Assignment - Lowlands (11 page)

“Work on it,-” he said. “And I’ll work on Jan.”

They were back in Amschellig Harbor by six o’clock. Jan Gunther revived quickly, and by the time they moored, he was at the wheel again, apologizing in his clumsy manner for having been so careless as to let his head get in the way of the swinging boom. Trinka, however, was strangely silent until they tied up.

“Don’t you have any idea whose vessel that was?” Durell asked. “You’ve been here a week or more. Didn’t you recognize the yacht?”

“No, there are several of that size,” she said. “And I couldn’t see the name on the transom. I’m afraid I’m not as good an operative as I thought. The slightest crisis, and I came apart.”

“Not at all.”

“You could not depend on me again.”

“I may have to,” he said, smiling.

“But I have lost confidence in myself.” Then she brightened. “Perhaps it is only hunger now. It is almost dinner time, and I am absolutely starved!”

“Sorry, you’ll have to buy your own meal. I’m due back at the hotel for a date with Julian Wilde, remember?” 

Then she returned to the problem, like a puppy worrying a bone. “But
why
should anyone want to drown us, when we are following Wilde’s instructions?”

He had several ideas about that, but he said nothing. He helped Jan check the bilges and strakes of the
Suzanne
, where they had been grazed, but the sloop had no leaks, and aside from an ugly scar in its paint the little boat was unharmed. Durell hurried through the examination, said his goodbyes, and left for the hotel.

He arrived five minutes late. The fog still persisted, and the chill dampness blowing from the North Sea had driven the tennis players indoors. There was no message for him at the desk. The dining room was filled with Dutch appetites, but he skipped eating there, and ordered a Javanese dinner sent up from the rijsttafel, with a bottle of Dutch gin.

Despite the afternoon, he was aware of enormous relief. He felt physically better. The slight symptoms of malaise that had worried his morale earlier were gone. He did not carry the plague. When he entered his room, closing the door behind him, he saw at once that someone else had been here.

It could have been the maid who had moved his flight bag, but he did not think so. It had been carried across the room and now sat at a right angle to the right upper leg of the bed.

John O’Keefe had been here.

Durell went to the bag and opened it and found the sealed envelope O’Keefe had left for him. In the darkening light that came off the fog-bound, he flipped through the dossiers O’Keefe had enclosed. But first he read the brief note.

Cajun—am bumbling about like a tourist after 

several objects sunk at sea. Am scared to death.

Are you well? Claire will never forgive you for 

ruining our holiday. But she loves you. John.

The onionskin carbon copies enclosed with the note were excerpts from dossiers on Julian and Marius Wilde. Durell memorized the data as he read them.

WILDE, Julian, alias Wildenauer, Joseph. Wilderski, John.

Nationality: Polish, made Br. subj. 20/6/ 45, 

bel. b. Vilno (?) but suspect Czech a/o Hungarian 

ancestry. Mbr. Polish Army, Lance Cpl, joined Free 

Polish forces after 3 yrs. Nazi war prisoner, records 

Buchenwald 6 mos., released slave labor Holland, 

escaped fishing boat Feb. ’43 to Dunstan, England. 

Commissioned lieutenant Free Polish Army 23 Aug 

’43, fought Col. Wilenski’s Brigade Netherlands 

campaign. D.C. no records.

Occupation: Labourer, draftsmen, educ. London 

U. and grad, construct, engineer, Chandler-Smith 

Ltd. London. Inc. £3600 1960

Address:    Gravely Mews 25, London SW.

Marital status: single.

Children: none.

Member organizations: none.

Physical description: Age 36(?) Hgt. 6’2”

Wgt. 210, Eyes brown, hair blond. Outstanding 

scars: concentration camp tattoo under left arm 

223433, knife wound scar upper left abdomen.

Passport in order. Form 22150 — A 52C 15151

No known criminal record CID

The dossier on “Wilde, Marius” contained much the same background information and differed only in a physical description that precisely fitted that of the dead man found on the dike that afternoon.

A second note from John O’Keefe was clipped to the onionskin dossiers, and read:

Cajun—we’ve traced the slave-labor chores of 

these lads to the Wadden Zee Dikes when the 

Nazis were here. Did they work on the Cassandra 

bunker? A good bet. Did they hear the Dutch were 

finally getting around to repairs? Count on it.

Search of Wilde flat Gravely Mews—they live together, 

devoted brothers, neighbors say—came up 

with
Times
cutting of Dutch engineering plans to 

reconstruct sabotaged dikes. Did they know about 

Cassandra all these years? Good chance. Their 

objective assessed: find bunker again and sell to 

highest bidder. No other organized gang or persons 

involved. Take it from here, Samuel.

Durell made twists of O’Keefe’s notes and the onionskin dossier copies and burned all the paper in the ashtrays in his hotel room. The information vanished in smoke, but it was all committed to memory, and when the ashes were cooled he crushed them under his fingers and tapped the remnants out of the window.

He was just turning back when he heard the key in his door.

As far as he knew, the desk clerk was aware of his return, and no hotel employee would enter without knocking first. He took the gun that Flaas had given him from his pocket and held it ready as the door was unlocked from outside and casually pushed open.

The girl who called herself Cassandra stood there.

She wore dark slacks, tilted sun glasses, and a pale cashmere sweater around her shoulders against the chill fog. Her heavy blonde hair was tied into a pony-tail and fastened with a tortoise-shell comb. She rested one hand on the doorjamb, and Durell saw that she wore an emerald ring of at least five carats’ weight. He also saw there were new rope burns on her hand and that she wore rubber-soled shoes.

She was not alone. The fat seaman named Erich and his young, pimply cohort stood behind her trim figure. She could afford to smile. Both of her assistants had guns pointed at Durell.

“Mr. Durell,” she said in her accented English. “You do not seem surprised?”

“I’m not.”

“And you are not pleased, either?”

“That depends.”

“Did you wish to see me again?”

“Oh, yes,” Durell said. “You and your two friends, Frau von Uittal. I wrote you down in my little black book, to settle our account one day. I suppose this may well be the day.”

“Perhaps, perhaps.” She smiled again. “On the other hand, it is good to be alive still, is it not?”

He did not know if she were referring to the virus that had killed Piet Van Horn and which he’d thought for a time might kill him, too; or whether she referred to the incident at sea in the
Suzanne
. He suddenly decided, with little expectation of error, that the only person who could own the big boat that had tried to run down the
Suzanne
was this girl who called herself Cassandra. He was not completely right; but he was close enough to the truth to act with judgment upon it.

The fat seaman, Erich, looked at Durell without pleasure, then licked his lips and spoke in German to the blonde girl. “He will come with us? You have asked him?” “Not yet.”

“Then ask him, please!”

“Do not presume to give me an order, Erich.”

“I do not. It is the general’s order.”

“My husband can wait.”

“It is not the way he described the situation to me, madame. Please ask this man to come along now, and to come along quietly, without fuss, or we shall give him more of what we gave him before. It would be a pleasure, but the general is impatient.”

The woman looked mockingly at the fat seaman. “And you are afraid of his impatience? The great god, General von Uittal, frightens you?”

“Yes, madame. He frightens me very much. And if you were a wise woman and a good wife, you would be frightened, too.”

“Do not be insolent! Can you take his gun?”

Erich gestured to Durell, who sighed and gave him Flaas’ gun and said in fluent German, “It’s all right, Erich. Pardon me for eavesdropping, but I’m coming peacefully.” The fat sailor grunted in surprise, then shrugged. Cassandra said, “Oh, you are wise.”

“On one condition, however,” Durell added.

“There are no conditions,” she said.

“I insist. I want to know your real name, Cassandra.”

“You understood Erich. I am Frau von Uittal.”

“And your first name is Cassandra?”

She said coldly, “It was once Emma.”

“Thank you,” Durell said. “That’s what I wanted to know.”

They left the hotel quietly, without arousing anyone’s interest. It was already six-thirty, and there was no sign anywhere of Julian Wilde, who was now half an hour late. Durell did not expect to see him now. He was sure that Julian already knew about the murder of his brother Marius.

Dusk came early with the fog that cast a glum pall over the holiday-makers at the Gunderhof Hotel. Only the lovers, strolling on the sea wall or the dike paths, did not seem to mind. Durell expected to be hustled into a waiting car, but instead they walked the quarter-mile along the dike into the village of Amschellig.

A launch waited for them at the municipal dock. He looked for the
Suzanne’s
sprightly contours, but she was lost among the silent lines of moored sloops on the misty water. Durell sat beside Cassandra—he would always think of her by that name, he decided—in the center of the launch. The fat man steered. The pimply youngster kept a gun pointed at Durell.

They made for the same yacht, Durell saw at once, that had tried to run them down at sea. As they came alongside, Erich said something to the younger sailor who, once the others had climbed aboard, took the launch hastily back to the fog-shrouded pier.

“Did you send him to search my room?” Durell asked.

“
Ja
. Why not?”

“A pity. He won’t find anything.”

“Then you will be sorry. This time you will truly regret it, if you are stubborn. Move, swine!”

The fat man shoved him along the glistening deck. The girl hurried ahead, vanishing through a doorway that shed bright yellow light into the swirling gloom of fog. The yacht was anchored about a hundred yards offshore, near the breakwater, and the steady clangor of the fog buoy at the channel entrance punctuated the darkness with mournful frequency. On the vessel itself, everything shone with military polish and immaculate Prussian efficiency. The registry, shown on the white life-preservers on the rail, was the
Valkyron
of Hamburg, West Germany.

“In here, you,” said Erich. “The general is at dinner. You will remain standing at attention when he speaks to you, and you will not speak first, under any circumstances.

“
Jawohl
,” said Durell. “May I breathe?”

The fat man said grimly, “You may soon make such a request in earnest, American. It is not a joking matter. The general never jokes.”

“I know that,” Durell said. “I know all about von Uittal.”

He recognized the man himself the moment he was ushered into the dining salon of the yacht. A long table, spread with fine linen, was set with gleaming cut glass and silver and Rosenthal china. The general sat alone at the head of the table in the paneled cabin. Cassandra stood beside him and a little to the rear, as if in attendance. Her face was impassive as Erich pushed Durell, stumbling, into the room.

“Here he is, my general,” Erich said.

“Very good. You have done well.”

“Thank you, my general,” Erich rapped. He all but saluted, standing at stiff attention. Durell saw there was another place set at the table, at his end, but Cassandra did not take the chair, nor was she invited to do so. And he did not expect to be the other guest. He saw that Cassandra looked resentfully at her husband, but this might have been imagined.

S.S. General Friedrich Hans Paulhous von Uittal had quite a dossier among interested commissions and departments of the Allied governments. He had been tried as a war criminal during the Nuremberg trials, in absentia, since he had disappeared, and was sentenced to a ten-year term. Two years later a K Section operative dug him out of a small Italian coastal village where he had been living as a Jewish refugee from Austria, ironically accepting the label of those he had tried to exterminate. He was extradited to West Germany to serve his sentence for abnormal cruelty while in command of a concentration camp, served six years and six months and was released for reasons of failing health.

Von Uittal had his nerve, Durell thought, cruising Netherlands waters with his record of cruelty to the Dutch underground during the Nazi Occupation. But no one had ever accused the S.S. general of cowardice. There was arrogance in every inch of the slim, corseted body, in the square face, the flat Teutonic brow, and thick brown hair that even now was only slightly tinged with gray. He would be about sixty, Durell thought, with his corset and dyed hair.

There was no record of his marriage in K Section files. He looked again at the blonde Cassandra, but her glance flicked rapidly away to avoid his eyes. He wondered what was troubling her. Perhaps she resented the general’s disdain for women; she had not been invited to join her husband at dinner, and he wondered why.

“Mr. Durell,” von Uittal began, his mouth thin and precise as the dry sound of his voice. “I trust you are here with the intent of being reasonable and cooperative. It would avoid much delay and some unpleasantness for you. May we understand each other from the start?”

“I understand you,” Durell said. “Whether you know what makes me tick is highly doubtful.”

“I note enmity in your voice. You are not of Dutch descent, of course. I have done nothing to you. My alleged war crimes were all carried out as direct military orders, and I never had any choice but to obey.”