Color Of Blood (23 page)

“We figure, Officer White—it’s just a guess, mind you—that you don’t know who the blood-sucking informers are working for your side. We could do all kinds of nasty things to you, and you still couldn’t give us the names of those vermin because we don’t think you know who they are.”

Judy’s breathing grew shallow as she braced for the punch line that would explain why she had been drugged, tied up, and blindfolded.

“So we have a better idea, which I think you’ll find much more appealing. Are you following me, Officer White?”

Judy moved her head in the slightest nod, but in truth her mind was vacillating wildly between raw physical fear and planning for some way out of this mess.

“This may come as a bit of surprise to you, Officer White, but we already have one source inside the AFP in WA, as well as several in the AFP back east—and let’s not forget the Crime Commission. You know, Canberra should pay their federal coppers a better wage. We’d stop having to pay them so much bloody cash on the side. Then again, we’d lose our leverage, wouldn’t we?”

More laughter.

“Everybody wants money, money, money,” the voice said. “Thank God for greed, or we’d be nowhere, let me tell you. So, let me stop babbling and announce Phase Two: wouldn’t it be better to work together and not at cross purposes?”

The adrenaline made her bound body twitch with small, involuntary jerks. Her breathing was loud as she inhaled air through her nostrils.

“Pull back the tape on her mouth,” the voice commanded.

A pair of thick fingers dug into the end of the tape and pulled it, slowly freeing her mouth. She hungrily took in several large gulps of air.

“That better?” the voice asked.

“Yes.” Her own voice was now eerily distorted as well.

“So let’s get to the point. You’d agree that we frightened the bloody hell out of your dad and mum. After he got the note, you did what you were supposed to do, right? You took it to your boss, and there was a big meeting among the crack AFP unit, and even detectives from the WA Police and Crime Commission, right? And a fucking PowerPoint presentation! Bloody good show with all that rubbish about the Golden Triangle.”

More laughter.

How in the hell did he know what went on inside the AFP?
Judy wondered.
What does he mean about more informers?

“Now, you may have gathered we know a lot about you folks at the AFP, but we don’t know enough of what goes on there. We’d like you to join our enterprise by feeding us information that you think we’d find useful.
We planted the note on your father’s car to scare the shit out of your family. We knew you’d go crying like a little puppy to your AFP mates about your poor, poor family. And we knew there would be a big meeting, and then all we had to do was grab you and show you we know what happens inside the AFP here in WA. Yes?”

Judy lay there furiously processing this information.

“Please say, ‘yes,’” the voice commanded.

“Yes.”

“So this is how it’s going to work: You’ll be contacted on your work email account from someone called Mandy, and Mandy will tell you how to communicate with us. Mandy may change things up a bit, but just do what she says. Don’t try to trace her emails; we have clever ways of spoofing them so that you’ll never find Mandy. That’s simple enough, isn’t it, Officer White? And of course we’ll pay you handsomely for your troubles. I don’t have to tell you that you shouldn’t be rash with your extra income, do I? Please don’t draw attention to your newfound wealth: bad form and all that.

“And of course you won’t tell anyone at AFP about our arrangement because, as you can tell, we already have someone inside there. And the moment we hear that you’ve leaked this plan, well, there will be consequences, which we’ll explain in a moment.”

Who the hell is the snitch inside AFP?
she thought.
They can’t believe I’m just going to flip like this? My God, they’re complete idiots.

“Now, you can ask yourself why we need more than one helper inside the AFP in WA, and the answer is the same reason you folks have more than one helper—redundancy! If we lose one of our helpers, we’ll have another. And neither of you know who the other is. Isn’t this a brilliant plan! Neither will give up the goods because they’ll be found out by the other one. Don’t know why it took us so fucking long to figure out we need to act like coppers!”

More laughter.

“Well, as you can imagine, we didn’t expect you to accept our invitation without some reservations. And we’re not going to these extraordinary steps for the pure fun of it, mind you. I was looking for a bold step to get the situation under control. Put the tape back on her,” the cartoonish voice commanded.

Judy felt it being reapplied and pressed down on her chin and cheeks to tighten the seal. She guessed, from the feel of it, that they had affixed a large strip of gauze into the center of a piece of duct tape. She felt a tinge of claustrophobia again as the tape was reapplied.

“Officer White, do you know what this device is?” the voice said.

She felt something heavy, metallic, and cold placed against her cheek, and convulsed slightly.

“It’s a bolt cutter,” the voice said, “a right big one. It’s used to cut very hard cylinders of steel, like a padlock, for instance.”

Judy swooned as if several sparrows were trying to fly out of her stomach.

“Besides padlocks, this wonderful device can also sever fingers,” the voice said. She heard guffaws of cartoon laughter.

She felt a hand grab her right wrist, even though it was bound to her side. She instinctively twisted her entire body as she tried to fight back.

“Don’t worry,” the voice said. “We’re not going to use it on your fingers. We’re not that bloody stupid. But we’d like you to feel the immense power of this device and know what it’s capable of. Now stop twisting because you could cause an accident. Please, Officer White, calm down. Now, do you feel that? Those are the cutting blades; feel how they fit snuggly around your index finger?”

Judy’s heart pounded as she felt the teeth of a huge pair of pliers placed delicately around her right index finger.
She could barely breathe as the two blades nestled against the soft flesh of her finger.

“I think you get the idea, yes?” the voice asked.

Judy nodded vigorously.

“So, how do you think that strapping young son of yours—I think his name is Simon—would look if, say, he was missing two or three fingers? I believe he’s right-handed, yes?”

“Stop,” Judy screamed through the tape. “Stop!”

“I bet you think you’ll be able to move that son of yours and hide him somewhere, don’t you? But we’ll find him. You think the AFP will move you and your whole family to the UK? Perhaps the US? South Africa? And your parents? You think they want to move to a foreign country at their age? Doesn’t matter, we’ll find you and Simon. I can promise you we’ll take off all the fingers of Simon’s right hand, just leave a stump, and it would be your fault, Officer White. He won’t be able to button his shirts, or hold a knife and fork properly. Such a shame, and all preventable.

“I’m sure you think we’re bluffing. So as a demonstration of our resolve, we are going to leave you with a little gift. It will be something that you can hide easily from prying eyes and yet will be a constant reminder of our enduring business relationship.”

Judy felt several burly arms suddenly press down hard on her thighs, and she twisted her body as she felt her right shoe being taken off and her nylon sock daintily removed.

In the millisecond it took for her to understand what was happening, and before she could scream through the duct tape, she distinctly heard someone yell, “No!”

But it was too late. She felt something metallic and cold touch her foot, followed by a searing pain that swept up her right leg, then a clicking sound.

Judy screamed and screamed, writhing so hard she thought she might have hurt her wrists. As she violently twisted her head, the tape covering her eyes parted at the edge just enough that, for a fraction of a second, she saw the shoulder of a man leaning down against her legs, while behind him stood a man with a bolt cutter. It appeared the man with the bolt cutter had short, bleach-blond hair, a deep tan, and a small, gold hoop earring on his left ear.

After several seconds of screaming and twisting, Judy started to calm down as her right foot grew numb with pain.

“Officer White, we’ve removed just the tip of your right baby toe. You don’t really need it, and you can hide it easily enough. We look forward to working with you in the future.”

Judy was in the process of screaming a muted “You fucking bastard!” when she felt a cloth imbued with the anesthetic placed over her nose. This time she greedily took it in.

***

The Japanese men stopped after leaving the Messeplatz and lit cigarettes; the two models sauntered by Dennis from right to left, followed by the Garder look-alike.

Dennis followed fifty feet back as the young man walked past the shuttle-bus stop and down Clarastrasse. Dennis lingered and took to the other side of the street, feeling a little out of his element. Garder was the trained, street-wise agent; Dennis was the trained investigator—he did his best work looking at documents and interviewing subjects. Nevertheless, Dennis knew enough about clandestine operations to appreciate that surprise was the ultimate weapon. As clumsy as Dennis might be, Garder would not be expecting to be tailed in this charming little Swiss town.

The man walked down the right side of the street in no hurry, stopping idly at a corner café, and then apparently changed his mind. Dennis did his best to keep a good distance back, and at one point the young man crossed to his side of the street, whereupon Dennis switched to the other side.

The man walked down Clarastrasse until it became Claraplatz, and Dennis could finally see the river and a bridge several blocks ahead.

The man stopped in front of a butcher shop and stared in the window for what seemed like five minutes. Dennis was forced to stop and fidget around a newspaper-vending box attached to a light post. A large bus spewing a thin cloud of diesel fumes lumbered down the street, momentarily blocking Dennis’s view of his prey. When the bus moved away, the man had vanished.

Dennis took off at a loping run down the street, straining to look down Claraplatz to see if the man had simply continued ahead. He pulled up directly across from the butcher shop and looked inside; there was a single white-haired, elderly woman in a beige jacket talking to the butcher.

Dennis continued at a trot until he came to a cross street and looked right, then left; a block down the tree-lined street to his left, he saw a man running. He took off down Rebgasse in pursuit and saw the runner take a right at the first street that would lead back to the river.

“Shit,” he muttered. “I don’t even know if this is Garder.”

Dennis found himself out of breath as he barreled past startled pedestrians. At one point he briefly got entangled in a leash tethering a small black poodle to a tall, angular elderly man. The owner yelled in alarm as Dennis briefly yanked the dog sideways.

Dennis took a wide, lurching turn down Schafgusslein and came to a stop, trying to catch his breath. The street was nearly empty of pedestrians, and he strained to look for any movement. A man and a woman walked toward him on the opposite side of the street about fifty yards away. On the right side of the street, a single young man in a leather jacket walked toward him smoking a cigarette.

Although he was out of breath, and a thick sheen of perspiration had settled on his forehead, Dennis took off running again, pounding heavily down the cement sidewalk.

His heart sank when he got to the next cross street; it was a wide thoroughfare with numerous pedestrians plying both sides of Rheingasse. He looked right and left, hanging onto a lamppost to rest.

If the man running away from him was Garder, his initial direction was down Claraplatz toward the river. Then the man took off running parallel to the river. If the man was trying to get as far from Dennis as possible, he would probably run west and away from the river; a river required a bridge to cross, where he could easily be seen and trapped.

But what if he cut back to the river?
Dennis thought
. He would only do so because he left something important, that’s why. He’s going to pick up money, jewelry, hell, maybe a new watch worth thousands of dollars, who the hell knows? So where did he leave all the stuff he wants to collect?

At a hotel or rooming house—no, not a rooming house, at a hotel. He’s too rich now to stay at a rooming house.

Hell,
Dennis thought,
the hotel could be miles from here—or anywhere in the city, really.

But wait, he was walking and could have taken a cab or a convention-center bus to his hotel if he had to. No, he chose to walk. His hotel is right around here, on this side of the bridge so he could easily saunter to the Messeplatz to ogle all his stupid watches,
Dennis concluded.

Dennis took off walking toward Claraplatz again, carefully scanning pedestrians and looking for hotels. He saw plenty of restaurants, cafes, and office buildings, but no hotels. He had long given up trying to pull his man out of the crowd; there were simply too many people.

After nearly a half-hour of meandering through the wide intersection of Clarastrasse and Rheingasse, he finally stopped a young businessman.

“Excuse me,” he said, “do you speak English?”

“Yes, a little,” he said.

“I’m lost, and I wonder if you could direct me to a hotel? Is there a nice hotel nearby?”

“Let me think,” the man said with what seemed to Dennis to be a French accent. “Ah, yes. Of course: the Merian. You will like this hotel.” He gave Dennis precise directions that took him three blocks away to a six-story stone building. The building itself looked several hundred years old and was nestled into a group of similar buildings that Dennis took to be apartments and office buildings.

He stood about fifty yards to the side of the entrance and debated whether to go inside and prowl the lobby. He looked up and down the street, hoping to see his prey sauntering by, but it was no use. Checking his watch, he estimated that fifty minutes had passed from when he had started tailing the young man.