When Barney had been seized in the chapel he had instinctively fought back, but the odds assembled there against him were so overwhelming that he knew his struggles to be hopeless. With Great Ram’s denunciation ringing in his ears he knew, too, that his life was not worth a quarter-of-an-hour’s purchase.
Then, as he was facing the altar while swaying wildly between his two antagonists, he had seen Mary throw the crucifix. The blinding flash, thunderous crash and heaving of the floor that followed had stricken all the Satanists with instant terror. The one holding on to Barney’s left arm let go. Swinging round he had kneed in the groin the other man who was clinging to him, and wrenched his right arm free. The rest of them, by stepping forward, could have barred his path to the open end of the chapel; but it had been plunged into darkness and they had been thrown into a panic. He cannoned into one and brushed by another; next moment he was out in the body of the Abbey and running for his life.
It was a nightmare dash, for out there fog combined with the darkness to prevent his seeing where he was going. Several times he ran slap into sections of wall and twice tripped to fall at full length among the weeds and brambles. Yet it was that spell-induced fog that saved him from determined pursuit and recapture.
After four or five minutes of staggering blindly about, he got clear of the ruin and could vaguely make out the trunks of big trees as he ran on now dodging between them. Another five minutes and both the wood and the fog-belt ended. He had no idea of the direction he had taken but there was no sign of a track or the cars in which the Satanists had arrived, and as far as he could see ahead of him lay only a ploughed field.
Pulling up on the edge of it, he stood gasping for breath and striving to collect his thoughts. He owed his life to Mary; he had no doubt about that. But what about her? Unless she too had got away in the darkness and confusion they would inflict a terrible vengeance on her. She was no fool; she must have known the sort of penalty she would have to pay for throwing a crucifix in the Great Ram’s face. That meant that, despite the bitter abuse she had hurled at him not much over an hour ago, deep down she must love him. Courageous men and women will take great risks to rescue children, and often complete strangers, from fire or drowning, but they do not voluntarily invite a terrible death for themselves in order to save the life of someone they hate. And after what had passed between them there could be no halfway house. If she did not hate him, then she loved him. At the thought that she must almost certainly still be in the clutches of the Satanists, he groaned aloud.
As his breathing eased a little, he swung round to plunge back into the wood. But he had taken only a few steps before he pulled up. The ruined Abbey must be anything between a quarter and half a mile away. In the fog and darkness nothing but a fluke could lead him back to it direct, and he might wander about in the wood for an hour or more without finding it.
Besides, when he did, what was he going to do? His gun had been taken from him by one of the American’s servant boys. He had intended to ask for it back after supper; but Lothar’s arrival had precipitated a series of events which had denied him the chance to do so. Even if Lothar had been rendered hors de combat by the blaze as the crucifix hit his face, there was still the giant American and the dozen men who made up his coven. Barney was far from being a coward and he had the greatest difficulty in resisting the urge to make an immediate attempt to rescue Mary; but he knew that on his own he could not possibly succeed.
He groaned again, leant against a tree and, covering his face with his hands, endeavoured to make up his mind about the best course to take. To bring the police on the scene was the obvious answer; but how could that be done most quickly? After a moment he decided that the best bet would be to get hold of one of the Satanists’ cars and drive in to Cambridge. Even if he could have found a house with a telephone fairly quickly, it might prove difficult to convince the police that he really needed the help of at least a dozen of them, and urgently; whereas if he went to a police station he had only to show his official pass to secure immediate assistance.
At a run he set off along the edge of the trees, but he had completely lost his bearings and actually was on the far side of the wood from the track along which the cars had come to it. After he had been running for several minutes, the wood ended in a right angle. Turning the corner he ran on, only to find that this side of the wood seemed longer than that on which he had come out; but having covered some distance along it he struck a path. To the right it led into the fog-shrouded wood, to the left to a cottage some hundred yards away, of which against the paler sky he could just make out the chimney and the roof line.
Realising now that he must have come out on the opposite side of the wood from the cars, and might yet have to run a long way to reach them, he decided to find out if the cottage had a telephone. Two minutes later he was hammering loudly on its door, and shouting, ‘Wake up there! Wake up!’
In response to his shouts a tousled head was thrust out of an upper window. Without waiting to be questioned or abused he cried, ‘I’m a policeman. This is urgent. It’s a matter of murder. Have you a telephone?’
‘No, I haven’t,’ angrily replied the man at the window; then, as the reason for his having been aroused from his sleep sunk in, he added, ‘Sorry I can’t help. But there’s one at the vicarage. Turn left and straight up the road. It’s just past the church; you can’t miss it.’
With a murmur of thanks Barney, still panting, dashed down the garden path to the lane on which the cottage faced, and up the road. After another gruelling run, now gasping for breath and sweating profusely, he reached the vicarage. The same tactics there led, after a few moments, to the front door being opened by a tall, middle-aged man in a dressing-gown, who said he was the vicar.
Using ‘murder’ again as the best means of getting swift action, Barney was led to the telephone and induced the desk-sergeant at the Cambridge police headquarters to put him through to the night-duty Inspector. To have mentioned Black Magic might have aroused scepticism; so Barney gave the code name by which his office was known to the police, and said that he was on the trail of a wanted enemy agent who was a known killer. Even so he had the greatest difficulty in persuading the Inspector to send more than one police car and also come out himself with a strong force of constables.
The vicar, his eyes on stalks as he listened, supplied the name of his village, which lay just over the crest of the hill; but this produced a new snag, as it was well across the county border, in the north-western corner of Essex. All Barney’s persuasive powers were needed to induce the Inspector to cut red tape and enter another county but, by promising to take the responsibility if there was any trouble, he succeeded.
At Barney’s request the vicar produced a map of the district. From it he quickly memorised the way to get back on to the other road from which the track led to the ruined Abbey; then he gratefully accepted the vicar’s offer of a whisky and soda.
Twenty minutes later the Inspector arrived with three carloads of police. Barney was waiting for them on the doorstep. Hastily thanking the vicar he showed the Inspector his special identity card, told him the direction to take and got into the back of his car. While they drove the better part of two miles along roads that went round the wood, he gave the Inspector the bare facts of the situation, then they bumped up the track to the place where the Satanists had left their cars.
The cars were no longer there but the sight of their fresh tracks, thrown up in the headlights of the police cars, dissipated the Inspector’s suspicions that Barney was suffering from overstrain and had brought him out on a wildgoose chase. The wood was still dank and eerily silent, apart from the constant dripping from the trees; but the fog had cleared a little and they made their way as quickly as they could towards the Abbey.
As they approached it, Barney’s fear that they would find Mary there, but dead and mutilated, was so great that his throat contracted till he thought he was going to choke; and when they came in sight of the chapel, as the police shone their torches into it, he had to make a great effort in order to force himself to keep his eyes in that direction.
No twisted body lay sprawled there, but his fears were hardly lessened until he had run forward and looked at the altar. Upon it there was no trace of newly-spilled blood. Only then was he able to hope that by some means Mary had succeeded in escaping the Great Ram’s vengeance, temporarily at least. But, owing to her position in the chapel at the time she had wrecked the proceedings, he thought it most unlikely that she had got away; and he knew that as a result of her act every moment that she remained in the hands of the Satanists her life must be in danger.
In consequence, before the police had had a chance to do more than take a first look at the big black candles, he hurried them back to the cars and gave the Inspector directions on how to reach the Cedars. Another quarter of an hour sped by while the cars made their dash back into Cambridgeshire. They screamed their way through Fulgoham village then, as they reached the place where Barney had parked his own car some two hours earlier, he had them flagged down to a halt.
They all got out and the Inspector gave swift directions to his men to surround the house so that nobody could get away from it. He allowed five minutes for the men to take up their positions, then he and Barney walked up to the front door. Their ringing, after some minutes, brought Jim down to it. Barney said, ‘You remember me. Your friend Iziah got the wrong idea and slugged me, but later I had supper with the Colonel. I’ve come back to talk to him again.’
Jim’s eyes grew round. ‘But he’s not here, Boss. He left with you. He’s gone off on leave, an’ we’re not looking to see him back for a fortnight. Didn’t he tell you?’
Barney’s hopes of catching the American and rescuing Mary were dashed, but he asked quickly, ‘Where has he gone?’
‘I wouldn’t know, Boss,’ came the obviously truthful reply. ‘The Colonel don’t go tell us boys how he’s planning to spend his time.’
‘All right,’ Barney snapped. ‘Perhaps I can find out by running over the house.’
The Inspector drew him aside and whispered, ‘We haven’t got a search warrant.’
‘To hell with that!’ retorted Barney. ‘Stay outside if you like. I’m going in.’ Fixing the servant boy with a basilisk stare, he said to him, ‘Go and get my gun. You’ll find me in the sitting-room.’
Seeing that Barney was accompanied by a police inspector and that other policemen were standing about in the offing, Jim offered no opposition. Marching inside, Barney went straight to the telephone and got through to his office. He told the night-duty officer to ring the Chief and inform him that Sullivan had contacted Lothar Khune at a house near Fulgoham, in Cambridgeshire, in company with Mrs. Morden and an American Air Force Colonel named Henrick G. Washington, but had lost them and now had reason to believe that the trio were on their way to London.
He then helped himself to a whisky and soda and rang the bell. Jim appeared holding the little automatic. Barney took it, slipped it in his pocket and spent five minutes firing questions at him. But none of Jim’s replies threw any light on whither his master might be bound. Barney sent for the other two boys, but his questions to them proved equally unrewarding.
He then spent half an hour going over the house. The sight of the black satin sheets on the bed in the principal bedroom aroused in him mingled feelings of nausea and homicidal jealousy, but he steeled himself to go through the drawers and cupboards. Neither there, in the sitting-room, nor anywhere else in the house did he discover any evidence which would have connected Colonel Washington with Satanist activities, and clearly his servants regarded him as a quick-tempered, but generous, cheerful and entirely normal master.
Rejoining the Inspector, who all this time had been glumly waiting outside, Barney arranged for him to have the house kept under observation, on the off-chance that Lothar, or the Colonel, might return to it; then he collected his own car and accompanied the police cars back to Cambridge. On their arrival in the city the Inspector knocked up an hotel for Barney and, feeling that there was nothing more that he could do for the time being, he took a room in it.
By then it was close on three in the morning, and he had had a twenty-hour day, the last eight hours of which had been filled with constant strain and endeavour. Yet, tired as he was, he did not manage to get to sleep for over an hour after he had got into bed, because he was still so agitated about what might be happening to Mary.
He had left a call for seven o’clock. By a little after eight he was on his way to London, and well before ten he was in the office of C.B.’s P.A., declaring that he must see the Chief urgently as soon as he arrived.
‘He’s already here,’ the P.A. replied with a slightly sour grimace. ‘He has been here half the night, and wrecked my Sunday by calling me up at eight o’clock to report for duty. But he is expecting you, so you can go right in.’
C.B. was seated at his desk, but for once there were no papers upon it; apart from a used coffee cup it was empty. As Barney entered Verney turned his head and asked quickly, ‘Any news of the Great Ram?’
‘News?’ Barney repeated. ‘Not since I telephoned, I was hoping that the police had picked him up.’
‘No, you were wrong about his being on his way to London. I had Scotland Yard lay on everything they’d got, but to no purpose. My bet is now that he has again left England by air.’
‘What makes you think that, Sir?’ Barney asked with nervous sharpness.
Verney gave a wry grin. ‘If you’ve got a flask on you, you’d better take a pull from it. About one o’clock this morning your new pal, Colonel Henrick G. Washington, left his base in an aircraft. With him he took a little souvenir. Can you guess what it was?’
‘Not…’ Barney’s eyes widened, ‘… not an H-bomb?’
‘You’ve hit it, chum; or near as makes no difference. Actually it was one of the latest pattern U.S. nuclear warheads.’
‘And Lothar went with him?’
‘Everything points to that.’
‘But Mary! Mary!’ Barney’s voice was an anguished cry. ‘What have they done with her?’
C.B. spread out his long hands. ‘I can guess how you must be feeling, and I’d give a lot to be able to tell you that she is safe and well. As things are I think that you can take it that she is still alive. They went straight from the Abbey to the air base; so if they had killed her it is pretty certain that by now someone would have found her body. Unless she got away and is wandering, temporarily out of her mind, that leaves only one alternative. It is that they took her with them.’
Suddenly sitting down Barney began to hammer his clenched fists together. ‘Oh God!’ he moaned. ‘Oh God, this is too ghastly! If only I’d gone direct to the air base. Earlier I was speculating on what Lothar was up to down there, and it occurred to me that he was probably planning to snatch some major secret from the Americans. But later, well, later…’
‘Easy on, young feller, easy on. You’d had a packet yourself, and I’ll not hold it against you that your thoughts were on the girl.’
‘But if I’d gone to the air base I might have wrecked their plan, bagged Lothar, and rescued Mary.’
‘No; you couldn’t have done that. You were lost, you had no transport, and after you got away from the ruined Abbey over half an hour elapsed before you were able to communicate with the police. Even if you had directed them straight on to the air base, by the time they arrived and had explained matters to the Security people there it would have been too late. Colonel Washington’s aircraft would already have taken off.’
Barney looked up in surprise. ‘When I telephoned the office, I gave only the bare facts about my having got on to Lothar. I said nothing about the Abbey and the hellish business that took place there. How did you know…?’
Smiling slightly, C.B. replied. ‘Otto had a vision, and knocked me up in the middle of the night. I’ve since had a long report from the Cambridge police, and another from the U.S. Security people. Between them I’ve managed to form a pretty good picture of what happened. But of course there are gaps in it; and I’d like you now to give me a detailed account of your activities from the time you left Inspector Thompson after having a drink with him at The World’s End.’
With an effort Barney dragged his thoughts away from Mary and for ten minutes made, in jerky staccato sentences, his report about his encounter with Ratnadatta and all that had followed.
When he had done, C.B. said, ‘That clears up quite a lot of points. Now I’ll give you my side of it. A little before two o’clock the Office called me and relayed your message. When I learned that you had actually contacted Lothar and believed him to be on his way to London I naturally went all out to get him. I not only alerted Special Branch, but got the Chief Constables of all the Home Counties out of bed to lay on networks in case he made for some hideout on the East or South coasts. After half an hour I’d done all I could so, having told the Office to call me if they got him, I put out the light and went to sleep again.
‘About an hour later my step-son roused me out. Otto had woken him by hammering on the front door. I had Otto in and this is what he had to say. Round about midnight he was awakened by a violent blow on the chin. He says it was as though a flaming torch had been thrust into his face. Instantly he became identified with Lothar and, I suppose one can say, inside his mind.’
‘He saw as clearly as though in strong sunshine, a chapel in the ruined Abbey to which you had been taken, and you struggling in the grip of two hooded men. He was aware that Mary Morden was there and that it was she who had inflicted this grievous injury upon him. Although within seconds everything went black, he knew that you had got away, but at the moment his mind was obsessed with his desire to be revenged on Mary. Some of the Satanists produced torches and he rallied his strength to put a terrible curse upon her. But Colonel Washington intervened and threatened to rat on him unless he postponed taking any action against her.’
‘So that’s what happened.’ Barney let out a swift sigh. His relief for Mary was faintly tinged with jealousy at the thought that it was the American instead of himself who had succeeded in protecting her; but he added quickly, ‘And what then? Did they go straight to the air base?’
‘I gather so. Otto’s chin was paining him severely; so he got out of bed and bathed it. As the injury was a form of burn, that made matters worse rather than better, and for a time he lost touch with the situation. He says that when he picked it up again he seemed to be poised above a dark wood that was filled with fog; but he could see through the fog. He saw Lothar and the others making their way to several cars on the edge of the wood, then get into them and drive off. He saw you, too, on the other side of the wood, stumbling about in it, and obviously lost.’
Then, instead of getting on the telephone to me at once, the fool swallowed five or six aspirins to dull his pain, and got back into bed again. As he lay there he picked up Lothar in a car with Colonel Washington and Mary Morden. The car was approaching the air base, but soon after they had entered it the aspirins began to work and he dozed off. About three o’clock he woke, thought over his vision and decided that he ought not to wait until the morning to tell me about it; so he got up, dressed and came round to Dovehouse Street.
‘As soon as I had heard Otto’s story I felt sure that you were on the wrong scent about their being on their way to London. What is more, in view of the last coup Lothar pulled off, the idea that he had been taken into a United States air base by an Air Force Colonel who was another Satanist properly put the wind up me. I telephoned a warning to the base and asked that Colonel Washington and anyone with him should be put under preventive arrest. Then I hurried into my clothes, came up to the Office and gave the whole story over the scrambler line to H.Q. Strategic Air Command at Lakenheath in Suffolk.
‘Half an hour later they came back to me to say that we’d missed the boat. Apparently Washington is a real rough diamond, but he was an ace flyer in the war, and stayed on in the Air Force afterwards only because he is mad-keen on flying. He has stacks of money and in addition to living like a prince in this house, the Cedars, outside the base with a team of imported coloured boys to look after him, he has his own private six-seater aircraft that he flies himself whenever he goes on leave to the Continent. He had applied for leave in the regular way and been given a fortnight. His ‘plane is fitted with equipment for night flying; so no one thought it particularly strange that he should elect to take off at one in the morning. His service record is a brilliant one and there has never been the slightest hint of anything against him on security grounds.
‘They knew nothing of anyone who might be Lothar, and the night duty-officer who was reporting to me obviously thought that I’d been sold a cock-and-bull story. No doubt that was partly because I had suggested in the first place that Washington was probably about to fly one of their super-bombers off to Russia; and it transpired that he hadn’t. I told this sceptical type to order a check-up on all secret equipment at the base to see if anything was missing; and that he had better get his Chief out of bed to take over from him, or he might regret it. After that, to fill in time I got on to Thompson to enquire how the raid on that place at Cremorne had gone off.’
Barney suddenly looked up. ‘Bejesus! My mind has been so taken up with Mary and Lothar that I’ve never given it a thought. How did it go, Sir?’
‘Ace high. We bagged the lot with their pants down. Thompson said that when they went in it was like a scene from the Folies Bergére, and that he hadn’t seen so many nudes since his uncle took him on a trip to Paris when he was a youngster. They were bundled up in a blanket apiece and taken off to Cannon Row. There were about thirty of them and some dozen coloured people, men and women, but they were only staff, and all appeared to be slightly loopy.’
‘Have you got the names of the Satanists yet?’
‘Not the lot. When I rang up the Special Branch boys were still grilling them. But among them there is one cop that the Yard are particularly pleased about. He is a saintly-looking old gentleman named Bingley. His speciality is luring little girls into back-lots and strangling them. After his last murder the police had a clear case against him but before they could arrest him he disappeared. That was five years ago, and evidently he has been lying low very comfortably in the house at Cremorne ever since.’
‘How about Ratnadatta?’
‘Oh, he’s been sent up from Fulham, to join the rest of the bunch.’
‘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 passsed 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 recognised 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 shrew 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 warhead 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 as 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 northeast 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 twentyfive-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 war-head 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 war-head 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 broke 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…’
There followed her conversation with Wash which had culminated in his describing to her exactly how her husband had been murdered. Then there came another short silence.
‘By jove, she’s got us the goods!’ Even C.B. could not suppress the excitement in his voice. ‘What courage! Just think what she must have gone through without giving in; and the skill she showed in leading him in the trap. She deserves a decoration.’
Mary’s voice came again, but this time so low that it was hardly more than a whisper. She said. ‘This is Mary Morden with a message for Colonel Verney, care of Special Branch, Scotland Yard. Mary Morden for Colonel Verney. Anyone who comes into possession of this spool should take it at once to the nearest police station. You will have heard my screams. I was being tortured by a Colonel Washington of the U.S. Air Force in a house called the Cedars near Fulgoham. It was he, too, whom you heard give particulars of the murder of my husband. Colonel Washington brought me here last Saturday night from a Satanist Temple at Cremorne…’
While they listened with bated breath Mary went on to relate how she had gone to the Temple because she had recognised her dead husband’s shoes on Ratnadatta’s feet. After describing them she again spoke of Wash, giving a brief outline of his personality and background. Then she said, ‘If Colonel Washington’s confession to having witnessed the murder of my husband is not sufficient to arrest him on, some pretext for removing him from his command should be found at once; because he may endanger peace. He says his flying career may soon be brought to an end by the introduction of rockets, and I believe he is planning to start a new career by going over to the Russians. He says that Russia will never attack the U.S., but the U.S. may be driven by economic reasons to attack Russia. He thinks that given peace Russia will be able to wreck the commerce of the West and so dominate the world in ten years’ time. Therefore she would lay down the red carpet for anyone who could bring about the abolition of all nuclear weapons. A way to do this would be to drop an H-bomb on Switzerland. Neither side would take action while trying to find out who dropped the bomb. Meanwhile, eyewitness reports of the horrors caused would lead to the democratic Governments of the West being forced by their people to agree a pact with the Soviet Government to scrap all nuclear weapons. The Russians could then go ahead without fear with their programme of underselling the West in the world’s markets and conquest by peaceful penetration. Colonel Washington could fly one of his big aircraft out at any time, drop an H-bomb on Switzerland, and fly on to reap a great reward in Russia. It is imperative that he should be deprived of the power to do so. Mary Morden for Colonel Verney, care of Scotland Yard.’
Dramatically the whispering ceased and the tape came to an end. For a moment the four men standing round the machine remained white-faced and silent. Then C.B. looked across at Otto and said.
‘You were right. They are in Switzerland. But why, instead of taking one of his bombers and dropping the bomb, did Washington take only the war-head for use with the rocket?’
‘Because in the Satanic hierarchy Lothar is his boss, and Lothar wanted it that way,’ replied the scientist.
‘But why?’ Verney asked again.
‘Only one answer to that,’ snapped Richter. ‘Lothar doesn’t mean the big bang to take place in Switzerland. He has just kidded Washington along about that. He means to launch his rocket so that it hits some place else; and that could start a world war.’
‘No.’ C.B. shook his head. ‘Forewarned is forearmed. He’s got only one war-head. God knows that’s bad enough. But as the Russians won’t have launched it they will believe one of ours has gone off through some ghastly accident; so they won’t follow it up with others. We must send out a signal to all concerned that we are expecting a maniac to launch one, and that the Russians have no hand in it, so there is to be no retaliation.’
‘You are assuming that he will aim it on London or Paris,’ said Otto quickly.
‘Of course. He is a Communist, or at all events he worked willingly for the Russians for years.’
‘He worked for the Russians, but he was never a Communist. He is a dyed-in-the-wool Nazi. Over and above that, though, he is a Satanist. His aim is to disrupt all stable forms of government; to create a state of world anarchy, so that it becomes every man for himself, and in a new era of complete lawlessness and disorder the Devil will come into his own again.’
‘Well, what do you deduce from that?’ asked Richter sharply.
‘That if his rocket had the range to do it he would try to land it on New York; because it is the United States that he hates with a positive fanaticism. As it is he’ll probably put it down on the other side of the Iron Curtain, hoping that the Russians will retaliate and blow most of the American cities off the map.’
‘Maybe you’ve got something there,’ the American admitted. ‘I doubt though if Moscow would fall for that. He could aim it at Prague or Budapest, but I don’t see the Russians entering on an all-out war because one of their satellites has been blitzed. They’ll not risk their own cities being laid in ruins. It would be a different story if he could put it down in Moscow, but Moscow is thirteen hundred miles from Switzerland; so praised be the Lord, he can’t.’
‘One moment,’ Barney cut in, addressing Otto. ‘Have you any idea how high above sea level this cave is where Lothar has his rocket?’
‘From what I know of the Alps it would be anything between eight and ten thousand feet.’
‘Well, the atmosphere must be much more rarefied at that height. Isn’t that going to decrease the resistance to the rocket on its take-off and greatly increase its range?’
‘Otto stared at him appalled. ‘You’re right!’ he muttered. ‘You’re right! It could double it. It could give him the thirteen hundred miles he’d need to land it on Moscow.’
‘God help us all that’s it then!’ Verney smashed his fist down on his desk. ‘Even if we warn the Russians in advance they’ll never believe that we didn’t launch the rocket. Within minutes of its landing they’ll retaliate on America and Britain with everything they’ve got. At any moment now the world may go up in flames.’