Kees is back in Amsterdam for the first time since he’d been released from the Bijlmerbajes prison and relocated down to Rotterdam to start the long process of working his way undercover into Van der Pol’s organization.
Right now he’s asleep in the car he’d driven up in. A noise wakes him and he starts; for a full two seconds he can’t remember where he is.
Then it all clicks.
He’s watching a row of garages. The one he’s particularly interested in is ten down. The noise he’s heard is someone walking towards it, their back to him, a dark baseball cap on his head. The figure stops outside the tenth.
Kees has tracked down the man Van der Pol had wanted found, knows that the garage is paid for in cash by someone answering the man’s description. And it looks like he was right – presumably the figure heading there now is the man himself.
Kees has Van der Pol on speed-dial. He’d been given a phone along with the car.
Van der Pol answers before the first ring’s even completed.
‘Got him,’ Kees says.
‘OK,’ replies Van der Pol. ‘Here’s what you’re going to do.’
Kees reckons he should be feeling sick. But, as he pops the glove compartment and finds the gun he’d not known was there, he realizes he’s not feeling anything at all.
The figure with the cap moves away from the tenth garage door, and quickly to the end of the row. Kees loses sight of him for a second, before he sees him reappear on the flat roof, walking back towards the tenth door. Kees slips down his seat.
The man pulls out a gun, lies down on the roof and reaches over the edge to hit the door a couple of times with the butt of the gun.
After a few seconds the garage door starts to open, revealing shoes, legs, then a torso.
Once it’s fully up Kees recognizes the man.
It’s his target, Alex Haanstra.
Further back in the garage there’s a large screen, a movie playing on it. And in front of it, someone – a woman – is tied to a chair, kneeling with her head to the ground like a religious penitent. On the screen a man is doing something Kees can’t quite work out, too far away to properly see the detail.
Haanstra stands there for a second, scanning the surroundings. Kees slips even lower. Haanstra steps forward, and at the same moment the man on the roof reaches down with his gun and shoots him in the head.
Haanstra stands for a moment, swaying like a drunk, the bullet having ripped most of his lower jaw off, then his whole body collapses.
The man with the gun stands up, pulls out a phone and makes a call.
There’s something really familiar about him.
But he can’t see his face.
Sirens split the air. The man lowers his phone, moves to the next garage along, and lowers himself back down to the ground.
The sirens are getting closer. The man moves towards Haanstra’s body, weapon out, even though there’s no way he’s getting up again.
The man kicks him. Haanstra doesn’t move. The man shoots him in the back of the head a second time. Then he turns towards the garage. Kees sees him start, as if he’s just had a shock. It’s almost like he hadn’t expected there to be anyone in the garage, far less someone tied up. He stands there for a moment as if making a decision, before heading into the garage towards the woman, glancing round just before he does.
Kees gets a glimpse of the man’s face.
And that’s when he decides to get the hell out of there.