'I may.'
'Stubborn, aren't you?' the chief constable said. 'A Frisian trait. Shall we go look for your car now?'
'I'm stubborn,' Grijpstra thought the next morning, after he had dropped de Gier at the Military Police barracks, where the sergeant was met by Private Sudema, nephew of Lieutenant Sudema of the State Police. A nice break for the sergeant, Grijpstra thought kindly. Enjoyment of nature. I'll be stubbornly at work. I'm not a foreigner, like silly de Gier. I can see what goes on here from the inside out.
Grijpstra, in his Frisian jersey and his Frisian cap, lost his way between the villages where his suspects lived. He flagged down a State Police Land Rover and was escorted, but lost his way again. I'll never give in, Grijpstra thought, I'll untie the Frisian knot.
Pyr Wydema, Tyark Tamminga, and Yelte Prik, exporters of sheep, grown into their gleaming, smelly jackets, with their caps pulled over their leering eyes, denied all charges in all languages available to them. They denied them in High and Low Frisian, in the dialect of Leeuwarden, and even in Dutch. 'My parents were born in the Frisian port of Harlingen,' Grijpstra kept saying.
The suspects wanted to know if they could be arrested at this stage of the inquiry. They could not. They ordered the adjutant to leave. They brought out No Trespassing signs and untied their dogs. Their wives interfered and confiscated their shotguns and poured coffee for Grijpstra, who sat exhausted under the gnarled old trees, cooled by a breeze from the sea, surrounded by dainty church towers penetrating the peaceful greenery all around. Grijpstra sighed when he saw the brown sails of fishing boats on the lakes. He listened to the rustling of corn at the end of fertile meadows. How pleasant the landscape, how hard his task.
'Off with him,' Pyr, Tyark, and Yelte shouted at their wives. 'There's work to do. The cattle market is tomorrow. Will he never be gone?'
The Volkswagen circled small dikes and was lost again. The calm expanse of the sea was on Grypstra's left. Wasn't he supposed to go south? He turned the car again, aiming for the capital and missing Leeuwarden once more.
'Where are you headed now?' a State Police sergeant asked from the window of his Land Rover.
'Leeuwarden,' Grijpstra shouted furiously.
'A break for coffee?' the sergeant suggested. In the pub, other colleagues mentioned the presence of another lost soul, a commissaris from Amsterdam in a silver Citroen. 'We kept setting him right and he keeps coming back at us again.'
'What might you be doing here?' the sergeant asked.
Grijpstra explained the nature of his visit, mentioning his three suspects.
'Pyr?' the sergeant asked. 'Tyark? Yelte? How could they ever be suspected? Surely you know better. Didn't you say your parents came from Harlingen? Ah, I see,' the sergeant slapped his brow. 'You're on official leave of absence.'
'I am?' Grijpstra asked.
'Stress,' the sergeant said. 'I read the Police Gazette. A common affliction in Amsterdam. Your superiors must be trying new cures. Sending you off on odd errands to more restful locations.'
'Is that right?'Grijpstra asked furiously.
The sergeant patted the adjutant's arm.
'Just stay around. After a while you'll feel much better.'
\\ 13 /////
Cardozo cycled.It was the right day for sporting activity, with a sunny sky and hardly any wind-a day for a bike ride, but biking from Amsterdam to Dingjum was lunacy, he granted that much. He defined his behavior as childish, caused by his own hotheaded insistence on getting ahead, and he even considered his own appearance childish, dressed as he was in shorts and a touristy shirt, and especially because of his equipment-a tin lunch box strapped to the luggage carrier in the rear, containing cheese sandwiches and an apple. Moreover, he was breaking a promise. To break promises one made to others could be excused, but when the promise was made to oneself, some respect was due. All those years he had biked to school, always with the wind pushing him back, beaten by rain, with a painful crotch, pulled to and fro by cowardly obedience to teacher and parent, he had looked forward to the day when he would be free of the heavy bike. When school was over, he'd thrown the bicycle into the canal, and after that he had used only engine-driven transport, like real people use. So what was he doing here now, on Samuel's dated contraption?
Next to him, cars raced along, and on the other side the green dike flowed slowly up, topped by high grass where seagulls stalked about. On the Inland Sea, a fishing boat bobbed slowly. Against shreds of fog the sails of a flatbottomed pleasure yacht emerged from the pure blue swell. In the yacht, holiday makers would be lounging about. I'm not living properly, Cardozo thought, pedaling with force. If I were as intelligent as I thought I was, I would be doing something pleasurably clever now.
Did a hunch get me here? Cardozo thought. Do my hunches ever work? Why did I forget about practical cooperation? Am I not part of a team? He could have telephoned the commissaris. 'Sir, I'll be bicycling to Dingjum today.' 'Don't do that,' the commissaris would have answered. Wouldn't that remark have saved him insane trouble? And shouldn't he be covered? Some risk is involved in the work of a police detective. Wasn't he hunting a dangerous fiend who thought nothing of putting a bullet through a fellow being's head and setting fire to his remains? Suppose the psychopathic demon knew that Cardozo was now cycling up the dike?
One of the handlebars on Samuel's bike carried a rear view mirror. In the mirror, three Chinese could be seen. The Chinese cycled in line. The nearest Chinese looked unhappy. The nearest Chinese's pedal ground past the chain case with an irritating, repetitious, squeaky moan; unmusical, probably also to Far Eastern ears. The farthest Chinese cyclist was Wo Hop's mate, unrecognizable at that distance. Wo Hop's mate was tired. The various stages in his recent career had convinced him that he was indeed a Rotten Egg. How could he ever have allowed himself to be riding a low-quality bike to an ever-extending nowhere?
Isn't it about time, Cardozo thought, that I got off my bicycle to eat an apple? While he contemplated the possibility, three more Chinese cyclists appeared, coming toward him. A coincidence, Cardozo thought. To be followed by three bicycling Chinese, to be confronted by three bicycling Chinese-anything is bound to happen if life lasts long enough. The occurrence could even be turned about. It should be possible for a Chinese to cycle on a Chinese dike and be followed by three Dutchmen on bikes and approached by three more Dutchmen. But if I were that Chinese, Cardozo thought, I would get off my bike, peel an apple in some quiet spot, watch all those Dutchmen until the horizons swallowed them up, and hope never to see any of them again.
Cardozo slowed and jumped off his bike. The Chinese followed his example. The Chinese produced pistols. Cardozo clawed his way deep into the grass.
The Chinese opened fire. Cardozo rolled into a shallow ditch left by a careless bulldozer driver, filled with flowering weeds. Nettles stung him, reed stalks scratched his ears, disturbed ants sank their jaws into his flesh, and a bullet cut off a leaf. The Chinese kept shooting, aiming at each other now. They weren't bad marksmen. Not every shot was successful, and two Chinese remained, crawling toward each other. They kept firing as they crawled.
Ten Arrest Team members, military policemen, kenneled and trained in the south of the country, dressed in combat fatigues, were driving along the dike in five cars. They had been issued orders to exterminate or; if possible, to arrest two dangerous criminals, Bald Ary and Fritz with the Tuft, in the cattle market of Leeuwarden, in another week's time. Because the extermination or arrest of two dangerous criminals who would be well armed and most likely in possession of a fast car would require coordination on the road, the Arrest Team was now on exercise. The five cars were connected by radio. The commander was in the first vehicle. He saw and heard the Chinese cyclists shooting at each other.
'All cars stop and park, over.'
'Weapons ready to fire, over.'
'Prepare attack direction Friesland, over.'
'Leave cars, follow me, attack. Over and out.'
P-S machine pistols with shortened barrels crackled, and folly automatic Uzi carbine/machine-gun
