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  The man shakes his head violently. “More than one, certainly.”

  “They live here long?”

  Another denial. “Come and go. Not so often.”

  “Turks?”

  The man nods. “Not nice, these men. Never speak.”

  Knox studies the bathroom: concrete walls. It’s a bunker.

  He says, “We will go into the other room. You will tell your friends it’s okay. The children and your friends . . .”

  “Brothers. They are my brothers.”

  “You, all of you, must come in here. Stay in here. It’s safe in here, these walls.” Knox reminds the man of the gun in his hand, and the man nods. “Silently. No sound. These are bad men.”

  Another quick nod from the man.

  Knox keeps the man in front of him. Together they pass into the room, and his hostage speaks rapidly, telling the two younger men, “It is all right!” The men are on their feet, the tension thick. The kids come awake.

  “No heroics,” Knox speaks in French.

  His hostage serves as his ally. The panic is diffused. Knox takes their cell phones, not wanting any emergency calls made. The men cooperate, surrendering their phones. The five lock themselves in the bathroom. Knox hides the phones in a drawer.

  He’s not going to climb any more balconies. His nerves are electric with the events of the past few minutes, and he can’t afford a post-adrenaline slump.

  He peers through the security peep. The webcam is a round piece of plastic mounted in the corner by the opposing door, aimed toward the stairwell.

  The door will be locked, likely barred from the inside as well. He’s not going through it; they will have to open it for him. Too late for a pizza delivery. The idea of climbing the balconies resurfaces, but his patience is worn thin. His batteries overcharged, he wants to do this now.

  He sees the ball cap hanging on a peg.

  Opens the door, plasters himself to the wall and hurries across, hooking the cap over the camera. Rolls to his left, back to the wall, the shut door alongside.

  If they’re asleep, if no one is watching the screen, he’ll need to start climbing. But if they’re awaiting confirmation the girls are gone, they don’t have it and nerves will be high.

  He hears a man approach the other side of the apartment door. Likely eye to the peephole from where he won’t have a view of the dysfunctional camera. Knox waits for the sound of the lock turning, the door coming open.

  Nothing. Too smart for that, Knox thinks.

  He suffers a panic attack. He can hear Dulwich say, “Always beware of unintended consequences.”

  He has scared the rabbit from the hole—and there’s no one watching the hole.

  He crosses the landing back toward the mistaken apartment. A shot rings out and takes a chunk from the door in front of him. Mistake number 2: the man at the door had not left.

  Knox dives and rolls into the apartment. One of his hostages has fled the bathroom in search of the phones and is hunched over, hands over his head. The man drops to the floor and crawls. Knox leaps over him and reaches the balcony door. They will escape by the front or back balconies, forcing Knox to choose, and he’s chosen the back because this is what he would do.

  And there they are: two men, already lowering onto the second-floor balcony, two below Knox’s level, toward the middle of the structure. As one careens into a patio chair, he turns and takes a wild shot at Knox.

  This is the starter’s pistol for Knox, the game changer. He doesn’t like being shot at. He turns and goes for the fireman’s act on the downspout to make up time. The downspout obliges by tearing loose from the wall and Knox goes down like a pole vaulter. It bends and then snaps, dropping him the final fifteen feet.

  Two more shots ring out, but they’re chaff, meant as countermeasure, trying to force Knox to keep his head down. He braces his forearm in a prone posture and puts one of his four bullets into the man firing the weapon. He takes out a piece of the man’s buttocks, spinning him and causing a horrific scream. It’s a lucky shot at this distance; he’s not about to waste any of his remaining three.

  The downed man is in a ball of pain and out of play.

  Knox rises to his feet. The remaining man bursts through a hedgerow and vanishes. Knox leaps through the line of shrubs, ducking and rolling in case his opponent has used it to set him up. The move costs Knox by taking him off his feet. The man had no intention of pausing to shoot; he’s making for the line of parked cars.

  He’s too far away for Knox to get off any kind of accurate shot. At which point Knox realizes his gun feels light. One touch confirms he’s lost its magazine. The handle stock is crammed with dirt. He has one round in the chamber, if that.

  The car starts, its headlights switching on automatically. It rams the vehicle behind it as the driver cuts the wheel to escape the parking space. Knox is going to lose him.

  The car’s engine whines as it overraces. The tires shriek. Knox runs for the lane. Vaults a row of large rocks that create a boundary between the parked cars and lawn.

  The car speeds toward him. Twenty meters . . . Fifteen . . . He aims the handgun, but it fails to fire. He drops it and reaches down. Takes hold of the nearest rock—the thing is massive—and hits it, dislodging it. He kneels, wraps his arms around and maneuvers it out of the stubborn earth. His muscles tearing, his chest and head exploding, he pins it to his chest, turns and gets one knee up.

  Ten . . .

  Then his second knee. He squats like an Olympic weight lifter. Shuffles his feet forward a matter of inches.

  Five meters . . .

  Grunts as he struggles to stand. Feels something pop in his gut. Heaves the rock. It travels about two feet, no more. Takes out the front bumper and right headlight, but has the desired effect: the airbags deploy. The driver is slammed back in his seat, like a fist to the face. The car plows into the rear end of a puke orange hatchback, and rebounds back into the lane.

  Knox throws open the passenger door, grabs Fahiz—it is Fahiz!—by the arm and pulls him across the front seat like a toy. Elbows him in the jaw. Hears a crack. Places the stunned man’s right arm against the dash, rotates the shoulder out of its socket and delivers a blow to the reversed elbow, dislocating it.

  Hears a shot. Takes cover behind the car. Comes around behind the wheel and the collapsed airbag and floors it. Both car doors shut from the forward velocity. A bullet cleanly pierces the rear side window.

  Fahiz—Polat—looks like a mannequin dropped from a third-floor window. But the guy is not going down easily. He tucks his knees, swivels and kicks Knox into a different time zone, pressing him into the driver’s door.

  The car drifts through a corner. Fahiz kicks the steering wheel. The car crosses the lane and bounces off a retaining rail. Two more vicious kicks beat Knox’s head into the driver’s-door window. The gun is lost. Fahiz straightens his arm, grabs the wheel and throws himself backward, pulling his dislocated arm out far enough to reset it into the socket. He screams. Regains enough use of the arm to throw a punch, connecting with Knox’s temple. Fahiz screams again, but a curl of a smile takes to his wounded face.

  “About time,” Fahiz says.

  His left arm raises. But the elbow is dislocated so that the forearm flaps with Knox’s gun roughly aimed at Knox.

  Knox shoulders the gun out of the way, gropes between the seats. Fahiz slaps away his efforts. The car scrapes along a row of parked cars and Knox manages to keep it on the road. The gun discharges. Knox is instantly deaf.

  His fingers search blindly between the seats, with Fahiz pounding and slapping away his efforts.

  But Knox wins: he yanks the parking brake. Fahiz and the weapon are thrown forward against the dash. The car slides through an intersection and is T-boned on Knox’s side by a slow-moving tram. The vehicle is pushed down the street, spins and is dumped into oncoming traffic.

  Knox punches Fahiz in the previously dislocated shoulder. He then takes hold of the man’s left forearm and reverses
it like it belongs to a gummy bear. Fahiz opens his mouth to cry out, but there’s no sound. The man is past pain. His eyes roll in his head. He waves the gun at the end of his rubbery arm up to head height—Knox sees the barrel’s dark hole out of the side of his eye.

  Fahiz pulls the trigger. Click. Empty.

  Fahiz is all whites where his eyes should be. He slumps.

  The exchange is made outside the Jet Center. Brower arrives with only his two prisoners, Grace and Dulwich. He can’t be seen making such a trade, but possesses the authority to release them.

  The phone call leading up to the dawn exchange was not easy sledding. Pushed by Brower, Knox admitted a lack of hard evidence but informed the man that Sonia possessed Kreiger’s hard drives. Something has changed between that call and now, two hours later. Perhaps Kreiger has been arrested and is already talking. Whatever it is, Brower wears his fatigue well.

  “Christ!” Brower says, seeing Fahiz’s condition.

  “We took a tram for half a block,” Knox says, indicating the car that looks as if it shouldn’t run. “The airbags had previously engaged.”

  Fahiz says, with difficulty, “You arrest me, you will anger much of Oud-West.”

  “Thank you for that input,” Brower says. He replaces the shoelaces that bind the wrists of Fahiz’s bizarrely twisted arms with a set of handcuffs. “That has got to hurt.”

  “I feel nothing,” Fahiz says.

  Knox pats him firmly on the dislocated shoulder, causing him inordinate pain. “A real soldier, this one.”

  “There is money. Much money.” Fahiz addresses both men. “Besides, you have nothing.”

  “We have Gerhardt Kreiger,” Knox corrects, feeling no shame in giving up the man. “It’s going to come down to who gets in front of this, eh, Brower?”

  “Just so. Always the same.”

  “To hell with all of you!”

  Brower makes sure to use the man’s arms while putting him into the backseat of the unmarked car.

  “There will be warrants for your arrest,” Brower says. “I wouldn’t return to the Netherlands for some time.”

  “I’ll miss it,” Knox says. “I like it here.”

  “If you expect me to thank you, that’s not going to happen. You’ve left me a mess to clean up.”

  “I have limited expectations,” Knox says. “I’m pretty low maintenance.”

  Brower’s had enough. He circles the car and drives off.

  Dulwich collects a wheelchair from inside the Jet Center and together the men wheel Grace though the automatic doors. Nothing is said among the three; barely a word is spoken. A first-aid kit is provided and Grace tends to Knox’s shoulder wound. The hernia will have to wait.

  Dulwich disappears into the business center, spending time on the computer and phone. His eyes find Grace and Knox from time to time, like a school principal.

  The flight team arrives. The pilot gives Knox a disapproving look. Grace doesn’t ask. But she can read Knox’s mind, as it turns out.

  “She tried to get us killed,” Grace reminds him.

  “There is that.” He doesn’t think of himself as a particularly forgiving man, but he has let that go easily enough. He keeps seeing the parts he wants to see, remembering the moments he wants to remember.

  She might have told him something encouraging, but she doesn’t try. This is what they do. Who they are.

  Knox falls asleep waiting to board the plane, the pilot taking an inordinate amount of time preparing and filing the flight plan.

  Now strapped in one of the eight seats, he nods off again.

  He’s forgotten to ask where they’re headed.

  The island of Patmos is covered by cascading white buildings set against the azure blue of the sea, mirrored by cumulous clouds in a matching sky. It’s an active monastery, Saint John the Theologian, housing one hundred seventy-five monks who farm their own food, raise goats and grow their own wine on outlying acreage.

  Grace and Knox have been debriefed on multiple occasions by interrogators too pale to have been on the island long. Dulwich is nowhere to be seen. The warm sun soothes wounds inside and out. Grace has turned nearly black in a yellow bikini that seems to shrink by the week. Knox has stopped himself from staring repeatedly, reminded of their evening in Natuurhonig.

  He nearly can’t remember the abdominal surgery, but has a bandage to show for it. Grace has conquered Sudoku. Knox has caught up with his company paperwork that has plagued him for months. But it has lost its luster—not the paperwork, but the thought of import/export. Dulwich has won, and Knox resents it deeply.

  “Here is what we know,” Grace says from the chaise longue beside his. A fountain of two cupids peeing into a birdbath gives a pair of butterflies a place to dance.

  Knox is expecting more on Berker Polat, who at last mention had been refused bail by the Dutch and was said to have been badly beaten by inmates when it was leaked he mistreated young girls.

  But Grace, being Grace, surprises him.

  “We found and tagged the forty-seven thousand,” she says, as if picking up a conversation they’d started over lunch. “I can have that back to you, but do not recommend it. She is very good, this Evelyn. If this is her first time, I would be surprised—and that may aid us in our search. Her past, whatever it may turn out to be. If, or should I say when—because you will instigate this—she moves the forty-seven, it will assist me in tracking the remaining funds. This is the heart of forensic accounting: a person’s tendency to repeat himself. The transfer of the forty-seven will bear a fingerprint, maybe three stops? five stops? the degree to which it is laundered. Believe it or not, this will allow me to go back in time and match similar patterns to your remaining funds.”

  “Are you saying it can be recovered?”

  “I have told you as much all along.”

  “Cheerleading,” he says. “I thought—”

  “You doubted me.”

  “I doubted you.”

  “I told you I will find your money. I will find your money. It may go well beyond that, John. In my experience: this isn’t her first time. We will find more than just your money, and when we do . . . finders keepers.”

  It strikes him as such a Western expression. Wonders at the changes in her, worries she will be fast-tracked within the company and that this may be the last they work together. He feels like they’re just getting started.

  He drinks from a sweating beer bottle. Burps softly and excuses himself.

  She chuckles.

  “Oh, come on.”

  “Not the burp, John. The apology. This is new.”

  “Is it?”

  “David will find her. When he does, your actions will trigger the withdrawal of the forty-seven. It must be carefully planned, carefully thought out.”

  “My action will be to cave her head in.”

  “No, John.”

  She has taken him literally. Again. He’s about to try to straighten it out when she lays the chaise longue back flat. Knox can’t help himself from looking. Again.

  “Not going to happen,” she says.

  He looks away at the peeing cupids. “In your dreams,” he mutters.

  “Mine or yours?”

  Several minutes pass. Side by side.

  “You miss her,” Grace says to the sky. “This is understandable.”

  “What makes you the expert?”

  It takes Grace another minute to answer.

  “My broken heart,” she says.

  Three weeks and four days later, Knox stands outside a duplex in Hamtramck, Michigan, ready to keep his promise. The air smells clean thanks to an overnight rain. He toes the cracked sidewalk where a tree root is exposed, trying to write a script in advance, to have himself prepared for whatever arises. He remembers when the tree was only as tall as he is now. All his size and powerful body, and yet he feels so small.

  He wonders why he stalls, what necessitates such preparation. Catch as catch can, he reminds himself. But he answers: because i
t’s smoking in a fireworks factory. It’s a life that centers around him like he’s the sun. It’s this unrelenting burden and responsibility that he resents and that he loves, that he welcomes and resists. Where does the temptation to turn around and return to the rental car come from? How can a gun fired not terrify him the way standing here does?

  He climbs the steps and rings the doorbell.

  • • •

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Publishers Since 1838

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Copyright © 2013 by Page One, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Pearson, Ridley.

  Choke point / Ridley Pearson.

  p. cm

  ISBN 978-1-101-62115-8

  1. Child slaves—Fiction. 2. Netherlands—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3566.E234C46 2013b 2013003706

  813'.54—dc23

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ALSO BY RIDLEY PEARSON

  The Risk Agent

  In Harm’s Way

  Killer Summer

  Killer View

  Killer Weekend

  Cut and Run

  The Art of Deception