Читать книгу Look-Alike - Meredith Fletcher - Страница 12

Standing in the shadows in front of Central Station, Joachim Reiter watched the two young women leave the building. They headed toward the red-light district and that didn’t please him. Although the sex shops and brothels were tourist attractions, they were also places were people got into trouble and sometimes got killed.

And those two women—or maybe only the one he’d first met at the train station—were in trouble. Otherwise Arnaud Beck’s men wouldn’t have led Joachim to them.

The last hour had been quite the circus, Joachim reflected. Tension and nervousness rattled through him. He didn’t want to be there, so far from home and his family. Being out of the country right now threatened everything. If any of his subterfuges were found out, he was dead. More important, so was his family.

He exhaled and avoided the fear clamoring inside his mind. One step at a time, Joachim. You won’t make any mistakes. Just get this done and get back home.

But things had already gotten more complicated than he’d guessed. He’d been sent to Amsterdam to find a man named Tuenis Meijer and had tripped across Beck’s men while gathering information about his target. Thinking that Beck’s men might lead him to Meijer, Joachim had followed them, staying out of sight. They’d never known he was there until he let them see him in the railway station.

Then they had locked on to the young blond woman at the station. Joachim still didn’t know who she was or what threat or possibility of gain she represented to a man like Arnaud Beck, but he’d known he couldn’t let them kidnap her or kill her.

Although he had, in the past, kidnapped and killed other men, Joachim couldn’t stand idly by while something happened to the woman. He wasn’t that kind of man. And he didn’t want to be the kind of man Günter Stahlmann paid him to be.

He was working on a way out. If trying to get there didn’t get him or his family killed in the process. Still, he played that deadly game by his rules and he’d made Günter respect them. Rule number one was that Joachim would never harm an innocent.

That was why he had broken his cover and revealed himself to Beck’s men. Although they’d had their quarry in their sights, his presence there had upped the stakes. For them all, he ruefully admitted. No one was supposed to know he was there, either.

That decision was going to bring him trouble. He took trouble one step at a time, though. He’d learned that from years spent living between the crush of evil and the law. None of it had been easy. Even the way out he was now reaching for couldn’t promise he would live out his life instead of getting a bullet through his head or a knife across his throat for his betrayal.

But the women had gone one way and Beck’s men, now wise to his presence, had gone another. It was a stalemate that he could live with at the moment. What happened to them later was out of his hands. If something did happen, he hoped he would never know.

One of his cell phones chirped for attention. He pulled the device from inside his jacket, but his eyes stayed on the two blond women walking toward Oude Zijde.

A freighter passing in the north canal on the other side of the station sounded its horn, the tone mournful on the night air, like some lonely beast.

“Yes,” Joachim said into the phone. He spoke Russian now. Like his German and English, his voice carried no dialect.

“I have an address for you,” the young woman’s voice on the other end announced. “Your target lives on a houseboat called Satyr Dreams down on Achterburgwal. It’s near the intersection of Rusland Street.”

“I can find it.” Joachim paused, wondering how much he should reveal. But then, there was always the possibility that the woman was tracking his progress. “Beck’s men are here.”

Some of the confidence vanished from the young woman’s tone. “Are you certain?”

“One of them is known to me. He’s a criminal named Felix Horst. He specializes in armory and wetwork.” Wetwork was a euphemism for murder and assassination. Joachim knew people who did such things, but he would never be one of them.

“You knew that it was likely you would cross paths with Beck. I told you that.”

“You did. But if Beck, or at least one of his lieutenants, is here, it affects what we are able to do in the future. If you have any influence with him…”

“Beck is not part of this organization. I told you that, too.”

She had, but Joachim hadn’t necessarily believed her. The fact that she knew Beck, and knew what kind of man he was, made her information on him suspect. Most people outside the criminal syndicate and law enforcement didn’t know about Beck. That she did told him he needed to be careful.

“Concentrate on your mission, Joachim,” she chided him. “Call me when you reach his houseboat.”

The phone clicked in Joachim’s ear. He closed the cell phone and replaced it in his pocket. Slowly, he turned and surveyed the street. Is she watching? He wasn’t certain.

Paranoia was a constant state of his profession. The feeling was one of the things that kept him alive all these years. His world was filled with gunrunners and black marketers, dope dealers and blackmailers, thieves and murderers. The sad thing was, he felt more at home in that world than any other.

Sometimes, when he let his own doubts and limitations plague him, he lost hope that he would ever be out of the sewer he was in. All his life that he could remember had been about violence, about crime that boiled down to sex and money. Even if he got out of it, got away from Günter and men like him, Joachim wondered how he was supposed to live like a normal man.

He would never be normal.

At the canal he flagged down a water taxi and gave his target’s address, wishing he knew more about why he was there.

And why a man as dangerous as Arnaud Beck was, too.

As Sam walked toward the area, Amsterdam’s red-light district pulsed neon against the encroaching night. It was just after 10:00 p.m. locally and the nine-to-five crowds had given the city over to the nightlife. The clubs and bars were full, and music stained the air, but traffic was sparse.

The city was shaped like a horseshoe, built on the old streets that had accommodated horse-and-buggy traffic. The canals had always offered transport, and the majority of destinations were within walking distance. Small parties and big groups walked through the streets and window-shopped.

She and Elle walked alone.

The Voorburgwal Canal lay to their right and the Achterburgwal Canal to their left. Buildings were crammed together in the space between. Trees and boats lined the canals and bicyclists weaved between the pedestrians.

The red-light district created a ruby bubble of illumination in Oude Zijde, the old side of the city. Although she hadn’t been there yet, Sam knew sex shops and brothels filled the area. What she was probably going to see intrigued her, but at the same time she was put off by reports of sexual slavery. Willing adults putting on a sex show in a window was one thing, but she had to wonder if some were forced to perform.

“When was the last time you were in Amsterdam?” Sam asked, curious about her sister’s life.

“Five months ago. Perhaps six.”

“You never mentioned it.”

“I was working.”

“Ah.” Although they’d shared a lot about their lives, Sam knew they kept secrets from each other. Given the nature of their professions, they had to.

However, the unclassified bits and pieces gave them much to discuss. Like who to bribe in Rio de Janeiro to get weapons and transportation, or who to lean on in Paris to get information about the black market network. Several of the people they’d met on missions had been the subject of more than a few laughs over beer and pizza.

Sam couldn’t help wondering if the mission they were presently on would be something they’d laugh about later. The fact that she hadn’t found her quarry yet spoke volumes about how difficult it might become.

Neither Allison nor Alex had given many clues. They’d simply come to Sam and asked her to find the man. Sam knew that Allison had been digging around in some of the secret files they’d found during their investigation of Rainy’s murder. The files’ importance had taken on a new dimension when Alex had connected them to the death of Allison’s own mother, Athena Academy founder Marion Gracelyn. She’d felt certain that the mystery assignment came out of those, but she had no clue what it pertained to.

Now, in the middle of Amsterdam, misgivings rattled against her confidence. She didn’t doubt that she could find Meijer, but the danger quotient was doubtlessly going to go up.

And I invited my sister to do this, Sam thought. Way to go.

“Who are you after?” Elle asked.

“Tuenis Meijer. He’s a—”

“Computer cracker,” Elle said.

She used the correct term for the man’s chosen illegal profession. Hacker was a term used by the public as a result of movies and misinformation. True masters of the craft referred to themselves as crackers because they cracked the code that protected information. “Right,” Sam said.

“Sorry,” Elle said. “Didn’t mean to spoil your briefing. It’s just that I’ve dealt with guys who have done business with Tuenis in the past.”

“It’s okay,” Sam said. “I knew you were familiar with Amsterdam. That’s one of the reasons I asked you to meet me here instead of canceling out. Your knowing Meijer is a plus.”

“He’s truly slime.”

“That’s what I gathered.”

Elle stopped and gazed south. “He keeps a houseboat on the Achterburgwal near Rusland Street.”

“I know,” Sam said. “I’ve already been by there. He wasn’t home.”

“Do you have a destination in mind?” Elle asked.

“I thought we would cruise the strip. Find out where the action is.” Sam walked along the Voorburgwal. Neon shimmered like stripes of runny rainbows in the dark water of the canal. A passing motorboat created a pulse of vibrant noise. Waves slapped against the houseboats moored at the canal’s edge. “Tuenis has a predilection for sex clubs.”

“Yes, he does.” Elle smiled. “This should be interesting, since you haven’t been here before.” She turned and headed into the nearest alley. “You won’t find the ones Tuenis will be interested in out on the street. He’s a truly bad boy. At least, he thinks he is. We’ll need to hit the alleys. That’s where you find the more aggressive clubs.”

In just a matter of steps, Sam felt like she’d been transported into another world. Narrow, long and winding, the alley slipped between tall buildings filled with large picture windows on the lower floors. Red lights ringed windows in which provocatively dressed, semiclad and nude women lounged, danced or moved in open invitation to voyeurism.

It was like nothing Sam had ever seen before. But she couldn’t help smiling, thinking about what Riley would say if she showed up in his bedroom dressed—or undressed—in one of those outfits. In fact, she was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to say anything until he managed to pull his jaw up from the ground.

The woman in the booth smiled back at Sam and blew her a kiss.

“Sam?” Elle called.

“Yeah?”

“Problem?”

Sam turned to her sister. “Before we leave Amsterdam, we have to go shopping.”

Elle shook her head. “Poor Riley. He’s not going to know what hit him.”

“That’s exactly the point,” Sam said. “You don’t catch him off guard often.”

Elle glanced at the women in the windows. “That will do it. I know just the place. After we find Meijer.” Turning, still grinning, she continued down the alley.

Keeping his face forward, Joachim performed a walk-by near Satyr Dreams. Darkness filled the houseboat’s deck. His senses tingled with alertness the way they had since he was a boy and had first learned to break and enter back in Leipzig. Back then, stealing had been a way of survival. Forced entry was merely one of the skills he employed in his current vocation.

The houseboat was spacious but looked old. The fabricated metal exterior held pockmarks from hail and other abuse. Rocking on the waves from passing vessels, Satyr Dreams slapped against the side of the canal with quiet, hollow thuds.

He felt confident he could get inside.

At twelve he had started breaking into the homes of affluent people on the outer edges of the old neighborhood. That had been the year his father had been killed while trying to commit an armored car robbery. The Berlin Wall had fallen only a few years previously and West Germany was still working out the details of absorbing East Germany. The difference between the two countries’ economies had been like night and day. For a time, West German business had taken advantage of the East German labor pool, paying them only slightly more than they had already been getting paid. It wasn’t a good introduction to Western ways.

But crime had been good. Joachim’s father hadn’t been a bad man, just one who liked living easy and grew attracted to the danger of taking what he wanted. But he’d always been kind and gentle and soft-spoken. Until his father’s death, Joachim and his mother and sister hadn’t known his father had been a criminal.

Joachim’s mother had worked, but she hadn’t been able to make enough to keep a roof over their heads and feed them after her husband’s death. Joachim had tried to find a job, but no one wanted to hire a twelve-year-old boy and pay him enough to make up the difference his mother fell short on every month. In the end, he’d become a thief.

At first, Joachim had taken only food and small things he could trade for more food. Later, he had worked with a few partners and started stealing from corporate warehouses, targeting electronics and vehicles, moving into higher risk theft for a chance at a higher paycheck.

One night, one of his friends had been shot while they’d stolen a car. The boy had bled to death in the seat beside Joachim. The man Joachim had sold the stolen Mercedes to had docked the price for the blood on the seats. Joachim had been forced to dump his friend’s body in an alley as if it were common trash. He hadn’t been able to speak to his friend’s mother ever again.

Joachim knew the world wasn’t fair, and he’d quickly gotten harder to match it.

Since the age of fifteen, Joachim had been involved in organized crime. His mother had turned a blind eye to the money he’d brought into the house, and his sister had never known what he did. By the time he’d gotten old enough to get a legitimate job, he was too entangled to get out.

The people he did business with wouldn’t let him step out of their circle without paying a heavy price. They feared snitches.

Joachim had started as a numbers runner for Günter Stahlmann. At eighteen, Joachim had proven he could survive on the streets, and Günter promoted him to enforcer. For the next five years, Joachim had collected from habitual criminals who owed Günter money for sports bets and had tracked down those who had stolen from Günter. Joachim had been shot and stabbed on several occasions.

The last two years, though, he had graduated to a position of specialty assignments. The current assignment to Amsterdam came under that heading. Lately, Günter had managed a working arrangement with the mysterious woman who was currently calling the shots on the mission to capture Tuenis Meijer. Joachim didn’t know the nature of that arrangement, but he was paying careful attention.

Getting sent after Meijer couldn’t have happened at a worse time. Joachim was close to getting away from Günter for good. During the last year, pursuant to the agreement he’d made with the German police, Joachim had been steadily betraying his employer, easing out of the shackles of crime that had bound him for all these years. It hadn’t been an easy trick to accomplish. His life was currently several layers of lies deep.

But he desperately wanted out. Enough so to risk everything he had in the attempt.

Joachim stepped into the dark shadows that draped the houseboat. With a lithe coil of muscles, he leaped onto the rear deck. He tried the door, because he’d learned while collecting for Günter that doors weren’t always locked.

This one was.

It was also armed with an alarm.

Kneeling, Joachim pulled on a pair of thin surgical gloves and took out an electronic lock-pick kit from his pocket. Working quickly, he held a small pen-flash in his mouth for light and then cut into the alarm wiring. He bypassed the secondary alarm, then popped the plastic cover on the main alarm and connected the lock-pick’s alligator clips to the circuitry leading to the operating system. A quick tap on the electronic lock-pick device sent the digital readout scurrying to chase out the alarm code.

Less than a minute later, the readout flashed the eight-digit code. He pressed the activation button and the lock opened with a quiet snik.

Pocketing the electronic lock-pick, Joachim opened the door and went inside.

The boathouse smelled like the inside of a gym locker. Joachim breathed through his mouth. Evidently Tuenis Meijer spent his ill-gotten gains on sex and drugs but not on maids. He pulled the shades and played his pen-flash around.

It looked like a dirty clothes bomb had gone off inside the living area. Pizza boxes and fast-food containers littered every flat surface. The only thing that looked clean was the computer desk.

Joachim left the computer alone for the moment. During his time as a collector, he’d learned that people who used computers as their preferred weapons often left them booby-trapped. He wasn’t proficient in computer usage. Günter had other people for that.

His cell phone rang.

Taking it out, he opened it and said, “Yes.”

“Hey, kiddo,” Günter said in his deep voice. He was a large, broad man with a nose that had been broken many times and a thick shock of black hair only now going to gray. He liked American movies, particularly the crime dramas known as noir.

“Hey,” Joachim said. Neither of them used names. It was a practice of many years because they both knew their phone lines could be tapped at any time.

“How’s it going?” Günter asked.

“I’m still looking for our package.”

Günter sighed, and the sound was filled with all the sadness old Germany could muster. “I’m counting on you to pull this out, kiddo.”

“I will.” Quelling the unease that talking to Günter created, Joachim made a quick circuit of the galley. The clutter continued there. How can Meijer live like this?

Intrigued by the closet, Joachim tried to open the door. It was locked. He set the pen-flash on the galley table so the beam played over the door and he could free his hands. Reaching into his jacket pocket, he took out two lock-picks, shouldered the cell to his ear and knelt to work on the lock.

“I just want to warn you to stay on your toes,” Günter said.

“I am. I always do.”

“Don’t trust anybody over there.”

“I never do.” The lock clicked open.

“And you’ll let me know the instant you find the package?”

“Of course.” Joachim put the lock-picks away and pulled the closet door open. Once the lock was released, the door opened quickly, forced into frantic motion by the weight on the other side. Stepping back, Joachim reached for a long knife in the cutlery block on the galley table. The cell phone tumbled from his shoulder to the floor.

A man sprawled at Joachim’s feet, barely illuminated by the pen-flash’s wide beam.

Joachim brought the knife up smoothly, the blade positioned along his forearm so it wouldn’t easily be knocked from his grasp. The technique didn’t allow him to immediately stab an opponent, but he could slash an opponent’s face, hands, arms or stomach. Once an enemy started to bleed, it was only a matter of time till he succumbed.

The man at Joachim’s feet didn’t move.

Picking up his pen-flash, Joachim surveyed the man. A neat round bullet hole between the man’s eyes showed blue-black. A tiny streamer of blood zigzagged down his face.

“Hey, kiddo,” Günter called from the phone. “Hey.”

Senses flaring wildly, sensitive now to the rocking motion the houseboat made on the water, Joachim waited in the darkness. He fully expected to hear police sirens and helicopter rotors overhead.

“Hey,” Günter called out a little more strongly. “Can you hear me now?”

Moving slowly, making himself breathe and not bolt off the houseboat, Joachim scooped up the phone. “Yes.”

“What happened?”

Joachim shined the pen-flash down on the man’s face. His head rocked slowly back and forth with the houseboat’s motion.

“We have a problem,” Joachim said, struggling to keep himself calm. But he knew the problem was his. With everything so delicately balanced in his life, with all the lies he’d told, he felt certain that something had fallen through the cracks. He didn’t doubt for a moment that he’d just been set up. He could already feel the jaws of the trap springing closed on him.