Tamar Read Free Page B

o’clock the room was full of sunlight. Nicholson sat looking out of the bay window, apparently watching a game of tennis that Tamar could hear faintly but not see. The man called Hendriks sat at the table. He was rather overweight and unhealthy in complexion; the flesh of his face looked as if it had been moulded out of dough by a baker with dirty hands. He took an ID booklet from his briefcase and slid it across the table to Tamar.
    “Christiaan Boogart,” he announced. “Taken into Germany as forced labour in 1941. Contracted tuberculosis winter ’43. Failed to make a full recovery, therefore of no further use to the Third Reich. Repatriated. Now an itinerant farmworker.”
    Tamar didn’t look at the ID. He didn’t need to. “Again? I’m Boogart
again
?”
    Nicholson said, with his back to the room, “We thought you might be pleased. A bit less homework for you to do.”
    “But, sir. Boogart? He’s an agricultural labourer. What would he be doing in Rotterdam?”
    “You’re not going to Rotterdam,” Hendriks said calmly.
    “What?”
    Nicholson glanced round, his face inscrutable against the light.
    “You’re not going to Rotterdam,” Hendriks repeated.
    As Tamar gazed at him blankly, Hendriks leaned forward on his elbows, his plump hands clasped. “In your opinion,” he asked, “would it be fair to describe the Dutch resistance as fragmented? Disorganized?”
    “What? Er . . . no. It would be fair to describe it as a bloody shambles.”
    “That’s perhaps a little harsh. But, yes, the different resistance organizations have been mounting operations without any central planning. A bomb here, an ambush there, a train derailed, a telephone exchange blown up. Fine things in themselves, but not adding up to anything really useful. And the Germans are taking terrible reprisals for such actions. Their jails are packed with what they call
Todeskandidaten
. You know what the word means?”
    “It translates as ‘death candidates,’” Tamar said.
    “That’s right. It’s a system they were beginning to operate when you were last there, a year ago. Every time there’s a so-called ‘terrorist outrage’ the Gestapo drag a dozen or so poor bastards out of prison and shoot them in the street. Making sure the locals are watching, of course. We don’t think it’s worth it. Do you?”
    Tamar didn’t answer immediately; then he said, “It’s a complicated question.”
    Nicholson interrupted again. “Not to me, it isn’t,” he said. “Several of our people — your colleagues — are death candidates right now. Austin is. So are Holvoet and Dubois. Thijssen too.”
    Tamar looked at the colonel. “Thijssen? Jan Thijssen?”
    “Correct,” Nicholson said. “Your old boss. He’s banged up in Apeldoorn.”
    “I thought he was dead.”
    “No. They kept him alive, poor sod. I don’t much fancy his chances if we don’t get a grip on things.”
    Hendriks cleared his throat officiously. “The point is that these hostages will be sacrificed if we do not establish discipline. For this and other reasons it is now an absolute priority to get all resistance groups to bury their differences and work together. You would agree that this is desirable?”
    Tamar made an unnecessary sign of agreement.
    “Therefore,” Hendriks said, sounding proud of himself, “what we’ve done is divide Holland into sixteen zones. Each of these zones will have a commandant who will persuade — at gunpoint if necessary — the various resistance groups to unite under his control. Once that is achieved, the resistance will only conduct operations authorized by Delta Centrum in Amsterdam. You, Tamar, are to be the commandant of zone six. Now, I want to show you this.”
    The file he plopped onto the table had a brown cardboard cover with a thick red band running diagonally across it.
    “This contains everything we know about your area as it is at present. It is as detailed as we can make it. We cannot guarantee that the