Amsterdam is a famously tolerant city, but even so a grown man walking around trouserless was going to attract attention, so I swam and drifted as far as I could without contracting hypothermia, and finally hauled myself onto a moored houseboat. There was a light on inside or I’d have kicked a door or window in to look for clothing, but the last thing I could risk was another incident. So I disembarked and walked shoeless, bare-legged and with an utter absence of dignity, to my apartment.
The astonishing thing turned out to be the fact that I walked right past a beat cop resting on his bike, and he said nothing. Amsterdam cops were on high alert for an art thief, not an escaped lunatic in his underwear.
I slogged up the stairs to my apartment, acutely aware of the fact that I had, just nine days earlier, arrived similarly wet but minus only a shoe. One more round of this and the next time around I’d be stark naked.
I had left my key in my trousers and thus in the canal, so I knocked, loudly. Chante would be asleep by now, it had to be after one a.m. The caper had almost five more hours to run and I had no idea whether it was working. As soon as I’d had a warm shower and a room-temperature whisky I would be able to at least check mainstream media and Twitter, even if I dared not survey the accounts. But first: hot water, whisky and dry clothing.
I knocked again, thinking Chante was asleep and in mid-knock the door opened. It was opened by Tabasco, the guy I’d sprayed with my hot sauce mixture in the Rijksmuseum.
I saw past him and my heart stopped. Across the living room, Delia was sitting in a chair, ankles tied to the chair legs, hands behind her back, mouth stuffed with a napkin and secured by duct tape wrapped around her head.
Willy Pete stood behind her.
I could do one of two things: go in, or run away.
The decent, heroic thing would be to walk in, face the situation squarely, and hope for a deal to be struck, or at least stall until rescue arrived. Only there was no rescue coming. Also, decent and heroic were not the point, winning was the point and Rule Number One is never let the enemy write the narrative. Never follow the enemy’s plan.
So I didn’t do the decent, heroic thing, I did the smart thing: I ran.
I ran almost three feet before plowing straight into Lisp, the third member of the Ontario Crew. I ran into him and bounced back. He shoved me hard and I stumbled backward into Tabasco, who wrapped big arms around me, pinned as his fellow minion zip-tied my hands in front of me. Then Tabasco shoved me backward and swung a hard fist into the side of my head. My knees buckled and it was several seconds before I could see properly.
When the spinning geometric patterns subsided I saw that in addition to Willy, Tabasco and Lisp, there was a fourth person. A woman. Wachmeester Olivia DeKuyper, pride of the Koninklijke Marechaussee.
‘Oh,’ I said, being too weary, cold and defeated to think of something clever.
‘Are you drunk?’ DeKuyper demanded, turning her nose up at my wet, canal-smelling trouserlessness.
‘No. I just went for a swim. And frankly I could use a drink.’
‘Could you?’ Willy sneered. ‘Well, fuck you.’
‘Mind if I stand up?’ I asked this of the policewoman, who shrugged.
I struggled without the use of my hands, but got to my bare feet and without asking further permission headed for the sideboard where the whiskey beckoned to me. Hands secured in front I poured myself a glass of Talisker and drank half of it.
‘Anyone else?’ I asked, nodding at the bottle.
‘This is not a social call,’ DeKuyper said.
‘No?’
That earned me a punch in the kidneys from Lisp, which sent electric eels shooting up my spine and down my arms. It was a struggle not to collapse again, and I was proud that I held onto my glass.
‘We’re not really in the mood for bullshit,’ Willy Pete said by way of explanation.
‘Pity,’ I grated. ‘I’m so good at bullshit.’
‘We want the painting. Just the painting,’ DeKuyper said. ‘Give us the Vermeer and we will leave you alone, unharmed.’
‘I assume there’s an “or else” coming?’
‘Or else,’ Willy Pete said ominously. He grinned at me and produced a glass vial, a bit larger than the sort of thing used to package crack. He shook it and I saw that it contained water. Water and a few little, irregular pebbles, yellowish in color. ‘See these harmless-looking little pebbles? They’re nothing so long as they are submerged and not exposed to the air. But these are special pebbles, these. White phosphorus. And white phosphorus, when it is exposed to oxygen, will begin to grow warm and to smoke. It’s what they use for smoke grenades, you know. White phosphorus. Willy Pete.’
‘Yeah, I get the connection, Willy. But thanks for the exposition dump.’
‘Leave white phosphorus in the air and it will burn all by itself. Spontaneous combustion.’ The man had knowledge and was determined to share it. ‘It will burn and there’s not a single thing that will stop it burning. Put it on flesh and …’ He pulled his turtleneck aside, exposing flesh like melted wax. ‘Painful, too.’
‘Ah, so we’re doing torture,’ I said.
He shrugged. DeKuyper looked uncomfortable, but not uncomfortable enough to do anything.
And Delia? Not happy. She was gagged and bound, but it all felt like one of those movies where the baddie has Bruce Banner all tied up. Agent D was itching to do violence.
‘There will be no need for torture if you simply hand over the Vermeer,’ Willy said.
‘No can do, I’m afraid.’
Willy made a sarcastic tsk-tsk sound. ‘Yeah, I thought you might say that. And if I threaten to kill you?’
‘I’ll point out that if I’m dead I can’t tell you much.’
‘Exactly. So here’s what I’m going to do. See, I am going to place one of these little pebbles of white phosphorus on Agent Delacorte’s head. And then we wait for a while till it combusts. Or, if you’re impatient, I can speed things along a bit by lighting it. After which it will begin to burn down through her hair. And then through the thin flesh of her scalp. And then it will begin to melt and crack the bone of her skull. Then, Mr Mitre, the real damage starts, because it will just keep burning and burning and it will melt its way through the gray matter, burning away Agent Delacorte’s brain, destroying memories and abilities and perhaps depriving her of speech. The pain would be hideous and—’
‘Not really,’ I interrupted.
‘What?’
‘It won’t be that painful. I mean, the human brain has no pain receptors. You can stick pins in a brain, or drop bits of white phosphorus on it all day long and the brain won’t feel a thing. I mean, the rest, sure, it would definitely make a mess of her brain, but it wouldn’t be a bunch of screaming, it’d be more like, you know, Daisy.’
It had been no empty boast to claim skill at the spinning of bullshit. There’s an old saying among lawyers: If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither on your side, pound the table. My own rather less elegant version goes, If you don’t like the story, write a different one.
‘More … Daisy?’ DeKuyper frowned confusion at Willy who wasn’t so sure he understood, either.
‘Oh, come on, you guys haven’t seen 2001: A Space Odyssey? You know, the part where Dave is pulling processors out of the HAL 9000? And HAL sings “Daisy”? But slower as each processor is removed? ‘“Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do. I’m half crazy, all for the love—”’
‘Shut the fuck up!’ Willy yelled and I imagine he’d have liked one or more of his henchpeople to punch me, but they’d become caught up in the story.
‘He’s right,’ Tabasco said, nodding vigorously. ‘That’s in the movie.’
I turned to him. ‘It’s a masterpiece. One of the greatest movies of all time. Don’t you agree?’
‘Stop wasting time,’ Willy snarled. ‘Give me the Vermeer!’
All through this my thoughts were at least partly on Chante. Where the hell was she? Had they hurt her? Would I find her lying dead in her bedroom? Delia’s laser eyes were intense but not conveying anything helpful.
‘So a pebble of white phosphorus, how long will it keep burning? I mean, after it melts down through her brain, what happens next? Does it drop into her sinuses? Does it burn down through her soft palette and into her mouth? Because then … I mean, if I were writing the scene … then she’d spit the thing at you.’ Now Delia’s eyes seemed to be telling me something, but I was pretty sure it was something like, what the fuck are you babbling about? I didn’t know what the fuck I was babbling about, I was stalling. Stalling and signaling indifference because that’s the thing with a hostage, you have to devalue them. What Willy expected me to do was plead for Delia. Well … no.
‘Or maybe,’ I said excitedly. ‘Oh oh, this is even better. There’s something flammable or even explosive. Right? Like dynamite or Molotov cocktails. The white phosphorus burns down, into her mouth, she spits it into the dynamite and boom. It’s a sacrifice play.’
‘What the fuck are you … Shut the fuck up and—’ Willy began.
‘Oh wait, I have another idea! OK, now follow me on this.’ They were. All four of them were listening like children waiting on the next development in a bedtime story. ‘First of all, it would require a fairly detailed notion of brain physiology, but once the white phosphorus has burned through the skull, she could tilt her head this way or that and sort of guide the path of the burning white phosphorus.’
‘Why are we listening to this—’ the dirty cop interrupted, but then she saw the puzzled look on Willy’s face and fell silent. I had caught Willy’s interest.
‘The thing is,’ I babbled on. ‘The victim – agent Delacorte here – could, if she knew enough about brain physiology, sort of aim the burning pebble to annihilate one kind of memory, or shut down some portion of her brain, which would, might, have the effect of enhancing the activity in other parts of her brain. I’m not saying superpowers would be involved, but you can’t be sure.’
Through all this Delia was not happy. She had blood running down the side of her neck from where someone had smashed her with enough force to render her incapable of resisting as she was zip-tied to a chair. I avoided making eye contact, any expression of concern, even non-verbal, would weaken my position. And my position was plenty weak as it was. Weak to the point of being gossamer.
‘Very interesting,’ DeKuyper said, thinking she was clever and calling my bluff. ‘So shall we put it to the test?’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘You’re going to want to move her.’ I pointed. ‘She’s awfully close to that smoke alarm. And you all know what burning hair is like.’
Four sets of eyes went to the smoke alarm. No, they had not thought of that. They were not an imaginative bunch, they were more the direct-action kind of folks, to whit, the placing of a gun barrel against the side of my head. This was Tabasco. But I wasn’t worried, he wasn’t going to shoot me.
‘Go ahead, genius, pull the trigger and then toddle off and explain to Daniel Isaac that you failed to get him his Vermeer. Failed despite what I’m guessing was a healthy up-front payment and a whole lot of expenses.’
‘How about I just shoot the bitch, then?’
‘I don’t think Sergeant DeKuyper would … oh, you mean the FBI agent. Go ahead, shoot her. You still won’t get your painting, will you? Because as soon as you kill her you’re right back to threatening me. And see, here’s the thing: the four of you can’t walk away from this and leave either the Feeb or me alive, so let’s cut the bullshit and talk business.’
I waited to see if any of them would argue that point but, sadly, no. We were all in agreement that the Ontario Crew, plus their corrupt cop, would need both Delia and me dead.
‘So, here’s where we are,’ I said. ‘You have empty threats, I have the Vermeer, we all know Isaac’s behind this, we all know that at least some of you have worked for the CIA, and the CIA may be fine with lots of shit, probably including the murder of an Irishman in a dark alley, but I don’t think they’re fine with either torturing or murdering an FBI agent. No, you are way off the reservation on this, which means you have to cover your tracks and Agent Delacorte and I are tracks.’
‘There are lots of ways to die,’ Willy said. ‘There’s quick and painless, and there’s slow and agonizing.’
‘Kind of a lousy choice there, Willy. May I call you Willy? See, here’s my guess. You’ve been on the phone or on a secure app, whatever, talking to the Chipster. That’s what I call Isaac, do you think he’d mind? No? Anyway, the Chipster would have been furious. What the fuck is this shit, he’d have said in his reedy, gasping old man with COPD voice, “How did you let someone else steal my Vermeer?” Right?’
No answer necessary. That was exactly what had happened.
‘And you said, “Just hold on, moneybags, we’ll get you the painting. Don’t pay the ransom.” But Chip was like, “Hey, I was going to pay you fifty million. I can pay this thief off with just a tenth of that, and I won’t risk the Vermeer.” Right? Did I miss anything?’
Willy’s silence was confirmation.
‘And now, the clock is ticking down. What is it now, two a.m.?’
DeKuyper glanced at her watch and scowled.
‘Four hours left. Tick-tock. Four hours for you to convince me to hand over a painting which, should I actually hand it over, would mean getting a bullet to the back of the head a minute later. You see the problem. Right? Right. The cool thing is, I actually have a solution.’
None of them wanted to ask. To ask was to concede that I was now running the meeting. DeKuyper stared daggers at Willy. The other two carefully avoided making eye contact at all, but it was clear that they wanted to hear the solution. We were in what used to be called a Mexican stand-off, though I imagine someone’s come up with a less ethnically offensive term. A stand-off which, if nothing changed radically, would leave old man Isaac Vermeerless and the Ontario Crew scrambling to repay whatever earnest money Isaac had fronted them.
‘Just for our amusement,’ Willy huffed, ‘tell us.’
I shrugged. ‘It’s simple. Look, you don’t give a damn about the Vermeer and neither do I. In what, a little less than four hours? Yeah, in just less than four hours a timed incendiary device goes off and the Vermeer is destroyed. Live, on YouTube. Well, none of us care about the art, but we do all care about money. Money is rather the point, isn’t it? You had your eyes on a massive haul, fifty very large. I mean, fucking hell. Fifty! But that fifty million is gone now. Poof! Not happening. So now we are down to what could happen.’
I would like to point out that all through this I was standing in my underpants (black, three-inch boxers) and bare feet and stinking of canal water. I heard about an actor once who played all the way through Macbeth with a broken ankle. This was kind of like that.
‘Here’s what could happen,’ I said, and gave DeKuyper a saucy wink. ‘What could happen is that Isaac ponies up the five million. And I tell you where to find the Vermeer which you move – I assume you planned that part carefully – to Isaac’s secret museum for him to drool over as he gasps his corrupt last breath.’
‘You think that old bastard will pay us out if he’s already paid you five million? He’ll tell us to fuck off with whatever spare change he happens to have in his wall safe.’
‘Maybe,’ I admitted. ‘But that’ll be better than what you’ve got now. I mean, you’ll have the five million.’
‘We’ll have the … what?’
‘The five million. See, as soon as I have it in my account, I’ll move it to yours. Well, all but half a million. Because that half a mill is what we’re putting in the account of Agent Delia Delacorte.’
That stunned ’em. Stunned Delia, too, judging by the furious glare.
‘See, the thing is, we need mutual assured destruction. Like the cold war. Mutual assured destruction. If Delacorte opens her mouth, we leak details of the half million. Now, maybe the Bureau buys her explanation, but probably not, they’re suspicious people those Feebs. In any case they won’t buy her explanation, certainly not after this catastrophic failure on her part. They’ll investigate and find, surprise! that Delacorte asked for this assignment. Asked. And then a half mill shows up in her name.’
Four sets of eyes turned to Delia who strained angrily against her bonds, putting on quite a show. I wondered if it was genuine or whether she was acting the part I needed her to play. Either way, it was effective.
‘And what about you, Mitre? What do you get out of all this?’
‘Me? Oh, I keep whatever cash comes in that’s not from Isaac. I’m a man of simple needs. You get four and a half mill, Agent D gets half, Isaac gets his painting, and I get whatever money all the other good, art-loving citizens of the world have donated.’
DeKuyper shook her head. ‘It will not work. The FBI will know that money sent to Delacorte’s account is an attempt at discrediting her.’
‘Maybe,’ I allowed. ‘But not if the money went to a private offshore account she’s never disclosed.’
Blank astonishment in Delia’s eyes, which I hoped no one else noticed.
‘In fact,’ I said, ‘just to prove my bona fides, how about I make a small contribution of my own. Say ten thousand euros?’ I mutely held up my zip-tied hands. At a nod from the bemused Mr Pete, Lisp used a wickedly unpleasant-looking knife to cut the tie.
Then, DeKuyper watched over my shoulder as I opened a bank app, tapped in passwords, and transferred ten thousand euros from an account I controlled, to another account I controlled.
No, of course the second account wasn’t in Delia’s name, why would I give her my money?
‘You boys – and lady – actually believe I’d be dealing with an FBI agent and not have a way to compromise her?’ I laughed and shook my head ruefully. It may be the oldest con in the modern world. I mean, back in caveman days I’m sure the cons involved bones and grubs and whatnot, but in the modern era it’s all about money. Money, money, money. This was a variation on what’s sometimes called the in-and-in: the conman appears to put his own money into the scheme.
I prayed to the Great God of Grifters that these three did not know anything of the game. The ex-soldiers were not the big concern. There are exceptions, but as a rule there are few suckers quite like a man in uniform who is not in uniform. If you can’t con a soldier or sailor on leave you’re just not trying.
DeKuyper was the more likely problem. As a cop she’d have seen grifts before. Maybe. Then again, maybe not, she wasn’t a street cop, she was part of an elite. I wondered how they’d gotten to her. You can’t just go around fronting random cops and offering them bribes. Sure, you could do that in New Orleans, but this was Amsterdam.
But as DeKuyper watched the little animated GIF showing money flying from one account to another she seemed fascinated. The page also showed something else I wanted her to see: my balance in the first account, which was just shy of a million. People respect people with money. You’d think after decades of banks and politicians and billionaires exposed as cheats, regular folks would stop assuming that people with money don’t steal. But no, folks will still insist on confusing money, IQ and virtue – three very different things.
‘There you go,’ I announced and closed the app. ‘Ten grand in our trussed-up Feeb’s secret account. Agent Delacorte now has a choice.’ I walked up to Delia, swaggered a bit actually, playing my part. ‘Now you have a choice, Delacorte. Keep the ten. Keep the five hundred that will be along shortly. Your account isn’t compromised, not as far as I know, anyway. I only know it because I creeped your phone while you went to the bathroom last week.’
She glared, but Delia is not a stupid woman, rather far from it, and she had figured out my game. Anger, defiance and then, just a bit of softening, a downward look as she considered.
‘Your choice is simple, Delacorte. Really very simple. On the one hand, you run to your bosses and claim you were used, which, when you consider the context of this whole fiasco, probably means your career is already a bit fucked. Or you keep a nice little nest egg and no one is the wiser. The Vermeer ends up with Isaac, I make money, the Crew here makes some money, and you make some money. You report that your effort to block the theft failed. Just that.’
I resolutely maintained eye contact with Delia. I was hoping Willy and DeKuyper were looking at her as well, it would mean they were buying it.
‘So, are you in and wealthy, Delacorte, or are you going to fuck yourself?’
Delia tried to speak, but there was the small matter of the gag.
‘Let her speak,’ I told Willy. And he began to unwind the tape around her head.
When I was a kid I used to watch the old Charlie Brown specials. There was always a time when Snoopy would have a little interlude of happy dancing. That’s what I felt like doing, because as long as nothing else went wrong, I had won.
Delia, may the blessings of a just God rain down on her, did the exactly right thing. Once the tape was loose she spit out the gag and said, ‘Half a million my ass. If I’m selling my soul it will be for the full seven figures. I want a million.’
‘Fuck you,’ Willy shot back.
And we were off to the races: the bargaining had begun. The consensus seemed to be that if anyone was making up the rest of Delia’s piece, it should be me. Willy’s logic was impeccable. ‘You’ve already cost me enough, Mitre. Keep pushing and I may decide to hell with it and put both of you down.’
So DeKuyper watched again as the animated GIF flew $490,000 – five hundred minus the ten I’d already transferred – from account A to account B.
I transcribed the number of Delia’s supposed account and gave it to Willy.
‘And now,’ I intoned, ‘We’re all in this together. No one says a word, now or ever. As Benjamin Franklin said, we must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly we shall all hang separately.’