I couldn’t tell whether the whole radio had failed or just the transmitter. It didn’t seem to matter. Our well-made plans had gone astray. The only thing to do was to drive to the station and talk to Watkins directly. There was no point trying to follow Jacobs if I couldn’t contact him. I had no idea which way Samovar had gone.
I started the car and drove carefully through the mist. As I left the car park and entered the Friedhoffplein a car went past, heading east towards Haarlem and Amsterdam. It might have been Jacobs’ Marina but in the swirling mist I couldn’t be sure.
I crawled towards the station behind a Volkswagen laundry van; the inscription ‘Peeperkorn, Heemstede’ on its rear door and the bundles of washing inside were barely visible. There was no sound from the radio until I was approaching the station. Then the voice of Christopher Watkins boomed into the car. At least the radio receiver was working.
‘Alpha One to Alpha Two and Alpha Three. Is anything happening? Out.’
After a few seconds Jacobs replied. ‘Alpha Two. I’m right on his tail. Just leaving Zandvoort on the main road to Amsterdam. Where are you?’
Watkins responded instantly. ‘Whose tail? What’s happening?’ The irritation in his voice plainly audible through the heavy static.
Jacobs responded patiently. ‘Alpha Two. I’m following the suspect we saw at the nature reserve.’
Watkins interrupted him. ‘What suspect? Why didn’t you call me Alpha Two?’ The last syllable was missing because he’d snapped off the microphone too quickly.
‘A man collected the message,’ said Jacobs. ‘I’m now following him. Didn’t Thomas tell you? It’s a white Mercedes, blue roof, licence 57 LB 91.’
‘Alpha One. Stay on air, I’ll be right with you.’ Then Watkins turned his attention to me. ‘Come in Alpha Three. Where are you?’
Instinctively I tried the transmitter again but it was still out of action. I could only stare at the receiver as it sounded once more, ‘Alpha One to Alpha Three. Come in.’
There was a moment’s silence and then Watkins returned to Jacobs. ‘Where the hell’s Alpha Three?’ he barked.
‘His radio may be broken,’ Jacobs responded.
There was another brief silence. Perhaps Watkins was starting his engine or else simply deciding what to do. Then he spoke again. ‘Alpha One to Alpha Three. If you can hear me make your way to the station and collect the other message. Then phone London.’
I was almost at the station as Watkins clicked off. Two minutes later I turned into Zeestraat. Leaving the Stationplein was a grey Mercedes similar to the one Watkins was driving. It turned left towards Amsterdam. I drew up at the side of the station near the postbox.
Standing beside the box was a man wearing a grey suit. As I got out of the car I saw him reach behind the box for the cigarette packet that Leonov had left. Taking the camera in one hand and a postcard in the other, I walked towards him. He turned as I approached, slipping something into his pocket. A startled look crossed his face, almost as if he recognised me. The camera was operated simply by pressing the base of the book’s spine, and I took what I hoped were two good pictures.
The man stepped towards a green Ford Capri and climbed into the passenger seat. I could see nothing of the driver except for his hands which were encased in black leather driving gloves perforated at the knuckles. I made a mental note of the Capri’s number.
Obviously Leonov had made two drops not as a security precaution but because there were two collectors. What should I do now: phone Adam Joseff in London or follow the Capri? Unless they had been unbelievably lucky in timing their arrival to coincide with Watkins’ departure the two men had obviously been waiting for him to leave. Therefore they were on to us, or at least on to Watkins. In that case London should know about it at once, so they could take action before the Russians decided to abandon ship. On the other hand, phoning London seemed tantamount to doing nothing and passing the buck. I didn’t know what was in the message or who the men who had collected it were: by following them I at least might be able to answer the second query. Probably at the back of my mind there was the thought that I might even return a hero.
The Capri came past. I could see the driver clearly: thin face, pinched cheeks, sharp nose, short, black hair stopping above unusually small ears, and wearing a blue jacket. All I could see of the other man was the radio in his hand.
I started the Opel and moved after them. Due to the mist they had their lights on and it was easy to follow the twin red rear lights as they turned out of the Stationplein into Zeestraat and then into Engelbertsstraat. They were headed back the way I had just come, south towards the nature reserve. I expected them to turn east, towards Haarlem, but they kept on parallel to the sea. They seemed to be driving to the other drop.
Sure enough, the Capri eventually turned off the coast road towards the dunes and entered the car park. Switching off my lights, I cruised slowly after them. I wanted to make sure they were here just to check the other drop. Leaving the Opel near the entrance I ran through the mist towards the blue bin on the other side. The Capri was parked almost exactly where Jacobs and I had spent an hour waiting for Samovar. I crouched on the ground, confident that I would not be seen by the occupants of the car whom I could vaguely make out still seated inside. After a few minutes both doors opened and the two men got out. To my surprise they made no attempt to approach the bin but instead walked quickly to the road where Jacobs had found the Mercedes, and then turned left towards the nature reserve.
I moved slowly in the same direction.
A large sign announced that this was both nature reserve and DUINWATERWINPLAATS, one of Amsterdam’s municipal water supplies. The notice also warned that anybody found in the reserve without a ticket would be fined. Unsurprisingly the two men had ignored this. They were standing inside the gates looking at a large map. I could barely make them out through the cloying mist, and as I approached they walked off eastwards towards the dunes. Neither of them looked behind and it didn’t occur to me to wonder why not. I ran quickly to the map.
The enclosed area swept south in a broad band away from Zandvoort, flanked on one side by a narrow stretch of dunes and beach and then the North Sea. The reserve consisted mainly of rolling sand dunes and narrow canals used to collect water. On the map the canals looked like thin blue sausages. Presumably at each end there were pipes linking them together into a grid.
On the bottom of the map was a red sign warning ‘reeën gejaagd ’, deer hunted. I could only pray that there were no idiots wandering round in the dense mist with loaded rifles just waiting for some sign of movement.
The two men had disappeared.
I should have stopped then. It would have been better to wait for the men to return to their car rather than risk losing them in the reserve. And I should have found a phone and called London to let them know what was happening. But I didn’t.
Instead I struck out eastward along the path, hoping that the two men hadn’t branched off into the dunes. The path had once been tarmacked but the ravages of time and weather had left it liberally bedecked with sand and tufts of grass. It led gently up through the dunes. The only sign of life was a small rabbit hopping across the track. The mist was getting heavier, grey and clammy. I could feel droplets of water on my hair. Occasionally I came across part of a clearly defined footprint in the wet sand speckled along the path.
I heard a noise ahead, muffled by the mist. It could have been the sound of falling water from the canal that I knew was not far away or it could have been voices. My eyes strained through the grey-white shroud. I edged slowly forward and heard the sound again, people talking.
Vaguely I made out the silhouette of two men, but I couldn’t be sure that my eyes weren’t playing tricks. Wish-fulfilment: I wanted to see two men and therefore I saw two men. Then I was sure, because the two clinging silhouettes split apart for a second and then moved off.
They had been standing by a squat distance marker on the intersection between our path and a broader one, wide enough for motor traffic, running at right angles. The signpost showed that I had come 0.8 kilometres from Zandvoort, while by turning left I would reach the Natuurpad in 1.7 kilometres. It gave no indication of what I would find by turning right as the two men had done.
I turned right.
The track was now made of large concrete rectangles, perhaps fourteen feet by seven feet, laid two by two. Between each block were a few inches of sand covered with grass and rabbit droppings. To my right, bushes and dunes disappeared into the mist, while on my left there was just a white blanket. Unknown to me at that time, the ground to the east dropped away almost vertically twenty feet to a canal. Twice there were sounds of pumps coming from that direction, but I could see nothing. Occasionally I caught a glimpse of the two men ahead of me. They were moving quickly now and I had to stretch to keep up.
Eventually they stopped in the middle of the path. I stood stock still hoping that neither would spot me if they turned round. They didn’t turn. One of them seemed to be pointing towards the east. They couldn’t be lost. Even in the dense mist the path we had followed was the simplest possible. I could only imagine that they didn’t know where they wanted to go, which seemed unlikely.
It was a sign of my total lack of field experience that it never occurred to me to wonder why the men I was following had headed off into the dunes with no more idea of where they were going than I had.
They turned eastwards. I followed, dropping back further so that they couldn’t see me if they looked over their shoulders. It also meant of course that I couldn’t see them. I heard water and realised we must have crossed a canal on a bridge or dyke but I couldn’t see anything through the increasingly thick blanket of mist. I sensed, rather than saw, the men turn left again. A track sloped downward. I advanced cautiously, trying desperately to muffle each step. I was starting to curse myself for not having phoned London rather than blundering around as I was doing.
The ground underfoot was sand sprinkled with shells and here and there patches of grass. Almost subconsciously I noticed the wide, deep tread of a tractor tyre.
Suddenly a building loomed up in front, black and oddly menacing. There was no sign of habitation. I could see no more than four or five feet in front of me. Slowly I edged forward and found a door painted white and padlocked. The solitary window was covered by a white metal shutter and, like the door, securely locked. Turning to the right I groped my way around the corner of the building. The windows there had been bricked up. My foot kicked a fragment of brick and it hit against the wall with a hollow thud. I stood as still as a statue, petrified in the eerie silence.
Then I heard a movement behind me.
For a reason I’ll never understand, I dropped to one knee and, as I did so, a bullet thudded into the wall, ricocheting away into the dank, grey clouds. I ran.
There was another plop and a bullet whistled past, missing me by a yard or so. I kept running.
There were no more shots and no sound of pursuit. Glancing over my shoulder into the enveloping white behind me, I lost my footing and tripped over a log, falling forward on to the sand. I reached back, found the log and picked it up. It was about four inches in diameter and two feet long. I don’t know what sort of tree it came from but balancing it in my hand it seemed incredibly light. As a club it wouldn’t do much damage, but it was all I had.
Picking myself up I ran on again, straight into a horizontal metal pole. The pole was painted bright yellow, presumably so that people wouldn’t run into it!
The pole formed the bar of a gate, hinged at one end on to an upright brown metal post. I felt my way to the other end of the pole, which was about twelve feet long, and discovered that it rested on a small yellow post. The gate was obviously meant to be swung across the path that ran beside the canal. It was now open but presumably somewhere on the other side of the track there would be another yellow support for the gate pole to rest on when it was closed.
There was a canal on my left but there was also the sound of falling water coming from the right. That must be water from a subsidiary canal falling into a pipe under the path and into the canal by which I was standing.
I moved around the gate, stepping carefully so that I didn’t fall into the water that I could just make out beside my shoes. The gate was now between me and the path. I stood stock still and, as I did so, there came the sound of two men walking slowly down the path towards the canals, and towards me. I felt calmer now. I was getting used to the mist, confident the men wouldn’t see me unless I moved. I had only been able to distinguish their dark and blurred silhouettes because they kept moving. But I had to do something. The mist wouldn’t last for ever.
As the men came parallel with the closed gate, perhaps six feet away, I lifted the pole off its support and swung it across the path with all my strength. It caught both of them in the small of their backs and sent them sprawling forward.
I jumped on to the nearest of the two men. It happened to be the one in the blue jacket, the driver of the Capri. My swinging club crashed against his head and the wood disintegrated. The man staggered and fell sideways on to the grass that ran beside the canal.
I turned towards the other man, the one with the gun, and almost tumbled into his arms. I tried desperately to remember the tricks I had been taught in the Brecon Beacons but Sergeant Dominic hadn’t spent much time lecturing on what to do when struggling on a narrow path between two canals in a thick mist. My opponent was strong but not supple. We grappled helplessly as I reached for his gun hand while he alternately squeezed me in a semi-bear hug and then tried to turn his gun on me. Suddenly he stepped back, lost his footing and fell into the canal that lay at right angles to the path, pulling me in with him.
The shock of the ice-cold water jarred through every inch of my body. The man underneath me was splashing around as if he was drowning, although the water in the canal wasn’t deep. He struck me a glancing blow on the cheek. I felt a ring on one of his fingers but there was no power in his flailing arms. Reaching out a hand I felt a wooden stake sticking up out of the water. With my other hand I grabbed the man’s head and smashed it against the stake. Once. Twice. Three times. His arms fell back into the water and his whole body seemed to soften.
Next to me was a large pipe leading under the footpath into the main canal. I felt the water surging into it, pulling at my legs. I still held the man’s head in one hand like a ball and I pushed it roughly into the pipe. It was no time for hesitation. He had been trying to kill me.
There was no sign of the other man but he must be close, my makeshift club wouldn’t have done much damage. It seemed to me that I’d been making an enormous noise, splashing around, but the mist had muffled it. The man I’d fought had dropped his gun when he fell into the canal. I groped around on the canal bed but couldn’t find it and quickly gave up the search. There were more important things to do. Who were these men? I reached into the pockets of his expensive grey suit. His wallet must have fallen out but I found something else, an empty cigarette packet. As I drew it out I saw the brand name, Caballero.
Suddenly I heard a sound on the path above me.
A voice shouted into the mist behind me. I thought it was a name, ‘Nikki.’
Silence followed, tomb-like in its intensity.
I decided not to stick around and, clambering up the opposite bank, I grabbed at a post bearing a notice, ‘VERBODEN TOEGANG’. Desperate not to make any more noise I turned eastwards. The only sound came from a small weir. Turning off the bare track into the dunes I walked aimlessly for four or five minutes before stopping to listen for the noise of pursuit. Nobody came. I was shaking.
People don’t carry guns in peacetime. Nobody had suggested we should arm ourselves.
‘It’s just a routine dead-letter collection,’ Watkins had said. ‘Think of it as a training exercise.’
After fifteen minutes I crossed back over the canal and, shivering with the wet and cold, cut back through the dunes towards the sea. I reached a barbed wire fence at the edge of the nature reserve. From that it was a short hike to a path that led between two more rows of barbed wire down on to the beach. Then I walked back to Zandvoort beside the cold and grey North Sea.
When I reached the car park the Capri had gone. The mist was still clinging on. I walked over to my Opel, warily, half expecting another bullet to appear from nowhere. But nothing happened. The car was as I had left it. I tried the radio but still without success. Watkins and Jacobs were evidently either not transmitting or out of range. I drove slowly along the few hundred yards to the Hotel Sonnewende.
The receptionist seemed not at all surprised to see a complete stranger, still wet from the canal, wanting to make a phone call to Britain. He led me to a fairly large cubicle containing a phone, wrote down the number I wanted and explained in faultless English that he would go and connect me.
‘You can pay me at reception when you are finished,’ he added, almost as an afterthought.
Within seconds I was through to London. To my surprise I was put straight through to Adam Joseff.
‘How are things?’ he asked.
‘Awful. This line is clear, right?’
It was a silly question. If anybody was listening in they would almost certainly be listening at my end which Joseff would know nothing about. Nerves were getting to me.
Joseff told me to go ahead.
‘The other two are chasing someone, but I’ve lost radio contact and I think I’ve just killed a man who jumped me.’
There was a momentary silence. ‘I see. Are you injured?’
‘No.’
‘Right, Thomas, no more on the phone. Go straight to Schiphol. We’ll have a ticket waiting for you at the British Airways desk. And you’ll be met at Heathrow. Leave everything to us. Just get out of Holland as quickly as possible. You can leave the car wherever it suits you.’