Passenger to Frankfurt - Agatha Christie [61]
‘They make money out of it?’
‘Enormous sums of money. But it’s more than just an association of Pushers. It has a more sinister side to it. It’s being used to finish off the weaklings amongst the young, shall we say, to make them complete slaves. Slaves so that they cannot live and exist or do jobs for their employers without a supply of drugs.’
Kenwood whistled.
‘That’s a bad show, isn’t it? Don’t you know at all who those Drug Pushers are?’
‘Some of them, yes. But only the lesser fry. Not the real controllers. Drug headquarters are, so far as we can judge, in Central Asia and the Levant. They get delivered from there in the tyres of cars, in cement, in concrete, in all kinds of machinery and industrial goods. They’re delivered all over the world and passed on as ordinary trade goods to where they are meant to go.
‘“F” stands for finance. Money! A money spider’s web in the centre of it all. You’ll have to go to Mr Robinson to tell you about money. According to a memo here, money is coming very largely from America and there’s also a headquarters in Bavaria. There’s a vast reserve in South Africa, based on gold and diamonds. Most of the money is going to South America. One of the principal controllers, if I may so put it, of money, is a very powerful and talented woman. She’s old now: must be near to death. But she is still strong and active. Her name was Charlotte Krapp. Her father owned the vast Krapp yards in Germany. She was a financial genius herself and operated in Wall Street. She accumulated fortune after fortune by investments in all parts of the world. She owns transport, she owns machinery, she owns industrial concerns. All these things. She lives in a vast castle in Bavaria–from there she directs a flow of money to different parts of the globe.
‘“S” represents science–the new knowledge of chemical and biological warfare–Various young scientists have defected–There is a nucleus of them in the US, we believe, vowed and dedicated to the cause of anarchy.’
‘Fighting for anarchy? A contradiction in terms. Can there be such a thing?’
‘You believe in anarchy if you are young. You want a new world, and to begin with you must pull down the old one–just as you pull down a house before you build a new one to replace it. But if you don’t know where you are going, if you don’t know where you are being lured to go, or even pushed to go, what will the new world be like, and where will the believers be when they get it? Some of them slaves, some of them blinded by hate, some by violence and sadism, both preached and practised. Some of them–and God help those–still idealistic, still believing as people did in France at the time of the French Revolution that that revolution would bring prosperity, peace, happiness, contentment to its people.’
‘And what are we doing about all this? What are we proposing to do about it?’ It was Admiral Blunt who spoke.
‘What are we doing about it? All that we can. I assure you, all you who are here, we are doing all that we can. We have people working for us in every country. We have agents, inquirers, those who gather information, and bring it back here–’
THE RING
F Big Charlotte — Bavaria
A Eric Olafsson — Sweden, Industrialist, Armaments
D Said to go by the name of Demetrios — Smyrna, Drugs
S Dr Sarolensky — Colorado, USA, Physicist-Chemist. Suspicion only
J — A woman. Goes by Code name of Juanita. Said to be dangerous. No knowledge of her real name.
‘Which is very necessary,’ said Colonel Pikeaway. ‘First we’ve got to know–know who’s who, who’s with us and who’s against us. And after that we’ve got to see what, if anything, can be done.’
‘Our name for this diagram is The Ring. Here’s a list of what we know about the Ring leaders. Those with a query mean that we know only the name they go by–or alternatively we only suspect that they