He grabbed a passing blonde and smiled at her.
“Care to dance?”
The lap dance room turned out to have several curtained cubicles in it. Mike rather obviously twitched several aside, getting angry looks from the men in the cubicles, one of whom, sure enough, was getting a blowjob, and causing the girl with him to pull him along to an empty one.
“Sorry,” Mike said, sitting down in the chair. “I like to watch.”
“It is very much against house rules,” the girl said, sitting down next to him. The previous song hadn’t finished, so they had to wait for the next one. “I am Hanne.”
“Pleased to meet you, Hanne,” Mike said. “I’m Mike.” It made just as much sense to use his “real” name as a cover. The girl didn’t give a shit who he was.
“Is twenty euros for a lap dance,” Hanne said, taking off her halter top. “Is fifty euros for blow. That is two songs. If you don’t come by end of second song, well, I do my best.”
“I’ll just take a dance,” Mike replied. “Do I get to touch?”
“You can touch,” Hanne said gravely. “If you touch too hard, though, I will tell you to stop. If you don’t stop, you get sent out.”
“I can live with that,” Mike said as the previous dance ended and the next began.
The girl slid to her knees in front of him, spreading his legs and dragging her hair over his crotch, then slowly slid up his body, humming as she did so.
Mike slid his hands down her back and along her sides, then up her stomach to her high, firm breasts. She clearly hadn’t been dancing long, since they were natural and had hardly a hint of sag. He continued to run his hands over her body, gently, teasingly, as she teased him in turn.
“You are very good with hands,” Hanne said huskily.
“Maybe you should be paying me,” he replied, smiling into her eyes.
“Is very nice,” she whispered in his ear. “I like.”
“I’m glad,” Mike said, licking her ear lightly. “But all you get is one dance. I have to save my strength for all the other girls in the district.”
She giggled at that and slid her head back down, rubbing her face in his crotch. Then she slid back up and licked at his ear.
“I think maybe you wish you’d paid for blow, yes?”
“You’re very nice,” Mike said, nipping at her earlobe. “But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.”
The song finished and Hanne backed away slowly.
“Wooo,” she said, holding out her hand for the money. “That was more than usual fun.”
“I’m glad you liked it,” Mike said, handing her thirty euros. “You take care.”
He walked back out to the main area and looked around for Fagan, but the colonel was nowhere in sight.
“Come on, man,” Mike muttered. “One dance is enough.”
When two more dances, six minutes more or less, had passed, Mike walked over to the champagne room door, a curtain rather, and tipped the bouncer to let him in without a girl.
“Fagan,” Mike said loudly.
“Coming,” the colonel replied in a strained voice.
He exited one of the cubicles a moment later, zipping his trousers.
“I don’t care what that comedian said,” Fagan noted. “If he thinks there’s no sex in the champagne room, he’s never been to Amsterdam.”
They had hit two more strip joints, where Mike very pointedly had the colonel go for a single lap dance while he took the champagne room, and were headed to another when Mike’s phone rang.
He stepped into an alley to cloak the street noise and hit the connect.
“Ay-yup?” he said.
“The technician is on his way,” Assadolah said. “All is well?”
“Turr’ble,” Mike replied. “Jist turr’ble. Been sittin’ here watchin’ the cops go by for the last few ahrs. Jist a wond’rin’ when that techie’d show.”
“He will be there soon,” Assadolah said. “You can go, now. How is traffic?”
“Baid,” Mike said. “But Ah figur Ah kin git back in plenty of tahm fer the evenin’ shows.”
“That is well,” Assadolah said. “Have a safe trip.”
“Bet on it,” Mike replied, hitting the disconnect. He immediately dialed OSOL and went through the scramble routine.
“Got a call,” Mike said.
“We were listening in real time,” Pierson replied. “One hour until the pope’s mass.”
“He cut it kind of close,” Mike said. “That tech, whoever he is, isn’t going to have much time to get out of town.”
“The tech turned out to be a former IRA member,” Pierson said. “The bomb is not only encased in lead, it’s filled with booby traps. The French had never seen anything like it but the British had; it was a full IRA rig. IRA bombs are…”
“The toughest in the world,” Mike finished. “Fuck, I hate those Provo bastards. Now they’re selling their expertise to the mujahideen.”
“We talked to the Dutch police,” Pierson said. “They’re willing to not flood the place to find Assadolah, for obvious reasons. But there are a couple of undercover cops moving around as well. And there’s a tac team on standby if you need backup.”
“Nice to know,” Mike said, walking back to the street. “I have to keep looking.”
“Terrible job, I know,” Pierson said, chuckling blackly. “Nero only fiddled while Rome burned.”
“You wouldn’t believe the tab that Fagan is running up,” Mike agreed, looking over at the colonel. “I’m surprised he can still stand with all the blowjobs he’s been getting.”
“Oh, thanks very much,” Fagan said, shaking his head. “You realize all those calls are recorded.”
“So is most of what goes on in the lap dance rooms,” Mike replied. “I wish we could get access to the tapes; it would make this a lot quicker.”
Chapter Eight
They crossed the street, dodging traffic, and headed to the next strip joint. This one was rather seedy: the cover was only three euros and the girls were pretty worn out. The crowd was also different, running a lot more to Middle Eastern males. Mike spotted on that looked a bit like Assadolah and did a double take. But he was pretty sure it wasn’t him. And there was no evidence of a phone on the guy. He looked like a day-laborer and was staring at the girl on stage like she was the Holy Grail.
He passed around the stage and back to the front, meeting up with Fagan, who had also noticed the guy and dismissed him, then headed to the champagne room with one of the halfway decent-looking women.
This champagne room had larger cubicles, with couches that were wide enough to be beds, and Mike caught more than one guy going at it when he looked behind the curtains. Most of them didn’t notice, but the girls under them did. In the third cubicle he saw the target. He was sitting on the couch, lying back with his eyes closed, being fellated by a naked redhead. Her hair was obviously out of a bottle since her exposed pubic tuft was dark brown and flecked with gray.
Mike dropped the curtain disinterestedly then took one step forward, drawing his sidearm, and stepped back to the cubicle. He stepped through the curtain, took a double-handed grip and carefully shot Assadolah Shaath in the right shoulder, covering the whore in front of him in blood-splatter.
The whore backed away, screaming, as Mike crossed the room and grabbed the terrorist by his shot arm, dragging him to the floor, face-down, as he screamed in pain.
“Which one is the disconnect code?” Mike growled, stepping on the terrorist’s wounded shoulder to hold him down and socketing the .45 into his ear. “Which one?”