Puppet on a Chain

CHAPTER NINE

The view from the top of the towering Havengebouw, the skyscraper in the harbour, is unquestionably the best in Amsterdam. But I wasn't interested in the view that morning, only in the facilities this vantage point had to offer. The sun was shining, but it was breezy and cool at that altitude and even at sea-level the wind was strong enough to ruffle the blue-grey waters into irregular wavy patterns of white horses.

The observation platform was crowded with tourists, for the most part with wind-blown hair, binoculars and cameras, and although I didn't carry any camera I didn't think I looked different from any other tourist. Only my purpose in being up there was.

I leaned on my elbows and gazed out to sea. De Graaf had certainly done me proud with those binoculars, they were as good as any I had ever come across and with the near-perfect visibility that day the degree of definition was all that I could ever have wished for.

The glasses were steadied on a coastal steamer of about a thousand tons that was curving into harbour. Even when I first picked her up I could detect the large rust-streaked patches on the hull and see that she was flying the Belgian flag. And the time, shortly before noon, was right. I followed her progress and it seemed to me that she was taking a wider sweep than one or two vessels that had preceded her and was going very close indeed to the buoys that marked the channel: but maybe that was where the deepest water lay.

I followed her progress till she closed on the harbour and then I could distinguish the rather scarred name on the rusty bows. Marianne the name read. The captain was certainly a stickler for punctuality, but whether he was such a stickler for abiding by the law was another question.

I went down to the Havenrestaurant and had lunch. I wasn't hungry but meal-times in Amsterdam, as my experience had been since coming there, tended to be irregular and infrequent. The food in the Havenrestaurant is well spoken of and I've no doubt it merits its reputation: but I don't remember what I had for lunch that day.

I arrived at the Hotel Touring at one-thirty. I didn't really expect to find that Maggie and Belinda had returned yet and they hadn't. I told the man behind the desk that I'd wait in the lounge, but I don't much fancy lounges, especially when I had to study papers like the papers I had to study from the folder we'd taken from Morgenstern and Muggenthaler's, so I waited till the desk was momentarily unmanned, took the lift to the fourth floor and let myself into the girls' room. It was a fractionally better room than the previous one they'd had, and the couch, which I immediately tested, was fractionally softer, but there wasn't enough in it to make Maggie and Belinda turn cartwheels for joy, apart from the fact that the first cartwheel in any direction would have brought them up against a solid wall.

I lay on that couch for over an hour, going through all the warehouse's invoices and a very unexciting and innocuous list of invoices they turned out to be. But there was one name among all the others that turned up with surprising frequency and as its products matched with the line of my developing suspicions, I made a note of its name and map location.

A key turned in the lock and Maggie and Belinda entered. Their first reaction on seeing me seemed to be one of relief, which was quickly followed by an unmistakable air of annoyance. I said mildly: 'Is there something up, then?'

'You had us worried,' Maggie said coldly. 'The man at the desk said you were waiting for us in the lounge and you weren't there.'

'We waited half an hour.' Belinda was almost bitter about it. 'We thought you had gone.'

'I was tired. I had to lie down. Now that I've apologized, how did your morning go?'

'Well — ' Maggie didn't seem very mollified — 'we had no luck with Astrid — '

'I know. The man at the desk gave me your message. We can quit worrying about Astrid. She's gone.'

'Gone?' they said.

'Skipped the country.'

'Skipped the country?'

'Athens.'

'Athens?'

'Look,' I said. 'Let's keep the vaudeville act for later. 'She and George left Schiphol this morning.'

'Why?' Belinda asked.

'Scared. The bad men were leaning on her from one side and the good guy — me — on the other. So she lit out.'

'How do you know she's gone?' Maggie enquired.,

'A man at the Balinova told me.' I didn't elaborate, if they'd any illusions left about the nice boss they had I wanted them to keep them. 'And I checked with the airport.'

'Mm.' Maggie was unimpressed by my morning's work, she seemed to have the feeling that it was all my fault that Astrid had gone and as usual she was right. 'Well, Belinda or me first?'

'This first.' I handed her the paper with the figures 910020 written on it. 'What does it mean?'

Maggie looked at it, turned it upside down and looked at the back. 'Nothing,' she said.

'Let me see it,' Belinda said brightly. 'I'm good at anagrams and cross-words.' She was, too. Almost at once she said: 'Reverse it. 020019. Two a.m. on the 19th, which is tomorrow morning.'

'Not bad at all,' I said indulgently. It had taken me half an hour to work it out.

'What happens then?' Maggie asked suspiciously.

'Whoever wrote those figures forgot to explain that,' I said evasively, for I was getting tired of telling outright lies. 'Well, Maggie, you.'

'Well.' She sat down and smoothed out a lime-green cotton dress which looked as if it had shrunk an awful lot with repeated washing. 'I put on this new dress to the park because Trudi hadn't seen it before and the wind was blowing so I had a scarf over my head and — '

'And you were wearing dark glasses.'

'Right.' Maggie wasn't an easy girl to throw off stride. 'I wandered around for half an hour, dodging pensioners and prams most of the time. Then I saw her — or rather I saw this enormous fat old — old — '

'Beldam?'

'Beldam. Dressed like you said she would be. Then I saw Trudi. Long-sleeved white cotton dress, couldn't keep still, skipped about like a lamb.' Maggie paused and said reflectively: 'She really is a rather beautiful girl.'

'You have a generous soul, Maggie.'

Maggie took the hint. 'By and by they sat down on a bench. I sat on another about thirty yards away, just looking over the top of a magazine. A Dutch magazine.'

'A nice touch,' I approved.

'Then Trudi started plaiting the hair of this puppet — '

'What puppet?'

The puppet she was carrying,' Maggie said patiently. 'If you keep on interrupting I find it difficult to remember all the details. While she was doing this a man came up and sat beside them. A big man in a dark suit with a priest's collar, white moustache, marvellous white hair. He seemed a very nice man.'

'I'm sure he was,' I said mechanically. I could well imagine the Rev. Thaddeus Goodbody as a man of instant charm except, perhaps, at half-past three in the morning.

'Trudi seemed very fond of him. After a minute or two, she reached an arm round his neck and whispered something in his ear. He made a great play of being shocked but you could see he wasn't really, for he reached a hand into his pocket and pressed something into her hand. Money, I suppose.' I was on the point of asking if she was sure it wasn't a hypodermic syringe, but Maggie was far too nice for that. 'Then she rose, still clutching this puppet, and skipped across to an ice-cream van. She bought an ice-cream cornet — and then she started walking straight towards me.'

'You left?'

'I held the magazine higher,' Maggie said with dignity. 'I needn't have bothered. She headed past me towards another open van about twenty feet away.'

'To admire the puppets?'

'How did you know?' Maggie sounded disappointed.

'Every second van in Amsterdam seems to sell puppets.'

That's what she did. Fingered them, stroked them. The old man in charge tried to look angry but who could be angry with a girl like that? She went right round the van, then went back to the bench. She kept on offering the cornet to the puppet.'

'And didn't seem upset when the puppet didn't want any. What were the old girl and the pastor doing the while?'

'Talking. They seemed to have a lot to talk about. Then Trudi got back and they all talked some more, then the pastor patted Trudi on the back, they all rose, he took his hat off to the old girl, as you call her, and they all went away.'

'An idyllic scene. They went away together?'

'No. The pastor went by himself.'

Try to follow any of them?'

'No.'

'Good girl. Were you followed?'

'I don't think so.'

'You don't think so?'

There was a whole crowd of people leaving at the same time as I did. Fifty, sixty, I don't know. It would be silly for me to say that I was sure nobody had an eye on me. But nobody followed me back here.'

'Belinda?'

There's a coffee-shop almost opposite the Hostel Paris. Lots of girls came and went from the hostel but I was on my fourth cup before I recognized one who'd been in the church last night. A tall girl with auburn hair, striking, I suppose you would call her — '

'How do you know what I'd call her? She was dressed like a nun last night.'

'Yes.'

'Then you couldn't have seen that she had auburn hair.'

'She had a mole high up on her left cheekbone.'

'And black eyebrows?' Maggie put in.

'That's her,' Belinda agreed. I gave up. I believed them. When one good-looking girl examines another good-looking girl her eyes are turned into long-range telescopes. 'I followed her to the Kalverstraat,' Belinda continued. 'She went into a big store. She seemed to walk haphazardly through the ground floor but she wasn't being haphazard really for she fetched up pretty quickly at a counter marked "SOUVENIRS: EXPORT ONLY". The girl examined the souvenirs casually but I knew she was far more interested in the puppets than anything else.'

'Well, well, well,' I said. 'Puppets again. How did you know she was interested?'

'I just knew,' Belinda said in the tone of one trying to describe various colours to a person who has been blind from birth. 'Then after a while she started to examine a particular group of puppets very closely. After shilly-shallying for a while she made her choice, but I knew she wasn't shilly-shallying.' I kept prudent silence. 'She spoke to the assistant who wrote something on a piece of paper.'

'The time it would — '

'The time it would take to write the average address.' She'd carried on blandly as if she hadn't heard me. 'Then the girl passed over money and left.'

'You followed her?'

'No. Am I a good girl too?'

'Yes.'

'And I wasn't followed.'

'Or watched? In the store, I mean. By, for instance, any big fat middle-aged man.'

Belinda giggled. 'Lots of big — '

'All right, all right, so lots of big fat middle-aged men spend a lot of time watching you. And lots of young thin ones, too, I shouldn't wonder.' I paused consideringly. 'Tweedledum and Tweedledee, I love you both.'

They exchanged glances. 'Well,' Belinda said, 'that is nice.'

'Professionally speaking, dear girls, professionally speaking. Excellent reports from both, I must say. Belinda, you saw the puppet the girl chose?'

'I'm paid to see things,' she said primly.

I eyed her speculatively, but let it go. 'Quite. It was a Huyler costumed puppet. Like the one we saw in the warehouse.'

'How on earth did you know?'

'I could say I'm psychic. I could say "genius". The fact of the matter is that I have access to certain information that you two don't.'

'Well, then, share it with us.' Belinda, of course.

'No.'

'Why not?'

'Because there are men in Amsterdam who could take you and put you in a quiet dark room and make you talk.'

There was a long pause, then Belinda said: 'And you wouldn't?'

'I might at that,' I admitted. 'But they wouldn't find it so easy to get me into that quiet dark room in the first place.' I picked up a batch of the invoices. 'Either of you ever heard of the Kasteel Linden. No? Neither had I. It seems, however, that they supply our friends Morgenstern and Muggenthaler with a large proportion of pendulum clocks.'

'Why pendulum clocks?' Maggie asked.

'I don't know,' I lied frankly. 'There may be a connection. I'd asked Astrid to try to trace the source of a certain type of clock — she had, you understand, a lot of underworld connections that she didn't want. But she's gone now. I'll look into it tomorrow.'

'We'll do it today,' Belinda said. 'We could go to this Kasteel place and —'

'You do that and you're on the next plane back to England. Alternatively, I don't want to waste time dragging you up from the bottom of the moat that surrounds this castle. Clear?'

'Yes, sir,' they said meekly and in unison. It was becoming distressingly and increasingly plain that they didn't regard my bite as being anywhere near as bad as my bark.

I gathered the papers and rose. 'The rest of the day is yours. I'll see you tomorrow morning.'

Oddly, they didn't seem too happy about getting the rest of the day to themselves. Maggie said: 'And you?'

'A car trip to the country. To clear my head. Then sleep, then maybe a boat trip tonight.'

'One of those romantic night cruises on the canals?' Belinda tried to speak lightly but it didn't come off. She and Maggie appeared to be on to something I'd missed. 'You'll need someone to watch your back, won't you? I'll come.'

'Another time. But don't you two go out on the canals. Don't go near the canals. Don't go near the night-clubs. And, above all, don't go near the docks or that warehouse.'

'And don't you go out tonight either.' I stared at Maggie. Never in five years had she spoken so vehemently, so fiercely even: and she's certainly never told me what to do. She caught my arm, another unheard-of thing. 'Please.'

'Maggie!'

'Do you have to take that boat trip tonight?'

'Now, Maggie —'

'At two o'clock in the morning?'

'What's wrong, Maggie? It's not like you to — '

'I don't know. Yes, I do know. Somebody seems to be walking over my grave with hob-nailed boots.'

'Tell him to mind how he goes.'

Belinda took a step towards me. 'Maggie's right. You mustn't go out tonight.' Her face was tight with concern.

'You, too, Belinda?'

'Please.'

There was a strange tension in the room which I couldn't even begin to comprehend. Their faces were pleading, a curious near-desperation in their eyes, much as if I'd just announced that I was going to jump off a cliff.

Belinda said: 'What Maggie means is, don't leave us.' Maggie nodded. 'Don't go out tonight. Stay with us.' 'Oh, hell!' I said. 'Next time I need help abroad I'm going to bring a couple of big girls with me.' I made to move past them towards the door, but Maggie barred the way, reached up and kissed me. Only seconds later Belinda did the same.

'This is very bad for discipline,' I said. Sherman out of his depth. 'Very bad indeed.'

I opened the door and turned to see if they agreed with me. But they said nothing, just stood there looking curiously forlorn. I shook my head in irritation and left.

On the way back to the Rembrandt I bought brown paper and string. In the hotel room I used this to wrap up a complete kit of clothes that was now more or less recovered from the previous night's soaking, printed a fictitious name and address on it and took it down to the desk. The assistant manager was in position.

'Where's the nearest post office?' I asked.

'My dear Mr Sherman — ' The punctiliously friendly greeting was automatic but he'd stopped smiling by this time — 'we can attend to that for you.'

'Thank you, but I wish to register it personally.'

'Ah, I understand.' He didn't understand at all, which was that I didn't want brows raised or foreheads creased over the sight of Sherman leaving with a large brown parcel under his arm. He gave me the address I didn't want.

I put the parcel in the boot of the police car and drove through the city and the suburbs until I was out in the country, heading north. By and by I knew I was running alongside the waters of the Zuider Zee but I couldn't see them because of the high retaining dyke to the right of the road. There wasn't much to see on the left hand either: the Dutch countryside is not designed to send the tourist into raptures.

Presently I came to a signpost reading 'Huyler 5 km', and a few hundred yards further on turned left off the road and stopped the car soon after in the tiny square of a tiny picture-postcard village. The square had its post office and outside the post office was a public telephone-box. I locked the boot and doors of the car and left it there.

I made my way back to the main road, crossed it and climbed up the sloping grass-covered dyke until I could look out over the Zuider Zee. A fresh breeze sparkled the waters blue and white under the late afternoon sun, but, scenically, one couldn't say much more for that stretch of water, for the encompassing land was so low that it appeared, when it appeared at all, as no more than a flat dark bar on the horizon. The only distinctive feature anywhere to be seen was an island to the north-east, about a mile off-shore.

This was the island of Huyler and it wasn't even an island. It had been, but some engineers had built a causeway out to it from the mainland to expose the islanders more fully to the benefits of civilization and the tourist trade. Along the top of this causeway a tarmac highway had been laid.

Nor did the island itself even deserve the description of distinctive. It was so low-lying and flat that it seemed that a wave of any size must wash straight over it, but its flatness was relieved by scattered farm-houses, several big Dutch barns and, on the western shore of the island, facing towards the mainland, a village nestling round a tiny harbour. And, of course, it had its canals. That was all there was to be seen, so I left, regained the road, walked along till I came to a bus stop and caught the first bus back to Amsterdam.

I elected for an early dinner, for I did not expect to have much opportunity to eat later that night and I had the suspicion that whatever the fates had in store for me that night had better not be encountered on a full stomach. And then I went to bed, for I didn't anticipate having any sleep later that night either.

The travel alarm awoke me at half-past midnight. I didn't feel particularly rested. I dressed carefully in a dark suit, navy roll-neck jersey, dark rubber-soled canvas shoes and a dark canvas jacket. The gun I wrapped in a zipped oilskin bag and jammed into the shoulder-holster. Two spare magazines went into a similar pouch and I secured those in a zipped pocket of the canvas jacket. I looked longingly at the bottle of Scotch on the side-board and decided against it. I left.

I left, as was by now second nature to me, by the fire-escape. The street below, as usual, was deserted and I knew that nobody followed me as I left the hotel. It wasn't necessary for anyone to follow me for those who wished me ill knew where I was going and where they could expect to find me. I knew they knew. What I hoped was that no one knew that I knew.

I elected to walk because I didn't have the car any more and because I had become allergic to taxis of Amsterdam. The streets were empty, at least the streets I chose were. It seemed a very quiet and peaceful city.

I reached the docks area, located myself, and moved on till I stood in the dark shadow of a storage shed. The luminous dial of my watch told me that it was twenty minutes to two. The wind had increased in strength and the air had turned much colder, but there was no rain about although there was rain in the air. I could smell it over the strong nostalgic odours of sea and tar and ropes and all the other things that make dockside areas smell the same the world over. Tattered dark clouds scudded across the only fractionally less dark sky, occasionally revealing a glimpse of a pale high half-moon, more often obscuring it, but even when the moon was hidden the darkness was never absolute, for above there were always rapidly changing patches of starlit sky.

In the brighter intervals I looked out across the harbour that stretched away into first dimness and then nothingness. There were literally hundreds of barges to be seen in this, one of the great barge harbours of the world, ranging in size from tiny twenty-footers to the massive Rhine barges, all jammed in a seemingly inextricable confusion. The confusion, I knew, was more apparent than real. Close packed the barges undoubtedly were but, although it would call for the most intricate manoeuvring, each barge had, in fact, access to a narrow sea lane, which might intersect with two or three progressively larger lanes before reaching the open water beyond. The barges were connected to land by a series of long wide floating gangways, which in turn had other and narrower gangways attached at right angles to them.

The moon went behind a cloud. I moved out of the shadows on to one of the main central gangways, my rubber shoes quite soundless on the wet wood, and even had I been clumping along in hob-nailed boots I question whether anyone — other than those who were ill-intentioned to me — would have paid any heed, because although all the barges were almost certainly inhabited by their crews and in many cases their crews and families, there were only one or two scattered cabin lights to be seen among all the hundreds of craft lying there: and apart from the faint threnody of the wind and the soft creaking and rubbing as the wind made the barges work gently at their moorings, the silence was total. The barge harbour was a city in itself and the city was asleep.

I'd traversed about a third of the length of the main gangway when the moon broke through. I stopped and looked round.

About fifty yards behind me two men were walking purposefully and silently towards me. They were but shadows, silhouettes, but I could see that the silhouettes of their right arms were longer than those of their left arms. They were carrying something in their right hands. I wasn't surprised to see those objects in their hands just as I hadn't been surprised to see the men themselves.

I glanced briefly to my right. Two more men were advancing steadily from land on the adjacent paralleling gangway to the right. They were abreast with the two on my own gangway.

I glanced to the left. Two more of them, two more moving dark silhouettes. I admired their co-ordination.

I turned and kept on walking towards the harbour. As I went, I extracted the gun from its holster, removed the waterproof covering, zipped up the covering again and replaced it in a zipped pocket. The moon went behind a cloud. I began to run, and as I did so I glanced over my shoulder. The three pairs of men had also broken into a run. I made another five yards and glanced over my shoulder again. The two men on my gangway had stopped and were lining up their guns on me, or seemed to be, because it was difficult to see in the starlight, but a moment later I was convinced they had for narrow red flames licked out in the darkness although there was no sound of shots, which was perfectly understandable for no man in his right senses was going to upset hundreds of tough Dutch, German and Belgian bargees if he could possibly help it. They appeared, however, to have no objection to upsetting me. The moon came out again and I started to run a second time.

The bullet that hit me did more damage to my clothes than it did to me although the swift burning pain on the outside of my upper right arm made me reach up involuntarily to clasp it. Enough was enough. I swerved off the main gangway, jumped on to the bows of a barge that was moored by a small gangway at right angles and ran silently along the deck till I got in the shelter of the wheelhouse aft. Once in shelter, I edged a cautious eye round the corner.

The two men on the central gangway had stopped and were making urgent sweeping motions to their friends on the right, indicating that I should be outflanked and, more likely than not, shot in the back. They had, I thought, very limited ideas about what constituted fair play and sportsmanship: but there was no questioning their efficiency. Quite plainly, if they were going to get me at all — and I rated their chances as good — it was going to be by this encircling or outflanking method and it would obviously be a very good thing for me if I could disabuse them of this idea as soon as I could; so I temporarily ignored the two men on the central gangway, assuming, and correctly, I hoped, that they would remain where they were and wait for the outflankers to catch me unawares, and turned round to face the left gangway.

Five seconds and they were in view, not running, but walking deliberately and peering into the moon-shadows cast by the wheelhouses and cabins of the barges, which was a very foolhardy or just simply foolish thing to do because I was in the deepest shadow I could find while they, by contrast, were almost brutally exposed by the light of the half-moon and I saw them long before they ever saw me. I doubt whether they ever saw me. One of them, for a certainty, did not, for he never saw anything again: he must have been dead before he struck the gangway and slid with a curious absence of noise, no more than a sibilant splash, into the harbour. I lined up for a second shot, but the other man had reacted very quickly indeed and flung himself backwards out of my line of sight before I could squeeze the trigger again. It occurred to me, for no reason at all, that my sportsmanship was on an even lower level than theirs, but I was in the mood for sitting ducks that night.

I turned and moved for'ard again and peered round the edge of the wheelhouse. The two men on the central gangway hadn't moved. Perhaps they didn't know what had happened. They were a very long way away for an accurate pistol shot by night, but I took a long steady careful aim and tried anyway. But this duck was too far away. I heard a man give an exclamation and clutch his leg, but from the alacrity with which he followed his companion and jumped from the gangway into the shelter of a barge he couldn't have been badly hurt. The moon went behind a cloud again, a very small cloud, but the only cloud for the next minute or so and they had me pin-pointed. I scrambled along the barge, regained the main gangway and started to run further out into the harbour.

I hadn't got ten yards when that damned moon made its presence felt again. I flung myself flat, landing so that I faced inshore. To my left the gangway was empty which was hardly surprising as the confidence of the remaining man there must have been badly shaken. I glanced to my right. The two men there were much closer than the two who had just so prudently vacated the central gangway and from the fact that they were still walking forward in a purposeful and confident manner it was apparent that they did not yet know that one of their number was at the bottom of the harbour, but they were as quick to learn the virtue of prudence as the other three had been, for they disappeared from the gangway very quickly when I loosed off two quick and speculative shots at them, both of which clearly missed. The two men who had been on the central gangway were making a cautious attempt to regain it, but they were too far away to worry me or I them.

For another five minutes this deadly game of hide-and-seek went on, running, taking cover, loosing off a shot, then running again, while all the time they closed in inexorably on me. They were being very circumspect now, taking the minimum of chances and using their superior numbers cleverly to advantage, one or two engaging my attention while the others scuttled forward from the shelter of one barge to the next. I was soberly and coldly aware that if I didn't do something different and do it very soon, there could be only one end to this game, and that it must come soon.

Of all the inappropriate times to do so, I chose several of the brief occasions I spent sheltering behind cabins and wheelhouses to think about Belinda and Maggie. Was this, I wondered, why they couldn't see me now, for not only would they have known they had behaved so queerly the last time I had seen them? Had they guessed, or known by some peculiarly feminine intuitive process, that something like this was going to happen to me and known what the end would be and been afraid to tell me? It was as well, I thought, that they had been right but their faith in the infallibility of their boss would have been sadly shaken. I felt desperate and I supposed I must have looked pretty much the same way; I'd expected to find a man with a quick gun or a quicker knife lying in wait for me and I think I could have coped with that, with luck even with two of them: but I had not expected this. What had I said to Belinda outside the warehouse? — 'He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day.' But now I had no place to run to for I was only twenty yards short of the end of the main gangway. It was a macabre feeling to be hunted to death like a wild animal or a dog with rabies while hundreds of people were sleeping within a hundred yards of me and all I had to do to save myself was to unscrew my silencer and fire two shots in the air and within seconds the entire barge harbour would have been in life-saving uproar. But I couldn't bring myself to do this, for what I had to do had to be done tonight and I knew this was the last chance I would ever have. My life in Amsterdam after tonight wouldn't be worth a crooked farthing. I couldn't bring myself to do it if there was left to me even the slenderest chance imaginable. I didn't think there was, not what a sane man would call a chance. I don't think I was quite sane then.

I looked at my watch. Six minutes to two. In yet another way, time had almost run out. I looked at the sky. A small cloud was drifting towards the moon and this would be the minute they would choose for the next and almost certainly last assault: it would have to be the moment I chose for my next and almost certainly last attempt to escape. I looked at the deck of the barge: its cargo was scrap and I picked up a length of metal. I again gauged the direction of that dark little cloud, which seemed to have grown even littler. Its centre wasn't going to pass directly across the moon but it would have to do.

I'd five shots left in my second magazine and I fired them off in quick succession at where I knew or guessed my pursuers had taken cover. I hoped this might hold them for a few seconds but I don't think I really believed it. Quickly I shoved the gun back in its waterproof covering, zipped it up and for extra security stowed it not in its holster but in a zipped pocket of my canvas coat, ran along the barge for a few steps, stepped on the gunwale and threw myself on to the main gangway. I scrambled desperately to my feet and as I did I realized that the damned cloud had missed the moon altogether.

I suddenly felt very calm because there were no options open to me now. I ran, because there was nothing else in the world I could do, weaving madly from side to side to throw my would-be executioners off aim. Half a dozen times in not three seconds I heard soft thudding sounds — they were as close to me as that now — and twice felt hands that I could not see tugging fiercely at my clothes. Suddenly I threw my head back, flung both arms high in the air and sent the piece of metal spinning into the water and had crashed heavily to the gangway even before I heard the splash. I struggled drunkenly and briefly to my feet, clutched my throat, and toppled over backwards into the canal. I took as deep a breath as possible and held it against the impact.

The water was cold, but not icily so, opaque and not very deep. My feet touched mud and I kept them touching mud. I began to exhale, very slowly, very carefully, husbanding my air reserves which probably weren't very much as I didn't go in for this sort of thing very often. Unless I had miscalculated the eagerness of my pursuers to do away with me — and I hadn't — the two men on the central gangway would have been peering hopefully down at the spot where I had disappeared within five seconds of my disappearance. I hoped that they drew all the wrong conclusions from the slow stream of bubbles drifting to the top of the water and I hoped they drew them soon, for I couldn't keep up this kind of performance very much longer.

After what seemed about five minutes but was probably not more than thirty seconds I stopped exhaling and sending bubbles to the surface for the excellent reason that I had no more air left in my lungs to exhale. My lungs were beginning to hurt a little now. I could almost hear my heart — I could certainly feel it — thudding away in an empty chest, and my ears ached. I pushed clear of the mud and swam to my right and hoped to God I'd got myself orientated right. I had. My hand came in contact with the keel of a barge and I used the purchase obtained to pass quickly under, then swam up to the surface.

I don't think I could have stayed below for even a few seconds longer without swallowing water. As it was, when I broke surface it took considerable restraint and will-power to prevent me from drawing in a great lungful of air with a whoop that could have been heard half-way across the harbour, but in certain circumstances, such as when your life depends on it, one can exercise a very considerable amount of will-power indeed and I made do with several large but silent gulps of air.

At first I could see nothing at all, but this was just because of the oily film on the surface of the water that had momentarily glued my eyelids together. I cleared this but still there wasn't much to see, just the dark hull of the barge I was hiding behind, the main gangway in front of me, and another parallel barge about ten feet distant. I could hear voices, a soft murmuring of voices. I swam silently to the stern of the barge, steadied myself by the rudder and peered cautiously round the stern. Two men, one with a torch, were standing on the gangway peering down at the spot where I had so recently disappeared: the waters were satisfactorily dark and still.

The two men straightened. One of them shrugged and made a gesture with the palms of both hands held upwards: the second man nodded agreement and rubbed his leg tenderly. The first man lifted his arms and crossed them above his head twice, first to his left, then to his right. Just as he did so there was a staccato and spluttering coughing sound as a marine diesel, somewhere very close indeed, started up. It was obvious that neither of the two men cared very much for this new development, for the man who had made the signal at once grabbed the arm of the other and led him away, hobbling badly, at the best speed he could muster.

I hauled myself aboard the barge, which sounds a very simple exercise indeed, but when a sheer-sided bull is four feet clear of the water this simple exercise can turn out to be a near-impossibility and so it turned out for me. I made it eventually with the aid of the stern-rope, flopped over the gunwale and lay there for a full half minute, gasping away like a stranded whale, before a combination of the beginnings of recovery from complete exhaustion and a mounting sense of urgency had me on my feet again and heading towards the barge's bows and the main gangway.

The two men who had been so lately bent on my destruction and were now no doubt full of that righteous glow which comes from the satisfaction of a worthwhile job well done were now no more than two vaguely discerned shadows disappearing into the even deeper shadows of the storage sheds on shore. I pulled myself on to the gangway and crouched there for a moment until I had located the source of the diesel, then stooped, ran,quickly along the gangway till I came to the place where the barge was secured to a side gangway, first dropping to my hands and knees, then inching along on knees and elbows before peering over the edge of the gangway.

The barge was at least seventy feet in length, broad in proportion and as totally lacking in grace of design as it was possible to be. The for'ard three quarters of the barge was given up entirely to battened holds, then after that came the wheelhouse and, right aft and joined to the wheelhouse, the crew accommodation. Yellow lights shone through the curtained windows. A large man in a dark peaked cap was leaning out of a wheelhouse window talking to a crew member who was about to clamber on to the side gangway to cast off.

The stern of the barge was hard against the main gangway on which I was lying. I waited till the crew member had climbed on to the side gangway and was walking away to cast off for'ard, then slithered down soundlessly on to the stern of the barge and crouched low behind the cabin until I heard the sound of ropes being thrown aboard and the hollow thump of feet on wood as the man jumped down from the side gangway. I moved silently for'ard until I came to an iron ladder fitted to the fore end of the cabin, climbed up this and edged for'ard in a prone position till I was stretched flat on the stepped wheelhouse roof. The navigation lights came on but this was no worry: they were so positioned on either side of the wheelhouse roof that they had the comforting effect of throwing the position in which I lay into comparatively deeper shadow.

The engine note deepened and the side gangway slowly dropped astern. I wondered bleakly if I had stepped from the frying-pan into the fire.