Алистер Маклин - Floodgate

‘Thank you. I’m sure he would. If he’s not asleep, that is.’

Vasco was not asleep. He was comfortably seated in a small armchair that he had brought into the bathroom. Using the pencil beam of the variably hooded torch which was an indispensable item of his travelling equipment, van Effen handed Vasco the glass.

‘Compliments of Mr Samuelson.’

‘Very civil of him. Well, it’s eight-twenty now and the same character is still on watch. Judging from his performance with that bottle he must be half sloshed by this time. Like me, as you can see, he’s found an armchair. I’m surprised he hasn’t dropped off by this time. Anyway, I’ll keep watch until they change guard. The toddy will help sustain me through the long watches of the night.’

Van Effen gave him a brief resumé of the Ministry of Defence’s statement and the FFF’s reply, promised that he and George would be back by nine o’clock and left.

He returned to the living-room to find that the group seated in armchairs had been considerably depleted.

‘The Lieutenant seems to have benefited from that first toddy. He doesn’t sound quite so hoarse. Very drowsy but not too drowsy to attack the second toddy. His thanks. And dear me, dear me, the lovely young ladies have departed. Shame. But I’m not surprised. They were hardly what you might call gay and vivacious at the table tonight.’

‘They said they were tired,’ Samuelson said. Julie, van Effen knew, had not been tired. She was a notoriously poor air traveller and the thought of travelling in a helicopter – she’d never been in one in her life – must have been a nightmare. ‘Whatever have they done to make them tired?’

‘Nothing. They’re just nervous and apprehensive.’

‘Just like George and myself.’

Samuelson surveyed him dispassionately. ‘I doubt whether you and your big friend have ever been nervous and apprehensive in your lives.’

‘There’s always a first time. And where’s the holy father?’

‘You know the Reverend doesn’t drink. But it’s not that. Every night before he goes to sleep he spends an hour in meditation and prayer.’

Van Effen said sombrely: ‘Let’s hope he includes in his prayers the souls of the victims of his nuclear toys.’

The silence that followed, of which van Effen seemed to be quite unaware, was, to say the least, embarrassing. It was Romero, in a clear attempt to break the silence, who said hastily: ‘Speaking of those nuclear toys, as you call them, I told you earlier I could show them to you. As an explosives expert, I thought you might be interested –’

‘Not I.’ Van Effen waved an indifferent hand. ‘Same old principles – need-to-know and would it help any if I saw them?’ He was aware of George’s momentary slight frown but knew that no one else had seen it. Van Effen paused, as if something had just occurred to him, then said: ‘Someone has to be able to trigger off those nuclear devices. Don’t tell me it’s Joop and his psychopathic pals.’

‘It is indeed, as you say in your disparaging fashion, Joop and his psychopathic friends.’ The words held a rebuke but the tone didn’t: it required no telepathy to realize that Samuelson shared van Effen’s opinion of the Red Army Faction. ‘When they got hold of those devices in Metnitz, they also obtained copies of the operating instructions. One would have been useless without the other.’

‘Remind me not to be within five kilometres of Joop and company when they arm either of those devices. A palm-reader once told me I had a long life-line but she could have been wrong. How is this device in the Markerwaard to be detonated?’

‘Pre-set timing device.’

‘And the two other devices?’

‘By radio control.’

‘God help us all. Make that ten kilometres.’

‘You don’t trust them?’

‘I wouldn’t trust Joop and his friends with a firework. They are fanatics and fanatics have unstable minds. Unstable hands also, probably. No, I don’t trust them. Neither, I suspect, do you.’

‘You still wouldn’t like to see those devices?’

‘I presume you’re not lunatic enough to keep those in the mill.’

‘They’re a kilometre away in a secure underground cellar.’

‘I’ve no intention of going out in that monsoon. And though you might not be lunatic I think you’re guilty of a grave error of judgement. To detonate any device by radio doesn’t call for the mind of an Einstein but it can be tricky and a job for experts. Joop and his band of trusty experts have never detonated a charge in their lives.’

‘And how would you know that?’

‘That’s being simple-minded. Why did you have to call me in for the palace job?’

‘True, true. Would your scruples, or your objections to monsoons, prevent you from having a look at the operating instructions? We have them in this room.’

Van Effen looked at him then looked away. The TV was on, showing a weirdly dressed quartet who were presumably singing, but, perhaps fortunately, in silence: the volume control had been turned off. Samuelson and his friends were presumably expecting another newscast. Van Effen looked back at Samuelson.

‘Scruples? What you have in mind, of course, is that we should do your work – your dirty work – for you instead of those deranged amateurs. Do you know what would happen if those explosions resulted in the deaths of any citizens?’

‘Yes. You would ensure that I joined the departed. I wouldn’t like that at all.’

‘Let’s see the plans.’

Romero Agnelli removed a couple of papers and handed one each to van Effen and George. George was the first to speak and that only after a few seconds.

‘This isn’t a half-kilo device. It’s only for the equivalent of fifty tons of TNT.’

Samuelson came very close to smirking. ‘The equivalent of ten tons would have suited me equally well. But it’s useful to exaggerate the terror potential, don’t you think?’

George didn’t say what he thought. After less than a minute he looked up and spoke again. ‘Only moderately complicated and very precise. Two snags. The first is that Joop speaks fractured English and people who have difficulty in speaking only the simplest form of a language usually are pretty hopeless when it comes to reading or writing it. The second snag is the jargon.’

‘Jargon?’

‘Technical terms,’ van Effen said. ‘They might as well be in Sanskrit as far as Joop is concerned.’

‘Well?’

Van Effen handed his paper back to Agnelli. ‘We’ll have to think and talk about it.’

Samuelson tried, not altogether successfully, to smother the smile of a man who knows he has won his point. For the next minute or two they remained, sipping their brandies in comparative and apparently companionable silence, when the singers, if such they were, slowly faded from the screen to be replaced by the now familiar figure of the tragedy-stricken newscaster.

‘The government have just announced that they have just received two more demands from the FFF. The first of those concerned the demand for a hundred and twenty million guilders and how it is to be transferred. The government does not say whether it will accede to the request and refuses to discuss the nature of the transfer. The second demand is for the release of two prisoners who were imprisoned several years ago for crimes of extreme violence. The government refuses to disclose the names of the prisoners.

‘We would remind viewers that we shall be on the air again at midnight to find out whether the FFF have, in fact, breached the Flevoland dykes.’

Agnelli switched off the set. ‘Satisfactory,’ Samuelson said. He was actually rubbing his hands together. ‘Eminently satisfactory.’

‘Seems like a pretty silly and stupid broadcast to me,’ van Effen said.