Angel in the Shadows Page 7

  ‘The two men found in the burnt-out car were both victims of the shooting at the villa.’

  ‘Based on this, we no longer have just a traffic accident, but a double homicide. This means that, besides being the victim of a hit-and-run, the boy may have witnessed what happened there. We arranged a special ambulance and transferred him to a secret location, where he’s receiving medical treatment, pending questioning.’

  ‘He hasn’t told you anything yet?’

  ‘To this day, hardly an intelligible word has crossed his lips. No doubt due to the trauma he’s suffered.’

  ‘Pretty clear-cut,’ Esther said. ‘How did you track our Atlantis man down?’

  Radjen drank the last sip of his espresso and crushed the cup with that familiar cracking sound into a sticky pile of plastic. ‘We also owe that one to her,’ he said, pointing at Farah’s photo. ‘Meijer went to her because he needed to get the story off his chest. She convinced him to come in and give a statement.’

  ‘Remarkable for a journalist,’ Esther said. ‘Usually they’re only interested in scoops.’

  ‘Hafez is pretty unique,’ Radjen said. In his mind he remembered her walking on to the mat in the Royal Theatre Carré. He was fascinated by her calm stride and her steadfast gaze, but, above all, by the pride with which she carried herself.

  That was only a few weeks ago. He slowly pulled the coffee mug Esther had delivered towards him. Only when he went to take a first sip did he realize she’d been staring at him impatiently the entire time.

  ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled, putting the mug back on his desk. ‘It was a really tiring night.’

  ‘Why did Meijer leave the scene?’

  ‘Because he was forced to. There was someone else in the car. Finance Minister Ewald Lombard.’

  She looked at him intently. ‘What was a government minister doing in the Amsterdamse Bos at two o’clock in the morning?’

  ‘They were on their way to the villa. If we can believe what Meijer said, the boy was meant for Lombard.’

  With an almost brusque movement Esther bent forward over his desk. ‘You didn’t get much sleep, Chief, and I’ve been out of the running for a few weeks, so let me recap this – if you don’t mind?’

  ‘Go right ahead.’

  ‘Meijer ran down a young boy in the Amsterdamse Bos at night. Not an ordinary boy, but one dressed up as a girl meant to serve as a sex toy for Minister Lombard. Meijer kept going because Lombard ordered him not to stop. But Meijer’s conscience got the better of him, so he went looking for a listening ear. He told his side of the story to a journalist, who then persuaded him to come here to give a statement. Have I got it right so far?’

  ‘So far, so good. Though two days after his first statement, Meijer showed up again, this time accompanied by a lawyer. He wanted to change his statement.’

  ‘Change his statement? As if we do in-store exchanges here.’

  She leaned on his desk, her arms and fingers outstretched. She was sitting with her legs wide and there was fire in her eyes.

  Radjen tried to sound business-like. ‘I made it clear to him that giving a new statement would lead to significant problems with the justice system. Because in one of the two, he would have committed perjury. But that didn’t stop him.’

  ‘What did he say the second time around?’

  ‘Only one thing. That Lombard hadn’t been in the car with him.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake. But whether Meijer was alone in that car or not, he still left the scene of an accident. Seems like a clear case of causing serious injury by dangerous driving. Good enough reason to keep him in custody. So why did you let him go?’

  ‘First of all, Meijer wasn’t an immediate danger to himself or a threat to others. And let’s not forget he’d been immensely helpful with his first statement. Meanwhile, the prosecutor gave us permission to search Lombard’s apartment: the one in The Hague he keeps for work.’

  ‘I see,’ Esther said. ‘Did you find anything there?’

  ‘Files on his computer …’

  She leaned back. Each movement accentuated by the creaking of her leather jacket. ‘I hear a “but” coming.’

  He planted his elbows on his desk, brought his palms together and rested his chin on his fingertips. ‘Let’s just say that the procedure didn’t go as smoothly as it should have … I had an expert from the Netherlands Forensic Institute do a preliminary investigation of the place.’

  ‘I assume he made a backup of the hard drive, sealed it and investigated everything on it at the Institute?’

  Radjen was silent. Esther looked at him incredulously.

  ‘Chief …?’

  Radjen coughed, bit his lip and grimaced.

  ‘Jesus, Chief …’

  ‘If a minister is suspected of child abuse … of course you need to intervene and as quickly as possible. But I know it’s quite questionable, legally speaking, to start investigating a computer on location and I know –’

  ‘Questionable? Anything could have been added to that computer! If it ever goes to court, Lombard’s defence is going to make mincemeat of you all.’

  He knew she was right, but he couldn’t handle her saying it directly to his face, not at this hour, not in this place, after first intoxicating him with the soothing scent of sea and apples.

  ‘We discovered incriminating evidence during the investigation, including a video with the boy.’ He lifted his chin. ‘And let’s just say: he wasn’t dancing. His dancing costume was long gone, torn from his body.’ Radjen realized he’d raised his voice unnecessarily, and he stopped.

  Esther’s voice sounded hoarse. ‘As far as I know, Lombard hasn’t been arrested.’

  ‘True,’ he said, but so softly that it almost seemed like a surrender. ‘The Netherlands Forensic Institute is still examining the computer files.’

  ‘When will they be finished?’

  ‘Hopefully today.’

  ‘They sure take their sweet time.’

  ‘We’re talking about the files belonging to a minister.’

  ‘Even then.’

  He could no longer avoid her penetrating stare. ‘Okay, Van Noordt, spit it out. Say what you have to say.’

  She straightened her back, placed her hands flat on her thighs, like sumo wrestlers do before a fight, and looked him right in the eye. ‘So, has anything happened between the discovery of those files and now? Has any action been taken against Lombard?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then why isn’t he in custody?’

  ‘The day that we found those files, Detective Calvino immediately left for Moscow. Lombard was there with a Dutch trade delegation. Based on the evidence, we thought we had a good chance of getting international legal cooperation – making it possible to arrest him abroad.’

  ‘In Moscow?’

  Her tone was starting to irritate him.

  ‘In Moscow, yes, and, even if it’d been Beijing or Timbuktu, we had to do something and we had to do it quickly. Calvino went to Moscow in an attempt to convince the Russian authorities, via the Dutch Embassy, to arrest Minister Lombard before his extensive network got wind of it. The prosecutor hesitated and ultimately didn’t issue an international arrest warrant. And, in the end, not only did Calvino look like a fool, but he was seen as a detective who’d overstepped his jurisdiction.’

  ‘I had a feeling this case was fishy,’ Esther said. ‘But after hearing this story, I know it for sure.’

  Perhaps it was only some wild fantasy, or maybe the combination of her perfume, her eyes, her posture and the tone of her words, but all these things relayed the same message: No matter how badly you’ve screwed this up, whatever mistakes you’ve made, I’m one hundred per cent behind you. I want to help you.

  ‘And you know what I think is worst of all?’ she continued. ‘That a little boy and an innocent Ghanaian woman are the victims of this.’

  ‘How do you know Efrya Meijer is innocent?’

  ‘Intuition.’

  �
�As a woman or a detective?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘Well, we’ll just have to see how good that intuition of yours is.’

  He slid the photos back into the folder, tucked it under his arm and picked up his coffee mug.

  Esther looked a bit riled by his comment. ‘I put her in Number 3, the least intimidating interrogation room,’ she said.

  8

  Dark acid-jazz beats wafted towards Paul as he walked past one of the enormous arched windows on his way back to the central workshop of the Hammer and Sickle steel factory, somewhere east of downtown Moscow.

  Paul barely heard the music. His mind was focused on the girl Farah had just described.

  Blue eyes, pale skin, freckles, red hair dyed blonde. Early twenties, Eastern European, possibly Russian.

  Inside the workshop, which was crammed full of computer screens in sleep mode, mixing panels and connectors, he made his way to a large desk where Anya had just picked a dark-grey mobile off a pile. It was a YotaPhone. The device looked vaguely similar to an iPhone, but it was a cheap Russian make and, because of its sluggish processor and low-quality camera, it was a phone no trendy Russian would want to be seen dead with.

  ‘Anything new?’ she asked without looking up, while dislodging the back of the device.

  ‘Maybe we’re lucky this time,’ Paul said.

  ‘You reckon?’

  With a fingernail she prised open the lid at the back, removed the battery and then carefully pulled out the micro SD card.

  Number eighteen.

  Another twelve to go.

  They were all being read and analysed by a frail-looking, chain-smoking young man who went by the name of Lesha. He had a large bald patch on the right side of his head, the result of being caught in a fire as a child. His maimed ear was pierced and full of little rings. The skin on part of his neck resembled that of a lizard.

  He sat motionless behind his laptop. Only his fingers were moving as they unlocked the images, code, documents and videos saved on the SD cards. They’d been at it for hours, but Paul suspected they could have saved themselves the trouble. They’d been given crap. After snatching black mobiles from a bin of confiscated items at police headquarters, cramming them into a jute bag and shoving them through the Škoda’s window, that OMON guy was eight hundred dollars richer.

  As a journalist, Anya had a sizeable network of contacts, but in having so many it was impossible to vouch for all of them. Not everybody was reliable, far from it, and certainly not those whose services had to be bought. Paul had made up his mind: he was going to search for this witness on his own.

  No connections, Trojan horses or inside help. This was his task now. And his alone.

  He picked up the printout with the names of all the students who’d registered for the International Summer School. Lesha had hacked Moscow State University’s digital archives. However, the problem with the list he’d produced was that it gave only the names, nationalities and ages of the students. Finding photos and addresses to go with those names would be a gargantuan task. But that was another problem Paul intended to solve in his own way.

  ‘Can I have the car keys?’ he asked.

  Anya was prising open the next device. ‘Why?’

  He thought of what he’d said to Farah.

  I’ll get you out of this, I promise.

  ‘I’m going to follow up on another lead.’

  The International Summer School module that was taught at the Seven Sisters was an initiative of the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia, or Rossiysky Universitet Druzhby Narodov, RUDN for short. The university had been founded during the Cold War with the aim of attracting students from the newly independent Asian and African nations to Moscow and offering them a first-class university education. In this way, the then Soviet government hoped to create a worldwide network of young academics who shared the same Communist ideals.

  The programme boasted quite a few illustrious alumni, Paul had discovered. The three most prominent ones were Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, also known as Carlos the Jackal, the man who’d gained global notoriety with his hostage-taking at OPEC headquarters in 1975; Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, aka an enemy of the US state; and Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority – not exactly a paragon of virtue either.

  Paul walked through the gate of the university complex, which was so high it made him feel like a dwarf. The outline of the building, erected in the middle of a park, loomed up faintly in the smoky morning fog. The steel structure of a colossal globe was attached to the building’s façade. The immense entryway steps made the Colosseum look like a doll’s house, and the lobby was so big you could land a plane in it.

  The woman at the reception desk peered at him through glasses perched on the tip of her nose. Paul thought there was something provocative about a woman of a certain age peering over her frames in this way. To him it conveyed something like, ‘Charm me, or get the hell out of here.’ He showed her his press card from the Citizen, even though he’d recently been sacked from that South African paper. He told her he was looking for students who were prepared to talk to him about their experiences during the recent hostage-taking.

  She took off her glasses and scrutinized his credentials. ‘You’re a long way from home, Mr Chapelle.’

  ‘The best stories rarely happen on your doorstep.’

  She gestured for him to wait, pressed some keys and donned her headset. Behind him, footsteps echoed in the lobby: students on their way to their first lectures. Although the woman spoke softly, Paul caught a few snippets of what she said to the person on the other end of the line: ‘… journalist from Johannesburg … to write about the hostage-taking … has the face of a boxer …’

  Paul leaned towards her. ‘It’s my Bruce Willis look,’ he said with a smile.

  She looked at him with her eyebrows raised.

  ‘Bruce Willis, at the end of each Die Hard film, smashed to bits …’

  She was now speaking loudly into her headset without taking her eyes off him. ‘His name is Paul Chapelle, thinks he’s Bruce Willis and speaks Russian like a cowboy.’

  She listened to the response, inaudible to Paul, and frowned in surprise. Then she hung up and pointed to the graphite-coloured sofa behind him. The sofa alone was big enough to give someone agoraphobia.

  ‘Wait there until you’re collected.’

  ‘By whom, if you don’t mind my asking?’

  She looked at him, quasi-annoyed. ‘Our Press Director, Sergey Kombromovich.’

  ‘I’ll wait here.’ He leaned towards her again. ‘I enjoy waiting in pleasant company.’

  ‘You can find your company elsewhere, cowboy. You’re blocking my view.’

  Paul could tell that cheekiness as a charm offensive was still working on her.

  Sergey Kombromovich was a balding man with an artistic goatee and brown horn-rimmed glasses, somewhat shabbily dressed in oversized green cords and a brown tweed jacket. A worldly intellectual who’d read all the Russian classics, Paul thought to himself, and probably spent his free time writing experimental poetry.

  With the courteousness of a gentleman, Sergey gave him a decidedly firm handshake, while greeting him, much to Paul’s surprise, in perfectly accented English.

  ‘Very pleased to meet you, Mr Chapelle.’

  Paul wondered what he’d done to deserve this deferential treatment.

  ‘Would you follow me, please?’ Sergey made the kind of gesture you often see ministers and presidents make after they’ve finished posing for the press with an important guest and the moment has arrived for getting down to business at the negotiating table.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting such a warm welcome at a state-controlled organization,’ Paul said.

  ‘Let me correct you,’ Sergey said, as he walked to the lift. ‘We’re an independent institution.’

  ‘That was rather different in Soviet times.’

  ‘That was then. This is now.’

  They stoo
d face to face in the lift.

  ‘You know,’ Sergey said, still sounding friendly, ‘I thought the latest Die Hard was rather disappointing. Again, that stereotypical American idea of Russians who’re all addicted to vodka, speak atrocious English, sing patriotic hymns, are criminals and have leaders who don’t know what’s going on in the world.’

  ‘Sounds pretty realistic for the most part,’ Paul replied. ‘But Bruce Willis is the last person we can blame for that anyway. He only does what he’s told.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Luckily I’m not an actor.’

  The lift doors slid open. At the end of a long, mahogany-clad corridor, Sergey swung open the door to his office, which must have normally provided an impressive view of the park, but today looked out on nothing but rust-coloured fog.

  ‘What inspires a journalist from Johannesburg to write about a hostage situation in Moscow?’ Sergey asked, after graciously inviting Paul to sit down in one of the red-velvet Art Deco armchairs and pouring him the mineral water he’d asked for.

  ‘I used to work in Moscow as a correspondent for the AND, a Dutch newspaper. I happened to be visiting friends here and –’

  ‘I’m familiar with the AND,’ Sergey interrupted him. ‘I believe my esteemed friend Edward Vallent is still in charge there, isn’t that right? Please give him my warmest regards when you see him next. And forgive my impertinence, Mr Chapelle, but my belief in serendipity is like the faith of an atheist. So let me ask you the bothersome question again. What’s the real reason behind your visit?’

  Paul sipped his water and pondered the question. ‘It’s personal, I’m afraid.’

  A frown appeared on Sergey’s forehead. ‘The combination of the terms “personal” and “afraid” is a most remarkable one,’ he said. ‘I mean, what’s there to fear about the personal? The world, Mr Chapelle, isn’t comprised of coincidences, and often it’s much smaller than we think … Am I supposed to fear this meeting because it’s a personal one? I don’t think so.’