‘Are you sure?’ Agnelli’s tone was unaccustomedly sharp.
‘If my assumptions are correct, and I see no reason why they shouldn’t be, then I’m sure.’
‘No loud bang?’
‘They wouldn’t hear it in the palace drawing-rooms, far less out in the Dam Square.’
‘How could one ensure that it is heard?’
‘Bring along enough spare amatol, let me have a look at the walls and I’ll tell you. Tell me, is it your intention just to leave the explosive there, lock the doors, throw away the keys—it will have occurred to you, of course, that there will be duplicates?’
‘These we have.’
‘And arrange for the bang after you’re clear of the palace?’ Agnelli nodded. ‘Then why on earth do you want me for a simple job like this? I’ve little enough in the way of conscience but I’d feel downright guilty taking money for a job like this. A young teenager in his first year in a physics or chemistry lab could do this. All you require is a battery, any old alarm clock, some household flex, a fulminate of mercury detonator, a primer and you’re off. Even simpler, all you require is a length of slow-burning RDX fuse. What you don’t want is an explosives expert—me. It’s a matter, Mr Agnelli, of professional pride.’
‘This is a job for a professional. It’s to be set off by remote radio control.’
‘A teenager in his second year in a physics or chemistry lab. Can’t you do it yourselves?’
‘For good reasons we want an expert. The reasons are not for you.’
‘You have the technical data for this radio-controlled device.’
‘A professional needs an instruction book?’
‘Only an amateur would ask a professional such a stupid question. Of course I need an instruction book, as you call it, but it’s not instructions I require. These systems are not difficult if you know how they work. Problem is, there are quite a number of different systems: it’s not instructions I require but data. As far as the device and the control are concerned, I need to know such things as voltage, wattage, wave-length, radio range, type of detonator, the nature of the triggering mechanism, the type of shielding and a few other odds and ends. You have this? The data, I mean?’
‘We have. I shall bring it along tonight.’
‘You will not. I have no wish to give offence, Mr Agnelli, but only a rank amateur would suggest that I start to learn about this device on the spot. I want to be so thoroughly familiarized with the data that I can leave them all behind before I go near the place. I shall want those data at least an hour in advance.’
‘Or no deal?’
‘I wouldn’t insult you by threats or blackmail. I assume that a reasonable man recognizes a reasonable request?’
‘He does. We’ll send it around at, say, six-thirty this evening?’
‘Fine.’ Van Effen paused briefly. ‘Well, well. We have been making diligent enquiries, haven’t we?’
‘It really wasn’t very difficult. We come now to the delicate question of remuneration—although I did promise it would be on a generous scale.’
‘You did mention the possibility of permanent employment?’
‘I did.’
‘Then let’s regard this as a test demonstration. You know, efficiency, reliability, professionalism. If I measure up, let’s then discuss payment for future jobs.’
‘Fair and generous. So fair, in fact, that I feel almost diffident about raising the next delicate point.’
‘I would hate for you to embarrass yourself. Let me raise it for you.’
‘This is more than generous.’
‘My nature. You have given me highly secret and very valuable information for which the police would doubtless reward me handsomely.’ Van Effen knew from Agnelli’s brief frown then renewed smile that he had indeed guessed correctly. ‘I shall not be giving this information to the police. Reasons? One, I am not a double-crosser. Two, I don’t like the police and they don’t like me—I don’t want to be within a long distance of any policemen. Three. Purely selfish and financial—I am certain I can make a great deal more money from working for you on several occasions than I can from betraying you once. Four, I do not wish to spend the rest of my life with a hit man or hit men only one step behind.’ Agnelli was smiling very broadly now. ‘The fifth is the most compelling reason. From what you have just told me you obviously have informers, contacts inside the palace who would immediately alert you to the presence of the police. As there could and would be only one person who could have betrayed you I could, possibly, be summarily disposed of, although I think you would find it much more elegant to turn me over to the police and suggest that they have a look at extradition requests from Poland and the United States. I think I would prefer the States—I might at least get a semblance of a fair trial there. I am not wanted, of course, under the name of Danilov: but the description of villains is usually pretty thorough and there can’t be many wanted men going round with a facial scar and a ruined left hand like mine. You can understand, Mr Agnelli, why I shall be giving the police a very wide berth indeed.’
‘I must say that you and the law don’t appear to have a great deal in common. Thank you, Mr Danilov, for having done my delicate task for me. That was exactly what I did have in mind. I am quite sure that you are going to be a very valuable member of our team.’
‘I can be trusted, you think?’
‘Unquestionably.’
‘Then I am doubly honoured.’ Agnelli raised a questioning eyebrow. ‘I didn’t have to remove the magazines from my guns today.’
Agnelli smiled, stood, shook hands and left with his two companions. Van Effen went to the office, listened to the playback of the recording, expressed his satisfaction and thanks to Henri, pocketed the tape and left.
As had now become his custom, van Effen parked his car at the rear of the Trianon but entered by the front door. A nondescript little man, seemingly engrossed in a newspaper, was seated close by the desk. Van Effen spoke to the man behind it.
‘I’d like a menu, please.’ He paid no attention to the seated man. ‘Thank you.’ He ticked off some items on the menu. ‘I’ll have that, that and that. And a bottle of burgundy. In my room at twelve-thirty please. After that I don’t want to be disturbed—so no phone calls, please. I’d be glad if you would give me a wake-up call at four o’clock.’
Van Effen took the lift to the first floor, walked down the stairs and peered cautiously round the corner. The little man had gone. He went across to the desk.
‘I see you’ve lost a valued customer, Charles.’
‘Hardly valued, Lieutenant. He drinks one tiny jonge jenever once every hour or so. That’s his third time here since last night. He is rather obvious, isn’t he?’
‘He doesn’t seem to think so. Will you cancel my lunch, Charles?’
Charles smiled. ‘Already cancelled.’
Van Effen left the Trianon a few minutes later, his appearance returned to normal.
‘Well,’ van Effen said, ‘were you worried stiff about me?’
‘Of course not,’ Julie said. ‘You told us there was nothing to worry about.’
‘Liar. You, too.’
‘Me?’ Annemarie said. ‘I haven’t said a word yet.’
‘You were about to. Your concern is perfectly understandable. A jonge jenever, large. The very jaws of death, I tell you.’
‘Tell us about brave Daniel,’ Julie said.
‘In a moment. First of all, I must phone the Colonel. He will be consumed with anxiety about his trusty lieutenant.’
‘It’s twelve-thirty,’ Julie said. ‘If I know the Colonel his only concern now is what aperitif he’s going to have before lunch.’
‘You do him an injustice. And, incidentally, me.’ He took the drink from his sister. ‘May I use your bedroom?’
‘Of course.’
Annemarie said: ‘I thought—’
‘There’s a phone there.’
‘Ah. State secrets.’
‘Not
at all. Come along. Both of you. It’ll save me from having to repeat myself.’
He sat down on Julie’s bed, opened a bedside cupboard and extracted a phone. Annemarie said: ‘That’s a curious-looking instrument.’
‘Scrambler phone. Any eavesdropper who is locked into your telephone hears only garbled nonsense. A device at the recipient’s end works in reverse and makes the jumble intelligible again. Much used by secret services and the better class of spy. Very popular with criminals, too. The original connection was to my apartment but I can also call de Graaf on it.’
He got through immediately. ‘Good morning, Colonel…No, I have not been attacked, kidnapped, tortured, assassinated or otherwise set upon…Quite the contrary. Positively cordial…No, there was a newcomer. Romero Agnelli’s brother. Genial mafia-type, quite friendly, really, rejoicing in the name of Leonardo Agnelli…Yes, it is rather splendid, isn’t it, and yes, we’ve made some arrangements. I am engaged to blow up the royal palace at eight p.m.…No, sir, I do not jest.’ He covered the mouthpiece and looked at the two startled, wide-eyed girls. ‘I think the Colonel’s drink has gone down the wrong way. Yes, sir, amatol. Triggered by a remote-controlled radio device, details of which I shall be receiving this evening…Certainly I intend to do it. They’re depending on me…No, it’s deep in the cellars. There will be no loss of life…Very well.’
He covered the mouthpiece with one hand and gave his empty glass to Julie with the other. ‘I’m to keep a respectful silence while he communes with himself before telling me what to do. I don’t need telling and I almost certainly won’t agree with what he suggests.’
‘Blowing up the royal palace.’ She looked at Julie who had just brought in the jenever bottle. ‘The palace. Blowing it up. He’s mad. You—you’re a policeman!’
‘A policeman’s lot is a hard one. All things to all men. Yes, I’m listening!’ There was a long pause. Julie and Annemarie studied his face covertly but closely, but he gave no indication as to what he was thinking although he did permit himself the occasional thoughtful expression as he sipped some more jenever.
‘Yes, I understand. Alternatives. First, you can pull me off altogether and you have the means to ensure that I do this, so, of course, I would have to accept that decision. But there’s a difference between pulling me off a job and putting me back on to it again. Should this prove to be the first in a series of bomb outrages—and you know better than anyone that those things almost invariably happen in cycles—then I should have to refuse to be assigned to the investigation on the grounds that I was fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to investigate this group’s activities and you denied me the opportunity…Certainly, sir, you could ask for my resignation on the grounds of refusing to obey orders. I would refuse to resign. You’d have to fire me. And then, of course, you would have to explain to your minister that you fired me because you had made a mistake, because you had refused to listen to me, because you wouldn’t give me the chance to stop what may be a new crime wave before it started, because you had backed your own judgment against mine and you had been wrong. Throw as many chestnuts as you like into the fire, Colonel. I refuse to pull them out. And I refuse to resign. Excuse me, sir.’
Julie had sat beside him on the bedside and had put both hands on his telephone arm as if trying to pull it away.
‘Stop it, Peter, stop it.’ Despite the fact that van Effen had prudently covered the mouthpiece, her voice was low, tense, urgent. ‘You can’t talk to the Colonel like that. Can’t you see that you’re putting the poor man in an impossible situation?’
Van Effen looked at Annemarie. From her compressed lips and slowly shaking head it was evident that she was of the same opinion as Julie. Van Effen looked back at his sister and she visibly recoiled from the expression on his face.
‘Why don’t you hear me out instead of indulging in a repetition of last night’s unwarranted interference and blundering into things you know nothing about? You think he’s in an impossible situation? Listen to what I say and judge what kind of position I’m in.’ She slowly removed her hands and just looked at him, her expression uncomprehending. Van Effen raised the phone again.
‘Forgive the interruption, Colonel. Julie says that I have no right to talk to you in this fashion and that I’m putting you in an impossible situation. Julie, alas, doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Annemarie, who is also here, agrees with her but she wouldn’t know what she’s talking about either. In fairness to them I must say that, judging by the way they are looking at each other, they don’t think I know what I’m talking about either. You people are only on the periphery: I’m the man in the middle. An impossible situation, she says. Consider your alternative.
‘I go ahead as planned with Agnelli and company. You, you say, will ensure my safety. In the first place you are duty-bound—you claim—to notify the royal household using as justification the many threats that have been made against the royal family in recent months. You will have the Dam square invisibly cordoned off by snipers. You will have anti-terrorist police squads inside the palace itself. It has apparently never occurred to you that those criminals have their moles and informants pretty thick on the ground and that the presence of even one extra policeman will be immediately reported. I have been warned that if any such thing happened they would know that there could have been only one source, one person, through whom this information reached the police. And I don’t think—I know— that the palace security is pitiful and that those spies move freely within the gates. Lift that telephone to the palace, to your anti-terrorist squads, to any other policeman, and you might as well reach out for pen and paper and write down and sign my death warrant.’ That was, van Effen was aware, pitching it rather strongly, extradition was the worst he had to face, even assuming they had penetrated his disguise, which was uncertain. But now wasn’t the moment for such niceties.
‘Ensure my safety? You’ll ensure my death, van Effen in a better world by midnight. What’s one detective-lieutenant less just so long as your pettifogging rules and hidebound regulations are concerned? Maybe—no, I’m sure—that Julie and Annemarie don’t like me very much at the moment but I think they’ll have the grace to testify at the inquest that I did do my best to save my own miserable skin.
‘That, of course, is the absolute worst scenario and I’ve no intention of being part of it. I’ve been thinking during our conversation and I’ve changed my mind about one thing. You’ve offered me two alternatives. One leads to being fired, the other to the old pine box. I’m not quite in my dotage yet and I think it would behove me to find some form of work where I’ll be faced with threats of neither dismissal nor extinction. If you send one of your boys round to Julie’s place I’ll let him have my written resignation. At the same time I’ll give him the tape-recording I had made in the Hunter’s Horn this morning. I hope that you and your University friends will be able to make something of it and of the other tape-recorded telephone messages. Sorry about this, Colonel, but you leave me with no option: I seem to have run out of alternatives.’ He replaced the telephone in the bedside cupboard and left the room.
When Julie and Annemarie rejoined him he was sitting relaxed in an armchair, legs crossed and jenever in hand. For a man who had just made such a momentous decision he seemed singularly unconcerned.
Julie said: ‘May I say something?’
‘Certainly. Compared to what the Colonel said and what he is no doubt thinking at this moment your slings and arrows are as nothing.’
She smiled faintly. ‘I haven’t lost my senses or memory. I have no intention of being—how did you put it so charmingly last night—cool, clinical, superior and handing out unwanted and unsolicited advice. I am sorry for what I said in the bedroom. I didn’t know you were in so impossible a situation. But if I go on to say that I also think you’ve put the Colonel in a fearful fix, you’ll probably say that you appreciate that a lieutenant’s life is as nothing compared to the Colonel’s finer feelings. Well, I still sa
y I’m sorry, but—’
Annemarie interrupted. ‘Julie?’
‘Yes?’
‘I wouldn’t bother saying sorry to him again. I don’t for a moment believe he’s in an impossible situation. Look at him. He’s getting high blood pressure through trying not to laugh out loud.’ She gave him a considering glance. ‘You’re not very active. I thought you came through here to write out your resignation.’
He frowned, looked off into the middle distance, then said: ‘I’ve no recollection of saying that.’
‘That’s because you never had any intention of writing out your resignation.’
‘Well, well. We’ll make a lady detective of you yet. You’re quite right, my dear, I did not. How could I? How could I leave Uncle Arthur alone to cope with the rising wave of crime in Amsterdam? He needs me.’
Annemarie said to Julie: ‘If I were to say to him that he is as Machiavellian as he is big-headed, do you think he would fire me? Or just try to reduce me to tears?’
Van Effen sipped his jenever. ‘Fortunately, I am above such things. And you must never confuse Machiavellianism with diplomacy, big-headedness with intelligence.’
‘You’re right, Annemarie. I’m sorry I said “sorry”.’ Julie looked at van Effen with something less than affection. ‘And what are you going to do now?’
‘Just sit. Waiting.’
‘Waiting for what?’
‘The phone. The Colonel.’
‘The Colonel!’ Julie said. ‘After what you said to him?’
‘After what he said to me, you mean.’
‘You’re going to have a very long wait.’ Annemarie spoke with conviction.
‘My dear children—or should I say babes in the wood—you sadly underestimate the Colonel. He is infinitely shrewder than either of you. He knows very well indeed what the score is. He’s taking some time to make this call because he’s figuring out a way to beat a strategic retreat without loss of dignity, peace with honour, if you will. Now there, if you like, does go a man with a Machiavellian cast of mind—after forty years battling with the underworld one does develop a certain cast of mind. I told the Colonel that he had left me with no place to go. De Graaf, being de Graaf, realized at once what I meant—that he had no place to go.’
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