An Artful Assassin in Amsterdam

by Michael Grant

  ‘What the holy fuck!’ I roared, outraged.

  His window was down and I was well past common sense, so I tried for a grab, got my hand briefly on the steering wheel, but he was in reverse, so he pulled back, bashed into a bike stand and in panic threw the van into first and hit the gas. The van shot forward, Hangbrother hit the brakes too late, and the van smashed into the front of the Polo, this time for real.

  Anyone who’d slept through the shotgun blasts would be awake now. It wasn’t a totaling crash, just some bent sheet metal, but car crashes have a very distinct noise and there’s no one alive who won’t take a moment to look at a crash.

  The smart way to run seemed to me to be south, away from the van, past the Polo. Hangwoman had come running around the back of the van, maybe assuming I’d go that direction, or maybe just to berate her brother, but it was too good an opportunity for me to pass up: there was the open door of the Polo and steam rising from its exhaust pipe and I did not fancy testing whether I could – with just one shoe – outrun a shotgun blast. I thrust my rear end into the car, pulled my legs in after me, stood on the clutch pedal, ground the gear shift in what I hoped was the right direction – left and forward? God, I hoped so.

  The engine revved, the gears ground and there was a sphincter-tightening moment of hesitation as the Polo’s bumper, entwined now with the van, did not want to yield and Hangbrother piled out of the van, fumbling bright red shells into the chambers of the shotgun. He was ten feet away, snapping the double-barrel gun closed, all the while being goaded by his furious sister, and I was in the car, stuck in the car, not nearly time enough to run.

  Then the Polo’s bumper broke free and I reversed, fish-tailing wildly. Ahead of me, back up the street, the Hangsiblings had climbed back aboard the van, brother behind the wheel, and my female nemesis now leaning out of the passenger side window with the big gun.

  They were coming after me, the lunatics. Every cop in Amsterdam would be heading our way and these assholes didn’t know when to walk away. I was in reverse, they were in a forward gear, and that was not a race I’d be winning. My only hope was reaching the cross street and turning around. Turned the right way the Polo would easily outrun the van. But the cross street was still a hundred yards off and suddenly I saw just about the last damn thing I wanted to see at that moment: bikes, four of them, turning onto Herrengracht, going the wrong way right down the middle of the street. Tourists. Drunk tourists on bikes!

  I could of course plow right through them. But even in my panicky state I had the feeling that maybe killing or maiming four people would be what Delia calls, ‘wrong.’ I braked hard and saw an opening: an actual empty parking space. I’d go in rear-first, throw it into gear, and at least be ready to race away once the two-wheeling idiots passed.

  Which would have worked had Hangbrother not panicked on seeing the approaching bikes and swerved.

  Right into the Polo. Right into the Polo which was backed right up against the canal.

  I felt a sickening thump when my back wheels rolled right over the ridiculous six-inch-high iron barrier. I dropped the clutch and gunned it. The powered front wheels squealed and – oh, that was a mistake: I was still in reverse.

  The Polo didn’t so much slide off the quay into the canal as execute a perfect backward dive. It was a five-foot drop, not enough to break my neck as the Polo’s hatch back hit the water, but enough for the back of my head to bang the headrest. There was a shriek of metal on concrete, and a second hard bump and the front wheels spun madly in the air.

  And then, the Polo was a boat.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Some emotionless corner of my brain was keeping track of time. 12:30-ish, after midnight, and Milan would no longer be in a boat. He would – assuming always that he was still free and on-schedule – have carried the package half a block from the last boat to a rented hatchback and driven it across town to a rental from an AirBnB competitor. He wouldn’t use that Wi-Fi, but would leach off the Wi-Fi from a different apartment across the street. I’d allowed for him to spend two broadcasts at this new location, after all, the man had to eat and take a pee at some point.

  At three a.m., with just three hours left till my cut-off, Milan would carry the package up onto the roof of yet another canal house, which would give him line of sight to our final rental and its Wi-Fi. There was some risk in this, running the final three broadcasts through a single Wi-Fi – it would mean leaving the package untended for three hours. But it was more important that Milan get well away: better to lose it all than have Milan picked up. It wouldn’t take Sarip five minutes to get Milan to name me. This way he could walk from that final location, reunite with Madalena at the Amrath, then trot over to Centraal and catch the 6:15 to Brussels. Their train would be pulling away just as the final broadcast ended.

  All of which would hopefully work as planned. But I had more immediate problems: VW Polos float better than one might expect, and I was now drifting along the canal at a speed only a snail would envy. Drifting right toward a bridge, indeed racing the white panel van to the bridge. The van won easily. Out they piled, Hangwoman and Hangbrother and the big shotgun in her hands. I flashed on our first encounter when she’d tried to lynch me from the bridge. Now she was aiming to blow my head off from a similar bridge.

  The Polo was skewing sideways, spinning slowly, which complicated Hangwoman’s aim. She leaned over the railing of the bridge and fired from not twenty feet away.

  In movies bullets don’t always penetrate sheet metal, but this was real life and the first blast blew buckshot right through the windshield, shredded the dashboard, broke the steering wheel. Nothing hit me. Then I was under the bridge, but not for long because when I drifted out the far side I’d be a sitting duck.

  So with water rising in the foot well and the canal water within sloshing distance of my windows I tried to push open the door and get out, but the water pressure kept the door tightly shut. So I started climbing out through the window but already I was coming into view on the opposite side of the bridge. Hanging halfway out was going to be bad.

  Out the other side and blam went the shotgun again, a hurried shot that left an uneven field of holes in the hood. Then I got lucky. The car rolled onto its side, a solid wall of water rushed in, and the Polo sank.

  Down went the Polo. The front, the engine, where all the weight was, plunged straight down, the rear end went straight up, and the Polo dived down and down as freezing water filled the cabin. Down and down through black water, falling a good, oh, six feet or so until the front bumper hit canal debris and stopped. I was completely submerged. The Polo was not. What I needed to do was get out through the window and swim as far as I could underwater. Which would have been a good plan had the suddenness of the plunge not caught me unawares and with empty lungs.

  Fortunately the back window of the hatchback was intact and back (up?) there was an air bubble. So I crawled and kicked my way over the seats, rose up into the air bubble and sucked air. Through wet, starred glass I saw Hangwoman reloading.

  She saw me looking at her, so I gave her the finger and before she could cock and aim, I submerged. I got tangled in a floating shoulder belt but freed myself and shot through the window. There was no light, no detail, no way even to be sure what direction I was pointed in. I had to risk a quick glance if I wasn’t to swim right into a wall of concrete or bricks. The water stung my eyes but I pried one open enough to differentiate the slightly brighter direction that should be ‘up’. I pivoted and kicked and my foot went through something that scraped and when I tried to kick free, I just managed to entangle my leg further.

  The Dutch pull something like 12,000 bikes out of the canal each year and I had just stuck my foot through the spokes of one. It did not want to let me go. My trousers were well and truly snagged.

  So, with lungs burning, I did what I had to do. Then I swam as far as I could underwater, surfaced just long enough for a gulp of air, submerged and swam on, and when I surfaced next I looked b
ack and saw the bridge had become a sort of art installation of flashing blue lights.

  Had the cops arrested the Hangsiblings? I couldn’t tell. But cold, scared, shivering from both cold and fear, trouserless and shoeless, I was hoping for a shootout in which the Dutch cops would kill both the crazy Nazi bastards.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Amsterdam is a famously tolerant city, but even so a grown man walking around trouserless was going to attract attention, so I swam and drifted as far as I could without contracting hypothermia, and finally hauled myself onto a moored houseboat. There was a light on inside or I’d have kicked a door or window in to look for clothing, but the last thing I could risk was another incident. So I disembarked and walked shoeless, bare-legged and with an utter absence of dignity, to my apartment.

  The astonishing thing turned out to be the fact that I walked right past a beat cop resting on his bike, and he said nothing. Amsterdam cops were on high alert for an art thief, not an escaped lunatic in his underwear.

  I slogged up the stairs to my apartment, acutely aware of the fact that I had, just nine days earlier, arrived similarly wet but minus only a shoe. One more round of this and the next time around I’d be stark naked.

  I had left my key in my trousers and thus in the canal, so I knocked, loudly. Chante would be asleep by now, it had to be after one a.m. The caper had almost five more hours to run and I had no idea whether it was working. As soon as I’d had a warm shower and a room-temperature whisky I would be able to at least check mainstream media and Twitter, even if I dared not survey the accounts. But first: hot water, whisky and dry clothing.

  I knocked again, thinking Chante was asleep and in mid-knock the door opened. It was opened by Tabasco, the guy I’d sprayed with my hot sauce mixture in the Rijksmuseum.

  I saw past him and my heart stopped. Across the living room, Delia was sitting in a chair, ankles tied to the chair legs, hands behind her back, mouth stuffed with a napkin and secured by duct tape wrapped around her head.

  Willy Pete stood behind her.

  I could do one of two things: go in, or run away.

  The decent, heroic thing would be to walk in, face the situation squarely, and hope for a deal to be struck, or at least stall until rescue arrived. Only there was no rescue coming. Also, decent and heroic were not the point, winning was the point and Rule Number One is never let the enemy write the narrative. Never follow the enemy’s plan.

  So I didn’t do the decent, heroic thing, I did the smart thing: I ran.

  I ran almost three feet before plowing straight into Lisp, the third member of the Ontario Crew. I ran into him and bounced back. He shoved me hard and I stumbled backward into Tabasco, who wrapped big arms around me, pinned as his fellow minion zip-tied my hands in front of me. Then Tabasco shoved me backward and swung a hard fist into the side of my head. My knees buckled and it was several seconds before I could see properly.

  When the spinning geometric patterns subsided I saw that in addition to Willy, Tabasco and Lisp, there was a fourth person. A woman. Wachmeester Olivia DeKuyper, pride of the Koninklijke Marechaussee.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, being too weary, cold and defeated to think of something clever.

  ‘Are you drunk?’ DeKuyper demanded, turning her nose up at my wet, canal-smelling trouserlessness.

  ‘No. I just went for a swim. And frankly I could use a drink.’

  ‘Could you?’ Willy sneered. ‘Well, fuck you.’

  ‘Mind if I stand up?’ I asked this of the policewoman, who shrugged.

  I struggled without the use of my hands, but got to my bare feet and without asking further permission headed for the sideboard where the whiskey beckoned to me. Hands secured in front I poured myself a glass of Talisker and drank half of it.

  ‘Anyone else?’ I asked, nodding at the bottle.

  ‘This is not a social call,’ DeKuyper said.

  ‘No?’

  That earned me a punch in the kidneys from Lisp, which sent electric eels shooting up my spine and down my arms. It was a struggle not to collapse again, and I was proud that I held onto my glass.

  ‘We’re not really in the mood for bullshit,’ Willy Pete said by way of explanation.

  ‘Pity,’ I grated. ‘I’m so good at bullshit.’

  ‘We want the painting. Just the painting,’ DeKuyper said. ‘Give us the Vermeer and we will leave you alone, unharmed.’

  ‘I assume there’s an “or else” coming?’

  ‘Or else,’ Willy Pete said ominously. He grinned at me and produced a glass vial, a bit larger than the sort of thing used to package crack. He shook it and I saw that it contained water. Water and a few little, irregular pebbles, yellowish in color. ‘See these harmless-looking little pebbles? They’re nothing so long as they are submerged and not exposed to the air. But these are special pebbles, these. White phosphorus. And white phosphorus, when it is exposed to oxygen, will begin to grow warm and to smoke. It’s what they use for smoke grenades, you know. White phosphorus. Willy Pete.’

  ‘Yeah, I get the connection, Willy. But thanks for the exposition dump.’

  ‘Leave white phosphorus in the air and it will burn all by itself. Spontaneous combustion.’ The man had knowledge and was determined to share it. ‘It will burn and there’s not a single thing that will stop it burning. Put it on flesh and …’ He pulled his turtleneck aside, exposing flesh like melted wax. ‘Painful, too.’

  ‘Ah, so we’re doing torture,’ I said.

  He shrugged. DeKuyper looked uncomfortable, but not uncomfortable enough to do anything.

  And Delia? Not happy. She was gagged and bound, but it all felt like one of those movies where the baddie has Bruce Banner all tied up. Agent D was itching to do violence.

  ‘There will be no need for torture if you simply hand over the Vermeer,’ Willy said.

  ‘No can do, I’m afraid.’

  Willy made a sarcastic tsk-tsk sound. ‘Yeah, I thought you might say that. And if I threaten to kill you?’

  ‘I’ll point out that if I’m dead I can’t tell you much.’

  ‘Exactly. So here’s what I’m going to do. See, I am going to place one of these little pebbles of white phosphorus on Agent Delacorte’s head. And then we wait for a while till it combusts. Or, if you’re impatient, I can speed things along a bit by lighting it. After which it will begin to burn down through her hair. And then through the thin flesh of her scalp. And then it will begin to melt and crack the bone of her skull. Then, Mr Mitre, the real damage starts, because it will just keep burning and burning and it will melt its way through the gray matter, burning away Agent Delacorte’s brain, destroying memories and abilities and perhaps depriving her of speech. The pain would be hideous and—’

  ‘Not really,’ I interrupted.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It won’t be that painful. I mean, the human brain has no pain receptors. You can stick pins in a brain, or drop bits of white phosphorus on it all day long and the brain won’t feel a thing. I mean, the rest, sure, it would definitely make a mess of her brain, but it wouldn’t be a bunch of screaming, it’d be more like, you know, Daisy.’

  It had been no empty boast to claim skill at the spinning of bullshit. There’s an old saying among lawyers: If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither on your side, pound the table. My own rather less elegant version goes, If you don’t like the story, write a different one.

  ‘More … Daisy?’ DeKuyper frowned confusion at Willy who wasn’t so sure he understood, either.

  ‘Oh, come on, you guys haven’t seen 2001: A Space Odyssey? You know, the part where Dave is pulling processors out of the HAL 9000? And HAL sings “Daisy”? But slower as each processor is removed? ‘“Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do. I’m half crazy, all for the love—”’

  ‘Shut the fuck up!’ Willy yelled and I imagine he’d have liked one or more of his henchpeople to punch me, but they’d become caught up in the st
ory.

  ‘He’s right,’ Tabasco said, nodding vigorously. ‘That’s in the movie.’

  I turned to him. ‘It’s a masterpiece. One of the greatest movies of all time. Don’t you agree?’

  ‘Stop wasting time,’ Willy snarled. ‘Give me the Vermeer!’

  All through this my thoughts were at least partly on Chante. Where the hell was she? Had they hurt her? Would I find her lying dead in her bedroom? Delia’s laser eyes were intense but not conveying anything helpful.

  ‘So a pebble of white phosphorus, how long will it keep burning? I mean, after it melts down through her brain, what happens next? Does it drop into her sinuses? Does it burn down through her soft palette and into her mouth? Because then … I mean, if I were writing the scene … then she’d spit the thing at you.’ Now Delia’s eyes seemed to be telling me something, but I was pretty sure it was something like, what the fuck are you babbling about? I didn’t know what the fuck I was babbling about, I was stalling. Stalling and signaling indifference because that’s the thing with a hostage, you have to devalue them. What Willy expected me to do was plead for Delia. Well … no.

  ‘Or maybe,’ I said excitedly. ‘Oh oh, this is even better. There’s something flammable or even explosive. Right? Like dynamite or Molotov cocktails. The white phosphorus burns down, into her mouth, she spits it into the dynamite and boom. It’s a sacrifice play.’

  ‘What the fuck are you … Shut the fuck up and—’ Willy began.

  ‘Oh wait, I have another idea! OK, now follow me on this.’ They were. All four of them were listening like children waiting on the next development in a bedtime story. ‘First of all, it would require a fairly detailed notion of brain physiology, but once the white phosphorus has burned through the skull, she could tilt her head this way or that and sort of guide the path of the burning white phosphorus.’

  ‘Why are we listening to this—’ the dirty cop interrupted, but then she saw the puzzled look on Willy’s face and fell silent. I had caught Willy’s interest.