It rang seven times before it was answered. “Yes?”

“Hi, August.”

A pause. “Where are you?”

“I need to talk to you.”

“You better be turning yourself in.”

“No. I need to see you. Face-to-face.”

“Um, I was shot today, you know.”

“Are you in the hospital?”

“No. Flesh wound in the arm and I took a blow to the head. The bullet is out and my head’s hard as steel. But I get sent home tomorrow. They didn’t have a plane available tonight.”

“I need your help.”

“You need help, all right, Sam. You know there was a dead body in the apartment next to you, don’t you?”

“I knew that.”

“Did you kill him?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Sam.”

“Well, he started it,” I said. “Can you come see me? Without Howell or anyone else?”

“You have to be kidding!”

“The guys I was with are tied to the man who set off the London bomb and kidnapped my wife,” I said. “Now, if you want to grab me, you will ruin any chance of getting this guy. He’s behind the bombing in Amsterdam and he’s working on getting experimental weapons of some sort to the States. He sent the dead guy who tried to kill me. He’s tied to the Money Czar we were investigating in London. August, it’s all knitted together and I’m this close to pulling it apart. I need your help.”

“You are so major-league screwed up, Sam. Look, come in; tell us all about it and let us help you.”

“I can’t, August. They’ll just put me back in jail. Howell thinks I’m in with these people. I don’t have time to explain to him that I’m not.”

“I’ll lose my job if I don’t report this conversation, and you know it.”

“Yes, you will.” I waited.

“Where are you?”

61

AUGUST ARRIVED AN HOUR LATER. Alone. I was at a back table in the Rode Prins, near the curtain screening the corridor that led to the kitchen. He sat heavily across from me. I’d kicked him in the side of the head and a purplish bruise stretched from temple to jaw. I could see the heft of a bandage underneath his jacket.

“How are you feeling?”

“Like hell. Howell’s gone to a meeting and I told them I needed fresh air.” He stared at me. “Sam. What in God’s name are you doing?”

“One of the crime families the Company had an interest in are the Lings. They’re based here. One of the Langley guys mentioned them in London.”

“Okay. They behind the grab on Lucy?”

“No. But I need to know if they are still being tracked by the Company.”

“What for?”

“I need to know where their shipments are. I need to steal one.”

His mouth opened, closed, opened again. “Insanity doesn’t agree with you, Sam.”

“It’s the only way for me to get close to the guy who took Lucy. He… he has a hostage, August, so I can’t force my way in. I have to draw him to me. But I need to know what we know about the Lings’ routes.”

“You’re crazy, Sam. I can’t imagine what you’ve lost. I can’t. But I think your grief has damaged you. Badly. And you have to accept—you’re not getting Lucy and the baby back. They’re gone. You know they wouldn’t have kept her alive for months. They wouldn’t have been saddled with a baby.” He stopped, as if horrified by his words.

I stared at him.

“This is all… for nothing,” August said. “You’re not getting them back. I’m sorry, man, sorrier than you will ever know. But I—”

“Please just do as I ask. If we were ever friends.”

“Friends don’t put friends in positions like this, man. I could lose it all.”

“You could. I already have. August, I know that you, as a decent man, are going to help me. You can’t not help me.” I wanted to say I saved your life today but I couldn’t play that card; he hadn’t seen me and it wasn’t fair.

“Howell will have my head.”

“Howell left a group of women behind in that machinists’ shop.”

“What do you mean?”

“After you and the other agent were hit, and he chased me out, did he secure the building?”

“He did.”

“Did he tell you there were a group of sex slaves being held captive in the back?”

August paled, dragged a finger along his unshaven jaw. “No. I didn’t know. I swear.”

“I believe you. Because Howell is Ahab, and I’m the white whale,” I said. “He’s losing perspective, August.”

“I… I don’t know.”

I took a deep breath. “I knew about you and Lucy seeing each other before Lucy and I dated. She never mentioned it. You both kept it secret and I don’t blame you; the Company doesn’t need to be in your business. But I knew. And you didn’t dump me as a friend for going out with your ex,” I said.

“Lucy and I weren’t a good match,” he said. “It only lasted a month.”

“Why?”

“I never trusted her.” He put his hands into his coat pockets and I wondered what I would do if he pulled a gun on me. I honestly didn’t know. August felt like the last strand of my normal life, and now I was asking him to do a job that was incredibly dangerous. I didn’t know what he was suggesting to me about my wife. I just couldn’t go there.

A long silence, and then he said, “Can I call you on this number if I find out about the Lings?”

“Yes.” I tried to keep the relief from my voice. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet. No promises.” He turned and walked out of the Rode Prins without another word.

I sat and drank Henrik’s good coffee and closed my eyes and thought through how I would steal the shipment, given what I could guess about the limitations I would face.

Five hours later August called. “We have an informant inside the Lings’ operation. The Lings’ trucks stop at a sweatshop in France. You do not hit them at the sweatshop, you hear me? You do not. You’ll dirty up a current investigation into them.” He gave me the address. “Their trucks are marked as being part of a company called Leeuw en Draak. Lion and Dragon.”

“Thank you,” I said. And meant it.

“Don’t call me again, Sam. Good luck.” And he hung up. Now I’d lost my best friend as well. I mourned for all of ten seconds.

Then I called Piet. “I have what we need.”

62

THE NEXT DAY, we waited in the rain, just north of Paris. It had taken us nearly five hours to drive south from Amsterdam, to the locale August had given me. It was early afternoon and the day was gray and sodden. Piet sat next to me, sharpening his wakizashi sword on a whetstone. Stroke. Stroke. Stroke. It made the flesh on my neck jerk. How sharp could you make a sword?

The sweatshop was off the E19/E15 expressway, hidden in a gray huddle of buildings. I wondered how pleasant it would be to be rid of Piet. Very soon, I thought. Very soon. We sat and watched absolutely nothing happen at the sweatshop. Hours passed; twilight began to approach.

“How does a Canadian soldier get into this business?” Piet asked, breaking the silence.

I glanced at him. “I was bored. How did you get into trafficking women?”

He smiled. “I needed money for art school.”

“I didn’t expect that answer.”

“An annoying percentage of young people in Amsterdam harbor a secret desire to be Van Gogh or Rembrandt. Anyway, I knew a guy. A friend of my mom’s. He needed help getting girls to Holland. I helped him buy a van so we could move them, and eventually I took over the route.”

“Took over?”

“He got married and thought he shouldn’t traffic girls no more. What, you thought I’d killed him?”

“Yes.”

“No. Known him since I was twelve.” He rubbed at his bottom lip. “He owns a coffee shop now.”