'Do you think the police will succeed in getting enough evidence to prove that some of them murdered Teddy Morden?'
Verney shook his head. 'I rather doubt it. Our best hope of that is that one of them will turn Queen's Evidence. But these people are not ordinary crooks. Such previous experience as I've had with Satanists has shown that generally they are so terrified of their Infernal Master, and of other members of their Fraternity who have escaped the net, that they prefer to face any legal punishment for obscene behaviour, and so on, rather than risk what might come to them if they spilled the beans about anything the police have failed to find out for themselves. But, of course, Special Branch are searching the place from attic to cellar, so there is a chance that they may come upon some incriminating documents.'
'How about the photos of Tom Ruddy and Mary?'
'Thompson got those and several dozen others of a similar nature; and the negatives. The Ruddy job was no isolated case. It is clear that they have been running a regular blackmail racket, either to get money out of people or force them into doing the Devil's work. Now that we've busted the racket, with luck we may be able to persuade some of the victims to prosecute.'
'They might,' Barney agreed, 'seeing that in such cases the victim is protected from having his name made public; and if they did we'd be able to get some of these Satanist swine much longer sentences than any they would receive for moral turpitude. But what about the air base, Sir? You must have heard something further?'
'Of course. About seven o'clock Colonel Richter rang up. He is the U.S. top security man, and by then they knew they'd had it. The base had made their check and reported a nuclear war-head missing. Richter sounded nearly as explosive as if he were an atomic war-head himself. He was just leaving to drive there to conduct a personal enquiry, and he promised to telephone me again as soon as he had got from his people the facts about Washington's departure. It is to hear from him I am waiting now.'
'May I wait here, too, Sir,' Barney asked.
'Certainly. I'll send for some more coffee. I expect you could do with a cup. As it is Sunday I have no appointments and I've already asked my No. 2 to attend to any special business, other than this, that might turn up. This thing is too big for either of us to take our mind off it until we are quite certain that there is no hope of retrieving the situation.'
Barney's face brightened. 'You think there might be, then?'
C.B. laid a finger alongside his big nose in a familiar gesture. 'From Cambridgeshire to Moscow is all of fifteen hundred miles. He couldn't fly that far in an ordinary aircraft without coming down somewhere on the way to refuel. As soon as Otto told me about his vision I saw the red light and I didn't wait for the Americans to do any checking. I got straight through to the Security Chief at N.A.T.O., and passed on to him Otto's description of Colonel Washington. I said I thought he had got away with a big bomber, but it might be a smaller aircraft, in which case he would have to come down to refuel and could easily be recognized on account of his unusual height and features. In any case, all stations were to be alerted to watch for any unscheduled aircraft crossing Europe in the direction of the Iron Curtain, and if spotted fighters were to be sent up to intercept and force it down.'
'You're certainly jolly quick off the mark, Sir.' Barney said with a note of admiration.
The older man shrugged. 'But not quick enough in this case, I'm afraid. If only Otto had come round to me at once we would have caught them for certain; but it was four o'clock before I could get cracking, and they had been in the air for three hours by then. If they were in anything that had the speed of an average airliner, they would have needed only another half hour's flying to cross the Iron Curtain. And once over it, of course, they would be in the clear; they could refuel without risk and fly on to Moscow. Still, there is just a chance that they had to come down this side of the Curtain and, if so, they may be being held pending a check up on them. If they are, we should hear pretty soon; or Richter may have done so already, as this is really a U.S. responsibility and he too will have been in touch with N.A.T.O.'
They had their coffee and some sandwiches and, to keep Barney from sitting brooding about Mary, C.B. made him give a much more detailed account of his doings the previous night. At eleven o'clock, as Colonel Richter had not come through, Verney 'phoned the Fulgoham air base and learnt that the Colonel was on his way up to London. At half past he was announced over the buzzer, and C.B. had him shown in at once.
The American Security Chief was short, tubby and round-faced, but there was nothing soft about him. His mouth was a hard line and his brown eyes, half veiled by heavy lids, were shrewd and calculating, yet he was not without a sense of humour. With a wry twist of his rat-trap mouth he declared that he would not waste time letting off steam. He had already done that by leaving a score of people down at the air base under close arrest for negligence; but he doubted if there was any case against most of them, as they had broken no regulation by allowing their Commanding Officer to fly off at any hour he liked in his own aircraft.
The aircraft had been a twin-engined six-seater. Recently it had had extra fuel tanks fitted and with these had a comfortable range of seven hundred miles. It had taken off on a north-easterly course and automatic radar plots showed that it had continued on that course out over the North Sea for at least a hundred miles. If the course was held that meant that the aircraft should, at about five o'clock in the morning, have been over Southern Norway. The questioning of Colonel Washington's officers had brought out the fact that he had told several of them that he intended to spend his leave fishing in Norway. Richter therefore suggested the possibility that Washington was innocent and that someone else had stolen the atomic war-head earlier in the day; or perhaps several days ago.
Verney promptly shot down that theory by making Barney give an account of Washington's association with Lothar, and stating that within his own knowledge Lothar had only a week earlier stolen a quantity of secret rocket fuel from the Experimental Station in Wales.
Richter blinked a little at Barney's description of the Black Magic ceremony from which he had narrowly escaped with his life; but he knew that such circles existed and, as a man answering Lothar's description had entered the air base with Washington, he agreed that the association left no doubt that it was they who had made off with the war-head.
Anxiously Barney asked, 'Was there a girl with them? A good-looking dark-haired young woman of about twenty-three?'
'Yep,' the Colonel replied. 'She was sitting in the back of the car. Washington told the gate guard that his two passengers were accompanying him on his leave. According to regulations they should have been signed in and given temporary passes, but seeing they were with the C.O., and he was in a hurry, the guard skipped that formality. He is sitting in the cooler now, wishing he hadn't. Both passengers were later seen to board Colonel Washington's aircraft.'
That killed Barney's last hope that Mary might have got away and was somewhere in hiding. Instead she was still a prisoner of the two Satanists and perhaps by now behind the Iron Curtain. To hide his sick misery, he turned away to the big window that looked out over London's roof-tops.
'The course from Cambridgeshire to Moscow is North by East,' C.B. remarked, 'so, after flying about half-way to Norway, Washington would have had only to alter course to due East to be heading for his real destination. But he'd have to fly over Denmark, and she is a member of N.A.T.O. I had a hope that the 'plane might be picked up before it got through, and forced down.'
Richter shook his head. 'No dice, friend. His seven hundred mile range would have enabled him to get over the Iron Curtain before he had to come down to refuel. Still, I would have thought our observation posts would have had some record of an unscheduled aircraft flying over. But they haven't. I was on to N.A.T.O. H.Q. before I left Fulgoham and from round four o'clock on they had alerted every station from the Northern tip of Denmark down to Frankfurt, and they've registered nothing crossing the line that might have been
our man.'
Barney turned back from the window and said to his Chief, 'I know it has always been your opinion, Sir, that Lothar is a Soviet agent; but Squadron-Leader Forsby takes a different view. He thinks that Lothar has broken with the Russians and has become just a scientist with cranky views, who is anxious to try out some private experiment. And Otto, you will recall, did report last week seeing him up in a cave among snow-covered mountains. If Forsby is right it seems possible that it really was to some secret hide-out in Norway that Washington has flown Lothar.'
'Maybe you're right, young feller,' Verney admitted. 'I only hope to God you are. That would account for his aircraft never having flown through the radio check, as the Norway stations were considered too far North to be worth alerting. Anyway, Otto intended to do an all-out concentration this morning on trying to locate his brother; so let's go down and find out if he has anything fresh to tell us.'
Five minutes later the three of them were in Verney's car on their way to Chelsea. Barney sat with the chauffeur and the other two in the back; so during the run C.B. was able to give Richter an idea of the strange bond that linked the Khune twins, and enabled them to contact each other on the psychic plane. While listening, the American eyed him somewhat dubiously but, in view of what he had already been told of the Satanic background to the whole business, he remarked: 'Well, there are stranger things . . . and so on, as it says in Hamlet; so it's not for me to question your beliefs about this business.'
At the small hotel at which C.B. had secured accommodation for Otto, Verney told his friend the landlord that he wanted to have a quiet talk with his guest; so the landlord placed his private sitting-room at their disposal, and a few minutes later Otto came down to it.
After he had been introduced to Colonel Richter, and been told that they still had no definite information concerning Lothar's whereabouts, he said, 'He has not gone into Russia. I'm sure of that. He is back in the mountain hide-out where I saw him last week. I saw him there again this morning about nine o'clock, just after I woke up. And it can't be in the Caucasus because he wouldn't have had time to fly that far. He could hardly have got so far as Dalmatia, either; so it must be either in Norway or the Alps. It is a cave, high up above snow level. There is a cable railway up to the broad platform at its entrance, and inside the cave a number of lean-to's have been made and furnished as bedrooms and living quarters. I saw him there as clearly as I see you; and with him were the hook-nosed giant in American uniform and a pretty dark-haired woman.'
'Was she . . .' Barney gulped, 'was she looking all right?'
'Well, she was a bit dishevelled and pale. No doubt she was tired from the journey. But otherwise she looked quite normal.'
By this time it was close on one o'clock; so C.B. asked the landlord to serve lunch for them in the private room in order that they could continue their talk without being overheard. It was not the first time Verney had made such a request, and the landlord willingly agreed.
After they had had a round of drinks they all felt better, and over the good meal that followed they were able to discuss the affair with relative calmness. But they got no further. When they had finished their meal C.B. told Barney that as no action could be taken for the moment, and he looked all in, he was to go home and to bed, so as to catch up on his loss of sleep. The others agreed to keep in touch in case of any fresh development, and before they separated it was agreed that they should all meet at Verney's office at nine o'clock the following morning.
On the Monday C.B. arrived at his office a little early to find that Otto was already there waiting for him. Without any preamble the scientist announced, 'They are in Switzerland; I'm sure of it.'
Verney's long face lit up. 'I supposed that they had come down near this mountain hide-out of Lothar's only to refuel from it, and that by this time they would have flown on to Russia. If you are right we may get them yet. But what makes you so certain that they are in Switzerland?'
'I couldn't swear to that, but I've spent several holidays in Switzerland and now I've been able to see more of the locality I'm convinced that it can be in no other country. Yesterday, in the evening, I got through to Lothar again, He was with the big American and they were standing on the rock platform outside the cave looking down into the valley, and all the features in it were of the kind I have seen in scores of Swiss valleys.'
C.B. picked up a ruler from his desk and stepped over to a big map of Europe that hung on the wall behind his chair. Stuck in it there were many pins with different coloured heads, the significance of which were known only to him and the senior members of his staff. Using the ruler as a rough measure, he said:
'Could be. From Cambridge to the southern tip of Norway or the frontier of Switzerland is just about the same distance - roughly five hundred miles. This aircraft had a fuel range of seven hundred, so he could have headed north-east for a hundred miles then swing right round to south south-west and gone in over Belgium with still enough fuel to carry him well into Switzerland. As only the radar screen that covers the Iron Curtain countries was alerted, he would have outflanked that, too. Have you any idea what they are up to in this cave?'
'I hadn't last night; but I have now.' Otto's face suddenly became grim. 'I woke about seven and succeeded in getting another look round the cave. I found that it is really a big curved tunnel. Its other entrance is from another broad outjutting shelf that cannot be seen from the valley below because it is hidden by a spur of the mountain. On it Lothar has a rocket, a mass of gear and . . .'
'A rocket!'
'Yes. As he has any amount of money he would have had no difficulty in getting a rocket shell and parts made to his specification, and he could assemble them himself. But, of course, it wouldn't have been any use to him unless he could get proper fuel and a war-head; so those he had to steal. Anyhow, on the far shelf outside the cave a twenty-five-foot rocket is lying, the drums containing my fuel are in a stack nearby, and for a launching pad he could not have a better base than the solid rock.'
'Good God, man!' C.B. exclaimed, aghast. 'D'you mean that he is intending to launch it?'
'There doesn't seem much doubt about that. At seven o'clock he, Colonel Washington, and a thick-set dark man were all hard at work round a forge, adapting the casing of the warhead from the bomb to serve as a cone for the rocket.'
At that minute Colonel Richter was shown in. When Verney told him the alarming news his rat-trap mouth worked silently for a few moments, then he said, 'Well, we've got something to be thankful for. Neither the fuel nor the H-bomb head have reached the Russians; and it doesn't look as though they are likely to.'
'But . . .' Verney began.
'I know, Colonel; I know,' the American cut in. 'Instead of having been left standing by an enemy agent, we have a madman on our hands. And the sort of party he may start with that warhead is no laughing matter. Still, with luck we might locate and grab him before he has a chance to set it off. If not it's going to be just too bad for quite a lot of Swiss.'
'I can't offer any concrete proof that this place is in Switzerland,' Otto said a shade hesitantly, 'although I've the strongest possible feeling that it is. But saying I'm right, there must be hundreds of valleys similar to the one I saw in my vision, and I've no means of directing you to it.'
'Only a small percentage of them would have cable railways,' replied Richter quickly. 'But what I don't get is why this crank should want to launch a rocket. And why do it in Switzerland? What does he expect to gain by killing a lot of Swiss? Mad he may be, but there must be some object that his crazy brain is aiming to achieve.'
'Because he launches it from Switzerland it doesn't follow that the war-head will explode there,' remarked C.B. Then he turned to Otto and asked, 'Can you give us any idea how far the fuel he's got would carry his rocket?'
After thinking for a moment the scientist said, 'I can give only an answer that may be widely out. So much depends on the weight of his rocket but, if it conforms to normal standards, I'd say that
with my new fuel he could send a rocket of that size anything from four to eight hundred miles.'
Richter's heavily-lidded eyes opened wide, and he exclaimed, 'Snakes alive! Then if he has the know-how to direct it accurately he might put it down on Paris, London or Berlin.'
'He has the know-how all right,' Otto replied glumly. 'He has been a top-line rocket scientist from the Peenemünde days, and that is sixteen years ago. But he won't put it on Berlin. My family is of German extraction, and Lothar has always had a passion for the Fatherland.'
The door opened and Barney came in. He made a quick apology to his Chief for being late, explaining that a learner-driver had run into his taxi, so held him up while a policeman was taking notes. Then he said excitedly,
'I've got something here, Sir, that may prove important. Mrs. Morden thrust it on me just before we left the Cedars on Saturday night. Owing to all that happened afterwards I forgot about it, and yesterday afternoon I was so dead beat that I simply threw my clothes on the floor and flopped into bed. This morning when I picked them up I came across it in my pocket. It's a spool of recorder tape.'
Verney took the small nail-varnish carton and shook out the spool; then he switched on the inter-com. and asked for a tape-recorder machine to be sent up. Five minutes later the tape was inserted in the machine and being played back.
An American voice said harshly, 'Get your clothes off,' then Mary's voice came, panic-stricken and pleading that she really had not meant to run away. Next second her piercing screams rang through the room, followed by a ghastly sobbing, then silence.
Beads of sweat had broken out on Barney's face. Fiercely he exclaimed, 'The swine! The swine! Then she did try to escape from him but he caught her. Oh, the swine! What did he do to her!'
'Shut up,' snapped C.B., for Mary's voice was coming from the machine again, but now it was quite normal. She was saying, 'I behaved very stupidly yesterday when you were telling me about human sacrifice. If I am to be a really good witch I ought to prepare myself to witness such ceremonies . . .'
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