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.”
I really didn’t want to know Piet as a person, but some instinctive need to understand