Choke Point

Knox is on foot on the streets of the city center, his stomach full, his mind alert. He’s on the hunt—he feels exceptionally good. Time is against him, but he understands the value of patience. This can’t be rushed.

Without the girls who fled the van, he has nothing to trade Brower for the release of Grace and Dulwich. By now the constables have taken the injured delivery team into custody; without hostages, the police may lack enough evidence to hold them for long. Knox has this one night at most.

He is presented with a choice: turn everything over to Brower and hope to win favor, or deliver the prize no cop could resist: Fahiz. The knot shop ringleader.

Grace’s work has been unable to specify a source location for the incoming messages to Kreiger, and has explained that an outgoing data stream would improve their chances. He needs Kreiger to contact Fahiz directly. It would allow him to track the e-mail through an ISP server to a particular router, to identify a city district, possibly narrow it down to a few blocks.

Knox walks the length of Kreupelsteeg, the alley that contains the entrance to Kreiger’s Natuurhonig. Circles fully around a long block, canal to canal, and back to the alley’s southern entrance, a fifteen-minute walk. It’s growing dark. The sex tourists are out in droves. The red-light district is hopping.

The pale, scantily clad girls stand in the windows like mannequins, smoking cigarettes, talking on cell phones, credit card processors on a table, ready to go. It’s the Gap of prostitution. It all reflects in the black water of a canal, doubling his distaste.

He crosses the canal in order to look back and get a wider view of the block that houses Natuurhonig. He’s taking into account every drain pipe, every intersection of architecture. It doesn’t look promising. Old Amsterdam is a warren of abutting, narrow brownstones without logic or reason. Many of the blocks contain courtyards common to all the buildings. He assumes there must be fire egress from upper floors of commercial buildings like Natuurhonig, but there’s little evidence from the outside, and he saw nothing while inside. He would have liked to leave by the front door. He’s not so sure about that anymore.

He buys a souvenir, an expandable duffel bag with a gold marijuana leaf emblazoned on it. He takes up position on a bench and makes a call. He gets an automated answering voice that repeats the number called but no indication of the owner’s identity.

“If this reaches you,” he says, “I forgive you. Berna is safe. But I need you if we’re to save the rest.” He names a restaurant/bar a half block away and a time: an hour from now. “Alone, or I can’t help the remaining girls.”

The time passes agonizingly slowly. He switches SIM cards, checking for messages: nothing. The dinner crowd flows into the red-light district; a few windows are lit, scantily clad girls reflecting green neon. Many more stand dark, awaiting a later hour. Knox has not moved. He measures the body language and the look of every new face. He looks to see if she has compromised him. He has four routes of egress available and a handgun tucked into the small of his back. Warmed by the adrenaline pumping through him, he rides it like a drug. He feels exceptionally right and good. This is where he thrives. Dulwich now owns him.

Sonia arrives alone. Knox first feels nothing beyond a negotiator’s appreciation that the deal appears to be going through. That acceptance causes a rush of grief and disappointment. He waits a long time, on alert for surveillance. He accepts the futility of it. She could be electronically marked. It could easily be a trap.

The bar isn’t busy. She sits on a stool. Knox passes her and takes a table for two, his back to the wall, where he can see the front entrance and a back hallway marked as an exit. She joins him after her drink arrives.

The cold in her eyes isn’t an act. She’s eager to be gone.

“They tried to kill us,” he says.

“He said a warning. I swear.”

“You negotiated.”

“I did. But, I swear—”

“I saw you on television,” he says, interrupting. “I suppose congratulations are in order.”

“What other girls?” She must know about the discovery of the dormitory and the knot shop by now. She has nothing to say about his successes.

“I can’t be in two places at once,” he says, tapping Grace’s laptop. “I need you to monitor the laptop while I do something.”

“Such as?”

“I’m going to shut him down.” He doesn’t need to tell her whom he means. “It’s what we all want and what I happen to need. You just do the monitoring. Keep the laptop safe.”

“You cannot possibly trust me for such a task. How can you possibly do this—whatever your name is?”

“Knox. It’s John. And yes, I do trust you to do this. I’m afraid there’s no other way.”

“You are desperate.”

He shrugs. A gnarly-looking waitress arrives—half sex kitten, half dominatrix. Amsterdam. Knox orders a coffee; Sonia waves the girl off.

“It’s over,” she says.

He takes that to mean many things, none of which he wants to face. Nor is he sure how to respond. She is beyond beautiful, without trying; she amplifies the light emitted by the pathetic candle that’s trying to stay lit. The sound of her voice is music and he’s suddenly so bone-tired he wishes he could just put his head back and listen to her speak. She could read the menu for all he cares.

His coffee arrives. It’s freshly brewed and surprisingly good.

“I want to hate you,” she whispers, hanging her head.

“That’s a start,” he says.

“No. It is an end.”

“It’s better than nothing.”

“It is less than nothing.”

“For now,” he says.

She looks up through glassy eyes. “We both got what we wanted,” she says.

“Not even close,” he tells her.

“What do I do?” She’s looking at Grace’s laptop.

“Mainly, keep watch. I can’t very well set it on a table and hope it will be there when I return. It must remain on, connected to the Internet. Running. There’s a screen capture key that I need you to operate. It will shorten the analysis time.” They spend nearly twenty minutes at the keyboard together. Knox works her through what little he knows.

“Natuurhonig,” she says.

“Why would you say that?” He has trouble keeping suspicion from his voice. He fears a second betrayal.

“It is less than two blocks from here.”

“She’s a coworker, nothing else. This is her laptop.”

“She’s under arrest.”

Sonia knows more than he suspected. She must be in direct contact with Brower to know their status. “There have been shootings. Deaths. It is serious for her.”

“For all of us,” he says.

“Natuurhonig,” she repeats.

“The less you know, the safer for you.” He wants to avoid the melodramatic because she’ll call him out for it. Sees no other way. “If I’m not back, if you don’t hear from me within the hour—”

“Oh, please.”

“You need to get this to her. Don’t even think about hacking it—it’ll zero itself with any attempt at that. You turn it over to Brower, or anyone else, and it’s useless. In her hands, only.”

“There is no way I can accomplish this.”

“You’ll think of something.”

Some of the ice is gone from her eyes, but there’s a veil of self-preservation in place that feels impenetrable.

“It’s operating now,” she points out. “Unlocked. If I take it, I do not need the password.”

“Which is why I need someone I can trust.”

She stares.

“I can end this.”

“It’s over.”

“You don’t believe that. Not for a second. You want it over or you wouldn’t have come.”

He finishes the coffee. Removes Grace’s power cord from the Scottevest. “In case it runs low on battery.” He adds, “I’ll give you exclusive rights to the story.”

“You do not know me so very well.”

“I’d like to,” he says.

He leaves by the back door, pausing at the narrow hallway to look back at her. She’s looking at him, her face unreadable.

Knox is not built for second-story work. He’s more of a ground-floor man. The Kreiger tactic is a risk. Calculated or not, he cannot allow it to backfire; there’s more to accomplish.

Using the pick gun, he enters a darkened souvenir shop, and turns to relock the door as the security alarm begins beeping its warning to enter the alarm code. He’s upstairs in a matter of seconds. The alarm begins whooping moments before he’s out the third-floor window, which he carefully returns to closed. He’s methodical, having rehearsed this in his mind a dozen times.

With the front door relocked, it will look like a false alarm, which accounts for over ninety percent of such calls. The interlocking roofs remind him of being above the knot shop. He walks carefully, avoiding breakable tiles, staying to the structurally sound and supported valleys and seams. It seems much farther than it should be, but at last he faces a peaked roof sandwiched between two flat, tarred roofs that are hidden behind ornamental Dutch facades. The skylight to his left offers a clouded aerial view down into Kreiger’s office.

He makes the call while watching the man at his desk.

“Ya?” Kreiger answers.

“I have the contents of your safe,” Knox says. “You know who this is. Either get me the goddamn rugs, or some people are going to be very angry with you.” He ends the call.

Below him, Kreiger heads directly to a large Asian floor urn. The urn separates at the rim. The silk plant rotates out of the way. Kreiger leans over. Knox sees only the man’s back as he’s leaning over the urn. He never for a moment doubted that the hyphenated number at the bottom of the man’s own contact information was a safe combination, but he gambled it was an office safe and not in the man’s home. Grace’s work has borne fruit. She reported watching over the computer’s webcam as he counted a great deal of cash, of hearing noises, and his return to the desk without the cash.

Kreiger returns everything as it was and leaves the office, presumably to have a talk with Usha.

Knox has just minutes. He retraces his steps, jimmies one of the windows in the peaked roof and lowers himself through. All the third-floor bedroom doors hang open. The brothel won’t be at capacity for another several hours. Business is confined to the second floor for the time being.

He can only hope the damage to the upper window won’t be noticed in the next few minutes. He’s into the man’s office and has the safe open on the first try. Empties it into the marijuana duffel, relocks it and slides the plant back into place.

He leaves a handwritten note on Kreiger’s keyboard. He winks at the screen, assuming Sonia is watching. Taps his wristwatch to let her know her part in this has come.

Returns to the hallway, the duffel slung over his back. There was a good deal of money in the safe, along with a pair of external hard drives and, more intriguing, no fewer than a dozen plastic bags containing what appear to be pubic hairs.

He’d planned to stash the duffel, surprise Kreiger by being in the man’s office upon his return, and to later leave by the front door. But he has misgivings about such brashness. He can hear Grace cautioning him.

The hallway’s overhead window is too high, even given his enormous reach. He jumps, trying to catch his fingers on the window frame, but it’s no good with the duffel awkwardly weighing him down.

The sound of someone climbing the stairs drives him into one of the open bedrooms. There’s an antique hand mirror on a dressing table; Knox uses it at an angle to scout the hallway.

Kreiger arrives at the top of the stairs and returns to his desk, where he sees the note ahead of when Knox would have wanted. It reads:

Nice banana plant. Get me the rugs.

Kreiger checks his safe. Roars to where the building shakes. Lumbers quickly downstairs shouting in Dutch.

Knox slides a chair into the hallway to make up the height he needs. Climbs up and out the jimmied window, the duffel over his shoulder. Knows the chair’s placement will give him away.

—

“YOU MISSED THE SHOW.” Sonia has succumbed to a glass of red wine and a calamari appetizer. Maybe two or three glasses, because she looks entrenched and comfortable, her earlier trepidation calmed. She emotes an air of respect for him.

“Did I?” Knox signals the waitress and orders a coffee. Maybe it’s all an act, adrenaline giving way to shock. Or a fatalistic surrender. But she’s eerily stable as she crosses her legs and treats him like they’re out on a date.

“No beer?”

“No beer.”

She angles the laptop in his direction. Knox is watching the restaurant’s back exit, the foot traffic in front on the sidewalk and, across the canal, the mouth of the alley that leads to Natuurhonig. One eye finds the laptop.

Kreiger’s office chair is empty. Suddenly a man screams.

“That would be Kreiger checking his safe,” Knox says.

Four minutes later, the florid-faced, winded man deposits himself into the desk chair and begins typing. Knox borrows Sonia’s wineglass and upends it. She covers her smile. When the waitress delivers the coffee, he orders her another.

Knox now divides his attention to include two smaller windows open on the laptop screen. The first scrolls code he doesn’t understand. The second shows a map where a red line stretches from Amsterdam to Berlin and back to Amsterdam.

“I captured these screen shots,” Sonia says. The resulting screen shots play out like a slide show. The last shows a district in Amsterdam as an island of pink. Knox studies it long enough to get its street boundaries.

He tests the temperature of the coffee and then drinks down half the cup. He can feel her watching him.

“You are not going to tell me,” she says.

He passes her the duffel. “To help Berna and the other girls. I’m assuming the hard drives will give you a story worth publishing, including human trafficking. Enough evidence to bring down Kreiger. Hopefully, Fahiz. That’s a work in progress.”

She unzips it, peers inside at the cash and gasps. Zips it back up. “I cannot,” she says, aiming the strap back at Knox. Her eyes stray to the bag repeatedly. She consumes a good deal of the wine as it arrives. “Jesus! It’s so much, John.”

He studies the laptop one more time to make sure he has it right. The Dutch street names drive him nuts. Alphabet soup. He enters several numbers from Grace’s contacts into the new phone: Primer’s direct office number; the tech center; Dulwich’s mobile; the Rutherford Risk emergency number. Some of these he has memorized, but the mind does strange things when juiced on adrenaline. Knox knows what’s coming.

“I want to help you,” she says. He won’t look at her. Knows the power of those eyes.

“Then get as far away from me as possible. Go to ground. Write your story. The pen is mightier, and all that.”

“And you are the sword?”

“I’m dull, but I’ll have to do.”

“Not dull,” she says, “just not honest.”

He nods. Finishes the coffee. It’s not as good as the earlier cup.

—

KNOX DROPS THE LAPTOP into the canal as he crosses the bridge. Feels its loss in his chest for it signals the endgame, a point of no return. There might be a dozen routes to the same end but he can only think of the one. Having started it in motion there’s no going back, even if he wanted to. This is what he tells himself, though a voice of conscience suggests otherwise; there’s always time to change plans. But he’s robotic, preprogrammed. His pace increases, his demeanor intensifies. He passes the curious and the creeps, the Indiana innocents and the perverts. The full-length windows are alight with wan skin and scant underclothing, navel rings and wigs. The air reeks of marijuana, tobacco and perfume. Of Indian food and motorboat exhaust. A dozen songs compete, Euro-rock to The Fray. Oddly enough, it’s the perfect place to hide—all attention is on the window girls and the promise of depravity.

He reaches the front door to Natuurhonig. Thinks back to his and Grace’s entrance. The receptionist, the gorgeous Tarantinoesque blonde. Doesn’t recall a male bouncer, but assumes that he—or they—blended in with the customers. But Kreiger is a cheap son of a bitch: there will only be the one bouncer.

“Good evening,” he tells the attractive receptionist, as he hands her fifty euros. Perhaps she remembers him. But his sour smell and sweat-stained face and hair must set off an alarm, along with the fact he doesn’t wait for her to admit him.

Knox is facing the stairs when a wide body in designer jeans and a mock turtleneck crosses toward him.

“Nice shirt.”

An amateur, the guy reaches out to grab Knox by the forearm. Knox pins the man’s thumb to his wrist and drops him to his knees. Crushes his nose with his own kneecap, then toes him in the solar plexus. The bleeding man collapses to the floor unable to breathe. Knox has barely broken stride. He climbs the stairs, two at a time, turning right at the top.

He shuts and locks Kreiger’s door and is behind the man’s desk before Kreiger has the desk drawer open that contains what turns out to be a .45. Unloaded, after Knox handles it.

He strips the man’s sport coat partially off his shoulders, pinning Kreiger to the office chair. Ties the man’s hands with phone cord. Pulls up a chair and sits cross-legged facing Kreiger.

Hears heavy footfalls coming upstairs.

“Tell him everything’s fine,” Knox advises.

Kreiger has only now begun to process what’s happening. The smell of pot smoke alerts Knox to the man’s dulled condition. Following the discovery of his empty safe, he blew a blunt.

The one in the hall sounds intent on bringing the door down. Kreiger calls out and assures him everything is okay. It takes two tries. The man calls back that he’s not leaving. He’s waiting outside the door.

Knox shakes his head at Kreiger, who then instructs the man to wait downstairs.

“I will get you the rugs,” Kreiger says pleadingly.

Knox offers a winsome smile.

It takes an inordinate amount of time for Kreiger’s stoned brain to process what’s happening. “Oh, shit.”

“Now you’ve got it,” Knox says. “You know that e-mail you just sent to Fahiz—or whatever name he goes by?” Knox smiles a shit-eating grin. “He called himself ‘Fahiz’ to the police. He’s a clever one. But you just gave him up, Gerhardt. He’s done. Which means you have one, and only one, play. You work with the police and maybe they protect you. Maybe, just maybe, they save your life.”

Kreiger is green. It’s a bad high. He’s wishing he hadn’t taken those last two tokes.

“Work with me,” Knox says.

Kreiger’s eyes wander to the open safe.

“I have the hard drives.”

Kreiger shakes his head.

“We know each other, Gerhardt. We’ve done business together for what, four, five years?”

Kreiger can’t speak, or knows he shouldn’t.

“And I am the guy you think I am. A simple businessman like yourself. Right?”

Kreiger rattles off a string of profanities in Dutch. Knox doesn’t know them all, but recognizes one as a piece of female anatomy.

“Stop me when I’m wrong,” Knox says.

Kreiger simply stares back at Knox.

“Gerhardt?”

Kreiger pretends he doesn’t hear.

Knox takes a stapler off the desk, bends Kreiger’s head back while cuffing the man’s mouth. He punches a staple into the man’s forehead.

Kreiger’s cry sounds like a cough.

“Nod,” Knox says, placing the stapler to the man’s nose.

Kreiger nods vehemently.

“Better?”

Kreiger nods again.

Knox settles, straddling the ladder-back chair. Kreiger is crying.

“Oh, please,” Knox says. “Let’s skip the good parts, shall we?”

Kreiger nods obediently.

“You recruit some of your girls from the pot shops. The good-looking ones who are out of money.”

Kreiger hesitates. Knox reaches for the stapler.

“Yes,” Kreiger says.

“Provide them work.”

“Yes.”

“Get them off the streets.”

“Exactly!”

Knox is no stranger to such interrogations. A graduate of the Navy’s SERE course—Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape—one of just a handful of civilians to take the course, he knows both sides of the chair. He works to loosen up Kreiger by establishing a rapport. Surprisingly, even though this man knows what Knox is up to, the offer of camaraderie will overpower other instincts.

“What benefits one, benefits all,” Knox says.

“I couldn’t have said it better.”

“The man who runs the knot shop . . . the rugs . . .” Knox waits for Kreiger to supply the name. Allows his eyes to wander to the stapler.

“Berker Polat,” Kreiger says.

“Spelled?”

Kreiger spells it out for Knox.

“You . . . what? . . . Agent his goods.” It’s a statement.

Kreiger nods.

“You ship his rugs. You agent them, and ship them.”

“Correct.”

Knox weaves his fingers together to keep himself from using his fists. Feels his throat dry. “Polat uses child labor.”

“I don’t ask. Never have. Don’t want to know.”

“Of course you know,” Knox says. He seizes the stapler and sinks two staples into the man’s thigh. The sound of Kreiger screaming brings Rudolf-the-red-nosed bouncer banging on the office door. A perspiring and terrified Kreiger tells his man to go away and stay away.

Knox is feeling insanely good. He cautions himself, wondering if it’s the pot smoke hanging in the air. Knowing better.

“The girls, yes,” Kreiger says. “I have never been inside his shop. I have no knowledge of the conditions or the—”

“You sell the girls for him.”

Knox hadn’t noticed the ceiling fan, but the resulting silence emphasizes its lazy rotation, suspended from the overhead ridgepole.

“Careful,” Knox says, withdrawing the gun from the small of his back. “No more stapler.”

Kreiger tries to swallow. Between the marijuana and terror he doesn’t have a drop of saliva. He sounds like a toilet refusing to flush.

He nods.

“As sex slaves,” Knox says, his finger absentmindedly finding the trigger.

Kreiger’s shock is authentic. Knox knows this by how quickly it transforms into wide-eyed alarm.

“Is that what you think?” Kreiger would have spit if his mouth wasn’t so dry. “Sex? No! No!”

“You’re a charitable organization, I suppose. Putting those girls onto the ship so they can pursue higher education.”

The first takeaway is that Kreiger is surprised at the depth of Knox’s information. The second is that he’s determined to resist any admission of guilt given the gun in Knox’s hand.

“I’m a little short on time,” Knox says.

“I abhor child pornography, the kiddie sex trade. Berker does as well. In this we are together, he and I. It is true: some of the girls he takes against their will. I do not deny this. Others, many others, are recruited with their parents’ agreement. He runs a business. I do not deny this. I do not ask. But as to the girls—”

“The auctioning to Asian buyers.”

Kreiger’s astonishment is manifest by his sudden hyperventilating.

Knox is a glutton. Loves shocking him like this. Wishes Grace were here to share it with him. Thoughts of her and Dulwich remind him of the clock. He must keep a step ahead of Fahiz or the man will flee the city.

Knox makes a buzzing sound. “Time’s up.”

Kreiger rushes his words. “The girls who come of age, the girls who menstruate—Polat can’t abide them. He weeds them out—I don’t know how! I swear!—and removes them from his shop. Says the hormones and the mess are bad for business. Ten-to-twelve-year-olds—that’s his stable. The castoffs . . . Yes, it’s true. I auction them. Asian buyers. Yes. How you can possibly know this . . . but yes. But not for what you think! These buyers have been carefully vetted! It’s a very, very small list. The girls go into work as laborers, with the caveat they will never be sold into the sex trade.”

“That’s horseshit.”

“I swear it.”

“You can’t possibly know what becomes of them. You, of all people! You’re in the business.”

“Not children, not ever.”

“You sack of shit. This is how you justify it? Do you seriously have yourself fooled into believing this?”

“I vet these—”

“How? You follow up, I suppose. Visit Indonesia often, do you?” Knox realizes it doesn’t matter: inmates take a dim view of crimes against children.

“You have much of it right, Knox. I swear you do. But not this part!”

“Uh-huh.”

“Not the girls.”

“Right.”

“They leave here as skilled laborers. They are moved to the sewing shops. Athletics. Knockoffs. Good positions. Decent treatment!” He sucks in a lungful of air.

“The saddest part,” Knox says, “is if you actually believe that.”