The red light district in Amsterdam is in De Wallen, the oldest part of the city, and is, to the surprise of many visitors, one of the safest areas for tourists to wander because of the proliferation of security cameras and a larger-than-usual police presence. It attracts tourists who come to gawp at the goods on offer, the almost-naked girls – and in some streets the almost-naked boys who look remarkably like almost-naked girls – sitting in the lighted windows waiting for trade. Most of the tourists just walk the streets peering into the windows, looking surreptitiously at the garish displays of costumes, unusual equipment and devices, magazines and DVDs for sale in the numerous sex shops, glancing at the images displayed outside the buildings that host live sex shows on small stages, and cautiously taking pictures of the girls – photography being banned in these streets – with the cameras in their mobile phones. It’s one of the places in Amsterdam, along with the churches and museums and cafes and restaurants and all the other more conventional attractions, that are on the typical itinerary of almost every tourist.
The tourists tend to visit what is often and incorrectly referred to as ‘Canal Strasse’ in packs and during the day, but there are other people who prowl these streets, usually in the afternoons and evenings, almost always alone, and who haven’t come to take in the sights but to engage with the girls or the boys on a more direct and personal level: to touch and feel and experience them in the most intimate possible fashion, not just to look. Some head straight for a particular girl, but most seem to check out the available talent before making a decision and then they slip unobtrusively through the appropriate door, after which the curtains are closed on that window for as long as the transaction takes.
For the punters, it’s a fairly safe experience, because the girls almost always insist on using a condom – those that offer to go bareback are best avoided, obviously – and they are medically checked on a regular basis for any infections. And of course it’s anonymous. The girls have no interest in the true identity of any of their clients, only in the contents of their wallets, and as far as the men are concerned the girls are just there to provide a service – very probably a service they can’t get at home – that’s readily available, for a modest fee, in the small and anonymous bedrooms of De Wallen.
It was late afternoon when a stocky, slightly untidy man walked down one of the linking roads that gave access to the main part of the red light district and turned north to follow the eastern side of the canal that bisected it. He didn’t look like most of the Johns who frequented the area, who often appeared slightly furtive, glancing round to see if they knew anyone – or, more importantly if anyone knew them – as they selected the working girl who would benefit financially, if in no other way, from an acquaintance measured in a bare handful of minutes. This man appeared to know exactly where he was going, and to be completely uninterested in any of the other browsers and pedestrians on the street.
In fact, this appearance was misleading, because in reality he was taking a keen interest in the people around him, but he was checking them out surreptitiously, looking out for not anyone in particular, but more a particular type of person. A person who was not wandering the streets by the canal looking for the cheap titillation provided by the sight of the available prostitutes, nor seeking the instant gratification that could be provided behind the closed curtains of one of the bedrooms. A person, in short, who was on the street for a different reason.
The stocky man’s destination wasn’t one of the illuminated windows and the illicit pleasures on display, or not directly, because Paul Richter was himself in De Wallen on business of a very different kind. Instead, he crossed the canal to the west side and walked into one of the bars there. His choice of drinking establishment was not random. He was there in that place on that day and at that time for a very specific reason.
At that hour of the afternoon, the serious drinkers hadn’t yet appeared, and apart from a young couple sitting at a table towards the back of the bar, heads close together and giggling at some shared secret in a conversation that looked as if it would end up in a nearby hotel room sooner rather than later, the place was empty. Richter ordered a lemonade from the bar, paid, took his drink over to the wide and slightly grubby windows that looked out over the street and the canal, unzipped his black leather jacket and sat down at a small circular wooden table, his attention focused on the view outside. His gaze scanned the street in a repetitive pattern, from right to left and left to right, covering both sides of the canal. He was now obviously looking for something or someone.
He’d been there about twenty minutes when his attention was drawn to a man on the east side of the canal. There was nothing about him that made him stand out from the other wandering pedestrians, except for what he did. He looked up at one of the illuminated windows almost directly opposite the bar, where a slim and startlingly beautiful blonde girl wearing what looked to Richter like a kind of baby doll nightdress – though his knowledge of fashion and clothing of almost every kind that wasn’t made of either denim or leather was virtually nil – sat on a chair, her legs demurely crossed and a book on her lap, her bored expression obvious even from a distance. The man paused briefly outside, glanced in both directions, and then climbed the steps and entered the building. A few seconds later, the girl stood up and drew the curtains across the window.
Although he was not the first man Richter had seen take that kind of action at other houses during that late afternoon, there was one subtle difference between him and the other punters. It was nothing much to do with the way he had looked or behaved, and everything to do with the destination he had selected. Because Richter had been watching that particular room across the canal almost as much as he had been watching the people on the street.
He glanced at his watch. 16:37. The time they had decided on was 16:38 – because only a fool or an amateur ever arranged a meet on the hour or half-hour – and on a Saturday when the streets were busier, so the chances were that he’d seen the right man. But he would soon know one way or the other because he knew that one of two things was going to happen.
Either the man would emerge from the building in about a minute, having been told that the rate the girl was asking was at least five times more than the fifty euros typically being charged by most of the hookers. That would prove he was a punter, a John. Or the curtains would remain closed for a significantly longer time, which would prove that he wasn’t.
Richter guessed that he wasn’t.
He waited just under a minute and then, with the curtains in the room opposite still firmly closed, he pushed his half-drunk glass of lemonade to one side, zipped up his leather jacket because of what he was wearing underneath it – a 9-millimetre Glock 17 in a fabric shoulder holster that hadn’t been in his possession when he’d boarded the British Airways flight to Schiphol at Heathrow two days earlier – and walked down the steps and out of the bar.
They’d picked that bar and that location for the girl because there was a bridge over the canal about twenty yards away, which meant it took Richter only a couple of minutes to make it over the water and up the stairs to get inside the house. He wasn’t expecting trouble, quite the reverse, but he subscribed to the view that a man with a gun in a holster is exactly the same as an unarmed man until he can draw his weapon, so he eased the Glock out of the holster before he gave a sequence of five spaced taps on the door of the girl’s room.
A couple of seconds later it opened, framing the blonde-haired girl in the gap. She looked at him for a moment, then moved aside to let him enter.
‘Afternoon, Tash,’ Richter murmured as he stepped inside.
Tanya Annabelle Simonen-Hawks, commonly known in the lower and less senior corridors of Legoland, the headquarters of the British Secret Intelligence Service at Vauxhall Cross in London as ‘Tash,’ nodded and closed the door behind Richter. He had known her off-and-on for about five years, but this was the first time they’d worked together.
‘Hi, Paul,’ she replied, and gestured towards a thick-set man wearing a badly-cut brown suit under a blue raincoat who was sitting on the upright chair in the window, where the curtains were still closed. He looked to be about forty years old, maybe forty-five, with the face of a street brawler, all lumps and angles hinting at a history of violent impacts with unyielding objects, under a crown of suspiciously thick and even more suspiciously black hair. To Richter, he looked Russian, or maybe Ukrainian, but right then his attention wasn’t focused on the man’s nationality, but on what he was holding.
‘The man sitting in my chair and pointing his Makarov pistol at your stomach says his name is Yuri,’ Tash explained, ‘which may or may not be true. Yuri, this is Paul Richter, from London. He’s come to collect the information you’ve brought.’
‘I have a question,’ Yuri said in Russian, his aim never wavering. ‘You were recently on a Russian ship. What was its name?’
‘The Semyon Timoshenko,’ Richter replied in the same language.
Tash glanced from one man to the other, both with their pistols aimed and ready. ‘If you’re going to shoot each other, I’d appreciate it if you could fit suppressors to keep the noise down. I’m trying not to attract too much attention while I’m here. And if you could shoot each other out in the street that would be a bonus, because then I wouldn’t have to clear up the mess in this room.’
Richter nodded, raised the muzzle of his Glock towards the ceiling and then slid it back into his holster.
‘Just a precaution,’ he said in Russian. ‘Sorry, Yuri.’
Across the room, the other man mirrored his action, sliding his Makarov into a belt holster under his jacket.
‘No problem,’ Yuri replied, now in fluent English, his voice deep and gravelly. ‘Men who take precautions tend to live longer than those who don’t. You gave the correct response and you match the description I was given,’ he added. ‘My masters at The Aquarium were very specific about the handover, and that you were to be the recipient. Nobody else. The pistol was just in case the wrong man stepped through that door.’
Richter grinned.
‘How did they describe me?’ he asked, sounding interested.
‘Stocky, scruffy and dangerous, basically. But they did show me a couple of photographs as well, so I’m happy with who you are.’
‘Good.’
Yuri reached inside his jacket and Richter tensed: the Russian could always be carrying a second weapon.
‘Relax, Paul,’ he said. ‘Even if I was reaching for a piece, your lady friend would make sure I couldn’t use it. She’s good. You should keep her.’
Richter glanced to his left at Tash. She was standing in the same spot, but now held a revolver – it looked to him like a hammerless Smith & Wesson Centennial, probably a .38 Special – in her right hand, the barrel not aimed directly at Yuri but close enough to make the threat to him clearly viable. He had no idea where she’d had the weapon concealed, what she was wearing seemingly offering no hiding places for a pistol or anything much else.
Yuri completed his move, his hand reappearing holding a small oblong of clear plastic, a standard case containing a coloured object that Richter recognised immediately as an SD card. The Russian stood up, took a couple of steps forward and placed it on the end of the bed.
‘Anything we should know about that?’ Richter asked.
‘I’m not aware of what’s on it,’ Yuri said, ‘but I’m told it’s self-explanatory and obviously encrypted. You’ll receive the unlock code through a different channel. I was also told that when they view the contents your masters will know what to do with the data. And now I need to get going. It’s been a long time since I was here in De Wallen with money in my pocket and time on my hands. There are a couple of girls at the other end of this street that I’d like to spend an hour or so with. Unless you really are on the market,’ he added hopefully, looking at Tash.
‘In your dreams,’ she replied, still aiming the Smith in his general direction.
Seconds later, the door closed behind him.
Richter watched from the window, pulling back the curtain about half an inch, as the Russian walked away. Then he picked up the case containing the SD card, looked at it for a few seconds and then zipped it into one of his own jacket pockets.
‘Is that it?’ Tash demanded, putting the revolver down on the bedside table. ‘Just one bloody SD card?’
Richter shook his head.
‘Just like you, I had no idea what the information was going to be,’ he said. ‘All we were told was that it was of vital importance to Britain to understand something, and that the messenger would provide the proof of whatever that something was. I presume it was too sensitive to just send it by mail, and there’s no way your people or mine would allow the Russians to download something onto one of our servers.’
‘Yuri mentioned The Aquarium. Presumably that means he’s GRU, or GU as it’s now known, and he’s based at Khodinka?’
‘I don’t know him,’ Richter said, ‘but that’s my guess, yes. And I do have a contact at a fairly high level in the GU, so I’m guessing that whatever data is on the SD card is kosher, and important.’
Tash still looked irritated.
‘So whose brilliant idea was it that I should spend a week pretending to be a hooker at the bottom end of the market here in Amsterdam?’
‘Nothing to do with me,’ Richter said immediately. ‘But I suppose arranging a meeting in a whore’s bedroom – no offence, Tash – at least meant that nobody would be able to see or hear what was done or said, so that does make sense. And you could say no to all the greasy little vermin who popped up outside the door wanting a good time for fifty euros. It wasn’t like you were actually trying to earn a living here. As a working girl, I mean.’
‘I know, and I did say no, most of the time.’
‘“Most of the time”?’ Richter echoed.
Tash nodded.
‘I get bored easily and sitting on that bloody stool all afternoon and evening reading a book isn’t actually my idea of a good time. So I did say yes to a couple of more-or-less fit guys, just to kind of break the monotony. And I figured I’d need to accommodate the odd punter just to blend in. All the girls here watch each other, you know, and if you don’t get any clients, you don’t make any money, and there was no way I could pass for a hooker unless I acted like one. So I kind of hooked, if that’s the right word.’
‘Well, at least you can pack your bags and get out of here now,’ Richter said. ‘I’ve got the SD card and that means the op is over.’
‘When are you flying back?’
‘Tomorrow afternoon, I suppose. I’ve got to return the weapon to the consulate here, and I guess you’ve got to do the same with that revolver.’
Tash nodded.
‘I’ll make you a deal,’ she said. ‘I’ve been existing on sandwiches and takeaways since I got here, so as we’re both free tonight, why don’t we treat ourselves to a decent meal? Or to be exact, why don’t you treat me to a decent meal? After all, I was watching your back while Yuri was here.’
‘No problem,’ Richter said. ‘Is that the deal?’
‘Not exactly,’ Tash replied. ‘I’ve been living here in this sodding basic knocking shop for over a week. When I walk out of here I don’t want to come back. I presume you’ve got a hotel booked somewhere, so once we’ve eaten you’ll have to squeeze me into your room for the night. If that’s okay? Maybe there’s a sofa or something in the room? Or a spare bed?’
Richter shook his head.
‘My expenses are cut to the bone, thanks to my boss, so all I’ve got is a double bed, one chair and a TV set bolted to the wall, plus a really small en suite shower room. But,’ he added after a moment, ‘I’m sure we can work something out.’
‘Works for me,’ Tash said.
She grinned at him and dragged a small suitcase out from under the bed. Then she dropped her knickers, pulled the nightie over her head, stood there stark naked for a few seconds, then clicked open the suitcase and began putting on fresh clothes.
Richter watched her carefully, taking mental notes and recording images in his mind.
‘Works for me, too,’ he muttered.