‘What about the Russians?’ I cut in. ‘Or the Chinese? Let’s face it, eleven young men have vanished into thin air. What happened to them?’
Charles stared down at the photographs. ‘The strange thing is that I vaguely recognize all these faces. Those bony skulls, and those eyes… somewhere. Look, James, we may have the makings of a new programme here. This English prodigy, Martin Sherrington, he should be easy to track down. Then the German, Herter. Find them and we may be on to something.’
We set off for Canterbury the next morning. The address, which I had been given by a friend who was science editor of the Daily Express, was on a housing estate behind the big General Electric radio and television plant on the edge of the city. We drove past the lines of grey-brick houses until we found the Sherringtons’ at the end of a row. Rising out of the remains of a greenhouse was a huge ham operator’s radio mast, its stay-wires snapped and rusting. In the eight years since his tremendous mind had revealed itself to the local grammar-school master, Martin Sherrington might have gone off to the ends of the world, to Cape Kennedy, the Urals or Peking.
In fact, not only were neither Martin nor his parents there, but it took us all of two days to find anyone who even remembered them at all. The present tenants of the house, a frayed-looking couple, had been there two years; and before them a large family of criminal inclinations who had been forced out by bailiffs and police. The headmaster of the grammar-school had retired to Scotland. Fortunately the school matron remembered Martin — ‘a brilliantly clever boy, we were all very proud of him. To tell the truth, though, I can’t say we felt much affection for him; he didn’t invite it.’ She knew nothing of Mrs Sherrington, and as for the boy’s father, they assumed he had died in the war.
Finally, thanks to a cashier at the accounts office of the local electric company, we found where Mrs Sherrington had moved.
As soon as I saw that pleasant white-walled villa in its prosperous suburb on the other side of Canterbury, I felt that the trail was warming. Something about the crisp gravel and large, well-trimmed garden reminded me of another house — Georges Duval’s near Paris.
From the roof of my car parked next to the hedge we watched a handsome, strong-shouldered woman strolling in the rose garden.
‘She’s come up in the world,’ I commented. ‘Who pays for this pad?’
The meeting was curious. This rather homely, quietly dressed woman in her late thirties gazed at us across the silver tea-set like a tamed Mona Lisa. She told us that we had absolutely no chance of interviewing Martin on television.
‘So much interest in your son was roused at the time, Mrs Sherrington. Can you tell us about his subsequent academic career? Which university did he go to?’
‘His education was completed privately.’ As for his present whereabouts, she believed he was now abroad, working for a large international organization whose name she was not at liberty to divulge.
‘Not a government department, Mrs Sherrington?’
She hesitated, but only briefly. ‘I am told the organization is intimately connected with various governments, but I have no real knowledge.’
Her voice was over-precise, as if she were hiding her real accent. As we left, I realized how lonely her life was; but as Judy remarked, she had probably been lonely ever since Martin Sherrington had first learned to speak.
Our trip to Germany was equally futile. All traces of Wolfgang Herter had vanished from the map. A few people in the small village near the Frankfurt autobahn remembered him, and the village postman said that Frau Herter had moved to Switzerland, to a lakeside villa near Lucerne. A woman of modest means and education, but the son had no doubt done very well.
I asked one or two questions.
Wolfgang’s father? Frau Herter had arrived with the child just after the war; the husband had probably perished in one of the nameless prison-camps or battlegrounds of World War II.
The balding man in the light grey suit? Yes, he had definitely come to the village, helping Frau Herter arrange her departure.
‘Back to London,’ I said to Judy. ‘This needs bigger resources than you and I have.’
As we flew back Judy said: ‘One thing I don’t understand. Why have the fathers always disappeared?’
‘A good question. Putting it crudely, love, a unique genetic coupling produced these twelve boys. It almost looks as if someone has torn the treasure map in two and kept one half. Think of the stock bank they’re building up, enough sperm on ice in a eugenic cocktail to repopulate the entire planet.’
