The mother nodded. “English.”
The former SAS operative smiled. “Good. My German’s pretty rusty and I don’t speak Hebrew. Mind you, quite a few Englishmen tell me they can’t understand me when I speak English.”
“What do you want?”
Adam clasped his hands together. Like his colleagues, he had weapons concealed on him, though he wasn’t going to withdraw them unless it was absolutely necessary to do so. “We’re not going to kill you or rape you. And providing you cooperate with us, we’re going to release you as soon as we can.” He held out his hand. “One or both of you will have a cell phone containing Simon’s number.”
The mother responded angrily, “I left my phone at home.”
Adam was unflustered. “Did you now?” He moved his hand toward the girl. “Let’s hope you didn’t.”
Tears were running down the teenager’s face, and she was shaking. “I don’t have any money. Not here.” She glanced imploringly at her mother. “Have you got money for them?”
“I don’t want your money!” Adam kept his arm outstretched. “Just your phone.”
With a trembling hand, the girl reached into her school blazer pocket and withdrew a pink cell. She quickly passed it to him, then grabbed her mother with both arms and pulled her close.
The mother spat, “If you do anything to her, I’ll kill you!”
“That’s fair enough.” Adam flicked open the phone, scrolled through its address book, and found a number under the name Papa. He pointed the screen at the girl. “Simon Rubner? Your father?”
The mother interjected, “What do you want with him?”
“Just a word. We need to find his boss.”
“He works alone.”
“No, he doesn’t. He works for a guy called Kurt Schreiber. You know him?”
The mother looked venomous, said nothing.
“Aye, I think you do. He pays for yer fancy lifestyle. Bet you’ve got a lot of vested interests in Schreiber keeping yer old man on his payroll.”
“Go to hell!”
“One day I will. When did you last see your husband?”
The mother looked hesitant, then opened her mouth to speak.
But Adam spoke first. “If you lie to me, it’ll go bad for all of you.”
Fresh tears emerged onto the mother’s face. “He’s not at home. He’s been away for a few weeks. Work.”
Adam returned his attention to the daughter, moving the cell phone screen to within inches of her face. “Rubner. Yes, or no?”
“Yes. . yes. What. .” The girl started crying loudly. “What. . what are you going to do to Papa?”
“That depends on him. Do you SMS him?”
The daughter nodded.
“Good. Hebrew or German?”
“German. Papa insists on it, so I improve my language skills.”
Adam looked at the phone, scrolled through a couple of messages she’d sent to her father, and saw that she was telling the truth. “How do you refer to your mother when talking to him?”
The girl looked confused.
Adam barked over the sound of the van’s engine, “What do you call her? Mummy? Mum? Mother?”
“Mumie.”
Adam leaned forward. “You sure? ’Cos if you’re trying to warn off your papa by speaking to him in the wrong way, then”-he gestured around him-“this’ll be your home for a long time.”
The daughter whimpered, “Muma.”
“That’s better.” He tossed the phone onto the daughter’s lap. “Write him a message. But don’t send it until I’ve read it. Message will read: Emergency. Muma ill. Heading home now. Phone running out of battery.”
The girl steadied herself as the van took a corner, then began typing the message. She held the phone out.
Adam took it and read out the message.
Roger, a fluent German speaker, called out, “That’ll do.”
Adam pressed Send, pulled the phone apart, and removed its battery. Discarding the pieces, he said, “Now, you ladies need to sit tight until Papa gets home.”
A pretty woman, holding a clipboard and wearing a matching blue suit with the words EINDHOVEN AIRPORT STAFF on the jacket, approached Will and Mikhail at the airport cafe. With a smile on her face, she asked in English, “Mr. Cope and Mr. Klyuev?”
Mikhail answered, “Yes.”
“I’ve been told to collect you. May I see your passports?”
They presented them to her.
Her smile broadened. “Please bring your bags and come with me.”
She led them past restaurants and throngs of commuters, through a door marked AIRPORT STAFF ONLY, down corridors, out a door, along the edge of a taxiing runway, and into an aircraft hanger. There were no planes in the building. Instead it contained eight men all wearing jeans, boots, bomber jackets, and baseball caps, and beyond them two SUVs.
The woman’s smile vanished as she turned to Will and Mikhail. “I’m Superintendent Engert, police.” She pointed at one of the men. “My second in command is Kapitein Derksen, Unit Interventie Mariniers. We’re from DSI.”
The Dienst Speciale Interventies, or Special Intervention Service, was an elite law enforcement unit formed in 2006 to protect Dutch society from the threats of terrorism. Experts in dealing with complex situations such as hostage taking and aircraft hijacking, the unit comprised superbly trained police snipers and Special Forces personnel from the UIM, a force comparable to DEVGRU and U.K. SBS.
“We’ll take you to the base where the witness is being held.” Engert turned to Derksen. “Do it exactly as I ordered it to be done.” She returned her attention to the two intelligence officers. “You’re on Dutch territory, are answerable to Dutch laws, and right now are under Dutch command. My men are going to place hoods over you and they won’t come off until you’re inside the base. Don’t bother trying to use time to calculate the approximate distance between here and there, because they’re going to take a messy route to confuse you. If you try anything silly, they have my authority to knock you unconscious.” All trace of the welcoming expression was gone; instead she stared at them with an icy and professional air of command. “In short, don’t try to fuck with us.”
Laith had been lying in the same position for six hours, hidden in a cluster of trees within a small stretch of parkland, using binoculars to watch the street containing Rubner’s family home. Though he couldn’t see him, he knew that Mark was 165 yards away, scrutinizing every inch of the quiet residential street from a different angle.
The big operative kept his breathing slow and tried to ignore the biting winter air that was penetrating his jacket, jeans, and boots. During his service in the Airborne Rangers, Delta Force, and SOG, he’d learned that the cold became your enemy at unexpected times. When deployed to the Arctic, Antarctic, or mountain ranges, operatives were typically equipped with clothing that acted as a total barrier to the extreme weather in those locations; problems usually only occurred if an operative made a mistake or became injured. But it was in situations like this that he’d seen operatives struggle and sometimes go down with hypothermia. If nothing happened in the next hour, he’d suggest to Mark that they swap positions, just so both men could briefly move their aching bodies.
He thought about Will Cochrane. This was his third mission with the MI6 officer. At first, he hadn’t taken to the man. Cochrane had appeared cold, aloof, reckless, and insubordinate, and at times he seemed to have a death wish. Perhaps some of those observations were still partly accurate. But over time, he’d seen glimpses of another man altogether-a man who had moments of utter compassion that counterbalanced his ruthlessness; an individual who displayed unwavering loyalty to those who helped him; a man who put on a metaphorical suit of armor not only to shield him from the horrors he had to deal with, but also to imprison the demons inside him. Not for the first time, he wondered how he’d cope with Will’s level of responsibility. Not well, he decided.