The Casey Collins Trilogy

6

6I snatched the coveralls and yanked them over my legs. They smelled of engine grease. My companion clapped hard hats on both our heads, grabbed the satchel and opened the door to the outside. Minutes later, we were in the front seat of an electric cart, pulling three linked wagons loaded with suitcases.

The cart grumbled around the terminal building, heading toward the array of planes parked beyond Passport Control. The rain was still falling, a cold drizzle that made streaks of darker blue on the coveralls, then quickly moistened all the fabric to the same damp shade. The rumpled collar grew clammy against my neck. My skin itched with the rashy feel of things out of control.

The sky was still navy blue, the winter night unaffected by the scraps of daylight on the horizon. Rain blurred the outlines of everything more than fifty feet in the distance. Closer to us, the bus idled at the terminal building. A crowd milled around it, cameramen with belts and shoulder packs, a technician juggling a padded microphone on a boom, uniformed policemen, including one with a leashed dog, prowling over the scene of my rescue. If it was a rescue.

Lura stood to one side, microphone in hand, speaking earnestly toward one of the cameras. She didn’t look away from the lens. I hunched my shoulders and tried to become nothing more than a blue unisex body topped by a canary-yellow hat.

We took a meandering route through the parked planes, ending up on the far side near a collection of buildings. We stopped beside a door marked as a men’s toilet. My blue-suited companion set the brake and jumped down, leaving the cart idling. I followed him around the building to what must have been the employee parking lot. He led me to a Volkswagen Jetta, dark brown, not new and spattered with mud. Two pairs of skis were racked on top. The country decal showed a capital “CH,” the designation for Switzerland. I eyed my companion. Definitely not Swiss. Not a man accustomed to neutrality.

He popped open the trunk, tossed in the satchel and his hard hat and began stripping off his coveralls. I did the same. He held out a plastic bag. “Empty your pockets into this.” When I hesitated, he shook the bag. “Anything that identifies you. In here—now.” Reluctantly, I pulled my passport and wallet from the zippered pocket inside my jacket and dropped them in. Then I added a handful of coins.

He closed the bag and shoved it into the tire well beneath the spare. Then he slammed the trunk and motioned me toward the passenger door. He slid behind the wheel and handed me a knitted cap patterned in red and blue and sporting a fluffy pom-pom. He’d donned a watch cap that outlined his ovoid skull. He looked more like an underwater demolition expert than a skier. I put on my hat and tucked my hair inside.

The man studied me, then reached across and pulled the wool lower on my forehead until it covered my eyebrows. His fingers smelled like harsh laundry soap. He grunted. “Slide down in the seat and close your eyes as though you are resting.” He backed out of the parking space. “With luck, no one will mistake you for an American fugitive. That is, if you can refrain from smiling and waving at the passersby.”

My companion drove out of the lot with arrogant confidence, his right hand on the wheel, his left dangling out of sight beside his seat. We left the airport behind and joined the rush of commuter traffic. I sat up straight and my hand went automatically to the door handle. My German was rudimentary, but Nord and Süd are pretty easy to figure out. We were driving south, away from the Jutland Peninsula. Away from Denmark and the Father-Major. “Okay,” I said to my driver. “You got me out of there. Thanks. I can take it from here.”

“You?” He made a disparaging noise as he cut into the left-hand lane and accelerated. “If it weren’t for me, your arrest would now be on worldwide television.”

“A miscalculation. I can manage now.”

“Manage? Oh, yes, I’m sure you can. Manage to get yourself locked up and interrogated.”

“Listen—”

“No.” His voice was like a club. “You listen. You should have stayed in Washington.”

“I had to get out of the US. If I hadn’t—”

“You would be someone else’s problem. Not mine.”

“Yours? Who the hell are you?”

“At this moment, the only person who can keep you out of prison.”

The flat certainty in his voice defied me to protest. I didn’t have a good one to make. Instead I asked, “But who, specifically, are you?”

His voice slid into an oily imitation of courtesy. “You must forgive my poor manners. I was somewhat preoccupied.” He tipped his head down in a mocking nod. “Major Hans van Hoof, at your service.”

The name was Flemish. The peculiar accent came from the mishmash of Dutch, French and German spoken by Belgians. I let my shoulders drop. Major Hans van Hoof was a Belgian soldier. And Belgium was part of NATO. The Father-Major had never mentioned any Belgian connections, but maybe Hans van Hoof was a new recruit. I said, “Holger Sorensen sent you.”

“No. No one sent me.”

“Then why did you come?”

“I was made aware of a problem. I am resolving it.”

So I’d been labeled “a problem.” I wasn’t going to like his solution. I asked, “Where are we going?”

“Brussels.”

“No way,” I said. “You go to Brussels. Drop me at the next train station. I have to straighten things out with Holger.”

“You can’t go to Denmark.”

“Has the FBI got Holger under surveillance?”

“The FBI and Denmark’s Politi. Perhaps Scotland Yard, too. All the police hounds have your scent, Casey Collins.”

“What can I do?”

“I’ll hide you tonight.”

“And then?”

“You’ll get out of the way.”

“What does that mean?”

His tone got harsher. “Isn’t it obvious? You must take your demented activity away. You must go someplace where no one has any interest in you.”

“No interest? Then I can’t go back to DC.”

“No. But you can’t remain here either. I’ve made arrangements to send you south.”

“You think I’d be less noticeable in the Mediterranean?”

“Farther south.”

I tried to make a joke. “Where, the Belgian Congo?”

“Whatever they are calling themselves these days. Perfect, I think. Conditions there are so chaotic, no one will notice your arrival. I know a nice, safe spot on the coast where you can take a long vacation.”

“Not a chance. I’m not leaving Europe. Not until I find out who blew up Global Flight 500.”

“How ridiculously American you sound.”

I swallowed my angry retort. I needed to be clever now, to provoke this man into revealing his connection to Holger. “How cynically European you sound. Somebody killed your colleague. But for you, Stefan’s loss is a setback, nothing more.”

“I am disappointed. I expected I would be dealing with a rational person—not a hysterical infant.”

Bingo. No reaction to the word “colleague.” Or to the name Stefan. Instead, an abrupt conversational shift that brought me back to the edge of my seat. “Won’t work, Hans. I know the tactic. Why don’t you want to talk about Stefan?”

He turned his head slightly to meet my gaze. Something flickered in his eyes. Perhaps loathing. Perhaps empathy. It was gone before I could put a name to it. He said, “I will allow nothing to interfere with our plans.”

Then he quit replying to my questions. After being rebuffed three times in thirty seconds, I stopped talking, too. The car took on the sour scents of damp wool and my wet, unwashed hair. The defroster put out paltry heat and a strong smell of burned dust. I was cold and the noxious odors unsettled my stomach. Van Hoof wasn’t a cop, as I’d first thought. But I was his prisoner all the same. He’d helped me escape incarceration in a federal penitentiary. But he wanted to ship me to his private penal colony in Africa.

My elbow banged against the door, my muscles jerky with panic. I hugged myself, overpowering my fear. Could van Hoof do what he wished with me?

Without moving my head, I glanced at him. His watch cap grazed the ceiling and his shoulders were broader than the seatback. He gazed intently at the road ahead, but he’d relaxed into the driver’s seat, legs spread wide. My thigh was only inches from his and I saw the difference. Legs twice as thick and probably twice as powerful as mine.

I loosened my grip on myself, flexed my fingers. I was smaller and weaker, but maybe I was smarter. Maybe he couldn’t control my life as easily as he thought. He’d said he’d allow nothing to interfere with his plans.

I had plans of my own. Get to Holger. Find out who had killed Stefan. And now one more: Get away from van Hoof. I stared out the window as we drove through the drizzle toward the Low Countries of Europe. This wasn’t the direction in which I wanted to go. But then again, it wasn’t the direction my pursuers would expect me to take. I’d let van Hoof take me where no one knew me. Where no one was looking for me. Once we’d evaded the FBI, I’d ditch him.

The prospect of action cheered me, yet I didn’t relax. I needed to stay alert. And there was no way I’d permit my slender leg to brush against the massive one beside it.

We crossed from Germany into the Netherlands. Near Apeldoorn, van Hoof pulled into a service area. He watched me through the rear window as he pumped fuel. When the tank was full, he walked over to the cashier to pay. I spotted the gold-embossed cover of a foreign passport tucked into the driver-side door pocket. I leaned across his seat and found not one but two Swiss passports, kept close at hand as if van Hoof expected to encounter a roadblock where he’d need to produce identity documents in a hurry. The top one revealed a grainy photo of a generic brunette. Younger than I was, shorter, but with help from Clairol, I could pass for Fräulein Keck. Not bad on short notice. I flipped open the second passport, expecting to see van Hoof’s fleshy features. But only the hairstyle matched. The face belonged to Stefan.

I was so startled, the other booklet slipped out of my hand and slid off the edge of the seat. A precious false identity. I couldn’t let it get away. I jammed my right hand into the crack between the seat and the door, my fingers scrabbling. But instead of a sharp cardboard edge, my hand brushed checkered wood. I ran my fingers over it and felt the familiar handgrip of a Browning nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol. It was the same handgun I’d trained with in Denmark, years ago. For an instant I smelled gunpowder again, felt my palm tingle the way it did after I’d fired a round. I heard Stefan’s voice, softly gloating over the skill he’d coaxed from me. Dobrze, moj skarbie. Bardzo dobrze. Good, my treasure. Very good.

My hand closed around the grip. Exactly what I needed to make van Hoof take me where I wanted to go.

Metal screeched and the car door jerked open. Van Hoof’s boot pinned my wrist against the frame. He grabbed the passports and shoved them into his pants pocket. His boot didn’t move and I lay with my cheek flat against the driver’s seat, the upholstery still warm from his body. When he bent down to retrieve the pistol, I saw sweat glistening under his eyes, and his breathing was heavy. He leaned closer and another fifty pounds of force crushed onto my wrist. I groaned.

“Kolwezi,” he hissed into my ear. “At the bottom of a copper pit. That’s the place for you.” He stepped back from the car.

I sat up and brushed grit off my wrist. My fingers smelled of gun oil. “What are you doing with Stefan’s passport?”

“Saving you from yourself.”

I watched him walk around the car and lock the weapon in the trunk. As soon as he was back behind the wheel, I said, “You know what he was working on.”

He got us back on the highway before he answered. “I can tell you one thing. There is nothing—nothing—more important than his mission. I will finish it. And you won’t get in my way.” His eyes were hard.

I didn’t prompt him to say more. I recalled van Hoof’s dangling left hand as we left the Hamburg airport. Had his fingertips been resting on the weapon? Had he planned to shoot his way past the press and the police? Or might he have found it less complicated to shoot me?