"Do you take medication?"
"Yes, but it doesn't cure. It dulls pain, but that's all. Hot baths are the best remedy."
"Hot baths!" the ambassador exclaimed, and clapped his hands. "But Japan is the country of hot baths! You'll find them all over the place. Natural hot springs. With a bit of luck we'll find you an inn with its own spring, although I wouldn't know of any offhand in Kyoto itself, just outside maybe. But even the ordinary Japanese bath should cure your rheumatism. You can sit and soak all day in a wooden tub with clean clear water, as hot as you can stand it. Their baths have copper tubes going through them twisted under a little wooden seat so that you can't burn yourself, and outside there will be a fellow keeping the fire under the bath burning. Or, if they are more modern, the bath will be electrically heated. My dear fellow, this is just what you are looking for. The baths alone will be worth your trip."
"Good," the commissaris said. The ambassador's enthusiasm was warming his bones and the brandy was seeping into his veins, taking the edge off the trials of the day.
"Splendid, splendid," the ambassador said. "Maybe you can give me the name and address of your cousin in Hong Kong, and the CIA can approach him and whisk him away for a while. Your sergeant won't have a cover, I presume, but I don't think the yakusa will worry about him. He'll be your bodyguard and can present himself as a tough young man from Amsterdam. The yakusa haven't met him here yet, have they?"
"Only the two men the sergeant arrested today."
"Well, they are tucked away in jail, and we'll arrange for them to be incommunicado."
"And Miss Andrews knows him."
"Yes yes. And Miss Andrews is staying with your niece, right?"
"She is. The police are keeping an eye on her movements."
The ambassador called for the bill and signed it with a flourish. "I am so glad we came to an agreement, I am sure you won't regret it. Japan is perhaps the most interesting country in the world. Exotic, mysterious and efficient, an unbelievable combination. You don't have to worry about seeing the Japanese ambassador, I'll take care of all details. You should be given your ticket within a week, I think, maybe earlier. We'll fly you out to Hong Kong first, so that you can familiarize yourself with your cover, and the sergeant can meanwhile fly out to Tokyo and meet whatever men the Japanese Secret Service will select to help you over there."
The commissaris mumbled his thanks for the dinner, and the ambassador reached out across the table and patted his guest's thin shoulder with a large hand on which thick blond hairs stood out individually in the light of four tall candles burning quietly on their silver chandelier.
"It was a rare pleasure having you here tonight. Leave it all to me now. I can work quickly when I am pushed, and a lot of different forces are pushing me right now."
They helped each other into their overcoats and strolled into the street. The ambassador didn't have a car with him and strode off into the drizzling rain, his hands clamped behind his back and his head and back bent slightly. The commissaris looked at the disappearing figure, snaking his head and scowling.
"How did I get into this?" he muttered fiercely, as he got into the Citroen. "Another year and I'll be retired. Why me?"
But there was no answer in the cold long streets of The Hague where nameless pedestrians shuffled about in the night, on their way home from a late movie.
\\\\\ 6 /////
Sergeant De Gier wasn't quite sure what he wanted to do. The day was over and done with, and he felt a numb form of tiredness, as if his limbs didn't belong to him and were likely to drop off his body. Behind him Police Headquarters was almost asleep. There were still a few lights in the lobby and corridors but the many black windows were staring at his back like dead eyes, sockets of a gigantic skull, and the water in the canal opposite the tram stop gleamed darkly. Even the few cars which cruised down narrow Marnix Street seemed hardly alive, lit-up shadows going nowhere.
But he still felt vaguely happy. Grijpstra's promise had been fulfilled. Together they had captured some of the subtleties of Bach's Weimar Prelude and he could hear Grijpstra's ruffling on the small drum supporting the trill of his own flute as they had flowed through the last chords of the sadly precise ending. He had taken Grijpstra to a cell in the back of Headquarters, where their two suspects had dumbly welcomed them, bowing from their bunks and awkwardly shaking hands when de Gier introduced them to the adjutant. Mr. Takemoto, Mr. Nakamura. Once again they had protested their innocence, in the few words of English at their command. Certainly they knew Mr. Nagai, and a very fine gentleman he was. They had enjoyed their meal with him and the nice Dutch beer. But they hadn't killed him. They were tourists and they had met Mr. Nagai in the Japanese restaurant and struck up a conversation. They had never met Mr. Nagai before. If he was dead now they were very sorry to hear it. Mr. Takemoto shook his round bald head in speechless consternation and sympathy and Mr. Nakamura blew his nose, several times and with great enthusiasm. And they would like to see their consul, and they would also like a cup of tea. De Gier went outside and came back with two bottles of lemonade. They bowed again and drank the lemonade. De Gier collected the empty bottles and nodded at Grijpstra. The suspects jumped up and bowed them out of the door where an elderly guard stood staring, rattling his keys nervously.
"Well?" de Gier had asked when they were back in their own office.
"Saaaaah," Grijpstra answered, and shook his head. He told de Gier about his investigation at the restaurant and picked up his drumsticks as he was talking. De Gier produced his flute from his inside pocket and assembled the small instrument.
Then they played Bach. De Gier had had his doubts, but Grijpstra sang the music to him again, he also scribbled a few notes down and de Gier began to feel his way about. He had closed his eyes, trying to find the atmosphere of the evening when they had listened to the record. He nodded as some of the passages came back to him. Grijpstra helped, humming and tenderly touching the tight surface of his drums. They didn't capture the entire piece, but it seemed to de Gier now that they had managed to touch something of its essence. He was shaking his head in surprise. How could they have done that with their limited knowledge of music and by using such unlikely instruments as a snare drum and a flute? Or was he trying to talk himself into an experience he never really had? How did he know what Bach had in mind when he constructed the piece? He heard the music again and saw Grijpstra's face, transformed by rapture, and almost felt the vibration of the ruffling drumsticks underlining his own sustained trills. He would have to listen to the record once more when he got home, for they had missed an entire part of the prelude, being unable to remember it exactly enough. The main motif had come back to him but there had been far more to it.
Perhaps they could try again later, although he doubted that they would ever find such a perfect setting again. Both he and Grijpstra had been sad and detached enough to get into the piece's mood. It had to do with Joanne Andrews' complaint, with the dead Mr. Nagai, his spectacled face peering at the lens of the cheap automatic camera, while his thin body was slumped in a cane chair on an Amsterdam terrace on a hot summer day. It was connected with the new BMW dangling from the police truck's hook, and to the blood spattered on its ceiling and the skull fragment hidden in a corner of the upholstery.
The streetcar arrived and he staggered to the nearest seat. He was tired, but he had been tired all day. The ride in the streetcar was a daze; he slept some of the time and got back into the prelude that hovered around and in his mind. He changed to a bus that happened to be waiting at the stop as he got off the streetcar.