A profound and rather gloomy silence was ended by the entrance of a waiter who approached. de Jong. ‘Telephone, sir. Is there a Lieutenant van Effen here?’
‘Me.’ Van Effen followed the waiter from the canteen and returned within a minute and addressed himself to de Graaf.
‘Duty sergeant. Apparently two men reported their boats missing some hours ago. Pleasure boat owners. The sergeant who took their complaint didn’t think it necessary to notify our department. Quite right, of course. The boats have now been recovered. One, it would seem, was taken by force. The boats are in our hands. I told them to take a couple of finger-print men aboard, return the boats to the owners but not to allow the owners aboard. If you can spare the time, sir, we can interview the two owners after we leave here: they live less than a kilometre from here.’
‘A promising lead, yes?’
‘No.’
‘I don’t think so either. However, no stone unturned. We may as well go now and — ‘
He broke off as the same waiter reappeared and approached him. ‘Phone again. For you this time, Colonel.’
De Graaf returned in a matter of seconds. ‘Jon, have you such a thing as a shorthand typist?’
‘Of course. Jan?’
‘Sir?’ A blond youngster was on his feet.
‘You heard the Colonel?’
‘Yes, sir.’ He looked at de Graaf. ‘What shall I say?’ ‘Ask her to take that phone call and type it out for me. Peter, you have clairvoyance, the second sight.’
‘The FFF?’
‘Indeed. The press, I need hardly say. The FFF have their publicity priorities right. Usual anonymous phone call. The sub-editor who took the call was smart enough to tape-record it but I’d be surprised if that is of the slightest help. A fairly lengthy statement, I understand. Shorthand is not my forte. Let us possess our souls in patience.’ They had possessed their souls for not more than four minutes when a girl entered and handed a type-written sheet to de Graaf. He thanked her, looked briefly at the sheet and said: ‘Action this day would appear to be their motto. This, I understand, is their statement in full and a fairly arrogant example of its kind it is, too. This is what the FFF says:
“‘Next time, perhaps, the responsible citizens in Amsterdam will listen to what we say, believe what we say and act accordingly. It is because you did not believe what we said that a misadventure occurred today. For this misadventure we hold Mr de Jong entirely responsible. He was given due warning and chose to ignore that warning. We deplore the unnecessary deaths of the three passengers aboard the Fokker Friendship but disclaim all responsibility. It was not possible for us to arrest the explosion.”’ De Graaf paused and looked at van Effen. ‘Interesting?’
‘Very. So they had an observer. We’ll never find him. He could have been in the airport but hundreds of people who don’t work here visit here every day. For all we know, there could have been someone outside the airport with a pair of binoculars. But that’s not what is interesting. The four first-aid men who brought in the most seriously injured passengers did not know at the time whether the three men who were later pronounced dead were, in fact, dead or alive. Two of them, I understand, died after admission, but none was officially pronounced dead until the doctor certified them as such. How did the FFF know? Neither the doctor nor the first-aid men could have been responsible for leaking the news for they would be the obvious suspects and all too easily checked on. Apart from them, the only people who knew of those deaths arc in this room.’ Van Effen looked leisurely around the sixteen men and three women seated at the canteen tables then turned to de Jong.
‘It hardly needs spelling out, does it, sir? We have an infiltrator here, an informant. The enemy has a spy in our camp. Again he carried out the same slow survey of the room. ‘I do wonder who it can be.’ ‘In this room?’ De Jong looked both disbelieving and unhappy at the same time.
‘I don’t have to repeat the obvious, do I?’
De Jong looked down at his hands which were now tightly clasped on the table. ‘No. No. Of course not. But, surely, well, we can find out. You can find out.’
‘The usual rigorous enquiries, is that it? Trace the movements of every person in this room after the Fokker crashed? Find out if anyone had access to the phone or, indeed, used a phone? Sure, we can do that, pursue the rigorous enquiries. We’ll find nothing.’
‘You’ll find nothing?’ De Jong looked his perplexity. ‘How can you be so sure, so sure in advance?’
‘Because,’ de Graaf said, ‘the Lieutenant has a policeman’s mind. Not a bunch to be underestimated, are they, Peter?’
‘They’re clever.’
De Jong looked from de Graaf to van Effen then back to de Graaf. ‘If someone would kindly explain.
‘Simple, really,’de Graaf said. ‘It hasn’t occurred to you that the FFF didn’t have to let us know that they knew of the deaths. Gratuitous information, if you like. They would know that we would know this. They would know, as the Lieutenant has just pointed out, that we would know that someone had informed them and that someone would have to be one of us. They would be certain that we would check on the possibility of someone here having made a phone call, so they made certain that no one here made a phone call. He passed the word on to an accomplice who is not in this room: the accomplice made the call. I’m afraid, Jon, that you have another mole burrowing away inside here. Maybe even more. You are aware, of course, that every word of our conversation will be reported back to the FFF, whoever they may be. We will, naturally, go through the motions and make the necessary routine enquiries. As van Effen says, we will, of course, draw a blank.’
‘But — but it all seems so pointless,’ de Jong said. ‘Why should they be so devious so as to achieve nothing?’
‘They’re not really devious and they do achieve something. A degree of demoralization, for one thing. More important, they are saying that they are a force to be reckoned with, that they can infiltrate and penetrate security when they so choose. They are giving the message that they are a highly organized group, one that is capable of carrying out any threats that it chooses to make and one that is to be ignored at our peril. ‘Speaking of threats and perils, let’s return to the FFF’s latest phone call. They go on to say: “We are sure that the Dutch people are well aware that, in the face of an attacker determined to bring it to its knees, it is the most defenceless nation in the world. The sea is not your enemy. We are, and the sea is our ally.
“‘You will not need reminding that the Netherlands has about 1300 kilometres of sea dykes. A certain Cornelius Rijpma, president of the Sea Polder board in Leeuwarden, in Friesland, is on record as saying some months ago that the dykes in his area consist of nothing more than layers of sand and that if a big storm comes they are certain to break. By a ‘big storm’, one would assume that it would have to be a storm of the order of the one that breached the delta defences in 1953 and took 1,850 lives. Our information, supplied to us by the Rijkswaterstaat, is that — ‘
‘What! What’ Van der Kuur, red-faced and almost incoherent with anger, was on his feet. ‘Are those devils daring to suggest that they got information from us? Dastardly! Impossible!’
‘Let me finish, Mr van der Kuur. Can’t you see that they’re using the same technique again, trying to undermine confidence and demoralize? just because we know that they have contacts with one or more of Mr de Jong’s staff is no proof that they have any with your people. Anyway, there’s worse to come. They go on: “Our information is that a storm of not more than 70 % of the power of the 1953 one would be sufficient to breach the dykes. Mr Rijpma was talking about vulnerable dykes. Of the Netherlands’ 1300 kilometres of dykes, almost exactly three hundred have deteriorated to a critical condition. By the best estimates, no repairs will be carried out to the threatened dykes for another twelve years, that is to say, 1995. All we propose to do is to accelerate the advent of the inevitable.”’