Floodgate (37 page)

' "I know why Maria is here. Despite her disapproval of what Romero is up to, there is a genuine bond of affection between them. As for Kathleen, I have mentioned that she is afraid of Samuelson and whatever he has in mind. I have also mentioned misguided love and loyalty. I am convinced that she is Samuelson's daughter." '
There was a considerable silence then George said: 'I take back what I said about her being smarter than you. She's smarter than the three of us put together. She has to be right. There's no other explanation.' Van Effen set fire to the note and flushed the ashes away. Then they turned off the shower and left.
Vasco shook van Effen by the shoulder. 'It's time, Mr Danilov.' Van Effen opened his eyes and, as always, was instantly awake. 'I didn't hear the 2 a.m. bell.'
'Turned it off - I've been awake for some time. George.' Only Samuelson, the Agnelli brothers and Daniken were in the living-room when the three men arrived.
'Just in time, gentlemen, just in time,' Samuelson said. Even though normally cheerful he seemed to be in uncommonly good humour that midnight, a condition that could possibly have been accounted for by the bottle of brandy and glass by his side, but which was almost certainly due to an anticipatory euphoria. 'Ten minutes and we're all back in bed.' 'Not me,' George said. 'I'm staying here. Your loading supervisor, remember. When do we begin the transfer?'
'Of course, of course. Half an hour say. Leonardo, we are neglecting our guests.'
While Leonardo proceeded to remedy the neglect, van Effen looked at Samuelson. He bore no resemblance to Kathleen but that meant nothing: she probably took after her Irish mother. Van Effen didn't doubt his sister's conviction.
The same announcer, whose depth of depression seemed to be matched only by his remarkable stamina, appeared on screen just after midnight. 'It is with regret that we have to announce that we will be unable to show live the threatened breaches of the Flevoland dykes when and if they occur. It is impossible for our TV cameras to operate in conditions of total darkness and torrential rain. We are, however, in constant radio-telephone touch with a number of observers and will inform you at once as soon as any positive news is at hand.' His image faded from the screen.
'Pity,' Samuelson said. He seemed in no way disappointed. 'It would have been a stirring spectacle. Still, we shouldn't have long to wait.' They had very little time to wait. Less than a minute elapsed before the announcer re-appeared, replacing a phone on his desk. 'The Oosthjk-Flevoland and Zuidslijk-Flevoland dykes were breached simultaneously some ninety seconds ago. Both breaches appear to be fairly massive but the appalling weather conditions make it impossible to gauge their extent or the severity of the flooding. The authorities say they must wait until the first light of dawn before the scope of the disaster can be accurately assessed. We shall, however, be on the air every hour on the hour to give you what fresh details are available.' He paused to look at a sheet of paper that had just been handed to him. 'A phone call has just been received from the FFF. The message reads: "Markerwaard 2 P.M. today."'
Eleven
Two men were to play particularly important parts in the morning hours of that day.
One of those was Sergeant Druckmann, who was accompanied by two other officers. All three were in plain clothes. Their unmarked police car was mud-covered and slightly battered. It carried an unusual amount of electronic equipment, two separate sets of radio transceivers and a radar tracking device, so much, in fact, that, unusually, it was located on the floor just in front of the right-hand rear seat. The operator sat on the left-hand rear seat with a large-scale road imp on his knees. The equipment was, for the moment, covered by a carelessly thrown rug. The car had been in position since six-thirty that morning in a side road just north of Gorinchen.
Two other unmarked police cars, similarly equipped, were within a few miles of them. But it was Druckmann's car that was to matter that morning.
The other man to matter was one Gropious, dressed in the uniform of a corporal in the Dutch army and sitting beside a private at the wheel of a small Dutch army troop carrier. Two other soldiers sat in the rear. Nobody would have used a photograph of Gropious on a recruitment poster for the Dutch army. His uniform was shabby and rather wrinkled and his long blond locks fell every which way under a hat that was more than slightly askew: the Dutch, for some reason best known to themselves, permit their soldiers to grow their hair to a length that would have had any British soldier confined to barracks for a fortnight. But the blond locks were not his own.
The uniform, like the wig, was a fake. Gropious was undeniably a soldier but no corporal: Lieutenant-Colonel Gropious, of the Dutch army commandos, was a particularly tough specimen of a particularly tough and elite corps.
The 7 a.m. broadcast that morning - the first breakfast-time broadcast in Dutch TV history - had been at once gloomy and slightly reassuring. Hundreds of square miles of the Flevolands had been inundated but to no great depth. As far as was known, no lives had been lost: the loss in livestock could not be estimated until later in the day. Hundreds of engineers were already pouring even more hundreds of tons of boulders and quick-setting concrete between hastily erected and, it was admitted, inadequately secured vertical steel plates. At best, it was also admitted, this could do no more than slightly reduce the effects of the next high tide and operations would have to cease at least three hours before that.
In the living-room of the windmill, where some dozen people were having breakfast, Samuelson was in high good humour.
'Exactly as predicted, ladies and gentlemen, exactly as predicted.' He looked in turn at van Effen, George and Vasco. 'I keep my word, do I not, gentlemen? Maximum psychological impact, yet not a life lost. Things are going our way .'He paused and listened to the thunderous drumming of the rain on the veranda, gradually lost his expression of good humour, drummed his fingers on the table, looked at Daniken and said: 'What do you think?' 'I don't like it much,' Daniken said. He rose and walked out to the veranda, closing the door behind him. He was back inside ten seconds. 'The wind's about the same,' he said. 'That is, gale force. I could fly in that. But the rain is the heaviest I've ever seen, even worse than the onset of the monsoon in India. Visibility is zero. I can't fly in that and keep our flight plan as it is.'
'You mean you won't By?' Samuelson said. 'You refuse to fly?' Samuelson didn't seem unduly perturbed.
'Not even if you ordered me. I will not be the person who Will be responsible for the end of all you wish for. I am the pilot and refuse to be responsible for the deaths of twenty-two people. Which I will be if we stick to our flight plans. Mass suicide is not for me.' Van Effen cleared his throat delicately. 'I am normally, as you know, the most incurious of persons, but I don't like this talk of mass suicide, not least because it involves me. Is the need to leave on time a matter of complete urgency?'
'Not really.' It was Romero Agnelli who answered. 'Mr Samuelson does the honour of leaving all the organization to me.'
'And exceptionally good you are at it, too.'
'Thank you.' Agnelli smiled almost apologetically. 'I'm just a stickler for timetables.'
'I don't think you need to worry too much about timetables,' van Effen said. 'I know this country, you people don't. I'm sure George and the Lieutenant will confirm that downpours of this extraordinary order rarely last more than an hour or so, never as long as two. As I am in this unusually questioning mood, what's all this about flight paths or flight plans or whatever?'
'No reason why you shouldn't know,' Samuelson said. He was obviously relieved by van Effen's statement and was in an expansive mood. 'Daniken has radio-filed a flight plan to Valkenburg, near Maastricht, and this has been accepted. We are, today, filming a scene in hilly countryside and the only hilly countryside in the Netherlands is in the province of Limburg where Valkenburg lies. Romero has even had the foresight to book us hotel accommodation there.'
'Where, of course, you have no intention of going. 'van Effen nodded his head twice. 'Neat, very neat. You take off for Limburg, which lies in a roughly south-south-easterly direction, then Mr Daniken descends and alters course. The Netherlands is a very flat country so one has to fly very low to keep beneath the radar screen. As a pilot myself, I know that altimeters are notoriously inaccurate at very low altitudes. It wouldn't do us a great deal of good if a sudden down draught were to bring us into contact with a block of high-rise flats or even one of those massive TV antennas which are such a feature of this country. Mr Daniken has to see where he is going and I have to say that I am in one hundred per cent agreement with Mr Daniken.'
'Mr Danilov has put it even better than I could,' Daniken said. 'I am in one hundred per cent agreement with him.'
'And I agree with you both,' Samuelson said. 'Leonardo, be so kind as to tell Ylvisaker to delay his departure with the truck until further notice. I do not wish him to arrive at our destination before we do.'
Ylvisaker, resplendent in his lieutenant-colonel's uniform, and his two companions, dressed in the uniforms of a sergeant and private of the Dutch army, departed at 8.45 a.m. The wind had not eased but the rain, as van Effen had predicted, had lessened to no more than a heavy drizzle.
At 8.46 a.m., Cornelius, the policeman in the rear of Sergeant Druckmann's car, said: 'They are moving out, sergeant.' Druckmann picked up his microphone.
'Sergeant Druckmann here. Target Zero has just moved out. Will A, B, C, D, E, please acknowledge.'
The five army patrol vehicles acknowledged in alphabetical order. Druckmann said: 'Two minutes, three at the most and we should be able to know what route Target Zero is taking. After that, we shall report at minute intervals.'
At 8.47 a.m., twenty-two people filed aboard the giant helicopter. All, except the four girls, van Effen and George, were dressed in Dutch army uniforms. Samuelson said goodbye to four umbrella-carrying staff who had come to see them off, assuring them that they would be back the following evening. All the soldiers, with the one exception, were armed with machine-pistols: the exception, Willi the feckless guard, was burdened only by a pair of handcuffs.
At 8.49 a.m., Daniken lifted off and headed towards the south-south-east.
Also at 8.49 a.m., Sergeant Druckmann reported: 'Tracking Target Zero at two kilometres. Target Zero is now one kilometre north of Gorinchen. From there the three main exit routes are east, south and west. Two minutes and we should be able to let you know which direction he is heading.'
Van Effen turned to Romero Agnelli, who was sitting beside him, cupped his hand to his ear and said: 'Two things intrigue me.
Agnelli smiled and lifted his eyebrows.
'I was led to believe that the armament on this gunship had been dismantled and replaced by dummies. Those guns arc for real.' 'The armament was dismantled and replaced by dummies. Then we replaced- the dummies. These things aren't hard to come by if you know where to look. What was the other thing?'
'Why isn't Daniken climbing? We're still under a hundred metres.' 'Look to your left and you'll see why.'
Van Effen looked. Less than fifty metres away another, much smaller helicopter, was flying alongside them. Even as van Effen looked the pilot slid back his window and waved an arm. Van Effen looked forward. Daniken was waving in return. The pilot of the small helicopter closed his window and began to climb. Daniken gently eased the gunship around until it was heading due south.
'Neat,' van Effen said. 'Very, very neat. In weather like this there will be precious little private flying in the country today. The odd bored air controller might just amuse himself by tracking this helicopter to Valkenburg. That helicopter, of course, is heading for Valkenburg. 'Agnelli nodded. 'Your idea, of course.' , Agnelli smiled and made a deprecating motion with his hand.
'Target Zero is heading west on the Sliedrecht road,' Druckmann report. 'Which patrol is in the vicinity?'
'Patrol A.'
'Ah! Colonel Gropious, sir?'
'Yes. I am seeing a road block one kilometre east of Sliedrecht. Close up until you have them visually. But not too close.' 'I understand, sir. Target Zero is travelling at a very leisurely pace - perhaps "circumspect" is the word I'm looking for. just below fifty kilometres. I estimate they should be with you in just under twenty minutes.'
'Thank you, sergeant.'
Ylvisaker leaned back luxuriously in his seat and lit a cigar. 'This,' he said with a sigh, 'is the life. Thank God we're not aboard that damned helicopter.'
That damned helicopter was bumping and lurching its way in a generally west-by-south direction. 'Generally', because Daniken was at pains to avoid towns, villages or settlements of any size. It was, van Effen thought, a totally superfluous precaution. There was no earthly reason why, say, a lone farmer should report the passage of an unidentified and probably unidentifiable helicopter. Helicopters were ten a penny in the Netherlands. Van Effen looked around the gunship. Most of the passengers looked distinctly unhappy and their complexions offered an interesting variety of shades of colour. Annemarie and Julie, who were sitting together, had adopted remarkably similar attitudes - clenched fists and eyes screwed tightly shut. Van Effen himself was untroubled: Daniken was a superb pilot. He cupped his hand to Agnelli's ear. 'How much further?' 'About fifteen minutes.'
'Reasonable accommodation?'
Agnelli smiled. 'It's a nice little place.'
judging by the standards of Samuelson's taste, the nice little place, van Effen thought, was probably about the size of the royal palace in the Dam Square.
The blue and yellow sign read: 'ROAD CHECK AHEAD. PLEASE STOP AT THE RED LIGHT'.
Ylvisaker's driver slowed and said: 'What do we do now?' Ylvisaker took a leisurely puff at his cigar. 'Drive on, my man.'
Gropious's driver lowered his binoculars. 'Target Zero for sure, Sir.' He raised his binoculars again. 'And the given number.' F.-K 289
Gropious's vehicle was in the left-hand lane, facing oncoming traffic. On the right-hand side, and slightly behind them, was another troop carrier. Two soldiers, both holding umbrellas, were leaning against their vehicle. Both were smoking cigarettes.
'Would you look at that sloppy bunch,' Ylvisaker said. 'Umbrellas! Cigarettes! I'll bet there's not an officer nearer than Rotterdam. And these, mind you, are the gallant troops sworn to defend NATO to the death.'