Bad Company

by Jack Higgins

As they progressed through the usual bad London traffic, Dillon thought about von Berger and what he would entail. The Daimler turned along a narrow lane between warehouse developments and came out on a wharf beside the Thames. They parked outside The Dark Man, Salter’s pub, its painted sign showing a sinister individual in a dark cloak.

  The main bar was very Victorian: mirrors, mahogany bars behind, porcelain beer pumps. Dora, the barmaid, sat on a stool reading The London Evening Standard.

  The afternoon trade was light except for four men in the corner booth, and a fifth alongside. Harry Salter, his nephew Billy, his minders, Joe Baxter and Sam Hall, and Major Roper in his wheelchair.

  Harry Salter looked up, saw Dillon first. “You little Irish bastard. And you, General. What’s going on?”

  “Oh, a great deal, Harry.” Ferguson squeezed in. “We’ve got trouble and it affects all of us. How are you, Roper?”

  The man in the state-of-the-art wheelchair smiled. He wore a reefer coat, his hair down to his shoulders, and his face was a taut mass of the scar tissue associated with burns. A Royal Engineers’ bomb disposal expert, decorated with the George Cross, his extraordinary career had been terminated by what he called a “silly little bomb” in a family car in Belfast.

  He’d survived and discovered a whole new career in computers. Now, if you wanted to find out anything in cyberspace, it was Roper you called.

  “I’m fine, General.”

  “And you have the file?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Excellent.”

  “Here, what goes on?” Harry Salter asked.

  Ferguson said, “You see to the drinks, Dillon, and I’ll fill them in.”

  Afterward, Harry Salter said, “So we’re back with Kate Rashid. She was going to knock us all off, and now this geezer has taken over.”

  Dillon, standing at the bar, was joined by Billy, who said, “What do you think, Dillon?”

  “I think he’s serious business, Billy.”

  “Well, we’ve handled serious business before.”

  “Yes, and it got you a bullet through your neck, eighteen stitches in your face and two bullets through the pelvis.”

  “Dillon, I’m fit now. I work with a personal trainer every day.”

  “Billy, you jumped out of an airplane for me at four hundred feet, twice. It’s over, that kind of thing.”

  “So, I’m still good on the street.”

  “We’ll see, younger brother.”

  Behind them, Ferguson had finished. Harry Salter said, “A right bastard, this one. Just as bad as her.”

  “So it would appear. What do you think, Roper?”

  “Well, the coming together of Rashid and Berger does make them one of the most powerful corporations in the world. It’s the apotheosis of capitalism – if that doesn’t sound too Marxist.”

  Ferguson nodded. “It’s like a bad novel, the whole thing.” He turned to Harry Salter. “I’ve had a trying morning, Harry. Could I have your famous shepherd’s pie and an indifferent red wine? I’m in need of comfort.”

  6.

  AT THE RASHID house in South Audley Street the Baron sat in the drawing room with Marco.

  “So what’s our game plan?” Marco asked.

  “Let’s start by taking some action against the small fry, these gangsters, the Salters.”

  “I’ll work something out. I have Newton and Cook keeping Dillon’s place under surveillance.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  “Just to keep an eye on him, see where he goes, what contacts he makes. I’ve given Newton the addresses of those involved on a regular basis with him, also computer photos.”

  “Where did you get those?”

  “From the computer right here in the study. There’s a mass of information there – details of various schemes and operations Kate Rashid has put into play.”

  “Business?”

  “Of a sort.”

  “I’ll leave it all to you, for the moment, Marco. With the merger of the two companies, I have enough on my hands. Just keep me informed.”

  “Of course, Father,” Marco said and went out.

  The next morning, the “council of war” had moved to Roper’s apartment in Regency Square. It was on the ground floor, with its own entrance and a slope to aid wheelchair users. Roper insisted on looking after himself and had had the apartment, from bathroom to kitchen, specially designed to take care of his problems.

  His sitting room had been turned into a state-of-the-art computer laboratory, including some highly classified equipment, which was there mainly because it suited Charles Ferguson. Over the years since his disaster in Belfast, Roper had become a legend in the world of computers. He had broken every kind of system from Moscow to Washington and he had proved his worth to Ferguson and the Prime Minister on more than one occasion.

  On that morning, Sean Dillon arrived first in his Mini Cooper, parked and pressed the doorbell. The voice box crackled and Roper said, “Who is it?”

  “Sean, you idiot, let me in.”

  The door swung open and he went through into the sitting room and found Roper in his wheelchair at the bank of computers. He crossed to a sideboard, found a bottle of Irish whiskey and poured one.

  “Paddy? Okay, well, it’s not Bushmills, but you’re improving.”

  “I’m on a pension, Dillon. The Ministry of Defence being as parsimonious as it is, I have to watch my pennies.”

  “You could always sell your medals. The Military Cross would do okay, but the George Cross would make a fortune.”

  “You’re always so amusing.” Roper tried a smile, always difficult with that ravaged, burned face.

  “Don’t start feeling sorry for yourself. Ferguson said you had found something?”

  “Yes, but let’s wait for them.” The front doorbell went and he pressed the remote control. “Here they are.”

  A moment later, Ferguson appeared, and with him a woman in her late thirties, with red hair, wearing an Armani trouser suit. She looked like some high-level business executive, but she was Ferguson’s assistant, Detective Superintendent Hannah Bernstein, on loan to him from Special Branch. She had an M.A. in psychology from Oxford, but she had killed more than once in the line of duty.

  “Ah, Dillon,” the general said, “we can get straight on with it. What have you got for us, Major?”

  “You wanted me to have a look at von Berger in general, the way he’s been able to take over Rashid? Well, I discovered something interesting. A couple of years ago, he hiked two billion into Rashid for their oil exploration in Hazar and the Empty Quarter.”

  There was silence. Hannah said, “Where on earth would he get that sort of money?”

  “Swiss banks. And it made me smell a rather large rat.”

  It was Dillon who said, “Let me guess. We’re into Nazi gold.”

  “And not only that,” said Roper. “I got this story from an Israeli intelligence source. Von Berger was in Baghdad to see Saddam on some arms deal – and he was attacked by a mob in the old city. They were going to lynch him, when Kate Rashid came on the scene with a few Bedus, pistol in hand, and saved his life.”

  “I can see it now,” Dillon said.

  “Not being able to sleep at two-thirty in the morning, as often happens,” Roper went on, “I decided to go back even further on von Berger. You know that story that he left Berlin in a Storch that happened to be there as a backup in case von Greim’s Arado had problems? He told American and British intelligence that it was simply opportunistic. He knew it was waiting in Goebbels’s garage and commandeered it.”

  “Only you don’t buy it,” Dillon put in.

  “Not for a moment. It was all too convenient. So I decided to access the Führer Bunker on my computer. I worked through the Records Office, the accounts of his interrogations, then I got into the University of Berlin’s stuff on the Bunker, all the people there, those who died, those who faded away, those who rushed into the night in a mostly vain attempt to escape
the Russians. Von Berger’s escape was obviously logged.”

  “Where is this getting us?” Hannah asked.

  “They’ve kept their records updated. Would you like to know how many people who were in the Führer Bunker in 1945 are still in the land of the living now?”

  Ferguson said, “Other than eighty-year-old Max von Berger?”

  “Yes. How would you like Sara Hesser, an SS auxiliary, who was used by the Führer as a relief secretary for his last six months in the Bunker? She was twenty-two years old in April 1945. That makes her seventy-nine now.”

  “Jesus,” Dillon said.

  Ferguson said, “You’re obviously leading up to something.”

  “Yes, you could say that. In the final debacle, when everyone fled the Bunker, by some miracle she was one of those who got through the underground tunnels and finally reached the West. She was in the hands of British intelligence in Munich, interrogated and released. In 1945, she met a British captain called George Grant, who was serving in the army of occupation. He married her two years later.”

  “And what happened?” Hannah demanded.

  “She came to England. He was a lawyer. They never had children. According to her interrogation reports, she’d been gang-raped by Russian soldiers.”

  “My God,” Hannah said. “And now?”

  “Her husband died of cancer five years ago. She lives at twenty-three Brick Lane, that’s in Wapping by the Thames. You can extract anything from these things.” He tapped the computer. “It’s a three-storied terrace house that she and her husband owned for forty-five years. The way London property has gone these days, it’s worth nine hundred thousand.”

  “I think that deserves another drink.” Dillon went to the Paddy bottle.

  Ferguson said, “You’re telling us that we have a woman who was a secretary to Hitler in the last few months of the war?”

  “Oh, yes. Marrying an English officer and all that, she just got lost, I suppose.”

  “And she would have known von Berger, must have known him,” said Dillon.

  “I should imagine so.”

  Hannah said, “But what would she have to say?”

  “God knows,” said Ferguson. “But I think it’s worth paying a visit, don’t you?”

  The Daimler left first, with Hannah and Ferguson inside, and Dillon followed in the Mini Cooper. Newton said to Cook, “Follow them.”

  “Which one?”

  “We’ll see where it leads.”

  He phoned Marco Rossi on his mobile. “Dillon went to Roper’s house in Regency Square, then Ferguson turned up with Bernstein. They’ve all come out again and we’re following.”

  “Good, stay with it. The minute they arrive at any kind of destination, phone me.”

  Brick Lane ran down to the Thames, a row of nineteenth-century houses on one side, mainly renovated. The front doors opened to the street, which was the only place to park. A church was on the other side – St. Mary’s – and a graveyard. By the river, a path ran beside a low wall, leading to a jetty at the far end that stuck out into the water, a relic of the old days when barge traffic called in on a regular basis. There was a shop at the end of the street called Patel’s, the kind that had prospered under Indian ownership, a general store.

  At that time of the day, there was plenty of parking available and certainly in front of number twenty-three. The Daimler turned in and Dillon pulled in behind. Dillon was first out and went to the door. There was a bell push and beneath it a brass plate.

  “George and Sara Grant,” he said, as Ferguson joined him.

  Dillon pressed the bell and heard a dog barking. There was the sound of footsteps approaching, a bolt being withdrawn; the door opened on a chain. “Be quiet, Benny,” a voice said. A face peered out, worn and lined, very gray hair pulled back from it, above faded blue eyes, and when she spoke it was almost a whisper. “What is it?”

  Hannah took over. “Mrs. Grant?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Detective Superintendent Bernstein.” She held up her warrant card. “Special Branch, Scotland Yard. This is General Charles Ferguson.”

  “We’d like a word, my dear,” Ferguson told her.

  There was immediate alarm on her face. “The police. What have I done?”

  It was Dillon who interjected in excellent German. “Don’t worry, liebling, we’re not the Gestapo. Information is what we seek.”

  “But about what?”

  Every instinct told him to be honest. “About the Führer Bunker, about those last few months, and particularly about what happened to Sturmbahnführer Max von Berger on the thirtieth of April, 1945.”

  “Oh, my God,” she said in German. “You’ve come for me after all these years.” But she pulled the chain and opened the door. There was a little Scottie dog running around her ankles, yapping.

  Dillon picked him up and fondled him, and the dog stopped barking and tried to lick his face. The old lady said, “I don’t understand, he never takes to strangers.”

  “Oh, I have a way with dogs, ever since childhood. Benny, is it?” He handed the Scottie to her. “All we want is a few words. There’s nothing bad intended, I give you my word.”

  She held the dog, looked at Dillon and touched his face with her other hand for a moment, and when she spoke it was in English. “What’s your name?”

  “Dillon, ma’am.”

  Her eyes became vacant for a moment. “Yes, I believe you. You’re a good man, Mr. Dillon, in spite of yourself.”

  Dillon almost choked and took a deep breath. “Trust me. No harm will come to you on this earth, I swear it.”

  “Then come in,” and she turned and led the way along the hall.

  Newton and Cook pulled in farther down Brick Lane, close to the shop. “You stay here and I’ll take a look,” Newton said and walked back to the house. Ferguson’s chauffeur was on the other side of the road, smoking a cigarette and walking to the river. Newton quickly checked the brass plate, then returned to the car. “Sara and George Grant. I’ll have words in the shop.”

  A middle-aged Indian was leaning on the counter, reading the Evening Standard. He glanced up, the shop for the moment quiet.

  “I seem to be wasting my time as usual,” Newton said. “Can you help me? I’m a debt collector, and I was given an Anthony Smith as being behind in rental payments on a car. I’ve come to check the address I was given. Twenty-three Brick Lane, only it’s a Sara and George Grant.”

  “You’ve been had,” Patel said. “A false address. The Grants have been there forever. Mr. Grant died five years ago, Mrs. Grant lives there on her own. Nice old lady, German, actually.”

  “Is that so?”

  “And she doesn’t own a car.”

  “Really. And German, you say?”

  “Definitely. She told me her name once. Hesser – Sara Hesser. Lived there more than forty years.”

  “Another wasted journey, but thanks anyway.”

  Newton went back to the car, rang Marco Rossi on his mobile and explained what was going on. Rossi said, “Stay there and I’ll be in touch.”

  In the sitting room at South Audley Street, the Baron was going through some papers when Marco entered. “When you told me of your final interview with the Führer, you mentioned a secretary, an SS auxiliary called Sara Hesser.”

  “Is this important?”

  “It is if she’s still in the land of the living and resides at twenty-three Brick Lane, Wapping.”

  “You’re certain of this?”

  “Absolutely.” He told the Baron of the sequence of events. “The fact that they’ve gone straight to this woman’s house speaks for itself. Thank God this Indian shopkeeper knows her well or we’d have been totally in the dark. What do we do?”

  “Nothing,” the Baron said. “If the woman tells what she knows to Ferguson, he will come and see me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The Baron gave him a look. “It’s time I told you something, Marco. You know of the Hi
tler diary, but only what I’ve told you. You’ve never read it.”

  “Yes, and I’ve often wondered why.”

  “Because there’s a secret in it. In 1945, the Führer entered into negotiations with President Roosevelt in an effort to promote a negotiated peace. The idea was for the Germans and Americans to turn on the Russians, to defeat a common enemy. Roosevelt didn’t buy it – but he did discuss it. Hitler sent General Walter Schellenberg of the SS to Sweden – and Roosevelt sent an American multimillionaire and senator named Jake Cazalet.”

  There was a moment’s silence, then Marco said, “But that’s the name of the President of the United States.”

  “And of Jake Cazalet’s father. He was a member of Roosevelt’s kitchen cabinet. Has it occurred to you how that would look? That Roosevelt, with Cazalet as his agent, actually had such dealings with Hitler? True, it didn’t come to anything, but what capital America’s enemies around the world would make of it! Cazalet would be finished.” He smiled. “I’ve held this secret for years, always certain it would eventually be of great importance.”

  “It’s unbelievable.”

  “So we wait for Ferguson.” The Baron smiled again. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t have a drink on it.”

  The sitting room was crowded, not only with furniture, but with the bric-a-brac accumulated over a long life. An old grand piano stood in a corner, the top crowded with photos, some in silver frames, the largest of a handsome young man in the uniform of an army captain.

  Ferguson picked it up. “Your husband?”

  “Yes, that’s George. He was a military policeman. I was an interpreter. That’s how we met.” She sat down, clutching Benny on her lap. “I was interrogated, you know, by the intelligence people, about being on the staff in the Bunker.”

  Ferguson nodded to Hannah, who said, “Tell us about that, Mrs. Grant.”

  “There’s nothing really to tell. I was an SS auxiliary, a secretary, a typist. I was twenty-two years old. I was transferred from SD headquarters in Berlin. SD meant SS Intelligence, but I was, like I’ve told you, just a young office girl.”