Floodgate

by Alistair MacLean

  ‘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, th
en, 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.’