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“Damned if I can remember. We were both twenty then. Long time ago. We just called him Big Paul. Huge chap, over six feet six. Wide as a truck. Must have weighed two hundred fifty pounds. Damn ... what was his last name ...?”
Kuyper’s brow lightened.
“I remember him,” he said. “Yeah, useful puncher. He had to get out, you know. One step ahead of the fuzz. That’s why he went to Africa. The bastards wanted him on a rape charge. Hold on ... Marchais. That was it, Paul Marchais.”
“Of course,” said Quinn. “Good old Paul.”
Steve Pyle, General Manager of the SAIB in Riyadh, got the letter from Andy Laing ten days after it was posted. He read it in the privacy of his office and when he put it down his hand was shaking. This whole thing was becoming a nightmare.
He knew the new records in the bank computer would stand up to electronic check—the colonel’s work at erasing one set and substituting another had been at near-genius level—but ... Supposing anything happened to the Minister, Prince Abdul? Suppose the Ministry did their April audit and the Prince declined to admit he had sanctioned the fund-raising? And he, Steve Pyle, had only the colonel’s word ...
He tried to reach Colonel Easterhouse by phone, but the man was away, unknown to Pyle, up in the mountainous North near Ha’il making plans with a Shi’ah Imam who believed that the hand of Allah was upon him and the shoes of the Prophet on his feet. It would be three days before Pyle could reach the colonel.
Quinn plied Kuyper with beer until mid-afternoon. He had to be careful. Too little and the man’s tongue would not be loosed enough to overcome his natural wariness and surliness; too much and he would simply pass out. He was that sort of drinker.
“I lost sight of him in ’67,” said Quinn, of their missing and mutual buddy Paul Marchais. “I got out when it all turned nasty for us mercs. I bet he never got out. Probably ended up dead in some rain ditch.”
Kuyper chortled, looked around, and tapped the side of his nose in the gesture of the foolish who think they know something special.
“He came back,” he said with glee. “He got out. Came back here.”
“To Belgium?”
“Yup—1968, must have been. I’d just got out of the nick. Saw him myself.”
Twenty-three years, thought Quinn. He could be anywhere. “Wouldn’t mind having a beer with Big Paul, for old times’ sake,” he mused.
Kuyper shook his head. “No chance,” he said drunkenly. “He’s disappeared. Had to, didn’t he, with the police thing and all that. Last I heard, he was working on a fun fair somewhere in the South.”
Five minutes later he was asleep. Quinn returned to the hotel, somewhat unsteadily. He, too, felt the need to sleep.
“Time to earn your keep,” he told Sam. “Go to the tourist information office and ask about fun fairs, theme parks, whatever. In the South of the country.”
It was 6:00 P.M. He slept for twelve hours.
“There are two,” Sam told him as they had breakfast in their room. “There’s Bellewaerde. That’s outside the town of Ieper in the extreme West, up near the coast and the French border. Or there’s Walibi outside Wavre. That’s south of Brussels. I’ve got the brochures.”
“I don’t suppose the brochures announce they might have an ex-Congo mercenary working there,” said Quinn. “That cretin said ‘South.’ We’ll try Walibi first. Plot a route and let’s check out.”
Just before ten he hoisted their luggage into the car. Once they picked up the motorway system it was another fast run, due south past Mechelen, around Brussels on the orbital ring road, and south again on the E.40 to Wavre. After that the theme park was signposted.
It was closed, of course. All fun fairs look sad in the grim chill of winter, with the dodgem cars huddled in canvas shrouds, the pavilions cold and empty, the gray rain tumbling off the girders of the roller coaster, and the wind running wet brown leaves into Ali Baba’s cave. Because of the rain, even maintenance work was suspended. There was no one in the administration office either. They repaired to a café farther down the road.
“What now?” asked Sam.
“Mr. Van Eyck, at his home,” said Quinn and asked for the local telephone directory.
The jovial face of the theme park’s director, Bertie Van Eyck, beamed out of the title page of the brochure, above his written welcome to all visitors. Being a Flemish name, and Wavre being deep in French-speaking country, there were only three Van Eycks listed. One was listed as Albert. Bertie. An address out of town. They lunched and drove out there, Quinn asking for directions several times.
It was a pleasant detached house on a long country road called the Chemin des Charrons. Mrs. Van Eyck answered the door and called for her husband, who soon appeared in cardigan and carpet slippers. From behind him came the sound of a sports program on the television.
Though Flemish-born, Bertie Van Eyck was in the tourist business and so was bilingual in French and Flemish. His English was also perfect. He summed up his visitors as Americans at a glance and said, “Yes, I am Van Eyck. Can I help you?”
“I sure hope you can, sir. Yes, I surely do,” said Quinn. He had dropped into his pose of folksy American innocence, which had fooled the receptionist at Blackwood’s Hotel. “Me and my lady wife here, we’re over in Belgium trying to look up relatives from the old country. See, my grandpa on my mother’s side, he came from Belgium, so I have cousins in these parts and I thought maybe if I could find one or two, that would be real nice to tell the family back Stateside. ...”
There was a roar from the television. Van Eyck looked visibly worried. The Belgian league leaders Tournai were playing French champions Sainte Étienne, a real needle match not to be missed by a football buff.
“I fear I am not related to any Americans,” he began.
