Changeling (19 page)

‘Tom, I don’t have my passport,’ Trey said, looking from the holdall to the painted colossus who had stepped nearer now and was towering over him menacingly.

‘You do now,’ Tom replied.

‘But—’

‘But me no buts, Trey. We don’t have time for a discussion about the whys and wherefores of everything right now. You’ll have to trust me when I say that everything is sorted.
It’s what I do
.’

Trey shook his head in bewilderment at the speed that everything was happening around him. His chest had started to ache, and he gingerly felt at the bandages through a gap in his shirt to check that he had not begun to bleed again.

Tom zipped the smaller bag up, and, with a nod to the man, ushered Trey back towards the door.

‘Right, young man. Let’s be getting a march on, shall we?’ He paused a moment, fixing Trey with a look. ‘I’m normally a great advocate of my dear old ma’s belief that “fools rush in where angels fear to tread”, but we don’t have time to fiddle-faddle around right now, so just keep by me at all times. I know that you’ll have a million and one questions buzzing around in that head of yours, but I really do not have time to be answering any of them right now, OK?’

Trey nodded his assent and determined to try to simply go along with things as best he could. They turned and walked back through the bustling workplace. Everybody in the office kept looking over the tops of their little alcove walls and nodding their encouragement.

There was a hubbub of worried and anxious voices in the room, and Trey looked at the people as he passed.

Tom glanced at him as if reading his thoughts. ‘Somebody in here is responsible for this,’ he said in a low voice so that only Trey could hear. ‘One of those faces is that of the traitor, and when I find out who it is …’ He trailed off as they approached the lift.

The woman that Alexa had identified to him as Ruth when she had shown Trey around the offices was standing by the elevator. She had already pressed the Down button for them, and as they approached she looked up at Tom with a worried expression. ‘Good luck,’ she said. ‘You and Lucien bring her back safe.’

Tom nodded to her as the lift doors opened up in front of them. He and Trey stepped inside, hitting the button for the car park.

They arrived at City Airport, the car dropping them off with their bags before leaving, having been dismissed by Tom. Lucien had left the car quickly, opening the door and running to the shade provided by the overhang outside the terminal entrance. Wearing his dark glasses, a wide-brimmed black hat and gloves against the winter sun, he must have appeared like some mad eccentric to the other travellers entering the building, most of whom were openly staring at him and his odd behaviour.

During the ride he’d applied a thick lotion to his face and neck. He turned to Trey when he spotted the boy watching him. ‘Proactive precaution, really. I’ll burn to hell when we get out of the car, but at least this stuff will lessen the effect a little.’

They were met by a tall man wearing a blue suit, who nodded at Lucien before following him into the terminal building. It was the first time that Trey could remember ever being at an airport, and it seemed incredibly busy to him. People were walking purposefully in every direction as they made the necessary preparations for their trips – collecting tickets, checking in, or grabbing a few of those last-minute essentials from the airport shops. Blue Suit cut a course directly through the thronging crowds and they bypassed the banks of check-in desks, heading directly towards the departure gates. As they approached, Trey was surprised when they veered off to the right, away from the snaking queue of people and towards a smaller door down from the main gate. Blue Suit held up a pass that hung around his neck on a lanyard to a security guard standing in front of the door, who peered at it intensely before nodding at the party. The guard punched a number into a keypad beside the door and held it open, standing back to let them pass.

On the other side, Blue Suit stood aside, and a smaller man with a moon face and a thin, well-kept moustache stepped forward, offering his hand to Lucien.

‘Mr Charron, a pleasure as always.’ The man shook Lucien’s hand and nodded in Trey and Tom’s direction. ‘Mr O’Callahan … young man … if you’d all like to follow me, we can have you on your way as quickly as possible.’ He indicated an area to their left where two uniformed airport officials were standing next to an X-ray scanning device.

Tom handed the three passports over and placed the backpack and holdall on to the device’s conveyor belt. One of the guards gestured for him to step forward and waved a handheld metal detector over him as Tom stood with his arms out by his side. Seeming satisfied, the airport security guard told Tom to step aside, and repeated the process on Trey and Lucien.

Meanwhile his colleague checked the passports, glancing up over the top of the travel documents at each of the three travellers in turn.

Trey’s heart hammered in his chest as the guard looked at him. Remembering what Tom had said to him, he lifted his chin and smiled, trying to look like a kid going on a trip with his relatives, before turning to pick up his bag from the other end of the table that it had emerged on to. The security guard handed the passports back to Tom, nodding his satisfaction to the moon-faced man, who had been hovering beside Lucien throughout the process.

‘Excellent. Now, Mr Charron, if you and your travel companions would like to step this way?’ He led them down a small, brightly lit corridor and into a waiting area with blue sofas and chairs around the edge and a small bar in the centre. ‘Your jet is fuelled and ready when you are. If you would like to step though that door over there, one of our people will transport you to your aircraft. Is there anything that I can get you before you leave?’ he asked.

‘You’ve been most helpful, thank you,’ Lucien replied, shaking the man’s hand again.

Twenty-five minutes later, Trey was sitting opposite Tom in the cabin of a Learjet 60, hurtling through the air at five hundred miles per hour towards Amsterdam.

Their arrival in Schiphol Airport and subsequent transfer were as seamless as the London experience. Schiphol was vast in comparison to the City Airport that they had just left, and Tom had to urge Trey along as he slowed to take in the sights around him. They were met at the airport by Tom’s contact, Jens van der Zande, who showed them to a large black Mercedes that was waiting at the front of the departure building. As soon as they were all safely inside, the car sped away towards the city, Jens driving expertly through the taxis and other cars that were leaving the airport grounds at the same time.

For Trey, who had never been further than France on a day trip with the care-home staff, the whole trip seemed utterly surreal. Only a few hours earlier he’d been drinking tea with Tom and Lucien in the apartment in London, and now here he was speeding along a motorway in Holland, watching the flat arable landscape flash past his window.

‘I’d like to thank you for arranging everything at such short notice, Jens. It couldn’t have been very easy,’ Lucien said.

‘Not a problem, Lucien. We had to pull in a few favours with some people, but they were all very willing to help us when they heard the circumstances.’

‘Where are we booked in?’

‘The Amstel Inter-Continental. I booked two suites, as specified by Tom: one for you and the other for Tom and the boy.’

Jens glanced at Trey in the rear-view mirror and gave him a slight nod of the head.

‘Jens, did you get the things that I asked for?’ Tom said, leaning forward in his seat.

‘The grenades and the MP5K are all in a bag in the boot. We had some trouble with the shotgun that you specified, but I think that you’ll be relatively satisfied with the alternative model that we have obtained.’

Tom winked at Trey, who was staring at him in disbelief. ‘There’s no need to fear the wind if your haystacks are tied down,’ he said with a grin.

‘Have we been able to ascertain if they have moved my daughter?’ Lucien asked.

‘Our sources would indicate that she is still in the same building that they took her to at the start. We are running trace spells every ten minutes or so, and Alexa’s captors seem perfectly happy for them to succeed. They’re making absolutely no attempt to hide her, Lucien. She’s alive, but we have been unable to ascertain if she has been harmed in any way.’

The inside of the car went silent as each of them considered this response. There was nothing more to be said, so they remained silent for the rest of the journey, the quiet rumble of the tyres as they rolled along the tarmac surface of the road the only accompaniment to their thoughts. The countryside outside began to change as they exited the motorway, the sudden appearance of shops and residences signalling the outskirts of the city, before the space between the buildings became less and less and then seemed to disappear entirely, consumed by the claustrophobic metropolis of the city centre. Trey sat staring at the scenery flashing past him and wished that his first visit to Amsterdam was under happier circumstances so that he could stop and take in some of the sights that he glimpsed as they sped by.

‘Here we are,’ Jens said, pulling up in front of the hotel. On their right, the Amstel River sluggishly made its way through the city. Barges and houseboats stretched along the banks on either side of the coffee-coloured water.

‘Tom and Trey will get checked in,’ Lucien said. He turned in his seat to face the two of them. ‘You’ll want to prepare your things, Tom. Jens and I will go ahead and take a look at the area around where Alexa is being held. Is that OK, Jens?’

‘Of course, Lucien. There are some things that I wanted to discuss with you anyway. We can do it in the car on the way.’

‘Be careful, guys,’ Tom said as he got out of the car. ‘They’ll be watching for you.’

Jens popped the boot from inside the car, and Trey and Tom were able to retrieve their bags. Tom removed his backpack, then hefted a long black canvas holdall from deep within the boot and hoisted it on to his shoulder, winking at Trey as he did so.

Trey followed him up the stairs leading to the hotel entrance, turning at the top to watch as the car sped away.

The lobby of the hotel was a vast, brightly lit open space, dominated by a huge mahogany staircase that led to a balcony running around the entire room. An enormous chandelier hung down over the staircase, its light reflected back up from the highly polished black-and-white marble floor tiles.

Trey had never been in a building that reeked of opulence as much as this one did, and he stood inside the entrance door gawping up at the grandeur all around him until Tom gently took him by the elbow and steered him towards the reception desk.

The receptionist was a tall man in rimless spectacles that reflected the computer screen that he was peering at as they approached. He stopped typing on his keyboard and smiled up at them.

‘Can I help you, gentlemen?’ he asked. Trey could hardly detect a trace of an accent in his perfect English.

‘Mr O’Callahan. I believe that you have a suite reserved in my name?’

The receptionist returned to his keyboard and, after a brief pause, checked them in and issued them with their room card. He pressed a button to summon the porter, and while they were waiting Trey looked around again at the cavernous surroundings. He peered across at the concierge, who was standing behind another desk a short distance away and was dressed in the same uniform as the receptionist. The man wore a far-from-genuine smile on his face as he waited for two American tourists to finish their argument about which particular trip they wanted to go on that evening, and Trey got the impression that they had been there for some time. Sensing that he was being watched, the man glanced over in Trey’s direction and gave him a polite nod.

The porter turned up, and the hunched little man insisted on putting their bags on a giant metal trolley before escorting them to their rooms. He took Trey’s holdall and placed it on the base next to Tom’s, but was waved away by the Irishman as he reached for the long canvas bag hanging over his shoulder. ‘That’s grand, thank you,’ Tom said, ‘but I’ll carry this one up myself.’

They followed the porter over to the polished wooden doors of the elevator, and up to their rooms.

‘I can’t believe that you tipped him twenty euros!’ Trey said as soon as the porter had left them and closed the door. ‘Bloody hell, all he did was wheel that trolley up here with our bags on it, and you go and give him twenty euros. I’d have pushed that thing up here for ten!’

He looked around him at the room. He’d expected a nice room – he doubted if they had anything but nice rooms in a place like this – but the suite that they were booked into was lush
.
Trey moved from the seating area into the main bedroom, where an enormous four-poster bed dominated the space.

‘Tom, this place is huge.’

‘Yeah? Well, you go and have a little explore, Trey. I’ve got a few things that I need to sort out right now.’

Trey walked through the bedroom and into the immense bathroom that came off it. He helped himself to the shampoos and soaps that were arranged neatly around the shelf above the sink, and tried on one of the thick, fluffy dressing gowns that were hanging behind the door – putting it on over his clothes.

‘Slight problem, Tom – double bed only,’ Trey shouted through.

‘That’ll be yours then. I’ll be on the sofa out here,’ Tom replied, adding under his breath, ‘not that you or I will be getting any sleep for the next day or so.’

Trey threw himself back on to the bed, popping one of the chocolate squares that had been set on the pillows into his mouth, and tried to get his head around the day so far. He looked up at the lined roof of the four-poster and frowned, the sweet chocolate suddenly tasting bitter in his mouth as his thoughts turned to Alexa and where she might be right now. He rolled out of the bed and walked slowly back into the living area.

Tom was kneeling on the floor, laying out the considerable arsenal that he had unpacked from the bag taken from the back of Jens’s car. Trey stepped close and looked at the collection.