Алистер Маклин - Floodgate

‘And I don’t quite understand you. You mean you’ve never even bothered to check on him, his background?’

‘We didn’t check yours.’

‘You didn’t have to,’ van Effen said bleakly. ‘Not with all those extradition warrants hanging around.’

Agnelli smiled. ‘That was this morning and this morning has been forgotten. You obviously know something about Vasco that we don’t.’

‘Obviously. He’s bad. Poison. He’s the classic example of game-keeper turned poacher. He’s treacherous and a man full of hate. He hates the law and the society that law protects – or is supposed to protect. He’s that most dangerous of criminals, an ex-cop gone wrong.’

‘A policeman?’ Agnelli’s surprise, van Effen thought, was splendidly done. ‘Police!’

‘Ex. No public accusation of wrong-doing, far less a trial. Dismissed without explanation – although doubtless there would have been an explanation made to Vasco. Just try making some discreet enquiries at the Utrecht police station about a certain ex-Sergeant Westenbrink and see what kind of dusty answers you get. My friend George is a different kettle of fish entirely. A firm believer in honour among thieves. An honest criminal, if such a contradiction in terms exists.’

‘This George is your explosives friend?’ Van Effen nodded. ‘He has a second name?’

‘No.’

‘Do you think he’d work for me?’

‘George never works for anyone. He might be prepared to work w ith someone. Another thing. George never works through anyone. Not even through me. He’s a very careful man. His police record is clean and he wants to keep it that way. He talks to principals only and then it must be face to face.’

‘That’s the way I like it. Do you think you could get him to talk to me?’

‘Who knows? I could ask him. Not here though.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’d advise him against it. He knows I wouldn’t do that without reason. Where can I contact you?’

‘I’ll contact you. At the Trianon.’

‘I won’t make any comments about how touching your trust in me is. Tomorrow morning.’

‘Tonight. Ten o’clock.’

‘You are in a hurry. No point, I suppose, in asking you the compelling nature of this deadline you so obviously have to meet. Besides, I told you, I have a nine-thirty appointment.’

‘Ten o’clock.’ Agnelli rose. ‘You will of course try to see your friend immediately. I’ll put a car at your disposal.’

‘Please, Mr Agnelli. Don’t be so naive.’

‘That’s an Esfahan rug you’re standing on,’ Colonel de Graaf said. ‘Very rare, very expensive.’

‘I’ve got to drip on to something,’ van Effen said reasonably. He was standing before the fire in the Colonel’s luxuriously furnished library, steam gently rising from his saturated clothing. ‘Not for me a door-to-door chauffeur-driven limousine. I have to cope with taxis that go home to roost when the first drop of rain falls and with people who seemed anxious to know where I was going. It didn’t seem clever to let them know that I was going to the house of the Chief of Police.’

‘Your friend Agnelli doesn’t trust you?’

‘Difficult to say. Oh, sure, it was Agnelli who had me followed – couldn’t have been anyone else. But I’m not sure that he’s suspicious of me – I think that, on principle, he just doesn’t trust anyone. Difficult character to read. You’d probably like him. Seems friendly and likeable enough – you really have to make an effort to associate him with anything like blackmail and torture – and even then you find it difficult to convince yourself. Which means nothing. I assume you had a comfortable evening, sir – that you didn’t have to cope with the elements or the thought that you might be shot in the back at any moment.’

De Graaf made a dismissive gesture which could have meant either that such considerations were irrelevant trifles or that they could not possibly apply to him in the first place. ‘An interesting meeting, but only to a limited extent. I’m afraid Bernhard wasn’t in a particularly receptive or cooperative frame of mind.’ Bernhard was Bernhard Dessens, the Minister of Justice.

‘A dithering old woman, scared to accept responsibility, unwilling to commit himself and looking to pass the buck elsewhere?’

‘Exactly. I couldn’t have put – I’ve told you before, Peter, that’s no way to talk about cabinet ministers. There were two of them. Names Riordan and Samuelson. One – person calling himself Riordan – could have been in disguise. The other had made no attempt at any such thing which can only mean that he’s pretty confident about something or other. Riordan had long black hair – shoulder-length, in fact, I thought that ludicrous style had gone out of fashion ten years ago – was deeply tanned, wore a Dutch bargee cap and sun-glasses.’

‘Anything so obvious has to be a disguise.’ Van Effen thought for a moment. ‘He wasn’t by any chance very tall and preternaturally thin?’

De Graaf nodded. ‘I thought that would occur to you at once. The fellow who commandeered that canal boat from – who was it?’

‘At Schiphol? Dekker.’

‘Dekker. This must be the man Dekker described. And damned if I don’t agree with your bizarre suggestion that this fellow – Riordan or whatever – is an albino. Dark glasses. Heavy tan to hide an alabaster complexion. Black hair to hide white. Other fellow – Samuelson – had white hair, thick and very wavy, white moustache and white goatee beard. No albino, though – blue eyes. All that white hair would normally bespeak advanced years but his face was almost completely unlined. But, then, he was very plump, which may account for the youthful skin. Looked like a cross between an idealized concept of a US Senator and some bloated plutocrat, oil billionaire or something like that.’

‘Maybe he’s got a better make-up man than Riordan.’

‘It’s possible. Both men spoke in English, from which I assumed that Samuelson couldn’t speak Dutch. Both made a point of stating that they were Irish-Americans and I have no doubt they were. I don’t have to be Hector or one of his professorial friends to know that – the north-east or New York accent was very strong. Riordan did nearly all the talking.

‘He asked – no, he demanded – that we contact the British government. More exactly, he demanded we act as intermediaries between the FFF and Whitehall on the basis that Whitehall would be much more likely to negotiate with another government than with an unknown group such as they were. When Bernhard asked what on earth they could possibly want to discuss with Whitehall they said they wanted to have a dialogue about Northern Ireland, but refused to elaborate further until the Dutch Government agreed to cooperate.’ De Graaf sighed. ‘Whereupon, alas, our Minister of Justice, seething and fulminating, while at the same time knowing damn well that they had him over a barrel, climbed on to his high horse and said it was inconceivable, unthinkable, that a sovereign nation should negotiate on behalf of a band of terrorists. He carried on for about five minutes in this vein, but I’ll spare you all the parliamentary rhetoric. He ended up by saying that he, personally, would die first.

‘Riordan said that he very much doubted that Dessens would go to such extraordinary lengths and further said that he was convinced that fourteen million Dutchmen would take a diametrically opposite point of view. Then he became rather unpleasantly personal and threatening. He said it didn’t make the slightest damn difference to anything if he, Dessens, committed suicide on the spot, for the Oostlijk–Flevoland dyke in the vicinity of Lelystad would go at midnight if the government didn’t agree to talk terms by ten o’clock tonight. He then produced a paper with a list of places which, he said, were in immediate danger of going at any moment. He didn’t say whether or not mines had already been placed in those areas – the usual uncertainty technique.