The Dark Hour (15 page)

“You called him?”

“Right after you arrived. He said he and another officer would arrive within ten minutes, and that I should wait with you in Faas’s office.”

Griffin dropped the phone into the cradle, then drew a gun from the back of his waist.

Jansen saw it, stumbled back into the desk, his eyes wide. “
Mijn God!
”

“Mr. Jansen,” Griffin said, carefully moving past the man into the doorway. “I may not know art, but I know cops. They’d ask you to call the station in an emergency, and they would
not
ask you to accompany suspects into isolated areas.”

“But he gave me his card.”

“Much like the card I gave you upstairs? It wasn’t real. Call the police station and ask if they have a Detective Van Meter working the case. If they do not, have them send officers immediately.”

“You aren’t going to kill me, are you?”

“I won’t need to. Your Detective Van Meter plans to kill all three of us.”

Chapter 22

December 8

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

G
riffin remained in the doorway, his gun aimed toward the elevator. “The call?” he said to the museum director.

Jansen turned, picked up the phone, his hand trembling as he punched in the number. He spoke Dutch, his voice shaking as Griffin heard him mention the name Van Meter. Then with a hollow-sounding “
Bedankt
,” he hung up. He looked at the two of them. “You are correct. There is no Van Meter working on the Faas case. I told them to send officers.”

“How many exits are on this floor?” Griffin asked.

“There’s a stairwell near the elevator and another down the hall, through the service doors of the storage area.”

“Let’s go. You’re not safe here.”

“But—”

“Now.
”

Sydney urged Jansen out the door toward the storage area. Griffin followed. They reached the end of the hallway, where a set of double doors covered in stainless steel blocked their way. An electric keypad was mounted to the right. Jansen started punching in a code, when Griffin heard the ping indicating the elevator had arrived.

He looked back, saw two men rounding the corner. The men stopped in their tracks, as though surprised. Jansen hit the last key. The door buzzed and he pulled it open.

“Hurry!” Griffin said.

A sharp crack echoed down the hallway. Plaster flew off the wall by Sydney’s head, and she dove to the side. Jansen fell to his knees, cowering. Griffin fired back. The men retreated behind the wall. Sydney, safe for the moment, was just a couple of feet from the door, and had a better angle on the suspects. Unfortunately, from the side of the hall he was standing on, no way they were making it into that door unless Sydney could cover them.

“Syd!” When she looked over at him, he slid the weapon across the hallway floor.

She picked it up and aimed. “Go!” she said. Griffin grabbed Jansen by his collar, then ran to the door as she fired. The moment they were in, she took several more shots as she sidestepped into the hall and into the door. Griffin pulled it shut behind her, and she handed him the weapon. He released the magazine, saw he had two rounds left. “Cutting it close.”

“I live for danger. Now let’s get the hell out of here,” she replied.

The hallway was long, wide, lit by a single row of fluorescent lights overhead. Their footsteps echoed down the concrete corridor as they ran toward the far end. Behind them, someone pounded on the metal doors.

“Will those doors hold?” Griffin asked as they ran.

“According to the installers . . . even . . . withstand gunfire,” Jansen said. The hallway ended in a T intersection, with another set of double doors right before them, as well as down another hallway to the left and to the right, and when they reached it, Jansen bent over, his hands on his knees, taking deep breaths. “Some . . . of the pieces stored . . . down here . . . are worth millions.”

“Which way?” Griffin asked.

Jansen pointed. “Exit . . . at the loading dock.”

Griffin gave a final look back, listened. The pounding had stopped. “How long would it take them to get here from upstairs?”

“They would have to run . . . all the way around the museum . . . Unless they acquired a key code.”

“Let’s go.” Griffin holstered his weapon, and the three continued to the last set of double doors. Jansen punched in a code, and the door buzzed. He pulled it open, and they stepped into a cavernous room filled with crates, some large, flat, leaning upright, probably containing paintings, others bulky and square and stacked several crates high. The space smelled of dust, and Sydney sneezed twice as they briskly worked their way around the maze of stored goods.

“Faas’s voice mail?” Sydney asked Griffin.

“Someone telephoned Faas, saying they know he received the package and they wanted it back. They were going to send someone by and he was to meet them outside the museum at six.” It was, Griffin noted, the same time he was to meet Faas, which meant he’d been set up—whether by Faas or someone else, he didn’t know.

“A package?” Jansen said. “Faas received one the day before he was killed . . . A new clerk delivered it to my office by mistake. It was postmarked from Paris.”

“You told this to the police?” Sydney asked.

“No. I didn’t think he was murdered because of something to do with the museum. But the police must have heard the voice mail. They were in his office long enough.”

“Any idea what was in the package?” Griffin said. “Or what was so special about it?”

“I wasn’t there when he opened it, but when I asked about it, he showed me. A letter opener. Ebony and gold. With Faas’s background, I assumed it was an antique, especially considering the size of the package in comparison to the piece. It must have had a lot of packing.” Undoubtedly what Faas had been stabbed with, Griffin thought, recalling the moment the knife fell from his grasp into the snow.

To which Sydney said, “They were looking for something when they killed Petra. Maybe that was it?”

Perhaps the police hadn’t found it. They had to go back for it, he thought, just as Jansen stopped in his tracks, a horrified expression on his face. “Do you . . . think those men will come after me?”

“The faster we get out of here,” Griffin replied, “the safer you’ll be.”

“This way,” Jansen said, winding his way around a few more dusty crates, pushing through another door that opened to a freight elevator. Beside it was a stairwell, and Jansen led them up two flights. The door led to the interior courtyard of the main entrance. Several police officers were running through it, and Griffin and Sydney stopped.

Griffin held his arm out to prevent Jansen from going any farther. “Is there another way?” Griffin asked.

“Won’t the police protect us?”

“If we hope to find Faas’s killer, it’s imperative we get out without anyone knowing we were here.”

Jansen looked at each in turn, then, as though coming to a decision, nodded. “The basement storage. It will take us to the entrance for the bus tours.” He led them back down the stairwell, stopping on the floor with the freight elevator. They took it down a couple more floors into the bowels of the museum, and then through a series of twists and turns, until they finally emerged into an underground parking garage, where several buses were lined up, one loading with passengers. “There,” Jansen said. “Follow the ramp up past the tour buses.”

Sydney and Griffin walked toward a group of tourists who stood waiting for the second bus when a police car cruised down the winding ramp. Jansen ran into the road, waved for it to pull over.

“Blend into the crowd,” Griffin said.

She glanced back, saw Jansen talking animatedly to the officer, then pointing in their direction.

Griffin grabbed Sydney’s hand as the first bus started off. They sprinted toward it, and Griffin hit the side. The driver stopped, opened the door, and Griffin said, “Thanks. We almost got on the wrong one.”

He climbed up the steps and Sydney followed. The vehicle accelerated as they walked toward the back row of seats, and she saw the officer getting out of his patrol car, calling something in on his portable radio as he and Jansen walked toward the group of waiting passengers, clearly looking for them.

“How long till they figure we’re here, not out there?” Syd asked.

“A few minutes at the most,” he said, as the bus drove up the winding ramp into the daylight, allowing them to see a number of police cars moving into the area. “If we don’t come up with a viable plan, we’ll be sitting in a jail cell within the hour. And that I can’t afford. I need to get back to that museum. And soon.”

“Are you nuts?” she whispered. “That place is crawling with cops.”

“That letter opener this Van Meter is looking for? If the police didn’t find it, I know exactly where it is.”

“And then what?”

“France to find out where the letter opener came from, and what the hell is so important about it. Assuming we come up with a plausible reason for the driver to stop.”

“That I can do,” she said. “Let me know when and where.”

F
rom his vantage point on the bus, Griffin saw the patrol cars converging in and around the
museumplein
. If possible, he wanted a little more distance between them and the Rijksmuseum. But then he heard static from the radio, saw the driver reaching for his mike. “Now,” he said to Sydney. “Before he answers that call.”

She stood, screamed, “Oh my God! Stop the bus!” She ran toward the front. “Please, stop the bus!”

The driver looked in his rearview mirror, put his hand back on the steering wheel, ignoring the radio dispatch call. “What’s wrong?”

“My husband’s heart medication,” she said, her hands clutched to her throat, her tone pleading. “I left it at the museum!”

Passengers stared, some complaining. Even so, the driver pulled the bus over, and Griffin, having followed Sydney to the front of the bus, relaxed slightly as the door opened, allowing them to exit. “My apologies,” he said to the driver, handing him several euros just before he stepped off.

On the sidewalk, they rushed back in the direction of the museum, and once the bus passed they flagged down a taxi, got in, took it to the central train station, then walked inside the crowded terminal. The instant Griffin saw the taxi depart with a new passenger, he bought two tram tickets, and he and Sydney took the very next tram that arrived, then exited when it was apparent the route would take them too far to the south. They walked the remainder of the way to the hotel beneath a leaden sky that threatened more snow. For the moment, several bicyclists were out and about, taking advantage of the break in the weather, and Griffin pulled Sydney to a halt when she almost stepped in the bike lane, the shrill bell of the cyclist warning them off. He looked at her, gave a grim smile. “You’re actually pretty good at this.”

“Almost getting run over by bicyclists?”

“Falling into a role. Back there at the museum.”

“Thanks.”

“The histrionics on the bus, however . . .” he said, holding up his hand, waving it to indicate her part was only so-so.

“It got the damned thing stopped, didn’t it?”

“Guess it did.”

They walked for a few minutes in silence, and then she asked, “So now what?”

“Now we go back for the knife.”

“Knife? I thought it was a letter opener?”

“Murder weapon, then.”

Sydney looked up at him, her head tilted. “Why didn’t the killer take it after he stabbed Faas?”

“It was dark. Maybe he didn’t realize it was
the
knife/letter opener they wanted. Or maybe he did, but when Petra and I showed up unexpectedly, we scared him off. He fled and had to leave the knife behind. I’m not sure it was intentional—its use as a weapon. After listening to that voice mail, I have to assume that Faas was smuggling it out of the museum to bring it to the caller as requested, or to bring it to me in hopes of avoiding the caller.”

A woman and child approached from the opposite direction, both bundled up in thick coats, scarves, and woolen hats. The little girl, tufts of blond curls escaping her hat, waved at them, and Sydney smiled, waved back. Once they were out of hearing range, Sydney asked, “And the cops didn’t recover the murder weapon?”

“Assuming this is what the killers were after, if they had, you think anyone would’ve bothered coming after Petra, asking if she had it? It snowed so much that night, and since. Unless one knew exactly where to look, they’d never find it.”

“And you do?”

He pictured the arch, the garden entrance to the Rijksmuseum, the moment he saw Faas stumbling toward them, his hand against his chest, holding the knife . . . “Yeah. I think I do.”

“We’re probably on the top-ten-most-wanted list by now, never mind the area is probably crawling with cops.”

“This time we wait for dark.”

Chapter 23

December 9

National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC)

Washington, D.C.

“W
e received a report that there was a woman in the museum with Zachary Griffin. Anyone in this room care to tell me who she was?” The bearer of said tidings, Roy Santiago, assistant deputy director of national intelligence, looked none too happy as he addressed those present.

It was the first that Tex had heard of Griffin’s whereabouts since he’d dropped Sydney off at the airport, and he was careful to keep his expression neutral, not react to the news he’d been so desperate to hear. There were too many sets of eyes watching everyone else in the room, each, Tex noted, connected to so many acronyms one almost needed an index to sort them out. The CIA’s NCS and SAD, the FBI’s FCI, ATLAS, NSA, DIA, as well as the White House contingent, including Miles Cavanaugh, and no fewer than two generals.

Under normal circumstances, this was the last place Tex should have been, but McNiel insisted on his and Marc di Luca’s presence, to show that ATLAS was fully cooperating in the search for Griffin. Marc, however, was deploying that afternoon to Jamaica, and Tex envied him since it meant the job of bringing in Griffin fell squarely on his own shoulders. An unenviable position, he thought as Santiago’s gaze landed on their boss, McNiel.