Alex Swan 02 Countdown to Terror by David Holman

Author:David Holman [Holman, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: 2_read, Thriller_VariousAuthors, -new
ISBN: 9781520671659
Google: F744nQAACAAJ
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: 2017-02-20T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 29

After a short trip through traffic from St Pancras and along Marylebone Road, the ambulance arrived at St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington. The crew carried Higgins on the stretcher bed, and assisted by medical staff, he was wheeled inside. ‘Abdominal gunshot wound,’ said the medic to the staff as they walked alongside the trolley bed.

Higgins was rushed into the casualty room and placed in a cubicle. The curtains around the bay were drawn and the staff went to work in accessing the wound.

Swan and Gable had seen Howard and Heidi Barnett back to their hotel, promising to meet up later in the evening for dinner. The two SID men had then raced back to Wellesley Mews and in minutes, Swan was on the telephone to John Stratton explaining the incident at St Pancras.

In his office at Leconfield House, an awestruck Stratton listened as Swan gave his account. Then, after enquiring about the current situation with Higgins, and relieved to hear that he would be okay, informed Swan of progress he had made with Gunther Fleischer.

‘By the way Alex, I have spoken with Bruno Weiz, my opposite in the BND. Seems that our man Fleischer is quite a big cheese in the circles of West German industry. He’s highly respected by the Bundestag. Are you sure that he could be behind this Onyx Cross outfit?’

Swan confirmed. ‘Oh yes, John I’m sure. I had a source name him before they jumped to their death off a rocket gantry.’

Stratton shrugged. ‘Yes of course. Well, in that case you better listen carefully to this. Bruno has dictated some extracts from his file to me which I had transcribed. You see, Bruno likes to have a finger on the pulse of powerful West German figures, and it so happens that Fleischer is on his list. So here goes…,’

Stratton cleared his throat then began. ‘Gunther Fleischer was born in Bavaria in 1924. His father Otto Fleischer was the proprietor of Fleischer & Koch, and also a member of the civilian version of the Waffen SS. He owned a firm for manufacturing construction vehicles and on his death, his son became the director. At the age of twenty three, Gunther Fleischer joined the Nazi Party and after graduating with an engineering degree at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, was recruited for the Reichstechnischeburo, Hitler’s technology think tank. At the end of the war, he managed to escape to Sweden as his mother, who was native Swedish, had been living there since the invasion of Poland in 1939. The family business obviously played a major part in the war, but because of its potential in the building of the new West Germany, seemed to have been exempt from the Potsdam Agreement conceived by the Allies to reduce German industry and manufacture. Fleischer has never married, however, he does have a long term lady friend, a Fraulein Katrina Holz, who is twelve years younger than him. They have been together since his return from Sweden in 1958, when he took over the family firm.

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