Terminus- Unlikely Allies by David Roy

Author:David Roy [Roy, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-11-21T05:00:00+00:00

The first man, ironically, was called Willi Fürst. He was small and muscular, with broad shoulders and a thick neck leading to a compact, symmetrical face. Fürst was neat, unmenacing and gave the impression of being someone who laughed readily. He was not laughing now.

He was accompanied by another German who acted as occasional interpreter.

‘What is your name?’, asked Sean. The interpreter gabbled German and Fürst looked puzzled.

‘Willi Fürst!’, he said laughing. His reply was given its redundant translation. The next sentence was translated too. ‘You sent for Willi Fürst and that is who came!’, he continued.

Sean’s instincts told him that they had the wrong man but he asked a few more questions just to blur the trail a little. After about a minute, a bemused Willi Fürst was released back to his company.

‘No?’, asked Fairfield.

‘No, sir’, said Sean. ‘He was telling the truth – I can just tell.’

Fairfield supposed he could; it was surely part of his job to know truth from lies.

'So, who have we got next?', he asked, referring to his shortened list. 'Daut, Lutzenberger and Hottman.'

Daut appeared in their midst fifteen minutes later. At once, Dale was struck by how unremarkable he was; a man who looked so ordinary that he should have been a spy. But he clearly wasn't a spy. The question was, was he a rocket engineer? Daut was invited to sit and the same questions were asked of him. He surprised those present by responding in English.

'I used to be a sailor', he explained simply. 'I had many British friends on ze ships.' He shrugged and smiled. Without waiting for an invitation, he had put himself in the clear; he was not a rocket engineer. Shortly after his dismissal, Lutzenberger turned up. Lutzenberger was a man-mountain, who, although he was clean shaven, looked in need of a beard. He seemed ill-at-ease and ran his hand over a permanently blue chin as he waited for his interrogators to begin. Before a word had been exchanged, Sean knew he was not the man they were looking for. In his estimation, men like Lutzenberger worked on farms and building sites, they did not sit at a desk inventing things or doing calculations with a slide rule. But the interview was not quite the dead end he assumed it would be.

Through the interpreter, they got their first lead.

'Willanek?', he said. 'I am not Willanek but I know him, the useless bastard. What do you want him for?'

Willanek's invented crimes were explained to him after which, with a disdainful outpouring of vitriol, he added a few 'crimes' of his own.

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