Floodgate

by Alistair MacLean

  ‘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 becom
e. 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.’