impossible. This wasn’t helped by the fact that it had two rotors instead of
the customary one.
The passengers were a very mixed bag indeed. Apart from de Graaf and his
justice Minister, Robert Kondstall, there were four cabinet ministers, of
whom only the Minister of Defence could claim any right to be aboard. The
other three, including, incredibly, the Minister of Education, were aboard
only because of the influence they wielded and their curiosity about things
that in no way concerned them. Much the same could have been said about the
senior air force officer, the brigadier and rear-admiral who sat together
behind de Graaf. Flight evaluation purposes had been their claim. The
evaluation tests had been completed a week ago: they were along purely as
rubber-neckers. The same could be said of the two experts from the
Rijkswaterstaat and the two from the Delft Hydraulics laboratory.
Superficially, it would have seemed, their presence could be more than
justified, but as the pilot had firmly stated that he had no intention of
setting his Chinook down in floodwaters and the experts, portly gentlemen
all, had indicated that they had no intention of descending by winch or
rope ladder only to be swept away, it was difficult to see how their
presence could be justified. The handful of journalists and cameramen
aboard could have claimed a right to be there: but even they were to admit
later that their trip had hardly been worthwhile.
The Chinook, flying at no more than two hundred metres and
55
about half a kilometre out to sea, was directly opposite Oosterend when
the sea dyke broke. It was a singularly unspectacular explosion – a little
sound, a little smoke, a little rubble, a little spray – but effective
enough for all that: the Waddenzee was already rushing through the narrow
gap and into the polder beyond. Less than half a khometre from the
entrance to the gap an ocean-going tug was already headed towards the
breach. As the pilot turned his Chinook westwards, presumably to see what
the conditions were like in the polder, de Graaf leaned over to one of the
Rijkswaterstaat experts. He had to shout to make himself heard.
‘How bad is it, Mr Okkerse? How long do you think it will take to seal
off the break?’
‘Well, damn their souls, damn their souls! Villains, devils, monsters!’
Okkerse clenched and unclenched his hands. ‘Monsters, I tell you, sir,
monsters!’ Okkerse was understandably upset. Dykes, the construction,
care and maintenance of, were his raison detre.
‘Yes, yes, monsters,’ de Graaf shouted. ‘How long to fix that?’
‘Moment.’ Okkerse rose, lurched forwards, spoke briefly to the pilot and
lurched his way back to his seat. ‘Got to see it first. Pilot’s taking
us down.’
The Chinook curved round, passing over the waters flooding across the
first reaches of the polder and came to hover some fifteen metres above
the ground and some twenty metres distant. Okkerse pressed his nose
against a window. After only a few seconds he turned away and gave the
wave off signal to the pilot. The Chinook curved away inland.
‘Clever fiends,’ Okkerse shouted. ‘Very clever fiends. It’s only a small
breach and they chose the perfecfmoment for it.’
‘What does the time of day matter?’
‘It matters very much. Rather, the state of the tide matters. They didn’t
pick high tide, because that would have caused heavy flooding and great
destruction.’
‘So they can’t be all that villainous?’
Okkerse didn’t seem to hear him. ‘And they didn’t Pick low tide because
they knew – how, I can’t even guess – that we
56
would do what we are just about to do and that is to block the gap with
the bows of a vessel. Which is what we are about to do with the bows of
that ocean-going tug down there. At low water the tug probably wouldn’t
have found enough water to get close to the dyke.’ He shook his head. ‘I
don’t like any of this.’
‘You think our friends have inside information?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘I suggested that to your friend Jon de Jong. That those people have
either an informant in or somebody employed in the Rijkswaterstaat.’
‘Ridiculous! Impossible! In our organization? Preposterous!’
‘That’s more or less what Jon said. Nothing’s impossible. What makes you
think your people are immune to penetration? Look at the British Secret
Service where security is supposed to be a religion. They’re penetrated
at regular intervals and with painful frequency. If it can happen to them
with all their resources, it’s ten times more likely to happen to you.
That’s beside the point. How long to seal the breach?’
‘The tug should block off about eighty per cent of the flow. The tide’s
going out. We’ve got everything ready to hand -concrete blocks, matting,
divers, steel plates, quick-setting concrete. A few hours. Technically,
a minor job. That’s not what worries me.’
De Graaf nodded, thanked him and resumed his seat beside Kondstaal.
‘Okkerse says it’s no problem, sir. Straightforward repair job.’
‘Didn’t think it would be a problem. The villains said there would be
minimal damage and they seem to mean what they say. That’s not what
worries me.’
‘That’s what Okkerse has just said. The worry is, of course, that they
can carry out their threats with impunity. We’re in an impossible
situation. What would you wager, sir, that we don’t receive another
threat this evening?’
‘Nothing. There’s no point in wondering what those people are up to.
They’ll doubtless let us know in their own good time. And there’s no
point, I suppose, in asking you what progress you’ve made so far.’
57
De Graaf concentrated on lighting his cheroot and said nothing.
Sergeant Westenbrink wore an off-white boiler suit, unbuttoned from throat
to waist to show off a garishly patterned and coloured Hawaiian shirt, a
Dutch bargee’s cap and a circular brass earring. Compared to those among
whom he lived and had his being, Vasco, van Effen thought, looked positively
underdressed but was still outlandish enough to make himself and the two men
sitting opposite him across the table in the booth in the Hunter’s Horn look
the pillars of a respectable society. One of them, clad in an immaculately
cut dark grey suit, was about van Effen’s age, darkly handsome, slightly
swarthy, with tightlycurled black hair, black eyes and, when he smiled –
which was often – what appeared to be perfect teeth. Any Mediterranean
country, van Effen thought, or, at the outside, not more than two
generations removed. His companion, a short, slightly balding man of perhaps
ten or fifteen years older than the other, wore a conservative dark suit and
a hairline moustache, the only really and slightly unusual feature in an
otherwise unremarkable face. Neither of them looked the slightest bit like
a bona fide member of the criminal classes but, then, few successful
criminals ever did.
The younger man – he went, it seemed, by the name of Romero Agnelli, which
might even have been his own -produced an ebony cigarette-holder, a Turkish
cigarette and a gold inlaid onyx lighter; any of which might have appeared
affected or even effeminate on almost any man: with Agnelli, all three
seemed inevitable. He lit the cigarette and smiled at van Effen.
‘You will not take it amiss if I ask one or two questions.’ He had a
pleasant baritone voice and spoke in English. ‘One cannot be too careful
these days.’
‘I cannot be too careful any day. If your question is pertinent, of course
I’ll answer it. If not, I won’t. Am I – ah – accorded the same privilege?’
‘Certainly.’
58
‘Except you can ask more what you consider pertinent questions than I
can.’
‘I don’t quite understand.’
‘Just that I take it that we’re talking on a potential employer employee
relationship. The employer is usually entitled to ask more questions.’
‘Now I understand. I won’t take advantage of that. I must say, Mr
Danilov, that you look more like the employer class yourself.’And indeed,
van Effen’s over-stuffed suit and padded cheeks did lend a certain air
of prosperity. It also made him look almost permanently genial. ‘Am I
mistaken in thinking that you carry a gun?’
‘Unlike you, Mr Agnelli, I’m afraid I’m not in the habit of patronizing
expensive tailors.’
‘Guns make me nervous.’The disarming smile didn’t show a trace of
nervousness.
‘Guns make me nervous, too. That’s why I carry one in case I meet a man
who is carrying one. That makes me very nervous.’ Van Effen smiled,
removed his Biretta from its shoulder holster, clicked out the magazine,
handed it to Agnelli and replaced his pistol. ‘That do anything for your
nerves?’
Agnelli smiled. ‘All gone.’
‘Then they shouldn’t be.’ Van Effen reached below the table and came up
with a tiny automatic. ‘A Lilliput, a toy in many ways, but lethal up to
twenty feet in the hands of a man who can fire accurately.’ He tapped out