inside the mill and reappeared shortly afterwards with three very large
glasses of brandy in his hands. ‘if we are to continue this discussion
in Verkhoyansk temperatures -what do you mean “Kathleen”?’
‘What I said. How does she strike you?’
‘We hardly know her,’ George said. ‘A lovely child, of course.’
‘There you go again. You and your middle-aged propensities. Vasco?’
‘I agree with George. I’ve never seen -‘ he broke off. ‘She seems kind
and gentle and -‘
‘An accomplished actress? A case-hardened spy?’ Vasco said nothing. ‘The
feminine equivalent of the smiler with the knife under the cloak?’
‘No!”Vasco was vehement.
‘No, indeed. When she was watching that TV announcement tonight, you
weren’t. You were watching her. Not that I blame you, she’s as watchable
as anyone in the Netherlands. But that’s not why you were watching her.
Apropos of nothing, Vasco, I think you’d make an excellent Inspector.
Under, of course, the
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watchful eye of George, whom I hope to persuade to leave his ill-chosen role
of restaurateur.’
‘Me?’ George stared at him as if either or both of them had taken leave of
their senses.
‘You. You’re wasted. Keep La Caracha, of course. Annelise is the best cook
in Amsterdam and you could always hire a couple of thugs, preferably
ex-convicts, to take over your distasteful duties as bouncer. But that’s by
the by. What did her eyes tell you, Vasco?’
‘Her eyes?’ Vasco was momentarily confused.
:Kathleen’s. You were watching her eyes, not her face.’
How did you know -‘
‘A combination of craftiness, cunning, dcviousness and experience. Practice
is all. Fear, distress?’
‘Something like that. Distinctly unhappy. Edgy. Odd thing was, she was
looking like that before the announcement was made. She knew what was
coming or thought or was convinced she knew what was coming and didn’t like
it one little bit.’
‘Another driven person,’ van Effen said.
‘If we’re talking about drivers and driven people,’ George said, ‘you could
also include Maria Agnelli. A great lip-licker is our Maria. We’ve all met
people who lick their lips when they’re in a state of sadistic anticipation
but when you’re in a state your lips don’t tremble. Hers did. Nervous
apprehension. Revulsion, if you like.’
‘I missed that,’ van Effen said.
‘Well, we’ve each of us got only one pair of eyes,’George said reasonably.
‘But you only had to have half an eye to see that Samuelson enjoyed every
moment of the broadcast. So what do we have? Thr’ee driven people. One of
those driven people, Samuelson, is also the driver, going hell-bent, one
nught say, round a serles of hairpin bends down a pretty precipitous
mountain slope. The other two are driven, terrified of going over a
precipice at the next hairpin.’
Vasco said in a complaining voice: ‘You’re going too fast for me. You make
those two girls sound relatively harmless, maybe even nice. Joachim, Joop
and those two other baby-faces in the
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mill here – Baader-Mcinhof, RAF or whatever you call them -they are Dot
nice.’
‘They wouldn’t agree,’ van Effen said. ‘They arc the new Messiahs,
dedicated to the creation of a nobler and better world. It’s mere!y
because of the blind folly of th:s misguided world that assassination and
the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons have become their
stock-in-trade.’
‘And those two girls are their associates and allies,’ Vasco said. He
sounded very bitter indeed. ‘Or do you dip your band into this witches’
brew of murder, mayhem, blackmail, tl-rrorism and theft and bring them
out pure as the driven snow?’
‘A little dusting of soot, perhaps. Camouflage. A little coercion here,
a littic blackmail there, misguided love, ruLisguided loyalty, a warped
code of hondur, a false sentimentality, a judicious mixture of truth and
lies.’
‘ “Conned”, I believe is the word you’re after,’ George said. ‘But they
weren’t conning anyone when they kidnapped Julie.’
‘Of course they were. Sure, they hoped to discourage me, but that was
only the ostensible reason. Romero Agne Ifil would never have thought
that up on his own and as for hurting my sister I’ve already given it as
my opinion that he would be reluctant to tread on a beetle. The orders
came from his brothers Giuseppe and Orlando, that delightful duo I put
away all those years ago.’
‘But they’re in prison.’
Van Effen sighed. ‘Vasco, Vasco. Some of the most powerful and vicious
gangs in the world are controlled by bosses temporarily confined to
maximum-security blocks in prisons. Palermo, Cagliari, Ajaccio,
Marseilles, half a dozen cities in the United States, even London and
Amsterdam and Naples – there’s where the criminal overlords – overlords
still with powers of life or death – hang out in their prison cells. It’s
Romero’s brothers who have the orders for the sending of those menacing
postcards to me, who ordered Julie’s kidnapping. But they’re not after
Julie. I don’t believe they’re even after me. Convicted criminals, oddly
enough, don’t usually harbour grudges against the cops who caught them:
their resentment is reserved for the judges who sentenced them. Italy Is
a classic example of this.’
246
‘If they’re not after you or Julie,’ George said slowly, ‘then my towering
intellect tells me they’re after something else. And to think that
Samuelson had the staggering effrontery to say that Riordan was prepared to
use the devil’s tools to fight the devil.’
‘And I said that one would require a very long spoon to sup with the
devil.’
‘Speaking about the devil,’ Vasco said, ‘and with all due respect, of
course, what the devil are you two talking about?’
‘Ile devil,’ George said. ‘Or devils. Part of the flooding – or
non-flooding of the country – and it may even be a pre-condition – will be
that Romero’s murderous brothers be released from prison or, heaven help
us, be given a free pardon.’
There was a brief hiatus while George returned inside the mill to get some
more anLi-pneumonia specific. When he returned van Effen said: ‘Well, so
much for theory. I d-Link we’ve got everything right except Samuelson’s
ultimate motivation. We’re not even wrong about that – we just don’t know.
Now, practicalities: that shouldn’t take too long. Our options are limited
and, besides, it’s too damned cold.
‘We have agreed that now is not the time to dispose of the three boss
villains here. There are other and non-theoretical reasons. Samuelson may
noi be the C-in-C, although I’m convinced he is. There may be others. He
has to have someone in the vicinity of the lisselmeer to trigger off that
damned nuclear device of theirs. They also told us, unwisely, that this is
only a stop-over HQ. Ile other will be their main one and, almost
certainly, the one from which they intend to make their final strike. We
have to find it so, for the moment, we have to go along with them.
‘I’m more than prepared for the fact that they’ll breach the dykes north
and south of Lelystad and flood the east and south Flevoland areas shordy
after midnight because I’m equally certain that the British are going to
temporize and not throw in the towel before the first bell rings. With any
luck there should be no loss of life – human life, that is: I wouldn’t care
to guess what is going to happen to the livestock. This nuclear device to
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be detonated in the Ijsselmeer tomorrow afternoon presents a more serious
threat – my guess is that it would be in the Markerwaard – and I wouldn’t
much care to be in the vicinity of Marken or Volendam, when it went off.
Nasty things, tidal waves, especially when the height is unpredictable.
Things might even be unpleasant in Hoorn or Amsterdam itself, although I
doubt it. After all, this is meant primarily as a demonstration for the
British cabinet or whatever. The big bang will come later – considering
the steadily worsening conditions that should be at the next high tide
afterwards. Or the one after that. In daylight, anyway.’
Vasco said: ‘Why daylight?’
‘You think they have this helicopter just to make a nonexistent film?
They want it to take them some place a land-based vehicle can’t reach.
An island, perhaps, though that seems unlikely. The point is that it’s
very difficult to land a helicopter in gale force winds although
highly-trained air-sea rescue pilots do it regularly. But to try it in
a gale in total darkness and driving rain – in zero visibility, that is
– is foolhardy to the point of suicide – especially if you happen to have
as part of your cargo some potentially unstable nuclear devices. So,
daylight.’
‘We might be here for a couple of days yet?’ George said.
‘My guess is that we’U be off first light in the morning. They’ll want
to establish themselves in their HQ, near the scene of action. Those
ground-to-ground and ground-to-air missiles -they have been deactivated?’
George nodded. ‘How are you when it comes to deactivating tactical