Free Puppet on a Chain by Alistair MacLean Page A

early evening I went down to the foyer and handed in my key. The smile of the assistant manager behind the desk lacked a little of the sabre-toothed quality of old, it was deferential, even apologetic: he'd obviously been told to try a new tack with me.
    'Good evening, good evening, Mr Sherman.' An affable ingratiation that I cared for even less than his normal approach. 'I'm afraid I must have sounded a little abrupt last evening, but you see -- '
    'Don't mention it, my dear fellow, don't mention it.' I wasn't going to let any old hotel manager outdo me in affability. 'It was perfectly understandable in the circumstances. Must have come as a very great shock to you.' I glanced through the foyer doors at the falling rain. 'The guide-books didn't mention this.'
    He smiled widely as if he hadn't heard the same inane remark a thousand times before, then said cunningly: 'Hardly the night for your English constitutional, Mr Sherman.'
    'No chance anyway. It's Zaandam for me tonight.' 'Zaandam.' He made a face. 'My commiserations, Mr Sherman.' He evidently knew a great deal more about Zaandam than I did, which was hardly surprising as I'd just picked the name from a map.
    I went outside. Rain or no rain, the barrel-organ was still grinding and screeching away at the top of its form. It was Puccini who was on the air tonight and he was taking a terrible beating. I crossed to the organ and stood there for some time, not so much listening to the music, for there was none to speak of, but looking without seeming to look at a handful of emaciated and ill-dressed teen-agers -- a rare sight indeed in Amsterdam where they don't go in for emaciation very much -- who leaned their elbows on the barrel-organ and seemed lost in rapture. My thoughts were interrupted by a gravelly voice behind me.
    'Mynheer likes music?' I turned. The ancient was smiling at me in a tentative sort of fashion. 'I love music.'
    'So do I, so do I.' I peered at him closely, for in the nature of things his time must be close and there could be no forgiveness for that remark. I smiled at him, one music-lover to the other.
    'I shall think of you tonight. I'm going to the opera.' 'Mynheer is kind.'
    I dropped two coins in the tin can that had mysteriously appeared under my nose. 'Mynheer is too kind.'
    Having the suspicions I did about him, I thought the same myself, but I smiled charitably and, recrossing the street, nodded to the doorman: with the masonic legerdemain known only to doormen, he materialized a taxi out of nowhere. I told him 'Schiphol Airport' and got inside.
    We moved off. We did not move off alone. At the first traffic lights, twenty yards from the hotel, I glanced through the tinted rear window. A yellow-striped Mercedes taxi was two cars behind us, a taxi I recognized as one that habitually frequented the rank not far from the hotel. But it could have been coincidence. The lights turned to green and we made our way into the Vijzelstraat. So did the yellow-striped Mercedes.
    I tapped the driver on the shoulder. 'Stop here, please. I want to buy some cigarettes.' I got out. The Mercedes was right behind us, stopped. No one got in, no one got out. I went into an hotel foyer, bought some cigarettes I didn't need and came out again. The Mercedes was still there. We moved off and after a few moments I said to the driver: Turn right along the Prinsengracht.'
    He protested. 'That is not the way to Schiphol.'
    'It's the way I want to go. Turn right.'
    He did and so did the Mercedes.
    'Stop.' He stopped. The Mercedes stopped. Coincidence was coincidence but this was ridiculous. I got out, walked back to the Mercedes and opened the door. The driver was a small man with a shiny blue suit and a disreputable air. 'Good evening. Are you for hire?'
    'No.' He looked me up and down, trying out first the air of easy insouciance, then that of insolent indifference, but he wasn't right for either part.
    'Then why are you stopped?'
    'Any law against a man stopping for a