Floodgate. Alistair MacLean
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She put her hand to her mouth to cover a smile but de Graaf had seen it.
‘You are amused, young lady.’ His tone had lost some warmth.
‘Well, yes, I am a little, sir. Your voice and expression of disapproval and disappointment. This friend is really a very gallant gentleman. Especially as he’s married.’
‘Inevitably.’ De Graaf was not amused.
‘He takes me to his cousin’s house, leaves me there and comes for me in the morning. That’s why he’s gallant, because he’s very much in love with his own wife. His cousin, Colonel de Graaf, is a lady.’
De Graaf said: ‘The Chief of Police is in his usual condition, namely, out of his depth.’ He was noticeably relieved. ‘You will, of course, Peter, have carried out a check on this cousin, this lady?’
‘No I have not.’ Van Effen spoke with some feeling. ‘I wouldn’t dare.’
De Graaf frowned briefly then leaned back and laughed. ‘Behold our intrepid Lieutenant, Annemarie. He’s terrified of his young sister. So
you’re staying with Julie?’
‘You know her then, sir?’
‘My favourite lady in all Amsterdam. Except, of course, for my wife and two daughters. I’m her godfather. Well, well.’
The phone rang. Van Effen picked it up and listened for perhaps half a minute then said: ‘Can anyone overhear my voice if I speak?’ Apparently nobody could for van Effen said: ‘Say that you’ll give me half a minute to think it over.’ At the end of that period van Effen spoke again: ‘Say to me: “Stephan, I swear to you it’s no police trap. My life on it. And if it were a police trap what would my life be worth then? Don’t be silly.” ’
A few moments later van Effen said: ‘That was fine. Will you be coming with them? Fine? Be sure to tell whoever comes with you—I’m sure it won’t be the gentlemen who have you under surveillance at the moment—that I have a police record in Poland and have a United States extradition warrant out against me. I shall be wearing a black leather glove.’ He hung up.
‘Nice touch about the police record and extradition warrant,’ de Graaf said. ‘Nice criminal touch and two statements they have no way of checking on. You will be carrying a gun, I assume?’
‘Certainly. It would be expected of me and I’ll have it in a shoulder holster that should make it obvious to even the most myopic that I am armed.’
Annemarie said doubtfully: ‘Perhaps they will take it off you before discussions start. Just as a precaution, I mean.’
‘One must take a chance about those things. I shall be brave.’
‘What Peter means,’ de Graaf said drily, ‘is that he always carries a second gun. It’s like his single glove theory, that people only concentrate on one thing at a time. It’s in that book of his, I’m sure. If a person finds a gun on you he’s got to be almost pathologically suspicious to start looking for another.’
‘It’s not in the book. I don’t put thoughts like those in criminal minds. Curious, sir, that we’ll both be engaged in something interesting at exactly four-thirty—you and the Minister, schnapps in hand, peering down at the Texel sea-dyke from the safety of your helicopter seats while I am entering the lion’s den.’
‘I’d switch with you any time,’ de Graaf said morosely. ‘I should be back from Texel by six—damn all I can do up there anyway. Let’s meet at seven.’
‘Provided we both survive—you the schnapps, me the lions. The 444 would be in order, sir?’
De Graaf didn’t say that the 444 would be in order: on the other hand he didn’t say it wouldn’t.
The Chinook helicopter, a big, fast experimental model on demonstration loan from the US Army of the Rhine, suffered from the same defect as other, smaller and less advanced models in that it was extremely noisy, the rackety clamour of the engines making conversation difficult and at times impossible. This wasn’t helped by the fact that it had two rotors instead of the customary one.
The passengers were a very mixed bag indeed. Apart from de Graaf and his Justice Minister, Robert Kondstall, there were four cabinet ministers, of whom only the Minister of Defence could claim any right to be aboard. The other three, including, incredibly, the Minister of Education, were aboard only because of the influence they wielded and their curiosity about things that in no way concerned them. Much the same could have been said about the senior air force officer, the brigadier and rear-admiral who sat together behind de Graaf. Flight evaluation purposes had been their claim. The evaluation tests had been completed a week ago: they were along purely as rubber-neckers. The same could be said of the two experts from the Rijkswaterstaat and the two from the Delft Hydraulics laboratory. Superficially, it would have seemed, their presence could be more than justified, but as the pilot had firmly stated that he had no intention of setting his Chinook down in floodwaters and the experts, portly gentlemen all, had indicated that they had no intention of descending by winch or rope ladder only to be swept away, it was difficult to see how their presence could be justified. The handful of journalists and cameramen aboard could have claimed a right to be there: but even they were to admit later that their trip had hardly been worthwhile.
The Chinook, flying at no more than two hundred metres and about half a kilometre out to sea, was directly opposite Oosterend when the sea dyke broke. It was a singularly unspectacular explosion—a little sound, a little smoke, a little rubble, a little spray—but effective enough for all that: the Waddenzee was already rushing through the narrow gap and into the polder beyond. Less than half a kilometre from the entrance to the gap an ocean-going tug was already headed towards the breach. As the pilot turned his Chinook westwards, presumably to see what the conditions were like in the polder, de Graaf leaned over to one of the Rijkswaterstaat experts. He had to shout to make himself heard.
‘How bad is it, Mr Okkerse? How long do you think it will take to seal off the break?’
‘Well, damn their souls, damn their souls! Villains, devils, monsters!’ Okkerse clenched and unclenched his hands. ‘Monsters, I tell you, sir, monsters!’ Okkerse was understandably upset. Dykes, the construction, care and maintenance of, were his raison d’être.
‘Yes, yes, monsters,’ de Graaf shouted. ‘How long to fix that?’
‘Moment.’ Okkerse rose, lurched forwards, spoke briefly to the pilot and lurched his way back to his seat. ‘Got to see it first. Pilot’s taking us down.’
The Chinook curved round, passing over the waters flooding across the first reaches of the polder and came to hover some fifteen metres above the ground and some twenty metres distant. Okkerse pressed his nose against a window. After only a few seconds he turned away and gave the wave off signal to the pilot. The Chinook curved away inland.
‘Clever fiends,’ Okkerse shouted. ‘Very clever fiends. It’s only a small breach and they chose the perfect moment for it.’
‘What does the time of day matter?’
‘It matters very much. Rather, the state of the tide matters. They didn’t pick high tide, because that would have caused heavy flooding and great destruction.’
‘So they can’t be all that villainous?’
Okkerse didn’t seem to hear him. ‘And they didn’t pick low tide because they knew—how, I can’t even guess—that we would do what we are just about to do and that is to block the gap with the bows of a vessel. Which is what we are about to do with the bows of that ocean-going tug down there. At low water the tug probably wouldn’t have found enough water to get close to the dyke.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t like any of this.’
‘You think