Werewolf (Commander Shaw Book 16) Read online

  Still worrying about Felicity Mandrake, I was airborne for Santiago’s Padahuel airport at a little after 2000 hours that evening. It was a longish haul and the clocks would go four hours backwards as we went west. Time was on my mind: about three days to go now before Hitler’s brain reached Britain, call it two at most before it left Chile. If that was where it was, currently.

  *

  Aboard the British Caledonian airliner, I read up the Bolz curricula vitae: the envelope contained photographs and from these I saw that the Bolzes could be called the long and the short. Long Bolz was Lothar, the husband; a man like a beanpole with a long, thin neck and eyes that struck me as being at once eager and anxious, rather birdlike really. Short Bolz — Lotte — was a bouncy bun. Round, with negligible legs in tight trousers — Humpty Dumpty on a tiny scale. They must have found life difficult at times of intimacy. They didn’t look like spies — but who does? — and they didn’t look dedicated politicals either. No Communist-cold, passionless zeal lurked that I could see. They actually looked nice and friendly and in a way sad. But appearances can be deceptive and their history showed that in fact they were both good Party stalwarts. They had been married for seventeen years and were both in their late thirties. Lothar had been a bank clerk, Lotte a secretary in the Party off ices in Karl-Marx-Stadt, once known as Chemnitz, when they had been recruited for espionage. In previous spying missions they had not drawn back from killing. Little bun-like Lotte had strangled a nurse in Essen. Lothar had pumped an automatic rifle into the bound bodies of a group of dissidents in Poland. In fact, they were a right pair of bastards.

  They had been, as I knew, sent into Chile fourteen years earlier on that special assignment — to find and eliminate the defector from East Germany, a man with Nazi views. Before they could go into action they’d been arrested and ultimately sentenced to life imprisonment; I’d been wrong earlier — and Max had told me so — in thinking it had been a straight twenty years. They had come to grief over a remarkably stupid escapade on Lothar’s part: he had made an attempt at rape in a public park in Valparaiso and had been arrested when the girl objected. His communist antecedents had come out and the game was up for him and Lotte. When the left-wing Salvador Allende had achieved power in 1970 the Bolzes had been hopeful of release; but this hadn’t happened. Allende’s grip on power was shaky — he’d only got 36.2 of the vote in any case — and it was believed he wanted to hang onto possible bargaining counters. Now, however, in spite of Chile’s subsequent right-wing lurch, the exchange had been arranged; the East Germans were said to be grateful and so, I thought, they should be. Jones and Priddy, my information-sheet told me, had been arrested in East Germany many years before on trumped-up charges and merely held so that, one day, they could be used as ready-made exchange pawns when a suitable occasion arose; now their moment had come, and no doubt they too would be grateful.

  I shoved the photographs and documents back into the envelope and slid it into my brief-case. I lay back and shut my eyes as the airliner rushed out across the Atlantic from the first fuelling stop at Lisbon. There would be others at Rio and Buenos Aires. Ideas came to me: I wondered high authority hadn’t gone into reverse, wondered why Whitehall hadn’t acted, to inhibit the exchange once the facts about Hitler’s brain, or supposed brain, had become known. To inhibit would presumably have been as easy as giving encouragement in the first place. It would be a diabolical thing to do to Jones and Priddy, of course, and I would have hated it to happen, but governments are not usually soft-hearted and nor was Max. Possibly the explanations for a volte face would have proved too embarrassing At Padahuel I deplaned under a clear blue sky and thought of long sandy beaches backed by mountains, and clean-limbed girls with not too much on, and drinks on shady verandahs and all that went with all of that. I’d like to holiday here with Felicity, but better not to think too much about that at the moment. I would grow maudlin, and there was work to be done.

  I was met and driven to the firm of shipping agents that gave cover to HQ 6D2 Chile, where I was whisked up in a lift to the equivalent of The Suite in London, to meet Max’s opposite number, name of Paul Younger — British: 6D2 steers clear of political involvements so far as its command structure goes, and most South American countries are too extremist orientated to admit of a local being given the top jobs; it wouldn’t have been good for our impartial image.

  Younger had all the up-to-date facts at his finger-tips. While I’d been in flight, it had all come through in cipher from Focal House. There was no news of Miss Mandrake, Younger said, sounding crisp and unemotional about it. I asked him if he had a line out on ex-Feldwebel Ublick and he said he had. Ublick was well known in his locality in the Andes foothills; he tended to stand out. But ‘well known’ was a relative phrase; the district was very sparsely inhabited and Ublick’s nearest neighbour, almost his sole one, was around seven miles distant. That neighbour was a wheat farmer; Ublick had made a home for himself, literally, on the fringe of the farm. Since he gave no trouble, no-one minded; old-time Germans were welcome enough in Chile where Nazism appeared to give no offence, though I wondered how Ublick had made out during President Allende’s tenure of office. Younger said he had achieved this simply by keeping his head well down, and in any case he had never paraded his politics. “You want to meet him?” Younger asked.

  I nodded.

  “When?”

  “Soonest possible,” I said, having time still riding on my mind.

  “No preliminary work?”

  “No,” I answered. “I’m going right for the nub.”

  “You won’t find the brain there, at least I’m pretty sure you won’t.”

  “I realise that. But Ublick’s bound to be the best bet.”

  Younger nodded; I think he wanted to warn me that other people would have an interest in the ex-feldwebel currently and I might run into a hornet’s nest, but he didn’t. It might have seemed presumptuous. He said, “I’ll have you helicoptered in.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “May I keep the helicopter till I’m through?”

  He said I could. After that he moved fast and I was airborne within a matter of minutes, swinging up and away over Chile’s capital to head south. We passed over the railway line running to the sea at Valparaiso, over good, wide roads, and to the east I saw the Andean peaks rising grandly to the still-blue sky. Dropping south we came over the great, rolling wheatlands in Chile’s agricultural centre regions; soon we were coming down near the small township of Buco, passing over the settlement itself to come down on some bare, level ground, free of any growth, under the shadow of the foothills and the splendid peaks behind. Before we were down I had picked up Ublick’s hut, or fancied I had, below the hills that stood bluish and mysterious.

  The Chilean pilot confirmed the hut’s ownership when I made the enquiry. “Yes, it is Ublick’s. There is a little smoke now,” he added.

  There was; a thin trail, blue to join the blue of the foothills. Beneath it there was sign of life. The hut seemed to be of very primitive construction and was, from ground level, almost lost against the backdrop of the hills, a sort of cabin. I said, “I’ll go right ahead.” I judged the distance to be about half a mile. “Stay by the machine, will you?”

  “I stay, yes.”

  I went off. It was a lonely walk in the great wide spaces, and never mind the helicopter behind me. I shivered with a sense of unease, wondering just what might lie ahead. I was not too worried about my reception, all the same; I had my heavy revolver, the pilot was armed, and so was the helicopter itself. I’d seen the machine-gun and I doubted if any lurking enemy would take the chance. The pilot was under orders to watch for trouble and to get airborne and cover me the moment anything happened. I didn’t want him hovering until it was absolutely necessary; the old Nazi could scare and clam up.

  I walked on. As I closed the cabin, constructed like those of the westward-thrusting pioneers of the last-century United States, I felt for my revolver. Its sheer heaviness was reassuring
. I didn’t like the silence; it could almost be felt, a near-physical force. I should have been seen, by now. A moment later I saw that the smoke was increasing and was coming not so much from the chimney but from the back of the cabin; and then I saw sudden flame, a great lick of it shooting up over the roof, and sparks flew, and the burning smell rolled out towards me.

  I stopped.

  No-one emerged from that fire. I ran forward, approaching as closely as I could. The old German could, I supposed, have upset some sort of stove and had been overcome by the smoke before aged limbs could drag him clear. There was a stream nearby: I ripped off my jacket and submerged it, then went on with the wet cloth over my mouth and nose for what it was worth. Behind me I heard the helicopter start up and soon it was hovering, its rotor blades fanning the flames viciously until I waved and screamed at the pilot to bugger off out of it, fast. But there was nothing I could do but wait for the flames to die; the heat was much too intense, so was the billowing smoke. Anything living would be dead by now, charred like Hitler’s body was said to have been but wasn’t.

  I waited. I waited a long time, during which the helicopter landed again. The flames died to small blue flickers, and I could go in closer. As soon as I could, I raked about in the embers. There was nothing approaching body shape. I didn’t believe anyone had died in the fire and I didn’t believe the old German could have set light to the hut himself, either intentionally or by accident. There was a stove all right, one that had probably burned wood, but no German, alive, dead or charred. I’d have seen anyone running away to safety. The fire could have been started by some delaying device, set to burn when certain people had got clear away … people who, in my view, had hooked the ex-feldwebel out of circulation before I could get to him myself.

  Just on the off-chance, just to make quite sure, I raked about in the ashes and embers, to see if there was a metal box lying around containing lunatic brains, but of course they wouldn’t have left that behind. I was still raking when a posse of men, farm hands, rode up from the west and dismounted.

  I said, “You’re a little late.”

  “Engleesh?”

  “Yes.”

  There was a grin on a swarthy face, a nasty grin. “You do thees? We catch in action, yes?”

  “No,” I said. I waved an arm. “I’ve only recently come in by helicopter. The pilot will confirm that. A pity you didn’t arrive earlier.”

  “We are busy. And word comes only just now. Where is the old man, the German?”

  I shrugged. “Not here.”

  “Dead?”

  “No. Just gone.”

  “You will come with us, and talk to the señor, the boss.”

  I saw no point in that at all. The boss wouldn’t know where the German had been taken, and once he got his hands on me the local police would be called in and it would take time, far too much time, to make 6D2 penetrate the rural Chilean mind. So I said, “I won’t, you know. The moment you lay hands on me, the helicopter will come in. It’s a minor gunship. The pilot has his orders. He won’t stop to ask. Got it, hombre?”

  At that precise moment my pilot decided to act. As if he’d heard what I had been saying, he took his helicopter up and turned it towards our little group. The noise was deafening and it had its effect. I yelled, “See what I mean?” and brought out my revolver. “If I were you, I’d beat it. It’s the only way to live.”

  They took the hint and mounted their horses in a mad scramble. Something took possession of me: I thought about Felicity and what she might be enduring in Jason Clutch’s evil hands and I released my tensions on the innocent Chilean farm hands. I pumped bullets into the ground behind their horses’ hooves and felt like a sheriff from the old Wild West, a real Texan gun-hand, as they vamoosed at high speed.

  Back in Santiago I reported to Paul Younger. He said he would send out ears to keep close to the ground, but didn’t expect much success. Neither did I. The brain snatchers would be fully geared to cover themselves; though I didn’t think the current business was a brain snatch so much as a Ublick snatch. Well, the body might turn up, but even that was doubtful. There are plenty of ways of disposing of bodies so that they’re never found. It’s just a question of ingenuity and wells are far from the end. I’d known of people buried in builders’ hardcore and becoming a part of motorway foundations. I didn’t really expect to see Ublick again.

  There was, however, someone else who could be useful if alive and locatable: the clue lay in the potted biography of Lothar and Lotte Bolz. The attempted rape: it was a long shot but it was currently all I had. The documentation I’d been given had included the rapee’s name: Gabrielle Opazo. That was not all. Her father had happened to be a leftist agitator and when the facts of the Bolzes’ mission had emerged he had been put into a state of confusion over his loyalties. Did daughter come first, or Party? However, the Commies stick together and, never mind the offence that had occasioned the arrest, Opazo had engineered a strike to have Lothar released. Of course it didn’t last five minuses and Opazo had found himself in gaol as well, sentenced to a couple of years. Soon after he had been released both he and his wife had been shot up by extreme rightists in the middle of the night, a murder that no doubt explained why Max had not so much as mentioned Opazo, back in London, as a likely contact.

  Not much use, really; but there had been the daughter, and there was nothing to say she was dead. Married maybe,

  with a change of name, which would make finding her difficult. And why bother? It could be presumed she wouldn’t have wanted any further contact with Lothar Bolz. On the other hand, she could well have inherited her father’s politics and in a sense both her parents had martyred themselves in the Bolz cause. Chile being a Latin country, some family feeling was presumably still in existence there. It might extend to Gabrielle Opazo.

  I put it to Paul Younger. He was not much help. He sent for some files and was able to tell me that Gabrielle Opazo, who would now be aged 34, had been still unmarried when her parents had been murdered but that after that date nothing was known of her except that she was believed to have left Santiago for Valparaiso and prostitution; the great seaport of Valparaiso was ideally suited to the brothel trade.

  I asked, “How many brothels are there?”

  “God knows,” he answered, shrugging. “If you tried them all, you’d be dead in a fortnight.”

  It didn’t sound promising. And the feeling of pressure grew worse when one of Younger’s telephones burred. Having taken the call he put down the instrument, looking pre-occupied. He said, “The Bolzes, Commander. They’ve just been released to the custody of the East German Embassy. They’re due to fly out on Friday by the commercial flight.”

  “I understood they were due to reach U.K. on Friday?” Younger said, “There’s been a change in the schedule.”

  “Well,” I said, “it gives us one more day and that’s something. Do I take it they’re landing at Gatwick?”

  Younger nodded. “That accounts for the alteration. It was to have been Leeds/Bradford by a special flight.” Good old Max, I thought. He must have driven Whitehall into a corner.

  *

  HQ had fixed me a first-class hotel and I checked in. I made a routine search of my suite for bugs and even for explosive devices, but I found nothing. I rang down to room service and had a bottle of Scotch sent up. Pouring a drink, I looked from my windows over the city of Santiago and the mountains beyond. I suppose it was beautiful, but I scarcely took it in: I had too much on my mind. After a quick drink I went down in the lift and out into the street. It was still early evening; the round trip to Buco hadn’t taken long. I walked along by the government buildings and thought about Chile’s rightist controlling junta; it was vital that they didn’t get to hear about the brain or they might well interfere on behalf of Klaus Kunze of the Bundestag. I walked towards the East German Embassy. Would Hitler’s brain be in there now, all ready for the off with the Bolzes in three days’ time? I doubted it; sure, it had to be all read
y somewhere and would be passed to the Bolzes at the last moment, but until that last moment arrived I reckoned it would stay with Nazi yobbos who wouldn’t be trusting either of the German Embassies, East or West. The brain was very strictly Werewolf business, and the East Germans were only the cats’-paws. That bloody brain … we, both 6D2 and HM Government, were caught slap in the middle. Whitehall certainly didn’t want it. Nor did they wish to be overtly involved in its destruction. I was the sucker; and it looked increasingly as though I would have to go in and get the bloody article myself and dispose of it.

  I went back to the hotel. It was early yet but despite the Chilean habit of eating late, I found I could get dinner. I went into the restaurant. I kept my eyes open without appearing to do so; I had no doubts at all that someone outside 6D2 would know I’d arrived in Santiago. Also, it might be known that I’d been down to Buco to look for ex-Feldwebel Ublick. Someone might give himself away; someone getting to his feet, however casually, and leaving the restaurant to make a telephone call, that sort of thing.

  However, there was nothing suspicious and I had a good dinner. After it I went into the cocktail bar and sat on a stool and ordered Bacardi. When I got to my second, the barman became chatty; he had time on his hands until later in the evening. He spoke good English and was very amiable. He asked me if I was in Santiago on business or as a tourist.

  “Business,” I said.

  “So? That is interesting.” The barman polished some glasses. “May one enquire what business, senor?”

  I said, “I’m in grain. Nothing romantic.”

  “You buy?”