they rushed him when he fell. We got him to the ambulance just in time. Maybe you should try to get there on foot.'
De Gier turned and looked at Grijpstra, who smiled reassuringly. Inspired by his superior's calm, de Gier nodded at the constable. 'We'll park her here.'
'Right,' the constable said, and turned. The crowd was coming their way, pushed by a charge of unseen policemen on the other side of the square. The constable braced himself, raising his shield to ward off a brick, a heavy man suddenly lurched forward and the constable hit him on the shoulder with his stick. The blow made a dull sound and the heavy man faltered. There were a dozen policemen between the detectives and the crowd now and Grijpstra pulled de Gier onto a porch.
'We may as well wait for the fight to shift.'
Together they watched a brick dent the roof of their car.
'Cigar?' Grijpstra asked.
De Gier shook his head and began to roil a cigarette. His hands trembled. What on earth inspired these people? He knew about the official causes of the riots, everybody knew. The underground, Amsterdam's new means of transport, had tunneled as far as this old and protected part of the inner city and some houses had to come down to make way for the monster eating its way through down below. There would be a station here sometime in the future. Most of Amsterdam accepted the underground; it had to come, to relieve the impossible traffic trying to get through the narrow streets and fouling the air. But the inhabitants of the Newmarket area had put up a protest. They wanted the station to be built somewhere else. They had written to the mayor, they had marched through the city, they had printed tens of thousands of posters and pasted them up everywhere, they had harassed the offices of the Public Works Department. And the mayor and his aldermen had tried to appease the protests. They had said 'yes' sometimes and 'no' at other times. And then, one day, the demolishing firm that had won the city's contract suddenly arrived and began to tear at the houses, and the citizens had fought with the wreckers and chased them off and had grappled, successfully at first, with the police.
Now the wreckers were back and the police had come out in force. The citizens would lose, of course. But meanwhile they were organized. They had bought two-way radios and put up guard posts. They had coordinated their defense and thrown up barricades. They were wearing motorcycle helmets and had armed themselves with sticks. They were even supposed to have armored trucks. But why? They would lose anyway.
Grijpstra, sucking at his small cigar, listened to the growling of the mob. The mob was very close now, its snout no farther away than ten feet. The policemen were holding their ground, being reinforced by a squad which had rushed up through the alley. Three constables had stopped when they saw the two civilians hiding on the porch but Grijpstra's police card had sent them on their way again.
Why? Grijpstra thought, but he knew the answer. This wasn't just a protest against the building of an underground station. There had always been violence in the city. Amsterdam, by its tolerance for unconventional behavior, attracts crazy people. Holland is a conventional country; crazy people have to go somewhere. They go to the capital, where the lovely canals, thousands and thousands of gable houses, hundreds of bridges of every shape and form, lines of old trees, clusters of offbeat bars and caf6s, dozens of small cinemas and theaters encourage and protect the odd. Crazy people are special people. They carry the country's genius, its urge to create, to find new ways. The State smiles and is proud of its crazy people. But the State does not approve of anarchism. It limits the odd.
The Newmarket area is very odd. And now, when the odd tried to argue with the State's choice of an underground station, and lost the argument, and reverted to violence, the State lost its smile and produced its strength, the strength of the blue-uniformed city police, and the black-uniformed military police, resplendent with white and silver braid, and reinforced with steel helmets and truncheons, and backed with armored cars and mechanical carriers equipped with water guns, spouting thousands of gallons of pressurized water on and against the bearded yelling hooligans who, only this morning, were artists and artisans, poets or unemployed intellectuals, gentle misfits and innocent dreamers.
De Gier sighed. A paper bag filled with powdered soapstone had flown into the alley and exploded on the pavement. The right side of his stylish suit, made out of blue denim by a cheap Turkish tailor, was stained with the white sticky substance. De Gier was an elegant man who took pride in his appearance. He was also a handsome man and he didn't like the feel of the powder in his mustache. Some of it would be on his thick curly hair. He didn't relish the idea of having a white mustache for the rest of the day. Grijpstra laughed.
'You caught some of it too,' de Gier said.
Grijpstra looked at his trousers but he didn't care. All his suits were the same, baggy and made of English striped material, thin white stripes on a blue background. The suit was old, like the gray tie, and he wouldn't mourn its loss. His shirt was new but the police would replace it if he filled in a report. Grijpstra leaned back against the door at the back of the porch and placed his hands on his stomach. He looked very placid.
'We ought to try and get through,' de Gier said. 'That lady will be waiting for us.'
'In a minute,' Grijpstra said. 'If we try now we'll only be food for the ambulance. If the hooligans don't get us the police will. They won't take the time to study our cards. They'll be nervous as well.'
De Gier smoked and listened. The fight had moved, it seemed. The screams and thuds were a little farther away now.
'Now,' he said, and stepped into the alley. The constables let them through. They ran across the square and dodged a heavy motorcycle and sidecar which came straight at them. The sergeant in the sidecar was beating the metal side of his vehiele with his rubber stick. His face had been cut by a woman's nails and blood had run all over his tunic. The constable driving the contraption was gray with dust and sweat streaked his face.
'Police,' Grijpstra boomed.
The motorcycle veered and charged the mob which had begun to form again behind the detectives.
Grijpstra fell. Two boys, in their late teens, had heard him shout 'Police' and they both attacked at the same time, kicking the adjutant's shins. De Gier was quick, but not quick enough. He hit the nearest boy on the side of the chin and the boy sighed and crumpled up. The other boy had been hit with the same movement, not by de Gier's fist but by his elbow. The elbow's sharp point hit the boy on the side of his face and he howled with pain and ran off.
'All right?' de Gier asked, helping Grijpstra back to his feet.
They ran on but an armored van was in their way now and a spout of water hit them from behind. De Gier fell. Now the water gun changed its position, and was aiming at Grijpstra's large bulk when the gunner saw the red stripes on the police card which the adjutant waved.
'Go away,' a police officer shouted at the detectives. 'What the hell do you think you are doing here? We don't want any plainclothesmen around.'
'Sorry, sir,' Grijpstra said. 'We have a call from the Straight Tree Ditch; this is the only way to get there.'
'Let them wait,' the inspector roared, his young face pale with fear.
'Can't. Manslaughter.'
'All right, all right. I'll give you an escort although I can't spare anyone. Hey! You and you. Take these men through. They are ours.'
Two burly military policemen answered the command, both with torn braid dangling from their shoulders.
'Shit,' the nearest of the two said. 'We have had everything today short of gunfire and we'll have that too if this goes on much longer.'
'Nobody went for his gun so far?' Grijpstra asked.
'One of your young chappies did,' the military policeman said, 'but we quieted him down. His mate had caught a brick in the face. Upset him a bit. Had to take the gun away from him in the end; said he would shoot the fellow who got his mate.'
Grijpstra meant to say something positive but a bag of soapstone powder hit them and he couldn't see for a while.
'Messy, hey?' the military policeman said. 'They must have tons of that damned powder. We caught a man on the roof using a heavy catapult; he was our first prisoner. I'd like to see the charge report we'll come up with. It will be crossbows next and mechanical stone throwers. Have you seen their armored trucks?'
'No,' de Gier said. 'Where?'
