The Negotiator

“Fourteen years,” admitted Qui

“I’m looking for a man,” said Qui

“An old friend, perhaps? Someone from the old days?”

“No, I’ve never met him.”

The beam in De Groot’s twinkling eyes did not falter, but he stirred his coffee a little more slowly.

“I heard you had retired from Lloyd’s,” he said.

“True,” said Qui

“Tracing missing people?” queried De Groot. “A new departure for you. Well, what’s his name and where does he live?”

De Groot owed him a favor. In May 1977, a group of South Moluccan fanatics, seeking to reestablish their old homeland in the former Dutch colony of Indonesia, had sought to publicize their cause by hijacking a train and a school at nearby Assen. There were fifty-four passengers on the train and a hundred children in the school. This sort of thing was new to Holland; they had no trained hostage-recovery teams in those days.

Qui

De Groot had listened to the lean American who seemed to understand the men of violence inside the train and the school. He suggested what would probably happen when the troops went in and the terrorists opened fire. De Groot ordered his men to do as the American suggested, and two stayed alive because of that. Both the train and the school were eventually stormed; six terrorists died, and two train passengers in the crossfire. No soldiers or policemen were killed.

“His name is Pretorius, Ja

“A common enough name, Pretorius,” he said. “You know which town or village he lives in?”

“No. But he is not Dutch. He’s South African by birth and I suspect may never have naturalized.”

“Then you have a problem,” said De Groot. “We do not have a central list of all foreign nationals living in Holland. Civil rights, you see.”

“He’s a former Congo mercenary. I’d have thought a background like that, plus being from a country Holland hardly approves of, would give him a card in some index somewhere.”

De Groot shook his head.

“Not necessarily. If he is here illegally, then he will not be on file, or we’d have expelled him for illegal entry. If he’s here legally, there’d be a card for him when he came in, but after that, if he committed no offenses against Dutch law, he could move freely around without checks. Part of our civil rights.”

Qui

“How would a man like that get entry and residence permits in Holland?” he asked.

“Well, if he married a Dutch girl he’d get it. That would even give him the right to naturalization. Then he could just disappear.”

“Social security, income tax, Immigration?”

“They wouldn’t tell you,” said De Groot. “The man would have the right to privacy. Even to tell me, I’d have to present a criminal case against the man to justify my inquiry. Believe me, I just can’t do that.”

“No way at all you could help me?” asked Qui

De Groot stared out of the window.

“I have a nephew with the BVD,” he said. “It would have to be unofficial… Your man might be listed with them.”

“Please ask him,” said Qui

While Qui

Papa De Groot called Qui

“He’s some fellow, your Pretorius,” said De Groot, studying his notes. “It seems our BVD were interested enough when he arrived in Holland ten years ago to file his details, just in case. Some of them come from him-the flattering bits. Others come from newspaper cuttings. Jan Pieter Pretorius, born Bloemfontein 1942-that makes him forty-nine now. Gives his profession as sign painter.”

Qui

“He returned to South Africa in 1968 after leaving Ruanda, then worked for a while as a security guard on a De Beers diamond mine in Sierra Leone.”

Yes, the man who could tell diamonds from paste, and knew about cubic zirconia.

“He had wandered as far as Paris twelve years ago; met a Dutch girl working for a French family, married her. That gave him access to Holland. His father-in-law installed him as barman-apparently the father-in-law owns two bars. The couple divorced five years ago, but Pretorius had saved enough to buy his own bar. He runs it and lives above it.”

“Where?” asked Qui

“A town called Den Bosch. You know it?”

Qui

“De Gouden Leeuw-the Golden Lion,” said De Groot.

Qui

“Find it?” asked Qui

“Yep. Way down south, near the Belgian border. Join Qui

“We’re lucky,” said Qui

The E.35 motorway ran straight as an arrow south-southeast to Z wolle, where Qui

Just north of Arnhem and west of the highway is the gliding club of Terlet. Despite the time of year it was a bright su

Sam was sandwiched between the timber stakes ru