The Hidden Target (8 page)

After what had happened? Nina shook her head. “Just one thing, though. It has been bothering me for some time.”

He waited, suddenly tense. Tony was sitting very still.

Nina said, “I just can’t go on calling you James. It’s too— too—” She laughed. “It doesn’t sound natural. Too formal for a real American. What shall it be? Jim or Jimmy?”

“Jim will do.” So I made a small mistake, he thought: I insisted on James.
Too formal for a real American...
Real? He looked at her sharply, but she was quite oblivious of the scare she had given him. “So we leave today,” he said. “You are ready, Tony?”

“Any time you say.”

Nina was looking at the stains on her shirt. Madge needed a change, too. “Let’s not bother about the photographs. We can have them taken later. We don’t need visas right away, do we?”

“We’ll keep to the arrangements,” Kiley said. The photographer could be trusted: a loyal comrade, knowing what was needed, following instructions and keeping his mouth shut. “Besides, the others are having their pictures taken at this very moment.” Tony rose. “I’d better get over there and tell them about the change in plans. They have gear to collect and stow on board.” He was already half-way to the door.

“What about his drink?” Madge asked.

“I guess he didn’t need it,” Kiley said. Tony’s blood pressure must already be high enough. He’ll have to remember to tolerate all the damn silly thoughts about clothes that women find natural. The more they chatter about nitwit topics, the less they’ll discuss anything serious. As for Nina’s outburst against terrorists, that couldn’t be better cover for Tony and me. Who’d expect Nina’s friends to be anything except political dolts like her?

“We have our own gear to pick up,” Nina remembered. “The bags are at the Alba. That’s nowhere near the garage. So what do we do? Take a taxi?”

A taxi? With some sharp-eyed driver linking two blondes, the Alba, and the garage? In spite of his own advice to Tony, Kiley drew a long breath to steady his voice. “No. We can stop and pick up your bags on our way out of Amsterdam. Or have you got to pack?” That wouldn’t do at all. The camper waiting, waiting; Tony’s fury unleashed in some savage though apt phrases.

“A couple of minutes,” Nina assured him. “Just toothbrushes and soap. That’s all.”

“There’s the bill—” began Madge.

“I’ll settle it,” Kiley said.

“We paid six days in advance. So they owe us for two.”

God give me strength, he thought, and then realised he had called on the name of a deity in whom he didn’t believe. For Christ’s sake... He took a deep draught of the scotch, newly arrived, and choked with sudden laughter. Very American: God and Christ, and two pretty blondes trying to understand and failing. Real enough, Miss Nina?

“Let’s eat,” he said. “We haven’t time to waste.” And we’ll be out of Amsterdam before the police search reaches garages and courtyards and workshops near the university area. For that barrel organ couldn’t have been pushed for any great distance—too cumbersome. And that little man hadn’t been running blindly. He was headed for his escape route, must have had a car parked safely out of sight. In our garage? Kiley wondered. Always a possibility, considering its owner’s sympathies. Not that a camper, all prepared for a long trip, couldn’t be satisfactorily explained. Even so, police made notes in little books. “What will you have?” he asked Nina. Whatever she’d choose, Madge would choose.

“I’m not really hungry.”

“Then we’ll order the
Koffietafel.
It’s always ready to serve.” He finished his drink and signalled to their waitress.

“I don’t think—”

“You’ll eat,” he told her. “Your next meal will be in Belgium.” He lifted Tony’s glass. “To our travels.”

“To our travels,” Nina echoed.

“Far and wide,” Madge ended, and smiled happily.

BRUNA IMPORTS
, read the restrained legend above the doorway of one of the restored houses on the Prinsengracht. There were other commercial establishments, too, on this Old Amsterdam street, including expensive restaurants and a luxury hotel, so that the firm of Bruna was not remarkable, tucked away as it was in the middle of a row of ancient gables. Crefeld’s office was on the top floor, reached by a very small private elevator installed years ago for someone’s heart ailment: it could hold two people if they were thin enough and pressed in a tight embrace. Renwick touched an ivory button to signal Crefeld. The elevator door was released, and he could ride up in solitary state, avoiding the staircase that would have taken him through the busy second and third floors, where imports of coffee and pepper were actually marketed. Bruna was authentic, not a false front for mysterious activities. But how Jake Crefeld— Jacobus van Crefeld, to give his full name; Brigadier-General to give him his equivalent rank—had ever managed to secure an office in this building was something that aroused Renwick’s admiration. Knowing Jake’s diplomacy, he wasn’t astounded.

The corridor was short and narrow. Crefeld’s door, as old and heavy as all the other carved woodwork in this building, had a faded sign, small and difficult to read:
J. SCHLEE/RARE BOOKS/BY APPOINTMENT ONLY
. The door swung open as Renwick was about to knock, and Crefeld was there with his broad smile and firm handshake to welcome him inside. “Had a peephole installed, Jake?” Renwick asked, studying the carved upper panel of the door as it was closed and bolted behind him. The small cut-out was centred in a wooden rosette, part of the door’s decoration both outside and in, not noticeable except by close scrutiny.

“And necessary,” Crefeld said. “Such are these times, Bob.” His large round face tried to look sad and failed. He was a big man in every way, in voice and laugh as well as in body and heart. The surprising thing was his light footstep, his quick movement. Nothing heavy or lumbering. Now he was at his desk, pulling a chair in place for Renwick. “I am sorry to bring you all the way from Brussels, but I thought it wise if we weren’t seen together, there. Den Haag was also out of the question for the same reason.”

***

“I guessed that. No trouble at all. I enjoyed getting away from the office.” This one was still the same as when Renwick had last visited it: dark panelled walls enclosing a square room, with a large desk, two comfortable chairs, a filing cabinet, and three telephones. There was one powerful lamp for evening work; by day, light beamed through the diamond panes of two windows, narrow and tall, which stood close to the desk. Everything was well in reach of Crefeld’s long arm. Now, he was lifting a large attaché case on to his lap. Renwick waited, wondering if the business that had brought him here necessitated so many documents. Then he smiled: he had forgotten that Jake never let business interfere with regular mealtimes.

“We’ll lunch first,” Crefeld was saying as he opened the attaché case, “and talk of this and that. I heard a rumour that you were resigning. Are you?” He swept blotting pad and letters aside, and in the cleared space spread out a checked napkin which had covered the food. Next came a plastic box containing cold cuts and cheese, a smaller box with cherries, a sliced loaf, two mugs, two plastic glasses, two paper plates, a Thermos of coffee, and a flask of gin.

“Negative. Only a rumour.” In fascination, Renwick watched the deft way in which Crefeld’s massive hands arranged the items in logical order. “Just a nice little piece of camouflage.”

“Because of your new project?” Crefeld poured gin into the two glasses. “That’s wise. No useful purpose in spilling the— What
do
you Americans spill?” He frowned at the glass he held out to Renwick. He prided himself on his command of colloquial English, acquired over his years of service with NATO.

“Beans.” Renwick smothered his grin. It was years since he had heard that phrase.

Crefeld inclined his head in acknowledgement. As usual, a strand of fair hair—now greying and thinning, Renwick noted—fell over his high forehead. He pushed it aside, a temporary victory, and studied his glass. “Glad it was only a rumour. You’ve still got twenty years ahead of you before you reach my age.”

If any of us are still functioning by that time, thought Renwick. Or alive. He raised his glass. “To survival.”

“To the project,” Crefeld said. They both drank to that. “Have you got a name for it yet?”

“The choice seems to lie between Counter-Terrorism Intelligence and International Intelligence against Terrorism. Pretty heavy. Any suggestions?”

“Well, your idea is based on something after the style of Interpol. Find something short and snappy like that.”

“Interintell?” Renwick’s grin was broad.

“Why not?”

“Sounds like a cable address.”

“So does Interpol. Few people know it as the International Criminal Police Organisation that began in Vienna.”

Renwick added tactfully, “Nineteen-twenty-three,” and ended a short discourse on the history of the international crime-chasers before Crefeld could deliver it.

“Interintell,” Crefeld said reflectively. “I like it.”

“So you really have decided to join us?” Renwick kept his tone light, but he waited anxiously. Crefeld would be excellent as the head of Interintell’s main office. Larsen, in Oslo, and Lademan, in Copenhagen, were his close friends. Add to that trio Richard Diehl, in West Germany, who was already cooperating: his country, after all, had more than its share of terrorists who sought refuge abroad when the heat became too great. (Only a few months ago, one of the Baader-Meinhof gang had been arrested as she tried to cross into the United States from Canada.) Then there was Ronald Gilman, in London— also definite. So was Tim MacEwan, in Ottawa. And Pierre Claudel, in Paris, had been enthusiastic from the start. All were old friends, had worked together in NATO, and now were back with their own intelligence services. A real blockbuster, reflected Renwick: brains and guts, and clout to match.

Crefeld was watching the younger man with a smile. “Of course. Did you ever doubt it? Who else has been rounded up?”

Renwick, with relief undisguised, gave him the names. “Next week, I’ll be in Washington and talk with Frank Cooper.”

“He has retired out of everything, hasn’t he? He’s on the old side, I’d say.”

Not as old as you, Jake, thought Renwick. “He’s still a good man.”

“What is he doing now?”

“International law. New York firm with a branch in Washington.”

“Ah—that could be useful. Well, you’ve made an excellent start... And I must say it is a first-rate idea.”

“But borrowed, as you said, from Interpol,” Renwick added.

“With considerable differences. They go after international crime. We go after international terrorists. But we face one difficulty.”

Only one? thought Renwick.

“Police forces of a hundred countries co-operate with Interpol. Will intelligence agencies do the same for us?” Crefeld shook his head. “They keep their records to themselves.”

“We aren’t asking them to open their files. All we ask is any information they have collected on terrorists, and in return we’ll give them all the evidence we’ve developed. We’ll act as a kind of clearing house for them. It’s much needed. Terrorism is international.”

“Terrorism... And that is a second difficulty. Whom do we call terrorists? We shall have to be quite clear about that, or else we’ll be in trouble. Some more gin?”

“No thanks. Breakfast is a long time away. I think I’ll make myself a sandwich.” Renwick selected a slice of ham, a slice of cheese and cushioned them between two thick slices of bread. “We’ll make the definition as clear as we can. Easiest done, perhaps, by stating what terrorism is not. It is not, for instance, resistance to alien forces that have invaded a country—against the will of the majority of its people: resistance fighters are not terrorists. Again, revolutionaries are not terrorists when they represent the will of the majority of their people.”

“The will of the majority,” Crefeld said. “That’s your measure?”

“That’s the way votes are counted, Jake.”

“In a free country,” Crefeld reminded him.

Renwick nodded agreement.

“But what if resistance fighters or revolutionaries find they don’t have a majority of the people behind them? Are they then terrorists?”

“If they use bullets and bombs to gain power over a majority that wants none of their ideas—yes, that’s what they have become: terrorists. Amateurs, of course, compared to the hardcore activists who think of power in terms of world revolution. Poor old world—whether it wants it or not, it’s to have anarchy thrust down its throat, for its own eventual good.”

Crefeld was helping himself to two of everything for a hefty sandwich. “When I was a boy, an anarchist was something left over from the nineteenth century. Bakunin—”

“‘The passion for destruction,’” quoted Renwick, “‘is also a creative passion.’ Or Malatesta declaring that ‘the insurrectionary deed is the most efficacious means for propaganda.’ Or Kropotkin cloaking the total overthrow of the state as it exists—and all the chaos that would bring—by preaching that anarchism is a moral and social doctrine before it is a political one. That has its appeal, you know. Freedom from the tyranny of national and corporate giantism. Everyone equalised and co-operating; under anarchist control of course. But where is freedom then? Somehow, no anarchist seems to face that problem. Or is their control good, and all other control bad?” Renwick shook his head, his lips tight.

“The simplifiers,” Crefeld said. “Terrible and terrifying. Not too many of them around, though.”

“Not as yet. Wait until the neo-Nazis start using them as shock troops.”

“But they belong to the left—the far left at that.”

“If the Communists can use them to create a revolutionary situation, so can other totalitarians. It’s the old delusion: you use me but I’m really using you; I’ll deal with you when the revolution is won. Where else do you think the anarchists get their money and training right now? Their ordinary sympathisers don’t carry that kind of clout. So they use their future enemy, and intend to get the final jump on them. The old delusion,” Renwick repeated, “and a mountain of trouble for the rest of the world.” Crefeld studied his friend. “Why this interest in the anarchists? Have you found some evidence that they are actually in alliance with the communists? You know their opinion of Soviet Russia—a betrayer of the revolution, curtailer of freedom.”