Floodgate. Alistair MacLean
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know virtually damn all. Three identical messages were received yesterday afternoon, one to a newspaper, one to the airport authorities—in effect, Mr de Jong—and one to the Rijkswaterstaat of the Ministry of Transport and Public Works.’ He paused briefly and looked across at a burly, dark-bearded man who was placidly polluting the atmosphere with the smoke from what appeared to be a very ancient pipe. ‘Ah! Of course. Mr van der Kuur. The Rijkswaterstaat Deputy Projects Engineer. How long to clear up this mess?’
Van der Kuur removed his pipe. ‘We have already started. We seal off the breach in the canal with metal sheeting—a temporary measure only, of course, but sufficient. After that—well, we do have the best and biggest pumps in the world. A routine job.’
‘How long?’
‘Thirty-six hours. At the outside.’ There was something very reassuring about der Kuur’s calm and matter-of-fact approach. ‘Provided of course that we get a degree of cooperation from the tugboat men, barge men and private owners whose boats are at the moment resting on the mud at the bottom of the canal. The boats that settled on an even keel are no problem: those which have fallen over on their sides could well fill up. I suppose self-interest will ensure cooperation.’
De Graaf said: ‘Any loss of life in the canal? Or anybody hurt?’
‘One of my inspectors reports a considerable degree of high blood pressure among the skippers and crews of the stranded craft. That apart, no one was harmed.’
‘Thank you. The messages came from a man or a group signing themselves FFF—it was not explained what those initials were meant to stand for. The intention, it was said, was to demonstrate that they could flood any part of our country whenever and wherever they wished by blowing up a strategically placed dyke and that accordingly they intended to give a small scale demonstration that would endanger no one and cause as little inconvenience as possible.’
‘As little inconvenience! Small scale.’ De Jong was back at his fist clenching. ‘I wonder what the devil they would regard as a large-scale demonstration?’
De Graaf nodded. ‘Quite. They said the target was Schiphol and that the flooding would come at 11 a.m. Not one minute before eleven, not one minute after. As we know, the breach was blown at precisely 11 a.m. At police headquarters, quite frankly, this was regarded as a hoax—after all, who in his right mind would want to turn Schiphol airport into an inland sea? Perhaps they saw some symbolic significance in their choice—after all, the Dutch navy defeated the Spanish navy at this very spot when the present Schiphol really was a sea. Hoax or not, we took no chances. The canal was the obvious choice for any saboteur so we had both sides of the north bank of the canal closely examined. There were no signs of any kind of disturbance that could have indicated a preparation for the blowing of the dyke. So we assumed it was some kind of practical joke.’ De Graaf shrugged, palms uplifted. ‘As we know too late nothing was further from the mind or minds of the FFF than fun and games.’
He turned to the man seated on his left side. ‘Peter, you’ve had time to think. Have you any idea—sorry, gentlemen, sorry. Some of you may not know my colleague here. Lieutenant Peter van Effen. Lieutenant van Effen is my senior detective lieutenant. He is also an explosives expert and, for his sins, the head of the city’s bomb disposal squad. Have you figured out yet how it was done?’
Peter van Effen was an unremarkable figure. Like his boss, he was just over medium height, uncommonly broad and looked suspiciously as if he were running to fat. He was in his mid or late thirties, had thick dark hair, a dark moustache and an almost permanent expression of amiability. He didn’t look like a senior detective lieutenant, in fact he didn’t even look like a policeman. Many people, including quite a number of people in Dutch prisons, tended to take van Effen’s easygoing affability at its face value.
‘It didn’t take much figuring, sir. Anything’s easy with hindsight. But even had we had foresight there was nothing we could have done about it anyway. We’ll almost certainly find that two boats were tied up bow to stern alongside the north bank. Unusual, but there’s no law, say, against an engine breakdown and a sympathetic owner of a passing vessel stopping to lend a hand. I should imagine that we’ll find that those boats were almost certainly stolen because there is traffic on the canal and any habitual waterway user would have been able to identify them.
‘The two boats would have been very close or even over—lapping, leaving a clear, hidden area where scuba divers could work. If this took place during dusk or night-time, as I’m sure it did, they would have bright lights on deck and when you have those on, anything below gunwale level is in deep shadow. They would have had a drilling machine, something like the ones you use on oil-rigs only, of course, this one would have been on a very small scale and operated horizontally not vertically. It would have been electrically powered, either by batteries or a generator, because the exhausts of a petrol or diesel plant make a great deal of noise. For an expert, and there are literally hundreds of experts operating on or around the North Sea, this would have been a childishly simple operation. They would drill through to, say, a foot of the other side of the dyke—we may be sure they would have taken very careful measurements beforehand—withdraw the bit and insert a waterproof canvas tube packed with explosives, maybe just plain old-fashioned dynamite or TNT, although a real expert would have gone for amatol beehives. They would then attach an electrical timing device, nothing elaborate, an old-fashioned kitchen alarm clock will do very well, plug the hole with mud and gravel—not that there would be a chance in a million of anyone ever looking there—and sail away.’
‘I could almost believe, Mr van Effen, that you masterminded this operation yourself,’ van der Kuur said. ‘So that’s how it was done.’
‘It’s how I would have done it and within the limits of a slight variation that’s how they did it. There is no other way.’ Van Effen looked at de Graaf. ‘We’re up against a team of experts and the person directing them is no clown. They know how to steal boats, they know how to handle them, they know where to steal drilling equipment, they know how to use that equipment and they’re obviously at home with explosives. No wild-eyed, slogan-chanting cranks among this lot: they’re professionals. I’ve asked head office to notify us immediately if they receive any complaints from factories, wholesalers or retailers of the theft of any equipment from the manufacturers or distributors of drilling equipment. Also to notify us of the theft of any vessels from that area.’
‘And beyond that?’ de Graaf said.
‘Nothing. We have no leads.’
De Graaf nodded and looked down at the paper he held in his hands. ‘That message from the mysterious FFF. No indication whatsoever as to the reason behind this threatened—now actual—sabotage. Just a warning that nobody should be at ground level at 11 a.m. this morning and that all planes should be flown out yesterday afternoon or evening to adjacent airfields as the needless destruction of property formed no part of their plans. Very considerate of them, I must say. And even more considerate, Jon, was the phone call you got at nine o’clock this morning urging you to evacuate all those planes immediately. But, of course, we all knew it was a hoax, so we paid no attention. Would you recognize that voice again, Jon?’
‘Not a chance. It was a woman’s voice, a young woman and speaking in English. All young women speaking English sound the same to me.’ Fist clenched, de Jong gently thumped the table before him. ‘They don’t even hint at the reason for carrying out this—this monstrous action. What have they achieved by this action? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I repeat that any person or persons who behave in this fashion have to be mentally unbalanced.’
Van Effen said: ‘I’m sorry, sir, I disagree. I do agree with what the Colonel said on the roof—they’re almost certainly as sane as any one. No one who is mentally unbalanced could have carried out this operation. And they’re not, as I said, wild-eyed terrorists throwing bombs in crowded market-places. In two separate warnings they did their best to ensure that neither human lives nor property would be put at risk. That was not the behaviour of irresponsible people.’
‘And who, then, was responsible for the deaths of the three people who lost their lives when that Fokker Friendship cartwheeled and crashed