Death in a High Latitude, page 21
‘Did you get any idea of who this gang is, and what they are doing here?’ I asked the commander.
‘Not really. They were more concerned to question us.’
‘What did you tell them?’
‘As little as we could. I said that we were on an Arctic exercise, primarily concerned with detailed air-navigation in the vicinity of the Pole.’
‘Did you identify the leader of the gang?’
‘I think so – at least he was the man who did most of the questioning, and who seemed to give instructions to the others. He has not come back.’
‘Then either he is the man we left on the yacht, or the man who was shot when they opened fire on us on leaving their plane. I’m inclined to think he is probably the dead man. The man we left on the yacht seemed a rather spineless individual.’
‘I should recognise him if you recover the body. What are you going to do about the man on the yacht?’
‘He will have to be collected and taken back to Germany.’
‘When do you think we ought to collect him?’ Keller asked.
‘I’ve been thinking about that. Timing is a critical problem. We ought to report our casualties as soon as possible, and I think we should try to recover the bodies for burial in Germany. That could be done on foot, but it would take days, and we haven’t really got a strong enough party. It could be done much more easily with another helicopter. That means getting one brought out.’
‘There would be no difficulty about that,’ the commander said.
‘I’m sure there wouldn’t be. But the moment these deaths are reported there will be a tremendous news story, and we don’t know yet who is behind it all. Do you think we could maintain silence for another twelve hours, until tomorrow morning? That would enable us to recover the man from the yacht, and give time for some hard questioning.’
The commander didn’t like it much – all his instincts were to report our situation forthwith. I didn’t like it either; it was hard on the next of kin that they should remain ignorant of what had happened. But Keller supported me. Neither he nor I could give orders to the Service people, but the commander’s own orders were to assist us and after some discussion he agreed to do as we asked. Then we had to decide who should collect the man from the yacht. I didn’t want to go, and I didn’t want Keller to go, for he was needed to question our German-speaking prisoners. In the end the commander decided to go himself, with three airmen. He could pilot the smaller plane, and we showed him on the chart precisely where the yacht was.
Ruth, Keller and I then got down to work with Dr Braunschweig. He still knew next to nothing about how we had come to look for him. He also wanted to send a radio message to tell his wife that he was safe. I hated the thoughts of his wife’s continued agony but I had to steel myself and tell him he must wait.
I gave him a quick summary of events since Sir Anthony Brotherton had come to us with the first ransom note. ‘So,’ he said – he spoke excellent English, but this was the expressive German ‘Zo’ – ‘I do not understand everything, but now I understand much more than I did. You know something of the Arctic climatic theory. I took it very seriously, and I wanted my company to investigate it in the utmost detail. Consider the advantages to the western world if it were no longer dependent on oil from the politically turbulent Middle East. There is plenty of Arctic oil – we have but touched the fringe of development there. The difficulty is in getting it out. There is a pipeline now from Alaska to the west coast of America, but such pipelines are hugely expensive, and there is always trouble with those who do not want the ecological balance of wild places to be upset. I am indeed sympathetic to them, but they are often ignorant and create alarms that are not justified. Big oil companies are, of course, much hated and distrusted – yet even those who hate us depend on what we do. We are not the soulless vandals we are made out to be . . . But no matter, there is no time for this. Imagine the value of a sea route for oil from the Arctic to Europe and the east coast of North America – quick, clean transport with no interference with anybody’s land.
‘To my astonishment Sir Anthony did not support me, and since he is by far the most powerful man on our board I could not hope to persuade a majority to go against him. Nor did I want to quarrel openly with him and others of my colleagues. So I determined to find out for myself whether a North-West Passage in the far north offers a feasible route. I had a most able mathematician on my staff in an Englishman called Adrian Stowe. He shared my enthusiasm, and gave invaluable help on the theoretical side. As his work progressed I became more and more convinced that a far northern passage does exist.’
‘It might exist mathematically and yet not be of any practical use,’ Ruth said.
‘That is just what Adrian Stowe used to tell me. I am not a mathematician in your’ – he gave a little bow to Ruth – ‘or Adrian Stowe’s class, but I spent many years as a chemical engineer, and I am not wholly ignorant of maths. It was, indeed, because I understood the limitations of a theoretical approach that I was determined to investigate the passage physically. Fortunately I was equipped to do so. I am a navigator, I have had much to do with sea transport, and I had my own oceangoing yacht. Then Adrian Stowe died.’
‘He was almost certainly murdered,’ I said. ‘In England, two other experts in the Arctic climatic theory, who were his friends and colleagues in his work, have also been murdered. Did you suspect that Mr Stowe’s death was not the suicide it was made out to be?’
Dr Braunschweig was silent for what seemed a long time. Then he said slowly, ‘I cannot say that I suspected . . . sometimes I feared. You must understand that all my life I have been immersed in my work, I have not thought of such things as the murder of a colleague. What has happened since makes me realise that I ought to have thought of such matters, but I did not.’
He was shaken and distressed. I let him recover himself and asked, ‘What happened on the day you left Hamburg?’
‘I was driving to my office when I saw Heinrich Baumgarten standing by the roadside. He recognised my car and waved at me to stop. I thought he was my friend, so I did stop. He said that his car had broken down some distance away and he had walked to the main road to try to get a lift. Could I drive him to his home? Of course I said yes. I ought to have realised that his story was improbable – a man in his position had only to telephone his office and a car would have been sent out to him at once. I thought of that later, not at the time.’
He paused, and went on, ‘I suppose it took about twenty minutes to get to his house. He asked me in for a cup of coffee, but I wanted to get to work and declined. However, he pressed me, saying that Hilde would be most disappointed if I did not go in, that I need stay only a few minutes, and that he wanted particularly to show me a photograph of a boat he was thinking of buying. Stupidly I gave way.
‘Hilde was very friendly, asked if my wife and I could have dinner with them one day in the following week, and made coffee for us. I remember nothing more until I woke after dark, lying fully dressed on a bed. I had a severe headache. I know now that the coffee was drugged, but at the time I thought I must have had a heart attack and that the Baumgartens were looking after me. A few minutes after I woke Heinrich came in, accompanied by another man. Both had pistols. Heinrich said he was sorry to upset me, but that he needed my help. He had, he said, to go to England secretly, and he wanted to go on my yacht. I asked why he needed a pistol, and why he could not simply have asked me to help him as a friend. He said I did not understand. I said I would have nothing to do with it, and wished to go home. He then said “That is why we have pistols. I’m afraid you must do as I tell you.”
‘I had little choice. Heinrich and the other man – he is called Arnold, but I do not know his other name, and he is the man who was wounded when he was ashore from Apfel – made me get into a car, and drove me to the waterfront. I thought of shouting for help, but it was late at night and there was nobody about. And the man Arnold kept his pistol pressed into my side. We got into a biggish dinghy, and Heinrich rowed. It was some distance from Apfel’s mooring and we must have been in the dinghy for nearly an hour. I wondered why we did not use an outboard, but realised that he did not want to make a noise. He brought us to Apfel and the three of us went on board. Hilde was in the saloon, still friendly, and gave me coffee and some food. I was hungry then, and glad to eat.
‘After this Heinrich said that we must leave, and that we must go out under sail because he did not wish to attract attention with the engine. He told me that I must handle Apfel because I knew her. He and the other man helped to get up the sails, and now it was Hilde who kept close to me with a pistol.
‘Perhaps I should have wrecked Apfel . . . Somehow I couldn’t. I was still very much in a daze. We sailed out and when we were well away from the mooring the dinghy was cast off and left to drift. Heinrich said that we would set a course for Harwich in England, and that as we were now standing out to sea he could handle Apfel and I could go to bed. I was permitted to use my own cabin, but they locked me in.
‘I suppose I was still affected by the drug, for, surprisingly I went to sleep, and slept until nearly six a.m. I looked out of my porthole, but could see no sign of land, nor anything to indicate where we were. I banged on my door, and soon afterwards Heinrich came. He was still polite. “I’m afraid I misled you yesterday,” he said. “We are not going to England.”
‘I asked, “Where are we going?”
‘He told me that it depended on me, but that he hoped I would cooperate. I asked what the devil he meant, and he said he understood that I was planning a voyage to the Arctic. If I was prepared to navigate, he and Hilde and his friend would help me to get there.
‘It was my own fault. I had liked Heinrich and Hilde, they had sailed with me for weekend cruises on Apfel, and while I think I was always discreet about my real purpose I made no particular secret about wanting to sail to Greenland. He told me that he and Hilde had been on board Apfel several times without my knowledge, and stored her for a long voyage. We need not put in anywhere save, perhaps, for water, and we could do that when we got to Greenland. All they wanted me to do was to navigate, though if I would help to work the ship we should all get on better.
‘What could I do? I was totally in their power, and I did want to go to the Arctic. I thought that the best thing I could do was to play along with him, bide my time, and escape when I could.’
‘You would not have been allowed to escape,’ I said. ‘You would not have returned from the voyage. I’m inclined to think that we found you in the nick of time – that the aeroplane was to evacuate the Baumgartens and the other man and that you would have been shot out of hand. I think you had given them what they wanted, and that they had finished with you.’
‘You may be right . . . even if you are only partly right I am infinitely in your debt.’
‘That does not matter. Rolf Keller and I were simply doing our duty. What does matter is whether you have formed any idea of why they kidnapped you and made you take them to the Arctic.’
‘Heinrich was never explicit, but you cannot live with a man on a boat without getting some impression of his motives. Heinrich controlled – largely owned – a flourishing oil engineering business. Much of his work was in the Middle East, and in our conversations I gained the idea that he was also interested financially in oil production in the Middle East. From one or two things he said I think that he was a considerable shareholder in the Arabian Sands Oil Company, a smallish independent company that we took over. The majority of the shares were held by banks as nominees. I was against our making any further investment in the Middle East, but I was outvoted by my colleagues on the board. Finance is not my own field, and I did not know the details of the shareholdings we bought out in taking over Arabian Sands – maybe they were so well disguised that nobody outside the nominee banker actually knew. I suspect that Heinrich was deeply involved, but I don’t know.’
‘You said that you thought the plane that brought the raiding party belonged to your company.’
‘I don’t think it – I know it belongs to Unol. Shipping is my chief administrative job in the company, but all transport comes under me, and I was concerned in buying a fleet of those aircraft for service in Alaska and other areas where we need to transport personnel by air.’
‘Could it have been used as it was without the connivance of someone in the company – someone in a senior position?’
‘You are implying what I do not want to think about.’
‘It has got to be thought about.’
‘I suppose the plane could have been stolen, but it would not be easy.’
‘Let us go one stage farther. Do you consider it probable that the murder of experts in the Arctic climatic theory and your kidnapping were organised by people in the company fearful of the effects in the Middle East if a new North-West Passage could be found?’
‘Within the company, perhaps . . . within the oil industry, certainly. There is very much at stake.’
‘Have you any idea who the people in the plane are?’
‘No.’
*
Keller and I next turned our attention to the pilot of the invading aircraft and the other members of his party who were fit to be interviewed. We got nowhere, because all refused to say anything except to demand lawyers. ‘There’s no point in wasting time on them,’ I said to Keller. ‘They’ll have to be turned over to the Canadian police, and they can be searched and interrogated later. I think we ought to radio the Canadian authorities now. It would be simpler to keep everything in our own hands, but we can’t. Various crimes have been committed on Canadian territory, and while the Baumgarten woman and the man who sailed with them from Hamburg can be extradited to face trial in Germany, the others will have to be dealt with by the Canadians. There’d be appalling diplomatic trouble if we just took the whole lot back to Hamburg.’
Keller agreed and we called in our own radio operator. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police maintain a number of posts in the Arctic. The nearest seemed to be on Baffin Island, and we had a radio frequency for it, but the post was at least seven hundred miles away from us and we did not know what sort of transport they had available. Also the whole affair was so complicated that it seemed best to get in touch directly with Ottawa, and to leave it to the Canadian authorities to decide what to do. Sir Edmund Pusey’s department at the Home Office has a liaison officer in the Canadian police, as it has with most of the world’s major police authorities, and I’d taken the precaution of putting his name and his position at Canadian police headquarters in my diary.
So we duly called up Ottawa, established a good RT link, and were lucky enough to find that Commissioner Tom MacDonald was in his office. He was intelligent and understanding, and didn’t waste time asking questions. I gave him a brief outline of what had happened and he said ‘Right, I’ll come myself. How many prisoners do you have?’
I told him, and explained that some were injured and in need of medical attention. I also said that if he could provide a pilot we had a plane available which could take the prisoners, doctor and nurse, and a Canadian police guard. He thought that might be helpful, and told us to stand by.
*
Waiting on that desolate, snow-flecked gravel plain was nerve-racking, but we had no choice. The commander’s return with the prisoner from Apfel broke the monotony, though this man, like the others, refused to say anything. Keller reported our dealings with the Canadian police to the commander. He was unhappy at the delay in starting back for Germany, but accepted its necessity. He was also relieved that we had at least done something to straighten out the complexities of waging what amounted to a private war on someone else’s territory.
Ruth had been helping the German Air Force nurse to look after the wounded. Soon after the commander’s return she came to tell me that Frau Baumgarten had woken up and was asking for me. ‘I wonder what she wants,’ I said.
‘I don’t know,’ Ruth replied, ‘but maybe it’s because she is English. She is shattered by her husband’s death and she probably wants to know what her own future is likely to be.’
‘I don’t think I can be of much comfort there,’ I said grimly.
*
I was now certain of at least one thing in the maze of events, and I put it to Hilde Baumgarten as soon as I saw her. She looked pathetic lying on a cot under air force blankets, but I could not let sentiment get in the way of questioning her.
‘Tell me why you helped in the murder of Dr Jackson,’ I said to her.
She did not attempt denial. She said wearily, ‘So you know about that. Who, exactly, are you?’
‘I represent the British police. My colleague is a high-ranking German policeman. You were engaged in an international conspiracy, and it had to be met internationally.’
‘How much do you know?’
‘I know that you were at a party attended by Dr Jackson on the night he died, and that you persuaded him to drink far more than was good for him. Later on that same night I think you went to his house, entered his bedroom through the french window, and helped him to take an overdose of pills. Oh, and you deposited an amber bead under the carpet near the door.’
‘You might have been there . . . You know, I liked Charles Jackson – I was a student of his once. It was a long time ago . . . Yet he had to be eliminated . . .’
‘Why?’
She did not answer for several minutes. Then, as if she were talking to herself, she went on, ‘You never think of retribution, that it can happen to you . . . It seemed so safe. There was all the money in the world, and the League Against Political Injustice to make it safer. You won’t have heard of LAPI, but you soon would have. Heinrich invented them to take care of the liquidation of Gustav Braunschweig. Now Heinrich is dead, and I don’t know what will happen to LAPI. They would have been so useful . . .’ Her voice trailed off, and she went into a trance-like state. I had to shake her out of it, and said roughly. ‘You talk of murder and kidnapping as if they were a sort of private game. Do you realise how serious your own position is?’
