I made my way back to the main road, crossed it and climbed up the sloping grass-covered dyke until I could look out over the Zuider Zee. A fresh breeze sparkled the waters blue and white under the late afternoon sun, but, scenically, one couldn’t say much more for that stretch of water, for the encompassing land was so low that it appeared, when it appeared at all, as no more than a flat dark bar on the horizon. The only distinctive feature anywhere to be seen was an island to the north-east, about a mile off-shore.
This was the island of Huyler and it wasn’t even an island. It had been, but some engineers had built a causeway out to it from the mainland to expose the islanders more fully to the benefits of civilization and the tourist trade. Along the top of this causeway a tarmac highway had been laid.
Nor did the island itself even deserve the description of distinctive. It was so low-lying and flat that it seemed that a wave of any size must wash straight over it, but its flatness was relieved by scattered farm-houses, several big Dutch barns and, on the western shore of the island, facing towards the mainland, a village nestling round a tiny harbour. And, of course, it had its canals. That was all there was to be seen, so I left, regained the road, walked along till I came to a bus stop and caught the first bus back to Amsterdam.
I elected for an early dinner, for I did not expect to have much opportunity to eat later that night and I had the suspicion that whatever the fates had in store for me that night had better not be encountered on a full stomach. And then I went to bed, for I didn’t anticipate having any sleep later that night either.
The travel alarm awoke me at half-past midnight. I didn’t feel particularly rested. I dressed carefully in a dark suit, navy roll-neck jersey, dark rubber-soled canvas shoes and a dark canvas jacket. The gun I wrapped in a zipped oilskin bag and jammed into the shoulder-holster. Two spare magazines went into a similar pouch and I secured those in a zipped pocket of the canvas jacket. I looked longingly at the bottle of Scotch on the side-board and decided against it. I left.
I left, as was by now second nature to me, by the fire-escape. The street below, as usual, was deserted and I knew that nobody followed me as I left the hotel. It wasn’t necessary for anyone to follow me for those who wished me ill knew where I was going and where they could expect to find me. I knew they knew. What I hoped was that no one knew that I knew.
I elected to walk because I didn’t have the car any more and because I had become allergic to taxis of Amsterdam. The streets were empty, at least the streets I chose were. It seemed a very quiet and peaceful city.
I reached the docks area, located myself, and moved on till I stood in the dark shadow of a storage shed. The luminous dial of my watch told me that it was twenty minutes to two. The wind had increased in strength and the air had turned much colder, but there was no rain about although there was rain in the air. I could smell it over the strong nostalgic odours of sea and tar and ropes and all the other things that make dockside areas smell the same the world over. Tattered dark clouds scudded across the only fractionally less dark sky, occasionally revealing a glimpse of a pale high half-moon, more often obscuring it, but even when the moon was hidden the darkness was never absolute, for above there were always rapidly changing patches of starlit sky.
In the brighter intervals I looked out across the harbour that stretched away into first dimness and then nothingness. There were literally hundreds of barges to be seen in this, one of the great barge harbours of the world, ranging in size from tiny twenty-footers to the massive Rhine barges, all jammed in a seemingly inextricable confusion. The confusion, I knew, was more apparent than real. Close packed the barges undoubtedly were but, although it would call for the most intricate manoeuvring, each barge had, in fact, access to a narrow sea lane, which might intersect with two or three progressively larger lanes before reaching the open water beyond. The barges were connected to land by a series of long wide floating gangways, which in turn had other and narrower gangways attached at right angles to them.
The moon went behind a cloud. I moved out of the shadows on to one of the main central gangways, my rubber shoes quite soundless on the wet wood, and even had I been clumping along in hob-nailed boots I question whether anyone — other than those who were ill-intentioned to me — would have paid any heed, because although all the barges were almost certainly inhabited by their crews and in many cases their crews and families, there were only one or two scattered cabin lights to be seen among all the hundreds of craft lying there: and apart from the faint threnody of the wind and the soft creaking and rubbing as the wind made the barges work gently at their moorings, the silence was total. The barge harbour was a city in itself and the city was asleep.
I’d traversed about a third of the length of the main gangway when the moon broke through. I stopped and looked round.
About fifty yards behind me two men were walking purposefully and silently towards me. They were but shadows, silhouettes, but I could see that the silhouettes of their right arms were longer than those of their left arms. They were carrying something in their right hands. I wasn’t surprised to see those objects in their hands just as I hadn’t been surprised to see the men themselves.
I glanced briefly to my right. Two more men were advancing steadily from land on the adjacent paralleling gangway to the right. They were abreast with the two on my own gangway.
I glanced to the left. Two more of them, two more moving dark silhouettes. I admired their co-ordination.
I turned and kept on walking towards the harbour. As I went, I extracted the gun from its holster, removed the waterproof covering, zipped up the covering again and replaced it in a zipped pocket. The moon went behind a cloud. I began to run, and as I did so I glanced over my shoulder. The three pairs of men had also broken into a run. I made another five yards and glanced over my shoulder again. The two men on my gangway had stopped and were lining up their guns on me, or seemed to be, because it was difficult to see in the starlight, but a moment later I was convinced they had for narrow red flames licked out in the darkness although there was no sound of shots, which was perfectly understandable for no man in his right senses was going to upset hundreds of tough Dutch, German and Belgian bargees if he could possibly help it. They appeared, however, to have no objection to upsetting me. The moon came out again and I started to run a second time.
The bullet that hit me did more damage to my clothes than it did to me although the swift burning pain on the outside of my upper right arm made me reach up involuntarily to clasp it. Enough was enough. I swerved off the main gangway, jumped on to the bows of a barge that was moored by a small gangway at right angles and ran silently along the deck till I got in the shelter of the wheelhouse aft. Once in shelter, I edged a cautious eye round the corner.
The two men on the central gangway had stopped and were making urgent sweeping motions to their friends on the right, indicating that I should be outflanked and, more likely than not, shot in the back. They had, I thought, very limited ideas about what constituted fair play and sportsmanship: but there was no questioning their efficiency. Quite plainly, if they were going to get me at all — and I rated their chances as good — it was going to be by this encircling or outflanking method and it would obviously be a very good thing for me if I could disabuse them of this idea as soon as I could; so I temporarily ignored the two men on the central gangway, assuming, and correctly, I hoped, that they would remain where they were and wait for the outflankers to catch me unawares, and turned round to face the left gangway.
Five seconds and they were in view, not running, but walking deliberately and peering into the moon-shadows cast by the wheelhouses and cabins of the barges, which was a very foolhardy or just simply foolish thing to do because I was in the deepest shadow I could find while they, by contrast, were almost brutally exposed by the light of the half-moon and I saw them long before they ever saw me. I doubt whether they ever saw me. One of them, for a certainty, did not, for he never saw anything again: he must have been dead before he struck the gangway and slid with a curious absence of noise, no more than a sibilant splash, into the harbour. I lined up for a second shot, but the other man had reacted very quickly indeed and flung himself backwards out of my line of sight before I could squeeze the trigger again. It occurred to me, for no reason at all, that my sportsmanship was on an even lower level than theirs, but I was in the mood for sitting ducks that night.