Алистер Маклин - Floodgate

‘Do what?’

‘Give yourself up to them?’

‘Of course. My appointment at the Trianon is overdue, sir. If there is any message for me, would you call me there. Stephan Danilov, if you remember. How long do you intend to remain here, sir?’

‘Until I see those maps or charts or whatever that Sergeant Oudshoorn found, and until I can get Lieutenant Valken here to take over. I’ll put him in the picture as far as I can.’

‘You have all the facts, sir.’

‘One would hope so,’ de Graaf said rather enigmatically.

When van Effen had gone, Thyssen said curiously: ‘I know it’s not my place to speak, sir, but would the Lieutenant really do that?’

‘Do what?’

‘Give himself up.’

‘You heard the Lieutenant.’

‘But – but that would be suicide, sir.’ Thyssen seemed almost agitated. ‘That would be the end of him.’

‘It would be the end of someone, and that’s a fact.’ De Graaf didn’t seem overly concerned.

Van Effen returned, via the rear entrance, to his room in the Trianon, called the desk and asked for Charles.

‘Charles? Van Effen. Has our friend returned?…Good. He will, I know, be in a position to hear every word you say. Kindly say the following into the phone. “Certainly, Mr Danilov. Coffee immediately and not to be disturbed afterwards. Expecting a visitor at six-thirty.” Let me know when he’s gone.’

Some thirty seconds later Charles called to inform him that the lobby was now empty.

Van Effen had just completed his metamorphosis into Stephan Danilov when the phone rang. It was de Graaf, who was still at Julie’s flat. He said he had something of interest to show van Effen and could he, van Effen, step round. Ten minutes, van Effen said.

When van Effen returned to the flat he found Thyssen gone and his place taken by Lieutenant Valken. Valken was a short, stout, rubicund character, easy-going and a trencherman of some note, which may have accounted for the fact that although he was several years older than van Effen he was his junior in the service, a fact that worried Valken not at all. They were good friends. Valken was, at that moment, surveying van Effen and speaking to the Colonel.

‘A reversal to type, wouldn’t you say, sir? Cross between a con man and a white slaver, with just a soupçon of a Mississippi river-boat gambler thrown in. Definitely criminal, anyway.’

De Graaf looked at van Effen and winced. ‘Wouldn’t trust him within a kilometre of either of my daughters. I don’t even trust the sound of his voice.’ He indicated the pile of papers on the table before him. ‘Like to sift through all of those, Peter. Or shall I just call attention to the ones that interest me?’

‘Just the ones that interest you, sir.’

‘God, that voice. Fine. Top five.’

Van Effen examined each in turn. They showed plans of what were clearly different levels of the same building: the number of compartments in each plan left no doubt that it was a very large building indeed. Van Effen looked up and said: ‘And where’s van Rees?’

‘Well, damn your eyes!’ de Graaf was aggrieved. ‘How the hell did you know those were the plans of the royal palace?’

‘Didn’t you?’

‘No I didn’t.’ De Graaf scowled, which he did very rarely and with difficulty. ‘Not until that young architect or whatever from the City Surveyor’s office told me. You do rob an old man of his pleasures, Peter.’ De Graaf regarded himself as merely approaching the prime of his life.

‘I didn’t know. Just guessed. As I shall be inside that building within three hours you can understand that my thoughts turn to it from time to time. Van Rees?’

‘My old and trusted friend.’ De Graaf, understandably, sounded very bitter indeed. ‘Put him up for my club, by God! Should have listened to you earlier, my boy, much earlier. And we should have expedited the examination of his bank account.’

‘No bank account?’

‘Gone. Gone.’

‘And so, one supposes, has van Rees.’

‘Four million guilders,’ de Graaf said. ‘Four million. Bank manager thought it a highly unusual step to take but – well –’

‘One does not question the motives and the integrity of a pillar of the community?’

‘Blackballed,’ de Graaf said gloomily. ‘Inevitable.’

‘There are other clubs, sir. Schiphol, I assume, is still not open for operations?’

‘You assume wrongly.’ The gloom remained in de Graaf’s face. ‘Heard ten – fifteen minutes ago. First plane out, a KLM for Paris, took off about twenty minutes ago.’

‘Van Rees, clutching his millions, relaxing in the first class?’

‘Yes.’

‘And no grounds for extradition. No charges against him. In fact, no hard evidence against him. That we’ll get the evidence, I don’t doubt. Then I’ll go and get him. When all this is over, I mean.’

‘Your illegal penchants are well known, Lieutenant.’

‘Yes, sir. Meantime, I suggest that my penchants, your blackballing and the fact that van Rees is at the present moment probably entering French air space are not quite of primary importance. What does matter is that van Rees – who has by this time passed over to the dyke-breakers all they’ll ever want to know about sluices, weirs and locks so that they won’t even miss him now – was also tied in with the would-be palace bombers. And we are as convinced as can be that the Annecy brothers are in league with the bombers. It was Julie who first expressed the possibility of this idea, how too much of a coincidence can be too much of a coincidence, although I must say – with all due modesty and not with hindsight – that this possibility had occurred to me before.’

‘Your modesty does you credit, Lieutenant.’

‘Thank you, sir. Well, what we’re faced with now is the probability – I would put it as high as certainty – that we are faced not with three different organizations but only with one. That should make things much simpler for us and easier to cope with.’

‘Oh. Of course, of course.’ De Graaf gave van Effen the kind of look that stops a long way short of being admiring. ‘How?’

‘How?’ Van Effen pondered. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Heaven help Amsterdam,’ de Graaf muttered.

‘Sir?’

De Graaf was saved from enlarging on his brief statement by a knock on the door. Valken opened it to admit a tall, lean gentleman with greying hair, rimless glasses and a faintly aristocratic air. De Graaf rose to his feet and greeted him warmly.

‘Hugh, my good friend. So kind of you to come and to come so quickly. At great inconvenience to yourself, I have no doubt.’

‘Not at all, my dear chief, not at all. The patients of a plastic surgeon do not expire upon the spot if not attended to immediately. With a six-month waiting list one can squeeze in the odd patient here and there.’

De Graaf made the introductions. ‘Professor Johnson. Lieutenant van Effen. Lieutenant Valken.’

‘Ah. Lieutenant van Effen. The Colonel has explained your requirements to me. Rather unusual requirements, I may say, even in our at-times somewhat bizarre profession – we tend to be called upon to remove scars, not inflict them. However.’

He looked at the scar on van Effen’s face, produced a magnifying glass and peered more closely. ‘Not bad, not bad at all. You have quite an artistic bent, my dear fellow. Wouldn’t deceive me – not when you’ve spent all your life studying thousands of different scars of every conceivable variety. But a layman is not a plastic surgeon and I doubt very much whether any layman would question the authenticity of that scar. Let me see the dreadful wound concealed by that glove on your left hand.’ He did some peering. ‘By Jove, even better. You are to be congratulated. Very convenient to have it on your left hand, isn’t it? But a trifle suspicious to the nasty criminal mind, perhaps? You are, of course, right-handed.’