‘You heard what Mr Samuelson said to you a short time ago.’ Agnelli looked quickly at the bar. Samuelson, still looking at nothing and nobody but with something peculiarly tense in his stance, appeared to be on yet another brandy. ‘Mr Riordan’s prepared to use the devil’s tools to fight the devil.’
‘Too late in the day to talk about pious, hypocritical platitudes, I suppose. How did you get them — those nuclear devices?’ ‘You heard. NATO. West Germany. Specifically, US bases.’ ‘I heard that. I didn’t ask where. I asked how.’ Van Effen looked away for a moment, then back at Agnelli. ‘I know. The RAF. The Red Army Faction.’
‘Yes. I would have told you but since you’ve guessed it or know — yes.’ ‘Jesus! The holy father upstairs must really have the original, twisted, double-dyed, infinite-stretch elastic conscience. The RAF! And only last night, according to the papers — correct me if I’m wrong — he was telling Wieringa, the Defence Minister, that the RAF were the inheritors of the bloody mantle of the Baader-Meinhof gangsters of the early seventies. The fact that his own hands are stained a bright red doesn’t appear to worry the Reverend at all. God, I should have thought of this right away. It’s only a couple of weeks since there was this successful breakin at a US army ammunition depot outside Hanover. The RAF claimed responsibility and their claim was generally accepted: the RAF is rather good at this and the Americans rather poor at guarding their installations. No mention of nuclear devices. It would have been in character for the RAF to have made specific mention of this: one supposes that they did but that the US Army, or the army through the government, put a stop order on this. Anti-nuclear sentiment is high enough already in Germany without the added knowledge that there’s a bunch of woolly-headed hare-brained young terrorists on the loose with nuclear weapons in their suitcases.’
‘No prizes for your guesses, Mr Danilov. Had to be that way. And it was.’ ‘Your information, of course, comes from the same source as the nuclear devices.’
‘Where else?’
‘Joachim and joop. And the two other baby-faced choirboys who were here when we arrived this afternoon.’
‘Who else?’
‘The leisure-time terrorists, as the West Germans call them — nights and weekends only. Since the egregious Christian Klar was captured — along with two lady friends, Mohnhaupt and Schultz I think they were called — and charged with the murders of diverse politicians, prosecutors, bankers and industrialists, the RAF have pulled in their horns and are reported to have moved into neighbouring countries. I suppose Holland was the natural, the inevitable first choice. Should be like a second home to them. ‘van Effen thought briefly then smiled. ‘On the one hand the RAF, on the other your blackmailing demands on the Dutch Government. Don’t you find it rather a splendid thought, Mr Agnelli, that the Dutch Government are going to pay the RAF for nuclear devices to be used against the Dutch people?’ Agnelli didn’t have the opportunity to say whether he did or not for the call-up buzzer on the RCA rang at that moment. He lifted the handset, spoke an acknowledgement, then said: ‘Mr Samuelson, for you.’ Samuelson came and took the handset, listened, said: ‘Thank you, Helmut, thank you very much,’hung up and looked at his watch. ‘Four minutes. I’m going to my room, Romero, but will be down for dinner. So will Mr Riordan. There’ll be a news flash on TV in four minutes. Please don’t miss it. ‘On his way to the stairs, he stopped by Annemarie’s table. ‘I am sorry, Miss Meijer.’ No ‘my dear’, no ‘Anne’. ‘I did not know.’ When the news flash came, interrupting some appropriately lugubrious offering from Handel by the Concertgebouw, it was very much what van Effen expected. ‘The now notorious terrorist — group, the FFF,’ the newscaster read, ‘have announced that, for reasons they do not wish to discuss, the demand for twenty million guilders from Mr David Meijer has been withdrawn, effective as from now. Miss Anne Meijer will be released and returned to her father as soon as is conveniently possible. The sum now asked from the Government has been correspondingly increased to a hundred and twenty million guilders.’
Apart from a slow shake of the head, which could have meant anything but probably indicated a total lack of understanding, Annemarie did not react at all. Julie smiled in delight and hugged her. George clapped a hand on van Effen’s knee and said: ‘Well, now, my friend, what do you think of that?’
‘Splendid,’ van Effen said. ‘Quite splendid. Bit unfair on policemen’s sisters, though. They should have let her go as well.’
‘I must admit,’ van Effen said, ‘that it does make it a bit more difficult to kill him, should that unfortunate need arise. If, of course, our friend Samuelson was moved solely by humanitarian principles. One must not misjudge the man. Perhaps he recalled the days when he used to say his prayers at his mother’s knees and his heart was touched. Equally well, he may be an even more calculating villain than we’ve given him credit for.’ ‘I can’t see how you can possibly say that,’ Vasco said. They were pacing to and fro on the front porch. It was bitterly cold, now, and the wind of gale force dimensions.
They had a certain degree of privacy out there — it had been impossible to conduct a private conversation inside — but only a certain degree. There was a loft over the garage, approached, as was the custom in that area, by an external stairway. Earlier on they had seen one man go up those stairs and another come down: almost certainly a change of watchman who would have taken position behind the loft window. There were probably others similarly stationed in the other barn and in the windmill itself. Whether the purpose was to keep insiders from going out or outsiders from coming in, it was impossible to say. All that could be said was that it was done with great discretion. Civilian staff were employed in the windmill and even the hint of the maintenance of a guard — almost certainly an armed guard — would have done much to destroy the credibility of the Golden Gate Film Productions.
‘I not only say that he may be an exceedingly cunning villain,’ van Effen said. ‘I believe it. Sure it was moving, touching, heartrending even, a fundamentally decent man overwhelmed by his own decency. You noticed the terms of the communiqué. Miss Anne Meijer will be released as soon as conveniently possible. For conveniently possible read inconveniently impossible. People will know that the poor man is trying desperately to return Annemarie to the bosom of her family but finds it impossible to do without jeopardizing his own plans and safety. But he has made the offer. Mr David Meijer, who has not, I assume, accumulated his millions or billions or whatever without having some faint glimmer of intelligence somewhere, will know exactly what the score is and that his daughter is as much a pawn as ever and that he can still be counted on to do the right thing — as far as Samuelson is concerned — about bringing his influence to bear on whatever the government’s decision may be. The government whose decision matters, of course, is the British one. He can’t influence that. But he can influence the Dutch Government to influence the British one, which is just about as useful from Samuelson’s viewpoint.
‘And think what would have happened had David Meijer died while his daughter was still in the FFF’s custody. Unlikely, but that’s not the point. People range from the soft-headed to the incurably romantic. The “died-of-a-broken heart” syndrome has always had a powerful following. Sure, people do die of a broken heart but it’s over the months and the years and not overnight. No matter. If he had died the public reaction to Samuelson and the FFF would have been one of total revulsion and rejection. Attitudes — would harden, resistance stiffen, and the average man in the street would say: “The hell with this cold, ruthless, murderous monster. -Never give in to him, never. Let him do his worst and see if we care.” That, I should imagine, is the last thing that Samuelson and company want.