Assignment - Lowlands

by Edward S. Aarons

  He arrived five minutes late. The fog still persisted, and the chill dampness blowing from the North Sea had driven the tennis players indoors. There was no message for him at the desk. The dining room was filled with Dutch appetites, but he skipped eating there, and ordered a Javanese dinner sent up from the rijsttafel, with a bottle of Dutch gin.

  Despite the afternoon, he was aware of enormous relief. He felt physically better. The slight symptoms of malaise that had worried his morale earlier were gone. He did not carry the plague. When he entered his room, closing the door behind him, he saw at once that someone else had been here.

  It could have been the maid who had moved his flight bag, but he did not think so. It had been carried across the room and now sat at a right angle to the right upper leg of the bed.

  John O’Keefe had been here.

  Durell went to the bag and opened it and found the sealed envelope O’Keefe had left for him. In the darkening light that came off the fog-bound, he flipped through the dossiers O’Keefe had enclosed. But first he read the brief note.

  Cajun—am bumbling about like a tourist after

  several objects sunk at sea. Am scared to death.

  Are you well? Claire will never forgive you for

  ruining our holiday. But she loves you. John.

  The onionskin carbon copies enclosed with the note were excerpts from dossiers on Julian and Marius Wilde. Durell memorized the data as he read them.

  WILDE, Julian, alias Wildenauer, Joseph. Wilderski, John.

  Nationality: Polish, made Br. subj. 20/6/ 45,

  bel. b. Vilno (?) but suspect Czech a/o Hungarian

  ancestry. Mbr. Polish Army, Lance Cpl, joined Free

  Polish forces after 3 yrs. Nazi war prisoner, records

  Buchenwald 6 mos., released slave labor Holland,

  escaped fishing boat Feb. ’43 to Dunstan, England.

  Commissioned lieutenant Free Polish Army 23 Aug

  ’43, fought Col. Wilenski’s Brigade Netherlands

  campaign. D.C. no records.

  Occupation: Labourer, draftsmen, educ. London

  U. and grad, construct, engineer, Chandler-Smith

  Ltd. London. Inc. £3600 1960

  Address: Gravely Mews 25, London SW.

  Marital status: single.

  Children: none.

  Member organizations: none.

  Physical description: Age 36(?) Hgt. 6’2”

  Wgt. 210, Eyes brown, hair blond. Outstanding

  scars: concentration camp tattoo under left arm

  223433, knife wound scar upper left abdomen.

  Passport in order. Form 22150 — A 52C 15151

  No known criminal record CID

  The dossier on “Wilde, Marius” contained much the same background information and differed only in a physical description that precisely fitted that of the dead man found on the dike that afternoon.

  A second note from John O’Keefe was clipped to the onionskin dossiers, and read:

  Cajun—we’ve traced the slave-labor chores of

  these lads to the Wadden Zee Dikes when the

  Nazis were here. Did they work on the Cassandra

  bunker? A good bet. Did they hear the Dutch were

  finally getting around to repairs? Count on it.

  Search of Wilde flat Gravely Mews—they live together,

  devoted brothers, neighbors say—came up

  with Times cutting of Dutch engineering plans to

  reconstruct sabotaged dikes. Did they know about

  Cassandra all these years? Good chance. Their

  objective assessed: find bunker again and sell to

  highest bidder. No other organized gang or persons

  involved. Take it from here, Samuel.

  Durell made twists of O’Keefe’s notes and the onionskin dossier copies and burned all the paper in the ashtrays in his hotel room. The information vanished in smoke, but it was all committed to memory, and when the ashes were cooled he crushed them under his fingers and tapped the remnants out of the window.

  He was just turning back when he heard the key in his door.

  As far as he knew, the desk clerk was aware of his return, and no hotel employee would enter without knocking first. He took the gun that Flaas had given him from his pocket and held it ready as the door was unlocked from outside and casually pushed open.

  The girl who called herself Cassandra stood there.

  Twelve

  She wore dark slacks, tilted sun glasses, and a pale cashmere sweater around her shoulders against the chill fog. Her heavy blonde hair was tied into a pony-tail and fastened with a tortoise-shell comb. She rested one hand on the doorjamb, and Durell saw that she wore an emerald ring of at least five carats’ weight. He also saw there were new rope burns on her hand and that she wore rubber-soled shoes.

  She was not alone. The fat seaman named Erich and his young, pimply cohort stood behind her trim figure. She could afford to smile. Both of her assistants had guns pointed at Durell.

  “Mr. Durell,” she said in her accented English. “You do not seem surprised?”

  “I’m not.”

  “And you are not pleased, either?”

  “That depends.”

  “Did you wish to see me again?”

  “Oh, yes,” Durell said. “You and your two friends, Frau von Uittal. I wrote you down in my little black book, to settle our account one day. I suppose this may well be the day.”

  “Perhaps, perhaps.” She smiled again. “On the other hand, it is good to be alive still, is it not?”

  He did not know if she were referring to the virus that had killed Piet Van Horn and which he’d thought for a time might kill him, too; or whether she referred to the incident at sea in the Suzanne. He suddenly decided, with little expectation of error, that the only person who could own the big boat that had tried to run down the Suzanne was this girl who called herself Cassandra. He was not completely right; but he was close enough to the truth to act with judgment upon it.

  The fat seaman, Erich, looked at Durell without pleasure, then licked his lips and spoke in German to the blonde girl. “He will come with us? You have asked him?” “Not yet.”

  “Then ask him, please!”

  “Do not presume to give me an order, Erich.”

  “I do not. It is the general’s order.”

  “My husband can wait.”

  “It is not the way he described the situation to me, madame. Please ask this man to come along now, and to come along quietly, without fuss, or we shall give him more of what we gave him before. It would be a pleasure, but the general is impatient.”

  The woman looked mockingly at the fat seaman. “And you are afraid of his impatience? The great god, General von Uittal, frightens you?”

  “Yes, madame. He frightens me very much. And if you were a wise woman and a good wife, you would be frightened, too.”

  “Do not be insolent! Can you take his gun?”

  Erich gestured to Durell, who sighed and gave him Flaas’ gun and said in fluent German, “It’s all right, Erich. Pardon me for eavesdropping, but I’m coming peacefully.” The fat sailor grunted in surprise, then shrugged. Cassandra said, “Oh, you are wise.”

  “On one condition, however,” Durell added.

  “There are no conditions,” she said.

  “I insist. I want to know your real name, Cassandra.”

  “You understood Erich. I am Frau von Uittal.”

  “And your first name is Cassandra?”

  She said coldly, “It was once Emma.”

  “Thank you,” Durell said. “That’s what I wanted to know.”

  They left the hotel quietly, without arousing anyone’s interest. It was already six-thirty, and there was no sign anywhere of Julian Wilde, who was now half an hour late. Durell did not expect to see him now. He was sure that Julian already knew about the murder of his brother Marius.

  Dusk came early with the fog that cast a glum pall over the holiday-makers
at the Gunderhof Hotel. Only the lovers, strolling on the sea wall or the dike paths, did not seem to mind. Durell expected to be hustled into a waiting car, but instead they walked the quarter-mile along the dike into the village of Amschellig.

  A launch waited for them at the municipal dock. He looked for the Suzanne’s sprightly contours, but she was lost among the silent lines of moored sloops on the misty water. Durell sat beside Cassandra—he would always think of her by that name, he decided—in the center of the launch. The fat man steered. The pimply youngster kept a gun pointed at Durell.

  They made for the same yacht, Durell saw at once, that had tried to run them down at sea. As they came alongside, Erich said something to the younger sailor who, once the others had climbed aboard, took the launch hastily back to the fog-shrouded pier.

  “Did you send him to search my room?” Durell asked.

  “Ja. Why not?”

  “A pity. He won’t find anything.”

  “Then you will be sorry. This time you will truly regret it, if you are stubborn. Move, swine!”

  The fat man shoved him along the glistening deck. The girl hurried ahead, vanishing through a doorway that shed bright yellow light into the swirling gloom of fog. The yacht was anchored about a hundred yards offshore, near the breakwater, and the steady clangor of the fog buoy at the channel entrance punctuated the darkness with mournful frequency. On the vessel itself, everything shone with military polish and immaculate Prussian efficiency. The registry, shown on the white life-preservers on the rail, was the Valkyron of Hamburg, West Germany.

  “In here, you,” said Erich. “The general is at dinner. You will remain standing at attention when he speaks to you, and you will not speak first, under any circumstances.

  “Jawohl,” said Durell. “May I breathe?”

  The fat man said grimly, “You may soon make such a request in earnest, American. It is not a joking matter. The general never jokes.”

  “I know that,” Durell said. “I know all about von Uittal.”

  He recognized the man himself the moment he was ushered into the dining salon of the yacht. A long table, spread with fine linen, was set with gleaming cut glass and silver and Rosenthal china. The general sat alone at the head of the table in the paneled cabin. Cassandra stood beside him and a little to the rear, as if in attendance. Her face was impassive as Erich pushed Durell, stumbling, into the room.

  “Here he is, my general,” Erich said.

  “Very good. You have done well.”

  “Thank you, my general,” Erich rapped. He all but saluted, standing at stiff attention. Durell saw there was another place set at the table, at his end, but Cassandra did not take the chair, nor was she invited to do so. And he did not expect to be the other guest. He saw that Cassandra looked resentfully at her husband, but this might have been imagined.

  S.S. General Friedrich Hans Paulhous von Uittal had quite a dossier among interested commissions and departments of the Allied governments. He had been tried as a war criminal during the Nuremberg trials, in absentia, since he had disappeared, and was sentenced to a ten-year term. Two years later a K Section operative dug him out of a small Italian coastal village where he had been living as a Jewish refugee from Austria, ironically accepting the label of those he had tried to exterminate. He was extradited to West Germany to serve his sentence for abnormal cruelty while in command of a concentration camp, served six years and six months and was released for reasons of failing health.

  Von Uittal had his nerve, Durell thought, cruising Netherlands waters with his record of cruelty to the Dutch underground during the Nazi Occupation. But no one had ever accused the S.S. general of cowardice. There was arrogance in every inch of the slim, corseted body, in the square face, the flat Teutonic brow, and thick brown hair that even now was only slightly tinged with gray. He would be about sixty, Durell thought, with his corset and dyed hair.

  There was no record of his marriage in K Section files. He looked again at the blonde Cassandra, but her glance flicked rapidly away to avoid his eyes. He wondered what was troubling her. Perhaps she resented the general’s disdain for women; she had not been invited to join her husband at dinner, and he wondered why.

  “Mr. Durell,” von Uittal began, his mouth thin and precise as the dry sound of his voice. “I trust you are here with the intent of being reasonable and cooperative. It would avoid much delay and some unpleasantness for you. May we understand each other from the start?”

  “I understand you,” Durell said. “Whether you know what makes me tick is highly doubtful.”

  “I note enmity in your voice. You are not of Dutch descent, of course. I have done nothing to you. My alleged war crimes were all carried out as direct military orders, and I never had any choice but to obey.”

  “That’s the song all you yellow canaries sing,” Durell said.

  “I paid the penality prescribed for me. I served out a long term in prison.”

  “And now you look forward to another big Tag?”

  “Perhaps.” Von Uittal smiled. “We are not dead and buried yet. We never will be. Everyone knows Germany’s position today is precisely as some of us predicted. You need us, and you will accept us on our terms, eventually.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “We shall dictate the future peace. You will see. The war has never really ended, you know. What we have witnessed for the past fifteen years is simply a breathing-space, a cooling-off period, a phase that most people in their foolishness do not recognize as war.” He looked up sharply at Durell, his pale eyes gray, almost colorless. “But you do. I see you are a man who knows the truth. So we are enemies. But even an enemy can be reasonable, and I shall make this brief. I have an excellent chef aboard, and dinner will be served in twenty minutes. If you are wise, you will be dining with me then or going ashore, as you choose; or you will be dead.”

  Durell shrugged. “I never misunderstood your kind, I’m happy to say, Uittal.”

  Erich snapped, “You will address the general as General von Uittal.”

  The German waved a negligent hand. “Do not be overly zealous, Erich. I have a feeling you will get your chance. Perhaps you should summon two more of the crew. That will leave your hands free.”

  “Yes, sir. I understand, sir.”

  “Now, then.” Von Uittal sat forward in a businesslike manner. “I will explain what I can, briefly, so we will have no doubts as to my meaning and intentions, Durell. We meet because of your connection with Piet Van Horn and Cassandra, my wife. By the way, did her name startle you? It was intended to do so. When I began this project, I asked her to assume the name for its shock value. —You were about to say something?”

  “Yes,” Durell said. “Does she know what it means?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  Cassandra frowned, but said nothing. Her husband went on as if at a military briefing. “This began during the Occupation, of course. And I’m sure you know that I was commanding general of this area for several months, before we were forced to retreat. I was in charge of demolitions designed to delay the Allied advance. And I was also in command of various experimental and research projects.”

  “Such as Cassandra.”

  The general waved a hand again. He, too, wore an emerald ring, larger than his wife’s. “I was not concerned with details. I knew its name and general aims, and I inspected the bunker construction from time to time. It took certain materials that were a nuisance to procure. The bunker, as you must have guessed, had to be hermetically sealed, airtight and watertight, so its contents could survive indefinitely, as if under controlled laboratory conditions. However, certain events were unpredicted.”

  “Such as the sudden Allied advance,” Durell said.

  “Yes. And I had some small undertaking of my own that needed attention. I—ah—I was and am an ardent collector of art.”

  “A thief, you mean,” Durell said. “Like others of your kind, you looted and plundered occupied
lands for art treasures. Is that it?”

  He felt his head snap around and knew that Erich had hit him with the gun, and then the carpeted deck came up and he was on his hands and knees, shaking his head to get rid of the ringing pain that clamored agonizingly in his brain. Cassandra cried out in protest. He shook his head again and saw blood spatter from a cut on his scalp and he decided Erich was chalking up a very unfavorable balance in his ledger. Then Erich kicked him, and he rolled away, got to his feet again, and leaned against the paneled cabin wall. The snowy linen and shining silver on the dining table were seen through a slowly clearing haze.

  “You were told not to speak unless the general asked a question," Erich grumbled. “Speak then, and not before.”

  “I’ll remember you, Erich.”

  “Not for long. You will soon be dead.”

  “Enough,” said the general. He leaned forward slightly, and Durell could almost hear his corset squeak. “I continue. It is encouraging that Herr Durell is talkative, Erich. Let us hope he goes on that way. In any case, Herr Durell, I was a collector of art, or a thief, or plunderer—whatever you choose to name it. And since I was intimately associated with the construction of the Cassandra bunker, and knew the facilities for hermetically sealing the contents against air, water and even temperature changes, to an extent, I stored my—ah—acquisitions there. When I heard that the Dutch were at last repairing the dikes here, ready to pump out the sea and reclaim the land, I sailed here to see what could be done about finding the Cassandra bunker first. We learned that Piet Van Horn was asking questions, and I sent Cassandra to Amsterdam to learn more about him. Then you entered the picture, and Cassandra tried to elicit information from you.”

  Durell thought of the prostitute’s bedroom and smiled at the blonde. “It was a very effective effort. I enjoyed it.” She flushed, bit her lip, and looked away.