Assignment - Lowlands (5 page)

“But you—you seem nice—” she faltered.

She looked behind him, then smiled and came quickly toward him. It was a warning. It should have been enough. But as Durell turned to face the corridor door, the girl who called herself Cassandra suddenly cried out and flung herself at him, wrapping warm legs and arms about him in an inextricable tangle that made him stumble and halt. She was surprisingly vicious. He heard the swish of air as the door was flung open, and there came the quick thud of footsteps. Two men, he thought angrily. He tore the girl’s arm from his neck, twisted about, reached for his gun— He saw them briefly before she hit him with the Balinese brass idol. Two of them: one big and beefy and fat, the other smaller, a teen-age adolescent, ratty and scared. The only thing they had in common was the way they dressed, dark sweaters and denim slacks: sailors’ outfits. He caught only this flickering impression, and then there came a crashing pain on the back of his head. And as he started to fall, there was a burst of light between his eyes as he was struck again.

Dimly, he heard the girl gasp in anger. “You took long enough getting here!”

“We could not help it, madame,” the fat one grunted. “Shall we—”

“You can kill him, for all I care!” she snapped.

Durell tried to get up. His arms and legs were made of lead. He felt his head snap to one side, his jaw striking his shoulder, and he knew he had been sapped again.

The last thing he remembered was a sharp, sudden pain in his ribs, and he knew this could only be the girl’s high, spiked heel kicking him spitefully as he lay sprawled flat on the dusty floor.

They took his gun and rifled his papers, which was of no great consequence. He could have used certain techniques, even in his weakened state, to get free. But there would be no advantage to this. Better to go along for the ride, he thought—up to a point.

It turned out to be literally a ride. The fat seaman and his young assistant carried him down creaking back stairs and out into an alley, and threw him without ceremony into the back of a Citroen. The girl came along. She spoke, not in Dutch, but in German, to the two men, who answered subserviently. Then the fat man made the mistake of referring to her as “Frau von Uittal.”

She reacted violently. “Shut your face, you fool!”

“But I—”

“Suppose he has heard my name?”

“The man is unconscious, madame. I would swear to it.”

“Well, in any case, it is stupid of you, Erich.”

“Yes, madame. Shall we kill him?” Erich, the fat one, who kept his foot on the back of Durell’s neck, spoke as if he were asking which wine to serve.

“I think not. Can he talk yet?”

“He can be made to talk, madame.”

“I know,” the girl said thoughtfully, “that he took a map from Piet Van Horn’s place.”

“I’ve searched him. He doesn’t have one with him.” “Then he dropped it off somewhere. You will have to ask him about it.”

From the sounds that reached him, Durell guessed they were driving out of the city; but he could not judge the direction. Presently, however, there were unmistakable harbor smells, and then the perfume of flowers, and then the sharp tang of salt water. The Citroen was driven by the younger sailor, and Cassandra sat up front with him. Durell continued to pretend to be unconscious, which was not difficult. It felt as if the fat man had tried to twist his head off his neck.

After the smell of salt water had persisted for some time, the Citroen was halted. Car doors slammed, thudded. Durell was dragged out, and he opened his eyes. He saw the glimmer of the sea, the Ijsselmeer, in dim moonlight, and there was a faint reflection of city lights from Amsterdam to the south. The girl stood to one side. Her full underlip pouted, and she looked at him from under lowering brows.

“Where is the map, Mr. Durell?” she asked in English.

He made himself sound vague. “Map?”

“The one you spoke to Piet Van Horn about. I heard you. I was listening at the door. I want that map.”

“I don’t have it.”

“We know you don’t have it now. What did you do with it?”

“I mailed it.”

“Where?”

“To England.”

The fat sailor said, “He is lying, madame. Shall I—?” 

“Yes,” said Cassandra.

But Durell had had enough. When the fat man swung something glittery at him, Durell ducked and came up under the blow and slammed a fist into the big man’s belly. There was a grunt, a burst of surprised pain. The younger sailor yelled shrilly and danced about. Durell caught him with a heel-kick in the ankle that sent him howling away. The fat sailor tried to recover, and Durell chopped at his neck with his left hand, chopped again, and the man went down on the sand on his knees, eyes bulging, mouth agape for air.

The girl was made of sterner stuff: she had circled behind him, and when Durell felt the shock of a blow on the back of his head, he knew she had won, after all. He pitched forward onto the cold sand, felt it grate against his cheek and lips, and closed his eyes against a spinning vertigo of darkness.

For a long time there was only the quiet plash and sigh of the sea against the coarse sand, with the wind murmuring somewhere and another murmuring of distant traffic. He thought he heard music, too, but he wasn’t sure. After a time he began to shiver. He rolled over on his back and stared up at Holland’s skies, saw the moon directly overhead, and knew he had been there much too long. He was alone, and Cassandra and her two thugs were long gone and far away. He rolled over on his belly again and lifted himself slowly to his hands and knees to get a better look at where he was.

The Ijsselmeer reached out, liquid silver under the moonlight, as flat and calm as a lake. A small concrete pier jutted out into the water about two hundred yards up the beach. In the other direction was a dark clot of simple Dutch houses—a fishing village on the inland sea, the former Zuider Zee. Navigation lights blinked in a pattern of red and green out on the water. Auto traffic sounded nearby, he looked inland and saw sweeping headlights touch the empty beach, the concrete pier, and the sea and the flat land that looked alike.

He rested.

After a time he got up and walked up the beach toward the road. He sat down on the edge of the concrete, in the cycle path, and waited. Half a dozen cars swept by, heading north and south. The little fishing village to the south seemed too far away to bother walking to. It was easier to wait. And presently there came a roaring and popping noise down the broad, brick-decked main highway, and the single eye of a motorcycle bathed him in garish light.

It was one of the highway emergency patrols, a yellow cycle with a sidecar, maintained all through the Netherlands on the highway system to assist stranded motorists. The driver of this one was very trim and efficient. He got off the cycle, adjusted a report pad clipped to his belt, and walked over to where Durell sat on the
rijwielpad
, under the round blue sign that indicated the cycle path.

“Mynheer, you have had an accident?”

“In a way, yes,” Durell answered in Dutch.

The cyclist immediately switched to slow but determined English. “Where is your car, sir?”

“I don’t have one. Could you give me a lift back to Amsterdam, or to a trolley stop where I could get back to town?”

“Of course, sir. But what happened? You have been hurt.”

“Yes, I was,” Durell said grimly.

It was almost midnight when he walked into the quiet lobby of the Hotel Spaanjager on Meerhofplein, back in the city. He had managed to brush some of the sand from his clothing, and he had washed the bloody bruise on the back of his head in a public washroom. But his head and body ached, and he felt an angry irritation aimed at himself for losing touch with the girl who, incredibly enough, called herself Cassandra.

The map he had mailed to himself had already arrived, with the usual Dutch efficiency, and the desk clerk in the small hotel promptly handed it to him when he came in. Durell went on up to his room, entered with care, found it safe, then took the map with him into the bathroom while he peeled off his clothes and turned on the hot water in the tub. The map still looked the same, a pre-war tourist road map without significant markings of any kind. He shook his head, not understanding it. Perhaps a laboratory analysis might bring out something in it, he decided.

Before soaking in the tub, he ordered a bottle of gin from the desk clerk. He felt rocky, and he wondered if the blow on his head had done any serious damage. He wasn’t sure. Again, in the tub, he looked at the map. It was the usual type issued by the Koninklijke Nederlandsche Automobile Club, dated 1938. What importance could Piet Van Horn have attached to it? He was still frowning over it when there came a discreet knock on the door and he called to the waiter to come in with his gin.

The waiter turned out to be a round, blond-haired man in his late forties, with a sturdy Dutch belly and pale blue eyes that rested briefly on Durell as he stood in the bathroom doorway.

“Heer Durell, I am Inspector Hans Flaas, of the Netherlands Security Police.”

Durell nodded, smiling. “Let me get dressed, Inspector.” 

“To be sure. But there was a report you had been injured.”

“I was. Your people are efficient.”

“It is a small country. Would you like a doctor?”

“No, no.”

“Then perhaps we can talk business.”

“I’ve been expecting you,” Durell said, and he wondered if O’Keefe had managed to get over here from London in time to dispose of Piet’s body. “I’ll be with you in a moment.”

“Of course.”

He toweled, shrugged into a robe, and went into the ' sitting room of his hotel suite. Inspector Flaas sat primly, knees and ankles together, like a wary spinster. But there was nothing humorous about the cool, intelligent way he looked at Durell. He asked Durell’s permission to smoke after they shook hands, then took out a crooked Italian cigar, apologizing for it.

“We have fine Dutch cigars here, but my taste has been debased by various circumstances. You don’t mind?”

“Not at all,” Durell said.

The Hollander spoke over the flame of his wooden match. “You realize, of course, that we know who you are and why you are here.”

“I hardly expected otherwise.”

Flaas nodded. “Perhaps what you did not know, however, is that Piet Van Horn is—what do you call it in English? A double agent. He works for Dutch Intelligence as well as for your secret K Section.”

“We are allies,” Durell pointed out, unperturbed.

“Yes. We have similar goals. Have you seen Piet today?” “Yes, at his house.”

“Do you know where he is now?”

“No. Don’t you?”

Inspector Flaas dragged at his crooked cigar. His round face was ruddy, healthy; his little potbelly looked hard, Durell thought: a man could break a wrist trying to sink a left hook into it.

“I believe we should be frank with each other, Heer Durell,” Flaas said. “Your reputation for reliability is not unknown to us. You can be a dangerous man, and we are happy to share a mutual goal with you and your intelligence division. On the other hand, this is the Netherlands, and we must ask your cooperation while you live under our jurisdiction. We have a mutual problem. It is a terrifying problem. It is a threat to all the civilized world.”

“I understand,” Durell said.

“Yes, the entire world. But first and foremost, my main interest, naturally, is the Dutch people—their safety and their health. It is we who are first menaced by this—this madman, Mr. Durell. You know of the fishermen who died?” “Piet told me.”

“It could be the commencement of a plague that might depopulate the world,” Flaas said slowly. “All the alarms about atomics, space rockets, stations on the moon—all that will fade into insignificance if this terror is let loose. There have been some who counsel bold, decisive action—a grand sweep of men into the north polders to find the madmen and their hideout, and pry them out of the lair from which they threaten us. But we may destroy ourselves so, I think. We must walk lightly. We will deal with these people, whoever they are, who hold this pistol at the head of mankind and ask only money in return. It is, in effect, ransom for all humanity.”

“How much do they ask?”

“We have had a new note, received at the Royal Palace in Dam Square, this afternoon.” Flaas looked sharply at Durell. “It mentions Piet. It says Piet is dead.”

Durell said, “I spoke to Piet only this afternoon.”

“But did he speak to you?”

“He was alive when I met him,” Durell countered. “So.” Flaas’ pale eyes were cool and distant. “It is a fact, however, that Piet is now missing. So the note received by the government people at Der Haag and here may be authentic. It requests the deposit of the money in the Banque Populaire Suisse in Geneva, in an account to be anonymously numbered, but which we have learned, through extraordinary efforts, to be held in the name of one Julian Wilde. Have you ever heard that name before Heer Durell?”

“Piet mentioned it, but went no further.”

“We are checking British intelligence and their records, criminal and military, to trace this man, since it is an English name. In any case, this man Wilde holds the pistol to our heads. He may be sane or supremely mad. At the moment, we cannot risk deciding which he is. We must abide by the demands of his ransom note.”

“And pay him?”

Flaas nodded. “We have tried to imagine what manner of man would threaten humanity with a new and deadly plague if he were not paid this huge sum. How could such a man hope to live with himself afterward? How could he escape the vengeance of the world? And would he carry through with his threat if we refused to treat with him? Is it all a gigantic bluff?”

“You said it yourself,” Durell pointed out. “Five innocent Dutch fishermen have died of the new virus. Is it a warning?”

“We must accept it as such.”

“How did you keep it from the press?” Durell asked. “If it leaks out to the public, there may be panic all over the world—”

“Not even the young doctor who treated the first victims knows more than he could deduce for himself. The secret is still safe.” Flaas leaned forward with elbows on knees and spoke quietly. His suit was rumpled by the heat of the summer night. “There was a secondary threat in the new note we received today. The secret virus may be sold to other nations not disposed in kindness toward the West.”