'I have no idea, sir. We know, of course, that petty criminals have in the past sold Russian and other eastern bloc weapons to the Irish Republican Army; but these, as I say, were petty criminals operating on a relatively petty scale. This, I feel, is something much bigger. The IRA never had any organization worth speaking of in this country. The FFF definitely have. Where can I contact you later on this evening, sir?' 'I wish you hadn't mentioned that,' de Graaf said gloomily. 'Earlier, I had hoped to spend it in the bosom of my family. But now? If the government does decide to send an emissary to parley with the FFF - good heavens, Peter, we completely forgot to listen in to the six o'clock news - the broadcast, rather, that was to state when and where the government would hold this parley.'

'We've only to lift a phone. It's of no significance.' 'True. This emissary I mentioned. Who, do you think, is the logical choice?'

'The Minister of Justice?'

'No other. My lord and master whom you have frequently, actionably and accurately described as an old woman. Old women like, to have their hands held. Who do you think would best play the part of nursemaid?' 'You'd make an admirable choice. In fact, I'm happy to say that you would be the inevitable choice. Don't forget to take an umbrella big enough for both of you.' Rain had begun to fall and fall so heavily that the Volkswagen's wipers failed adequately to cope with it. 'You should consider yourself privileged, sir, to have a ringside seat at what may be, at least, a minor turning point in history.'

'I'd rather have my own armchair by my own fireside.' De Graaf reduced visibility even more by drawing heavily on his cheroot. 'But whatever seat I'm in tonight it'll be a d.a.m.ned sight safer and more comfortable than the one you'll be in. Not that I would suppose for a moment that they have armchairs in the palace cellars.' De Graff apparently concentrating on increasing the blue fug inside the car, lapsed briefly into silence then said: 'I don't like it, Peter. I don't like it at all. Too many ifs, buts and question marks.'

'I have to admit that I'm not all that madly keen on it myself.

But we've agreed - it's our only way in. And there's another thing I don't like too much and makes me more than glad that your friend gave those scars a degree of permanence. I mean, they may have reservations about me that I didn't suspect before.'

'What makes you suspect now?'

'A rather disquieting remark that one of those gentlemen let drop a few minutes_ ago - Professor Span, it was. He said he came from Utrecht. He is firmly of the opinion that the Agnelli brothers come from the same place.'

'So?'

'It may have escaped your memory, sir, but Vasco - Sergeant Westenbrink - also comes from Utrecht.'

'd.a.m.n id' De Graaf said softly. The implications had struck him immediately. 'Oh, d.a.m.n it all!'

'Indeed. Cops and criminals generally have a working knowledge of each other. Two things may help, though. Vasco spent much of his time in Utrecht working under cover and he's been in disguise - sort of - since he took up residence in Krakerdom. Imponderables, sir, imponderables.' 'Your continued existence would seem to me to be another imponderable,' de Graaf said heavily. 'There is no call -'

'Yes, sir, I know, over and above the call of duty. Let's just say in for a penny in for a pound, or, if you like, a calculated risk. By my calculations, the odds are on me.' He pulled up outside de Graaf's house. 'I am glad that I'm not a betting man.' He peered at his watch. 'Six-seventeen. If I want to reach you in the next hour or so you will, of course, be in your room in the Trianon.'

'Briefly only, sir. For about forty minutes, from, say, six forty-five onwards, I'll be in La Caracha.'

'The devil you will! La Caracha. I thought someone was delivering some data or whatever it is in the Trianon at six thirty and that you were going to study that?'

'I don't have to look at it. I know how to operate radio controlled detonations. When I explained to them at length the difficulties involved in radio detonation, that was for their benefit and my benefit. Their benefit, to convince them that I really was what I purported to be, a whizz-kid in explosives: my benefit, to find out how much they really knew about the subject, which appears to be singularly little. Work that one out, sir - why so highly organised a group is anything but organized in what would appear to be a very - if not the most -vital department. That's one of the reasons why I said that by my calculations the odds are on me - I think they may really need me and be prepared to lean over just so slightly backwards to give me the benefit of the doubt.

'But the real reason for whatever optimism I have lies in La Caracha. You may remember I asked Vasco to meet me in Julie's flat. I changed my mind about that: I think that the further he and I - in any capacity of Danilov - keep away from the flat the better. So I've arranged to meet him in La Caracha. I also took the liberty of phoning George and asking him if he would be interested in giving me a little a.s.sistance. He said he would be more than pleased. I did not - I repeat not, sir - co-opt him in your name. I thought there were some things you'd rather not know about - officially, that is.'

'I see. You have a point. I sometimes wonder, Peter, how many things I don't know about, officially and unofficially, but now is not the time for brooding. I mean, you haven't the time. And how do you propose to have those two help guarantee your continued existence?' 'They will, I hope, be keeping an eye on me. A close eye. Vasco, as I think I've mentioned, has no equal as a shadower. And George - well, he has other virtues.'

'So I've noticed. May heaven help us all.'

Agnelli's messenger arrived punctually at six-thirty, less than two minutes after van Effen had arrived back in his room at the Trianon. A man, van Effen reflected, ideally suited for his task - a small, drab, unremarkable nonent.i.ty of a man who could have been first cousin of the other nonent.i.ty who consumed so remarkably few jonge jenevers in the close vicinity of the reception desk in the lobby. He handed over a yellow envelope, said that someone would be around to pick him up at seven forty-five and left, less than twenty seconds after his arrival.

'No,' Sergeant Westenbrink said. He was seated with van Effen and George in a small private room in La Caracha. 'I don't know the Annecys - the two that you didn't put in prison, that is.'

'Do they know you?'

'I'm sure they don't. I never came into contact with them. They left for Amsterdam about three years ago.'

'Ah, I'd forgotten. Either of you bear this broadcast that was supposed to be made to the FFF?'

'It was made,' George said. 'Minister of justice's house. 8 p.m. Guarantees of immunity - I a.s.sume the government believed in the threat to turn the Oostlijk-Flevoland into a new sea.'

'Well, doesn't concern us at the moment. You are sure you want to come in on this, George?'

George seemed to reflect. 'Could be difficult, even dangerous. There might even be violence.' He frowned, then brightened. 'But one does get so tired of serving Rodekool met Rolpens.'

'So. If you'll be kind enough to have your car outside the Trianon - or, shall I say, in the discreet vicinity - by seventy forty. Might leave in my Volkswagen, might be in the car of whoever comes to pick me up. I don't for a moment think you'll lose us but, in any case, you know we'll be heading in the general direction of the royal palace.'

George said: 'Does our Chief of Police know about us - our plans?' 'He knows about you two and that you'll be keeping a very careful watch - I hope - over me: The-rest, no. It would never do for us to go around breaking the law.'

'Of course not,' George said.

At precisely seven forty-five, no other than Romero Agnelli himself came to collect van Effen from the Trianon.

Six.

As far as one could tell, Romero Agnelli was in high good humour: but, then, as far as one could tell, Romero Agnelli was always in high good humour. Even the torrential rainfall drumming on the roof of the car had no effect on his spirits. The car was Agnelli's, a large and, van Effen had been glad to note, fairly conspicuous green Volvo.

'Dreadful night,' Agnelli said. 'Quite dreadful. And worse still to come, I'm sure. Bad time of the year, this. Always a bad time. Gales, spring tides, north wind - must listen in to the eight o'clock forecast.' Agnelli, van Effen thought, was uncommonly interested in the weather conditions. 'Busy day, Mr Danilov?'

'If you call sleeping being busy, yes, then I've had a busy day. Late in bed last night - late this morning, actually - and I didn't know what hour you'd keep me up to tonight. You have not, Mr Agnelli, been too free with information about your plans.'

'Would you have been in my situation? Don't worry, we won't keep you late. That data I sent round - it proved useful?'

'Everything I required.' Van Effen pulled out the yellow envelope from under his coat. 'Returned with thanks. I don't want to be found with that in my possession. Where's the radio?'

'In the boot. In perfect condition, I a.s.sure you.'

'I don't doubt it. Nevertheless, I shall want to see it. I trust the amatol, primers and the rest are not in the boot?' Agnelli looked at him in amus.e.m.e.nt. 'They're not. Why?' 'I'm thinking of the detonator. Usually made of some fulminating powder, commonly a mercury derivative. Delicate. Doesn't like being jounced around. And I don't like being around when it's jounced around.' 'They're in a room we've hired off the Kalvetstraat.'

'Would it be presumptuous of me to ask why the radio isn't with the explosives?

'Not at all. I want to trigger off the device in the palace from the Dam Square itself. Perhaps you wonder why?'

'Wonder or not, I'm not going to ask. The less I know the better all round. I'm a great believer in the need-to-know principle.' 'So, normally, am I.' He switched on the car radio. 'Eight o'clock. Forecast.' The forecast, which came through almost immediately, was not encouraging. Wind, force seven, north, veering north-north-east, increasing, heavy rains, temperature dropping. Then followed some technical jargon about stationary depressions and a confident, if gloomy, a.s.sertion that the weather would continue to deteriorate for the next forty-eight hours.

'Sounds bad,' Agnelli said. His expression did not appear to reflect inner concern. 'Lots of people, especially the middle-aged and older with longer memories, won't be feeling any too happy - especially with the recent comments about the decayed state of the d.y.k.es. Same conditions as caused those dreadful floods back in the fifties - and the d.y.k.es are in no better condition now than they were then.'

'Putting it a bit strongly, isn't it, Mr Agnelli? Think of the huge storm-surge barriers they've built in the delta area in the south-west.' 'And what guarantee have we that the North Sea is going to be considerate enough to launch its attack against the delta area? Little point in locking your front door if the back door is failing off its hinges.' Agnelli parked his car in the Voorburgwal, reached into the back seat and produced two large umbrellas.

'Not that these are going to be much help in this downpour. just wait a few seconds until I get the radio out of the boot.' just over a minute later they were standing outside a door to which Agnelli had his own key. Beyond lay an ill-lit and dingy pa.s.sageway, its floor covered with cracked linoleum. Agnelli furled his umbrella and gave a coded knock on the first door to the right - three taps, then one, then three. The door was opened by the man calling himself Helmut Paderiwski who made an unsuccessful effort to restrain a scowl when he recognized the person accompanying Agnelli, who appeared not to notice it.

'Helmut you have met,'Agnelli said, and led the way into the room. Unlike the corridor, it was brightly lit and was large and furnished in surprising comfort. Leonardo Agnelli gave van Effen a nod and a smile. Leonardo apart, there were four other people in the room, all young, all pleasant looking and very respectable: two men and two girls, all looking like refugees from some university honours graduate course, the type that would have more than pa.s.sed muster in any Parisian grand salon: they were also of the type that, in the past decade, had not only been members of, but had organized and controlled so many politically motivated criminal groups in Germany and Italy. They were considerably more formidable than your common-or-garden criminal who was concerned primarily with the acc.u.mulation of as much wealth as possible in the shortest time possible but who would rapidly abandon all thought of ill-gotten gains if personal danger threatened, fanatically dedicated people who would stop at nothing to achieve their own cherished Utopias, no matter how bizarre, sick and undesirable those Utopias might appear to the vast majority of their fellow men and women. They could, of course, have been genuine salon intellectuals who sought no more of life than the opportunity to discuss Proust and Stendhal, Hegelian and Kantian philosophies. But seekers after the higher truths did not commonly a.s.semble in such clandestine fashion, especially not in the close vicinity of sixteen-kilo blocks of amatol explosive which van Effen had at once observed neatly stacked in a corner.

Agnelli indicated the two young men. 'Joop and Joachim. They have other names, of course, but are not using them at the moment.' Joop and Joachim, oddly alike in that both were tall, slightly stooped and wore horn-rimmed gla.s.ses, bowed slightly, smiled but refrained from reciprocal comment when van Effen said he was delighted to meet them. Agnelli turned to a sweet-smiling dark-haired girl. 'And this is Maria, who has also for the moment forgotten her surname.'

'My, my,' van Effen said. 'Imagine forgetting a name like Agnelli.' Agnelli smiled. 'I didn't think you would be the man to miss much, Mr Danilov. Yes, my sister. And this is Kathleen.' Kathleen, pet.i.te and slender, had blue eyes, dark hair and a slightly humorous, slightly wry expression which in no way detracted from the fact that she was very pretty indeed.