"Thanks. I feel like doing some plowing over the week-end. With you. Let's talk about it then, if it still interests you. And in the meanwhile, I'll have someone look through the car for your notebook."
"Thanks a lot."
Hall went to the car. "Let's go back to the hotel," he said, "and find Souza. Or is the day clerk reliable?"
"Don't worry," Pepe said. "Arturo can be trusted. That's why Souza got him the job."
"We have a lot to do, Pepe. I want to search the room of the Dutchman, Androtten. We'll need all the help we can get."
They found the task very simple. Androtten had left that morning with a small handbag on what he described to the clerk as a two-day buying trip in the south. With the day clerk standing guard at the phone and Vicente lounging in the hall to sound any needed alarm, Hall and Pepe entered the Dutchman's room with a pass key and drew the blinds.
There was a picture of Androtten and what was evidently his family in a portable leather frame on the bureau. It showed Androtten and a fat blond matron sitting at a table, with a youth in his teens at Androtten's left and a little girl leaning at the woman's knee. "He's a family man," Pepe said.
"We'll see." Hall went through the wastebasket, the clothes hanging in the closet, every drawer in the bureau. He examined every piece of luggage for false sides and bottoms, hidden compartments, and stray papers. In the traveling bag he found in the closet, Hall discovered a heavy brown envelope. Inside was the picture of a young colonial Netherlands officer and a letter from the Dutch Government-in-Exile. The letter regretted to inform Androtten that his esteemed son, Lieutenant Wilhelm Androtten II, had perished fighting the Nazi invaders in the battle for the Lowlands, and had been posthumously awarded the second highest decoration the Queen gave such heroes. Hall had to guess at the contents of the letter, using his German as a basis for deciphering the Dutch.
"Does this look like that boy grown up?" he asked Pepe.
"I think so, Mateo. What does the letter say?"