The promontory dissolved into sea, less than a kilometre ahead.
The crack of gunfire spurred me on.
I kept scanning for some indication of life – of help. I thought I heard a dog bark, only where?
I looked behind. Did Joost have a dog? No, I’d have noticed it, surely…
Rijnsburger was now jogging at a steady rate, his legs rising and falling evenly, sand blurring his feet.
Still, I had my phone. Pulling it out, I saw that I had a bar of coverage and fumbled for my most recent calls. Another gunshot told me to keep moving.
Johan picked up.
‘I went back,’ I panted, ‘you’re right.’ A breath. ‘They killed him.’
‘Who – Joost? Slow down.’
‘No option.’ A breath. ‘After me.’
‘Where the hell are you?’
‘Nehalennia-eiland.’ A breath. ‘Heading north-west.’ Wheezing. ‘Along the beach.’
Crack.
A faint whistling noise, distinct from the wind, told me he’d come very close with that last shot.
The phone slipped from my hand as I tried to sprint.
Johan was two hours away, in Amsterdam. Rijnsburger was a hundred metres behind, gaining, and the end of the promontory was in sight.
It wasn’t a promontory – a spit, rather.
Longshore drift, forcing matter down the coast. Could that help me? I didn’t see how.
The light had changed, was playing tricks. The spit dissolved into a watery silveryness where the clouds broke and a white beam filtered down. The vertical light shaft appeared fantastical in comparison to the dark, stormy clouds surrounding it.
I staggered onward, lowering my gaze to my wobbly feet, negotiating the mini-ravines carved in the sand by eddies and undertows.
There were no trees or obstacles to hide behind, not even a lone boat. I had the sense of turning transparent, like some marine spectre. Could I swim for it?
Surely I was a dead man.
I couldn’t feel my feet anymore, and increasingly had the sense of hovering over the flat wetness. In contrast, Rijnsburger’s shoes slapped the sand hard, and the sound seemed to multiply. Like horses’ hooves at my back. Panic rushing into my ears and roaring there. As if I were being chased by legions of rogue secret service men and errant souls like Rijnsburger, stretching back over the decades – drawn to that place beyond the purview of elected government, where surveillance and other such features of modern warfare would always give them the upper hand.
There were more shots; I lost count.
‘Van der Pol!’
I daren’t turn.
‘Van der Pol!’ he called again.
This time I looked.
The sight that confronted me was equally confounding: he stood shin deep in water.
The tide was coming in.
The promontory, the spit, was shrinking around us. The wind wailed; fine sea spray flecked on my cheeks. The water was freezing, of course. I’d lost all sensation in my lower legs. I wouldn’t have known whether I was in the water or out of it without staring.
‘There have to be structures,’ Rijnsburger called, as though we were out for a Sunday stroll together. ‘There has to be an architecture,’ he cried, ‘at the back of it all.’
What the fuck was he talking about?
For a second I thought he was channelling Heinrich Karremans, and a vision of the dead Rijksbouwmeester came to me – the diving mask magnifying his staring eyes. I saw Zsolt To˝zsér, too – below the water surface, a silver trace of bubbles rising… I was about to join him.
‘Self-sufficiency, energy-wise,’ Rijnsburger was explaining. ‘You can’t erase history, but you can edit it.’
Rijnsburger stumbled, regaining his balance but looking curiously at his gun. His arm swung up towards me and became very straight. The gun was pointing directly at me. The sensation was dreamlike: I couldn’t move, the water surface seemed to freeze. Only Rijnsburger’s trigger finger was moving, again and again.
I couldn’t hear a bang. Had I already died?
I heaved the air from my lungs and bowed my head. The water was moving fast once more. Rijnsburger flung the weapon aside but begun wading towards me, the hunt still on.
It would be hand-to-hand combat, then. One of us would drown.
I started in his direction. However, I was toppling seaward. The pain in my hip had taken on a glassy intensity. Rijnsburger was unbuttoning his shirt and sliding it down his shoulders. He wore a white vest, and had a startlingly in-shape torso for a man his age.
‘We need to finish this,’ he said. His ribcage was bowing and flexing as he breathed deeply. One shoulder dipped and shrank down, his knees buckling.
Up he rose, back out of the water, which was up to his thighs now. How had the tide come in so fast? There must be a terrific undertow.
By the time Rijnsburger got close we were waist-deep, the current pushing forcefully against my hips – pushing him towards me.
‘When my organisation started, we had the chance of another way, Henk – that’s the thing. The thing that I keep returning to, in times of turmoil.’
Had he gone mad? The genesis of the secret service lay in World War Two. What the fuck was he referring to, then – the Nazis? Surely not, though the far right had never left the Dutch political stage entirely, especially not since the ‘immigrant crises’ of recent years. At any moment, the current would lift me off my feet.
Did Rijnsburger understand the tides?
‘I observed your efforts over in Driebergen,’ he said, still in his Sunday-stroll voice. He was close now. Almost within arm’s reach. ‘And I thought how much I liked what I saw: a man who might be useful to us, one day. I don’t mind telling you this now. It’s something to take with you, possibly. Something to reflect upon…’
His large hand came for me and splayed round my neck, his thumb finding my carotid artery easily and forcing my neck back and down. The current was with him, and soon my head was coldly under – him on top of me. His other hand held the back of my skull like he was baptising a baby. My feet kept digging for the seabed, but I couldn’t feel a thing.
I had no breath.
Rijnsburger held me there, and finally I gulped down water. Trying to cough it out caused me to drink more, its saltiness stinging my throat. My brain still worked, but weakly. In these temperatures, I had less than a minute to hold whatever breath.
I grasped and pushed and frantically tried to turn his wrist, but I couldn’t feel a thing. It was as if I’d turned into a ghost. Like Joost, and the others. Pray to God the rest of my family would be taken care of.
All feeling had left my physical extremities, and a calmness began to take hold in my centre. A carousel of mental images flickered by: my father nursing a dry gin in dusty Africa; his old-fashioned moustache, much like Tommy Franks’s, I now saw. Petra and Nadia, Johan… Nehalennia – a very old Zeeland goddess – Mother Sea as distinct from Father Land, with a benign-looking dog by her knee.
What struck me was the pattern of it all: the grand plan. How OK it is to leave the stage.
I closed my mouth and crossed my arms, ready to be carried on to the next place, when I glimpsed a rinsing of dark red. Shapes shifting over the water above me.
Faint shouting?
I was in another world.
*
Cold, gritty sand pressed against my cheek. I’d arrived ashore.
On the other side? Where?
A man crouched on the beach, his face hovering over mine.
‘Henk?’
I coughed and spluttered.
He shook me hard.
‘Henk? You remember me?’
His face blurred and stretched as it came into focus.
‘Cas?’ I said, trying to sit up.
I fell
back down, now aware of a foil survival blanket around me, crinkling in the wind.
‘Medics should get here soon. So too our old buddy. We’ll get you off this beach in short order. Better not to stay in any place longer than it takes for the fish to start smelling, as they say.’
I hadn’t seen Cas in years – not since the KMar, the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee, became a separate service within the armed forces. Johan must have stayed in touch. We’d all trained together, in Norway.
‘Good thing I live nearby,’ he said, winking. ‘Johan knew who to call.’
I sagged, closing my eyes.
‘Stay with us…’ Cas said, his words floating above me.
I nodded my agreement, forcing my mind to be busy, remembering their history: Queen Wilhelmina assigning the marechaussees the task of guarding royal palaces – a responsibility formerly held by gardeners; guarding a palace is called klompendienst (clog service); the KMar is anything but clog service… Two hundred marechaussees guarding the Queen and the Dutch government-in-exile during the war, and now it was the King’s army.
‘What about Rijnsburger?’ I mumbled, my eyes opening – just – to become slits.
‘He’s not in a good way, either. I had to make a choice – which of you to save.’ Cas was looking out to sea. ‘We’ve all faced harder decisions than that one.’ He smiled. ‘The waves claimed him,’ he clarified.
Did he know the rest?
36
SIX-GUN SALUTE
Cas did know the rest.
There was now a full-blown constitutional crisis caused by Wim Rijnsburger and his rogue faction within the secret service. The Royal Netherlands Marechaussee was one of the organs of state given extra national-security responsibilities as enquiries got underway; the Rijksrecherche was another. Once again, I was waiting to hear what my official role would be, bringing to justice the rogue actors involved.
Thick mist created a muffled intimacy at Joost’s graveside. We were near Amsterdam, on the coast, at the Dutch Honorary Cemetery in Bloemendaal. It had been Joost’s wish to be buried alongside war veterans.
The mist blurred the corners of the graves and crosses. It whited out the six-gun salute (one for each decade of Joost’s life), the recoiling guns barely visible, their blasts rumbling hauntingly.
Once the last report had echoed into the distance, the King himself stepped forward to speak.
He wore a thick black overcoat, and a forbearance that spoke to something deep in my soul – as a Dutchman, and simply a man.
‘We must learn to reconcile our material requirements with this nation’s historic principles,’ he was saying, ‘like Joost van Erven did.’
I’d often wondered where Joost’s confidence and sense of conviction came from. Now I knew: doing the right thing.
Petra squeezed my hand.
My wife had assumed a new role as a staff reporter at De Telegraaf, owing to the work she’d begun uncovering Joost’s thwarted attempts to investigate informant rackets, the favours-for-energy scam, the disappearance of Rem Lottman, and – most recently – Rijnsburger’s moves to clean up evidence of it all.
It had been a small faction within the secret service that Rijnsburger had led: a right-wing one, as suspected, that believed in Dutch independence and energy self-sufficiency at all costs. Extremism on home shores.
Its leader was now dead; there would be no state memorial service for Wim Rijnsburger.
‘There’s a point in every nation’s life when its earlier hopes and aspirations must make peace with the realities of its circumstances,’ the King went on, his measured breath condensing in the cold air. ‘That is, if the nation is to become whole.’
I’d heard that saying before. Or at least, a variation of it.
This time, I felt its full import.
*
The service ended, and a murmur of respectful conversation resumed. I caught a familiar face in the crowd: Marc Vissering’s. A dark-green scarf sprouted from his lapels, appearing to prop up his head. The tall prosecutor approached me.
‘Marc,’ I said, shaking his hand warmly. ‘How’s Liesbeth?’
‘Big.’ His wife was heavily pregnant. ‘But not complaining,’ he said, smiling. He paused. ‘Could I have a word?’
Petra caught the hint. ‘I’ll go and wait in the car,’ she said.
Once we were alone, Marc asked, ‘How are you recovering?’
I was limping, again. Hopefully not for too long this time.
‘Ready to get back to work,’ I replied in a low voice, referring to the rogue actors. ‘Looks like there was a dozen of them…’
‘Does that include the others they were controlling?’
I canted my head, unsure whom he was referring to.
‘A file crossed my desk.’ Marc double-checked that we were out of earshot. ‘An Amsterdam gangster called Frank Hals.’
Time slowed as I waited on his next words.
‘I reviewed how the To˝zsér brothers were turned from informants to providers of goods and services, as part of that favours-for-energy scam, and I wondered, could Frank Hals have been in the same boat?’
Did Marc harbour suspicions about Hals’s death aboard that submarine, and my involvement in it?
‘How d’you mean?’ I asked warily.
‘Frank Hals went on trial in 2008 accused of cultivating marijuana for resale. Do you remember?’
‘How could I forget?’
‘It was soon after the To˝zsérs arrived in Holland,’ Marc continued. ‘I’ve been looking at that case against Hals, and how easily he got off, and wondering whether Hals could have been recruited into a similar arrangement, in exchange for his innocence. Is that possible?’
‘As a fixer, you mean? A provider of goods and services to important people?’
‘Yes. Drugs – specifically MDMA – young children…’
Marc was speaking the truth. I knew.
‘The case against him in 2008 was strong,’ he said.
‘He had a good lawyer,’ I responded, looking away to the coast. I could hear the waves but couldn’t see them through the mist.
Marc leaned in. ‘We need to draw a line around the full extent of the wrongdoing here, Henk. That is, if we’re all going to make it through this together.’
I was eager to steer him away, to a related but separate subject.
‘What about Rem Lottman?’
‘What about him?’
‘He must have been running those people, by one means or another. Hals and the To˝zsérs, I mean. No wonder he had to go.’ I turned to face Marc. ‘Where did he go?’
His stiff overcoat rose and fell as he shrugged. ‘There’s a question. He was never found, as I understand it.’
Not for want of trying on my part…
Marc added, ‘Rijnsburger arranged the disappearance himself, perhaps, and took that secret with him to the grave. Lottman as another fall guy?’
Only now did I grasp how problematic Joost’s opposition to Lottman had become, and the vehemency with which Joost had appealed to ministers in The Hague.
A face swept past: Muriel Crutzen’s. She was formerly the energy minister, now security and justice. Willem van der Steen had gone in the post-Rijnsburger purge.
She eyed me from under a slanted hat. The justice minister has fallen; long live the justice minister.
And as Marc took his leave as well, something else came into focus – from my time spent searching for Rem Lottman in Zanzibar, East Africa…
*
Finally I found the bar, down a narrow lane in Stone Town, and dived inside it to escape the noon heat. A dog lay sleeping in the shade of the doorway. I sidestepped the creature and approached the counter – more slowly, my eyes adjusting to the gloom. A local stood behind it, watching me.
‘Hello,’ I began,
‘I’m looking for a man named Nustafa.’ He was the biddable one in the visa office, I’d been informed.
I counted off a hundred thousand shillings to get things going.
But the barman said nothing, and I knew instinctively that this was another false lead.
My wife had returned to Holland; the holiday was over.
It was time to rejoin her, time to go home. Zanzibar may have been a crossroads between Africa and the East – a ‘New Silk Road’, as those in the region called it – but the chances of Rem Lottman having passed through here felt slim to vanishing now.
I was wondering why this false trail through Zanzibar had been created, following a chance remark made by the energy minister at her office in The Hague, when a voice said, ‘I am he.’
I pivoted to see a coffee-skinned, moustached man dressed in khaki. A newspaper was open on his table at the back of the bar.
He was older, maybe in his seventies.
‘And you are?’ He had a curiously old-fashioned voice.
I approached his table, scattering several flies. ‘I’m looking for this man,’ I replied.
I sat down, laying a photo of Rem Lottman on top of his newspaper. It was from De Telegraaf, purportedly showing him kidnapped.
There was no perturbation in Nustafa’s face. I peeled off several hundred thousand more shillings to liven him up, in the process losing all track of the exchange rate.
This was crazy.
After a moment spent adjusting the photo so that it caught the light, he simply shook his head.
‘You don’t recognise him at all?’ I let the money sit there.
‘No.’
It was a tidy sum he’d received, for less than ten words.
I nodded resignedly.
My mind went to the airport, duty-free, the flight home…
‘But you remind me of someone,’ he said.
I was halfway up from my chair.
I sat down again.
‘From years ago,’ he continued, narrowing his eyes as though I’d teased him with a memory challenge.
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