by Stan Mason
‘Good, lad!’ he called out as I left his office. ‘I’m glad I thought of using it as a story! You know, sometimes I get these brilliant ideas! You’re lucky to have an editor of my calibre. Someone who can lead this newspaper successfully!’
The situation was too pathetic to contemplate. I had offered him the idea as a joke. Now he claimed it to have been his own. It wasn’t worth arguing the point with him, to reduce myself down to his level. What did it matter whose idea it was anyway? When I arrived back at my apartment, I stared at the damage woefully. This sort of thing didn’t happen to journalists in the ordinary line of duty, yet the apartment had been smashed up twice within a very short time. I lay back on the damaged settee and rested my head on the arm. The nightmare was over at last! Kirk and the Glazers would have been arrested by now... if they hadn’t escaped... and the house near Epping Forest closed completely. There would be no more combat sessions or classes in economics, international law, or government. At the same time, there would be no more Israeli agents like Carrie, no more Nazi hunters like Berg, no Nazi torch-bearers resembling Miss Grayson, no saviours such as Gates, and no dangerous outside elements in the form of Igor Strogoff. The assignment had ended!
I poured myself a drink and dwelt on the assignment in slow motion. It was different reviewing it in retrospect... reflecting the incidents in comfort without feeling the pain. After a while, the tiredness drifted from my body and I decided to visit one of my favourite haunts for a late lunch. As soon as I closed the front door, I sensed that something was wrong but I couldn’t fathom the danger. Someone from another world was trying to force me to recognise a premonition but I was too ignorant to make the connection. About two hundred metres from the apartment, I turned to discover the Nazi youth I had angered at Hayle’s party. He was dressed in ordinary clothes this time and he moved in for the kill with an ugly-looking knife in his right hand. I had no idea whether he knew of the action being taken against his colleagues by the government of Europe, but I became swiftly aware he was determined to take vengeance on me for the way I had treated him. I turned and parried the initial thrust, pushing him lightly into a set of railings. He rallied and came at me again like a bull in the ring against a matador. I adopted a martial arts pose by habit and used his weight to help me, sending him to the pavement some distance behind me. He grasped the dagger more tightly and hurled himself at me in blind desperation. I managed to send the knife spinning from his hand, and we fell to the ground together grappling fiercely. The public watched without interference as we rolled forwards and backwards across the pavement, trying to batter each other senseless. Eventually, we broke free and stood like two animals ready to lock horns. He glanced towards the middle of the road where the knife lay glistening in the sunlight. I followed his gaze, estimating we were both about the same distance away from the weapon. My brain told me I couldn’t afford to let him reach it first. Obviously, he read my thoughts for we dashed at tremendous speed into the road, both aiming to get there first. I recalled vaguely hearing the sound of a car horn and some kind of commotion and, suddenly, everything went black.
It was some time later when I recovered my senses to find myself in a ward at the local hospital. My leg was covered in plaster which was supported by a wire from aloft, while Barnaby sat in a wheelchair beside the bed. He was playing patience with a pack of cards.
‘Welcome back to the land of the living, Jimmy, boy!’ he greeted with a smile on his face.
I tried to shift my position but it caused indescribable pain. ‘What happened?’ I asked, trying to focus my mind on the fight with the Nazi youth.
‘It would seem you were fighting someone in the street and the two of you ran into the road for a knife that was there. He was hit directly by a car coming your way and killed outright. You were struck by a glancing blow by a vehicle going the other way. Lucky you didn’t get to the knife first!’
I shrugged sadly at my predicament, although relieved at having escaped the wrath of the young Nazi. Barnaby pressed me to tell him what happened and I related the story of the assignment to him. Sometimes he interrupted with short spurts of laughter. At other times, he came in with hoots of derision as though I was unfolding a modern tale of the Arabian nights. I was hardly surprised by his reaction, for he was probably jealous so many interesting incidents had taken place. After all, if he hadn’t broken his leg he would have been handling the assignment. When I finished, he became sombre and silent, thinking about the dangers I had faced. Most likely he was thinking to himself: “There, but for the grace of God, go I!” In my opinion, if he had been fit enough to carry out the assignment, he wouldn’t have survived.
We developed a new conversation in due course, complaining to each other about the fate of innocent trouble-shooting reporters whose efforts often demanded actions and decisions above and beyond the call of duty, and the faults of newspaper management to recognise the value of front-line reporters. Then the door opened and Ted Flanders entered with a smile on his face, as though he had just accepted the divine appointment to be our Fairy Godfather. However, the image was ruined by the fact that he wore a faded creased blue raincoat and chewed on the butt of an old cigar which fitted incongruously between his yellow teeth.
‘How are my boys today?’ he called to us cheerfully, stopping to light the cigar without showing any interest in our responses.
Barnaby and I glanced at each other coldly, neither of us willing to offer any comment. We both knew that if the editor was in such a good-natured mood it meant he wanted something to be done urgently.
‘We’re running a story on Igor Strogoff that looks great!’ he went on enthusiastically, turning towards me. ‘You sly old devil! You did write up those notes on him! We found them in your desk drawer!’ He brought his hand down on the bed playfully which caused me to wince. I wasn’t sure whether he did it deliberately as a token of revenge because I had lied to him. But then it could have been accidental for the man had no empathy at all for other people. ‘I’ve got another assignment for one of you. How about it, Barnaby? You’ve been in here for a week. You’re the one nearest to recovery. The newspaper doesn’t care too much for malingerers, you know!’
Barnaby stared at him icily and then pointed to the door. ‘Out!’ he shouted angrily. ‘Out! Out!’ I began to join him, repeating the same word in a chant, until a staff nurse weighing nearly two hundred pounds stormed through the doorway to investigate the disturbance.
‘What on earth is going on here?’ she demanded, sizing up the situation quickly, staring hard at the editor before attacking him vehemently. ‘Take that filthy cigar out of your mouth! This is a clinical hospital ward! Put it out this instant! And then get out! You’re upsetting my patients!’
Ted searched for an ash-tray to stub out the cigar, under the harsh gaze of the fearless nurse, before deciding to cut his losses and run. ‘Out!’ she repeated as he headed for the door. ‘Out!’
He turned as if to reason with her but, as he looked into her eyes, she took a step forward menacingly and he retreated swiftly, running out of the door as fast as his legs would carry him. He had met his match! It was such a funny sight that Barnaby and I were unable to stop laughing. The gales of mirth caused me to suffer extreme pain but I never regretted a moment of it. The vision of the editor being thrown out of the hospital by a belligerent staff nurse, trying to hide the butt of a burning cigar in his hand, was an unforgettable incident I would cherish until my dying day.
When Barnaby had gone back to his own room, I was given a sleeping-tablet and the lights were turned off for the night. I couldn’t sleep and lay in bed as my body throbbed with every beat of my heart. I kept thinking the forces of evil were at play at that very moment, embarking ceaselessly on a silent march. My mind, in torment, visualised row upon row of white crosses set out neatly in cemeteries designated for war graves. Although I had never visited any of them, it seemed to me I spent the ho
urs of the night counting the cost of human lives. I was naive enough to be disappointed that pernicious subversive elements existed in modern civilisation. Why was it necessary for the people of one particular nations, like the Nazis, to create their own Aryan race... a Master race... and view themselves a cut above everyone else? Why did they need to aim for the control of Europe, and then the rest of the world? Was it the desire for power, rank, possession, or simply to attain over-riding authority over every other human-being? It was something I would never truly understand and I doubted whether I was alone in that consideration. The only way I could reason with it was by analysing the existing facts. The world was filled with pockets of Nazis, their children and grandchildren and their followers, years after they had been crushed in a merciless war. The funds derived from the plunder and looting of gold vaults, art galleries and museums in Europe was increasing each year by means of investments in international markets. How many Nazis, their descendants and followers existed worldwide? The Prime Minister was perfectly correct when he suggested the public would become paranoid if they discovered the truth. I felt the same way by simply thinking about the danger to mankind from such evil predators... a section of society which murdered millions of others and brought the world to its knees because of its greed for power and domination. Berg, The Rooter, was quite right. We must remember never to forget! I looked across the room, out of the window, into the clear starlit night. The enemy was at large. They had the national spirit which burned fiercely within them. They had their followers who sought change. They had the funds by which to undertake a war during a time of peace. As for myself, despite the dangers, I had emerged unscathed. As Berg once told me: “One of the rules of the game is that you never do anything unless you’re absolutely positive you’re not going to get caught.” In my case, it proved to be more by luck than judgement. But there was another thing Berg had said which I considered far more important. “We must remember never to forget.” It was clear to me now that if we failed to do so, they would come at us again and again until we were conquered... and then the freedom we know and enjoy will exist no more!
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