Bear Island

by Alistair MacLean

  They wouldn’t say anything.

  ‘By and by,’ I went on, ‘you’d probably have manufactured some excuse for towing this vessel down to Perleporten so as to make the transshipment of the gold all that easier. And then heigh-ho for Merry England and the just enjoyment of the fruits of your labours. Could I be wrong?’

  ‘No.’ Otto was very calm. ‘You’re right. But I think you’d find it very hard to make a criminal case out of this. What could we possibly be charged with? Theft? Ridiculous. Finders, keepers.’

  ‘Finders, keepers? A few miserable tons of gold? Your ambitions are only paltry, you’re only skimming the surface of the available loot. Isn’t that so, Heissman?’

  They all looked at Heissman. Heissman, in turn, didn’t appear particularly anxious to look at anyone.

  ‘Why do you silly people think I’m here?’ I said. ‘Why do you think that, in spite of the elaborate smoke-screen you set up, the British Government not only knew that you were going to Bear Island but also knew that your purpose in going there was not as advertised? Don’t you know that, in certain matters, European governments co-operate very closely? Don’t you know that most of them share a keen interest in the activities of Johann Heissman? For what you don’t know is that most of them know a great deal more about Johann Heissman than you do. Perhaps, Heissman, you’d like to tell them yourself—starting, shall we say, with the thirty-odd years you’ve been working for the Soviet government?’

  Otto stared at Heissman, his huge jowls seeming to fall apart. Goin’s facial muscles tightened until the habitual smooth blandness had vanished from his face. The Count’s expression didn’t change, he just nodded slowly as if understanding at last the solution of a long-standing problem. Heissman looked acutely unhappy.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘as Heissman doesn’t appear to have any intention of telling anyone anything, I suppose that leaves it up to me. Heissman, here, is a remarkably gifted specialist in an extremely specialized field. He is, purely and simply, a treasure-hunter, and there’s no one in the business who can hold a candle to him. But he doesn’t just hunt for the type of treasure that you people think he does: I fear he may have been deceiving you on this point, as, indeed, he has been deceiving you on another. I refer to the fact that a pre-condition of his cutting you into a share of the loot was that his niece, Mary Stuart, be employed by Olympus Productions. Having the nasty and suspicious minds that you do, you probably and rapidly arrived at the conclusion that she wasn’t his niece at all—which she isn’t— and was along for some other purposes—which she is. But not for the purposes which your nasty and suspicious minds attributed to her. For Heissman, Miss Stuart was essential for the achievement of an entirely different purpose which he kind of forgot to tell you about.

  ‘Miss Stuart’s father, you have to understand, was just as unscrupulous and unprincipled a rogue as any of you. He held very senior positions in both the German Navy and the Nazi Party and, like others similarly placed, used his power to feather his own nest—just as Hermann Goering did—when the war was seen to be lost, although he was smarter than Goering and managed to get out from under before the war-criminal roundup. The gold, although this will probably never be proved, almost certainly came from the vaults of Norwegian banks, and a man with all the resources of the German Navy behind him would have had no trouble in choosing such a splendidly isolated spot as Perleporten in Bear Island and having the stuff transferred there. Probably by submarine. Not that it matters.

  ‘But it wasn’t just the gold that was transported to Perleporten, which is why Mary Stuart is here. Feathers weren’t enough for Dad’s nest, nothing less than swansdown would do. The swansdown almost certainly took the form of either bank bonds or securities, probably obtained—I wouldn’t say purchased—in the late thirties. Such securities are perfectly redeemable even today. An attempt was recently made to sell £30 millions’ worth of such securities through foreign exchange, but the West German Federal Bank wouldn’t play ball because proper owner-identification was lacking. But there wouldn’t be any problem about owner-identification this time, would there, Heissman?’

  Heissman didn’t say whether there would or there wouldn’t.

  ‘And where are they?’ I said. ‘Nicely welded up in a dummy steel ingot?’ As he still wasn’t being very forthcoming, I went on: ‘No matter, we’ll have them. And then you’re never going to have the pleasure of seeing Mary Stuart’s father put his signature and fingerprints on those documents and of checking that they match up.’

  ‘You’re sure of that?’ Heissman said. He had recovered his normal degree of composure, which meant that he was very composed indeed.

  ‘In a changing world like ours who can be sure of anything? But with that proviso, yes.’

  ‘I think you’ve overlooked something.’

  ‘I have?’

  ‘Yes. We have Admiral Hanneman.’

  ‘That’s Miss Stuart’s father’s true name?’

  ‘You didn’t even know that?’

  ‘No. It’s of no relevance. And no, I haven’t overlooked that fact. I shall attend to that matter shortly. After I have attended to your friends. Maybe that’s the wrong word, maybe they’re not your friends any more. I mean, they don’t look particularly friendly, do they?’

  ‘Monstrous!’ Otto shouted. ‘Absolutely monstrous. Unforgivable! Diabolical! Our own partner!’ He spluttered into an outraged silence.

  ‘Despicable,’ Goin said coldly. ‘Absolutely contemptible.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ I said. ‘Tell me, does this moral indignation stem from this revelation of the depths of Heissman’s perfidy or merely because he omitted to cut you in on the proceeds of the cashing of the securities? Don’t bother answering that question, it’s purely rhetorical, as villains you’re dyed in the same inky black as Heissman. What I mean is, most of you spend a great deal of time and careful thought in concealing from the other members of the board of Olympus Productions just what the true natures of your activities are. Heissman is hardly alone in this respect.

  ‘Take the Count here. Compared to the rest of you he was a vestal angel, but even he dabbled in some murky waters. For over thirty years now he’s been a member of the board and has had a free meal ticket for life because he happened to be in Vienna when the Anschluss came, when Otto headed for the States and Heissman was spirited away. Heissman was spirited away because Otto had arranged for him to be so that he could take all the film company’s capital out of the country: Otto was never a man to hesitate when it came to selling a friend down the river.

  ‘What Otto didn’t know but what the Count did but carefully refrained from telling him was that Heissman’s disappearance had been entirely voluntary. Heissman had been a German secret agent for some time and his adopted country needed him. What his adopted country didn’t know was that Russia had adopted him even before they had, but this isn’t germane to the main point: that Otto believed he had betrayed a friend for gold and that the Count knew it. Unfortunately, it’s going to be very hard to prove anything against the Count, and not being a grasping man by nature, never having asked for anything more than his salary, there’s nothing to demonstrate blackmail which is why I’ve chosen him—and he’s accepted—as the person to turn Queen’s Evidence against his fellow directors on the board.’

  Heissman now joined Otto and Goin in giving the Count the kind of look they had so lately given him.

  ‘Or take Otto,’ I went on. ‘For years he’d been embezzling very large sums of money from the company, virtually bleeding it white.’ It was now the turn of Heissman and the Count to stare at Otto. ‘Or take Goin. He discovered about the embezzling and for two or three years he’s been blackmailing Otto and bleeding him white. In sum, you constitute the most unpleasant, unprincipled and depraved bunch it’s ever been my misfortune to encounter. But I haven’t even scratched the surface of your infamy, have I? Or the infamy of one of you. We haven’t even discussed the person responsible for the violent deaths tha
t have taken place. He is, of course, one of you. He is, of course, quite, quite mad and will end his days in Broadmoor: although I have to admit that there’s been a certain far from crazy logic in his thinking and actions. But a prison for the insane—one regrets the abolition of the death penalty—is a certainty: it may well be, Otto, as well as being the best you can hope for, that you won’t live long after you get there.’ Otto said nothing, the expression on his face remained unchanged. I went on: ‘For your hired killers, of course, Jungbeck and Heyter, there will be life sentences in maximum security jails.’

  The temperature in that icily cold metallic tomb had fallen to many degrees below freezing point, but everyone appeared to be completely unaware of the fact: the classic example of mind over matter, and heaven knew that minds could rarely have been more exclusively and almost obsessively possessed than those of the men in those weird and alien surroundings.

  ‘Otto Gerran is an evil man,’ I said, ‘and the enormity of his crimes scarcely comes within the bounds of comprehension. However, one has to admit that he has had the most singularly wretched luck in his choice of business associates, and those associates must be held partly to blame for the terrible events that happened, for their extraordinary cupidity and selfishness drove Otto into a corner from which he could escape only by resorting to the most desperate measures.

  ‘We have already established that three of you here have been blackmailing Otto steadily over the years. His other two fellow directors, his daughter and Stryker, joined whole-heartedly in what had become by this time a very popular pastime. They, however, used a very different basis for their blackmail. This basis I cannot as yet prove but the facts, I believe, will be established in time. The facts are concerned with a car crash that took place in California over twenty years ago. There were two cars involved. One of those belonged to Lonnie Gilbert and had three women inside—his wife and two daughters, all of whom appeared to be considerably the worse for drink at the time. The other car belonged to the Strykers—but the Strykers were not in their car. The two people who were had, like Lonnie’s family, been at the same party in the Strykers’ house and, like Lonnie’s family, were in an advanced state of intoxication. They were Otto and Neal Divine. Isn’t that so, Otto?’

  ‘There’s nothing of this rubbish that can be proved.’

  ‘Not yet. Now, Otto was driving the car, but when Divine recovered from the effects of the crash he was convinced—no doubt by Otto—that he had been at the wheel. So for years now Divine has been under the impression that he owes his immunity from manslaughter charges purely to Otto’s silence. The salary lists show—’

  ‘Where did you get the salary lists from?’ Goin asked.

  ‘From your cubicle—where I also found this splendid bank-book of yours. The lists show that Divine has been receiving only a pittance in salary for years. How admirable is our Otto. He not only makes a man take the responsibility for deaths which he himself has caused but in the process reduces that man to the level of a serf and a pauper. The blackmailed doing some blackmailing on his own account. Makes for a pretty picture all round, does it not?

  ‘But the Strykers knew who had really caused the crash for Otto had been driving when they left the house. So they sold their silence in return for jobs on the board of Olympus Productions and vastly inflated salaries. You are a lovable, lovable lot, aren’t you? Do you know that this fat monster here actually tried to have Lonnie murdered tonight? Why? Because Judith Haynes, very shortly before she died, had told Lonnie the truth of what had happened in the car crash: so, of course, Lonnie would have been a danger to Otto as long as he had lived.

  ‘I don’t know who suggested this film expedition as a cover for getting the bullion. Heissman, I suppose. Not that it matters. What matters is that Otto saw in this proposed trip a unique and probably never to be repeated opportunity to solve all his troubles at one stroke. The solution was simple—eliminate all his five partners, including his daughter whom he hated as much as she hated him. So he gets himself two guns for hire, Heyter and Jungbeck—no question about the hire aspect, I found two thousand pounds in five-pound notes in Jungbeck’s case this afternoon: two alleged actors of whom no one but Otto had ever heard.

  ‘In effect, Otto would clear his board in one fell sweep. He’d get rid of the people he hated and who hated him. He’d buy enough time by their deaths to conceal his embezzlement. He’d collect very considerable insurance money and get back in the black with the help of accommodating accountants who can be as venal as the next lot. He would get all that lovely gold for himself. And, above all, he’d be for ever free of the continuous blackmail that had dominated his life and warped his mind until it drove him over the edge of insanity.’ I looked at Goin. ‘Do you understand now what I mean by saying that without me you’d have been dead by the end of the week?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I think so. I have no option other than to believe you are right.’ He looked at Otto in a kind of wonder. ‘But if he was only after the board of directors—’

  ‘Why should others die? Ill luck, ill management, or someone just got in his way. The first intended victim was the Count, and this was where the ill luck came in. Not the Count’s—Antonio’s. Otto, as I think digging into his past will show, is a man of many parts. Among some of the more esoteric skills acquired were some relating to either chemistry or medicine: Otto is at home with poisons. He is also, as so many very fat men are, extremely gifted at palming articles. At the table on the night when Antonio died the food, as usual, was served from the side table at the top of the main table where Otto sat. Otto introduced some aconite—only a pinch was necessary—into the horseradish on the plate intended for the Count. Unfortunately for poor Antonio, the Count has a profound dislike of horseradish and passed his on to the vegetarian Antonio. And so Antonio died.’

  ‘He tried to poison Heissman at the same time. But Heissman wasn’t feeling in the best of form that evening, were you, Heissman—you will recall that you left the table in a great hurry, your plate untouched. The economical Haggerty, instead of consigning this clearly untouched plate to the gash bucket, put it back in the casserole from which the two stewards, Scott and Moxen, were served later that night—and from which the Duke stole a few surreptitious mouthfuls. Three became very ill, two died—all through ill luck.’

  ‘Aren’t you overlooking the fact that Otto himself was poisoned?’ the Count said.

  ‘Sure he was. By his own hand. To obviate any suspicion that might fall on him. He didn’t use aconite though—all that was required was some relatively harmless emetic and some acting. This, incidentally, was why Otto sent me off on a tour of the Morning Rose—not to check on sea-sickness but to see who else he might have poisoned by accident. His reaction when he heard of Antonio’s death was unnaturally violent—though I didn’t get the significance at the time.

  ‘Matters took another tragic turn later that evening. Two people came to check my cabin in my absence—one was either Jungbeck or Heyter and the other was Halliday.’ I looked at Heissman. ‘He was your man, wasn’t he?’

  Heissman nodded silently.

  ‘Heissman was suspicious of me. He wanted to check on my bona fides and examined my cases—had them examined, rather, by Halliday. Otto was suspicious and one of his hired men discovered that I’d been reading an article about aconite. One death more or less wasn’t going to mean much to Otto now, so he planned to eliminate me, using his favourite eliminator—poison. In a bottle of scotch. Unfortunately for Halliday, who had come to see if he could lay hands on the medical case that I’d taken up to the saloon, he drank the night-cap intended for me.

  ‘The other deaths are easy to explain. When the party was searching for Smithy, Jungbeck and Heyter clobbered Allen and killed Stryker in this clumsy attempt to frame Allen. And, during the night, Otto arranged for the execution of his own daughter. He was on watch with Jungbeck and the murder could only have occurred during that time.’ I looked at Otto. ‘You should have checked o
n your daughter’s window—I’d screwed it shut so that it was impossible for anyone to have entered from the outside. I’d also found that a hypodermic and a phial of morphine had been stolen. You don’t have to admit any of this—both Jungbeck and Heyter will sing like canaries.’

  ‘I admit everything.’ Otto spoke with a massive calm. ‘You are correct in every detail. Not that I see that any of it is going to do you any good.’ I’d said that he was an artist in palming things and he proceeded to prove it. The very unpleasant-looking little black automatic that he held in his hand just seemed to have materialized there.

  ‘I don’t see that that’s going to do you any good either,’ I said. ‘After all, you’ve just admitted that you’re guilty of everything I claimed you were.’ I was standing directly under the conning-tower hatchway, where I’d deliberately and advisedly positioned myself as soon as we’d arrived, and I could see things that Otto couldn’t. ‘Where do you think the Morning Rose is now?’

  ‘What was that?’ I didn’t much like the way his pudgy little hand tightened round the butt of his gun.

  ‘She never went farther than Tunheim where there have been people up there waiting to hear from me. True, they couldn’t hear by direct radio contact, because you’d had one of your hard men smash the trawler’s receiver, hadn’t you? But before the Morning Rose left here I’d left aboard a radio device that tunes into a radio homer. They had clear instructions as to what to do the moment that device was actuated by the homer transmitter. It’s been transmitting for almost ninety minutes now. There are armed soldiers and police officers of both Norway and Britain aboard that trawler. Rather, they were. They’re aboard this vessel now. Please take my word for it Otherwise we have useless bloodshed.’