Steadman sank down on to the couch. Before he could speak, Pope had continued his tirade against his own organization. ‘And when the change comes in this country, dear boy, I’ll be directing the new broom as far as my own department is concerned. No more kid-glove treatment for suspect aliens, no more foreign trawlers in our waters. Family connections will mean nothing in the organization. Chinless wonders and nancy boys will be flushed out. Our “grey” people will be made to earn their keep.’
‘You’re as insane as Gant,’ Steadman said quietly.
‘Insane? Am I ranting, Harry? Am I raving? Do I really sound as though I’m mad?’
Steadman had to admit he didn’t. ‘But what you’re talking about – what you’re all talking about – is revolution. That’s impossible in England.’
‘What we’re talking about is counter-revolution. The revolution is already taking place. We intend to oppose it.’
‘What’s to stop your kind of power from becoming corrupt?’
‘Our one ideal, Harry. Don’t you see, we are a Holy Order? The thirteen men who will ultimately control the country will not be ordinary men. We’ll use the corruption around us, we’ll fight fire with fire . . .’
‘And not get burnt yourselves?’
‘Our spiritual leader will see we don’t.’
‘Himmler? A man who’s been dead for over thirty years? How can a corpse help you, Pope?’
The fat man merely smiled. ‘You must rest now, tonight will not be an easy one for you.’ He walked to a large oak bureau to one side of the room, on which stood a tray containing a dark bottle and one glass. He brought to tray over to Steadman and placed it at his feet. ‘Brandy,’ he announced. ‘I’m sure you need it.’ He straightened his huge frame, grunting at the effort. ‘Compliments of Mr Gant. Now, would you like some food, Harry? I’m sure you must be starving.’
Steadman shook his head. The hollowness in his stomach couldn’t be filled by food. The brandy might help, though.
‘I’ll leave you to rest.’ Pope walked to the door and for a brief moment, the investigator considered attacking him, smashing the brandy bottle over that obese head. His muscles tensed and he reached down for the neck of the bottle.
‘I shouldn’t, dear boy,’ Pope warned with a pleasant smile. ‘Griggs and Booth are just outside; you wouldn’t get very far. There is no escape for you, don’t you see? You’ve almost served your purpose, so why not relax and enjoy your final hours?’ Before the fat man disappeared through the door he gave Steadman a meaningful look. ‘Thank you, Harry, thank you for all your co-operation.’ Then, with a deep-throated chuckle, he was gone.
Steadman stared at the closed door for some time before he picked up the brandy. He uncorked the bottle and poured the dark brown liquid into the glass. He raised the glass to his lips and just before he sipped, he wondered if the drink could be drugged. But what would be the point? He was captive here, no chance of escape. Would they need him in a drugged state for whatever was to happen later that night? He doubted it; they had enough strongarm men to keep him passive. He took the tiniest of sips and rolled the fiery liquid around his mouth. He longed to swallow, knowing the brandy would do him good, but the faintest bitter taste held his throat muscles in check. Was it only his imagination or was there really a strange taint to the drink? Because of his danger his senses were acute; but was their sensitivity exaggerating the ordinary bitterness of the spirits?
He spat the liquid into the fire and the sudden flare-up made him jump back. The interior of his mouth burned with the thin coating of brandy left there, and he ran his tongue round it to dilute its strength. He looked longingly at the remaining contents of the glass and asked himself what they would try to drug him with – if they were trying to drug him – and his mind ran through the legend, the mythical story of the Holy Grail which had inspired Wagner’s Parsifal. The mystical opera he insisted be performed only at Bayreuth, the spiritual capital of the Germanic peoples. The opera Hitler had believed was the divine ideology of the Aryan Race!
Young Steve had told Steadman the basic story of the opera, which was a dramatization of the thirteenth-century poet’s Grail Romance, and the investigator had begun to understand why Gant – perverse though it was – had referred to him as ‘his Parsifal’. The central theme of the opera was the struggle between the Grail Knights and their adversaries, over the possession of the Holy Spear – the Spear of Longinus which had pierced the side of Christ.
The Spear had been stolen from them by Klingsor, a castrated evil magician who embodied Paganism, and in so doing, had dealt Amfortas, the leader of the Knights, a wound with the Spear that would never heal. In the hands of Klingsor, the Spear had become an evocator of black powers which only a completely guileless knight could overcome.
In Gant’s devious – or was it desperate – reasoning, he had seen himself as Klingsor, for Gant believed more in the powers of evil than in good, despising – as had Hitler – the Christian rituals connected with the myth, and in the arms dealer’s strange mind, Steadman had become his Parsifal, the ‘guileless’ knight who would have to be thwarted if the legend’s meaning was to be revoked. Parsifal had become a battle-weary soldier, a man whose mother had died grief-stricken when he had left her while still a boy. Although Steadman had always believed in the cause he had fought for, he would hardly have ascribed any deeply noble instincts to his own character, yet Gant had cast him in the romantic role of defender of the Good. Was it desperation on the arms dealer’s part, a need to create an omen where none existed, a megalomaniac’s desire to symbolize his own destiny? Perhaps Gant felt time was running out for him, the moment to launch his offensive was at hand, and someone was needed quickly to re-enact the final scene of Good against Evil, with the outcome this time heavily weighted on the side of Evil. A charade, a false ceremony for the benefit of the New Order! Steadman found it difficult not to smile at the foolishness of it all. This was why he had been drawn into the elaborate game. Unwittingly, David Goldblatt had provided them with their symbolic knight, a single man to be foiled, then destroyed as an omen of their future success. Gant must have been filled with elation when Maggie, under torture, had revealed she had been sent by Mossad, but only as second choice to her partner, Steadman, an ex-soldier, an ex-Mossad agent. An untainted Englishman.
It would have been easy for Pope to have gained access to the file kept by Military Intelligence on his, Steadman’s, past activities, and they had probably gloated on how his background could be compared – albeit loosely – to the mythical Parsifal’s. From then on, it had just been a matter of drawing him in. Maggie’s vile murder had been committed in order to tear him from the state of passivity he had built up over the last few years; the visit from Pope when he had declined to go against them despite his partner’s cruel death; the meeting with Gant at the armaments exhibition to assess his worth as an opponent; and the subsequent test when the tank had tried to crush him (had Holly’s life been as expendable as Köhner’s, or was this real proof of her innocence in the deadly game?); the revelations at Guildford to ensure his further involvement, and the next test of his worth against the sadistic Köhner, knowing if he escaped, he would contact Pope who would send him off on the last part of the charade without risk to their plans; and his luring to Gant’s North Devon estate, the ‘Wewelsburg’.
And now the Final Act was drawing near and one last test remained; but they wanted him to fail this one, so that his degradation would refute the outcome of the original legend. In the thirteenth-century minnesinger’s poem adapted by Wagner for his opera, a woman, Kundry by name, had tried to seduce Parsifal and degrade him as she had so many other knights. How these ancient standards of honour and chastity could compare with today’s, Steadman was at a loss to know, but nothing was sane in this whole bizarre plot. Gant and his followers would derive their own meaning from his sexual ‘downfall’. Anger boiled up in him and he threw the contents of the glass into the fire, enjoying the searing throwback of h
eat as the fire flared greedily, almost as though it were an emanation of his own rage. But they had made one small mistake in their elaborate scheme: Köhner had known about the Israeli agent, Smith; he had told Steadman the man had died. How could he have known unless he had been told by the bogus MI5 agents, Griggs and Booth? And that implicated Pope. It was enough for Steadman to have taken precautions before allowing himself to be drawn finally and irrevocably into the spider’s web. But had those precautions been enough? He looked at his watch and cursed. Where were they? What the hell were they waiting for? Were they part of the game too?
He leaped up and strode briskly to the window. It, too, was locked, and he looked out into the dark night, seeing little but his own reflection in the glass. He had lost track of time standing there, when the sound of a key turning in the lock made him look towards the door. The handle turned and the door opened slowly.
He was almost relieved when she slipped into the room; relieved it wasn’t Holly.
17
‘And I shall not shrink from using abnormal men, adventurers from love of the trade. There are countless men of this sort, useless in respectable life, but invaluable for this work.’
Adolf Hitler
Holly decided it was time to make her move. She knew her people would be reluctant to close in, but her absence would force them to do so. That might be too late, though.
She had been genuinely astounded when she had ‘stumbled’ on the hidden missile site. She was aware that Gant and his lunatic followers had some pretty twisted plans in mind, but had not realized those plans could involve such overt armed aggression. Even though it was known to her organization that Gant encouraged terrorist activities and supplied these various factions with arms – for a price – it was thought his own methods of undermining world peace were more subtle, more insidious. She had been stupid to get caught taking ‘snaps’ of the site, but they were still unsure of her. After all, if she was a freelance journalist and photographer as she claimed, then it would be perfectly natural for her curiosity to be aroused at such a discovery. Many journalists had been anxious to write a feature on ‘Edward Gant, Twentieth Century Arms Dealer’, over the past decade, so it was not unnatural that she had been so persistent. The fact that Gant had now begun to seek publicity and that her story of connection with his late wife’s family in the States had checked out, had led to her privileged position. Some privileged position, she reflected wryly.
Gant had invited her to his closely guarded estate the day before, promising her an ‘exclusive’ that would be the envy of the journalistic world. A car had arrived at Holly’s flat in the early hours of the morning with the arms dealer’s message, and had whisked her away before she had time to inform her own people. She was sure they were keeping tabs on her, though.
When she learned from Harry the purpose of the missile, she had been astounded at the flagrant cunning of Gant’s plan. There would be no tracing those who launched the rocket, though both Israelis and the Arabs would obviously be suspected. But the Israelis would know the Arabs were the perpetrators, and the Arabs would know the Israelis were the perpetrators. It would unsettle all the negotiations for peace between the two nations, and lead to another full-scale war which, in all likelihood, the Israelis would not win this time.
Holly had guessed the room was bugged – why else would they send Harry in to her? – and had had to deny any knowledge of Gant’s secret organization. However, she hadn’t lied about Mossad. She had wanted to hold him, tell him he wasn’t alone in all this, that others knew of the arms dealer’s intent. Harry had looked so grim, his mistrust undisguised, and she had wanted to blurt out the truth, to tell him of her government’s suspicions and anxiety over this, the most powerful Hitlerite group since the war. They knew its tentacles spread into high places, British Intelligence not the least of those places, and that they had to tread carefully and secretively in this country where the actual nest existed and thrived, for it was not just a threat to Britain, but to world equilibrium in general.
The investigator’s sudden appearance on the scene had mystified them at first and Holly still hadn’t figured out why he was so important to Gant. Her brief, though unexpectedly emotional, acquaintance with Harry had revealed nothing of any significance apart from the fact he had once been a Mossad agent. So why was he so important to Gant and why had he been allowed to get so close? And why, Holly asked herself, had he become so important to her?
Holly rose from the one easy-chair in the room and moved towards the door. She pressed her ear against the wood and listened: no sound came from the other side. Even if they thought she wasn’t involved, Holly doubted that they would leave her unwatched. She tried the door handle, twisting it to and fro.
‘Leave it, lady,’ a voice commanded from the other side. ‘You’re not going anywhere.’ Holly looked around the room, searching for an idea more than an object. But it was the object that gave her the idea.
Kristina closed the door and smiled across the room at Steadman.
He had to admit she was beautiful, her long, dark hair framing her pale face like a black sea flowing around an ice drift. The deep red of her full lips could have been an imprint of blood on the snow, a curving stain that was as cold as the ice around. Only her eyes were alien in the frozen landscape of her face, for they were alive, deep and glowing as though containing some inner amusement. Yet, there was an excitement in them too, and he felt it was to do with desire.
Her skirt was of the darkest umber, velvet in texture, and ending well below the knee where high and slim-heeled boots clung to her calves and ankles, flowing with the shape of her lower legs as the skirt flowed with the shape of her thighs. A brown shirt, two tones lighter than the skirt, open to a point below the cleft of her breasts, completed the picture of aggressive sexuality and, despite himself, he felt the opening pangs of desire. He caught the sudden flick of her eyes towards the brandy bottle and his passion was immediately stemmed.
‘I wanted to see you, Harry,’ Kristina said, before advancing on him.
‘Why?’ he asked bluntly.
She stopped before him. ‘To talk to you. Perhaps to help you escape.’
For a moment he was too stunned to speak. ‘You’d help me escape from here?’
‘I’d help you escape from the fate Edward Gant has in store for you.’
The sudden hope drained from Steadman and he asked, ‘How?’
‘By persuading Edward to let you live, by convincing him you could be useful to us.’ She was close to him now, having imperceptibly drawn nearer as they spoke. He looked down at her, interest more than contempt in his eyes.
‘How could I be useful to your Thulists?’ he asked.
‘You’re a resourceful man; you’ve done well to survive so far. You know much about Israeli Intelligence, a natural enemy to our movement, and any information you could give us would be invaluable. Your past record shows you are a ruthless man, and ruthlessness is something this country will need in the years ahead.’
‘But wouldn’t I have to believe in Nazism?’ Steadman asked scornfully.
‘You’d come to believe in time. Not all our members are convinced of our ideals, we’re aware of that. They seek power for power’s sake, not for race advancement, but for personal gain. Eventually, they’ll see it our way.’
‘And you think Gant would trust me?’
‘You’d have to convince him you could be trusted. I could help you do that.’
‘How?’
‘If I trusted you I could influence his judgement. I have in the past.’ She placed a hand on his shoulder and, inexplicably, a shudder ran through him.
‘But why should you believe in me?’ he said.
‘If we were lovers . . .’ He almost laughed aloud as she said the words. ‘. . . I’d know.’
‘And Major Brannigan. Isn’t he your lover?’
She smiled indulgently at Steadman. ‘You’re very observant. Andrew is a weak man. He doesn’t have your qual
ities, your strength.’
‘But I bet you helped draw him into all this.’
‘It’s not important now, Harry.’ She closed the gap between them and pressed her body against his. The contact was at once strongly repulsive yet intoxicating. Had the tiny amount of tampered-with brandy he’d allowed into his mouth begun to have some effect? Or was it her eyes? They had a peculiar mesmeric quality and he felt a tiredness overcoming him. He tried to flood any other thoughts from his mind, filling his head with the Parsifal legend, reminding himself of Gant’s malignity. Yet when he looked down at the beautiful face before him, it was difficult to imagine any reasonable motive behind the seduction. It would hardly be humiliating to succumb to such a woman, and he had certainly not taken any knightly vows of celibacy. Her dark eyes gazed back at him, unblinking, drawing him down, his head bending towards her, his lips reaching. It was almost as though he was being hypnotized, she exerting a stronger will over his . . .