One stood in front of him, the other behind him and to the side.

Piet Hoffmann waited.

But the attack never came.

His disguise worked.

“Could I use your bathroom? The heat really does me in.”

Hoffmann looked around, and the man who seemed to be in charge pointed to a blue door just before the entrance to the kitchen.

“There. Use the small button to flush.”

After Piet Hoffmann locked the toilet door behind him, he examined the floor, walls, ceiling until he was sure there were no cameras. Then he opened the brown leather briefcase he’d picked up at a Salvation Army and took out two things. A centimeter-sized microphone, the interpreter that only weighed a few grams, which he attached in the gap between the door and the floor. Then he took out the somewhat heavier hand grenade, which had been left in the Koslow Hoffmann family’s mailbox—he’d even put the colorful hands and arms and hat back on again—and he put it on the sink. Then he flushed the toilet and let the tap run long enough to wash his hands. He left the bathroom door cracked open so that one of the men would discover what he’d left behind not long after he was gone.

“Great. Thanks. That felt good. Sometimes it runs straight through you.”

The stress, worry he’d perceived when he stepped into this office returned. Just the few minutes he’d been away was enough to bring them back to last night and this morning and the mysteriously absent family that was their responsibility. It was clear they wanted him to leave as much as he did.

“Seventy-five thousand, is that right?”

“Yes. That’s our price.”

“If so, I’m afraid, well . . . I think that sounds like a bit much for us. My company is quite small. But let me think about it and get back to you. Okay?”

He said goodbye to them and gave them a handshake that was as weak as he looked. He didn’t turn around, not in the hall, not when he walked by the elevator, and not when he got to the stairs. At the next floor he stopped by the lamp and pulled out the jammer and timer. Then on to the entrance and the oppressive heat and his car, where he would wait until the interpreter conveyed what he hoped to hear.

Chapter 27