Angel in the Shadows Read online

  But now, as Esther drove them back to Amsterdam, it finally struck Radjen just how far he was from any insight that could help him to solve a case he had as much control over as a herd of wild horses.

  Part Three

  * * *

  FLIGHT

  1

  The glass white board took up nearly the entire wall in the Murder Investigation Team’s space at Amsterdam police headquarters. Radjen Tomasoa studied the arrangement of captioned photos, arrows pointing to names and question marks filling the board. He’d just brought the entire team, comprised of investigators, analysts and administrators, up to speed about the recent death of the minister’s chauffeur, Thomas Meijer. He’d told them about the child pornography files on Finance Minister Lombard’s computer being deleted and replaced by arty images of scantily clad girls. He’d also filled them in about the explosion in The Hague, which had not only killed the owner of Nationwide Forensics but also a staff member and two passers-by.

  He turned and looked at Esther van Noordt, who’d stayed behind at his request once everyone else had left the room. She’d flipped the chair around and straddled it. Leaning forward, her elbows resting on the back, she studied the captioned photos without realizing Radjen was quietly observing her.

  Some things simply go unnoticed, he thought: clothing that wears thin, a body that ages, a marriage that slowly falls to pieces. Things in his life would never be again what they had been in the past. But occasionally he got a glimpse of the promise his future could hold. Like the first time he’d laid eyes on Esther van Noordt. That must have been five years ago now.

  Last night, when he’d seen her at the door of Thomas Meijer’s house, he understood it. You could sweep something under the rug for five years, but eventually it crept out from under. Announced itself. He’d been aware of the feelings he’d had for her for years, and it didn’t look like they were letting up. She didn’t know. He didn’t want her to know how he felt. It could end up being an embarrassment.

  He walked over to the glass board, directly into her field of vision, and looked her in the eye.

  ‘Now that you’re back from holiday, I’m officially making you a member of the MIT. That means I need to give you the whole picture, tell you a lot more than I did at the initial briefing.’

  He pointed to the photo of the Afghan boy with the frightened dark eyes. SEKANDAR, CHILD TRAFFICKING and BACHA BAZI were written above it.

  ‘As I already mentioned to you, Detective Calvino was involved in this case from day one. Of the entire team, he was by far the most committed. He took Meijer’s first statement. He convinced me that we needed to go through Lombard’s computer while he was away on a trade mission in Russia. It was also Calvino’s idea to follow Lombard to Moscow. We were convinced that a quick arrest would throw Lombard off guard and compel him to admit his guilt. Anyway, it was worth a try. Calvino met with the liaison officer at the Dutch Embassy, but the guy wasn’t prepared to cooperate until the Netherlands delivered an arrest warrant. That authorization never came, and Calvino was sent packing. The military police were waiting for him at Schiphol Airport when he landed. The end of the story so far is that not Lombard but Calvino was picked up – for violation of diplomatic law. But, of course, the joke was he’d gone to Moscow without his badge. He’d officially taken some time off and paid for his ticket himself. As a private citizen, he could do what he wanted. Legally, they couldn’t touch him. Still, they’re going to charge him with something else.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The death of a suspect in custody. I told you Sekandar could be a key witness and that we therefore moved him to a secure place with a special ambulance.’

  He directed her attention to a photo of a battered ambulance that was designed specifically for the transport of intensive-care patients.

  ‘The mobile intensive-care unit was hijacked and, during a chase on the motorway, involved in a major accident. The hijacker was captured and taken to the station for questioning.’

  Radjen pointed to the photo of a man with a wide jawline and steel-blue eyes under plucked eyebrows. His head was shaved on both sides. His jet-black hair was tightly pulled back in a ponytail on the crown of his head.

  ‘Sasha Kovalev. A Russian who takes care of interiors; a so-called freelancer …’

  ‘He doesn’t look like the maintenance type,’ Esther said.

  ‘I mean he’s a stylist … Uh … there’s another name …’

  ‘Designer?’ Esther said.

  ‘His main client was AtlasNet. Kovalev did up all of their offices worldwide … you know what I mean?’

  ‘He did the styling,’ Esther said, grinning.

  ‘Kovalev’s last “styling” job was renovating the management offices of the former headquarters of the Dutch Trading Company, here in Amsterdam. A branch of AtlasNet is now located there. We suspected that his work was actually a cover for other illegal activities. It quickly became clear during Kovalev’s interrogation that he had more information than he initially wanted to share. He was prepared to offer up more in exchange for witness protection. To give us a taste of how important what he had to offer was, he told us he had evidence that a prominent Dutch politician was involved. Guess who?’

  ‘Jesus Christ?’

  ‘He’s a prominent figure, true, but he’s never been a politician and certainly not a Dutch one. Kovalev said that the villa was used as a location where Lombard could meet the boy. And Kovalev had to coordinate that meeting.’

  ‘What went wrong?’

  ‘From what Kovalev revealed during his interrogation, it seems like he wanted to keep the boy from being abused. He tried to free him. There was a shoot-out with the two men who brought the boy there. The boy fled through the woods, ran in a blind panic and ended up on the road, where he was hit by Minister Lombard’s vehicle.’

  ‘But this means,’ Esther said as she stood up, ‘that Kovalev’s a key witness.’

  ‘Was …’

  Radjen felt a bit dizzy. He searched for the words to describe, as objectively as possible, what happened on the night Detective Joshua Calvino, halfway through Kovalev’s interrogation, came to him to discuss the suspect’s request for witness protection.

  ‘I still don’t know exactly what happened in the interrogation room while I was consulting with Calvino,’ Radjen said, ‘but when Calvino returned, Kovalev was unconscious; his head bloodied on the table, and Detective Diba was nowhere to be found.’

  ‘Fucking mess,’ Esther sighed. ‘Then he took a swan dive off the Rembrandttoren, Diba, right?’

  Radjen nodded. He felt sick to his stomach, probably as a result of the explosion in The Hague. He threw open a window, leaned out, took a deep breath and soon felt a bit better. He closed the window and walked back to the white board, ignoring Esther’s worried look, and pointed to the photo of a tanned woman with serious eyes and short blonde hair.

  ‘Except they weren’t only after Sekandar … but her as well. Danielle Bernson, the doctor who was caring for the boy. She’d been back in the Netherlands for only a short time; had spent years working in Africa, in war zones. She was totally taken with Sekandar. For her, he was symbolic of the unscrupulous ways human traffickers operate. She sought out the media, and signed her death warrant with that. The way she was murdered was so out of control and cruel, it seemed more like a violent sex crime than a hit-for-hire.’

  Esther looked at the photos and cursed. Radjen hated swearing. Except when it came from Esther.

  He felt a second wave of nausea and his ears were ringing. The room began to spin. ‘I’ll be right back,’ he said, staggering into the hallway. To keep himself from falling, he imagined a white line on the ground to focus on. The corridor was spinning around him. He tried to grab on to something that was ungraspable: emptiness.

  He felt two hands support him from behind. Her hands, her voice. Esther’s voice. She pushed open the door to the lavatory and tightly held on to him as he bent over the toilet bowl and vomi
ted in minute-long waves. Then she hoisted him up, accompanied him to a sink, pushed his head under the tap and let him drink some water to wash away the sour taste in his mouth.

  He heard the crisp crackling sound of her leather jacket behind him. Her hands gently directing his head as he felt the cold water flowing across his face. She rubbed his head, without saying anything, as if she’d been doing this for years.

  He gave in to her, incapable of resisting. He was beyond being embarrassed.

  2

  As the KLM Boeing 747 took off for Schiphol Airport through a luminous, rust-brown layer of clouds, Moscow gradually faded in the late twilight.

  Unsurprisingly, the customs officials at Sheremetyevo International had turned Paul completely inside-out. But, since he’d taken the necessary precautions, they’d come up empty-handed. Once he cleared customs in Amsterdam, Anya would send him all the picture files encrypted.

  He closed his eyes and tried to get a handle on the ringing in his ears. That ringing was a constant companion, the only one he couldn’t walk out on. It remained with him wherever he went. Everything that had happened to him over the past few weeks, from the moment he got beaten to a pulp in Johannesburg to this moment of take-off, had made the ringing and its associated undercurrent of panic more persistent than ever, especially in situations from which he couldn’t escape, like this enclosed aircraft cabin.

  He checked his watch. It was nine in the evening.

  He’d travelled to Moscow to act as Farah’s safety net, to protect her if anything went wrong.

  And he was returning alone.

  Their very first encounter kept running through his head. The butterfly garden of the presidential palace in Kabul. Her jet-black hair, her bright blue eyes, her caramel-coloured skin. The arm that felt so surprisingly cool when he accidentally brushed against it. She was both brave and beautiful. He’d felt it even then: the desire, no, the need, to protect her. Instead, he’d acted all tough and tried to outdo her when she showed him her Pencak Silat moves. Then, holding his father’s hand, he’d walked away through the corridors of the presidential palace. Without looking back.

  Thirty years. That’s how long they hadn’t seen each other. But she’d never left his thoughts.

  However big he’d tried to make his world, however far he’d travelled, a twist of fate had made it so small that after all this time he’d found Farah again. And, strangely enough, it felt as if they’d never been apart, as if they remained connected in their innermost souls.

  The young girl who’d taught him his first rudimentary fight techniques had become a driven journalist who’d got it into her head to make life difficult for a Russian oligarch. It had only fuelled his desire to protect her. And, in exposing his soft side, a character trait he didn’t even know he had, she’d confused him to his very core.

  He could have accompanied her to Jakarta to look after her, keep her from harm’s way. But instead he’d agreed to her insane plan: work together, but each from a different part of the world, from a different city: Amsterdam, Jakarta, Moscow.

  Paul tried to take his mind off things by going through the papers he’d bought at the airport, but he kept being drawn to the articles on the aftermath of the hostage-taking at the Seven Sisters.

  Le Figaro cynically asked how thirteen heavily armed terrorists could have struck in the heart of Moscow. The world news page of The Times displayed the headline DUTCH JOURNALIST UNMASKED AS AFGHAN TERRORIST. It asked how it was possible for this woman to have disappeared without a trace. The New York Times featured a short but striking report on the ending of the hostage-taking, citing the leader of the Alpha Spetsnaz commandos. Having found Farah Hafez strapped to an explosive device, he’d proceeded to deactivate it. According to him, there’d been an American journalist on the scene who’d identified her as his colleague. Instead of being one of the terrorists, she was actually their victim. A spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Justice flatly denied this. Farah Hafez, who’d worked for the Dutch daily AND for ten years, was of Afghan origin. Hafez’s mother country had been occupied by the Russian Army for over nine years. Enough to explain why she’d joined the Chechen cause. After all, the Chechen rebels were fighting against the Russian occupation of their country. Hafez had only recently shown her violent disposition and anti-Russian sentiments by so severely injuring her Russian opponent at a martial arts gala in Amsterdam that the woman had needed hospital treatment.

  Under the headline BLACK WIDOW FARAH H. BECOMES ENEMY OF THE RUSSIAN STATE, De Nederlander dedicated a full-page article to the search for the ‘fugitive Farah H.’, which had been launched by the Russian FSB in collaboration with Europol. The article quoted a study saying that in the Netherlands alone more than 30,000 people had been influenced by radical Islamist ideas. According to De Nederlander, Farah was now their standard-bearer.

  On the domestic news page, a short article caught his eye, ‘Driver who hit Afghan boy in Amsterdamse Bos kills himself. Thomas M., a suspect in the case surrounding the hit-and-run of an Afghan boy, has taken his own life. The police declined to provide any further details on the ongoing investigation.’

  He was further startled when the aircraft entered an air pocket and listened anxiously to the stewardess’s announcement that they were encountering heavy turbulence. He took a few deep breaths before pinching his nose and clearing his ears, again and again. When he felt his heart rate accelerate, he squirted a bit of Rescue Spray on his tongue and drank some water.

  The FASTEN YOUR SEATBELT sign flickered on in an alarming shade of red. Lightning flashes lit up the windows. They were flying through the tops of storm clouds, where gusts of wind could reach speeds of up to 150 kilometres per hour.

  An hour later the pilot started the descent. Paul felt the aircraft’s cowl flaps slide out, the air current being deflected and the aircraft forced down.

  Lastly, the landing gear was lowered. Looking through the window, Paul noticed the plane approaching the runway at an angle, as if the pilot had decided to land diagonally. He reminded himself that the pilot had to bank into the wind so he could fly the aircraft straight and managed to get the better of his panic.

  The left wheel was the first to touch the runway, followed by the right and then the nose wheel. But the copious rainwater had left an oily film in places and the wheels couldn’t seem to grip the tarmac. Paul heard the thrust reversers being activated and the engines began to roar. Instinctively, he pressed his soaked back against the seat, as if by doing this he might be able to provide enough of a counterbalance to avert an imminent crash.

  3

  The hell Farah’d landed in had become all but invisible. She could hear only the shooting, the screaming and the shrill whining of gas grenades being fired over their heads at the demonstrators behind them.

  But gradually all these noises died down. For a moment, she thought she wasn’t just going blind but deaf as well, though she could still hear her own breathing and Aninda repeatedly saying, as she steered her away, ‘Stay calm, we’re nearly there.’ She also heard the hurried steps of other people running past them and realized they were slowly leaving the tear gas, the injured and the chaos behind.

  Aninda helped her into some place away from the turmoil outside. A wave of cold air struck her face. A rapid exchange of words between Aninda and a man. An iron roll-down shutter being slammed shut. The buzzing of an air-con unit. Aninda’s hands gently pushing her forward. She was crying with despair.

  Aninda turned on a tap and water splashed into a metal basin. Her hands held Farah’s head under the jet of water. She thought of Paul and how he’d done the same for her, in Moscow – just as firmly, just as lovingly – and how she’d cried, back then, and again now. The icy water streamed across her face. She tried to open her eyes, keen to know whether she could still see. When she saw white streaks, her panic increased. She thought she might go insane with fear.

  The fear was even worse than the pain.

  ‘Focus on your breat
hing, and count with me,’ Aninda said. ‘Satu, dua, tiga.’

  The same numbers. Satu, dua, tiga. Over and over. Like a mantra. Satu, dua, tiga.

  She rested both hands on the counter and listened to Aninda’s calming voice. The panic lessened.

  ‘Excellent. Keep counting. I’m going to prepare something for you.’

  ‘My lenses.’

  ‘In a minute. Keep counting now.’

  Satu … dua … tiga.

  Consultation in the background, while cupboards were yanked open and closed with brisk movements. Satu. A fridge door was opened and slammed shut. Dua. Crackling plastic, a strip of tablets, a pestle grinding something. Tiga. Something was whisked in a small bowl.

  Then the light was switched off. Erratic flames danced on her retina.

  ‘Come with me.’

  Gently, Aninda guided Farah to a chair, which she’d placed behind her. ‘Lean your head back a bit. Yes, that’s it. Open your eyes, as wide as possible.’

  Farah did as she was told. Her eyeballs felt electrically charged, with lightning flashing all around her.

  ‘I’m about to drop something into your eyes. It will sting a little, but soon bring relief.’

  Mere droplets on a scorching hot plate.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Keep counting.’

  ‘Satu … dua … what is it?’

  ‘Lemon juice, milk, water …’

  ‘Tiga … What else?’

  ‘Antacids. Keep counting.’

  ‘Satu …’

  The burning pain subsided.

  ‘Antacids …?’

  ‘Sit still. Keep your eyes open as wide as possible. I’m going to drop sterile water into them and take your lenses out.’

  She heard the male voice in the background again. Then a small light was directed at her eyes.

  ‘Don’t look into the light. Look straight ahead.’