They Disappeared

43

Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Most of the travel magazine’s staff had gone out for lunch.

Alone at his desk, Joost Smit twisted the cap from a bottle of pink stomach remedy and swallowed a mouthful. Grimacing, he resumed rereading the disturbing email on his computer. Joost had received it ten minutes ago from a friend in Turkey who’d noticed a small news story.

Yuri Kripovanosk, corporate security consultant and former reporter with Interfax, the Russian wire service, was dead at fifty-two. He’d been found in an alley near a busy market in Istanbul.

Foul play was not suspected, according to police.

Joost never trusted police statements when it came to the deaths of people he knew. He reached into his valise for his secure cell phone and called a friend in Vienna to see if he had more information. As the line rang, worry swirled in Joost’s mind over Yuri’s death. Yes, Yuri drank too much and when he drank he talked too much. He was the one who’d revealed Joost’s past to Aleena. But he was Joost’s most important associate in his global courier operation. Together they’d amassed sizable fortunes and talked of retiring to Aruba.

Yuri’s network was far more extensive and lucrative than Joost’s and far more dangerous, given that many of his clients were terrorists.

It was Yuri who’d arranged the music box delivery, through his people who’d brought it to Joost yesterday, near-frantic with instructions that it be delivered in New York within twenty-four hours. Yuri provided the emergency contact number to be memorized. For this job, Joost’s share was two hundred thousand euros. Cash. In the standard split. Half now, the remainder upon delivery. Joost did not know who the customer was or what the music box contained, only that it would pass easily through any security checkpoints.

Or so he was told.

And so he’d hoped.

In her last text Aleena had indicated that she’d changed planes in London without a problem and was en route to Newark. That gave Joost a measure of comfort on one front. But the unanswered phone in Vienna deepened his anxiety over Yuri’s death.

Joost hung up and swallowed another mouthful of stomach medicine.

His office phone rang.

The number for the receptionist downstairs displayed. Joost answered.

“Two gentlemen to see you, Mr. Smit.”

“I’m not expecting anyone. Tell them I am in meetings all afternoon.”

Joost hung up, removed his glasses and massaged his tired eyes. He needed to send a wire transfer to his bank in the Cayman Islands.

His line rang. The receptionist again.

“They’re from the KLPD.”

KLPD? That’s the national criminal investigations branch. Joost absorbed the update. “Did they say what it was about?”

“They wouldn’t say. They’re on their way to see you.”

Joost hung up. He had little time to think before two men entered the editorial department, scanned the empty desks, then filled the doorway to his office. One nodded to his nameplate.

“You are Joost Smit?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Sergeant Peter Linden and my partner is Sergeant Jan de Groot. We’re with the criminal intelligence division.”

A ping of uneasiness sounded in the back of Joost’s mind. Their accents were off.

De Groot shut his office door and proceeded to close all the window shades. At this point Joost thought it wise to cooperate. He stood to greet them.

“Yes, how can I help you?” He extended his hand.

Linden shook it, the glint of a gold filling flashed when he attempted a smile that seemed more like the scowl of a man void of human qualities.

“We have some routine inquiries.”

Then de Groot, the larger of the two men, shook Joost’s hand. Pain shot through it as if he’d been pricked as de Groot nearly crushed it in his.

Blood oozed from a small, deep puncture in the palm of Joost’s hand. Horror blossomed on his face. Gripping his wounded hand he sank into his chair, watching de Groot casually collapse the tiny needlepoint on his large ring.

Joost was aware that he’d been injected with poison.

“Comrade Smit,” Linden mocked him. “You’re aware who we are and why we’re here.”

Linden set a small vial with clear liquid and a packaged hypodermic needle on Joost’s desk out of Joost’s reach.

“Without this antidote,” Linden said, “you will die in twenty-five to thirty-five minutes, a heart attack at the desk, so common with men your age.”

Joost’s right hand was getting numb, sweat formed on his upper lip.

“The FSB in Moscow has been working very hard and that hard work led us to Yuri Kripovanosk in Istanbul,” Linden said. “Let me show you the excellent work of our team there.”

Linden reached into his pocket for his cell phone and played a short video recording. Yuri was in a darkened room, naked, bound to a table. A man with bolt cutters was amputating his toes. Linden adjusted the volume so Joost could hear Yuri’s screams.

“The toes, the fingers, then his cock. You know the drill. Old school but effective, right, Smit?” Linden’s gold crown flashed when he grinned. “He cooperated, which brings us to you.”

Joost swallowed.

“We have learned of a plot to assassinate our president in New York during the General Assembly of the United Nations. You will tell us about this plot and Russian security will defeat it our way, hopefully avoiding the complication or the embarrassment of involving the Americans.”

The numbness in Joost’s hand was shooting along his arm.

“I know nothing of any plot.”

“This is not the time to lie,” Linden said. “Yuri arranged for you to deliver an item containing something critical to this plot. What is it and where is it?”

Joost’s shoulder began throbbing.

He glanced at the antidote, then searched around his office, coming to a snapshot of a staff Christmas party, finding Aleena, smiling, innocent. If he gave her up, they would find her and kill her.

“Yuri was mis-mis-mistaken.”

Linden said nothing as de Groot began rummaging through files, the schedules, staff lists. Minutes passed as Linden tapped the antidote vial with the frequency of a ticking clock.

Painful spears of lightning shot through Joost’s brain.

His body had turned to stone. He saw de Groot drawing his face to a corkboard of upcoming editions and the small harmless note Joost had written on the look-ahead list: “Aleena in NYC for feature.”

Aleena’s full name was in the magazine. Her desk was a few feet away.

The room began spinning for Joost and he smelled bread.

Warm and fresh.

He was a boy again in his father’s bakery in Saint Petersburg. The happiest time of his life, helping box the pies, the tarts, and bag the bread. His Dutch father had big hands and he kneaded the dough like a master. His Russian mother smelled of sugar and cream when she hugged him against her apron.

Before he died Joost embraced the memory of how the ovens kept him so warm through the coldest winters.