Assignment - Lowlands (23 page)

“I’ll kill you now, Durell! And I’ll take the women with me.”

“There isn’t time. The tide is too high already.”

“Twenty more minutes. I checked it. Come on out from behind that table, eh? Make it easy for yourself. Didn’t think I had a hand gun, eh? Surprised you, I take it.” 

Durell gripped one of the table legs he crouched behind and tipped it over. It crashed toward the light, and he moved forward and to the left behind it. Wilde’s figure was enormous, powerful in the haze and glare. The light swung erratically and something went slashing across the floor with cold emphasis. It was sea water, pouring up the steps Durell had just used, slamming through the doorway he had kept Wilde from sealing.

Wilde yelled and the light swung over the seething tongue of flood. Durell drove at him, chopped at the light, and sent it falling end over end into the water. Wilde slashed with the gun barrel and Durell felt pain explode above his ear. He staggered down to one knee in the current. Wilde wrenched back. Durell tried to get up and grab at Wilde again, but the water slowed him and Wilde escaped, stepping backward rapidly. The gun roared deafeningly. Durell picked up a box from one of the tables and threw it. It struck the flashlight on the floor and smashed it out.

The darkness returned.

Sound was magnified into devouring proportions. There was the crash of the sea and the whine of the wind through the bunker opening above; and the rushing thrust of the tidal current drove through the bunkers below. Above or below, the sea was coming for them, Durell thought. There was no escape.

He listened to Wilde’s harsh breathing through the multitudinous noises. He thought he heard the man to the right of him. He tried to remember if Wilde still held the box of culture vials, but decided he must have had to put it down in order to handle both the flashlight and the gun. All right. But Wilde might have picked it up again. He listened. His life depended on what he heard, since every other sense was for the moment denied him.

Something scraped ahead and above him.

Alarm sent off panic reflexes inside him. Wilde was on the steps to the surface. There was another hermetical door there. If Wilde closed it on him, it would be like being sealed in a tomb.

He plunged forward.

The water was up to his knees. He reached the steps in the dark, stumbled, felt a sudden horror and panic as he remembered the sample vial of culture virus he had pocketed earlier. He paused, breathing carefully. It was still in his shirt pocket. He took it out, using only his sense of touch, and carefully lowered the slim ampoule into the water at his feet. Then he stepped ahead, free of that danger.

Wilde’s footsteps scraped on stone above him. There was a dim illumination the next moment. Daylight, gray and gloomy from the stormy evening, seeped through the opening up there. As Wilde’s figure blocked out the light, Durell saw that Wilde held the case of virus cultures in both hands again.

Both
hands, Durell noted.

He had lost the gun somewhere.

Durell drove up the steps fast. Wilde turned and kicked, trying to shove him back down into the flooding bunker. He would not be stopped. When Wilde kicked at him again, Durell caught his ankle and hauled savagely down. Wilde yelled as he lost his footing and tumbled down the steps. Durell slammed a fist at the blur of his face, struck again, and Wilde tried to fight back and still cling to the box of vials. His face convulsed. His foot slipped and Durell struck again. Wilde fell back, arms flung wide. His eyes blazed with sudden terror as the box of virus cultures flew from his grip. It shattered on the stone steps and broke, spilling pale liquid that splashed on Wilde’s legs and arms. They both stood frozen.

Gray light filtered down from above. Wilde drew in a shuddering breath and stared in disbelief at the wet stains on his skin.

“The virus . . . you spread it. . . . My God!”

Durell stood above him now. Their positions were reversed.

Wilde faltered, “I’ll be infected—it’s all over—”

Durell backed away up the stairs. He stood in the opening and looked down at the big man, who regarded him with stunned eyes that gazed into a dreadful infinity. “Help me, Durell. . . .”

“Stay where you are,” Durell said harshly.

Wilde’s words were ragged. “No, wait. I need a doctor—”

“No doctor can help you now.”

“Surely there must be something—”

“It’s too late for you.”

“For you, too, then!” Wilde shouted.

“No. I’m leaving you here.”

“You can’t!” Wilde screamed.

Then Durell swung the heavy door shut on the bunker.

Rain pelted his back as he leaned both arms upon the panel and pushed all his weight against it. He felt Wilde slam against the steel door like a ravening animal, again and again. The jolts of insanity hammered at him. Durell drew one deep breath after another. He had had to kill men before—but never like this. He did not know if his waning strength was equal to it. But it had to be done. Wilde was like the plague itself now, irrevocably destroyed by the very weapon with which he had threatened the world. His muffled screams came thinly through the door, mingled with the patter of rain and another sound—

The sound of gushing, pouring water that tumbled in final fury into the underground chamber.

Durell shoved harder against the door.

It wa' like slamming shut the lid to Pandora’s box of evils s
^p
t loose upon the world.

Rain pelted his back. His shoulders ached. Again he thrust back a blow from the other side of the door. He looked over his shoulder at what was left of the island. It had shriveled alarmingly. On either side, the furious combers, lashed by the North Sea gale, hammered in inevitable triumph against the remaining land. Nowhere was another island to be seen now. But the boats were still there, straining at anchor, dimly visible through the gloom.

He thrust again at a ravening blow against the door.

There came a muffled scream.

Then he felt the smash of water against the inner side of the panel. He thought he heard Wilde cry out again, but it might have been the wind. Exhaustion dragged at him but he did not leave.

A time passed.

It might have been a minute, or perhaps ten. He was not sure. There was no more life inside the bunker.

He stepped back.

Nothing happened.

He turned his face up to the pelting rain. It felt good on his body, crisp and clean and normal. The wind was cold, but he did not mind it.

He sank to his knees and rested for another brief time until the growing darkness warned him. and then he got up and walked back to the lighthouse where Trinka and Cassandra waited for him to lead them back to the boats.

The summer storm ended by morning. Then the sun shone, and everything along the shore of Friesland quickly returned to normal.

Durell slept until noon. He had returned with Trinka and Cassandra to Amschellig at eight o’clock in the evening and had then spent three hours in the local police station with Inspector Flaas. It was difficult to convince the Hollander that the virus danger was over. In the morning, when the tide dropped, Flaas said he would go out in the police launch and see for himself.

“Don’t open the bunker,” Durell warned him. “Wait a while.”

“How long, mynheer?”

“Let the sea sterilize the place. Wilde had enough virus culture with him to infect half of Europe.”

“Perhaps it should not be opened at all, then.” Flaas sighed. “Perhaps we should let it be his tomb.”

There were papers to sign, affidavits to dictate, phone calls and coded messages to be sent to London and to General McFee in Washington. By personal cable, Durell sent a brief message to Deirdre Padgett in Prince John, Maryland. Eventually, the Dutch Security people let him go back to the Gunderhof Hotel to rest and sleep.

He awoke to the ringing of the telephone and profuse apologies from the desk clerk. It was the police again, the clerk said. But it turned out to be Trinka Van Horn. 

“Sam? Is that you?”

“All of me,” he said. “How are you today, Trinka?”

“I am better. I have not forgotten my shame at being so afraid, but I feel much better.”

“And Jan?”

“He is back on the
Suzanne
”

“Good. Will I see you before I go back to Amsterdam?” She said in a strange voice, “Please come for lunch.

Please. I must talk to you. It must not end like this. I understand how it was yesterday, on the island. You were very kind and wonderful. But I do want to see you once more.”

“All right. In half an hour?”

“Thank you,” she whispered.

He showered and dressed in a dark summer suit with a fresh white shirt and blue necktie. In the bathroom mirror, his face looked drawn and tired; his blue eyes were darkened almost to black. He looked older, he decided: the last survivor of a long list of men like John O’Keefe, who had lost the odds on. survival in the performance of duty, in giving service to the cause for which they worked. Perhaps there was a touch more of gray in his black hair, Durell thought. Or an added sorrow to carry with him from this day on.

He visited the hotel doctor briefly to have the neck scratch bandaged, and the pompous Dutchman clucked and shook his head, muttering about careless Americans, and finally let him go.

He walked through the morning sunshine into Amschellig, following the brick-deck walk on top of the dike.

The bathers on the beach laughed and splashed in the surf. The tennis players ran grimly back and forth in their sweaty routine. The
rijwielpad
beside the highway was crowded with humming, speeding bicycles. The sea was calm. Sails shone and bent to the gentle wind.

It was as if yesterday’s elemental tempest had never been.

Jan Gunther was not on the
Suzanne
when Durell arrived at the mooring at the municipal pier. A girl in a bright summer frock was busy on deck with a picnic basket lunch, and it was a moment before Durell realized that the very feminine, petite figure belonged to Trinka Van Horn. It was the first time he had seen her wear anything but shorts or dungarees and a man’s white shirt.

Her dark hair shone softly and with luster in the sun. She wore a delicately shaded lipstick that subtly emphasized her desirable mouth. And, like herself, the
Suzanne
had been scoured and polished until everything about the girl and the boat shone in the gentle warmth of the noonday sun.

“Hello,” she said, and she blushed.

He kissed her. “It’s good to see you like this.”

“You are surprised? But you knew I was a woman.”

“Yes, I knew,” he said.

She blushed deeper. “A rather scarlet woman, I suppose you think, after yesterday afternoon.”

“Not at all. A lovely, wonderful woman with much to offer.”

She laughed and suddenly seemed easier. “And they say Americans have no ability for gallantry! You are marvelous. All at once I feel much better, Sam. And now I am starved! My appetite is atrocious, is it not?”

“I don’t know where you put it all,” he smiled.

“I suppose it will catch up with me later, and I will become big and fat and matronly.”

“Never.”

“You are being gallant again. Or is it hunger that makes you say such nice things?”

“Both,” he said.

She said soberly, “You notice: I do not ask if it was love.”

“Trinka,” he said. “It’s not.”

She turned her head away and busied herself with the picnic basket. There was chicken and fresh bread and butter in a small ice chest, with fruit, and bottles of Dutch beer and gin. She had spread a small table with white linen and silver. He watched her for a moment and then touched her cheek and turned her so he could see her eyes.

“Is it so bad with you, then, Trinka?”

“Oh, no. It’s just— Well, yesterday you made me a woman, and this carries with it certain responsibilities,” she said soberly. “I suppose you think I am much too serious for my age, but I can’t help being Dutch, after all— even though I don’t know where my passions may take me, as they did yesterday.” She paused. “Why do you smile?” 

“You’re very lovely,” he said.

“You think I am amusing?” She laughed suddenly. “I suspect I am. You need not worry. I will not ask you for anything. I simply had to see you again, to make sure my decision is correct. I thought about it all night, you see, after we left Inspector Flaas. I’ve been ordered to the Hague for another assignment, and you and I may never meet again. And I just had to see you once more, today.” 

“I’m glad,” he said.

She looked down at the table she had reset a dozen times. “I’ve decided to marry at last, that’s the thing.” 

“Oh?”

She turned in defiance. “Yes. And it’s Jan. I’ve decided to marry Jan Gunther, after all.”

“I think that’s wonderful,” he said sincerely. “But— have you decided to confess to him about us—about you and me?”

“I don’t know,” she said seriously. “Should I?”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Then I shan’t,” she decided primly.

Later, when he had finished the excellent and bountiful lunch, big Jan returned from the market with supplies for the
Suzanne
, and he toasted and congratulated the couple. Durell then left the boat and walked through the sunshine on Amschellig’s main street to the Boerderij Inn. He was not surprised when the red Mercedes-Benz eased toward him through the tourist traffic and the horn sounded gently but insistently. Cassandra was behind the wheel.

The sun turned her hair to molten gold, in a sleek and shining frame for her beautiful face. She wore a white linen dress, gold Balinese earrings, necklace, and white gloves. Trinka had looked sweet and demure, a child: Cassandra was smart and sophisticated and completely continental. She stopped the car and opened the door for Durell.

“I hope you do not think I am too bold, darling,” she said. “I stopped at the Gunderhof and picked up your luggage.”

“Reading my mind?” he asked.

“I hope so. You are going to Amsterdam, are you not?” 

“Yes. First leg of my trip home.”

“Are you in a great hurry?”