Assignment - Lowlands (2 page)

Cuypplein 45 was within walking distance of the cafe. Durell strolled slowly through the crowds on the sidewalk, paused to window-shop, bought a newspaper and some Dutch cigarettes. Nobody followed him. When he was sure of this, he turned into the doorway beside the antique shop at Number 45, opened a door painted delft blue and decorated with an immaculately polished brass knocker, and went up two narrow, steep flights of carpeted stairs to the third floor.

A woman came hurriedly out of a door at the opposite end of the corridor from the stairs, and even though Durell’s ascent had been soundless, she was immediately aware of him. She was short and stout and middle-aged, with white hair under a dustcap. Her eyes were cool and impersonal.

“Yes, mynheer?”

“I am looking for Piet Van Horn,” Durell said.

“If you are interested in antiques, the shop is—” “Actually, no. I like modern things. Fresh as today’s news, you know. Mynheer Van Horn promised to guide me to a furniture manufacturer—”

“I understand.” Her mouth was tight, disapproving. “Go in. I think he waits for you, but I am not sure—”

Her manner made him say: “Is something wrong?”

“He is ill. I wanted to call a doctor when he came back from Friesland, but he refused to permit it.”

“When was this?” Durell asked.

“Only this morning, mynheer. He said a doctor could not help him.” The woman’s pale blue eyes considered Durell’s dark height. She was worried, but her voice was flat and emotionless. “I hope you can do something for him, anyway.”

“I will try. How did he go to Friesland?”

“He used his car. The red Caravelle, parked in the alley by the canal, behind the house.”

“I see. Thank you.”

“Do you wish me to wait? Perhaps he will need me.”

“I think not,” Durell said.

He stood at the head of the stairs while the woman went down. At the first landing below, she turned heavily and looked up at him. Her eyes looked milky white. “I have been his housekeeper for many years,” she said in her flat Dutch. “I have always been trusted by him, until he began his affairs with you people. I told him he did not need the money. He could marry me. I have plenty for both and the shop. But he—he seemed to enjoy it. Until today. He is not happy today.”

Durell looked down at her and said nothing. It was quiet inside the old Dutch house, although he could hear the muted ringing of bicycle bells in the traffic outside. Finally the woman turned away and went on down the steps. When he was sure she was gone, he left the landing and went to the top floor and approached Piet Van Horn’s door.

He took certain precautions. First, there was the pill that Dickinson McFee had given him—there were three, altogether—although McFee had said, “I don’t know if this vial will do the slightest bit of good, Cajun. But take it, anyway. They can’t hurt and they might help. We just don’t know what we’re up against.”

Durell swallowed one of the pills. His mouth felt dry, and it was an effort to swallow. Then he took his gun from the underarm holster that the Dutch customs at Schiphol had overlooked, and he held the snubby-barreled .38 in his left hand while he knocked with his right.

“Piet?” he called softly.

There was no answer from behind the solid oaken door. He looked back at the stairway again. He had the feeling the housekeeper was down there, somewhere out of sight, listening just as intently as he. But he couldn’t see her, and he called to Van Horn once more. “Piet, I waited at lunch for you, but you didn’t come.”

A faint voice whispered: “Mynheer Durell?”

“Yes.”

“Come in. I am sorry. I was hoping you would realize— I could not meet you. I wanted to, but—Come in, come in.” The door was not locked. There was an ornate brass lever handle, softly polished, and he thumbed it down with care, waited a moment, then opened the door and waited again. He could see Piet from where he stood in the entrance. The man sprawled in a huge, old-fashioned tester bed, near a casement window of medieval stained glass. The windows were open against the heat of the day, and the sound of Amsterdam’s bicycle bells came clearly into the room. Beyond, glimpsed through the dusty leaves of plane trees and sycamores on the canal, he saw the shimmer of dark water beside Belgian blocks of pavement, and a small stone bridge arching over the stream. The colored light that drifted through the casement window, the white plaster walls and dark oak beams of the room, made Durell think of the paintings of Vermeer and de Hooch. This seventeenth-century Dutch house might have come directly from one of the museum canvases.

“What is it, Piet?” he asked softly of the man in the bed.

“Come in, Sam. I think it is all right.”

Durell went all the way into the room, alertly. But no one else was there. It was not a trap. He opened the huge walnut wardrobe and looked at the Hollander’s conservative clothing hanging there, then looked into the old-fashioned tiled bath that smelled of Piet’s favorite British aftershave lotion. He turned back to the man in the bed.

“What happened to you, Piet?”

“As you see,” the man said faintly, “I am very ill.”

“How ill?”

“I am dying.”

Durell looked at Piet and saw the Hollander try to smile. Van Horn was a small man who looked exactly like the vendor of antiques that he actually was. Bravery and devotion come in all sorts of packages, Durell thought. He had met Piet before, on other jobs in Western Europe; and he was shocked by the abrupt change in his appearance. Van Horn was no longer plump and ruddy. His sandy hair looked thin and dry; his bright blue eyes that normally snapped with quick intelligence looked faded and frightened. There was a thin shine of moisture on his pale face. He was fully clothed, in a dark gray suit, but his polished shoes were off, lying on the carpeted floor. The carpet, the old tapestry on the wall, the immense bed, and the small, gemlike oil paintings on the white walls were all treasures gleaned from the antique shop below. They looked all the brighter for Piet’s decay.

“Have you called a doctor, Piet?” he asked.

“No. Of what use would it be? It was all a mistake, you see. . . . A very awkward accident, which has killed me. . . .”

“Take it easy, Piet. Do you know exactly what is wrong with you?”

“It affects the—circulatory system—and the heart. My heart feels as if it is going to burst. It hammers against my ribs and struggles—but it will be conquered—”

“Piet, I was told about some of this in Washington—”

“I am the sixth victim. Look—over there—”

A pallid hand gestured weakly from the bed. Durell picked up a folded Dutch newspaper on the nearby antique table. It was a provincial edition from Friesland. A small news item was marked in red pencil.

He read aloud: “ ‘Five Die Mysteriously in Remote Village—’ ” and paused, looked at Piet, and read on. The village was Doorn, on the East Frisian island of Scheersplaat—a small fishing community remote from the usual byways of vacationing yachtsmen and tourists. The deaths seemed to be restricted to the crew of one fishing vessel, and a new form of virus was blamed for the epidemic. No one

else had died, however.

He looked at Piet again. “Is it the same? Are you sure?”

The little Hollander nodded weakly. “It has begun. It is a warning to us, I think, so we should know that the people we must deal with are ruthless and hold life cheap. Innocent men have died as an example of the wares they have to sell. It can be nothing else. And if the men we must trade with are so callous as to kill and present the corpses to us in warning, then we are up against something difficult, indeed.” Van Horn paused, coughed suddenly. “We cannot know how far it may go and when it will be stopped—
if
it can be stopped. Pandora’s box of dreadful treasure has been opened, my Cajun friend.”

“Do you know something? I am suddenly afraid. I do not want to die, but the world—Everything could be so beautiful—”

“Can a doctor make you feel easier?”

“It will be better—not to call anyone. You understand, of course.” The man’s chest heaved and his head moved spastically from side to side. Durell did not approach him or touch him. There was a sudden feverish light in Van Horn’s eyes. His tongue moistened his lips with slow and painful movements. “Can you hear me, my friend?”

“I can hear you. What happened up in Friesland, exactly?”

“I went to verify the information I was to give you. Yesterday I drove up beyond Leeuwarden and the Lauwers Zee to a village called Amschellig, in Friesland. Do you know the country and the sea there?”

“Only slightly.”

“Friesland is a beautiful province, drowned in mists and the flat sea. There is a light in the air that one can see nowhere else- in the world. It is the best sailing country, you know. And the wide green meadows filled with Frisian cattle—” The sick man paused, his face shining with sweat. “I found Cassandra there,” he whispered.

Durell’s face was blank. “Cassandra?”

“She was there,” Van Horn said again.

“It is only a code name, Piet. Don’t personify it.”

“But she
was
there! I know she—” The Hollander’s voice lifted, then collapsed. His chest heaved, then was still, fully expanded. Durell did not move. He watched the straining, uplifted chest. From outside came the shrill cries of children at play in the shade of the sycamore trees lining the canal banks. A barge went by, motor throbbing. He watched Piet’s chest. The man did not breathe; his eyes bulged. Durell waited. And then Piet’s chest collapsed all at once, came up again in a great shuddering gasp, and his swollen eyes again touched Durell. “You must go to Amschellig—and from there to the island of Scheersplaat. You will need a boat. In the misty light—you will find it is a wild land in a strange sea—you must find him and the woman, Cassandra—”

“Find who, Piet?”

“Wilde. Julian Wilde. And his brother, Marius.”

“Who are they?”

“Julian opened the box. And he is ready to spread death. Five have died up there, to prove his power. The people do not know why. No doctor could help them. He found the bunker, the place we have searched for all this time. The villagers were frightened—and the dike burst—”

There was a moment of incoherence.

Durell said, “Is the box, or bunker, on Scheersplaat? Where is it, Piet?”

“By the sea—where the mists come in—and the Groote Kerk light shines—”

There was silence.

“Piet? How did it happen to you like this? You were told to be careful. You knew the danger, didn’t you?” “Yes, I knew,” came a tired whisper.

“Then how did you let it happen to you?”

“It was—an accident—I think.”

“Aren’t you sure?”

“I was told it was safe—enough—to try to bring a vial of sample culture to you—”

“A sample? Do you have it?”

The round head on the pillow moved negatively from side to side. “When I fell ill—it was destroyed—”

“How?”

“It is at the bottom of the sea.”

“Yow should have saved it,” Durell said. “It could have been useful.”

“It would kill you, my friend, as it—as it has killed me. The accident—if it was an accident—came because it was supposed to be still sealed. But it was not sealed. And Julian and Marius knew itl I am sure they knew it! They want to make an insane fortune out of the lives of innocent people everywhere. They—they—”

There was silence again.

“Piet?”

The man’s mouth moved. His eyes were glazed, and his breathing was a harsh rasp of protest against the heat in the room. “Under the newspaper—the old map—you will need it—”

Durell turned quickly back to the table. A folded map was there, but it was only a standard edition of a highway road map of the Netherlands, published by Michelin, and he could see no markings on it of any significance.

“You said an old map, Piet. An antique? This one is dated nineteen thirty-eight.”

“The land has changed. It was flooded by the Nazis— during the occupation. Nothing is the same up there. But a new dike—is being built at last—to restore the land. On the map you will see—you will see—”

“Yes, Piet?”

The man coughed thickly. “Be careful—of Cassandra. She—she will kill you, too.”

His chest heaved convulsively. His body arched and rested like a bridge for an instant on the back of his skull and heels, taut, rigid, in a moment of incredible torture. And then it collapsed.

And Piet Van Horn was dead.

The children still called out to each other on the brick walk beside the canal. The bicycles hummed by. Another boat rippled past, its wake slapping and washing the ancient, moss-grown sides of the canal. Somewhere in the distance a churchbell rang, and Durell suddenly stirred and looked at his watch. It was four o’clock in the afternoon. He looked down at Piet’s small face, where a ray of ruby light from one of the stained-glass insets in the casement window touched his dead cheek and gave him an unholy look of utter health.

“I’m sorry, Piet,” Durell murmured.

Then he moved quickly, efficiently. Every trace of Piet Van Horn’s association with K Section had to be removed and destroyed. It took time. And while he was here, he might be destroyed, too, as Van Horn had been destroyed. Only yesterday, Piet had been healthy and alert. He was now a corpse, a thing of dread contagion, to be shunned, abhorred. . . .

The radio came first. It was fitted into a fifteenth-century desk cabinet in a corner of the room, and no attempt had been made to hide it, since it was an authorized amateur transmission station. Nevertheless, Durell searched behind it, knowing there was a code book somewhere; and he found it in a small hidden drawer in the back of the cabinet. The code consisted of a small, leather-bound Dutch-English dictionary. Set among other books, it could be innocent enough, he decided; and he did not take it away with him. Instead, he tossed it casually upon a shelf in plain sight, wondering why Piet hadn’t done the same. Next he searched Piet’s wallet, took out some American currency, and put it with his own, replacing the amount with Dutch guilder notes.

At the last moment he returned to the table and picked up the folded Michelin map of the Friesland and Groningen provinces of the Netherlands. He looked it over again, but nothing had been marked on it that he could see. But he folded it with care and put it in his pocket.