Choke Point (23 page)

Ten doe-eyed girls on sleeping bags and bamboo mats look away from a small TV. Not one screams.

The guard goes for a weapon. Wanting to avoid another gunshot, Knox puts the sole of his size 15 double-Es in the man’s gut and manages to send him into the drywall that fronts one of the metal studs. A
whoosh
of air is expelled. The man can’t breathe, can’t move. He sinks on weakened sticks.

One of the girls grabs the man’s fallen gun and, before Knox can stop her, turns it on her captor and squeezes the trigger. The weapon is safetied; her thumb fails to find the small lever. Knox offers his open hand and the girl surrenders it.

There’s an open box of twelve-inch plastic ties used on the girls at night. Knox binds the fallen man’s wrists behind his back and gags him with a small T-shirt.

Ten expressionless faces stare at him with blank eyes. Sonia is not among them—he’d been secretly hoping to find her. She could be eating dinner at this hour, or arguing with an editor, or floating in a canal, but he’d expected her here. Berna is absent as well. He’d hoped for her, at least.

“You make rugs?” Knox speaks Dutch to the girl who wielded the gun.

She nods.

“Not anymore,” he says.

A
bloodied woman drags herself down the hostel’s corridor, a laptop pushed on the carpet ahead of her. As she passes the stairwell door, it rattles. An insignificant vibration to anyone but Grace. The door’s movement indicates another door in the stairway has opened and closed, the airtight vacuum of the space responding to a slight change in pressure.

It might be anyone. Could be a guest leaving at ground level. But Grace’s internal alarm has sounded: it’s the cop. He’s come back for her, the flicker of recognition having blossomed into full suspicion. He takes the stairs knowing the elevator signals his arrival.

She’s no match for him; her only hope, flight. She pulls at the rough, industrial carpet, moving for the elevator. Only as she looks back toward the stairway door does she see the blood smear trailing her, pointing like an arrow.

A plan takes shape, the pieces all there. He last saw her down the hall in front of a different room. The blood arrow points to the elevator. She has to stand, no matter the pain. She claws her way up the concrete-block wall, her wounded leg throbbing and feeling like deadweight. She hops to her door, pain screaming through her. Feeling faint, she manages to get it open and drag her way through just as the stairway door opens, casting light across the hall. She eases the door shut. Locks it, and turns the deadbolt. Looks to the top bunk and the hung ceiling where Knox spliced into the co-ax.

Footfalls speed past her door. She hears a person slapping the elevator call button.

She slips the laptop between the mattress and the bunk bed’s plywood. Snatches her phone from the bed, texts 7-6-7 as she simultaneously climbs the back of the bunk, the pain so intense she can’t stop tears from running.

She looks up at the panels in the ceiling.

She hits
SEND
.

T
he solution of one problem brings us face to face with another,’” Dulwich quotes as he surveys a garage cluttered with ten teenage girls, a dead man and another man gagged and bound.

“I want to say: Jefferson,” Knox says.

“Martin Luther King.”

Dulwich’s phone purrs and he reads the text. “Grace. An SOS.”

The two take another long look at the mess they face. No time.

“We give it to Brower,” Knox says, proposing the next step for the dormitory girls.

“He’ll come after you for the kill.”

“No choice.”

Dulwich’s face is a knot of concentration. “We move the girls in the van,” he suggests, “dump it, and call in its location. We leave this guy in the passenger seat. It works out to a tidy little bundle for Brower. The guy’s prints have to be all over the van.”

“The other one?” Knox asks, wondering about the man he’s killed.

“Our friend at the dentist may need an organ donor. That keeps him off Brower’s radar.”

“We’ll have to raid the knot shop by morning. When the girls don’t show in the morning—”

“We can do that,” Dulwich says.

“What keeps Brower quiet?”

“My relationship with him is different than yours. He will work with us as long as there’s some carrot left out in front.”

Knox recalls Sonia’s mention of Brower’s ambition.

Dulwich doesn’t await Knox’s further agreement; his mind made up, he taps his screen and brings his phone to his ear, stepping outside. The call is to Brower.

Knox says to the girls, “Does anyone speak English?”

All ten hands raise at once, trembling to be chosen.

—

“
I
NEED
A HUNDRED THOUSAND EUROS,”
Knox says from the backseat.

“Who doesn’t?”

Knox marvels at Dulwich’s driving. They are flying down streets without the slightest sensation they’re even moving.

“Cash. Before noon tomorrow.”

“Dream on.”

“They can fly it in, for all I care, but I need it.”

“We’re in an abort, Knox. We won’t get a dime. Free airfare. Peanuts and drinks. Get a clue.”

“You’ve got to get me the money. I pay Kreiger for the rugs, he’s going to deliver the money. That leads directly to Fahiz. No question.”

“Follow the money? Never going to happen. There is no money. We’re supposed to be buttoning up.” Dulwich pulls over a block from the hostel. It’s like they’ve ridden a time machine.

“Tomorrow morning, at the latest, they find out about the dorm. After that, they’re in the wind.”

“And whose decision was that?”

Knox’s face burns. “Is that all you’ve got?”

“You don’t want all I’ve got.” Dulwich uses the remote to lock up. The car’s lights flash and it’s like a starting gun for both men.

“I take the stairs. I’ll enter from the back. Open phones,” Knox says, slipping his mobile into its interior pocket and connecting a wire.

They hook earbuds into their left ears. Knox’s wire is concealed in the windbreaker’s collar. Dulwich feeds his from his suit coat pocket. They test the connection while Dulwich works the weapon gained in the raid and tucks it into the small of his back.

“Ready,” Dulwich says.

Knox mutes his phone in order to hear Dulwich without interruption. He nods.

“No heroics,” Dulwich says. “If she’s compromised—”

“We shoot anyone, including the messenger.”

“Copy that.”

—

K
NOX STEALS
UP THE STAIRS
like a jungle cat. The Slovak semi-automatic is nearly concealed in his right hand, only an inch of muzzle showing. If he swings a fist while holding the gun, it will take his opponent’s jaw off his skull at both mandible joints. A ventriloquist’s doll.

He reaches the first floor in seconds, with no interference. Tests the hallway. Empty. Twenty minutes have passed since the 7-6-7, an eternity. He senses they’ve let her down; his stomach’s in a knot. First Maja. Then Sonia. Now Grace. Attrition is an anticipated part of any of Dulwich’s operations. People like Brian Primer speak of “reasonable loss,” “erosion” and “attrition through enforcement.” Knox is visibly angry as he approaches the room where they last left Grace. He’s frustrated to have to wait for Dulwich, who has the room’s other key card.

Dulwich disembarks the elevator. He seems to take forever reaching the door. He keys it open.

Empty.

Knox’s stomach drops.

“Shit,” Dulwich says.

“Someone close the door,” says a female voice through the ceiling’s acoustic tile.

—

G
RACE HAS
STRUNG CO-AX CABLE
between sprinkler pipes as a makeshift hammock. The two men help her down. Dulwich can’t stop mentioning all the blood. Knox wipes her hair back off her face as Grace materializes from her cocoon. It’s a touching, loving gesture. She squeezes his upper arm, amazed at the iron feel of it.

“Jesus!” Dulwich can’t get over the blood.

“I broke some stitches. Some tape, I am fine.”

“The hallway,” Knox says.

Dulwich has no idea what he’s talking about, whereas Grace looks impressed.

“Fahiz’s people or—”

“Police.” She explains the coming and going. The returning. “I knew they’d search every room, and they did.” Looking down at Dulwich from the top bunk, she says, “Under the mattress?”

“It’s here,” Dulwich says, her laptop in hand.

They help her to the floor and lay her out on the bed.

“Pants off,” Knox says.

“I’d rather do this myself.”

“Tough. Warm water,” Knox tells Dulwich, “and hand me the gauze and tape.”

The cop has dumped the bag of supplies out on the floor in disgust, having found the bloodied bedsheets. Dulwich collects them for Knox as the water runs.

“Quid pro quo,” Knox tells her, helping her out of the surgical pants. They are both thinking back to Shanghai when Grace tended to him.

She opens the laptop and places it to cover her lap. Knox nudges the computer up slightly and pushes her underwear leg seam higher.

“Easy,” she cautions.

She’s right about the busted stitches. He leaves them in. Cleans and dresses the wound. Tests his work and wins a wince and a small yelp. No blood.

“You can’t wear those,” Knox says.

“To hell I cannot!”

“We’ll buy you something,” Dulwich says.

Knox helps him to lift her, and together they wrap a towel around her waist.

“Here,” she says, spinning her laptop for the two men to see. “This is where I was . . . what I was working on before the police. You see the dead zone in Demir’s usage? It is basically all of the Oud-West district; a good part, if not all, of De Baarsjes; and the south half of De Krommerdt, from Jan Evertsenstraat to the canal.” She pauses, drawing the area with her bloodied finger. Knox rinses the towel and she cleans herself up, but the reminder of her injuries burdens them all.

“I conducted a fly-over using satellite mapping. My first thought was this blue area, here.” She leans to look at the screen and indicates an area on the satellite image she closes in on. “Turns out it is a tennis court at a school.”

“You’re looking for . . . ?” Dulwich asks.

“A water source.”

“Berna’s pant legs,” Knox reminds Dulwich. “The photo taken in the ER. Wet to the knees.”

“But that’s—”

“Significant,” Grace says, cutting off Dulwich’s dismissive tone. “The girl escapes. She finds her way to a clinic, arriving in bad condition. At some point she got her legs wet. Wet enough, recently enough, that they show up that way in her admittance photo.”

“During her escape,” Knox says.

“So, a water source,” Grace explains.

“For the record, I’m not buying this,” Dulwich says. “You want water? For the record, Amsterdam has a few hundred miles of canals.” He’s pushing Grace to show off her knowledge of the centuries-old Dutch battle against the flooding of low-level lands, the Wonders of the World system of dikes that holds seawater at bay, the adoption of Archimedes’ screw in flood control and irrigation. Offhanded remarks like Dulwich’s provoke her, but she keeps her cool and stays on point.

“I combined the two,” she reviews for Dulwich. “Demir’s phone records, revealing a . . . donut,” she says, finding Knox’s word, “in his usage. Along with a water source.” She grabs the map and drags it lower, exposing more of the north. She double-clicks repeatedly. With each action, the camera draws closer to the earth’s surface, like a zoom lens.

“A circle in the triangle,” she continues.

Dulwich is noticeably anxious and agitated. An advertising flyer lies on the floor. He picks it up, rolls it and taps it against his open palm like a cop with a nightstick. “We need to move. We can do this anywhere.”

“Please . . .” Grace says, annoyed with him. It’s a rare display of emotion, and it is not missed by either man. “A blue circle in a triangle of green.”

“A fountain,” Knox says, “in a small park.” He’s captured by her constrained excitement.

“With a bonus.” She runs the cursor in a blurring circle around five dull brown rectangles that look like pieces of pastel chalk in a box. They lie adjacent to a massive horseshoe-shaped structure that abuts a canal to the northeast.

Dulwich beats the newsprint against his hand annoyingly, his impatience grating.

“Warehouses,” Knox says to Grace.

“Or garages. Storage. Manufacturing?”

“The knot shop.”

“Escaping, she passed through this fountain.” Grace points to the blue circle. The cursor moves street to street, arriving eight blocks away, and stops. “The medical clinic.”

“I’m not saying it isn’t interesting,” Dulwich says carefully. “But it’s a theory, nothing more.”

“Worth looking into,” Knox counters. “There have to be more girls. The van isn’t going to show up tomorrow morning. If they are there, this will be the last time they are.”

“Then we have lost them for good,” Grace adds.

“You can’t lose what you don’t have.” Dulwich’s frustration surfaces as anger. Toeing the company line is killing him. He addresses Knox. “Pangarkar is not in that building.” He convinces no one, perhaps not even himself. “More to the point: Fahiz is not in that building.”

“It’s possible,” Knox says, “that at night, no one’s in the building.”

“To Brian’s point: we can give the address to Brower. Closing the shop does nothing to stop Fahiz. And do
not
tell me,” he says, raising a finger to Knox, “that Pangarkar can lead us to Fahiz, because
you
lost her. Not Grace. Not me.
You!
” The pressure and fatigue claim him. His face florid, his eyes bloodshot, his frontal vein bulging to bursting, he puts his face into Knox’s and beats the rolled newsprint against Knox’s shoulder. He’s dangerously close to starting a war. “You were right; fine. She
was
our one asset, our one ticket? Well,
you punched that ticket
!”

Knox swipes the newsprint from Dulwich’s hand with deceptive speed. He’s about to throw it to the floor when he sees it’s a pennysaver, the back page crammed with personals and classifieds. Time stops. Dulwich is poised defensively, expecting Knox to hit back; Grace holds her breath. Knox is locked in time travel, rooted back in the claustrophobic confines of the houseboat’s forward cabin.

Sonia sits with her laptop open . . .

Knox checks his watch. “What’s the time difference between here and Mumbai?” he asks.

“Four hours, thirty, ahead,” Grace says without consulting her computer. “Tehran and India both adopted the added thirty-minute difference in their time zones.” She silences Knox before he doubts her. “Do not ask me why.”

He does the math. Stares down Dulwich. “I’m going to need Winston’s help.”

“What the hell?”

“He needs to make a phone call for me.” He adds, “For us.”

“Because?”

“Because if he makes it, the publisher will listen.”

“I got that much.”

“Because I need to place a classified in Mumbai’s morning paper, which is about to go to press, if it hasn’t already.” He stumps Dulwich. “And I need you,” he says to Grace, “to post an ad on Craigslist right this minute.”

“What the hell?” Dulwich says.

“No matter what, she reads the classifieds
every
morning,” Knox says. “She reads them looking for her niece’s initials.”

“I don’t want to ask who, do I?” Dulwich says.

Knox answers, “I promise you, we can take this to the bank.”