Floodgate

by Alistair MacLean

  Samuelson had stopped smiling. He frowned and said: ‘I did not know this. Before God, I didn’t.’ Without apparently even pausing to think he reached out for the handset of his RCA and pressed a button. He must have received an acknowledgment almost immediately for he started talking into the mouthpiece rapidly and urgently, clearly issuing instructions in a language that no one there knew but which George, from a few odd words, recognized as being Yiddish. He replaced the handset, rose, walked around behind the bar, poured himself a brandy, not a small one, and drank the contents in two or three gulps. This performance was watched with some astonishment but no comment was made.

  Van Effen rose in turn, walked round to the bar in turn and poured brandy in turn—two brandies. He carried these round to Anne and Julie, waited until they had both sipped from them and resumed his seat.

  ‘Fine lot you are when it comes to ladies in distress.’ He looked at Agnelli. ‘That was a nice line in threats.’

  ‘You think they were meaningless threats, Mr Danilov?’ Agnelli didn’t seem at all reluctant to speak, like others in the room he probably found it embarrassing not to look at Samuelson who was on his second brandy and paying attention to nobody. ‘I assure you they were all genuinely intended. And will be carried out.’

  ‘So much for your word, Agnelli.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You’d have to have a damned short memory not to. Only a few hours ago you promised us that no harm would come to any Dutch people. You warn all the Lelystad people to take the necessary precautions against the breaching of the dykes. Good God, man, it’s pitch black outside and coming down in torrents. They won’t be able to see to take precautions.’

  ‘They don’t have to see. Flood level won’t be more than half a metre. We’ve checked and checked the area. Plenty of second-floor rooms and attics—although they could remain on the ground floor if they didn’t mind getting their feet wet. And plenty of boats. We’ve checked that also. The message was primarily for intimidation. Surely you can see that?’

  ‘That’s as maybe. Where’s old Elastic Conscience?’

  ‘Elastic what?’

  ‘Elastic who. Riordan. The praying priest. The god-fearing Reverend. Why wasn’t he here watching?’

  Agnelli smiled faintly. ‘He regards TV as the work of Satan. Could be right, for all I know. As you saw, he’s practically married to his earphones. There was a simultaneous radio broadcast.’

  ‘You do really have those nuclear devices? I find it frankly incredible.’

  ‘I can show them to you.’

  ‘Well, that answers that. So this man of peace and goodwill is prepared to play around with lethal explosives.’

  ‘You heard what Mr Samuelson said to you a short time ago.’ Agnelli looked quickly at the bar. Samuelson, still looking at nothing and nobody but with something peculiarly tense in his stance, appeared to be on yet another brandy. ‘Mr Riordan’s prepared to use the devil’s tools to fight the devil.’

  ‘Too late in the day to talk about pious, hypocritical platitudes, I suppose. How did you get them—those nuclear devices?’

  ‘You heard. NATO. West Germany. Specifically, US bases.’

  ‘I heard that. I didn’t ask where. I asked how.’ Van Effen looked away for a moment, then back at Agnelli. ‘I know. The RAF. The Red Army Faction.’

  ‘Yes. I would have told you but since you’ve guessed it or know—yes.’

  ‘Jesus! The holy father upstairs must really have the original, twisted, double-dyed, infinite-stretch elastic conscience. The RAF! And only last night, according to the papers—correct me if I’m wrong—he was telling Wieringa, the Defence Minister, that the RAF were the inheritors of the bloody mantle of the Baader-Meinhof gangsters of the early seventies. The fact that his own hands are stained a bright red doesn’t appear to worry the Reverend at all. God, I should have thought of this right away. It’s only a couple of weeks since there was this successful break-in at a US army ammunition depot outside Hanover. The RAF claimed responsibility and their claim was generally accepted: the RAF is rather good at this and the Americans rather poor at guarding their installations. No mention of nuclear devices. It would have been in character for the RAF to have made specific mention of this: one supposes that they did but that the US Army, or the army through the government, put a stop order on this. Anti-nuclear sentiment is high enough already in Germany without the added knowledge that there’s a bunch of woolly-headed hare-brained young terrorists on the loose with nuclear weapons in their suitcases.’

  ‘No prizes for your guesses, Mr Danilov. Had to be that way. And it was.’

  ‘Your information, of course, comes from the same source as the nuclear devices.’

  ‘Where else?’

  ‘Joachim and Joop. And the two other baby-faced choirboys who were here when we arrived this afternoon.’

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘The leisure-time terrorists, as the West Germans call them—nights and weekends only. Since the egregious Christian Klar was captured—along with two lady friends, Mohnhaupt and Schultz I think they were called—and charged with the murders of diverse politicians, prosecutors, bankers and industrialists, the RAF have pulled in their horns and are reported to have moved into neighbouring countries. I suppose Holland was the natural, the inevitable first choice. Should be like a second home to them.’ Van Effen thought briefly then smiled. ‘On the one hand the RAF, on the other your blackmailing demands on the Dutch Government. Don’t you find it rather a splendid thought, Mr Agnelli, that the Dutch Government are going to pay the RAF for nuclear devices to be used against the Dutch people?’

  Agnelli didn’t have the opportunity to say whether he did or not for the call-up buzzer on the RCA rang at that moment. He lifted the handset, spoke an acknowledgement, then said: ‘Mr Samuelson, for you.’

  Samuelson came and took the handset, listened, said: ‘Thank you, Helmut, thank you very much,’ hung up and looked at his watch. ‘Four minutes. I’m going to my room, Romero, but will be down for dinner. So will Mr Riordan. There’ll be a news flash on TV in four minutes. Please don’t miss it.’ On his way to the stairs, he stopped by Annemarie’s table. ‘I am sorry, Miss Meijer.’ No ‘my dear’, no ‘Anne’. ‘I did not know.’

  When the news flash came, interrupting some appropriately lugubrious offering from Handel by the Concertgebouw, it was very much what van Effen expected. ‘The now notorious terrorist group, the FFF,’ the newscaster read, ‘have announced that, for reasons they do not wish to discuss, the demand for twenty million guilders from Mr David Meijer has been withdrawn, effective as from now. Miss Anne Meijer will be released and returned to her father as soon as is conveniently possible. The sum now asked from the Government has been correspondingly increased to a hundred and twenty million guilders.’

  Apart from a slow shake of the head, which could have meant anything but probably indicated a total lack of understanding, Annemarie did not react at all. Julie smiled in delight and hugged her. George clapped a hand on van Effen’s knee and said: ‘Well, now, my friend, what do you think of that?’

  ‘Splendid,’ van Effen said. ‘Quite splendid. Bit unfair on policemen’s sisters, though. They should have let her go as well.’

  ‘I must admit,’ van Effen said, ‘that it does make it a bit more difficult to kill him, should that unfortunate need arise. If, of course, our friend Samuelson was moved solely by humanitarian principles. One must not misjudge the man. Perhaps he recalled the days when he used to say his prayers at his mother’s knees and his heart was touched. Equally well, he may be an even more calculating villain than we’ve given him credit for.’

  ‘I can’t see how you can possibly say that,’ Vasco said. They were pacing to and fro on the front porch. It was bitterly cold, now, and the wind of gale force dimensions. They had a certain degree of privacy out there—it had been impossible to conduct a private conversation inside—but only a certain degree. There was a loft over the ga
rage, approached, as was the custom in that area, by an external stairway. Earlier on they had seen one man go up those stairs and another come down: almost certainly a change of watchman who would have taken position behind the loft window. There were probably others similarly stationed in the other barn and in the windmill itself. Whether the purpose was to keep insiders from going out or outsiders from coming in, it was impossible to say. All that could be said was that it was done with great discretion. Civilian staff were employed in the windmill and even the hint of the maintenance of a guard—almost certainly an armed guard—would have done much to destroy the credibility of the Golden Gate Film Productions.

  ‘I not only say that he may be an exceedingly cunning villain,’ van Effen said. ‘I believe it. Sure it was moving, touching, heartrending even, a fundamentally decent man overwhelmed by his own decency. You noticed the terms of the communiqué. Miss Anne Meijer will be released as soon as conveniently possible. For conveniently possible read inconveniently impossible. People will know that the poor man is trying desperately to return Annemarie to the bosom of her family but finds it impossible to do without jeopardizing his own plans and safety. But he has made the offer. Mr David Meijer, who has not, I assume, accumulated his millions or billions or whatever without having some faint glimmer of intelligence somewhere, will know exactly what the score is and that his daughter is as much a pawn as ever and that he can still be counted on to do the right thing—as far as Samuelson is concerned—about bringing his influence to bear on whatever the government’s decision may be. The government whose decision matters, of course, is the British one. He can’t influence that. But he can influence the Dutch Government to influence the British one, which is just about as useful from Samuelson’s viewpoint.

  ‘And think what would have happened had David Meijer died while his daughter was still in the FFF’s custody. Unlikely, but that’s not the point. People range from the softheaded to the incurably romantic. The “died-of-a-broken-heart” syndrome has always had a powerful following. Sure, people do die of a broken heart but it’s over the months and the years and not overnight. No matter. If he had died the public reaction to Samuelson and the FFF would have been one of total revulsion and rejection. Attitudes would harden, resistance stiffen, and the average man in the street would say: “The hell with this cold, ruthless, murderous monster. Never give in to him, never. Let him do his worst and see if we care.” That, I should imagine, is the last thing that Samuelson and company want.

  ‘Going back to that communiqué. Notice the noble, dignified and selfless fashion in which he refused to give the reasons for his decisions. I didn’t know that David Meijer had a heart condition but for all I know it may be common knowledge. If it’s not, I’ll take long odds that it soon will be. Helmut Paderiwski, whom Samuelson calls our voice in Amsterdam, will make good and sure of that and that his voice will be heard. Radio and newspapers will be anonymously and discreetly told that David Meijer has a severe heart condition—the truth of that can soon be established—and hints dropped that his gallant hostage daughter had been pleading for his life. For the newspapers, it’s a natural, a human-angle story to tug at the very heart strings. Suitably dressed up in the usual sickening journalese, this will be manna to Samuelson, a big plus, an image that puts him in line for tabloid canonization. No matter what he’s done or is threatening to do, popular sympathy is going to swing behind him and make it all the easier for his demands to be granted. The whole world loves a reformed rogue, a bandit with a heart of gold. A toast to the Robin Hood of Amsterdam.’

  ‘This I do believe,’ George said. ‘Among the other accomplishments that you don’t know I have, is a smattering of Yiddish. Not much, not even a working knowledge, but a smattering. I wondered what senseless instructions he was trying to give in Yiddish to this fellow Paderiwski in Amsterdam. I don’t wonder any more. It makes sense.’

  ‘Lastly, of course, there’s the Dutch reverence for the guilder. What praise, people will say, can be too high for a man who spurns twenty million guilders—the fact that he doesn’t have it and probably wouldn’t have got it anyway is quite irrelevant—at the sight of a tear-drop in the corner of the eye of a lovely maiden. The twenty million, admittedly, is added to the government’s bill, but who ever cared about robbing a government. You still think, Vasco, that Samuelson was motivated only by humanitarian considerations?’

  ‘When you put it that way, I have to admit that I don’t. He has to be what you say—a crafty conniving villain. Well, it’s all very well you having convinced me. It’s an unfortunate fact that fourteen million other Dutchmen didn’t hear you. I’m convinced that they’re going to stay convinced to the contrary.’

  ‘Not all of them. Give some of them time and they’ll work it out. The great majority won’t. And that’s what the frightening thing is about Samuelson. It took me quite a time to figure out the angles here and I’m in the heart of this whole messy business. Samuelson’s got a computer mind. He did it all on his feet, within seconds and it would seem automatically, although of course it wasn’t automatic at all. Man’s brilliant. And he’s highly dangerous. It would behove us to have a very long spoon when we’re supping with Samuelson.’

  ‘Back to the devil again, is that it?’ George said. ‘He’s the key. Nothing else fits the lock. He’s the one who says that Riordan is prepared to use the devil’s tools to fight the devil. I wonder if Riordan uses a long spoon to sup with Samuelson. It must cost thousands of dollars a day to run this operation. Maybe tens of thousands. Agnelli hasn’t got that kind of money and I doubt whether Riordan ever earned a penny in his life.’

  ‘Samuelson beyond doubt. The paymaster.’

  ‘Pity we’re in no position to check with Interpol.’

  ‘Wouldn’t do us any good even if we were. If he’s as clever as I think he is. Interpol will never have heard of him. Interpol simply has no idea as to who the world’s outstanding criminals are. That’s why they’re outstanding. May not even have a criminal past at all—I say criminal past as distinct from criminal record. He’ll have no record. And perhaps, as I say, no past. He may even be what Uncle Arthur suggested he was—a bloated plutocrat, a man who has made his immense fortune in oil or shipping or something of the kind.’

  ‘Then we would have heard of him.’

  ‘We may or may not have heard of him—under another name, of course. May not even be a photograph of him in existence. Some of the world’s wealthiest men are never photographed.’

  George said: ‘If he’s as wealthy as we think he may be, why is he trying to extract more from other sources?’

  ‘Show. I’m convinced that Samuelson neither wants nor needs money. But for all I know he may have persuaded his partners that his funds are drying up and he’s now making a show about money to divert attention from the fact that money is of no value to him and that his interests lie elsewhere. Agnelli makes no secret of the fact that he’s very interested in money and this may be Samuelson’s way of keeping him happy. He has a large staff to keep happy and they’ll be keenly interested in seeing Samuelson displaying a keen interest in money. He seems to need us—for what precise purpose we don’t yet know, we may well be here on only a contingency basis—but we need money too. And Riordan, above all, has to be kept happy, for Riordan above all needs unholy money to achieve his holy purposes.’

  ‘Unholy money for unholy purposes,’ George said. ‘Split mind. Dichotomy. There must be something in this Irish-American connection. We know there are men who are willing to trade heroin for bags of gold to help a so-called worthy cause. Purblindness. That the word?’

  ‘Something like that. In medical terms, tunnel as opposed to peripheral vision. We have to accept that it’s an illness and try to treat it as best we can.’

  ‘How do we go about treating this ailment? The good doctor has something on his mind?’ Despite his vast bulk George shivered in the bitter wind. ‘A prescription? A nostrum?’

  ‘Too late for medicine.�
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  ‘Surgery? I wouldn’t even know which end of a scalpel to hold.’

  ‘You don’t have to. In the best medical parlance, surgery, at this moment, is contraindicated.’

  George cleared his throat delicately, which is no easy thing to do in a gale-force wind. ‘You have suddenly developed a new-found regard for the well-being of murderous villains? Criminals who are prepared to drown God knows how many thousands of our fellow countrymen?’

  ‘No such sea-change, George. I know they have their quota of hard men and psychopathic nut-cases around here but do you seriously doubt for a moment that we could kill Riordan, Samuelson and Agnelli and get the girls away unharmed?’

  ‘I know we could—I take back my ludicrous suggestion about your tender heart. Tungsten steel, more like.’

  Vasco’s expression didn’t exactly register shock but it did hold a certain amount of apprehension and disbelief.

  ‘You’re a policeman. Sir. Sworn to uphold the law. I mean, give them a fair trial and hang them in the morning.’

  ‘I’m my own court of law and I’d shoot them down like wild dogs if I thought it would solve anything but it wouldn’t. Two reasons—one psychological, one practical.

  ‘The psychological—curiosity, nosiness if you like. I am not convinced that those three are ordinary criminals. I am not convinced that Romero Agnelli is the murderous, ruthless killer we think he is. He bears no resemblance to his two brothers I put behind bars, who were Grade A vicious sadists. The fact that he hasn’t laid a finger on either Julie or Annemarie helps bear that out. Or Riordan. He’s no psychopath. Loony as a nut or nutty as a loon and a demagogue of some note—but only an occasional demagogue. But being loony doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re certifiable: there are quite a number of people tidied up—institutionalized, as they say—in lunatic asylums who are convinced that they are the only sane people around and that there exist great numbers of people, those responsible for wars, hunger, diseases, genocide, heroin pushers and those who talk glibly of nuclear annihilation, not to mention a few other trivial matters, who should be where they are, and who’s to say they’re not right?’