He selects the second property, for no other reason than this address is the farthest out of the addresses on the GPS, and is well located near a bus and train station.

  Concerned there may be hidden cameras, he stays away from the building. He parks the bike around the corner from which he takes a long hard look at the four yellow doors. He counts eight mail slots alongside each of the four yellow doors. The red doors separating the yellow appear to be ground-level storage or a shared laundry room. Residents of thirty-one of the thirty-two apartments are innocent bystanders. Fahiz is, in effect, using human shields.

  He could call in Brower and his men. Would information alone be enough to win his colleagues’ release? But the reason firms like Rutherford Risk exist is in part due to law enforcement’s ineptitude in hostage situations. He can picture a SWAT team charging through corridors. Fahiz will have countermeasures in place—an escape route at the very least.

  He anticipates no fewer than two men with Fahiz, possibly several times that. He’s tired and hurt, his shoulder wounded. He likes the odds.

  He considers smoking them out, but abhors the risk of innocent casualties. The most effective means would be to ask a resident, but that’s a crapshoot at best; if Fahiz has ingratiated himself with his neighbors, it’s suicidal.

  He circles back around to consulting Brower. Denies himself again the easy out.

  He collects himself; thinks it through. How would he and Dulwich do it? Where’s the point of egress? Given a raid, where’s the out? Leans around the corner and studies the building again.

  Four yellow doors, each servicing eight apartments, four to either side of a common stairway, judging by the curtainless windows rising in a column over each door. The only other windows without curtains are small ones at head height on the ground floor. Storage. No visible fire escape. It makes the top two end apartments ideal safe houses. Your enemy can only reach you by coming up the common stairs. With eyes on the door and stairs, there are no surprises.

  But where’s the out?

  He walks completely around a neighboring structure, identical to the others. Each apartment has a balcony.

  And there’s the out: in the event of a raid, Fahiz can quickly escape by lowering himself from one balcony to the next until he reaches ground level. There’s even a downspout outside the balcony for an express route, should the back prove to be guarded.

  Dulwich would have a camera on the yellow door and two more inside: one looking down from the first landing; a second, from the highest landing, making the castle impenetrable to a surprise attack. Dulwich would not bother to put eyes on the egress; an escape route exists only in case of an assault—a frontal attack.

  He would put a man on the ground.

  —

  KNOX MAKES A SECOND PASS around the apartment building, this time from a wider radius, alert for a guard he might have missed. Seeing none, he convinces himself a guard in such a quiet cul-de-sac would only attract attention and arouse suspicion, no matter how carefully placed. It is the solitude, the remoteness, of the setting that makes it so perfect to its purpose.

  He double-checks the handgun, hoping to find more than the four rounds left in its magazine. Reminds himself it isn’t just Fahiz he’s after. Despite circumstantial evidence connecting Kreiger to Fahiz, and Knox’s hope that Kreiger’s external hard drives may further implicate Fahiz, he needs hard evidence to trade to Brower. A captive girl is unlikely—the girls were meant for the shipment Knox interrupted. There could be rug or fiber evidence linking the man to the knot
shop, accounting, phones or a computer. Any and all of it is equally as important as the man himself. He can’t trade half a package.

  Satellite dishes hang off the half balconies in the back, including the first-floor corner balcony that is Knox’s destination. A blue glow behind the gauze curtains warns him that a television is on in the bedroom, just on the other side of a double-glazed glass door, also curtained from the street.

  The drainpipe is a cheap aluminum; he rethinks the idea of anyone using this as a fire pole; it won’t support him. But it provides enough of a grip to allow him to extend himself as he jumps, and catch hold of the balcony’s concrete platform. He pulls himself higher, takes hold of the banister rungs and gets a knee secure beneath him. He can hear a sound track and dialogue traveling less than a meter, can ill afford a neighbor crying out an alarm or calling the police. He holds to the very edge of the tiny concrete balcony, climbing up onto its south wall in order to reach the balcony directly overhead.

  An irritated voice from inside freezes him. The music and dialogue have stopped as well. It takes him several seconds to process that his legs are now blocking the dish, have interrupted the satellite transmission. He pulls and swings his legs high just as the door opens. Knox is parallel to the balcony below, stretched along the outside of the next balcony’s rail. An African man passes just feet below him. He bends to inspect the dish just as the music and dialogue start up again and a woman calls out in Dutch that everything’s fine.

  The door shuts and locks.

  Knox climbs from the second to the third balcony; from the third to the fourth. He’s suddenly more mechanical, more in control. He places his ear to the door as he slips the pick gun into the lock and pulls its trigger. Tumblers are caught. With a slight wiggle, the pick gun turns. He rids himself of all expectations. This is his gift: the ability to exist entirely in real time. It allows him to be prepared for anything, for nothing, for everything. He takes what he’s given and has the evolved nervous system to react with split-second timing.

  The room is dark on the other side of the glass. He closes his eyelids and waits for his pupils to adjust. Slips the gun from his lower back.