Floodgate by Alistair MacLean Read Free Book Online

would have to exclude the pitifully amateurish criminals among the Krakers, hot-headed madmen capable of any atrocity, no matter how many innocents suffer, in the name of their crazy and woolly ideals, totally amoral lunatics, mindless idiots who love destruction for destruction's sake. But they are not Dutchmen, though they may have been born in this country: they're just members of a terminally sick sub-culture that you'll find in many other countries.

'But I don't think they're responsible for the Schiphol flooding. However much one may deplore the action of the saboteurs one has to admire the clear-headed intelligence that lies behind it. Nobody with a clear-headed intelligence would ever dream of associating with the retarded morons who make up the Krakers, though that's not to say the Krakers couldn't be employed in some subordinate capacity where they wouldn't be allowed to know enough to do any damage. But no Dutchman, however criminally minded, would or could have been responsible. Every Dutchman is born with the belief, the certain knowledge, that our dykes are inviolable: it is an act of faith. I am not - what is the word, gentlemen? - I am not xenophobic, but this is a foreign-inspired ideaing carried out by foreigners. And it's only the beginning. There will be further atrocities. Wait and sec.'

'We won't have to wait long,' de Graaf said. 'They're going to breach the Texel sea dyke at four-thirty this afternoon.'

George nodded, as if the news had come as no surprise to him. 'So soon, so soon. And then the next dyke, and then the next, and the next. When the blackmail demands come, as come they must, for nothing other than blackmail can lie behind this, they will be horrendous.' He glanced towards his bar where a group of men were making urgent signals that they were dying of thirst. 'You will excuse me, gentlemen.' 'An extraordinary fellow,' de Graaf said. 'He would have made a splendid politician - he could hardly be accused of being at a loss for words. Strange type to be a criminal alleged to be associated with violence - he's an intelligent and clearly well educated man. So, on the other hand, were a number of famous - notorious, rather - and highly successful criminals in the past. But I find him especially intriguing. He seems well into the criminal mind but at the same time he thinks and speaks like a cop. And he got on to the possibility that those criminals might come from another country in a fraction of the time that it took us to arrive at the possibility - and, unlike us, he had nothing to help or guide him towards that conclusion. Maybe you and I are fractionally less clever than we like to think we are.'

'Maybe you should hire George, on an ad hoc basis, substantive rank of sergeant, as a dyke-breach investigator. Rather a fine title, don't you think?'

'The title is fine, the idea is not. Set a thief to catch a thief - the idea never did work. Do not jest with your superior in his hour of need. Speaking of need, when do we eat?'

'Let's ask.' George had returned with fresh supplies of besssenjenever. 'We'd like lunch, George.'

'The Colonel will eat here? La Caracha is doubly honoured. This table will do?'

'I'm expecting Vasco and Annemarie.'

'Of course. 'George picked up the drinks tray and led the way up four steps into a dining room, bright, cheerful and so small that it held only two tables. George produced a menu. 'Everything is excellent. The Rodekool met Rolpens is superb.'

'Shall we have the superb, Peter?' de Graaf said.

'Fine. And, George, as our chief of police is with us, I think the expense account could stand a bottle of reasonable wine.'

'Reasonable? Do I believe my ears? A superb wine to go with a superb dish and strictly on La Caracha. A Chateau Latour, perhaps? I have said that there is no better cellar than mine in the city. Equally beyond dispute is the fact that I have far the best Bordeaux cellar.' George handed them their aperitifs. 'Sharpen your appetites,