Puppet on a Chain. Alistair MacLean

dead man. One of our very best agents and a friend of mine for many years. He had urgent and, I assume, vital information that he wished to deliver to me in person in Schiphol. I was the only person in England who knew he would be there. But someone in this city knew. My rendezvous with Duclos was arranged through two completely unconnected channels, but someone not only knew I was coming but also knew the precise flight and time and so was conveniently on hand to get to Duclos before he could get to me. You will agree, Belinda, that I wasn’t changing the subject? You will agree that if they knew that much about me and one of my associates, they may be equally well informed about some other of my associates.’

      They looked at each other for a few moments, then Belinda said in a low voice: ‘Duclos was one of us?’

      ‘Are you deaf?’ I said irritably.

      ‘And that we – Maggie and myself, that is—’

       ‘Precisely.’

      They seemed to take the implied threats to their lives fairly calmly, but then they’d been trained to do a job and were here to do a job and not fall about in maidenly swoons. Maggie said: ‘I’m sorry about your friend.’

      I nodded.

      ‘And I’m sorry if I was silly,’ Belinda said. She meant it too, all contrition, but it wouldn’t last. She wasn’t the type. She looked at me, extraordinary green eyes under dark eyebrows and said slowly: ‘They’re on to you, aren’t they?’

      ‘That’s my girl,’ I said approvingly. ‘Worrying about her boss. On to me? Well, if they’re not they have half the staff at the Hotel Rembrandt keeping tabs on the wrong man. Even the side entrances are watched: I was tailed when I left tonight.’

      ‘He didn’t follow you far.’ Maggie’s loyalty could be positively embarrassing.

      ‘He was incompetent and obvious. So are the others there. People operating on the fringes of junky-land frequently are. On the other hand they may be deliberately trying to provoke a reaction. If that’s their intention, they’re going to be wildly successful.’

      ‘Provocation?’ Maggie sounded sad and resigned. Maggie knew me.

      ‘Endless. Walk, run, or stumble into everything. With both eyes tightly shut.’

      ‘This doesn’t seem a very clever or scientific way of investigation to me,’ Belinda said doubtfully. Her contrition was waning fast.

      ‘Jimmy Duclos was clever. The cleverest we had. And scientific. He’s in the city mortuary.’

      Belinda looked at me oddly. ‘You will put your neck under the block?’

      ‘On the block, dear,’ Maggie said absently. ‘And don’t go on telling your new boss what he can and can’t do.’ But her heart wasn’t in her words for the worry was in her eyes.

      ‘It’s suicide,’ Belinda persisted.

      ‘So? Crossing the streets in Amsterdam is suicide – or looks like it. Tens of thousands of people do it every day.’ I didn’t tell them that I had reason to believe that my early demise did not head the list of the ungodly priorities, not because I wished to improve my heroic image, but because it would only lead to the making of more explanations which I did not at the moment wish to make.

      ‘You didn’t bring us here for nothing,’ Maggie said.

      ‘That’s so. But any toe-tramping is my job. You keep out of sight. Tonight, you’re free. Also tomorrow, except that I want Belinda to take a walk with me tomorrow evening. After that, if you’re both good girls, I’ll take you to a naughty nightclub.’

      ‘I come all the way from Paris to go to a naughty night-club?’ Belinda was back at being amused again. ‘Why?’

       ‘I’ll tell you why. I’ll tell you some things about nightclubs you don’t know. I’ll tell you why we’re here. In fact,’ I said expansively, ‘I’ll tell you everything.’ By ‘everything’ I meant everything I thought they needed to know, not everything there was to tell: the differences were considerable. Belinda looked at me with anticipation. Maggie with a wearily affectionate scepticism, but then Maggie knew me. ‘But first, some Scotch.’

      ‘We have no Scotch, Major.’ Maggie had a very puritanical side to her at times.

      ‘Not even au fait with the basic principles of intelligence. You must learn to read the right books.’ I nodded to Belinda. The phone. Get some. Even the managerial classes must relax occasionally.’

      Belinda stood up, smoothing down her dark dress and looking at me with a sort of puzzled disfavour. She said slowly: ‘When you spoke about your friend in the mortuary I watched and you showed nothing. He’s still there and now you are – what is the word – flippant. Relaxing, you say. How can you do this?’

      ‘Practice. And a siphon of soda.’