Judas Page 13

  He should have gotten an award for his performance.

  Within an hour of his release, he had ditched his diet. It was no longer relevant to his story or his privileges in prison.

  On our way, we pass a McDonald’s. I stop to let him enjoy a hamburger.

  “Oh, this is great, Assie. I’ve really missed this,” he says with a chuckle.

  After we put his stuff away and he checks the location—and approves of it—we make an appointment with Peter R. de Vries, the crime reporter. Wim knows he would be hunted for comment and a first picture after being released. He wants to avoid this by giving a statement and a photo to the media now. Peter is the chosen one. This way, others will stop chasing after him and he can control the message. I wonder what he’s planning.

  We’re supposed to meet Peter at the entrance of the forest, somewhere in Gooi. While we wait for him, Wim wants to be briefed on what has happened over the last couple of years. In the forest we can speak freely for the first time, without a guard behind a mirror recording everything. We’re still alert to directional microphones, though, so we whisper. We discuss Wim’s current position in the criminal world, every investigation he was involved in, his women, and the need to make money.

  With each minute that passes, Wim gets crankier; it doesn’t take long for his true personality to surface.

  “Call Peter! Where is that son of a bitch? Who does he think he is to leave me waiting here? I gave him a scoop!” he rages.

  I call Peter, who says he is on his way. He arrives within minutes, and Peter and I exchange greetings. I feel uncomfortable. Not long ago, I told Peter that I never wanted Wim to be released. Now here I am, Wim’s confidante. Peter doesn’t let on. He knows the danger I would be in if Wim knew how I really felt about him.

  In his conversation with Peter, Wim focuses on his poor health. His heart will be functioning at only twenty-five percent, he says; he has a short life expectancy, and the doctors gave him two years to live five years ago. His heart will give out any day now. He shows Peter his collection of pills and tells him about his strict diet, explaining that he only eats what he cooks himself.

  I have to hand it to him: it’s a smart play. He wants his enemies to underestimate him. A sick old man, not worth spending money for a judicial inquiry or a liquidation.

  Wim successfully pulls the wool over Peter’s eyes—his specialty—and Peter leaves with the message that Wim wants published all over the media: he is not dangerous but terminally ill.

  After the meeting with Peter, we go shopping in Naarden to supply the chalet. We deliberately choose an out-of-the-way town so as not to reveal his whereabouts.

  His image has become iconic; he is recognized and spoken to wherever we go. He relishes the attention, and everybody seems to have forgotten why exactly he is so famous.

  But I haven’t.

  Heading back to the chalet, I start talking indirectly—in case of wires in the car—about the liquidation, or assassination, of Stanley Hillis. Wim turns to me and puts his finger to his lips. I stop talking. We’re driving on a back road, and he says, “Pull over here.”

  I park the car in the emergency lane. “Get out,” he says.

  We walk a ways down the road before he stops me at a safe distance from the car. I know because he taught me: wires in a car can pick up sound from as far away as a hundred yards.

  He stands in front of me, a savage look on his face. “We killed them all, all of them.”

  Then he turns around and walks back to the car.

  Back at the chalet, we watch a couple of TV shows. He is particularly interested in De Wereld Draait Door, where Peter R. de Vries is talking about Wim’s health. Wim’s mission has succeeded: he has signaled that he is harmless.

  “Now I’m free to speed things up again,” he says.

  It’s late and Wim asks, “Are you sleeping over?”

  “Thanks, but no,” I say. “I’m going home.”

  “Nah, you’re staying, aren’t you? You’re not leaving me here all alone,” he asks in his familiar, coercive style that leaves you no choice. “You don’t enjoy being here with me, do you? “Well, too bad, because I do like it. You can’t leave.”

  That first night I stay over, reluctantly. I sleep on the couch, next to the sliding glass doors. Despite all the security measures I’ve taken, I’m still afraid we have been followed and that Wim’s former criminal friends will riddle the chalet with bullets. In these peaceful, leafy surroundings, I see danger everywhere. I’m not scared of dying, but I refuse to die because of him.

  That used to be different.

  There was a time when I would have given my life for him.

  After the Heineken kidnapping, when we were all treated as pariahs, I totally believed in the us-against-the-rest-of-the-world myth of family loyalty he had taught us.

  But once I found out that Wim was capable of killing his own family, I knew. The outside world wasn’t our enemy. He was.

  That night in the chalet I lie awake all night long. I am consumed by the thought that nobody knows where we were. That Wim is already asleep and unguarded, that I could get rid of all traces of DNA by torching the house.

  That I have the chance to kill him now.

  After that sleepless night, I drive home. Sonja is waiting for me.

  I tell her that I almost killed our brother, but was too cowardly to do it.

  “I’m glad you didn’t do it, As,” she says. “I don’t want him to get off so lightly. That punishment would not be painful enough.” Sonja wants him to spend the rest of his life in prison. That way, he would know how it felt to be betrayed, every day, the way he had betrayed her husband, his friend, Cor van Hout.

  She is right, and I wish the same fate for Wim. “But that’s only possible if we stand up against him and testify,” I say.

  “Right,” she agrees.

  “Then you know what will happen.”

  “Yes, I know,” Sonja answers. “But maybe we should take that risk.”

  Dying I

  2013

  “THEY WANT TO TALK TO YOU. YOU CAN REACH THEM AT THIS​ NUMBER,” Peter said, and he handed me the card of the Criminal Intelligence Unit (CIU).

  I had known this was coming. I had asked Peter to contact the Justice Department on Sonja’s and my behalf, to say we might be willing to speak with them. But when I looked at the number, I panicked. Only now did the reality sink in of what a meeting with representatives of the Justice Department would mean. I was gasping for air and tried to look relaxed in front of Peter.

  “Thanks. I’ll be in touch,” I told him, and put the card in my pocket.

  Once in the car, I entered the number in my phone under a different name and ate the card. I couldn’t take any risks at all.

  On my way home, my stomach was gripped by fear at the thought of calling this number. A deeply rooted, all-encompassing fear of Him—of Wim, of Willem Frederik Holleeder, alias the Nose. My brother.

  One day after Wim’s release, he and I were walking from the Scheldestraat to the Ferdinand Bolstraat. A man approached us, and while he looked at us, he put his hand in a small shoulder bag.

  Instinctively and without speaking, we split up. Wim took one side of the street, I the other. Better not stay together when there is going to be a shooting. Better one get shot than both.

  Our eyes were focused on that bag. We both scanned the carrier. Was he a hit man or not? Judging from his looks and movements, he could be; he fit the profile.

  Over the years, you develop a sixth sense for this kind of thing. You learn how to judge not only how a person looks, but also the direction of a glance and the resoluteness of a walk.

  The guy took his hand out of the bag. It was nothing. I started walking alongside Wim again.

  “Nothing going on,” he said.

  “But better safe than sorry,” I said.

  We had discussed Wim’s death before, when he developed his coronary problems. I had agreed with him that Sonja and I toge
ther with Sandra, Wim’s girlfriend, would make the decision to pull the plug if he were reduced to a vegetable.

  “Did you take care of it?” he asked from behind the glass when I visited him in the Scheveningen prison. “The three of you, right? Because I know what you’re like, Assie. You’d pull a plug on me when you see one. Sonja can’t decide anything, so Sandra will be decisive. She loves me the most.”

  He had talked with us repeatedly about not wanting to become a vegetable, but had never mentioned the possibility of death by assassination. His whole life, plus ours, was geared to that, but it was never discussed. After Endstra’s extortion and before he was arrested, I finally brought it up.

  “Are you after my money? Is that it? Are you having me whacked?”

  He had that familiar black gleam in his eyes, and I saw that he meant what he said. I ended the discussion because I didn’t want to risk him really thinking that.

  On that day when we were walking on the Scheldestraat, I tried again. I wanted to know how somebody who decides so easily about the lives of others thinks about death himself.

  “Are you not afraid to die?” I asked.

  “No,” said Wim. “I’ve been there, when my heart stopped. I got a little dizzy and suddenly I was walking down the street toward a white light. It was pretty relaxed, kind of nice, really. I felt okay and then I heard Sonja crying out, ‘Wim, come back, come back, Wim, come here!’ She winked at me, beckoning me over. I walked up to Sonja and I stayed alive.

  “So, no,” he continued. “I’m not afraid to die. You don’t realize when it happens, and you don’t really feel anything.”

  What he told me was in contrast to the psychological and psychiatric reports in which he admitted being afraid of dying in prison. That he wanted to be with his family so badly, to be able to cope with his brief life expectancy.

  When I confronted him about this, he said, “I just did that to be a bit more comfortable inside. Those reports came in really handy in that respect.”

  So, he didn’t fear the prospect of death. “Being locked up is worse,” he said.

  Well, this would have to be it, then, I thought. I couldn’t be weak. I had to “strike first in the dark,” for Francis, for Richie, for Cor.

  To really punish Wim, we had to put him behind bars. Permanently. The solution of the criminal world—liquidation—was out of the question. Sonja didn’t see that as punishment, didn’t think he should get off that easy, and I took her point.

  “Let him suffer, too, the way we’ve been suffering for years,” she said.

  It was torture to think that he might get away with everything, throw his arms in the air, pull a sorry face, and cry out, “But I always get the blame! Whenever there is an execution it’s always me who did it!”

  “He’s good at that,” Sonja said. “Acting pitiful. You know what is a pity? That Cor spent his last seconds on the cold cobbles. That is pitiful. That my kids don’t have a father, that’s pitiful. He shouldn’t get away with acting all pitiful about Cor. Let everybody know what he is really like. I want to tell the truth, finally.”

  For years he had pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes with his sanctimonious behavior. All for the benefit of his ego.

  Dying like a godfather would just add to the Wim myth. I agreed with her, but I had a hard time thinking of Wim spending every day in a cell. If he ended up bleeding on the cold cobbles like Cor, we would never have to look over our shoulders again.

  “He has always said that if he gets a life sentence, he will kill himself,” said Sonja. “Let him do his thing, just as long as he dies knowing that we got our revenge for Cor’s death.”

  It was simple. To fight Wim the way Sonja wanted to, we needed the Justice Department. I had to put aside my feelings and look at it more practically.

  This was why I had turned to Peter R. de Vries, who had initially advised us against talking to the CIU, and asked him to pave the way for a talk.

  I stared at the number Peter had given me.

  Calling for an appointment meant that I would be confirming what he had told the CIU about Sonja and me during his pre-interview. Calling meant that I might be willing to testify against Wim. Calling meant that at least one detective would know and could tell my brother.

  I couldn’t prevent him from finding out that I had talked to the Justice Department. It was best to assume it would happen and to give him a plausible reason for my contacting them. That’s why I had told him beforehand that I had a good relationship with one CIU officer. It was an alibi I had created soon after his release, when I told him that I would talk to this officer for his benefit.

  “Comes in handy, doesn’t it?” I said, exactly what he wanted to hear.

  “Always, Assie,” he said.

  My work as a lawyer in criminal cases made it plausible for me to have such a contact, and he swallowed my story. Should the Justice Department leak that I had contacted them, this would be my alibi: “You knew I was talking to the CIU. But I do it just for you.”

  It was the best I could do to protect myself against corrupt detectives, but it was still a risk.

  The next day I made an appointment.

  The Meeting

  ON JANUARY 21, 2013, I NERVOUSLY CALLED THE NUMBER. A FEMALE voice said, “Michelle speaking.”

  “Hello, Peter R. de Vries gave me your number, and I would like to make an appointment,” I said.

  She immediately knew who I was and asked if I could meet tomorrow.

  “Yes, I can,” I said.

  She said they would call me back about the exact time.

  I said, “Could you please text me? I’d rather not speak over the phone.”

  They sent me a time and location around midday: six p.m., Newport Hotel, Amstelveen.

  The meeting was set.

  That same afternoon, I drove to Sonja’s to tell her. “You really made an appointment?”

  “Yes,” I said, “I no longer see any other option. I’ll just go and see what happens.”

  “Shall I come with you?”

  “No, let’s wait and see. They are cops, after all. It’s best if they haven’t seen you yet. That way they can never say you were involved in this. Also, you can’t account for where you are. If he calls and you can’t be reached, he will start thinking all that crazy stuff again. He’s used to that with me, but he will mistrust you. So I’ll just go on my own.”

  On my way to meet the CIU, I checked my mirrors constantly to see that I wasn’t followed. I had taken a different car because if Wim saw my car, he’d wonder why I was at that hotel.

  I was nervous. He used hotels as meeting places. He could just as likely be there, too, and I’d run into him. Or he would just sidle up to me suddenly, as he often did. I never knew how he tracked me down, and it always gave me the shivers.

  I got a message on my phone. “Hi, please let us know when you’re there. We’ll pick you up in the lobby.”

  I arrived at a big, majestic hotel not far from the place Cor was killed. I entered the garage and parked my car. I had to collect all my courage to climb the steps to the entrance, but I gained strength from the knowledge that we were doing this for Cor.

  I went in and was startled. It was a terribly complex space with niches everywhere, many entrances and exits. If he was here, or if he came in, I would never be able to notice. What a crap location and a bad start: I immediately regretted accepting this meeting. If this was the way they handled my anonymity, I couldn’t expect much good to come of it.

  I sat down in the lobby. Every second there, my feeling of unrest grew. I had taken a big enough risk just showing up—I couldn’t wait around for them. I was just getting up to leave when a blond woman approached me.

  “Astrid?” I nodded. “I’m Michelle, we spoke on the phone.”

  She was clearly with the police; she looked sprightly and had a clear gaze. Not a rat, from the look of it. I instantly decided to go with her. Silently we walked to the elevator and got in. The doors closed
. The walls started closing in on me. I was short of breath and sweating.

  We stood there uncomfortably.

  “So good of you to come,” Michelle said, trying to break the ice.

  I nodded politely, but it certainly didn’t feel good. In our family, it’s seen as a disgrace to talk to the Justice Department. It goes against all our principles. We are not “traitors.”

  This was bred into us by my mother. The Germans had taken her father during the war. My father’s father had been “a dirty collaborator,” my mother used to whisper so my father couldn’t hear her.

  At the same time, I knew I wouldn’t be here if Wim hadn’t forced me into this situation, and I held on to my motives.

  “You are hard to reach, aren’t you?” Michelle tried, to keep the conversation going. “We’ve been trying privately and at work, but we just couldn’t get through.”

  “That’s possible. I am not keen on people I don’t know,” I replied curtly.

  It was true. With a family like mine, I can’t afford to have strangers contacting me. I never know their motives. It could be the press looking for a juicy story, a police informant who wants to infiltrate the family, my brother’s colleagues who are looking for him, or even enemies who want to get at him through me. I do everything not to be available to these people, because it’s never about me.

  “My secretary submits every request for contact to me. I never meet with strangers, and my private life is restricted to my family,” I added, in an attempt to be a bit more accessible. I realized that since her first question, I’d been avoiding real contact.