The Hidden Target by Helen MacInnes Read Free Book Online Page B

himself an extra hour in his early-morning drive from Brussels—in July there were thousands of tourists and hundreds of sightseeing buses as well as the usual trucks to cope with, not to mention some unexpected delay at the frontier. Today, there had been no complications at all. He had an hour and a half on his hands before he met Crefeld. Purposely, he chose a garage near Central Station: it lay on the far side of the old town from Crefeld’s discreet office. Not his official office; that was in The Hague with the rest of the government buildings. Because Crefeld, in his scrambled call to Renwick yesterday, had suggested Amsterdam for their meeting, there must be a piece of highly important business to discuss. Crefeld, of Dutch Intelligence, attached to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation until two years ago, was not inclined to suggest a face-to-face meeting unless the information he had was both urgent and vital. Renwick’s response had been quick. He had dropped the work that had piled up on his desk during his absence in Germany last week, and headed in a nicely anonymous rented car for Amsterdam.
    An hour and a half... Well, a walk would stretch his legs. He set out at a leisurely pace, in keeping with his civilian clothes—tweed jacket and flannels, nothing flamboyant; just old favourites that made him feel comfortable. The man-made island on which Central Station lay was well behind him. He headed south, then slightly to the west to escape the main thoroughfares and their jam of traffic. Here, in the close huddle of streets, medieval houses edging ancient canals, pointed gables, brick, and sandstone decorated with elaborately trimmed cornices, walking was almost pleasant: still too much traffic, torrents of flying Dutchmen on their bicycles. So he changed direction again, travelling a little to the east to reach the long narrow stretch of Kalverstraat, where traffic was banned and pedestrians could walk without any nervous glances over their shoulders. Too many shops here, for his taste, but you couldn’t have everything. And most of Amsterdam, the tourists, too, seemed to be window gazing.
    It was the usual problem, he was thinking, of an old city trying to cope with the twentieth century. From a bird’s-eye view, central Amsterdam would seem to be a completely geometric layout, a concentric sweeping of straight-running canals and parallel streets suddenly twisting, but neatly, carefully, in true Dutch fashion, to let canals and streets run as straight and parallel as ever until the next sharp turn. On a map, the pattern would be logical and easy; on foot, especially a stranger’s foot, it could be mystifying. It had taken him several visits to Amsterdam to master short cuts.
    Ahead of him were two of the mystified, pausing in the stream of pedestrians, hesitating about their direction. Two newly arrived lemmings—Renwick’s word for the trek of backpackers swarming off the trains for a week or two of reclining on grass, cosily squashed together, unperturbed by the mixtures of music from a hundred radios or by the polite policemen trying to separate the heroin users from the dreamers on hashish. But these two girls weren’t bent under backpacks: their shoulder bags were large but smart. Striped shirts were tucked into tight blue jeans that didn’t have a quarter inch to spare over neat buttocks. Their blonde hair, shoulder length and no doubt parted in the centre to swing free, was gleaming clean. Two most attractive lemmings, he thought as he noted the slender waists and thighs, the well-proportioned legs poured into skin-tight trousers. From this rear view at least, he added to that. Then one of them obliged his curiosity by turning to face him. Good God, he was now thinking, it can’t be, it couldn’t be—but it was.
    Nina O’Connell’s casual glance turned to wide-eyed astonishment. “Robert Renwick—Bob!” She came running towards him, arms outstretched. He had been about to shake hands.