Arman’s arms had once been thick with hard muscle, but these days they were fleshy and slack. He rested the box on the counter and sorted through buttons of hashish in plastic wrappers. I came to my feet and stepped up to the counter. I set a small backpack on the counter and pretended to be interested in the contents of the glass jars in one of the cabinets.
“Alles wat ik u kunnen helpen met?” he said in Dutch.
My Dutch being pretty nonexistent these days, I tried a grunt and a short shrug.
This was a gesture he had apparently witnessed before, because he switched to English and tried again: “Interested in our specials?”
I removed my sunglasses, kept my voice low as I said, “Got any Specter Six?”
Arman went statue-still, like his bones had turned to ice, and his face knotted into a ball of hard concentration. Specter Six had been the code name for one of the many counternarcotics teams that I ran back in the day, and Arman DiCiccio had been one of my assets.
“Damn!” It was a sneer. Then he rose to his full height and spread his shoulders, as if the memories of his past service invigorated him. Well, maybe “service” was overstating it.
I extended my hand before he could get out another word. “Charlie Green.” Two words and he knew I was undercover, as if my ridiculous outfit weren’t hint enough.
We shook. I read his grip, looking for signs of anxiety. “How have you been, Arman?”
His hand was warm and loose, but not without some of its former strength. A good sign. I let it go.
He smiled and slapped that proud gut of his. “Too good. Way too good,” he said. “Man, it’s been … hell, it’s been a bunch of years.”
With his gaze fully on me, I studied his eyes: steady and clear. I measured the timbre of his words and found nothing but warmth and camaraderie.
His gaze flickered to my cap, and the old habits of our clandestine operations came back. He would no sooner give away my identity than he would betray his mother. I had once broken the neck of a Colombian drug dealer who had the muzzle of his Glock .380 screwed to DiCiccio’s temple, and he owed me. At least, that’s what he thought. Who was I to argue?
He said, “Here on business, Mr. Green?”
“Always.”
“I have some kick-ass Purple Skunk in the back. Let’s have a taste.” Arman waved in the direction of my waitress. “Maaje. Mind the store, will you?”
My old comrade shoved the hashish buttons under the counter and limped through the beaded curtain. I stepped around the counter and followed him into a stockroom thick with the smells of coffee, teas, and hashish.
Arman continued through another door into a small office. An open laptop sat on a desk between neat stacks of papers and magazines. Muted cheers from a soccer game murmured from a flat-screen TV on the wall. A wipe board on the adjacent wall was covered with columns and numbers listing the shop’s eclectic inventory.
He stood to one side and ushered me in with a flick of his fingers. He closed the door behind me. I took the pulse of the room; it was three seconds before I judged it clean.
“Sit, my friend,” he said. I chose a green leather chair with a view of the door. I placed my backpack on the floor. DiCiccio took his place in an Aeron executive chair behind the desk. He propped his right foot on a wooden crate and massaged the bullet wound on his thigh, the product of our last job together.
“What gives? Mr. Green?” He cocked an eyebrow. I knew he wanted to say “Jake” but stayed with my nom de guerre.
I inched my chair closer to the desk and winged a thumb in the direction of the TV. “Turn that up a bit, will you?”
Arman aimed the remote at the flat screen and pumped up the volume. I had no reason to believe that anyone would be eavesdropping on us, but there was no such thing as being too careful.
He laid the remote back on the desk and knitted his fingers. Then he leaned forward. His voice dropped an octave. “I figured you’d be retired. Not too many guys like you beat the odds.”
“I was retired. I opted back in.”
That piqued his curiosity, and he raised his eyebrows, anticipating, I imagined, some type of enticing explanation.
I dodged his unspoken question and got straight to the point: “I need your help, Arman.”
He gestured with open hands. “Whatever you need, Mr. Green.”
“The Iranian opium connection,” I said simply.
Arman DiCiccio, a veteran of way too many close calls, puffed his cheeks and leaned back into his chair. He exaggerated a long sigh and rubbed his face. Then he leaned forward and anchored his elbows on the desk. “You’re deep in it, aren’t you, Mr. Green?”
I didn’t answer right away. Finally, I said, “Deeper than you think.”
Arman DiCiccio’s eyes narrowed, and he hunched over his desk. I sensed a strain of concern. He was putting two and two together. He knew I hadn’t come here to talk about the opium trade. I wouldn’t have come out of retirement for that. He probably also figured that whatever I was up to was bigger than one guy trying to connect the dots between Iran’s stronghold on the opium market and their blatant funding of terrorist groups from Japan to Algeria. That left only one thing: weapons development. When I saw him shake his thick head and massage his ruddy face with two hands, I knew he’d made the connection. “Okay. So, I’ll ask you again. What do you need?”
“One plus one. A name here in Amsterdam and a name in Tehran. An open door to the money pipeline. Something I can track,” I said. “And I don’t have time to work my way up from the bottom, Arman. Top dogs only.”
With immense sarcasm, he said, “Damn. Is that all? Hell, why didn’t you say so.”
I waited. He had every right to be pissed. Here he was, running his little hole-in-the-wall enterprise, just making enough to stay comfortable, and some guy from a past he’d do anything to forget shows up and asks him to ID someone who could put him out of business with a single phone call.
“This make us even,” he said. “Right?”
“You’ve never owed me a thing, my friend.”
DiCiccio smirked. Whispered, “Same old Jake.”
He clicked the keys on his laptop and turned it around for me to see. The monitor displayed a local newspaper, Schuttevaer. Centered on a page of the business section was a photo of a round-bellied man with a trim beard, and dressed in a dark suit. He stood grinning on a balcony overlooking the city. The caption identified him as Atash Morshed, and the adjoining article described the extraordinary success of his online banking business, investment firm, and brokerage house. Well, I had to give Mr. Morshed credit. What better cover for hiding and diverting money.
I said, “A well-respected investment banker. Makes sense. Do me a favor. Cut and paste this link into an e-mail message.” I gave him the address of an anonymous Yahoo account.
He turned the laptop back around and clicked a series of keys. “Done,” he said, then sat back with his hands folded over his belly. “You won’t get close to the guy, you know. Especially now. One of his buddies — a real model citizen by the name of Reza Mahvi — got whacked yesterday in Paris, so his crew has tightened ranks, from what I’ve heard.”
News travels fast, I thought. But that was no reason to let Arman know that Reza’s death was old news to me. I said, “Thanks for the heads-up. Now who’s the guy pulling Morshed’s leash in Tehran? That’s who I’m really after.”