Dennis Wheatley - The Satanist

'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 passed 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 recognized 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 shrewd 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 war-head 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 CO., 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 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.'