‘Going back to that communiqué. Notice the noble, dignified and selfless fashion in which he refused to give the reasons for his decisions. I didn’t know that David Meijer had a heart condition but for all I know it may be common knowledge. If it’s not, I’ll take long odds that it soon will be. Helmut Paderiwski, whom Samuelson calls our voice in Amsterdam, will make good and sure of &.at and that his voice will be heard. Radio and newspapers will be anonymously and discreetly told that David Meijer has a severe heart condition — the truth of that can soon be established — and hints dropped that his gallant hostage daughter had been pleading for his life. For the newspapers, it’s a natural, a human-angle story to tug at the very heart strings. Suitably dressed up in the usual sickening journalese, this will be manna to Samuelson, a big plus, an image that puts him in line for tabloid canonization. No matter what he’s done or is threatening to do, popular sympathy is going to swing behind him and make it all the easier for his demands to be granted. The whole world loves a reformed rogue, a bandit with a heart of gold. A toast to the Robin Hood of Amsterdam.’
‘This I do believe,’ George said. ‘Among the other accomplishments that you don’t know I have, is a smattering of Yiddish. Not much, not even a working knowledge, but a smattering. I wondered what senseless instructions he was trying to give in Yiddish to this fellow Paderiwski in Amsterdam. I don’t wonder any more. It makes sense.’ ‘Lastly, of course, there’s the Dutch reverence for the guilder. What praise, people will say, can be too high for a man who spurns twenty million guilders — the fact that he doesn’t have it and probably wouldn’t have got it anyway is quite irrelevant — at the sight of a tear-drop in the comer of the eye of a lovely maiden. The twenty million, admittedly, is added to the government’s bill, but who ever cared about robbing a government. You still think, Vasco, that Samuelson was motivated only by humanitarian considerations?’ ‘When you put it that way, I have to admit that I don’t. He has to be what you say — a crafty conniving villain. Well, it’s all very well you having convinced me. It’s an unfortunate fact that fourteen million other Dutchmen didn’t hear you. I’m convinced that they’re going to stay convinced to the contrary.’
‘Not all of them. Give some of them time and they’ll work it out. The great majority won’t. And that’s what the frightening thing is about Samuelson. It took me quite a time to figure out the angles here and I’m in the heart of this whole messy business. Samuelson’s got a computer mind. He did it all on his feet, within seconds and it would seem automatically, although of course it wasn’t automatic at all. Man’s brilliant. And he’s highly dangerous. It would behove us to have a very long spoon when we’re supping with Samuelson.’
‘Back to the devil again, is that it?’George said. ‘He’s the key. Nothing else fits the lock. He’s the one who says that Riordan is prepared to use the devil’s tools to fight the devil. I wonder if Riordan uses a long spoon to sup with Samuelson. It must cost thousands of dollars a day to run this operation. Maybe tens of thousands. Agnelli hasn’t got that kind of money and I doubt whether Riordan ever earned a penny in his life.’ ‘Samuelson beyond doubt. The paymaster.’
‘Pity we’re in no position to check with Interpol.’ ‘Wouldn’t do us-any good even if we were. If he’s as clever as I think he is. Interpol will never have heard of him. Interpol simply has no idea as to who the world’s outstanding criminals are. That’s why they’re outstanding. May not even have a criminal past at all — I say criminal past as distinct from criminal record. He’ll have no record. And perhaps, as I say, no past. He may even be what Uncle Arthur suggested he was — a bloated plutocrat, a man who has made his immense fortune in oil or shipping or something of the kind.’
‘Then we would have heard of him.’
‘We may or may not have heard of him — under another name, of course. May not even be a photograph of him in existence. Some of the world’s wealthiest men are never photographed.’
George said: ‘If he’s as wealthy as we think he may be, why is he trying to extract more from other sources?’
‘Show. I’m convinced that Samuelson neither wants nor needs money. But for all I know he may have persuaded his partners that his funds are drying up and he’s now making a show about money to divert attention from the fact that money is of no value to him and that his interests lie elsewhere. Agnelli makes no secret of the fact that he’s very interested in money and this may be Samuelson’s way of keeping him happy. He has a large staff to keep happy and they’ll be keenly interested in seeing Samuelson displaying a keen interest in money. He seems to need us — for what precise purpose we don’t yet know, we may well be here on only a contingency basis — but we need money too. And Riordan, above all, has to be kept happy, for Riordan above all needs unholy money to achieve his holy purposes.’
‘Unholy money for unholy purposes,’ George said. ‘Split mind. Dichotomy. There must be something in this Irish American connection. We know there are men who are willing to trade heroin for bags of gold to help a so-called worthy cause. Purblindness. That the word?’ ‘Something like that. In medical terms, tunnels as opposed to peripheral vision. We have to accept that it’s an illness and try to treat it as best we can.’
‘How do we go about treating this ailment? The good doctor has something on his mind?’ Despite his vast bulk George shivered in the bitter wind. ‘A prescription? A nostrum?’
‘Too late for medicine.’
‘Surgery? I wouldn’t even know which end of a scalpel to hold.’ ‘You don’t have to. In the best medical parlance, surgery, at this moment, is contra-indicated.’
George cleared his throat delicately, which is no easy thing to do in a gale-force wind. ‘You have suddenly developed a new-found regard for the well-being of murderous villains? Criminals who are prepared to drown God knows how many thousands of our fellow countrymen?’
‘No such sea-change, George. I know they have their quota of hard men and psychopathic nut-cases around here but do you seriously doubt for a moment that we could kill Riordan, Samuelson and Agnelli and get the girls away unharmed?’
‘I know we could — I take back my ludicrous suggestion about your tender heart. Tungsten steel, more like.’
Vasco’s expression didn’t exactly register shock but it did hold a certain amount of apprehension and disbelief.
‘You’re a policeman. Sir. Sworn to uphold the law. I mean, give them a fair trial and hang them in the morning.’
‘I’m my own court of law and I’d shoot them down like wild dogs if I thought it would solve anything but it wouldn’t. Two reasons — one psychological, one practical.
‘The psychological — curiosity, nosiness if you like. I am not convinced that those three are ordinary criminals. I am not convinced that Romero Agnelli is the murderous, ruthless killer we think he is. He bears no resemblance to his two brothers I put behind bars, who were Grade A vicious sadists. The fact that he hasn’t laid a finger on either Julie or Annemarie helps bear that out. Or Riordan. He’s no psychopath. Loony as a nut or nutty as a loon and a demagogue of some note — but only an occasional demagogue. But being loony doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re certifiable: there are quite a number of people tidied up — institutionalized, as they say — in lunatic asylums who are convinced that they are the only sane people around and that there exist great numbers of people, those responsible for wars, hunger, diseases, genocide, heroin pushers and those who talk glibly of nuclear annihilation, not to mention a few other trivial matters, who should be where they are, and who’s to say they’re not right?’