Puppet on a Chain by Alistair MacLean Page A

in the Hotel Rembrandt.
    Colonel de Graaf's office wasn't in the least like the Hotel Rembrandt. It was a large enough room, but bleak and bare and functional, furnished mainly with steel-grey filing cabinets, a steel-grey table and steel-grey seats which were as hard as steel. But at least the decor had the effect of making you concentrate on the matter on hand: there was nothing to distract the mind or eye. De Graaf and I, after ten minutes preliminary discussion, were concentrating, although I think it came more easily to de Graaf than it did to me. I had lain awake to a late hour the previous night and am never at my. best at ten a.m. on a cold and blustery morning.
    'All drugs,' de Graaf agreed. 'Of course we're concerned with all drugs -- opium, cannabis, amphetamine, LSD, STP, cocaine, amyl acetate -- you name it, Major Sherman, and we're concerned in it. They all destroy or lead on to destruction. But in this instance we are confining ourselves to the really evil one -- heroin. Agreed?'
    'Agreed.' The deep incisive voice came from the doorway. I turned round and looked at the man who stood there, a tall man in a well-cut dark business suit, cool penetrating grey eyes, a pleasant face that could stop being pleasant very quickly, very professional-looking. There was no mistaking his profession. Here was a cop and not one to be taken lightly either.
    He closed the door and walked across to me with the light springy step of a man much younger than one in his middle forties, which he was at least. He put out his hand and said: 'Van Gelder. I've heard a lot about you, Major Sherman.'
    I thought this one over, briefly but carefully. decided to refrain from comment. I smiled and shook his hand.
    'Inspector van Gelder,' de Graaf said. 'Head of our narcotics bureau. He will be working with you, Sherman. He will offer you the best co-operation possible.'
    'I sincerely hope we can work well together.' Van Gelder smiled and sat down. 'Tell me, what progress your end? Do you think you can break the supply ring in England?'
    'I think we could. It's a highly organized distributive pipeline, very highly integrated with almost no cut-offs -- and it's because of that that we have been able to identify dozens of their pushers and the half-dozen or so main distributors.'
    'You could break the ring but you won't. You're leaving it strictly alone?'
    'What else, Inspector? We break them up and the next distribution ring will be driven so far underground that we'll never find it. As it is, we can pick them up when and if we want to. The thing we really want to find out is how the damned stuff gets in -- and who's supplying it.'
    'And you think -- obviously, or you wouldn't be here -- that the supplies come from here? Or hereabouts?'
    'Not hereabouts. Here. And I don't think. I know. Eighty per cent of those under surveillance -- and I refer to the distributors and their intermediaries -- have links with this country. To be precise, with Amsterdam -- nearly all of them. They have relatives here, or they have friends. They have business contacts here or personally conduct business here or they come here on holiday. We've spent five years on building up this dossier.'
    De Graaf smiled. 'On this place called "here".'
    'On Amsterdam, yes.'
    Van Gelder asked: 'There are copies of this dossier?'
    'One.'
    'With you?'
    'Yes.'
    'On you?'
    'In the only safe place.' I tapped my head.
    'As safe a place as any,' de Graaf approved, then added thoughtfully: 'As long, of course, that you don't meet up with people who might be inclined to treat you the way you treat them.'
    'I don't understand, Colonel.'
    'I speak in riddles,' de Graaf said affably. 'Ah right, I agree. At the moment the finger points at the Netherlands. Not to put too fine a point on it, as you don't put too fine a point on it, at Amsterdam. We, too, know our unfortunate reputation. We wish it was untrue. But it isn't. We know the stuff comes in in bulk. We know it goes out again all broken up