Alistair MacLean - Puppet on a Chain

The assistant manager rushed past me and I followed more leisurely. By the time I reached the lift the assistant manager was on his knees, bent over the sprawled-out form of the dead waiter.

'My goodness,' I said. 'Is he ill, do you think?'

'Ill? Ill?' The assistant manager glared at me. 'Look at the way his neck is. The man's dead.'

'Good God, I do believe you're right.' I stooped and peered more closely at the waiter. 'Haven't I seen this man somewhere before?'

'He was your floor-waiter,' the assistant manager said, which is not an easy remark to make with your teeth clamped together.

'I thought he looked familiar. In the midst of life — ' I shook my head sadly. 'Where's the restaurant?'

'Where's the — where's the — '

'Never mind,' I said soothingly, 'I can see you're upset. I'll find it myself.'

The restaurant of the Hotel Rembrandt may not be, as the owners claim, the best in Holland, but I wouldn't care to take them to court on a charge of misrepresentation. From the caviare to the fresh out-of-season strawberries — I wondered idly whether to charge this in the expense account as entertainment or bribes — the food was superb. I thought briefly, but not guiltily, about Maggie and Belinda, but such things had to be. The red plush sofa on which I was sitting was the ultimate in dining comfort, so I leaned back in it, lifted my brandy glass and said, 'Amsterdam!'

'Amsterdam!' said Colonel Van de Graaf. The Colonel, deputy head of the city's police, had joined me, without invitation, only five minutes previously. He was sitting in a large chair which seemed too small for him. A very broad man of only medium height, he had iron-grey hair, a deeply-trenched, tanned face, the unmistakable cast of authority and an air about him of almost dismaying competence. He went on dryly: 'I'm glad to see you enjoying yourself, Major Sherman, after such an, eventful day.'

'Gather ye rosebuds while you may, Colonel — life is all too short. What events?'

'We have been unable to discover very much about this man, James Duclos, who was shot and killed at the airport today.' A patient man and not one to be easily drawn, was Colonel de Graaf. 'We know only that he arrived from England three weeks ago, that he checked into the Hotel Schiller for one night and then disappeared. He seems, Major Sherman, to have been meeting your plane. Was this, one asks, just coincidence?'

'He was meeting me.' De Graaf was bound to find out sooner or later. 'One of my men. I think he must have got hold of a forged police pass from somewhere — to get past immigration, I mean.'

'You surprise me.' He sighed heavily and didn't seem in the least surprised. 'My friend, it makes it very difficult for us if we don't know those things. I should have been told about Duclos. As we have instructions from Interpol in Paris to give you every possible assistance, don't you think it would be better if we can work together? We can help you — you can help us.' He sipped some brandy. His grey eyes were verv direct. 'One would assume that this man of yours had information — and now we have lost it.'

'Perhaps. Well, let's start by you helping me. Can you see if you have a Miss Astrid Lemay on your files? Works in a night-club but she doesn't sound Dutch and she doesn't look Dutch so you may have something on her.'

The girl you knocked down at the airport? How do you know she works in a night-club.'

'She told me,' I said unblushingly.

He frowned. 'The airport officials made no mention of any such remark to me.'

The airport officials are a bunch of old women.'

'Ah!' It could have meant anything. 'This information I can obtain. Nothing more?'

'Nothing more.'

'One other little event we have not referred to.'

Tell me.'

'The sixth-floor waiter- — an unsavoury fellow about whom we know a little — was not one of your men?'

'Colonel!'

'I didn't for a moment think he was. Did you know that he died of a broken neck?'

'He must have had a very heavy fall,' I said sympathetically.

De Graaf drained his brandy and stood up.

'We are not acquainted with you. Major Sherman, but you have been too long in Interpol and gained too much of a European reputation for us not to be acquainted with your methods. May I remind you that what goes in Istanbul and Marseilles and Palermo — to name but a few places — does not go in Amsterdam?'

'My word,' I said. 'You are well informed.'

'Here, in Amsterdam, we are all subject to the law.' He might not have heard me. 'Myself included. You are no exception.'

'Nor would I expect to be,' I said virtuously. 'Well then, co-operation. The purpose of my visit. When can I talk to you?'

'My office, ten o'clock.' He looked around the restaurant without enthusiasm. 'Here is hardly the time and place.'

I raised an eyebrow.

'The Hotel Rembrandt,' said de Graaf heavily, 'is a listening-post of international renown.'

'You astonish me,' I said.

De Graaf left. I wondered why the hell he thought I'd chosen to stay in the Hotel Rembrandt.

Colonel de Graaf's office wasn't in the least like the Hotel Rembrandt. It was a large enough room, but bleak and bare and functional, furnished mainly with steel-grey filing cabinets, a steel-grey table and steel-grey seats which were as hard as steel. But at least the decor had the effect of making you concentrate on the matter on hand: there was nothing to distract the mind or eye. De Graaf and I, after ten minutes preliminary discussion, were concentrating, although I think it came more easily to de Graaf than it did to me. I had lain awake to a late hour the previous night and am never at my. best at ten a.m. on a cold and blustery morning.

'All drugs,' de Graaf agreed. 'Of course we're concerned with all drugs — opium, cannabis, amphetamine, LSD, STP, cocaine, amyl acetate — you name it, Major Sherman, and we're concerned in it. They all destroy or lead on to destruction. But in this instance we are confining ourselves to the really evil one — heroin. Agreed?'

'Agreed.' The deep incisive voice came from the doorway. I turned round and looked at the man who stood there, a tall man in a well-cut dark business suit, cool penetrating grey eyes, a pleasant face that could stop being pleasant very quickly, very professional-looking. There was no mistaking his profession. Here was a cop and not one to be taken lightly either.

He closed the door and walked across to me with the light springy step of a man much younger than one in his middle forties, which he was at least. He put out his hand and said: 'Van Gelder. I've heard a lot about you, Major Sherman.'

I thought this one over, briefly but carefully. decided to refrain from comment. I smiled and shook his hand.

'Inspector van Gelder,' de Graaf said. 'Head of our narcotics bureau. He will be working with you, Sherman. He will offer you the best co-operation possible.'

'I sincerely hope we can work well together.' Van Gelder smiled and sat down. 'Tell me, what progress your end? Do you think you can break the supply ring in England?'

'I think we could. It's a highly organized distributive pipeline, very highly integrated with almost no cut-offs — and it's because of that that we have been able to identify dozens of their pushers and the half-dozen or so main distributors.'

'You could break the ring but you won't. You're leaving it strictly alone?'

'What else, Inspector? We break them up and the next distribution ring will be driven so far underground that we'll never find it. As it is, we can pick them up when and if we want to. The thing we really want to find out is how the damned stuff gets in — and who's supplying it.'

'And you think — obviously, or you wouldn't be here — that the supplies come from here? Or hereabouts?'