Back Up

by Paul Colize

  His last words.

  That afternoon, Andy and I took the train. By evening, we were in Vienna, settling into a charming apartment in Prater. I could see the big wheel from the window.

  Next day, he took me to visit the Vienna museums. Andy went from picture to picture, dancing with delight, kneeling before them, jumping up to peer closely at each canvas, telling me anecdotes about the artists’ lives, or commenting on the techniques they had used.

  At the Belvedere, his excitement reached fever pitch. The museum’s centrepiece was Gustav Klimt’s Kiss. The canvas was displayed in a glass case, and lit to accentuate the vivid colours and gold leaf. Andy said that Klimt had produced a much bolder version of the picture a few years beforehand, which had mysteriously disappeared.

  I made a show of listening, but all I could think about was the meeting arranged for March the eighteenth. My mind was made up. Once I had unburdened myself of the secret, I would go home, and turn myself in.

  I was convinced the outcry surrounding my revelations would act in my favour and encourage clemency.

  When I had paid my debt, I could lead a normal life.

  83: UNUSUAL FOR HIM

  First thing on the morning of Thursday, March the fourteenth, 1968, a year to the day after the events in Berlin, Michael Stern marched into his chief’s office.

  He confessed straightaway to going against orders, and said he had continued with the enquiry he had begun six months earlier, into the deaths of the four members of the band known as Pearl Harbor. He outlined the different stages of the investigation, and provided conclusive proof that the deaths in March 1967 were linked to, indeed part of, a CIA plot designed to programme human beings for military purposes.

  Finally, he told his chief about his recent contact with the back-up drummer who had been present at the recording. And he concluded by announcing that this key witness would be coming to London the following Monday. The man had compiled a document recounting the facts and explaining the techniques used by the US agency to manipulate behaviour en masse.

  The editor-in-chief waited for him to finish. He got to his feet and picked up two recent copies of the Belfast Telegraph.

  He began reading the article Stern had written about the Ilyushin air crash in Aswan. Stern had concluded his dispatch by suggesting that in light of the Cold War between the United States and Russia, the accident was very likely no accident at all.

  The second article, also by Stern, had been published two days earlier. Stern had been sent to report on the disappearance of a Soviet K 129 submarine. The vessel had been carrying three nuclear ballistic missiles. It had left its base in Ribachyi on the Kamchatka peninsula towards the end of February, and had disappeared without trace on the eighth of March, off the coast of Hawaii.

  Stern had propounded the theory – contested in some sections of the media, supported in others – that the sub had been torpedoed by the US navy.

  When he finished reading, the editor-in-chief was loud in his exasperation.

  A journalist reported facts, nothing but the facts, without exaggeration or understatement, without distortion or extrapolation in support of some lunatic conspiracy theory. He insisted that the Belfast Telegraph was a proud, independent paper, not an organ of the Communist party.

  And hard on the heels of these two infringements of the basic laws of journalism, here was Stern again, digging up an old, highly dubious story in an effort to reveal yet another CIA plot.

  Stern began to object, but his chief cut him short and warned that no way would his paper make a fool of itself by publishing a ‘scoop’ that was both hypothetical and obviously partisan.

  He ordered Stern to take a few days off and think about his future career. Because the Belfast Telegraph wouldn’t compromise its reputation any further by publishing his paranoid fantasies.

  And with that, he called the interview to a close. Stern left the room, slamming the door behind him.

  Early that evening, Stern’s wife called the newspaper office.

  She was worried. Stern wasn’t home yet. They had guests, and he had promised he’d be home early. He hadn’t called to say he’d be late, which was unusual for him.

  84: I LOST CONSCIOUSNESS

  The day before my departure for London was a very special day in my life. But I would only know that the day after.

  Andy had started work at his hotel. I got up late and wandered aimlessly through the streets, deep in thought about what lay ahead.

  It was a Sunday. In the centre of Vienna, the majestic façades were resplendent in bright sunshine that would have warmed the people out walking, were it not for an icy wind.

  The city basked in its old-world glory. Trams made their way along the broad avenues, the first of the day’s tourists were taking their horse-drawn carriage rides, and coachmen strutted in their top hats and riding coats.

  In front of the opera house, smartly-dressed couples waited in line, carrying folding chairs, in hopes of cheap, standing-room tickets.

  I walked along the Graben, allowing myself to be picked out by street conjurors and acrobats. I stopped to eat a sausage and drink a beer at one of the kiosks.

  I felt free, I could breathe. Everything seemed so simple. I was very far from imagining what had occurred some nine thousand kilometres away.

  With a hundred of his men, Lieutenant William Calley, commander of Charlie company, had surrounded the small village of My Lai, in Vietnam. Calley had rounded up the population, set the village alight and ordered everyone killed. Almost five hundred civilians were slaughtered in cold blood. Wounded children were murdered trying to escape. Thirty women who emerged from one shelter with their hands in the air were killed, with their babies. Even the dogs and cats were killed.

  Calley’s men seemed to be in a kind of trance. It was said the carnage had been carried out to the strains of hard rock music, played through loudspeakers mounted on helicopters.

  I hadn’t slept all night. As if the news had somehow been imprinted on my subconscious. Next day, I took a taxi to the airport. Mv plane left around noon and landed in London one and a half hours later.

  Michael Stern would be there to meet me. We had arranged to meet by the Mini Cooper display in the arrivals hall. We would both carry the latest edition of the Belfast Telegraph under one arm. I would find a copy at one of the news stands.

  My stomach clenched tight as I presented my passport on arrival. The officers barely glanced at my papers. I hurried to meet Stern, buying a copy of the Belfast Telegraph on my way.

  I circled the Mini Cooper with the paper under my arm, but there was no sign of Stern. I felt ridiculous, walking round and round the car. I unfolded the newspaper and prepared to wait.

  My heart stopped. I read the banner headline and knew instantly that Stern would not be coming. I had walked into a trap.

  I hurried towards the exit.

  I was a few metres from the glass doors when an electric shock left me rooted to the spot. An iron grip closed around both my arms. One of the men standing either side of me spoke into my ear, in a low voice. I was coming with them, quietly. No fuss.

  We turned around and crossed the hall, back the way I had come. We disappeared down a corridor. They opened a door and pushed me into a windowless office, flooded with bright, violent light and furnished with nothing but a metal table and two chairs.

  Behind one of these stood the man from the recording studio. He looked taller than I remembered. He stared at me just as when we had first met, with complete indifference. He seemed incapable of emotion.

  He stepped forward, positioned himself in front of me and spoke two words. ‘The Book.’

  My mind raced, but I couldn’t find the words, and said nothing.

  The man signalled to his acolytes. One of them tore the ruck sack from my back and tipped its contents onto the floor, sifting them with his foot. The document was not there. They ordered me to undress.

  I did as they asked, and stood naked in front of t
he three men. They made a meticulous search of my possessions, but found nothing. One by one, they took each item from out of my bag and examined it. Then they tore the lining, shredded my clothes and took everything in my toilet bag to pieces.

  They were empty-handed. The giant planted himself in front of me once more and stared me in the eye. He seemed neither furious nor exasperated. He heaved a great sigh. If anything, he looked mildly irritated – as if my refusal to cooperate would make him late for his next meeting.

  The man standing behind me hollered straight in my ear.

  ‘The Book!’

  I saw this was my only hope of salvation. So long as they failed to lay hands on my text, there was a chance I would live.

  I said I had no idea what they were talking about.

  I felt a slight movement. A shock. Something broke inside me, and I lost consciousness.

  85: THE MYSTERY WAS DARKER STILL

  Dominique supposed that Michael Stern – the name Jacques Bernier had spelled out – had been a close friend or associate.

  Perhaps Bernier had been a journalist himself, and the man was a colleague. But he might equally be a friend, or merely an acquaintance. Unless Stern had once written an article concerning him, directly or indirectly.

  Whatever the reason, Bernier had given Stern’s name because this person could help him, and perhaps explain what had happened before his accident.

  He began with an Internet search. If Michael Stern had ever written an article or a column of interest, there would be references to it on the Web.

  He typed the journalist’s name into the Google search window and pressed ‘Enter’.

  The results astounded him.

  Michael Stern was far from unknown. If this was indeed the man Jacques Bernier was talking about, then the mystery surrounding his past life had just thickened even further.

  Michael S. Stern was born to a working-class family in Derry on October the twenty-fifth, 1938. He studied journalism at Queen’s University Belfast, and joined the Belfast Telegraph in September 1963. The Telegraph was Northern Ireland’s biggest paper at the time, with a circulation of over one hundred thousand copies.

  Early on the morning of Monday, March the eighteenth, 1968, he had walked into the office of his editor-in-chief, Roger McGuinness, and killed him with three shots to the head. Next, he had killed Greg Ryan, a colleague who tried to tackle him, and seriously wounded Stephen Jones, a radio announcer who was present at the time. Security had intervened and managed to disarm him.

  A few days before, Stern had a serious row with Roger McGuinness, who had accused him of political bias in a number of articles, and delivered a strong warning. Several witnesses had seen Stern leave the premises in a very bad temper.

  His wife reported that he had not come home that night, and hadn’t contacted her.

  Questioned a few hours after his arrest, Stern declared he had acted under duress. He said he had been abducted by a group of men, and kept in isolation for several days. He claimed to have been brainwashed and programmed to commit the murders. He cited an extensive plot, organised by a foreign governmental agency, aimed at controlling human consciousness and using mass manipulation to further their imperialist ends.

  The experts dismissed his far-fetched claims. There was no plea of diminished responsibility.

  He was tried, found guilty of murder with malice aforethought, and sentenced to life imprisonment.

  Stern was held at Belfast’s Crumlin Road Gaol until 1976, when he was transferred to the so-called H-Blocks at the Maze prison. There, he took part in the hunger strikes of 1981.

  He engaged in a number of other actions designed to draw public attention to the miscarriage of justice he claimed he had suffered.

  Throughout his detention, he persistently claimed his innocence, and stuck to his version of the facts.

  He was found dead in his cell on the fourth of March, 1987. The autopsy concluded he had suffered a heart attack.

  Dominique consulted several sites giving details of all this. They all gave the same account of the facts. There was no mention of Jacques Bernier.

  Stern had killed his editor-in-chief over forty years ago. Jacques Bernier had been twenty-three years old.

  Why had he brought up this man’s name? Had he known him in prison? Had they shared a cell?

  Dominique thought he had found a possible meaning behind Bernier’s message. But now, the mystery was darker still.

  86: MY HANDS BEGAN TO SHAKE

  The day before my arrest was my last day of freedom. My last hours as a human being.

  The fog came down, and took possession of my soul.

  My consciousness altered, slowly. My brain was blurred, I never felt fully awake. A kind of nagging, drugged sensation destroyed my faculties and neutralised my will. I was living in a parallel world. My hands were no longer my own. I would look at them, and try to recognise them. They had become strangers to me.

  I felt my face for signs of the physical blows I was sure I had suffered, but could find nothing. They persecuted me, but the treatments inflicted upon me left no trace.

  I saw the things around me. I recognised them, but I could no longer name them, nor recognise what they were for.

  They shut me in a kind of sparsely-furnished bedroom. They would come in at regular intervals, in pairs. They were faceless. They would grab me by the arms and take me to an interview room, different each time.

  They would make me sit. Men would examine me, and ask me questions.

  The book.

  They spoke politely, with deference, as if anxious to be seen to be sticking to the rules.

  The book.

  The book.

  They invented scenarios. I had given it to someone on the plane. I had posted it to an address in London before leaving Vienna. I had deposited it in a bank vault. I had hidden it at the airport.

  I programmed my responses. I clung to my last hope, silence. I had no idea what they were talking about. I knew nothing about the book. Gradually, I forgot what I had written.

  Other questions came. Who had I spoken to? Who had I spouted my nonsense to?

  I thought of Mary, and Gunther. If Stern had spoken to them, they would know. I had to protect Mary. I prayed they hadn’t heard any mention of her name. As long as they remained in the dark about the whereabouts of the book, there was a chance I would live.

  Silence.

  Oblivion.

  I thought of nothing else.

  Keeping quiet and forgetting.

  They would come to fetch me, and ask the same questions each time.

  Where?

  Who?

  When they brought me back to my room, I would check my hands, feel my face.

  I became impotent. I was incapable of situating myself in time. There was no clock, no mirror, no window. Men in white coats would come into my room. They forced me to swallow pills. I underwent examinations. When they left, I would sleep. Each day, the fog thickened.

  I don’t know how many days, or weeks, or months it lasted.

  They came for me without warning. They took me to a large hall where fifteen or so people were waiting.

  Everyone spoke loudly and emphatically.

  They described who I was. They told me I was a deserter, a drug trafficker, that I had been involved in the death of a young girl in Paris, that I had killed a rival in London, that I had attacked and robbed a British citizen. They spoke words I didn’t understand.

  I hadn’t known for sure if Gab was dead. I didn’t want to believe it even though I knew I had gone too far. I felt bitter regret.

  I wanted news of Mary, but couldn’t allow myself to speak. My hands grew bony, my head spun.

  They declared that I was suffering from diminished responsibility, and sent me to Dartford. The fog became impenetrable. My hands began to shake.

  87: THE PERPETRATORS WERE NEVER QUESTIONED

  On Sunday the seventeenth of March, 1968, shortly before speaking to students at
the University of Kansas, Senator Robert Kennedy announced his candidacy for the White House.

  The news was greeted with enthusiasm in Berlin, where his brother, JFK, had been welcomed in June 1963, and famously declared ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’.

  That evening, the Graffiti had enjoyed one of its best and most profitable nights of the year. Despite a renewed onslaught of winter weather, Berliners were out partying in force. The club’s new resident rock group, a bunch of energetic English guys, had taken the atmosphere to fever pitch, and the punters had partied into the small hours.

  The last diehards had left at 6:00a.m. – when the sun was already up.

  As he did every Sunday, Gunther Krombach had set about closing the bar. He emptied the cash register, slipped the bank notes into a stiff cardboard envelope, poured the coins into a metal box and headed downstairs to stash everything in the restaurant safe.

  There he found Pablo Fermi, the manager, closing the restaurant.

  Once the money was safely stowed, the two made themselves a dish of pasta. They often spent an hour philosophising and talking politics before heading home.

  Shortly before 7:00a.m., while Gunther Krombach was fetching his jacket, three men in cagoules burst into the restaurant. They wore long, black coats and military boots, and they were armed with pump-action shotguns.

  They held up Pablo Fermi and insisted he hand over the takings. While the manager carried out their orders, in fear of his life, one of the men left the group and headed upstairs.

  A few moments later, Fermi heard two loud shots. The man reappeared. He nodded to his colleagues, and the three dashed outside. Paolo Fermi heard the rumble of a powerful engine and the screech of tyres.

  Paralysed with fear, he waited a few seconds before racing to the stairs leading to the night club.

  He found Gunther Krombach’s lifeless body spread-eagled behind the bar, with two bullets to the head, shot at point blank range.