A second man, attired in similar drab, raced over, and Janson heard them talking. The language was unfamiliar—but not entirely so. Straining, he could make out a fair amount of it. It was Slavic—Serbo-Croatian, in fact. A distant cousin to Czech, but close enough that, by concentrating, he was able to make out the basics.

A small, powerful sedan roared up to them, and after another brief, barked exchange, the two men leaped into the backseat. Police sirens screamed in the distance.

They were leaving the scene because the police were beginning to arrive. Other drab-clad gunmen piled into an SUV and drove off as well.

Battered, bloodied, Janson staggered to the side street where Barry Cooper, sweating and wide-eyed, remained in the driver’s seat of the armored limo.

“You need to go to a hospital,” Cooper said, shaken.

For a moment Janson was silent, and his eyes were closed. Concentrating intensely, he returned to the words he had heard. Korte Prinsengracht … Centraal Station … Westerdok … Oosterdok …

“Get me to Centraal Station,” Janson said.

“We’re going to have half the cops in Amsterdam on our tail.” A light drizzle had begun to fall, and Cooper switched on the window wipers.

“Pedal to the metal.”

Cooper nodded, and set off north on Prinsengracht, the wheels squealing against the slick pavement. By the time they reached the bridge over Brouwersgracht, it was apparent that they had no police pursuers. But were there pursuers of another kind?

“Serbian irregulars,” Janson murmured. “They’re mostly mercenaries these days. But whose?”

“Serbian mercenaries? You’re harshing my groove, man. I’m gonna pretend I didn’t hear that.”

Separating Korte Prinsengracht from the Westerdok, where largely abandoned warehouses stood, was the man-made island on which the Centraal Station was built. But that was not where the giant and his friends were headed. They would be heading toward the vast maintenance buildings to the south of the station, which were sheltered from casual observation. At night, heroin addicts went there to score and shoot up; during the day, however, it was almost entirely abandoned.

“Keep going, straight!” Janson yelled, jerking to full attention.

“I thought you said Centraal Station … .”

“There’s a maintenance building to the right, five hundred yards away. Overlooking the wharves of Oosterdok. Now floor it.”

The limo powered past the parking lot of the train station and bounded down the broken pavement of the derelict yards where, years ago, the business of the wharves had been conducted. Most of the commercial harbors had relocated to North Amsterdam; what remained were phantoms of brick and concrete and corrugated steel.

A gated Cyclone fence suddenly loomed before them. Cooper stopped the car, and Janson got out. The fence was old, the links frosted with oxide. But the knob set, set into a large rectangular metal plate, was bright and shiny, obviously new.

From a distance, he heard shouts.