The Munich Dilemma
by Sinbad

Chapter 15

They walked some distance towards the centre of Ipswich until they came to a public phone box. Ricky took the sheet of emergency phone numbers from his wallet. Chris helped him by holding it while he dialled the number of the Foreign Office that Mr Farquharson had given them.

“Mr Farquharson, please. Uh, Lord Beaulieu.” Ricky remembered the trouble he'd had last time he phoned. This time there was no problem, no delay.

“Ricky? Ricky Taylor? Where are you? I've been hoping you would call!”

“I'm with Chris, sir, we're in Ipswich. Can you come and get us? Have they caught Kamille?”

“One thing at a time, young man! Slow down! First of all, why are you in Ipswich?”

“We came across from Bremerhaven in a sailing boat, the owner took us.”

“But why?”

“Well we got to Bremerhaven by train but we ran out of Deutschmarkes. So we asked around till we found someone who would take us. A Dutchman and his English wife.”

“Okay. That's good. Your Dutchman may have saved your life. Ricky, look at the panel in the phone box. Somewhere you'll see the location of your phone box. What does it say?”

Ricky searched the panel, which had some spray paint defacing part of it, but he found what he was looking for.

“The corner of Fore Street and Station Road, sir.”

“Fore Street and Station Road. Good. Now, listen carefully. Don't leave the phone box. I want both of you to stay in that phone box, no matter what. Even if someone else wants to use the phone you don't give it up to them. Stay there. Very shortly a police car will arrive and will take you to the police station. Go with the policemen and stay in the police station with them until I arrive. Have you got that?”

“Yes, sir. What's up, what's all this about?”

“I'd rather tell you that when I see you. Sorry but it's for the best. Don't tell me what it is, but do you remember my first name?”

Ricky remembered, an even more unusual name than his surname. “Yes, sir.”

“Good. When the police arrive, they will mention my name. My first name. Don't go with anyone who doesn't mention my name. Have you got that?”

“Yes, I've got it. Chris can hear you too, sir, he's got his ear to the phone.”

“Good boys. Now, I know you're sensible lads but this is getting more dangerous than we thought. So I want you to take it very seriously and take great care. Do exactly what I told you and I'll be with you as quick as I can get there. Good luck!”

- and the line went dead. Ricky put the receiver down. The boys looked at each other. Neither spoke.

So they stood there, in the phone box, wondering what was so dangerous in Ipswich and feeling very exposed, out there in a phone box.

Minutes passed and there was a tap on the glass behind them. A woman with blue tinted hair and a heavy coat with a fur collar, despite the warm weather, was standing with an umbrella in her hand, the handle in the shape of a duck's head towards the window. She looked annoyed. When the boys turned, she said something but through the glass they couldn't tell what. Chris pushed the door open and popped his head round.

“It's out of order. We've reported it and there's an engineer coming. We're waiting to meet him.”

Before she could respond he pulled back behind the door and let it close on its powerful spring. She stood there for a few minutes more, and eventually gave up. She was nowhere to be seen when the police car Mr Farquharson had promised pulled up right beside the phone box. There were two uniformed officers in it, a woman in the front passenger seat, and a man driving. The woman got out, the man stayed in the car. She walked around to the door and opened it.

“Hello, boys, what are you doing in here?”

Chris looked at Ricky in consternation. Was this not the police car sent to collect them? Had the old woman reported them and another police car had responded?

With a sinking heart, Chris tried: “The phone's out of order. We've reported it and we're waiting for the engineer to arrive.”

“You don't need to wait for the engineer, and he might not arrive today. Anyway. if the phone's out of order, how did you report it?”

Neither boy had an answer to that.

The policewoman smiled. “Well there's no need to wait here any longer. A man called Chumley sent us to collect you. You've to come with us.”

The relief of the boys was palpable, all the rigid fear went out of them and their shoulders slumped. They came out of the little box as she held the door open for them, and clambered into the back of the police car. Through the opposite window Ricky spotted a small commotion across the road in the doorway of a shop. A small crowd had gathered to watch the activity of the police – maybe there wasn't much excitement in their lives. He could make out the woman with the blue hair in their midst. She was pointing their way and gesticulating with her umbrella and talking indignantly.

Well, thought Ricky, he and Chris had provided a little entertainment to brighten the lives of these people. The ragamuffins who had hogged a perfectly good telephone box and had been hauled away by the police to languish in a dungeon for the rest of their lives in punishment for their heinous crime. He smiled and waved as the car pulled off.

In the police station they were treated as curiosities. The staff on duty seemed not to know why they were there, and the call from the foreign office was clearly not something that happened every day, or every year for that matter. The duty sergeant was friendly enough but had nowhere to put them. He ushered them into his office, but there were only two chairs and he needed to work at his desk. He called the policewoman in, the one who brought them from the phone box. They discussed the boys as though they weren't there. Ricky and Chris made faces at each other across the room. They made more faces when the policewoman suggested putting the boys in a cell until they were collected, but eventually the decision was made to put them in the interview room. So they were ushered from the sergeant's office down the corridor to the interview room, a bare room painted dark blue, with a single bulb hanging from a ceiling rose providing harsh and inadequate light. There were no windows, and just a table half way along one wall jutting out into the room. An odd looking cassette tape deck with the word NEAL prominently displayed and big brightly coloured buttons was on the table against the wall. There were four plastic chairs at the table, and that was it. No other furniture, at all. The door was a heavy reinforced door, with a small wired glass window at eye level, and a lock on the outside. The floor was concrete painted rust red. Ricky was just turning to complain that this was as bad as being put in a cell, when the door slammed and they were shut in. A clear click gave away that they were locked in.

So, they made the best of it. They sat down on the uncomfortable chairs. They talked, their conversation revolved around Mr Farquharson, and how long it would be before he turned up and took them away from this room, and what could be the danger that he hadn't explained yet. An hour went by. There was nothing to do. They looked around for inspiration, and there was only the tape deck. There was a tape in it and they couldn't resist. There was a big red button marked 'Record' and underneath someone had stuck a label which read 'Press this at the start of an interview'. So they pressed it, of course.

“Mr Taylor, can you tell the audience at home your impression of the station and staff at the Ipswich police station?”

“Why, certainly. We arrived in a police car which was comfortable and clean, although we were in the back seat and I noticed that the doors didn't open from the inside. It felt a little weird knowing that we were going to have to rely on someone to let us out. The station is a dump, an ugly concrete building. But the staff are just wonderful. We were welcomed in and given much needed refreshments, and made very comfortable.”

“Really? It's a surprise that the staff at a busy police station like this one could find the time to put themselves out so much!”

“Really, well, no. Actually they made us feel thoroughly unwanted, and nearly put us in a cell. Eventually they decided to put us in the interview room, but as you see it's hardly nicer than a cell. And they've locked us in.”

“We're locked in? Why would they do that? We're not prisoners, are we?”

“Well, actually, I guess we are. It's certainly not for our protection – an intruder could open the door because the lock is on the outside. We're the only ones who can't operate the lock!”

They might have continued in this vein, it felt good to give vent to their feelings, but they heard the sound of the door unlocking. Chris's hand shot out to press the Stop button and by the time the door opened, both boys were sitting well away from the the tape deck, the picture of innocence.

The door swung open and there, framed (almost jammed) in the doorway was the bulk of Cholmondeley Farquharson, Lord Beaulieu. The boys jumped up, and all he needed was a small gesture, he beckoned them and turned away to make his way back along the corridor. At the door to the sergeant's office, labelled as such, he paused. He opened the door and surprised the sergeant eating a sandwich.

In a tone of voice the boys had never heard from him, he called out: “Why were my friends locked in your interview room?”

The sergeant just sat there with his mouth open, a morsel of lettuce hanging from his lower lip.

“And have you provided refreshments? Something to eat? A cup of tea, at least? I notice you've ensured you fed yourself!”

The policeman was beginning to look quite sheepish. Ricky and Chris peeped around Mr Farquharson, enjoying the spectacle.

“I haven't time to waste on you. I'll be contacting your superiors in due course. Come on you two, we've a long journey ahead of us!”

He closed the door on the sergeant, now spluttering in an attempt to defend himself, to justify his actions, and in the process spraying fragments of sandwich across his desk. They walked briskly past the front desk and out onto the street. A big limousine was parked directly outside with its engine running and a driver at thte controls. Mr Farquharson opened the rear door and ushered the two boys in, then closed the door on them and got into the front passenger seat. Once his door was closed, the car moved off. Ricky noticed that the driver was dressed very informally, in jeans and a sweater. But he sat ramrod straight in his seat and he guessed that he was a soldier of some sort. Mr Farquharson's bulk fitted into the passenger seat and he had managed to clip his seat belt across his great stomach, but he couldn't also turn to face the boys. So he talked to them while looking forwards, watching them in the courtesy mirror on the back of the sun visor in front of him.

“I'm sorry if I frightened you on the phone earlier, and I'm even more sorry they didn't treat you well in the police station. Those people haven't the common sense of a housefly. Anyway, let me tell you what the problem is. It's serious, we think, and you may be in very real danger, so we're not taking any chances.”

Ricky pushed back into the seat, as though to mould himself into it. He had had enough of danger and adventure, now he just wanted peace and quiet. He glanced at Chris and thought Chris was thinking along the same lines.

“I'm sorry to say that after you slipped through his fingers, Blumfeld has kidnapped Bettina. We don't know where she is and we don't really know why he kidnapped her but maybe she's a bargaining tool. His freedom for hers, perhaps.

“We understood why he was trying to reach you two, you're the only people who know what he looks like as a man and also when he dresses as a woman. So far he's been able to escape because his cross-dressing hasn't been known, and he's been able to evade capture when the authorities have been looking for a man by dressing as a woman, and vice-versa. Now, however, that cover is blown, but he can probably still use the same tactic because he is completely convincing as a woman. But you two can identify him as either gender. So you're dangerous, and I'm sure he was trying to get to you to kill you.

“I think you were very sensible not to get on that plane. I think you and the other passengers would have had a fatal accident. Now, I won't quiz you right now about why you didn't just phone me from the airport, it's too late to change the past. You went off on your own, and took the train, onto which he was able to follow you easily, and then you took passage on a small sailing vessel, which appears to have caught him completely off guard. That was a wise move on your part. You must tell me some time how you came to choose that boat.

“When he lost you he seems to have changed his plan. I guess he was hoping to get rid of you two – to kill you, in fact. That way he would have been free to continue changing his apparent gender every time his pursuers got too close. When he lost your trail he thought again and decided on another way of escaping justice. And he's taken Bettina. Why would he choose her? We don't know why he picked on her. Certainly she's seen him before, but she's never seen him as a woman, has she?”

Both Ricky and Chris were shaking their heads.

“We haven't worked that one out, I don't see what advantage there is for him in taking Bettina hostage over taking anyone close to hand. The postman, the paperboy, his doctor. Any one of them would do for a hostage? But he travelled back down to Munich, and sought out Bettina. Any idea? Boys?”

Ricky thought he knew a possible reason, but waited to see what Chris would say.

Chris, however, said nothing, but looked pleadingly at Ricky. He took the hint.

“I always thought kidnappers did it because they were mad, not because they had a plan worked out. But I guess this man always has a plan. I wonder whether he'd observed Chris and Bettina together before now? He'd have seen that they're keen on each other. Might he have thought that Bettina's captivity would bring Chris looking for her, and that I'd come along too? In other words he's using Bettina as a tool to get to Chris and me?”

“Yes, I do think that, Ricky. Well done for spotting it. So we mustn't play into his hands. Our first priority is to get you somewhere safe where we can look after you. And preferably somewhere more comfortable than that room at the police station! Then we'll take stock and decide on our plan of action. We need to get Bettina back, safe, to her family, and once we've cared for that we need, if possible, to trap and detain Blumfeld. He's done too much damage now, he must know his time is up – we'll reel him in somehow.”

He fell silent and the boys thought over what he'd said.

The car drove into a multi-storey car park, much too fast, in Ricky's view. They had to hold onto the door handles as the big limousine swung up the spiral ramp from level to level until they reached the top,where they parked in a corner. They all got out and the driver led them across the concrete to another car, a white estate car. They piled in, this time Mr Farquharson sat in the back and Chris went up into the front with the driver. They left the car park and headed off, initially in the direction they had just come from, and then half a mile down the road they turned off onto a major road heading off into the countryside and almost immediately pulled into a layby, where they waited five minutes. The driver watched every car passing them carefully.

“What are we doing?” Chris spoke, but both boys wanted to know.

“We're trying to establish if we're being followed, and shake off our tail if we have one. Thankfully I don't think we do. Okay, drive on, Scott.”

So the driver's name was Scott. He pulled out into the stream of traffic, and this time drove fast. Very fast. It was an exciting ride. The speedometer the boys could both see over the driver's shoulder was reading high, often over a hundred miles per hour. Ricky had never travelled that fast in a car. Scott was very skilled, weaving from lane to lane to pass slower vehicles.

They must have travelled about fifty miles when they pulled off the dual carriageway and headed for the centre of a big town. Without warning, Scott swung the wheel sharply left and skidded to a halt in front of a car rental depot. They all piled out, Scott ran into the office, flashed a card which galvanised the desk clerk into action. He led Scott out and opened the roll-up door of a garage which contained a dark green Audi A6 saloon. Scott took the keys from the clerk, they all piled in, Mr Farquharson again in the front with the driver, and they were off again.

“Didn't you have to sign anything?” asked Chris.

For the first time Scott, or possibly Mr Scott, spoke.”

“Best not to ask, young sir. He was expecting us. It was pre-arranged. But yes, usually you do have to sign stuff at those places.”

“Where are we going?” Ricky asking, this time. And it was Mr Farquharson who answered.

“We're going to somewhere safe where your enemies won't find you. Like I said. And it will be comfortable, I think I can promise you. You'll soon see, we're nearly there.”

And sure enough within five minutes they'd turned off the road onto a long drive which wound through parkland to a big mansion house, apparently now a country hotel. They pulled up to the front door and a man in uniform came out to meet them. They all piled out of the car and Scott handed the keys to the uniformed man who jumped in the car and drove it around the side of the house and into one of a row of garages. He shut and locked the garage door, Ricky noticed just before he followed the others up the stone staircase and in through the enormous double doors into a big marble-floored foyer. It was a hotel, a very posh one. Neither Chris or Ricky had ever been in a hotel so impressive.

“You are my nephews and Scott is my private secretary. I am an author of historical novels and I'm researching my new book. We've been booked in here since three weeks ago – a precaution my department took in case it was necessary. I expected to be cancelling the booking but now it has come in useful.”

The man at the reception desk had Mr Farquharson sign a piece of paper, and the man in uniform who had garaged the car came back in and the receptionist called him over and handed him three keys, and asked them all to follow the steward who would show them their rooms. They followed him up the broad sweep of an imposing staircase with an enormous chandelier hanging above it, all marble but covered in plush red carpet. From the top of the staircase they walked under an archway and along a wide brightly lit corridor, carpeted in the same plush red axminster, and at the end of the corridor he opened in turn the last three doors. Great big rooms were revealed, each with doors out onto a verandah and a swimming pool beyond.

“We have missed lunch. What can you provide us to keep us going until the evening?” Ricky hadn't even thought about food since Mr Farquharson had harangued the police sergeant about not providing them refreshments, but now suddenly he realised how hungry he was. And he was very glad when the steward pointed them to the room service menu and invited them to phone through an order at any time.

Mr Farquharson chose the room at the end, Scott the first room which put the boys together in the room in between.

“Settle into your rooms, order anything you like, and we'll meet again at 7 and we'll go to the restaurant for a meal. You can use the pool if you like, or anything else. Don't wander away from the hotel, though!”

“Er, we don't have any luggage. So we don't have wash things, clean clothes, swimming trunks. Won't the staff think it's a bit odd?”

“They're used to odd things here, I think it's likely people often turn up with no luggage. There's a shop, they call it a boutique, on the second floor and you'll find you can buy some clothes there, and wash things too. They're used to people needing these things. Don't worry about the money, you'll find everything is very expensive, but needs must, and my department is picking up the bill.”

Chris looked at Ricky. Both boys' eyes lit up. “Wow!”

First things first. They investigated the bathroom, Ricky went in first and Chris read the menu, then Chris went in and Ricky made his choice. When Chris came back they phoned their order through and flopped on the bed until their meal arrived. Kebabs, lamb and shredded green leaves and onion in a bread pocket drenched in lemon juice. It was a meal you could get from a take-away near their school and the boys liked to treat themselves occasionally, it reminded them of their happy times in Jordan. These kebabs, however were rather different than those served at Kosta's Greek and English take-away. These, for instance, contained slices of roast lamb, and olives, and peppers, and mint as well as lemon juice, and the bread was wonderfully toasted so that it cracked when they bit into it. It was just what they wanted.

They finished their meal, washed down with glasses of orange juice which must have been squeezed out of oranges just minutes earlier. It was now about four o'clock and they had no doubt how best to use their time until the evening meal. They went up to the boutique and bought lots of underwear and shirts and a pair of trousers each, and swimming trunks, and toothbrushes, and charged it all to the room bill. Back in their room they changed into trunks and took a towel each from the bathroom and went out to the pool. They had the pool to themselves until Scott joined them and swam lengths, so they enjoyed themselves, using the spring board and larking about. They had a great time, it was like the pool at the big hotel they'd frequented as kids in Amman, Jordan. Not at all like swimming at school, where there was always a teacher to tell you to smarten up and swim lengths properly.