Kate sat in an interrogation room that was just like every other one she’d ever been in. It had the same cinder block walls, the same piss-yellow fluorescent light, and the same dirty mirror that hid whoever was watching. The only difference was that this time she was the suspect being questioned.
Chief Inspector Amelie Janssen sat across the table from her with notepad and pen. The detective’s shoulder-length hair had a just-got-out-of-bed wave to it. Probably because she’d just gotten out of bed. It was 4 A.M.
“I can’t count all the laws that you’ve broken,” Janssen said. “If it were up to me, you’d be in handcuffs and ankle chains like any other common crook. But it’s not my decision. It’s up to the general commissioner, and she’s waiting to hear from the prime minister’s office, which is demanding an explanation from the U.S. ambassador in Brussels.”
“I captured an international fugitive who is wanted in a dozen countries, including this one,” Kate said. “So instead of complaining, you should be congratulating me.”
“You’re right. Where are my manners?” Janssen said. “Congratulations on helping the Road Runners pull off the biggest diamond heist in the history of Belgium.”
“I had nothing to do with that.”
“You certainly didn’t do anything to stop it. As far as I’m concerned, you’re an accessory after the fact.”
“I apprehended the man responsible for the crime,” Kate said. “Or have you forgotten that?”
“While the rest of the Road Runners got away with the diamonds,” Janssen said. “If you’d told us you were here and what you were doing, we could have staked out the building and captured them all in the act.”
“I didn’t know there was going to be a robbery.”
“Okay.” Janssen leaned back in her seat again. “So explain to me how you ended up in the vault with Nicolas Fox.”
Kate had learned from Nick that the best lies were the ones that stuck as close to the truth as possible. So she followed his advice.
“There were rumors for months that Fox had joined the Road Runners. So when I heard that Dragan Kovic and several members of his gang were spotted last week in Honolulu, I got on the first flight out there to see if they’d left any tracks,” Kate said. “They did. I found out where Dragan went to rent a car, then used the GPS records for the vehicle to retrace his movements for the few hours that he was on the island. That led me to the store where his gang bought their disposable phones, which have unique identifying numbers. With that information, and some help from a friend at the NSA, I was able to pull the call records. There was only one call off the island.”
“To the Executive Merchants Building,” Janssen said.
“You got it.”
“You should have notified us at that point.”
“I didn’t have anything,” Kate said.
“You had enough to go on to fly here and watch the building, hoping you’d spot Fox or a Road Runner who could lead you to him.”
“Yes, but it was an outrageous long shot. I didn’t even tell my bosses what I was doing. I just cashed in some vacation time and booked a flight.”
Janssen sighed and made a note to herself on the pad. Kate tried to read it upside-down, but it was in Flemish. “What happened next?”
“Jet lag,” Kate said.
“I don’t understand.”
“I was sitting in a dark alcove across the street from the building and I fell asleep.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“I wish I was, because it’s humiliating. But I’d barely slept for the last week and I’d been watching the building all day. I was exhausted. When I woke up, a van was pulling away and the garage door was closing. It didn’t feel right so I made a run for it.”
“You could have gone to the police instead. They were right up the street.”
“I am the police,” Kate said.
“Not here.”
“It’s who I am everywhere, and since I only had a split second to act, my reflexes took over. I managed to roll under the garage door right before it closed,” Kate said. “I took the stairs down to the vault and discovered that the three-ton door was wide open. I was sure that the vault had been emptied, that the thieves were long gone, and that I’d slept through the heist. I lowered my guard, which is how Fox got the jump on me when I went into the vault. We fought and I won.”
Janssen stopped taking notes and set her pen down. “What was Fox doing there?”
“I assume that he was double-crossed and left behind,” Kate said. “Maybe we’ll find out, and get a lead on the missing diamonds, when you stop wasting valuable time questioning me and we begin interrogating him.”
“You aren’t getting near him,” Janssen said. “You’re out of this.”
“He’s my prisoner.”
“You have no authority here to arrest anybody. You can stand in line to extradite him with all of the law enforcement agencies in Europe. That is, after he’s released from our prison, in thirty years.”
There was a knock on the other side of the mirror. Janssen threw a glance at the mirror and saw her own irritated expression reflected back at her.
“Stay here.” Janssen gathered up her notebook and pen and left the room.
Kate thought she’d given a good performance. Her story unfolded like a farce but it would be very hard for Janssen to prove it wasn’t the truth. However, it was just the beginning. The U.S. State Department, Justice Department, and the FBI would demand answers too, and probably her badge, if not her head.
Janssen came back in and held the door open. “You can go, but you can’t leave Antwerp. We’re holding on to your passport and your badge until we decide what to do with you.”
Kate stood up. “What about Nicolas Fox?”
“He’s not your problem anymore.”
Kate stepped out of the monolithic police station into the Saturday morning sun. She walked up the street, past coffeehouses and upscale clothing shops, with no particular destination in mind.
She was emotionally numb. She’d come to Antwerp to save Nick, and instead she’d put him in prison. There was a time, not so long ago, when she would have celebrated his capture. Instead, she was already thinking about how she was going to manage to get Nick free.
She caught a glimpse of a familiar figure reflected in a shop window. It was Jake. She didn’t turn to acknowledge him. He’d approach her when he was certain nobody else was on her tail. She wanted to be sure too. So now her wandering had intent.
She crossed the Groenplaats, a large plaza ringed by cafés and bars, and headed for the Cathedral of Our Lady, a Gothic monument to failed dreams that had taken two hundred years to build and yet was still incomplete. The cathedral was supposed to have had two matching four-hundred-foot towers. But in the 495 years since the church opened its doors, only one tower had been finished, and could be seen all over the city, while the other tower remained uncompleted and half as tall.
To reach the cathedral’s entrance, Kate had to go down a narrow cobblestone street, a bottleneck of restaurants, coffeehouses, and Leonidas chocolate shops, all crammed tightly together and stuck to the side of the church like barnacles. At the base of the cathedral’s unfinished tower was a sculpture of four stonemasons at work. She stopped to look at the sculpture, not to wonder if it was a critical statement about the glacial pace of construction, but to see if the bottleneck had revealed anyone shadowing her. It hadn’t. Her father walked past her and went inside the church.
Kate followed him and discovered that the church charged admission. Her father hadn’t lost any of his edge, she thought. Paying for a ticket and going through the turnstile presented an obstacle that would flush out anybody following them. She paid her six euros, walked through the turnstile, and entered the vast nave with its impressive vaulted ceiling.
At the base of each pillar holding up the church were altars to the various craft and professional guilds that had been leaders of the community in ancient times. The altarpieces were large paintings by Flemish masters. The paintings depicted guild members demonstrating their particular trades.
She stood in front of the altarpiece for the fencing guild, which had once served as Antwerp’s de facto police force. It was a painting of Saint Michael, the guardian of paradise, and his army of angels battling a seven-headed dragon and a legion of naked man-beasts with what looked like monster masks over their crotches.
“Those are some nasty codpieces,” Kate said in a voice slightly louder than a whisper.
Her father pretended to take pictures of the nave with his cellphone. “They sure are. Codpieces are uncomfortable enough to wear without fangs and horns on ’em.”
“I’m not going to ask how you know that,” she said.
“What happened in the vault?” Jake asked.
“I was caught in the act of arresting Nick. I told the police that I’d tracked him here from Hawaii and stumbled into the heist.”
“I’m glad you were able to smooth-talk your way out of jail. I was already making plans to help you.”
“What did you have in mind?”
“I was going to do what any sensible father would in a situation like this,” Jake said.
“You started looking for a good criminal lawyer?”
“I ordered explosives from my buddy in Amsterdam.”
She looked at him. “That’s what you consider the sensible thing? Blowing a hole in the police station and mounting a jailbreak?”
“Of course not. That would be insane.”
“Then what were the explosives for?”
“I was going to ambush the armored police van carrying you to court on Monday morning and blast open the doors to set you free.”
“At least that won’t be necessary now.” Kate took a seat in the row of pews behind him and lowered her head.
“The plan is still on,” Jake said, snapping some more photos. “Now we can use them to bust Nick out. We’ve got forty-eight hours to work on the details and steal the necessary vehicles. A garbage truck and two motorcycles should do it.”
Good grief, Kate thought. I’m going to steal two motorcycles and a garbage truck! As if she hadn’t already broken enough laws. She pressed her lips together and made the sign of the cross.
“What are you doing?” Jake asked. “We’re Presbyterian.”
“The agreement Nick had with the FBI was that if he was ever caught by the police, anywhere in the world, our operation was over and he’d be on his own.”
“I didn’t agree to that,” Jake said. “Besides, he’s my friend and you love him. That’s more than enough for me.”
Love him, she thought. Jeez Louise. That’s wrong on so many levels.
“I don’t…you know,” she said to her dad.
“What?”
“The L word.”
“Love?”
“Yes. The L word and Nicolas Fox shouldn’t be said in the same sentence. Especially not out loud.”
Jake gave his head a small shake. “How would you describe your relationship with him?”
“Reluctant partners,” Kate said.
“Okay, I’ll buy that. What else?”
“I guess I think he’s hot.”
“Too much information,” Jake said. He got up with his back to her, and left a disposable phone behind on the pew. “Get some rest. Call me when you’re ready.”