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Solo has read up on Dutch history, that much is clear. On the ride from the airport to Amsterdam, no moment is spent in silence as Solo explains how the American declaration of independence was inspired by the Dutch version from the 17th century, when they had declared themselves independent from Spain. According to Napoleon, the 75 years or so that followed would be declared “The Golden Age” due to the nation flourishing in several ways. It brought forth painters like Rembrandt and Vermeer. Gaby had stopped listening about fifteen minutes ago, but she doesn’t have the heart to tell Solo to be silent. He’s always enjoyed history - art history in particular - and the twinkle in his eye he gets when talking about it is endearing, in a way.
“In 1672, the French attacked, and the year got declared “the Year of Disaster”. One of the most important regents got lynched quite brutally. I won’t go into detail, but let’s say that the people in that time weren’t afraid of a little cannibalism.” The lack of reaction from his partners earns them a sigh, and Solo decides it’s time to get back to the mission anyway.
“The regent’s name was Johan de Witt, who, as you might know, almost shares a name with our target for today. The only difference is that our Johan de Wit misses a T in his last name and isn’t a regent, but simply a low-ranking NSB-member.”
“Still a nazi,” Illya speaks up. “If it was up to KGB, he would end up same way as his namesake.” Seeing the concerned looks on Gaby’s face, he quickly adds: “Without the cannibalism, of course.”
Before yesterday, Gaby had completely forgotten about the NSB. The Dutch branch of the Nazi party had never been that successful, anyway. She vaguely remembers meeting a “friend” of her father who was their leader. She doesn’t remember his name, but she recalls that, at the time, she thought it sounded a bit like the word mustard. She’d spent the following night wondering why he wasn’t yellow like the condiment. Mustard-man and Solo’s former colleague, Anika de Koning, were the only Dutch people she’d met before coming here today. How strange, considering the Netherlands was a neighbor to her home country. To be fair, though, there was a war and later a wall in the way.
“This should be a quick mission, anyway. We already pretty much have his location, so a simple stakeout would do. We’ll be done by tomorrow,” Solo muses, and Gaby can tell he’s already making plans in his head.
“Which leaves another day and a half for you to chase some pretty blondes around Amsterdam,” Gaby guesses. For once, it’s not true.
“Actually, I’d like to try the more touristy route for once. I read about a quaint little town called Madurodam. I think you’d feel right at home there, Gabs.”
Gaby frowns, crossing her arms defensively. “Why’s that? What kind of town is it?”
“It’ll have to be a surprise, now won’t it?” Solo flashes his most disarming smile, and adds a wink for good measure. She doesn’t trust him at all.
Their taxi arrives at their hotel a few minutes later. The façade is in traditional Amsterdam grachtengordel style, with tall windows and steps to the front door. The top of the building looks like a set of stairs, Gaby notes, just like she’s seen on the postcards.
Illya takes her suitcase along with his. She can carry it herself, but at this point it’s become so normal for him to play the responsible fiancé that it carries over a bit into their real lives. Neither of them really know how to feel about this development, but they don’t dare comment on it. Acknowledging it would make it real, and their job doesn’t allow that.
Opting for discretion, Waverly had chosen a small hotel for them. The rooms look bare compared to what they’re used to in other big cities like Rome or Istanbul. Solo accounts the simplicity to the protestantism and frugality of the country.
Solo and Illya share a room, their covers as business partners on a tight budget are plain and straightforward. It’s only for their hotel reservations, they don’t even have to uphold their covers as the mission should be done in a day or two anyway. Gaby has a room for herself, her cover being a sole female traveller from West-Berlin, visiting her aunt that fled to Amsterdam after the war. She has to give the receptionist credit for keeping a straight face while speaking German with Gaby; she knows the hate towards Germans runs deep, and she can’t really blame them for it. She would have preferred to speak English as well, but the receptionist himself said his German was better than his English.
A call from the front desk interrupts her unpacking.
“Fräulein Schmidt, you have a call from a Mr. Waverly. Can I put him through?” the receptionist sounds through the phone. Even though his German grammar is perfect, Gaby hears his pronunciation on certain vowels is slightly off.
Why would Waverly call her now? Has anything changed regarding the mission? God, she hopes not. She’d much rather finish this up quickly so they can go somewhere less dreary.
“I’ll take the call, thank you.” A hum, then a click, and London is on the line.
“I know this is rather an unsuspected call, but I reckon you’ll like this one,” Waverly explains after they’ve exchanged the codewords - which are just a formality at this point. “De Wit has been found dead in the canals of Amsterdam, about half a mile from his presumed hiding place. Now I expect the police to handle the rest, as there’s no reason for you to investigate further. He was low-ranking and if I may hazard a guess, I think his NSB-colleagues did the job themselves.”
“That’s good news, sir. I’ll inform the rest immediately,” Gaby replies, silently hoping their next destination is somewhere near a beach.
“No need, I just got off the phone with them. I’ve also told them that the rest of the two days in the Netherlands are yours. Do with it as your please. A last-minute city trip, if you will. Please report back to me on Friday in London.” Before hanging up, Waverly remembers something. “Ah, and if you need anything or notice something suspicious, please mention it to Gerard, the receptionist.”
“Can we trust him?” Gaby asks, wondering just how many people Waverly actually knows.
“Let’s just say he owes me. There’s a reason this phone call wasn’t encrypted, I’ve found him to be very discreet and trustworthy. See you on Friday.” Click.
As if on cue, a knock on her door startles her. The person on the other side - Solo, she guesses correctly - wastes no time waiting for an answer and enters right away.
“I’ve told you to knock before entering many times now,” Gaby chastises him.
Perhaps looking find evidence on the door, he turns to look at it and back at her. “I did knock.”
The couch isn’t as comfortable as the one in Rome, he notes, as he sits down, unbuttoning his suit jacket.
“Yeah, well, we’re leaving soon again anyway. We’ve only got tomorrow and then we leave Friday afternoon.”
“And in the meantime, we could go sightseeing. There are a few museums in Amsterdam, but I reckon you won’t join me?” Taking Gaby’s silence as an answer, he changes his plans accordingly. “I know. I’ll take you to that town I was talking about, Madurodam!”
Gaby’s attitude changes from curious to suspicious the longer Solo goes without wanting to give any information about this “quaint, little town”.
“What do you even mean, I’ll love it? I’m not a small-town girl, what business do I have in a place like that?”
“On the contrary, I think you’ll fit right in. Peril, on the other hand…”
-
It’s barely been an hour, and Illya is sure he has already stepped on at least five tiny structures and possibly a few tiny children.
Solo had kept his mouth shut about something for the first time in his life, and all for a stupid gag about Gaby being small and fitting in with the minuscule cityscape. He couldn’t in his right mind muster up any anger, though, because seeing Gaby ooh and aah at every little landmark was enough for his day not to be entirely ruined.
He has to admit that the craftsmanship that had gone into such a big small village is impeccable. Every window of every building is carved out, some are even transparent so that you can see an actual household inside. A train had almost taken him out earlier; the cart had hit his ankle at a surprisingly painful spot - and at full speed, too.
Of course, Solo had read up on the place, and insists a full tour is in order. Madurodam is surprisingly large, and the tour takes almost a full hour. Afterwards, he drags them to a nearby café. Illya is surprised the coffee isn’t just as small as the buildings in the park. He wouldn’t have put it past them, really.
When Gaby orders her coffee spiked, the judgmental look of their server doesn’t go past any of them. She wonders if it’s because of her German, or if it’s because the people here are so uptight about alcohol. This is the first place besides the airport that actually has alcohol on the drinks menu. Her coffee arrives, however, severely spiked. She makes sure to leave an extra tip.
“By the way, Peril, I always see you walking around, taking pictures of everything like a good tourist, so I decided to buy a small camera myself, as well.” Solo puts the little leather bag he's been carrying around on the table, extracting a lumpy camera. He’d presumed the bag had been a fashion item. A new trend from New York, perhaps, to carry around a small satchel like that. Illya hadn’t thought about it having any function at all. Knowing Solo, it could just as well have contained some pomade and several stolen goods.
“I snapped a picture while you two weren’t looking, just to see if I had a knack for it. I think it came out well.” He drops a picture in washed-out color on the worn, wooden table.
“A polaroid?” Gaby asks, picking up the picture to inspect it further.
“Brand new model from 1963,” Solo explains, sounding like a salesman while fiddling with the device in his hands. “You just take a picture, pull it from the negative, and let it develop. This one turned out like this in about a minute or so. I might need some lessons in framing and lighting from Peril, but for a first try, I’m quite impressed with myself.” Solo’s smile is a little too… knowing for Illya. He joins Gaby to take a look at the photograph.
It depicts the two of them, standing too close to each other to be professional. Their backs are to the camera but Gaby’s head is turned upwards to look at him while he points down, explaining something about the miniature monument in front of them. Right now, he can’t even remember the exact landmark, but he does remember the look of curiosity and silent awe in Gaby’s eyes. This picture was probably taken just moments before they had both taken a step back, aware of their proximity and concluding that for colleagues, it was far from a decent distance from each other.
Before Illya can curse Solo for taking the picture, Gaby asks him if she can keep it.
“Of course, Gabs,” Solo answers, glancing at Illya before looking at her again. “it’s all yours.”
-
Their next and final destination has taken them about half an hour of driving north. This time, Solo had relented and told them where they would be going.
“A lovely place called Keukenhof,” he says from behind the wheel, no doubt butchering the pronunciation despite his efforts. “It’s fields and fields of the most beautiful flowers, and we happen to visit while they’re all in bloom.”
It doesn’t exactly look promising from the entrance, the photos of big fields with the most colorful flowers likely exaggerating. Solo sighs when Gaby comments on it, and tells her to just see for herself, like he's been here before. She wonders if he has.
He was right, though. There are countless fields of mostly tulips, stretching as far as the eye can see. Right away, she spots a pattern in some of the gardens. One has the pattern of the Dutch flag, another one that of a heart. Those are just the simple ones; she bets that to see some of the more intricate patterns, she’d have to stand somewhere high.
Immediately, Solo unpacks his camera, raising his eyebrows at Gaby.
“No, maybe later,” she laughs. He’s utterly engrossed in his new hobby. “I want to walk around for a bit.”
She sits down near a patch of tulips. Most of the flowers are a bright orange, but a white tulip manages to sneak in every cluster of ten or so. It reminds her of her dress from Berlin. She still has it, tucked into a corner of her suitcase. She doesn’t wear it to missions anymore, afraid it’ll bring bang memories of her betrayal, but she won’t get rid of it entirely. Maybe, it reminds her of her first and last clear memories of her father, too.
She doesn't notice the presence of someone next to her until she’s spoken to. If she were Napoleon, Illya would tell her she’s a terrible spy.
“Are you okay?” an accented voice asks. She still can’t believe how such a big man can move so soundlessly.
Nodding, she doesn’t look at Illya, instead opting to look around. “We used to have a big garden, before the war,” she says, her voice almost a whisper as if she's telling him a secret. In a way, she is. She’s barely told anybody about her life before and during the war, uncomfortable with the fact that her early childhood was funded by Nazi money. The guild that creeps up on her every time she speaks of it is ridiculous, of course. She was a child, she couldn’t have known about the atrocities committed by the Nazi party. Still, she hates that it taints otherwise happy memories like this one.
“It had tulips just like these. Ours were mostly red, like the ones over there,” she points ahead, at the patch of flowers behind the orange ones. “We had every type of flower you could imagine, even the exotic ones. Daffodils, orchids, roses, lilies, you name it. I used to spend so much time there in the summer, gardening with my mother. After the war, when we visited our old house, the first place I ran to was the garden. It was destroyed, along with the rest of the place, of course.”
Illya is a listener, not a talker. She’s used to him not replying to her, she knows he listens and registers what she says anyway. She also knows he’s aware of how complicated her childhood was, and that she doesn’t like to be pitied.
“Which flower was your favorite?” he asks instead.
“Carnations,” she answers without hesitating. “It was my mother’s favorite as well. I’m not being sentimental, saying that it’s my favorite because it was hers. I think it’s really pretty and kind of flashy. It doesn’t suit me at all, and my mom used to tell me that as well, but they have always been my favorite.”
He hums in acknowledgement. “We had tiny garden in our old home near Moscow. It was mostly weeds, but sometimes, a flower would grow there, too.” He frowns. “I could never take care of it. Winter would come and it got too cold.”
“Now that is something that’s hard to believe,” Gaby exclaims, nudging him with her elbow to make him look at her. “You’re always so careful, even with small things.”
“And you are never careful enough yet you used to keep big garden,” he retorts.
“I guess you have a point there,” she concedes, and they sit in comfortable silence for a few minutes before Solo comes to get them for another tour.
-
Gaby is surprised at how much a simple day of playing tourist could wear her out. She’s dozing off in the backseat, Solo driving them back to Amsterdam and Illya holding the map in the passenger seat. They haven’t argued the entire trip back, so she knows they must be tired too.
Their second and last night is uneventful, Solo going out to find out if Amsterdam has any nightlife at all. She hears footsteps in the hallway around five in the morning, so she supposes the city is active at night after all.
They fly back to London in the early afternoon and take a taxi to HQ. She doesn’t know how he did it, she’s been with him the whole time, but when she arrives in her office, she encounters a small vase of carnations on her desk. A muted yellow with red at the edges, just like she and her mother used to have in their garden.
She picks one out the vase, breaks the stem off, puts the flower in her hair and heads to Illya’s office.