Choke Point (11 page)

“She’s of interest to us.” Knox strives to remind Brower of his connection to Dulwich.

“I can try to find out for you, but chances are it will only impede your efforts.”

“Poke the nest.”

“Just like that. Yes.”

Knox shrugs. “Her name would help.”

“I’m sure it would.”

“She had a colleague of ours under surveillance.” Knox can safely go this far, but not much farther. Brower knows more than he’s telling—how much more, Knox can’t tell.

“You received the police report,” Brower says. It might be a question.

“That was helpful,” Knox says. “Extremely helpful.”

“You and David must not make the mistake of interfering with an active investigation.”

“Of course not.”

“The young girl, Berna, is ours. The article caused a political firestorm. You get in the way—”

“Never our intention,” Knox lies. “Our interest is”—Knox vamps—“protecting the free speech of the people interviewed in the article.” He’s been told this is how Dulwich pitched it to Brower. Private concerns don’t shut down illegal sweatshops; that is reserved for authorities.

“Important, certainly. But should that work interfere—”

“It will not.”

“This woman you were following has nothing to do with those interviewed.”

“There you go,” Knox says. “That’s all I was trying to find out.”

“So there’s your answer.”

“So it would appear.” Knox hesitates, wondering how honest he dare be. “I can’t tell if we’re on the same side or not.”

“David is a good friend.”

Knox nods.

“You will be released. You must appear before a magistrate in the morning. I will vouch for you—it was mistaken identity. There will be no charges.”

“Thank you.” Knox is surprised it must go this far. “Who is she?”

“It is not my case.”

“Can you find out for us?”

“It is possible. I will let David know, if so.”

“What do you know about the community center on Speijkstraat?”

“In regards to . . . ?”

“There was an assault. Two teenage boys. On a woman.”

“Was this reported?” Brower’s concern is genuine.

“No. We didn’t want to make our efforts any more difficult. I’m sure you understand.”

“Teens?”

“Yes.”

“This is a good neighborhood. But these are difficult economic times for everyone.”

“Unusual?” Knox asks. “We need to determine if my colleague was the real target.”

“This woman . . . the one you were following. She sent your colleague there, to the
stichting
?”

Dulwich knew how to pick them.

“I can understand your interest in her,” Brower says.

“Nice to know who your enemies are. If the police are—”

“She is not ours.”

Knox ticks this off his list. Brower looks confused. Knox says, “A CI for your superintendent?” He adds, “Confidential informant,” though it’s unnecessary, perhaps insulting, given Brower’s dismissive reaction.

“Doubtful,” Brower says.

Knox has to make a judgment call. He decides this is not a time for holding back. “A vendor at a street market put my colleague in that alley. This other woman—who later met with your superintendent—intervened during the assault.” He cuts off Brower before the man can interrupt. “There’s no question it was her. The question is whether or not the vendor created the assault to allow a partner to intervene and appear the hero, or if that’s overthinking it.”

“And you stayed with this woman all night?” Brower sounds dubious. “This is how you came to connect her with our super?”

Knox doesn’t answer, which to him is not technically lying to the police. “The next thing I know, she’s meeting some guy in a park. And here I am.”

Brower is warming up to Knox. He considers him carefully for the better part of a minute. It seems like much longer. “The city government is in the midst of a facelift that is politically charged and possibly economically suicidal, at least in the short run. There is a transformation under way from the Amsterdam of marijuana bars and open prostitution to a city with core family values. We are doing what your Las Vegas did over a decade ago. We’re a little late. This newspaper article, the idea of child slave labor and all that implies—child prostitution, sex slaves—this is exactly what the city can ill afford at the moment. It also hurts the Netherlands’ standing in the EU. Which is a long-winded way of saying your presence here is ill-advised and unwanted. This is not to say child labor is in any way condoned, or that we would turn a blind eye. Quite the opposite, I assure you. It’s more the outsider element, and of course the international publicity. The existence of a sweatshop is being investigated. It is an active investigation—any interference in an active investigation is itself a crime. You and David and this colleague of yours—I’m assuming it’s a woman because of the assault—should take note of this. How and if this woman you were following connects to our work as opposed to yours . . . as I have said, I will look into it and report back to David. In the meantime . . .”

“I appreciate both the explanation and your efforts. It will be taken under advisement. But to remind you: our concern is freedom of the press.”

“One other piece of unsolicited advice,” Brower says, his concentration fixed, his brow tight. “These black market operations are well organized and well defended. I suspect the bottoms of the canals carry the bodies of many who tried to cross them.” He pauses and lowers his voice. “I cannot vouch for
all
my colleagues. There is a great deal of money at play.”

Knox refuses to react. His only response is a slight nod. Brower is trying to save his life.

“Until tomorrow morning, then,” Brower says, leaning back.

Knox provides him the phone number of one of the SIM cards he carries. Brower will text the time and location of the hearing.

As Knox leaves the constabulary, he keeps an eye over his shoulder as he advised Sonia to do, Brower’s warning echoing in his mind.

—

G
RACE’S DRIVER,
D
ULWICH,
catches her eye from across a crowded Starbucks where a good deal of English is spoken. She packs up and joins him. He holds open the rear door of the rented Mercedes for her and then climbs behind the wheel himself.

“So?” she asks.

“Your scarf lady had lunch with Pangarkar.”

Grace has been waiting impatiently for his return. It has been nearly an hour and the wait has been killing her.

“And?”

“I had the burger.”

“Please.”

“Knox may have lost her. It’s unclear. He played a hunch that didn’t work out. It happens.” He reviews for her what he and Knox discussed about the meeting between the two.

“They
know
each other, Pangarkar and this woman?”

“They do now,” he says. “What about Berna?”

“Her full name is Berna
Ranatunga
. She’s from Belgium.”

“Well done.”

She passes her laptop over the backseat. It shows the two photos of the girl. Dulwich drags it toward him at the next light.

“Wet legs.”

“She arrived there that way. I am working on it.”

“Working?”

“The canals are not knee deep. I’m looking for ponds and fountains . . . someplace a child might have waded through.” She hauls the laptop back over the seat. “Turn left in two blocks.”

“You have a nicer voice than the GPS,” he says. The device speaks female robot in Dutch. It’s hardly a compliment. Dulwich zooms out to try to see where she’s directing him.

Four blocks later as his eyes leave the mirror, he says, “Interesting.”

She knows better than to turn around to look. There isn’t enough tinting to hide her actions.

“A tail?” she says.

But Dulwich has his mobile out and is one-eyeing the street as he navigates the phone’s screen.

He speaks Dutch. “Inspector Brower, please.” He pauses intermittently. “Josh? It’s me, David . . . He’s not great with authority . . . I’ll tell him. Question for you . . . How quickly can you run a vehicle registration plate? . . . Please.” He consults the mirror and begins reciting the plate information when he’s cut off. He ends the call, placing the phone in the cup holder. He explains, “Our contact at the police. His guys grabbed up Knox. Our guy, Brower, smoothed the waters.”

She didn’t hear the groan of a motorcycle. “The car behind us.”

“Uh-huh.”

“No one followed me,” she says absolutely.

“No one’s accusing you of anything.”

“You’re assuming it was me,” she says. “You’re wrong.”

“We
want
you followed,” Dulwich says, reminding her. “This is a good thing.”

“But I wasn’t followed.”

“It’s a taxi. A private taxi.”

“I do not understand.”

“We’ve underestimated the reach of our adversaries, as well as your celebrity.” He pauses. “The same thing happened to Knox in Shanghai. Money gets spread around the taxi drivers, the tram operators, hotel doormen. A private network of informers who have their eyes everywhere.”

She experiences a chill. Doesn’t want to acknowledge she was spotted. “Four blocks, and then a right,” she says, directing him. “Let me out anywhere along the green. I will meet you on the opposite side, at the film museum, in ten minutes.”

“Too risky.”

“You are getting exactly what you want. We will see to what lengths they will go. I can handle him . . . them. You would not have chosen me otherwise.” She’s eager to make her points with Dulwich where she can. Her Army training and her performance in Shanghai are worth reminding him of.

Their eyes meet in the rearview mirror and she knows she has him exactly where she wants him. Men like Dulwich are so predictable. Knox, far less so. Dulwich is the drill sergeant type: he’ll push to the edge of sanity, but ultimately believes both in a person’s abilities—as he defines them—and the expendability of any one player to the greater cause. She’s glad it worked out for Dulwich to drive her; she knows how to play him.

He pulls to the curb. She’s out of the car and headed into the park. It is a beautiful setting of lawns and paths interlaced with a dozen ponds. The sudden change from brick and asphalt to grass and birdsong has a calming effect on her. The cabdriver has followed her, but he’s lagging behind and she can feel the tug of his parked vehicle drawing him. Whatever money he’s been offered doesn’t measure well against the hassle of a parking violation and abandoning his cab. She quickens her step and by the second intersection she’s lost him.

The pond she encounters has a three-flume fountain shooting water thirty feet into the air. There are couples on blankets despite the cold. The lawn tapers into the water where a child could easily wade. There are bushes along the water’s edge behind which a child could hide.

She passes a gazebo where the water is behind a retaining wall, and offers an unlikely place to hide. The park is enormous and would take an hour or more to circumnavigate, but she puts it on her list of possible locations.

She is well trained at increasing her pace without the appearance of doing so. Much of her sudden increase in speed over ground is the product of flexing her ankles with each step. It results in an incremental burst of speed which is unseen to the eye—a sprinter’s trick—along with a slight increase in stride and standing up straighter, her posture implying a body more at rest than one leaning into her efforts. A person attempting to follow her will find himself losing ground, distance he can’t make up without revealing himself. Her Army Intelligence instructor, a woman in anatomy only, used video and timing drills that, at the time, seemed overly harsh and exhausting. Only now does Grace appreciate them.

Fifteen minutes later, she and Dulwich are driving the streets surrounding the park. The real estate doesn’t match her needs. It’s hard—
impossible
—to picture a knot shop in such a classy neighborhood where brand-name companies occupy converted mansions along the park’s perimeter. This isn’t an area to recruit hungry girls or to have them seen entering and exiting a building at all hours.

“We are going about this all wrong,” she says, blurting it out before she realizes she’s challenging Dulwich’s original plan.

“Are we?”

“That is, I may have an alternative plan to bring these people to us.”

“Are you going to share?”

“How committed is our client in terms of investment?”

“Less ambiguous, please.”

“I will need . . . That is: it will require substantial investment in infrastructure. Five figures easily.”

“If it means we can shut it down, I believe the client will bring the necessary resources to bear,” Dulwich says.

“Not all of the funds will be recouped.”

“I’m listening,” he says.

A
figure lurks in a dark corner of a dismal bar in the heart of the red-light district. Knox holds off, eyeing things in the reflection of the bar mirror. The bar is peopled with men of every age, stoned and drunk and smoking cigarettes. The women, far fewer in number, are overweight and overly made up, with piercings and too much pale, pimpled skin showing. The bartender looks like he could hold his own in a fight. He nods at Knox, Knox taps the bar and another beer is delivered. Knox pays cash. No tabs are run in a place like this.

He takes his beer over to the corner. Sonia Pangarkar is revealed out of the shadow. Knox sits down on a bench next to her.

“Hello.”

“Mr. Steele,” she says.

“I can think of nicer places to meet.”

“No one knows me in a place like this. My television work . . . it comes at a price.”

“You don’t want to be seen in my company?”

“It is dangerous, this work, Mr. Steele. We’ve discussed this.”

“You’re afraid.”

“I am careful.”

“Can’t be too careful,” he says.

“She’s a teacher. She knew the other one I told you about. She has a student who attends infrequently. She noticed the calluses I wrote about in my story. The girl’s father, or a man claiming to be her father, because the teacher has never met the father, showed up at school yesterday. The girl escaped out the window. She’s willing to talk—the teacher—if I keep her name out of it.”

“Not much for me to work with. For you, yes, of course.”

“There is, or I wouldn’t have contacted you.” Sonia is abrupt, verging on dismissive. He hears a new tension in her voice. She isn’t sleeping well, judging by her gloomy eyes. The gin in front of her isn’t her first.

“Are you sure?” he asks. “Maybe you wanted the company.” He has a role to play; he has to fight to stay in character.

She hangs her head. “Leave,” she says.

“Time and place.” Knox upends the beer. He sets the half-empty bottle back on the table and stands. “Text or voice mail. Give me at least an hour advance notice.” He only checks his various SIM chips once an hour.

She glances at her watch. “Forty minutes. You’ll need your camera, unless I’m mistaken.”

Knox is surprised by the timing.

“I’ll come with you to get it,” she says. “And I’ll take your phone until we’re finished.”

“I thought we trusted each other.”

“Why would you think that?”

“You’ve confided in me.”

“Have I?”

He thinks of her meeting with the scarf woman. “As far as I know you have.”

“Stick to the arrangement.” She holds out her hand. “I will return it after our appointment.”

“You’d better turn off your own first,” he says, passing her the iPhone. “It’s your phone these people would track, not mine. No one knows me.”

She calls a number from memory and speaks Dutch, telling whoever’s on the other end that she’s on schedule. Knox smells a setup as he contemplates why Sonia Pangarkar would lead him into a trap. She turns off his phone and pockets it.

“How do you know I don’t carry a second phone?” he asks.

“Do you?”

“No.”

“Then we can go now.”

She pulls a beige scarf up over her head and leads him out of the back of the pub, a door he should have known existed.

Knox is hit by something hot below the ribs. He’s thrown back and his knees fail and he’s down on the cobblestone. Tourists and pedestrians make room around him, barely breaking stride. A second man grabs Sonia, pulling for her bag. Knox cracks this man’s knee with the sole of his shoe, causing him to cry out and let go of her.

The first guy leads with the cattle prod, lunging at the fallen Knox like a swordsman. He wears a shiny black leather jacket and designer jeans. Knox rolls into the cobblestone lane and chops at the hand holding the cattle prod. He manages to force a miss, but fails to dislodge it. He’s hit in the right arm, and his arm goes instantly numb. His head spins. The device is designed to punish but not knock him unconscious. It’s riot gear, either stolen or bought on the black market, or the guy’s a cop.

Knox has use of only his left arm.

Sonia kicks the man who’s down.

“Go!” Knox manages.

She’s off at a run.

Knox pulls on a leg nearest him. A woman in her twenties falls across him and takes the brunt of the next burst of voltage. She tries to scream, but no sound comes out. Knox pulls his legs out from under her and drags himself across the cobbles.

Two guys attack the man with the cattle prod. Friends of the fallen woman. They go at him with haymakers. They’re rugby types, and drunk enough to want the fight. Knox keeps back-pedaling, one-armed, awaiting any sensation in his legs. When the tingling arrives, he draws himself to his feet and limps off in the direction Sonia ran. By the wet, thumping sounds behind him, the ruggers are winning.

Knox rounds the corner and nearly coldcocks Sonia as she grabs him by the arm. She leads him down into a waiting boat, the engine running, and they speed off in a water taxi.

“What the hell?” Sonia shouts over the motor.

John Steele can’t say what he’s thinking:
police
. The look of the guy, the leather jacket and jeans. The fact that he’d checked all three SIMs when just outside the bar, prior to the meeting. He’d given one of his numbers to Brower. He wants to trust the chief inspector, but he doesn’t trust the sergeant who first interviewed him, or the superintendent who busted him. John Steele can’t know any of this.

“They must have been after you,” he says, “but wanted to neutralize me first.”

“It didn’t seem that way.”

“I don’t think you’re paying me enough.” She isn’t paying him anything.

“If you want to quit, I understand.”

“Are you kidding? We just confirmed this is a hot story. I’m in.”

“I can talk to my editor. Maybe he can offer our per diem. Not that that helps all that much. Our paper is very cheap.”

“They wanted your bag,” Knox says.

She clutches it firmly.

“You should back up to the cloud and you should erase stuff once you do. You can’t leave anything important on your laptop. They’re clearly coming after your laptop.” He hopes a photographer would say things like this. “I’m something of a tech nerd.”

“I am not so good. You can show me how?”

He contrasts this with Grace, who is capable of hacking high-level systems, who rarely admits her limitations. He’s concerned he should think of her, wonders why it’s happening.

“Yes,” he says. “No problem.”

The yellow water taxi works through the labyrinth of canals that expand out from city center like concentric ring roads. Knox requests a stop near his hotel. He leaves Sonia waiting in the water taxi. A historical plaque on the hotel doorway steals his thought. He’d rather not be reminded at a time like this of the city’s history. But one can’t pick such things. The city dates back eight hundred years to a bridge built by fishermen. They put doors on the bridge creating a dam, holding back the spring floods of the IJ. The protected town became important to the shipment of beer, and eventually grain from the north. But it was a religious miracle that made it a place of pilgrimage, elevating its population and importance. Now it is seen more as Europe’s city of sin; the turnabout strikes him as ironic and even sad.

He retrieves his camera bag from the room. The windbreaker is disgusting from his rolling around the alley. He leaves it behind. Ten minutes later they’re under way again. Sonia returns his iPhone to him, her eyes apologetic.

The water taxi driver makes turn after turn and soon Knox has lost track of their location. The narrow canal houses—their high gables designed to hold winches for hauling up prosperous merchants’ goods and furniture—give way to the ubiquitous brick buildings of the outer neighborhoods, providing Knox with some indication of the distance they’ve made. Travel by water is so much faster than surface streets, further complicating his task. He would like a GPS fix. The current SIM card in the phone doesn’t allow for GPS; the other chips are in his jacket, back in the hotel.

Sonia’s holding her hair out of her face and looking across the boat at him. Not exactly the way a reporter would. More like a woman. A curious woman at that.

“Where’d you learn to fight like that? Back there?”

“U.S. Army,” he lies.

She studies him. “Thank you.”

“I could say ‘My pleasure,’ but I’d be lying. Tell the truth,” says John Steele, the photographer, “I was scared shitless back there.”

“Be careful, John. It will serve you well to not forget I have built my career on conducting interviews.” She leaves it there, but they never lose eye contact in the flickering streetlight that struggles to reach the canal through trees and bridges.

“Did you recognize them?”

“No. But it was dark. They were dressed well for a pair of thugs.”

“How do thugs dress?”

“Better than I thought, apparently.”

Another turn and the taxi slows. It pulls up to a dock that rocks in the wake. The driver holds on to a cleat while they climb off amid the slap of water against the canal wall. Sonia pays him. The boat pulls away.

“Are you coming?” she asks.

But Knox is keeping his eye on the driver, whose cell phone is already out and to his ear. “We’re here to interview the teacher?”

“Yes, of course.”

“We have ten minutes to get out of this neighborhood. Maybe less. I hope the house is close by.”

“That’s ridiculous. How can you know that?” Nervous. Apprehensive.

He wishes she wouldn’t do that. Appreciates Grace for her levelheadedness.

“The driver. The boat operator. I think he may have recognized you. He was on his mobile phone the moment he pulled away.”

“So?” She leads the way across the street and to the right.

Knox looks for a landmark or street sign. These neighborhoods all appear the same.

“It’s common enough practice for certain elements to seek outside assistance when trying to find someone like you,” he says.

“The police? I have nothing to hide from the police.”

But she walks faster, pulling away from him. He gives her the space, gives her time to think about it. She stops abruptly and turns to face him. “Do not patronize me. I confess I’m unfamiliar with being someone’s target, but that does not give you the excuse to take advantage of me. If you are implying what I think you are implying, I do not accept this at all! The entire city is looking for me? Who is the naïve one?”

“Seven minutes,” he says. “Maybe less.”

“You’re the big expert.”

“I’m the big expert. In this, yes. I may not have many useful skills.” He glances down at his camera bag to make the point. “But I’ve done some things I’m not so proud of, and I know the streets—evidently better than you. This would be the wrong time to doubt me.”

“Only the police have that kind of reach.”

“Six and a half minutes.”

“It’s going to go longer.”

“Then we need an exit strategy. We can’t be walking the streets. No taxis. No trams.”

“You are overreacting.”

“The Fiat across the street. I’ll need a tennis ball.”

“What?”

“Better if you ask her for it. And I’ll need you to stall her long enough for me to get a knife out of the kitchen.”

“This is part of that street savvy of yours, I suppose?”

“You suppose right. Six minutes.”

At the next door, she lets them inside. Her finger roams the board and rings an apartment one flight up although there’s no inner door to breach. Knox remains two steps below her as they climb, his attention divided to include the door to the street. He can move his arm, though it’s numb. His side hurts where he was zapped. He would like to believe he’s thinking clearly, but knows better. It leaves him paranoid and prone to overreact. A door coming open above them sparks a wave of adrenaline.

The woman who awaits them is in her early forties, with tired eyes and crooked eyebrows. The apartment is modest. Two tweens study at the kitchen table. There is no sign of the husband, but there’s evidence of him—an extra-large sweatshirt draped over the arm of the couch, a hunting magazine next to the well-used television remote. She shows them inside. They decline the offer of something to drink. Knox checks his watch, making sure that Sonia sees him.

The conversation starts awkwardly with the teacher issuing concerns and denials. This is not something she would usually do. She would typically consult with a parent first. She doesn’t hold the press in high regard, and yet is quick to make Sonia an exception. She is understandably nervous.

Sonia is an adept interviewer. Knox takes mental notes. His wrist is angled on his lap so he can see the watch face. Two minutes. While Sonia works the woman, Knox excuses himself to the washroom. He passes through the kitchen in order to say hello to the kids. He steals a knife.

By the time he returns, they are into the crux of the interview.

“. . . only occasionally,” says the teacher, in Dutch.

Sonia recaps for Knox, also in Dutch. “Elizabeth was just telling me that this student of hers, Maja, misses more days than she attends, but is an eager student when in attendance.”