Friends in Low Countries by Scott MacLeod
from Windmills: a PUNK NOIR Magazine series
Agent Figgis was headed to Amsterdam. He knew shit-all about Holland.
Wasn’t one of those Austin Powers movies set there? He knew about the space cakes of course. And the window-front hookers offering the convenience of a Burger King drive-through. Who didn’t? But what Figgis really knew about was smack. And the Dutch were having a problem with white powder. Figgis and his DEA task force recently had cracked a ring of big-time peddlers uptown in Inwood. His reward was not the week playing three card poker in Aruba he’d hoped for. But rather a secondment to Interpol in The Hague to help these tulip farmers clean up their backyard.
At his hotel near the Rijksmuseum he met his liaison, Dirk. Who briefed Figgis in his nasally but very fluent English over Heinekens (what else?) and a plate of fried baitfish that looked like Rice Krispies with eyes.
“We’ve got a lead from an informer that there will be a meeting at the dock tonight, presumably about shipping arrangements to move the junk. And where it might be coming from. Seems it will go out by canal, out into the North Sea. Then who knows. We need you to listen in.”
At the stakeout, Figgis stood shrouded in darkness pointing his small parabolic mike at the conversing smugglers.
Apparently the Interpol budget was having the same problems as NATO, thought Figgis, as he tried to activate the antique listening device. As he fiddled with the balky knob, the monitor gave a loud shriek of feedback.
The startled perps sprinted away down the waterfront. Figgis was more of a long distance runner than a sprinter. Hell to be honest he was more of a driver than a runner. He huffed after the two younger men along the waterline.
They turned into a large warehouse at the head of the next pier. Figgis followed.
The cavernous building held rows and rows of cheap touristy crap. Wooden shoes. Ceramics of a little Dutch boy with his finger plugging a dam. And windmills. Hundreds and hundreds of cheap plastic windmills. What a load of garbage. Figgis supposed the Dutch were trying to give Temu a run for its money.
The shelves of mini-turbines made Figgis nostalgic. His little sister had always loved windmills. As kids, mostly left on their own, they had played a lot of miniature golf, where the last hole always was hidden behind the spinning blades of a windmill. A hole in one would win you a free game. The time she nailed one was etched in their memory banks as a rare sunny day. He grabbed one of the trinkets and pocketed it for the trip home. She’d remember and get a kick out of it for sure. But the chase was over. His prey was gone.
Figgis’s prize for losing their lead was a quick hook. He was called back home, which suited him just fine. At the airport he prepared for the long flight and teed up some binge worthy downloads. He dropped his bag on the conveyor and trudged ahead.
Then all hell broke loose. The alarms sounded and a squad of Schiphol police swarmed the scanner.
Figgis was dragged rudely off the line into a small windowless office. Where he was shown a large, clear Ziploc bag. Showing his souvenir windmill. Smashed to bits. And sitting in a mini-snowbank of white powder. Snortable, cookable, injectable powder.
Figgis breathed a deep centering breath. The good news was he’d solved the case. The bad news was he’d have to figure out how to explain it all to the assembled gendarmerie who were much more than affable stroopwafel eaters. They also were the most badass drug cops in the EU.
This story appears as part of Windmills, a PUNK NOIR Magazine series.
Bio
Scott MacLeod is a father of two who writes in Central Florida. His work has appeared recently in Punk Noir, Shotgun Honey, The Under Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, Trash Cat Lit, Sum Flux, Micromance, Free Flash Fiction, Westwords, BULL, Microzine, Dead Mule, Close to the Bone, Roi Faineant, Urban Pigs, Every Day Fiction, Bristol Noir, Witcraft, Coffin Bell, Frontier Tales, Yellow Mama, and Gumshoe, with more forthcoming. His Son of Ugly weekly flash newsletter can be found on Substack, on Instagram @scottmacleod478, on X @ScottMacLe59594 and at Facebook.
PUNK NOIR, the online literary and arts magazine that looks at the world at its most askew, casting a bloodshot eye over the written word, film, music, television and more.
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