The Library of Forbidden Books

Chapter 13

Agent Patrick Smith chose the next vantage point carefully. Surveillance worked best when the spy changed his routine completely from day to day, unlike the mark that was being scrutinized. Different spots from where to observe at differing times assured that no suspicious activity could be detected by security personnel or the occupants of the house. Better yet was when the spy had equipment that could pierce the cloak of darkness or pick up heat signatures, thereby avoiding having to round obstacles and risk discovery — and Sam Cleave had the necessary equipment.

It was just before 9:30pm when the drizzle came down on Rotterdam, gradually drenching everything in its deceptively meager downpour. Through the light rain, the lights of houses looked like disembodied eyes faintly glowing with no detail to guide the eye on the dimensions of the setting. Sam would kill for a smoke, but he had to focus on preparing his nest for the evening. He had borrowed Anneke’s vehicle for the evening, as she had no obligations the following day and Paddy would need their car to tail Roodt to the meeting.

“You ready?” Paddy panted as he jumped into Sam’s passenger seat, his short hair clinging to his face in wet points that dripped tiny tears every now and then.

“Shit, it is really coming down, isn’t it?” Sam noted. “And yet it is dead quiet, this sprinkle. Like ghost rain.”

“Aye, but it’s real enough to wet my entire head just after I washed my bloody hair,” Paddy answered with an irritated shudder from the cold that gripped him. Sam sniggered and shook his head. “Sam, I need you to watch carefully for any activity while I’m gone. If anything happens, contact Anneke. She is leaving her comms on at all times, but I will have my device switched off. The last thing we want while I am sneaking about among those snakes is for my phone to ring, yeah?”

“Affirmative,” Sam agreed. “Paddy, I know you know what you’re doing, but please just be careful, all right? You’re my best mate, man. I don’t want to scoop you up with a dustpan when your locator leads me to you.”

Paddy smiled dryly, “Oh, Sammy. I didn’t know you cared.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Sam scoffed between humor and sincere concern in the midst of his friend’s mockery.

Paddy laughed, “I’ll watch my back, Sam. No worries. Before you know it I’ll be back with everything we need. Can I borrow your camera? I need to document every move over there.”

“What kind of camera do you need?” Sam asked.

“Preferably one that shoots video but is small enough to handle like a phone. I saw you using something like that a few days ago,” Paddy said.

“Ah!” Sam nodded, remembering the device Patrick was referring to. He fumbled in his large, shapeless sports bag and pulled out his Vivitar DVR 925 high definition camcorder and slammed it into Paddy’s palm. After a brief tutorial about how to operate the intricate technology, Paddy packed it in his coat pocket. They sat in awkward silence for a few minutes, apparently listening to the rain accumulating into solid droplets that clanged off the side of the car and dripped hard on its roof from the sagging leaf tips of stretching overhead branches.

Below them, through the spooky haze and glowing orbs of light, they noticed movement on the Roodt premises. Lights went off in certain windows and on in others until they could see Roodt and his driver emerge from the front door. Crouched over, the two men rushed to the large, black, luxury sedan waiting in the driveway.

“Okay, that’s my cue, Sam,” Paddy said suddenly, decimating the peace in the dark car. He opened the door and stepped out, briefly bending into the car to talk to Sam. “Be careful. Don’t let the lack of movement fool you and draw you out. Stay put, all right?”

“Aye, I won’t move unless they aim an RPG at me, I promise,” Sam half jested with a wink, hiding his welling anxiety. “Godspeed, Paddy.”

Without another word his friend closed the door and made for the other car, taking care not to switch on his beams before he had safely come into the same street as the departing vehicle below them down the street. Sam’s stomach turned. No matter how many times he had been in these situations, it was a nervousness that was impossible to lure into false comfort. Every time he had his eye on the enemy he felt agitated by the possibilities of his demise. By now he had learned that things could go really bad, really quickly, and he refused to ignore the daily awareness of his mortality.

Two pairs of headlights swam lazily along the invisible road below Sam’s parking spot, where Paddy’s vehicle casually weaved in behind Roodt’s, leaving a comfortable distance between them to avert alarm from the black car ahead. Sam’s dark eyes stretched wide open to keep his vision sharp on the two cars until they finally disappeared in the haunting white mist of the night rain, leaving him alone in the dark to his own task.

Finally he could smoke, Sam thought, and lit up a fag. He rolled down his window just enough for the smoke to escape without admitting the wet spray from outside. By the glimmer of the golden orange burn at the end of his cigarette Sam could see just how much his hands were really shaking.

“Get your shit together, Sam,” he told himself out loud, exhaling the blue tufts from his lungs. For some unexplainable reason the morphing smoke reminded him of the first day he set eyes on Nina when they stood outside smoking, both finding the insufferable ass-kissing of the faculty and benefactors tedious. He recalled the cold breath from Salisbury Crags whipping at their coats and hair as they stood outside the then newly acquired and mollycoddled Braxfield Tower.

That day he would never have dreamed that the two of them would ever become so close, so familiar. Neither of them ever thought that they would endure so much toil together after billionaire playboy Dave Purdue would bring together on that fateful expedition party to Antarctica to seek out Ice Station Wolfenstein. Sam wondered what had become of Purdue after he was delivered to the council after returning from their excursion to look for Atlantis in Madeira almost a year ago.

Then Nina’s face blessed his mind’s eye. Her perpetual scowl, her dark eyes and hair, her angry beauty, and the way she chewed her pens just like he did. Her voice had abandoned his memory by now, a pity. Sam wished he could hear it just once more, but he dared not contact her again, at least not until she had made up her own mind to find direction for her tumultuous and indecisive affections.

“I miss you, lassie,” he whispered over the filter of his smoke, pursing his lips one last time to exhaust it. “Hope you’re safe, wherever you ran away to.”

Something caught Sam’s eye as he flicked the butt from the narrow slit in the top of the window. At the Roodt residence there was a commotion inside Jaap’s office, seen by Sam as shadows moving behind the curtain in the well-lit room. Two figures peaked and sank, heaved and stretched over the illuminated square like characters on a projector, the folds of the drapes warping their shapes so that he could not discern their identities or number.

He used his strong camera lens to zoom in through the shroud of rain. Sam watched the hectic dance of the black silhouettes. Unable to see properly he tapped into the sound feed, but it yielded only white noise, crackle, and the occasional half word from Jaap’s young wife. There was a man’s voice coming through, but it literally only merited a syllable with long intervals, not good enough by any stretch for evidence or review.

“Goddammit,” Sam sighed. The weather was disturbing the satellite link, no doubt, and it presented a costly inconvenience. The problem had to be corrected, and promptly. Without the audio, and now lacking visuals of definite activity, the time spent on this stakeout would be useless, not to mention a steep waste of time. Sam knew his quiet, concealed perch was over and he had to somehow fix the connection by getting nearer to the residence to manually assess the situation by means of wireless handheld devices that would record the goings on in the interim until the weather cleared up a bit for the primary surveillance to recover.

Sam stalked through the wet, cold darkness, using his IR lens to make his way through the pitch-dark spots of the generous plant and tree areas where his naked eye could not guide him. Toward the perimeter of the premises, Sam could not help but feel a somber hand clench around his chest, something that felt very much like the portending of doom as he stole through the scratching claws of the wooden giants towering about him. His boots sank deep into the tended soil under the trees, but the journalist kept his urging complaints inside his head while he wanted to cuss out loud at the discomfort of muddy mush oozing onto his feet.

Falling over roots under cover of foliage that prevented the IR from picking up their presence, Sam ground his teeth in frustration every time he stumbled with his knees mired in the frigid mud, trying not to damage the delicate equipment in the process. The house came into view before him, and, as it did, he could hear the voices clearer on his earpiece. From Paddy’s portable audio recorder that Sam used for this special circumstance, he could hear three voices — two men and a woman.

Jaap’s wife was definitely the source of the female voice, but the other two men spoke very occasionally and, when they did, the same interference that provoked his investigation would scramble their voices into a molten mess of sonic disturbance. The only way Sam could tell them apart was a tone difference they exhibited. One sounded like an average male voice while the other was considerably deeper, making it nearly impossible to hear what he was saying.

In the escalating whistle of the wind that battered Sam, it was almost imperceptible, reduced to a mumbling. He was only too grateful that it was all being recorded, so even though he could not figure out who was present and what they discussed, it would be on the recording for later evaluation. Sam sat tight outside the office window, much as he did before with Paddy. But the rain pelted him and his fingers ached at the torment of his burning skin, stiffening his hands in their position as his teeth inadvertently began to clatter.

Jesus, I hope Paddy is having a better night than me, he thought as he balled up his body to muster any warmth he could while waiting for them to leave the room.

Finally the light went out. Sam breathed a heavy sigh of relief. He cowered through the trees to return to the warm safety of his vehicle before they could see him. Sam fled stealthily uphill toward the end of the driveway where it merged with the street, taking care to stay under the cover of the trees as he did. Behind him he heard a car start and it jolted his muscles into overdrive to propel him forward quicker, but the car’s headlights almost found his heel and Sam dove into the adjacent bushes to avert detection. Under the blackness of the tall oak tree where he crouched, he waited, frozen still as one of the rocks in the rock garden surrounding him.

As the silver BMW glided past him on its way to the neck of the road where the paving met the tarmac, Sam used the night-vision setting on his camera to make one final attempt at seeing who had stayed behind in Jaap Roodt’s house. Through the passenger window the driver’s face appeared and as the car passed slowly uphill Sam’s lens caught the profile of the passenger in the backseat.

“Holy shit!” Sam said to himself in the rain, his eyes fixed on the image in the lens. His mouth fell open and his heart skipped several beats, erratically jumping in his chest from guilt and wariness. “It’s Purdue!”