The only sure way to know if the legends were still good was to try and use them.
I gave Mila the background on my old names and we went into her cabin where she broke out a kit full of diplomatic paper, cameras, a small but powerful printer and a laptop. A forger’s paradise.
“So what’s the first step when we arrive?”
“We meet Yasmin’s father in Amsterdam.”
“Her father?”
“Mr. Zaid can tell you more about Yasmin and her kidnapping.”
Mr. Zaid? Was he Mila’s boss? “ You tell me.”
“I’d rather you hear details from him.”
“What does he know about me?”
“Just that you can help him get his daughter back. That’s all he needs to know.”
“Where will we meet him?”
“At a bar.”
“You sure like bars,” I said.
“Yes,” Mila said. “I sure do. Now. I want to be sure you are not rusty. The rest of the day, we only speak Russian. And how is your Dutch?”
“Poor.”
“I will expect it to improve quickly.” She rolled her eyes. “I hope you won’t embarrass me with poor verb choices.”
24
I watched Mila build the new versions of me. I was like Frankenstein’s monster crafted out of watermarked paper and credit histories and life histories. She made me a Canadian, an American, a German, and a New Zealander. All under different names. I watched her use backdoor entries into what should have been ironclad government databases in Washington, Berlin, Ottawa, and Christchurch to insert the codes for the passports into the appropriate government databases, making me a legitimate traveler. She slid with ease into banks, issuing credit cards to me in my various old identities.
“The Company could be looking for my old names, too,” I said.
“They could. A risk we must take.”
I wondered again-who was this woman? Mila whistled a Bananarama tune as she worked.
Rotterdam. The port accommodated around four hundred ships a day, both ocean-bound and for inland waterways, and a labyrinth of rail and road. The port itself was like a city, loading cranes the jagged skyscrapers, vast avenues of water the streets. This was a critical artery between the hundreds of millions of people in North America and the hundreds of millions of people in Europe and beyond.
I rode out in the same container I rode in on. Mila was unwilling to risk that passport control at the port hadn’t received the alert on my passport. And she was worried about the crew talking. She spent the morning of our arrival greasing more palms. Silence cost money.
I waited for the container to settle and for her to come and open the door.
When she did, a uniformed man, a port inspector, stood with her.
“Everything is fine,” she said to me in Russian. The inspector stepped inside and displayed great interest in the Vermonter soap. Mila spoke rapidly to the inspector in Dutch; he nodded, didn’t look at us.
Mila and I walked out into the gray cloudy day.
“You are very handy with the bribes,” I said to her, as we hurried across the busy docking area.
“I am beloved and popular,” Mila said. “I have friends in every corner of the world.”
And we vanished into the flood of goods and people coming into Europe.
25
We took the train to Amsterdam, fifty-six kilometers away, and I watched the flatland of Holland unpeel before my gaze. I was back in Europe, where I had been happiest with Lucy, and imprisoned by the Company. I thought of the dead intruder and his own ticket to Amsterdam.
I leaned back against the train seat. I’d traded one chain, from Howell, to another from Mila. I watched the brief stretch of Holland pan out in silence. I’d had months to sit and think about what I’d do if I got the chance to find Lucy, and here it was, and my skin felt like lit matches lay under it. The possible truths-that Lucy and our baby were dead, or that Lucy had betrayed me-loomed large, the monsters I didn’t want to see and yet had to see.
Fine. I was going to find the man with the scar, force him to tell me where my wife and child were. Then I was going to be the last thing he ever saw on this earth.
PART TWO
“The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.”
26
The bar in Amsterdam was called De Rode Prins, the “Red Prince,” and it was located along a lovely old canal called the Prinsengracht, the “Prince’s Canal,” with many small cafes, hotels, stately residences, and offices on both sides of its long curve. The Anne Frank Huis stood a few blocks away (usually with a quiet, respectful crowd snapping pictures), and the only boat on the canal was one of those get-on/get-off tour numbers, purring forward while the tourists took their snaps of the waterside buildings and soaked up the charm.
The air smelled of morning rain but the sun had scattered the clouds. The second thing you notice about Amsterdam-after the canals, of course-are the bicycles. They are everywhere, and on an early spring day they swarm like bees rising from hives. The bicycles are not at all fancy, since they are often stolen, but you will see them ridden by lawyers in suits, mothers with the kids balanced on the back or on the handlebars, students and office workers hurrying along. No one wears a helmet. A steady stream of bikes-although rush hour was over and lunch not yet beginning-zipped their way past the small Rode Prins. A few tables perched on the outside, and two gentlemen sat drinking spring beers, watching the light dance on the water beyond the parked houseboats.
Mila and I stepped inside and I could see, from my couple of trips earlier to Amsterdam, that the Rode Prins was a prime example of a dying art. It was a “brown bar,” so called because in the olden days an incessant stream of tobacco smoke stained the walls. Now there was no smoking in the bar, and the walls were brown because they’d been painted that way. The room was narrow, with a long-running leather banquette with several tables on one side, a large table near the window, and a beautiful bar along the opposite wall. Red-shaded lamps hung from the ceiling. A painting of some forgotten royal hung on the wall, and there was a red smear across the canvas-across face and finery and hands-as though a glob of blood or paint had been hurled at it years ago. The painted prince looked very alone. To me, Rode Prins sounded like Road Prince, a king of the wanderers.
I glanced at a menu while Mila waited for the barkeep. They offered beers brewed especially for each season. This was my kind of bar. It surprised me that Mila would choose such a spot for a meeting.
A bartender, tall, bald, heavy-built, and with a small gap between his front teeth, appeared from the back. Mila and the man spoke rapid Dutch; he gave me the wariest of glances. Then Mila said to me, “Sam, this is Henrik. Henrik, this is Sam. Sam will be staying upstairs. Give him whatever he needs.” Henrik shook my hand, a solid, firm grip. Where Mila seemed all exotic secrets, Henrik seemed like a bartender to whom you could talk. I was staying here? I didn’t say anything but Henrik just gave me a polite nod.
He gestured toward the back of the establishment, to a narrow hallway decorated with black-and-white photographs of the Prinsengracht through the years. I followed Mila as she headed for the rear of the bar and up a flight of stairs.
Mila stopped and looked at me. “Bahjat Zaid is a man who is absolutely terrified for his daughter. He doesn’t know you and he’s trusting his daughter’s life to you. Don’t rattle his trust. We’re his only hope. He can’t go to the police.”
“Why?”
“He can explain.” Mila turned and I followed her up the stairs. In a private apartment above the Rode Prins, a tall man sat, shoulders hunched, as though he’d played at Atlas carrying the world, and failed. He stood as we entered, smoothing his palms on his tailored suit jacket.