Chapter 22 #2
As it rolled to a stop, her heart accelerated, pumping fresh fear through her arteries.
The engine shut off. A moment later, the back door swung open.
The driver reached in and sliced apart the duct tape binding Maggie’s ankles, then hauled her out.
As he set her down on her feet, she quickly took in their surroundings.
Saw an empty parking lot, a building looming in the darkness.
Some sort of warehouse. They were in an industrial area, deserted at this time of night.
The lights of Amsterdam were only a faint glow in the distance.
Lloyd was dragged out next, but he was so unsteady he stumbled to his knees. Remained there, unable to rise, his hands bound and useless behind his back. The gunman hauled him back to his feet and gave him a shove toward the warehouse.
“Go,” the woman ordered Maggie.
Frantically, Maggie considered her possible moves, calculated the odds of survival.
If she tried to run, she’d get maybe a dozen, two dozen yards before a bullet would take her down.
That was a gamble with a 100 percent chance of failure.
No, choose another move. Cooperate. Talk.
Delay. Give them a semblance of what they wanted and wait for a different opportunity to escape.
This was a warehouse, so it might have tools.
Hammers, screwdrivers, something she could get her hands on.
It might bring their chance for survival up to a whopping 1 percent, but if she didn’t fight back, there was no chance at all.
She’d take that 1 percent because it was all she had.
They stepped into the warehouse. The woman flipped the wall switch and lights came on overhead, illuminating a concrete floor, walls of corrugated metal.
A cavernous building with rows of storage shelves that marched into the distant shadows.
The gunman yanked the tape off Maggie’s mouth and shoved her to her knees.
She sank, joints protesting, onto the concrete floor.
With a moan, Lloyd flopped down beside her.
The woman held up the ID’s she’d pulled from their wallets. “Margaret Bird, from Purity, Maine. Lloyd Slocum, also from Purity, Maine. You’re both a long way from home.” She focused on Lloyd. “Who sent you?”
Lloyd shook his head. “No one sent us.”
“The truth!”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Who do you work for?” The woman kicked him in the knee. “Tell me!”
Lloyd cried out and crumpled forward, over his battered knee. “I don’t work for anyone.”
The woman handed the ID’s to her companion. “We’ll have the answer soon enough. Our people are checking your identities.”
“Look, you’ve made a mistake,” groaned Lloyd. “I’m retired. I’m only here to find my wife, Ingrid.”
“Your wife? Then why do you have Dmitry’s photo in your phone?”
“Dmitry?”
“You showed it to me this morning.”
Lloyd shook his head. “You told us his name was Willem Dekker.”
“That’s the name he now uses. Where is he?”
“I don’t give a bloody damn about the man. I told you, I’m just looking for—”
“We’re searching for Dmitry too,” Maggie cut in.
The woman’s gaze snapped to Maggie. “Why?”
“Probably for the same reason you are. But he’s a hard man to find.” Maggie shot Lloyd a warning glance. Don’t say a word. Let me handle this.
The woman paced over to the gunman and murmured to him in Russian, then paced back to Maggie. “Who sent you?”
“People who are willing to pay.”
“And they hired you?”
“No one ever notices us.” That much, at least, was the truth.
“No one will notice when you go missing either.” The woman nodded to the gunman.
He raised his weapon and aimed at Maggie.
“If we’re all searching for Dmitry,” Maggie said coolly, “we should work together, don’t you think?”
The man hesitated. Cast a quizzical glance at the woman.
“Together?” The woman shook her head. “We claimed this contract first. They told us it was ours. And we do not share.”
“Without Dmitry, you earn nothing. Do you want to find him or not?”
The woman spoke to the gunman. He swung his gun toward Lloyd, who gave a whimper. “Now, Ms. Margaret Bird. Tell us who sent you.”
“It’s all a mistake, I swear!” Lloyd cried out. “We don’t know anyone named Dmitry!”
“Lloyd,” said Maggie.
“We have your names,” said the woman. “With or without your cooperation, we’ll learn who you work for.”
“Half of something is worth more than all of nothing,” said Maggie.
The woman eyed her. “What do you mean?”
“It’s clear you haven’t found Dmitry on your own. If we work together, we improve the odds we find him.”
“I told you, we do not share.” The woman nodded to the gunman. “She dies first.”
The gun swung toward Maggie, and she stared straight into the suppressor barrel. Just a babysitting trip. A short trip to Amsterdam and home again. This is how it ends.
“No,” Lloyd said. “Don’t hurt her! I’m the one who made her come! She had nothing to do with—”
The gunshot echoed through the warehouse, the sound fracturing against corrugated steel, bouncing back at them in a million deafening shards.
At first, Maggie was too numb to feel the blood spattered on her face, too paralyzed to process the fact the bullet could not have come from the suppressor.
She heard the metallic thunk of the gun hitting the concrete floor.
Saw the gunman’s legs wobble and his body tip sideways before he collapsed in front of her.
The woman snatched up the fallen gun and spun around to face whoever had shot her partner.
Before she could fire, a bullet slammed into her chest. She sprawled backward, arms splayed out, and drew in a frantic breath.
It came out in a wet and noisy gurgle. She was still alive, but she was drowning in her own blood.
From the warehouse shadows emerged two men dressed in black, one blond, the other dark haired.
The dark-haired man was clearly the one in charge, judging by his commanding presence and purposeful stride.
With swift efficiency, he kicked the gun away from the fallen woman, gave the bodies a quick, appraising glance, then turned his full attention to the kneeling prisoners.
Blood was pooling at his feet, and the stench of violence hung in the air, but this man was chillingly calm.
He was in his early forties, with a narrow, sharply angular face and deep-set blue eyes that were impossible to read.
While his colleague spoke rapid Dutch into a cell phone, the dark-haired man remained focused on Maggie.
She heard the word ambulance in the phone conversation, but it was clearly too late for the dying woman, whose breaths were already irregular and stuttering.
Then her breathing ceased entirely, and her face went slack in death.
“Are you uninjured, Ms. Bird?” the dark-haired man asked.
Maggie released a startled sob that sputtered into laughter. It echoed in the warehouse, like the barking of a madwoman. “We’re fine,” she finally managed to say. “We’re both fine.”
He leaned over and sliced apart the tape binding her wrists. As she massaged the feeling back into her hands, his words suddenly registered. He’d called her by name. “You know who we are,” she said.
The man turned to Lloyd, who was still pale and shaking. “You would have saved us a great deal of trouble if you’d just stayed home, Mr. Slocum.”
“I don’t understand.” Lloyd looked at Maggie. “Are we safe now? Is this all over?”
“No,” the man sighed. “It’s certainly not over.” He reached down to take Maggie’s hand and, with one easy tug, pulled her to her feet.
“You’re American,” she said. She looked at the blond man, who was now crouched over the dead gunman, emptying the pockets. “He’s Dutch intelligence?”
The American nodded. “My colleague from AIVD.”
“And you work for . . .”
“I’m sure you’ve already figured it out.”
“My old Agency,” said Maggie.
He tipped his head. “Jon Marcus. I’d like to say it’s nice to meet you, but this situation is more of an annoyance.”
“CIA and AIVD playing in the same sandbox? What’s going on?”
“Classified.”
“After tonight, I think I have a right to know.”
“You’re supposed to be retired. Both of you.”
“We are retired.”
“It didn’t look that way to us.” He turned to Lloyd. “Not after you asked Interpol to ID a certain person of interest.”
“You mean the man in the gray suit?” said Lloyd. “My contact at Interpol said the man’s face isn’t in any database.”
“That’s for his own safety. To protect him against what almost happened to you, if we hadn’t intervened.”
“How long have you been watching us?” said Maggie.
“Since you turned up at the apartment building this morning.”
“You had it under surveillance?”
“And you, as well. We know you arrived on a flight from Boston this morning. We were rather hoping you wouldn’t involve yourselves in this, but there you were.
Walking into the spider’s web.” He looked down at the two bodies on the concrete floor.
“Now we have a mess to clean up. And questions these two won’t be able to answer. ”
Maggie had heard enough to understand what was going on. She looked at the dead man. At the tattoos on his finger and the back of his hand. “He’s Vory.”
Marcus shot her a startled look, the first hint of emotion she’d glimpsed in that sphinx of a face. “How do you know?”
“He spoke Russian. And that’s a quincunx tattooed on his hand. He’s done time in prison. I’m guessing that if you open his shirt, he’ll have an eight-pointed star on his shoulder.”
The Dutch agent bent down and peeled back the man’s shirt. There, on the shoulder, was a tattoo of an eight-pointed star.
“Prison mafia,” said Maggie. “Here to kill someone named Dmitry.”
The Dutch agent straightened. “These Vory are everywhere in Europe, like cockroaches. Brussels, Amsterdam. They work for whoever’s willing to hire them.”
“And the woman?” asked Maggie. “She sounded Dutch to me.”
“She is,” said Marcus.
“You know her name?”
“We do.”
“Something you’re willing to share with us?”
“We’ve shared enough. It will mean nothing to you.”