be heading toward the vast maintenance buildings to the south of the station,
which were sheltered from casual observation. At night, heroin addicts went
there to score and shoot up; during the day, however, it was almost entirely
abandoned.
“Keep going, straight!” Janson yelled, jerking to full attention.
“I thought you said Centraal Station … ”
“There’s a maintenance building to the right, five hundred yards away.
Overlooking the wharves of Oosterdok. Now floor it.”
The limo powered past the parking lot of the train station and bounded down the
broken pavement of the derelict yards where, years ago, the business of the
wharves had been conducted. Most of the commercial harbors had relocated to
North Amsterdam; what remained were phantoms of brick and concrete and
corrugated steel.
A gated Cyclone fence suddenly loomed before them. Cooper stopped the car, and
Janson got out. The fence was old, the links frosted with oxide. But the knob
set, set into a large rectangular metal plate, was bright and shiny, obviously
new.
From a distance, he heard shouts.
Frantically, Janson withdrew a small bump key from his pocket and set to work.
He positioned the very end of it into the keyway and then, in a sudden, plunging
movement, thrust the rest of it into the lock and twisted it in a single
continuous motion. The speed of that motion was crucial: the key had to be
turned before the lock’s spring pressed the top pin down.
His fingers could feel that the top pin had bounced high enough to fly beyond
the shear line, that his twist had taken advantage of the split second in which
the pin columns had bounced out of alignment. The gate was open.
He waved Cooper through and gestured for him to park the car about a hundred
yards away, behind a rusting, abandoned train car.
Janson himself raced over to the side of a huge steel shed and, flattening
himself against it, edged swiftly toward the shouts he had heard.
Finally, he could see through the dim light into the vast interior, and what he
made out sickened him.
The woman from Consular Operations was roped to a cement pillar with a thick
hawser, her clothes crudely torn off her.
“This shit is getting old fast,” she growled, but the fear beneath the bravado
was all too evident.
Before her, the giant with the glossy, puckered scar loomed. He belted her with
his hand, and her head snapped back against the concrete. He pulled out a knife
and sliced off her undergarments.
“Don’t you touch me, you son of a bitch!” she yelled.
“What are you going to do about it?” The voice was harshly guttural. The giant
laughed as he loosened his belt.
“I wouldn’t get Ratko mad if I were you,” said his companion, who held a long
thin blade that glinted even in the gloom. “He prefers ’em alive—but he’s not
that particular.”
The woman loosed a bloodcurdling shriek. Sheer animal terror? Janson suspected
that there was more to it—that she was hoping against hope that somebody might
hear.
Yet the wind and the rumble of distant barges drowned out whatever sounds might
be made.
In the gloom of the warehouse, he could make out the gleaming shape of the
powerful sedan the men had ridden in, the engine ticking as it cooled.
The man slapped her again, and then the slaps became rhythmic. The aim was not
interrogation. It was, in fact, part of a sexual ritual, Janson realized to his
horror. As the killer’s trousers dropped heavily to the floor, his organ was
silhouetted in the gloom: the woman’s death would be preceded by indignity.
Janson froze as he heard a soft Serbian-accented voice from behind him: “Drop
the gun.”
Janson whirled around and found himself face-to-face with a slender man who had
gold-rimmed glasses perched high on an aquiline nose. The man wore khaki
trousers and a white shirt, both neatly pressed. He stood very close to him and,
with a casual movement, pressed a revolver against his forehead.
It was a setup.
“Drop the gun,” the man repeated.
Janson let his pistol fall to the concrete. The steady pressure of the man’s gun
against his forehead admitted no negotiation. Another piercing scream rent the
air, this time with a quaver that signified profound terror or rage.
The man with the gold-rimmed glasses smiled grimly. “The American bitch sings.
Ratko likes to fuck them before he kills them. The screams turn him on. What is
in store for you, I’m afraid, will be far less enjoyable. As you will learn for
yourself. He’ll be finished shortly. And so will she. And so, if you are
fortunate, will you.”
“Why? For Christ’s sakes, why?” Janson demanded in a low, urgent voice.
“Such an American question, that,” the man replied. His voice was more
cultivated than the giant’s, but equally devoid of emotion. He was probably the
operation’s leader. “But we will be the ones asking questions. And if you do not
answer them to our satisfaction, you will suffer an excruciatingly painful death
before your body disappears in the waters of the Oosterdok.”
“And if I do what you ask?”
“Your death will be merciful and swift. Oh, I’m sorry. Were you hoping for more
choices?” The man’s thin lips twitched with contempt. “You Americans always want
things that aren’t on the menu, don’t you? You can never have enough choices.
Only, I am not an American, Mr. Janson. I offer you one choice. Death with
agony—or death without.” His quiet words had the effect of an icy wind.
As the woman released another ear-piercing scream, Janson contorted his face
into a look of terror. “Please,” he said, in a half whimper. “I’ll do anything …
” Janson reached into a place deep within and began to tremble visibly.
A gratified, sadistic smile came to the man with the gold-rimmed glasses.
Suddenly, Janson’s shaking knees buckled, and he dropped down two feet,
remaining perfectly erect as he bent his knees. At the same time, his right hand
shot straight up, grabbing the wrist of the man’s outstretched hand.
The man’s smile faded as Janson pulled his arm down in a powerful wrist lock,
wrenching it toward his elbow and twisting it at an acute angle. Now the man
bellowed in pain as the ligaments in his arm were strained and torn, but Janson
was relentless, taking a long step back with his left foot and pulling the
attacker to the ground. He yanked on the arm with all his strength and heard a
pop as the ball joint was dislocated from the socket. The man roared again,
agony mingling with disbelief. Janson fell on him, bringing all his weight down
on his right knee, driving it into the man’s rib cage. He could hear at least
two ribs break. The man gasped, and behind the gold-rimmed glasses, tears rushed
to his eyes. The broken ribs would make simply breathing exquisitely painful.
Roused by the nearby footfalls of his companions, the man tried to free his gun
arm, despite his dislocated joint, but Janson had it pinned between his chest
and left knee. Janson turned his right hand into a claw and clamped it around
the man’s throat, lifting and slamming his head against the ground until his
body was limp. Moments later, when Janson reared up, he had a gun in both hands—
And squeezed off two shots—one at a rough-hewn man rushing toward him with an
automatic pistol, a second at a bearded man several feet behind him, with a
submachine gun held at his side. Both slumped to the ground.
Janson strode toward where the man they called Ratko stood, only to find the
raking fire of an AKS-74 pocking the concrete floor in a storm of sparks and
micro-explosions. It had to be directed by a man on a catwalk high above, and it
created an impassable zone between Janson and Ratko—who had hastily hiked up his
trousers and was turning to face him. A .45 handgun looked small in the Serb
giant’s enormous hand.
Now Janson ducked behind a concrete pillar. As he expected, the man with the
submachine gun overhead repositioned himself to gain an angle on Janson. But in
doing so he had exposed himself. Peering around the corner, Janson caught a
fleeting glimpse of a short, stocky moonfaced man who held the AKS-74 as if it
were part of him. A brief fusillade tore into the pillar he hid behind. Janson
snaked a hand around it and squeezed off a blind shot. He heard it twang against
steel-pipe railing and knew he had missed. Sudden footsteps on the steel catwalk
helped him locate the man in space, however, and he squeezed off three more
shots.
Each one missed. Damn—what had he expected? And yet he could not visually locate
the man with the assault weapon without exposing himself to his deadly fire.
Light briefly flooded the dim warehouse as somebody opened a side door.