Assignment - Lowlands (9 page)

Durell nodded. “You took it out of the sea.”

“Yes. Am I forgiven for my rudeness?”

“Of course.”

They shook hands and she smiled, her fingers cool and firm in his. Then Jan Gunther’s voice rumbled from the deck above, and Trinka started suddenly.

“The dikes are ahead,” she said. “Let’s go up.”

Durell followed her slim, firm figure up the steep ladder into the sunshine again.

The crying of sea gulls overhead blended with the rhythmic thump of pumps working on the huge scows and barges off the
Suzanne’s
bow. But Durell was more impressed by the sudden threatening change of weather in the short time he had been below with Trinka. It was only shortly after noon, but the sun of the morning was lost behind a high overcast that looked thicker to the west, out over the North Sea reaches, and a heavy fog bank lay on the horizon that way.

The tide had turned, too, and was running out through numerous channels in sand bars and low-lying islets of uninhabited sand dunes and tall, reedy grasses. The mainland itself was a smudge to the east, off the starboard bow of the
Suzanne
.

The sections of the restored dike looked like huge, humped whales looming out of the flat, milky sea, in a long line curving to the distant coast. Cranes, bulldozers, scows, derricks, and bridging equipment, with sand pumps and concrete mixers, all made a cacophony of organized noise as the sloop tacked closer to the largest dike section where a number of wooden construction shacks loomed against the sky. A temporary dock thrust into the buoy-marked channel, amid a forest of cranes and hoists. Wooden steps angled up the steep walls of the dike at this point.

“What happened here originally, do you know?” Durell asked.

Trinka nodded. “During the war, when the Germans knew they were beaten, they spitefully flooded this area by sabotaging the dike at strategic places. The sea came in and drowned the land and the farms and the villages and, for one reason or another, this area hasn’t been reclaimed until now. As you can see,” the girl said, indicating direction with a sweep of her tanned arm, “the dike goes from island to island in a semicircle that eventually will be completely closed again. Then the pumps will really go to work, and the land will emerge and become useful again. Some parts of the sea bottom, near Scheersplaat particularly, were already enclosed by smaller units and pumped dry—before last week’s accident.”

“Are you so sure it was an accident?” Durell asked. She looked sober. “No Hollander would sabotage a dike under any circumstances.”

“But perhaps it wasn’t a Hollander who did it.”

“You are thinking of Julian and Marius Wilde?” “Maybe,” Durell said. “Let’s ask the man in charge here what he thinks about it.”

The swarms of construction workers in yellow-and-white steel helmets paid no attention to them as they climbed the zig-zag steps from the dock float to the top of the dike where the construction shacks were located. One or two paused to stare at Trinka’s figure in her white shorts, but there was something austere and prim about her that discouraged the male eyes intrigued by her progress. And a glance at Jan Gunther’s scowl staved off any tentative approach.

From the top of the dike Durell could see the vast sweep of sea and island and distant coast, where salt-water creeks and small rivers drained into the North Sea from West Germany. It was astonishing what a difference in perspective the small change in height effected. To the north the sea was banked in thick fog slowly approaching the whole area. To the south, where the sun still shone, the sails of pleasure boats bent to a stiffening breeze. Overhead, the sun had lost its brilliance behind the haze, and the wind on the dike top carried a surprisingly chill bite. But Trinka, in her shorts and shirt, seemed totally unconcerned as she led the way to the chief engineer’s office.

The man’s name was Hans Moejiker, and he looked like a seventeenth-century Renaissance Dutchman out of a Rembrandt canvas. He was big and ponderous, with a solid belly, a bald, shining head, and irascible eyes. Scattered around the office on drafting tables and cabinets was a mare’s nest of hydrographic and geodetic charts and blueprints of the sea-bottom construction project. Trinka spoke to Moejiker in a rapid local dialect that came too fast for Durell to follow. Between her quick explanations their conversation was interrupted by ringing phones, requests for advice from a steady stream of workmen, and the quick jotting of scribbled notes by the sweating fat man. Finally Trinka produced from the pocket of her shorts a small card which Moejiker considered. He put on a pair of hornrimmed reading glasses to consider it again, and then he shrugged and spoke to Durell in perfectly clear English.

“I have no time to be bothered by your inquiries, sir,” he said. But under the circumstances I have no choice. If you are looking for sources of trouble and difficulties, you have come to the right place, as you can see. Miss Van Horn asks me if I think the so-called accident to West Section Two could have been an act of sabotage. I say it is. Or was. I said it to the local police and I said it to the national authorities. Dynamite does not explode of itself. We take every precaution, and some abnormal ones as well. We are a careful people, Mr. Durell. The dikes are most vital to us—our ultimate defense against the sea. Would we be careless about them? Nonsense. It was sabotage.”

“And do you have any suspicions?” Durell asked. “Anyone among your workmen who might have had a hand in it, for example?”

“I don’t know. I have no time to investigate.”

“And the police haven’t helped?”

“Pooh! What do they know of my work? I’m too busy even to argue with them about it.”

“Perhaps if any of your construction people have left the project recently—

Hans Moejiker considered Durell, pursed his lips, then nodded his bald head. “I shall have it checked.”

“Check the names of Julian and Marius Wilde, while you’re about it,” Durell suggested. “They may be on your payroll.”

“Wilde, you say? That means something, yes.” Moejiker pushed his fat belly around the drafting table and abruptly went outside. He made a shrill whistling sound that penetrated the clanking and clamoring of steam and bulldozer, and offered a quick explanation to Durell. “I was just on my way to check on them when you interrupted me.”

“On which one? And why?”

“Marius Wilde—one of our assistant engineers. An Englishman, but he knows this dike and the islands like the back of his hand. Phenomenal, for a foreigner.”

“Where is he now?”

“Come along with me,” the Dutchman said belligerently. “I think he’s dead.”

The fog rolled over the dike construction site like a vast, soundless tidal wave, billowing in toward the shore. The effect was startling. Sight and sound became muffled and dampened by the whiteness, and everything took on hazy, unreal proportions, alternately looming up and vanishing in the varied areas of the fog. Durell could not see the surface of the water at the base of the dike where they stood. The construction machines kept moving purposefully at their tasks, however, with an occasional stabbing, glowing blaze of light as one or another of the operators turned on spotlights to guide themselves. There was no break in the pattern of construction.

Han Moejiker led the way with his rolling, waddling, fat man’s gait, heading for a jeep driven by a blue-denimed worker.

Trinka murmured, “I am so ashamed. I’ve been stupid. I should have asked such an obvious question long ago.” “You didn’t know the Wildes’ name before,” Durell said. “And I’m sure there are plenty of other foreigners working on this project besides the Wildes.”

She leaned forward in the jeep and spoke to Moejiker in the Friesian dialect, and the fat man answered irritably. Trinka turned back to Durell. “I asked where the construction workers are quartered, since this work goes on all summer. Some are sheltered in company barracks, but many others chose to find rooms in the coastal villages. Heer Moejiker has no idea where the Wilde brothers can be found, but he will check his records when we return.” Durell tapped the construction chief on the shoulder. “What makes you think Marius Wilde is dead, Heer Moejiker?”

Moejiker snorted. “They’ve found a dead man at the end of the West Section Two. It looks as if he slipped and fell to the ballast rock we’ve been dumping there. He broke his neck.”

“And he’s been identified as Marius Wilde?”

“Just ten minute ago.”

They drove on. The dike curved like a vast causeway out to sea, connecting one sandy islet after another. The fog thickened, and the yellow-helmeted driver snapped on the headlights, although this helped little against the glittering curtains of mist that blew across their path. After a short time the driver halted and they got out to walk the rest of the way across the unfinished top deck. The footing was rough and uncertain.

They passed a steam shovel, saw the squat shape of a barge moored to the dike, then worked their way with care down the sides close to the dike. There was nothing to be seen beyond the last pile of rubbly fill but the fog-bound sea, although from somewhere beyond their range of vision came the distant groan of a fog buoy and the faint clangor of a warning bell. Trinka paused and shivered, rubbing her bare arms.

“I did not expect this,” she said. “I do not like it. Suppose it is Marius Wilde? Suppose his accidental death upsets the deal you are to make with his brother?”

“Let’s not suppose anything yet,” Durell said. He took her elbow and helped her down the tricky descent to the huge boulders below, and he was mildly surprised when the prim little girl did not object to his personal contact.

A small knot of workmen from the barge was clustered at the far end of the unfinished dike. The tide had quickened, and a swift, ominous current poured outward into the North Sea. From here Durell could see the looming mass of another dike section barely outlined through the mist. He turned to Hans Moejiker.

“Will this be completed soon?”

“In a day or two. We have all the fill we need, ready to ship from Groningen. The pumps are ready to begin their work then.”

“Is this where the dike wjs sabotaged?”

“Near here,” the fat engineer said testily. “All this water you see must be pumped out again. Let’s see what’s going on.”

The workmen scattered quickly before Moejiker’s bellying progress. The dead man sprawled on the rocks just beyond.

He looked strangely like a fish out of water, beached and white and open-mouthed, as- if his gasps for air had ended abruptly and unexpectedly. He wore a sport shirt and slacks, and had pale hair and thin, pinched features. For a moment Durell could not understand what made him look so strange, and then he saw that the dead man had no teeth in his mouth, and had apparently forgotten to put in his dentures before he died. There was a crushed area on the back of his head where he had cracked his skull against one of the ballast rocks, and he looked as if he had fallen, arms outflung, from the top of the dike above them.

Moejiker barked swift questions at the workmen, who answered quickly and respectfully. Durell watched Trinka Van Horn. But beyond an efficient, cool glance at the dead man, Trinka paid the body no further attention, reserving her interest for the answers the workmen were giving Moejiker in their local dialect.

“He was found half an hour ago,” she explained to Durell. “Some of the barge men thought they heard a launch and stepped out to warn the boat away from this channel, which you can see is very swift and treacherous with the turn of the tide. But they saw no boat.”

“Was it foggy here then?”

“Yes. And they found this man. He was dead then.”

“Is it Marius Wilde?”

She listened for another moment. “Yes. His papers show that. Moejiker says he recognizes him, too. It is Marius Wilde.”

The fat Dutchman began to bark sharp orders to the workmen, who scattered to perform the tasks he set for them. No one touched the dead man. He asked Trinka if anything had been disturbed, and she shook her head and said everything was being kept in order for the police, who had been summoned and would be here shortly from Amschellig, She asked a few questions of her own from a nearby workman then.

“Nobody knows where Marius or his brother lived,” she told Durell. “This man says they were rather snobbish. They acted in a very superior manner that angered everyone they worked with.”

“Does this man know Julian, too?”

Trinka asked a few more questions, and the workman shrugged. “He says yes, he knows Julian, and does not like him. He says both Julian and Marius were strange, even for Englishmen.”

“But they aren’t really English, are they?”

“That’s what they claimed to be.”

“How do they think Marius died here?” Durell asked. “They assume he slipped and fell. Why?”

“It doesn’t make sense. Julian and Marius were playing a desperate and dangerous game, for fantastic stakes. It doesn’t ring true that one of them should die as the result of a stupid accident.”

Before she could reply, Durell steped forward to check his hunch. The dead man lay apparently exactly as he had landed when he fell from the dike deck, sprawled with arms and legs akimbo, his head at a curious angle that indicated a broken neck as well as a crushed skull. But there was very little blood on the quarried rock. He knelt quickly beside the dead man. He saw that Marius Wilde, even in death, was only a weak facsimile of his brother Julian. Here was none of the savage, feline strength of Julian. This had been the weaker of the two, which explained Julian’s protective attitude. Weaker physically, yes —but there was evidence in the narrow, pinched face of a strong intellect, although everything was difficult to judge because of the gaping, toothless mouth. Durell thought about the total lack of teeth in a man not more than forty, and wondered how it had happened. Then, before anyone could object, he reached out and turned the dead man over.

He found what he wanted then, although just now it was of no help. He felt puzzled and confused, and looked up as Moejiker bellied up to him to protest his interference.

“What do you think you are doing? The police will not like this. Even though it was an accident, the law—”