Алистер Маклин - Puppet on a Chain

As usual it was raining and as we passed along the Rembrandtplein by the Hotel Schiller, Maggie gave a well-timed shiver.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘There’s a taxi. In fact, lots of taxis.’

‘I wouldn’t say that there’s not a taxi in Amsterdam that’s not in the pay of the ungodly,’ I said with feeling, ‘but I wouldn’t bet a nickel on it. It’s not far.’

Neither was it – by taxi. By foot it was a very considerable way indeed. But I had no intention of covering the distance on foot. I led Maggie down the Thorbeckeplein, turned left, right and left again till we came out on the Amstel. Maggie said: ‘You do seem to know your way around, don’t you, Major Sherman?’

‘I’ve been here before.’

‘When?’

‘I forget. Last year, sometime.’

‘When last year?’ Maggie knew or thought she knew all my movements over the past five years and Maggie could be easily piqued. She didn’t like what she called irregularities.

‘In the spring, I think it was.’

‘Two months, maybe?’

‘About that.’

‘You spent two months in Miami last spring,’ she said accusingly. ‘That’s what the records say.’

‘You know how I get my dates mixed up.’

‘No, I don’t.’ She paused. ‘I thought you’d never seen Colonel de Graaf and van Gelder before?’

‘I hadn’t.’

‘But–’

‘I didn’t want to bother them.’ I stopped by a phone-box. ‘A couple of calls to make. Wait here.’

‘I will not!’ A very heady atmosphere, was Amsterdam’s. She was getting as bad as Belinda. But she had a point the slanting rain was sheeting down very heavily now. I opened the door and let her precede me into the booth. I called a near-by cab company whose number I knew, started to dial another number.

‘I didn’t know you spoke Dutch,’ Maggie said.

‘Neither do our friends. That’s why we may get an honest taxi-driver.’

‘You really don’t trust anyone, do you?’ Maggie said admiringly.

‘I trust you, Maggie.’

‘No, you don’t. You just don’t want to burden my beautiful head with unnecessary problems.’

‘That’s my line,’ I complained. De Graaf came on the phone. After the usual courtesies I said: ‘Those scraps of paper? No luck yet? Thank you, Colonel de Graaf, I’ll call back later.’ I hung up.

‘What scraps of paper?’ Maggie asked.

‘Scraps of paper I gave him.’

‘Where did you get them from?’

‘A chap gave them to me last night.’

Maggie gave me her old-fashioned resigned look but said nothing. After a couple of minutes a taxi came along. I gave him an address in the old city and when we got there walked with Maggie down a narrow street to one of the canals in the dock area. I stopped at the corner.

‘This is it?’

‘This is it,’ said Maggie.

‘This’ was a little grey church about fifty yards away along the canal bank. It was an ancient sway-backed crumbling edifice that appeared to be maintained in the near-vertical by faith alone, for to my untrained eye it looked to be in imminent danger of toppling into the canal. It had a short square stone tower, at least five degrees off the perpendicular, topped by a tiny steeple that leaned dangerously in the other direction. The time was ripe for the First Reformed Church of the American Huguenot Society to launch a major fund-raising drive.

That some of the adjacent buildings had been in even greater danger of collapse was evidenced by the fact that a large area of building on the canal side beyond the church had already been demolished: a giant crane, with the most enormous boom I had ever seen almost lost in the darkness above, stood in the middle of this cleared lot where rebuilding had already reached the stage of the completion of the reinforced foundations.

We walked slowly along the canal side towards the church. Clearly audible now was the sound of organ music and of women singing. It sounded very pleasant and safe and homely and nostalgic, the music drifting out over the darkened waters of the canal.

‘The service seems to be still in progress,’ I said. ‘You go in there–’

I broke off and did a double-take at a blonde girl in a belted white raincoat who was just walking by.

‘Hey!’ I said.

The blonde girl had it all buttoned up about what to do when accosted by strange men in a lonely street. She took one look at me and started to run. She didn’t get very far. She slipped on the wet cobbles, recovered, but only made another two or three paces before I caught up with her. She struggled briefly to escape, then relaxed and flung her arms about my neck. Maggie joined us, that old puritanical look on her face again.

‘A very old friend, Major Sherman?’

‘Since this morning. This is Trudi. Trudi van Gelder.’

‘Oh.’ Maggie laid a reassuring hand on Trudi’s arm but Trudi ignored her, tightened her grip around my neck and gazed admiringly into my face from a distance of about four inches.

‘I like you,’ Trudi announced. ‘You’re nice.’

‘Yes, I know, you told me. Oh hell!’

‘What to do?’ Maggie asked.

‘What to do. I’ve got to get her home. I’ve got to take her home. Put her in a taxi and she’d skip at the first traffic lights. A hundred to one the old battle-axe who’s supposed to be guarding her has dozed off and by this time her father’s probably scouring the town. He’d find it cheaper to use a ball and chain.’

I unlocked Trudi’s arms, not without some difficulty, and pushed up the sleeve of her left arm. I looked first of all at her arm, then at Maggie whose eyes widened and then lips pursed as she saw the unlovely pattern left by the hypodermic needles. I pulled down the sleeve – instead of breaking into tears as she had done last time Trudi just stood there and giggled as if it were all great fun – and examined the other forearm. I pulled that sleeve down too.

‘Nothing fresh,’ I said.

‘You mean there’s nothing fresh that you can see,’ Maggie said.

‘What do you expect me to do? Make her stand here in this icy rain and do a strip-tease on the banks of the canal to that organ music? Wait a moment.’

‘Why?’

‘I want to think,’ I said patiently.

So I thought, while Maggie stood there with an expression of dutiful expectation on her face and Trudi clutched my arm in a proprietorial fashion and gazed adoringly up at me. Finally, I said:

‘You haven’t been seen by anybody in there?’

‘Not as far as I know.’

‘But Belinda has, of course.’

‘Of course. But not so she would be recognized again. All the people in there have their heads covered. Belinda’s wearing a scarf and the hood of her coat and she’s sitting in shadow I saw that from the doorway.’

‘Get her out. Wait till the service is over, then follow Astrid. And try to memorize the faces of as many as possible of those who are attending the service.’

Maggie looked doubtful. ‘I’m afraid that’s going to be difficult.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, they all look alike.’

‘They all what are they, Chinese or something?’

‘Most of them are nuns, carrying Bibles and those beads at their waists, and you can’t see their hair, and they have those long black clothes and those white–’

‘Maggie–’ I restrained myself with difficulty ‘–I know what nuns look like.’

‘Yes, but there’s something else. They’re nearly all young and good-looking some very good-looking–’

‘You don’t have to have a face like a bus smash to be a nun. Phone your hotel and leave the number of wherever you happen to finish up. Come on, Trudi. Home.’

She went with me docilely enough, by foot first and then by taxi, where she held my hand all the time and talked a lot of bright nonsense in a very vivacious way, like a young child being taken out on an unexpected treat. At van Gelder’s house I asked the taxi to wait.