Assignment - Lowlands (14 page)

“Did you ever love von Uittal?”

She lit his cigarette for him. Her mouth, rich and smiling, looked wet in the glow of the match. “No. I never loved anyone.”

“He thought you loved Marius.”

“Marius was not enough man for me. —I feel good,” she said abruptly. “I feel like singing and dancing. I feel free! Can you understand that?”

“I think so.”

“I want to do something utterly mad. I want to walk in the sea. Come with me, will you?”

With no further warning, she opened the car door and jumped out and ran across the dike to the other side. In the fog, her figure was tall and pale, vanishing over the dike.

“Cassandra!”

She looked back and gestured with her hand, and then she found steps going down to the narrow beach on the seaward side of the dike and she ran down them. Durell elbowed his door open and stepped out. He felt an unaccountable concern for her, mixed with the residual anger at the way she had ended his chase of Julian Wilde. There were questions he wanted to ask, and answers he had to have from her. He started across the foggy road after her, leaving only the parking lights to mark the Mercedes’ location in the dark.

On one of the sandy islands out at sea, a lighthouse sent probing beams of brightness swinging in a rhythmic arc across the sea and the land. It touched the dike regularly, alternately turning the night to the jeweled brightness of fog, and then cool, anonymous darkness. In the interval of light, he found the steps and ran down them.

“Cassandra!” he called again.

“I’m here. I’m walking in the sea.”

The dike looked enormously high when he reached the strip of beach at its base. The surf was mild, splashing gently in small combers developed in the shallow tidal areas. Tall reeds grew here where the land and sea dissolved into one another like languorous lovers. He heard the girl splash through the shallows, and a duck awakened with a cry of alarm and flew off with an exaggerated slapping of wings.

The girl laughed softly.

“Here I am.”

The beam from the lighthouse touched her in its orderly circuit of the horizons. She had loosened her hair again and it hung in cascading waves of heavy gold. Her mouth was parted, and he saw the gleam of her white teeth when she laughed throatily.

“Over here,” she said.

“Come back to the car,” he ordered her. “Are you ill?”

“No, I feel wonderful. I feel happy and free. I want—I want to celebrate my freedom, darling. I want to know that I am finished with Friedrich at last. Time enough later for details. There will be such boring sessions with the police, and all the lawyers in Hamburg won’t be able to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again. How can I be angry with Julian Wilde? He did what I wished to do and never dared. He struck off my chains.”

He splashed through the warm surf toward her. There was an offbeat ring in her voice that sounded a warning note of the abnormal. The beam of the lighthouse touched her again and her head was tilted back, her pale brown eyes regarding him, and then she held out her arms to him as she stood in the wash of salt water among the reeds. “Come here, darling. I want you.”

“Cassandra, your husband—”

“My husband is dead and I’m happy about it. I want to prove it to myself, don’t you see? I want to prove it with you.”

She surged toward him in the knee-high salt water, and as she waded nearer she took off her blouse, and he saw she had no bra on and did not need one. Then she paused and with a quick wriggle of her hips she rolled down her slacks, stepped out of them, and hurled them happily toward the beach.

She stood naked before him, arms outstretched.

“Come here,” she called. Her eyes were wide, unseeing. “Please, I need you. Don’t understand? He took me when I was only a child in Berlin, and I knew nothing. He was rich, he said, and if I gave him what he wanted, he would give me everything else, he said. So I did. Anything he asked, I did. Things I’d never imagined. Sometimes I tried to wash the touch of him away, in bath after bath, because he made me feel like an animal. Later, he beat me and cursed me and called me stupid, and treated me like a pet beast he had use for only at certain times. Do you see? You saw how he was tonight. Ready for his fine dinner, while I stood at the table and waited like a slave, a female!”

Her bitterness spilled over with the sharp impact of her words. She stood like a blonde Aphrodite rising from the reedy sea. The silent flashing beam of the distant lighthouse touched the massive wall of the sea dike towering darkly over their heads, shone on the white beach, and bathed her body in a pale glow, swiftly, fleetingly. There was a challenge in the way she stood with rounded hips askew, with firm breasts and flat stomach and long legs steady where the sea ebbed and washed and rolled.

“I feel drunk,” she went on, whispering. “I need something, do you understand? Or I shall fly apart and destroy myself. Something is wound up tightly inside me, after all these years with him, and tonight I must be released. In Amsterdam I played a game with you, obeying his orders. Tonight I am free and I do this because I wish it, and no one else. I am my own mistress. We can finish what we began in Amsterdam, you and I. You saw me then, like this. Did you want me then?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Do you want me now?”

“Yes,” he said.

They came together slowly in the briny warm water, with the mist moving slowly on the faint sea wind and the monstrous height of the sea wall towering over them. She shivered and shuddered desperately. Her mouth sought his with a ferocity that was shocking. Her body swayed and jerked. Her head was tilted back as he held her and he saw that her eyes were wide open in the misty, white-jeweled glare of the swinging light—wide open, and staring at nothing at all, or at something that did not include him as Sam Durell, but only as an instrument for her orgasmic satisfaction in her husband’s death.

He let her go.

She clung to him frantically, seeking completion.

He thrust her away again.

She moaned and suddenly stood with her naked body rigid. Her face was transfigured by what she was feeling. Her eyes closed, opened wide, and then she gave a small, ragged cry that was torn from her throat. And she slid to her knees in the warm surge of salt water.

“Please . . .” she whispered.

“No. I’ll get your clothes, Cassandra.”

She looked at him with hatred.

“I’m sorry to be cruel,” he said. “You did it to yourself, though. Get dressed and I’ll take you back to Amschellig.”

“I will not go anywhere with you,” she breathed.

She stood up, walked out of the water, and picked up her clothes from the beach where she had flung them. Without looking back, she walked off into the darkness, under the dark shadow of the dike. She walked away in the direction of the town.

Durell let her go. He climbed the steps back to the road and returned to the Mercedes. He settled down to wait for someone to come along and give him a lift back to Amschellig.

A Swedish couple, driving a Saab down from Denmark via Groningen, picked him up and took him back to Amschellig. The Swedish woman clucked over Durell’s battered face, reminding him of his session with Erich, and he assured her it looked worse than it actually was. The husband simply grunted glumly over his wife’s concern for a stranger.

Inspector Flaas was waiting in Durell’s room at the Gunderhof when he let himself in. The Dutch security man looked the same as in Amsterdam—stolid and determined. He was smoking one of his crooked Italian cigars. He wore a brown seersucker, a dark red tie, and heavy shoes. There was sand on his shoes, and his eyes followed Durell’s glance and he shrugged and smiled.

“What happened to you, my friend?”

As Durell stripped and took a hot shower in the big tiled bathroom adjacent to his room, he told Flaas about Marius Wilde’s murder by General von Uittal, and of Julian’s vengeful raid on the
Valkyron
. Nothing changed in Flaas’ manner.

“Yes, yes, I know all this,” the Hollander finally said. “But the local police can hafrale that end of it.”

“What about Julian Wilde?” Durell asked. “Will you pick him up now on a charge of murder?”

“You will leave that to us now.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Precisely what I said, Heer Durell. Our government has again changed its collective mind. I warned you in Amsterdam that there were factions resentful of knuckling under to the threat of Virus Cassandra. They have gained the upper hand. And with it, perhaps the end for Julian Wilde.”

“What have you done?”

Flaas smoked his thin black cigar for a moment. “This is a small country. We have a rather complicated network of roads and canals—did you know that you can take the Amschellig Canal here and work your way down by barge and launch to Amsterdam and through Belgium all the way to Paris, and never once leave the water, although you will be many, many miles inland? It is true. However, we have bottled up all available outlets from Friesland and Groningen, and the international borders will be completely sealed, of course. Julian Wilde will not escape us.”

Durell came angrily out of the shower, a towel wrapped around himself. “You’re not serious? You’re not going to pick him up without finding the Cassandra bunker first, are you?”

“Those are my orders. Incidentally, a doctor should look after your bruises, my friend.”

“I’m all right,” Durell said shortly. “Julian Wilde knows where the bunker is. He can spread the plague, if he decides to. And he will, as soon as he learns you’ve thrown a net around this area. For God’s sake, you can’t—”

“I cannot change the situation. I do not like it, but I cannot change it.”

Durell drew a breath. “Where do I fit into the revised picture?”

“Nowhere, sir. That is what I came to tell you.”

“Then I’m pulled off the job?”

“I regret to say so, but—yes.”

“Who also says so?”

“The Netherlands Security Administration has been in touch with Washington. You have a reputation for creating explosive reactions, Heer Durell, but Dutch lives are at stake, and our nation’s existence may be in the balance. We cannot permit you to continue here.”

“Whatever happened here would have happened anyway,” Durell objected.

“Perhaps. But now we are concerned with containing Julian Wilde in this area—much as one would seal off an area containing a dangerous beast. Can you appreciate this?” “Of course. He raised the ante, you know. He wants ten million now.”

“We have accepted this demand. It has been arranged.” “Arranged? But you just said—”

“We have thrown a cordon around this place and put the money in the Swiss bank for him, and are prepared to offer him amnesty. One must explore every avenue out of this strange dilemma. All parties in the government are agreed for the moment that there must be no aggressive activity against the people who know where Cassandra is buried. We have lost General von Uittal as a witness—and his information might have been of immense value. So you will suspend all your activities and return to Amsterdam in the morning. Your embassy in the Hague will have further orders for you. I am sorry, Durell. I like you. I think you were doing the right thing. But we have no choice except to obey.”

“How many men are you using here?”

“Over one hundred. Why?”

“Won’t Julian notice the noose around his neck?”

“They are trickling in one by one. Some are women. They arrive by bus and train and motor. They will not be noticeable among the other tourists.”

“But suppose he suspects, and acts out of desperation?” Durell insisted. “He can spread the plague, you know.” “We will do everything possible to avoid public panic. So far we have been fortunate. Nothing has leaked to the press about the affair here in Amschellig. And it must never leak out. Our people are brave and utterly reliable, but faced with an unseen, deadly virus, a thing that strikes you into the grave in such a short time—” Flaas paused and ground out his cigar emphatically. His face was pale with frustration. “So. I came to tell you that you are relieved of the problem. I shall handle it now, at the orders of my government. You will leave for Amsterdam tomorrow. Agreed?”

Durell shrugged. “As you say, we must obey orders.” “But will you? You have a reputation—”

“I have no choice, it seems.”

“Good. Will you do me a favor?”

“Of course.”

“Then call for the hotel doctor to look at you.”

“All right.”

“Good night,” Inspector Flaas said.

“Sweet dreams,” said Durell.

The hotel doctor was an elderly Dutchman with a gentle, reproving manner. He applied antiseptic to Durell’s bruises and cuts, inquired about tetanus shots, was told that Durell had had all the shots he needed, and clucked over his scalp wounds.

“Are you sure you feel all right, mynheer? No dizziness? No trouble with your eyes? Any headache?”

“Nothing, thanks,” Durell said. “There is one thing, though. Is there a ferry that might take me to Doorn tomorrow morning?”

“To Doorn?”

“On Scheersplaat Island.”

“Oh. Of course. How curious.”

“I hoped it might be. Do you know the doctor in residence there?”

“My nephew—Willem de Gruenvig. I was talking to him just the other day.”

“About the fishermen who died there?”

The elderly doctor looked sharper and not quite as bumbling as before. “What do you know about that, sir?” 

“Only stories. Rumors, you know.”

“Then I advise you to forget it,” the doctor said.

“I will. But is there a ferry to Doorn?”

“At nine o’clock, from Amschellig.”

“Thank you. How much do I owe you?" The doctor looked suspicious. “Mynheer, I am not sure—”

“Whatever it is, put it on my account at the hotel desk. Will that be all right?”

“That is not what I started to discuss.”

“I know. But perhaps we should leave things as they are.”

“I see. I don’t understand, but—I see. Good night.”

“Good night,” Durell said.

When the doctor was gone he locked the door, shoved a tilted chair against the handle, and went to sleep.