EQMM, June 2010
Page 19
While Ganelon watched Haverstick's mind race to find something else to sweeten the pot, more travelers entered the café and took tables closer to them.
After a moment, with forced casualness, the Englishman asked, “Did I ever tell you about my grandfather Haverstick? Back before the Great War, his eye on the diplomatic corps, he went to Hanover to learn German, believing, as many then did, that Hanoverian German would serve him best, since the House of Hanover ruled England. He meant to give it a year but hadn't counted on German irregular verbs. He ended up marrying a Hanover girl and brought her back to England. Anyway, both families remained close. Two years ago I visited the German side, doing a lot of exploring the countryside by car. I'm afraid I can't tell you what MI5 had me looking for."
"Perhaps the disappearance of two German engineering regiments in the area?” suggested Ganelon as the waiter returned with his cold tea in a whisky glass.
Haverstick admitted, “Yes, it was. But there's more.” Then he told how one afternoon after a tour of some beer gardens in the countryside, keeping his ears open for talk about the vanished regiments, Haverstick was returning to Hanover through the Koppelberg mountains when he passed a single file of six young men hiking beside the road. Their leader, a blond with a decided limp, carried an iron walking stick. The two men behind him wore black glasses, one walking with a hand on the shoulder of the man with the walking stick, the other with a hand on the second man's shoulder. Next came two men with ear trumpets hung around their necks and heavy knapsacks on their backs. The last man in line had a withered arm and carried a pole with a triangular flag with a swastika on it.
A bit farther down the road Haverstick passed a trail up into the mountains. Feeling a call of nature after all the beer, he stopped just around the bend and walked back to the trail to find a quiet spot out of sight. As he stood there off the trail along came the column of hikers he'd passed on the road singing a song, something about being happy handicapped wanderers for Hitler.
Curious, Haverstick followed to see what they were up to. The path entered a steep ravine sloping upwards toward the mountain. At last the hikers came to a dead end at the sheer stone face of the mountain. The two blind men began running their fingers across the rock as high as they could reach and down again as though feeling for a crack in the surface. Clearly this was not the first time they'd been there. Then one of them pointed to a place on the rock and their leader stepped up and inserted his iron walking stick, which had a pry-bar shape on the bottom, into the rock. Then he and the two knapsack carriers threw all their weight against it. On their third try, Haverstick heard a click and a door swung open in the mountain face.
Lighting lanterns, the whole party entered into the mountain. The man with the withered arm came last, walking backwards to make sure they weren't being followed. Then the door swung shut.
As he told his story Haverstick was pleased to see Ganelon's face light up with interest. “When I told my superiors at MI5 they thought I was crazy. Until a month ago, that is."
"When two mountaineering regiments in the Hanover area vanished into nowhere?” asked Ganelon.
"And when two panzer divisions were moved there,” said Haverstick. He paused. “Well, what do you think?"
Ganelon looked away and recited, “ ‘Hamelin town's in Brunswick, / By famous Hanover city; / The river Weser, deep and wide, / Washes its wall on the southern side; / A pleasanter spot you never spied.’ “ Here Ganelon held the palm of a hand over his eyes and looked left and right.
Haverstick brightened. “ ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin,’ “ he said. “Good old Bobby Burns."
When the detective shook his head, Haverstick insisted, “I think I'm right, old man. I've this little memory trick for names. In this case I imagined a police constable on fire. Bobby Burns. Get it?"
"Your memory trick played a trick on you,” said Ganelon. “Your constable on fire is Bobby Browning."
Haverstick cocked his head and gave a defeated smile. “I always thought you were . . . “ He made fists and shadow-boxed. “Not . . . “ He shaded his eyes and looked left and right . . . “interested in poetry."
"Before he went to England for King George V's coronation my father had me hold the book while he recited ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’ from memory with hand gestures. That was how English hosts and guests entertained each other back then, with recitations and singing around the piano. Anyway, you know the story. This piper hires himself out to free Hamelin from a plague of rats."
"But the city fathers renege on his reward,” said Haverstick. “So the piper plays another tune."
"One about a land where ‘the sparrows were brighter than peacocks here,’ “ quoted Ganelon.
Haverstick nodded. “And all Hamelin's children followed him, dancing and singing out of the city, and vanished forever through a secret doorway in a nearby mountain. Didn't they end up in Transylvania?"
"According to Browning,” said Ganelon. “Others said other places. Russia lured many German farm people with promises of free land. Many who came kept their languages and customs. They say foreign travelers, stumbling upon these people, sometimes thought they'd found the descendants of Hamelin's abducted children."
Ganelon told Haverstick Bibikov's story of the Germans in the snow and the door on the Ukrainian side of the Carpathian Mountains.
"But that explains everything,” said Haverstick, in an excited whisper. “The bloody Boche are planning a surprise attack on the Bolshies from underground!"
A snapping sound made Ganelon turn and look closely at the nearest of the most recent arrivals, a man with a long gray beard, rosy cheeks, and, beneath a fat, celluloid-looking nose, a chewing jaw. But there was no food before him on the table. Apparently Wainwright—Ganelon was sure it was him—was still working on his eavesdropping badge.
The American stood up when he saw Ganelon's look and went to the door just as a man in Imperial Airways uniform entered to announce it was time for boarding. With much scraping of chairs the travelers rose to board the flying boat.
Ganelon walked Haverstick out to the street. The Englishman seemed distracted, as if he was already composing a cable to M15 about the German underground march to send from Alexandria. “Bon voyage,” said Ganelon as his friend disappeared into the seaplane hangar. Then he crossed to the quayside to wait. Seaplane takeoffs were not something to be seen every day.
At last the Short Brothers Empire flying boat emerged from the hangar and taxied across the water to the far end of the harbor. Then it turned and came roaring and shaking back. Now it lifted up and rose in the air and with a wag of its wings, and barely skimming the ramparts of the Chateau Gai at the harbor entrance, it disappeared across the Mediterranean.
Ganelon turned away. And now what? He suspected MI5 would keep mum about Germany's subterranean march into Russia. England needed all the time it could get to put its own defenses in order for the day the Germans turned on them. And now that Wainwright knew both ends of the story would the Americans warn the Russians? He doubted they'd see it as their fight.
And it wasn't San Sebastiano's fight either. For his part, Ganelon owed Von Rummel nothing. As a matter of fact, the man owed him a cigarette lighter. But he was still in Bibikov's debt for the Scampi information. Should he warn him? Or could he settle his debt by giving Bibikov the plan for the Ethiop's Ear plus the modified design for the new French light machine gun, the Rata2E, which he'd won from the Czech spy in a poker game?
What to do? What to do? Ganelon stood there at the quay with the taste of cold tea still in his mouth. He flexed his fingers and made them into fists. Time to visit a low dive or two. A good bar brawl always cleared his head and set his thinking straight.
Copyright © 2010 James Powell
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