Offspring

by Stan Mason

  ‘Do we have to go on like this?’ demanded Strogoff. ‘Violence always wins in the end if one is prepared to use it indiscriminately. Now... where’s the microfilm?’

  The man was right! The meek would never inherit the earth! It was the revolutionaries, the dictators, the tyrants and the despots who controlled it. Karl grabbed me by the collar and started to slap my face until I yielded like a coward. I went to the tiny wardrobe in the bedroom and produced the buff envelope which I passed to Strogoff.

  ‘You should keep away from the bottle,’ he advised. ‘It impairs your judgement.’ He opened the envelope and took out the strips of microfilm which he held up to the light. He screwed up one eye to focus accurately. ‘What’s this?’ he demanded angrily. ‘This film has been cut. It shows only the names of those criminals with surnames beginning from A to M. What happened to the rest of it?’ I staggered over to the executive case with a pain throbbing through my head at each heartbeat, and examined the money. ‘What happened to the rest of this?’

  ‘You’re not that drunk then!’ grunted the Russian. ‘The rest of the money’s in a safe place. It’s my insurance you’ll give me the information I need.’

  ‘Well keeping half the microfilm is my insurance I’ll get paid.’ I started to laugh, which had the effect of setting him off as well.

  ‘I like it, Herr Erdbeer,’ he roared. ‘We’re two people from the same mould. I’ll pay you the balance when you deliver the rest of the information.’

  ‘Tell me?’ I asked, still slurring my words. ‘How did you know what the cost of the information would be?’

  ‘I don’t think you need to know that,’ he replied austerely. ‘The rest of the money’s at my fortress. It’ll be a good opportunity for you to visit me in my domain in the Zugspitze.’

  ‘Where exactly is this place?’ I asked suspiciously.

  ‘All you have to do is to start making your way up the mountain. My troops will see you coming and direct you to the right place. However, I’m returning there tomorrow by helicopter. Both you and your friend can ride with me. I’ll be here at ten o’clock in the morning.’ He uttered a brief order in German and, by the time I had collected my wits, they had gone.

  I spent the next twenty minutes drinking coffee to bring me some way back to normality. Once I had sobered up a little, I checked the money in the executive case which was practically the same amount I had agreed with Hausmann. How Strogoff knew what Hausmann would ask was a complete mystery to me. I drove all the way back to Berchtesgaden without delay. Hausmann must have known what had happened but he didn’t blink an eyebrow. How could I have possibly secured so much money in such a short time? And why was I bringing it to him at such a late hour? He must have known! He examined the money carefully and blinked and twitched a few times as though recognising the Russian’s fingerprints on the soft leather top of the case. Then he handed me a white envelope which he said contained the true microfilm. I wasted no time and returned to Munich, going directly to the British Embassy. They were not too pleased with my presence at that time of the morning but they acted effectively in the knowledge I was acting under the direct instructions of the Prime Minister of Britain. We undertook the official procedures with regard to security, which involved my signature on a number of documents, and the white envelope was eventually locked away in a secure place. It was the only way I could be sure Berg wouldn’t steal it. When I arrived back at the apartment it was four o’clock in the morning. Berg was waiting for me and I could see he was agitated.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he demanded.

  ‘Why? what’s happened?’

  ‘Nothing. I was concerned about you, that’s all!’

  ‘That must be the overstatement of the year,’ I laughed.

  He looked at me strangely. ‘Something happened, didn’t it? Other than with Hausmann’s daughter! Furthermore, I can’t find the envelope with the microfilm. Have you any idea where it is?’

  He pressed for further information but I withheld the events of the night. ‘Tomorrow!’ I told him, unwilling to discuss anything in the early hours of the morning. ‘I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow!’

  ‘For your information,’ he riposted, ‘it is tomorrow!’

  I laughed at his comment. For a change the boot was on the other foot. He had no idea I had received a visit and money from Strogoff. Nor did he realise I had paid Hausmann and taken receipt of the real microfilm. Now he was the one who would have to wait for details! Gradually, the success and achievement of the trip filtered through my tired brain. What a coup! I had obtained the information... and got it for nothing too! Ted Flanders would simply grunt ungratefully when i told him the story, but there was no doubt about it being a highly-prized coup! Needless to say, the end was in sight and I was extremely please with myself. However, I was a long way from home and there was always the possibility of danger in store... especially when Strogoff was around.

  The next day, Karl called at ten o’clock. I looked through the window to see Strogoff sitting in the back seat of the car and nodded quietly to myself. ‘You’re going to his fortress to pick up the money,’ I told Berg bluntly, much to his surprise, as I removed the second buff envelope from the tea-caddy. ‘He has half the microfilm. Here’s the rest of it.’ I stuffed the envelope into his hand as he started to protest, but I refused to let him have his own way. ‘Get back as soon as possible with the money,’ I lied, ‘and we’ll go back to Hausmann and collect the real microfilm.’

  I indicated to Karl that Berg was going with him and held my breath in case he insisted I went along too. The car waited for about half-a-minute and then moved off, leaving me to heave a sigh of relief. Strogoff had obviously asked Berg whether he had the rest of the information. When The Rooter responded affirmatively, the Russian decided there was no point in waiting for me. He could track me down whenever he wanted to. If I discovered the identity of Der Bankvorsteher, Strogoff would find some way to compensate me providing I divulged the details to him. No doubt some fiendish plan was working its way through his evil mind in that direction. I considered coldly it would be the last time I ever saw Jack Berg. The money promised by the Russian was simply a ruse. After landing in his own realm, he would take the buff envelope from Berg and tell Karl to get rid of him. Berg was expendable. He would never know I had the true microfilm in my possession all the time. I disliked being deceitful to a fellow human-being, but someone had changed the ground rules again and we were all fighting for survival! I didn’t even dare to think what Strogoff would do when he discovered the information was false. After all, the truth would emerge sooner or later. I hoped it might be later, for everyone’s sake... especially my own!

  Chapter Fifteen

  I spent the following day at a leisurely pace, walking along the gentler grassy slopes near the hotel. There was a carefree feeling within my bones I was on vacation again, away from all the worries, the cares and the problems of a troubled world. I ambled along trying not to think of Berg, or International Three Thousand, or about Nazi war criminals. Everything here seemed so remote from the exigencies of civilisation. I ought to have packed and arranged for my return flight to Britain yet I remained, held by the invisible grip of destiny for a reason far beyond my understanding. For a while, I lay on a grassy slope with my eyes closed enjoying the pleasant breeze. At the back of my mind I dwelt on how long I should wait before taking a taxi to the British Embassy to collect the microfilm and report back to the Prime Minister. In the real world, it was essential to follow that plan without delay, but I allowed the hours to pass by unrewardingly using them for my personal pleasure. Ted Flanders would have had a fit if he could see me stretched out here in this mountain paradise. But why should he grumble? I had accomplished a great deal for the newspaper in a very short space of time. If the assignment had been given to someone else, it was unlikely they would have reached this point for months... maybe eve
n longer! Not that the editor had time for that kind of logic. He simply wanted results! In his rule book there were many whippings and extremely few carrots!

  Berg never returned that day. At least he hadn’t come back by five o’clock. I decided it would be dangerous to spend another night at the apartment so I booked a seat on the next flight to London. There wasn’t much time left for comfort before departure and I hastened to the British Embassy to collect the microfilm and continue speedily to the airport. Before boarding the aircraft, I started to wonder about Berg again, and I rang the apartment with forlorn hope but there was no reply. It was almost certain Strogoff had carried out his mischievous plan to kill him once he laid his hands on the other part of the microfilm. If Hausmann hadn’t been sharp enough to divide it into separate parts, my demise would have been imminent as well. Furthermore, I was glad not to have been forced physically to join the Russian in his helicopter flight to his mountain retreat. If that had happened, the world would never know the truth!

  It was customary for me to become agitated at the commencement of a long journey to get home. My blood always raced with impatience and excitement. I could hardly wait to enjoy the comfort of climbing into my own bed. On this occasion, however, sleep was uppermost in my mind and, after landing at London airport, I decided to rent a room for the night at a nearby hotel. Once again fate took a hand. When I returned to my apartment the following morning, there were two police cars outside and uniformed men and detectives crawling over the place. It didn’t take someone with the instincts of Sherlock Holmes to realise something serious had happened. I pushed my way through the crowd of inquisitive on-lookers, racing upstairs until I came face to face with a posse of plain-clothed and uniformed police. Once again, the apartment had been wrecked, but this time the damage was total. The intruder had pulled every piece of furniture apart, ripping through all the soft furnishings with a knife, clearly searching for something important. The flash of the police photographer’s camera reflected off the white walls of the bedroom and I pushed a policeman aside to find Tania’s body on the bed covered with a sheet. I lifted it to stare at her. She lay pale and inert, with blood seeping from a corner of her mouth. There was no doubt she had passed from this world to the next. I noticed the handiwork well. Her appearance and the position in which she had been left was identical to the one in which I had found Carrie on the night she was murdered. I was hustled quickly out of the bedroom and a police inspector started to interrogate me.

  ‘The tenant of this apartment is a person called James Savage. Are you that man?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Where were you between the hours of eight and ten o’clock last night?’ he began firmly, looking for any signs in my face which might give him a clue to her death.

  ‘I was thirty thousand feet in the air, on my way back from Germany,’ I told him, as the shock of Tania’s death filtered through my mind to become reality.

  ‘How well did you know this woman?’

  ‘She was a colleague. A fellow newspaper reporter. She was staying here for a while. How was she killed?’

  ‘Who said she was killed?’ he riposted suspiciously.

  ‘Look, inspector. She was a young woman, ambitious and happy with life. She wouldn’t have taken her own life. Don’t play games with me! She was murdered!’

  ‘Then you’ll be surprised if I told you she died from an overdose of amphetamines administered between eight and ten o’clock last night. What do you say about that?’

  ‘There’s blood seeping from a corner of her mouth. An overdose of tablets wouldn’t do a thing like that!’ I was angry, almost to the point of insolence. ‘I tell you there was no reason for her to take her own life! She wouldn’t have done it! We were on an assignment together. If she took tablets, someone forced her to swallow them. That’s why there’s blood seeping from her mouth! Are there any other marks on her body?’

  He refused to answer the question and there was a momentary silence. Then he inhaled deeply and stared directly into my eyes giving me a piercing look. ‘I’d like to know more about this assignment of yours, Mr. Savage.’ he went on slowly. ‘But first, let me ask you... do you follow any kind of a cult?’ ‘Cult? What are you talking about?’

  ‘Some kind of pursuit you indulged in together perhaps? Something a little out of the ordinary?’

  ‘You’ve lost me. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  He moved to a corner of the room and picked up a black leather case laying on its side. I had never seen it before. I could only presume it belonged to Tania. He opened it and tipped out the contents on the badly-damaged settee for me to examine. It contained a number of Nazi artefacts which could be readily identified by a small flag bearing the insignia of a swastika and a large book with a coloured fylfot on the cover. ‘Do you collect souvenirs from World War Two as a hobby?’ he asked gruffly.

  I was too upset to play games with him, deciding to call a halt to the interrogation. ‘Before you pursue any lines of enquiry,’ I advised him, much to his astonishment, ‘you’ll have to contact the Prime Minister. The assignment in which we were engaged is one of the utmost secrecy and of national importance. I can’t answer any questions without breaching the Official Secrets Act. If you contact Mr. Maitland, the Personal Assistant to the Prime Minister, he’ll advise you accordingly.’

  The inspector stared at me tiredly for a few moments, weighing up the situation and then reached for the cordless telephone which lay on the floor. As he dialled the police station to ask them to verify the situation, I looked at some of the artefacts. They were the normal run-of-the-mill collectors’ items from Germany in World War Two, comprising an Iron Cross, a steel dagger, some ribbons and medals, an automatic pistol, and a few other incidental items, but it was the book which took my interest. On the cover, below the fylfot, emblazoned in gold, the initials P.C. had been branded, which meant little to me. I opened the tome to realise it represented a family album containing a great deal of text written in neat copperplate handwriting in German and many photographs. While waiting for the inspector to finish the telephone call, I flipped over the pages swiftly, extremely impressed by the painstaking effort of the originator of the volume, scanning the photographs of a high-ranking German officer who served in both major World Wars. The face was familiar although I couldn’t place it, and I went on to look at the pictures of his son as he grew up. I couldn’t recognise the boy’s face and ended up with some degree of frustration for my ignorance. Remembering the names of people I met had always been one of my weaknesses. There were so many actors in films whose names I couldn’t recall when they appeared on the screen, and I often let the problem roll round in my mind for days. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I would wake to remember who they were, by which time I had forgotten the name of the film in which they had acted. As I closed the cover of the book, I knew that the personal filing cabinet in my brain would start to search the data stored there thoroughly. How long it would take for me to discover the identity of the man, and what use it was likely to be, I had no idea. But it had meant something to Tania or she wouldn’t have given her life for it.

  ‘Who found her?’ I asked the police inspector, who was still holding the telephone, waiting for a reply.

  ‘Your next door neighbour, Mrs. Fanshaw, called in half an hour ago to return this case. It seems your colleague asked her to look after it overnight and return it to her this morning. When she couldn’t get an answer she called the police.’

  ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it,’ I told him point-blank. ‘Whoever killed her wanted the case. That’s why they pulled this place apart after she was murdered.’

  ‘What’s it all about?’ asked the inspector sharply, trying to get me to render information meaningful to him.

  ‘You’ll have to ask the Prime Minister,’ I insisted, refusing to tell him anything at all.

  At that
moment, a man in plain clothes emerged from the bedroom and crossed to the inspector to whisper in his ear. My interrogator’s lips appeared to tighten as he nodded. Then a voice sounded in the telephone receiver and he grunted before placing it down gently on the ripped settee. ‘Well,’ he told me, with disappointment in his voice, ‘it looks like you’re one of the untouchables. I can’t ask you anything at all, which leaves the police hanging out on a limb as usual. I wish people in high places would confide in us occasionally. It would certainly help. I don’t know how they expect us to fight crime if they refuse to tell us anything and handcuff us at the same time!’ He paused for a few moments before imparting the rest of the information. ‘By the way,’ he went on, ‘you may be interested to learn it wasn’t an overdose of tablets but the administration of a deadly poison which takes about fifteen seconds to cause death. If it helps, the body shows signs of bruising around the stomach and the ribs. At least three ribs were broken. Who are these people you’re involved with?’

  ‘You know I can’t answer that, inspector,’ I replied, feeling anger welling-up inside me. I was furious to hear that Tania had to suffer being beaten-up before she was killed. I would have liked five minutes alone with her murderer to avenge my dear friend. But it would never happen. The telephone rang and I picked up the instrument. ‘Savage!’ I snarled into the mouthpiece.

  ‘Mr. Savage,’ responded the woman at the other end of the line. ‘I’m calling on behalf of Mr. Kirk. He mentioned the other day you would be interested in coming here again... to meet with one of his colleagues. Is it still your wish to attend?’

  My anger subsided quickly at the invitation and I took a deep breath to quell my excitement. ‘Yes, I wish to attend,’ I uttered quietly as my heart pounded strongly in my chest. At last I was to meet Der Bankvorsteher! ‘When is the meeting to be held?’