They wouldn't say anything.
"By and by," I went on, "you'd probably have manufactured some excuse for towing this vessel down to Perleporten so as to make the transshipment of the gold all that easier. And then heigh-ho for Merry England and the just enjoyment of the fruits of your labours. Could I he wrong?"
"No." Otto was very calm. "You're right. But I think you'd find it very hard to make a criminal case out of this. What could we possibly be charged with? Theft? Ridiculous. Finders, keepers."
"Finders, keepers? A few miserable tons of gold? Your ambitions are only paltry, you're only swimming the surface of the available loot. Isn't that so, Heissman?"
They all looked at Heissman. Heissman, in turn, didn't appear particularly anxious to look at anyone.
"Why do you silly people think I'm here?" I said. "Why do you think that, in spite of the elaborate smoke screen you set up, that the British Government not only knew that you were going to Bear Island but also knew that your purpose in going there was not as advertised? Don't you know that, in certain matters, European governments co-operate very closely? Don't you know that most of them share a keen interest in the activities of Johann Heissman? For what you don't know is that most of them know a great deal more about Johann Heissman than you do. Perhaps, Heissman, you'd like to tell them yourself-starting, shall we say, with the thirty-odd years you've been working for the Soviet Government?"
Otto stared at Heissman, his huge jowls seeming to fall apart. Goin's facial muscles tightened until the habitual smooth blandness had vanished from his face. The Count's expression didn't change, he just nodded slowly as if understanding at last the solution of a long-standing problem. Heissman looked acutely unhappy.
"Well, ", I said, "as Heissman doesn't appear to have any intention of telling anyone anything, I suppose that leaves it up to me. Heissman, here, is a remarkably gifted specialist in an extremely specialised field. He is, purely and simply, a treasure-hunter and there's no one in the business who can hold a candle to him. But he doesn't just hunt for the type of treasure that you people think he does: I fear he may have been deceiving you on this point, as, indeed, he has been deceiving you on another. I refer to the fact that a precondition of his cutting you into a share of the loot was that his niece, Mary Stuart, be employed by Olympus Productions. Having the nasty and suspicious minds that you do, you probably and rapidly arrived at the conclusion that she wasn't his niece at all-which she isn't-and was along for some other purposes, which she is. But not for the purposes which your nasty and suspicious minds attributed to her. For Heissman, Miss Stuart was essential for the achievement of an entirely different purpose which he kind of forgot to tell you about.
"Miss Stuart's father, you have to understand, was just as unscrupulous and unprincipled a rogue as any of you. He held very senior positions in both the German Navy and the Nazi Party and, like others similarly placed, used his power to feather his own nest-just as Hermann Goering did-when the war was seen to be lost, although he was smarter than Goering and managed to get out from under before the war criminal roundup. The gold, although this will probably never be proved, almost certainly came from the vaults of Norwegian banks and a man with all the resources of the German Navy behind him would have had no trouble in choosing such a splendidly isolated spot as Perleporten in Bear Island and having the stuff transferred there. Probably by submarine. Not that it matters. "But it wasn't just the gold that was transported to Perleporten, which is why Mary Stuart is here. Feathers weren't enough for Dad's nest, nothing less than swansdown would do. The swansdown almost certainly took the form of either bank bonds or securities, probably obtained-I wouldn't say purchased-in the late "30s- Such securities are perfectly redeemable even today. An attempt was recently made to sell 30,000,000 worth of such securities through foreign exchanges but the West German Federal Bank wouldn't play ball because proper owner identification was lacking. But there wouldn't be any problem about owner identification this time, would there, Heissman?"
Heissman didn't say whether there would or there wouldn't. "And where are they?" I said. "Nicely welded up on a dummy steel in got." As he still wasn't being very forthcoming I went on: "No matter, we'll have them. And then you're never going to have the pleasure of seeing Mary Stuart's father put his signature and fingerprints on those documents and of checking that they match up. You're sure of that?" Heissman said. He bad recovered his normal degree of composure which meant that he was very composed indeed. "In a changing world like ours who can be sure of anything. But with that proviso, yes. I think you've overlooked something."
"I have?"
"Yes. We have Admiral Hanneman."
"That's Miss Stuart's father's true name?"
"You didn't even know that?"
"No. It's of no relevance. And no, I haven't overlooked that fact. I shall attend to that matter shortly. After I have attended to your friends. Maybe that's the wrong word, maybe they're not your friends any more. I mean, they don't look particularly friendly, do they?"
"Monstrous!" Otto shouted. "Absolutely monstrous. Unforgivable! Diabolical! Our own partner!"
He spluttered into an outraged silence. "Despicable," Goin said coldly. "Absolutely contemptible."
"Isn't it?" I said. "Tell me, does this moral indignation stem from this revelation of the depths of Heissman's perfidy or merely because he omitted to cut you in on the proceeds of the cashing of the securities?
Don't bother answering that question, it's purely rhetorical, as villains you're dyed in the same inky black as Heissman. What I mean is, most of you spend a great deal of time and careful thought in concealing from the other members of the board of Olympus Productions just what the true natures of your activities are. Heissman is hardly alone in this respect. "Take the Count here. Compared to the rest of you he was a vestal angel but even he dabbled in some murky waters. For over thirty years now he's been a member of the board and has had a free meal ticket for life because he happened to be in Vienna when the Anschluss came, when Otto headed for the States and Heissman was spirited away. Heissman was spirited away because Otto bad arranged for him to be so that he could take all the film company's capital out of the country: Otto was never a man to hesitate when it came to selling a friend down the river. "What Otto didn't know but what the Count did but carefully refrained from telling him was that Heissman's disappearance had been entirely voluntary. Heissman had been a German secret agent for some time and his adopted country needed him. What his adopted country didn't know was that Russia had adopted him even before they had but this isn't germane to the main point that Otto believed he had betrayed a friend for gold and that the Count knew it. Unfortunately, it's going to be very hard to prove anything against the Count and not being a grasping man by nature never asked for anything more than his salary there's nothing to demonstrate blackmail which is why I've chosen him-and he's accepted as the person to turn Queen's Evidence against his fellow directors on the board."
Heissman now joined Otto and Goin in giving the Count the kind of look they had so lately given him. "Or take Otto," I went on. "For years he'd been embezzling very large sums of money from the company, virtually bleeding it white." It was now the turn of Heissman and the Count to stare at Otto. "Or take Goin. He discovered about the embezzling and for two or three years he's been blackmailing Otto and bleeding him white. In sum, you constitute the most unpleasant, unprincipled and depraved bunch it's ever been my misfortune to encounter. But I haven't even scratched the surface of your infamy, have I? Or the infamy of one of you. We haven't even discussed the person responsible for the violent deaths that have taken place. He is, of course, one of you. He is, of course, quite mad and will end his days in Broadmoor: although I have to admit that there's been a certain far from crazy logic in his thinking and actions. But a prison for the insane-one regrets the abolition of the death penalty-is a certainty: it may well be, Otto, as well as being the best you can hope for, that you won't live long after you get there." Otto said nothing, the expression on his face remained unchanged. I went on: "For your hired killers, of course, Jungbeck and Heyter, there will be life sentences in maximum security goals."