But it turned out that there was no immediate need for the poison, because the arrival of the police was not the first step in a personal tragedy; it was part of a national tragedy, of a world-wide tragedy, for that was the morning that the Germans invaded Holland, and the police were arresting, not a spy - which Schuylenboeck had been for a long time - but an enemy alien; Schuylenboeck had been that for only a few minutes, after the German planes had dropped their first bombs on the Dutch civilian population.The Lek II was a tugboat, almost new; since long before the war began between Germany and England, Schuylenboeck, as her owner and captain, had been taking vast tows up the Rhine to supply the German war machine. It had been a profitable contract, but the money had been no sort of compensation to the tug’s captain; instead, he had found his reward in reporting to London all the numerous things that a tugboat captain can discover during voyages to the German munition towns on the Rhine.The police officer was quite apologetic about arresting Jan Schuylenboeck; odd though it was for a Gestapo man to be apologetic about anything at all.‘The purest formality, Captain,’ said the police officer.
