Requiem for an Assassin

No. You don’t own me.

The hell I don’t. You’d be dead now if it weren’t for me. You would have died the first night you pissed your pants in a firefight. Your life is mine. I don’t own you? I fucking am you.

“You okay?”

I jumped to the side and my right hand went to clear a blade clipped to my pocket, a blade that wasn’t there. Before I knew it, I had the stool in my hands, cocked back like a baseball bat.

It had been the bartender talking to me. He took a step back and raised his hands, his eyes wide.

“Hey, man,” he said. “It’s cool. It’s cool.”

Fear had blown away the marijuana trance like an arctic wind. I looked around and realized where I was. And what I was doing.

I put the stool down. Everyone was looking at me.

The bartender slowly lowered his hands. “You were pretty zoned out there, man. That Thai weed can be strong.”

“Yeah, it can be,” I said, nodding. “I don’t think I’ll be having any more of it.”

I walked in the wet, cold air until I found a cheap hotel, where I slept for several hours. When I woke, I still felt exhausted, the way you do from a post-combat parasympathetic backlash, but at least my head was clear again. All the flying, the stalking, the near catastrophes. Then getting Dox out, knowing he was all right. And now that thing in the coffeehouse…it was like facing off with your worst enemy, then getting pulled apart with everybody still armed, nothing really resolved.

I stopped for some food and coffee at a place called Café Bouwman, on Utrechtsestraat along the Prinsengracht canal. It was good-a neighborhood kind of place, low-key, unpretentious, with old wooden tables and leather seats, and a bartender who knew her customers. When I was done, I called Boaz from a pay phone.

“How are we doing?” I said.

“We finished up ahead of schedule. We were waiting for your call.”

“Good. How soon can you be in the place we talked about?”

“We’re here now. But we have a car, we can meet you anywhere.”

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have accepted the proposal. But I wasn’t worried about Boaz right now. And the Krasnapolsky was less than a fifteen-minute walk from where I was. It would save time to go straight there.

“I’ll meet you in front in fifteen minutes,” I said.

BOAZ AND NAFTALI were waiting out front as promised. Boaz had lost the Hawaiian shirt and was wearing a bulky down jacket and jeans. He looked thoroughly unremarkable, nondescript, unmemorable. Naftali had on a nylon windbreaker and a backpack. But for a certain hard look in his eyes that not everyone would know what to make of, Gil’s brother looked like a young European tourist on a budget. We walked down the street to a pizza place. Boaz and Naftali ordered a few slices, and we sat in back to talk.

“Do you celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah?” Boaz asked.

“Neither.”

“Well, you’ll like our presents regardless. USP tacticals and suppressors, and some sharp pointy things, too. I love the holidays.”

I briefed them on the layout around Boezeman’s building, then we discussed how to proceed. Boaz agreed that intercepting Boezeman as he came home tonight, or failing that as he left in the morning, was our best bet. But as we started talking about Hilger, I began to feel uneasy. We weren’t taking his possible presence adequately into account.

“If this whole thing is real,” I said, “and he really does have a radiological device that he needs to arm, he could be here already. He might already have contacted Boezeman. Hell, he might already have armed the bomb for all we know.”

“All right,” Boaz said. “Let’s assume he did. What does he do next?”

“He gets the hell out of Dodge. The op is done. Maybe the device is on a timer; maybe it’s mobile-phone-activated. Either way, he’d want to leave town before detonation, otherwise there’s too much chance of getting caught up in a security sweep. So he catches the train to Brussels, straight from Rotterdam.”

“No,” Naftali said.

Boaz and I both looked at him. Boaz said, “I knew you could talk.”

“He doesn’t leave right away,” Naftali said, ignoring the commentary. “He’s lost all his cutouts and he’s dealing with Boezeman directly now. Boezeman can co

We were all quiet for a moment. Naftali had just made a damn good point.

“All right,” I said. “Where does he get to Boezeman?”

Naftali shrugged. “Where are we talking about getting to him?”

Boaz nodded. “You’re right. And I don’t like the idea of waiting for Boezeman in the same place and at the same time as Hilger. A lot of things could go wrong.”

“Why don’t we call him?” I said. “Boezeman. Flush him out. If he knows anything, we’ll be able to tell.”

“It’s risky,” Boaz said. “It would be warning him.”

I shrugged. “He’s still got to come home tonight. If the call doesn’t get the results we want, we can always use the apartment as plan B.”

I took out the notes I had made from the information on the Kanezaki bulletin board. “Here’s his mobile,” I said. “Let’s see what happens if our friend Boezeman gets an unexpected phone call.”

Boaz handed me a mobile. “Sterile,” he said.

I input the number. Two rings, then a deep voice: “Hoi.”

“Hello, Mister Boezeman?”

“Yes, speaking.”

I thought of the names Kanezaki had mentioned on the bulletin board. “I’m a friend of our mutual acquaintances, James Hillman and William Detts.”

I paused. Boezeman said, “Yes?”

Not an “I’m sorry?” or a “Who?” Something about the word choice, and his tone, told me I’d hit pay dirt.

I waited longer, seeing what the pressure of silence might produce.

“Uh, is this about the rental property?” he said.

Goddamn, it was working. That was a bona fide if ever I’d heard one.

“I’m supposed to give you a signal in return, right?” I said.

“Who…who is this?”

“I’ll explain who I am, Mister Boezeman. Right now, I’m either your best friend or your worst enemy. I’ve been investigating James Hillman for more than two years. I know what he’s doing in Rotterdam. I know how he’s using you to do it. Cooperate with me, right now, or the next call you get will be from the national police and security services.”

There was a long pause. I could hear his breathing. It was fast.

“I…what do you want?” he said.

“To meet you. Right now. To tell you what Hillman has really been up to and for you to brief me. In return for that, I won’t make that phone call to the police. But one thing first. It’s very important. It’s for your safety. Did you meet with Hillman earlier today?”

“I…I…why?”

He met him. It was all right there in his voice.

“You’re not safe,” I said. “You can’t go home tonight. Not until we’ve taken care of this.”

“How…I don’t even know who you are.”

“Are you at work now?”

“Yes.”

“Good. You’ll have an hour to think about all this, and you’ll see that trusting me is your only option. I’m on my way to Rotterdam now. I’ll call when I arrive. We can meet anywhere you like. You’ll want to choose somewhere public.” I clicked off.

Boaz frowned. “You’re going to let him choose the place?”

“Of course not. I just want to get him moving. Once he takes some action, he’ll take more. Now let’s go. I’ll brief you on the way.”

Their car was parked near the hotel, a Mercedes C Class with a navigation system. Naftali drove. Boaz input Boezeman’s work address. We were there in less than an hour-not the city of Rotterdam, which I’d heard was pretty, nor even the port itself, but instead the refinery complex, a sprawling network of waterways plied by freighters and garbage scows; thousands of miles of pipes twisting in all directions, carrying who knows what to God knows where; squat oil tanks and rotating power turbines and towers belching smoke into a sky the color of lead.