Werewolf (Commander Shaw Book 16)

by Philip McCutchan

  “That the time is near?”

  “Yes,” I said harshly, “and not that alone. It also means they’re feeling one hundred per cent confident of success.”

  I said I would notify Bonn in due course as to when Felicity would be ready to go home to London and then, there being nothing else I could usefully do, I went back to my hotel and bed. I don’t believe I slept a wink; that lift kept on going down, thump, time and again, and I heard that policeman’s terrible screams, and I thought of the poor, pulped body that had been brought out when the lift had been grappled free on its cable once the brake-safe system had been reconnected up above. I thought of what Felicity might have been looking like now. And, as I sweated through the night, I wished to God that the little bastard who had freed the cable had been left alive to talk and suffer, but he hadn’t and that was that. The helicopter’s police crew had gunned him down when he tried to reach the fire escape by jumping to the upper platform, and he had been found full of holes. And he turned out to be Hans Hagen, proprietor of Der Kaiserhof and the jiggle-breasted neon woman. Stupidly, the cops had freed him from arrest earlier. Ublick’s evidence as to his brother had got him off murder. Apparently Hans Hagen had been petrified when released and the cops had the idea he might lead them somewhere useful just by being got at, but they’d gone and lost him … they should have consulted me, of course. I was furious, and let them see it.

  *

  I did sleep a little in the end — must have done, since I had to drag myself awake when the sun came through the curtains. I rolled over and sat up, rubbed sleep from my eyes, ran a hand through my hair. I felt lousy, really red-eyed, like a hangover. I got to my feet, shaved, washed; while I did so I was thinking of Hans Hagen. I was thinking of his proposed visit to England as reported by Ublick’s brother. It could all tie in. I didn’t see how, but it could. Max had said, Scotland Yard was anxious about a demo to take place somewhere on the south coast, date not yet known. And then I hear that Hans Hagen is going to England, and after that Hans Hagen is positively implicated with the brain and Klaus Kunze — even if the earlier association with dead Ublick wasn’t enough.

  It stank. Yet there was something missing still. I racked my brains. That demonstration … what was it to be? Just the usual march, the banner-waving, the slogans shouted out by half-wits and thugs, the low-intelligence faces like mad apes, the violence, the arrests, the physical damage to the police who would afterwards be accused of provocation and assault? Or something more than that — something much more, like Big Eye?

  If only I could find a link. I gave myself a headache trying to find one. I rang down to room service and asked for a continental breakfast to be sent up. Fruit juice and coffee made me feel a shade better and I lit a cigarette. Thirty minutes later I was with Felicity, who was in hospital under the personal supervision of a woman police officer of motherly aspect. She was doing fine and said she’d rather stay on the job. We argued about that for a while but my thoughts were not really with the argument and I left her with nothing decided. I was still cogitating about Hans Hagen; some sort of obstinacy kept me glued to a man who on the face of things was not an important part of Klaus Kunze’s ambitions.

  I went along to the 6D2 agency and there I was given more shipping lists to wade through. I read them carefully and it took time. There were so many ships. My mind felt blank; concentration was difficult. Hans Hagen again … Hans Hagen and England. Hans Hagen and England, his visit there, and that curious find I’d made amongst his letters at Der Kaiserhof: the Littlewoods football pool coupons.

  It was funny, was that. Then something seemed to jell in my mind. I shoved the shipping lists into my pocket and went as fast as possible to police HQ.

  Football: there were any number of teams of varying degrees of skill or luck along the south coast of England. Plymouth, Southampton, Brighton and Hove Albion, Portsmouth, plus others that were not strictly coastal. The pools coupons gave me dates: on the coming Saturday — two days’ time — Portsmouth would play Leeds United, at home at Fratton Park. The following Saturday Southampton was drawn to play Arsenal, also at home, and Brighton and Hove were due to meet Wolverhampton at the Goldstone ground, another home match. There was absolutely no suggestion that the demo would have anything to do with football, but it was funny that Hans Hagen had had those coupons and that according to the slightly younger Ublick he had intended visiting England. There could be some connexion if only I could see it. I went back to those shipping lists, concentrating on what was due into West German ports ex South America close to Saturday week; there wouldn’t have been time for the brain to arrive by sea by the coming Saturday. I still felt that if Hans Hagen had been in any way connected with the trouble that was due to hit the south coast, then that trouble just might be scheduled to happen simultaneously with the start of trouble here in West Berlin. The German mind was tidy, liking order.

  I found four ships that at first sight looked interesting: on the Friday, the British-registered tanker Charter Regent was due in Cuxhaven from the Plate, and the Panamanian container ship Lady Forest would enter the Elbe estuary for Hamburg out of Iquique in Chile. On Saturday the West German vessel Koblenzschloss from Valparaiso was due to berth in the early morning at Bremerhaven. Also due into Bremerhaven, this time from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, was the West German Walter Strobe!. I discounted both the Lady Forest and the Koblenzschloss: they had left their overseas ports before the brain could have been embarked. But the Charter Regent from the Plate and the Walter Strobel from Rio could fit, providing Klaus Kunze had been nippy in crossing frontiers out of Chile. In fact, both ships fitted admirably. So, I had to admit, could any number of others arriving later in various West German ports; and there were still the many miles of land frontiers.

  I was far from happy, but I passed the names of what I believed to be the two most likely ships to the police and asked for special treatment for them: I suggested they might be held in the river and not allowed to berth alongside until they had been searched from truck to keelson. The chief of police, to whom I was speaking, agreed to pass the wort! to the port authorities at Cuxhaven and Bremerhaven. He had already told me that trouble was in the air and I’d asked him to elaborate.

  He said, “A stirring, here in Berlin. A stirring of sludge from the bottom of the pot. There have been many incidents, mostly small, but indicative. People whom we know to have hidden Nazi sympathies are moving out into the open, strutting boastfully.”

  “As a result of the broadcast?”

  The police chief shrugged. “Perhaps. I think it goes deeper than that, though. I think the word may have spread much earlier in certain circles, that the brain was coming back.”

  “So they’re ready to go as soon as it does?”

  “Yes, I believe so. But we are ready too.”

  “There’ll be bloodshed.”

  “Yes, there will be bloodshed.”

  *

  The police chief had sounded not only bitter but to a degree hopeless. There had been a kind of resignation. Germany had seen it all before and peacetime bloodshed was nothing new. It had come in the early twenties with the soaring inflation, it had come in the thirties with the rise of Adolf Hitler. When it came again, and if, when it did, it achieved any success at all, it would be bound to escalate. Very many Germans would jump on the bandwagon once it was rolling, people who were not currently Nazis but who would respond to all the razzmatazz, the drums and the brass and the ranting speeches, old men and young who would share the former glories and whose hearts would swell. There might be no holding them. It was just as well, I thought, that the Unter den Linden was the other side of Checkpoint Charlie and the Wall. To have the essence of Hitler being marched again along the Unter den Linden would have been the pinnacle of symbolism and ecstasy.

  After I had left police headquarters I went slap into one of the manifestations of which I’d just been hearing. Uniformed police were being mustered, forming a precautionary protective cordon against
a marching mob of men and tough-looking women. There was foreboding in their very mixture. Many were simple thugs, but many were smart-looking older men who had clearly served in the war. One or two wore Iron Crosses on their greatcoats, and they all marched smartly to the beat of a drummer. I doubted if many of them would have the Werewolf brand that I had seen on Stummerl’s body in the North Yorkshire Moors, yet there they were, along with the strong-arm boys. It sent a shiver down my spine: in today’s world set-up Britain had a need of a stable West Germany. The files marched past and apart from a few Hitler-style salutes they did nothing offensive. But farther along they met their opponents, the Communists, and then the whole thing went sky-high as the rival factions met in a head-on charge. There were yells and obscenities and bodies fell everywhere; the bloodshed had started. The march, now a mob that had taken leave of its senses, burst into a rampage. The police moved in and seemed to be overwhelmed until reinforcements arrived. There was a scream of sirens as the mobiles came tearing in from their patrols. Soon the tear gas bombs were in action, plus the rubber bullets and then the water hoses from the fire engines.

  I left them to it. I had decided to move back to the centre of things, which for me was Bonn. Things were going to come to a head soon and I would need to be in close touch with base as time ran out. I paid my bill at my hotel and took the Mercedes out of West Berlin, passing once again through East Germany to cross the frontier at Helmstedt. East Germany, normally an uncomfortable place as to its atmosphere, seemed today to be happier than the West. That impression was strengthened when I reported in to Willi Waldstein: he had tidings that the whole country was restive. It wasn’t only in Berlin that the marchers were out, and there had been many clashes with the police and Communists and a number of people, women among them, had died in the mob violence.

  Waldstein asked after Miss Mandrake.

  “Basically O.K.,” I said. “I want her back in Britain, as I told you.”

  He nodded. “Yes. So does Max.”

  “He’s been in touch?”

  “Yes — ”

  “Any developments his end?”

  “Nothing. That is, he told me nothing.”

  I was about to say that I had some things to tell Max when Waldstein’s security line rang and he answered. I saw the worry in his eyes as he listened; it was a brief call and when he put the receiver down he said, “You have come in at an opportune moment. I don’t know what this means, but there has been trouble at Zippingen.”

  “Zippingen?”

  “It is a small airfield for light aircraft, close to the Netherlands border. There has been an attack by a mob on the customs post.”

  I felt the prickle of apprehension. “Details?” I asked.

  “Little. It was just after an aircraft had landed. The mob came out from a number of parked cars, and attacked. The pilot and passengers from the aircraft made off in the cars. The customs officers are dead. That is all that is known-at present.”

  I stood up. “Helicopter,” I said. “And fast!”

  *

  No time was lost: I was airborne within half an hour and swinging up and away to the north-west. Zippingen was around sixty miles by helicopter. My mind roved over the possibilities: the chief one was that Klaus Kunze had come in by air after all. If so, the brain was already on the move in Germany. On the other hand, it could be no more than a drugs ring or something similar. Simple smuggling … but I had no confidence that it was that. The worst loomed. Soon I had the small airfield in sight: it was a one man and a boy sort of place, a handful of crummy corrugated-iron-roofed buildings and an apology for a control tower, no hard runway and a tattered windsock on a pole. Currently there was a large number of police. The mob had gone and so, I fancied, had their cars. It looked like a clean getaway. All the vehicles present were police ones.

  I was put down on the field and was soon hearing the news for myself. Two of the ground staff had survived the massacre and had been able to give their accounts. Three men, identities unknown, had got out of the light aircraft, and as they had done so the waiting mob had closed in with guns. Each of the men had been carrying something that had looked heavy: one had a cardboard carton of Dewar’s whisky, another had a plain square box, the third carried a television set. While the guns were turned on the customs post and the airfield staff, these three men had carried their wares separately to three of the waiting cars and had been driven away. And I knew that Herr Hitler’s brain could have been in any one of those three containers. The given descriptions of the three men were vague, too vague, though the bearer of the television set could, just about, have been Klaus Kunze. Even if this were so, it didn’t help: it didn’t have to be Kunze who was carrying the brain.

  I had to do some guessing now. It was all I could do. I guessed West Berlin. True, Bonn was the capital of the Federal Republic, the seat of government and all that; but to every German Berlin was the important place, the real capital in the German heart, and it was in Berlin that Hitler had been said to have died, in Berlin, so central to the Third Reich and all the Nazi dreams and ambitions, that Adolf Hitler the Chancellor had made some of his most inflammatory speeches.

  *

  I spoke to Max from the Berlin agency. I said I’d carried out a quick examination of the aircraft and the local police would be checking for fingerprints. There had been, I said, a nasty smell of formaldehyde aboard the plane: perhaps something had leaked from the brain, round the stopper of the glass bowl. I told Max about the football pools coupons and I advanced my theories about the games on the next two week-ends. I said, “Assuming the brain’s come in, the ships don’t matter anymore, nor do Plymouth, Southampton or Brighton. Portsmouth’s the most likely — ”

  He cut in to ask, “Why?”

  “Question of timing. They won’t hang about now. They’ll strike hard and fast before anything goes adrift. Pompey’s playing at home on Saturday. Besides, from many points of view Portsmouth’s a prime target.” I elaborated on Portsmouth, traditional home of the British Navy, even today when there’s not much Navy to make a home for. It could be a symbol. In the war years, Hermann Goering’s Luftwaffe had done its best to flatten Portsmouth and kill the spirit of the Navy in the name of Hitler. They had not succeeded in killing anyone’s spirit though the physical damage and the casualties had been colossal. Portsmouth had changed shape permanently.

  Max sounded irritated. “Words, words,” he snapped. “Just get the brain and never mind the rhetoric.”

  I said, “You don’t quite get the point.”

  “What point?”

  “This: if the first public materialisation of the brain takes place in Germany at the same time as something nasty hits Portsmouth, the effect’s going to be somewhat electric. The Germans are impressed by that kind of thing — they’ll put it down to Hitler — ”

  “Rubbish!”

  I said, “With respect, it’s not rubbish at all. It’s a very tenable theory, and if I’m right we’ve got something under forty-eight hours left. Don’t forget, you’ve been worried yourself about that demo — you’ve been expecting developments on the south coast — ”

  “Why in heaven’s name bring a bloody football match into it?”

  Frankly, I didn’t know, but suggested that football crowds tended to occupy a lot of police time and attention and manpower, also that a villain could infiltrate that much the easier on a day when the fans were roistering and smashing the town up. Max said that Pompey was fairly low down in the divisions and didn’t attract the big-time vandals like Leeds and Glasgow. I reminded him that Leeds United had been thrown up in the draw to play Pompey. A lot of Leeds would be down south. Max grunted; he didn’t like being reminded of anything. He said that the two ships, one in Cuxhaven, the other in Bremerhaven, shouldn’t be disregarded for a wild theory. The airfield job could have been a blind. He had a point, of course, and I said the orders regarding the ships would stand.

  Before I cut the call, I asked Max if he really wanted Miss
Mandrake in London. She had wanted to stay with me, and now I might have a need of her. If those men from the light aircraft remained split up, I couldn’t keep an eye on all of them without reliable and understanding assistance.

  Max said, “If she’s fit and willing, keep her. But look after her. I don’t want to lose her.”

  I was surprised, not at the statement but at his tone; he had sounded really concerned. It was the nearest Max had ever got to sentimentality, to my knowledge. I left the agency and went along to see Felicity, who was up and dressed and looking fine. She was delighted to stay in Berlin. I found a nurse and was passed on by stages to a consultant, who said Miss Mandrake could be discharged but must take things easily for a while yet. I said I would do my best to see she did but no promises. The consultant was a busy man and I don’t believe he listened. Felicity and I left the hospital and checked back into the same hotel as I’d been using till that morning and I had just gone up to my room when a phone call came from reception. A gentleman was asking for me and the name was Ublick.

  Should he be sent up?

  “No,” I said. “I’ll come down. Ask him to wait at reception.” I wasn’t going to take chances of my caller not being who he said he was; if he wasn’t, I preferred to meet him in the open. However, it was Ublick the younger all right and he seemed to be suffering from suppressed excitement. Neither of us wanted to talk at reception so I took him to a lounge where we sat in a corner well away from flapping ears. Ublick unburdened his mind. It appeared he had paid another visit to Der Kaiserhof, looking for a medal missing from his dead brother’s uniform; he thought it might have fallen off in the bar, but apparently it hadn’t and must after all have gone in the scrimmage in the street earlier. However, that was not of importance to me, Ublick said. Something else might be. It was. While he was there he had seen a man whom he had heard addressed as Herr Kunze by the barman. He had remembered I had asked him if he knew anyone by that name.