Alistair Maclean
Floodgate

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

HARPER

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1983 then in paperback by Fontana 1984

Copyright © Alistair MacLean 1983

Alistair MacLean asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780006169116

Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2009 ISBN: 9780007289271

Version: 2016-10-11

To David and Judy

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Keep Reading

About the Author

By Alistair MacLean

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

The two oddly similar incidents, although both happening on the night of February 3rd, and both involving army ammunition storage installations, had no discernible connection.

The occurrence at De Doorns in Holland was mysterious, spectacular and tragic: the one at Metnitz in Germany was a good deal less mysterious, unspectacular and faintly comic.

Three soldiers were on guard at the Dutch ammunition dump, set in a concrete bunker one and a half kilometres north of the village of De Doorns, when, about one-thirty in the morning, the only two citizens who were awake in the village reported a staccato burst of machine-pistol fire—it was later established that the guards were carrying machine-pistols—followed immediately by the sound of a gigantic explosion, which was later found to have blasted in the earth a crater sixty metres wide by twelve deep.

Houses in the village suffered moderately severe damage but there was no loss of life.

It was presumed that the guards had fired at intruders and that a stray bullet had triggered the detonation. No traces of the guards or supposed intruders were found afterwards.

In Germany, a group calling themselves the Red Army Faction, a well-known and well-organized band of terrorists, claimed that they had easily overcome the two-man guard at the US Nato arms dump near Metnitz. Both men, it had been claimed, had been drinking and when the intruders had left both were covered with blankets—it had been a bitterly cold night. The US Army denied the drinking allegation but made no mention of the blankets. The intruders claimed that they had acquired a quantity of offensive weapons, some so advanced that they were still on the secret list. The US Army denied this.

The West German press heavily favoured the intruders’ account. When it came to penetrating army bases, the Red Army Faction had an impressive record: when it came to protecting them, the US Army had an unimpressive one.

The Red Army Faction customarily list the nature of their thefts in meticulous detail. No such details of the alleged secret weapons were published. It has been assumed that, if the Faction’s account was true, the US Army or the US Army through the German government, had issued a stop order to the press.

ONE

‘It is clear that it is the work of a madman.’ Jon de Jong, tall, lean, grey, ascetic and the general manager of Schiphol airport, looked and sounded very gloomy indeed and, in the circumstances, he had every justification in looking and sounding that way.

‘Insanity. A man has to be deranged, unhinged, to perform a wanton, mindless, pointless and purposeless task like this.’ Like the monkish professor he so closely resembled, de Jong tended to be precise to the point of pedantry and, as now, had a weakness for pompous tautology.

‘A lunatic.’

‘One sees your point of view,’ de Graaf said. Colonel van de Graaf, a remarkably broad man of medium height with a deeply trenched, tanned face, had about him an unperturbability and an unmistakable cast of authority that accorded well with the Chief of Police of a nation’s capital city. ‘I can understand and agree with it but only to a certain extent. I appreciate how you feel, my friend. Your beloved airport, one of the best in Europe—’

‘Amsterdam airport is the best in Europe.’ De Jong spoke as if by rote, his thoughts elsewhere. ‘Was.’

‘And will be again. The criminal responsible for this is, it is certain, not a man of a normal cast of mind. But that does not mean that he is instantly certifiable. Maybe he doesn’t like you, has a grudge against you. Maybe he’s an ex-employee fired by one of your departmental managers for what the manager regarded as a perfectly valid reason but a reason with which the disgruntled employee didn’t agree. Maybe he’s a citizen living close by, on the outskirts of Amsterdam, say, or between here and Aalsmeer, who finds the decibel level from the aircraft intolerably high. Maybe he’s a dedicated environmentalist who objects, in what must be a very violent fashion, to jet engines polluting the atmosphere, which they undoubtedly do. Our country, as you are well aware, has more than its fair share of dedicated environmentalists. Maybe he doesn’t like our Government’s policies.’ De Graaf ran a hand through his thick, iron-grey hair. ‘Maybe anything. But he could be as sane as either of us.’

‘Maybe you’d better have another look, Colonel,’ de Jong said. His hands were clenching and unclenching and he was shivering violently. Both of those were involuntary but for different reasons. The former accurately reflected an intense frustration and anger; the latter was due to the fact that, when an ice-cold wind blows east-north-east off the Ijsselmeer, and before that from Siberia, the roof of the main concourse of Schiphol airport was no place to be. ‘As sane as you or I? Would you or I have been responsible for this—this atrocity? Look, Colonel, just look.’

De Graaf looked. Had he been the airport manager, he reflected, it would hardly have been a sight to gladden his heart. Schiphol airport had just disappeared, its place taken by a wave-rippled lake that stretched almost as far as the eyes could see. The source of the flooding was all too easy to locate: close to the big fuel storage tanks just outwith the perimeter of the airport itself, a wide breach had appeared in the dyke of the canal to the south: the debris, stones and mud that were scattered along the top of the dyke on either side of the breach left no doubt that the rupture of the containing dyke had not been of a natural or spontaneous origin.

The effect of the onrush of waters had been devastating. The airport buildings themselves, though flooded in the ground floors and basements, remained intact. The damage done to the sensitive electric and electronic machinery was very considerable and would almost certainly cost millions of guilders to replace but the structural integrity of the buildings was unaffected: Schiphol airport is very solidly built and securely anchored to its foundations.

Aircraft, unfortunately, when not operating in their natural element, are very delicate artifacts and, of course, have no means at all of anchoring themselves. A momentary screwing of de Graaf’s eyes showed that this was all too painfully evident. Small planes had drifted away to the north. Some were still floating aimlessly around. Some were known to be sunk and out of sight, and two had their tail-planes sticking up above the water—those would have been single-engined planes, carried down head-first by the weight of the engines in their noses. Some two-engined passenger jets, 737s and DC9s, and three-engined planes, Trident 3s and 727s had also moved and were scattered randomly over a large area of the airfield, their noses pointing in every which direction. Two were tipped on their sides and two others were partially submerged, with only parts of their upper bodies showing: their undercarriages had collapsed. The big planes, the 747s, the Tri-Stars, the DC10s, were still in situ, held in position by their sheer massive weight—these planes, fuelled, can weigh between three and four hundred tons. Two, however, had fallen over to one side, presumably because the undercarriages distant from the onrush of water had collapsed. One did not have to be an aeronautical engineer to realize that both planes were write-offs. Both port wings were angled upwards at an angle of about twenty degrees and only the roots of the starboard wings were visible, a position that could only have been accounted for by the fact that both wings must have broken upwards somewhere along their lengths.

Several hundred yards along a main runway an undercarriage projecting above the water showed where a Fokker Friendship, accelerating for take-off, had tried to escape the floodwaters and failed. It was possible that the pilot had not seen the approach of the flood waters, possible but unlikely: it was more likely that he had seen them, reckoned that he had nothing to lose either way, continued accelerating but failed to gain liftoff speed before being caught. There was no question of his plane having been engulfed: in those initial stages, according to observers, there had been only an inch or two of water fanning out over the airfield but that had been enough to make the Fokker aquaplane with disastrous results.

Airport cars and trucks had simply drowned under the water. The only remaining signs of any wheeled vehicles were the projecting three or four steps of aircraft boarding ramps and the top of a tanker: even the ends of two crocodile disembarkation tubes were dipped forlornly into the murky waters.

De Graaf sighed, shook his head and turned to de Jong who was gazing almost sightlessly over his devastated airfield as if still quite unable to comprehend the enormity of what had happened.

‘You have a point, Jon. You and I are sane, or at least I think the world at large would think so, and it is not possible that we could have been responsible for such appalling destruction. But that doesn’t mean that the criminal responsible for this wanton destruction is insane: we will doubtless find, either through our own efforts or because he chooses to inform us, that there was a very compelling reason for what he did. I shouldn’t have used the word “wanton” there, you shouldn’t have used words like “mindless” and “pointless”. This is no random, arbitrary, spur-of-the-moment act of an escaped mental patient: this is a deliberately calculated act designed to produce a deliberately calculated effect.’

Reluctantly, as if by a giant effort of will, de Jong looked away from the flooded airfield. ‘Effect? The only effect it has on me is one of sheer outrage. What other effects could there be? Do you have any suggestions?’

‘None. I’ve had no time to think about it. Don’t forget I’ve only just come to this. Sure, sure, we knew yesterday that this was promised, but like everyone else, I thought the idea was so preposterous as to be not worth considering. But I have two other suggestions. I suggest that we’ll achieve nothing by staring out over Lake Schiphol: and I suggest we’re not going to help anyone or anything by hanging around here and getting pneumonia.’ De Jong’s briefly pained expression showed what he thought of the term ‘Lake Schiphol’ but he made no comment.

The staff canteen was an improvement on the roof-top inasmuch as there was no wind but it wasn’t all that much warmer. All electric heating had inevitably been short-circuited and the butane heaters that had been brought in had as yet had a minimal effect on the chilled atmosphere. An abundance of hot coffee helped: something rather more sustaining, de Graaf reflected, would have been in order, but for those with a taste for schnapps or jonge jenever the presence of the airport manager had a markedly inhibiting effect. As became his ascetic appearance, de Jong was a lifelong teetotaller, a difficult thing to be in Holland. He never made a point of this, he had never even been heard to mention this, but, somehow, people just didn’t drink anything stronger than tea or coffee when de Jong was around.

De Graaf said: ‘Let’s summarize briefly what we know. It has to be brief because we know virtually damn all. Three identical messages were received yesterday afternoon, one to a newspaper, one to the airport authorities—in effect, Mr de Jong—and one to the Rijkswaterstaat of the Ministry of Transport and Public Works.’ He paused briefly and looked across at a burly, dark-bearded man who was placidly polluting the atmosphere with the smoke from what appeared to be a very ancient pipe. ‘Ah! Of course. Mr van der Kuur. The Rijkswaterstaat Deputy Projects Engineer. How long to clear up this mess?’

Van der Kuur removed his pipe. ‘We have already started. We seal off the breach in the canal with metal sheeting—a temporary measure only, of course, but sufficient. After that—well, we do have the best and biggest pumps in the world. A routine job.’

‘How long?’

‘Thirty-six hours. At the outside.’ There was something very reassuring about der Kuur’s calm and matter-of-fact approach. ‘Provided of course that we get a degree of cooperation from the tugboat men, barge men and private owners whose boats are at the moment resting on the mud at the bottom of the canal. The boats that settled on an even keel are no problem: those which have fallen over on their sides could well fill up. I suppose self-interest will ensure cooperation.’

De Graaf said: ‘Any loss of life in the canal? Or anybody hurt?’

‘One of my inspectors reports a considerable degree of high blood pressure among the skippers and crews of the stranded craft. That apart, no one was harmed.’

‘Thank you. The messages came from a man or a group signing themselves FFF—it was not explained what those initials were meant to stand for. The intention, it was said, was to demonstrate that they could flood any part of our country whenever and wherever they wished by blowing up a strategically placed dyke and that accordingly they intended to give a small scale demonstration that would endanger no one and cause as little inconvenience as possible.’

‘As little inconvenience! Small scale.’ De Jong was back at his fist clenching. ‘I wonder what the devil they would regard as a large-scale demonstration?’

De Graaf nodded. ‘Quite. They said the target was Schiphol and that the flooding would come at 11 a.m. Not one minute before eleven, not one minute after. As we know, the breach was blown at precisely 11 a.m. At police headquarters, quite frankly, this was regarded as a hoax—after all, who in his right mind would want to turn Schiphol airport into an inland sea? Perhaps they saw some symbolic significance in their choice—after all, the Dutch navy defeated the Spanish navy at this very spot when the present Schiphol really was a sea. Hoax or not, we took no chances. The canal was the obvious choice for any saboteur so we had both sides of the north bank of the canal closely examined. There were no signs of any kind of disturbance that could have indicated a preparation for the blowing of the dyke. So we assumed it was some kind of practical joke.’ De Graaf shrugged, palms uplifted. ‘As we know too late nothing was further from the mind or minds of the FFF than fun and games.’

He turned to the man seated on his left side. ‘Peter, you’ve had time to think. Have you any idea—sorry, gentlemen, sorry. Some of you may not know my colleague here. Lieutenant Peter van Effen. Lieutenant van Effen is my senior detective lieutenant. He is also an explosives expert and, for his sins, the head of the city’s bomb disposal squad. Have you figured out yet how it was done?’

Peter van Effen was an unremarkable figure. Like his boss, he was just over medium height, uncommonly broad and looked suspiciously as if he were running to fat. He was in his mid or late thirties, had thick dark hair, a dark moustache and an almost permanent expression of amiability. He didn’t look like a senior detective lieutenant, in fact he didn’t even look like a policeman. Many people, including quite a number of people in Dutch prisons, tended to take van Effen’s easygoing affability at its face value.

‘It didn’t take much figuring, sir. Anything’s easy with hindsight. But even had we had foresight there was nothing we could have done about it anyway. We’ll almost certainly find that two boats were tied up bow to stern alongside the north bank. Unusual, but there’s no law, say, against an engine breakdown and a sympathetic owner of a passing vessel stopping to lend a hand. I should imagine that we’ll find that those boats were almost certainly stolen because there is traffic on the canal and any habitual waterway user would have been able to identify them.

‘The two boats would have been very close or even over—lapping, leaving a clear, hidden area where scuba divers could work. If this took place during dusk or night-time, as I’m sure it did, they would have bright lights on deck and when you have those on, anything below gunwale level is in deep shadow. They would have had a drilling machine, something like the ones you use on oil-rigs only, of course, this one would have been on a very small scale and operated horizontally not vertically. It would have been electrically powered, either by batteries or a generator, because the exhausts of a petrol or diesel plant make a great deal of noise. For an expert, and there are literally hundreds of experts operating on or around the North Sea, this would have been a childishly simple operation. They would drill through to, say, a foot of the other side of the dyke—we may be sure they would have taken very careful measurements beforehand—withdraw the bit and insert a waterproof canvas tube packed with explosives, maybe just plain old-fashioned dynamite or TNT, although a real expert would have gone for amatol beehives. They would then attach an electrical timing device, nothing elaborate, an old-fashioned kitchen alarm clock will do very well, plug the hole with mud and gravel—not that there would be a chance in a million of anyone ever looking there—and sail away.’

‘I could almost believe, Mr van Effen, that you masterminded this operation yourself,’ van der Kuur said. ‘So that’s how it was done.’

‘It’s how I would have done it and within the limits of a slight variation that’s how they did it. There is no other way.’ Van Effen looked at de Graaf. ‘We’re up against a team of experts and the person directing them is no clown. They know how to steal boats, they know how to handle them, they know where to steal drilling equipment, they know how to use that equipment and they’re obviously at home with explosives. No wild-eyed, slogan-chanting cranks among this lot: they’re professionals. I’ve asked head office to notify us immediately if they receive any complaints from factories, wholesalers or retailers of the theft of any equipment from the manufacturers or distributors of drilling equipment. Also to notify us of the theft of any vessels from that area.’

‘And beyond that?’ de Graaf said.

‘Nothing. We have no leads.’

De Graaf nodded and looked down at the paper he held in his hands. ‘That message from the mysterious FFF. No indication whatsoever as to the reason behind this threatened—now actual—sabotage. Just a warning that nobody should be at ground level at 11 a.m. this morning and that all planes should be flown out yesterday afternoon or evening to adjacent airfields as the needless destruction of property formed no part of their plans. Very considerate of them, I must say. And even more considerate, Jon, was the phone call you got at nine o’clock this morning urging you to evacuate all those planes immediately. But, of course, we all knew it was a hoax, so we paid no attention. Would you recognize that voice again, Jon?’

‘Not a chance. It was a woman’s voice, a young woman and speaking in English. All young women speaking English sound the same to me.’ Fist clenched, de Jong gently thumped the table before him. ‘They don’t even hint at the reason for carrying out this—this monstrous action. What have they achieved by this action? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I repeat that any person or persons who behave in this fashion have to be mentally unbalanced.’

Van Effen said: ‘I’m sorry, sir, I disagree. I do agree with what the Colonel said on the roof—they’re almost certainly as sane as any one. No one who is mentally unbalanced could have carried out this operation. And they’re not, as I said, wild-eyed terrorists throwing bombs in crowded market-places. In two separate warnings they did their best to ensure that neither human lives nor property would be put at risk. That was not the behaviour of irresponsible people.’

‘And who, then, was responsible for the deaths of the three people who lost their lives when that Fokker Friendship cartwheeled and crashed on take-off?’

‘The saboteurs, indirectly. One could equally well say that you were, also indirectly. It might be argued you might at least have considered the possibility that the threat was not a hoax, taken even the most remote possibility into account and refused permission for the Fokker to take off at exactly 11 a.m. But that permission was given, personally I understand, by you. It is as certain as certain can be that the saboteurs had carefully checked landing and take-off schedules and made sure that there were no planes either taking off or landing at or near that time. That Fokker was the private plane of a German industrialist and was therefore not listed on the scheduled departures. I suggest, Mr de Jong, that it’s futile to ascribe the blame for those three deaths to anyone. Sheer bad luck, an unfortunate coincidence in timing, an act of God, call it what you like. There was nothing planned, nothing calculated, no motive behind those deaths. It was nobody’s fault.’

De Jong had substituted finger-drumming for table thumping. ‘If those evil men were as considerate as you say, why didn’t they postpone the explosion when they saw people boarding the plane?’

‘Because we don’t know that they were in a position to see anything and, even if they were, they were almost certainly unable to do anything about it. Had the explosives been activated by a radio-controlled device, sure, they could have stopped it. But, as I told you, I’m pretty certain it was an electrical timer and to de-activate that they would have had to assemble a boat, scuba gear and diver—and all in broad daylight—in a matter of minutes. In the time available, that would have been impossible.’

There was a faint but unmistakable sheen of sweat on de Jong’s forehead. ‘They could have phoned a warning.’

Van Effen looked at de Jong for a long moment, then said: ‘How much attention did you pay to the previous warning this morning?’

De Jong made no reply.

‘And you’ve just said that the saboteurs have achieved nothing, absolutely nothing, by their action. I know you’re upset, sir, and it seems unfair to press the point, but can you really be so naive as to believe that? They’ve already made a considerable achievement. They have achieved the beginnings of a climate of fear and uncertainty, a climate that can only worsen with the passing of the hours. If they’ve struck once, apparently without a blind bit of motivation, are the chances not high that they will strike again? If they do, when? If they do, where? And, above all, there’s the why. What overpowering reason do they have to behave as they do?’ He looked at de Graaf. ‘Soften up the victim but keep him in suspense as to your purpose in behaving in this fashion. It’s a novel form of blackmail and I see no reason why it shouldn’t work. I have the strong feeling that we are going to hear from the FFF in the very near future. Not to state the reasons for acting as they do, certainly not to make any specific demands. Dear me, no. Not that. That’s not the way you conduct psychological warfare. One turns the wheel that stretches the rack very, very slowly over a calculated period of time. Gives the victim time to ponder more deeply about the hopelessness of his situation while his morale sinks lower and lower. At least that’s how I believe they operated in the Middle Ages—when using the actual instrument, of course.’

De Jong said sourly: ‘You seem to know a lot about the workings of the criminal mind.’

‘A little.’ Van Effen smiled agreeably. ‘I wouldn’t presume to tell you how to run an airport.’

‘And what am I to understand from that?’

‘Mr van Effen just means that a cobbler should stick to his last.’ De Graaf made a placatory gesture with his hand. ‘He’s the author of the now established text-book on the psychology of the criminal mind. Never read it myself. So, Peter. You seem sure the FFF will contact us very soon, but not to tell us about themselves or their objectives. Tell us what? The where and the when? Their next—ah—demonstration?’

‘What else?’

A profound and rather gloomy silence was ended by the entrance of a waiter who approached de Jong. ‘Telephone, sir. Is there a Lieutenant van Effen here?’

‘Me.’ Van Effen followed the waiter from the canteen and returned within a minute and addressed himself to de Graaf.

‘Duty sergeant. Apparently two men reported their boats missing some hours ago. Pleasure boat owners. The sergeant who took their complaint didn’t think it necessary to notify our department. Quite right, of course. The boats have now been recovered. One, it would seem, was taken by force. The boats are in our hands. I told them to take a couple of finger-print men aboard, return the boats to the owners but not to allow the owners aboard. If you can spare the time, sir, we can interview the two owners after we leave here: they live less than a kilometre from here.’

‘A promising lead, yes?’

‘No.’

‘I don’t think so either. However, no stone unturned. We may as well go now and—’

He broke off as the same waiter reappeared and approached him. ‘Phone again. For you this time, Colonel.’

De Graaf returned in a matter of seconds. ‘Jon, have you such a thing as a shorthand typist?’

‘Of course. Jan?’

‘Sir?’ A blond youngster was on his feet.

‘You heard the Colonel?’

‘Yes, sir.’ He looked at de Graaf. ‘What shall I say?’

‘Ask her to take that phone call and type it out for me. Peter, you have clairvoyance, the second sight.’

‘The FFF?’

‘Indeed. The press, I need hardly say. The FFF have their publicity priorities right. Usual anonymous phone call. The sub-editor who took the call was smart enough to tape-record it but I’d be surprised if that is of the slightest help. A fairly lengthy statement, I understand. Shorthand is not my forte. Let us possess our souls in patience.’

They had possessed their souls for not more than four minutes when a girl entered and handed a type-written sheet to de Graaf. He thanked her, looked briefly at the sheet and said: ‘Action this day would appear to be their motto. This, I understand, is their statement in full and a fairly arrogant example of its kind it is, too. This is what the FFF says:

‘“Next time, perhaps, the responsible citizens in Amsterdam will listen to what we say, believe what we say and act accordingly. It is because you did not believe what we said that a misadventure occurred today. For this misadventure we hold Mr de Jong entirely responsible. He was given due warning and chose to ignore that warning. We deplore the unnecessary deaths of the three passengers aboard the Fokker Friendship but disclaim all responsibility. It was not possible for us to arrest the explosion.”’ De Graaf paused and looked at van Effen. ‘Interesting?’

‘Very. So they had an observer. We’ll never find him. He could have been in the airport but hundreds of people who don’t work here visit here every day. For all we know, there could have been someone outside the airport with a pair of binoculars. But that’s not what is interesting. The four first-aid men who brought in the most seriously injured passengers did not know at the time whether the three men who were later pronounced dead were, in fact, dead or alive. Two of them, I understand, died after admission, but none was officially pronounced dead until the doctor certified them as such. How did the FFF know? Neither the doctor nor the first-aid men could have been responsible for leaking the news for they would be the obvious suspects and all too easily checked on. Apart from them, the only people who knew of those deaths are in this room.’ Van Effen looked leisurely around the sixteen men and three women seated at the canteen tables then turned to de Jong.

‘It hardly needs spelling out, does it, sir? We have an infiltrator here, an informant. The enemy has a spy in our camp.’ Again he carried out the same slow survey of the room. ‘I do wonder who it can be.’

‘In this room?’ De Jong looked both disbelieving and unhappy at the same time.

‘I don’t have to repeat the obvious, do I?’

De Jong looked down at his hands which were now tightly clasped on the table. ‘No. No. Of course not. But, surely, well, we can find out. You can find out.’

‘The usual rigorous enquiries, is that it? Trace the movements of every person in this room after the Fokker crashed? Find out if anyone had access to the phone or, indeed, used a phone? Sure, we can do that, pursue the rigorous enquiries. We’ll find nothing.’

‘You’ll find nothing?’ De Jong looked perplexed. ‘How can you be so sure, so sure in advance?’

‘Because,’ de Graaf said, ‘the Lieutenant has a policeman’s mind. Not a bunch to be underestimated, are they, Peter?’

‘They’re clever.’

De Jong looked from de Graaf to van Effen then back to de Graaf. ‘If someone would kindly explain…’

‘Simple, really,’ de Graaf said. ‘It hasn’t occurred to you that the FFF didn’t have to let us know that they knew of the deaths. Gratuitous information, if you like. They would know that we would know this. They would know, as the Lieutenant has just pointed out, that we would know that someone had informed them and that someone would have to be one of us. They would be certain that we would check on the possibility of someone here having made a phone call, so they made certain that no one here made a phone call. He passed the word on to an accomplice who is not in this room: the accomplice made the call. I’m afraid, Jon, that you have another mole burrowing away inside here. Maybe even more. You are aware, of course, that every word of our conversation will be reported back to the FFF, whoever they may be. We will, naturally, go through the motions and make the necessary routine enquiries. As van Effen says, we will, of course, draw a blank.’

‘But—but it all seems so pointless,’ de Jong said. ‘Why should they be so devious so as to achieve nothing?’

‘They’re not really devious and they do achieve something. A degree of demoralization, for one thing. More important, they are saying that they are a force to be reckoned with, that they can infiltrate and penetrate security when they so choose. They are giving the message that they are a highly organized group, one that is capable of carrying out any threats that it chooses to make and one that is to be ignored at our peril.

‘Speaking of threats and perils, let’s return to the FFF’s latest phone call. They go on to say: “We are sure that the Dutch people are well aware that, in the face of an attacker determined to bring it to its knees, it is the most defenceless nation in the world. The sea is not your enemy. We are, and the sea is our ally.

‘“You will not need reminding that the Netherlands has about 1300 kilometres of sea dykes. A certain Cornelius Rijpma, president of the Sea Polder board in Leeuwarden, in Friesland, is on record as saying some months ago that the dykes in his area consist of nothing more than layers of sand and that if a big storm comes they are certain to break. By a ‘big storm’, one would assume that it would have to be a storm of the order of the one that breached the delta defences in 1953 and took 1,850 lives. Our information, supplied to us by the Rijkswaterstaat, is that—’”

‘What! What!’ Van der Kuur, red-faced and almost incoherent with anger, was on his feet. ‘Are those devils daring to suggest that they got information from us? Dastardly! Impossible!’

‘Let me finish, Mr van der Kuur. Can’t you see that they’re using the same technique again, trying to undermine confidence and demoralize? Just because we know that they have contacts with one or more of Mr de Jong’s staff is no proof that they have any with your people. Anyway, there’s worse to come. They go on: “Our information is that a storm of not more than 70% of the power of the 1953 one would be sufficient to breach the dykes. Mr Rijpma was talking about vulnerable dykes. Of the Netherlands’ 1300 kilometres of dykes, almost exactly three hundred have deteriorated to a critical condition. By the best estimates, no repairs will be carried out to the threatened dykes for another twelve years, that is to say, 1995. All we propose to do is to accelerate the advent of the inevitable.”’

De Graaf paused and looked around. A chilled hush seemed to have fallen over the canteen. Only two people were looking at him: the others were either gazing at the floor or into the far distance; in both cases it was not difficult to guess that they didn’t like what they saw.

‘“The dykes cannot be repaired because there is no money to repair them. All the money available, or likely to be available in the future, is being sunk or will be sunk into the construction of the East Scheldt storm-surge barrier, the last link in the so-called Delta plan designed to keep the North Sea at bay. The costs are staggering. Due to gross original underestimates, cost over-runs and inflation, the likely bill will probably be in excess of nine billion guilders—and this massive sum for a project that some engineering experts say will not work anyway. The project consists of 63 lock-gates fitted between enormous, 18,000 tonne, free-standing concrete pillars. The dissident experts fear that heavy seas could shift the pillars, jam the locks and render the barrier inoperable. A shift of two centimetres would be enough. Ask Mr van der Kuur of the Rijkswaterstaat.”’

De Graaf paused and looked up. Van der Kuur was on his feet again, every bit as apoplectic as on the previous occasion: the thought was inevitable that van der Kuur’s normal air of pipe-puffing imperturbability was a very thin veneer indeed.

‘Lies!’ he shouted. ‘Rubbish! Balderdash! Defamation! Calumny! Lies, I tell you, lies!’

‘You’re the engineer in charge. You should know. So, really, there’s no need to get so worked up about it.’ De Graaf’s tone was mild, conciliatory. ‘The dissidents the FFF speak about—they have no hydraulic engineering qualifications?’

‘The dissidents! A handful. Qualifications? Of course. Paper qualifications! Not one of them has any practical experience as far as this matter is concerned.’

Van Effen said: ‘Does anybody have on this project? Practical experience, I mean. I understood that the East Scheldt involved completely untested engineering techniques and that you are, in effect, moving into the realms of the unknown.’ He raised a hand as van der Kuur was about to rise again. ‘Sorry. This is all really irrelevant. What is relevant is that there is a mind or minds among the FFF that is not only highly intelligent but has a clear understanding about the application of practical psychology. First, they introduce the elements of doubt, dismay, dissension and the erosion of confidence into Schiphol. Then they apply the same techniques to the Rijkswaterstaat. And now, through the medium of every paper in the land, this evening or tomorrow morning, and doubtless, through television and radio, they will introduce those same elements into the nation at large. If you ask me, they have—or will have—achieved a very great deal in a very short space of time. A remarkable feat. They are to be respected as strategists if not as human beings. I trust that the traitor in our midst will report that back to them.’

‘Indeed,’ de Graaf said. ‘And I trust the same traitor will understand if we don’t discuss the steps we plan to undertake to combat this menace. Well, ladies and gentlemen, to the final paragraph of their message and incidentally, no doubt, to introduce some more of what the Lieutenant referred to as doubt, dismay, dissension, erosion of confidence or whatever. They go on to say: “In order to demonstrate your helplessness and our ability to strike at will wherever and whenever we choose, we would advise you that a breach will be made in the Texel sea dyke at 4.30 p.m. this afternoon.”’

‘What!’ The word came simultaneously from at least half a dozen people.

‘Shook me a bit, too,’ de Graaf said. ‘That’s what they say. I don’t for a moment doubt them. Brinkman’—this to a uniformed young police officer—‘contact the office. No urgency, probably, but check that people on the island know what’s coming to them. Mr van der Kuur, I’m sure I can leave it to you to have the necessary men and equipment to stand by.’ He consulted the sheet again. ‘Not a big operation, they say. “We are sure that damage will be minimal but it might behove the citizens of Oosterend and De Waal to stand by their boats or take to their attics shortly after 4.30. Very shortly.” Damned arrogance. They end up by saying: “We know that those names will give you a fairly accurate idea as to where the charges have been placed. We defy you to find them.”’

‘And that’s all?’ van der Kuur said.

‘That’s all.’

‘No reasons, no explanations for those damned outrages? No demands? Nothing?’

‘Nothing.’

‘I still say we’re up against a bunch of raving maniacs.’

‘And I say that we’re up against clever and very calculating criminals who are more than content to let us stew in our own juice for the time being. I wouldn’t worry about the demands, if I were you. These will come in due time—their time. Well, nothing more we can achieve here—not, on reflection, that we have achieved anything. I bid you good day, Mr de Jong, and hope that you’ll be back in operational services some time tomorrow. It’ll take days, I suppose, to replace the machinery ruined in your basements.’

On their way out, van Effen made a gesture to de Graaf to hold back. He looked casually around to make sure that no one was within earshot and said: ‘I’d like to put tails on a couple of gentlemen who were in that room.’

‘Well, you don’t waste time, I will say. You have, of course, your reasons.’

‘I was watching them when you broke the news of the proposed Texel breach. It hit them. Most of them just stared away into space and those who didn’t were studying the floor. All of them, I assume, were considering the awful implications. Two did neither. They just kept on looking at you. Maybe they didn’t react because it didn’t come as any news to them.’

‘Straws. You’re just clutching at straws.’

‘Isn’t that what a drowning man is supposed to do?’

‘With all the water that’s around, present and promised, you might have picked a less painful metaphor. Who?’

‘Alfred van Rees.’

‘Ah. The Rijkswaterstaat’s Locks, Weirs and Sluices man. Preposterous. Friend of mine. Honest as the day’s long.’

‘Maybe the Mr Hyde in him doesn’t come out until after sunset. And Fred Klassen.’

‘Klassen! Schiphol’s security chief. Preposterous.’

‘That’s twice. Or is he a friend of yours, too?’

‘Impossible. Twenty years’ unblemished service. The security chief?’

‘If you were a criminal and were given the choice of subverting any one man in a big organization, who would you go for?’

De Graaf looked at him for a long moment, then walked on in silence.

TWO

Bakkeren and Dekker were the names of the two boat-owners who had been involuntarily deprived of their vessels during the previous night. As it turned out, they were brothers-in-law. Bakkeren was phlegmatic about the borrowing of his boat and not particularly concerned by the fact that he had not yet been allowed to examine his boat to see what damage, if any, had been done to it. Dekker, by contrast and understandably, was seething with rage: he had, as he had informed de Graaf and van Effen within twenty seconds of their arrival at his suburban home, been rather roughly handled during the previous evening.

‘Is no man safe in this godforsaken city?’ He didn’t speak the words, he shouted them, but it was reasonable to assume that this was not his normal conversational custom. ‘Police, you say you are, police! Ha! Police! A fine job you do of guarding the honest citizens of Amsterdam. There I was, sitting in my own boat and minding my own business when those four gangsters—’

‘Moment,’ van Effen said. ‘Were they wearing gloves?’

‘Gloves!’ Dekker, a small dark, intense man, stared at him in outraged disbelief. ‘Gloves! Here am I, the victim of a savage assault, and all you can think of—’

‘Gloves.’

Something in van Effen’s tone had reached through the man’s anger, one could almost see his blood pressure easing a few points. ‘Gloves, eh? Funny, that. Yes, they were. All of them.’

Van Effen turned to a uniformed sergeant. ‘Bernhard.’

‘Yes, sir. I’ll tell the finger-print men to go home.’

‘Sorry, Mr Dekker. Tell it your way. If there was anything that struck you as unusual or odd, let us know.’

‘It was all bloody odd,’ Dekker said morosely. He had been, as he had said, minding his own business in his little cabin, when he had been hailed from the bank. He’d gone on deck and a tall man—it was almost dark and his features had been indistinguishable—had asked him if he could hire the boat for the night. He said he was from a film company and wanted to shoot some night scenes and offered a thousand guilders. Dekker had thought it extremely odd that an offer of that nature should have been made at such short notice and with night falling: he had refused. Next thing he knew, three other men had appeared on the scene, he’d been dragged from the boat, bundled into a car and driven to his home.

Van Effen said: ‘Did you direct them?’

‘Are you mad?’ Looking at the fiery little man it was impossible to believe that he would volunteer information to anyone.

‘So they’ve been watching your movements for some time. You weren’t aware that you were under surveillance at any time?’

‘Under what?’

‘Being watched, followed, seeing the same stranger an unusual number of times?’

‘Who’d watch and follow a fishmonger? Well, who would think they would? So they hauled me into the house—’

‘Didn’t you try to escape at any time?’

‘Would you listen to the man?’ Dekker was justifiably bitter. ‘How far would you get with your wrists handcuffed behind your back?’

‘Handcuffs?’

‘I suppose you thought that only police used those things. So they dragged me into the bathroom, tied my feet with a clothes line and taped my mouth with Elastoplast. Then they locked the door from the outside.’

‘You were completely helpless?’

‘Completely.’ The little man’s face darkened at the recollection. ‘I managed to get to my feet and a hell of a lot of good that did me. There’s no window in the bathroom. If there had been I don’t know of any way I could have broken it and even if I had there was no way I could shout for help, was there? Not with God knows how many strips of plaster over my mouth.

‘Three or four hours later—I’m not sure how long it was—they came back and freed me. The tall man told me they’d left fifteen hundred guilders on the kitchen table—a thousand for the hire of the boat and five hundred for incidental expenses.’

‘What expenses?’

‘How should I know?’ Dekker sounded weary. ‘They didn’t explain. They just left.’

‘Did you see them go? Type of car, number, anything like that?’

‘I did not see them go. I did not see their car, far less its number.’ Dekker spoke with the air of a man who is exercising massive restraint. ‘When I say they freed me, I meant that they had unlocked and removed the handcuffs. Took me a couple of minutes to remove the strips of Elastoplast and damnably painful it was, too. Took quite a bit of skin amd my moustache with it too. Then I hopped through to the kitchen and got the bread knife to the ropes round my ankles. The money was there, all right and I’d be glad if you’d put it in your police fund because I won’t touch their filthy money. Almost certainly stolen anyway. They and their car, of course, were to hell and gone by that time.’

Van Effen was diplomatically sympathetic. ‘Considering what you’ve been through, Mr Dekker, I think you’re being very calm and restrained. Could you describe them?’

‘Ordinary clothes. Rain-coats. That’s all.’

‘Their faces?’

‘It was dark on the canal bank, dark in the car and by the time we reached here they were all wearing hoods. Well, three of them. One stayed on the boat.’

‘Slits in the hoods, of course.’ Van Effen wasn’t disappointed, he’d expected nothing else.

‘Round holes, more like.’

‘Did they talk among themselves?’

‘Not a word. Only the leader spoke.’

‘How do you know he was the leader?’

‘Leaders give orders, don’t they?’

‘I suppose. Would you recognize the voice again?’

Dekker hesitated. ‘I don’t know. Well, yes, I think I would.’

‘Ah. Something unusual about his voice?’

‘Yes. Well. He talked funny Dutch.’

‘Funny?’

‘It wasn’t—what shall I say—Dutch Dutch.’

‘Poor Dutch, is that it?’

‘No. The other way around. It was very good. Too good. Like the news-readers on TV and radio.’

‘Too precise, yes? Book Dutch. A foreigner, perhaps?’

‘That’s what I would guess.’

‘Would you have any idea where he might have come from?’

‘There you have me, Lieutenant. I’ve never been out of the country. I hear often enough that many people in the city speak English or German or both. Not me. I speak neither. Foreign tourists don’t come to a fishmonger’s shop. I sell my fish in Dutch.’

‘Thanks, anyway. Could be a help. Anything else about this leader—if that’s what he was?’

‘He was tall, very tall.’ He tried his first half-smile of the afternoon. ‘You don’t have to be tall to be taller than I am but I didn’t even reach up to his shoulders. Ten, maybe twelve centimetres taller than you are. And thin, very very thin: he was wearing a long rain-coat, blue it was, that came way below his knees and it fell from his shoulders like a coat hanging from a coat-hanger.’

‘The hoods had holes, you say, not slits. You could see this tall man’s eyes?’

‘Not even that. This fellow was wearing dark eye-glasses.’

‘Sun-glasses? I did ask you to tell me if there was anything odd about those people. Didn’t you think it odd that a person should be wearing a pair of sun-glasses at night?’

‘Odd? Why should it be odd? Look, Lieutenant, a bachelor like me spends a lot of time watching movies and TV. The villains always wear dark glasses. That’s how you can tell they’re villains.’

‘True, true.’ Van Effen turned to Dekker’s brother-in-law. ‘I understand, Mr Bakkeren, that you were lucky enough to escape the attentions of those gentlemen.’

‘Wife’s birthday. In town for a dinner and show. Anyway, they could have stolen my boat any time and I would have known nothing about it. If they were watching Maks here, they would have been watching me and they’d know that I only go near my boat on weekends.’

Van Effen turned to de Graaf. ‘Would you like to see the boats, sir?’

‘Do you think we’ll find anything?’

‘No. Well, might find out what they’ve been doing. I’ll bet they haven’t left one clue for hardworking policemen to find.’

‘Might as well waste some more time.’

The brothers-in-law went in their own car, the two policemen in van Effen’s, an ancient and battered Peugeot with a far from ancient engine. It bore no police distinguishing marks whatsoever and even the radio telephone was concealed. De Graaf lowered himself gingerly into the creaking and virtually springless seat.

‘I refrain from groaning and complaining, Peter. I know there must be a couple of hundred similar wrecks rattling about the streets of Amsterdam and I appreciate your passion for anonymity, but would it kill you to replace or re-upholster the passenger seat?’

‘I thought it lent a nice touch of authenticity. But it shall be done. Pick up anything back in the house there?’

‘Nothing that you didn’t. Interesting that the tall thin man should be accompanied by a couple of mutes. It has occurred to you that if the leader, as Dekker calls him, is a foreigner then his henchmen are also probably foreigners and may very well be unable to speak a word of Dutch?’

‘It had occurred and it is possible. Dekker said that the leader gave orders which would give one to understand that they spoke, or at least understood, Dutch. Doesn’t necessarily follow, of course. The orders may have been meaningless and given only to convince the listener that the others were Dutch. Pity that Dekker has never ventured beyond the frontiers of his own homeland. He might—I say just might—have been able to identify the country of origin of the owner of that voice. I speak two or three languages, Peter, you even more. Do you think, if we’d heard this person speaking, we’d have been able to tell his country?’

‘There’s a chance. I wouldn’t put it higher than that. I know what you’re thinking, sir. The tape-recording that this newspaper sub-editor made of the phone call they received. Chances there would be much poorer—you know how a phone call can distort a voice. And they don’t strike me as people who would make such a fairly obvious mistake. Besides, even if we did succeed in guessing at the country of origin, how the hell would that help us in tracking them down?’

De Graaf lit up a very black cheroot. Van Effen wound down his window. De Graaf paid no attention. He said: ‘You’re a great comforter. Give us a few more facts—or let’s dig up a few more—and it might be of great help to us. Apart from the fact, not yet established, that he may be a foreigner, all we know about this lad is that he’s very tall, built along the lines of an emaciated garden rake and has something wrong with his eyes.’

‘Wrong? The eyes, I mean, sir? All we know for certain is that he wears sun-glasses at night-time. Could mean anything or nothing. Could be a fad. Maybe he fancies himself in them. Maybe, as Dekker suggested, he thinks sun-glasses are de rigueur for the better class villain. Maybe, like the American President’s Secret Service body-guards, he wears them because any potential malefactor in a crowd can never know whether the agent’s eyes are fixed on him or not, thereby inhibiting him from action. Or he might be just suffering from nyctalopia.’

‘I see. Nyctalopia. Every schoolboy knows, of course. I am sure, Peter, that you will enlighten me at your leisure.’

‘Funny old word to describe a funny old condition. I am told it’s the only English language word with two precisely opposite meanings. On the one hand, it means night-blindness, the recurrent loss of vision after sunset, the causes of which are only vaguely understood. On the other hand, it can be taken to mean day-blindness, the inability to see clearly except by night, and here the causes are equally obscure. A rare disease, whatever meaning you take, but its existence has been well attested to. The sun-glasses, as we think of them, may well be fitted with special correctional lenses.’

‘It would appear to me that a criminal suffering from either manifestation of this disease would be labouring under a severe occupational handicap. Both a house-breaker, who operates by daylight, and a burglar, who operates by night, would be a bit restricted in their movements if they were afflicted, respectively, by day or night blindness. Just a little bit too far-fetched for me, Peter. I prefer the old-fashioned reasons. Badly scarred about the eyes. Cross-eyed. Maybe he’s got a squint. Maybe an eye whose iris is streaked or particoloured. Maybe wall-eyed, where the iris is so light that you can hardly distinguish it from the white or where the pupils are of two different colours. Maybe a sufferer from exophthalmic goitre, which results in very protuberant eyes. Maybe he’s only got one eye. In any event, I’d guess he’s suffering from some physical abnormality by which he would be immediately identifiable without the help of those dark glasses.’

‘So now all we’ve got to do is to ask Interpol for a list, world-wide, of all known criminals with eye defects. There must be tens of thousands of them. Even if there were only ten on the list, it still wouldn’t help us worth a damn. Chances are good, of course, that he hasn’t even got a criminal record.’ Van Effen pondered briefly. ‘Or maybe they could give us a list of all albino criminals on their books. They need glasses to hide their eyes.’

‘The Lieutenant is pleased to be facetious,’ de Graaf said morosely. He puffed on his cheroot, then said, almost wonderingly: ‘By Jove, Peter. You could be right.’

Ahead, Dekker had slowed to a stop and now van Effen did also. Two boats were moored alongside a canal bank, both about eleven or twelve metres in length, with two cabins and an open poop deck. The two policemen joined Dekker aboard his boat: Bakkeren boarded his own which lay immediately ahead. Dekker said: ‘Well, gentlemen, what do you want to check first?’

De Graaf said: ‘How long have you had this boat?’

‘Six years.’

‘In that case, I don’t think Lieutenant van Effen or I will bother to check anything. After six years, you must know every corner, every nook and cranny on this boat. So we’d be grateful if you’d do the checking. Just tell us if there is anything here, even the tiniest thing, that shouldn’t be here: or anything that’s missing that should be here. You might, first, be so good as to ask your brother-in-law to do the same aboard his boat.’

Some twenty minutes later the brothers-in-law were able to state definitely that nothing had been left behind and that, in both cases, only two things had been taken: beer from the fridges and diesel from the tanks. Neither Dekker nor Bakkeren could say definitely how many cans of beer had been taken, they didn’t count such things: but both were adamant that each fuel tank was down by at least twenty litres.

‘Twenty litres each?’ van Effen said. ‘Well, they wouldn’t have used two litres to get from here to the airport canal bank and back. So they used the engine for some other purpose. Can you open the engine hatch and let me have a torch?’

Van Effen’s check of the engine-room battery was cursory, seconds only, but sufficient. He said: ‘Do either of you two gentlemen ever use crocodile clips when using or charging your batteries—you know, those spring-loaded grips with the serrated teeth? No? Well, someone was using them last night. You can see the indentations on the terminals. They had the batteries in your two boats connected up, in parallel or series, it wouldn’t have mattered, they’d have been using a transformer, and ran your engines to keep the batteries charged. Hence the missing forty litres.’

‘I suppose,’ Dekker said, ‘that was what that gangster meant by incidental costs.’

‘I suppose it was.’

De Graaf lowered himself, not protesting too much, into the springless, creaking passenger seat of the ancient Peugeot just as the radio telephone rang. Van Effen answered then passed the phone across to de Graaf who spoke briefly then returned the phone to its concealed position.

‘I feared this,’ de Graaf said. He sounded weary. ‘My minister wants me to fly up with him to Texel. Taking half the cabinet with him, I understand.’

‘Good God! Those rubber-necking clowns. What on earth do they hope to achieve by being up there? They’ll only get in everyone’s way, gum up the works and achieve nothing: but, then, they’re very practised in that sort of thing.’

‘I would remind you, Lieutenant van Effen, that you are talking about elected Ministers of the Crown.’ If the words were intended as a reprimand, de Graaf’s heart wasn’t in it.

‘A useless and incompetent bunch. Make them look important, perhaps get their name in the papers, might even be worth a vote or two among the more backward of the electorate. Still, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it, sir.’

De Graaf glowered at him then said hopefully: ‘I don’t suppose you’d like to come, Peter?’

‘You don’t suppose quite correctly, sir. Besides, I have things to do.’

‘Do you think I don’t?’ De Graaf looked and sounded very gloomy.

‘Ah! But I’m only a cop. You have to be a cop and a diplomat. I’ll drop you off at the office.’

‘Join me for lunch?’

‘Like to, sir, but I’m having lunch at an establishment, shall we say, where Amsterdam’s Chief of Police wouldn’t be seen dead. La Caracha it’s called. Your wife and daughters wouldn’t approve, sir.’

‘Business, of course?’

‘Of course. A little talk with a couple of our friends in the Krakers. You asked me a couple of months ago to keep a discreet, apart from an official, eye on them. They report occasionally, usually at La Caracha.’

‘Ah! The Krakers. Haven’t had much time to think of them in the past two months. And how are our disenchanted youth, the anti-everything students, the flower men, the hippies, the squatters?’

‘And the drug-pushers and gun-runners? Keeping a suspiciously low profile, these days. I must say I feel happier, no that’s not the word, less worried when they’re heaving iron bars and bricks at our uniformed police and overturning and burning the odd car, because then we know where we are: with this unusual peace and quiet and uncharacteristic inactivity, I feel there’s trouble brewing somewhere.’

‘You’re not actually looking for trouble, Peter?’

‘I’ve got the nasty feeling I’m going to find it anyway. Looking will be quite unnecessary. Yesterday afternoon, when that call came from the FFF, I sent two of our best people into the area. They might come across something. An off-chance. But the crime in Amsterdam is becoming more and more centralized in the Kraker area. The FFF would you say qualify as criminals?’

‘Birds of a feather? Well, maybe. But the FFF seem like pretty smart boys, maybe too smart to associate with the Krakers, who could hardly be called the intellectual Titans of crime.’

‘The FFF. So far we’ve got a pretty tall fellow, with maybe something wrong with his eyes and maybe of foreign extraction. We’ve practically got it all wrapped up.’

‘Sarcasm ill becomes you. All right, all right, no stone unturned, any action is better than nothing. What’s the food like at La Caracha?’

‘For that area, surprisingly good. I’ve had a few meals—’ He broke off and looked at de Graaf. ‘You are going to honour us at the table, sir?’

‘Well, I thought, I mean, as Chief of Police—’

‘Of course, of course. Delighted.’

‘And no one will know where I am.’ De Graaf seemed cheered at the prospect. ‘That damned radio phone can ring its head off for all I care. I won’t be able to hear it.’

‘Nobody else will be able to hear it either. That damned phone, as you call it, will be switched off the moment we park. How do you think the dockland citizens are going to react when they hear a phone go off in this relic?’

They drove off. By and by de Graaf lit another cheroot, van Effen lowered his window and de Graaf said: ‘You have, of course, checked up on the proprietor of La Caracha. What’s he called?’

‘He prefers to be known just as George. I know him moderately well. He’s held in high regard among the local people.’

‘A kindly man? A do-gooder? Charitable? An upstanding citizen, you would say?’

‘He’s reputed to be a ranking member of three, perhaps four, successful criminal organizations. Not drugs, not prostitution, he despises those and won’t touch them: robbery, it is said, is his forte, usually armed, with or without violence according to the amount of resistance offered. He, himself, can be extremely violent. I can testify to that personally. The violence, of course, was not directed at me: you have to be out of your mind to attack a police lieutenant and George is very far from being out of his mind.’

‘You do have a genius for picking your friends, associates, or whatever you call them, Peter.’ De Graaf puffed at his cheroot and if he was ruffled in any way he didn’t show it. ‘Why isn’t this menace to society behind bars?’

‘You can’t arrest, charge, try and convict a man on hearsay. I can’t very well go up to George with a pair of handcuffs and say: “People have been telling me stories and I have to take you in.” Besides, we’re friends.’

‘You’ve said yourself that he can be excessively violent. You can pull him in on that.’

‘No. He’s entitled to eject any person who is drunk, abusive, uses foul language or is guilty of causing an affray. That’s the limit of George’s violence. Ejection. Usually two at a time. The law says he can. We are the law.’

‘Sounds an interesting character. Unusual, one might say. Two at a time, eh?’

‘Wait till you see George.’

‘And how do you propose to introduce me?’

‘No need to emphasize the police connections. Just Colonel de Graaf. This is, shall we say, a semiofficial visit.’

‘I may be recognized.’

‘Colonel, there isn’t a self-respecting criminal in this city who wouldn’t recognize you at a distance of half a kilometre. When their kids are misbehaving they probably whip out your picture, show it to their offspring and tell them if they don’t mend their ways—the bogieman will come and get them.’

‘Extremely witty. You’re not exactly unknown yourself, Peter. I’d be curious to know what the—ah—criminal element hereabouts think about you.’

‘You don’t have to be curious. They think I’m bent.’

The unprepossessing entrance to La Caracha was located halfway down a lane so narrow that not even a car could enter it. The cracked plaster of the tiny entrance porch, the fading and peeling paint belied the bar room that lay beyond. This was well lit and clean, with gleaming knotted-pine walls, half-a-dozen tables, each with four small armchairs instead of the usual metal or plastic seats, a semi-circular bar flanked by fixed stools and, beyond the bar, the barman. When one looked at him one forgot about the rest of the room.

He was huge. Very tall and very broad he probably weighed in about a hundred and thirty kilos. He wore a rather splendid Mexican sombrero—one assumed there was some connection between the barman’s headgear and the vaguely Latin American name of the restaurant—a white shirt, a black string tie, an open black waistcoat and black leather trousers. The absence of a gun-belt and a holstered Peacemaker Colt struck a discordant note. The eyes were dark, the bushy eyebrows black and the equally black moustache, equally bushy, luxuriant and dropping down past the corners of his mouth, perfectly complemented the spectacular sombrero. The craggy face appeared to have been hacked from granite by an enthusiastic but ungifted stone-mason. He was the epitome of all those ‘wanted’ portraits that used to adorn the walls of nineteenth-century western American saloons.

‘That’s George?’ Van Effen didn’t bother to answer the superfluous question. ‘When he ejects them two at a time I assume he uses only one hand.’

George caught sight of them and hurried round the corner of the bar, a wide, welcoming smile revealing startlingly white teeth. The nearer he approached, the bigger he seemed to become. His hand was outstretched while he was still quite some distance away.

‘Welcome, Peter, my friend, welcome. And Colonel van de Graaf. My word, this is indeed an honour.’ He pumped the Colonel’s hand as if he were a twin brother he hadn’t seen for twenty years.

De Graaf smiled. ‘You know me then?’

‘If there is anyone in the city who doesn’t recognize our Commissioner of Police he must either be blind or never read newspapers or magazines. Peter, as of this moment, my reputation is made.’ He looked at de Graaf and dropped his voice. ‘Provided, of course that this is not an official visit.’

‘Purely unofficial,’ de Graaf said. ‘Regard me as the Lieutenant’s guest.’

‘It is my pleasure to celebrate this auspicious occasion,’ George said. ‘Borreltje, jonge jenever, whisky, beer, wine—La Caracha has an excellent wine cellar. No better in Amsterdam. But I recommend my bessenjenever, gentlemen. Ice just beginning to form on the top.’ He touched his lips. ‘Incomparable.’

So it proved, and in the quantities that George supplied it the bessenjenever—red-currant gin—was as formidable as it was incomparable. George remained with them for a few minutes, discoursing freely on a variety of subjects but mainly and inevitably about the dyke breach that had brought back into existence the long-vanished Haarlem lake.

‘No need to look for the perpetrators of this crime among the professional criminals of the Netherlands.’ George sounded very positive. ‘I use the word “professional” because one would have to exclude the pitifully amateurish criminals among the Krakers, hot-headed madmen capable of any atrocity, no matter how many innocents suffer, in the name of their crazy and woolly ideals, totally amoral lunatics, mindless idiots who love destruction for destruction’s sake. But they are not Dutchmen, though they may have been born in this country: they’re just members of a terminally sick sub-culture that you’ll find in many other countries.

‘But I don’t think they’re responsible for the Schiphol flooding. However much one may deplore the action of the saboteurs one has to admire the clear-headed intelligence that lies behind it. Nobody with a clear-headed intelligence would ever dream of associating with the retarded morons who make up the Krakers, though that’s not to say the Krakers couldn’t be employed in some subordinate capacity where they wouldn’t be allowed to know enough to do any damage. But no Dutchman, however criminally minded, would or could have been responsible. Every Dutchman is born with the belief, the certain knowledge, that our dykes are inviolable: it is an act of faith. I am not—what is the word, gentlemen?—I am not xenophobic, but this is a foreign-inspired idea being carried out by foreigners. And it’s only the beginning. There will be further atrocities. Wait and see.’

‘We won’t have to wait long,’ de Graaf said. ‘They’re going to breach the Texel sea dyke at four-thirty this afternoon.’

George nodded, as if the news had come as no surprise to him.

‘So soon, so soon. And then the next dyke, and then the next, and the next. When the blackmail demands come, as come they must, for nothing other than blackmail can lie behind this, they will be horrendous.’ He glanced towards his bar where a group of men were making urgent signals that they were dying of thirst. ‘You will excuse me, gentlemen.’

‘An extraordinary fellow,’ de Graaf said. ‘He would have made a splendid politician—he could hardly be accused of being at a loss for words. Strange type to be a criminal alleged to be associated with violence—he’s an intelligent and clearly well-educated man. So, on the other hand, were a number of famous—notorious, rather—and highly successful criminals in the past. But I find him especially intriguing. He seems well into the criminal mind but at the same time he thinks and speaks like a cop. And he got on to the possibility that those criminals might come from another country in a fraction of the time that it took us to arrive at the possibility—and, unlike us, he had nothing to help or guide him towards that conclusion. Maybe you and I are fractionally less clever than we like to think we are.’

‘Maybe you should hire George, on an ad hoc basis, substantive rank of sergeant, as a dyke-breach investigator. Rather a fine title, don’t you think?’

‘The title is fine, the idea is not. Set a thief to catch a thief—the idea never did work. Do not jest with your superior in his hour of need. Speaking of need, when do we eat?’

‘Let’s ask.’ George had returned with fresh supplies of bessenjenever. ‘We’d like lunch, George.’

‘The Colonel will eat here? La Caracha is doubly honoured. This table will do?’

‘I’m expecting Vasco and Annemarie.’

‘Of course.’ George picked up the drinks tray and led the way up four steps into a dining room, bright, cheerful and so small that it held only two tables. George produced a menu. ‘Everything is excellent. The Rodekool met Rolpens is superb.’

‘Shall we have the superb, Peter?’ de Graaf said.

‘Fine. And, George, as our chief of police is with us, I think the expense account could stand a bottle of reasonable wine.’

‘Reasonable? Do I believe my ears? A superb wine to go with a superb dish and strictly on La Caracha. A Château Latour, perhaps? I have said that there is no better cellar than mine in the city. Equally beyond dispute is the fact that I have far the best Bordeaux cellar.’ George handed them their aperitifs. ‘Sharpen your appetites, gentlemen. Annelise, I promise, will excel herself.’

When George left de Graaf said: ‘Who’s Annelise?’

‘His wife. Less than half his size. He’s terrified of her. A wonderful cook.’

‘She is aware of his, what shall we say, extracurricular activities?’

‘She knows nothing.’

‘You mentioned a Vasco and an Annemarie. Those, I assume, are your informants. George seems to know about them.’

‘He knows them pretty well. They’re friends.’

‘Does he also know that they’re working under-cover for you?’ Van Effen nodded and de Graaf frowned. ‘Is this wise? Is it politic? Is it, dammit, even professional?’

‘I trust George.’

‘Maybe you do. I don’t have to. To say you have the best Bordeaux cellar in Amsterdam is to make a pretty large claim. That would cost money, a great deal of money. Is he into the highjacking and smuggling rackets too or does he earn enough from his extra-curricular activities to buy honestly on the open market?’

‘Look, sir, I never said George was a rogue, thief, crook, gangster or whatever. I was only quoting the neighbourhood opinion of him. I wanted you to make up your own mind about him. I do think you already have, only you still have reservations owing to the fact that you have a nasty, devious, suspicious mind which is why, I suppose, you’re the city’s Chief of Police. Annelise knows nothing about George’s extra-curricular activities, as you call them, because there are none. George has never earned an illegal guilder in his life. He’s totally straight and if every man in Amsterdam were as honest as he is you’d join the unemployed by nightfall. I was certain you’d caught on to this when you said he thought and spoke like a cop. He is—or was—a cop, and a damned good one, a sergeant in line for his inspectorate when he decided to retire last year. Phone the Chief of Police in Groningen and find out who he’d give a bag of gold for to have back on his staff.’

‘I am staggered,’ de Graaf said. He didn’t look staggered, he just sat placidly puffing his cheroot and sipping his bessenjenever as if van Effen had been discussing the weather or crops. ‘Different. Yes, different.’ He didn’t say what was different. ‘Might have given me some kind of warning, though.’

‘Thought you’d guess, sir. He’s got cop written all over him. At least he had until he grew his moustache after retirement.’

‘Any specialities?’

‘Drugs and counter-terrorism. I should have said drugs then counter-terrorism.’

‘Drugs? The only drug in the province of Groningen comes out of a gin bottle. Here’s the place for him. Or, if I take you rightly, was. Why was he taken off. Who took him off?’

‘Nobody. Nature took him off. To be a successful drugs cop you have to be able to merge unobtrusively into your background. You’ve seen him. He wasn’t built to merge into anything.’

‘What’s more, they’ve never even seen a terrorist up north.’

‘They’re not all that thick on the ground down here either, sir. Maybe that’s why George resigned—no challenge, nothing left for him to do.’

‘A waste. An intelligence like that devoting its life to serving up superfluous calories to already overweight Amsterdamers. Could be useful. Maybe there’s something to your idea of ad hoc recruitment. In an emergency, could always have him co-opted.’

‘Yes, sir. I thought that to co-opt anyone you required a committee, a quorum.’

‘There’s only one committee and quorum in the Amsterdam police force and I’m it. If you think he could be of help, just ask me. In fact, don’t bother to ask me. I’m hungry.’

‘Ah, yes. George normally serves up hors d’oeuvre. Maybe he thought there was no urgency.’ He surveyed de Graaf’s ample frame. ‘Superfluous calories. However…’ He rose, opened a wooden cupboard door to reveal a refrigerator, opened this and said: ‘Half a smoked salmon. Smoked trout. Mountain Ham. Gouda, Edam, and a few other odds and ends.’

‘There are no limits to the heights you might reach, my boy.’ Some time later, the first sharp edge of his appetite temporarily blunted, he said: ‘If you’re too busy or too cowardly to accompany me to Texel, may one ask what you intend to do.’

‘Depends on what I learn from Annemarie and Vasco. If, of course, anything. On balance, however, I think I’ll go and do what poor George couldn’t, merge unobtrusively among the Krakers in their garden suburb.’

‘You! You’re mad. The unchallenged bête noire of Krakerdom. Two minutes after your arrival all activity and conversation will wither on the vine.’

‘I’ve been there more than once in the past and the vine has remained unaffected. I don’t wear this rather nice pin-stripe you see before you or my official uniform. I wear another uniform. My Kraker uniform. I don’t think I’ve ever discussed my wardrobe with you before.’ Van Effen sipped some more bessenjenever. ‘I’ve a sealskin jacket with lots and lots of tassels and a coonskin hat with a wolverine’s tail attached to the back. Rather dashing, really.’ De Graaf closed his eyes, screwed them tightly shut and then opened them again. ‘The trousers are made of some other kind of skin, I don’t know what it is, with lots of little leather strips down the sides. Moccasins, of course. Those were a mistake. The moccasins, I mean. They leak. Then my hair and my moustache are blond, not platinum, you understand, that would attract too much attention.’

‘The rest of your outfit doesn’t?’

‘The dye is impervious to any rain-storm. Have to use a special detergent to get it off. A painful process. Then I wear half a dozen rings, solid brass, on my right hand.’

‘That the hand you hit people with?’

‘Among other things I’m a Green Peace, antinuclear, environmental pacifist. I also have a multicoloured bead necklace, double chain, and an earring. Only one earring. Two are passé.’

‘This, some day, I must see.’

‘I can get you one like it, if you like.’ De Graaf closed his eyes again and was saved further comment by the arrival of George with lunch. George served the Rodekool met Rolpens, opened the Château Latour with a suitably reverential air and departed. The meal was a simple one, red cabbage, rolled spiced meat and sliced apple, but, as George had promised, splendidly cooked: as was customary in Amsterdam there was enough food for four. The wine, also as George had promised, was superb.

They had just finished when George brought in coffee. ‘Annemarie is outside.’

‘Bring her in, please.’

Annemarie was a young lady of undeniably striking appearance. She wore a roll-necked pullover of indeterminate colour which had once, perhaps, been white. It was about four sizes too large for her, a defect she had tried to remedy by hauling a three-inch studded belt tightly about her midriff. As she had a rather slender waist, the effect was incongruous in the extreme: she resembled nothing so much as a potato bag that had been tied around the middle. The faded and patched blue jeans were fashionably frayed at the cuffs and she teetered, rather than walked, into the room on a pair of stained short leather boots with ludicrously pointed high heels. The condition of her streaky blonde hair showed that she regarded combs as an unnecessary luxury. The jet-black mascara had been applied with a heavy hand, as had the turquoise eye-shadow. The ghastly pallor of her face, which could only have been caused by an over-enthusiastic application of some cheap powder, was in stunning contrast to the two circular red patches on her cheeks, which equally owed nothing to nature. The lipstick was purple and the blood-red nail varnish, which showed to advantage when she removed the cigarette holder from between her stained teeth, was chipped and flaking. The nose-wrinkling smell of her cheap perfume suggested that she had been bathing in it, although the impression was overwhelming that she hadn’t bathed in anything for a very long time. Her brass earrings tinkled as she teetered.

Van Effen looked at de Graaf, but de Graaf didn’t look at him: he was either mesmerized or petrified by the apparition before him. Van Effen cleared his throat, loudly.

‘This is Annemarie, sir.’

‘Yes, yes, Annemarie.’ De Graaf was still staring at her, and it was by a visibly conscious effort of will-power that he turned his head to look at van Effen. ‘Of course, of course. Annemarie. But there are one or two things I haven’t had the opportunity yet to discuss with you and—’

‘I understand, sir. Annemarie, my dear, would you mind for a few minutes—I’m sure George will give you something.’ She blew a long puff of smoke, smiled and tottered from the room.

‘Annemarie, my dear.’ De Graaf sounded and looked appalled. ‘Annemarie, my dear. You in your Kraker uniform and that—that creature, what a couple you would make. Level headed, I’d always thought you, eminently sensible—this must be some kind of joke. Where on earth did you pick up that hussy, that harlot, that harridan, that ghastly spectacle? God, that make-up, that bordello perfume!’

‘It’s not like you, sir, to go by appearances. Snap judgments—’

‘Snap judgments! Those preposterous shoes. That filthy jersey that was built for—for a gorilla—’

‘A very practical jersey, sir. That way no one would suspect the existence of the Biretta automatic she carries strapped beneath her waist.’

‘A Biretta! That creature, that spectacle—she carries an automatic? That—that caricature of a human being carries a gun? You must be mad.’ He drew deeply on his cheroot. ‘No, you’re not mad. I’m not complaining, Peter, but it’s been a shock to my system.’

‘I can see that, sir. Should have warned you, I suppose. She does have rather an effect on people who make her acquaintance for the first time. That awful harridan is in fact a rather lovely young lady, or would be if she soaked in a bath for about an hour. She’s very nice, charming really, intelligent, speaks four languages, is a university graduate and is also a lady policewoman from Rotterdam. Don’t you see, sir, I’m making a point. If she can fool the Chief of Police, who has become Chief of Police by, among other things, being fooled by fewer people than anyone else around, she can fool anyone.’

‘How did you come by this paragon?’

‘Exchange basis. Not a very fair exchange, really. I knew she’d spent six months underground in Rotterdam, and we had no one comparable up here. It wasn’t easy but my opposite number down there is a friend of mine.’

‘Why wasn’t I informed of this?’

‘Because you gave me a free hand, remember. I would have informed you if there had been anything to report. So far there has been nothing. Didn’t want to bother you with trifles.’

De Graaf smiled. ‘I doubt whether the young lady would care to be called a trifle. Have her in, would you?’

Van Effen did so and de Graaf waved her courteously to a seat. ‘Sorry you were kept waiting. You know who I am?’

‘Of course. Colonel van de Graaf. My boss.’ The slightly husky voice was low and pleasant, at complete variation with her appearance.

‘Lieutenant van Effen told you?’

‘He didn’t have to, sir. I work for him and I know he works for you. And I’ve seen your picture dozens of times.’

‘That outfit you’re wearing, Annemarie. Don’t you feel it makes you look rather conspicuous?’

‘Among the people I’m supposed to be investigating? I can assure you, sir, that compared to some of the clothes worn there, mine are low key, positively understated. Isn’t that so, Peter?’

‘Ah! Peter, is it? A lowly ranker addresses my senior Lieutenant by his given name?’

‘On orders, sir. We’ve been out a couple of times together—’

‘Among your—ah—friends?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I wish I had seen that.’

‘We do form rather a striking couple. I told Annemarie that it would be unwise to call me Lieutenant in such company but to call me Peter and always think of me as Peter. That way you don’t make mistakes. Someone drummed this into me years ago.’

‘I was the drummer. I understand that you carry a gun, young lady. You can use it?’

‘I was trained at the police range.’

‘Ever used it?’

‘No. And I must admit I hope I never have to.’

‘Would you use it?’

‘I don’t know. If it was to stop someone from killing a person, well, perhaps, yes. But I couldn’t kill a person. I don’t like guns. I’m afraid I’m not very brave, sir.’

‘Nonsense. Your sentiments do you credit. Feel exactly the same way myself. And it takes a brave girl to venture into Krakerland.’

She half-smiled. ‘That’s where the roll-neck comes in so useful. They can’t see the pulse in my neck.’

‘Rubbish. How are things among your friends? Anything untoward or exciting afoot.’

‘They’re not a very exciting lot, sir. Rather dull, really. Most of them are not the social rebels and anti-authority storm troopers they would like to be thought to be. Of course, there are the drug-pushers and drug-users, and there is a hard core that trade in armaments, selling Russian small-arms to the Irish Republican Army and other disaffected elements. But Peter has told me not to bother about the arms-running side.’

‘Disaffected elements? I rather like that. So, Peter, the young lady does not concern herself with gun-running. Why?’

‘You ask me, sir? America, Russia, Britain, France trade in arms—legally—to the tune of billions of dollars yearly. The Israelis do it, as do the Iranians, Libyans and God knows how many other countries. All with their government’s blessings. Who are we to become all God-fearing, moralistic and holier-than-thou when private enterprise move in on a tiny scale? Anyway, I know you’re not really interested in that side, and that the only things you really are interested in are drugs and those mysterious and increasing threats to the Royal family and members of the Government.’

‘Yes, yes, of course. Anything interesting to report on any of these fronts?’

Annemarie shook her head. ‘Vasco—you’ve heard of Vasco?’

‘Yes. Never met him, though. Supposed to meet him today. In fact I thought I was meeting him with you.’

‘I thought so, too. We’d arranged to meet in a café close by here almost an hour ago. No signs, which is most unlike Vasco.’

‘This friend of yours—he’s a dyed-in-the-wool true-blue Kraker?’

‘Well, he seems to be but he can’t be, can he? They have some kind of leaders, nobody with any personality or charisma, a kind of loose council, and Vasco appears to be a member or close to it. But he says he’s basically against them and I believe him. After all, he works for you. Sort of.’

‘But you’re in two minds about him?’

‘My intelligence, if I have any, says that—well, I’m ambivalent about him. My instincts trust him.’

‘Peter?’

‘Her instincts are right. He’s a cop. Detective sergeant.’

‘A policeman.’ Annemarie’s lips were compressed, her eyes angry. ‘Thank you. Thank you very much.’

‘Don’t be childish,’ van Effen said. ‘You told him you were a policewoman?’

She didn’t answer and de Graaf said hastily: ‘It’s the need-to-know principle, my dear. He didn’t even tell me. I take it he thinks I didn’t need to know. You were about to say something about Vasco?’

‘Yes. Could be important. I don’t know. He told me late last night that he thought he had a lead. He said he had been approached by one of the council, a person who knew that he, Vasco, moved quite often about the outside world—to them, everything beyond their suburban boundaries is the outside world. He said he was being taken to a meeting about midnight to meet someone important. I don’t know who the person was.’

Van Effen said: ‘Who was the person who approached him? Can you describe him?’

‘I can describe him, all right. Short, balding, pepper-and-salt beard and a bad squint in his right eye.’

De Graaf looked at van Effen. ‘Another eye disorder, but this one for real. This person have a name?’

‘Julius.’

‘Julius what?’

‘Just—’ She hesitated. ‘Julius Caesar. I know it’s crazy, but then they’re crazy. Nobody out there ever uses his real name. Right now, as far as names are concerned, they’re going through an historical phase. That’s the kind of follow-my-leader sheep they are. We’ve got Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Charlemagne, Lord Nelson, Helen of Troy, Cleopatra—I could go on. They go for macho men or beautiful women, everything that they’re not. Anyway, Julius Caesar.’

Van Effen said: ‘And that’s all you know? No indications as to what kind of lead it was?’

‘No.’ She pursed her lips. ‘That’s not to say that he didn’t know.’

‘An odd comment to make,’ de Graaf said. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Nothing. I just don’t know whether he knows or not.’

‘Dear me.’ De Graaf studied her quizzically. ‘You don’t trust your fellow officer?’

‘He doesn’t trust me.’

‘Well, once again, dear me. This does make for a happy relationship in the field.’

Van Effen said: ‘Sergeant Westenbrink doesn’t distrust her. It’s just that three years working under-cover tends to make you secretive, a loner.’

‘Westenbrink, is it. I thought I knew all my sergeants.’

‘He’s from Utrecht, sir.’

‘You cast a wide net. Lieutenant van Effen, Annemarie, works on the same principle as Vasco, whose name, I feel quite certain, is not Vasco. The need to know. How can you be hurt when you see me being treated in this cavalier fashion?’

George entered, apologized, picked up a phone set from a side table and placed it in front of Annemarie. She lifted the receiver, listened to the crackling voice for all of two minutes, said: ‘Thank you. Five minutes,’ and hung up.

Van Effen said: ‘The Hunter’s Horn, I presume. What’s the message from Vasco?’

‘The Hunter’s Horn.’ De Graaf frowned. ‘I trust that’s not the Hunter’s Horn that—’

‘There’s only one—ah—establishment of that name in Amsterdam. Beggars can’t be choosers. Apart from La Caracha it’s our only safe house in Amsterdam. A private connection, Colonel. The fair name of the Amsterdam police department remains unbesmirched.’

‘Not to know,’ de Graaf muttered. ‘Not to know.’

‘You’re half right,’ Annemarie said, almost reluctantly. ‘It was the Hunter’s Horn. But it wasn’t Vasco.’

‘Never said it was. I said “What’s the message from Vasco?” It was Henri. Henri, sir, is the owner. Vasco is under observation but whoever is tailing him didn’t know, wasn’t to know, that it’s virtually impossible to follow Vasco without Vasco being aware of it. So he couldn’t come here. The person or persons following him would have raised their eyebrows if they saw you here: they’d have gone into shock if they’d found me, which would have been a small disaster for us and the end of the usefulness of both Vasco and yourself. So the only place left for Vasco was the Hunter’s Horn. Even there he couldn’t use the telephone for he would still be being watched. So he wrote a small note for Henri who did the telephoning. You’re to ask me a question and you’re to give Henri my answer inside five minutes.’

Annemarie sighed. ‘Did you have to spoil it for me?’ Then she brightened. ‘But you didn’t get it all, did you?’

‘I’m brilliant at deducing the obvious. I’m not clairvoyant. The rest, what I didn’t get, can wait, including the reasons why Vasco is going to call me back.’

‘I didn’t say that?’

‘Henri did. The message.’

She made a moue. ‘It went like this. Two tails. Understand can’t ditch. Meet two—’

De Graaf interrupted. ‘What was that meant to mean?’

‘Westenbrink’s shorthand, I imagine,’ van Effen said. ‘Only two ways of getting rid of his tails. He could throw them into the nearest canal, which he’s perfectly capable of doing or he could easily have lost them which he is again perfectly capable of doing. Either course of action would have ended any connection he’s succeeded in making.’

Annemarie went on: ‘Meet two, three men four-thirty Hunter’s Horn.’ She pushed across a piece of paper.

‘Stephan Danilov,’ van Effen read. ‘Pole. Radom. Explosives expert. Oil well fires. Texas. Clear enough. Interesting, sir?’

‘It is indeed. How do you feel about blowing up banks?’

‘Should be interesting to see the law from the other side. They’ll bring along a Polish speaker, of course.’

Annemarie said: ‘You think this is a Polish criminal group.’

‘No. Just to check on me.’

‘But if they speak to you in—’

‘If they speak to him in Polish, my dear,’ de Graaf said, ‘he’ll answer in Polish, in which language he’s very fluent. Your friend from Utrecht, Peter, of course knew this.’

Annemarie said: ‘But—but you’ll be recognized. Everybody in that—that ghetto knows you, I mean, knows who you are.’

‘Ninny. Sorry, but, please. If you think I’m going to present myself as Lieutenant van Effen you can’t be feeling too well. I shall, in the best traditions as befits the circumstances, be heavily disguised. I shall put on about twenty kilos—I have a suit and shirt designed to cope with the excess avoirdupois—fatten my cheeks, tint hair and moustache, wear a sinister scar and a black leather glove. That’s to disguise the fearful scars and burns I sustained when—let me see, yes, of course—when I was putting out this oil fire in Saudi Arabia or wherever. It’s remarkable what a single black glove does. It becomes the focal point for identification in nearly everyone’s mind and if you’re not wearing it, you’re not you, if you follow me. And don’t call Krakerdom a ghetto—it’s an insult to decent Jews.’

‘I didn’t mean to—’

‘I know. I’m sorry. Call Henri, tell him it’s OK and to let a few minutes pass before giving Vasco the nod.’

She made the call and hung up. ‘Everything seems all right. A few minutes.’ She looked at van Effen. ‘You already have all the details you want. Why have Vasco make the call?’

‘Why have Vasco make the call?’ Van Effen tried to look patient. ‘Vasco goes back every afternoon to this empty block of flats that they’ve taken over under so-called squatters’ rights. He’s been under surveillance since his meeting with the council or whatever they call themselves since last night and it’s a safe assumption that he’ll remain under surveillance until the time of the meeting in the Hunter’s Horn. How’s he supposed to have communicated with me to arrange this meeting? Telepathy?’

De Graaf cleared his throat and looked at Annemarie. ‘You must forgive our Lieutenant his old-world gallantry. Do you go back to the dreadful place now?’

‘Very soon.’

‘And you stay there overnight?’

She gave a mock shudder. ‘There are limits, sir, to my loyalty to the police force. No, I don’t sleep there at nights.’

‘No raised eyebrows among the fraternity?’

‘Not at all, sir. I have a gentleman friend who comes calling for me every evening. The Krakers understand this sort of thing.’

‘And you go back in the morning?’

‘Yes, sir.’ She put her hand to her mouth to cover a smile but de Graaf had seen it.

‘You are amused, young lady.’ His tone had lost some warmth.

‘Well, yes, I am a little, sir. Your voice and expression of disapproval and disappointment. This friend is really a very gallant gentleman. Especially as he’s married.’

‘Inevitably.’ De Graaf was not amused.

‘He takes me to his cousin’s house, leaves me there and comes for me in the morning. That’s why he’s gallant, because he’s very much in love with his own wife. His cousin, Colonel de Graaf, is a lady.’

De Graaf said: ‘The Chief of Police is in his usual condition, namely, out of his depth.’ He was noticeably relieved. ‘You will, of course, Peter, have carried out a check on this cousin, this lady?’

‘No I have not.’ Van Effen spoke with some feeling. ‘I wouldn’t dare.’

De Graaf frowned briefly then leaned back and laughed. ‘Behold our intrepid Lieutenant, Annemarie. He’s terrified of his young sister. So

you’re staying with Julie?’

‘You know her then, sir?’

‘My favourite lady in all Amsterdam. Except, of course, for my wife and two daughters. I’m her godfather. Well, well.’

The phone rang. Van Effen picked it up and listened for perhaps half a minute then said: ‘Can anyone overhear my voice if I speak?’ Apparently nobody could for van Effen said: ‘Say that you’ll give me half a minute to think it over.’ At the end of that period van Effen spoke again: ‘Say to me: “Stephan, I swear to you it’s no police trap. My life on it. And if it were a police trap what would my life be worth then? Don’t be silly.” ’

A few moments later van Effen said: ‘That was fine. Will you be coming with them? Fine? Be sure to tell whoever comes with you—I’m sure it won’t be the gentlemen who have you under surveillance at the moment—that I have a police record in Poland and have a United States extradition warrant out against me. I shall be wearing a black leather glove.’ He hung up.

‘Nice touch about the police record and extradition warrant,’ de Graaf said. ‘Nice criminal touch and two statements they have no way of checking on. You will be carrying a gun, I assume?’

‘Certainly. It would be expected of me and I’ll have it in a shoulder holster that should make it obvious to even the most myopic that I am armed.’

Annemarie said doubtfully: ‘Perhaps they will take it off you before discussions start. Just as a precaution, I mean.’

‘One must take a chance about those things. I shall be brave.’

‘What Peter means,’ de Graaf said drily, ‘is that he always carries a second gun. It’s like his single glove theory, that people only concentrate on one thing at a time. It’s in that book of his, I’m sure. If a person finds a gun on you he’s got to be almost pathologically suspicious to start looking for another.’

‘It’s not in the book. I don’t put thoughts like those in criminal minds. Curious, sir, that we’ll both be engaged in something interesting at exactly four-thirty—you and the Minister, schnapps in hand, peering down at the Texel sea-dyke from the safety of your helicopter seats while I am entering the lion’s den.’

‘I’d switch with you any time,’ de Graaf said morosely. ‘I should be back from Texel by six—damn all I can do up there anyway. Let’s meet at seven.’

‘Provided we both survive—you the schnapps, me the lions. The 444 would be in order, sir?’

De Graaf didn’t say that the 444 would be in order: on the other hand he didn’t say it wouldn’t.

THREE

The Chinook helicopter, a big, fast experimental model on demonstration loan from the US Army of the Rhine, suffered from the same defect as other, smaller and less advanced models in that it was extremely noisy, the rackety clamour of the engines making conversation difficult and at times impossible. This wasn’t helped by the fact that it had two rotors instead of the customary one.

The passengers were a very mixed bag indeed. Apart from de Graaf and his Justice Minister, Robert Kondstall, there were four cabinet ministers, of whom only the Minister of Defence could claim any right to be aboard. The other three, including, incredibly, the Minister of Education, were aboard only because of the influence they wielded and their curiosity about things that in no way concerned them. Much the same could have been said about the senior air force officer, the brigadier and rear-admiral who sat together behind de Graaf. Flight evaluation purposes had been their claim. The evaluation tests had been completed a week ago: they were along purely as rubber-neckers. The same could be said of the two experts from the Rijkswaterstaat and the two from the Delft Hydraulics laboratory. Superficially, it would have seemed, their presence could be more than justified, but as the pilot had firmly stated that he had no intention of setting his Chinook down in floodwaters and the experts, portly gentlemen all, had indicated that they had no intention of descending by winch or rope ladder only to be swept away, it was difficult to see how their presence could be justified. The handful of journalists and cameramen aboard could have claimed a right to be there: but even they were to admit later that their trip had hardly been worthwhile.

The Chinook, flying at no more than two hundred metres and about half a kilometre out to sea, was directly opposite Oosterend when the sea dyke broke. It was a singularly unspectacular explosion—a little sound, a little smoke, a little rubble, a little spray—but effective enough for all that: the Waddenzee was already rushing through the narrow gap and into the polder beyond. Less than half a kilometre from the entrance to the gap an ocean-going tug was already headed towards the breach. As the pilot turned his Chinook westwards, presumably to see what the conditions were like in the polder, de Graaf leaned over to one of the Rijkswaterstaat experts. He had to shout to make himself heard.

‘How bad is it, Mr Okkerse? How long do you think it will take to seal off the break?’

‘Well, damn their souls, damn their souls! Villains, devils, monsters!’ Okkerse clenched and unclenched his hands. ‘Monsters, I tell you, sir, monsters!’ Okkerse was understandably upset. Dykes, the construction, care and maintenance of, were his raison d’être.

‘Yes, yes, monsters,’ de Graaf shouted. ‘How long to fix that?’

‘Moment.’ Okkerse rose, lurched forwards, spoke briefly to the pilot and lurched his way back to his seat. ‘Got to see it first. Pilot’s taking us down.’

The Chinook curved round, passing over the waters flooding across the first reaches of the polder and came to hover some fifteen metres above the ground and some twenty metres distant. Okkerse pressed his nose against a window. After only a few seconds he turned away and gave the wave off signal to the pilot. The Chinook curved away inland.

‘Clever fiends,’ Okkerse shouted. ‘Very clever fiends. It’s only a small breach and they chose the perfect moment for it.’

‘What does the time of day matter?’

‘It matters very much. Rather, the state of the tide matters. They didn’t pick high tide, because that would have caused heavy flooding and great destruction.’

‘So they can’t be all that villainous?’

Okkerse didn’t seem to hear him. ‘And they didn’t pick low tide because they knew—how, I can’t even guess—that we would do what we are just about to do and that is to block the gap with the bows of a vessel. Which is what we are about to do with the bows of that ocean-going tug down there. At low water the tug probably wouldn’t have found enough water to get close to the dyke.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t like any of this.’

‘You think our friends have inside information?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘I suggested that to your friend Jon de Jong. That those people have either an informant in or somebody employed in the Rijkswaterstaat.’

‘Ridiculous! Impossible! In our organization? Preposterous!’

‘That’s more or less what Jon said. Nothing’s impossible. What makes you think your people are immune to penetration? Look at the British Secret Service where security is supposed to be a religion. They’re penetrated at regular intervals and with painful frequency. If it can happen to them with all their resources, it’s ten times more likely to happen to you. That’s beside the point. How long to seal the breach?’

‘The tug should block off about eighty per cent of the flow. The tide’s going out. We’ve got everything ready to hand—concrete blocks, matting, divers, steel plates, quick-setting concrete. A few hours. Technically, a minor job. That’s not what worries me.’

De Graaf nodded, thanked him and resumed his seat beside Kondstaal. ‘Okkerse says it’s no problem, sir. Straightforward repair job.’

‘Didn’t think it would be a problem. The villains said there would be minimal damage and they seem to mean what they say. That’s not what worries me.’

‘That’s what Okkerse has just said. The worry is, of course, that they can carry out their threats with impunity. We’re in an impossible situation. What would you wager, sir, that we don’t receive another threat this evening?’

‘Nothing. There’s no point in wondering what those people are up to. They’ll doubtless let us know in their own good time. And there’s no point, I suppose, in asking you what progress you’ve made so far.’

De Graaf concentrated on lighting his cheroot and said nothing.

Sergeant Westenbrink wore an off-white boiler suit, unbuttoned from throat to waist to show off a garishly patterned and coloured Hawaiian shirt, a Dutch bargee’s cap and a circular brass earring. Compared to those among whom he lived and had his being, Vasco, van Effen thought, looked positively under-dressed but was still outlandish enough to make himself and the two men sitting opposite him across the table in the booth in the Hunter’s Horn look the pillars of a respectable society. One of them, clad in an immaculately cut dark grey suit, was about van Effen’s age, darkly handsome, slightly swarthy, with tightly-curled black hair, black eyes and, when he smiled—which was often—what appeared to be perfect teeth. Any Mediterranean country, van Effen thought, or, at the outside, not more than two generations removed. His companion, a short, slightly balding man of perhaps ten or fifteen years older than the other, wore a conservative dark suit and a hairline moustache, the only really and slightly unusual feature in an otherwise unremarkable face. Neither of them looked the slightest bit like a bona fide member of the criminal classes but, then, few successful criminals ever did.

The younger man—he went, it seemed, by the name of Romero Agnelli, which might even have been his own—produced an ebony cigarette-holder, a Turkish cigarette and a gold inlaid onyx lighter; any of which might have appeared affected or even effeminate on almost any man: with Agnelli, all three seemed inevitable. He lit the cigarette and smiled at van Effen.

‘You will not take it amiss if I ask one or two questions.’ He had a pleasant baritone voice and spoke in English. ‘One cannot be too careful these days.’

‘I cannot be too careful any day. If your question is pertinent, of course I’ll answer it. If not, I won’t. Am I—ah—accorded the same privilege?’

‘Certainly.’

‘Except you can ask more what you consider pertinent questions than I can.’

‘I don’t quite understand.’

‘Just that I take it that we’re talking on a potential employer employee relationship. The employer is usually entitled to ask more questions.’

‘Now I understand. I won’t take advantage of that. I must say, Mr Danilov, that you look more like the employer class yourself.’ And indeed, van Effen’s over-stuffed suit and padded cheeks did lend a certain air of prosperity. It also made him look almost permanently genial. ‘Am I mistaken in thinking that you carry a gun?’

‘Unlike you, Mr Agnelli, I’m afraid I’m not in the habit of patronizing expensive tailors.’

‘Guns make me nervous.’ The disarming smile didn’t show a trace of nervousness.

‘Guns make me nervous, too. That’s why I carry one in case I meet a man who is carrying one. That makes me very nervous.’ Van Effen smiled, removed his Biretta from its shoulder holster, clicked out the magazine, handed it to Agnelli and replaced his pistol. ‘That do anything for your nerves?’

Agnelli smiled. ‘All gone.’

‘Then they shouldn’t be.’ Van Effen reached below the table and came up with a tiny automatic. ‘A Lilliput, a toy in many ways, but lethal up to twenty feet in the hands of a man who can fire accurately.’ He tapped out the magazine, handed this in turn to Agnelli and replaced the Lilliput in its ankle holster. ‘That’s all. Three guns would be just too much to carry about.’

‘So I should imagine.’ Agnelli’s smile, which had momentarily vanished, was back in place. He pushed the two magazines across the table. ‘I don’t think we’ll be requiring guns this afternoon.’

‘Indeed. But something would be useful.’ Van Effen dropped the magazines into a side pocket. ‘I always find that talking—’

‘Beer for me,’ Agnelli said. ‘And for Helmut, too, I know.’

‘Four beers,’ van Effen said. ‘Vasco, if you would be so kind—’ Vasco rose and left the booth.

Agnelli said: ‘Known Vasco long?’

Van Effen considered. ‘A proper question. Two months. Why?’ Had they, van Effen wondered, been asking the same question of Vasco.

‘Idle curiosity.’ Agnelli, van Effen thought, was not a man to indulge in idle curiosity. ‘Your name really is Stephan Danilov?’

‘Certainly not. But it’s the name I go by in Amsterdam.’

‘But you really are a Pole?’ The elder man’s voice, dry and precise, befitted his cast of countenance which could have been that of a moderately successful lawyer or accountant. He also spoke in Polish.

‘For my sins.’ Van Effen raised an eyebrow. ‘Vasco, of course.’

‘Yes. Where were you born?’

‘Radom.’

‘I know it. Not well. A rather provincial town, I thought.’

‘So I’ve heard.’

‘You’ve heard? But you lived there.’

‘Four years. When you’re four years old a provincial town is the centre of the world. My father—a printer—moved to a better job.’

‘Where?’

‘Warsaw.’

‘Aha!’

‘Aha yourself.’ Van Effen spoke in some irritation. ‘You sound as if you know Warsaw and are now going to find out if I know it. Why, I can’t imagine. You’re not by any chance a lawyer, Mr—I’m afraid I don’t know your name?’

‘Paderiwski. I am a lawyer.’

‘Paderiwski. Given time, I would have thought you could have come up with a better one than that. And I was right, eh? A lawyer. I wouldn’t care to have you acting for my defence. You make a poor interrogator.’

Agnelli was smiling but Paderiwski was not. His lips were pursed. He said brusquely: ‘You know the Tin-Roofed Palace, of course.’

‘Of course.’

‘Where is it?’

‘Dear me. What have we here. The Inquisition? Ah. Thank you.’ He took a glass from a tray that a waiter, following Vasco, had just brought into the curtained booth and lifted it. ‘Your health, gentlemen. The place you’re so curious about, Mr—ah—Paderiwski, is close by the Wista, on the corner of the Wybrzeze Gdanskie and the Slasko-Dabrowski bridge.’ He sipped some more beer. ‘Unless they’ve moved it, of course. Some years since I’ve been there.’

Paderiwski was not amused. ‘The Palace of Culture and Science.’

‘Parade Square. It’s too big.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Too big to have been moved, I mean. Two thousand, three hundred rooms are a lot of rooms. A monstrosity. The wedding-cake, they call it. But, then, Stalin never did have any taste in architecture.’

‘Stalin?’ Agnelli said.

‘His personal gift to my already long-suffering countrymen.’ So Agnelli spoke Polish, too.

‘Where’s the Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw?’

‘It’s not in Warsaw. Mlociny, ten kilometres to the north.’ Van Effen’s voice was now as brusque as Paderiwski’s had been. ‘Where’s the Nike?You don’t know? What’s the Nike? You don’t know? Any citizen of Warsaw knows it’s the name given to the “Heroes of Warsaw” monument. What’s Zamenhofa Street famous for?’ An increasingly uncomfortable Paderiwski made no reply. ‘The Ghetto monument. I told you you’d make a lousy lawyer, Paderiwski. Any competent lawyer, for the defence or the prosecution, always prepares his brief. You didn’t. You’re a fraud. It’s my belief that you’ve never even been in Warsaw and that you just spent an hour or so studying a gazetteer or guide-book.’ Van Effen placed his hands on the table as if preparatory to rising. ‘I don’t think, gentleman, that we need detain each other any longer. Discreet enquiries are one thing, offensive interrogation by an incompetent, another. I see no basis here for mutual trust and, quite honestly, I need neither a job nor money.’ He rose. ‘Good day, gentlemen.’

Agnelli reached out a hand. He didn’t touch van Effen, it was just a restraining gesture. ‘Please sit down, Mr Danilov. Perhaps Helmut has rather overstepped the mark but have you ever met a lawyer who wasn’t burdened with a suspicious, mistrustful mind? Helmut—or we—just happened to choose the wrong suspect. Helmut, in fact, has been in Warsaw but only, as you almost guessed, briefly and as a tourist. I, personally, don’t doubt you could find your way about Warsaw blindfolded.’ Paderiwski had the look of a man who wished he were in some other place, any place. ‘A blunder. We apologize.’

‘That’s kind.’ Van Effen sat down and quaffed some more beer. ‘Fair enough.’

Agnelli smiled. Almost certainly a double-dyed villain, van Effen thought, but a charming and persuasive one. ‘Now that you’ve established a degree of moral ascendancy over us I’ll reinforce that by admitting that we almost certainly need you more than you need us.’

Not to be outdone, van Effen smiled in turn. ‘You must be in a desperate way.’ He lifted and examined his empty glass. ‘If you’d just poke your head round the corner, Vasco, and make the usual SOS.’

‘Of course, Stephan.’ There was an unmistakable expression of relief in his face. He did as asked then settled back in his seat.

‘No more interrogation,’ Agnelli said. ‘I’ll come straight to the point. Your friend Vasco tells me that you know a little about explosives.’

‘Vasco does me less than justice. I know a great deal about explosives.’ He looked at Vasco in reproof. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you would discuss a friend—that’s me, Vasco, in case you’ve forgotten—with strangers.’

‘I didn’t. Well, I did, but I just said it was someone I knew.’

‘No harm. Explosives, as I say, I know. Defusing bombs I know. I’m also fairly proficient in capping well-head oil fires but you wouldn’t be approaching me in this fashion if that was your problem. You’d be on the phone to Texas, where I learnt my trade.’

‘No oil fires.’ Agnelli smiled again. ‘But defusing bombs—well that’s something else. Where did you learn a dangerous trade like that?’

‘Army,’ van Effen said briefly. He didn’t specify which army.

‘You’ve actually defused bombs?’ Agnelli’s respect was genuine.

‘Quite a number.’

‘You must be good.’

‘Why?’

‘You’re here.’

‘I am good. I’m also lucky, because no matter how good you are the bomb you’re trying to defuse may be your last one. Peaceful retirement is not the lot of a bomb disposal expert. But as I assume you have no more unexploded bombs than you have oil wells, then it must be explosives. Explosives experts in Holland are not in short supply. You have only to advertise. That I should be approached in a clandestine fashion can only mean that you are engaged in activities that are illegal.’

‘We are. Have you never been? Engaged, I mean?’

‘All depends upon who defines what is illegal and what is not and how they define it. Some people hold definitions which are different from mine and wish to discuss the matter with me. Very tiresome they can be, those alleged upholders of justice. You know what the British say—the law is an ass.’ Van Effen considered. ‘I think I put that rather well.’

‘You’ve hardly committed yourself. May one ask—delicately, of course—whether this discussion you are avoiding has anything to do with your vacationing in Amsterdam?’

‘You may. It has. What do you want me to blow up?’

Agnelli raised his eyebrows. ‘Well, well, you can be blunt. Almost as blunt as you can be, shall we say, diplomatic’

‘That’s an answer? An explosives expert is good for only one thing—exploding things. You wish me to explode something? Yes or no?’

‘Yes.’

‘Two things. Banks, boats, bridges, anything of that kind I’ll blow up and guarantee a satisfactory job. Anything that involves injury, far less death, to any person I won’t have any part of.’

‘You won’t ever be called upon to do any such thing. That’s also a guarantee. The second thing?’

‘I don’t seek to flatter you when I say that you’re an intelligent man, Mr Agnelli. Highly intelligent, I should think. Such people are usually first-class organizers. To seek the help of a last minute unknown to help you execute some project that may have been in the planning stage for quite some time doesn’t smack to me of preparation, organization or professionalism. If I may say so.’

‘You may. A very valid point. In your position I would adopt the same disbelieving or questioning attitude. You have to take my word for it that I am a member of a highly organized team. But, as you must well know, the best-laid plans etc. An unfortunate accident. I can explain to your satisfaction. But not just at this moment. Will you accept our offer?’

‘You haven’t made one yet.’

‘Will you accept an offer of a job in our organization, on, if you wish, a permanent basis, on what I think you’ll find a very satisfactory salary plus commission basis, your special responsibility being the demolition of certain structures, those structures to be specified at a later date.’

‘Sounds very businesslike. And I like the idea of commissions, whatever they may be. I agree. When do I start and what do I start on?’

‘You’ll have to bear with me a little, Mr Danilov. My brief for this afternoon is only of a limited nature—to find out, if, in principle, you are prepared to work with us, which I’m glad to say you seem to be. I have to report back. You will be contacted very shortly, sometime tomorrow, I’m sure.’

‘You are not the leader of this organization?’

‘No.’

‘You surprise me. A man like you acting as a lieutenant—well, this leader I must meet.’

‘You shall, I promise.’

‘How will you contact me? No phones, please.’

‘Certainly not. You will be our courier, Vasco?’

‘My pleasure, Mr Agnelli. You know where to reach me any time.’

‘Thank you.’ Agnelli stood up and gave his hand to van Effen. ‘A pleasure, Mr Danilov. I look forward to meeting you tomorrow.’ Helmut Paderiwski didn’t offer to shake hands.

As the door closed behind them, Sergeant Westenbrink said: ‘I need another beer, Lieutenant.’

‘Peter. Always Peter.’

‘Sorry. That was pretty close. The ice was very thin at times.’

‘Not for a practised liar. I rather gather that you’ve given them the impression that I’m a desperate and wanted criminal?’

‘I did mention that there was the odd extradition warrant out for you. But I didn’t forget to emphasize your generally upright and honest nature. When dealing with your fellow criminals, of course.’

‘Of course. Before you get the beer, I have a phone call to make. Well, get it anyway.’

Van Effen went to the bar and said to the man behind it, ‘Henri, a private call, if I may.’

Henri, the proprietor, was a tall, gaunt man, sallow of countenance and lugubrious of expression. ‘You in trouble again, Peter?’

‘No. I hope someone else will be, soon.’

Van Effen went into the office and dialled a number. ‘Trianon? The manager, please. I don’t care if he is in conference, call him. It’s Lieutenant van Effen.’ He hung on for a few moments. ‘Charles? Do me a favour. Book me in as from a fortnight ago. Enter it in the book, will you, in the name of Stephan Danilov. And would you notify the receptionist and doorman. Yes, I expect people to be enquiring. Just tell them. Many thanks. I’ll explain when I see you.’

He returned to the booth. ‘Just booked myself—Stephan Danilov, that is—into a hotel. Agnelli pointedly did not mention anything about where I might be staying but you can be sure that he’ll have one of his men on the phone for the next couple of hours if need be, trying to locate me in every hotel or pension in the city.’

‘So he’ll know where you are—or where you’re supposed to be.’ Vasco sighed. ‘It would help if we knew where they were.’

‘Should know soon enough. There’s been two separate tails on them ever since they left the Hunter’s Horn.’

Van Effen, appearance returned to normal, asked the girl at the Telegraph’s reception desk for the sub-editor who had taken the FFF’s first telephone message. This turned out to be a fresh-faced and very eager young man.

‘Mr Morelis?’ van Effen said. ‘Police.’

‘Yes, sir. Lieutenant van Effen, isn’t it? I’ve been expecting you. You’ll be wanting to hear the tapes? Maybe I should tell you first that we’ve just had another message from the FFF, as they call themselves.’

‘Have you now? I suppose I should say “The devil you have” but I’m not surprised. It was inevitable. Happy tidings, of course.’

‘Hardly. The first half of the message was given over to congratulating themselves on the Texel job, how it had happened precisely as they had predicted and with no loss of life: the second half said there would be scenes of considerable activity on the North Holland canal, two kilometres north of Alkmaar at nine o’clock tomorrow morning.’

‘That, too, was inevitable. Not the location, of course. Just the threat. You’ve taped that, too?’

‘Yes.’

‘That was well done. May I hear them?’

Van Effen heard them, twice over. When they were finished he said to Morelis: ‘You’ve listened to those, of course?’

‘Too often.’ Morelis smiled. ‘Fancied myself as a detective, thought maybe you would give me a job but I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s more to this detecting business than meets the eye.’

‘Nothing struck you as odd about any of the tapes?’

‘They were all made by the same woman. But that’s no help.’

‘Nothing odd about accents, tones? No nuances that struck you as unusual?’

‘No, sir. But I’m no judge. I’m slightly hard of hearing, nothing serious, but enough to blunt my judgment, assuming I had any. Mean anything to you, Lieutenant?’

‘The lady is a foreigner. What country I’ve no idea. Don’t mention that around.’

‘No, sir. I rather like being a sub-editor.’

‘We are not in Moscow, young man. Put those tapes in a bag for me. I’ll let you have them back in a day or two.’

Back in his office, van Effen asked to see the duty sergeant. When he arrived van Effen said: ‘A few hours ago I asked for a couple of men to be put on a Fred Klassen and Alfred van Rees. Did you know about this, and if you did, do you know who the two men were?’

‘I knew, sir. Detective Voight and Detective Tindeman.’

‘Good. Either of them called in?’

‘Both. Less than twenty minutes ago. Tindeman says van Rees is at home and seems to have settled in for the evening. Klassen is still on duty at the airport or, at least, he’s still at the airport. So, nothing yet, sir.’

Van Effen looked at his watch. ‘I’m leaving now. If you get any word from either, a positive not negative report, call me at the Dikker en Thijs. After nine, call me at home.’

Colonel van de Graaf came from a very old, very aristocratic and very wealthy family and was a great stickler for tradition, so it came as no surprise to van Effen when he approached their table wearing dinner jacket, black tie and red carnation. His approach bore all the elements of a royal progress: he seemed to greet everyone, stopped to speak occasionally and waved graciously at those tables not directly in his path. It was said of de Graaf that he knew everybody who was anybody in the city of Amsterdam: he certainly seemed to know everybody in the Dikker en Thijs. Four paces away from van Effen’s table he stopped abruptly as if he had been transfixed: but, in fact, it was his eyes that were doing the transfixing.

That the girl who had risen from the table with van Effen to greet de Graaf had this momentarily paralysing effect not only on de Graaf but on a wide cross-section of the males of Amsterdam and beyond was understandable. She was of medium height, wore a rather more than well-filled ankle-length grey silk gown and no jewellery whatsoever. Jewellery would have been superfluous and no one would have paid any attention to it anyway: what caught and held the attention, as it had caught the riveted attention of the momentarily benumbed Colonel, was the flawless classical perfection of the features, a perfection only enhanced, if this were possible, by a slightly crooked eyetooth which was visible when she smiled, which seemed to be most of the time. This was no simpering and empty-headed would-be Miss Universe contender, churned out with repetitive monotony by a Californian-style production line. The finely chiselled features and delicately formed bone structure served only to emphasize the character and intelligence they served only to highlight. She had gleaming auburn hair, great hazel eyes and a bewitching smile. It had, at any rate, bewitched the Colonel. Van Effen cleared his throat.

‘Colonel van de Graaf. May I introduce Miss Meijer. Miss Anne Meijer.’

‘My pleasure, my pleasure.’ De Graaf grabbed her outstretched hand in both of his and shook it vigorously. ‘My word, my boy, you are to be congratulated: where did you find this entrancing creature?’

‘There’s nothing to it really, sir. You just go out into the darkened streets of Amsterdam, stretch out your hands and—well, there you are.’

‘Yes, yes, of course. Naturally.’ He had no idea what he was saying. He seemed to become aware that he had been holding and shaking her hand for an unconscionably long time for he eventually and reluctantly released it. ‘Remarkable. Quite remarkable.’ He didn’t say what he found remarkable and didn’t have to. ‘You cannot possibly live in this city. Little, my dear, escapes the notice of a Chief of Police and I think it would be impossible for you to be overlooked even in a city of this size.’

‘Rotterdam.’

‘Well, that’s not your fault. Peter, I have no hesitation in saying that there can be no more stunningly beautiful lady in the city of Amsterdam.’ He lowered his voice a few decibels. ‘In fact I would come right out and say that she is the most stunningly beautiful in the city, but I have a wife and two daughters and these restaurants have ears. You must be about the same age as my daughters? May I ask how old you are?’

‘You must excuse the Colonel,’ van Effen said. ‘Policemen are much given to asking questions: some Chiefs of Police never stop.’

The girl was smiling at de Graaf while van Effen was speaking and, once again, van Effen could have been addressing a brick wall. ‘Twenty-seven,’ she said.

‘Twenty-seven. Exactly the age of my elder daughter. And Miss Anne Meijer. Bears out my contention—the younger generation of Dutchmen are a poor, backward and unenterprising lot.’ He looked at van Effen, as if he symbolized all that was wrong with the current generation, then looked again at the girl. ‘Odd. I know I’ve never seen you but your voice is vaguely familiar.’ He looked at van Effen again and frowned slightly. ‘I look forward immensely to having dinner with you, but I thought—well, Peter, there were one or two confidential business matters that we had to discuss.’

‘Indeed, sir. But when you suggested we meet at seven o’clock you made no exclusions.’

‘I don’t understand.’

The girl said: ‘Colonel.’

‘Yes, my dear?’

‘Am I really such a hussy, a harlot, harridan and ghastly spectacle? Or is it because you don’t trust me that you want to speak privately with Peter?’

De Graaf took a pace forward, caught the girl by the shoulders, removed one hand to stop a passing waiter and said: ‘A jonge jenever. Large.’

‘Immediately, Colonel.’

De Graaf held her shoulders again, stared intently into her face—he was probably trying to equate or associate the vision before him with the creature he had met in La Caracha—shook his head, muttered something to or about the same nameless deity and sank into the nearest chair.

Van Effen was sympathetic. ‘It comes as a shock, I know, sir. Happened to me the first time. A brilliant make-up artist, don’t you think? If it’s any consolation, sir, she also fooled me once. But no disguise this time—just a wash and brush-up.’ He looked at her consideringly. ‘But, well, yes, rather good-looking.’

‘Good-looking. Hah!’ De Graaf took the jonge jenever from the waiter’s tray and quaffed half the contents at a gulp. ‘Ravishing. At my age, systems shouldn’t be subjected to such shocks. Anne? Annemarie? What do I call you?’

‘Whichever.’

‘Anne. My dear. I said such dreadful things about you. It is not possible.’

‘Of course it’s not. I couldn’t believe Peter when he said you had.’

Van Effen waved a hand. ‘A loose translation, shall we say?’

‘Very loose.’ Wisely, de Graaf did not pursue the subject. ‘And what in heaven’s name, is a girl like you doing in a job like this.’

‘I thought it was an honourable profession?’

‘Yes, yes, of course. But what I meant was—well—’

‘What the Colonel means,’ van Effen said, ‘is that you should be an international stage or screen star, presiding over a Parisian salon, or married to an American oil millionaire—billionaire, if you like—or a belted English earl. Too beautiful, that’s your trouble. Isn’t that it, Colonel?’

‘Couldn’t have put it better myself.’

‘Dear me.’ Anne smiled. ‘Doesn’t say much for your Amsterdam girls. You mean you only employ ugly girls?’

De Graaf smiled for the first time that evening. ‘I am not to be drawn. The Chief of Police is famed for his powers of recovery. But you—you—among those dreadful Krakers and dressed like a—like—’

‘Harlot? Hussy?’

‘If you like, yes.’ He put his hand on hers. ‘This is no place for a girl like you. Must get you out of it. Police is no place for you.’

‘One has to earn a living, sir.’

‘You? You need never earn a living. That, Anne, is a compliment.’

‘I like what I’m doing.’

De Graaf didn’t seem to have heard her. He was gazing at some distant object out in space. Van Effen said to the girl: ‘Watch him. He’s at his most cunning when he goes into a trance.’

‘I am not in a trance,’ de Graaf said coldly. ‘What did you say your surname was?’

‘Meijer.’

‘You have a family?’

‘Oh, yes. The usual. Parents, sisters, two brothers.’

‘Brothers and sisters share your interest in law and order?’

‘Police, you mean. No.’

‘Your father?’

‘Again police?’ She smiled as a person smiles when recalling someone of whom they are very fond. ‘I couldn’t imagine it. He’s in the building business.’

‘Does he know what kind of business you are in?’

She hesitated. ‘Well, no.’

‘What do you mean, well, no? He doesn’t, does he? Why?’

‘Why?’ She seemed to be on the defensive. ‘He likes us to be independent.’

‘Would he approve of what you are doing? And that was no answer you gave me. Would he approve of his darling daughter mingling with the Krakers?’

‘Is this what it’s like to be a suspect, sir, and to be grilled? Am I supposed to have done something wrong?’

‘Of course not. Would he approve?’ The entranced Colonel of a few minutes previously could have belonged to another world.

‘No.’

‘You put me in a quandary. I don’t like you being in this. You, apparently, do. Your father wouldn’t. To whom should I listen—you or your father?’

‘The question hardly arises, sir. You don’t know my father.’

‘Child!’

‘What does that mean. I don’t understand.’

‘I know your father. Very well. We’ve been friends for over thirty years.’

‘Impossible! You can’t know him. You’ve only just met me and you didn’t even know me.’ She was no actress and was visibly upset. ‘This is—this is a trick of some kind.’

‘Annemarie.’ Van Effen touched her arm. ‘If the Colonel says he’s a friend of your father, then he is. Come on, sir.’

‘I know. When next you write or phone, Anne—if you ever do—give my warmest regards to David Joseph Karlmann Meijer.’

Her eyes widened. She opened her mouth as if to speak, closed it again and turned to van Effen. ‘I think it’s my turn for a jonge jenever.’

De Graaf looked at van Effen. ‘My old friend David—we’ve gone sailing, fishing, skiing, hunting over the years—we were even up exploring the Amazon before this young lady here was born—owns a huge construction company. He also owns one of the biggest cement factories in the Netherlands, oil refineries, tankers, an electronics firm and God knows what else. “One has to earn a living, sir,”’ he mimicked. ‘Earn a living! Cruel, cruel landlord throwing the poor orphan out into the snow. Ah!’ He turned to look at the maître d’ at his elbow. ‘Good evening. The young people will choose for me. But, first, another jonge jenever.’ He looked at Annemarie. ‘Must have something to cry into. They say gin is best.’

After the orders had been taken and the maître d’ and his minions departed, van Effen said: ‘You have a scenario, sir, and you don’t like what you see.’

‘I don’t like it at all. Two things. If anything happens to this young lady—well, David Meijer’s wrath is fearful to behold—and it’s considerably worse to be the object of it. Secondly, disguise or no disguise, Anne’s identity may be discovered. It can happen, as you know all too well, Peter: a slip of the tongue, an unguarded reference, some careless action, there are too many possibilities. What a windfall for a penniless Kraker or even worse, a professional kidnapper. Her father would pay five, ten million guilders to get her back. Do you like it, Peter?’

Van Effen made to speak, then glanced at the waiter who stood by his side.

‘Lieutenant van Effen. Phone.’

Van Effen excused himself. De Graaf said: ‘Well, do you like it?’

‘Not the way you put it but—I don’t want to seem impertinent, sir, to disagree with my boss, but I think you put it too strongly. I’ve been doing this kind of work for some months in Rotterdam and nothing has ever happened to me there. And while there may be no Krakers down there, the criminal element are a great deal tougher than they are here. I’m sorry, Colonel, but I think you exaggerate the dangers. I’m rather good at disguises—you as much as said so yourself. I have a gun. Best, of course, is that no one in Amsterdam knows me.’

‘I know you.’

‘That’s different. Peter says that you know everyone—and you must admit that it was a very remote chance that you knew my father.’

‘I could have found out easily enough. Peter knows?’

‘Only my name. Not who I am, not until you spoke about it just now. I must say he didn’t seem particularly surprised.’ She smiled. ‘He could, of course, have been unconcerned or uninterested.’

‘You’re fishing for compliments, my dear.’ She made to protest but he held up his hand. ‘In your case, indifference is impossible. The Lieutenant cares very much for people. That doesn’t mean he goes around showing it all the time. It’s a learned habit. I know he didn’t know. I’m equally sure Julie does.’

‘Ah. Julie. Your favourite lady in all Amsterdam?’

‘I now have two favourite ladies in all Amsterdam. With the usual provisos, of course.’

‘Your wife and daughters, of course.’

‘Of course. Don’t stall. You’re very good at stalling, you know, Anne, at diverting me from the topic at hand, which is you, and don’t give me those big innocent eyes.’

‘Julie knows,’ she said. ‘How did you know that, sir?’

‘Because I know Julie. Because she’s clever. Because she’s a woman. Living so close to you she’s bound to notice things that others wouldn’t. Clothes, jewellery, personal possessions—things the average working girl wouldn’t have. Even the way you speak. Fine by me if Julie knows, she’d never tell anyone, I’ll bet she’s never even told her brother. You like living there?’

‘Very much. And Julie, also very much. I think she likes me, too. I have the honour to sleep in the bedroom that used to be Peter’s. I believe he left about six years ago.’ She frowned. ‘I asked her why he’d left, it couldn’t have been an argument, they’re obviously terribly fond of each other, but she wouldn’t tell me, just said I’d have to ask Peter.’

‘Did you ask him?’

‘No.’ She shook her head very firmly. ‘One doesn’t ask the Lieutenant personal questions.’

‘I agree that he does rather give that impression. He’s quite approachable really. No secret about his departure—he left to get married. Marianne. Loveliest girl in Amsterdam, even although I do say it about my own niece.’

‘She’s your niece?’

‘Was.’ De Graaf’s voice was sombre. ‘Even in those days Peter was the best, most able cop in the city; far better than I am but for God’s sake don’t tell him so. He broke up a particularly vicious gang of people who specialized in a nice mixture of blackmail and torture. Four brothers, they were, the Annecys. God knows where they got their name from. Peter put two of them away for fifteen years. The other two just vanished. Shortly after the conviction of the two brothers, someone, almost certainly one or both of the two brothers that had not been brought to justice, placed in Peter’s weekend canal boat a huge bomb wired up to the ignition switch—same technique as was used by the murderers who assassinated Lord Mountbatten. As it happened, Peter wasn’t aboard his boat that weekend. But Marianne and their two children were.’

‘Dear God!’ The girl’s hands were clenched. ‘How awful. How—how dreadful!’

‘And every three months or so since that time he receives a postcard from one of the two surviving Annecy brothers. Never any message. Just a drawing of a noose and a coffin, a reminder that he’s living on borrowed time. Charming, isn’t it?’

‘Horrible! Just horrible! He must be worried to death. I know I would. Wondering every night when I go to sleep—if I could sleep—whether I would wake up in the morning.’

‘I don’t think he worries much—if he did he’d never show it—and I know he sleeps very well. But that’s the reason—although he never mentions it—why he doesn’t return to live with Julie. He doesn’t want her to be around when the bomb comes through his window.’

‘What a way to live! Why doesn’t he emigrate somewhere, live under an assumed name?’

‘If you ever get to know Peter van Effen—really know him, I mean—you’ll wonder why you ever asked that question. Anne, you have an enchanting smile. Let me see it again.’

She gave a puzzled half-smile. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘He’s coming back. Let me see how good an actress you are.’

And, indeed, when van Effen returned to the table she was smiling, a person at ease with the world. When she looked up and saw the expression—more accurately, the total lack of expression—on his face she stopped smiling.

‘About to ruin our dinner, are you, Peter?’ de Graaf shook his head. ‘And such a splendid meal we’ve ordered.’

‘Not quite.’ Van Effen smiled faintly. ‘Might put us off our third bottle of Bordeaux or Burgundy or whatever. Perhaps even the second bottle? First, let me put you briefly in the picture as to what happened earlier today. Yes, sir, I’ll have some wine, I feel I could do with a mild restorative. I’ve been offered a job—at, I’m sure, a far higher salary plus than I’m ever likely to get in this police force—to blow something up. What, I don’t know. Could be the Amsterdam—Rotterdam bank for all I know. Maybe a boat, bridge, barge, barracks, maybe anything. Haven’t been told yet.

‘As you know, Vasco had brought those two characters to the Hunter’s Horn this afternoon. Prosperous and respectable citizens, but, then, no successful criminal ever looks like one. We were all very cagey and crafty, toing-and-froing, sparring and giving nothing away for most of the time. Then they made me this definite offer of a job and I accepted. They said they would have to report back to their superiors but would definitely contact me tomorrow and give me details of the job to be done and what my rewards would be for this. Vasco was to be the courier. So we shook hands like gentlemen and parted with expressions of goodwill and mutual trust.

‘I had two sets of tails waiting at a discreet distance from the Hunter’s Horn. I’ve had a report—’

‘Goodwill and mutual trust?’ Annemarie said.

De Graaf waved a hand. ‘We tend to use figurative terms in our profession. Proceed, Peter.’

‘I’ve had news of both sets of tails. The first say that they lost Agnelli and Paderiwski—that’s what they called themselves—’

‘Good God!’ de Graaf said. ‘Agnelli and Paderiwski. A famous industrialist and a famous pianist. Aren’t they original?’

‘That’s what I thought. Lost them in a traffic jam, they say. Claimed that they hadn’t been spotted. Pure accident. The report about the other two makes me wonder, to say the least.’

‘ “About” the other two?’ de Graaf said. ‘Not “from”?’

‘About. They were found in a darkened alley. Barely able to call for help, barely conscious. Unable to move and both in agony. Both men had had both kneecaps smashed. A sign used in Sicily and certain American cities that some people don’t like being followed and that those who were doing the following won’t be doing it again for some time to come. They weren’t knee-capped—no guns. Iron bars. They’re under surgery. Neither man will be able to walk for months, neither will ever be able to walk properly again. Nice, isn’t it, sir. And a new development in our fair city. Another instance, one supposes, of the steady advance of American culture.’

‘Crippled?’ Annemarie’s voice was low, barely above a whisper. ‘Crippled for life. How can you—how can you joke about such things.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Van Effen looked at her, saw that some colour had gone from her face, and pushed her glass closer to her. ‘Take some. I’ll join you. Joking? I can assure you I never felt less funny in my life. And it’s not just an American practice, sir: it’s become a very popular pastime in Northern Ireland in the past two or three years.’

‘So your other tails were almost certainly given the slip and nothing accidental about it.’ De Graaf sampled his Bordeaux and the distressing news didn’t appear to have upset him unduly for he smacked his lips appreciatively. ‘Excellent. Our friends seem to have a considerable expertise in both evasive and direct action. Professionals. And gone to ground. Ah. All is not lost. The Chateaubriand. You said you would share this with me, my dear.’

She appeared to give a tiny shudder. ‘I know it’s trite, silly, but I don’t think I could eat a thing.’

‘Maybe the moles will come out of their burrows tomorrow,’ van Effen said. ‘I’m still hoping that they will keep their promise and make contact with me.’

Annemarie stared at him, almost blankly. ‘You must be mad,’ she said in a low voice. She seemed genuinely puzzled. ‘Either they’ll come and give you the same treatment, perhaps worse, perhaps dispose of you permanently, or they won’t come at all. After they carried out that savage attack on those poor men they could have examined them and found out that they were policemen. They must have been carrying something that would identify them as policemen, even guns. Were they carrying guns?’ Van Effen nodded. ‘Then they’ll know you are a policeman because they’ll know you must have had them followed since they left the Hunter’s Horn. You like the idea of suicide?’ She reached out and touched de Graaf’s wrist. ‘You mustn’t let him do it, sir. He’ll be killed.’

‘Your concern does you credit.’ It was van Effen who answered and he seemed quite unmoved by her plea. ‘But quite uncalled for. The villains don’t necessarily know that I set the tails on their tracks. They might not even have noticed them until long after they’d left the Hunter’s Horn and would have no reason to connect me with them. That’s one thing. The other thing is the fact that though the Colonel is your father’s friend that doesn’t give the father’s daughter the right to advise the Colonel. A fledgling policewoman. A Chief of Police. It would be laughable if it weren’t so presumptuous.’

She looked at him, her eyes hurt as if she had been struck, then lowered her gaze to the tablecloth. De Graaf looked at van Effen, shook his head slightly, then took the girl’s hand.

‘Your concern does do you credit. It does. But it doesn’t give me much credit in your eyes. None. Look at me.’ She looked at him, the hazel eyes at once solemn and apprehensive. ‘Van Effen is absolutely correct. The foxes have to be flushed from their covers and this, at the moment, seems the only way to do it. So Peter will go—I would never order him to go—and with my consent. Good heavens, girl, do you think I would use him as live bait, a lamb to the slaughter, a Daniel in the lion’s den, a tethered goat for the tiger? My word, I do have a way with metaphors. I guarantee, my girl, that, when and if the meeting does take place, both the Hunter’s Horn and the surrounding area will be alive with invisible armed men. Invisible to the ungodly. Peter will be as safe as a man in a church.’

‘I know. I’m silly. I’m sorry.’

‘Pay no attention to the Colonel’s comforting words,’ van Effen said. ‘I shall probably be riddled with bullets. Police bullets. Unless it’s pointed out to them that I’m in disguise. Ironic if they shot the wrong man. Same outfit as before. Just let them concentrate on the black glove. That’s me.’

A waiter approached their table. ‘Sorry, Lieutenant. There’s another call for you.’

Van Effen was back inside two minutes. ‘Well, no surprise, surprise. The FFF, again, mysterious message, no doubt stepping up their demoralizing campaign. They say there could be some havoc wreaked along the North Holland Canal tomorrow at Alkmaar at 9 a.m., but they have made no guarantee that there will be. All they have promised is that there will be some quite considerable activity.’

De Graaf said: ‘That was all?’

‘All. I see. Seems utterly pointless and meaningless. What the devil do you think they’re up to now?’

‘It’s not pointless. That’s just the point—to make us wonder and worry about just what the devil they are up to now. They want to create uncertainty, confusion and demoralization and it would seem to me that they’re going the right way about it. Speaking of the FFF, sir, how was your pleasure trip to Texel this afternoon?’

‘Complete waste of time. I was accompanied, as you more or less predicted, by a bunch of old women.’

‘You don’t intend to be at Alkmaar at 9 a.m. tomorrow?’

‘I intend to be in Amsterdam at 9 a.m. tomorrow. What am I supposed to do? Lurk around and nab anyone who looks as if he is acting suspiciously, such as gloating over the scene of the crime?’

‘An unpromising course of action. You’ve got friends in the University, sir. Specifically, in the linguistics department?’

De Graaf said to Annemarie: ‘I’m supposed to look startled at this sudden switch and ask “why on earth do you ask that?” ’ He looked at van Effen. ‘Well, why on earth do you ask that?’

‘I listened to the FFF’s tapes in the Telegraph’s office earlier on this evening. A woman’s voice. A young woman, I would say. And not Dutch, I’m sure.’

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