I HURRIED TO GET TO WORK ON TIME FOR A WITNESS HEARING scheduled for nine a.m. at the courthouse. Always aware of the risk that the distance I have to walk to my car entails, I walk down the stairs cautiously. I’ll never know what will happen at the end of those stairs. I’m always prepared for a gunman waiting for me there. Not that I can do anything about it; I have to use those steps no matter what.
If the gunman’s there, I’ll always be too late. It’s just a weak spot that is hard to avoid. Once you’re in the car, you have a chance, although that also depends on the car you drive.
I hurry to my car, which is quite a ways away because I’d had to park around the corner. No spots in front of the house.
The more meters I have to walk to my car, the more vulnerable I am, and the higher the risk I run, especially now that I can’t see my car. If the car is on my block or in front of my door, at least I can see if I’m being waylaid. If the car is around the corner, that’s a lot more difficult. I know that a gunman would know the direction I walk to my car. Your car is a focal point, just like your house. Draw a line between those two points and you’ve got your walking direction. Turning a corner makes you more vulnerable, you don’t know who’ll be waiting for you.
I’m in a hurry, and you can’t afford to be if you need the time to adapt to the situation.
This particular Monday in August 2015, everything’s going wrong. Aware of the danger that may lie around the corner, I first run to the other side of the street so I can see the block my car is parked on before I walk there. My car itself is out of sight; it’s hidden behind a big bus. That’s not good, and my first thought is to wonder if this was done on purpose. Has someone deliberately blocked the view of my car? And what, or rather who, is in that bus?
I’m halfway to my car, and I see a person who doesn’t fit in with the street. He’s just standing there. From my side, I can see that he’s looking at my car.
I slow down and walk closer to the houses. He hasn’t seen me coming yet; at least, he doesn’t act like he has. I disappear into one of the many porches. It doesn’t feel right. I’m sure he was standing there waiting for me.
I don’t want to wait on the porch for too long, in case he did see me and will come for me. I consider ringing the bell of one of the apartments in the porches, to pretend I don’t feel well and to ask for a doctor. The chance that a poshly dressed and unwell woman asking for help won’t be let in is not so big.
But I’m in a hurry as well, that damned hurry. I need to get to that hearing. Maybe I’m seeing ghosts, and what kind of explanation will I give to the judge, clerk, and witness for my arriving late? Explain to them that I thought I was going to be killed? That I had to make sure not to take any risk of getting shot? How would that look? I can’t very well say that, now, can I?
What should I do? I can’t go to my car, that’s for sure. I decide to walk back to the corner I came from. Meanwhile I call Sonja to ask where she is.
“I’m on my way to you, to clean your house,” she says.
“Can you come pick me up?” I ask. “Someone is standing near my car.”
“Of course. I’m on my way.”
“How much longer?” I ask. “I’m in a hurry; I need to get to court.”
“Ten minutes,” she says.
“Okay, please hurry, I may just make it in time. Drive up to the entrance of Coffee Company. There’s a lot of activity there, and I’ll just get in and you drive straight on.”
To be safe, I call Sandra. We always warn each other when we see something suspicious.
“San, I have this guy standing near my car. I don’t trust it. Son’s picking me up. But you be careful, too, when you walk out your door.”
“I will,” she says.
Sonja’s pulling up, and I get in. “It can’t go on like this.”
I am just in time for the hearing. It turns out the witness wasn’t delivered by the police, so I can just go home. All that stress for nothing. To me, it’s the last straw.
If I want a chance to survive, I have to live like he did, the way he survived for so long.
“They have tried to kill me a hundred times,” he told me last year. He probably exaggerates, but I knew there were people who at least had planned on popping him.
Thomas van der Bijl, who openly said to Teeven that he couldn’t manage to have him killed.
A group of people, among them Kees Houtman, who tried and failed during Christmas 2005, but were still at it.
Willem Endstra, who had tried through several different hitmen, attempts he told me about himself, when they were pending.
That time Srdjan “Serge” Miranovic’s son came to see him in Kobe’s Restaurant with a loaded gun, an attempt at retribution for his father’s death.
That one time someone (probably hired by the Mieremet clan) had actually tried to kill him on Westerstraat when he was with my mother. He meant to report it.
Or that time we were in a restaurant on Van Woustraat and this guy with dead eyes reached for his pocket.
I truly believe he has escaped death on many occasions. So often that it probably feels like a hundred times to him.
He had survived all of them, and he was helped by his practice of having no regular patterns, no regular place to go to, no fixed address but various places where he stayed: in Huizen, in the house a doctor friend rented for him; at the Newport Hotel, where he stayed with Nicky; in Utrecht at Mandy’s and Maike’s places; in Amsterdam, in the western part with Marieke, a new young flame; and in the Jordaan, at Jill’s. And then there was Sandra’s house. And Mom’s.
He could not be linked to one residence. He had no normal job with one fixed address. He met in public bars and restaurants where it was so crowded that no gunman would ever open fire there. He never made an appointment far in advance; he would always change or cancel plans at the last minute if the feeling wasn’t right.
No car in front of the door, but a garage where Sandra’s son, the one he hated so much, had to take his scooter out for him when he needed it and put it back in at night. He wouldn’t do that himself; it was too dangerous. And when the scooter was in the garage, no one could see if he was there.
So waylaying him was not an option. He only had a phone to call, not to be called. He was unreachable by anyone, and, with the battery out, not traceable.
With me, it’s a different story. I live in my one apartment, where I always sleep and have to leave from; my car always in front of or near the house or my office. You know where I am. And most of all, my normal job, my fixed office address, where anyone can find me at any time of day.
That aspect of my life in particular forced me to adapt to a pattern I couldn’t escape. I didn’t have to sleep at home, and using other means of transportation wasn’t a problem, either, but my job—that could kill me. I couldn’t cancel or postpone hearings at the last minute. They were planned months in advance and were fixed. These were often cases where clients were detained, and postponement meant that they would be held longer, maybe needlessly. That was in contradiction to the responsibilities of my job as a lawyer.
I couldn’t arrange for my visits to prison at the last moment, or visit my clients without warning. It doesn’t work that way. They know when I’m coming. I prepare cases with my clients; it’s a collaboration that takes planning, so everybody knows where I am. Not only my clients, but also fellow prisoners, their families, and the prison staff. All of these people have scheduled contact with me, and it takes just one hungry person who wants to make a buck to give me away to a gunman.
It’s impossible to be a criminal lawyer without running into people who have dealings with Wim.
And what if Wim comes out of the ESP and goes back to the Penitentiary Institution, where he can chat with other guys? Guys he can easily use to his benefit? Guys who are often a bit mentally handicapped in some way and can be easily persuaded to do the weirdest stuff for their idol?
Things would only get more dangerous. I love my job. But it also connects me to a world that I know gives ample opportunity to track me down and give me away. I had already had one scare at work.
This was when it had just come out that we were testifying, and it involved a client with a certain background who could be dangerous to me. That day I was in a hearing with him, and I got a very uneasy feeling.
To be on the safe side, I wore my bulletproof vest in the car. The time I was to arrive was known, and it would be very easy to approach me on the stairs of the courthouse. As a lawyer I don’t have to pass through the scanner, so when I’m inside, in the toilet, I can replace my vest with a tunic. After the hearing, I replaced the tunic with a vest again, that I wore invisibly under my clothes, so that I could walk back to my car at least sort of protected. Nothing happened.
But fear of some professional situations made it hard for me to function. If some clients wanted to come to a hearing against my advice and would not come in, that made me suspicious. Then I would think: Do you want to point me out so that after the hearing I’m an easy target?
When I made an appointment outside my office or court, I would change the location just before, or would go there half an hour early to complicate the situation. I had to be on guard. But I grew tired of it, and it took all the pleasure out of my job. And I knew that the regular pattern imposed by my work would be the end of me. I didn’t want to give up. I wanted to keep on working, but it was irresponsible.
That same day, the day Sonja drove me to the hearing after I saw the strange man standing at my car, I texted my partner, with whom I’d worked for almost twenty years, and told him I was quitting.
My partner, with whom I had celebrated Christmas and New Year’s Eve for twenty years. My partner, who’d been through everything with me—Cor’s death, the prosecutions, my role as a witness—and who’s always been there for me. My partner, whom I had never once kissed on the cheek, nor had he kissed me on my cheek, because we functioned as men with each other. And we were both against unsolicited and above all unwanted physical contact. We both detested socializing, and if we really couldn’t refuse, we’d go to a party together. My partner, the only person who’s never lied to me or anybody else; you can’t even catch him telling a white lie. It’s almost corny, how trustworthy he is. My partner, whom I texted that I was unable to speak to him, because after reaching this decision, if I heard his voice, I could only cry.
Twenty years together, every day, and now nothing. Being alone. Again, my brother was dictating my life. The person who—next to my family—was most valuable and dear to me, I had lost now, too.
That same Monday, I informed my colleagues and my secretary, who had become my friend. We cried together, afraid of the inevitable separation, angry at the unfairness of the misery laid upon us.
I couldn’t even face my partner after my decision without my heart exploding from grief. Seeing him at our office, knowing that we wouldn’t sit together anymore, made my stomach turn.
That afternoon I left the office and he walked past me, both of us silent, not able to say anything meaningful, till we turned around and embraced each other. We were both sobbing.
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you, too,” I said, and then we parted and walked on quickly.
The grief was too immense to touch, or to even come close to.
I had to get out of there quickly so as not to succumb. We were never emotional, no matter what kind of drama took place—we both thought it too complicated. The only way we dealt with sorrow was by working even harder so we couldn’t think about the pain. But I was way past that.
Tuesday, I handed over all my cases. Thursday, I did my last hearing. That Friday I was unemployed for the first time in my life. Saturday and Sunday, I emptied my office.
Now I live surrounded by bulletproof windows and doors. I’ve lost not just my job, but a part of my identity.