One

Durell was with Deirdre Padgett when McFee called. The telephone rang persistently through the rose-brick Colonial house Deirdre owned in Prince John, on the shores of the Chesapeake. It was Saturday evening, and the week end was hot and sultry. He had been glad to get out of Washington. Thunder rumbled in the west, and a mist drifted over the shining reaches of the bay. They were finished with dinner and sat on the brick terrace overlooking the water; the hot summer day promised to end peacefully. Until the telephone rang.

Durell stood up at once, a little too quickly. She knew he had been waiting for the sound of it. She had been watching a hummingbird in the delphinium, and Durell had been enjoying the slim line of Deirdre’s throat, the raven black of her hair, the quiet poise and grace of her being.

He looked at the inquiry in her eyes and nodded.

“Yes, it’s for me.”

“I suppose it must be, Sam. You’ve been listening for it since last night.”

“Yes. I’m sorry, Dee.”

“It must be important,” she said hopelessly.

She knew better than to question him. All of K Section, the trouble-shooting branch of the Central Intelligence Agency of the State Department, had been alerted. She did not know this. Durell kept her as detached from the business as possible. But there were times when some of it inevitably touched her, and she could not hide the quick concern in her face, nor the way the corners of her soft mouth reflected pain.

“You’d better answer it,” she said quietly. “And I hate this, as you well know.”

He did not reply. The hummingbird had darted away from the spiked delphinium. All at once, the bay seemed gray and ominous. He went into the house and picked up the phone.

It was General Dickinson McFee himself, head of K Section, and Durell’s immediate boss. He spoke with crisp authority. “I’m sorry, Cajun. I know you were looking forward to a week at Prince John. But you’re wanted in town. Do you know Bassett’s Bar?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll be briefed there. Pack some things, Sam. You’re going abroad.”

“Can I ask where?”

There was a silence. Durell immediately regretted the question. But this was unusual. The desperate turmoil at Number 20 Annapolis Street, where K Section maintained anonymous headquarters near the diplomats’ row, meant that all routine had gone by the board. All over the world, men were standing by. Waiting. Wondering. There were men in Hong Kong, West Berlin, London, and Algeria; in planes and on ships, quietly at home or in business offices; they slept and ate and talked and laughed and made love.

And waited.

Forty-two hours ago, they had been told to wait.

Nobody knew why.

It was as if a controlling hand at the center of a vast and complicated web had suddenly pulled every wire humming taut.

No such alert had ever gone out before. No one knew what to expect.

Durell stood holding the telephone, hearing the sound of birds in the massive oak trees towering above Deirdre’s home. Last night he had made love to her, and it was as if nothing else existed but this private Eden here on the shores of the bay. He came here too often, he thought. In his business, it was better not to have any personal attachments like this.

He said: “Do you want me in town immediately, General?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, Sam.”

He saw the warm, bright light fade from the evening sky. “Can’t you tell me what it is, General?”

“It’s Operation Cassandra,” McFee said, and hung up.

And the end of the world began.

Two

Durell flew that night to London, arriving at nine in the morning, Greenwich time. London Airport was as hot and humid as Washington. It was as if the whole world were wrapped in this breathless midsummer heat. There was a haze in the normally dear blue English sky, and the morning sun seemed unnaturally swollen.

John O’Keefe met him at the airport with a folder of identification papers for the Dutch authorities and a wad of guilders. They drank coffee while Durell waited for the plane to Amsterdam.

“It’s good to see you again, Cajun,” O’Keefe said. “I get so tied up here with paper work, I miss getting together with you fellows.” O’Keefe was a redheaded Irishman with a white, flashing grin, a beautiful English wife named Claire, and four redheaded kids, all living in haphazard joy in a huge old Mayfair flat.

“How is Claire?” Durell asked, grinning involuntarily.

“Just blooming. Asking for a fifth offspring, but I don’t know. We’re hoping for a little rest pretty soon—bought a cottage out in Devon, the most beautiful spot you ever saw—” O’Keefe smiled ruefully and limped to the table, carrying his coffee. He had lost a leg in Korea, which kept him from active field work. But his brain was quick, incisive, and analytical, and his work for K Section’s London branch was invaluable. His blue eyes were serious as he maneuvered his artifical leg around to sit in a chair opposite Durell. “You’re here about Cassandra, of course. But that doesn’t mean anything to us laborers in the vineyard, Sam. Just what is Cassandra?” O’Keefe frowned now. “It’s got everyone over here going balmy. Is it that bad?”

“Bad enough.”

“Let’s see,” O’Keefe mused. “Cassandra—something out of Greek legend, right? A Trojan princess, daughter of Priam and Hecuba, a prophetess who warned of coming destruction and whose knowledge became a curse, I believe, until she was enslaved by Agamemnon and killed by his wife. Somebody surely chose the code name for some meaning and purpose, Sam.”

“Don’t try to figure it out,” Durell said. “It’s a code name that was stuck in the files long ago, and everyone hoped it would never be pulled out for use.”

“It’s made quite a flap. I can’t help my curiosity.” “You’d better help it. It might kill you.”

O’Keefe was persistent. “Cassandra was a prophetess of evil and doom, whose prophecies were not believed, right?” Durell said, “Let’s hope the operation doesn’t end like that. When were you planning your vacation in Devon?” O’Keefe grimaced. “Day after tomorrow, Claire says.” “You’ll have to hold it off. I’m sorry, Johnny, but I’ll need you on a standby basis. I want to be able to reach you at any moment, and I may need you in Holland. Do you know Piet Van Horn, by the way?”

“Sure. I’ve talked to him once or twice on the scramble phone. A sober, diligent little guy. Antique dealer in Amsterdam.”

“That’s one of his jobs,” Durell said. “He’s my first contact. He’s been sent up North by the Dutch to act as emissary in the Cassandra deal. I meet him today for his report. You’ll hear later from either Piet or me.”

“Good enough.”

Durell stood up and shook hands with O’Keefe. “Thanks for meeting me. I’ll see you and Claire again soon, I think.” “You know your papers only take you as far as Holland, don’t you?” O’Keefe asked.

“If I’m lucky, that’s as far as I’ll have to go.”

He took the next plane to Amsterdam—there were eleven daily flights from London—and landed at Schiphol Aerodrome a little before noon. There was no one familiar on the plane. Nobody who had flown overseas with him during the night was on the Amsterdam flight. Nevertheless, when Durell debarked at Schiphol, with its modem terminal buildings, elegant shopping areas, playgrounds, and miniature sightseeing train for tourists, he was still careful, and used varied evasive tactics to make sure he was not followed. Not that it mattered. If there was any mistake, the whole world would know soon enough about Operation Cassandra. And then it would be impossible to control.

Durell was a tall man, in his early thirties, solidly muscled, with a harsh face and black hair tinged with premature gray. He walked lightly, alertly. He was always careful. You learned to be careful early in his business, but if you did not learn this at once, there was no time to learn it later. You died. You died in various ways—a garrote in a Marseilles alley, a shove from the platform of the London Underground, a knife in a Bangkok hotel. His business was the silent and ruthless war of secret defense, and he had been in it a long time. His survival factor, he sometimes reflected, must long ago have run out. He felt somewhat like the old fox he had often hunted in the Louisiana bayous, in his boyhood days. That fox was a wise animal who had learned all the tricks for staying alive. He had never managed to get the animal, and he was secretly glad that the fox had managed to outwit him. With a gambler’s skill, Durell too kept spinning out the odds in his favor.

He took a taxi into Amsterdam, and because he was early, he detoured through Aalsmeer, wanting to be reminded, by a glimpse of the town’s green little islands banked with flowers for its auctions, of his former pleasure in Holland. He was fond of the country, with its picture-postcard windmills, sandy beaches, long narrow canals and tree-bordered meadows, its old, medieval architecture. He had almost forgotten about the preponderance of cyclists skimming along on the rijwielpads beside the motor lanes.

It was a pleasure to greet Amsterdam again, with its cool, brick-paved streets and tree-lined concentric canals. He told the taxi driver to cross in front of the Royal Palace in Dam Square and go down Kalverstraat, with its magnificent shops, before turning out again from the center of the immaculate city to the hotel where he usually stayed.

The Spaanjager was small and residential, on a quiet little dead end called Meerhofplein. His room, arranged for by O’Keefe, was ready for him when he checked in, although he could see that Amsterdam was bursting with tourists.

He gave the room an automatic check when he deposited his bags there. Two casement windows overlooked a beech-bordered canal where children played. Several bicyclists pedaled by on the street below, and a glass-topped motor launch, filled with sightseers, moved down the curving canal.

He turned back into the room, drew a deep breath, and decided it would do.

He put on a dark blue summer-weight suit, a white shirt, and a solid necktie. His clothes were Continental enough in cut and style to let him blend unnoticed with the crowds in downtown Amsterdam. He spoke and understood Dutch well enough to be accepted.

At two o’clock he walked to a café just off busy Liedse-straat and ordered koffietafel, although it was a little late for lunch by Dutch standards. He sat and waited for his contact, and watched the crowds. He wished he could have called Deirdre before taking the plane for London; but McFee had vetoed all further contacts. Most of this work, he reflected, was as lonely as a dead-broke gambler playing his last dollar on a final turn of the card.

Long ago, Durell’s grandfather Jonathan had taught him every trick, honest and dirty, of the art of gambling. Old Jon was one of the last of the Mississippi riverboat gamblers, and Durell’s boyhood in the delta had been spent in learning the old man’s wisdom in sun-dappled Bayou Peche Rouge. The old man taught him all there was to knovr about calculated risks, ruthless hunting and trapping, and especially the vagaries and deceptions of man himself.

Durell smiled as he sipped the strong Dutch gin and waited for his lunch. Nothing ever changes, he thought, except yourself. Years ago, he was going to be a lawyer, when his grandfather sent him north out of the bayou country to Yale, in New Haven. He would be a judge, he thought—perhaps in the Supreme Court. But the war came along and changed everything. There was the OSS and G2, and later an invitation to train at The Farm in Maryland for the newly formed K Section of the CIA. The business had became a way of life for him, with a dedicated purpose that ruled all else.

At The Farm he learned to kill with a roll of newspaper, or with the edge of his palm driven against a vital neural center. You were taught to trust no one, man or woman, friend or enemy. You considered no place on earth as safe. After a time, these things became a matter of reflex and conditioning. You always looked over your shoulder. And you avoided emotional entanglements, since they could be lethal. When emotion—pity, love, sentiment—took over, the odds dropped on your chances for survival. . . .

Durell looked at his watch. It was two-thirty. Piet Van Horn was half an hour late, according to the Washington timetable.

He ordered another coffee and considered the crowded, tree-shaded street. Bicycles and scooters and small European cars swarmed in a steady, interlocking flow of traffic around the corner from the cafe. Beyond the corner, where the tall brick buildings of gabled Dutch Renaissance architecture overlooked a canal, he could see the slow gliding motion of motor barges headed for the port area on the Ijsselmeer, with now and then the gawking faces of tourists peering from a sightseeing bus. Pigeons moved slowly around the open tiled floor of the cafe, seeking shade from the August sun.

At two-thirty-five Durell dropped several guilder notes on the round coffee table and left the café.

There was no reason that Durell knew for Piet to be late.

No good reason, that is.

Piet Van Horn ran a safe house for the CIA above his small antique shop off Kalverstraat, at Cuypplein 45. It was used as an occasional drop for couriers; a storage depot for documents, clothing, and weapons for agents moving east and west from England to the Continent; and it contained a highly refined short-wave radio that operated under an amateur license and sent code messages directly to the monitor station in Washington, under the pretext of mundane conversations with an American ham.

Cuypplein 45 was within walking distance of the cafe. Durell strolled slowly through the crowds on the sidewalk, paused to window-shop, bought a newspaper and some Dutch cigarettes. Nobody followed him. When he was sure of this, he turned into the doorway beside the antique shop at Number 45, opened a door painted delft blue and decorated with an immaculately polished brass knocker, and went up two narrow, steep flights of carpeted stairs to the third floor.

A woman came hurriedly out of a door at the opposite end of the corridor from the stairs, and even though Durell’s ascent had been soundless, she was immediately aware of him. She was short and stout and middle-aged, with white hair under a dustcap. Her eyes were cool and impersonal.

“Yes, mynheer?”

“I am looking for Piet Van Horn,” Durell said.

“If you are interested in antiques, the shop is—” “Actually, no. I like modern things. Fresh as today’s news, you know. Mynheer Van Horn promised to guide me to a furniture manufacturer—”

“I understand.” Her mouth was tight, disapproving. “Go in. I think he waits for you, but I am not sure—”

Her manner made him say: “Is something wrong?”

“He is ill. I wanted to call a doctor when he came back from Friesland, but he refused to permit it.”

“When was this?” Durell asked.

“Only this morning, mynheer. He said a doctor could not help him.” The woman’s pale blue eyes considered Durell’s dark height. She was worried, but her voice was flat and emotionless. “I hope you can do something for him, anyway.”

“I will try. How did he go to Friesland?”

“He used his car. The red Caravelle, parked in the alley by the canal, behind the house.”

“I see. Thank you.”

“Do you wish me to wait? Perhaps he will need me.”

“I think not,” Durell said.

He stood at the head of the stairs while the woman went down. At the first landing below, she turned heavily and looked up at him. Her eyes looked milky white. “I have been his housekeeper for many years,” she said in her flat Dutch. “I have always been trusted by him, until he began his affairs with you people. I told him he did not need the money. He could marry me. I have plenty for both and the shop. But he—he seemed to enjoy it. Until today. He is not happy today.”

Durell looked down at her and said nothing. It was quiet inside the old Dutch house, although he could hear the muted ringing of bicycle bells in the traffic outside. Finally the woman turned away and went on down the steps. When he was sure she was gone, he left the landing and went to the top floor and approached Piet Van Horn’s door.

He took certain precautions. First, there was the pill that Dickinson McFee had given him—there were three, altogether—although McFee had said, “I don’t know if this vial will do the slightest bit of good, Cajun. But take it, anyway. They can’t hurt and they might help. We just don’t know what we’re up against.”

Durell swallowed one of the pills. His mouth felt dry, and it was an effort to swallow. Then he took his gun from the underarm holster that the Dutch customs at Schiphol had overlooked, and he held the snubby-barreled .38 in his left hand while he knocked with his right.

“Piet?” he called softly.

There was no answer from behind the solid oaken door. He looked back at the stairway again. He had the feeling the housekeeper was down there, somewhere out of sight, listening just as intently as he. But he couldn’t see her, and he called to Van Horn once more. “Piet, I waited at lunch for you, but you didn’t come.”

A faint voice whispered: “Mynheer Durell?”

“Yes.”

“Come in. I am sorry. I was hoping you would realize— I could not meet you. I wanted to, but—Come in, come in.” The door was not locked. There was an ornate brass lever handle, softly polished, and he thumbed it down with care, waited a moment, then opened the door and waited again. He could see Piet from where he stood in the entrance. The man sprawled in a huge, old-fashioned tester bed, near a casement window of medieval stained glass. The windows were open against the heat of the day, and the sound of Amsterdam’s bicycle bells came clearly into the room. Beyond, glimpsed through the dusty leaves of plane trees and sycamores on the canal, he saw the shimmer of dark water beside Belgian blocks of pavement, and a small stone bridge arching over the stream. The colored light that drifted through the casement window, the white plaster walls and dark oak beams of the room, made Durell think of the paintings of Vermeer and de Hooch. This seventeenth-century Dutch house might have come directly from one of the museum canvases.

“What is it, Piet?” he asked softly of the man in the bed.

“Come in, Sam. I think it is all right.”

Durell went all the way into the room, alertly. But no one else was there. It was not a trap. He opened the huge walnut wardrobe and looked at the Hollander’s conservative clothing hanging there, then looked into the old-fashioned tiled bath that smelled of Piet’s favorite British aftershave lotion. He turned back to the man in the bed.

“What happened to you, Piet?”

“As you see,” the man said faintly, “I am very ill.”

“How ill?”

“I am dying.”

Durell looked at Piet and saw the Hollander try to smile. Van Horn was a small man who looked exactly like the vendor of antiques that he actually was. Bravery and devotion come in all sorts of packages, Durell thought. He had met Piet before, on other jobs in Western Europe; and he was shocked by the abrupt change in his appearance. Van Horn was no longer plump and ruddy. His sandy hair looked thin and dry; his bright blue eyes that normally snapped with quick intelligence looked faded and frightened. There was a thin shine of moisture on his pale face. He was fully clothed, in a dark gray suit, but his polished shoes were off, lying on the carpeted floor. The carpet, the old tapestry on the wall, the immense bed, and the small, gemlike oil paintings on the white walls were all treasures gleaned from the antique shop below. They looked all the brighter for Piet’s decay.

“Have you called a doctor, Piet?” he asked.

“No. Of what use would it be? It was all a mistake, you see. . . . A very awkward accident, which has killed me. . . .”

“Take it easy, Piet. Do you know exactly what is wrong with you?”

“It affects the—circulatory system—and the heart. My heart feels as if it is going to burst. It hammers against my ribs and struggles—but it will be conquered—”

“Piet, I was told about some of this in Washington—”

“I am the sixth victim. Look—over there—”

A pallid hand gestured weakly from the bed. Durell picked up a folded Dutch newspaper on the nearby antique table. It was a provincial edition from Friesland. A small news item was marked in red pencil.

He read aloud: “ ‘Five Die Mysteriously in Remote Village—’ ” and paused, looked at Piet, and read on. The village was Doorn, on the East Frisian island of Scheersplaat—a small fishing community remote from the usual byways of vacationing yachtsmen and tourists. The deaths seemed to be restricted to the crew of one fishing vessel, and a new form of virus was blamed for the epidemic. No one

else had died, however.

He looked at Piet again. “Is it the same? Are you sure?”

The little Hollander nodded weakly. “It has begun. It is a warning to us, I think, so we should know that the people we must deal with are ruthless and hold life cheap. Innocent men have died as an example of the wares they have to sell. It can be nothing else. And if the men we must trade with are so callous as to kill and present the corpses to us in warning, then we are up against something difficult, indeed.” Van Horn paused, coughed suddenly. “We cannot know how far it may go and when it will be stopped—if it can be stopped. Pandora’s box of dreadful treasure has been opened, my Cajun friend.”

“Take it easy, Piet.”

“Do you know something? I am suddenly afraid. I do not want to die, but the world—Everything could be so beautiful—”

“Can a doctor make you feel easier?”

“It will be better—not to call anyone. You understand, of course.” The man’s chest heaved and his head moved spastically from side to side. Durell did not approach him or touch him. There was a sudden feverish light in Van Horn’s eyes. His tongue moistened his lips with slow and painful movements. “Can you hear me, my friend?”

“I can hear you. What happened up in Friesland, exactly?”

“I went to verify the information I was to give you. Yesterday I drove up beyond Leeuwarden and the Lauwers Zee to a village called Amschellig, in Friesland. Do you know the country and the sea there?”

“Only slightly.”

“Friesland is a beautiful province, drowned in mists and the flat sea. There is a light in the air that one can see nowhere else- in the world. It is the best sailing country, you know. And the wide green meadows filled with Frisian cattle—” The sick man paused, his face shining with sweat. “I found Cassandra there,” he whispered.

Durell’s face was blank. “Cassandra?”

“She was there,” Van Horn said again.

“It is only a code name, Piet. Don’t personify it.”

“But she was there! I know she—” The Hollander’s voice lifted, then collapsed. His chest heaved, then was still, fully expanded. Durell did not move. He watched the straining, uplifted chest. From outside came the shrill cries of children at play in the shade of the sycamore trees lining the canal banks. A barge went by, motor throbbing. He watched Piet’s chest. The man did not breathe; his eyes bulged. Durell waited. And then Piet’s chest collapsed all at once, came up again in a great shuddering gasp, and his swollen eyes again touched Durell. “You must go to Amschellig—and from there to the island of Scheersplaat. You will need a boat. In the misty light—you will find it is a wild land in a strange sea—you must find him and the woman, Cassandra—”

“Find who, Piet?”

“Wilde. Julian Wilde. And his brother, Marius.”

“Who are they?”

“Julian opened the box. And he is ready to spread death. Five have died up there, to prove his power. The people do not know why. No doctor could help them. He found the bunker, the place we have searched for all this time. The villagers were frightened—and the dike burst—”

There was a moment of incoherence.

Durell said, “Is the box, or bunker, on Scheersplaat? Where is it, Piet?”

“By the sea—where the mists come in—and the Groote Kerk light shines—”

There was silence.

“Piet? How did it happen to you like this? You were told to be careful. You knew the danger, didn’t you?” “Yes, I knew,” came a tired whisper.

“Then how did you let it happen to you?”

“It was—an accident—I think.”

“Aren’t you sure?”

“I was told it was safe—enough—to try to bring a vial of sample culture to you—”

“A sample? Do you have it?”

The round head on the pillow moved negatively from side to side. “When I fell ill—it was destroyed—”

“How?”

“It is at the bottom of the sea.”

“Yow should have saved it,” Durell said. “It could have been useful.”

“It would kill you, my friend, as it—as it has killed me. The accident—if it was an accident—came because it was supposed to be still sealed. But it was not sealed. And Julian and Marius knew itl I am sure they knew it! They want to make an insane fortune out of the lives of innocent people everywhere. They—they—”

There was silence again.

“Piet?”

The man’s mouth moved. His eyes were glazed, and his breathing was a harsh rasp of protest against the heat in the room. “Under the newspaper—the old map—you will need it—”

Durell turned quickly back to the table. A folded map was there, but it was only a standard edition of a highway road map of the Netherlands, published by Michelin, and he could see no markings on it of any significance.

“You said an old map, Piet. An antique? This one is dated nineteen thirty-eight.”

“The land has changed. It was flooded by the Nazis— during the occupation. Nothing is the same up there. But a new dike—is being built at last—to restore the land. On the map you will see—you will see—”

“Yes, Piet?”

The man coughed thickly. “Be careful—of Cassandra. She—she will kill you, too.”

His chest heaved convulsively. His body arched and rested like a bridge for an instant on the back of his skull and heels, taut, rigid, in a moment of incredible torture. And then it collapsed.

And Piet Van Horn was dead.

Three

The children still called out to each other on the brick walk beside the canal. The bicycles hummed by. Another boat rippled past, its wake slapping and washing the ancient, moss-grown sides of the canal. Somewhere in the distance a churchbell rang, and Durell suddenly stirred and looked at his watch. It was four o’clock in the afternoon. He looked down at Piet’s small face, where a ray of ruby light from one of the stained-glass insets in the casement window touched his dead cheek and gave him an unholy look of utter health.

“I’m sorry, Piet,” Durell murmured.

Then he moved quickly, efficiently. Every trace of Piet Van Horn’s association with K Section had to be removed and destroyed. It took time. And while he was here, he might be destroyed, too, as Van Horn had been destroyed. Only yesterday, Piet had been healthy and alert. He was now a corpse, a thing of dread contagion, to be shunned, abhorred. . . .

The radio came first. It was fitted into a fifteenth-century desk cabinet in a corner of the room, and no attempt had been made to hide it, since it was an authorized amateur transmission station. Nevertheless, Durell searched behind it, knowing there was a code book somewhere; and he found it in a small hidden drawer in the back of the cabinet. The code consisted of a small, leather-bound Dutch-English dictionary. Set among other books, it could be innocent enough, he decided; and he did not take it away with him. Instead, he tossed it casually upon a shelf in plain sight, wondering why Piet hadn’t done the same. Next he searched Piet’s wallet, took out some American currency, and put it with his own, replacing the amount with Dutch guilder notes.

At the last moment he returned to the table and picked up the folded Michelin map of the Friesland and Groningen provinces of the Netherlands. He looked it over again, but nothing had been marked on it that he could see. But he folded it with care and put it in his pocket.

There was little else. Piet had been careful. Careful, that is, until yesterday, when something—or somebody— reached out and killed him.

Van Horn’s car keys were on the dresser. Durell picked them up and went to the door, took the big, old-fashioned key from the inner latch, and looked back just once at the dead man on the bed. Sooner or later, the body should be autopsied in a morgue. But short of removing the corpse now—an utter impossibility—he could not permit anyone to touch Piet. No one not alerted to the danger should even enter this room.

The alternative could bring death to the entire city. It might already be too late to isolate the thing Van Horn had brought back with him, he thought grimly. Everything might be too late.

He might be carrying the same death with him, now.

He locked the door, pocketed the big key, and started down the steep stairway to the street entrance beside the antique shop. Shadows slanted down ahead of him. He wondered where the housekeeper might be. And on impulse he suddenly paused, halfway down to the second floor.

He trapped the sound of a quick footfall just below him.

It stopped at once. He could not see down there, since the next flight below, leading to the street door, was blocked by the landing. On the other hand, the colored glass panels in the street door were visible, sending shafts of bright light into the tiny, tiled vestibule.

Whoever had paused below him would have to cross that small area of colored light to gain the safety of the street.

He waited.

The other person waited, too.

He tried to remember how the footfall had sounded, fleeing from his descent. It had been light and careful, with a small secondary heel click. A woman, then, on high heels. The housekeeper? She wore heavy oxfords for her massive size, Durell remembered. Someone else, then. Someone light on her feet. A young woman.

No one like that had been mentioned in his briefing.

He waited.

He knew how to be patient. He did not move; he did not make a sound. He wondered if the woman—or girl— below him really knew he was there. He did not recall making any noise when he’d left Piet’s room. Yet something had frightened her, started her on the run. Yes, she knew he was above her. She was waiting, too—

Her patience did not equal his. All at once, Durell saw the flash of honey-colored hair, the foreshortened view of a woman in a print dress of Indonesian design as she ran across the tiled vestibule and wrenched open the street door. He was after her at the same instant. He lost sight of her as he rounded the landing, swinging to the smooth, worn newel post to implement his speed. He wanted a look at her face. But he didn’t make it. She was through the door and outside before he reached ground level.

The street along the canal was quiet, cooler under the shade of the sycamore trees. The canal sparkled in the late sunlight. There were long shadows on the brick sidewalk and on the canal banks. Some of the children were gone. Durell stood on the white stone doorstep beside the antique shop and looked one way, then the other. He did not see the girl in the Indonesian dress. She was gone. But she could not have turned the corner in the time it took him to come down the last few steps. She had to be somewhere nearby.

The doorbell of Piet Van Horn’s antique shop rang with a ching-a-ching sound. The housekeeper stood there in the doorway, hands folded over her ample stomach, and stared stonily at him.

“Mynheer, have you talked with Piet?”

“Yes,” Durell said. “He is all right.”

“All right? But he was terribly ill, he—”

“He’s much better now,” Durell said. “And he does not wish to be disturbed. He said he would sleep through until morning.”

“Without dinner?”

She looked incredulous, and Durell knew he had made a mistake. To Hollanders, food was a most important factor of daily life. Meals in the Netherlands were heavy, hearty, and frequent. It would be inconceivable to the housekeeper for Piet to pass up dinner.

He said quickly, “It is his stomach, you see. It is very upset. He has made some tea to quiet it. He will be all right. Just do not disturb him.”

The big woman shrugged doubtfully. “As you say, mynheer.”

At that moment, Durell saw the girl again. She had been standing hidden behind the broad trunk of an old chestnut tree on the opposite side of the street, near the canal bank. All at once she broke from cover, perhaps assuming his attention was being diverted by Piet’s housekeeper. He saw that she was young, as he had suspected. Her print dress was a bright splash of color under the spreading tree limbs. Her long, honey-colored hair bobbed on her shoulders as she moved, her back held stiffly. Her legs were long and straight and very good. He watched the smooth articulation of thigh and hip with appreciation. But he still could not see her face.

“Do you know that girl?” he asked the housekeeper.

“Who?”

“That one, going down the street to the bridge.”

“No, sir,” the woman replied.

Durell inclined his head in thanks, then turned to go. He started off easily, his long stride casually deceptive, covering ground with remarkable speed. He did not want to overtake the girl at once. She had been snooping in Piet’s house, perhaps listening at Piet’s bedroom door while he’d been talking to the dying man. Why? What had she heard, and who was she? He had to take time to probe for the answers.

The girl turned the comer and got on a trolley. As she climbed aboard, she turned her head slightly to look back deliberately at Durell, and he glimpsed her face. She looked pale and frightened. He got an impression of enormous eyes, slightly uptilted, a pink mouth, an elfin beauty. Then she swung aboard and mingled with the press of other passengers.

He was lucky. There are no cruising taxis in Amsterdam, but there was a taxi stand nearby, where a glass-domed tourist canal boat was docked. Otherwise, he would have been out of luck. He climbed into the first cab and told the driver what to do.

He was kept busy for the next hour. The girl got off the trolley at Dam Square, went into a department store, strolled down Nieuwen Dijk toward Central Station; then she changed her mind and retraced her steps to Kalver-straat, where she bought a pair of white leather gloves, a small leather overnight case, sun glasses, suntan lotion, and a lipstick. She looked back twice only, searching for Durell, apparently unable to resist the impulse. He did not think she saw him, but he couldn’t be sure. He was an expert at shadowing, and patient at it, when it was not easy to be patient. He kept thinking about Ret Van Horn’s body behind the locked door of his bedroom. Something had to be done about it, quickly. The housekeeper would have closed up the antique shop by now—it was almost six o’clock, and the Dutch were habitually early diners. His admonition to the woman not to disturb Piet’s “sleep” might or might not be obeyed. He did not know how much the woman knew about Piet’s employment with K Section.

But even more urgent was the need to establish some kind of quarantine there. He felt the urgency of settling this at once. On the other hand, the girl’s evasive behavior, her presence in the house, and her obvious attempts to shake free of him had to be explained.

He found an opportunity at last when she turned into a restaurant called ’T Oude Schaap, “The Old Sheep,” near Rembrandtplein. She seated herself at a window table, in plain view. There was a phone booth across the broad, clean avenue, and he could observe her from there. Durell changed a twenty-guilder note at a confectioner’s shop redolent of kopjes coffee candy, borrowed an envelope from the proprietor, and stuffed the Michelin map he had taken from Piet’s room into it, then addressed it to himself at the Spaanjager Hotel. The proprietor promised to mail it on his way home on the trolley in an hour. Then Durell dodged the streams of bicycles on the street and a tourist sightseeing bus to return to the phone booth.

The operators were quick and efficient. He asked for overseas service and gave the London number that John O’Keefe maintained for urgent contact. He knew O’Keefe would be waiting for him. He watched the girl in the window across the street being served by an elderly waiter, and then he heard O’Keefe’s quick, lilting voice.

“Johnny here.”

“This is Sam. Are you clear?”

“All clear, Cajun. You’re in Amsterdam?”

“I need some help,” Durell said bluntly. “Piet is out of the picture. All the way out.”

O’Keefe was shocked. “What happened to him? Cassandra?”

“I think so. Maybe an accident, but I’m not sure about it. There’s a girl involved, and I had to leave the body. You know what that means. There’s a lot at stake—maybe the whole city.”

O’Keefe sucked in a thin breath. “Good God, Sam—”

“I want you here tonight. You’ll have to dispose of him.”

“Is it safe?”

“I don’t know,” Durell said flatly. “I had to expose myself. If you don’t want to take the chance, someone else will have to do it.”

“No, it isn’t that. But if we only knew more about it—”

“We don’t know anything about it. Piet died too fast. In less than twenty-four hours, I suspect. So we have a time limit. We’ll know how much he carried in a day or two, if anyone else gets hit—I’ll have to watch myself, too— but we may not be sure, even then. The medical reports will be puzzling, I’m sure. It didn’t look to me like anything more than a coronary, perhaps massive.”

“Maybe it was just that,” O’Keefe began.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Durell said.

“Yes. You’re right. It’s my Irish optimism. All right, Sam, I’ll come right over.” He laughed thinly. “And I just rewrote my last will and testament, to make sure Claire and the kids have rights to the flat and the farm in Devon and some stock I recently bought for our old age—”

“Claire and the kids may not have an old age, either, if we don’t choke this off fast,” Durell said grimly.

“Right you are. Is Piet in his own house?”

“In the bedroom, top floor. I locked the door. You’ll have to get it out, weight it down, take it out to sea and drop it into deep water. You’ll have to do this in a way that means he’ll not come up too soon, understand? Either that, or use an incinerator. Which can you manage?”

“It will be the sea, I think.”

“Whatever you do, keep the police, the local neighbors, and everyone else out of it. Nobody is to touch him but you. Understand?”

“Thanks for nothing,” O’Keefe said. “Expendable Johnny, that’s me.”

“You bought it when you signed into the business,” Durell said.

“Don’t remind me of my follies, Sam. Listen. . . O’Keefe paused, and Durell waited, watching the girl in the restaurant across the street. O’Keefe went on: “Sam, what happens if we can’t cork up this bottle right away?” “You know your medieval history, Johnny. You’ve heard of the Black Death, the plagues, and so forth. This will be quicker, broader, much more efficient. After all, the people who worked on Cassandra were thoroughly trained biochemical technicians.”

“It should have been kept buried,” O’Keefe whispered. “Well, it wasn’t. Have you got everything straight now?”

“I’ll be there by midnight. . . . Sam?”

“Yes?”

“How do you feel?”

“It doesn’t work that fast,” Durell said quietly.

“But you were with Piet. You could have got it from him.”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you scared? Honestly?”

“Yes,” Durell said. “I’m damned scared.”

He hung up.

Four

Operation Cassandra had been in the files a long time.

It was only a nightmare rumor, a poisonous old-wives’ tale, a relic of World War II.

Along with unnamed and unimagined secret weapons, along with the V-l and V-2 rockets and the Peenemunde research base of the Nazi High Command, there was Operation Cassandra.

Routine checking in Washington of crates of war records, the clerical residue of shiploads of material seized by the speeding spearheads of General Patton’s Third Army, uncovered Operation Cassandra.

But it was still a rumored nightmare, a hint only of the unmentionable. It was death waiting to be unleashed, in a manner not seen since the Middle Ages. It was to be a grotesque and silent Götterdämmerung, a quiet ending to all that mankind cherished.

Cassandra was biological, germ warfare. Nothing new. It had existed for a long time in laboratories, in biological test tubes, a warping of the ultimate excuses for war, a negation of every normal and decent instinct in man, a representation of the Nazi philosophy. Cassandra should have been killed in the laboratory. Instead, she was nurtured and perfected. The deadly ampoules and vials were ready to be dropped on Great Britain’s cities and fields when the Allied spearheads sped into Holland and forced a wild and panicked retreat by the Germans.

The base where Cassandra had grown in her molds and flats of slime was reported as destroyed.

But there was a question.

Destroyed?

The records unearthed by Washington were vague. One suggested the deliberate sealing of a bunker that contained all the records, and the heavy waterproof safes racked with vials of Cassandra cultures. The virus had no enemy, could not be seen or counted, and caused death from apparent massive coronary constrictions in twenty-four hours. But other records implied that the underground laboratory had been flooded when the retreating Germans sabotaged Holland’s dikes and vengefully let in the tides of the cold North Sea.

The northern coasts of Germany and Holland, the West and East Frisian Islands, and the drowned polders of Groningen and Friesland were scoured quietly and efficiently. Nothing was found. No bunkers. No laboratory. No hint of the germ-warfare research the records showed during the Nazi Occupation.

Then file it and forget it. It was only a rumor and a nightmare, a ragtag end of terror propaganda.

If the place was destroyed, so was the virus.

It doesn’t exist.

So code it, file it, forget it.

And nothing happened for another ten years.

A week before the K Section alert, an anonymous letter arrived at the U.S. Embassy in The Hague, Netherlands, offering six test vials of the Cassandra virus for sale to the United States, or to the NATO defense organization, for the sum of five million dollars in a cash deposit in an anonymously numbered account in the Banque Populaire Suisse in Geneva. Further details of this first letter were lost because the aide who opened it in routine fashion labeled it for the crank file, where it was dropped into the incinerator forty-eight hours later.

The next note included the news clipping from the provincial Dutch newspaper that Durell had seen, mentioning a small but serious outbreak of extremely virulent infection in the fishing village of Doorn on the island of Scheersplaat in the East Frisians. A copy of the demand went to the State Department in Washington.

The file on Cassandra was reopened.

Dutch, British and American intelligence records were scoured. The West German authorities were enlisted in a desperate attempt to locate the laboratory and personnel indicated by the writer.

Negative.

Nothing was turned up.

Then a warning letter came to K Section, threatening to turn the secret over to the enemies of the West (the Cold War having suddenly entered a virulent phase all its own just then), unless immediate action were forthcoming on the demands. An agent to treat with the writer of the note was named—Piet Van Horn. This last was cause for considerable discomfiture at Number 20 Annapolis Street, K. Section’s HQ. How did the writer know that Van Horn was on the CIA payroll? The signature caused confusion, too: the note was signed Cassandra. How could anyone not originally familiar with the Nazi project know its secret code name?

It could mean that someone among the German biochemists had waited all these years to strike for personal profit.

Or it could mean there was a leak from within the ranks of the CIA.

Piet Van Horn was questioned. His house was placed under twenty-four-hour surveillance. Everything he owned and everything he did, every single uneventful, unimportant detail of his life was picked up, turned over, examined microscopically, analyzed, and finally dismissed. Negative again. Piet was innocent. Since he was the agent specifically named to negotiate the matter of Cassandra, Piet would have to be used.

It was at this point that Durell was called in.

One more effort was made to run down those who were trying to blackmail the West by threat and terror. No, not just trying, Durell thought grimly. People had died. Innocent Dutch fishermen in the north country had been exposed to the virus. It showed the sort of temperament of the men they were up against—or women, he corrected himself, since you could take nothing for granted in this business— who had somehow stumbled upon or deliberately uncovered the buried laboratory of the Nazi virologists who had been seeking an ultimate weapon with which to force a victorious end to their lost war.

They might be up against madmen; but Durell doubted it. There was a breed of hard-bitten international adventurers who owed allegiance to no one and possessed no principles. They were a group apart, socially amoral. Their detachment from normal social responsibility was marked in their manner and moods, in the sense of feral strength and jungle individuality among them.

There were no more dangerous men in the world than Durell thought. They recognized no code, legal or moral, except that which served their own interests.

Life was cheap: a matter of getting and holding, by strength, cunning, or force, every material thing the world had to offer. You lived and died by a set of primitive rules the world had almost forgotten.

The last effort to uncover the site of the old bunker-laboratory had been made by Piet Van Horn yesterday. He had been sent up to Amschellig to sit and wait for those who wanted to sell Virus Cassandra. After all, something had to be done. You couldn’t sit still and let a plague grow wild in the world.

The effort had killed Piet.

Perhaps he himself had contracted the virus, too, Durell thought. He knew nothing about it, how it was spread or how it might affect him. Piet had told him much too little.

But Piet’s steps now had to be retraced, with care and caution, to keep the fragile contact alive. Perhaps a different ending to Piet’s trip might be managed.

And this was Durell’s job.

He didn’t like it. He preferred an enemy he could see and feel, in the shape of a man. The shadow that hung over an unsuspecting world was too big and formless to combat rationally.

He waited now, and watched the girl in the restaurant window. . . .

It was dark when she left. Durell had seen no one near her except the waiter. She hadn’t gone to a telephone or sent any messages as far as he could tell. She picked up her gold purse and walked quickly from ’T Oude Schaap, checked her watch, and went to the taxi stand at the corner. Durell followed. Her path was no longer indirect. She headed for Thorbeckeplein, an area of cheap bars and honkytonk cafes notorious in Amsterdam for its women, gin, thieves’ nests, and its danger to unwary tourists. The girl got out of the cab presently and dismissed it to walk alone down a narrow street of red-light houses. Women sat on the steps in the shadowed heat of evening and looked in dull-eyed resentment at the girl’s passage, then perked up as Durell went by and solicited him in a number of overt ways. When the girl turned into a passageway entrance beside a souvenir shop on the edge of an old, baroque apartment house, he paused, gave her a certain amount of time, and then went in, too.

Just inside the doorway he stopped, considering his next move. The girl in the bright Indonesian dress did not belong here, not by any stretch of the imagination. Her poise and looks all indicated a class and status far above this place. Yet she seemed familiar enough with the environment.

He went on through the entryway.

A flight of dark stairs led up toward a buttery radiance. The woodwork was dark, greasy to the touch. Durell mounted the steps silently. He heard a radio playing loudly somewhere. A man said something dim and indistinct from behind a closed door up ahead. At the top of the first flight, Durell halted again. He felt he was being led up into a crude and deliberate trap. But he was ready for it when it happened.

The girl’s voice drifted down to him from the landing above. “Mynheer, you have been following me?”

He looked up as she leaned over the balustrade of this tenement house above a souvenir shop. She was smiling.

“Yes,” he said.

“Come up, please. We can do business, I think.”

He had a sudden misgiving that perhaps the girl belonged to Amsterdam’s red-light district, after all. It could have been an innocent coincidence that had taken her into Piet Van Horn’s house earlier. But Durell tended to discount coincidence. He went up to meet her.

She seemed to be alone. There were other doors in the corridor, brown and shabby, but they were all tightly closed, and no sounds came from behind them. The door directly behind the blonde girl stood ajar, however, and he glimpsed a dingy room with a big Dutch brass bed, an angular dresser, and a window with a black shade drawn down tightly to the sill. There was a smell of coffee, of cooking, of stale perfume and stale love affairs. A single garish electric bulb shed a harsh light behind the girl, outlining the sensual, exaggerated pose of her hip as she waited for him. It served to keep her face in the shadow as she stood with her back to the light, and all he could see was the hint of a mocking smile, the gleam of moisture in her long eyes. He had a sudden impression of the Orient, somehow, perhaps brought to him by a large brass Balinese idol that stood out against the shabby decor of the girl’s bedroom. But Holland was full of Indonesian art, relics of a lost island empire in the Far East. He could have been mistaken about the slight hint of it in the girl’s face. It seemed to him, when she spoke in Dutch, that there were accents of German in it; but he wasn’t sure. And she quickly switched to English after her first words.

“Well?” she said. “You stare at me enough, I think. Aren’t you satisfied? Why have you followed me all over town? Or are you one of the shy ones, afraid to do business openly?”

“That depends on your business,” Durell rejoined.

She laughed. “Do you have any doubt what it is?” She came toward him in the hallway, hands on hips in an overt invitation. “You will be pleased with me, I am sure. You do like me, no? Otherwise you would not follow me, to be sure. I was very annoyed with you, you know. You could have spoken to me much sooner—perhaps bought my dinner for me. Tell me, are you an American?”

“Are you German?” Durell asked.

She looked startled. “Do I sound like a German?”

“Your accent doesn’t ring true.”

“But I learned English from Americans. Many years ago, when I was younger, but still in this business, you see. Yes, I was in West Berlin. So many soldiers there! And for so many years I But please, come in. Do not be embarrassed. I have some good jenever, really fine Dutch gin, and we can order some refreshments from the cafe at the corner. We will not be disturbed here.” She tugged at his arm gently, drawing him toward the open bedroom door.

“You know I didn’t follow you for this,” he said.

“Oh?”

“I want to know what you were doing in Piet Van Horn’s house this afternoon, and why you ran away in such a panic when I came out of his room. Why were you there? Why were you listening to us?”

Her mouth was delicately doubtful. “Was I there? Oh, I think you are very much mistaken.”

“You were there. Don’t lie about it.”

“Why should I lie? Have you very much money?”

“I can pay a reasonable sum for information.”

“About what? I do not understand. I am a simple person in a simple business. Do you wish to make love to me, or not? If you are here for other reasons, you might as well go away now. I do not care for perversions, and even less for conversation. I will not tell you the story of my life, either. If you mean to make a disturbance, I shall call for the police. I have a license, you know. What I do is perfectly legal.”

Her eyes were bold, challenging. He hesitated. Her tone and attitude were convincing, but—

To gain time, he said, “How do you call yourself— professionally, that is?”

He saw her eyes widen slightly, and then they crinkled at the comers in what might have been amusement, anger, or slyness. Her laughter was soft. Her smile made her Ups dark, her teeth sharp and white and dangerous.

“Why, everyone knows me,” she said. “I am Cassandra.”

Five

His face did not change. He gave nothing away.

He knew somehow that if he reacted wrongly, this girl would run, either literally or else behind more subterfuge and lies, until too much time was lost to make her information useful. Yet he was badly jolted. He did not want to frighten her. He doubted if she knew the significance of the word. He had the idea—perhaps only a wishful hunch— that she was not sure what the reaction to her name was supposed to be. He saw that she was watching him with some curiosity, almost expectancy. Perhaps there was even a little fear in the long brown eyes that slanted up at him.

He managed a shrug and said easily, “It is a rather unusual name.”

“Do you like it?”

“ ‘A rose by any other name. . . .’ ”

She laughed again. “Well, do we do business now?”

“I am sure of it,” he said.

She held the door open. “Come in, then.”

The room was modestly furnished, stripped of unnecessary decor except for the Balinese idol of cheap brass. It looked ready for its evening’s business. When he closed the heavy door behind him, he could hear a dim thud of rhythm from the musicians in the sailor’s bar across the street. The primary piece of furniture was the bed, of course—massive, amply mattressed and cushioned. There was a bidet in one corner, a closet door in another. He saw that the hall door had no lock or bolt. He went to the closet door, opened it, looked at the cheap, perfumed dresses and shabby, ratty-furred winter coat hanging on the rod. It was obvious at once that Cassandra, or whatever her true name might be, did not belong here. The room was borrowed. None of the clothes would fit her, nor did they match in style and taste the Indonesian print linen she was wearing now. He turned slowly, smiling.

"Well. you said you had some gin?” he asked. “I’d like to relax a bit before—you know—”

“I think— There isn’t much time—” She paused and bit her lip. All at once she seemed awkward. Her fingers fumbled with the top buttons of her dress. She remained standing in the center of the room. “I’m not so sure—”

“You said you wanted to do business. Isn’t there anything to drink here?”

“Yes, I think I can find something.”

She went to a tiny cabinet under a gas hot plate. But Durell reached into the clothes closet and picked up a bottle of Dutch gin he had seen on the floor in there.

“Here we are. Did you forget where you keep the stuff?”

“Oh. No, it’s just—somehow you make me nervous.” “Come on,” he said. “It’s hot in here. You’ve got too much on, honey.”

“Well—”

Her fingers worked nervously at the buttons of her dress. Her eyes were cast down. There was a faint flush on her cheek, and she bit her lip in frustration. Somewhere in the building a radio began to play, very loudly. She lifted her head and listened to it for a moment, then came to a decision. She smiled, and began to take off her dress.

For a moment, as she stood in the woman’s classic posture of dishevelment with the dress pulled half over her head by her upraised arms, Durell felt the squeeze of instinct in him. She had a proud, rare figure that any man might covet.

Her hips were richly curved, feminine, clad in lacy black that only emphasized the silken sheen of her flesh beneath. Her stomach was flat, her legs long and rounded and firm. As she pulled the dress over her head and shook her hair loose in a cascade of honey gold, her full breasts moved impatiently in the tight confines of her black bra. She paused then, freezing, and looked at him.

“What is it?”

“You’re very beautiful,” he said gently.

“Oh, do you think so? Am I worth a hundred guilders?” “Worth much more. So very beautiful—and such a very poor liar.”

She flung the dress aside in pretended anger. “Are we back to that nonsense again? I told you, I went to Piet Van Horn’s house on business.”

“You’re not a whore,” he said bluntly.

“But you— But I—”

“An amateur always give herself away. A real pro would have had my guilders in her hot little fist long before now. A real pro knows better than to trust any man this far.”

“But you—you seem nice—” she faltered.

She looked behind him, then smiled and came quickly toward him. It was a warning. It should have been enough. But as Durell turned to face the corridor door, the girl who called herself Cassandra suddenly cried out and flung herself at him, wrapping warm legs and arms about him in an inextricable tangle that made him stumble and halt. She was surprisingly vicious. He heard the swish of air as the door was flung open, and there came the quick thud of footsteps. Two men, he thought angrily. He tore the girl’s arm from his neck, twisted about, reached for his gun— He saw them briefly before she hit him with the Balinese brass idol. Two of them: one big and beefy and fat, the other smaller, a teen-age adolescent, ratty and scared. The only thing they had in common was the way they dressed, dark sweaters and denim slacks: sailors’ outfits. He caught only this flickering impression, and then there came a crashing pain on the back of his head. And as he started to fall, there was a burst of light between his eyes as he was struck again.

Dimly, he heard the girl gasp in anger. “You took long enough getting here!”

“We could not help it, madame,” the fat one grunted. “Shall we—”

“You can kill him, for all I care!” she snapped.

Durell tried to get up. His arms and legs were made of lead. He felt his head snap to one side, his jaw striking his shoulder, and he knew he had been sapped again.

The last thing he remembered was a sharp, sudden pain in his ribs, and he knew this could only be the girl’s high, spiked heel kicking him spitefully as he lay sprawled flat on the dusty floor.

They took his gun and rifled his papers, which was of no great consequence. He could have used certain techniques, even in his weakened state, to get free. But there would be no advantage to this. Better to go along for the ride, he thought—up to a point.

It turned out to be literally a ride. The fat seaman and his young assistant carried him down creaking back stairs and out into an alley, and threw him without ceremony into the back of a Citroen. The girl came along. She spoke, not in Dutch, but in German, to the two men, who answered subserviently. Then the fat man made the mistake of referring to her as “Frau von Uittal.”

She reacted violently. “Shut your face, you fool!”

“But I—”

“Suppose he has heard my name?”

“The man is unconscious, madame. I would swear to it.”

“Well, in any case, it is stupid of you, Erich.”

“Yes, madame. Shall we kill him?” Erich, the fat one, who kept his foot on the back of Durell’s neck, spoke as if he were asking which wine to serve.

“I think not. Can he talk yet?”

“He can be made to talk, madame.”

“I know,” the girl said thoughtfully, “that he took a map from Piet Van Horn’s place.”

“I’ve searched him. He doesn’t have one with him.” “Then he dropped it off somewhere. You will have to ask him about it.”

From the sounds that reached him, Durell guessed they were driving out of the city; but he could not judge the direction. Presently, however, there were unmistakable harbor smells, and then the perfume of flowers, and then the sharp tang of salt water. The Citroen was driven by the younger sailor, and Cassandra sat up front with him. Durell continued to pretend to be unconscious, which was not difficult. It felt as if the fat man had tried to twist his head off his neck.

After the smell of salt water had persisted for some time, the Citroen was halted. Car doors slammed, thudded. Durell was dragged out, and he opened his eyes. He saw the glimmer of the sea, the Ijsselmeer, in dim moonlight, and there was a faint reflection of city lights from Amsterdam to the south. The girl stood to one side. Her full underlip pouted, and she looked at him from under lowering brows.

“Where is the map, Mr. Durell?” she asked in English.

He made himself sound vague. “Map?”

“The one you spoke to Piet Van Horn about. I heard you. I was listening at the door. I want that map.”

“I don’t have it.”

“We know you don’t have it now. What did you do with it?”

“I mailed it.”

“Where?”

“To England.”

The fat sailor said, “He is lying, madame. Shall I—?”

“Yes,” said Cassandra.

But Durell had had enough. When the fat man swung something glittery at him, Durell ducked and came up under the blow and slammed a fist into the big man’s belly. There was a grunt, a burst of surprised pain. The younger sailor yelled shrilly and danced about. Durell caught him with a heel-kick in the ankle that sent him howling away. The fat sailor tried to recover, and Durell chopped at his neck with his left hand, chopped again, and the man went down on the sand on his knees, eyes bulging, mouth agape for air.

The girl was made of sterner stuff: she had circled behind him, and when Durell felt the shock of a blow on the back of his head, he knew she had won, after all. He pitched forward onto the cold sand, felt it grate against his cheek and lips, and closed his eyes against a spinning vertigo of darkness.

For a long time there was only the quiet plash and sigh of the sea against the coarse sand, with the wind murmuring somewhere and another murmuring of distant traffic. He thought he heard music, too, but he wasn’t sure. After a time he began to shiver. He rolled over on his back and stared up at Holland’s skies, saw the moon directly overhead, and knew he had been there much too long. He was alone, and Cassandra and her two thugs were long gone and far away. He rolled over on his belly again and lifted himself slowly to his hands and knees to get a better look at where he was.

The Ijsselmeer reached out, liquid silver under the moonlight, as flat and calm as a lake. A small concrete pier jutted out into the water about two hundred yards up the beach. In the other direction was a dark clot of simple Dutch houses—a fishing village on the inland sea, the former Zuider Zee. Navigation lights blinked in a pattern of red and green out on the water. Auto traffic sounded nearby, he looked inland and saw sweeping headlights touch the empty beach, the concrete pier, and the sea and the flat land that looked alike.

He rested.

After a time he got up and walked up the beach toward the road. He sat down on the edge of the concrete, in the cycle path, and waited. Half a dozen cars swept by, heading north and south. The little fishing village to the south seemed too far away to bother walking to. It was easier to wait. And presently there came a roaring and popping noise down the broad, brick-decked main highway, and the single eye of a motorcycle bathed him in garish light.

It was one of the highway emergency patrols, a yellow cycle with a sidecar, maintained all through the Netherlands on the highway system to assist stranded motorists. The driver of this one was very trim and efficient. He got off the cycle, adjusted a report pad clipped to his belt, and walked over to where Durell sat on the rijwielpad, under the round blue sign that indicated the cycle path.

“Mynheer, you have had an accident?”

“In a way, yes,” Durell answered in Dutch.

The cyclist immediately switched to slow but determined English. “Where is your car, sir?”

“I don’t have one. Could you give me a lift back to Amsterdam, or to a trolley stop where I could get back to town?”

“Of course, sir. But what happened? You have been hurt.”

“Yes, I was,” Durell said grimly.

It was almost midnight when he walked into the quiet lobby of the Hotel Spaanjager on Meerhofplein, back in the city. He had managed to brush some of the sand from his clothing, and he had washed the bloody bruise on the back of his head in a public washroom. But his head and body ached, and he felt an angry irritation aimed at himself for losing touch with the girl who, incredibly enough, called herself Cassandra.

The map he had mailed to himself had already arrived, with the usual Dutch efficiency, and the desk clerk in the small hotel promptly handed it to him when he came in. Durell went on up to his room, entered with care, found it safe, then took the map with him into the bathroom while he peeled off his clothes and turned on the hot water in the tub. The map still looked the same, a pre-war tourist road map without significant markings of any kind. He shook his head, not understanding it. Perhaps a laboratory analysis might bring out something in it, he decided.

Before soaking in the tub, he ordered a bottle of gin from the desk clerk. He felt rocky, and he wondered if the blow on his head had done any serious damage. He wasn’t sure. Again, in the tub, he looked at the map. It was the usual type issued by the Koninklijke Nederlandsche Automobile Club, dated 1938. What importance could Piet Van Horn have attached to it? He was still frowning over it when there came a discreet knock on the door and he called to the waiter to come in with his gin.

The waiter turned out to be a round, blond-haired man in his late forties, with a sturdy Dutch belly and pale blue eyes that rested briefly on Durell as he stood in the bathroom doorway.

“Heer Durell, I am Inspector Hans Flaas, of the Netherlands Security Police.”

Durell nodded, smiling. “Let me get dressed, Inspector.”

“To be sure. But there was a report you had been injured.”

“I was. Your people are efficient.”

“It is a small country. Would you like a doctor?”

“No, no.”

“Then perhaps we can talk business.”

“I’ve been expecting you,” Durell said, and he wondered if O’Keefe had managed to get over here from London in time to dispose of Piet’s body. “I’ll be with you in a moment.”

“Of course.”

He toweled, shrugged into a robe, and went into the ' sitting room of his hotel suite. Inspector Flaas sat primly, knees and ankles together, like a wary spinster. But there was nothing humorous about the cool, intelligent way he looked at Durell. He asked Durell’s permission to smoke after they shook hands, then took out a crooked Italian cigar, apologizing for it.

“We have fine Dutch cigars here, but my taste has been debased by various circumstances. You don’t mind?”

“Not at all,” Durell said.

The Hollander spoke over the flame of his wooden match. “You realize, of course, that we know who you are and why you are here.”

“I hardly expected otherwise.”

Flaas nodded. “Perhaps what you did not know, however, is that Piet Van Horn is—what do you call it in English? A double agent. He works for Dutch Intelligence as well as for your secret K Section.”

“We are allies,” Durell pointed out, unperturbed.

“Yes. We have similar goals. Have you seen Piet today?” “Yes, at his house.”

“Do you know where he is now?”

“No. Don’t you?”

Inspector Flaas dragged at his crooked cigar. His round face was ruddy, healthy; his little potbelly looked hard, Durell thought: a man could break a wrist trying to sink a left hook into it.

“I believe we should be frank with each other, Heer Durell,” Flaas said. “Your reputation for reliability is not unknown to us. You can be a dangerous man, and we are happy to share a mutual goal with you and your intelligence division. On the other hand, this is the Netherlands, and we must ask your cooperation while you live under our jurisdiction. We have a mutual problem. It is a terrifying problem. It is a threat to all the civilized world.”

“I understand,” Durell said.

“Yes, the entire world. But first and foremost, my main interest, naturally, is the Dutch people—their safety and their health. It is we who are first menaced by this—this madman, Mr. Durell. You know of the fishermen who died?” “Piet told me.”

“It could be the commencement of a plague that might depopulate the world,” Flaas said slowly. “All the alarms about atomics, space rockets, stations on the moon—all that will fade into insignificance if this terror is let loose. There have been some who counsel bold, decisive action—a grand sweep of men into the north polders to find the madmen and their hideout, and pry them out of the lair from which they threaten us. But we may destroy ourselves so, I think. We must walk lightly. We will deal with these people, whoever they are, who hold this pistol at the head of mankind and ask only money in return. It is, in effect, ransom for all humanity.”

“How much do they ask?”

“We have had a new note, received at the Royal Palace in Dam Square, this afternoon.” Flaas looked sharply at Durell. “It mentions Piet. It says Piet is dead.”

Durell said, “I spoke to Piet only this afternoon.”

“But did he speak to you?”

“He was alive when I met him,” Durell countered. “So.” Flaas’ pale eyes were cool and distant. “It is a fact, however, that Piet is now missing. So the note received by the government people at Der Haag and here may be authentic. It requests the deposit of the money in the Banque Populaire Suisse in Geneva, in an account to be anonymously numbered, but which we have learned, through extraordinary efforts, to be held in the name of one Julian Wilde. Have you ever heard that name before Heer Durell?”

“Piet mentioned it, but went no further.”

“We are checking British intelligence and their records, criminal and military, to trace this man, since it is an English name. In any case, this man Wilde holds the pistol to our heads. He may be sane or supremely mad. At the moment, we cannot risk deciding which he is. We must abide by the demands of his ransom note.”

“And pay him?”

Flaas nodded. “We have tried to imagine what manner of man would threaten humanity with a new and deadly plague if he were not paid this huge sum. How could such a man hope to live with himself afterward? How could he escape the vengeance of the world? And would he carry through with his threat if we refused to treat with him? Is it all a gigantic bluff?”

“You said it yourself,” Durell pointed out. “Five innocent Dutch fishermen have died of the new virus. Is it a warning?”

“We must accept it as such.”

“How did you keep it from the press?” Durell asked. “If it leaks out to the public, there may be panic all over the world—”

“Not even the young doctor who treated the first victims knows more than he could deduce for himself. The secret is still safe.” Flaas leaned forward with elbows on knees and spoke quietly. His suit was rumpled by the heat of the summer night. “There was a secondary threat in the new note we received today. The secret virus may be sold to other nations not disposed in kindness toward the West.”

“Yes, I expected that,” Durell said.

Flaas took from his pocket severed small, folded sheets of bluish stationery. “These are the notes received by the Defense Ministry today. Quite ordinary, as you see. I understand duplicates were received by your Consul General’s office here in Amsterdam. The instructions are specific. I have been in touch with Washington, Heer Durell. I am empowered to suggest that you carry out the instructions contained in this note.”

“What are they?” Durell asked.

“This man Wilde requests that a new emissary be sent to treat with him on receiving the virus culture, when payment is made in Switzerland for them. You are to drive to Friesland tomorrow, past Leeuwarden, to a town called Amschellig, a small village. The hotel there, the Gunderhof, is plain, but clean and neat. You will be comfortable. In Amschellig you will be contacted by this—Julian Wilde.”

“I see.”

“You will be retracing Piet’s steps. It is a dangerous thing to do. Piet, I think, was careless, since he is missing now. Perhaps he is dead.”

“I’ll go, of course,” Durell said.

“We suggest that you check in and simply wait to be contacted by this Wilde. You are authorized to deal with him and exchange the bank credits in Switzerland for full information on the virus, all the data and material and cultures. However, it is suggested that, in the event something goes wrong, you should have some field for maneuver. Therefore you are to go to the waterfront in Amschellig and inquire about renting a boat to cruise, as a tourist, among the Frisian Islands; but you are not to rent a vessel until you are contacted by our people. We will have a boat and crew ready for you, and they will make themselves known to you at the proper time.”

Flaas reached in his coat pocket, took out a plain brown envelope, and handed it to Durell. It was sealed with wax. “Here are the Swiss credits for the American dollars, made out as directed by my government to pay this—this unholy ransom. You will be careful with it, naturally.” He smiled tightly. “We are a thrifty people.”

“I’ll be careful,” Durell said, putting the envelope in the same pocket with the auto map that had interested Cassandra.

Flaas sighed. “It is rather a hopeless task, trying to find a submerged bunker that has been lost under the sea for over fifteen years. A laboratory of that sort—which must be airtight and watertight for the virus still to be potent—could be almost anywhere. We have no official records of it, even after a desperate search made among old war documents. However, we know the bunker was reached, and it was reopened, and one of the virus cultures taken out and used to kill the fishermen at Doorn. So it can be found again. And if anything goes wrong with your deal, it is your job to find it—quickly.” Flaas drew a deep sharp breath. “Quickly, mynheer, do you understand?”

“Since the wartime flooding,” Durell said, “everything has changed up there, geographically.”

“True. And the land has not yet been recovered from the sea. That is why the job is so difficult.”

“How much time do I have, if my contact with Wilde goes wrong?”

Inspector Flaas stood up and stubbed out his crooked cigar.

“As I said, there are some in the government who want defiant action. They claim the threat is from a small group of madmen—perhaps only one or two, after all. This faction cannot be held off forever. We Dutch have a history of resistance, as you know, to threats, tyranny and blackmail. The tradition will be preserved. You have forty-eight hours to conclude the deal, Heer Durell. Either get the virus in exchange for that envelope of Swiss bank credits, .or you must give up trying on your own. We know you want to keep this out of other hands, and we understand this. But we cannot risk Dutch lives indefinitely.”

“What will you do after forty-eight hours?”

“You will be asked to leave the Netherlands?”

“And then?”

“A manhunt will be conducted in the north provinces to clean out this nest of madmen, once and for all.”

“At the risk of the plague?”

Inspector Flaas nodded slowly.

“I am afraid so, yes. At risk of the plague.”

Six

Durell waited, without moving, for a full hour after Flaas was gone. He sat in darkness, so that any watchers outside the hotel might think he had turned in for the night, and he sipped the strong, smooth Dutch gin and hoped that O’Keefe would call him soon to assure him about Piet’s body. But no call came and the gin was no help. After an hour he got up and used the service stairs instead of the elevator and left the hotel by the back door.

This area of Amsterdam was peaceful, dark, and quiet at this post-midnight hour. He walked easily through the cooling summer night, in the deep shadow of the beech trees lining the canals, heading toward the center of the city. Once he thought he heard the quiet footfall of a surveillance operative behind him, and he sat on a bench and smoked a cigarette and waited twenty minutes, but no one appeared, and he didn’t think Flaas had put a watcher on him. None had been watching the back door of the Spaanjager Hotel, anyway. He went on.

Van Horn’s antique shop at Cuypplein 45 was closed and shuttered. The canal where the children had been playing that afternoon was now dark and deserted. Durell walked to the far corner, crossed, and walked back again on the other side of the narrow street. All the houses were wrapped in their medieval dreams. There was no traffic on the canal, none on Cuypplein Straat. The upper windows of Van Horn’s house were all in darkness. There was nothing to tell him if O’Keefe had been here yet. Durell found a bench near the canal landing where the tourist boats stopped, and sat in deep shadow, considering Van Horn’s house.

Whatever virtues a man might practice to perfect himself in the business, Durell knew with a gambler’s instinct that only too often luck played a decisive role in the solution. He never counted on it; but he was never surprised by fortuitous turns of events. He accepted what came along and tried to use it, good or bad. You could be patient, you could be highly skilled in all the black arts of espionage, you could be brilliant—but if the luck of gamblers failed to come your way, the work could be plodding, dull, and often too late in resolution to be of any use to K Section.

But he was lucky now.

Piet Van Horn’s house was shuttered for the night, but he had been on watch less than five minutes when he saw the side door next to the shop suddenly open and close and a dim figure move onto the sidewalk. Immediately Durell was on his feet.

It was the housekeeper, Lina Huysing. The stout, grim-looking woman paused on the brick sidewalk, as if in indecision. Then she turned left, crossing the street under the sycamore trees, and walked quickly in a path that took her very near to where Durell waited in the shadows. She carried a small overnight case in her left hand, and a black straw hat sat primly on her middle-aged gray head. Her flat-heeled shoes made determined raps on the brick sidewalk as she walked.

Durell moved quickly around the bench, grateful that he had not arrived here ten minutes later.

“Lina,” he said quietly. “Miss Huysing.”

The woman halted as if struck by lightning. In the dim street light that filtered under the shade trees, her face looked pale. Terror touched and twisted her mouth. Then she saw it was Durell, and she shrank back with a quick intake of breath.

“Oh! It is you, Heer Durell.”

“Of course. Don’t be afraid.”

“Do not come near me I Please! I beg of you—”

“All right,” he said. “I won’t.”

“Are you—are you ill, too?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t feel anything yet. But how do you know about that?”

Her voice was flat and bitter. “Your friend, Heer O’Keefe, was here an hour ago and took Piet away.” Her eyes were big, swimming with sudden tears. “Piet was dead when you left him, is it not so?”

“Yes,” Durell said. “I’m sorry.” They spoke across the width of the sidewalk, and he looked both ways to make sure they were alone on the canal bank. He thought he saw a couple strolling in the shadows near the far corner, but he turned his attention back to the woman. “Did O’Keefe leave a message for me, Lina?”

She hesitated. “What is there to say? Piet is dead. I warned him what might happen. But to die of a disease like that—”

“O’Keefe told you this?” Durell asked sharply.

She held up her hands as if to thrust him away when he took a step toward her. “I am not a fool! It was plain to see that your associate was being very careful of infection.”

“Just what did O’Keefe say to you?”

“He said everything was being taken care of. He said you were to go on up to Amschellig, as Inspector Flaas directed. It has been cleared with your superiors.” The stout woman bit her lip. “You are to check into the Hotel Gunderhof and wait for O’Keefe there. He will join you tomorrow.”

“Anything else?”

“What more can there be? It is your fault that Piet is dead.” The woman began to cry, burying her face in a handkerchief, her heavy body wracked by silent, stifled sorrow. Durell wished he could comfort her. But he knew that if he touched her, her latent hysteria might get out of control. She said, “Piet loved his shop and all the lovely things he bought and sold. Why did you have to talk him into such ugly work, mynheer? What good did it do him?” “Piet was a brave man. He died for Holland,” Durell said, knowing how inadequate the words were for this grieving woman. “He didn’t do these special errands just for us. He worked for Holland, too.”

She shook her head. “But why did he die?”

“He tried to save others,” he said.

“And you? You will die, too?”

“I don’t know,” he said truthfully.

“You were with Piet for an hour—and you knew what might happen, being with him?”

“I wasn’t sure, at first. Later, I knew. But I had to talk to Piet and find out what he had learned.”

She said, “Your friend O’Keefe disinfected the room, but he seemed to doubt he could do much. What will he do with—with Piet?”

“It doesn’t matter, does it?” he asked gently. “What O’Keefe took away with him was not really Piet at all, now.”

She was silent. Then she sighed, a long exhalation of exhausted emotion, and she straightened and looked directly at Durell’s tall, shadowed figure on the sidewalk.

“You are brave, too. I can be no less.”

“Where are you going?”

“To my sister’s house, in Gravenhage. Is it safe?”

“I think so, if you stayed out of Piet’s room.”

“Yes, I did.”

“If the police question you, will you tell them about O’Keefe?” Durell asked. “He should have time to do— what must be done.”

“I understand. I will vanish for a day.”

Durell nodded. “That will be time enough.”

“I should hate you,” she whispered. “And yet—and yet—” She looked at him in wonder. “By tomorrow you may be as Piet, and still you go on. . . .”

“There’s nothing else to do,” Durell said.

After the woman left, he walked around the shuttered house to the back alley and found the little red Caravelle that Piet had driven in to get to Friesland. With the keys he had taken from Piet’s room, Durell started the car and drove back to his hotel. For twenty minutes he pored minutely over the road map he had taken from Piet’s room, but it still yielded nothing. As far as he could see without the aid of a microscopic lab examination, there were no marks on it.

He slept for four hours, and at dawn he checked out and drove north out of Amsterdam. In the cool early hours the land was flat and misty, broken only by the occasional loom of a windmill or the long, straight line of a sea dike to the west, and the rows of beech trees across the countryside that marked the canals. He drove through Volendam, where the Dutch still wore old peasant cosumes for the tourists; but at this hour there were no sightseers about.

At six o’clock he paused for a Dutch breakfast of crisp hot rolls, butter, and cheese, bacon and eggs, and steaming coffee. He was surprisingly hungry. By the time he returned to the red Caravelle, the sun was shining through the morning mist.

He took the wide, straight road along the top of the huge dike that crossed the Ijsselmeer and drove for eighteen miles with the sea on either hand. The land was shining, immaculate; the countryside green and flat, laced with its blue lakes and beech-bordered roads and canals. The white cloth sails of windmills ceaselessly pumping water shone in the dawn sun. The little car drummed speedily along the road, handling with ease. Now and then the wide road deck changed from brick to concrete and back to brick again.

He made good progress through the snug little villages that seemed to be waiting only for Hobbema’s brush and canvas. This was the land of Cuyp and Pieter de Hooch and Terborch, illuminated in all the museums of the world. It was a small country, easily crossed in a matter of hours. He reached Amschellig before nine o’clock.

A room had been reserved for him at the Gunderhof. It was a big, rambling, wooden hotel, designed for family vacations, and it was crowded to capacity with holiday-goers. Listening to the babel of Dutch, French, Italian and English voices from the dining room when he checked in, he heard no hint of panic or rumor. The clerk acknowledged his signature with a nod, tapped the bell for a boy, and Durell was led up to the third floor.

His room faced the North Sea. Beyond the white curve of beaches and the blue water he could see the low, sandy outlines of Terschelling and Schiermonnikoog, the nearest Frisian Islands in the Wadden Zee. The air was clear and crisp, smelling of salt and tidal flats. Down on the beach in front of the hotel were bathers and swimmers. On the tennis courts, determined Dutch couples were already perspiring in the morning sun. And the inevitable bicyclists were busy at the cycle rack, selecting their vehicles for a spin along the brick-paved dike road.

Southward was the village of Amschellig, tidy and crisp in the morning sunlight. Fishing boats were moored at the dock, their bluff, blunt bows unchanged in design for centuries. At the municipal pier was a collection of private yachts, sloops and cruisers. Already a few sails sparkled and bent before the wind offshore.

Durell ordered coffee and rolls, lit a cigarette, and considered his next move. He had been told to rendezvous here with the mysterious men who were literally blackmailing all of civilization. But impatience touched him. He knew that waiting was part of the business, but it never came easily. He was rarely content to leave the initiative to the other side. But now he had no choice.

The envelope of Swiss bank credits that Inspector Flaas had given him was easy to conceal behind the walnut wardrobe that served as a clothes closet in his room. He used a few strips of tape from the kit in his flight bag to tape the envelope to the back of the chest. He kept his own sketchy credentials in his wallet, along with his passport that listed his occupation as an attorney, although it had been a long time since he’d considered the practice of law.

When the coffee came, served by an apple-cheeked girl in peasant costume, he drank two cups and smoked another cigarette and waited, thinking of all the other times he’d had to wait like this, not knowing what the next moment might bring. He felt a faint squeamishness in his stomach and a deep, vague malaise, as if he were coming down with a cold. He took his pulse and found that it was faster and shallower than usual. It might be, he thought grimly, that he would follow Piet Van Horn to the grave in a few more hours.

He waited.

At ten o’clock the sea was dotted with sails, the tennis courts rang with excited cries and the thudding of tireless Dutch feet, the cyclists were long out of sight along the curving dike road, and the sun was hot on the beach and the placid sea. Durell sat in a chair near the window and closed his eyes. His head ached. It could be from lack of sleep, and from the beating he’d taken at the hands of the mysterious blonde Cassandra’s men. Could be. He hoped that was all it might be, and told himself not to think about it.

But he could not help thinking about it.

He sweated out time that stretched to infinity and spun -away like water pouring downstream.

At eleven o’clock he finished the coffee, smoked the last of his cigarettes, and was bathed in a cool, uncertain sweat that was unusual for him. He felt drowsy. The sun and the sounds of the holiday-makers in the big wooden hotel, the brightness of the sea and sky, had a hypnotic effect he could not combat.

He dozed.

He dreamed of his boyhood in the Louisiana bayous and of his years at Yale, and of a long procession of able, dedicated men in the business who were dead now.

Maybe his luck had run out at last.

Then there came a sharp, hard rap on his room door, and he got up and unlocked it. He looked at the man who stood in the deserted corridor outside, and he knew this was his enemy.

Seven

He was tall, powerful, with dangerous eyes and an arrogant, amoral, animal aura about him. There was no attempt at courtesy. He said, “Durell?” and pushed into the room shutting the door with a thud. He looked around, crossed to the window to stare at the sea and the beach and the dike, opened the dresser and glanced inside, yanked open the bathroom door and stuck his head in, then turned to Durell.

“Well?”

“I’m Durell.”

“Sit down, like a good chap, will you?”

“Are you Julian Wilde?”

“Of course. You must have talked to that stupid Piet Van Horn. How is Piet, by the way?”

“Piet is dead,” Durell said flatly.

“Good.” The man grinned. “He was stupid, you know.” Durell said nothing. He felt a surge of anger at the man’s callous words, and knew the remark was calculated to throw him off balance. He waited quietly.

Julian Wilde moved with the grace of a jungle cat. His British accent was almost, not quite, perfect; the way in which certain consonants were pronounced hinted faintly of a Middle European origin. He could be Balkan, Czech, or Polish. There was a Slavic prominence to his cheekbones, and he had thick blond hair. His brown eyes were hard and sharp, his hands were big, powerful. There was a look of anger all about him, a sense of danger, as if something explosive ticked inside his strong, restless figure. He wore an English tweed jacket, flannel slacks, and white sport shoes. His teeth looked white and strong when he smiled.

“You knew Piet Van Horn, eh?” he asked. “What did you do with the body?”

“I knew him. He’s safely disposed of.”

“Good. We can’t have the plague spreading unnecessarily, can we?” Wilde paused. “I told you to sit down, my friend.”

“We’re not friends. Did you come here to do business?” “I came here to find out about Marius, first.”

“Who?”

“My brother Marius. The innocent. The bloody idiot. What have you done with him?” Julian Wilde’s voice was harsh. “And don’t look surprised or ignorant. It won’t wash, you know. I give you chaps all the credit in the world for being brainy types. But if you’ve taken Marius into custody for star-chamber proceedings, you’ll regret it.”

“I have no information on that,” Durell said.

“I don’t believe you. You look too cool for comfort.”

Durell gave the big man no answer. For a moment he debated taking Julian Wilde, disarming him. He could do it,he decided. Julian Wilde was big and powerful and undoubtedly armed; but the risk  might be worth it, if the whole thing could be wound up here and now. The only trouble was, there was no telling what provision Wilde might have made against such a move. There was a feral quality about him that made Durell pause—an amoral glint in the eye, a savagery to the mouth. There was a breed of adventurers in the world who acknowledged no moral codes. And the stamp of that breed was on Julian Wilde, without mistake.

“We know nothing about what has happened to your brother,” Durell said. “I’m sure we don’t have him.”

“You’ve got him, all right. Why else would he vanish? I want him back, friend. And I resent this move against us. The price has gone up. We want ten million now.”

Durell stared. “I’ve only been authorized to deal with you for five million dollars.”

“Too bad. The cost of fooling around brings it up to ten. In cash, at the Banque Populaire Suisse. And for every hour Marius is missing, the price rises another hundred thousand. Understand?”

“I’m not authorized—”

“Then get the authorization!” Julian Wilde snapped. A fine beading of sweat was on his upper lip. “I want Marius back, safe and unharmed. I haven’t taken care of the bloody fool all these years, trying to get ahead, just to have him pay the piper at the last minute.”

“I don’t know what I can do,” Durell said. “For all I know, your brother may have paid the same price Piet Van Horn paid.”

“No! Marius knew how to handle the stuff.”

“Is he the biochemist, then?”

“We both know how to handle Cassandra; don’t worry.”

“Well enough to spread the plague in Doorn?”

“It’s been contained there,” Wilde said quickly.

“But five fishermen have died.”

“Well, that was their fault, you see? One of them got frisky, and they all paid for it. Anyone who crosses us pays for it.”

“And those deaths don’t bother you?” Durell asked. “Are you serious in your threat to kill millions of people?” There was silence in the room, and in the brief pause Durell heard again the cries of the bathers on the beach, the thud and slap of the tennis players, the jingle of bicycle bells. Beyond the window the sun shone on an innocent holiday world. But what was outside seemed unreal, and the only truth was in this hotel room, in the words that darkened the atmosphere between them.

A subtle change had come over Julian Wilde—a sense of menace and desperation, of complete detachment from normal human values. Watching him, Durell felt a faint shiver deep inside himself. There was something different about Wilde. His British manner rang untrue, oddly out of key. All at once, Durell felt as if he had invited an alien danger into the room that had changed the color of the atmosphere and tinged the day with weird and unparalleled menace.

He shook himself mentally. Either he was beginning to run a fever, which meant he was hopelessly following Piet down to doom, or he was letting this man’s manner dominate him with hypnotic strength.

“Well, there you have it,” Wilde said suddenly. “I mean to have Marius back, safe and hearty, clear? The price is now ten million—and in return, you get all the Cassandra: lab and equipment and culture vials.”

“How can we know you won’t hold out enough to blackmail us again?”

“You can’t be sure. You must trust us.”

“And if we don’t?”

“You have to.” Wilde grinned tightly. “Remember, get Marius back by six o’clock. I’ll drop by then. And arrange for the increase in bank credits, like a good chap. Or else.” Wilde’s hand moved flickeringly, faster than Durell had ever seen a knife drawn before. The blade came from his sleeve, and its flat shaft caught the sunlight with a momentary blinding flash as Wilde stepped across the room and thrust the point at Durell’s throat. Durell did not move. His dark eyes were almost black as he said quietly: “Put the knife away, Wilde.”

“What I can do to you now, I can do to the whole world. Is that clear? I mean to be safe, and I mean to be wealthy. I haven’t suffered and waited all these years for nothing. Neither I nor Marius will tolerate any foolery. We mean what we say. We would rather die than fail— as you will die, if you don’t have Marius here for me by six o’clock tonight to conclude our deal.”

There was something tigerish in the man’s brown eyes, in his tight, hard grin. Durell felt the pinprick of the knife point against his throat and said again, “Put it away, Wilde, or lose it.”

“Lose it? Really? I’m fond of this blade, you know. I’ve had two, exactly alike, for a long time. If you could see the grip, you would notice the skull and crossbones of the dear old Gestapo elite. Inlaid with silver and ivory, no less. The Nazi who owned it died when he began beating poor Marius. Marius never knew how to care for himself. Or am I telling you too much? Is it all registering? Will you do some quick research on us? It will get you nowhere, friend. When we have our credits and you have Cassandra, the deal will be ended, and we shall simply disappear.”

“I doubt if you’ll get away with it.”

“Oh, but we will!” Then man breathed angrily. “We’ve waited a long time—and Marius may not have been strong enough to cope with this brutal world, but he was clever, and a wonderful schemer. He saw the possibilities when the chance came. He worked out everything.”

“So of the two of you, he is the brains” Durell said. “You may think so, if you like.”

“Without him, you’re just the muscle, is that it?”

The knife at Durell’s throat moved slightly. “This blade has been used more than once. I could use it again.

I could easily dislike you, old man, to the point where I might kill you.”

“For the last time,” Durell said, “put it away.”

Wilde grinned. There was a sort of jungle cruelty in the man, a fanaticism and a knowledge of blood spilled long ago.

Durell dropped and turned, chopping at the knife in Wilde’s threatening hand. His move was fluid and deadly. Wilde made a thin gasping sound and tried to step back, but Durell hooked a foot behind his heel and sent him over backward, staggering. At the same time, Durell twisted painfully and the knife went flickering through the air. Durell turned with it and when it clattered to the floor, he stamped hard on it.

The blade shattered under his heel.

Stooping, he picked up the handle, noting the ivory and jeweled Nazi decorations in the grip. He tossed the broken point of the blade into the wastebasket.

“You broke my knife!” Wilde whispered incredulously. “I don’t like them at my throat. Not even as a joke. Or was it a joke, Wilde?”

“I had that a long time. I valued it highly.”

“Then you shouldn’t have treated it as a toy.” Something faded in Wilde’s pale brown eyes, and then he looked up and shrugged, smiling. The tension and violence abruptly left his voice and he spoke quietly and crisply.

“I shall call on you again at six o’clock this evening. I will be prepared to deliver everything you want. In return, I warn you, I must find my brother Marius here, safe, unharmed. And ten million dollars in credits. At six o’clock.”

“I’ll be here,” Durell said.

He stood still until Julian Wilde had left the room.

He counted a slow ten, then he too stepped out into the corridor. A young man and a girl came down the hall hand in hand, swinging tennis rackets. They smiled at Durell in passing. There was no sign of Julian Wilde.

For a moment he wondered if Wilde might be checked into an adjacent room. It might have been the smart thing to do. Then the young man, in passing, said in accented English, “Are you looking for your friend, sir? He went down the steps there, in a tremendous hurry.”

“Thank you.”

He followed quickly, going down the wide wooden stairs to the lobby. Perhaps what he was doing was not practical, but there was a faint chance that he might be able to tail Julian Wilde to some place of importance. That he might infuriate the already fury-ridden man was a chance he had to take.

Wilde was striding out through the front doorway of the Gunderhof when Durell reached the bottom of the stairs. The sea sparkled blindingly beyond the brief boardwalk and the beach. Sails bent to the wind beyond the low-lying islands offshore. Wilde turned left, stalking with feline grace among the deckchairs and tangled bicycles on the paving, and he did not look back. The path on the dike led in a long curve toward the red roofs and docks of Amschellig, a quarter-mile away. The walk was spotted with strollers and cyclists; and Durell, after allowing a greater distance to come between them, followed Wilde at an even pace.

It seemed to him that his brief interview had netted enough information to keep Inspector Flaas and O’Keefe quite busy. No one except Piet had mentioned Marius Wilde until now. And Julian Wilde was in a rage because his brother was missing. Durell had no idea what meaning this might have, except that Julian had remorselessly applied more pressure because of it. Something would have to be done about it quickly.

He wished he could have held the man a little longer. Too many questions were still unanswered. Were Julian and his brother the only men involved in the Cassandra plot? Or were there others? Perhaps the Wildes were only messengers and agents; but on this, Durell could not make up his mind. Julian Wilde seemed to be his own master, and only time would tell if there were others still in the shadows.

Julian Wilde seemed unconcerned about being followed. He walked swiftly in the North Sea sunshine, never looking backward. Durell checked behind him to see if Wilde’s self-assurance stemmed from having a cover for his escape; but he could see no one suspicious among the holiday crowds strolling on the dike.

Amschellig had a long, wide main street that paralleled the waterfront, where the buildings were mostly commercial houses devoted to both the fishing industry and tourists. Across from the main quay for the blunt-bowed fishing boats, an amusement pier of modest size had been built. The harbor, behind its stone mole, was crowded with yachts, and the narrow, brick-paved streets were completely taken over by the tourists.

It immediately became more difficult to keep Wilde in sight, and only the man’s size and leonine blond head made it possible. Beyond the amusement pier, Wilde turned abruptly Into a narrow side street lined with warehouses, and Durell increased his speed to turn the same corner.

He never quite reached it.

From the quayside, where a number of sailing sloops were tied up, stepped a giant young Hollander, in the typical narrow-visored cap and baggy trousers. He put a huge hand on Durell’s chest, and smiled, showing several gold teeth in his mouth.

“Mynheer, a moment, if you please.”

“Get out of my way.”

“It is important, mynheer. I am authorized—”

“Get lost,” Durell snapped.

“Lost?” The big young man frowned, his pale brows wrinkling under the cap. His callused seaman’s hand remained on Durell’s chest. “You do not know where you are, mynheer?”

Durell saw Julian Wilde escaping if another moment went by, and acted out of momentary anger as he chopped at the big Hollander’s hand that pressed him toward the dockside. But the seaman’s arm was like an oaken log, hard and immovable. His eyes opened with blue, innocent surprise and hurt, and when Durell stabbed a stiff fistful of fingers into the man’s solar plexus, in what should have been a disabling blow, the Hollander wasn’t there to receive it.

“Mynheer, please, we are friends—”

Durell swung again, but his wrist was caught in the huge hand and he was twisted off balance. No one had ever been able to do that to him before: the Hollander’s strength was enormous. The man grinned like a happy idiot.

“I am sorry, Heer Durell. I have a boat to offer you, that is all. You are looking for a boat to rent, are you not? We should make a bargain quickly, before people start to stare at us.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Inspector Flaas suggested that you rent a boat, right?” Durell stared at the huge young man, then at the alley where Wilde had disappeared. It still might not be too late. But when he started around the big man, the other said in a low, firm voice, “I am sorry, mynheer. I must insist. I have my instructions. Trinka wants to see you now.”

“Later!”

“Now.”

Durell let his arm go slack, ducked under the other’s grip, feeling his skin burn where the big man tried to hang on, and came up facing the Hollander. This time he got in a hard right to the other’s belly. He didn’t care what sort of scene he created now. He heard a woman passerby gasp, and a man shouted and the big Hollander went staggering back, losing his cap as he jolted heavily against a dock shed with enough of an impact to make the little structure shake violently. There was still only innocent regret and surprise on the man’s face. He licked his lips, shook his head, hunched his shoulders, and came at Durell like a charging bull.

Durell never liked to think afterward of what might have happened if he really had it out with the Hollander then. He stood braced as the giant charged, frustrated by the man’s persistence. And then, as if he had been checked by a leash, the Hollander came to an abrupt halt as a girl’s annoyed, light voice called:

“Jan! Jan Gunther! Stop that nonsense this instant!”

Eight

Her voice carried astonishing authority for her size. The Dutch girls Durell knew were usually full-bodied and had the typical Hollander’s well-fed look. This one was tiny, with jet-dark hair that betrayed Spanish ancestry from the time the Duke of Alba ruled the Netherlands for Spain. Her features, however, had the milky softness and radiant complexion of all the Dutch. And in proportion to her size, her figure was exquisite, even bold.

She came toward them across the quay with a determined stride: a small, seductive figure in white shorts and a man’s white shirt open at the throat. Her legs were long and firm and deeply tanned. She wore her dark hair cut short, boyishly, but there was an ultrafemininity about her, from the top of her angry head to her tiny, tapping toes as she stood diminutively beside the hulking Jan Gunther.

“I am so sorry, Heer Durell. Jan misunderstood. I did not mean to detain you this way. Were you going somewhere important?”

“It doesn’t matter now,” Durell said.

“I am Trinka Van Horn,” she said, and put out her hand. “Uncle Piet and I work for the same company, you might say.”

“Trinka?”

She wrinkled her tiny nose. “A very common name, is it not? Katrinka Van Horn. The boat I own is the Suzanne—no one knows why. It is as stubborn and opinionated as a mule—or a man.”

“That could be a feminine trait, too,” Durell said.

“Oh, dear. Are we to be enemies?”

He looked at her firm, perfect little figure in her shorts. “Are we to share your boat?”

“Yes. That is the general idea.”

“Then I sincerely hope we’ll be friends,” he said.

“Oh, you are so gallant—for an American, that is. Of course, Jan comes along, too. As crew—and perhaps as bodyguard.”

“A pity.”

She laughed. “Oh, Jan can be useful.”

Durell rubbed his wrist reminiscently. “I suppose so.” He looked at the hulking young Jan, whose bright blue eyes were fixed in abject worship of the tiny Trinka. “All right, Jan? No hard feelings?”

His English was thick and stubborn. “Of course not, sir.”

“We thought it best to begin at once on the cruise,” the girl said. “I was about to send Jan to the Gunderhof for you, since I think Inspector Flaas makes too much out of precautionary measures. You were pointed out to us when you checked in this morning. There is little time to waste. So I decided to begin our search today.”

“Search?”

“For the bunker-laboratory, of course.”

“Have you been trying to find it for long?”

“We have been cruising the Frisians for almost a week—since before Piet came here. But we haven’t found anything so far.”

“Did you see Piet yesterday?”

“No. But Flaas telephoned and said Piet has vanished and he fears—We all think Uncle Piet is in serious trouble. Unless you can reassure me—” She looked at him questioningly. “Can you tell me anything about Uncle Piet, Mr. Durell?”

“Nothing good,” he said soberly.

Her eyes quickly searched his face. Under her diminu-femininity there was a toughness of steel, he decided. He saw by the look on her face that she understood his words, accepted them, mourned, and adjusted to this new fact, all in the space of a few brief seconds.

“Is he—dead?” Her voice was quiet.

“Trinka—” Jan began.

“It is all right. Is Uncle Piet dead, Heer Durell?” “Yes,” Durell said.

She was silent. An outboard motor started up in the anchorage, popping and stuttering, then settling down to a roar. A woman laughed on one of the moored yachts. Sea gulls slid down the edge of the wind blowing from over the North Sea. The air felt colder, somehow, although the sun was still bright and the tourists nearby were still gay. The girl nodded slowly and rubbed her arm. The wind caught little tendrils of her dark hair and blew them across the bloom of her cheek. Durell saw she was in her late twenties, mature and with a bright intelligence.

“Thank you for not lying to me, as you did to Flaas,” she said quietly.

“I didn’t exactly lie—”

“It is all right. I trust you will continue to be frank with me, if we are to work together on this Cassandra project.”

Jan Gunther said clumsily, “Shall we go aboard now?”

“Why not?” Durell asked.

The Suzanne was a thirty-six-foot sloop of polished mahogany, teak and brass, with an immaculate cabin divided into two compartments with double bunks in each, the one amidships serving as lounge and messroom. Forward was a head, a thoroughly equipped galley, and a fully stocked pantry. There were an auxiliary engine that was exclusively Jan Gunther’s domain.

Durell told Trinka he had to be back at the Gunderhof by six o’clock that evening, and she nodded agreement.

“I understand. You will make contact with the Cassandra people then?”

“I’ve already made contact. They’ve jacked up the price to ten million dollars.” He told her briefly of his encounter with Julian Wilde, and Trinka frowned, biting her pink lip. She had not seen anyone like Julian Wilde in the area before, she said, and she would have noticed him, she thought, if he’d been around Amschellig much.

“If Uncle Piet contacted this Wilde yesterday, he had no time to tell me about it,” she said. She made a frustrated mouth. “We have had the usual difficulty in coordinating operations, however. But what will you do about this ultimatum?”

“There’s no real hurry on that, I think. But I’m going to look for Marius Wilde,” Durell said.

“Where?”

“Anyplace where there may have been trouble in this area.”

“But I can’t think of anything—”

“Trinka,” Jan Gunther rumbled. “There has been trouble at the Wadden Zee Dike Six.”

“Oh, yes, but—”

“What kind of trouble?” Durell asked the big Hollander.

But Jan looked embarrassed for having spoken at all. He waved a deprecatory hand at the petite Trinka, then sat down on the cabin coaming and frowned at the moored yachts all around them.

Trinka said, “Oh, it’s nonsense.” But she seemed quite disturbed. “There were rumors of sabotage up there—an explosion. Some careless workmen repairing the dike last week allowed some dynamite to go up and ruined a great deal of reclamation work.”

“How long has this work been going on?”

“It was begun by the government this spring. Actually, the Wadden Zee Dike Six is a very old one, but the Nazis sabotaged it during the war and flooded a huge section of the polder.”

“How long have you known about all this?’ Durell asked sharply.

“Why, everyone up here knows about the engineering work going on there. But when the accident happened, the sea came in through the break in the dike and reflooded much that had been pumped dry up to that point. But this is not the sort of trouble you meant when you said it would help you find Marius Wilde, is it?”

“I think it might be,” Durell said.

The run up the coast and out among the Frisian Islands was aided by a brisk easterly wind for the first two hours of the trip. There was no other way, Trinka explained, to reach the dikes being repaired in the shallow sea, except by boat or a long roundabout drive and the use of working dredges and scows. It was quicker and easier to use the Suzanne. And Durell agreed that the sloop was a quick, pleasant vessel, lively in response to the wind that bowled them along at a good clip, faster than the auxiliary engine could have taken them.

Jan Gunther sat stolidly at the wheel, handling the boat with delicate ease. Trinka prepared lunch down below, and did not invite Durell’s help. From the deck, he considered the flat, glimmering expanse of sea and shore and the smudges of islands low on the horizon. The Suzanne heeled and murmured and ran quartering before the wind with a long, purling wake behind her. Durell remembered sailing on Long Island Sound during his days at Yale, and earlier sailing on the Gulf on the few occasions when he got away from Bayou Peche Rouge. This Dutch yacht had bluff bows and a higher freeboard than those he was acquainted with, but Jan handled her nicely, and she was a fine sailer—in this pleasant weather, at least.

Amschellig was lost in the haze behind them as they went north and east along the curve of the diked coast of Friesland and Groningen. Various indentations in the shore showed where dikes were still to be built or repaired. But soon these details of the area were lost as they swung farther out to sea among the tangled channels and shallows of the offshore islands.

These could be tricky waters, Durell noted, with a swift tide that could change miles of clear sailing into sand-bottomed traps that would hang you up for hours until the tide flooded again. But Jan and Trinka obviously knew the waters well, and they seemed unconcerned.

Lunch was served on deck, prepared by Trinka, and it did not break with the tradition of solid, generous Dutch meals. What astonished Durell was that Trinka easily ate as much as the huge Jan or himself, yet seemed unconcerned about her delicate little figure. There was kreeft, lobster, and then uitsmijter, huge slabs of buttered bread covered with Dutch ham and a single egg; then chunks of creamy cake and a huge pot of coffee. Jan and Trinka ate persistently, engrossed in the serious business of nourishment. Durell, who felt better by the moment in the sea air, began to think he had miraculously escaped infection by Piet, and he joined them with a hearty appetite.

When the meal was over he offered to help clean up, and after a moment’s hesitation, Trinka nodded and he joined her in the galley.

“You must forgive me,” she said, as they worked together in the tiny quarters. “I have been rude, I think. It is because of Uncle Piet. I was very fond of him.”

“How long have you been at this job?” Durell asked.

Her eyes were suddenly crisp and cool. “Long enough. Four years. Even longer, if you allow for—certain circumstances.” She paused, but did not elaborate. “I heard about you, Mr. Durell, from Uncle Piet, of course.”

“Call me Sam,” he said.

“Very well, Sam. Will you call me Trinka?”

“I want to,” he said.

“Good. I know I have been impolite. We Dutch try to make our behavior equally dejtig and gezellig—decorous and dignified, yet cozy and comfortable. It is sometimes difficult for me, when things go wrong, to strike the—the happy medium. I am very much afraid of things, these days.”

“How long have you been assigned to the Cassandra problem?”

“From the very beginning.”

“And you finally came up here to work on it by hunting for the bunker?”

“Yes. Without luck, so far.” She made a small grimace. “I have seen so far only the shores of Friesland and Groningen. It is very beautiful, though. We have a saying in the Netherlands—that God made the world, but the Dutch made Holland.”

Durell nodded. “You took it out of the sea.”

“Yes. Am I forgiven for my rudeness?”

“Of course.”

They shook hands and she smiled, her fingers cool and firm in his. Then Jan Gunther’s voice rumbled from the deck above, and Trinka started suddenly.

“The dikes are ahead,” she said. “Let’s go up.”

Durell followed her slim, firm figure up the steep ladder into the sunshine again.

The crying of sea gulls overhead blended with the rhythmic thump of pumps working on the huge scows and barges off the Suzanne’s bow. But Durell was more impressed by the sudden threatening change of weather in the short time he had been below with Trinka. It was only shortly after noon, but the sun of the morning was lost behind a high overcast that looked thicker to the west, out over the North Sea reaches, and a heavy fog bank lay on the horizon that way.

The tide had turned, too, and was running out through numerous channels in sand bars and low-lying islets of uninhabited sand dunes and tall, reedy grasses. The mainland itself was a smudge to the east, off the starboard bow of the Suzanne.

The sections of the restored dike looked like huge, humped whales looming out of the flat, milky sea, in a long line curving to the distant coast. Cranes, bulldozers, scows, derricks, and bridging equipment, with sand pumps and concrete mixers, all made a cacophony of organized noise as the sloop tacked closer to the largest dike section where a number of wooden construction shacks loomed against the sky. A temporary dock thrust into the buoy-marked channel, amid a forest of cranes and hoists. Wooden steps angled up the steep walls of the dike at this point.

“What happened here originally, do you know?” Durell asked.

Trinka nodded. “During the war, when the Germans knew they were beaten, they spitefully flooded this area by sabotaging the dike at strategic places. The sea came in and drowned the land and the farms and the villages and, for one reason or another, this area hasn’t been reclaimed until now. As you can see,” the girl said, indicating direction with a sweep of her tanned arm, “the dike goes from island to island in a semicircle that eventually will be completely closed again. Then the pumps will really go to work, and the land will emerge and become useful again. Some parts of the sea bottom, near Scheersplaat particularly, were already enclosed by smaller units and pumped dry—before last week’s accident.”

“Are you so sure it was an accident?” Durell asked. She looked sober. “No Hollander would sabotage a dike under any circumstances.”

“But perhaps it wasn’t a Hollander who did it.”

“You are thinking of Julian and Marius Wilde?” “Maybe,” Durell said. “Let’s ask the man in charge here what he thinks about it.”

The swarms of construction workers in yellow-and-white steel helmets paid no attention to them as they climbed the zig-zag steps from the dock float to the top of the dike where the construction shacks were located. One or two paused to stare at Trinka’s figure in her white shorts, but there was something austere and prim about her that discouraged the male eyes intrigued by her progress. And a glance at Jan Gunther’s scowl staved off any tentative approach.

From the top of the dike Durell could see the vast sweep of sea and island and distant coast, where salt-water creeks and small rivers drained into the North Sea from West Germany. It was astonishing what a difference in perspective the small change in height effected. To the north the sea was banked in thick fog slowly approaching the whole area. To the south, where the sun still shone, the sails of pleasure boats bent to a stiffening breeze. Overhead, the sun had lost its brilliance behind the haze, and the wind on the dike top carried a surprisingly chill bite. But Trinka, in her shorts and shirt, seemed totally unconcerned as she led the way to the chief engineer’s office.

The man’s name was Hans Moejiker, and he looked like a seventeenth-century Renaissance Dutchman out of a Rembrandt canvas. He was big and ponderous, with a solid belly, a bald, shining head, and irascible eyes. Scattered around the office on drafting tables and cabinets was a mare’s nest of hydrographic and geodetic charts and blueprints of the sea-bottom construction project. Trinka spoke to Moejiker in a rapid local dialect that came too fast for Durell to follow. Between her quick explanations their conversation was interrupted by ringing phones, requests for advice from a steady stream of workmen, and the quick jotting of scribbled notes by the sweating fat man. Finally Trinka produced from the pocket of her shorts a small card which Moejiker considered. He put on a pair of hornrimmed reading glasses to consider it again, and then he shrugged and spoke to Durell in perfectly clear English.

“I have no time to be bothered by your inquiries, sir,” he said. But under the circumstances I have no choice. If you are looking for sources of trouble and difficulties, you have come to the right place, as you can see. Miss Van Horn asks me if I think the so-called accident to West Section Two could have been an act of sabotage. I say it is. Or was. I said it to the local police and I said it to the national authorities. Dynamite does not explode of itself. We take every precaution, and some abnormal ones as well. We are a careful people, Mr. Durell. The dikes are most vital to us—our ultimate defense against the sea. Would we be careless about them? Nonsense. It was sabotage.”

“And do you have any suspicions?” Durell asked. “Anyone among your workmen who might have had a hand in it, for example?”

“I don’t know. I have no time to investigate.”

“And the police haven’t helped?”

“Pooh! What do they know of my work? I’m too busy even to argue with them about it.”

“Perhaps if any of your construction people have left the project recently—

Hans Moejiker considered Durell, pursed his lips, then nodded his bald head. “I shall have it checked.”

“Check the names of Julian and Marius Wilde, while you’re about it,” Durell suggested. “They may be on your payroll.”

“Wilde, you say? That means something, yes.” Moejiker pushed his fat belly around the drafting table and abruptly went outside. He made a shrill whistling sound that penetrated the clanking and clamoring of steam and bulldozer, and offered a quick explanation to Durell. “I was just on my way to check on them when you interrupted me.”

“On which one? And why?”

“Marius Wilde—one of our assistant engineers. An Englishman, but he knows this dike and the islands like the back of his hand. Phenomenal, for a foreigner.”

“Where is he now?”

“Come along with me,” the Dutchman said belligerently. “I think he’s dead.”

Nine

The fog rolled over the dike construction site like a vast, soundless tidal wave, billowing in toward the shore. The effect was startling. Sight and sound became muffled and dampened by the whiteness, and everything took on hazy, unreal proportions, alternately looming up and vanishing in the varied areas of the fog. Durell could not see the surface of the water at the base of the dike where they stood. The construction machines kept moving purposefully at their tasks, however, with an occasional stabbing, glowing blaze of light as one or another of the operators turned on spotlights to guide themselves. There was no break in the pattern of construction.

Han Moejiker led the way with his rolling, waddling, fat man’s gait, heading for a jeep driven by a blue-denimed worker.

Trinka murmured, “I am so ashamed. I’ve been stupid. I should have asked such an obvious question long ago.” “You didn’t know the Wildes’ name before,” Durell said. “And I’m sure there are plenty of other foreigners working on this project besides the Wildes.”

She leaned forward in the jeep and spoke to Moejiker in the Friesian dialect, and the fat man answered irritably. Trinka turned back to Durell. “I asked where the construction workers are quartered, since this work goes on all summer. Some are sheltered in company barracks, but many others chose to find rooms in the coastal villages. Heer Moejiker has no idea where the Wilde brothers can be found, but he will check his records when we return.” Durell tapped the construction chief on the shoulder. “What makes you think Marius Wilde is dead, Heer Moejiker?”

Moejiker snorted. “They’ve found a dead man at the end of the West Section Two. It looks as if he slipped and fell to the ballast rock we’ve been dumping there. He broke his neck.”

“And he’s been identified as Marius Wilde?”

“Just ten minute ago.”

They drove on. The dike curved like a vast causeway out to sea, connecting one sandy islet after another. The fog thickened, and the yellow-helmeted driver snapped on the headlights, although this helped little against the glittering curtains of mist that blew across their path. After a short time the driver halted and they got out to walk the rest of the way across the unfinished top deck. The footing was rough and uncertain.

They passed a steam shovel, saw the squat shape of a barge moored to the dike, then worked their way with care down the sides close to the dike. There was nothing to be seen beyond the last pile of rubbly fill but the fog-bound sea, although from somewhere beyond their range of vision came the distant groan of a fog buoy and the faint clangor of a warning bell. Trinka paused and shivered, rubbing her bare arms.

“I did not expect this,” she said. “I do not like it. Suppose it is Marius Wilde? Suppose his accidental death upsets the deal you are to make with his brother?”

“Let’s not suppose anything yet,” Durell said. He took her elbow and helped her down the tricky descent to the huge boulders below, and he was mildly surprised when the prim little girl did not object to his personal contact.

A small knot of workmen from the barge was clustered at the far end of the unfinished dike. The tide had quickened, and a swift, ominous current poured outward into the North Sea. From here Durell could see the looming mass of another dike section barely outlined through the mist. He turned to Hans Moejiker.

“Will this be completed soon?”

“In a day or two. We have all the fill we need, ready to ship from Groningen. The pumps are ready to begin their work then.”

“Is this where the dike wjs sabotaged?”

“Near here,” the fat engineer said testily. “All this water you see must be pumped out again. Let’s see what’s going on.”

The workmen scattered quickly before Moejiker’s bellying progress. The dead man sprawled on the rocks just beyond.

He looked strangely like a fish out of water, beached and white and open-mouthed, as- if his gasps for air had ended abruptly and unexpectedly. He wore a sport shirt and slacks, and had pale hair and thin, pinched features. For a moment Durell could not understand what made him look so strange, and then he saw that the dead man had no teeth in his mouth, and had apparently forgotten to put in his dentures before he died. There was a crushed area on the back of his head where he had cracked his skull against one of the ballast rocks, and he looked as if he had fallen, arms outflung, from the top of the dike above them.

Moejiker barked swift questions at the workmen, who answered quickly and respectfully. Durell watched Trinka Van Horn. But beyond an efficient, cool glance at the dead man, Trinka paid the body no further attention, reserving her interest for the answers the workmen were giving Moejiker in their local dialect.

“He was found half an hour ago,” she explained to Durell. “Some of the barge men thought they heard a launch and stepped out to warn the boat away from this channel, which you can see is very swift and treacherous with the turn of the tide. But they saw no boat.”

“Was it foggy here then?”

“Yes. And they found this man. He was dead then.”

“Is it Marius Wilde?”

She listened for another moment. “Yes. His papers show that. Moejiker says he recognizes him, too. It is Marius Wilde.”

The fat Dutchman began to bark sharp orders to the workmen, who scattered to perform the tasks he set for them. No one touched the dead man. He asked Trinka if anything had been disturbed, and she shook her head and said everything was being kept in order for the police, who had been summoned and would be here shortly from Amschellig, She asked a few questions of her own from a nearby workman then.

“Nobody knows where Marius or his brother lived,” she told Durell. “This man says they were rather snobbish. They acted in a very superior manner that angered everyone they worked with.”

“Does this man know Julian, too?”

Trinka asked a few more questions, and the workman shrugged. “He says yes, he knows Julian, and does not like him. He says both Julian and Marius were strange, even for Englishmen.”

“But they aren’t really English, are they?”

“That’s what they claimed to be.”

“How do they think Marius died here?” Durell asked. “They assume he slipped and fell. Why?”

“It doesn’t make sense. Julian and Marius were playing a desperate and dangerous game, for fantastic stakes. It doesn’t ring true that one of them should die as the result of a stupid accident.”

Before she could reply, Durell steped forward to check his hunch. The dead man lay apparently exactly as he had landed when he fell from the dike deck, sprawled with arms and legs akimbo, his head at a curious angle that indicated a broken neck as well as a crushed skull. But there was very little blood on the quarried rock. He knelt quickly beside the dead man. He saw that Marius Wilde, even in death, was only a weak facsimile of his brother Julian. Here was none of the savage, feline strength of Julian. This had been the weaker of the two, which explained Julian’s protective attitude. Weaker physically, yes —but there was evidence in the narrow, pinched face of a strong intellect, although everything was difficult to judge because of the gaping, toothless mouth. Durell thought about the total lack of teeth in a man not more than forty, and wondered how it had happened. Then, before anyone could object, he reached out and turned the dead man over.

He found what he wanted then, although just now it was of no help. He felt puzzled and confused, and looked up as Moejiker bellied up to him to protest his interference.

“What do you think you are doing? The police will not like this. Even though it was an accident, the law—”

“It was not an accident. Look here,” Durell said. He showed the Hollander the back of the dead man’s head. Most of the damage to the skull from the rock impact was high up. But just above the base, in the area of the medulla oblongata, where the spinal column joined the brain, there was a neat round hole, scarcely darkened with blood.

“This is a bullet wound,” Durell said flatly. He stood up, looked at Moejiker’s startled face. “Marius Wilde was shot. He was murdered.”

Ten

The police launch, summoned by radio, contained a quiet, efficient crew who went about their work with methodical Dutch calm. None of Moejiker’s impatient bellowing about delays in his day’s schedule made any impression. They asked questions, jotted notes, consulted with each other, interviewed Durell briefly, spoke to Trinka Van Horn at greater length. Trinka’s trim figure somehow crackled with authority when she protested against the delay they were causing. It was already past three in the afternoon, and Durell began to think of his coming meeting with Julian, whose demand for his brother’s safety would meet with an unexpected response now.

Durell kept his silence and left it to Trinka to explain what they were doing here. He considered a number of possible answers to Marius Wilde’s murder, but none of them held a definite answer. Someone had killed Marius and tried to make it look like an accident. Was the clumsiness deliberate, or had it been a real attempt to cover up the bullet wound? It could mean the difference between dealing with professionals or amateurs. Somehow, Durell tended toward the latter. But the killer’s identity, whether part of the Cassandra gang or someone completely unsuspected until now, defied speculation.

It was after three o’clock when Trinka told him they were free to go. “They have spoken to Flaas, from their launch radio. It is all right to return to Amschellig now.” She looked deeply troubled. “Do you want to go back with the police, or will it be all righit for you to return with the Suzanne?”

Durell smiled. “The Suzanne, by all means.”

“Good. Perhaps we can figure out this horrible thing.” She paused. “But this must not be allowed to interfere with your arrangements for Julian. We had better go now, if the fog isn’t to hold us up too long to prevent your return by six o’clock.”

Ten minutes later they ghosted through a dead-white world of mist and calm sea. Not a breath of air stirred. The water was glassy, with a slow ground-swell from the north. Jan Gunther used the auxiliary engine and Trinka acted as bow lookout, calling out buoy locations for the maze of channels they had to thread, now that the tide was ebbing so fast. Because of the chill of the fog, she had changed below into faded denim slacks and a tight-fitting, striped singlet that only emphasized the remarkable femininity of her tiny figure.

Durell sat quietly amidships and watched the white fog. He was aware of a complete normalcy of pulse and heartbeat. He had no symptoms of illness whatever, and for the first time since he’d met Piet Van Horn yesterday, twenty-four hours ago, he allowed himself a long sigh of relief. He had been prepared for anything. He had known the danger of infection from Virus Cassandra, and for a time this morning, because of the beating he had experienced yesterday, he had watched his physical reactions with some care. But he had not caught Piet’s infection. He had passed through the dangerous time period without developing anything. So he was safe.

Not that death was a stranger to him. Sudden, violent, ugly death was always with him, and in the solitary fashion of his profession, he knew he had to face it alone. Not that he was callous toward it. But it was a world at war, secretly and viciously, in which he moved and lived and worked. No quarter was given; none was asked. No bugles blew in triumph or to mark a retreat. If you failed or died, you were simply removed from the scene and your records disposed of. There was never a monument to mark the work you had done.

Marius Wilde’s death threw a serious monkey-wrench into the general plan that had been forming in his mind since he’d arrived at the Gunderhof Hotel. He would have to play it by ear for the next few hours, he decided—depending on what happened with Julian.

“Sam?”

He turned as Trinka spoke. She was looking back toward him from her lookout position at the bow. He got up and joined her.

“Listen,” she said. “We are being followed.”

“Here at sea?”

“Listen,” she said again.

Above the steady beat of the Suzanne’s two-cycle engine he heard the deep-throated mutter of a diesel motor, somewhere astern and off the port quarter. He looked that way, but only the bright white blindness of the fog greeted his search.

“How can we be followed in this?” he asked quietly.

“It’s a much larger vessel than ours—a large yacht, which has a lookout mast, or a bridge. The fog may only be a few feet above the surface of the sea here—maybe ten, fifteen feet at the most. Our mast may show above it. And they can see it.”

“Who would they be?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“You’ve been here long enough to have a few ideas.”

She turned in quick hostility. “Do you mean I have not done my job properly? We have searched every island for twenty miles up and down the coast, Jan and I, day in and day out. But searching for the bunker, which is the job I was assigned to do, is worse than hunting for the proverbial needle in the haystack. If you think—”

He held up his hands to ward off her angry words. “You have a Spanish temper, Trinka. Take it easy. I implied nothing. I just thought you might be able to identify the boat, because of the diesel—”

She looked only slightly mollified. “There are a number of yachts around here of the that size—two German, a Swedish, an Italian publisher’s schooner—it could be anyone.”

“Why would anyone follow us now?”

“Have you no theories of your own?” she countered.

“None.”

“Well, I don’t like it,” she said flatly. “I would feel much better if we can get rid of them.”

“Maybe it doesn’t mean anything. Maybe they’re just following the same tidal channels to get back to Amschellig.”

“No. We have taken some evasive action. Jan turned out to sea several times, through quite tricky channels, just to see if the other boat turned, too. They are definitely trailing us.”

“Perhaps they’re lost and using our mast as a guide.”

She looked dubious. “Well, we shall see. Are you armed?”

“Yes.”

“I shall get a rifle for Jan,” she said.

She went below. Durell stood on the wet deck and tried to see through the blinding mist. The sound of the other motor, deep-throated and somehow ominous, seemed to come from every quarter. But he could make out nothing. Looking straight up, there was only the dazzling glare of water suspended in the air, brighter in one area to indicate where the sun was. Trinka was right. The fog that covered this area of the sea was only a few feet thick, a low creeping blanket that lay heavily on the oily surface of the water.

Trinka came back and put a rifle beside Jan, who sat at the wheel like a stolid graven image. She said something to the big Hollander, and Jan increased their speed and then suddenly put the helm hard over, making the Suzanne swerve sharply in her course. It was a game of blind man’s buff, Durell thought, in which their mysterious pursuer had all the advantages of not being blind at all.

The other vessel changed course with them, at once. And now the beat of the diesel engine came faster and louder from astern.

“Jan!” Trinka called.

The big man at the wheel shook his head.

“Can we do it?” she asked.

“Do what?” Durell interrupted.

“We were just abeam of Hovringen Shoal. The depth of water there at lowest tide is only four feet, and the Suzanne’s keel requires six feet, six inches. But the tide hasn’t run out all the way yet. There is just a chance we could get across and escape them.”

“Should we escape them?” Durell asked.

“Of course! Suppose they intend to kill us?”

“Why should they? How do we endanger anyone, except Julian? And why would Julian try to kill us before our six o’clock appointment is carried out?”

“I suppose you think we should let ourselves be run down and left to drown!” the girl objected.

“I think we ought to find out who is behind us, and why.”

She looked indecisive, then shook her head. “No. I cannot allow the Suzanne to be damaged. We’ll try the shoal. Jan, put her over again.”

The big man obeyed promptly. Durell, looking astern, heard the yacht’s engines aft quicken again. Now suddenly there came the loom of something sharper and more solidly white than the whiteness of the fog. Trinka drew in a sudden breath as the bow of a speeding vessel took shape in the mist astern—the high, ornate bow of a sixty or seventy-footer, at least. It came on fast, white foam boiling around the prow. Jan slapped his hand on their fog horn in desperation, and the sound boomed out all around them in frantic warning. The other vessel made no reply, paid no heed, and simply came on fast in a course meant to cut them off from the dubious safety of the shoal.

There was no doubt now. The other boat meant to run them down. And its size and power meant it could cut the Suzanne in half and keep right on going. It would be reported, if reported at all, as an accident at sea, thanks to the fog.

“Jan!” Trinka cried. “Hurry!”

“I do not think we can make it, Trinka,” the big young man muttered. “It will be a very close thing.”

Their course took them directly across the other vessel’s path. Whoever was at the helm of the diesel-powered yacht knew about the Hovringen Shoal and also knew that the larger vessel would quickly go aground where the Suzanne might float. No attempt was made to change course on the other’s part. But the throb of the diesel became a heavy, angry roar as the last ounce of power was applied to intercept the sloop.

Ahead, Durell saw the color of the Water change where the shoal began. A buoy clanged loudly in the tugging tide, and he thought he heard the crash of surf far ahead in the fog. But then the high bow of the white yacht was upon them. Trinka screamed. Jan Gunther gave a hoarse shout and lifted his rifle as if he could stop the other vessel with a bullet. There was no one to be seen on the other’s deck or behind the glass windows of the bridge. The bow loomed high, came smashing down at the sloop’s deck. Durell threw himself at the wheel, hurling his weight against Jan’s frozen grip. The sloop heeled, shuddered, and slid sidewise onto the sand bar.

There came a sliding, rasping sound and Durell was thrown from his feet with the grazing collision. He caught a line, felt someone slam into him, and caught at Trinka’s leg as the sloop yawed. The boom slammed wildly across the deck and the girl slid half overboard. The air was filled with a strange hooting sound from the other vessel’s horn. The high boiling wake lifted the Suzanne’s stern and shoved her farther onto the shoal. Something grated deep below, and the deck shuddered.

Durell struggled to hang on to Trinka leg; he pulled her back, caught at her groping hand, and hauled her to the deck beside him. The boom slammed viciously overhead. He heard a cry and saw Jan Gunther stretched flat as a swinging block caught the side of his head.

The other yacht was gone, swallowed by the mist. And there came another long, shuddering tremor as the Suzanne’s keel scraped bottom again.

“Are you all right?” he asked Trinka.

“Yes, I— Thank you. I’d have gone overboard if you—”

“Take care of Jan, will you? He’s been hurt.”

He shoved Gunther into the safety of the cockpit before snatching the spinning wheel. He had noted their course before, and now he tried to steady the vessel. The engine still ran, and they righted slowly, plunging on into the fog. The sound of the other yacht was gone, swallowed up by the mist and by distance.

Trinka looked up with Jan’s head in her lap. “His scalp is badly cut.” Her face was white. “Do you realize what just happened?”

“Somebody tried to kill us,” Durell said grimly.

“Yes. But why?”

“Because we are what we are, and they know it and don’t want us around to ask any more questions.”

“Was it Julian Wilde?”

“I don’t think so. Am I headed on the right course?”

She stood beside him. “A little more to port, just a few points. Are we over the shoal?”

“I think so.”

“It is all that saved us,” she whispered.

She began to tremble violently. Her lips were pale. She stared at the fog and started to speak again and bit her lip.

“It was a close one,” Durell said.

“I am sorry. I should have been prepared for it.” She tried to smile. “I will be all right soon. Thank you.”

He pulled her down beside him at the wheel. Her waist was slim and supple, her body firm under his grip. “Stop shaking, Trinka. It turned out all right.”

“I—I didn’t know I was a coward. I’d have gone overboard if you hadn’t caught me. And poor Jan—”

“Take care of him. It’s only a scalp injury.”

“You’re right.”

But she didn’t move. He handed the wheel to her and when he saw she held the Suzanne on course, he suddenly kissed her, hard and without inhibition, on her trembling mouth. Her body stiffened with shock. Instinctively, her primness fought him, surprised. And she forgot her fear in the sudden anger she showed when she slapped him. “What do you think—”

He grinned. “Can you steer a straight course now?”

Her eyes blazed. “You—that was hateful!”

“Was it?”

“I was not so—not so helpless—I cannot think—” “Just steer the boat now, Trinka,” he said gently. “And keep your mind off what almost happened to us and concentrate on despising me. All right?”

For a moment she stared in unmitigated outrage. Then she saw his smile and her lips twitched. She looked down at their course on the binnacle compass and adjusted the wheel; then she smiled in return and laughed and said softly, “It would not be difficult to—to hate you very much, Sam Durell.”

“Work on it,-” he said. “And I’ll work on Jan.”

Eleven

They were back in Amschellig Harbor by six o’clock. Jan Gunther revived quickly, and by the time they moored, he was at the wheel again, apologizing in his clumsy manner for having been so careless as to let his head get in the way of the swinging boom. Trinka, however, was strangely silent until they tied up.

“Don’t you have any idea whose vessel that was?” Durell asked. “You’ve been here a week or more. Didn’t you recognize the yacht?”

“No, there are several of that size,” she said. “And I couldn’t see the name on the transom. I’m afraid I’m not as good an operative as I thought. The slightest crisis, and I came apart.”

“Not at all.”

“You could not depend on me again.”

“I may have to,” he said, smiling.

“But I have lost confidence in myself.” Then she brightened. “Perhaps it is only hunger now. It is almost dinner time, and I am absolutely starved!”

“Sorry, you’ll have to buy your own meal. I’m due back at the hotel for a date with Julian Wilde, remember?”

Then she returned to the problem, like a puppy worrying a bone. “But why should anyone want to drown us, when we are following Wilde’s instructions?”

He had several ideas about that, but he said nothing. He helped Jan check the bilges and strakes of the Suzanne, where they had been grazed, but the sloop had no leaks, and aside from an ugly scar in its paint the little boat was unharmed. Durell hurried through the examination, said his goodbyes, and left for the hotel.

He arrived five minutes late. The fog still persisted, and the chill dampness blowing from the North Sea had driven the tennis players indoors. There was no message for him at the desk. The dining room was filled with Dutch appetites, but he skipped eating there, and ordered a Javanese dinner sent up from the rijsttafel, with a bottle of Dutch gin.

Despite the afternoon, he was aware of enormous relief. He felt physically better. The slight symptoms of malaise that had worried his morale earlier were gone. He did not carry the plague. When he entered his room, closing the door behind him, he saw at once that someone else had been here.

It could have been the maid who had moved his flight bag, but he did not think so. It had been carried across the room and now sat at a right angle to the right upper leg of the bed.

John O’Keefe had been here.

Durell went to the bag and opened it and found the sealed envelope O’Keefe had left for him. In the darkening light that came off the fog-bound, he flipped through the dossiers O’Keefe had enclosed. But first he read the brief note.

Cajun—am bumbling about like a tourist after

several objects sunk at sea. Am scared to death.

Are you well? Claire will never forgive you for

ruining our holiday. But she loves you. John.

The onionskin carbon copies enclosed with the note were excerpts from dossiers on Julian and Marius Wilde. Durell memorized the data as he read them.

WILDE, Julian, alias Wildenauer, Joseph. Wilderski, John.

Nationality: Polish, made Br. subj. 20/6/ 45,

bel. b. Vilno (?) but suspect Czech a/o Hungarian

ancestry. Mbr. Polish Army, Lance Cpl, joined Free

Polish forces after 3 yrs. Nazi war prisoner, records

Buchenwald 6 mos., released slave labor Holland,

escaped fishing boat Feb. ’43 to Dunstan, England.

Commissioned lieutenant Free Polish Army 23 Aug

’43, fought Col. Wilenski’s Brigade Netherlands

campaign. D.C. no records.

Occupation: Labourer, draftsmen, educ. London

U. and grad, construct, engineer, Chandler-Smith

Ltd. London. Inc. £3600 1960

Address:    Gravely Mews 25, London SW.

Marital status: single.

Children: none.

Member organizations: none.

Physical description: Age 36(?) Hgt. 6’2”

Wgt. 210, Eyes brown, hair blond. Outstanding

scars: concentration camp tattoo under left arm

223433, knife wound scar upper left abdomen.

Passport in order. Form 22150 — A 52C 15151

No known criminal record CID

The dossier on “Wilde, Marius” contained much the same background information and differed only in a physical description that precisely fitted that of the dead man found on the dike that afternoon.

A second note from John O’Keefe was clipped to the onionskin dossiers, and read:

Cajun—we’ve traced the slave-labor chores of

these lads to the Wadden Zee Dikes when the

Nazis were here. Did they work on the Cassandra

bunker? A good bet. Did they hear the Dutch were

finally getting around to repairs? Count on it.

Search of Wilde flat Gravely Mews—they live together,

devoted brothers, neighbors say—came up

with Times cutting of Dutch engineering plans to

reconstruct sabotaged dikes. Did they know about

Cassandra all these years? Good chance. Their

objective assessed: find bunker again and sell to

highest bidder. No other organized gang or persons

involved. Take it from here, Samuel.

Durell made twists of O’Keefe’s notes and the onionskin dossier copies and burned all the paper in the ashtrays in his hotel room. The information vanished in smoke, but it was all committed to memory, and when the ashes were cooled he crushed them under his fingers and tapped the remnants out of the window.

He was just turning back when he heard the key in his door.

As far as he knew, the desk clerk was aware of his return, and no hotel employee would enter without knocking first. He took the gun that Flaas had given him from his pocket and held it ready as the door was unlocked from outside and casually pushed open.

The girl who called herself Cassandra stood there.

Twelve

She wore dark slacks, tilted sun glasses, and a pale cashmere sweater around her shoulders against the chill fog. Her heavy blonde hair was tied into a pony-tail and fastened with a tortoise-shell comb. She rested one hand on the doorjamb, and Durell saw that she wore an emerald ring of at least five carats’ weight. He also saw there were new rope burns on her hand and that she wore rubber-soled shoes.

She was not alone. The fat seaman named Erich and his young, pimply cohort stood behind her trim figure. She could afford to smile. Both of her assistants had guns pointed at Durell.

“Mr. Durell,” she said in her accented English. “You do not seem surprised?”

“I’m not.”

“And you are not pleased, either?”

“That depends.”

“Did you wish to see me again?”

“Oh, yes,” Durell said. “You and your two friends, Frau von Uittal. I wrote you down in my little black book, to settle our account one day. I suppose this may well be the day.”

“Perhaps, perhaps.” She smiled again. “On the other hand, it is good to be alive still, is it not?”

He did not know if she were referring to the virus that had killed Piet Van Horn and which he’d thought for a time might kill him, too; or whether she referred to the incident at sea in the Suzanne. He suddenly decided, with little expectation of error, that the only person who could own the big boat that had tried to run down the Suzanne was this girl who called herself Cassandra. He was not completely right; but he was close enough to the truth to act with judgment upon it.

The fat seaman, Erich, looked at Durell without pleasure, then licked his lips and spoke in German to the blonde girl. “He will come with us? You have asked him?” “Not yet.”

“Then ask him, please!”

“Do not presume to give me an order, Erich.”

“I do not. It is the general’s order.”

“My husband can wait.”

“It is not the way he described the situation to me, madame. Please ask this man to come along now, and to come along quietly, without fuss, or we shall give him more of what we gave him before. It would be a pleasure, but the general is impatient.”

The woman looked mockingly at the fat seaman. “And you are afraid of his impatience? The great god, General von Uittal, frightens you?”

“Yes, madame. He frightens me very much. And if you were a wise woman and a good wife, you would be frightened, too.”

“Do not be insolent! Can you take his gun?”

Erich gestured to Durell, who sighed and gave him Flaas’ gun and said in fluent German, “It’s all right, Erich. Pardon me for eavesdropping, but I’m coming peacefully.” The fat sailor grunted in surprise, then shrugged. Cassandra said, “Oh, you are wise.”

“On one condition, however,” Durell added.

“There are no conditions,” she said.

“I insist. I want to know your real name, Cassandra.”

“You understood Erich. I am Frau von Uittal.”

“And your first name is Cassandra?”

She said coldly, “It was once Emma.”

“Thank you,” Durell said. “That’s what I wanted to know.”

They left the hotel quietly, without arousing anyone’s interest. It was already six-thirty, and there was no sign anywhere of Julian Wilde, who was now half an hour late. Durell did not expect to see him now. He was sure that Julian already knew about the murder of his brother Marius.

Dusk came early with the fog that cast a glum pall over the holiday-makers at the Gunderhof Hotel. Only the lovers, strolling on the sea wall or the dike paths, did not seem to mind. Durell expected to be hustled into a waiting car, but instead they walked the quarter-mile along the dike into the village of Amschellig.

A launch waited for them at the municipal dock. He looked for the Suzanne’s sprightly contours, but she was lost among the silent lines of moored sloops on the misty water. Durell sat beside Cassandra—he would always think of her by that name, he decided—in the center of the launch. The fat man steered. The pimply youngster kept a gun pointed at Durell.

They made for the same yacht, Durell saw at once, that had tried to run them down at sea. As they came alongside, Erich said something to the younger sailor who, once the others had climbed aboard, took the launch hastily back to the fog-shrouded pier.

“Did you send him to search my room?” Durell asked.

“Ja. Why not?”

“A pity. He won’t find anything.”

“Then you will be sorry. This time you will truly regret it, if you are stubborn. Move, swine!”

The fat man shoved him along the glistening deck. The girl hurried ahead, vanishing through a doorway that shed bright yellow light into the swirling gloom of fog. The yacht was anchored about a hundred yards offshore, near the breakwater, and the steady clangor of the fog buoy at the channel entrance punctuated the darkness with mournful frequency. On the vessel itself, everything shone with military polish and immaculate Prussian efficiency. The registry, shown on the white life-preservers on the rail, was the Valkyron of Hamburg, West Germany.

“In here, you,” said Erich. “The general is at dinner. You will remain standing at attention when he speaks to you, and you will not speak first, under any circumstances.

“Jawohl,” said Durell. “May I breathe?”

The fat man said grimly, “You may soon make such a request in earnest, American. It is not a joking matter. The general never jokes.”

“I know that,” Durell said. “I know all about von Uittal.”

He recognized the man himself the moment he was ushered into the dining salon of the yacht. A long table, spread with fine linen, was set with gleaming cut glass and silver and Rosenthal china. The general sat alone at the head of the table in the paneled cabin. Cassandra stood beside him and a little to the rear, as if in attendance. Her face was impassive as Erich pushed Durell, stumbling, into the room.

“Here he is, my general,” Erich said.

“Very good. You have done well.”

“Thank you, my general,” Erich rapped. He all but saluted, standing at stiff attention. Durell saw there was another place set at the table, at his end, but Cassandra did not take the chair, nor was she invited to do so. And he did not expect to be the other guest. He saw that Cassandra looked resentfully at her husband, but this might have been imagined.

S.S. General Friedrich Hans Paulhous von Uittal had quite a dossier among interested commissions and departments of the Allied governments. He had been tried as a war criminal during the Nuremberg trials, in absentia, since he had disappeared, and was sentenced to a ten-year term. Two years later a K Section operative dug him out of a small Italian coastal village where he had been living as a Jewish refugee from Austria, ironically accepting the label of those he had tried to exterminate. He was extradited to West Germany to serve his sentence for abnormal cruelty while in command of a concentration camp, served six years and six months and was released for reasons of failing health.

Von Uittal had his nerve, Durell thought, cruising Netherlands waters with his record of cruelty to the Dutch underground during the Nazi Occupation. But no one had ever accused the S.S. general of cowardice. There was arrogance in every inch of the slim, corseted body, in the square face, the flat Teutonic brow, and thick brown hair that even now was only slightly tinged with gray. He would be about sixty, Durell thought, with his corset and dyed hair.

There was no record of his marriage in K Section files. He looked again at the blonde Cassandra, but her glance flicked rapidly away to avoid his eyes. He wondered what was troubling her. Perhaps she resented the general’s disdain for women; she had not been invited to join her husband at dinner, and he wondered why.

“Mr. Durell,” von Uittal began, his mouth thin and precise as the dry sound of his voice. “I trust you are here with the intent of being reasonable and cooperative. It would avoid much delay and some unpleasantness for you. May we understand each other from the start?”

“I understand you,” Durell said. “Whether you know what makes me tick is highly doubtful.”

“I note enmity in your voice. You are not of Dutch descent, of course. I have done nothing to you. My alleged war crimes were all carried out as direct military orders, and I never had any choice but to obey.”

“That’s the song all you yellow canaries sing,” Durell said.

“I paid the penality prescribed for me. I served out a long term in prison.”

“And now you look forward to another big Tag?”

“Perhaps.” Von Uittal smiled. “We are not dead and buried yet. We never will be. Everyone knows Germany’s position today is precisely as some of us predicted. You need us, and you will accept us on our terms, eventually.”

“I doubt that.”

“We shall dictate the future peace. You will see. The war has never really ended, you know. What we have witnessed for the past fifteen years is simply a breathing-space, a cooling-off period, a phase that most people in their foolishness do not recognize as war.” He looked up sharply at Durell, his pale eyes gray, almost colorless. “But you do. I see you are a man who knows the truth. So we are enemies. But even an enemy can be reasonable, and I shall make this brief. I have an excellent chef aboard, and dinner will be served in twenty minutes. If you are wise, you will be dining with me then or going ashore, as you choose; or you will be dead.”

Durell shrugged. “I never misunderstood your kind, I’m happy to say, Uittal.”

Erich snapped, “You will address the general as General von Uittal.”

The German waved a negligent hand. “Do not be overly zealous, Erich. I have a feeling you will get your chance. Perhaps you should summon two more of the crew. That will leave your hands free.”

“Yes, sir. I understand, sir.”

“Now, then.” Von Uittal sat forward in a businesslike manner. “I will explain what I can, briefly, so we will have no doubts as to my meaning and intentions, Durell. We meet because of your connection with Piet Van Horn and Cassandra, my wife. By the way, did her name startle you? It was intended to do so. When I began this project, I asked her to assume the name for its shock value. —You were about to say something?”

“Yes,” Durell said. “Does she know what it means?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so.”

Cassandra frowned, but said nothing. Her husband went on as if at a military briefing. “This began during the Occupation, of course. And I’m sure you know that I was commanding general of this area for several months, before we were forced to retreat. I was in charge of demolitions designed to delay the Allied advance. And I was also in command of various experimental and research projects.”

“Such as Cassandra.”

The general waved a hand again. He, too, wore an emerald ring, larger than his wife’s. “I was not concerned with details. I knew its name and general aims, and I inspected the bunker construction from time to time. It took certain materials that were a nuisance to procure. The bunker, as you must have guessed, had to be hermetically sealed, airtight and watertight, so its contents could survive indefinitely, as if under controlled laboratory conditions. However, certain events were unpredicted.”

“Such as the sudden Allied advance,” Durell said.

“Yes. And I had some small undertaking of my own that needed attention. I—ah—I was and am an ardent collector of art.”

“A thief, you mean,” Durell said. “Like others of your kind, you looted and plundered occupied lands for art treasures. Is that it?”

He felt his head snap around and knew that Erich had hit him with the gun, and then the carpeted deck came up and he was on his hands and knees, shaking his head to get rid of the ringing pain that clamored agonizingly in his brain. Cassandra cried out in protest. He shook his head again and saw blood spatter from a cut on his scalp and he decided Erich was chalking up a very unfavorable balance in his ledger. Then Erich kicked him, and he rolled away, got to his feet again, and leaned against the paneled cabin wall. The snowy linen and shining silver on the dining table were seen through a slowly clearing haze.

“You were told not to speak unless the general asked a question," Erich grumbled. “Speak then, and not before.”

“I’ll remember you, Erich.”

“Not for long. You will soon be dead.”

“Enough,” said the general. He leaned forward slightly, and Durell could almost hear his corset squeak. “I continue. It is encouraging that Herr Durell is talkative, Erich. Let us hope he goes on that way. In any case, Herr Durell, I was a collector of art, or a thief, or plunderer—whatever you choose to name it. And since I was intimately associated with the construction of the Cassandra bunker, and knew the facilities for hermetically sealing the contents against air, water and even temperature changes, to an extent, I stored my—ah—acquisitions there. When I heard that the Dutch were at last repairing the dikes here, ready to pump out the sea and reclaim the land, I sailed here to see what could be done about finding the Cassandra bunker first. We learned that Piet Van Horn was asking questions, and I sent Cassandra to Amsterdam to learn more about him. Then you entered the picture, and Cassandra tried to elicit information from you.”

Durell thought of the prostitute’s bedroom and smiled at the blonde. “It was a very effective effort. I enjoyed it.” She flushed, bit her lip, and looked away.

“What is it?” Durell asked her. “Doesn’t this godlike creature permit you to dine at the same table with him, Cassandra? Do you have to stand beside him like a faithful dog?”

She flushed again. “I am not hungry.”

“She is being punished,” von Uittal said calmly. “When one fails, one pays the penalty for failure.”

“It wasn’t for lack of trial,” Durell said.

The girl looked away. The general seemed unconcerned, although Erich made another threatening move, checked by von Uittal’s raised hand. “We will be patient, Erich. Americans pretend to be casual and humorous in the face of a desperate difficulty. Just how desperate Herr Durell’s situation is, will be seen. It depends on his cooperation, eh?” He turned back to Durell. “Your coagent, Piet Van Horn, apparently stumbled by pure luck on the bunker site, although I have searched for two weeks and have not been able to relocate it, thanks to changes in topography and the sea bottom in the past fifteen years. I did not expect to be confused by the North Sea tides, but—” Von Uittal shrugged. “There you are. I know Van Horn found the place, from his appearance in Doorn and his questioning of the fishermen’s families there, together with the local doctor. And there was the small Hals hanging in one of the cottages. I have it now, but there it was, and I recognized it. It was one that I collected myself and stored in the bunker. I bought it last night. Paid good guilders, cash, for it. The foolish woman did not know its value. She said her husband —one who died, you understand?—had brought it home a few days ago, before the dike was sabotaged. Which is another matter. That was puzzling, but it is explained now. I know who did it, and why it was done—to delay me, of course. But it won’t work.”

“And Marius Wilde?” Durell asked suddenly. Nothing changed in the general’s face except that the icy eyes grew icier. “We have talked enough, I think. Cassandra knows that you got a map from Piet Van Horn. She did not manage to get it from you, and you told her it was mailed to England, and she was stupid enough to accept that story. I do not. I want the map, Herr Durell. I want it at once.”

“I don’t have it with me.”

“Then where is it?”

Cassandra spoke in a thin voice. “What about Marius Wilde?” Her words were only a whisper, but her eyes were suddenly enormous in her lovely face. “What about Marius, Friedrich?”

“Be still,” the general said.

“I want to know.”

“Do you? Do you really?” All at once the general’s voice lifted in suppressed rage. “I suppose you do, you bitch! You have bungled and blundered like a stupid woman at every turn! The maps you brought from military headquarters were all useless! ” The man abruptly lurched to his feet, almost upsetting the elaborate dining table, and opened a cabinet against the wall and began hurling out rolls of military and hydrographic charts that unfurled and rolled across the cabin deck. The general’s face was dark with anger as he swung to the blonde girl. His fist shook as he raised it. “All my work, and it is you who bungle it now! The maps you brought from Berlin are useless. And what you paid for them, selling yourself, is not my concern! You are only a whining, useless bitch, good for one purpose only! And then you claim to fall in love with an untermensch, a slave, such as Marius Wilde—a half breed, a distortion, a mixture of the lower orders, when you are my wife!”

He slapped her. The blow rang like a pistol shot, and she fell sprawling to the floor. Her hair came undone and rippled in a heavy blonde screen across her bruised face. Durell took a step forward, and checked himself as Erich slammed the gun into his ribs. The atmosphere in the cabin vibrated with the general’s unnatural, unbalanced rage. Not a sound came from the girl. She stood up quietly, holding her cheek, and did not look at Durell.

Durell said, “Cassandra, do you know the significance of the name that your husband gave you?” He watched her shake her head dumbly; her eyes beseeched him to be silent. But he went on. “Did you know that what the general really wants is a plague-virus culture that was developed by Nazi biochemists and medical people—a virus that can wipe out half the people on earth? He wants to find the laboratory again, not for the art treasures he stole and hid there, but to regain the virus and be in a position to bargain for power again. Didn’t you know that?”

The girl watched with wide, dazed eyes. Neither the general nor Erich interrupted, to Durell’s surprise. Cassandra shook her head slowly.

“No, I knew nothing of such a horrible thing.”

“And he gave you the code name of the virus, Cassandra.”

Von Uittal laughed. “I thought it quite fitting.” Cassandra said, “Is it true, Friedrich?”

“Of course, my dear.”

“It is the virus you are after?”

“Why not? Our organization could come to light again, with such a weapon. We could sweep away all the stupidities of the past fifteen years and take our rightful place of power again. We could manipulate West against East for the greater glory and eventual domination of the New Reich.”

“You are mad, Friedrich,” she whispered.

“All great men seem mad, to the ignorant and the stupid,” he said easily. Then his manner changed abruptly again, charged with military precision. “Herr Durell, you have shocked my wife, and I have permitted you to do so, because she has been an extraordinary bungler and deserved some punishment. However, the amusement is now over. You will tell me where Van Horn’s map is, and what it shows upon it to indicate the location of the Cassandra bunker.” “But it’s under water now, anyway,” Durell said, “since the dike was sabotaged.”

“The pumping goes on. It may be in reach again tomorrow. Will you tell me what I want to know?”

“No.”

“Do you understand that I can kill you here without fear of punishment? No one will know. You can die in agony, if I order it. Erich will be pleased, if you are obstinate.”

“I don’t have the map.”

“But you know where it is. Where is it?”

“It wouldn’t tell you anything.”

The general said impatiently, “Erich?”

Erich said, “With pleasure, sir.”

And so it began.

He could have escaped it. Erich, after all, was not a professional. He made mistakes that could have been used to turn the tables in that glittering dining salon. The fat man was vicious and overly eager, and therefore he was careless. But Durell decided to wait him out. There was more to be learned here, and he was not ready yet to end the visit.

The general held a Luger on him while Erich did his dirty work. Durell took Erich’s blows and efforts to paralyze him with pain and, although he scarcely enjoyed it, it was endurable. In Durell’s world, one had to learn the limitations of the body; you had to know your personal threshold of pain, your breaking point. It was a cardinal rule with all the field agents of K Section. When you fell into enemy hands, you had to be prepared for quick and painless death. In Durell’s case, he carried a poison capsule built into a molar by careful dental surgery. He carried death around with him like a ticking time bomb. It would not take too much to break the capsule—enough so it could not be done unconsciously, in sleep or in a drugged state; but it would be easy enough. You had to be willing to face this possibility, sooner or later; and it took a certain personality, lonely and self-sufficient, detached from the ordinary entanglements of family, friends and ambition, to be able to live with this.

He had learned how to live with pain, control his body reflexes, and absorb punishment by accepting it and not fighting back when it was best not to do so. Erich was not a professional. Durell had been worried about this, because some of the Nazis were diabolically ingenious in devising torments for body and soul; but Erich was not one of them, fortunately. He could have done better.

Even so, it was not easy. Questions alternated with blows, shouts and curses, with kicks and twists of limbs. Durell sweated it out. The cabin was blurred, the faces of the general and Erich and Cassandra were vague in the moments when he could look around and breathe deeply in preparation for the next round.

“Herr Durell, why are you so obstinate?” The general’s voice seemed to come from a vast distance. The scent of tobacco touched him and he saw that von Uittal stood at one of the cabin windows, lighting a thin cigar. The window was dark, and he realized with some surprise that night had come since his arrival on the yacht. “You may be sure that I and the people I represent are reasonable. After all, the virus does belong to us, by virtue of our discovery of this particular strain. Our technicians perfected it; we spent time and treasure upon its development. It belongs to us, and no one else.”

“It should be destroyed,” Durell gasped.

“One moment, Erich.” Von Uittal peered at Durell with sudden interest. “You were in contact with Piet Van Horn, who died of it?”

“Yes. And I may now be a carrier, if that’s of any interest to you.”

The general shook his head. “No, no, you cannot frighten me like that. The strain has a twenty-four-hour virulence only. Otherwise, how could our troops have been expected to occupy enemy territory that had been seeded with Cassandra? No, my friend, you are safe. And so are we. But you may die of Erich, you know.” The general considered the tip of his cigar. From somewhere out in the harbor came the sound of a boat engine, throbbing through the cool fog. The Valkyron rode easily at anchor, solid and magnificent. “Herr Durell, I am not noted for my patience. I do not believe that you mailed Piet’s map to England.

Nor do I believe that it was a simple tourist map, and no more. I want the truth. I want the map. I have spent too much time in fruitless cruising of these waters, from Borkum to Terschelling, and I am without patience or pity. I leave you here with Erich. When you are ready to talk—or when you are dead—I shall come back.”

Cassandra spoke suddenly, her face frightened. “No, Friedrich. Why didn’t you tell me about my name? Is it amusing to you that I innocently accepted a name synonymous with death?”

“I thought it amusing, yes. But be quiet.”

“I will not. You could have told me about the virus.” “It was not necessary to tell you anything. A woman’s mind is a treacherous and stupid thing, at best. Go to bed, Cassandra. I shall see you later.”

“I have not dined yet,” she said.

“And you won’t. You’ve done badly enough.”

“Am I a child, to be sent to bed without supper?”

“We will talk about it later.”

“No, Friedrich. Now.” She looked defiant and frightened, all at once, as if surprised at her temerity in speaking up to him. “You are a monster, you know. You take as much pleasure in torturing me as you do with Durell.”

“Do you deny you’ve behaved badly?”

“I deny nothing.”

“Ah. You were in love with Marius Wilde?”

“Perhaps. I hadn’t thought much of it. He was pleasant to me. I did not know he was your enemy. I thought he was an Englishman, an engineer working on the dikes, and useful to us.”

“So you went to bed with him,” von Uittal said, his voice trembling. “Bitch! Whore! To go to bed with an animal of the field, to couple with a dog, to fornicate with a beast—this is the same as giving yourself to Marius Wilde. A Pole, a slave-laborer, a—a—”

His rage took possession of him and he struck her hard. This time the blonde girl, though staggered, did not fall. She pulled herself up straighter, defiant, her face white, her eyes blazing.

“I will leave you, Friedrich! I will go to Marius now!” “Yes.” He laughed harshly. “Do that—into the grave.”

“You will not hurt either of us.”

Durell spoke sharply. “Cassandra, Marius is dead.”

She stopped, frozen by the impact of his words. It was plain she had not heard about the murdered man on the dike. Her eyes widened in horror, and she swallowed and looked at Durell.

“It is true?”

“He was shot today while working on the dike. It looked like an accident, but there’s a bullet in his brain.” Durell turned to look beyond Erich’s fat bulk at the general. The general had lifted the Luger, and it was a dangerous moment. But he went on. “What happened, General von Uittal? Did you run into Marius accidentally, while probing around the dike? Did he recognize you as the Nazi in charge of the slave laborers, the prisoners of war lifted out of Buchenwald and sentenced to work on the Cassandra bunker?”

Von Uittal nodded. “He was a madman when he recognized me. It was a mutually unpleasant surprise. He tried to kill me, and I shot him in self-defense.”

“And his brother?”

“I am not worried about his brother. He was not there, of course. Marius recognized me. He was shocked and startled. I suppose that after all these years, to come upon me in this same place, under somewhat similar circumstances—his resentment must have been enormous. He must have harbored longings for revenge all these years.” Von Uittal smiled grimly. “He was weeping with his fury when I killed him.”

“But I don’t think you met him by accident,” Durell said. “You sought him out because Cassandra became friendly with him, isn’t that true? You went to the dike deliberately to kill Marius Wilde.”

“Friedrich?” Cassandra whispered.

Von Uittal turned to look at her. His smile was cold and cruel. He started to speak, and then there came a small crashing sound, not very loud or alarming, and Durell saw the glass of one of the salon windows blow in, crashing, and the general’s face changed in a strange fashion, suddenly blowing and swelling in distortion as his skull exploded outward.

The sound of a heavy gun fired from the deck outside came an instant later.

Thirteen

The impact of a heavy-caliber bullet striking the back of a man’s head has a horrifying effect. Because of internal pressures in the cranium, fluids, brains, and bone are thrust forward into the face, distorting and swelling the features instantly into an ugly caricature of what the victim had looked like.

Erich saw his master an instant before von Uittal fell, and he screamed like a woman. Cassandra stood frozen, smiling queerly. Durell used the moment to good advantage.

Confused shouts and footsteps sounded on the fog-bound deck outside. Durell swung hard as Erich screamed, sank a hard left into the fat man’s belly, hit him again, caught the man’s gun as it fell, and slashed it across Erich’s face. Erich screamed again, from personal pain this time. Terror became painful agony under Durell’s hard, chopping blows. The man scrambled awkwardly aside, fell, and tried to get up again. Durell let him reach his feet, then hit him again in the stomach and straightened him with a slashing, numbing, side-handed chop that drove Erich in sprawling paralysis to the carpeted floor. He felt reluctant that it came so easily for Erich; it should have taken more time. But the score was now a little more even. Turning, within the same few seconds it took to dispose of Erich, he picked up the gun and thrust von Uittal’s Luger at the blonde girl.

“Are you with me, Cassandra?”

“But I—what happened?”

“Will you come with me?”

She seemed to be in a dream. “Yes. Yes, I want to get away. I—-I’ve had enough. I feel sick—”

“Time later for such luxuries. Come on.”

“But who was it?”

“Brother Julian, ten to one. He found out what happened to Marius and came aboard to even the score. Now, run!”

They scrambled out of the cabin and onto the dark, misty deck. A running sailor caromed into Durell. Durell tripped him, caught Cassandra’s hand, and turned toward the bow where someone had had the presence of mind to turn on one of the boat’s spotlights. The lights of Amschellig harbor all around them made a dim, pale curtain through the fog. Durell was aware of stiffness and bruises all over his body, but he did not permit his injuries to slow him down. He saw the probing finger of the spotlight sweep the oily water and pick up the white wake of a speedboat heading for shore. The blond man’s head visible behind the speedboat’s wheel could only be Julian Wilde. He had guessed correctly.

“Is that the Valkyron’s boat?” he snapped to the girl. “No, ours must be at the ladder—”

“Let’s go back astern, then.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Catch up to Julian, if we can.”

They ran back along the deck to the ladder where they had first boarded the yacht. It was still lowered, and the launch Erich had used to bring them from shore was now tied there.

“You first,” Durell told Cassandra.

“I don’t think I— Is Friedrich really dead? Is he?”

“He is. Hurry!”

She went down the ladder quickly, her blonde hair swaying on her shoulders. Up forward, the spotlight still held the retreating motorboat in its grip. A rifle cracked from the bridge. Shouts and cries and questions rattled in the confusion aboard the yacht. No one knew what was happening. Then someone saw Durell and Cassandra going down the ladder and the spotlight swung blindingly to bathe them in its dazzling glare.

“Halt! You, there, halt! Frau von Uittal, please—!” Durell aimed, squeezed the trigger, and shot out the spotlight. The darkness struck down like a falling curtain.

Cassandra thumbed the starter button of the launch engine. It whined, reared, died. Durell pushed her aside and tried again. This time it roared loudly, coughed, and he eased out the choke until it settled down to a decisive rhythm. Cassandra scrambled forward and threw off the painter and they surged away from the yacht’s towering side.

Julian Wilde’s boat was already out of sight, heading for the dim, iridescent line of lights on Amschellig’s docks. Somewhere on shore an alarm siren went off in response to the vague shots and confusion on the Valkyron. Other lights came popping on among the sloops and fishing boats in the fog-bound harbor. A general babble of shouted questions filled the dark evening.

Durell paid no attention to these distractions as he headed for shore. He was not sure where Julian would land, but the only place to moor was near the Suzanne’s berth, and he headed that way.

The other boat was faster, however. He spotted it drifting away from the stone wall after Julian Wilde abandoned it with a single mighty leap that took him to the top of the embankment, shoving the speedboat out toward the harbor again. Durell knew Cassandra could not duplicate his quarry’s leap, and he swung the launch toward the landing steps. It gave Julian an advantage. By the time they reached the sidewalk above, facing the medieval shops and chandleries, the sound of a motor car came beating back though the drifting fog.

“This way,” Cassandra gasped.

“No, he’s heading there.”

“But my car—a Mercedes—we can overtake him. It’s parked in front of the Boerderij.” She caught his hand. “It is the leading hotel here. Haven’t you been there?”

“Not yet.”

“Then come. The Mercedes will do the job for us.”

He waited a moment. He heard the girl panting for breath, and he could hear the muffled clamor of search and alarm in the harbor. The air was cold and damp as he drew a deep breath and listened. The sound of Julian Wilde’s motor car drummed off to the north, on the dike road that led to the Gunderhof. He waited until he was sure that his quarry had gone beyond the hotel, then he ran with the girl for two blocks along the brick walk atop the embankment.

Her car was sleek, low-slung, powerful, seating just two. Cassandra gasped, “You drive. I don’t think I can— I feel so—”

He slid behind the wheel, felt the quick, powerful response of the motor, and swung the Mercedes in a scream-mg circle around the embankment and onto the road after the fleeing Julian Wilde.

At no time until now had he analyzed his motives in giving chase to Wilde. It was not from any desire to catch a murderer. In this case, Durell was not concerned with criminal justice. His assignment was above all ordinary considerations. It did not matter that Julian had killed General von Uittal—whose death, in any case, was long overdue. But he could not let the only man who controlled the Cassandra virus drive off in a red, lustful fury for vengeance. He had to stop Julian before the man took other drastic steps. There was no telling what might be in Julian Wilde’s mind.

He glanced sidewise at Cassandra. Ten minutes ago she had seen her husband murdered, after he accused her of an affair with Marius Wilde. But she sat now in the careening Mercedes with a strange small smile on her lips.

“Did you get a look at Julian’s car?” he asked her.

She stared ahead. “Yes. It was English. A Jaguar, I think.”

“Can we catch it?”

“You can try.”

“Don’t you want to?”

“I never met Julian,” she said quietly. “Marius never mentioned his brother. But I will not let you take him to the police for what he did to Friedrich, if that’s why you are chasing him.”

“No, it’s not for that,” Durell said.

“I did not think so.”

They flashed past the lights of the Gunderhof and bored north through the fog on the dike road. It was like driving through a dark tunnel that curved slowly to the northeast, following the shore toward Groningen. There was very little traffic. Two ruby tail-lights far ahead on the flat landscape told him where his quarry was, when they became suddenly visible though a momentary break in the sea fog. But the lifting of the curtain was frustratingly brief.

“Where does this road go?” Durell asked the girl. “North, through Groningen Province to Germany.” “Did Marius live in this area?”

“I never learned where he lived.”

“Are you sure?”

“Why do you always doubt what I say?”

“Why do you always lie? You had an affair with Marius, but I’m not concerned about that. But surely you met somewhere in private.”

“I never slept with him. Friedrich was wrong about that.” “All right, you never did. But you met him where he lived.”

She was silent.

“Where was it, Cassandra?”

“I can’t tell you. That would be where you would go to find Julian, too, is it not?”

“Of course.”

“Well, I’ve just decided I don’t want you to find him.” He spoke in exasperation. “Then why did you come with me? Why did you lend me your car?”

“To make sure you don’t catch up with him. You see, we’re going to run out of fuel in a moment. You’ll see.” And she laughed softly.

It was not a normal sound. It was quiet, but it was laced with a deep, sensual pleasure, and she wriggled deeper in the car’s bucket seat, like a cat turning around to curl up in cozy security.

A few moments later the Mercedes’ engine sputtered and died. The fuel gauge showed empty, exactly as she had predicted.

Durell let the heavy sports car glide slowly off the road lane to the shoulder of the dike. In the silence, when they rolled to a halt, he heard on the right hand the singing of crickets in the field below the level of the sea wall; on the left, he heard the easy crash and sigh of surf on a beach where the North Sea surged in tidal strength against the dike. He settled back behind the wheel in controlled anger.

“Well, we’re stranded. Have you got a cigarette?”

“In the glove compartment,” the girl said.

“What do we do now?” he asked, helping himself.

“We can walk back. Or wait here. Someone will be along soon.”

“Not too soon, on a foggy night like this,” he said.

“You don’t mind sitting here with me, for a while?”

“You shouldn’t have tricked me,” he said thinly. “It’s important to get to Julian Wilde.”

“I don’t want him to be punished. He struck off my chains and set me free tonight.”

“You don’t sound like a grieving widow.”

“I’m not. You saw what my husband was like—how he treated me, what he thought of me. Why should I weep for him? Oh, he wanted so much to marry me, when he thought he loved me and passion had inflamed him. For once in my stupid life, I did the right thing, and I gave him nothing, you understand, until we were married and he signed over an irrevocable settlement of his estate that will make me a rich woman. But even then I was stupid. He was stripped of everything by the West German courts. He lived on his neo-Nazi party funds, you see. Things were provided for him by those who still dream of revived glory and power. But von Uittal himself turned out to be penniless.” She laughed bitterly. “However, the yacht is now mine, and everything aboard it. So I do have something after all from the humiliation and degradation he gave me. It was worth it, to be patient.”

“Did you ever love von Uittal?”

She lit his cigarette for him. Her mouth, rich and smiling, looked wet in the glow of the match. “No. I never loved anyone.”

“He thought you loved Marius.”

“Marius was not enough man for me. —I feel good,” she said abruptly. “I feel like singing and dancing. I feel free! Can you understand that?”

“I think so.”

“I want to do something utterly mad. I want to walk in the sea. Come with me, will you?”

With no further warning, she opened the car door and jumped out and ran across the dike to the other side. In the fog, her figure was tall and pale, vanishing over the dike.

“Cassandra!”

She looked back and gestured with her hand, and then she found steps going down to the narrow beach on the seaward side of the dike and she ran down them. Durell elbowed his door open and stepped out. He felt an unaccountable concern for her, mixed with the residual anger at the way she had ended his chase of Julian Wilde. There were questions he wanted to ask, and answers he had to have from her. He started across the foggy road after her, leaving only the parking lights to mark the Mercedes’ location in the dark.

On one of the sandy islands out at sea, a lighthouse sent probing beams of brightness swinging in a rhythmic arc across the sea and the land. It touched the dike regularly, alternately turning the night to the jeweled brightness of fog, and then cool, anonymous darkness. In the interval of light, he found the steps and ran down them.

“Cassandra!” he called again.

“I’m here. I’m walking in the sea.”

The dike looked enormously high when he reached the strip of beach at its base. The surf was mild, splashing gently in small combers developed in the shallow tidal areas. Tall reeds grew here where the land and sea dissolved into one another like languorous lovers. He heard the girl splash through the shallows, and a duck awakened with a cry of alarm and flew off with an exaggerated slapping of wings.

The girl laughed softly.

“Here I am.”

The beam from the lighthouse touched her in its orderly circuit of the horizons. She had loosened her hair again and it hung in cascading waves of heavy gold. Her mouth was parted, and he saw the gleam of her white teeth when she laughed throatily.

“Over here,” she said.

“Come back to the car,” he ordered her. “Are you ill?”

“No, I feel wonderful. I feel happy and free. I want—I want to celebrate my freedom, darling. I want to know that I am finished with Friedrich at last. Time enough later for details. There will be such boring sessions with the police, and all the lawyers in Hamburg won’t be able to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again. How can I be angry with Julian Wilde? He did what I wished to do and never dared. He struck off my chains.”

He splashed through the warm surf toward her. There was an offbeat ring in her voice that sounded a warning note of the abnormal. The beam of the lighthouse touched her again and her head was tilted back, her pale brown eyes regarding him, and then she held out her arms to him as she stood in the wash of salt water among the reeds. “Come here, darling. I want you.”

“Cassandra, your husband—”

“My husband is dead and I’m happy about it. I want to prove it to myself, don’t you see? I want to prove it with you.”

She surged toward him in the knee-high salt water, and as she waded nearer she took off her blouse, and he saw she had no bra on and did not need one. Then she paused and with a quick wriggle of her hips she rolled down her slacks, stepped out of them, and hurled them happily toward the beach.

She stood naked before him, arms outstretched.

“Come here,” she called. Her eyes were wide, unseeing. “Please, I need you. Don’t understand? He took me when I was only a child in Berlin, and I knew nothing. He was rich, he said, and if I gave him what he wanted, he would give me everything else, he said. So I did. Anything he asked, I did. Things I’d never imagined. Sometimes I tried to wash the touch of him away, in bath after bath, because he made me feel like an animal. Later, he beat me and cursed me and called me stupid, and treated me like a pet beast he had use for only at certain times. Do you see? You saw how he was tonight. Ready for his fine dinner, while I stood at the table and waited like a slave, a female!”

Her bitterness spilled over with the sharp impact of her words. She stood like a blonde Aphrodite rising from the reedy sea. The silent flashing beam of the distant lighthouse touched the massive wall of the sea dike towering darkly over their heads, shone on the white beach, and bathed her body in a pale glow, swiftly, fleetingly. There was a challenge in the way she stood with rounded hips askew, with firm breasts and flat stomach and long legs steady where the sea ebbed and washed and rolled.

“I feel drunk,” she went on, whispering. “I need something, do you understand? Or I shall fly apart and destroy myself. Something is wound up tightly inside me, after all these years with him, and tonight I must be released. In Amsterdam I played a game with you, obeying his orders. Tonight I am free and I do this because I wish it, and no one else. I am my own mistress. We can finish what we began in Amsterdam, you and I. You saw me then, like this. Did you want me then?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Do you want me now?”

“Yes,” he said.

They came together slowly in the briny warm water, with the mist moving slowly on the faint sea wind and the monstrous height of the sea wall towering over them. She shivered and shuddered desperately. Her mouth sought his with a ferocity that was shocking. Her body swayed and jerked. Her head was tilted back as he held her and he saw that her eyes were wide open in the misty, white-jeweled glare of the swinging light—wide open, and staring at nothing at all, or at something that did not include him as Sam Durell, but only as an instrument for her orgasmic satisfaction in her husband’s death.

He let her go.

She clung to him frantically, seeking completion.

He thrust her away again.

She moaned and suddenly stood with her naked body rigid. Her face was transfigured by what she was feeling. Her eyes closed, opened wide, and then she gave a small, ragged cry that was torn from her throat. And she slid to her knees in the warm surge of salt water.

“Please . . .” she whispered.

“No. I’ll get your clothes, Cassandra.”

She looked at him with hatred.

“I’m sorry to be cruel,” he said. “You did it to yourself, though. Get dressed and I’ll take you back to Amschellig.”

“I will not go anywhere with you,” she breathed.

She stood up, walked out of the water, and picked up her clothes from the beach where she had flung them. Without looking back, she walked off into the darkness, under the dark shadow of the dike. She walked away in the direction of the town.

Durell let her go. He climbed the steps back to the road and returned to the Mercedes. He settled down to wait for someone to come along and give him a lift back to Amschellig.

Fourteen

A Swedish couple, driving a Saab down from Denmark via Groningen, picked him up and took him back to Amschellig. The Swedish woman clucked over Durell’s battered face, reminding him of his session with Erich, and he assured her it looked worse than it actually was. The husband simply grunted glumly over his wife’s concern for a stranger.

Inspector Flaas was waiting in Durell’s room at the Gunderhof when he let himself in. The Dutch security man looked the same as in Amsterdam—stolid and determined. He was smoking one of his crooked Italian cigars. He wore a brown seersucker, a dark red tie, and heavy shoes. There was sand on his shoes, and his eyes followed Durell’s glance and he shrugged and smiled.

“What happened to you, my friend?”

As Durell stripped and took a hot shower in the big tiled bathroom adjacent to his room, he told Flaas about Marius Wilde’s murder by General von Uittal, and of Julian’s vengeful raid on the Valkyron. Nothing changed in Flaas’ manner.

“Yes, yes, I know all this,” the Hollander finally said. “But the local police can hafrale that end of it.”

“What about Julian Wilde?” Durell asked. “Will you pick him up now on a charge of murder?”

“You will leave that to us now.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Precisely what I said, Heer Durell. Our government has again changed its collective mind. I warned you in Amsterdam that there were factions resentful of knuckling under to the threat of Virus Cassandra. They have gained the upper hand. And with it, perhaps the end for Julian Wilde.”

“What have you done?”

Flaas smoked his thin black cigar for a moment. “This is a small country. We have a rather complicated network of roads and canals—did you know that you can take the Amschellig Canal here and work your way down by barge and launch to Amsterdam and through Belgium all the way to Paris, and never once leave the water, although you will be many, many miles inland? It is true. However, we have bottled up all available outlets from Friesland and Groningen, and the international borders will be completely sealed, of course. Julian Wilde will not escape us.”

Durell came angrily out of the shower, a towel wrapped around himself. “You’re not serious? You’re not going to pick him up without finding the Cassandra bunker first, are you?”

“Those are my orders. Incidentally, a doctor should look after your bruises, my friend.”

“I’m all right,” Durell said shortly. “Julian Wilde knows where the bunker is. He can spread the plague, if he decides to. And he will, as soon as he learns you’ve thrown a net around this area. For God’s sake, you can’t—”

“I cannot change the situation. I do not like it, but I cannot change it.”

Durell drew a breath. “Where do I fit into the revised picture?”

“Nowhere, sir. That is what I came to tell you.”

“Then I’m pulled off the job?”

“I regret to say so, but—yes.”

“Who also says so?”

“The Netherlands Security Administration has been in touch with Washington. You have a reputation for creating explosive reactions, Heer Durell, but Dutch lives are at stake, and our nation’s existence may be in the balance. We cannot permit you to continue here.”

“Whatever happened here would have happened anyway,” Durell objected.

“Perhaps. But now we are concerned with containing Julian Wilde in this area—much as one would seal off an area containing a dangerous beast. Can you appreciate this?” “Of course. He raised the ante, you know. He wants ten million now.”

“We have accepted this demand. It has been arranged.” “Arranged? But you just said—”

“We have thrown a cordon around this place and put the money in the Swiss bank for him, and are prepared to offer him amnesty. One must explore every avenue out of this strange dilemma. All parties in the government are agreed for the moment that there must be no aggressive activity against the people who know where Cassandra is buried. We have lost General von Uittal as a witness—and his information might have been of immense value. So you will suspend all your activities and return to Amsterdam in the morning. Your embassy in the Hague will have further orders for you. I am sorry, Durell. I like you. I think you were doing the right thing. But we have no choice except to obey.”

“How many men are you using here?”

“Over one hundred. Why?”

“Won’t Julian notice the noose around his neck?”

“They are trickling in one by one. Some are women. They arrive by bus and train and motor. They will not be noticeable among the other tourists.”

“But suppose he suspects, and acts out of desperation?” Durell insisted. “He can spread the plague, you know.” “We will do everything possible to avoid public panic. So far we have been fortunate. Nothing has leaked to the press about the affair here in Amschellig. And it must never leak out. Our people are brave and utterly reliable, but faced with an unseen, deadly virus, a thing that strikes you into the grave in such a short time—” Flaas paused and ground out his cigar emphatically. His face was pale with frustration. “So. I came to tell you that you are relieved of the problem. I shall handle it now, at the orders of my government. You will leave for Amsterdam tomorrow. Agreed?”

Durell shrugged. “As you say, we must obey orders.” “But will you? You have a reputation—”

“I have no choice, it seems.”

“Good. Will you do me a favor?”

“Of course.”

“Then call for the hotel doctor to look at you.”

“All right.”

“Good night,” Inspector Flaas said.

“Sweet dreams,” said Durell.

The hotel doctor was an elderly Dutchman with a gentle, reproving manner. He applied antiseptic to Durell’s bruises and cuts, inquired about tetanus shots, was told that Durell had had all the shots he needed, and clucked over his scalp wounds.

“Are you sure you feel all right, mynheer? No dizziness? No trouble with your eyes? Any headache?”

“Nothing, thanks,” Durell said. “There is one thing, though. Is there a ferry that might take me to Doorn tomorrow morning?”

“To Doorn?”

“On Scheersplaat Island.”

“Oh. Of course. How curious.”

“I hoped it might be. Do you know the doctor in residence there?”

“My nephew—Willem de Gruenvig. I was talking to him just the other day.”

“About the fishermen who died there?”

The elderly doctor looked sharper and not quite as bumbling as before. “What do you know about that, sir?”

“Only stories. Rumors, you know.”

“Then I advise you to forget it,” the doctor said.

“I will. But is there a ferry to Doorn?”

“At nine o’clock, from Amschellig.”

“Thank you. How much do I owe you?" The doctor looked suspicious. “Mynheer, I am not sure—”

“Whatever it is, put it on my account at the hotel desk. Will that be all right?”

“That is not what I started to discuss.”

“I know. But perhaps we should leave things as they are.”

“I see. I don’t understand, but—I see. Good night.”

“Good night,” Durell said.

When the doctor was gone he locked the door, shoved a tilted chair against the handle, and went to sleep.

When he awoke, the fog was gone. The sun shone through the windows, and it was just seven o’clock. The telephone was ringing beside the bed. He rolled over and picked it up.

“Cajun?”

“O’Keefe,” he said.

“Bless you for being alive, Samuel.”

“Were you worried?”

“I figured that whatever happened to you after being in contact with Piet might happen to me. Claire blesses you, too. Even though she doesn’t know why.”

“Where are you, John?”

“Downstairs. I’ve eaten breakfast and let you have your beauty sleep. Did you know this place is crawling with Flaas’ people?”

“Yes. I’ve been shown to the door.”

“I know. I guess I’d better come up.”

“Right.”

Durell hung up and started to dress. John O’Keefe knocked on the door two minutes later. They shook hands with the warmth of old and reliable friendship. Something of the redheaded man’s lightness and humor came into the room with him. O’Keefe wore slacks and a sport shirt and two-toned shoes and looked every inch the American tourist from Chicago.

“I’ve ordered breakfast and coffee for you, okay?”

“Fine,” Durell said. “I’m sorry I had to give you that dirty detail with Piet Van Horn’s body.”

“All in the day’s work, Cajun. Did you know that the Dutch have taken over Cassandra completely? We’re persona non grata here.”

“What do our people say?”

“Officially?” asked O’Keefe. “Or for our eyes only?”

“Our eyes,” Durell said.

“If we can, we’re to stick it out.”

“Good,” Durell said. “I feel better already.”

“But we don’t antagonize anyone. That’s important. Do you want to be briefed now, or after you eat?”

“Now, John.”

“Well, we know where to find Julian Wilde,” said O’Keefe quietly. “We know where he and his brother have been living while they worked on the Wadden Zee Dike project. Are you interested?”

Durell grinned. “I’ll be damned.”

“Could be, Cajun. Organization works like a charm, now and then. The old lone-wolf tactics are fine, but now and then you need the efficiency of team work, hitting the three-yard line for a touchdown.”

“Shut up and keep talking.”

“Which do you prefer?” O’Keefe grinned.

“How did you find out? And where is Julian?”

“The ransom note gave it to us, Cajun—the blue note-paper on which Wilde frères requested their modest sum of blackmail in exchange for a few vials of nasty plague germs. I snitched a piece of it and had it analyzed and traced. Guess where?” O’Keefe sighed. “Ever hear of the Boerderij Hotel in Amschellig?”

“Just last night, under my nose,” Durell said, remembering the big inn wrapped in foggy shrouds where Cassandra’s car had been parked. He felt irritated with himself. “Is that it?”

“That’s where the notepaper came from. It took some fast footwork from the lab boys, but there’s no doubt about it. Do you know it means farmhouse?—Boerderij, I mean.” “Yes.”

“Well, it’s the fanciest tourist joint this side of Miami. Good beer, fine food, jammed to the rafters with travelers who pay through the nose. What better place for Julian and Marius Wilde to dissolve into anonymity, eh?”

“You’ve got something,” Durell conceded. “But Julian may not have gone back to his hole there after last night.” “Shall I find out?”

Durell hesitated. “You’ll have to be very careful, John.” “Of Flaas? He doesn’t even know me.”

“Don’t underestimate him. But I wasn’t thinking of our friends. I had Julian Wilde in mind. It’s just possible that he has another vial of the plague virus on his person.”

“Oh, Lord,” O’Keefe whispered, suddenly shocked. “Exactly. If he has, he’s like a man walking around with a bottle of nitro.”

“I see what you mean.”

“Just be careful, that’s all. It’s worse than nitro.”

“Don’t worry about me. Claire and I are still counting on our holiday.”

“Good. If you spot Wilde, don’t do anything,” Durell said. “Just wait for me.”

“Where are you going?”

“To Doorn. I want to know more about those fishermen who died over there.”

Fifteen

The ferry left for Scheersplaat and Doorn at exactly nine o’clock, with the usual Dutch efficiency. It was not crowded. It was a converted fishing boat, decked over and provided with an awning and benches, a coffee bar, and sandwich service. Only a dozen other people came on board, in addition to the crew and Durell, and they looked like natives except for a volubly quarreling Italian couple and a city-type Hollander who tried to look at ease among the fishermen and only succeeded in looking uncomfortable. Durell did not think this one worked for Flaas. He did not think Flaas had ordered him to be shadowed.

From the ferry pier in Amschellig he had looked for the Suzanne and finally spotted it a few minutes before the ferry sailed. He walked over, after checking the departure time, and spoke to Trinka Van Horn. She was working on the scratches and gouges in the hull made the night before by their brush with the Valkyron, which was tied up at the other end of the pier and ostentatiously guarded. He did not see Cassandra in the vicinity. Trinka came up with a daub of paint on her pink, creamy cheek and a look of challenge in her blue eyes. The black hair she had inherited from a Spanish ancestor blew gently in the breeze. She wore dungarees and a man's white shirt, and the wind molded the cotton to her firm, high breasts and tiny waist and incredibly perfect form. Durell found himself wondering what she might look like in a cocktail gown, in something sleek and totally feminine. He didn’t think it could offer much of an advantage over how she looked right now.

“Hello,” she greeted him. “Are you off to Amsterdam?” He nodded. “I see you’ve had the word.”

“Well, you know who I work for,” she said shortly. “Are you going on with it?”

“Tan and I are just waiting. Inspector Flaas told us not to sail anywhere today. Something big is happening. I’ve seen a lot of our people in town.”

“Yes,” Durell said. “How are your bruises?”

She flushed. “How did you know—” Then she grinned impishly. “Oh. Yes, we were all knocked around a bit, weren’t we? Were you aboard the Valkyron when all the shooting happened?”

“Yes.”

“I was sure it was you. You look the type to keep at it, whatever the punishment. I wish I’d been with you, though. But when I think about the general’s murder, I’m glad I wasn’t.”

“I’m glad you weren’t, too. It wasn’t fun and games, Trinka.”

She said, “I’m sorry you’re going back to Amsterdam.” “So am I. Is it possible I might see you there?”

“What for?” she asked.

“Why, for a date,” he said.

“Oh.” And she flushed again. “I didn’t imagine—But I suppose so.” She looked over the side of the sloop, where Jan Gunther sat enormously in a sling, industriously painting over the scars where the Suzanne had been grazed. The blond Hollander looked grim. “Would you mind if I had a date with Heer Durell, Jan?” she called down to him.

“It is not for me to tell you how to spend your time, Trinka,” he grumbled.

She laughed. “Poor Jan. He’s so possessive.”

“Does he have any legal claims?”

“Legal? Oh, I see. Oh, no. He asks me regularly to marry him, every Sunday at dinner. And regularly I say no, thank you, I am not the marrying kind.”

“Well,” said Durell.

“I am glad you are safe,” she said impulsively. “We started off badly, you and I, didn’t we? But we are friends now.”

“Of course.”

“Well, goodbye,” she said.

“Goodbye.”

He took her by the shoulders and kissed her on the mouth before she could react in surprise, and then he turned and walked away without looking back at her. He didn’t care if she saw him going aboard the ferry to Doorn, or not.

Scheersplaat was a long sand bar with its greatest elevation only eleven feet above high tide, and when the North

Sea’s winter gales Struck, only the high brick dikes and the long- row of sturdy windmills pumping sea water out as fast as it came in managed to preserve the village of Doorn from the ocean’s wrath. There were fields and pastures and brown Frisian cattle in the rich meadows, and at the north end of the island was the village itself, snug and shining and immaculate, with a tiny harbor and a small fleet of fishing boats to serve its economy.

Durell discovered that the ferry returned at noon, and then walked down the cobbled main street, enjoying the hot sun and the sea wind that seemed to scour everything on the island to a shining cleanliness. Everyone seemed to be busy at something: the men working at nets or on their boats, the women marketing or washing; and even the towheaded children played with the marked sobriety that characterized these people.

He found the doctor’s house without difficulty. A small black-and-white sign indicated his name, Willem de Gruenvig. and business did not seem overwhelming. The office was in the back of a modest cottage at one end of the main street, with a lawn on the harbor side and a view of the fishing fleet and the sea and the salt flats. The doctor was a young, fair-haired man, pipe-smoking, deliberate, who worked at calking a dinghy drawn up on white rollers on the lawn. In the back yard a young woman, presumably his wife, hung up washing while supervising the quiet play of four blond children.

Doctor de Gruenvig nodded at Durell’s introduction and said, “Oh, yes, Inspector Flaas. who was here yesterday, said you might be paying a call.”

“Have you heard from him since then?”

“Why, no. He said I was to cooperate with you in this matter, any way I can." The doctor puffed at his pipe and only succeeded in looking younger. “Is my English clear to you, by the way?”

“Perfectly clear. I want to talk to you, of course, about the fishermen who took sick and died last week.”

“Yes. It is a serious matter.”

“Very. Do you know how serious it really is, doctor?”

“Of course. First, as a medical man. I know what I saw. And second, naturally, my suspicions were confirmed by Inspector Flaas.”

“No one else in Doorn knows?”

The young man shook his head and pointed his pipe at the young woman in the back yard. “Not even my wife. Why should I worry her? At first I thought everyone on Scheersplat was doomed. I could not see any other course. But the miracle happened. In twenty-four hours it was all over. Five good men were dead, so quickly, so terribly. But no one else came down with the virus. And there has been nothing since.”

“May I talk to some of the victims’ families?”

“The fishermen’s wives? Oh, I don’t think it would be wise.”

“Why not?”

“I told them only that it was a very unusual, rare type of pneumonia. The symptoms are rather similar, you know, and I would not be surprised at all if the so-called virus were a specially developed strain of pneumococci. But more questions would start new rumors and make talk that would soon go beyond Doorn and touch the mainland. And who knows then where it would end? It is difficult enough to restrain one’s own panic, Mr. Durell. These are solid, good-natured people, but not highly educated. They do not have much imagination, but they have enough, enough,”

“Then tell me, doctor—were all the victims from the same fishing boat?”

“Oh, yes. From the Moeji. Klaus Jenner was the captain—a fine boy, just married, too. I know his widow well. She lives over there.” The pipe stem pointed to the roof of another cottage visible over the dunes down the shore. “They were all in the charter together.”

“What charter?”

“Why, the one by the two Englishmen, the brothers.”

“Wilde?”

“Yes, that was the name.”

“Did the Wildes go aboard the Moeji, too?”

The young doctor stared at Durell. The sea wind blew gently, and from the back yard came a thin call from his wife, and he called back in a dialect that Durell could not understand.

“Come with me. We will talk to Ima Jenner.” The doctor started along the beach toward the next cottage. “I hope you will be gentle with her. It is a terrible thing, to be married such a short time, and to lose one’s loved one so soon. I had to give her daily sedatives, but she is better now. It was Klaus who took the virus culture, you see. It was all his fault.”

Durell stopped short. “The captain of the fishing boat had a vial of the virus?”

“You are shocked, I see. But he took it only out of ignorance. These fishermen are really innocents. The two men who chartered the Moeji were so strange that Klaus decided to find out more about them.”

“So he stole a vial of the culture from the Wildes?”

“Well, yes, if you care to put it that way. One cannot condemn Klaus Jenner now. He is dead because of his innocent curiosity.”

“One moment.” Durell paused on the beach, staring at the Jenner cottage ahead. It looked lonely and forlorn. “Perhaps it won’t be necessary to talk to the widows of these men, if you can answer my questions here.”

“I shall certainly try.”

“You spoke to the fishermen when they first became ill?”

“Yes, when their families called me in to attend them.”

“Did you make them tell you the truth?”

“I recognized the strangeness and the virulence of their symptoms. I concluded that the whole population of the island might be in grave danger, so I pressed them for information.”

“And that’s how you learned that the two Wilde brothers chartered Jenner’s boat, right? And Klaus Jenner admitted to you before he died that he had ‘borrowed’ a culture vial from one of the Wildes."

“Correct, but—”

“Where did the vial come from originally?”

“That is the important question.”

“Can you answer it?” Durell asked urgently.

“No, I could not get the answer.”

“Why not? The fishermen took the Wildes someplace where they recovered the culture from the sea bottom.”

“It was south of here.” The doctor swept an arm toward the flat, shining sea, the long tidal flats beyond the tip of the island, and the dim line of the Wadden Zee Dike on the horizon. “Somewhere in there. It is a tangle of hundreds of tidal islands, you know—they appear only at ebb tide.

When the dike is finally repaired, of course, there will be a direct land connection with Scheersplaat again. There was one once, you know. But in the meantime, the sea bottom is a wilderness of what was once farms, before the Nazis flooded us out and brought back the old tidal channels that make us an island today.”

“I think you know more than this,” Durell said after a moment. “The fishermen must have known exactly where their boat was, every minute of the time.”

“Well, yes.”

“So?”

“They would not tell me.”

“Why not?”

“They were paid not to. The Wildes paid them for their silence.”

“But they were dying! Surely they talked!”

The young Dutchman looked embarrassed. “I am very sorry. I did not recognize how serious their illness was, at first. How could I? And then, when it was imperative to get more information, it was too late. Some were delirious. Hans Dringen died first, four hours after he got off the boat. Piet Vliemann raved like a lunatic about a light on the sea, a light on the sea, over and over again.”

“What was that about?”

“I do not know. Those were the words he muttered.”

“The light on the sea?”

“That is all.”

It seemed to Durell that he almost had something important in his grasp. It was just beyond the reach of his mental fingers, evanescent, evoking a familiar image that he could not seize and analyze. He dismissed it to question the Hollander further.

“All right. Let’s assume none of them actually saw where the vial came from. What happened, exactly? Surely they told you something to give you ideas.”

“All I could gather,” the doctor said, “was that at a certain point, at a certain place and time when the tide was just so, the Wilde brothers got off the fishing boat and rowed and waded somewhere out of sight, and when they came back they had the vials with them.”

“Vials? More than one?”

“Oh, yes. I am afraid so. More than one.”

“How many?”

“I do not know.”

“But Klaus Jenner had one?”

“And his wife gave it to me.”

“And its condition?”

“It had been uncorked. Klaus removed the seal.”

“And opened Pandora’s box of evils for the world,” Durell said.

“It killed him,” the young doctor said soberly.

“But not you?”

“I handled it carefully.”

“Do you have the vial now?”

“It was taken from my by Heer Van Horn who came here with credentials from Inspector Flaas. Inspector Flaas explained to me that Van Horn did not have it or turn it in to the authorities, however. It is believed that Heer Van Horn, in turn, was careless with it, or perhaps had the vial taken from him back in his hotel, the Gunderhof. There was evidence of a struggle there, Inspector Flaas said.” The young doctor looked apologetic. “I suppose I should have emptied the vial. Sterilized it. I thought I was doing the best thing, however, in trying to save the culture for analysis and laboratory work. These people of Doorn are very dear to me, and at the time I was afraid of a completely uncontrolled pestilence sweeping Scheersplaat and all of the Netherlands, perhaps all of the world. Well, I made a wrong guess. It did not turn out that way. I still stand by my decision, however.”

“I understand,” Durell said. “But the world is larger than Doorn or Scheersplaat or Holland, as you say.”

He stared at the sunlit sea, the bright dunes, the inland meadows where the cattle grazed, and the sweep of a sea gull’s wings on the breeze. He could appreciate how the young doctor felt. But he was aware of a vast frustration. He knew now how Piet Van Horn had died. Obviously, Julian Wilde had recovered the vial from him, and in the process, Piet had been infected. So much for those questions. No one could be blamed for it.

“You are sure,” he said finally to the doctor, “that none of the wives of the dead men can tell you where the Moeji sailed to pick up that vial of plague culture?”

“I asked them, over and over again, mynheer, in many different ways. So did Inspector Flaas. It is useless. None of the men spoke of it. They did not know they were dying, you see,” the doctor said simply. “I could not tell them.”

“So there is no one. to tell us where the island is?”

“No one,” said the doctor. “They are all dead.”

Sixteen

Durell took the noon ferry back to Amschellig, eating lunch aboard. He considered going directly to the Boerderij Inn, but instead walked along the dike road to his own hotel. The Valkyron was not in the harbor, neither was the Suzanne. At the Gunderhof, he went straight up to his room, expecting to find John O’Keefe waiting to report to him. But no one was there, and there were no messages at the desk.

He waited fifteen minutes, aware of an uneasiness in sharp conflict with the sunny day and the laughter of swimmers on the beach, cyclists and tennis players. He decided he could not stay passively in the room. He changed into a sport shirt, shaved, brushed his hair, considered trimming his small, dark moustache, studied his lean gambler’s face and then shook his head at himself in sudden exasperation and started walking back to Amschellig.

The Boerderij may have been a simple farmhouse a century ago, but decades of catering to tourists had added elaborate wings, cottages, outbuildings, and landscaping to the place, until all that was left of its humble origin was its name. In the fog last night, when he took Cassandra’s Mercedes from the parking lot, he had seen very little of it. Now he realized how easily the Wildes could lose themselves in the crowded anonymity of such a place. He wondered if Cassandra had known all along that Marius lived here. He decided she had. She denied an affair with the murdered man, but Durell had reservations about that. He knew he had made a bitter enemy when he rejected her on the beach; she would be a long time remembering what she had done and how she had done it, an hour after her husband died.

He asked at the desk if a Julian Wilde was registered, and the answer, after all, was simple. The clerk nodded and gave him the room number, 52, and said it was on the second floor of Cottage B. “Directly to your right, sir, and down the path beyond the swimming pool. Are you from the police?”

“I am associated with Inspector Flaas.”

“Mr. Durell, is it?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. O’Keefe is here. He said if you appeared, you were to join him at Cottage B.”

Durell concealed his surprise. “Thank you.”

He felt wary as he walked down the path toward the outbuilding that snuggled next to the high wall of the town dike. The cottage had a thatched, medieval roof with many gables; a lower-floor apartment that was occupied by a volatile family of French tourists; and a flight of outside stairs to a balcony level with the dike top, where a separate doorway served the second apartment. Durell went up quietly, aware of the Frenchman coming out to stare at him through rimless steel glasses in silent curiosity.

“Allo!” the man called sharply.

Durell looked down at him. “Yes?”

“When are you fellows going to be finished up there? It is very disturbing to have all of you tramping about like this. I shall complain to the management, you understand.”

“Go right ahead,” Durell said.

“If you are looking for the other man, he is gone.”

“Which man?”

“The redheaded one. He left with Wilde, ten minutes ago.”

“What?”

“Ten minutes ago.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am usually sure of my facts, m’sieu. They went along the dike.”

Durell stared at the man and hesitated. “Thank you.”

“Just don’t make too much noise about things, will you?”

He took only a moment to check the inside of the cottage apartment. The door was unlocked. No one was here. He went out into the sunlight again and the Frenchman was still standing there, exactly as before, and he made a sweeping gesture with his arm, pointing down toward the dike.

“They went there. Eleven minutes ago, now.”

Durell wanted to run. He went from the cottage to the dike, ran up the broad, grassy slope to the top, and looked to the left and right. He was on a level with the rooftops of the village now. He could see the harbor, with the moored boats and gray stone mole, and below, on the beach side, a small children’s playground had been set up by the hotel management, complete with slides, acrobatic mazes, a carousel.

A small crowd was gathered around the carrousel. A man yelled, and two other men began to run toward the hotel entrance.

Durell ran down the dike to a flight of steps that took him into the playground area. The carrousel had been stopped, and a small knot of tourists was crowded around it, pushing the children away with hushed whispers and sharp admonitions.

A man was mounted awkwardly on one of the miniature, ornately carved ponies. It was John O’Keefe. Everything about him told Durell he was dead.

It was like a harsh, challenging cry of defiance, a cruel and bitter and senseless gesture.

O’Keefe had been stabbed in the back. The handle of a knife stuck out of his coat between his shoulder blades, and the sun shone on the jeweled hilt and the enameled swastika emblem. Durell knew that this was a duplicate of the knife he had broken for Julian Wilde yesterday, in his hotel room.

He did not go near O’Keefe.

He stared at the redheaded man and remembered the lilt in his voice and the softness in him when he had spoken of his wife and the holiday he was planning with her.

Then he turned and walked quietly away.

Seventeen

He walked back toward the Gunderhof along the cycle path on the dike, and he appreciated the quiet shade of the beech trees planted with mathematical precision along the edge of the road. At the Gunderhof’s tennis courts he paused. He saw Inspector Flaas on the front steps of the hotel, talking to several subordinates with quick, angry gestures. He knew Flaas was looking for him, and if Flaas caught him now, he would be on his way back to Amsterdam within an hour, with an escort. Durell turned his back at once and walked the other way.

More than anything, at the moment, he needed time, a quiet hour in which to think and regain control of himself.

But time had turned into a commodity whose value had gone up sharply in the last hour. Flaas would not tolerate any more independent action. The Dutch security man would soon be on his way to Amschellig to investigate O’Keefe’s death. And most of the man’s agents would be alerted to spot Durell now, too. In the broad sunshine, exposed to the cool breeze and flat spaces of sea and land, there seemed no place to hide, no place to go where he could search out the answers to questions that seemed to hover just beyond the curtains of his mind.

He joined a group of tourists on the dike road, came to the cycle racks, and on impulse chose one when a group of youngsters ran up from the beach and made off with several of the vehicles. He hadn’t ridden a bicycle for some time, but it was a knack one never lost. He pedaled after the teen-agers, and from a distance he seemed to be part of the group; but none of the laughing boys and girls paid any attention to him as he followed them down the rijwielpad, beside the highway.

Four miles north of the Gunderhof he allowed himself to fall behind and finally found steps going down to a solitary stretch of beach. He sat with his back to the base of the dike and stared out over the shining sea, lit a cigarette, and tried to think around the painful image of John O’Keefe’s death.

He told himself not to think about O’Keefe. You make friends and lose them suddenly and senselessly in this business. You tried to find a reason why, thinking that perhaps you could learn from the victim’s mistake and prevent it happening to you, too. You never really thought it could happen to you, though; and John O’Keefe had been so sure of survival that he had planned his holiday trip with Claire and the children without hesitation.

He would have to see Claire, before he returned to the States—if he ever got that far, Durell thought.

Anger would achieve nothing, he knew, and yet he could not control an inner drive toward violence. There was something amoral in Julian Wilde, neolithic; a taint of the jungle that put him beyond ordinary consideration. This was a creature as deadly as the plague virus he carried with him—an animal who represented danger to every decent human being on the face of the earth.

He did not doubt that Julian Wilde could and would spread the Cassandra plague. It fitted the pattern of the man. He had compared Wilde to a man walking around with a bottle of nitro in his pocket; but the virus was worse than a localized explosive. And how do you approach such a quarry, whose slightest move could trigger a pestilence that might claim a million lives overnight?

He did not know.

He picked up a stone from the beach and threw it into the placid sea. He finished his cigarette and crushed it out, then lit another. The sun was hot. The breeze blew from the northwest, from over the reaches of the North Sea and the low, mist-shrouded islands off the coast. A gull rode down the wind and looked at him and veered away.

On the road above him, traffic hummed innocently on its way. He was safe here from Flaas and anyone else, for the moment. It was here that he had to find the answer. Here and now.

He tried to summarize the facts he knew to be true.

First, Julian Wilde had one or more vials of the plague culture; and he was a man who would use it if trapped and cornered.

Second, Julian Wilde knew where the bunker was hidden. He had visited it with Marius. He had opened it. He had waded and rowed to it from the fishing boat he’d chartered.

Why had he waded? Durell wondered.

First, to keep the Moeji’s crew from actually seeing where he went. But in this flat landscape, Durell thought, how could anyone hide in the drowned, reedy islands and the flat, shining sea?

Obviously, Wilde waded out of sight by going around and behind something that he put between himself and the curious fishermen from Doorn.

Durell searched the sea’s horizon from where he sat on the beach. But there was nothing extraordinary in the landscape to provide an answer.

Yet he felt excitement build in him.

A third fact was that Piet Van Horn had developed a theory about the location of the bunker laboratory. He had tried to tell Durell about it before he died. He had pointed to the auto-tourist map of Friesland and Groningen.

The map had to mean something. At the moment, it was taped to the back of the heavy wardrobe chest in his room at the Gunderhof, unless it was already in Inspector Flaas’ pocket. In any case, he had already studied it, and there was nothing to be seen that might yield a clue to the bunker’s location.

Obviously, Piet had not had time while here to doctor the road map in a way that would require laboratory analysis—use of ultra-violet light or special techniques to bring out any written messages. Whatever was on the map, Durell decided, was in plain sight, to be seen by anyone with the eyes to recognize it.

Durell threw another pebble into the sea.

Or maybe there was nothing at all on the map, after all. Maybe there was nothing special to see. Maybe it was the map itself, taken as a whole, that meant something. Maybe Piet had tried to tell him something with the idea of an old map.

Durell sat up straighter, startled by this thought.

The idea of an old map? The tourist map had a prewar date, in the late Thirties. Before the war. It showed the location of villages, farms and roads that had been under the surface of the sea ever since the Nazis’ sabotage of the dikes.

That must have been what Piet had tried to get across before he died—the idea of consulting old maps.

And what had he said about a church and a light?

Groote Kerk Light.

Then, sitting on the beach not far from where he had been with Cassandra last night, when the rhythm of the lighthouse out at sea had given impulse and brilliance to her spasm of passion, he suddenly saw the answer as clearly as that forgotten beam of light.

Even the fisherman of Doorn, dying, had muttered in his delirium about a light upon the sea. A lighthouse. A submerged lighthouse named Groote Kerk Light? Had it been marked on Piet’s map, after all? Durell could not remember. But suppose that, at low tide, part of the ruins of an old lighthouse showed above the surface of the sea. And the Wilde brothers, in the Moeji, had waded around the ruins and out of sight of the fishermen; and, when hidden by the bulk of the ruins, had opened the sealed entrance to the Cassandra laboratory bunker.

Durell stood up suddenly and stared hard at the sea.

It was out there. It had to be.

At ebb tide, at a certain place and a certain time, it could be reached and destroyed.

He was already running toward the steps to the top of the dike as his mind jumped to the next move. He remembered the rolls of hydrographic charts in the construction shack atop the Wadden Zee Dike. If any chart existed to show the Groote Kerk Light as it had once been, it would be there.

Then he paused at the top of the stone steps where he had left his bicycle.

A uniformed Dutch policeman stood beside it, thumbs hooked patiently in his belt, waiting for him.

Eighteen

The policeman saluted. “Mynheer, is it your cycle?”

“Yes,” Durell said.

“I must warn you, then— by the way, you are English? American? Yes. Well, I must warn you that you are to use the rijwielpad south to Amschellig from here without option and according to the signs.” The policeman pointed to a metal standard down the road. “Bicycles must use the path wherever the signs are round and blue in shape and color. Optional use is permitted only where the signs are oblong and black. You left your bicycle illegally standing out of the lane.”

“I am sorry,” Durell said. “Is that all?”

“It is very important for your safety, mynheer.”

“Of course. I appreciate your courtesy.”

“Very good, sir.”

The patrolman saluted and drove away. Whatever Flaas’ efficiency rating might be, Durell thought as he pedaled toward the Gunderhof, it did not include alerting the local highway patrol.

He found a public phone booth near the hotel and used his supply of guilders to get the information operator. He asked to be connected with the Wadden Zee project, and specifically with Heer Moejiker, the construction engineer in charge. The telephone hummed through a short delay. Beyond the glass booth, he watched the tourists stroll and laugh and enjoy the sunshine. Somewhere in the same sunshine a man named Julian Wilde walked about with sudden death in his pocket, knowing he was trapped, perhaps coming to realize the desperate futility of his solitary challenge to the whole civilized world.

The phone clicked.

“Yes? Yes?”

It was the fat man’s impatient voice. Durell introduced himself quickly and was gratified that the engineer remembered him; he asked his questions about charts that might show where Groote Kerk Lighthouse had been once.

“Eh? Eh? What’s this all about it, anyway? Why is it so popular suddenly, eh?” Moejiker shouted into the phone.

“Has anyone else been inquiring about it?” Durell asked.

“Hah! Naturally! Quite a charmer, too.”

“The girl I was with yesterday? Miss Van Horn?”

“No, no. I’m talking about the widow. Haven’t you heard? General von Uittal was killed last night, and she’s sailing around on his yacht like a queen. Looks like one, too.”

Durell said thinly: “Then Frau von Uittal has been to see you about your old charts, too?”

“Of course, of course. Only half an hour ago. A charming lady. Absolutely charming.” The Dutchman chuckled his fat man’s rumbling, belly-shaking chuckle. “She charmed me out of several of my old maps.”

“Did any of them show the location of Groote Kerk Light?”

“Some, yes. That’s what I said. Haven’t you been listening, man? Quite useless, you know. And I could see no reason not to oblige her, since she wants to cruise these waters safely, and has had several narrow squeaks, as she says, with the tidal channels. It doesn’t seem she plans to go in for lengthy mourning, eh? Hah! If at all. Women today are not quite respectful, I must say—”

“Listen,” Durell interrupted anxiously. “Do you know where Groote Kerk Light used to be located?”

“Certainly I do. What do you take me for? She didn’t ask about it specifically, you understand. Only for the area charts ten miles south-southeast of Scheersplaat, quadrant twelve.”

“Well, where is that?”

“Mynheer, I thought you knew. At low tide, you could have seen it yourself, yesterday. Due south of where we found Marius Wilde’s body at the end of the dike, eh? In three hours, you’ll see the ruins of the Groote Kerk Light when the tide ebbs just right. But look here, what is it all about? If you can help me to help the widow, I’d be eternally grateful, you know—”

“You say she was there half an hour ago?”

“Right here, yes, but—”

“Thanks,” Durell said. “Goodbye.”

He hung up.

He took the Gunderhof Hotel station-wagon bus to Amschellig in order to conceal himself in the crowded traffic from Inspector Flaas’ men. In Amschellig he got off at the municipal pier and walked to where the Suzanne was berthed. Wherever she had been earlier, she was back again.

Several anglers in shorts and knitted shirts were fishing from the end of the stone pier. An ice-cream vendor with a bicycle cart jingled by, followed by a troop of hungry children. It was hot in the afternoon sun. The Suzanne was now moored opposite the ferry shed, but the Scheersplaat ferry was gone, and there was no activity in the area. The scars on the sloop’s side had been painted over, her deck tidied, her sails neatly furled. There did not seem to be anyone aboard when Durell stepped over the rail.

“Trinka?” he called.

The busy harbor echoed with the rattle of an outboard motor, the hum of voices carried over the water, the pulse of traffic. But the sloop seemed to be wrapped in an isolated silence.

“Jan?”

There was no answer.

He turned to the cabin door, let himself down the narrow ladder, and stood in the center cabin that served for dining purposes. The light from the small portholes was tinged with green from the reflections off the harbor waves. It made ripples on the curved overhead and the shining, polished mess table. He went forward through the tiny galley and saw that the door to the forward cabin, which was Trinka’s, was closed.

“Trinka?” he called again.

The silence persisted.

He tried the brass door handle, pushed it down, shoved against the door, gained an inch, and felt it jam against something that yielded another inch and then stuck solidly. He stepped back. The boat rocked in the wake of a passing craft. He started to call Trinka again, then suddenly drove hard at the cabin door with his shoulder. It yielded a little more, but not much. Just enough to let him see the man’s hand on the deck between the doorjamb and the casing.

He applied his weight in earnest, shoved hard, and heard a long-drawn groan as the door yielded enough space for him to slip inside. He almost stepped on Jan Gunther as he did so, and then recovered his balance with another quick stride and turned to consider Trinka’s cabin.

She was not here. He looked at Jan Gunther’s enormous bulk that crowded the door passage, then moved through the greenish daylight that came through the tiny ports and opened the narrow door to the head. Empty. No one was in the shower stall, either.

“Jan, can you hear me?” he asked gently.

The big Hollander was badly hurt. His eyes were open but unfocused, and there was a deep gash on his forehead and another on the back of his head that still bled heavily. He groaned and tried to sit up, but failed. He wet his lips.

“Do you know me, Jan?” Durell asked.

“Yes, mynheer.”

“What happened to you?”

“I don’t—know—”

“Where is Trinka?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was she with you when you were attacked?”

“Yes, mynheer. My head—feels so—strange—”

“Don’t move,” Durell said. “You’ve been hurt.”

“I am so ashamed—”

“You were hit by an expert. Nothing to be ashamed about.”

“But he took Trinka—”

“Who took her? Julian Wilde?”

“Yes. It was he. I remember now. Like a madman. I promised to protect her—it is my job, mynheer—and I failed. My head—my eyes—I cannot see clearly.”

“Lie still. You need a doctor.”

But Jan struggled to sit up. “No, I must find Trinka. He took her away.”

“Do you know where they went?”

“To the—bunker—”

“And where is that?”

There was silence. Jan sat with his mouth open, and the raw effort of his breathing filled the cabin with its unnatural sound. Blood ran down his neck and stained his singlet. He raised his big hand before his face and stared at it and then a strange sound came from him. His face convulsed, and it was a moment or two before Durell realized he was weeping with shame.

“Can you walk, Jan?”

“Forgive me. I—yes, I can.”

“Let me help you to the deck.”

It was an effort. Jan fell, crawled, hauled himself up the ladder and fell face down on the deck in the sunlight. Almost at once someone on the pier saw him and cried out in alarm. Durell called for a doctor and then helped Jan over the side to the stone pier. It was not easy. Jan still objected to leaving the Suzanne.

“I must go after Trinka—he took her away—he will kill her—”

“Why did he take her, Jan?” Durell asked.

“I think—for a hostage—”

“How did he leave?”

“A boat. He—came alongside in a boat.”

“A launch?”

“Ja. Small, but very fast.”

“Good enough for the open sea?”

“Oh, ja. Today it would be—all right. Calm enough. No trouble.”

“All right, Jan. I think I know where to find them. Here’s the doctor,” he said, seeing the elderly medical man from the Gunderhof Hotel pushing authoritatively through the small crowd. At the far end of the pier, fifty yards away, a uniformed policeman was walking quickly toward them. Durell said, “I’m going to leave you now. I need the Suzanne, Jan. Do you understand?”

“Help her. Help Trinka—”

“I’ll get her back, don’t worry.”

Durell jumped back into the cockpit and thumbed the sloop’s motor. The engine responded instantly. He cast off the lines, aware of the hostile, startled glances of the onlookers, and shoved off. The policeman was running, but Jan was talking to the doctor and waving the policeman away, and Durell did not look back. He heard a whistle skirl, and there was a shout sent after him, ordering him to return the boat to the dock. He threw the tiller over and the Suzanne swept out through devious passages among the moored craft in the harbor, and in a few moments it was clear of the breakwater and out on the open sea.

The tide was ebbing. He used as a landmark the thin line of the Wadden Zee Dike on the north horizon of the calm sea. There was no wind, and he ignored the sails, pushing the small engine to the utmost as he steered among a maze of channels that appeared now where they had sailed in safety on an apparently open sea yesterday. The ebbing North Sea tide had transformed this area into a tangled labyrinth of sand bars, buoy-marked channels and canals, and reedy areas where land and sea merged in an unsure alliance.

The run toward the Wadden Zee Dike took less than an hour, but it seemed endless. The ebb flow helped shove the Suzanne along at a dangerous pace through the channels, and when he could make out the end of the dike where he had found Marius Wilde’s body yesterday, he changed course to a more westerly direction.

Now the tangle of channels, reed-grown islands and brackish salt-water pools made it difficult to pick out any distinctive landmark. From the deck of the sloop he could see little that was different in any direction. The tidal channels had fallen very low, almost at complete ebb. He consulted the tide table tacked to the cockpit near the wheel and saw he had about an hour before the tide turned. He wished he could have brought a lookout to stand up forward to spot the channel turns and openings, since from the wheel he could see very little above the tall reeds and low mounds of sandy dunes that obstructed his view of the twisting water routes.

Here and there the ruined foundations of a house or farm were still recognizable as the Suzanne drummed past. The channel he followed suddenly forked northerly and easterly, and he did not know which to take. He chose the easterly entrance on impulse. But it was the wrong guess. In less than a minute he sensed a slackening of the tidal current, and then saw he had guided the sloop into a dead-end lagoon of brackish salt water draining outward against the course he had chosen. The depth of water was tricky. The keel grazed bottom slightly as he turned to retreat. The boat shuddered, the mast trembled, and the steel halyards sang like plucked guitar strings. A flock of wild ducks rose from the reeds with thunderously flapping wings and circled away to the west. He felt trapped, caught in a hot stale bowl of sand islands and marsh grasses, cut off from any chance to estimate his position. A feeling of frustration moved in him.

Time was running out as surely as the tide was reaching its lowest ebb.

There had to be a reason for Julian Wilde to risk the desperate chance of returning to his room at the Boerderij Inn and then snatching Trinka Van Horn as a hostage. Why did he need a hostage? What did he have in mind? It was plain that the Dutch Security people had taken a step that produced intense alarm in their quarry. Wilde was aware of the cordon of men and guns drawn around the Amschellig area. But what was he planning to do to escape? The Dutch government was prepared to grant amnesty, Flaas had said. But had any talks actually taken place? Durell doubted it. As far as Wilde knew, with his jungle cunning and fugitive temperament, the net around Amschellig was for only one purpose—to find him, seize him, and kill him. Surely the man had a plan to save himself, and it included using Trinka as a hostage. Would it be enough? Durell wondered. There was a feeling of pressure, of time ebbing with the tide, and when the tide changed and time ran out, it would all be too late.

He had to find the Cassandra bunker now.

He stood up, holding the wheel steady. A long row of tree stumps alongside the channel, growing out of the tormented shapes of the sand banks, marked an old prewar canal. He followed it, edging westward. The steady chug of the Suzanne’s engine was muffled in the infinity of sky and sea and the maze of islands. Now and then he glimpsed the loom of the reconstructed dike, miles to the north; but it was only a brief, chance glimpse, scarcely enough to keep himself oriented. He saw no other boats. He saw no other people. It was as if he had entered a world that had drowned two decades ago, and now lifted its dead, scarred face to the sky for this brief interlude between the North Sea tides, only to sink soon beneath the surface of the ocean again.

It seemed hopeless. He took a channel to the north, then east, then to the south, and came back to a place he remembered, the old canal bed with the beach stumps bordering the channel. He was sure of the depth of water here, at any rate. And there had to be enough water for the fishing boat the Wildes had chartered to reach the ruins of Groote Kerk Light.

He circled again, deliberately seeking out old canal beds now. The tide was almost fully out. Its urgent rush out to sea had grown less impetuous, and the Suzanne was easier to control. Durell stood with the wheel held by pressure against his thigh and scanned the afternoon landscape. A reedy island, less than two feet above the surface of the sea, sprawled to the south. A humped rise of sand about three hundred feet to the east indicated a ruined building. But it was rather an oblong shape, not that of a lighthouse. To the southeast the waterways were an impossible labyrinth of small channels, some of them mere trickles, with changing colors in the water to indicate submerged barriers to the Suzanne’s keel. Northward there was a stretch of open water, then more reedy barriers of sea bottom.

He was lost. Finding the ruins of a lighthouse here without expert help was like hunting the proverbial needle in a haystack.

He made the circuit once more. The canal bank on his left yielded to an island perhaps half a mile in length, lying like a whale’s back at a north-northwesterly angle. It was higher at one end than the other, and on a hunch he turned the Suzanne into a channel to port. In a moment, he swore softly, seeing the ripple of shallow water all the way across his chosen course. There was no passage here. Short of using a dinghy or wading in the warm, shallow sea, there was no way to reach the higher end of the island—

Yes, he thought.

Julian Wilde had brought the fishing boat to a place where he had used a dinghy to row and then had got out and waded out of sight.

It could be this place, he thought.

There were field glasses in the cockpit, and he used them to scan the far end of the island. Barren sand dunes, reeds, marsh grass—and then the shape of something that could only have been man-made, showing where the tide had scoured away the camouflage of sand and revealed barnacled red brick in a circular base—

The Groote Kerk Light.

He spent no more time in speculation. The Suzanne had probed as far into the channel as she could go without grounding, and he let go of the wheel to run forward and throw the anchor over. The ebbing tide had lost all strength, but it still ran out enough to keep the sloop’s bow head on toward the nearby island. He took the rifle Jan had shown him, a Remington .30-08, from the cabin; made certain it was loaded; and pocketed an extra clip from one of the cabinets before he lowered himself over the side with the gun held high and dry over his head. He could not touch bottom for a minute or two, and had to swim awkwardly toward shore. Then the bottom shelved up abruptly and he surged out of the water onto dry sand.

In every quarter there was nothing to see except the glimmering wasteland of sun and ocean and marsh and sky. No one ventured here at ebb tide. Later, when evening came, the sea would have swept back and where he now stood would be under many feet of water, enough to float the yachts moored at Amschellig at this moment. But now it was as if he stood on the bottom of the sea—without another human soul in sight for miles.

Certainly, there was no sign of Cassandra and the Valkyron.

Turning, he trudged toward the far end of the island where he had glimpsed the round base of the ruined lighthouse. The whale-back shape of the long dune cut off his view of the other shore, and he scouted it twice, careful to keep out of sight in case Wilde was anywhere about. But he could not see for any distance through the reeds and sea grasses on that side, and he dropped back to the shoreline again, trotting on the hard sand in response to an inner urgency that demanded he waste no more time in precautions.

Looking back, he saw the Suzanne swinging slowly broadside as the tide ebbed at its lowest level at last. The sloop looked small and fragile from this distance.

Then it was lost from sight as he turned a bend in the shore and dipped down and around the base of the ruin. He was sure now that this was the place where Julian Wilde had left the fishing boat and gone down into the Cassandra bunker.

The ruins were undeniably those of an old lighthouse. Under the shapes of the sand dunes nearby, he could make out the vague outlines of the keeper’s quarters. Barnacles, mussels, and weeds covered the concrete and brick, except where the scouring action of the tidal current kept it clean.

He saw no one.

There was no other boat here.

An air of desertion and desolation hung over the place, as if it were shunned even by the birds of the sea.

He paused, the rifle at his side. The hot sun gave rise to brackish smells, to the odors of sea vegetation exposed to sunlight. From far, far away came the sound of a muffled explosion as work proceeded on the distant Wadden Zee Dike. That world seemed to belong to another age, separate from this one of bleached and twisted tree stumps taken from a surrealist painting, with the jagged tower base of the old lighthouse and its rounded doorway half buried in tidal silt. . . .

Trinka’s footprints, and those of a man’s heavy shoes, were plainly evident in the smooth sand leading up to the lighthouse door.

Durell paused, stood still.

He had the feeling he was being watched.

He turned slowly in every direction, but there was nothing to see.

He noted that the tracks did not actually enter the lighthouse base. They turned left, to seaward, and vanished over the dune behind the ruin.

He went that way.

The footprints were lost on the crest of the rise, where wild sea grasses grew, bending to the wind. The part of the island that emerged at low tide behind the lighthouse was slightly higher than the rest, and a long straight ridge on the western shore looked too mathematically precise to be a natural creation. Turning, he walked along its flat top and then studied the sea. It fitted. He was on top of the old fortifications, bunkers and sea walls that had served the Nazi Occupation forces against the British Isles across the North Sea.

He wanted to call out Trinka’s name, but the silence and solitude of this place forbade it. He walked on, his rifle ready.

But he did not need the weapon.

Fifty yards beyond the lighthouse ruin he saw the shovel, the heap of sand, the glint of rusty-red metal against the greens and beiges of the tidal flats. In a moment he stood at the ponderous trap door built into the top of the bunker.

He knew at once that this was what he had been hunting.

This was the place Piet Van Horn had died trying to find; the place that caused the death of General von Uittal and John O’Keefe and the innocent fishermen of Doorn. This was the place that a thousand men in strategic areas of the West were wondering about, with fear in their bellies and their hearts, because of the deadly plague nourished here.

The entrance was dark, with a flight of narrow stone steps going down. He had not brought a flashlight from the sloop. He entered slowly, aware of the danger of his silhouette against the sky to anyone crouching in wait below. But nothing happened. His entrance was not challenged.

The odor of sea growths exposed to the air, of the slime and barnacles of years of growth on the interior walls, yielded abruptly at a door set into the wall at the bottom of the steps. Heavy gaskets of rubbery composition, clinging together and built into both wall and door, once had formed a hermetical seal. It took considerable effort to push it open, but when the seal broke apart, the heavy door swung inward on silent hinges.

Darkness waited for him.

Whatever lighting system had once existed down here was long gone, of course. He would have to go back to the boat for a flashlight. The small amount of sunshine that filtered down the bunker stairs showed a tiled section of white wall, a metal table, a rubberized floor, a glimmer of glass laboratory equipment beyond. . . .

He felt a sense of awe, and a feeling of pressure around him, as if in a trap. For more than fifteen years this room had resisted the weight of the sea, the surges of tidal current and storm. The air was still dry, slightly musty, smelling rubbery and sterile. And yet—

He wanted to back out and run into the sun and wind and see the clean ocean again.

The small thumping sound halted his retreat. It came from the darkness to his right.

The rifle leaped to the ready in his hands. He swung about, facing the sound. But he could see nothing. The light from the stairs behind him now seemed far too bright, making the darkness all the darker.

“Trinka?” he called softly.

The thumping was repeated, insistently.

It was she.

She was tied hand and foot, and gagged, seated on the rubberized floor of the bunker to the right of the steps. He could see the glimmer of her wide eyes, the white of her shirt. He lowered the rifle, but did not approach her. “Are you alone?”

She nodded vigorously.

“Is Julian Wilde here?”

She shook her head in a desperate negative.

“Did he leave you here alone?”

She gave another affirmative nod.

He went over to her and untied the knots that held her. Her face was a pale blur close to his. The air was musty, but he could sense the sweetness of her body as he knelt beside her. He took off the white strip of cloth that gagged her and she coughed, and then whispered, “Don’t stay down here. Get up, quickly. Get out of here. The door—he’s a madman—be may be hiding outside—” He picked her up with a scooping motion and held her against his chest. He started for the stairs, his heart thudding crazily in anticipation of disaster. If Wilde was outside, and slammed the hermetical door shut against them both— He saw the sunlight above, the arc of blue sky, the shape of a white cloud moving across the circular opening. His sense of danger was enormous. If they were imprisoned here, everything was finished. He had accepted such a risk, coming down here. He had thought Wilde might be inside —but if he was still above, waiting for a victim to enter his trap—

He lunged up the stairs, passed through the hermetic-seal door, and paused with a gasp of relief on the mossy, barnacled steps.

“Wait a moment,” he said. “My rifle.”

“Hurry, Sam.”

He left the girl and hurried back inside again. He could see the interior of the bunker more clearly now. It was stripped clean, as far as he could see. As he snatched up the rifle he had put down in order to pick up Trinka, he saw that there were orderly shelves ranged around three sides of the bunker-laboratory, and that all the shelves were empty. The bakelite-topped tables, the stainless-steel cabinets, the retorts and burners and small ovens all looked relatively new. In the unearthly gloom, he saw another door beyond, but the darkness was too thick to penetrate there.

Here was where Cassandra had been bred and nourished and brought to dark and vengeful fruition. Here was the place the virus had been strengthened and coddled and sealed into neat receptacles against a day of desperate attack ordered by a madman whose inhumanity was incalculable. He felt a thin shudder along his spine. Whatever samples of Virus Cassandra had remained in this particular room were now gone. Julian Wilde had taken them all.

He had enough to wipe out half the European continent; perhaps enough to destroy most of the world.

He ran back up the steps again. Trinka had pulled herself out of the trap door into the sunlight and was working on the rest of her bonds. He knelt beside her and quickly finished freeing her wrists and ankles.

“Are you all right now?” he asked quietly.

She was shivering violently. “I don’t know. I didn’t think I was frightened when I was trapped down there— I couldn’t let myself give in to the fear I felt, or I—I’d have gone crazy, thinking—”

“Take it easy,” he said.

“I know. I’ll be all right. But I thought I—I thought I would drown down there, or perhaps suffocate. I felt so helpless. I imagined how it would be, and—what time is it?”

“After two.”

“Then I still had four hours.”

“Was he going to leave you down there?”

She nodded, swallowed, nodded again. She rubbed her throat with her fingertips. “He said he would be back, but I didn’t believe him.”

“Did he hurt you, otherwise?”

“No.”

“Why did he take you here?”

“He is going to make a deal with Inspector Flaas—for safe passage. He said I was going to be a double guarantee of his safety. But he didn’t think Flaas would really get here in time to help me. He laughed at me. And he said I was typical of the fools who were trying to stop him.”

“All right, Trinka. You’re safe now, anyway.”

“It’s not all right. It will never be all right again. Not for me.”

“We’ll get him, you can be sure of that.”

“I don’t think so. I think he will succeed,” she said flatly. “There is something in him—a feeling that frightens me— He will get his money and disappear, you’ll see. He has it all planned. He was very talkative down in the bunker, when he cleaned it out.”

“I noticed he took everything.”

“Yes. His plans were made in every detail, long ago. He will get the money in Switzerland and then vanish. No one will be able to identify him after that. He will be rich. But he has a strange attitude toward the world. The Nazis degraded him until they warped his judgment. He—he hates everyone. All of us. He doesn’t care if we are all killed. He keeps talking about his brother Marius, too, about revenge for him—”

“Can you walk with me now?” Durell interrupted. “Are your legs all right?”

“They hurt. It’s the circulation, I think.”

“Rub them,” he said. “Hard.”

She rubbed her calves and thighs. There was a smudge of dirt on her cheek, and her soft, dark hair was disheveled. Her eyes looked different. The hours she had spent underground in the bunker, waiting to die, must have been torment beyond comprehension. She kept shivering, although the hazy sun was still warm. The sea wind had sharpened a little, however, and he put his arm around her and she clung to him like a frightened child, still shuddering. Her body was warm and fragrant and desirable. He helped her to her feet and she leaned against him.

“How did you happen to get here and find me?”

“I came in the Suzanne,” he said. “It’s moored beyond the lighthouse ruins. Just over this rise.”

They walked that way.

The tide had turned, and the weather was changing with it, as it had changed yesterday. A haze obscured the sky to the west, but the sun still shone brightly on the endless expanse of muddy channels, drying mudbanks and dunes and salt-water pools left by the ebb tide. From the top of the dune that formed tie highest point of the whale-back island, Durell and the girl could see the lagoon where he had moored the Suzanne, to their left and to the north.

Everything looked the same, except for one thing.

The Suzanne wasn’t there any more.

Nineteen

He told himself it was impossible. The sloop couldn’t be gone. He had only been ashore a half hour. But it was possible. It had happened. The boat was not in sight. There was nothing human to greet his eye in all the arc of his vision, north and west, east and south.

Trinka sat down on the top of the dime. Her face was white. “Could the anchor have slipped?” she whispered.

“No,” he answered harshly. “And even if it did, the Suzanne would only have grounded over there, on the bar.” He pointed to the twisting channel mouth. “Somebody had to guide the sloop away from here.”

“It was Julian Wilde,” she said.

“You told me he was gone.”

“Perhaps he saw you coming. He must have hidden when you came ashore, and when you went to the lighthouse, he simply tied his launch to the Suzanne and towed her away with him.”

“To strand us here?”

“Of course,” the girl said.

“How high does the tide rise in this area?”

“High enough to drown us.”

“I haven’t studied the lighthouse ruins too closely,” he said. “It’s got the highest elevation on the island. Does the tide cover that, too?”

“I am sure of it,” Trinka said. “Otherwise, I’d have noticed it on my search last week. I think this whole place sinks under many feet of water at high tide.”

“So he left us here to drown.”

“That is his idea, it seems.” She smiled wanly. “But it is better to die in the sunshine than down there, in that place where he left me—”

She began to shudder again, and he put his arm around her. “When will the tide be at flood?” he asked.

“I think we will be under by nightfall.”

“We can swim for a time. And shout for help.”

She shook her head. “You do not know the currents here. They are treacherous. We might stay afloat for a short time, but the tide will drag us under soon enough.” She looked at all quarters of the bleak, milky-white horizon. “I do not like the looks of the weather, either. If there is a storm, then even nature has conspired against us. Isn’t there anything we can do?”

“We can only wait,” he said.

They walked back to the lighthouse, choosing it instinctively as a shelter because it was the highest point on the island. From the top of the ruin he searched the sea again, but he could not spot the Suzanne’s mast among the labyrinthine channels and islands surrounding them. Already, however, he saw how the turning tide had changed the current in places, and he heard a murmur from the swift-flowing sea at the base of the lighthouse ruin.

They had about four hours before the sea would cover them.

He wondered what Julian Wilde intended to do in those four hours. What did he mean to do with all the vials of virus culture he had taken out of the Cassandra bunker?

He tried to ignore his sense of utter and complete defeat. There was nothing he could do. He was trapped here; he had been neatly lured out of action and stranded in the middle of a barren, salt wilderness, while the enemy went ahead with whatever insane plan he expected to execute.

“Sam?” Trinka said quietly.

“Yes?”

“He’s beaten us, hasn’t he?”

“It looks that way.”

“Are we going to die here?”

“I don’t know.”

“When I was alone down there, tied up in the bunker, and I thought no one in all the world would ever find me—” She suddenly gasped and put a hand to her mouth in dismay. “I am horrible! Is Jan—is he all right? Is he—”

“I turned him over to a doctor.”

“I never thought to ask until now. It was all so sudden, you know. Julian Wilde came aboard just as calmly as you please. He knew who I was. He said he’d seen me searching the islands, and made his own inquiries. He told me he had planned to use me in an emergency, against the authorities, all along, if he had to. Jan was asleep in his bunk when he came aboard. I was studying the charts again—I don’t know why, because Flaas said it was all over and the authorities were giving Wilde everything he demanded. Then he stepped aboard out of the blue and went straight into Jan’s cabin. Jan heard him in his sleep, I guess, because he sat up and tried to fight back; but he never had a chance. I—I saw it happen. I saw Wilde’s face. It was so—so cruel, so vicious, I—”

She paused and shook her head and looked out at the sea. It was as if they were alone as sole survivors in a desolated world.

“When Wilde left me in the bunker, he said he would come back for me, or tell the authorities where I was, if they were reasonable and concluded a deal with him quickly. But I knew he would never come back and he wouldn’t tell anybody about me until it was too late. And it was cold and damp down there, and I tried to figure out how much time I had before—before the tide came in and poured down and—I was so alone—and it was so dark and cold, like a tomb—”

“Don’t think about it now,” Durell said.

“I don’t mind. I’m all right now. I’ve faced the idea of dying. It’s just that I couldn’t stand it to think of dying down there in the dark, trapped by the tide. It will be all right up here, even if it’s night before the tide reaches us. There will be the stars to look at, anyway.”

“We’re not going to die,” he said.

She smiled ruefully. “Are you King Canute, to command the tide?”

“Maybe something will turn up. We have several hours yet.”

“The hours will go fast enough,” she said.

The time went too fast. Seated at the base of the ruined lighthouse, they watched the afternoon wane, growing darker with massive thunderheads piling up in the western sky. The water changed color from blue to slate-gray. One by one, the low, reedy islands to the south grew smaller, ringed by white combers, and gradually yielded to the insistent, devouring hunger of the tide. Far off, a sail bent before the increasing wind; but there was no way to signal to the craft out there on the open sea, miles away.

Every few minutes Durell got up and climbed to the top of the lighthouse base to scan the horizons. Trinka was curious.

“No one will come here,” she said. “This whole area for miles around is marked on all the navigational charts as being dangerous tidal shoals. No one in their right senses would take a boat into this area this far.”

“I still think someone will come,” he said.

“I don’t know why you are so sure of it.”

“It’s the widow,” he explained. “The woman that General von Uittal named Cassandra, as a grim joke on her and the rest of the world. She’s got the general’s yacht, the Valkyron—the one that almost ran us down, remember?”

“Yes, but—”

“She was at the Wadden Zee Dike this morning, talking to the superintendent. She borrowed some charts from him.”

“That does not mean she will find this place.”

“She knows about the Groote Kerk Light. We must presume she managed to draw the name from Marius Wilde, before the general killed him. Cassandra wants money. She isn’t interested in the virus, I imagine. But she knows there were some art treasures buried here, and she’ll be coming for them.”

“Even so,” Trinka objected, “there certainly is not enough water here for a vessel like the Valkyron to reach us in time.”

“Not even at high tide?”

She said quietly, “It will be much too late for us then.”

He kept searching for Cassandra, anyway.

There was something hypnotic in the changes within the sea. Now the currents were completely reversed, and the tide came in with long, rolling swells—inexorable, timeless, powerful beyond imagination. The currents seethed and boiled in their channels, swept in among the reeds like charging phalanxes of horsemen, crashed in combers over the dunes and mudbanks and changed the scene moment by moment into one of angry, spume-lashed wilderness.

The wind came up, too. Thunder rolled majestically from the cumulus clouds that towered high out of sight in the ocherous western sky. The wind was cold, with a harsh bite to it, as if to remind them of its origin in the Arctic regions beyond the rim of the North Sea.

When Durell next climbed to the top of the lighthouse ruin, he saw that the entire shape of the island had changed, submerging into the combers that had sprung up with the turn of the tide. The lagoon had broadened immensely, and the old canal route he had followed, marked by the bleached stumps of submerged trees, was all under water and no longer to be identified. He studied the high ridge that marked the western edge of the island and was struck again by its artificial precision. There must be a long line of coastal fortifications here, he thought, sunk into the ground; subterranean gun chambers, munitions storage rooms, barracks for the men who had stood guard here years and years ago. . . .

He saw that Trinka was smoking a cigarette when he climbed down again. The cigarette was dry, and she had a waterproof packet of matches on the sand beside her.

“May I borrow this?” he asked.

“Of course. But what do you want to do?”

“I think I should explore the Cassandra bunker. There won’t be another chance. And I had no light when I got you out of there.”

“I wish you wouldn’t do it. It is too dangerous, already. The tide has come up several feet.”

“There’s still more than an hour,” he said gently.

She looked at the sky. “It will grow dark earlier than usual. It is going to storm badly. I know this land. It will be a regular gale, bitterly cold and with extraordinary high tides. Look, the sea is all whitecaps now. No one will come this way.”

“Then we’ll just have to help ourselves, somehow.”

“But how?”

“I don’t know yet. We’ll see.”

“I think we are going to die here,” the girl whispered. “And I don’t want it to happen. I don’t want it to grow dark. The way it was in the bunker, I kept thinking of a tomb, of how dark and wet and clammy it would be, to be dead. I know it is silly—one wouldn’t feel anything, would one? And yet I hate the thought of the dark and the wet—”

“It’s not going to happen,” he said flatly.

“But the storm destroys our last hope. Can’t you see?” Her voice was thin. He looked for hysteria in her eyes, but they were strangely calm. The wind made her shiver, and she hugged herself. “I thought there was so much time ahead of me. I was such a fool. I thought there was time for love and marriage and children and doing all the things one usually dreams of—traveling, meeting people, fashioning a career—”

“Are you in love with Jan?” Durell asked.

“No. Yes. I don’t know.”

“Were you ever in love with anyone?”

“I think not. And as I sit here, it seems I’ve only been half alive all these years. My nature was too conservative.” He smiled. “I noticed that.”

“And it was wrong of me. I should have been more daring. I should have welcomed more personal involvements.”

“Love, you mean.”

“Yes. Love. A man.”

“You couldn’t ever take just any man, though, Trinka,” he said gently. “And the right one just never came along, that’s all.”

“Perhaps he did,” she said solemnly. “But it’s too late now, isn’t it?”

“I’ll never admit that.”

“Sam . . .”

“I know what you mean,” he said.

“Are you in love with someone back home, in America?”

Deirdre Padgett’s face and form drifted gently through his mind. “Yes, I am.”

“I suppose she is very lovely.”

“Yes. Very.”

“But you have not married?”

“No.”

“May I ask why not?”

“It’s a long story. It’s a question of the work I do. It’s better to be alone.” He thought of John O’Keefe and Claire and all the redheaded kids who would never feel John’s strong arms scooping them up and tossing them high in the air in greeting. He thought of Claire O’Keefe, who would never feel John’s love and passion again. And yet— he did not know if John had been wrong or not. It was all over for O’Keefe, but the sum of O’Keefe’s life was the richer for having loved and married and raised children. Better for O'Keefe, yes. He’d had something, Durell thought, of what most ordinary men enjoy in their lifetimes, even while O’Keefe lived in the extraordinary world of K Section. But what of Claire? He wondered if she now would regret the chance she took, when she married John O’Keefe, and chose to live on the knife-edge of danger and disaster for all those years. Now that the knife had slipped and the game was over, would she think it had been worth it, now, with the grief and the accented loneliness and the fatherless children?

He did not know. He could not answer for himself. Trinka’s hand crept into his. Her voice was quiet. “So you chose the lonely way for yourself, didn’t you?”

“I suppose so. I thought it was better,” he said. “Not just for myself, you understand.”

“But suppose it is now over for us? The storm and the tide—in a few hours, it could all be finished for you and me.”

“Yes.”

“Sam?”

He looked at her. Her eyes were wide and steady.

“Sam, could I be your girl? Just for a little while,” she said quietly. “Just for now.”

“And if it doesn’t end for us?”

“Just for now,” she said again. “Please.”

He took her in his arms and felt the salt slide of her tears as she pressed her cheek to his, and he kissed her. Her mouth, trained to reject passion by her years of discipline, was clumsy and restrained at first. Then she gave a little cry of despair, and he kissed her again, and she turned all at once to liquid fire in his embrace, demanding him and yielding to him, all at once, while the wind blew around the ruins that sheltered them and the sound of the sea became a louder muttering of threats as it lifted steadily to reach out and engulf them. . . .

Twenty

Now half the island was gone, devoured by the unrelenting sea. A thin rain began to fall. Darkness lay to the east, a haze of gloom shrouding the distant flat coastland of the Friesland province. The air was filled with the sound of combers crashing on shallow flats, and the cries of sea birds fleeing the wind occasionally came to them, shredded by speed and flight. And there was the surge and countersurge of currents pouring in upon the myriad channels and islets and bars of the ocean bottom here.

Durell left Trinka in the shelter of the lighthouse door. He took the rifle with him, and the waterproof matches he had borrowed from her, and climbed around the ruined lighthouse to the top of the bunker ridge. Trinka kept her eyes closed, after telling him to hurry back. She refused to go down into the bunker again.

The wind kicked stinging sand into his eyes as he reached the crest of the ridge. To the west, lightning ribboned and scratched at the gray-and-white sea. The thunder echoed the growling menace of the rising waters. The lagoon was gone, submerged under a welter of whitecaps that reached as far as he could see toward the east. Trinka had been right. No boatman in his right senses would risk crossing this area when the tide was rising.

He paused for a moment outside the bunker entrance, considering the faintly defined shape of the concrete and reinforced steel abutment that still showed dimly under the layers of sand and mud and sea-bottom silt. How long had these ruins been untouched and unexplored? It seemed to Durell the answers might be here; and then he went down the slime-covered steps to the Cassandra bunker again.

The hermetically sealed door yielded easily this time. He struck a match and stepped inside, orienting himself by the flickering light, and saw again the tables, shelves, and lab equipment. Then the match went out.

The darkness was almost absolute except for the gray, rainy light filtering down the stairs behind him. He struck another match and searched for the door he had noticed just before he carried Trinka out the last time. In the tiny, bomblike flare, he saw it to his left. Opening it, he stared into a bunkroom still equipped with tiered bunks. A series of matches carried him into another laboratory, a corridor, and then a storage room. Julian Wilde had been here, too. Broken cases indicated where S.S. General von Uittal’s looted art had been stored, and he wondered how much Julian had actually taken with him. Only about half the cases were opened.

The air was dry and musty, smelling of the rubbery seal. He found a broken case of culture vials and picked up one of the sealed tubes. The control number was stamped on the seal, and the culture medium still fitted the vial. He pocketed it as evidence, although he wondered if he would survive to show this to anyone.

Beyond this room was another sealed door. He had only four matches left. He struck one and studied the lock mechanism, then had to use another match before he got the ponderous door open. It hadn’t been used in almost twenty years, and the stainless-steel hinges had shifted balance slightly. The match burned his fingers and he dropped it. He did not light a third. He used both hands to haul back on the door.

A surge of cold, clammy air poured into the dryness of the lab bunker. Water dripped and splashed and echoed cavernously. He struck the third match now.

He was in a gun-battery chamber of concrete and steel. There was a fourteen-inch coastal rifle standing in the monumental, echoing dome of the chamber in several feet of brackish water left by the ebbing tide. A glimmer of daylight came through the gun slot. Steel ladders and catwalks led to other corridors and arched tunnels to right and left that served other pieces in the battery. An air of gloom, disuse, and forgotten military power filled the chamber. He lowered himself into the water and found it came to his knees. Before moving on, he checked the current and the watermarks on the barnacle-encrusted walls. At high tide, the sea filled everything.

He followed a straight tunnel, guided by the occasional glimmer of light from the gun ports. He saw that the openings were protected by steel fire flanges overgrown with barnacles and weeds that perfectly camouflaged their artificiality from anyone viewing the area at sea. It was raining outside. When he paused to look out, he saw only the wind-whipped surf battering the island, and the air that poured against his face was cold and biting.

Finally he returned to the Cassandra bunker and used his fourth match to find his way out to the top of the ridge. He was uneasy about leaving Trinka alone this long.

Rain slashed at him. He squinted into the wind, turned toward the lighthouse—and the sound of a gunshot made a spiteful crack behind him.

The bullet slammed past his head with a sound like a thunderclap.

Twenty-one

He threw himself flat, clinging to the rifle he had taken from the Suzanne. A second shot smacked into the sand beside him. He rolled over down the dune, not daring to look around yet. The weapon sounded like a rifle equal to his own. He slid down in a small avalanche of wet sand, rolled over twice more, got to his feet and scrambled to the left, nearer the lighthouse. A third shot sang overhead. He ran, crouching, threw himself flat again, then twisted around.

A man’s tall shape was outlined against the rainy sky.

“Durell! ”

His shouted name was a fragment of rage whipped by the sea wind. It was Julian Wilde.

“Durell, drop it!”

There was no time to wonder at Wilde’s appearance here. He had assumed that Wilde had long reached the town of Amschellig to make his deal with Inspector Flaas for safe passage to Switzerland. But there had to be a reason for his return to the island. Durell knew he would learn it soon enough. For the moment, he only wanted to keep alive.

He raised his rifle, and Wilde promptly vanished behind the crest of the dune. “Durell, give it up! Throw out your gun.”

“Will you do the same?”

“Listen, there’s been an accident—”

“Why did you come back here?”

“I’ve been double-crossed!” The man’s words were torn to shreds by the wind. “The Swiss—I’m going to show them—they won’t let me in! Do you hear that? Nobody in the world will let me in!”

Durell kept silent.

“The whole deal is off!” Wilde cried. “They won’t get me the money. Do you hear me?”

Durell said nothing.

“Durell?”

The wind blew harder.

“I’ll kill you, Durell!”

There was an insane violence in the man’s voice. From where he lay hugging the wet sand, Durell was between Wilde and the lighthouse. He wondered about Trinka. Had she heard the shots? He looked back through the rain. Perhanc she was sheltering inside the ruin. Better that way, he decided It would be disastrous if Wilde reached her.

He looked the other way, uneasy over Wilde’s abrupt silence. He lifted his head carefully over the ridge. To the north, the sea was a froth of whitecaps, but there was the Suzanne again. plunging at anchor in the tidal current where the lagoon had been. The island itself had shrunk to half its size, eroded by the sea. In the gloom, the sea seemed to have swallowed up all the other islets around. There was only this left, and its life couldn’t be more than another hour or two.

Something burned across his neck; the sound of the gunshot came an instant later, and he felt himself fall, stumbling. Water slashed across his legs. He had been outflanked, and he knew he was wounded, but he did not know how badly. He got to his knees as a small comber smashed into his back and fired at a dim shape running in a crouch across the top of the ridge. The shape disappeared. But Julian Wilde hadn’t been hit. His leap out of sight had been powerful and deliberate, bringing him on to the same plane as Durell in relation to the lighthouse. Durell retreated, stumbling through the reedy surf below the bunker ridge He felt warm blood run down his neck and across his chest, and he touched the wound gingerly. It was just a crease.

His alarm for Trinka drove him on. He was perhaps twenty yards closer to the lighthouse than Wilde. He floundered through the surf, turned at the end of the ridge, and saw the barnacle-encrusted wall and abutment of the lighthouse. “Trinka!”

She stood in the doorway facing the rain.

“Get back inside!” he shouted.

She immediately stepped into the shadows of the doorway. He ran toward her. He did not see Wilde now. Perhaps Wilde had gone into the Cassandra bunker, thinking she was still a prisoner there. He threw himself into the shelter of the lighthouse door and dropped to his knees. Trinka’s arms supported him, her face stunned with worry.

“What is it? What happened?”

“Wilde came back.”

“Here? But why?”

“I’m not sure. Something must have gone wrong with his plans.”

“You’re bleeding,” she said. “Let me help you.”

“Wait a moment.”

He turned to face the outer world from the gloomy shelter of the lighthouse ruin. He did not like his position.

He could see only a small segment of the island, and his field of fire was limited. Wilde could circle around behind them and trap them here—

“Hold still,” Trinka said firmly.

She tore a strip from his shirt, made a compress, and applied it to the wound on Ms neck. Her hands were firm; her manner was now impersonal. He found it hard to believe that only minutes ago he had held her violently impassioned in his arms.

“Didn’t you see the Suzanne return?” he asked.

“I—I wasn’t looking,” she said briefly. “I was thinking —after we made love—and you wanted to explore the bunker. I just sat here waiting for the tide to come and finish everything. . . .”    i

“How much time do we have?”

“When it grows dark,” she said. “That will be the end.”

“If Wilde doesn’t get us first,” he said grimly.

He wished he had a drink. The wind was cold, and the rain had an icy touch when the wind blew it into the entrance to the ruin. He listened for any warning sounds above the crash of the sea, but it was impossible to hear anything as light as a footfall outside. He felt trapped, as much by the unanswered questions that plagued him as by the present situation. He said to Trinka: “I think that what happened with Wilde was that when he went to deal with Inspector Flaas, he learned that word had come from Switzerland that he would not be able to enter there, bank credits or not. I don’t blame the Swiss. It’s something Wilde should have anticipated—the Swiss getting wind of all this, somehow. Who would want a man like Wilde within their borders? He’s like a plague himself. He carries the virus with him. Whatever the Swiss suspect, it’s enough to make them refuse to go along with the deal.”

“But where does that leave us?” Trinka whispered. “We have Wilde on our hands.”

“And the plague.”

“Yes.” Durell nodded. “If Wilde is running now, if Flaas ordered him to give up, maybe he tried to sail all the way to England and the storm stopped him. I don’t think he considers the Suzanne safe enough to sail across the North Sea tonight.”

“But he knows this is a tidal island,” Trinka objected. “It will soon be under many feet of water.”

“Perhaps he came back for you,” Durell said flatly.

Her face went suddenly blank. “For me?”

“Or for something here that he needs and wants.”

“He does not need me. He left me here to die.”

“I wonder,” Durell said.

She said coldly, “I don’t like what you are thinking. It isn’t fair. I thought we were friends.”

“Lovers, you mean.”

She flushed. “Very well. Maybe I was foolish. I was frightened. I wanted the comfort of having you make love to me—and it was wonderful,” she said, a low hostility in her tone. “But now I wonder what you are trying to say.” “It’s my business,” he told her, “to be suspicious of everything. Of you and everyone and everything.”

“Do you suggest I am an ally of Julian Wilde?”

“Are you?”

“But how could I be, when he tied me up and left me—” “He came back, didn’t he?”

“Not for me.”

“Maybe it was arranged to look good for you, in case I or someone came along and found you. It makes you look like an innocent victim, rather than Wilde’s ally, motivated by the same wish for money.”

“Oh, you must be insane,” she whispered. Her face was white and her eyes were uncomprehending. “How can you talk to me like this? Do you think money is so important that I’d sell out my country and my people and inflict a plague upon them?”

“People do strange and terrible things for money.”

“I hate you, Sam Durell,” she said slowly. “I would cry if I could. But I have gone beyond tears. If our last hour on earth must be spent as enemies, them I will thank you not to speak to me again.”

“I have to know the truth.”

“How could I lie to you, after we made love? How?”

She began to tremble. She was small and delicate and she looked totally defenseless, as if her last resources had crumbled under his suspicion. He felt sorry for her. But he had to test her, to know who and what she really was. There was only a little time left. Danger waited outside for them. And he could not risk a shot in the back.

He stood up and walked into the gloom of the lighthouse ruin, taking the rifle with him. She remained seated, facing the opening, watching the sea and the arc of beach where Julian Wilde might appear.

The base of the lighthouse was a large circular room filled with the tidal debris of many years. Barnacles, mussels and seaweed covered the stone floor and walls, waiting for the tide to return and nourish them again. The air was rank with the smells of iodine and brine. Rain filtered through the steel beams and abutments overhead that had supported the vanished light tower. He circled the base wall slowly. The diameter of the ruin was about fifty feet. He went halfway around and saw the trap door.

It was revealed by the shell-encrusted ring set in the stone floor. The wooden hatch was long disintegrated, and silt had partially filled in the steps going into the dark hole below. He had no idea where the passage led.

“Sam?”

He turned, rifle ready, and saw Trinka staring north. He walked back and she looked at him with impassive eyes.

“Could we make a run for the boats now?” she asked.

“If Wilde lets us. He’s got a gun, too.”

“If we got to the boats first, we’d be saved from the tide. I’ve been expecting to die here; I’d made up my mind to it; and now like a miracle he’s come back with the boat—”

“Or by prearrangement,” he said thinly.

“You don’t trust me at all, do you?”

“I want to,” he said. “I wish I could.”

“Can’t we have a truce, at least, and save ourselves?” she demanded angrily. “Must you be so blinded by your professional training that you lose all human values? Are you a machine, or what?”

“I want to live as much as you, Trinka,” he said quietly. “That’s why I’m trying to be careful.”

She spread her hands. “I am unarmed. How can I hurt you? Did you suspect me an hour ago, when we made love?”

“Wilde hadn’t come back then,” he said. “He wasn’t sitting somewhere out there waiting to knock me off. It was just luck, poor aim, and the wind that saved me,” he finished grimly.

“And you think I arranged—” She paused, hand to her mouth. “Oh. Oh, I see. I understand now. You think I’ve been waiting for Wilde to pick me up and that I talked to him and told him to kill you when you came up out of the bunker a few minutes ago.”

“Did you?”

“No, I did not. Believe me. I am everything I said I was. And if we don’t trust each other, we won’t get off the island alive.”

“So you suggest we make a run for the boats?”

“Wilde has gone into the bunker,” she said. “The way is clear.”

She was right. When he stepped carefully from their shelter, he could not see Julian Wilde. The Suzanne, with Wilde’s launch tied astern, swung in the wind and rain not more than a hundred yards down the shrinking shore of the island.

“All right. Let’s try it,” he said.

If Trinka was lying, he decided, then he had to expect to find Wilde lying in ambush somewhere along the route. He scanned the terrain with care. The island was relatively featureless except for the lighthouse ruin and the long, artificially straight ridge facing west. Tall grasses and reeds rippled in the rising wind. The crash of the surf shivered in the air, and the cold rain pelted their faces.

He pointed to the sandy beach that curved north to the former lagoon where the boats were moored. The rain cut off their view as they started out. In the gloom, very little could be seen. But he consoled himself with the thought that Wilde was equally handicapped.

They sprinted quickly, digging their toes into the wet sand, then dropped flat in the reeds. No shots greeted them.

Nothing was to be seen. The rain lightened, and he made out the boats, nearer now. They represented rescue from the encroaching tide. Two more sprints would bring them to the beach opposite the sloop. Then they would have to swim for it. That would be the bad time, he thought, when his rifle would be useless. Maybe Wilde was waiting for that.

They got up and ran in a zigzag course across the reedy dune toward the boats. It was like a nightmare in which your feet bogged in glue while terror snapped at your heels. Trinka fell sprawling in the sand. He dropped to his knees beside her. They were only halfway. Ahead was an open stretch of sand, dimpled by the rain. They sheltered for the moment in the last clump of reeds.

“Did you hurt yourself?” he asked.

“No. I’m sorry, I’m just clumsy.”

“We can’t stop next time until we hit the water and swim for it” he said. “Are you sure you can make it?”

“I’ve got to try. I’ve got to do it,” she said.

“Good.”

“Do you honestly care?” she whispered bitterly.

To her astonishment, he kissed her. “Of course. Let’s go.”

On their feet, they ran down the slope toward the Suzanne. As if to confound them, the rain suddenly came down with cloudburst intensity, hammering them with a cold fury that filled the world with driving spray and blinding wind. They could see nothing. Durell shouted to Trinka to stop, but she plunged on, and suddenly they were in water that surged hungrily about their ankles and then leaped at their knees. Trinka reeled in confusion. Their wet clothes were plastered tightly to their bodies. She shouted something above the hissing rage of the storm, but the wind tore the words from her lips. He caught her hand as the tidal current abruptly eroded the sand from underfoot.

They turned blindly, searching for dry land. Durell felt the strain of the tide on his legs; his thigh muscles trembled. The girl’s wet hand began to slide from his grip. She could not stand on her feet. A comber smashed at them suddenly, rearing out of the wind and driving rain. Trinka coughed and gave a little cry and suddenly went under. He clung to her hand with all his strength. If his left arm were free, he could have hauled her up easily; but he did not want to let go of the rifle.

For an agonizing moment it was in balance. The tide, pouring through a channel sluiced across the island, smashed them out into the lagoon. The water lifted to Durell’s waist. The girl had struggled up, coughing and strangling, until her arms were around him. She clung to him then and he knew her feet were not touching bottom.

Thunder crashed. Lightning flared. The surge of tide pushed once more, then abruptly yielded with a sudden release of pressure that made him stagger. In a momentary pause in the rain, he saw the island shore. It had changed radically. Little more than the bunker ridge was left, running about two hundred yards northerly.

He looked for the boats, but could not see them through the rain. There was nothing to do but regain the fast-dissolving land.

It took moments of desperate struggle. Trinka simply lacked the strength to do more than cling to him as he fought his way out of the tidal current.

But even then they had no chance to rest.

Trinka screamed when he dropped to his knees with her in the sand, and he turned to look in the direction she was staring. He saw a motor dinghy pulled high on the beach. It hadn’t been there before. And beyond, offshore, was the dimly visible hull of the Valkyron.

Closer at hand, on a low ridge above them, was a trio of black-rubber-suited figures, their skin-diving outfits and skull-tight helmets glistening in the rain. There was Erich, and Cassandra von Uittal, and the pimply-faced crew member who tagged along with the fat mate.

Erich had a Schmeisser machine pistol in his hand and a hard grin on his face. As Durell turned, Erich raised the gun and squeezed the trigger.

Twenty-two

The Schmeisser’s hammering seemed muted by the thunder of the storm. At that moment Durell could not have saved himself. Later, Durell remembered how they had looked in their glistening frogmen’s outfits. And it was Cassandra who prevented Erich from finishing him off in that instant of incredulity.

She gave a sharp cry and knocked the muzzle of the Schmeisser aside. The racketing slugs whined high overhead. Erich cursed and stepped back, and the blonde woman, whose black rubber suit effectively emphasized the fullness of her voluptuous body, stepped between the sailor and Durell.

“Be patient, Erich. Please.” Then she turned to Durell. “You will drop your rifle, please.”

“What do you want here?” Durell countered.

“We would have come sooner, but we had to wait for the tide to rise high enough to bring the yacht in close. And of course you know what I want. I intend to get the rest of the general’s treasure-trove of paintings and objets d’art.”

“I thought they were all gone.”

“No, no. There are storage rooms—secret places in the bunker. The general told me about it. Be kind enough to drop your rifle. You can help us load. Afterward, we will let you go to your boat.”

Durell kept his rifle in hand. “How can I trust you?” He watched her tightly. “You and I are not allies or friends now.”

“No. I offered you more than friendship, and you rejected me.” Cassandra’s voice was thin, but it cut through the sound of wind and surf. “But I am not inhuman. You and this girl can go safely from here, if you cooperate and help us now.”

Durell shrugged. “All right.”

“Now, then. Drop your gun.”

He looked at the three unearthly, rubber-suited figures and decided the time had come to cut the cards for Erich. He owed Erich a lot. The fat man was holding the machine pistol a little laxly as Cassandra spoke. Perhaps he was winded from his climb out of the sea. Or perhaps Trinka’s scanty wet costume intrigued him to much.

Instead of dropping the rifle, Durell let his hand slide down to the trigger and he shot Erich in the stomach, rapidly, twice.

The fat man’s pistol yammered as he fell. Durell did not watch him die. He swung the rifle fast as Cassandra moved, and she froze when he covered her. But he missed the other sailor. The third rubber-suited figure showed unexpected imagination and daring. Until now, he had been a shadowy hanger-on to the fat Erich. But now he dived forward suddenly, a knife in his hand, and grabbed for Trinka. But his first effort was a mistake, and his first mistake was a lethal one.

Trinka disarmed him quickly, efficiently, professionally. As the sailor lunged for her with the knife uplifted, she stepped under it and toward him instead of retreating instinctively. This threw him off stride and her hand shot up, caught the rubber-clad wrist, and twisted sharply. The man was stronger, but her knowledge of leverage and neural centers was better. He screamed suddenly and tried to twist away and Trinka caught his knife as it fell. Before the sailor could recover she made a quick, ripping gesture. The sailor screamed again, a bubbling sound of shock and incredulity.

The knife hilt glistened in his chest.

Trinka fell to hands and knees, gasping, her head bowed. She was violently sick. Durell walked over the dune toward Cassandra, who stood frozen by the sudden turn of events.

“I should have known,” she said bitterly. “The general and his men bungled everything, always. In one moment, I am stripped of my men and my weapons.” She looked at Trinka. “Such a sweet little killer. So petite and so deadly. It makes me sick, too.”

“She had to do it,” Durell said. “She doesn’t have to like doing it.”

“You surprised Erich. He looked forward to killing you.”

“It was a mutual ambition. I meant to kill him.”

“And me? What will you do with me?”

“We’ll save you for the police. Come along. Trinka?” The small girl lifted her head. Her face was very white. She looked at the dead men and shuddered again, but she got to her feet.

“Take Erich’s pistol, will you?” he asked.

She said thinly, “Oh, do you trust me now?”

“I have to. We’ll use Cassandra’s dinghy.”

“And leave Wilde here?”

Cassandra sucked in a shocked breath. “He is here?”

“In the bunker, right now,” Durell said.

“No. No! He will destroy everything!”

Cassandra started to run, disregarding Durell’s gun. Durell, turning to warn her away from the ridge with a shout, saw Julian Wilde emerge from the bunker door at that instant.

Julian Wilde was no Erich. He shot first. Durell felt a shock go through his arm as the slug, by a fluke, hit the rifle in his hand. The gun was torn from his grip. He fell to the sand with it, shouting a warning to Trinka and Cassandra. A second bullet spanked the sand. He twisted desperately. The two girls were flat in the reeds to avoid the fire. He raised his head again and saw Wilde’s figure against the dark sky. Durell was helpless. His rifle was smashed; the Schmeisser machine pistol of Erich’s was about twenty feet away near the water’s edge. Wilde had disarmed him effectively.

He called the man’s name, but the wind and rain tore the words away from him. “Wilde, listen to me!”

Wilde seemed not to hear. Durell gathered himself for a dive at the machine pistol, and Trinka called urgently, “Sam, don’t. Please. He is only waiting for you to try it. What good will it do any of us if he kills you?”

“We’ll drown here, otherwise,” he said. “We can’t reach the boats without crossing his field of fire.”

“He is still unloading the loot from the bunker,” she said quickly. “There is yet a little time.”

“Then he’ll come down after us.”

“He is not sure you are unarmed now. Perhaps if we go back to the lighthouse . . .”

He looked at the two women. Cassandra, in her black skin-diver’s suit with its tight helmet, looked strangely

detached. Trinka seemed only concerned for himself. He looked at her again.

“Are you all right now?” he asked.

“I’m sorry I was so foolish as to get sick.”

“Was it the first time you killed?”

She nodded, swallowed.

“You were well trained,” he said.

“Perhaps. But never again—if we get away from here.” He tried for the Schmeisser anyway. He got two steps from the covering reeds when Wilde’s gun cracked and the pistol jumped in the sand. Wilde fired again and Durell felt the fan of air as the slug slammed past him and he dived back for the reeds. Trinka reached for him and caught his arm, her face angry.

“Why must you try to kill yourself like that?”

“It’s all right. He could have killed me,” Durell said, “but he didn’t. He wants to keep us here. It pleases him more, I think, to have us drown slowly than to be shot mercifully. He’s a sharpshooter. If he could hit the Schmeisser, he could have put the same slug through my head. But he didn’t. So he wants us to die in the sea.”

“It is horrible,” Trinka whispered.

Cassandra said, “One can expect nothing else, I think.” They retreated to the lighthouse. The rain had slackened, but the thick clouds brought on a premature evening gloom. The sea was covered with whitecaps, and most of the sand bars and labyrinthine channels had been swallowed by the tide. Durell estimated that less than half an hour would finish this island, too. And judging by the terrific tidal pressures when they had stumbled into the channel a few minutes ago, he knew they couldn’t survive more than a few minutes, once the sea reached them.

From the entrance to the lighthouse they could see the approaches to this end of the island, and Julian Wilde could not surprise them. Durell turned to Cassandra.

“You might as well tell me the truth now,” he said. “Surely, if you came back for more of the general’s looted paintings, you knew you had no chance to get away with them.”

“I have nothing left.” Her pale brown eyes were cool. “You showed me the truth about myself on the beach last night. I’ll never have anything unless I get what I need here and now.”

“Are you sure there are more paintings?”

“The general often talked about them. They are located in a small storage room off the biological laboratory. They were stacked in crates. I thought I could sell them in America or France—or anywhere. I could have been rich.”

“The general’s friends wouldn’t let you get away with them, would they?”

“Oh. that’s all finished for now, I think. Inspector Flaas will send all that data to West Germany, for prosecution.” She smiled cynically. “Perhaps von Uittal’s friends will escape, even then. Perhaps they are right about Germany’s future. But I don’t care. I have my chance to be safe and happy now. with all the money I’ll ever need, if I can get those paintings.”

“When did you see Inspector Flaas?”

“He questioned me this morning about Marius Wilde and the general. I heard him say to a subordinate that Julian’s visa to Switzerland had been revoked. The Swiss will not let him in. Someone in the Dutch government leaked the truth about the virus to the Swiss. So they decided in the Hague to move against Wilde once and for all. No more deals, Flaas said. Better to risk the plague than to go on dealing with Wilde.”

“Why do you think Julian Wilde came back here?” Durell asked.

She shrugged. “Where can he go? Who will let him in? He is like a leper, doomed to have every door shut in his face.” The girl shivered. “I would not change places with him for anything. I could not live alone like that, hated and shunned by everyone—just because he wants revenge on the whole world because of an injury that took place long ago and was overcome. He had a decent life in England, did he not? Well, I don’t envy him.”

“I do,” Durell said drily. “He has a gun.”

“Perhaps he started to sail for England,” Cassandra suggested, “and the storm forced him this way, and he decided to stop once more and clean out the bunker of the paintings and the virus vials completely.”

Durell nodded. “And possibly to pick up his hostage.” He stood up. “Trinka?”

The dark-haired Dutch girl turned. “Yes?”

“Watch Cassandra. Take no chances with her. I’m going after Wilde.”

“With your bare hands?”

He nodded. “And surprise,” he said. “I’ll reach him underground.”

“I don’t understand. How—”

“If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, try to make some arrangement with Wilde to take you two off the island.”

“I’d rather not. I can guess what his terms will be.”

“Is it better to drown?” he asked flatly. He looked at Cassandra. “I’ll take that waterproof torch on your diving outfit.” He had noticed the compact equipment belted to the woman’s rubber suit. Cassandra handed the light to him. It was small and square, and when he tested it, a narrow beam of light shone across the curving brick walls of the lighthouse. “Remember, Trinka. Don’t wait more than fifteen minutes, do you understand?”

“I want to go with you,” she whispered.

“You can’t. Watch Cassandra. She may be tricky.” Cassandra said grimly, “I won’t try anything. This one is too quick and handy with the knife.”

Trinka blanched, then set her small mouth tightly. “Yes. I can kill, if I have to, with my bare hands. And I will, if something happens to Durell.”

Twenty-three

The trap door he had found earlier in the stone base of the lighthouse yielded without much difficulty. He squeezed through the silted opening and used Cassandra’s torch on the sea moss and weeds that grew up in his way, awaiting the return of the tide. He lowered himself down the mossy steps and looked back at Trinka’s face above him.

“Will this take you to the bunker?” she asked.

“I hope so. It’s our only chance.”

“Be careful, Sam.”

He nodded and went on, not looking back.

Beyond the stairs there was less silt and sea growth to hinder him. He was in a brick-lined tunnel where the footing was slimy and treacherous, the air filled with the sharp odors of decay. He felt oppressed, as if he were in a dark trap from which there could be no escape. Soon enough, the surging tide would pour into these old bunkers through a hundred openings and when it did, the crushing tons of sea water would fill every crevice to prevent his escape.

He moved on cautiously, through trailing sea growth and around a rusted coast-artillery cannon that was like some surrealistic representation encrusted with sea jewels of shells and barnacles. The arched and vaulted tunnels picked up the sound of the raging sea outside, and the dank air was filled with the muted tumult of the storm.

This was a desperate and calculated risk, he knew. If he could slip behind Julian Wilde this way and take the man in the lab bunker by surprise, they might reach the boats in time to save themselves. There was no other choice of action. As for the risks he ran, death could come one way or another, but it was inevitable if he failed.

Then he paused. There seemed to be no exit from the chamber he had just entered.

The flashlight shone on brick and concrete walls ahead.

Water dripped from the ceiling, and an eager trickle ran across the mossy floor. The room had been designed for storage, to judge from the fantastically barnacled racks and shelves all about. And he could find no door ahead into the next vault.

Something clicked nearby, as of steel on stone.

He snapped off the torch and darkness folded in. He might have been in a mine thousands of feet below the surface, for all the light evident. He could see nothing. And the black, inky air accented the trickling echoes of the encroaching sea water in the vaulted chamber.

There came another click, from his right and overhead. He waited. Something scraped. The sea boomed beyond the bunker walls. The smell of brine and iodine and decayed vegetation was thicker. He tried the flashlight, turning it toward the sound. The old shelves and storage scaffolds glinted with crustacean growth. He walked around them to the wall beyond and saw the crevice. He instantly turned off the light.

This time the darkness did not return completely.

Dim radiance filtered through the silted opening. It wavered, faded, strengthened. He moved forward, splashing in the water that now ran in eager tongues across the bunker floor. He felt a chill of apprehension. This chamber was already below flood-tide level. How soon would the sea fill it? Perhaps his return route was already impassable.

The light beyond the crevice faded again, but not before he saw that the tides had cracked and silted what had once been a concrete bulkhead doorway. Steps lifted beyond. The opening was narrowed by shell growth, and when he squeezed through his skin was painfully scraped. He went on sidewise, felt for a step, and suddenly got through.

The stairs ahead went up toward the wavering light. Now he could hear Wilde’s footsteps and the man’s heavy, labored breathing as he shoved crates and furniture aside in his search for whatever he had come here for. For an instant the man’s shadow leaped, gargantuan and distorted, down the stairs toward him.

The open bulkhead door ahead was one of the hermetically sealed doors to the Cassandra laboratory.

Water suddenly sloshed around his feet and he looked back. Without his torch, which he had pocketed with the sample vial of the Cassandra virus he had taken earlier, there was little to see. But he heard a thunderous roar as if water had burst through from the rising sea, and a white turbulence spun and eddied across the floor behind him. A cold wind whipped by him and up the stone steps ahead.

He plunged up with it.

The water rose violently, dragging at his knees, his thighs. It came in a great tidal surge that drowned out all need for caution. He was half driven up the steps by the impact.

When he was almost to the top, he saw the ponderous door being swung shut in his face.

For an instant he faced the possibility of being caught here, left to drown in this cauldron of tidal flux. There was no hope of retreating. He had to go up.

His shoulder slammed the closing door and drove it inward. There came a grunt of surprise from beyond. Durell fought free of the tide and drove on again. There was just enough space to tumble through into the storage room of the Cassandra bunker, and then Julian Wilde slammed shut the rubber-gasketed door against the crash of the impouring sea.

“You?” the man gasped. “Where—”

Durell kicked at the gasoline lantern on the stone floor and spun toward the startled blond man. All in an instant, he took in the purpose and achievements of the other. Stacked against the far wall were the crates of oil paintings that General von Uittal had tried to get. In addition, there were several more wooden boxes of test-tubes and vials. Julian Wilde held one of the boxes in both hands, staring in astonishment at Durell’s sudden appearance.

The darkness blanketed them both,

The tide in the chamber below made a dull, muffled pounding. Durell heard a careful scraping sound.

“Wilde?” he called softly.

“Don’t come near me,” the man replied in the dark. “I’ve got the virus culture in my hands. Unless you want me to smash it—”

“It would get you, too.”

“I’ve also got my gun.”

Durell tried to remember if he had seen the weapon before he had kicked out the lantern light. It was not there. He said, “You’re lying. You left your gun at the top of the exit stairs.”

“Even so.” Wilde’s voice was thick and disembodied in the sterile laboratory air. “What do you want, then?”

“We want to get off the island.”

“I could have killed you before, you know,” the man said.

“Perhaps you should have.”

“It’s not too late, chum. I just thought it would be more amusing if I left you and the Dutch copper girl to swim a bit before you bought it. After all, nobody invited you into this. You could have obeyed Flaas’ orders, eh? You could’ve gone back to Amsterdam.”

“Who told you that?”

“The inspector himself. Apologized for your interference, he did. Of course, this was before those stupid Swiss decided I was a leper, or some such sort of beast.”

“You are,” Durell said. “Nobody will have you. Were you planning to make a run for it to England?”

“When the weather smooths out a bit, sure. I’ll have Cassandra with me—the virus, I mean. She’ll buy me out of anything.” Wilde chuckled. “Now stand where you are, eh? I’m going to run for it, and it doesn’t matter any more if you or a million people die. They don’t concern me, you see. I’m going to get what I want, no matter what. Marius and I didn’t suffer all these years for nothing.”

“Marius is dead—or have you forgotten?”

“I don’t forget anything. Not ever. Goodbye, chum.” The last words were tighter and harsher, as if Wilde were suddenly holding his breath with a preparatory muscular spasm. Durell was ready when the light suddenly splashed across the chamber. He dived to the left and was not surprised by the roar of a gun in the narrow confines of the room. The eye of the flashlight was enormous, jerking to and fro. The room was crowded with tables, cabinets, crates of supplies. He could not see beyond the glaring eye of the torch. The gun smashed at him again, and something shattered overhead and sprinkled glass on the floor.

“I’ll kill you now, Durell! And I’ll take the women with me.”

“There isn’t time. The tide is too high already.”

“Twenty more minutes. I checked it. Come on out from behind that table, eh? Make it easy for yourself. Didn’t think I had a hand gun, eh? Surprised you, I take it.”

Durell gripped one of the table legs he crouched behind and tipped it over. It crashed toward the light, and he moved forward and to the left behind it. Wilde’s figure was enormous, powerful in the haze and glare. The light swung erratically and something went slashing across the floor with cold emphasis. It was sea water, pouring up the steps Durell had just used, slamming through the doorway he had kept Wilde from sealing.

Wilde yelled and the light swung over the seething tongue of flood. Durell drove at him, chopped at the light, and sent it falling end over end into the water. Wilde slashed with the gun barrel and Durell felt pain explode above his ear. He staggered down to one knee in the current. Wilde wrenched back. Durell tried to get up and grab at Wilde again, but the water slowed him and Wilde escaped, stepping backward rapidly. The gun roared deafeningly. Durell picked up a box from one of the tables and threw it. It struck the flashlight on the floor and smashed it out.

The darkness returned.

Sound was magnified into devouring proportions. There was the crash of the sea and the whine of the wind through the bunker opening above; and the rushing thrust of the tidal current drove through the bunkers below. Above or below, the sea was coming for them, Durell thought. There was no escape.

He listened to Wilde’s harsh breathing through the multitudinous noises. He thought he heard the man to the right of him. He tried to remember if Wilde still held the box of culture vials, but decided he must have had to put it down in order to handle both the flashlight and the gun. All right. But Wilde might have picked it up again. He listened. His life depended on what he heard, since every other sense was for the moment denied him.

Something scraped ahead and above him.

Alarm sent off panic reflexes inside him. Wilde was on the steps to the surface. There was another hermetical door there. If Wilde closed it on him, it would be like being sealed in a tomb.

He plunged forward.

The water was up to his knees. He reached the steps in the dark, stumbled, felt a sudden horror and panic as he remembered the sample vial of culture virus he had pocketed earlier. He paused, breathing carefully. It was still in his shirt pocket. He took it out, using only his sense of touch, and carefully lowered the slim ampoule into the water at his feet. Then he stepped ahead, free of that danger.

Wilde’s footsteps scraped on stone above him. There was a dim illumination the next moment. Daylight, gray and gloomy from the stormy evening, seeped through the opening up there. As Wilde’s figure blocked out the light, Durell saw that Wilde held the case of virus cultures in both hands again.

Both hands, Durell noted.

He had lost the gun somewhere.

Durell drove up the steps fast. Wilde turned and kicked, trying to shove him back down into the flooding bunker. He would not be stopped. When Wilde kicked at him again, Durell caught his ankle and hauled savagely down. Wilde yelled as he lost his footing and tumbled down the steps. Durell slammed a fist at the blur of his face, struck again, and Wilde tried to fight back and still cling to the box of vials. His face convulsed. His foot slipped and Durell struck again. Wilde fell back, arms flung wide. His eyes blazed with sudden terror as the box of virus cultures flew from his grip. It shattered on the stone steps and broke, spilling pale liquid that splashed on Wilde’s legs and arms. They both stood frozen.

Gray light filtered down from above. Wilde drew in a shuddering breath and stared in disbelief at the wet stains on his skin.

“The virus . . . you spread it. . . . My God!”

Durell stood above him now. Their positions were reversed.

Wilde faltered, “I’ll be infected—it’s all over—”

Durell backed away up the stairs. He stood in the opening and looked down at the big man, who regarded him with stunned eyes that gazed into a dreadful infinity. “Help me, Durell. . . .”

“Stay where you are,” Durell said harshly.

Wilde’s words were ragged. “No, wait. I need a doctor—”

“No doctor can help you now.”

“Surely there must be something—”

“It’s too late for you.”

“For you, too, then!” Wilde shouted.

“No. I’m leaving you here.”

“You can’t!” Wilde screamed.

Then Durell swung the heavy door shut on the bunker.

Rain pelted his back as he leaned both arms upon the panel and pushed all his weight against it. He felt Wilde slam against the steel door like a ravening animal, again and again. The jolts of insanity hammered at him. Durell drew one deep breath after another. He had had to kill men before—but never like this. He did not know if his waning strength was equal to it. But it had to be done. Wilde was like the plague itself now, irrevocably destroyed by the very weapon with which he had threatened the world. His muffled screams came thinly through the door, mingled with the patter of rain and another sound—

The sound of gushing, pouring water that tumbled in final fury into the underground chamber.

Durell shoved harder against the door.

It wa' like slamming shut the lid to Pandora’s box of evils spt loose upon the world.

Rain pelted his back. His shoulders ached. Again he thrust back a blow from the other side of the door. He looked over his shoulder at what was left of the island. It had shriveled alarmingly. On either side, the furious combers, lashed by the North Sea gale, hammered in inevitable triumph against the remaining land. Nowhere was another island to be seen now. But the boats were still there, straining at anchor, dimly visible through the gloom.

He thrust again at a ravening blow against the door.

There came a muffled scream.

Then he felt the smash of water against the inner side of the panel. He thought he heard Wilde cry out again, but it might have been the wind. Exhaustion dragged at him but he did not leave.

A time passed.

It might have been a minute, or perhaps ten. He was not sure. There was no more life inside the bunker.

He stepped back.

Nothing happened.

He turned his face up to the pelting rain. It felt good on his body, crisp and clean and normal. The wind was cold, but he did not mind it.

He sank to his knees and rested for another brief time until the growing darkness warned him. and then he got up and walked back to the lighthouse where Trinka and Cassandra waited for him to lead them back to the boats.

Twenty-four

The summer storm ended by morning. Then the sun shone, and everything along the shore of Friesland quickly returned to normal.

Durell slept until noon. He had returned with Trinka and Cassandra to Amschellig at eight o’clock in the evening and had then spent three hours in the local police station with Inspector Flaas. It was difficult to convince the Hollander that the virus danger was over. In the morning, when the tide dropped, Flaas said he would go out in the police launch and see for himself.

“Don’t open the bunker,” Durell warned him. “Wait a while.”

“How long, mynheer?”

“Let the sea sterilize the place. Wilde had enough virus culture with him to infect half of Europe.”

“Perhaps it should not be opened at all, then.” Flaas sighed. “Perhaps we should let it be his tomb.”

There were papers to sign, affidavits to dictate, phone calls and coded messages to be sent to London and to General McFee in Washington. By personal cable, Durell sent a brief message to Deirdre Padgett in Prince John, Maryland. Eventually, the Dutch Security people let him go back to the Gunderhof Hotel to rest and sleep.

He awoke to the ringing of the telephone and profuse apologies from the desk clerk. It was the police again, the clerk said. But it turned out to be Trinka Van Horn.

“Sam? Is that you?”

“All of me,” he said. “How are you today, Trinka?”

“I am better. I have not forgotten my shame at being so afraid, but I feel much better.”

“And Jan?”

“He is back on the Suzanne”

“Good. Will I see you before I go back to Amsterdam?” She said in a strange voice, “Please come for lunch.

Please. I must talk to you. It must not end like this. I understand how it was yesterday, on the island. You were very kind and wonderful. But I do want to see you once more.”

“All right. In half an hour?”

“Thank you,” she whispered.

He showered and dressed in a dark summer suit with a fresh white shirt and blue necktie. In the bathroom mirror, his face looked drawn and tired; his blue eyes were darkened almost to black. He looked older, he decided: the last survivor of a long list of men like John O’Keefe, who had lost the odds on. survival in the performance of duty, in giving service to the cause for which they worked. Perhaps there was a touch more of gray in his black hair, Durell thought. Or an added sorrow to carry with him from this day on.

He visited the hotel doctor briefly to have the neck scratch bandaged, and the pompous Dutchman clucked and shook his head, muttering about careless Americans, and finally let him go.

He walked through the morning sunshine into Amschellig, following the brick-deck walk on top of the dike.

The bathers on the beach laughed and splashed in the surf. The tennis players ran grimly back and forth in their sweaty routine. The rijwielpad beside the highway was crowded with humming, speeding bicycles. The sea was calm. Sails shone and bent to the gentle wind.

It was as if yesterday’s elemental tempest had never been.

Jan Gunther was not on the Suzanne when Durell arrived at the mooring at the municipal pier. A girl in a bright summer frock was busy on deck with a picnic basket lunch, and it was a moment before Durell realized that the very feminine, petite figure belonged to Trinka Van Horn. It was the first time he had seen her wear anything but shorts or dungarees and a man’s white shirt.

Her dark hair shone softly and with luster in the sun. She wore a delicately shaded lipstick that subtly emphasized her desirable mouth. And, like herself, the Suzanne had been scoured and polished until everything about the girl and the boat shone in the gentle warmth of the noonday sun.

“Hello,” she said, and she blushed.

He kissed her. “It’s good to see you like this.”

“You are surprised? But you knew I was a woman.”

“Yes, I knew,” he said.

She blushed deeper. “A rather scarlet woman, I suppose you think, after yesterday afternoon.”

“Not at all. A lovely, wonderful woman with much to offer.”

She laughed and suddenly seemed easier. “And they say Americans have no ability for gallantry! You are marvelous. All at once I feel much better, Sam. And now I am starved! My appetite is atrocious, is it not?”

“I don’t know where you put it all,” he smiled.

“I suppose it will catch up with me later, and I will become big and fat and matronly.”

“Never.”

“You are being gallant again. Or is it hunger that makes you say such nice things?”

“Both,” he said.

She said soberly, “You notice: I do not ask if it was love.”

“Trinka,” he said. “It’s not.”

She turned her head away and busied herself with the picnic basket. There was chicken and fresh bread and butter in a small ice chest, with fruit, and bottles of Dutch beer and gin. She had spread a small table with white linen and silver. He watched her for a moment and then touched her cheek and turned her so he could see her eyes.

“Is it so bad with you, then, Trinka?”

“Oh, no. It’s just— Well, yesterday you made me a woman, and this carries with it certain responsibilities,” she said soberly. “I suppose you think I am much too serious for my age, but I can’t help being Dutch, after all— even though I don’t know where my passions may take me, as they did yesterday.” She paused. “Why do you smile?”

“You’re very lovely,” he said.

“You think I am amusing?” She laughed suddenly. “I suspect I am. You need not worry. I will not ask you for anything. I simply had to see you again, to make sure my decision is correct. I thought about it all night, you see, after we left Inspector Flaas. I’ve been ordered to the Hague for another assignment, and you and I may never meet again. And I just had to see you once more, today.”

“I’m glad,” he said.

She looked down at the table she had reset a dozen times. “I’ve decided to marry at last, that’s the thing.”

“Oh?”

She turned in defiance. “Yes. And it’s Jan. I’ve decided to marry Jan Gunther, after all.”

“I think that’s wonderful,” he said sincerely. “But— have you decided to confess to him about us—about you and me?”

“I don’t know,” she said seriously. “Should I?”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Then I shan’t,” she decided primly.

Later, when he had finished the excellent and bountiful lunch, big Jan returned from the market with supplies for the Suzanne, and he toasted and congratulated the couple. Durell then left the boat and walked through the sunshine on Amschellig’s main street to the Boerderij Inn. He was not surprised when the red Mercedes-Benz eased toward him through the tourist traffic and the horn sounded gently but insistently. Cassandra was behind the wheel.

The sun turned her hair to molten gold, in a sleek and shining frame for her beautiful face. She wore a white linen dress, gold Balinese earrings, necklace, and white gloves. Trinka had looked sweet and demure, a child: Cassandra was smart and sophisticated and completely continental. She stopped the car and opened the door for Durell.

“I hope you do not think I am too bold, darling,” she said. “I stopped at the Gunderhof and picked up your luggage.”

“Reading my mind?” he asked.

“I hope so. You are going to Amsterdam, are you not?”

“Yes. First leg of my trip home.”

“Are you in a great hurry?”

“That depends.”

“I am going to Amsterdam, too,” Cassandra said, easing the powerful car out of the burden of traffic to the main highway south of Amschellig. “You don’t mind if I ask you to accept a lift? You owe me something—after all, I did save your life yesterday when Erich started to fire and I knocked his gun aside.” Her eyes slid sidewise toward him, smiling, and she looked somehow at peace with herself and the world. “So much has happened since I last saw you with the police. I am a good loser, you see. Inspector Flaas has ordered me to remain in Holland until the investigation of the general’s activities is completed. And I do not mind. I am a guest of the state, with a generous allowance.” “And what will you do afterward?”

“I think I will manage, don’t you?”

He considered the smooth line of her hip and thigh and the proud lift of her breast as she guided the Mercedes southward. “Yes, you have the equipment,” he said. “You’ll get along.”

“You rejected me, though.”

“Both times with good reason.”

“But that is all over now. It is like a nightmare—like an illness, as if all the things I said and did with you were done in a fever, when I was out of my mind. Do you understand?”

“I think so.”

“I feel as if I were reborn today. I want to make a fresh start. I need confidence. When I am through with the police here, I shall go to the south of France, to the Riviera. Something should turn up there.”

“Such as a rich Argentinian cattle rancher?”

“Perhaps.” She grinned. Then she added seriously, “Do you know, I rather like the name of Cassandra. Should I keep it?”

“Why not?”

“Do you say this because it suits me? Because it connotes something evil?”

“I never thought of you as evil, Cassandra. I always—thought you were as much a victim of all this as anyone could be.”

“Even when I tried to kill you?”

“That was yesterday. As you say, this is a new day.” They were silent. Already Amschellig was far behind, and the big red Mercedes traveled a small, narrow side road near the shore. They passed through a small Dutch village nestled along the dike, then another. The clean, shining land of meadows, windmills and tree-lined canals had never looked brighter, Durell thought. Now and then the car lifted as if on wings over a bridge that spanned a canal or stream. The main highway was miles away to their left. They were out of the usual traffic route for tourists, he noted, and the villages they passed, with their small inns and hotels, were unpretentious and honest, not conscious of the tourists who seldom used this route.

He was not surprised when the engine coughed and the Mercedes hesitated. Cassandra made a small sound and eased the car under the shade of a huge old beech tree. Ahead was an inn, a few other cars, and a herd of Frisian cattle in the distance.

The host, a stout and beaming Dutchman, came out of the inn door as the Mercedes rolled to a halt.

“Ah, Frau van Uittal. You are exactly on time, as promised. I have the room all ready, very private, very discreet.”

Cassandra looked at Durell with wide and innocent eyes. “Oh, dear, I seem to have run out of petrol again.”

Durell looked at the shining, sunny world and then at the blond girl who willingly waited beside him.

“I don’t mind,” he said.

Table of Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-one

Twenty-two

Twenty-three

Twenty-four