He never completed his sentence. There was the sound of a brief, shattering crash. The jetty wall Newman had one foot perched on shuddered under the massive impact. The fog lifted again briefly. In time for them to see the Holsten V submerging with terrifying swiftness. No sign of any other vessel.
On the hill slope Marler saw their shadowy forms leave the vessel, counted, knew they were all ashore. He heard the menacing sound of collision. He had his Armalite rested against his shoulder. As the Holsten began to sink he fired blind – at a point a few feet above where the dying vessel had been moored – fired two shots.
Then he heard a muffled scream. Followed by silence. A moment later he heard in the heavy silence a splash of something hitting water. Then more silence.
37
On the inside of the harbour basin Tweed grabbed hold of Kuhlmann by the arm. He spoke quietly but urgently.
`That was a Stealth ship which sunk Westendorf's motor yacht…'
`Stealth?' the German asked, mystified.
`Listen to me, Otto! Like the Stealth bombers the Americans built. You've heard of them? Good. There are ships now built of similar materials – invisible to normal radar. Paula saw nothing on the screen just before she ran down into the saloon. Believe me, I know what I'm talking about…'
`You normally do. An invisible ship?'
`Invisible to all present forms of radar,' Tweed stressed. `Then I'll contact the river police. And the Coastguard. This fog extends to the sea…'
This fog was lifting onshore. Kuhlmann ran up to the entrance to a three-storey hotel as the others followed. An old building of character, it had white plaster walls. As the others followed him, entering a garden past a beech hedge covered with dead leaves, Paula noticed a turret at one corner and the date of its construction on the side wall. 1902.
Marler joined Tweed and Paula, the Armalite concealed inside his hold-all. His trouser legs were sodden with damp. He spoke quickly.
`I hit someone when I fired, heard his body splash into the water
…'
`Tell Kuhlmann quickly…'
Marler ran after the police chief as he mounted a flight of steps to the building. The Strandhotel. There was a brief consultation between the two men and Kuhlmann ran inside the hotel. Marler walked back down the path to join the others as Westendorf arrived.
`Paula is shivering with the cold. Let us go back to my car and wait for Kuhlmann,' the German suggested.
`I'll wait inside my own car, parked not far behind yours,' Marler decided.
He was careful not to report the incident of the man he was sure he had shot. He wasn't sure how much Tweed wanted Westendorf to know.
`That's better,' said Paula, settled in the rear of the limo and taking off her gloves to rub her hands. Already the heaters Westendorf had switched on were filling the interior with welcome warmth. And Westendorf had been tactful, attributing her shudders to the cold: she sensed he realized she was suffering from delayed reaction.
`What about your son, Franz?' Tweed enquired, seated in the front beside their host.
`He is being kept in a Bremen clinic overnight for a medical check-up. He will be back with me in the morning. I talked with him over the phone and he was quite indignant at being kept there while doctors 'messed him about', as he put it. He sounded in very good shape, I'm relieved to say. Now, what happened back there at the harbour?'
Tweed explained quickly about Stealth, about the drama at Lymington when Paula had waited at the marina. He looked over his shoulder.
`All along I have trusted your eyesight. Now we've had further proof how good it is. Had you not acted so swiftly we would all be dead.'
`I did see something coming for the Holsten,' Paula responded. 'I couldn't be a hundred per cent certain at the Lymington marina, but this time I was. And the radar was blank – I glanced at it before I flew down the steps.'
`Andover and Delvaux told me about Stealth ships while I was in Liege,' Westendorf mused. 'I didn't believe them. Now I do. They add a terrifying dimension to the menace which faces Europe and – ultimately – America. We'll never even see the enemy coming. Andover told me a lot when I visited Liege.'
`Which enemy is that?' Tweed asked.
`The People's Republic of China, the citadel of Communism. He foresaw an army of twenty million sweeping across Asia, like the old Mongol hordes, but at much greater speed with modern tanks. He said he had talked with a Russian called Voronov in Hong Kong.'
`Not Viktor Voronov, the administrator of the KGB archives in Brezhnev's time?'
`The same. He was an old man when he sought out Andover to warn him.'
Westendorf stopped speaking. He was staring towards the harbour as though stunned by what had happened. `Warn Andover about what?' Tweed pressed.
`By then Voronov was disillusioned with the whole system. Had been for a long time, apparently, which is why he slipped across the border into China and then Hong Kong. He told Andover the Chinese were in close touch with the old Soviet hardliners – in Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine. As soon as the Chinese hordes arrive they'll install the hardliners as puppet rulers – so they'll just sweep over the old Soviet Union with no opposition and on into Europe. What puzzles me is these weird colonies of executives you mentioned.'
`I quote Andover's historical research from memory – 'Ogdai Khan swept his hosts across Asia to Russia in 1235… Poland was ravaged, and a mixed army of Poles and Germans was annihilated at the battle of Liegnitz in Lower Silesia in 1241… the Mongols embarked upon the enterprise with full knowledge of the situation of Hungary and the condition of Poland – they had taken care to inform themselves by a well-organized system of spies.'' Tweed paused. 'I draw your attention to the last few words. History is repeating itself.'
`You mean-' Westendorf began.
`That these so-called executives in Britain, Belgium, Germany – and soon to arrive, I suspect, in force in Denmark – are spies trained in the East, probably in China. They may well be the advance guard, the elite who will control more to come – across the Oder-Neisse frontier with other refugees.'
`You sound convinced,' Westendorf commented. `Well, that's the way I'd organize it…'
He stopped speaking as Kuhlmann appeared, tapped on the window, and gestured for Tweed to join him. Outside the limo Tweed followed the police chief, who paused near to Marler's car.
`I have alerted everyone. Reinforcements of police will arrive shortly to search the shore. Ah, I think they are arriving already.'
Patrol cars were appearing as dim shapes, parking along the Strandweg. Uniformed men jumped out, went across a stretch of grass to the edge of the Elbe. Others ran back out of sight parallel to the river.
`Radio in patrol cars can speed things up,' Kuhlmann commented.
`Searching the shore for what?' Tweed asked.
`The body of the man Marler shot – and heard hit the water. The tide is beginning to recede. With a lot of luck the body may be washed up on one of the little sandy beaches further down the river. A long shot but-'
Kuhlmann broke off as a uniformed man ran back towards him. He stopped, panting for breath.
`Chief Inspector, we have discovered the corpse of a man lying on a beach…'
`To Berliner Tor!'
Kuhlmann gave the order to the police driver who had taken over the wheel of Marler's Mercedes 600. It was night. They had left Blankenese, had escorted Westendorf, driving his limo, to Schloss Tannenberg. A plain-clothes
