"Did he tell your agent why he wanted to see his friend?" Dawson asked eagerly.
"No," Colonel Welsh replied. "That's one of the questions he wouldn't answer, though my agent asked it more than once as he heard more and more of the strange story. It's funny, but though Nikolsk had saved my agent's life, and believed him definitely on Russia's side, he couldn't get it out of his head that my agent might rob him of his great secret. Yes, you're guessing it. Nikolsk's secret knowledge of the Nazi war plan that he had learned while in Germany. Oddly enough, he told my agent every detail of his meeting with Agent Jones. Of how he had torn the secret information in half, given half to Jones, and destroyed the half that he kept. He told my agent all that, but he wouldn't tell him one word of what the information was about. And do you know why?"
"Didn't trust your agent, obviously," Freddy Farmer spoke up.
"Yes, that's my guess, too," Dawson added.
"No," Colonel Welsh said with a vigorous shake of his head. "True, he didn't tell my agent what his half of the information was because he was afraid of being betrayed. But he wouldn't reveal anything about the other half—because he had forgotten it!"
"Forgotten it, for cat's sake!" Dawson exploded. "But—?"
"Just what I am about to explain," Colonel Welsh cut in. "He swore blind that what he knew was of no use at all without the half that he had given to Jones. And to get it all together he had to see either Jones or his friend. He felt that Jones was dead, but—but he still held to the crazy belief that his friend would return to Tobolsk one day, and that together they would place in Joseph Stalin's hands something more valuable than a hundred armored divisions, or a thousand squadrons of aircraft!"
As the echo of the last died away, a tingling silence settled over the room. Dawson had the insane urge to pinch himself hard just to make sure he wasn't sleeping through a very cockeyed dream. He knew, and had seen for himself, many of the upside down things that come out of war. But this dizzy tale was a new high for everything. When he tried to mull it over, and gain some sense from it, it simply made his brain hurt.
"This is certainly something, sir," he mumbled, and gave the Colonel a searching look. "And you are going to say that your agent didn't learn a darn thing, and had to leave it that way? Gosh! I think I would have slung Nikolsk over my shoulder and high-tailed to Moscow as fast as I could, and counted on Joseph Stalin, himself, getting him to talk."
"Don't worry," the Colonel said, with a grim, smile, "my agent thought of that idea, too. But, of course, it was impossible. He even suggested the idea, but Nikolsk would have no part of it. He insisted that what little he might be able to tell Stalin wouldn't help at all. He had to wait for either his friend, or Agent Jones, to turn up. And he was going to park right there in Tobolsk, keeping out of the way of the Nazis, until either of those things happened."