sighed. ‘Trouble is, I’d have to incarcerate myself along with you, as I agree with every word you say. If the government honestly believes that the people will take their meaningless assertions at face value, then they’re in an even worse case than I thought. Which, I may add, I didn’t think was possible. They are in an impossible situation: do you think it even remotely possible that they don’t recognize this?’
‘They’ll recognize it all right. just as soon as they begin to think in terms of political survival. If they bury their heads in the sand they’ll be turfed out of power within a week. An acute concern about preserving the status quo — their status quo — can work wonders. They have already blundered by having the commentator say that they have been requested — not ordered — to discuss the affair. They have been ordered, not requested, otherwise the commentator, the news-reader, would not have used the term “outrageous demand”. There’s nothing outrageous in their demand. It’s the demands that will be made when the meeting takes place — as, of course, it will do — that will almost certainly be outrageous.’ ‘Any discussion about this matter can only be speculative,’ the Colonel said heavily. ‘So it’s not worth the speculation. We have other and more urgent matters to attend to.’
‘There’s a matter I should be attending to at this moment,’ van Effen said. ‘I have an appointment at the Trianon. Well, a kind of appointment. There’s a fellow there who will be expecting me but doesn’t know that I’m expecting him. One of Agnelli’s stake-outs. He’s expecting to see me in my full criminal regalia — he’s under the impression that I’ve been a sleep all afternoon, which might have been no bad thing — and I mustn’t disappoint him.’
The phone rang. De Graaf answered it and handed it to van Effen. ‘Yes. Yes, Lieutenant van Effen … I’ll wait … Why should I?’ He held the phone some inches from his ear. ‘Some clown advising me to avoid damage to my ear-drums and to — ‘ He broke off as a High-pitched scream, a feminine scream, not of fear but of agony, came from the earpiece. Van Effen jammed the phone against his ear, listened for a few seconds then hung up. De Graaf said: ‘What in God’s name was that?’
‘Julie. At least that’s what the man said. Well, his words were: “Your sister is a bit slow in co-operating. We’ll call again when she does. ”’ ‘Torture,’ the Colonel said. His voice was steady but his eyes were mad. ‘Torturing my Julie.’
Van Effen smiled faintly. ‘Mine, too, remember? Possibly. The Annecy brothers’ speciality. But it was just a shade too crude, too pat, too theatrical.’
‘God, Peter, she’s your sister!’
‘Yes, sir. I’ll remind the brothers of that when I meet them.’ Trace the call, man! Trace the call!’
‘No point, sir. I have good ears. I could just detect the faint overlay hiss of a recorder. That could have come from anywhere. And it’s what makes me think it’s a phoney put-together job.’
‘Then why the devil was the call made?’
‘Two reasons, perhaps, although I can only guess at the first. I don’t think they thought that I would even suspect that the call was not what it purported to be, that I would be so upset over my sister’s kidnapping that! would take anything in its connection at face value. Second thing, of course, is that they’re not after Julie, they’re after me. This — at least to their highly suspect way of psychological reasoning — is part of the softening-up process.’
De Graaf sat in silence, rose, poured himself another Van der Hum, returned to his seat, thought some more then said: ‘I hardly like to bring up this point, Lieutenant, but has it occurred to you that next time, or maybe the time after next, the Annecys may decide to abandon the psychological approach and say: “Surrender to us, Lieutenant van Effen, or your sister will cbe and we’ll see to it that she dies very very slowly.” ‘Would you do it-‘
‘Do what?’
‘Give yourself up to them?’
‘Of course. My appointment at the Trianon is overdue, sir. If there is any message for me, would you call me there. Stephan Danilov, if you remember. How long do you intend to re
here, sir?’
‘Until I see those maps or charts or whatever that Sergeant Oudshoorn found, and until I can get Lieutenant Valken here to take over. I’ll put him in the picture as L-r as I can.’
‘You have all the facts, sir.’
‘One would hope so,’de Graaf said rather enigmatically. When van Effen had gone, Thyssen said curiously: ‘I know it’s not my place to speak, sir, but would the Lieutenant really do that?’ ‘Do what?’
‘Give himself up.’
‘You heard the Lieutenant.’
‘But — but that would be suicide, ‘Thyssen seemed almost agitated. ‘That would be the end of him.’
‘It would be the end of someone, and that’s a fact.’ De Graaf didn’t seem overly concerned.
Van Effen returned, via the rear entrance, to his room in the Trianon, called the desk and asked for Charles.
‘Charles? Van Effen. Has our friend returned? … Good. He will, I know, be in a position to hear every word you say. Kindly say the following into the phone. “Certainly, Mr Danilov. Coffee immediately and not to be disturbed afterwards. Expecting a visitor at six-thirty.” Let me know when he’s gone.’
Some thirty seconds later Charles called to inform him that the lobby was now empty.
Van Effen had just completed his metamorphosis into Stephan Danilov when the phone rang. It was de Graaf, who was still at Julie’s flat. He said he had something of interest to show van Effen and could he, van Effen, step round. Ten minutes, van Effen said.
When van Effen returned to the flat he found Thyssen gone and his place taken by Lieutenant Valken. Valken was a short, stout, rubicund character, easy-going and a trencherman of some note, which may have accounted for the fact that although he was several years older than van Effen he was his junior in the service, a fact that worried Valken not at all. They were good friends. Valken was, at that moment, surveying van Effen and speaking to the Colonel.
‘A reversal to type, wouldn’t you say, sir? Cross between a con man and a white slaver, with just a soupcion of a Mississippi river-boat gambler thrown in. Definitely criminal, anyway.’
De Graaf looked at van Effen and winced. ‘Wouldn’t trust him within a kilometre of either of my daughters. I don’t even trust the sound of his voice.’ He indicated the pile of papers on the table before him. ‘Like to sift through all of those, Peter. Or shall I just call attention to the ones that interest me?’
‘Just the ones that interest you, sir.’
‘God, that voice.. Fine. Top five.’
Van Effen examined each in turn. They showed plans of what were clearly different levels of the same building: the number of compartments in each plan left no doubt that it was a very large building indeed. Van Effen looked up and said: ‘And where’s van Rees?’
‘Well, damn your eyes!’ de Graaf was aggrieved. ‘How the hell did you know those were the plans of the royal palace?’
‘Didn’t you?’
‘No I didn’t. ‘De Graaf scowled, which he did very rarely and with difficulty. ‘Not until that young architect or whatever from the City Surveyor’s office told me. You do rob an old man of his pleasures, Peter.’ De Graaf regarded himself as merely approaching the prime of his life.
‘I didn’t know. just guessed. As I shall be inside that building within three hours you can understand that my thoughts turn to it from time to time. Van Rees?’
‘My old and trusted friend.’ De Graaf, understandably, sounded very bitter indeed. ‘Put him up for my club, by God! Should have listened to you earlier, my boy, much earlier. And we should have expedited the examination of his bank account.’
‘No bank account?’
‘Gone. Gone.’
‘And so, one supposes, has van Rees.’
‘Four million guilders,’ de Graaf said. ‘Four million. Bank manager thought it a highly unusual step to take but — well — ‘ ‘One does not question the motives and the integrity of a pillar of the community?’
‘Blackballed,’ de Graaf said gloomily. ‘Inevitable.’ ‘There are other clubs, sir. Schiphol, I assume, is still not open for operations?’
‘You assume wrongly.’ The gloom remained in de Graaf’s face. ‘Heard ten-fifteen minutes ago. First plane
