The crash came when they were actually on the outskirts of Hamburg. Night had fallen. The Volkswagen had just passed under the massive iron girders of the Elbe bridge, and the darkly shining surface of the three lane carriageway was glittering with a confusion of reflected lights – an endless succession of glaring headlamps approaching, the flashing scarlet and green and blue neon of factory signs, an infinity of crimson tail-lights, winking amber direction indicators, the sudden red flare of brake lamps, all cast dazzling streamers of color along the wet asphalt.
They came up fast on a knot of slow-moving traffic. Ahead of them a sixty ton articulated truck pulled out suddenly to overtake a long trailer loaded with two bulldozers. Kurt, who was driving in the center lane, flashed his indicators and pulled over to the left to pass the two juggernauts. But just before he drew level a small sports car, its exhaust crackling, shot right across the road from the inside lane in an attempt to get through in front of him. Swearing, Kurt braked and signaled his intention to resume the center lane. But at the very last moment the driver of the sports car, perhaps catching sight of the Volkswagen's lights in his mirror decided against the maneuver and tucked in behind the outer truck. To avoid running into the back of him, Kurt was forced to wrench at the wheel and swerve momentarily back into the fast lane – this time without signaling. The driver of the heavy Mercedes sedan coming up behind him at 120 miles an hour didn't have a chance. His brake lights blazed momentarily; his headlamps flashed as he leaned on the horn ring… and then the big car, slewing drunkenly sideways under the fierce braking, slammed with devastating force into the Volkswagen's rear quarter.
Over the thunderous impact of the collision the shrill scream of tires on the wet road lanced the night. The mini-bus, struck with shattering violence by two tons of machinery going at almost twice its speed, catapulted forward to smash savagely into the solid back of the truck, bounced from there into the rear of the trailer, spun around twice and finally crunched to a halt against a steel guard rail on the hard shoulder.
The Mercedes, its nearside fender crumpled against the wheel by the shock, skidded crazily across the greasy surface of the road, cannoned off a concrete mile-post, shot back to the central reservation and overturned in a shower of mud and breaking glass. Both the truck and the trailer, hardly damaged in the accident, lurched slightly and then rolled to a stop with a hiss of their powerful air brakes. The sports car, miraculously escaping harm, had dodged back into the outside lane and accelerated away towards the city.
For Susan Templar, hunched shuddering in the back of the mini-bus, the crash was just one more nightmare to follow the others. Her sudden wild hope of rescue when they ran out of gasoline had been dashed as soon as it was born; there were spare jerricans under one of the seats. Later, as the dusk thickened over the rainswept heath north of Hannover, she had been brutally forced to suck off each of the male youths in turn and finally lick the cunt of the sadistic Lisa herself. And it was not so much the ruthless subjugation of her innocent body to their vile demands that worried her, it was the horrifying realization that, despite the shame and humiliation flooding over her at this second debasement, there had been a part of her that had actually enjoyed, even reveled in, the debauch!
She wasn't watching the road when the accident occurred. The world erupted without warning into an inferno of noise and movement in which the monstrous clangor of the collision, the shriek of tortured metal, the squeal of tires and the splintering of glass all combined with a sudden stunning blow on the back of her head to render her temporarily senseless. When the red mists cleared from her eyes and the clamor in her ears subsided she was standing shuddering in the pouring rain with Stefan and Heinz supporting her by the arms. Her clothes, which she had only been allowed to put back on a few minutes before, were already drenched. Her head ached abominably and there was a painful graze on her right arm.
Beyond the silver spears of rain lancing through the headlamp beams of cars and trucks already halted by the accident, she could see figures moving. There was a crowd in the center of the road. A Citroen sedan had turned around with its spotlights facing the wrong way to warn approaching traffic of the hold-up. In the garish illumination of a neon factory sign on the far side of the autobahn, a short stout man in glasses – presumably the driver of the Mercedes, miraculously unhurt – was gesticulating wildly towards the gaping door of his overturned sedan.
There were voices shouting near her. She turned to her left and saw the wreckage of the Volkswagen. The whole of the front was smashed into an unrecognizable tangle of twisted steel in the middle of which a single screen wiper jerked uselessly to and fro like the leg of a dying insect. Through the distorted gap where the windshield had been, the top half of Kurt's body slumped with lifelessly hanging arms. Mercifully his face was hidden, but occasional gouts of blood and brains still splashed sluggishly down from his shattered skull to the crumpled bodywork.
Averting her eyes with a shiver of horror, Susan wondered why none of the people milling around had at least tried to remove him from the telescoped cab. A moment later she saw why. A loud-voiced man with a powerful electric torch was striding down the line of halted vehicles, attempting to guide the crawling traffic past the fragments of twisted steel and glass littering the road. For an instant the beam of light swung across and lit up the wrecked interior of the mini-bus. In the fraction of a second before it was plunged into darkness again, the dazed teenager saw with ghastly clarity the jagged shaft of the steering post, glistening a gruesome red, projecting between the dead boy's shoulder-blades.
As his head and shoulders had been hurled through the windshield, the dreadful impact of the collision had forced the offside wheel up into the Volkswagen's floor and driven the column straight through his chest, impaling him like a moth on a board! Choking down her nausea, Susan turned aside to see Klaus, limping heavily, help Lisa around the battered rear end of the vehicle. The blonde's hair was in rats tails around her shoulders and there was an ugly gash bleeding on her forehead, but otherwise she seemed unhurt. Shot violently forward by the shock, the five of them had been saved by the front seats, against which they had ended up in a tangled heap, bruised and shaken but still alive.
Looking carefully away from the front of the Volkswagen, Lisa leaned close to Heinz and whispered: "Might as well let her try it here. We can take advantage of the situation now it's arrived."
"Right," he murmured back with a crooked grin. "It might even go better here than it would in the middle of the city!"
She nodded. "I'll tip off Stefan," she said in a low voice.
Numbed with shock, Susan paid no attention. In a sudden silence that fell over the nightmare scene, she heard the raindrops sizzling gently against the hot metal of the wagon's wrecked motor. And then suddenly she became aware that the grip on her arms had relaxed a little. Her captors were muttering together and seemed almost to have forgotten her! What on earth was she thinking of, standing here meekly like an obedient child! She wanted to escape, didn't she? Well here was a God-sent opportunity; if she couldn't get away now, she never would!
Summoning all her energy, she drew a deep breath and wrenched her arms suddenly free. Ten yards away, the driver of one of the trucks was standing talking to a crash-helmeted motor-cyclist and another man. Frantically she rushed towards them as she heard Stefan and Heinz shout behind her.
"Help!" the terrified girl cried as she ran. "Help me! Please help… you've got to protect me! Keep them away from me, please!"
The truck driver swung round – a tough little man with a seamed and weather-beaten face.
"What's that you say?" he demanded. "You were a passenger in the Volks, weren't you Fraulein? God, you were lucky to…"
"Listen to me!" the sobbing brunette interrupted. "You've got to listen to me! I'm being kidnapped! They were taking me away!"
"Kidnapped!" the motor-cyclist echoed. "You can't be serious!"
"I am, I am," Susan babbled, glancing fearfully over her shoulder. "They tricked me into it… back in Konigswinter… Five of them… they're taking me away! Please… don't let them get at me…!"
Beside the shattered mini-bus, Lisa touched Heinz on the arm.
"That should be enough to do the trick," she said. "You three go get her; I'll see you over there."
As they strode purposefully towards the frenzied American girl, she climbed unobtrusively over the steel guard rail beside the road and hurried across a stretch of wasteland beyond which street lamps charted the course of a service road between two factories. Susan screamed as she saw the three youths approach.
"Don't let them touch me!" she cried as she dodged behind the truck driver.
"Thanks, mate," Heinz said to the driver. "We'll take care of her now. She got a nasty bump on the head and she doesn't know what she's saying."
"Just a minute," the driver protested. "The young lady says…"
"I told you: she got hit on the head."
"Don't believe him!" Susan sobbed. "They were taking me away."
"Come, my dear: we'll take you home," Stefan said firmly, reaching for Susan's arm.
The truck driver planted himself firmly in front of the terrified girl.
"I don't know about that," he said belligerently. "The lady says she wants protection. I think we'd better hear a little more about it."
"Get out of my way!" Stefan said through set teeth.
"Better wait until the police come, if you ask me," the motorcyclist said. "Maybe she's telling the truth. Maybe she isn't. Let them sort it out."
"She's coming with us," Klaus said curtly.
"Not while I'm here…" the truck driver began.
The three youths exploded into action. Klaus pivoted on his heel and struck the motor-cyclist a terrible blow on the point of the jaw. The helmeted head snapped back and the man crashed to the ground to lie motionless with widespread arms on the wet tarmac. At the same time, Stefan swung at the truck driver – but the little man blocked the punch expertly with the palm of one hand and jabbed a ferocious left into the boy's stomach. Stefan grunted and doubled forward. The driver drew back his arm again… but Heinz chopped brutally at the side of his neck with the edge of his hand as Klaus hit him viciously on the temple from the other side. The little man gave a choking gasp and sagged at the knee. A moment later he slumped unconscious at their feet. The third man, a pale, sandy-haired individual with spectacles, had retreated hastily at the first sign of violence. Heinz raced after him and caught him by the shoulder, swinging him around savagely as the other two seized the screaming Susan and carried her struggling towards the safety fence.
"I don't want any trouble!" the sandy-haired man stuttered in abject terror. "I believe you! You take her if you like! It's no business of mine, honestly. I don't want any trouble!"
He cringed away from the lean-faced youth, shivering with fright.
"Want it or not, brother, you got it!" Heinz said with a malevolent grin.
Without relaxing his hold on the cowering man, he punched him once pitilessly in the solar plexus. The sandy man's breath whooshed out of his lungs and he dropped instantly to the wet macadam, to lie whimpering with his arms crossed over his head. Heinz shrugged contemptuously and turned to run after the others. Before the bystanders had realized anything was amiss, the kidnapped teenager, slung over Klaus' shoulder with Heinz's cruel hand clamped over her mouth, was being rushed across the vacant lot to join the waiting Lisa.
Colonel Templar adjusted the spectacles on his nose and riffled through the Telex sheets on his desk. He was a spare, hard-muscled man of forty with a clipped, dark mustache and gray eyes in a face now lined with worry and fatigue.
"This seems to be it," he said tersely, selecting a sheet and holding it up. "I just got these from the Chief of Police."
"What is it, Alec?" Eileen Templar asked nervously, shifting her position in the visitor's chair on the other side of the desk. "Not… bad news, I hope? I couldn't bear it if…"
"Depends," her husband said. "At least she's alive – if it's her, and this seems to me the most likely of the lot. Report circulated by the Bureau of Missing Persons in Hamburg, forwarded to them by the department dealing with road accidents."
"Accidents?" Eileen faltered. "Oh, God! Not…"
"Cool it, for God's sake!" the colonel said irritably. "No need to get in a state about it!"
He read the paper in his hand: "Accident on the Hamburg-Hanover autobahn last night… Volkswagen mini-bus and Mercedes sedan in collision with a couple of trucks… one dead, none seriously injured… dark teenage girl, apparently unhurt, speaking German with a strong English or American accent, broke away from the survivors in the Volkswagen and claimed she was being kidnapped."
"Kidnapped!" his wife echoed faintly. "Oh, Alec."
"Asked one of the truck drivers and two bystanders for protection," Templar continued, "but three German youths attacked… beat them up and left them lying in the road… took the girl away before anyone else could intervene. Truck driver reported it to the police as soon as they arrived on the scene."
"But who on…?" Eileen demanded bewilderedly. "Who in God's name would want to kidnap Susan? And why?"
"I think I have an idea," the colonel said grimly.
He scanned the Telex sheet again. "The dead man's name was given as Kurt Frodenberg… 22 years old… driver of the Volkswagen, and it seems there was a blonde girl with them of about the same age. That figures."
"I don't understand."
"Anarchists," Templar said briefly. "Do anything they can to discredit the Americans, the French, the British – even the Goddamn Russkis! Frodenberg was known to have been mixed up with a group that's been active for some months now… here, in Hamburg, in Dusseldorf, in Munich. We think they were behind the murder of that policeman after the demonstration the other night, but we can't prove it." He paused and then added significantly: "A group led by a blonde girl of about 22."
"But what on earth would they want with our Susie?" Eileen asked. "I mean I don't see the point… if it was her… what good would it do them after all?"
Templar sighed. "That's just what I intend to find out," he said forcefully. "I'm leaving for Hamburg right away."
"But I don't understand," Susan Templar wailed. "Why do you hate the Americans so much? What harm did we ever do you?"
"You're the main pillars of a rotten society that's got to be destroyed," Lisa replied. "If it wasn't for your lousy money, this decadent German regime would have tottered long ago."
They were sitting under a naked electric bulb in a small shuttered room at the top of an old house in the St. Pauli district of Hamburg. Susan had no idea how she had got there; somebody had clapped a pad soaked with a sickly, sweet-smelling substance over her mouth and nose as soon as they had reached the far side of the waste ground beyond the autobahn – and the next thing she had known, she was in this bare, cell-like attic furnished only with a trundle bed and a rickety chair.
She had no idea what time it was, or whether it was day or night. The shutters were locked and no light of any kind penetrated the two small windows. She remembered sleeping, she remembered awakening and being given food and drink. She remembered although she preferred to forget – having submitted to her captors' vile and obscene sexual demands, both female and male, again and again in the intervening periods. But of how much time had elapsed, she had no idea. The nightmare journey from Siegsdorff seemed a hundred years ago. Now, wearing only a terrycloth robe they had given her, she lay on the bed talking to the German girl, trying to make some sense out of her abduction and the extraordinary circumstances surrounding it.
"Are you Communists, then?" she asked.
"Good God no!" Lisa said angrily. "Their society's as rotten as yours! The West is stifling through over-indulgence and corruption; the East is stifling through narrow-mindedness and bureaucracy. Both of them have got to go before there's any real freedom!"
"And you're helping them on their way?"
"The East will destroy itself ultimately," the blonde explained loftily. "Because of the money your country's pouring into Europe, the revolution will take longer here. People are too well-fed and too complacent to bother. So it's left to groups like ours to take the initiative."
"But what are you trying to do?" Susan asked bewilderedly.
"I told you. This society's too complex – and the capitalists have the reins too firmly in their hands – for it to be altered. It's got to be destroyed, totally destroyed, before anything worthwhile can be built."
"But supposing you did destroy it – what would you put in its place?"
"Others who come after us can decide that," Lisa said. "It's enough for us to hasten in whatever way we can its destruction. And one of the ways is to get you and people like you thrown out of Europe. If we can get the Americans discredited by showing them up for what they are, the disintegration will be that much quicker!"
"And you think it's right to kill people… to have innocent folks suffer… just because it suits your plans?"
"In all revolutionary movements the few have to suffer in the cause of the many," Lisa said virtuously.
The captive brunette sighed and shook her dark head.
"I still don't see what good it does you, having kidnapped me!"
"You're not supposed to see. But it will help certain plans we have."
"How?"
"You ask too many questions. Take off that robe and lie down."
"Oh no!" Susan gasped. "Please… Not again!"
"Yes again," the German blonde girl said inexorably. "And again and again and again, just as often as we want."
Her red-nailed fingers dropped to the captive girl's exposed thigh and moved lasciviously towards the vee of dark, silky pubic hair showing between the open edges of the loose robe. The American girl was crying now.
"Please!" she sobbed, clamping her legs together and drawing the garment tighter around her. "Please…"
She didn't want to do this because, God help her, she was beginning to like it… beginning to like being Lisa's lover… beginning to love being brought to orgasm by the gang males.
"No," Susan said in a sudden defiance, "I'm not going to… anymore!"
Lisa drew back her hand and slashed viciously across the face.
"Do what you're told you little bitch!" she snapped. "Take that off and lie on your back holding your cunt open, or I'll get Heinz in to beat you into obedience!"
As Susan cried out with pain and alarm, the urgent shrilling of a telephone sounded in an adjoining room. For an instant both girls, prisoner and the jailer, froze. They heard the scrape of a chair, a man's voice speaking, the sound of footsteps. The door opened and Heinz put his head into the room.
"That was Elsa," he said briefly. "In one hour's time."
A slow smile spread over Lisa's face.
"Saved by the bell," she said to Susan. "Quite literally! Well – you were asking how it helped us, having you here. Now you're going to find out!"
"W-w-w-what do you mean?" the frightened teenager quavered.
"Usually," the blonde explained, "when someone's kidnapped the ransom's paid by somebody else. Then, if they're lucky, they're set free."
"B-b-b-but you… you said you weren't asking a ransom for m-m-m-me."
"We're not – in the usual sense. If you want to be set free, the price has to be paid by you yourself."
"I don't understand," Susan said tearfully. "I don't understand any of it."
"You don't have to. But if you ever want to get out of here alive," Lisa said with a harsh, menacing note in her voice, "you've got to do something for us… and you've got to do it exactly as you're told… or else! Now listen carefully while I tell you what you do…"