journalese, this will be manna to Samuelson, a big plus, an image that
puts him in line for tabloid canonization. No matter what he’s done or
is threatening to do, popular sympathy is going to swing behind him and
make it all the easier for his demands to be granted. The whole world
loves a reformed rogue, a bandit with a heart of gold. A toast to the
Robin Hood of Amsterdam.’
‘This I do believe,’ George said. ‘Among the other accomplishments that
you don’t know I have, is a smattering of Yiddish. Not much, not even a
working knowledge, but a smattering. I wondered what senseless
instructions he was trying to give in Yiddish to this fellow Paderiwski
in Amsterdam. I don’t wonder any more. It makes sense.’
‘Lastly, of course, there’s the Dutch reverence for the guilder. What
praise, people will say, can be toolaigh for a man who spurns twenty
million guilders – the fact that he doesn’t have it and probably wouldn’t
have got it anyway is quite irrelevant – at the sight of a tear-drop in
the comer of the eye of a lovely
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maiden. The twenty million, admittedly, is added to the government’s bill,
but who ever cared about robbing a government. You still think, Vasco, that
Samuelson was motivated only by humanitarian considerations?’
‘When you put it that way, I have to admit that I don’t. He has to be what
you say – a crafty conniving villain. Well, it’s all very well you having
convinced me. It’s an unfortunate fact that fourteen million other Dutchmen
didn’t hear you. I’m convinced that they’re going to stay convinced to the
contrary.’
‘Not all of them. Give some of them time and they’ll work it out. The great
majority won’t. And that’s what the frightening thing is about Samuelson.
It took me quite a time to figure out the angles here and I’m in the heart
of this whole messy business. Samuelson’s got a computer mind. He did it
all on his feet, within seconds and it would seem automatically, although
of course it wasn’t automatic at all. Man’s brilliant. And he’s highly
dangerous. It would behove us to have a very long spoon when we’re supping
with Samuelson.’
‘Back to the devil again, is that it?’George said. ‘He’s the key. Nothing
else fits the lock. He’s the one who says that Riordan is prepared to use
the devil’s tools to fight the devil. I wonder if Riordan uses a long spoon
to sup with Samuelson. It must cost thousands of.dollars a day to run this
operation. Maybe tens of thousands. Agnelli hasn’t got that kind of money
and I doubt whether Riordan ever earned a penny in his life.’
‘Samuelson beyond doubt. The paymaster.’
‘Pity we’re in no position to check with Interpol.’
‘Wouldn’t do us-any good even if we were. If he’s as clever as I think he
is. Interpol will never have heard of him. Interpol simply has no idea as
to who the world’s outstanding criminals are. That’s why they’re
outstanding. May not even have a criminal past at all – I say criminal past
as distinct from criminal record. He’ll have no record. And perhaps, as I
say, no past. He may even be what Uncle Arthur suggested he was – a bloated
plutocrat, a man who has made his immense fortune in oil or shipping or
something of the kind.’
‘Then we would have heard of him.’
‘We may or may not have heard of him – under another name,
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of course. May not even be a photograph of him in existence. Some of the
world’s wealthiest men are never photographed.’
George said: ‘If he’s as wealthy as we think he may be, why is he trying
to extract mori from other sources?’
‘Show. I’m convinced that Samuelson neither wants nor needs money. But
for all I know he may have persuaded his partners that his funds are
drying up and he’s now making a show about money to divert attention from
the fact that money is of no value to him and that his interests lie
elsewhere. Agnelli makes no secret of the fact that he’s very interested
in money and this may be Samuelson’s way of keeping him happy. He has a
large staff to keep happy and they’ll be keenly interested in seeing
Samuelson displaying a keen interest in money. He seems to need us – for
what precise purpose we don’t yet know, we may well be here on only a
contingency basis – but we need money too. And Riordan, above all, has
to be kept happy, for Riordan above all needs unholy money to achieve his
holy purposes.’
‘Unholy money for unholy purposes,’ George said. ‘Split mind. Dichotomy.
There must be something in this IrishAmerican connection. We know there
are men who are willing to trade heroin for bags of gold to help a
so-called worthy cause. Purblindness. That the word?’
‘Something like that. In medical terms, tunnels as opposed to peripheral
vision. We have to accept that it’s an illness and try to treat it as
best we can.’
‘How do we go about treating this ailment? The good doctor has something
on his mind?’ Despite his vast bulk George shivered in the bitter wind.
‘A prescription? A nostrum?’
‘Too late for medicine.’
‘Surgery? I wouldn’t even know which end of a scalpel to hold.’
‘You don’t have to. In the best medical parlance, surgery, at this
moment, is contra-indicated.’
George cleared his throat delicately, which is no easy thing to do in a
gale-force wind. ‘You have suddenly developed a new-found regard for the
well-being of murderous villains?
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Criminals who are prepared to drown God knows how many thousands of our
fellow countrymen?’
‘No such sea-chan.ge, George. I know they have their quota of hard men and
psychopathic nut-cases around here but do you seriously doubt for a moment
that we could kill Riordan, Samuelson and Agnelli and get the girls away
unharmed?’
‘I know we could – I take back my ludicrous suggestion about your tender
heart. Tungsten steel, more like.’
Vasco’s expression didn’t exactly register shock but it did hold a certain
amount of apprehension and disbelief.
‘You’re a policeman. Sir. Sworn to uphold the law. I mean, give them a fair
trial and hang them in the morning.’
‘I’m my own court of law and I’d shoot them down like wild dogs if I
thought it would solve anything but it wouldn’t. Two reasons – one
psychological, one practicall.
‘The psychological – curiosity, nosiness if you like. I am not convinced
that those three are ordinary criminals. I am not convinced that Romero
Agnelli is the murderous, ruthless killer we think he is. He bears no
resemblance to his two brothers I put behind bars, who were Grade A vicious
sadists. The fact that he hasn’t laid a finger on either Julie or Annemarie
helps bear that out. Or Riordan. He’s no psychopath. Loony as a nut or
nutty as a loon and a demagogue of some note – but only an occasional
demagogue. But being loony doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re
certifiable: there are quite a number of people tidied up –
institutionalized, as they say – in lunatic asylums who are convinced that
they are the only sane people around and that there exist great numbers of
people, those responsible for wars, hunger, diseases, genocide, heroin
pushers and those who talk glibly of nuclear annihilation, not to mention
a few other trivial matters, who should be where they are, and who’s to say
they’re not right?’
‘And then there’s the faccor of demagoguery.’
‘Dema what?’ Vasco said.
‘People who are supposed to go in for ranting and raving. A word that has
fallen into disuse. A word associated with the likes of Hitler, Mussolini
and a few dozen nationalistic leaders in the world today. There are good
demagogues and bad ones.
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Originally it meant people who were opposed to established rules of law,
usually bad rules. Christ, if you Eke, could have been called a demagogue.
Riordan, I admit, is no member of the Holy Trinity, but I believe him to
be a sincere and honest demagogue, however misguided. I do not believe him
to be evil.
‘Samuelson is the nigger in the woodpile – if one can use such racist
language in these days. He’s the real enigma. You know that he’s
English?’
Both men shook their heads.
‘He is. A wealthy man. Obviously, a very wealthy man. Sure, rich men are
normally under a compulsion to become even richer, but there’s a limit
even to that and I believe Samuelson has reached that limit. As sane and
stable a man as you could ever hope to meet. Beneath that bonhomie and
geniality I think he’s an obsessed man. A driven man. I would like to
know what drives him. What do you think of Kathleen?’
Both men stared at him, then George said: ‘Wait a minute.’ He disappeared