The St. Pauli district lies to the West of Hamburg, on the right bank of the river. The rich bankers and industrialists of the city, being driven home in their Mercedes and Opels to the shady mansions of the expensive suburb of Blankenese, switch on the interior lights of their limousines and bury their noses in their papers as they drive through. Respectable inhabitants of the center eye tourists and newcomers warily, fearful that they may ask the way the notorious Reeperbahn, that street of sin that bisects St. Pauli. Hamburg citizens, in fact, seem slightly ashamed of their entertainment area. But the Reeperbahn is no unsavoury back-street alley. To begin with it's almost two miles long and about as wide as the Champs Elysees in Paris.
Behind the jammed car parks and service roads bordering its curving, tree fringed length, glittering lines of theaters, cinemas, clubs and restaurants tempt the reveler with money to spend. For in St. Pauli entertainment is big business – and business is as usual twenty-four hours a day, with every conceivable taste catered for. At the far end of the avenue the more sinful establishments prosper. The cinemas are blue; the clubs offer entertainments more bizarre than beautiful; the whores choke the doorways. There's a cabaret where the floor-show presents naked women wrestling in liquid mud; another that challenges its clients to ride a donkey drunk on buckets of beer; a third specializing in transvestitism and flagellation.
They used to tell a story in Hamburg about a rich American visiting a St. Pauli club, empty except for a handsome dark girl sitting at the piano.
After waiting some minutes, the American asks: "Don't I get any service around here? Where's the waiter?"
"So sorry," the girl said. "The waiter's in love with the hat-check boy, and tonight's the hat-check boy's night off."
"Well, couldn't the chef come and take my order?"
"Alas," the girl sighs, "Tuesday is the night the chef is beaten by the doorman of the club across the street."
"Well, what about the doorman here?"
"His friend is a sailor – and he's on furlough right now."
"Hell," the American says disgustedly, "doesn't anyone around here like girls?"
The lady at the piano strikes a chord.
"What do you think I come here for?" she says.
There are two streets in the strip-club area called the Grosse Freiheit and the Kleine Freiheit – the Greater and the Lesser Freedom – where once the whores sat in shop windows waiting to be hired. But the shutters are permanently closed now and the bust-and-belly business has taken over. Instead, a block away, rises the multi-story steel and concrete Eros Center – the only apartment block in the world inhabited exclusively by prostitutes, who promenade in its central courtyard hoping to attract clients to their king-sized beds above. Beside the police station is the Zillertal – a huge, gaudy restaurant noisily featuring those three B's – beer, brass-bands and belching – that represent Bavaria's contribution to the humor of the world. And across the road from the Zillertal is the sole remaining example of the "little streets" of St. Pauli – the Herbertstrasse.
Barred off at each end with urinal-like steel partitions carrying huge warnings forbidding entry to minors, the Herbertstrasse is only just over a hundred yards long. The bulbs in the street lamps are pink. An old man plays a sentimental tune on an accordion in one corner. And along the broad cobbled precinct, in the shadows of the one cul-de-sac that leads off it, a constant flow of men – a surprising number with a wife or girl on one arm – promenade the thirty-odd brothels whose madams rent the three-story houses on the street. In the wide ground-floor picture-windows sit the girls… fat girls, thin girls, black girls, white girls, big-breasted jolly girls in decollete nightgowns, severe girls in corsets with whips tucked into their boots, girls in leather, girls in rubber, girls in fishnet tights and girls in skin-hugging wool catsuits.
Whatever your fetish, whatever your fantasy, you have only to knock on the window and ask. The Herbertstrasse (theme tune: I Can Give You Anything But Love, Baby) can cope. And it was to the Herbertstrasse, two miles from the center with the precise verticals of its buildings bordering the lakeside lawns of the Alster, that Susan Templar was brought shortly after Lisa and her companions had received their telephone call from the mysterious Elsa.
Shivering with apprehension, her arms tightly held by Heinz and Klaus, the kidnapped girl followed the sadistic blonde along the rain-wet street and across the crowded, traffic-jammed width of the Reeperbahn. Because it was the season of Fasching, there was a special Bavarian night at the Zillertal and the sidewalks were reeling with drunken, perspiring southerners, red-faced and paunchy, some of them in costume and many wearing domino masks. Through this walpurgisnacht of shrill laughter, bawdy pleasantries and beery breath, the frightened teenager was hustled, past the barriers, past the men with calculating eyes, into the rose-red street – which tonight wore a festive, almost a family air of relaxation. They hurried to the door of one of the houses in the cul-de-sac. The picture windows were brightly lit but there were no girls sitting on display behind them. Lisa's knock was answered at once by a tall, big-breasted woman.
She nodded to the blonde German girl and said briefly: "Upstairs. Number six on the second floor."
"Thanks, Elsa," Lisa said.
Beckoning to her companions and their captive, she began to climb a narrow staircase at the back of the hallway.
"Isn't Stefan here?" Klaus asked as they mounted behind her.
Lisa shook her head. "He went to collect the green Volks. Heinrich brought it up from Siegsdorff today. We're going to meet at his studio later in Oldenburg. But Stefan should be here in a few minutes."
"I hope so," Heinz said. "Because we're going to need him for…"
"Don't worry," the blonde cut in. "It's all taken care of."
They led Susan into a small room stuffy with central heating. There was a low divan covered with black satin against one wall. Two chairs, an old-fashioned wardrobe, a washbasin and bidet behind a screen, and several large mirrors completed the furnishings. A table lamp with a red bulb was the only illumination. Lisa opened the wardrobe and took out a black leather corset with trailing laces, a pair of high-heeled knee boots, and a black papier-mache face mask with elastic ear-pieces.
"Put these on," she ordered.
Susan's face was a study in bewilderment. "But I don't understand," she began tearfully.
"How many times do I have to tell you – you don't have to understand!" the blonde snapped. "Take off your clothes and put those on!"
Repressing a sob, the voluptuous young brunette reluctantly undressed and drew on the black boots. When they were tight enough for Lisa's satisfaction, she stood helplessly in the hot room, her softly curved body gleaming whitely in the seductive light, while they laced her into the form-fitting waist corsette. Finally, Lisa handed her the mask.
"Why do I have to…?" Susan faltered.
"Will you do what you're told! All you have to do it follow our instructions. I've explained already: there's a certain client of this establishment we wish to compromise. All you need to know is that! You're dressed like this, and you're to wear that mask, because it's the season of Fasching… it's the custom to dress up in the south, and they follow it here during this week as a sop to their clients from that part of the country."
"But why me? Why must I…?"
"Because the client likes a new girl each time he comes and you happen to be the type he likes. If you do what you're told, you can buy your way out of this – pay your ransom if you like – and we'll let you go. If not…"
The blonde nodded towards Heinz. The lean-faced youth had taken a wicked-looking, short-barreled revolver from his pocket. Susan gasped with fright as he broke the gun, spun the cylinder, and inserted six cartridges into the chambers.
"I'll be right here," he said menacingly, going to the wall and tapping a moulding above one of the mirrors.
They took the trembling girl into the adjoining room and showed her how there was a spy hole commanding the whole of the room they had just left.
"The gun'll be pointing through this gap," Heinz said bleakly, opening the shutter concealing the hole. "I'll be standing here the whole time, watching. And if you take one wrong step – if you breathe a word to the client – there's a slug for each of you! We won't hesitate to kill him too."
Lisa held up a hand for silence. Outside in the passageway, there was the sound of footsteps, a man's voice, a laugh from Elsa, the soft closing of a door.
"Right – you know what you have to do," the blonde whispered. "You go on in there and you do exactly what the man says. Exactly. If you do it right, we'll let you go. If not…"
She left the sentence unfinished and again jerked her head at Heinz, drawing a hand across her throat in a gruesome gesture. Heinz stuck an unlit cigarette between his lips and nodded towards the door.
"Away you go!" he said.
They took the bewildered teenager back into the corridor, opened the door of the room they had first been in, and pushed her inside. The door closed softly behind her. She stood shuddering with anticipation. There was a pile of clothes on one of the chairs now and a naked man bending over them. He was tall, lean and muscular, with a down of dark hairs tracing the course of his spine. Beyond the taut curve of his hip, she could see the rigid staff of his penis jutting from the vee of wiry pubic hair at his loins like a thick quivering arrow. The bulbous, purple head was already emerging from the foreskin. As he heard the girl enter he swung round to face her and Susan repressed a gasp of petrified amazement.
The man whose whims she was there to serve was her own father! She was aghast, stunned, speechless with horror. Behind the mask, which covered her face from brow to upper lip, she blanched. What in God's name was he doing here? Did they know? Had he recognized her? The last question was answered at once, for he moved towards her, his rigidly erect cock wagging from side to side above the sperm-bloated pouch of his testicles, with a lustful expression on his face that she had never seen before.
"Very nice!" he said caressingly, reaching out his hand to cup the full globe of one breast as it swelled seductively above the leather corset. "Elsa always did know just what I wanted!"
Susan recoiled away from his familiar touch with a shudder of disgust. This mustn't happen, she thought wildly. It mustn't! But how could she possibly stop it, knowing that Heinz and his gun were so near? Her heart thudding in her chest, she sat weakly on the divan. Feasting his eyes lustfully on the triangle of silky hair at her loins, Colonel Templar took his penis in one hand and began skimming the loose skin rapidly up and down the throbbing shaft.
"Come on then," he said hoarsely. "You know what to do. Let's get down to it, baby."
Behind her disguise, the girl stared at him piteously.
"G-g-g-get down to it?" she repeated in a quavering voice.
What on earth was she supposed to do? What sexual technique was she supposed to know?
"Get your legs up on the bed and roll over on your tits," Templar commanded harshly.
"W-w-what do you mean?"
Through the slitted eye-holes of the mask, his daughter stared up at him in blank incomprehension.
"Do as I say. Didn't Elsa tell you, for God's sakes? I like coming in the back way."
"The b-b-back way? Oh, no!" Susan whimpered as the full realization of the indecent ravishment he was proposing burst on her mind. "Not that, please! You… you can't do it to me there! You can't…"
Her father chuckled. "I knew Elsa wouldn't let me down!" he said. "I go for a bit of play-acting. It turns me on when you girls play the innocent like that!"
Bending down, he seized her legs and yanked them roughly up and over the bed, at the same time twisting her violently so that she was flung face downwards on the mattress. Then, as she sobbed helplessly into the pillow, he leaped and kneeled between her widespread naked thighs, forcing them ruthlessly apart with his knees.
The frightened teenager's mind was a chaos of conflicting emotions. She was sickened first of all by the thought of her own father visiting a whore-house; and the knowledge that he was an old client, coupled with the realization of the horrible, obscene and unnatural thing he wanted to do, upset her more than ever. Why, he was no better than her mother, amusing herself with the local Burgomaster when the colonel was away! But worst of all, of course, was the fact that he was unsuspectingly about to sodomize his own daughter! How could she possibly allow him to do such a thing? It would bring him down to the level of Lisa and her vile gang of ravishers! It would destroy forever the whole secure domestic foundation on which her young life was based! Yet how could she possibly stop him? The only conceivable way would be to reveal her true identity… and the spine-chilling thought of the sadistic Heinz and his gun ruled that out from the start.
The fanatic German youth would not hesitate to shoot if he thought their plans – whatever they were – were in danger of being thwarted! And even were she not terrified for her own life, the thought that she would automatically sign her father's death-warrant as well was enough to scotch the idea. No, she would have to go through with it whatever the anguish it might bring! She would have to sacrifice herself for her father's sake! Her mind seething with doubts, she clenched her teeth and gripped the pillow until her slender knuckles showed white. Colonel Templar's muscular thighs were relentlessly spreading her legs, clad in the black boots which came just above her knees.
"Reach behind you, baby, and spread the cheeks of your ass," he rasped.
"I can't!" Susan squealed despite her resolutions. "You can't do this to me, please! Couldn't you do it some other way? Please, please…"
She broke off with a gasp of pain as he brought his open hand cracking down viciously across her naked buttocks, leaving the red weals of finger marks flaming on the trembling white flesh below the leather corset.
"Do what you're told, you little bitch," her unsuspecting father growled. "You're being paid, aren't you?"
Her chest racked with deep tearing sobs, the masked brunette moved her quivering hands over the rounded globes and reluctantly dragged them apart, exposing the tiny puckered hole of her anus nestling in its hairless furrow. She still couldn't believe that any man would do such a bestial thing to her! And as for suffering it at the hands of her own father – it was monstrous! It was the ultimate depth of degradation! It was really too much for her young mind to bear! Perhaps, she thought desperately, it was a whim of her father's. Perhaps he liked to make his women crawl and plead with him before he made love to them more normally. Surely it must be simply a ploy to intimidate her! It couldn't be true that he wanted to take her… to take anybody there! But her father's outstretched middle finger was poking at the wrinkled hole centered in her hot and sweating crevice. She jerked involuntarily at the sudden pain.
"Relax!" he hissed threateningly. "And keep those ass-cheeks spread!"
Susan felt the tip of his finger again at the entrance to her defenseless rectum, and she frantically clenched the tiny ring tight in an attempt to delay the brutal penetration she knew must be coming. Templar probed for a moment at the outer edges of the tiny elastic circle and then, with a grunt of satisfaction, he shoved his finger into the warm velvety passage. The disguised girl gasped aloud. Moans of protest forced their way through her clenched teeth as he drilled deeper and deeper, expanding the tightness of her rectum until she thought she must faint from the pain and shame of the cruel invasion.
He began to move the finger around in the clinging, rubbery opening, sawing it in and out to stretch the tiny anus in preparation for the greater entry to follow. A flicker of surprise, almost of pleasure, passed suddenly over his daughter's face. The pain was gradually fading and a sensation was taking its place that was very close to enjoyment! She couldn't believe that it could feel so good – but it did, sending wild thrills of perverse pleasure rocketing through her loins. Her mouth opened and she began to pant and mewl in perverse delight as the colonel's finger worked around and around deep in her wide-stretched rectum!
Then abruptly she remembered who and what she was – she was actually taking pleasure from a sexual assault on her by her own unknowing father! How could she possibly justify such a debased and obscene emotion? A hot flush of shame washed over her and she bit her lips to stifle the groan of near-ecstasy that was trembling in her throat. As suddenly as he had forced the finger in, Colonel Templar dragged it out again… and the black corseted kneeling girl became aware with a shudder of humiliation that her inner thighs above her boots were wet from her pleasuring young cunt. Despite the anguished turmoil in her mind, her body was responding to his touch and moisture was already flooding the interfolded flesh at the entrance to her quivering cunt as her vaginal secretions flowed in excited readiness.
Thrusting his hand between his daughter's belly and the mattress, the colonel stroked his fingers back along the moistly sliding length of her vaginal furrow and smeared the fluid up and around her plundered little anus to lubricate the opening. An instant later she felt, with a tremor of alarm, the hot rubbery tip of his throbbing penis pressing against her tightly puckered anal opening. Oh God, this was intolerable! Her own father…!
Susan held her breath as she felt it begin to thrust. Oh God, it was huge! She would never be able to take it in her rectum without her belly being torn apart! The muscles on Colonel Templar's lean stomach stood out as he strained forward, and the anguished girl felt the soft probing between her buttocks grow into a hard, irresistible pressure against the tight elastic ring of her anus.
"Ooooooooooooooooh…! God, no…! Pleeeeeeeeease! Aaaaaa-aaaaaagh!" she screeched as the interfolded nether ring suddenly gave way and the bulbous head of her father's cock surged inside with a plunging rush.
A spasm of pain shot through her that was so unbearable she twisted and screamed again and again, trying with all her strength to evade the bestial impalement. Her buttocks writhed like trapped animals trying to escape, thrashing frenziedly to disengage themselves from the stone-hard penis cruelly penetrating her virginal anus. But her movements served only to wedge the thickly gleaming staff more securely in her tortured back passage.
Templar seized the edges of the pillow and pulled it forcibly up against her contorted face to muffle her cries. At the same time his pounding thighs forced his thick cock another inch… and then another… into her helpless young body. Susan could hardly think; the flickers of unwilling pleasure that had been coursing through her veins were driven out by the agony of this monstrous assault! Everything she did brought pain and still more pain! It was as though a relentless battering-ram was being pitilessly hammered into the distended opening of her virginal rectum.
Suddenly her father's loins smacked heavily into the softness of her spread buttocks. The punishing instrument was buried to the hilt in her almost-split anus. She was hopelessly skewered on the cruelly thick fleshiness of her own father's penis! Panting hoarsely behind her, Colonel Templar began to fuck rhythmically deep into the soft buttery depths of her back passage as she groaned in anguish and fought still with wild desperation against the horror and degradation of the depraved attack on her defensively puckered anus. Then, with a final moan of surrender, her strength failed and her ripe young body subsided limply on the bed, impaled on the plank-stiff cock like a pinned insect.
As soon as his daughter collapsed, the unsuspecting father seized her elbows and, still keeping his hotly pulsating penis buried deep in her rectum, rolled over on to his back, pulling the girl on top of him. She was now lying face upwards, her shoulders resting on his hairy chest, her black-booted legs splayed limply outside his own, while his cock continued to fuck up into her stretched little rectal opening from underneath. His hands snaked around to cup her budding teenaged breasts above him and his knees rose slightly between her legs to keep her trembling white thighs apart.
It was while they were lying obscenely coupled like this that Lisa silently opened the door and stole into the room. She was naked and her eyes were glistening with excitement. She had watched the entire scene of debauchery through the spy hole where Heinz was posted with the loaded gun. It was obvious that whatever nefarious plans were coming to fruition, the blonde German girl took a lewd and sadistic delight in the depraved exhibition she had engineered for its own obscene sake!
Ever since Colonel Templar had unknowingly appeared before his reluctantly performing daughter, Lisa's fingers had been rubbing frantically at the swollen clitoris throbbing up between her legs. Now, with nipples darkly erect in the center of her ripely swelling breasts, she was coming in for the kill! She gazed for an electrifying moment at the lustfully erotic tableau on the bed.
Susan's head had fallen backwards over her father's shoulder, her mouth opening and closing spasmodically as the mewling sounds of pleasure again began to force their way through her trembling lips. Her tautly swelling young breasts rose and fell rapidly under his imprisoning fingers. And between her splayed legs, and thickly gleaming stump of Templar's vast cock disappeared into her forever-stretched anus below the pinkly glistening slit of her no longer virginal little cunt. Lisa stared greedily at the defenselessly gaping pussy with its inviting hair-lined lips, at the rigidly pulsing shaft of the penis buried below it, and at the bloated pouch of Templar's balls resting on the covers between his thighs. Then, with a stifled cry of hunger, she threw herself down on the bed and lowered her face toward the pair of steaming loins widespread obscenely before her.
Taking the colonel's sperm-laden testicles in her mouth, she rolled the sperm-swollen glands softly around her tongue and then licked slowly up the bulge of his throbbing shaft, on through the moistly folded pink flanges of Susan's cunt, and up to the inflamed and blood-gorged bud of the masked teenager's clitoris.
Seeing her come in, Templar had briefly raised his head to nod a greeting. He had been expecting a second girl. He had ordered one and here she was! It wasn't one of the whores he knew, but she looked seductive enough to please anyone! But the searing contact of Lisa's knowledgeable tongue was the first evidence Susan had that a third person had joined them. She jerked galvanically, her loins arching up with an unbearable tingle of unwanted excitement as the blonde girl's tongue slobbered erotically up and down the whole wet furrow of her genitals, on to the huge penis plowing into her anus, and then back up to her quivering clitoris again. At the same time her father began a slow and ruthless plunging into her cruelly stretched rectal passage, pulling tiny pink ridges of clasping flesh out with the base of his cock each time he withdrew for another vicious lunge inside. Between them, he and the sadistic German girl worked in slavish lustful rhythm over the whole sensitive area of Susan's obscenely exposed loins. Lisa sucked and licked and mewled and nibbled at the berserk teenager's hotly shuddering cunt.
Templar rammed his stone-hard penis deeper and deeper up into her bowels, the throbbing head feeling as though it was about to burst apart in the tight rubbery grip of the ravished brunette's vise-like rectal passage. Susan ground her buttocks savagely back against his pounding thrusts. There was no longer any pain – no shame, no humiliation; she had forgotten the horrifying fact that it was her own father whose long hard cock was spearing into her in unnatural and indecent ravishment. The only things she was aware of were the unbidden and obscenely delicious shafts of soul-destroying erotic passion that flamed through her quivering body begging for more and more and more and more. Lisa was wildly fingering her own cunt again as she lanced her tongue far up into the sweet heated depths of the wildly aroused teenager's vaginal passage. And suddenly, over the fierce grinding of the military man's loins, she felt the young brunette tense and quiver uncontrollably. Almost of their own volition, Susan's hands darted down to cradle the face of the German girl who sucked so furiously at her wildly convulsing pussy.
The kidnapped teenager's back arched up off her father's hips and she cried frenziedly: "Oh God! Oh God! Oh God…! I'm going to cum…! I'm cumming…! I'm cuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmrning…! Eeee-eeeeeeeeuuuuugh!"
The older girl felt Susan's cunt opening around her slavering lips and warm gushes of hot sticky fluid flooded into her mouth and down over the pistoning cock below it. Simultaneously the colonel uttered a hoarse cry, and his hands began clawing his daughter's nakedly jiggling breasts in wild abandon as his penis jerked powerfully and the first hot wave of his thick, scalding cum squirted far up into the velvet depths of her rectum. Hearing these twin groans of ecstasy above her and feeling the urgent shudders of the two sweating bodies as they lay spurting their loads of boiling liquid passion around her slobbering mouth, Lisa too began to quiver and thresh between their thighs, groaning out the spasms of her orgasm deep into the hot wetness of their jerking loins as her saliva streamed down Susan's cunt to mingle with the floods of cum around Templar's balls.
Forgetting everything but her own secret world of lust, Susan lifted her head and gave a long shuddering cry of fulfillment. She had never known that such a transport of passion and joy could exist! And at that moment, through more concealed spy holes beyond the foot of the bed, at one side of the room, and in the ceiling above the obscenely coupled threesome, bright lights flashed and the shutters of cameras held by Heinz and Klaus and Stefan clicked. Despite his temporary exhaustion, Alec Templar's years of combat training told. He was on his feet in a flash, his deflating penis pulling free of Susan's anus with a wet sucking sound as he hurled the girl to one side.
"What the hell's going on?" he roared angrily.
Quick as he was, Lisa – unencumbered with another body on top of her – was even quicker. She was out the room with the door slammed shut before he realized what was happening. The colonel whirled on his daughter.
"What's going on, for God's sakes?" he shouted again, advancing on the cringing girl. "You better spill it fast, baby, or you're going to get the shit beaten out of you!"
The frightened teenager cowered against the bed.
"I d-d-don't know," she stuttered wildly. "I-I-I… please!"
"We'll have that mask off for a start," Templar said grimly, reaching for the black domino covering his daughter's face.
"Nooooooo!" Susan cried wildly. "They'll kill you! Please…"
But the enraged military man's fingers curled around the edge of the flimsy covering and yanked so savagely that the elastic straps ripped clean away from the mask and he found himself staring into the horrified eyes of his own daughter! For a timeless instant he gaped at her, thunderstruck with astonishment and total disbelief.
"Suzy!" he cried wildly. "But how…? Why…? What on earth…?"
And then, dropping his face momentarily into his hands as he remembered: "Oh, my God…!"
Susan flung herself weeping on his naked chest, her hands clasping and unclasping on his muscular shoulders.
"Oh, Daddy!" she sobbed helplessly. "Oh, Daddy…!"
Gently but firmly, Templar disengaged himself.
"We'll see about this shit!" he said grimly, striding towards the door.
"Daddy, don't!" his daughter screamed. "They'll kill you! They have a gun!"
He shook his head. "Not now," he said. "I know the way these merchants work. They've already got what they wanted. They'll be out of here in a flash if I don't stop them."
He seized the door handle and tugged. The door was locked.
"Fuck!" Colonel Templar said feelingly.
He dashed across to the corner where his clothes were neatly folded over a chair and yanked his revolver holster from the pile of garments. The holster was empty. His gun was gone. Breathing heavily, he began frantically dressing himself.
"W-w-w-what are you going to do?" his daughter quavered.
"If I can't shoot out the lock, I'll kick the door in," Templar said, drawing on his boots.
"B-b-b-b-but suppose they're waiting outside and they…"
"I know what I'm doing," Templar cut in. "They won't!"
"Do you… do you mean I'm free then?" Susan faltered.
"Yes, darling, you're free. I'm the one that's trapped now!" her father said.
"But I don't understand…" the girl began in bewilderment.
"Later," the colonel said curtly.
He picked up a black leather dress hanging from a hook behind the door and tossed it over.
"Put this on over those things. We haven't time to find your own stuff now."
As the voluptuous teenager eased the tightly shining garment over her ripely swelling breasts and smoothed the skirt down past the corset hugging her slender waist, he stepped back three paces and launched himself at the door, shooting out his foot at the last moment to crash against the woodwork just above the lock. The door shivered but held. Templar retired and hurled himself forward a second time. His heel thudded jarringly against the wood and the panel above the lock splintered. But still the door remained locked. Again the American slammed his heel against the woodwork with all his weight behind it. This time the whole panel split from top to bottom and the lock sagged drunkenly from the frame. Templar dragged the door open and charged out into the corridor.
The doors to the three rooms from which Heinz and the others had taken the photographs stood ajar. Each was lit with a low-power red bulb; each was furnished exactly like the one they had just left – a divan, a couple of chairs, large mirrors, a washbasin, an old-fashioned wardrobe. In one, huge photo blow-ups of naked fat women wrestling occupied a whole wall. In another, a rack supporting a collection of whips, canes, chains and strange appliances in leather and steel stood next to a bizarre trestle table equipped with wrist and ankle cuffs. The spy hole shutters in all three were open. But of Stefan, Lisa and the others there was no sign. Susan sniffed. There was a hint of tobacco in the air and layers of blue smoke wreathed above the crimson lamp.
"Now I know they've gone," she said. "Heinz always has an unlit cigarette in his mouth; he only lights it when the job is done!"
"We'll just make sure," the colonel said grimly.
But the other rooms on the floor were empty and unlit. So were those on the floor below. On the ground floor, the door to the front room with the exhibition windows was open… but there was nobody there and the lights were out. The front door itself was barred and padlocked. They hurried through to a kitchen and liquor store at the back. There was a cool, moist draught blowing through an open window and the back door was not quite closed. Outside, they found themselves in a narrow unlit alley parallel with Herbertstrasse. There was nobody to be seen. Templar breathed heavily.
"Just as I thought," he said. "The birds have flown! They must have taken the place over for the evening and paid Elsa to preside just as though business was as usual! I'll see she never gets the chance to operate again, the bitch!"
Standing beside him on the greasy cobbles, the bright lights from the far end of the alley casting a halo around her dark hair, Susan looked the picture of puzzled bewilderment in the sophisticated knee boots and tight leather dress that served only to accentuate her youth and innocence.
"What are you going to do?" she queried nervously.
"Do my damnedest to get my hands on those pictures!" the colonel said.
"But why? Couldn't we just… Why not go to the police? There's a precinct house just across the street. I saw it as we came in. It must be just beyond the end of this alley."
"This is not a matter for the police!" her father snapped. "Look – the place where they've been keeping you: is it far? Could you find it again?"
"I… I think so. It's not far. Just around the corner really. Across that big street with all the lights, and then about two blocks away on the left."
"Hmm… that must be off the Grosse Freiheit. The car's parked in front of the police station. You can show me the way. Let's go!" Templar said.
Seizing the girl's hand, he ran down the alleyway towards the lights. Dodging through the laughing, singing drunken crowds streaming from the Zillertal, they piled into the colonel's BMW coupe, threaded their way across the traffic choking the Reeperbahn, and drove past the neon signs flashing their invitations to the strip-clubs lining the Grosse Freiheit.
"I think it's the next on the left," Susan said. "No – the second on the left… there!"
Passing the Kleine Freiheit, dark and deserted now that the brothels were closed, Templar turned the BMW into a narrow, twisting street. As their headlamp beams illuminated the shuttered facades, they saw a pale green Volkswagen without lights pull away from the curb at the far end of the thoroughfare and disappear around a corner in the direction of the Reeperbahn.
"There they are!" Susan shouted excitedly. "That's it… that's the house! I recognize it! And that's the car they had down in Siegsdorff… I heard them say some friend was bringing it back for them!"
"Right!" her father said. "They're getting out… with the stuff, no doubt. Well, we'll see about that!"
Treading heavily on the throttle pedal, he sent the BMW hurtling after the green car. They followed the Volkswagen back into the city along the glittering, curving length of the Reeperbahn, turned left to skirt the Rathaus and the long blank wall of the Planten und Blomen, almost caught up passing the bright display windows of the boutiques at each side of Colonnaden – and then sat fuming, waiting for a taxi to turn around ahead of them in front of the floodlit neo-classical entrance to the Fier Jahreszein Hotel.
By the time Templar could squeeze the coupe past, the Volkswagen was half way across the bridge spanning the Aistere. Setting his teeth, the colonel swerved outside a bus, jumped a set of lights changing to red, and roared in pursuit. Traffic on the bridge was heavy. In the dark, still water on either side of them, reflections from the lighted windows of buses mingled with the images of long strings of street lamps garlanding the lake. A crowded ferry ablaze with lights shivered the calm surface just off the pier.
They passed the Atlantic Hotel, circled the central station, and sped along the wide, undulating Heidenkampsweg towards the eastern outskirts of the city. But it was not until they were nearing the approach road to the autobahn that the traffic thinned enough to allow Templar to use the BMW's superior acceleration and close the gap between the two cars. Then, as they passed a modernistic office block gleaming with steel and black glass, an Opel Kapitan driven by an elderly man so short that he could scarcely see, over the rim of the steering wheel pulled out of a side street and blocked their way. A hundred yards ahead, traffic signals showed green. The Opel slowed… and as it drew abreast the lights changed to red.
"Get on with it, man!" Templar shouted. "You can make that, you old bastard!"
But the big car rocked to a halt half way across the intersection, forcing him to stamp on the brakes and bring the BMW sliding to a stop just behind them. The twin tail-lights of the Volkswagen, which had been switched on as soon as they reached the city center, dwindled down the long perspective of street lamps and was finally lost to sight among the winking reds and greens of a signal light over a railway bridge spanning the road.