Алистер Маклин - Floodgate

He covered the mouthpiece with one hand and gave his empty glass to Julie with the other. ‘I’m to keep a respectful silence while he communes with himself before telling me what to do. I don’t need telling and I almost certainly won’t agree with what he suggests.’

‘Blowing up the royal palace.’ She looked at Julie who had just brought in the jenever bottle. ‘The palace. Blowing it up. He’s mad. You – you’re a policeman!’

‘A policeman’s lot is a hard one. All things to all men. Yes, I’m listening!’ There was a long pause. Julie and Annemarie studied his face covertly but closely, but he gave no indication as to what he was thinking although he did permit himself the occasional thoughtful expression as he sipped some more jenever.

‘Yes, I understand. Alternatives. First, you can pull me off altogether and you have the means to ensure that I do this, so, of course, I would have to accept that decision. But there’s a difference between pulling me off a job and putting me back on to it again. Should this prove to be the first in a series of bomb outrages – and you know better than anyone that those things almost invariably happen in cycles – then I should have to refuse to be assigned to the investigation on the grounds that I was fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to investigate this group’s activities and you denied me the opportunity…Certainly, sir, you could ask for my resignation on the grounds of refusing to obey orders. I would refuse to resign. You’d have to fire me. And then, of course, you would have to explain to your minister that you fired me because you had made a mistake, because you had refused to listen to me, because you wouldn’t give me the chance to stop what may be a new crime wave before it started, because you had backed your own judgment against mine and you had been wrong. Throw as many chestnuts as you like into the fire, Colonel. I refuse to pull them out. And I refuse to resign. Excuse me, sir.’

Julie had sat beside him on the bedside and had put both hands on his telephone arm as if trying to pull it away.

‘Stop it, Peter, stop it.’ Despite the fact that van Effen had prudently covered the mouthpiece, her voice was low, tense, urgent. ‘You can’t talk to the Colonel like that. Can’t you see that you’re putting the poor man in an impossible situation?’

Van Effen looked at Annemarie. From her compressed lips and slowly shaking head it was evident that she was of the same opinion as Julie. Van Effen looked back at his sister and she visibly recoiled from the expression on his face.

‘Why don’t you hear me out instead of indulging in a repetition of last night’s unwarranted interference and blundering into things you know nothing about? You think he’s in an impossible situation? Listen to what I say and judge what kind of position I’m in.’ She slowly removed her hands and just looked at him, her expression uncomprehending. Van Effen raised the phone again.

‘Forgive the interruption, Colonel. Julie says that I have no right to talk to you in this fashion and that I’m putting you in an impossible situation. Julie, alas, doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Annemarie, who is also here, agrees with her but she wouldn’t know what she’s talking about either. In fairness to them I must say that, judging by the way they are looking at each other, they don’t think I know what I’m talking about either. You people are only on the periphery: I’m the man in the middle. An impossible situation, she says. Consider your alternative.

‘I go ahead as planned with Agnelli and company. You, you say, will ensure my safety. In the first place you are duty-bound – you claim – to notify the royal household using as justification the many threats that have been made against the royal family in recent months. You will have the Dam square invisibly cordoned off by snipers. You will have anti-terrorist police squads inside the palace itself. It has apparently never occurred to you that those criminals have their moles and informants pretty thick on the ground and that the presence of even one extra policeman will be immediately reported. I have been warned that if any such thing happened they would know that there could have been only one source, one person, through whom this information reached the police. And I don’t think – I know – that the palace security is pitiful and that those spies move freely within the gates. Lift that telephone to the palace, to your anti-terrorist squads, to any other policeman, and you might as well reach out for pen and paper and write down and sign my death warrant.’ That was, van Effen was aware, pitching it rather strongly, extradition was the worst he had to face, even assuming they had penetrated his disguise, which was uncertain. But now wasn’t the moment for such niceties.

‘Ensure my safety? You’ll ensure my death, van Effen in a better world by midnight. What’s one detective-lieutenant less just so long as your pettifogging rules and hidebound regulations are concerned? Maybe – no, I’m sure – that Julie and Annemarie don’t like me very much at the moment but I think they’ll have the grace to testify at the inquest that I did do my best to save my own miserable skin.

‘That, of course, is the absolute worst scenario and I’ve no intention of being part of it. I’ve been thinking during our conversation and I’ve changed my mind about one thing. You’ve offered me two alternatives. One leads to being fired, the other to the old pine box. I’m not quite in my dotage yet and I think it would behove me to find some form of work where I’ll be faced with threats of neither dismissal nor extinction. If you send one of your boys round to Julie’s place I’ll let him have my written resignation. At the same time I’ll give him the tape-recording I had made in the Hunter’s Horn this morning. I hope that you and your University friends will be able to make something of it and of the other tape-recorded telephone messages. Sorry about this, Colonel, but you leave me with no option: I seem to have run out of alternatives.’ He replaced the telephone in the bedside cupboard and left the room.

When Julie and Annemarie rejoined him he was sitting relaxed in an armchair, legs crossed and jenever in hand. For a man who had just made such a momentous decision he seemed singularly unconcerned.

Julie said: ‘May I say something?’

‘Certainly. Compared to what the Colonel said and what he is no doubt thinking at this moment your slings and arrows are as nothing.’

She smiled faintly. ‘I haven’t lost my senses or memory. I have no intention of being – how did you put it so charmingly last night – cool, clinical, superior and handing out unwanted and unsolicited advice. I am sorry for what I said in the bedroom. I didn’t know you were in so impossible a situation. But if I go on to say that I also think you’ve put the Colonel in a fearful fix, you’ll probably say that you appreciate that a lieutenant’s life is as nothing compared to the Colonel’s finer feelings. Well, I still say I’m sorry, but –’

Annemarie interrupted. ‘Julie?’

‘Yes?’

‘I wouldn’t bother saying sorry to him again. I don’t for a moment believe he’s in an impossible situation. Look at him. He’s getting high blood pressure through trying not to laugh out loud.’ She gave him a considering glance. ‘You’re not very active. I thought you came through here to write out your resignation.’

He frowned, looked off into the middle distance, then said: ‘I’ve no recollection of saying that.’

‘That’s because you never had any intention of writing out your resignation.’

‘Well, well. We’ll make a lady detective of you yet. You’re quite right, my dear, I did not. How could I? How could I leave Uncle Arthur alone to cope with the rising wave of crime in Amsterdam? He needs me.’