Big fish bites

two common men nab a real spy ... and don't know what to do with him!

               











4
The Big Fish Bites

“Know what?” Carl said after the would-be spy-bashers had left their bunker. “I’m hungry. Do you want to have a snack?”
“Great idea!” John was just thinking the same thing. The dash to the supermarket, the strain and stress caused at the check-out counter, and a heated discussion afterwards had been just too much for his crimped stomach.
“While we eat we can figure out what else we need,” Carl added mysteriously.
“What do you mean?” John’s voice turned sour at the thought of weapons. He’d never held a firearm in his hands. Guns meant blood, or at least the two were never far from each other�"or so his father had told him when he was younger.
“No muffled rifles or anything like that!” Carl frowned, reading his brother’s face. “We’re not hunting down a drug dealer or anything! We need more refined stuff, I mean.”
“Like what?” John prodded as they entered a pizzeria.
“Let’s sit down first,” Carl said, looking over his shoulder suspiciously. He puffed and saddled, with obvious delight, a creaky wicker chair by a lonely corner table.
After a stooped, silent waiter took their order, Carl fetched a ballpoint pen from his jacket.
“See?” he began to speak in short phrases, or half-words, as spies did in his imagination. It was becoming irksome for John;  too odd and amateurish to go unnoticed, wasn’t it?
“See what?” John shrugged and grinned with one corner of his mouth. “A pen?”
“Yes, a pen,” Carl replied. His eyes didn’t even twinkle. “And we need a...” he trailed off, staring at the innocent junior clerk like a university professor would peer at a mere shepherd.
“A piece of paper?” John suggested with the air of an office worm for whom pen and paper were bound forever like Tom and Jerry, or politicians and scandals.
“Nope!” Carl grinned, the mischievous sparkle in his eye returning. “We need a remote microphone of this size, up to three hundred yards range.”

John nodded, blank-faced. What else could he do? He wasn’t a hardware magician or a spy freak. “What for?” he asked dully and sipped the orange juice that the speechless waiter, who himself could have passed for a clandestine school student, had brought.
“To tap phones and eavesdrop on conversations in cars,” Carl replied, in a drier tone. “Fine idea, eh?”
John gulped. His brother, a former solid citizen, was deteriorating into a slightly maniacal, obsessed nerd whose only dream was to eclipse both the fictitious James Bond and the real General Canaris.
Carl smiled mysteriously, rummaging through the pages of a thick copybook with wiring diagrams. “Hmmm, this microphone module can be ready  in the morning,” he said, pointing his thick finger at one diagram and glancing up at John. “Can you take a day off t’morrow?”  
That was just the question the younger Cheesekop had both expected and dreaded. Unplanned days off weren’t well regarded by his private bank’s bosses. Carl looked at him imploringly, suddenly seeming quite sheepish.
“Hmm, maybe. I’ll try,” John squeezed out, tapping the table with his fingers. “I’ll try.”
“Please, brother!” pleaded the engineer. “Tomorrow I’ll come with my car, and bring” he lowered his voice to a whisper, “the microphone along. We’re only doing this for a week, remember?”
“Only a week,” John returned firmly. “And just during the day, I hope.”
“Of course, of course,” Carl repeated, nodding too readily. “And I’ll do all the monitoring... and all the special stuff as well...”

He was interrupted by the long-faced waiter bringing two steaming, sizzling pizzas. Two hungry mouths stopped their confidential talk and began to indulge in the activity that even the world’s best spies cannot avoid�"stodging.
Carl gobbled up a couple of larger slices, then washed them down with two gulps of orange juice. Then he set his massive briefcase�"or rather, the undersized chest �"on the shaky table. He took off his tortoise-shell glasses and pulled a small jar from the depths of the case, then slowly began to rub the smelly liquid onto the lenses of his glasses, all the while whistling a silly pop melody. John frowned.
“What’s that, now?” he asked, his stomach sinking and his pizza-inspired delight spoiled at the least expected moment.
“Amalgame fluid,” whispered thickset Carl in a grizzly-like tone. “When it’s rubbed upon the lenses, it makes them look like mirrored glasses.”
“Oh.” John shrugged, still not knowing what this was all about.
Carl knew, however. “And we’ll buy a pair for you!” He summed up with the sunny, easy mood of an amateur painter who’d just sketched another ‘Gioconda’.
“Carl,” John began, sighing. The future junior co-agent was getting weary from all the absurd theatre. “It’s not cool to wear mirrored sunglasses anymore.” He clearly didn’t want to look like a novice crook or a low-drawer pimp.
“Oh, Johnny, I know,” Carl said with a frown. The budding chief agent was filled with sudden, swelling, sincere compassion for John’s slender nose, which had never known the yoke of glasses even on tropical holidays. “But... imagine if someone takes a photo, on the sly, and you become known to the press, or...” he trailed off.
“Or?” John stopped chewing. The police?
 “Or... to a foreign intelligence,” Carl whispered, almost touching John’s ear with his greasy lips.
The junior co-agent drew back. He leaned against the dilapidated wicker chair, crossing his hands on his chest and shaking his head. It all sounded so grave now, so serious. So... sinister. Luckily this game will all be over in a week, he consoled himself.

***

How could John have known how wrong he’d turn out to be? The ‘game’ they were pulled, whirled, and plunged into wouldn’t last just seven dull, bob-tailed calendar days. No, it would swallow a couple of years, topple three governments, nearly sink a ship with a secret cargo, put two neighbouring nations on war alert, and cause one of the novice spy-hunters to have to escape the country in the boot of a vehicle. But how could either of the brothers have known that their plain, common, flavourless lives were about to be suddenly plugged into a high-voltage power system of international intrigue? But there was no way back now, and at the moment, neither of the modest, polite, clean-shaven, fair-weather brothers had a slightest clue of the great gale ahead.

***

 “Shall we go?” Carl asked when he’d finished polishing his spectacles. He placed them upon his nose with the panache of a multiple-Oscar winner and stood up. The two halves of his bottomless briefcase snapped like a mid-sized dinosaur’s jaws, the latch clicking like the lock of a semi-automatic pistol.
“What else have you got in there?” John asked curiously, pointing his chin towards the larger-than-life briefcase. He vaguely remembered Carl’s short-lived work for the military academy, and the aura of ‘top secret’ and ‘holy of holies’ still hovered around that mysterious chest. Now, the scratched old thing had become his older brother’s best aide in the hunt for the evasive treasure they were interested in now�"information.
Carl just smiled conspiratorially and said nothing.
John shook his head, grinning weakly. He stood up reluctantly. From his baby years on, he’d been told to follow his older sibling�"who’d never do him any harm, who was always sober and painfully punctual as a Swiss watch, and who was as boringly predictable as the Dutch rain. Suddenly, for the second time in his life, John doubted that his older brother knew best.
 “Where are you hurrying off to?” John demanded as they passed out the doorway of the pizzeria. He couldn’t understand why Carl was almost running again; the macho-style, adrenaline-boosted life of a junior co-agent was too fast-paced for a well-mannered tweedy bank clerk.
 “To buy you mirrored sunglasses!” Carl boomed, not slowing his frantic pace. “It’s almost June, right? There should be sunglass vendors everywhere! Dash, where are they? Any idea?”

John frowned as though from a dental pain. It was late March, to be precise. Obviously, the strong wine of being a ‘secret intelligence officer’ had gone to his brother’s head, and it was beginning to whirl.
 “There’s one! I see one by the taxi stand!” announced Carl triumphantly, almost colliding with an occasional policeman.
“Sorr-ry,” growled the minion of the law as Carl raced on.
“A pair of mirrored sunglasses, please!” orated Carl to the bored, unshaven salesman with an earring who was hunched behind the stall.
 “Yes, sir!” The trader stood up. “You mean, sun lenses for your eyeglasses?”
 “No! Yes! That is, no!” The engineer’s head turned like a turret in a first-person console shooter game, each time shifting in another direction. His gestures were as broad as they were uncertain.
 “Huh?” The trader couldn’t follow what was going on.
 “I mean, um, the sunglasses are for the boyo.” Carl nodded nonchalantly over his right shoulder, where a grey-bearded gentleman in his eighties was wading along, leaning on a weathered  walking stick. The entrepreneur’s eyes rounded.
Just behind the aged gentleman, John groaned. He didn’t like being called ‘the boyo’ one bit. He walked up to the stall with a heavy step. “The sunglasses are for me,” he said wearily, trying to cover his brother’s sudden spring madness with his own coolness and savoir-vivre.
The salesman, who had seen many a queer fish in his life, nodded. “The mirrored ones are at the top. There are three rows over there.” He pointed.
John grabbed the first pair of cheap, plastic mirrored spectacles he saw and tossed them, with sheer disgust, onto his nose. He looked into a broad mirror readily held up by the salesman. He glanced at Carl uncertainly.
“They’re not bad, but you’re looking like... like a spy!” summed up the chief co-agent with an expert’s air.
“Well, is that wrong?” John raised his shoulders. “Shouldn’t we look like... you know?”
“Oh, Johnnie, a spy who’s looking like a spy is not a... a good spy!” declared Carl in a loud pitch. He was again wound up like a grandfather clock’s tight spring, and again losing control over his voice, almost shouting his last words. He turned his head (over which he seemed to have no control) toward a taxi driver who was lingering nearby, listening.

“Yeah, sur, you’re ruyght, absolutlee ruyght!” nodded the moustachioed driver with a strong, stuttering turkish accent. He smoothed his skimpy hair and added, in a lower voice, “Eh, sur, y’ knoou, eef yu need to catch a reel spuy, ask mee!”
“Really? Why?” Carl stopped shouting and came closer to the cabbie.
John sighed. What a sheer profanation I’m taking part of! A cabbie as a spy-hunting tutor! Why not use a janitor’s advice to learn opera singing? he begrudged.
“Eehm sir, I stood here fur tvelv yeers.” The cabbie came near and began to bend his fingers, ticking off his observations. “At furst, a spuy is a forrenner, ruyght?”
“Sure!” Carl agreed. A Dutchman would never become a traitor, that was as clear as the sun.
John paid for the mirrored sunglasses, tucked them into his jacket, and came closer.
“Sakondlee, I see a forrenner frum free hunnerd metters.” The Turk’s eyes twinkled with seasoned bazaar savvy. “I’ve seen a lut, and cun tell yee a Franchman frum a Spunniar, a Sweede frum a Dane, a Korean frum a Chinnese. Reelly!”
“Really?” John asked incredulously. He himself could barely tell a Japanese from a Hindu. “Fine, let’s do a test, then. Who’s that gent with the rucksack?” John pointed to the left, where a tourist-like man with a map in his hand was sauntering along the pavement. John’s unbespectacled eyes narrowed. If the cabbie failed this simple test, Carl could come back to his senses and the absurd theatre could be laid to rest that much sooner.
The chauffeur knit his brow, rubbed his square chin, and pinched his long nose.
“A Franch!” he concluded, leaning his head to the right, nodding as the man walked on. “Yep!”
“Okay,” John responded. He glanced at Carl, then raced toward the fellow with the rucksack. “Excuse me, but what time is it?” he asked in Dutch. John clamped his hands with a foretaste of triumph. The guy looked like a German or a Dutchman. What is he talking about, French?
The tourist halted, smiling kindly with a plain savoir-vivre. “Uh... pardon, monsigneur. Parlais-vous francais?” sounded a guttural melody instead of the familiar grunting.
“Um, no,” John confusedly shook his head. “I... no... do,” he babbled, then smiled and retreated awkwardly, spreading his hands. He only spoke Dutch, English, and German; as with most folks in the Netherlands, the language of Richelieu and De Gaulle wasn’t within his range. Or, at least, not yet.

When he stumbled back to them, the triumphant chauffeur and a respectful Carl stood next to the cab. The driver shook the hands of the would-be counter-intelligence squad.
“I’m Selim!” he introduced himself. “And yu are poleece studdents, ruyght?”
“Yes!” Carl replied immediately, nodding. “That’s so.”
John, who didn’t like white lies or overly broad definitions (Everyone is a student of life, folks, he thought), kept silent, only bobbing his head lightly. Ufff, when will this insane week end?
“I luyk studdents,” purred Selim. “Yu cun use mye car to watch, yu need a lut of watchin’, ruyght?”
“That’s right!” agreed Carl, who was planning the same�"that is, to watch his victims from a car with tinted windows the next day. Today he had no car with him. He glanced at his brother. John shrugged. It’s your day, man, the junior clerk’s blank face seemed to say. It’s your music to order�"and your turn to pay the bills.
“Yes, please!” Carl opened the BMW’s finely curved rear door, ready to take a seat. He admired how a new Dutchman could show such patriotic verve�"
The man avidly lifted his hand. Carl stood still. What’s up?
“Eet’s fur fiftee Euro an hour,” the cabbie informed them and smiled. “Eets no prublem for yu, ruyght?”
“Oh, that’s no problem,” Carl replied, smiling broadly. Then he quenched his grin a bit. What if they should sit in there for three hours? And was that rate per person, or ...?
Carl climbed into the low automobile, settled his case to his left, and waved his hand to John.
“Yes?” his younger brother asked sourly. What now?
“Know what?” Carl said in a low, quiet voice, assuming the assuredness of a chief officer who gives orders. “I don’t carry much cash along. Could you please take out three hundred for me? I’ll give you my card.” He rummaged in his jacket, where the spy card still dangled inside the empty corn can, in search of his debit card, but found none. “Sheeps ...” he mumbled, wary to ask his younger brother for money.
“I’ll take out the cash,” John said sourly, briefly touching his brother’s square shoulder. I earn three hundred Euros a day, true. But I’d never throw a dime away on a nutty spectacle like this! he thought.
John was back in five minutes and climbed into the cab. Silently he passed the crisp bank notes to Carl. The driver sat in the front seat listening to the sounds of rustling cash �"music that was sweet to his ear.
“A hundred, at first,” Carl said as he placed two pastel notes into the driver’s narrow palm. “To start.”
“Gudd,” agreed the cab driver as he crammed the cash into his worn wallet. “Me gaw and seet in de car beforr, me tell naw-buddy who you are, gudd?”
“Of course,” nodded the two brothers, finally together.
The front door closed behind the bony back of the moustachioed, police-friendly Turk. Both brothers sighed�"one with relief, the other with rising anger.
“Carl!” John poked his older ‘broer’ with his elbow.
“Ye-eah?” The superspy-in-training stopped peering through the low window and looked at John.
“I feel like the last idiot, to tell you the truth.” John slammed his palm against his thigh so firmly that a fine dust rose up, dancing under the pale roof and obscuring the already-dystrophic sun that was trying to poke its fleshless ray fingers through the budding leaves of the primly trimmed trees beside the canal.
“Oh, Johnnie, the week will pass quicker than a thunderbolt!” the senior Cheesekop patted his voluminous case. “If anything goes awry, I’ll foot all the bills. You’ll be as clean as a tear!”
“If only it would be that easy,” mumbled the junior co-agent, feeling the mirrored sunglasses in his side pocket and slowly getting boiling-mad at himself. Why had he agreed? He needed to learn to say no to Carl, once and for all.
A moment of stuffy, stale, strained silence settled in. There were throngs of people, both Dutch and foreign, walking along both sides of the canal, driving neat cars or junky scooters, leisurely stretched out on tour boats or busily cycling.
Who among them is a spy, for goodness sakes? John wondered, sighing agitatedly. What a fool I’ve been to agree to this plan...  

“We can’t lose time,” whispered Carl, suddenly and meaningfully, and cleared his throat.
John, too mad to answer, didn’t even nod. He looked at his watch. Indeed, they were killing time in a rather weird, and expensive, way.
“I shall use this opportunity to train my voice,” concluded the older brother, clearing his chest again and trimming his necktie. He straightened up and opened his mouth broadly, like an army sergeant.
“Kingdom of the Netherlands! You’re arrested!” he boomed, then glimpsed at John. “Sounds good?”
John stared at him and chuckled, scarcely able to hold back a loud giggle. “Sounds... pitiful,” he replied honestly, shaking his head. “Like a bad joke.”
Carl coughed a couple of times, then took his glasses off and wiped them, not caring that the precious mirror fluid was soaking into the hanky. He was getting nervous; two scarlet spots appeared on his cheeks.
“Hmmm, hmm,” he mumbled, then rubbed his forehead. “How does one begin, then?”
“No idea,” John returned, feeling some rare pity for his comrade-in-unseen-arms. “I’ve never arrested anyone before.”
Carl placed his glasses back and scratched his ear for contrast. He was clearly brainstorming a high-altitude problem�"alone. The Dutch always win, sooner or later, Carl reasoned, recalling John’s drummed-up slogan from a couple of days ago. I’ll cope.
“Fine, let’s try it like this.” Carl began slowly, as though rewinding a VHS tape in his mind, “General counter-intelligence. Your passport, please?”
“Why ‘passport’?” the junior clerk came up with a sudden correction. “Why not ‘documents’? Many folks live for years without a passport these days.”
Carl was rapidly�"and loudly�"improving. “General counter-intelligence service. Your documents, please!” he thundered with the severe face of an ancient Greek tyrant announcing the last battle of the Trojan war.

John giggled openly this time when he saw the cardboard deodoriser tied to the rear-view mirror swinging around from the force of Carl’s breath. “Sorry,” he muttered as he wiped some miniature tears from the corner of his eye. “If the poor spy doesn’t die on the spot from a heart attack, he’ll die later from laughter!”
“You mean... too loud?” Carl wasn’t amused at all.
“Three times too loud!” John turned his head to the side to hide his broad grin.
“All right.” Carl nodded, then went on, almost at a whisper. “General counter-intelligence service; you’re arrested!”
The clerk stifled a laugh. They’d grown up in a very traditional rural family, drinking respect with their mother’s milk. John would never openly ridicule or laugh off his parents, his aunt, or even Carl.
“Why?” The older brother nonetheless felt plainly insulted, but he had no one else to test his approach on. After all, he couldn’t try to holler such orders at his colleagues, his neighbours, or his kids.
“Carl, now it seems like you’re begging,” replied the younger brother. “I could barely hear it, even in this quiet car, and you’d be speaking it out in the open. Anyone would have to ask you, ‘What are you mumbling, sir? Are you all right?’”
“Good. Good.” Carl tightened his lips, cleared his throat, and announced, “Kingdom of the Netherlands, counter-intelligence service.” He paused and glanced at John. The clerk nodded. “Your documents, please!”
“That’s all right,” John conceded, “in terms of volume. But somehow it still doesn’t hit the apple.”
“Sheeps!” This time it was Carl’s palm that flagged his own pants, raising another cloud of wool dust.
“That’s good!” John commented.
“What? What’s good?” The engineer frowned. Streaks of sweat began to show on his forehead.
“The intonation.” John looked serious. “You can’t beg for someone’s documents. You can’t force someone to hand their papers over to you by yelling. You should demand that they do. Get it?”
“Yeah!” puffed the chief engineer, already bone-tired from fighting the invisible enemies of Queen Beatrix and Crown Prince Willem Alexander. “If a good newspaper report is like a flight to the moon, then how hard can catching a spy be?”

The front door of the taxi screeched open, and the moustachioed head of the driver poked in.
“All gudd?” He smiled down at the two. “Wanna a snuck?”
“I’d visit a toilet, with pleasure,” John took advantage of the costly assistance. “Are there any nearby?”
“Ugh,” the cabbie said with some hesitation. “M-maybbee, fur yu. Juss a mummet!”    He disappeared inside the crowd, which was getting thicker as the evening rush drew closer. He returned in a couple of minutes.
“Gaw to eh kebab!” his voice twinkled. “Juss neer heer.”
In the kebab’s dingy loo which resembled a refugee camp, complete with cracked windows, three rolls of barbed wire, a cow’s horned skull, and the crankshaft of an unknown vehicle, the undercover officers said farewell to the pale-yellow remains of the bright-orange liquid they’d guzzled an hour earlier. They sneaked back into their position. The driver climbed into the front seat.
 “Eh, freends, I see yu’re reel poleece studdents.” He drummed his not-very-clean fingers on the greasy front head rest. “I cun tell you sum fin.”
 “Something?” Carl assumed the role of the boss again. He found that it went easier each time he did. John noticed this, too.
 “Yep, sum fin.” The cabbie hushed his voice to almost below hearing level. “Me curred a reer cleent yestr’die.”
 “You gave a ride to someone who sat at the rear seat?” John asked with a frowned. The deep accent was too strong for his ear.
 “Shut up, please!” Carl, afraid of the driver’s reaction, whispered and poked John with his elbow. John winced and pouted.
 “Eh, eh, I alvauy curree d’ cleents at de buck seet!” exploded the temperamental Turk, returning to a very audible pitch. “I sey, me curred a re-ear cleent, thut meens, un-ussal! Yu get?”
“Perfectly! A rare bird!” Carl seemed to tune in his hearing.
“For wun hunner I’d tell yu what he lookt luyk.” The driver switched back to a half-whisper and knit his other brow, which surely would mean a lot for another Turk, but was of unperceivable importance to the two pale-faced agents.
John glanced askew at Carl. This time he really smelled a hoax. The cabman was simply churning out his hard-earned salary!
 “Please.” Carl passed two other fifty-Euro notes into two ready palms.
 “Gudd.” The cabbie took the keys from his pocket and continued, “Of cors, yu nev’r hurd eet frum meself.”
“It goes without saying!” Carl declared.
John nodded, feeling like a silly doll. Bullocks, he thought, bemused.
“Yestr’die, me took a chup frum Schiphol. I stood dere until noon,” Selim trimmed his moustache and began his story. “En he wus a purfect stranner!”
“Yes...?” Carl’s glasses began to regain their victorious shine, even without much fluid on them.
“Yu knoe, he told me, ‘Bristol, please’ and the Keisergracht is clawzd, yu knoe?”
Both nodded, although the street name meant something only to John.
“And he wus almos’ askin mee wyy me goes anuthr way ’round? Hou cun a stranner knoe?”
This question didn’t mean much for John. Carl began to rub his chin.
“Was he upset, then?” the elder brother enquired, with an almost professional air.
“Yep, but huydinn it so gudd!” Selim’s voice again hovered at new heights. “Wyy?”
Carl looked at John, who just shrugged, and then back to the driver.
“So... he was different from a normal tourist, wasn’t he?”
“I’d swim de Amstel ovve twanty timms eef he wusn’t!” Selim put his hand to his throat. “He’s a spuy o’ sum fin lake dat.”
“Good, man,” returned Carl after a full minute of silence. “Your observations will be taken into account by us. Can you, please...”
“To Bristol? Wun hunnerd!” Selim’s arithmetic was very straight and simple. John’s eyes rounded, which the diligent driver noticed at once. “Eh, eh, me use a metter, me use a taximetter, allavauy, but yu need a speeshal service, eet fur speeshal tariff, eh?”
“No problem. Please,” Carl gave his assent to the cabbie, feeling both remorse for picking the spy card up and a thrill from the imminent use of it. “Let’s go, then.”
“Eh, munny, sur!” The narrow palm opened again between the wide front seats. Carl, now grieving the fact that he was getting deeper into his younger brother’s pocket, pulled out the last note. It was no longer a pair of pastel-coloured fiftiers, but a green hundred.
“Eh, hunnerd!” Selim folded the note and squeezed it into his bottomless wallet. “You’ll hev a lack!”
“A luck?” John couldn’t hold his sarcastic remark back.
“Eh, man, eef me say dat yu hev lack, you hev a reel lack!” gesticulated Selim, throwing his sizeable vehicle between tinkling trams, tooting buses, swearing scooter drivers, and cheeky bikers. The rush hour had struck, and traffic in the capital’s centre had stalled, turning into its usual afternoon nightmare. Or, it had almost stalled, for some daredevil cabbies were pushing through, using even the smallest gaps of free tarmac or the ‘sacred cow ways’ that were the broad bike paths.

***
Even with Selim’s outstanding skills and daring impudence, some forty minutes passed before the Bristol facade, familiar to every Schiphol cabman but wholly unknown to the freshly-baked agents, beckoned to them. Selim moored his four-pawed beast into the taxi only lane, the sole free space available, and turned the guzzling engine off.
“Heer wee are!” the asphalt gladiator boomed as he wiped his forehead with a large hanky that looked like Arafat’s headscarf. “Now cutch heem!”
“What exactly did he look like?” Carl asked the last question. John peered at his brother with a mix of slight disgust, growing uncertainty, and genuine care. Did he really intend to launch out into the dusk and wave the spy card before an unsuspecting tourist’s nose, scaring him out of his wits with it?
“Hee lookt, okay, he lookt saw,” Selim trailed off. He rubbed his forehead. Yesterday’s guest had no special features to speak of; he was so mousy and indiscernible that even his trained mind began to overheat like the eight-cylinder motor of his car had minutes ago. “He had smawl ayys, an’ brownish haar, an’ he wore a grey jakket and a brown tuy... an’ de tuy wus too narrow fur Amsterdam!” he concluded, finally grasping at least one unique feature. “I saw!”
Carl and John looked at the driver, then at one another. The tip wasn’t worth a shoelace, yet what alternative did they have? It was dawning more and more upon both espionage hobbyists just how much they lacked. They had no ‘base’ to fall back on like the regular unseen military have�"no apparatus of hundreds of experts who made photos, wrote dossiers, analysed data, checked facts, compared logs, and did a thousand and one other chores before their agents headed out to nab the proper guy. Now, both felt like fish out of water�"like petty, feeble, unskilled babes in the dark, thick woods of greed, high treason, and compromise, where the kings quarrelled or gambled for fun while the pawns lost their heads.
 “We’re going!” commanded Carl, reaching into his jacket pocket and grappling for the corn can. The card couldn’t have any food remains on it, of course, so the engineer wiped it against his pants. He was subsequently too preoccupied to care for corn that was now on his pants, and too cautious to just step out of the car and begin their ‘mission’. After all, within three minutes the GPS antenna, as miniature as it was, would find a satellite in the open, and the spy trackers would be hunted down. Suddenly, his eyes caught sight of a half-eaten chocolate bar on the dashboard.
“Can I please, sir, have the chocolate?” Carl asked without any reserve�"and even with a hint of newly bred impertinence.
“Eh? Chakolut? Pleez, pleez!” The driver was ready, his wallet sufficiently stuffed with ‘feeftees’ and a ‘hunnerd,’ to show some Eastern generosity and share his dessert. He grabbed the bar from the dusty dashboard and delivered it into the trembling, sweaty hands of the upcoming gentleman of adventure.

Carl wasn’t intending to ward off the chattering teeth and goose skin he felt, very unpleasantly and clearly, with a brief Lucullian pleasure. No, he had another idea. He removed the foil and tucked the rest of the bar, for just a moment, into his inside jacket pocket. Next, he folded the aluminium foil in four, then wrapped the card in it. That’s better, he thought with sudden relief. The foil would make do as Faraday’s cage, thwarting the wireless connection or at least weakening it. He resolved to try to solder the battery off at home, but for now, this would have to do.
“Wait for us for half an hour, please,” communicated Carl before leaving the rear seat.
Selim nodded and lifted both his thumbs in the air. He looked alert and serious.
The two brothers stepped noiselessly out of the dark vehicle and trotted, slowly and uncertainly, towards the brightly lit white facade. Carl didn’t utter a word. What on earth should they do? Enter the hotel and show the card to a porter and order him to show them the logbook with all the tourists’ names? But the cabbie hadn’t conjured up a name, though he couldn’t be blamed for that. Two small eyes and a necktie too narrow for Amsterdam were pitifully weak clues.
“Where shall we go... or stand?” John asked after they’d been stuck for a good ten minutes to the middle of the pavement, loitering there like passengers late for a train�"aloof, fidgeting, and dejected. The western wind blew stronger, carrying candy wrappers and empty plastic cups along with it; the street was draughty and cold.
“No idea, to tell you the truth,” Carl admitted with a shrug. “We could stand... behind a tree.”
“Carl, please!” John rolled his eyes, almost ready to cry. “Why not climb up a tree? Then you could jump down onto the spy’s head!”

The engineer scratched his chin. The trunks, indeed, weren’t thick enough to serve as a hiding place even for slender John, let alone his own bulky self. No, it would be up to him to invent a set of observation and spy-bashing techniques newer than those used in the time of the Norman Conquest or the Hundred Years’ War.
“Should we... walk, maybe?” Carl suggested. “From left to right, and then the other way around? That way we won’t get cold, at least.”
“Well...” John, who was now beginning to feel shivery, was on the brink of agreeing to anything. “Let’s walk,” he sighed.

***

 After circling around the street twenty times or so, Carl stopped�"so abruptly that the junior agent bumped into his back. “Know what?” he decided, scratching his aching shoulder, “It’s getting too dark for this. Let’s go into the hotel and pretend we’re going to book a room.”
 “Loony,” disagreed John, rubbing his aching nose, “one doesn’t arrive at a posh hotel in the evening without luggage.”
“I’ve got a briefcase,” opposed Carl, but he soon resigned himself. To begin with, he’d forgotten his chest in the taxi, silently hoping that their cabbie wouldn’t drive away with his microchip-filled treasure box. What’s more, even if he’d been holding it now, it was quite possible that the porter would tell them that all the rooms were booked, and what then? “Isn’t there a restaurant?” Carl sniffed the crisp air. “I feel like I smell... something like... roasted steak!”
“I feel dog tired,” countered John, as sincerely as he could.
“Then come along!” the senior co-agent clamped his oscillating comrade by the elbow and dragged him towards the glass door. It flung open and a porter in lush livery stood in their way.
“Sirs?” asked the porter with the uppity dignity of a rich man’s minion.
“We’ve got a dinner booked,” said Carl coolly, almost snobbishly. John kept silent, looking straight ahead, wondering at how quickly he’d learned to not even notice lies. His tacky mirror glasses were still lying in his pocket.
“By the name of, sir?” the clean-shaven chin yielded a bit.
Carl’s stomach fell a fraction of a centimetre. “Misters Axel van den Bergh and Serge Lefebre,” he cited the first fable names that came to his mind.
The servant produced a cream-coloured note card from his breast pocket and studied it for a long twenty seconds. By an unattainable miracle, Carl’s blind shot had hit the bull’s eye. ‘Serge L.’ was printed there, followed with a comma and three dots. That meant another, anonymous, person would be joining him.

The porter stepped aside. “Please,” he bowed to the now-worthy guests, switching his voice to a kinder, warmer, and more servile register, “the cloak room is to the right. The usher will accompany you to the restaurant. Have a nice evening, sirs.” He reached for a dated-looking phone, picked up the black ebonite receiver, and spoke briefly.
The brothers ventured into the brightly lit hall where uniformed, stately waiters carried small silver trays with champagne. A lean, red-eyed man in a too-tight tailcoat came up to them.
“Good evening, sirs,” he said in decent English, pointing towards the double doors to the dining room. “Your table is the third from the left.”
Carl nodded curtly. He felt that he shouldn’t talk to the flunkies unless it was necessary. They should play the roles of people of importance�"people who ambled in there whenever they wished, to dine for the price of a small car.
Inside, the usher shuffled behind the two rather shabbily dressed visitors and helped both to sit, pulling out their chairs with the knack of a thoroughbred butler. They sat down.
  “Carl!” John whispered to his brother. “What’re you thinking, man? Imagine they come up? The guys who booked the dinner?”
“Then I’ll pull out the card,” Carl cut him short before nodding briefly to another waiter, this one in white gloves, who brought the menus. Carl himself seemed too tired to conjure up any smart way out.
John drooped his head and glanced at his watch. Six-twenty. Normally he’d be back home by now. He’d get a poignant call from his wife at any moment. He sat there stiffly, as though on needles.
“Carl, I have to go to the loo,” he whispered to the chief co-agent. “I have to phone Sveta!”
The older brother nodded and John started across the finely decorated room.
“Oh, and one more thing,” Carl hissed.
John stalled, halfway to the lobby. Yes? his burning eyes seemed to ask.
“When you’re back, put the mirrored glasses on!” he whispered loudly.

***

...Two storeys above the restaurant, another clean-shaven man in a grey jacket and a narrow tie sat as though on needles. Major Davis knew that the job should be a cinch, but for some reason he already felt, even before it had begun, like he was at the end of his tether. Years of knife-sharp intelligence work had created a sixth sense within him�"a keen intuition, a ‘nose’ for future events, a sort or clairvoyance�"though he didn’t actually believe in mediums or the like.
All he felt now was a hollow, sucking, gnawing foretaste of a flop�"and a nasty one, at that. No one likes being flunked at school, much less failing at work, and still less to flop at the end of one’s career. Yet, Davis was a Brit born and bred, and he knew, deep in his genes, how to ‘meet triumph and disaster, and treat those both imposters just the same.’ A red Triumph stood in his Sussex garage, ready and running, and now... now it seemed to be the time for the other half of Kipling’s verse to materialise.
He glanced at his watch. It was six-eighteen local time. He had to go. His liaison, one Serge L., was to be seated at the third table on the left side of the dining room, wearing a pair of mirrored tortoise-shell glasses. Nothing else about him was known, as usual; the receiving side, most likely a diplomat or an incognito dignitary, hadn’t been too plentiful with concrete data. The success of this mission, then, depended on solid planning, perfect timing, and faultless conspiracy�"and such was what his Office was known for. And on some luck, Major Davis added in his head. Luck had always seemed to follow him. At least, so far...

***

Down in the restaurant, an unsuspecting usher accompanied the nervous major to the third table on the left, where the upset engineer, pretending to read the menu (though holding it upside-down) was sitting alone, impatiently waiting on his brother. Without him, he didn’t feel at home in this voluptuous hall dotted with tacky, gilded fountains and pseudo-antique marble statues. He also fretted that he was without his tacit aide�"his boxy briefcase�"for the first time in years.          
Five strides short of the table, the usher halted. “Here, sir,” he said to the new grey-clad diner, bowing.
“Thank you,” uttered Norman, glancing back as the tailcoat vanished between the rows of Corinthian columns.
Carl lifted his head and trimmed his tortoise-shell glasses, on which, he believed, the remainder of the reflecting fluid still rested. Do they still shine as they should? he wondered, briefly and intensely.
Davis came three steps closer. Carl raised his head, not knowing if he should greet the visitor. Who on earth could this be? he wondered nervously. Is this chap indeed that Axel Bergh, or the Frenchman? What should he do? Retreat, beg his pardon, tell a joke, or what? Carl felt treacherous sweat flushing down his forehead.
 “Good evening, sir. May I ask what time it is?” the rather uneasy MI6 officer began the prepared charade. The proper coded answer had to be, ‘My watch is seven minutes late, I’m sorry.’ If the answer was correct, then the major could go on with the plan�"that is, hand over the briefcase. Then the mission would be over, and in the morning, he would be ambling through the well-known Heathrow halls on his way back home, slightly bored at having completed another dull job�"a bacon-and-eggs lunch at a five-star hotel, in simple terms.
 “Good evening!” replied Carl, who had, of course, no insight into the Office’s codes and plans. The rather sweaty engineer looked at his watch, which was neither late nor early. “It’s six-twenty-two in the evening.”
The visitor didn’t move or speak a word. Strange...
For a long, endless second Carl’s bespectacled eyes stared at the man in front of him, and the major’s inquisitive eyes peered back.
Wait a minute, thought Carl suspiciously. Those small eyes, that grey jacket, that narrow tie... Was the wolf running straight to the hunter? Carl jumped to his feet, making the heavy oak chair crash to the ground. He snatched the card out of his pocket, not caring that the crackling chocolate foil was still stuck to it for a brief moment before it fluttered over the table and landed on the floor.
“Kingdom of the Netherlands, counter-intelligence,” he announced dryly and, so it seemed, toughly. He weightily stepped on the treacherous foil. “You documents, please!”
          The major gazed at the card, then glanced at Carl, then assumed an ‘innocent tourist’ face. “Sorry?” he asked, trimming his tie and eyeing the card again. His heart sank. It was indeed a real Dutch counter-intelligence ID; he’d studied such cards for long enough to know a real from a fake blindfolded. This was no hoax or provocation. They’d certainly be circling the hotel by now, with the police in civil�"
 “Your documents, please!” Carl’s repeated command interrupted his thoughts. The engineer felt the sweat beginning to fog up his glasses, and he was maddened by the fact that he couldn’t wipe them.
Norman shrugged, put his hand into his side pocket, and nimbly pressed both of the alert buttons on the inside of his jacket�"an indication that meant ‘Yellow alert! I’m snapped! Abort mission!’. The next minute, if all went well, these words, sufficiently coded, would appear in the Office. If he was lucky enough to keep his jacket, he’d get a coded answer on a micro-SD card to copy to his handheld mobile and read. If he was searched, or imprisoned, he would try to destroy the button-sized transmitters in his jacket and reach the Embassy at any cost.
Next, the major pulled his passport out and placed it, politely, into Carl’s trembling hands, which he’d just managed to wipe against his shirt. The officer used the brief moment when the pseudo-officer was studying his empty-shelled document to glimpse behind him. The view behind him wasn’t smooth sailing, either�"in the shiny lane between the columns stood another fellow in mirrored sunglasses, his right hand tucked into his jacket pocket. That John had just placed his cell phone, and not a muffled gun there, wasn’t revealed to anyone.
“You are arrested, sir,” declared Carl, “on the power of Article 43 of the Dutch Penal Code. Follow us, please.” The novice ‘agent’ didn’t have any time to wipe the rolling sweat from his forehead. His heart thumped like an awakened volcano, and, worse still, his knees began to tremble almost visibly. A couple of minutes more and Carl knew he’d be shaking like a late-stage Parkinson patient�"and that would mean a shameful end of this whole ‘Operation Bristol.’ Wait a minute, Carl thought, fighting guilt, shame, and fear. Why did I arrest this guy?
Davis’s trained eyes had noticed all of Carl’s wayward body language and he felt a bit easier, but, on the other hand, he was more confused than ever. These guys look and act like a pair of amateurs, sweating and teetering and toppling furniture. But the ID was real, the timing perfect. Who’s playing a nasty joke on me, and why? the major wondered coolly. All right, let’s see...
“Follow me,” repeated Carl, hiccupping from emotional overload as he stepped over the fallen chair. Jostling against the table, which creaked and swayed, he marched to the double entry doors, paying no attention to the massive crystal flower vase which shook, tilted, and thumped down upon the table top.
“Your briefcase, please?” asked John, stretching his left hand towards Norman. The younger brother, instead of turning crab-red like Carl, assumed a morbid pale green face as he always did when upset or afraid. He still had his right hand stuck in his pocket, and couldn’t pull it out, he was so paralysed with confusion and fear. “Please keep your hands behind your back!” he uttered, falling short of breath, woodily plodding on his heavy feet. He couldn’t remember in which movie had he heard that command. Maybe it was in one about cowboys and Indians some twenty years ago.
Norman, sagged and sullen on the surface but modestly hopeful inside, handed the briefcase over and then folded his hands behind him as required. Yes, he knew enough martial arts to make those flabby chaps fly through the hall; both were clumsily exposing their temples, necks, and throats like the stuffed mannequins in the Office’s sports and wrestling range. But he easily decided that he would not use those skills now. The situation was plainly daft; it was all one thick haze. And what if ...

While the three were passing under the troubled eye of the head waiter (for chairs and vases don’t fall over too often in five-stars hotels) and through the entry hall, a gasping guest in a costly suit and mirrored tortoise-shell glasses stormed in, almost knocking the liveried porter off his feet.
 “Whaaaat? I�"I�"am Serge L.!” he bellowed with a strong Eastern European accent, shoving the scared servant aside like a feckless rag doll. “It’s me, you blockhead! Get lost, yob tvoyou!” He almost ran into the dining hall.
Catching sight of the new guest, Norman chuckled as loud as he could afford and turned his head, almost at an owl-sharp angle, towards his real proxy. The new arrival wasn’t looking anywhere except at the third table on the left side, under which the flattened chocolate foil lay and upon which the drenched tablecloth hung sloppily, half on the tabletop and half draped over the silk-upholstered chairs. Two baffled waiters lingered nearby, one scratching his head and the other rubbing his chin. The crystal vase still rested on its side, and three delicate waterfalls were trickling, delightfully, down onto the thick bordeaux-coloured carpet.
The rumpled porter, his eyes round, gaped at the three silent chaps. The one in the middle had his hands behind his back, and they were trotting one after another, like an honour guard, towards the exit.
 “Sirs?” he mumbled feebly, seeing three jackets dissolving in the dusk. “Eh?”

***

Inside the dark, empty taxi, the brothers felt a bit fortified. They were at least back to their ‘home base’. The culprit sat squeezed in the middle of the dusty, smelly car, without his passport or his briefcase.
What do we do now? Carl wondered. They couldn’t take council with themselves any longer on how they were to act, and there was no script or stage director. Selim, where are you? thought Carl feverishly before he drove the indecent, pesky thought away. They had to interrogate their captive, but first they had to know how. Fine, how does James Bond normally begin?
 The driver, as it turned out, wasn’t far off. He was babbling with another moustachioed brunette in the cab behind them. He was dying from curiosity, wanting to see if the third guy was, indeed, that strange ‘buzznessman’ he had brought to the hotel just the night before. But he left the play, too serious to meddle in, to the others. What if the grey-clad chap was armed? He decided to let the ‘poleece studdens’ practice alone.

Both ‘studdens,’ however, sat in his car in almost complete darkness and uneasy, stuffy, hear-a-pin-drop silence. John felt that he was beginning to blush from shame. After three or four tense minutes, Carl attempted to switch the interior light on. Sitting behind the driver’s seat, he leaned in towards the steering wheel and began to grapple with buttons on the dashboard. Where on earth have those Munich wizards put the cabin lights? he muttered silently.
 “Umm,” uttered Carl, his belly pressed up against the seat. He was getting mad from holding back a belch and was sweating again�"all because of one stupid, unreachable switch. He shifted his body weight and tried with his left hand, to no avail; the broad dashboard remained an abracadabra of signs, buttons, and levers. Only the alarm button was alight; the rest were dark. Drat! Why didn’t we ask Selim earlier? came more silent cusses.
 “Sirs, let me help you,” their captive suddenly spoke out. “The light switch is the third in the second row, if I’m correct.”
Carl chuckled, jerking his whole body. The words had come unexpectedly, and too loud for the silent interior. But he said nothing, and began to fumble again. Second row ... but, man, from beneath or from above? After trying both, the engineer held his hand back again, confused and speechless. What now?
 “May I?” asked Davis, who felt almost free now. Holding his victorious grin back, he took the initiative over. There came no word from his captors, so he reached forward and flipped the proper switch. He could have done the same in most mainstream cars, trucks, and buses, in the total darkness, or even underwater. The light shone.
Oops... the amateur agents’ faces spoke that unuttered word so clearly that the genuine agent needed real effort to refrain from a genuine giggle.
With the precious light finally on, Carl pulled the passport from his jacket and opened it. Dash it... The forgotten chocolate that he’d tucked hastily into his left inner pocket had melted, gluing the pages of the hapless booklet shut solidly. All he could do was pry the nameless rear cover open. He glanced at the candied document and crammed it back into his pocket, producing a slopping sound and moistening his pointer finger with the dark brown mess. Do intelligence agents give the passports back to the people they search? he thought briefly. But they were supposed to act, not ponder for hours.
 “Good afternoon, sir,” announced Carl, not knowing how to begin, hardly able to keep up his weighty intonation, and too confused to notice that his greeting came far too late.  The major didn’t even bat an eyelid. “Your name is?”
 “Douglas, sirs,” Davis responded in a plain, colourless voice. He was able to withstand forty-eight hours of cross-examination by four enemy officers�"real enemy officers, that is. “Norbert Douglas.”
 “Please open you baggage,” requested John, handing the little leather briefcase to the major. The request only bothered the real agent slightly; it would take a truly overzealous interrogator to notice that the bank certificates the Office used to back the cash were replicas.
 “Can I possibly know what the charges against me are?” asked Norman, politely but firmly and with the air of a no-nonsense person who knows his rights and keeps the phone number of his lawyer handy.
 “Article 45a of the Dutch penal code,” John returned suddenly. He felt that he was responsible for the briefcase, and therefore that he should answer the culprit’s present question. Carl gave his brother a lightning-like stare that could have perhaps killed a bullock on the spot. You’re not supposed to speak! his eyes yelled.
 “Umm,” Norman murmured, lifting his brows a bit. “The other gentlemen cited Article 43, right?”
 “That is correct!” Carl’s mind sought a suitable answer much like a drowning man would grasp at a stick. “You’re charged with both, for bank frauding and ... umm, money laundry,” he cited the first accusations that rattled somewhere in the back of his memory. “But in here, we ask the questions.” He finished the last phrase so curtly that John blinked. Only at the last moment was the junior bank clerk able to hold back from covering his mouth with his palm�"the universal gesture known to people from New Zealand to Iceland that meant, ‘I’m baffled and cowed, what’s up with you?’         
Norman, asking nothing more, keyed in the code for both locks and clicked the briefcase open.
“Um,” uttered Carl, peering at the numerous packs of bank notes inside. “Sir?”
“Yes?” replied Davis innocently, with the well-trained air of a jovial millionaire who always keeps a quarter million in cash handy for a little shopping.
“That’s... a heap of money!” exclaimed the middle-class engineer, grappling for the next thread in this badly cut and woefully stitched interrogation.
“Yes it is,” the major agreed with a tiny teasing note to his voice. Come on, sissies! his defiant heart urged.
“It’s... exactly three hundred thousand Euros,” added John with the coolness and knack of a professional bean counter. His eyes were used to counting such sums, and his hands could pack the standard ten-thousand-Euro bundles without looking. He suddenly felt like he was back at his office. “Have you any documents for this amount?”
“Yes, of course.” Norman tilted the case’s lid further up and searched for the bank papers in the inside pocket, carefully keeping his lips unmoving to hide his silent cussing.
John took the bank prints into his hands and scrutinised them with a trained eye. He often dealt with cheques, SWIFT, and anonymous money transfers to and from a dozen countries. He also had an expert’s insider perspective.
“Which account is the cash drawn from?” asked John dryly. He noticed that the issuing bank code�"the internal one�"contained three cyphers, numeric codes that were reserved for government offices only. Who is this guy? Is he indeed a spy? Or a money courier? pondered John seriously. For the first time he felt as though he was perhaps doing a good service for his country.
“Um,” stuttered the Brit. Now it was Norman’s turn to have an overheated brain. “It’s from my company,” he explained and stopped. Who are these guys, d****t?
“Your company?” John grinned slightly. “Can I know its name, please? Because the bank code on this page tells me something else.” He underlined the long row of cyphers and letters across the bottom of a bill.
“Let me give you my card,” the officer said readily, still hoping that the usual business path would lead him back to freedom. He grappled inside the briefcase’s pocket and pulled a card out. “Please.”
“Norbert Douglas, Manager,” read Carl aloud, happy to grab the initiative back. “Eton antiques.”
As his brother’s voice dropped heavily in the stuffy car, John continued to look at the cash declarations, which were dull to everyone but himself. “These are not signed by a bank officer,” he pointed out. “Why not?”
“I can’t say. Sorry,” the officer said and shrugged lightly. “Those banks... they are so messy at times.”
“Oh, really?” John began to smell a rat, like a full-blooded anti-spy. He had dealt enough with banks from the other side of the Channel to know first-hand that they weren’t sloppy by any measure�"and surely not when a quarter million sterling in cash was to fly overseas!
“Shall we send one pack to be evaluated?” Carl clumsily meddled in the expert’s talk, stretching his hand towards the pastel-coloured fortune. His heavy arm swung a jot too far, however, and his finger, still greased with the dark, almond-flavoured cocoa, brushed against one of the tidy ten-thousand-Euro packs, leaving a large brown blotch on it.
“Ugh!” the reserved officer couldn’t curb his outburst. “Sir?”
Carl clamped his teeth together, holding in the ‘sorry’ that was almost ready to flutter from his lips, and reached for his own briefcase, which now occupied the front passenger seat. He fetched a little LED-flashlight from it, positioned the device over the chocolate spot, and pressed the button, illuminating the unsuspecting cocoa with a bright bluish-white light. Then, turning off the beam, he brought the flashlight casing close to his eyes, pretending to read some fabled data from it, and tucked it back into his case�"all in full, mysterious, and meaningless silence.
John, holding back a mixture of woeful sighs and loud giggles with the last vestiges of his willpower, and feeling that the clumsy melodrama should be ended immediately before it turned into a complete farce, tucked the banking prints back into the briefcase’s pocket. He opened the door and stepped out. “You may go, sir,” he said to the man, whom he’d most happily have kept under arrest if he’d had the authority. “For now.” The last words hung in the air like an omen.
The military officer climbed out of the vehicle in a silent rage, but he didn’t leave the brothers straight away.
“Yes?” John’s mirrored glasses sat crookedly on his nose, but he didn’t try to tidy them up.
“May I have my passport back, please?” he said modestly but audibly enough, turning to the dark space inside the car.
Carl, who had also heard the question, kept his peace. What could he do? The hapless document had turned into a sort of chocolate-glazed pancake inside his pocket: warm, sticky, and almond scented. But if they took his document with them, the guy would report them to the police, and the police would surely find the passport and arrest them in the process! Carl, who could nearly feel the stale air of a prison cell closing in on him, shuddered.
“Here!” Carl stretched his hand out to deliver the passport, keeping the almond-stained side upside-down. ‘Norbert’ reached for it, then, after just one glimpse at the polluted document and a very brief cuss, hurried back to the hotel, where he hoped�"with a hope as tiny as a poppy seed�"that the real liaison would still be sitting at the third table on the left.

He didn’t get far. Twenty yards from the front door of the hotel he heard, unpleasantly close, the  rattle of a motorcycle’s engine behind his back. He turned around. The two-wheeler rode, very slowly, along the empty pavement. What now? Davis thought, trying to cope with the adrenaline rush coursing through his body after the nutty taxi talk. He stood still, peering into the dimmed headlight of a large motorcycle equipped with a set of blue flashing lights. A policeman in a leather uniform dismounted and stopped the rumbling engine.
“Sergeant van Dyke, police corps of Amsterdam. Can I see your documents?” he asked, reaching for a walky-talky on his hip.
Norman sighed, openly and gloomily. What a doggone night.
The self-assured policeman stretched out his hand, which was clad in a coarse glove. Davis, trying to look as innocent and baffled as he’d been trained to be, grappled in his pockets to fetch the passport.
“Um, sir, there was a little accident with it,” he mumbled. “It has just fallen on the ground.”
The sergeant took the chocolate-bound booklet and attempted to open it, to no avail. The substance had hardened in the evening chill, and the smeared cocoa mass had cemented the small rectangle shut like pine resin.
 “What’s that?” he demanded, pressing a button on his talking device. “Is that your passport?”
“Sorry, sir. It has just fallen onto the ground. I... I am awfully sorry. I’m a tourist, just out for an evening walk, and ...”
“And your papers fell straight into a pool? A pool of knee-deep mud?” The leather-clad police officer frowned, weary from listening to the same silly excuses for so many years. “Show me where,” he challenged. He pulled a long flashlight from the back of his motorcycle and switched it on.
Davis, his stomach heavy as a stone, fidgeted, turning his head aimlessly around. The dark BMW where he’d sat just minutes ago suddenly made a sharp U-turn and belched out an acrid exhaust cloud. Screeching its wide tires, the vehicle disappeared from sight. At least those two odd balls are gone, he thought.
“It was... it was more or less... here,” he muttered, trying to look and sound like a silly tourist but feeling that the excuse simply didn’t fit, no matter what the circumstances. There were no puddles of anything for yards or acres around, no traces of any liquid whatsoever�"which was unusual for Holland, to have the pavement as dry as dust.
“Where?” the sergeant’s voice gained some metal tones. Norman, who couldn’t contrive any further tales, kept silent. The uniformed man pressed another button on his walky-talky and grunted several words in Dutch.

Very soon�"too soon for the overwhelmed agent�"two other police officers came up from the hotel’s door, which seemed to be hanging askew on one hinge and lacking a large chunk of glass. Between the officers limped the head waiter. The velour collar of his finely tailored livery had been torn brutally off, his right hand was hastily bandaged, and his left cheek was red.
Seeing Norman, the lackey stopped, swelled his lips, and raised his undamaged hand. “It’s�"it’s him!” he stuttered, nodding like a wound-up doll. “Yes sirs, yes sirs!”
“Follow us, please!” boomed the newly arrived police officer. He carefully took the candied passport from the sergeant. “We must question you on your role in the scuffling and hooliganery.”
“Me?” the well-bred MI6 officer sincerely raised his brows.
“Yes, sir,” replied the policeman. “You were seen in this hotel moments before the fight began.”
“The fighting?” repeated a baffled Davis. What on earth? Had everyone gone nuts?
“Yes, sir,” returned the officer curtly. “What have you done with your passport?”
“I... I... I’ve just dropped it,” shrugged Davis, feeling his heart sinking like a millstone.
“Well, we’ll just drop you at the police station,” concluded the other policeman, his mouth set in a firm line between his greying hair and the three stripes on his chevron. Davis looked at the ground and slumped. What a nasty flop.

***

The undersized and overcrowded downtown police station looked like a field hospital after a short yet fierce battle. At least half a dozen men and one woman, their heads and limbs bandaged and their faces patched up, pined away on hard benches and stools that had been hastily brought into the main hall for this occasion. Amsterdam had never been a sleepy, boring hamlet with only one church, two cemeteries, a barber shop, and a post office, but this evening was too hot by any standard.
Davis turned his head around in well-hidden disbelief. Three guys in badly torn tailcoats must have been waiters or ushers; two others, in ruffled tailor-made clothes and model shoes (one of which lacked a sole) were possible diners; one was a cook in a partially white apron; and the last, with his long, greasy hair and torn jeans, looked like a tramp. What the hell happened? The acute, poignant thought raked the M16 officer like a jagged knife. He felt that this whole pathetic affray had been caused by him�"or, rather, by his forced absence.
After taking his fingerprints, the police officer pointed Norman towards a wooden stool behind a tall barrier. “Sit down, please,” he said gruffly and opened the new protocol�"the fourteenth one of the evening. Doggone night...
“Name and surname?”
“Douglas, Norbert.”
The ballpoint screeched its way across the greyish recycled paper.
“Birth date?”
“The twenty-seventh of September, nineteen sixty-nine.” If that were true, I’d probably have a bit less grey hair, he chuckled to himself humourlessly.
“Country and place of habitation?”
“United Kingdom, Holmwood, Surrey, one-fourteen James Street.” I should really visit that place one of these days, he thought.
“Purpose for coming to the Netherlands?”
“Antiques purchase and general business.” Oh, if only that were true!
“Occupation?”
“Manager of an antique dealership.” How long do standard Dutch interrogations go on for? thought Davis, hiding a nervous yawn.

As though overhearing his last thought, the officer ceased writing. Those questions were just blossoms; the fruits had to follow, as Norman knew well. The policeman turned on his well-used chair and fetched a file. Not even looking at his suspect, he began. “According to the evidence of waiters Mr. Kip, Mr. Kok, and usher Mr. Klok, you asked the latter to guide you to the third table on the left side of the restaurant.”
“Yes,” replied the major cautiously.
“According to their evidence, you expected to meet a certain man called Serge L.”
“Hmmm,” Norman hemmed, trying to gain time. His mind, though trained and drilled to focus on two or three threads at once, was working in overdrive.
“It that right?”
“Yes, but...” stalled the secret officer
“But?” The ballpoint hung in the air like an auctioneer’s hammer.
“But I’m not sure he was there,” Norman finally put his theory into words.
The uniformed officer sat back and reached for another file.
“According to the evidence of the abovementioned witnesses, you left the restaurant at Bristol Hotel, in which you also had your stay booked, at six-twenty-five p.m., in the company of two men. Is that correct?”
“Yes.” The major knew that fighting hard evidence would lose him time and energy.
“Who were they?”
The question, which had been expected by the MI6 functionary, dropped like a cold boulder on the desk’s worn surface.
“I... I can’t tell you, sir.” Norman’s mind suddenly formed a plan. Let’s see how it’ll work... All the instructions and escape variants he’d learned at the Office suddenly became a pile of junk.
“You can’t?” stressed the interrogator. “Why not?”
“Hmmm, it’s too... it’s too private, sir.” Davis tilted his head to the side..
“You mean,” the policeman wrote down his suspect’s last answer, “that those people were known to you?”
“Sort of,” agreed Norman cautiously, suspecting a trap and grappling to figure out where it was lying in wait.
“But one of them was Serge L., correct?” the inquirer clarified, glancing at the agent with hidden exultation.
For a long, endless second Norman sat speechless. What’s he going to ask next?
“Sir?” The officer wrote something down and gazed at the major again. “Do you know the person called Serge L., with whom you had arranged a meeting tonight?”
“Yes, I... I do,” Norman carefully weighed his words.
“Have you seen him tonight?”
“No.”

The police officer’s face turned blank, plain, emotionless, and even bored. A bad sign, Davis  knew from all the psychological workshops he had taken part in at the Office; it meant the other side didn’t trust you at all. The policeman pressed a couple of buttons on his phone without picking up the receiver. The side door opened and a young chap in a sergeant’s uniform appeared with an envelope. The policeman opened it, took out a photo, and placed it before Norman.
“Do you know this person?” he asked dryly.
“No,” returned the secret agent in like style, but of course he did recognise the fellow pictured with the dark glasses. It was his liaison, Serge L.
“So you weren’t waiting for this person tonight?”
“No.”
So this guy thinks he can play games, noted the policeman, before going on without raising an eyebrow. The photograph was still in his hand.
 “This person arrived at the same table you’d been sitting at just a narrow minute after you’d left,” the policeman said as he glanced through a fat file. “Who was he looking for?”
“I-I don’t know,” stuttered Norman, feeling like the last cretin. He hadn’t felt that bad in years. The police officer nodded, the movement rippling his white shirt and dark navy badges. He went on reading.
“According to the evidence, that guest�"” he thrust the photo into the air “�"who was in a certain stage of intoxication, by the way, shouted at least four times, very audibly, um, let me see now, ‘Where’s that, um, eff-ing Englishman?’ Now who could he have been referring to?”
“I haven’t a clue,” replied Davis. Dash, a drunken liaison! Even in my younger years, I couldn't even have dreamt of such... clients.
“You haven’t a clue,” drawled the policeman. “Incidentally, you were the only Englishman at that hotel tonight.”
Norman looked straight ahead, silent and deadpan on the outside, sullen and grumpy on the inside. What else can I do? he thought desperately.    
“Sir?”
Norman glanced at him, moving only his eyes.
“Can you comment on that?” asked the inquirer, leaning over his papers again. “Facts known to us prove that this person, who later, together with his chauffeur, began to hurl the furniture and inflict multiple corporal injuries on the personnel and guests of the aforementioned hotel, was waiting for you.”
Norman remained still.
“Do you agree, sir?”
Not a sound.
“Shall we regard your silence as agreement?” the inquirer pressed on.
“I have the right to refrain from informing about a third person,” said Norman, pulling one of his last trumps. “Haven’t I?”
The policeman nodded several times, drumming on the desk with his fingers. His suspect certainly knew Dutch laws�"or those befitting him, that is. Hmm, then he might be no less than a money courier for the Mafia, a recidivist from Eastern Europe with fake or stolen papers, the policeman speculated silently. It’s not fair that this riffraff comes from all over the world to Amsterdam, making us pore extra hours over an obvious Interpol problem! The policeman was getting hot around the collar just thinking about it. Jug him for thirty days and let the Justice Ministry figure out in whose cage such birds have to sing their terms out!  
“Yes, sir, you have these rights in terms of a third party,” he said as he set his head, briefly, upon his hand. “Let’s talk about you now.”
Norman sat still. These tricks were gaining him some time, but he didn’t need that now. What he badly needed was a valid dark blue passport with a ‘Corps Diplomatique’ imprint. But the Office slashed their use after those couple of scandals the other year and now they don’t want to risk libel, Norman recalled acidly. And now I am paying for  someone else’s quiet sleep with my old hide!
“You arranged a meeting with Serge L., correct? And what was the purpose of that meeting?” the officer went on, innocently blinking his greenish eyes from under his pale brown eyebrows.
“To view some antiques catalogues,” Norman responded, still trying to keep afloat.
“Is Serge L. an antiquarian, then?”
“Yes, I think so...”
“And where is he from?”
“From Holland, I presume,” shrugged Davis. “I only met him once. In London.”
“Where?”
“At Sotheby’s.” Norman smiled weakly in the vain hope that the millionaire’s fair name would persuade the law that he, Norman Davis�"or, rather, Norbert Douglas�"was just a law-abiding, well-off Brit who came to Holland for some big shopping and got into some minor trouble.
The officer’s face didn’t change. “So, you brought some money along,” he asked in a cold, sinister tone. He didn’t smile.
“Yes,” agreed Davis dully, sensing what the next question would be and finding no feasible answer. A chilly, shivering wave of dread passed over his back.
“And some chocolate?”

Norman knew that, at this very moment, the interrogating officer was examining him as a scientist would examine new bacteria under a microscope. As if that weren’t enough, another officer with two stripes on his chevron came by and sat down next to the first. Now, four attentive eyes stared at one tired man in a grey jacket.
“Sir?” the first officer lifted his head a bit. “Have you heard my question?”
“I won’t answer any further questions without my lawyer,” replied the secret agent, using his last, flimsy life buoy�"one that was, if fact, a legal shipwreck, not to mention a second big dent to his previously ironclad military honour. What a shame, he thought, to lose against two dilettanti and a chocolate bar ...
Both Dutch officers looked at each other, then at their suspect.
“If that’s the case,” said the first one deliberately. “I’ll have to issue a thirty-day arrest warrant for you so that we have time to confirm your identity. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I understand,” echoed Norman weakly. What else can I do?
“In your briefcase we found three hundred thousand Euros, complete with a large chocolate smudge and a fingerprint that isn’t yours,” the second officer read from the file. “This same fingerprint was also found on your passport�"or what was left of your passport, anyhow. You possess, at the moment, no valid identity papers apart from this candy wrapper.” He took the sticky brown booklet from a plastic envelope and glanced at Norman again, as though offering him one last hope. “Can you comment on this?”
There was a pause. “No.”

The first policeman glanced at the second and picked up the telephone receiver. A short phrase in Dutch followed, and, in a short while, two armed sergeants stomped in.
“Take him to the detention cell in Southwest,” commanded the two-star officer before he turned, almost bemusedly, to Norman. “You’re arrested on the grounds of insufficient personal evidence and charged with illicit money trafficking under Articles 17 and 145a of the Dutch penal code. Tomorrow you can contact your Embassy. Now sign the interrogation report, please.”
The captive did, his hand woody, his face deadpan.
“Good night.”
Davis kept mum. This was the second time in twenty-two years that he’d hated his job.
“With or without?” one of the sergeants asked in Dutch, after a brief silence.
“With,” replied the first officer. “He’s fit and able-bodied. He can run..”
The sergeant who stood closest to Norman turned towards the captive. “Stand up, please!”
The major did. For decades, sergeants had stood in his presence, and now...
“Stretch out your hands, please,” came the next command.
Norman sighed, very lightly, and did as he was asked. ‘With,’ in Dutch police lingo, obviously didn’t mean a cup o’ tea with milk. It meant that the detainee should be handcuffed. The cold, hard metal rings embraced the MI6’s wrists. He felt a gloved, hard hand on his elbow.
“Go on,” prompted the sergeant. There would be no more ‘pleases’.

***

While the silent brothers Cheesekop, not really believing what they had just done, sat on the east-bound train, quivering at every rustle, and the tacit M-I6 agent languished behind the plexiglass wall on the hard rear seat of a white-and-blue striped car, and while the second consul Serge Lemonkin, his knuckles still aching, saddled the leather seat of an armoured vehicle, cussing into his satellite phone, the doors of the police station slid open. A well-fed man, wearing a forgettable suit and a preoccupied look, hurried in. The waiters, forgetting their injuries, turned their heads like soldiers in a trench. One attempted to get up.
“Please,” he said, looking at the reception policewoman and barely nodding to his decimated staff. The hotel boss flipped a document onto the reception counter. “That’s a complete list of all the damage incurred.” He pulled a silk neckerchief off his neck and wiped, nervously, the abundant sweat dripping from his wrinkled forehead and plump face.
On the cream-coloured, watermarked paper, the following had been meticulously written:

    Livery, 4 suits, torn and bitten through:           7,200,00  Euro
    A upper-jaw denture, trampled upon:                          742,45  Euro
    3 antique oak tables, damaged beyond repair:              33,000,00  Euro
    8 windows, smashed with a table leg:                             4,000,00  Euro
    A 100-quart beer cask, cracked, beer poured out:               556,54  Euro
    Chrystal chandelier, destroyed (set as a collar around  
    Apollo statue’s neck):                                     884,00  Euro
    Fountain, “Pissing Cupid,” abused (the water
    spout knocked off and drowned in creme brulée):        17,000,00  Euro
    Moral damage, compensation for 6 employees:                   50,00  Euro                     
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------        Total:                      63,382,99 Euro

Author's Note

a continuation of chapter 3, in fact