Assignment - Lowlands (8 page)

Amschellig had a long, wide main street that paralleled the waterfront, where the buildings were mostly commercial houses devoted to both the fishing industry and tourists. Across from the main quay for the blunt-bowed fishing boats, an amusement pier of modest size had been built. The harbor, behind its stone mole, was crowded with yachts, and the narrow, brick-paved streets were completely taken over by the tourists.

It immediately became more difficult to keep Wilde in sight, and only the man’s size and leonine blond head made it possible. Beyond the amusement pier, Wilde turned abruptly Into a narrow side street lined with warehouses, and Durell increased his speed to turn the same corner.

He never quite reached it.

From the quayside, where a number of sailing sloops were tied up, stepped a giant young Hollander, in the typical narrow-visored cap and baggy trousers. He put a huge hand on Durell’s chest, and smiled, showing several gold teeth in his mouth.

“Mynheer, a moment, if you please.”

“Get out of my way.”

“It is important, mynheer. I am authorized—”

“Get lost,” Durell snapped.

“Lost?” The big young man frowned, his pale brows wrinkling under the cap. His callused seaman’s hand remained on Durell’s chest. “You do not know where you are, mynheer?”

Durell saw Julian Wilde escaping if another moment went by, and acted out of momentary anger as he chopped at the big Hollander’s hand that pressed him toward the dockside. But the seaman’s arm was like an oaken log, hard and immovable. His eyes opened with blue, innocent surprise and hurt, and when Durell stabbed a stiff fistful of fingers into the man’s solar plexus, in what should have been a disabling blow, the Hollander wasn’t there to receive it.

“Mynheer, please, we are friends—”

Durell swung again, but his wrist was caught in the huge hand and he was twisted off balance. No one had ever been able to do that to him before: the Hollander’s strength was enormous. The man grinned like a happy idiot.

“I am sorry, Heer Durell. I have a boat to offer you, that is all. You are looking for a boat to rent, are you not? We should make a bargain quickly, before people start to stare at us.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Inspector Flaas suggested that you rent a boat, right?” Durell stared at the huge young man, then at the alley where Wilde had disappeared. It still might not be too late. But when he started around the big man, the other said in a low, firm voice, “I am sorry, mynheer. I must insist. I have my instructions. Trinka wants to see you now.” 

“Later!”

“Now.”

Durell let his arm go slack, ducked under the other’s grip, feeling his skin burn where the big man tried to hang on, and came up facing the Hollander. This time he got in a hard right to the other’s belly. He didn’t care what sort of scene he created now. He heard a woman passerby gasp, and a man shouted and the big Hollander went staggering back, losing his cap as he jolted heavily against a dock shed with enough of an impact to make the little structure shake violently. There was still only innocent regret and surprise on the man’s face. He licked his lips, shook his head, hunched his shoulders, and came at Durell like a charging bull.

Durell never liked to think afterward of what might have happened if he really had it out with the Hollander then. He stood braced as the giant charged, frustrated by the man’s persistence. And then, as if he had been checked by a leash, the Hollander came to an abrupt halt as a girl’s annoyed, light voice called:

“Jan! Jan Gunther! Stop that nonsense this instant!”

Her voice carried astonishing authority for her size. The Dutch girls Durell knew were usually full-bodied and had the typical Hollander’s well-fed look. This one was tiny, with jet-dark hair that betrayed Spanish ancestry from the time the Duke of Alba ruled the Netherlands for Spain. Her features, however, had the milky softness and radiant complexion of all the Dutch. And in proportion to her size, her figure was exquisite, even bold.

She came toward them across the quay with a determined stride: a small, seductive figure in white shorts and a man’s white shirt open at the throat. Her legs were long and firm and deeply tanned. She wore her dark hair cut short, boyishly, but there was an ultrafemininity about her, from the top of her angry head to her tiny, tapping toes as she stood diminutively beside the hulking Jan Gunther.

“I am so sorry, Heer Durell. Jan misunderstood. I did not mean to detain you this way. Were you going somewhere important?”

“It doesn’t matter now,” Durell said.

“I am Trinka Van Horn,” she said, and put out her hand. “Uncle Piet and I work for the same company, you might say.”

“Trinka?”

She wrinkled her tiny nose. “A very common name, is it not? Katrinka Van Horn. The boat I own is the
Suzanne
—no one knows why. It is as stubborn and opinionated as a mule—or a man.”

“That could be a feminine trait, too,” Durell said.

“Oh, dear. Are we to be enemies?”

He looked at her firm, perfect little figure in her shorts. “Are we to share your boat?”

“Yes. That is the general idea.”

“Then I sincerely hope we’ll be friends,” he said.

“Oh, you are so gallant—for an American, that is. Of course, Jan comes along, too. As crew—and perhaps as bodyguard.”

“A pity.”

She laughed. “Oh, Jan can be useful.”

Durell rubbed his wrist reminiscently. “I suppose so.” He looked at the hulking young Jan, whose bright blue eyes were fixed in abject worship of the tiny Trinka. “All right, Jan? No hard feelings?”

His English was thick and stubborn. “Of course not, sir.”

“We thought it best to begin at once on the cruise,” the girl said. “I was about to send Jan to the Gunderhof for you, since I think Inspector Flaas makes too much out of precautionary measures. You were pointed out to us when you checked in this morning. There is little time to waste. So I decided to begin our search today.”

“Search?”

“For the bunker-laboratory, of course.”

“Have you been trying to find it for long?”

“We have been cruising the Frisians for almost a week—since before Piet came here. But we haven’t found anything so far.”

“Did you see Piet yesterday?”

“No. But Flaas telephoned and said Piet has vanished and he fears—We all think Uncle Piet is in serious trouble. Unless you can reassure me—” She looked at him questioningly. “Can you tell me anything about Uncle Piet, Mr. Durell?”

“Nothing good,” he said soberly.

Her eyes quickly searched his face. Under her diminu-femininity there was a toughness of steel, he decided. He saw by the look on her face that she understood his words, accepted them, mourned, and adjusted to this new fact, all in the space of a few brief seconds.

“Is he—dead?” Her voice was quiet.

“Trinka—” Jan began.

“It is all right. Is Uncle Piet dead, Heer Durell?” “Yes,” Durell said.

She was silent. An outboard motor started up in the anchorage, popping and stuttering, then settling down to a roar. A woman laughed on one of the moored yachts. Sea gulls slid down the edge of the wind blowing from over the North Sea. The air felt colder, somehow, although the sun was still bright and the tourists nearby were still gay. The girl nodded slowly and rubbed her arm. The wind caught little tendrils of her dark hair and blew them across the bloom of her cheek. Durell saw she was in her late twenties, mature and with a bright intelligence.

“Thank you for not lying to me, as you did to Flaas,” she said quietly.

“I didn’t exactly lie—”

“It is all right. I trust you will continue to be frank with me, if we are to work together on this Cassandra project.”

Jan Gunther said clumsily, “Shall we go aboard now?”

“Why not?” Durell asked.

The
Suzanne
was a thirty-six-foot sloop of polished mahogany, teak and brass, with an immaculate cabin divided into two compartments with double bunks in each, the one amidships serving as lounge and messroom. Forward was a head, a thoroughly equipped galley, and a fully stocked pantry. There were an auxiliary engine that was exclusively Jan Gunther’s domain.

Durell told Trinka he had to be back at the Gunderhof by six o’clock that evening, and she nodded agreement.

“I understand. You will make contact with the Cassandra people then?”

“I’ve already made contact. They’ve jacked up the price to ten million dollars.” He told her briefly of his encounter with Julian Wilde, and Trinka frowned, biting her pink lip. She had not seen anyone like Julian Wilde in the area before, she said, and she would have noticed him, she thought, if he’d been around Amschellig much.

“If Uncle Piet contacted this Wilde yesterday, he had no time to tell me about it,” she said. She made a frustrated mouth. “We have had the usual difficulty in coordinating operations, however. But what will you do about this ultimatum?”

“There’s no real hurry on that, I think. But I’m going to look for Marius Wilde,” Durell said.

“Where?”

“Anyplace where there may have been trouble in this area.”

“But I can’t think of anything—”

“Trinka,” Jan Gunther rumbled. “There has been trouble at the Wadden Zee Dike Six.”

“Oh, yes, but—”

“What kind of trouble?” Durell asked the big Hollander.

But Jan looked embarrassed for having spoken at all. He waved a deprecatory hand at the petite Trinka, then sat down on the cabin coaming and frowned at the moored yachts all around them.

Trinka said, “Oh, it’s nonsense.” But she seemed quite disturbed. “There were rumors of sabotage up there—an explosion. Some careless workmen repairing the dike last week allowed some dynamite to go up and ruined a great deal of reclamation work.”

“How long has this work been going on?”

“It was begun by the government this spring. Actually, the Wadden Zee Dike Six is a very old one, but the Nazis sabotaged it during the war and flooded a huge section of the polder.”

“How long have you known about all this?’ Durell asked sharply.

“Why, everyone up here knows about the engineering work going on there. But when the accident happened, the sea came in through the break in the dike and reflooded much that had been pumped dry up to that point. But this is not the sort of trouble you meant when you said it would help you find Marius Wilde, is it?”

“I think it might be,” Durell said.

The run up the coast and out among the Frisian Islands was aided by a brisk easterly wind for the first two hours of the trip. There was no other way, Trinka explained, to reach the dikes being repaired in the shallow sea, except by boat or a long roundabout drive and the use of working dredges and scows. It was quicker and easier to use the
Suzanne
. And Durell agreed that the sloop was a quick, pleasant vessel, lively in response to the wind that bowled them along at a good clip, faster than the auxiliary engine could have taken them.

Jan Gunther sat stolidly at the wheel, handling the boat with delicate ease. Trinka prepared lunch down below, and did not invite Durell’s help. From the deck, he considered the flat, glimmering expanse of sea and shore and the smudges of islands low on the horizon. The
Suzanne
heeled and murmured and ran quartering before the wind with a long, purling wake behind her. Durell remembered sailing on Long Island Sound during his days at Yale, and earlier sailing on the Gulf on the few occasions when he got away from Bayou Peche Rouge. This Dutch yacht had bluff bows and a higher freeboard than those he was acquainted with, but Jan handled her nicely, and she was a fine sailer—in this pleasant weather, at least.

Amschellig was lost in the haze behind them as they went north and east along the curve of the diked coast of Friesland and Groningen. Various indentations in the shore showed where dikes were still to be built or repaired. But soon these details of the area were lost as they swung farther out to sea among the tangled channels and shallows of the offshore islands.

These could be tricky waters, Durell noted, with a swift tide that could change miles of clear sailing into sand-bottomed traps that would hang you up for hours until the tide flooded again. But Jan and Trinka obviously knew the waters well, and they seemed unconcerned.

Lunch was served on deck, prepared by Trinka, and it did not break with the tradition of solid, generous Dutch meals. What astonished Durell was that Trinka easily ate as much as the huge Jan or himself, yet seemed unconcerned about her delicate little figure. There was
kreeft
, lobster, and then
uitsmijter
, huge slabs of buttered bread covered with Dutch ham and a single egg; then chunks of creamy cake and a huge pot of coffee. Jan and Trinka ate persistently, engrossed in the serious business of nourishment. Durell, who felt better by the moment in the sea air, began to think he had miraculously escaped infection by Piet, and he joined them with a hearty appetite.

When the meal was over he offered to help clean up, and after a moment’s hesitation, Trinka nodded and he joined her in the galley.

“You must forgive me,” she said, as they worked together in the tiny quarters. “I have been rude, I think. It is because of Uncle Piet. I was very fond of him.”

“How long have you been at this job?” Durell asked.

Her eyes were suddenly crisp and cool. “Long enough. Four years. Even longer, if you allow for—certain circumstances.” She paused, but did not elaborate. “I heard about you, Mr. Durell, from Uncle Piet, of course.”

“Call me Sam,” he said.

“Very well, Sam. Will you call me Trinka?”

“I want to,” he said.

“Good. I know I have been impolite. We Dutch try to make our behavior equally
dejtig
and
gezellig
—decorous and dignified, yet cozy and comfortable. It is sometimes difficult for me, when things go wrong, to strike the—the happy medium. I am very much afraid of things, these days.”

“How long have you been assigned to the Cassandra problem?”

“From the very beginning.”

“And you finally came up here to work on it by hunting for the bunker?”

“Yes. Without luck, so far.” She made a small grimace. “I have seen so far only the shores of Friesland and Groningen. It is very beautiful, though. We have a saying in the Netherlands—that God made the world, but the Dutch made Holland.”