By the time the mountaineering Nazi had come into the picture the old soldier had felt near to death himself and had implored the member of the Bundestag to take the brain back to the Fatherland as a last service to the Fuehrer. Although only too anxious to assist, the Bundestag man, a public figure by virtue of his office, had apparently feared difficulties of entry if accompanied by Adolf Hitler’s mainspring — which was intended, not for the duly constituted government in Bonn, but for one of the underground neo-Nazi groups that abounded in West Germany. Ordinary members of the Bundestag were as liable as anyone else to a luggage search. So the preserved brain had been left in the Andes foothills with the old soldier Ublick, who had not in fact died; and then the chance had come up when the exchange of political prisoners had been arranged. No-one was going to go through the Bolz baggage; and in any case, to my mind, there was another angle, one on which Max proceeded to lay a metaphorical finger.
“But the Bolzes are East Germans,” he said almost plaintively. “A fat lot of good delivering it to that lot, surely!”
I agreed. “Plug didn’t specify this, but it’s obvious to me that the Bundestag man means to organise a hijack of the Bolz airlift.”
“A forced landing in West Germany?”
I nodded. “At an arranged spot with Nazis in attendance. The brain’ll be hooked away and held till the hopeful gauleiters are ready to bring it out.”
Max said, “Yes, it’s possible enough.” He drummed his fingers on the polished leather top of his tulipwood desk, a desk worth a small fortune but a drop in the ocean to the accountants of 6D2. He said in a rather scornful tone, “This brain. Only one man’s word. Could be anybody’s.”
“True,” I said, “but it hangs together in a revolting sort of way. We all know the fanaticism and the devotion, at any rate of a handful of those closest to him. We all know that Nazism goes on in West Germany today, too. Even if it’s not Hitler’s brain … if enough West Germans can be persuaded to believe it is, and I fancy that’ll be dead easy, then it doesn’t matter if it isn’t his. It’ll be more than enough to inflame the faithful. Check?”
Max nodded and said, thoughtfully, “Check. You could be only too right. There’s a bunch of real fanatics on the loose in West Germany. They call themselves the Werewolves.”
“Yes, I know. Plug spoke of them, as a matter of fact. Plug’s boyos are hand-in-glove with them.”
Max asked, “This Plug. NF?”
I shrugged. “He didn’t say so — wouldn’t admit to it. I don’t know … I’d say it goes beyond the NF, personally. Basically, the NF are patriots, even if misguided. Plug’s lot just are not. They’re in it for the cash.”
“They’re not Nazis themselves?”
I shrugged again; I just didn’t know. If asked, Plug’s thugs would probably work for the Communists just as convincedly as for the West German Nazis till the pay-off was made, except that the Commies don’t need that kind of help — they’re too well organised. NF, Nazis, Werewolves — they were not, or not yet anyway, and stood in need of what assistance they could get. The NF made a lot of noise from time to time, but they lacked clout really and were very much more fragmented and isolated than the Communists backed by the Moscow link. On the other hand if that dreadful brain with all its poison, all its murderous instincts when alive, was plunged as it were into the political arena, then trouble would come on a very wide scale and must, I believed, involve Britain. It could escalate fast, with Europe becoming racked with tensions and even the NATO structure coming under threat, the existence of its vital West German bases pressured by the forces of desperate evil — melodramatic, but I could Find no other Fitting phrase. Plug might have been made to tell us much more, and I regretted having had to kill him, but there it was; and the more I thought about that nightmare descent of Sutton Bank, the luckier I knew I had been myself.
Max appeared to latch onto my thoughts. He said, “We must turn the screw on William Smith. In the meantime, we — you, that is — must dig up some of the others. What about that member of the Bundestag? Did you get a name?”
“No,” I said. “Plug wouldn’t say or didn’t know. I fancy the latter. There’s probably a go-between.”
“Then dig. Our people in Bonn may be able to help.”
“I’ll do what I can,” I said. “How about the borders, and the Tartan Army?”
“They can wait. You’re off that, so is Miss Mandrake. This thing’s more immediate.” Max stared me in the eyes. “Do I take it you don’t know the details of the hand-over?”
“I don’t know a thing,” I said.
“This man Plug — he didn’t say?”
I said, “He didn’t know. I told you — that was what he wanted to find out.”
“Ah, yes. He fancied Leeds. He was spot on.” Max unlocked a steel-lined drawer in his desk and brought out a cardboard folder which he opened. He took up a red-tinted sheet of A4, ran his eye down it, and then said, “‘The exchange is to take place at 0230 hours in the morning of Friday. That gives us — what — four and a half days less a few hours. It’s scheduled to take place at Leeds/Bradford airport and there’s to be no overt security — Whitehall doesn’t want it overplayed.”
“And now?”
Max shoved the A4 back into the folder, and the folder was locked back in the drawer. He said, “The plans may have to change in the light of things as they develop. I shall suggest a shift to Gatwick, to be made at the last possible moment — that’s one thing. And the security will have to be stepped up, I dare say — ”
“And the brain itself?”
Max gave a harsh laugh. “You mean, do we hook it away from the Bolzes’ luggage?”
I nodded.
Max said, “That’s going to need a Whitehall decision. After all, they’re the principals in this. As for me, I see nasty complications in impounding Hitler’s brain into official British custody when it’s being merely transferred to an East German aircraft and technically hasn’t entered Britain at all.”
Max wasn’t the only one who foresaw difficulties in brain seizure: I did myself, and was far from surprised when lunch in my flat with Felicity Mandrake was interrupted by Max’s voice on the scramble line from Focal House.
“Whitehall,” he said. “Now. Cabinet Office. All right?”
“No,” I snapped back at him. “I’m hungry, not to say dead tired. But I’ll go, of course.” I banged the handset down and explained to Felicity, who looked resigned. I went outside and found a taxi and did as bid by the boss. When I reached the Cabinet Office there was a lot of cloak-and-dagger around plus an air of much unease; I decided that this wasn’t Cabinet Office business in the normal course of events, but the place had been chosen as being perhaps more anonymous than your actual Downing Street or some definable government department. All sorts of people came and went in the Cabinet Office as part of the day to day routine. And all sorts of people were present this afternoon to listen to me and then to brief me — or they would have briefed me if they’d ever reached a decision. There were four severe-looking men of middle age who I gathered were Deputy Secretaries; there was a VIP from Defence Ministry; there was a man from the Home Office and an Assistant Commissioner from Scotland Yard. And there was no less a person than a Minister of the Crown to lead them, a man whom I recognised easily enough but who swore me to secrecy as to his presence at the meeting. Just after I was announced, another man came in, rather furtively, and was introduced as a Commissioner from the Board of Customs and Excise at King’s Beam House, EC3. Commissioner he may have been, but, with my memories of service in the RN, he looked to me just like any ordinary rummager waiting to trap good British seamen coming ashore with a little over the odds in duty-free cigarettes. His name was Gurr, which I found fitting. Oddly enough, he came from Yorkshire; and, after I had made my report and the Minister had said a few brief words about the potential gravity of the situation, and had passed the ball to the Customs, Mr Gurr came out strongly against any Customs involveme
nt.
“Ah doan’t like it,” he announced firmly. “Ah doan’t, not at all. Int’ first place,” he elaborated, pursuing the point Max had made to me earlier, “it’s not passing through Customs when it goes straight to another aircraft — ”
“I think we’re entitled to search, Mr Gurr.”
“Aye. Well, even if that point’s stretched like knicker elastic, ah’m not too sure, like, under which category a brain, preserved, would come. It’s not too specific int’ regulations, any road. Ah doan’t know under what section we could get them, that ah doan’t.”
“But surely, Mr Gurr — ”
“It’s all very well you saying but surely, Minister. Customs and Excise, they have to play straight as you know very well — ”
“Yes, yes, but — ”
“And we doan’t want anything nasty, like. Hitler was nasty enough. There could be political implications — ”
“There are political implications, Mr Gurr!”
“That’s what ah thought.” Mr Gurr folded his arms and sat back with an air of finality: Yorkshire would not be moved. Gurr would stonewall the batting from now on. He did just that. The Minister must jolly well think up some other way. It was a Defence Ministry job, or the police. Not Customs and Excise. If the brain was wanted, someone else must get it. Gurr sat and said nothing further; I didn’t really blame him for his stand. The Customs are often made the whipping-boys. One of the Deputy Secretaries to the Cabinet Office suggested Immigration, but he scarcely got a hearing on that one: preserved brains don’t immigrate. Just to make quite certain, the man from the Home Office, who apparently represented Immigration, came in to say that his airport staff were not expected, so far as he was aware, to deal with inanimate matter and any insistence that they should do so could lead to strike action. Mr Gurr nodded vigorously, as though in tacit indication that Customs and Excise would adopt that line also.
The Minister sighed and turned to Defence and Police. They had to obey orders and they both knew it. Full support would naturally be given once the orders were issued.
*
“The orders were not issued,” I said to Max later. “Avoidance was the whole point of the meeting, I rather fancy. The Minister hoped to arrive at a solution without having to give any actual orders to the army or the Met.”
“Typical,” Max said, sounding disgusted. “Did you get the impression they were taking you seriously, or not?”
“Not, on the whole,” I said. “I think the Minister was convinced about what could happen, but not the others. I think they see it as not particularly involving this country.”
“What about the NATO alliance? It’s an unfriendly act in my book, to allow anything that could fuel the German Nazi movement. It’s embarrassing to Bonn, to say the least.”
“At times,” I said, “we’re all ostriches.” It was a pity the exchange venue couldn’t be shifted out of the United Kingdom, but to do that would also be an unfriendly act, to say nothing of the likely fact that the moment the UK backed out of a direct reception of its own nationals ex East Germany — Jones and Priddy — a rat would be smelled strongly and no other country would play. I thought again about what the Customs man had said: but even without Customs and Excise, why shouldn’t that brain be seized and destroyed before the Bolzes were escorted to the East German airliner? I was pretty sure the Defence Ministry man, who was a Major-General, had been thinking along those lines too, though he hadn’t put the point. No-one these days cares to suggest actual force; it’s a dirty word.
All the same, I used it to Max. “It’s the answer that stares us in the face,” I said.
“Agreed. But I’ve had the Prime Minister on the line in person. It’s not on, except possibly as a last resort. UK doesn’t want the opprobrium. We don’t want the damn thing in British custody, as I said this morning. Wherever it is, it’ll be a focal point — and if destroyed — ” Max broke off as one of his telephones burred softly on his desk. He answered, and spoke monosyllabically, and I saw his lips tighten as he listened. He put the handset down and said, “The Yard. The Commissioner himself. William Smith has died in police custody. You’d better get up to York pronto, Shaw.”
*
I rang through for Felicity to meet me at Heathrow; at a little after 7 p.m. we were disembarking at Leeds/Bradford airport, where I unparked the Volvo and drove fast for York. The Yard report had said William Smith had died from poison, self-administered.
On arrival at the nick I got the full story from the officer in charge. William Smith, whose real identity was still unknown, had been put under intensive interrogation by teams of CID men. He had still said nothing and after some hard hours had been put back in his cell. When they went for him again, he was stone cold dead. There were no marks on his body and it could have been natural causes — a heart attack or something similar. But the police surgeon had said, poison. When this verdict had been delivered, Smith’s clothing had been minutely examined and a small gap had been found in the lining of his jacket, where it had been sewn behind the lapel. In this, a capsule could have been hidden. To bring it out and swallow it would have been easy enough. This could be done when the pressures mounted unbearably. But to do it would have needed immense dedication. William Smith must have had a high degree of commitment. In my book, he had: the forensic report included another item. Beneath William Smith’s left arm, high up in the under-arm hair, was a small purple tattoo, so small that at first, it had looked like a mole or birth-mark. A magnifying glass had revealed the depiction of a wolf’s head.
“Werewolf,” I said.
“Pardon?”
“Never mind, just a passing thought. Look, where would you expect above all to find a really dedicated Nazi, Superintendent?”
He was surprised; I hadn’t yet told him too much of the background. “Nazi?” he repeated, and scratched his head. “Outside Bradford,” he said, “how about West Germany? All these neo-Nazi bods who keep cropping up — ”
“Right,” I said. “Could William Smith have been a German, d’you think?”
“No reason why not, I suppose. He didn’t open his mouth much, but when he did he never struck any of us as anything but an Englishman, but that doesn’t have to prove he was.”
“Quite. It could explain a lot, couldn’t it?”
“Yes — identity and all that. No records. Do you want me to get onto Interpol, Commander?”
I shook my head. “Thanks, but no. We have our sources. I’ll contact HQ 6D2 West Germany. Can you let me have photographs of the body, plus a full description — measurements, distinguishing marks — you know what I’ll want?” That, the Superintendent said, would be done, and a dental surgeon would be brought in to write a full report on the teeth. I hung around the nick while this was done, and when all was ready I got it sealed up and handed it over to Felicity Mandrake. “Back to FH,” I said. “Inter City — we’ve missed the last flight out from Leeds. Get this lot sent across to Bonn. Priority, Most Immediate.”
“You’re not coming?” she asked.
“No. I’ve a hunch something’s going to develop up here. Tell Max I’d like you back in the morning, all right?”
I drove her to the railway station. She was looking bloody-minded. This was the second time she’d expected to spend the night in a hotel in York, and it hadn’t happened. I dropped her and drove the Volvo back to where I’d parked on first arrival in York, not far from the Minster. I wandered around York, keeping my eyes wide. Somebody might try to get me again. It’s often a useful ploy to turn yourself into a target, always providing you keep one jump ahead. But nothing happened except that the snow found its way relentlessly through my shoes as I trudged the narrow, ancient streets and alleys and found myself in Whip-ma-whop-ma Gate, and then the Shambles with its exquisite little shops, then crossed a square and came back full circle, almost, to a nice, warm pub where I had a couple of whiskies and then a steak in the Coq d’Or nearby. After that I picked up the Volvo and drove alone to the
Viking, into which I’d booked from the nick. Before going to sleep I was visited by an unwelcome thought: what the hell was I doing? How could I, how could anybody, stop dead Hitler’s brain coming into Britain other than at source as it were? Really, that was the nub of the whole thing. No use approaching the Chilean Government; they were a Rightist bunch who would probably approve the idea of the brain going back to the Fatherland. If only the brain could be found before it was loaded onto the aircraft that was to bring the Bolzes into Britain … but there wasn’t much time left now. Maybe I was wasting my time in York, but I still had that hunch that Yorkshire was in the picture yet. If nothing began to jell within the next twenty-four hours, it would be different.
Werewolf (Commander Shaw Book 16) Page 3