Assignment - Lowlands (18 page)

Here and there the ruined foundations of a house or farm were still recognizable as the
Suzanne
drummed past. The channel he followed suddenly forked northerly and easterly, and he did not know which to take. He chose the easterly entrance on impulse. But it was the wrong guess. In less than a minute he sensed a slackening of the tidal current, and then saw he had guided the sloop into a dead-end lagoon of brackish salt water draining outward against the course he had chosen. The depth of water was tricky. The keel grazed bottom slightly as he turned to retreat. The boat shuddered, the mast trembled, and the steel halyards sang like plucked guitar strings. A flock of wild ducks rose from the reeds with thunderously flapping wings and circled away to the west. He felt trapped, caught in a hot stale bowl of sand islands and marsh grasses, cut off from any chance to estimate his position. A feeling of frustration moved in him.

Time was running out as surely as the tide was reaching its lowest ebb.

There had to be a reason for Julian Wilde to risk the desperate chance of returning to his room at the Boerderij Inn and then snatching Trinka Van Horn as a hostage. Why did he need a hostage? What did he have in mind? It was plain that the Dutch Security people had taken a step that produced intense alarm in their quarry. Wilde was aware of the cordon of men and guns drawn around the Amschellig area. But what was he planning to do to escape? The Dutch government was prepared to grant amnesty, Flaas had said. But had any talks actually taken place? Durell doubted it. As far as Wilde knew, with his jungle cunning and fugitive temperament, the net around Amschellig was for only one purpose—to find him, seize him, and kill him. Surely the man had a plan to save himself, and it included using Trinka as a hostage. Would it be enough? Durell wondered. There was a feeling of pressure, of time ebbing with the tide, and when the tide changed and time ran out, it would all be too late.

He had to find the Cassandra bunker now.

He stood up, holding the wheel steady. A long row of tree stumps alongside the channel, growing out of the tormented shapes of the sand banks, marked an old prewar canal. He followed it, edging westward. The steady chug of the
Suzanne’s
engine was muffled in the infinity of sky and sea and the maze of islands. Now and then he glimpsed the loom of the reconstructed dike, miles to the north; but it was only a brief, chance glimpse, scarcely enough to keep himself oriented. He saw no other boats. He saw no other people. It was as if he had entered a world that had drowned two decades ago, and now lifted its dead, scarred face to the sky for this brief interlude between the North Sea tides, only to sink soon beneath the surface of the ocean again.

It seemed hopeless. He took a channel to the north, then east, then to the south, and came back to a place he remembered, the old canal bed with the beach stumps bordering the channel. He was sure of the depth of water here, at any rate. And there had to be enough water for the fishing boat the Wildes had chartered to reach the ruins of Groote Kerk Light.

He circled again, deliberately seeking out old canal beds now. The tide was almost fully out. Its urgent rush out to sea had grown less impetuous, and the
Suzanne
was easier to control. Durell stood with the wheel held by pressure against his thigh and scanned the afternoon landscape. A reedy island, less than two feet above the surface of the sea, sprawled to the south. A humped rise of sand about three hundred feet to the east indicated a ruined building. But it was rather an oblong shape, not that of a lighthouse. To the southeast the waterways were an impossible labyrinth of small channels, some of them mere trickles, with changing colors in the water to indicate submerged barriers to the
Suzanne’s
keel. Northward there was a stretch of open water, then more reedy barriers of sea bottom.

He was lost. Finding the ruins of a lighthouse here without expert help was like hunting the proverbial needle in a haystack.

He made the circuit once more. The canal bank on his left yielded to an island perhaps half a mile in length, lying like a whale’s back at a north-northwesterly angle. It was higher at one end than the other, and on a hunch he turned the
Suzanne
into a channel to port. In a moment, he swore softly, seeing the ripple of shallow water all the way across his chosen course. There was no passage here. Short of using a dinghy or wading in the warm, shallow sea, there was no way to reach the higher end of the island—

Yes
, he thought.

Julian Wilde had brought the fishing boat to a place where he had used a dinghy to row and then had got out and
waded
out of sight.

It could be this place, he thought.

There were field glasses in the cockpit, and he used them to scan the far end of the island. Barren sand dunes, reeds, marsh grass—and then the shape of something that could only have been man-made, showing where the tide had scoured away the camouflage of sand and revealed barnacled red brick in a circular base—

The Groote Kerk Light.

He spent no more time in speculation. The
Suzanne
had probed as far into the channel as she could go without grounding, and he let go of the wheel to run forward and throw the anchor over. The ebbing tide had lost all strength, but it still ran out enough to keep the sloop’s bow head on toward the nearby island. He took the rifle Jan had shown him, a Remington .30-08, from the cabin; made certain it was loaded; and pocketed an extra clip from one of the cabinets before he lowered himself over the side with the gun held high and dry over his head. He could not touch bottom for a minute or two, and had to swim awkwardly toward shore. Then the bottom shelved up abruptly and he surged out of the water onto dry sand.

In every quarter there was nothing to see except the glimmering wasteland of sun and ocean and marsh and sky. No one ventured here at ebb tide. Later, when evening came, the sea would have swept back and where he now stood would be under many feet of water, enough to float the yachts moored at Amschellig at this moment. But now it was as if he stood on the bottom of the sea—without another human soul in sight for miles.

Certainly, there was no sign of Cassandra and the
Valkyron
.

Turning, he trudged toward the far end of the island where he had glimpsed the round base of the ruined lighthouse. The whale-back shape of the long dune cut off his view of the other shore, and he scouted it twice, careful to keep out of sight in case Wilde was anywhere about. But he could not see for any distance through the reeds and sea grasses on that side, and he dropped back to the shoreline again, trotting on the hard sand in response to an inner urgency that demanded he waste no more time in precautions.

Looking back, he saw the
Suzanne
swinging slowly broadside as the tide ebbed at its lowest level at last. The sloop looked small and fragile from this distance.

Then it was lost from sight as he turned a bend in the shore and dipped down and around the base of the ruin. He was sure now that this was the place where Julian Wilde had left the fishing boat and gone down into the Cassandra bunker.

The ruins were undeniably those of an old lighthouse. Under the shapes of the sand dunes nearby, he could make out the vague outlines of the keeper’s quarters. Barnacles, mussels, and weeds covered the concrete and brick, except where the scouring action of the tidal current kept it clean.

He saw no one.

There was no other boat here.

An air of desertion and desolation hung over the place, as if it were shunned even by the birds of the sea.

He paused, the rifle at his side. The hot sun gave rise to brackish smells, to the odors of sea vegetation exposed to sunlight. From far, far away came the sound of a muffled explosion as work proceeded on the distant Wadden Zee Dike. That world seemed to belong to another age, separate from this one of bleached and twisted tree stumps taken from a surrealist painting, with the jagged tower base of the old lighthouse and its rounded doorway half buried in tidal silt. . . .

Trinka’s footprints, and those of a man’s heavy shoes, were plainly evident in the smooth sand leading up to the lighthouse door.

Durell paused, stood still.

He had the feeling he was being watched.

He turned slowly in every direction, but there was nothing to see.

He noted that the tracks did not actually enter the lighthouse base. They turned left, to seaward, and vanished over the dune behind the ruin.

He went that way.

The footprints were lost on the crest of the rise, where wild sea grasses grew, bending to the wind. The part of the island that emerged at low tide behind the lighthouse was slightly higher than the rest, and a long straight ridge on the western shore looked too mathematically precise to be a natural creation. Turning, he walked along its flat top and then studied the sea. It fitted. He was on top of the old fortifications, bunkers and sea walls that had served the Nazi Occupation forces against the British Isles across the North Sea.

He wanted to call out Trinka’s name, but the silence and solitude of this place forbade it. He walked on, his rifle ready.

But he did not need the weapon.

Fifty yards beyond the lighthouse ruin he saw the shovel, the heap of sand, the glint of rusty-red metal against the greens and beiges of the tidal flats. In a moment he stood at the ponderous trap door built into the top of the bunker.

He knew at once that this was what he had been hunting.

This was the place Piet Van Horn had died trying to find; the place that caused the death of General von Uittal and John O’Keefe and the innocent fishermen of Doorn. This was the place that a thousand men in strategic areas of the West were wondering about, with fear in their bellies and their hearts, because of the deadly plague nourished here.

The entrance was dark, with a flight of narrow stone steps going down. He had not brought a flashlight from the sloop. He entered slowly, aware of the danger of his silhouette against the sky to anyone crouching in wait below. But nothing happened. His entrance was not challenged.

The odor of sea growths exposed to the air, of the slime and barnacles of years of growth on the interior walls, yielded abruptly at a door set into the wall at the bottom of the steps. Heavy gaskets of rubbery composition, clinging together and built into both wall and door, once had formed a hermetical seal. It took considerable effort to push it open, but when the seal broke apart, the heavy door swung inward on silent hinges.

Darkness waited for him.

Whatever lighting system had once existed down here was long gone, of course. He would have to go back to the boat for a flashlight. The small amount of sunshine that filtered down the bunker stairs showed a tiled section of white wall, a metal table, a rubberized floor, a glimmer of glass laboratory equipment beyond. . . .

He felt a sense of awe, and a feeling of pressure around him, as if in a trap. For more than fifteen years this room had resisted the weight of the sea, the surges of tidal current and storm. The air was still dry, slightly musty, smelling rubbery and sterile. And yet—

He wanted to back out and run into the sun and wind and see the clean ocean again.

The small thumping sound halted his retreat. It came from the darkness to his right.

The rifle leaped to the ready in his hands. He swung about, facing the sound. But he could see nothing. The light from the stairs behind him now seemed far too bright, making the darkness all the darker.

“Trinka?” he called softly.

The thumping was repeated, insistently.

It was she.

She was tied hand and foot, and gagged, seated on the rubberized floor of the bunker to the right of the steps. He could see the glimmer of her wide eyes, the white of her shirt. He lowered the rifle, but did not approach her. “Are you alone?”

She nodded vigorously.

“Is Julian Wilde here?”

She shook her head in a desperate negative.

“Did he leave you here alone?”

She gave another affirmative nod.

He went over to her and untied the knots that held her. Her face was a pale blur close to his. The air was musty, but he could sense the sweetness of her body as he knelt beside her. He took off the white strip of cloth that gagged her and she coughed, and then whispered, “Don’t stay down here. Get up, quickly. Get out of here. The door—he’s a madman—be may be hiding outside—” He picked her up with a scooping motion and held her against his chest. He started for the stairs, his heart thudding crazily in anticipation of disaster. If Wilde was outside, and slammed the hermetical door shut against them both— He saw the sunlight above, the arc of blue sky, the shape of a white cloud moving across the circular opening. His sense of danger was enormous. If they were imprisoned here, everything was finished. He had accepted such a risk, coming down here. He had thought Wilde might be inside —but if he was still above, waiting for a victim to enter his trap—

He lunged up the stairs, passed through the hermetic-seal door, and paused with a gasp of relief on the mossy, barnacled steps.

“Wait a moment,” he said. “My rifle.”

“Hurry, Sam.”

He left the girl and hurried back inside again. He could see the interior of the bunker more clearly now. It was stripped clean, as far as he could see. As he snatched up the rifle he had put down in order to pick up Trinka, he saw that there were orderly shelves ranged around three sides of the bunker-laboratory, and that all the shelves were empty. The bakelite-topped tables, the stainless-steel cabinets, the retorts and burners and small ovens all looked relatively new. In the unearthly gloom, he saw another door beyond, but the darkness was too thick to penetrate there.

Here was where Cassandra had been bred and nourished and brought to dark and vengeful fruition. Here was the place the virus had been strengthened and coddled and sealed into neat receptacles against a day of desperate attack ordered by a madman whose inhumanity was incalculable. He felt a thin shudder along his spine. Whatever samples of Virus Cassandra had remained in this particular room were now gone. Julian Wilde had taken them all.