The Man Who Never Was Page 26
*
Meanwhile, the research on Drone technology had never really broken stride, and had serendipitously been partly funded by the windfall assistance of public clamour for all manner of future products from branches of the same research – GPS.
Satellite TV, cars with satellite navigation, and mobile telephones were just around the corner. This thrust would ultimately lead to the internet, something which would change the way we live our lives, for a very long time to come. Even espionage would be forced to adapt to instant everything. The independent inquiry, for which Sophie had worked so tirelessly, gradually lost momentum, eventually becoming a sideshow to the birth of new kind of terrorism.
Newcastle 1989
Harry Smyth’s pestering of DI Black finally paid off, a few months after the independent inquiry had faded to obscurity. Having obtained the address of Karl, he initiated contact with the ex-Luftwaffe pilot and arranged for the whole of the family to visit Dusseldorf. The exact timing was unclear because Hilda had become quite unwell. Multiple examinations and diagnoses proved fruitless, and she deteriorated steadily as the weeks passed. By the first of November she tried to explain that Harry needed to let her go.
“My quality of life is at a low ebb, and I know my time is short. There is something I want you to know. Your birthday, in August 1940 is just six months after…”
“Yes, Mum, I know where you’re going with this. I figured it out before I was twenty-one. You and dad didn’t get married until February that year. I just assumed that it was a circumstance of the war. He may never have returned, and procreation was more important than the ‘fuddy-duddy’ Victorian morality of the villagers. Who am I to comment on such impropriety? I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
Hilda had finally shed a burden which had lasted a lifetime, and somehow this made the prospect of impending farewell a little easier for both of them. She passed away quietly on the next morning, just after 10.30 am. For Harry, her final breath dispersed the expectation of departure, as an immense shock wave hit him. The utter finality of losing a second parent.
A month later he stood in the concourse of Dusseldorf airport, waiting expectantly. He was alone; it no longer felt genuine for the whole family to make the trip, so soon after Hilda had passed on.
The figure approaching him with a smile and an outstretched hand was not overly familiar. Back in 1945, they’d both been recognisable by their shock of blond hair. The intervening years had thinned Karl’s thatch, and turned the remnants a snowy white. But the smile, and exposure of the prominent gold fillings produced waves of emotion as they embraced.
Back at Karl’s house, he was introduced to Frau Buchwald and their two daughters, plus a few grandchildren. After a wonderful welcome, and bedtime for the young, the reminiscing began in earnest. Finally, everyone had retired to bed other than the two of them. Harry produced a wrapped object from his pocket.
“I managed to recover this from the police, and I know that my father and mother would be pleased that this reunion is marked with such an appropriate reminder.”
Karl’s facial expression was a mosaic of curiosity and anticipation. He was speechless as he revealed the watch, and his thoughts leapt back to the bend in the river where he had given it to Michael, his saviour. The tears trickled slowly downward, and a couple splashed on to the face of the timepiece. The shared feelings of the two men, representatives of nations at war all those years ago, were in stark contrast to the building tension of the current clash of ideologies of the Superpowers, previously bound as allies against fascism; obviously it had been a veneer of convenience. The two friends discussed this until eventually they conceded to the need for sleep.
It didn’t seem like farewell as Harry departed, he felt as if a missing piece of his life had been impossibly retrieved, against all odds. Karl made a solemn promise to return to High Spen. Harry knew that the mysterious stranger with the gleaming disc, who had turned from a P.O.W. into a true friend, would never break such a pledge. It was important to him, as it indirectly bridged a gap of several decades back to his early life in High Spen, particularly his parents and grandmother.
*
The reunion was poignant. The P.O.W. site, the refuge Karl shared with Michael, the docks where he was apprehended, and not least the coke works. When Harry and Karl chatted about those times, the German was able to state that he’d left Britain without knowing that his friend, Markus Emmers, had died in Winlaton Mill.
“Theo Devlin and I took Max Vogt’s car and left him to talk his way out of British Intelligence discovering that he was a spy.
“When we first flew over this part of your country Markus jumped out of the aircraft ahead of me, and never explained that he was to work with Vogt, and the man with the code name. I thought we were to be captured together. It all seems so pointless now, but I sometimes wonder what the Reich was actually trying to achieve with that research mission.”
Harry and Karl could never have made the connection, even though they remained good friends until Karl passed away in 2001.
2001-Legacy
The warnings were abundant but not heeded, and the loosening grip of governments around the world eventually bore witness to the horror of asymmetric warfare, as hijacked aircraft struck at the very heart of New York, and therefore American society itself.
Pilotless weapons were very high on the agenda of Nazi Germany. As history has since recorded, when such concepts are combined with the currency of martyrdom, the boundaries become blurred. Without the anonymous, untraceable means of communication – the internet, such cells of terrorists would have been almost impossible to create. Did this ‘tectonic shift’ harbour the portents of a third global conflict? Very possibly. How would National Intelligence Agencies be able to adapt? Merely listing the terrorist incidents since we went online would suggest that the answer is – not very well.
Arguably, the thrust of Adolf Hitler, during the 1939-1945 world conflict, is a perfect example of nurturing potentially unseen futurism. We are now capable of observing the theatre of war, any war, from one’s living room on a large screen TV. Buried somewhere in the confluence of this research was a lesson; one which seems to require re-learning with worrying frequency. Frontiers and pitfalls are implicit bedfellows. One is easy to recognise while the other lurks invitingly to those who see the world differently.