Алистер Маклин - Floodgate

‘Not me,’ George said. ‘I’m staying here. Your loading supervisor, remember. When do we begin the transfer?’

‘Of course, of course. Half an hour, say. Leonardo, we are neglecting our guests.’

While Leonardo proceeded to remedy the neglect, van Effen looked at Samuelson. He bore no resemblance to Kathleen but that meant nothing: she probably took after her Irish mother. Van Effen didn’t doubt his sister’s conviction.

The same announcer, whose depth of depression seemed to be matched only by his remarkable stamina, appeared on screen just after midnight.

‘It is with regret that we have to announce that we will be unable to show live the threatened breaches of the Flevoland dykes when and if they occur. It is impossible for our TV cameras to operate in conditions of total darkness and torrential rain. We are, however, in constant radiotelephone touch with a number of observers and will inform you at once as soon as any positive news is at hand.’ His image faded from the screen.

‘Pity,’ Samuelson said. He seemed in no way disappointed. ‘It would have been a stirring spectacle. Still, we shouldn’t have long to wait.’

They had very little time to wait. Less than a minute elapsed before the announcer re-appeared, replacing a phone on his desk.

‘The Oostlijk–Flevoland and Zuidslijk–Flevoland dykes were breached simultaneously some ninety seconds ago. Both breaches appear to be fairly massive but the appalling weather conditions make it impossible to gauge their extent or the severity of the flooding. The authorities say they must wait until the first light of dawn before the scope of the disaster can be accurately assessed. We shall, however, be on the air every hour on the hour to give you what fresh details are available.’ He paused to look at a sheet of paper that had just been handed to him.

‘A phone call has just been received from the FFF. The message reads: “Markerwaard 2 p.m. today.” ’

Two men were to play particularly important parts in the morning hours of that day.

One of those was Sergeant Druckmann, who was accompanied by two other officers. All three were in plain clothes. Their unmarked police car was mud-covered and slightly battered. It carried an unusual amount of electronic equipment, two separate sets of radio transceivers and a radar tracking device, so much, in fact, that, unusually, it was located on the floor just in front of the right-hand rear seat. The operator sat on the left-hand rear seat with a large-scale road map on his knees. The equipment was, for the moment, covered by a carelessly thrown rug. The car had been in position since six-thirty that morning in a side road just north of Gorinchen.

Two other unmarked police cars, similarly equipped, were within a few miles of them. But it was Druckmann’s car that was to matter that morning.

The other man to matter was one Gropious, dressed in the uniform of a corporal in the Dutch army and sitting beside a private at the wheel of a small Dutch army troop carrier. Two other soldiers sat in the rear. Nobody would have used a photograph of Gropious on a recruitment poster for the Dutch army. His uniform was shabby and rather wrinkled and his long blond locks fell every which way under a hat that was more than slightly askew: the Dutch, for some reason best known to themselves, permit their soldiers to grow their hair to a length that would have had any British soldier confined to barracks for a fortnight. But the blond locks were not his own.

The uniform, like the wig, was a fake. Gropious was undeniably a soldier but no corporal: Lieutenant-Colonel Gropious, of the Dutch army commandos, was a particularly tough specimen of a particularly tough and élite corps.

The 7 a.m. broadcast that morning – the first breakfast-time broadcast in Dutch TV history – had been at once gloomy and slightly reassuring. Hundreds of square miles of the Flevolands had been inundated but to no great depth. As far as was known, no lives had been lost: the loss in livestock could not be estimated until later in the day. Hundreds of engineers were already pouring even more hundreds of tons of boulders and quick-setting concrete between hastily erected and, it was admitted, inadequately secured vertical steel plates. At best, it was also admitted, this could do no more than slightly reduce the effects of the next high tide and operations would have to cease at least three hours before that.

In the living-room of the windmill, where some dozen people were having breakfast, Samuelson was in high good humour.

‘Exactly as predicted, ladies and gentlemen, exactly as predicted.’ He looked in turn at van Effen, George and Vasco. ‘I keep my word, do I not, gentlemen? Maximum psychological impact, yet not a life lost. Things are going our way.’ He paused and listened to the thunderous drumming of the rain on the verandah, gradually lost his expression of good humour, drummed his fingers on the table, looked at Daniken and said: ‘What do you think?’

‘I don’t like it much,’ Daniken said. He rose and walked out to the verandah, closing the door behind him. He was back inside ten seconds.

‘The wind’s about the same,’ he said. ‘That is, gale force. I could fly in that. But the rain is the heaviest I’ve ever seen, even worse than the onset of the monsoon in India. Visibility is zero. I can’t fly in that and keep our flight plan as it is.’

‘You mean you won’t fly?’ Samuelson said. ‘You refuse to fly?’ Samuelson didn’t seem unduly perturbed.

‘Not even if you ordered me. I will not be the person who will be responsible for the end of all you wish for. I am the pilot and refuse to be responsible for the deaths of twenty-two people. Which I will be if we stick to our flight plans. Mass suicide is not for me.’

Van Effen cleared his throat delicately. ‘I am normally, as you know, the most incurious of persons, but I don’t like this talk of mass suicide, not least because it involves me. Is the need to leave on time a matter of complete urgency?’

‘Not really.’ It was Romero Agnelli who answered. ‘Mr Samuelson does the honour of leaving all the organization to me.’

‘And exceptionally good you are at it, too.’

‘Thank you.’ Agnelli smiled almost apologetically. ‘I’m just a stickler for timetables.’

‘I don’t think you need to worry too much about timetables,’ van Effen said. ‘I know this country, you people don’t. I’m sure George and the Lieutenant will confirm that downpours of this extraordinary order rarely last more than an hour or so, never as long as two. As I am in this unusually questioning mood, what’s all this about flight paths or flight plans or whatever?’

‘No reason why you shouldn’t know,’ Samuelson said. He was obviously relieved by van Effen’s statement and was in an expansive mood. ‘Daniken has radio-filed a flight plan to Valkenburg, near Maastricht, and this has been accepted. We are, today, filming a scene in hilly countryside and the only hilly countryside in the Netherlands is in the province of Limburg where Valkenburg lies. Romero has even had the foresight to book us hotel accommodation there.’

‘Where, of course, you have no intention of going.’ Van Effen nodded his head twice. ‘Neat, very neat. You take off for Limburg, which lies in a roughly south-south-easterly direction, then Mr Daniken descends and alters course. The Netherlands is a very flat country so one has to fly very low to keep beneath the radar screen. As a pilot myself, I know that altimeters are notoriously inaccurate at very low altitudes. It wouldn’t do us a great deal of good if a sudden down-draught were to bring us into contact with a block of high-rise flats or even one of those massive TV antennaes which are such a feature of this country. Mr Daniken has to see where he is going and I have to say that I am in one hundred per cent agreement with Mr Daniken.’