Assignment - Lowlands (15 page)

When he awoke, the fog was gone. The sun shone through the windows, and it was just seven o’clock. The telephone was ringing beside the bed. He rolled over and picked it up.

“Cajun?”

“O’Keefe,” he said.

“Bless you for being alive, Samuel.”

“Were you worried?”

“I figured that whatever happened to you after being in contact with Piet might happen to me. Claire blesses you, too. Even though she doesn’t know why.”

“Where are you, John?”

“Downstairs. I’ve eaten breakfast and let you have your beauty sleep. Did you know this place is crawling with Flaas’ people?”

“Yes. I’ve been shown to the door.”

“I know. I guess I’d better come up.”

“Right.”

Durell hung up and started to dress. John O’Keefe knocked on the door two minutes later. They shook hands with the warmth of old and reliable friendship. Something of the redheaded man’s lightness and humor came into the room with him. O’Keefe wore slacks and a sport shirt and two-toned shoes and looked every inch the American tourist from Chicago.

“I’ve ordered breakfast and coffee for you, okay?”

“Fine,” Durell said. “I’m sorry I had to give you that dirty detail with Piet Van Horn’s body.”

“All in the day’s work, Cajun. Did you know that the Dutch have taken over Cassandra completely? We’re persona non grata here.”

“What do our people say?”

“Officially?” asked O’Keefe. “Or for our eyes only?”

“Our eyes,” Durell said.

“If we can, we’re to stick it out.”

“Good,” Durell said. “I feel better already.”

“But we don’t antagonize anyone. That’s important. Do you want to be briefed now, or after you eat?”

“Now, John.”

“Well, we know where to find Julian Wilde,” said O’Keefe quietly. “We know where he and his brother have been living while they worked on the Wadden Zee Dike project. Are you interested?”

Durell grinned. “I’ll be damned.”

“Could be, Cajun. Organization works like a charm, now and then. The old lone-wolf tactics are fine, but now and then you need the efficiency of team work, hitting the three-yard line for a touchdown.”

“Shut up and keep talking.”

“Which do you prefer?” O’Keefe grinned.

“How did you find out? And where is Julian?”

“The ransom note gave it to us, Cajun—the blue note-paper on which Wilde
frères
requested their modest sum of blackmail in exchange for a few vials of nasty plague germs. I snitched a piece of it and had it analyzed and traced. Guess where?” O’Keefe sighed. “Ever hear of the Boerderij Hotel in Amschellig?”

“Just last night, under my nose,” Durell said, remembering the big inn wrapped in foggy shrouds where Cassandra’s car had been parked. He felt irritated with himself. “Is that it?”

“That’s where the notepaper came from. It took some fast footwork from the lab boys, but there’s no doubt about it. Do you know it means farmhouse?—
Boerderij
, I mean.” “Yes.”

“Well, it’s the fanciest tourist joint this side of Miami. Good beer, fine food, jammed to the rafters with travelers who pay through the nose. What better place for Julian and Marius Wilde to dissolve into anonymity, eh?”

“You’ve got something,” Durell conceded. “But Julian may not have gone back to his hole there after last night.” “Shall I find out?”

Durell hesitated. “You’ll have to be very careful, John.” “Of Flaas? He doesn’t even know me.”

“Don’t underestimate him. But I wasn’t thinking of our friends. I had Julian Wilde in mind. It’s just possible that he has another vial of the plague virus on his person.”

“Oh, Lord,” O’Keefe whispered, suddenly shocked. “Exactly. If he has, he’s like a man walking around with a bottle of nitro.”

“I see what you mean.”

“Just be careful, that’s all. It’s worse than nitro.”

“Don’t worry about me. Claire and I are still counting on our holiday.”

“Good. If you spot Wilde, don’t do anything,” Durell said. “Just wait for me.”

“Where are you going?”

“To Doorn. I want to know more about those fishermen who died over there.”

The ferry left for Scheersplaat and Doorn at exactly nine o’clock, with the usual Dutch efficiency. It was not crowded. It was a converted fishing boat, decked over and provided with an awning and benches, a coffee bar, and sandwich service. Only a dozen other people came on board, in addition to the crew and Durell, and they looked like natives except for a volubly quarreling Italian couple and a city-type Hollander who tried to look at ease among the fishermen and only succeeded in looking uncomfortable. Durell did not think this one worked for Flaas. He did not think Flaas had ordered him to be shadowed.

From the ferry pier in Amschellig he had looked for the
Suzanne
and finally spotted it a few minutes before the ferry sailed. He walked over, after checking the departure time, and spoke to Trinka Van Horn. She was working on the scratches and gouges in the hull made the night before by their brush with the
Valkyron
, which was tied up at the other end of the pier and ostentatiously guarded. He did not see Cassandra in the vicinity. Trinka came up with a daub of paint on her pink, creamy cheek and a look of challenge in her blue eyes. The black hair she had inherited from a Spanish ancestor blew gently in the breeze. She wore dungarees and a man's white shirt, and the wind molded the cotton to her firm, high breasts and tiny waist and incredibly perfect form. Durell found himself wondering what she might look like in a cocktail gown, in something sleek and totally feminine. He didn’t think it could offer much of an advantage over how she looked right now.

“Hello,” she greeted him. “Are you off to Amsterdam?” He nodded. “I see you’ve had the word.”

“Well, you know who I work for,” she said shortly. “Are you going on with it?”

“Tan and I are just waiting. Inspector Flaas told us not to sail anywhere today. Something big is happening. I’ve seen a lot of our people in town.”

“Yes,” Durell said. “How are your bruises?”

She flushed. “How did you know—” Then she grinned impishly. “Oh. Yes, we were all knocked around a bit, weren’t we? Were you aboard the
Valkyron
when all the shooting happened?”

“Yes.”

“I was sure it was you. You look the type to keep at it, whatever the punishment. I wish I’d been with you, though. But when I think about the general’s murder, I’m glad I wasn’t.”

“I’m glad you weren’t, too. It wasn’t fun and games, Trinka.”

She said, “I’m sorry you’re going back to Amsterdam.” “So am I. Is it possible I might see you there?”

“What for?” she asked.

“Why, for a date,” he said.

“Oh.” And she flushed again. “I didn’t imagine—But I suppose so.” She looked over the side of the sloop, where Jan Gunther sat enormously in a sling, industriously painting over the scars where the
Suzanne
had been grazed. The blond Hollander looked grim. “Would you mind if I had a date with Heer Durell, Jan?” she called down to him.

“It is not for me to tell you how to spend your time, Trinka,” he grumbled.

She laughed. “Poor Jan. He’s so possessive.”

“Does he have any legal claims?”

“Legal? Oh, I see. Oh, no. He asks me regularly to marry him, every Sunday at dinner. And regularly I say no, thank you, I am not the marrying kind.”

“Well,” said Durell.

“I am glad you are safe,” she said impulsively. “We started off badly, you and I, didn’t we? But we are friends now.”

“Of course.”

“Well, goodbye,” she said.

“Goodbye.”

He took her by the shoulders and kissed her on the mouth before she could react in surprise, and then he turned and walked away without looking back at her. He didn’t care if she saw him going aboard the ferry to Doorn, or not.

Scheersplaat was a long sand bar with its greatest elevation only eleven feet above high tide, and when the North

Sea’s winter gales Struck, only the high brick dikes and the long- row of sturdy windmills pumping sea water out as fast as it came in managed to preserve the village of Doorn from the ocean’s wrath. There were fields and pastures and brown Frisian cattle in the rich meadows, and at the north end of the island was the village itself, snug and shining and immaculate, with a tiny harbor and a small fleet of fishing boats to serve its economy.

Durell discovered that the ferry returned at noon, and then walked down the cobbled main street, enjoying the hot sun and the sea wind that seemed to scour everything on the island to a shining cleanliness. Everyone seemed to be busy at something: the men working at nets or on their boats, the women marketing or washing; and even the towheaded children played with the marked sobriety that characterized these people.

He found the doctor’s house without difficulty. A small black-and-white sign indicated his name, Willem de Gruenvig. and business did not seem overwhelming. The office was in the back of a modest cottage at one end of the main street, with a lawn on the harbor side and a view of the fishing fleet and the sea and the salt flats. The doctor was a young, fair-haired man, pipe-smoking, deliberate, who worked at calking a dinghy drawn up on white rollers on the lawn. In the back yard a young woman, presumably his wife, hung up washing while supervising the quiet play of four blond children.

Doctor de Gruenvig nodded at Durell’s introduction and said, “Oh, yes, Inspector Flaas. who was here yesterday, said you might be paying a call.”

“Have you heard from him since then?”

“Why, no. He said I was to cooperate with you in this matter, any way I can." The doctor puffed at his pipe and only succeeded in looking younger. “Is my English clear to you, by the way?”

“Perfectly clear. I want to talk to you, of course, about the fishermen who took sick and died last week.”

“Yes. It is a serious matter.”

“Very. Do you know how serious it really is, doctor?”

“Of course. First, as a medical man. I know what I saw. And second, naturally, my suspicions were confirmed by Inspector Flaas.”

“No one else in Doorn knows?”

The young man shook his head and pointed his pipe at the young woman in the back yard. “Not even my wife. Why should I worry her? At first I thought everyone on Scheersplat was doomed. I could not see any other course. But the miracle happened. In twenty-four hours it was all over. Five good men were dead, so quickly, so terribly. But no one else came down with the virus. And there has been nothing since.”

“May I talk to some of the victims’ families?”

“The fishermen’s wives? Oh, I don’t think it would be wise.”

“Why not?”

“I told them only that it was a very unusual, rare type of pneumonia. The symptoms are rather similar, you know, and I would not be surprised at all if the so-called virus were a specially developed strain of pneumococci. But more questions would start new rumors and make talk that would soon go beyond Doorn and touch the mainland. And who knows then where it would end? It is difficult enough to restrain one’s own panic, Mr. Durell. These are solid, good-natured people, but not highly educated. They do not have much imagination, but they have enough, enough,”

“Then tell me, doctor—were all the victims from the same fishing boat?”

“Oh, yes. From the
Moeji
. Klaus Jenner was the captain—a fine boy, just married, too. I know his widow well. She lives over there.” The pipe stem pointed to the roof of another cottage visible over the dunes down the shore. “They were all in the charter together.”

“What charter?”

“Why, the one by the two Englishmen, the brothers.” 

“Wilde?”

“Yes, that was the name.”

“Did the Wildes go aboard the
Moeji
, too?”

The young doctor stared at Durell. The sea wind blew gently, and from the back yard came a thin call from his wife, and he called back in a dialect that Durell could not understand.

“Come with me. We will talk to Ima Jenner.” The doctor started along the beach toward the next cottage. “I hope you will be gentle with her. It is a terrible thing, to be married such a short time, and to lose one’s loved one so soon. I had to give her daily sedatives, but she is better now. It was Klaus who took the virus culture, you see. It was all his fault.”

Durell stopped short. “The captain of the fishing boat had a vial of the virus?”

“You are shocked, I see. But he took it only out of ignorance. These fishermen are really innocents. The two men who chartered the
Moeji
were so strange that Klaus decided to find out more about them.”

“So he stole a vial of the culture from the Wildes?” 

“Well, yes, if you care to put it that way. One cannot condemn Klaus Jenner now. He is dead because of his innocent curiosity.”

“One moment.” Durell paused on the beach, staring at the Jenner cottage ahead. It looked lonely and forlorn. “Perhaps it won’t be necessary to talk to the widows of these men, if you can answer my questions here.”

“I shall certainly try.”

“You spoke to the fishermen when they first became ill?”

“Yes, when their families called me in to attend them.”

“Did you make them tell you the truth?”

“I recognized the strangeness and the virulence of their symptoms. I concluded that the whole population of the island might be in grave danger, so I pressed them for information.”

“And that’s how you learned that the two Wilde brothers chartered Jenner’s boat, right? And Klaus Jenner admitted to you before he died that he had ‘borrowed’ a culture vial from one of the Wildes."

“Correct, but—”

“Where did the vial come from originally?”

“That is the important question.”

“Can you answer it?” Durell asked urgently.

“No, I could not get the answer.”

“Why not? The fishermen took the Wildes someplace where they recovered the culture from the sea bottom.”

“It was south of here.” The doctor swept an arm toward the flat, shining sea, the long tidal flats beyond the tip of the island, and the dim line of the Wadden Zee Dike on the horizon. “Somewhere in there. It is a tangle of hundreds of tidal islands, you know—they appear only at ebb tide.