Passenger to Frankfurt - Agatha Christie [74]
‘Absurd nonsense,’ said Mr Lazenby. ‘Once all this is put a stop to–the whole thing will collapse. This is all quite ridiculous. What can they do?’ Cedric Lazenby sounded merely querulous.
Herr Spiess shook his heavy, wise head.
‘You may ask. I tell you the answer, which is–they do not know. They don’t know where they’re going. They don’t know what is going to be done with them.’
‘You mean they’re not the real leaders?’
‘They are the young marching Heroes, treading their path to glory, on the stepping-stones of violence, of pain, of hatred. They have now their following not only in South America and Europe. The cult has travelled north. In the United States, there too the young men riot, they march, they follow the banner of the Young Siegfried. They are taught his ways, they are taught to kill, to enjoy pain, they are taught the rules of the Death’s Head, the rules of Himmler. They are being trained, you see. They are being secretly indoctrinated. They do not know what they’re being trained for. But we do, some of us at least. And you? In this country?’
‘Four or five of us, perhaps,’ said Colonel Pikeaway.
‘In Russia they know, in America they have begun to know. They know that there are the followers of the Young Hero, Siegfried, based on the Norse Legends, and that a young Siegfried is the leader. That that is their new religion. The religion of the glorious boy, the golden triumph of youth. In him the old Nordic Gods have risen again.
‘But that, of course,’ said Herr Spiess, dropping his voice to a commonplace tone, ‘that of course is not the simple prosaic truth. There are some powerful personalities behind this. Evil men with first-class brains. A first-class financier, a great industrialist, someone who controls mines, oil, stores of uranium, who owns scientists of the top class, and those are the ones, a committee of men, who themselves do not look particularly interesting or extraordinary, but nevertheless have got control. They control the sources of power, and control through certain means of their own the young men who kill and the young men who are slaves. By control of drugs they acquire slaves. Slaves in every country who little by little progress from soft drugs to hard drugs and who are then completely subservient, completely dependent on men whom they do not even know but who secretly own them body and soul. Their craving need for a particular drug makes them slaves, and in due course, these slaves prove to be no good, because of their dependence on drugs, they will only be capable of sitting in apathy dreaming sweet dreams, and so they will be left to die, or even helped to die. They will not inherit that kingdom in which they believe. Strange religions are being deliberately introduced to them. The gods of the old days disguised.’
‘And permissive sex also plays its part, I suppose?’
‘Sex can destroy itself. In old Roman times the men who steeped themselves in vice, who were oversexed, who ran sex to death until they were bored and weary of sex, sometimes fled from it and went out into the desert and became Anchorites like St Simeon Stylites. Sex will exhaust itself. It does its work for the time being, but it cannot rule you as drugs rule you. Drugs and sadism and the love of power and hatred. A desire for pain for its own sake. The pleasures of inflicting it. They are teaching themselves the pleasures of evil. Once the pleasures of evil get a hold on you, you cannot draw back.’
‘My dear Chancellor–I really can’t believe you–I mean, well