Hugh Burden

Margaret Fuchs (Valerie Leon) is in bed dreaming: in an ancient Egyptian tomb some priests are burying Queen Tera (also Valerie Leon) who looks like Margaret. As part of the ritual they chop her hand off, take it outside and throw it to the jackals. They go back into tomb and place the lid on the sarcophagus. Outside, a jackal dies on the ground with its throat ripped and bloody as the hand crawls away. As the priests leave the tomb a sandstorm appears and they all die with lacerated throats too. The severed hand crawls away. Margaret awakes from her nightmare. Her father Professor Julian Fuchs (Andrew Weir) comes into bedroom to comfort her. Another man, Corbeck (James Villiers), watches then from the window of an empty house opposite. Next morning the Professor gives Margaret a ring containing a large ruby. She puts it on showing she has a scar completely across her wrist before going off with her boyfriend Tod (Mark Edwards) in his sports car, observed again from by Corbeck from opposite. In a mental hospital two orderlies look at Berrigan (George Coulouris) in his cell which has a desk and some furnishings. He is seeing some lights that look like stars on his carpet. Tod inspects Margaret's ring closely. He thinks it must have come from her father's expedition. Tod says he will take it to a friend who can give them more information. At the mental hospital, Corbeck visits Berrigan. He tries to take an ornamental cobra from the wardrobe but Berrigan attacks him and the orderlies intervene and make him leave. Tod and Margaret visit expert Geoffrey Dandridge (Hugh Burden) to show him the ring but when he sees Margaret he collapses. Star-like lights appear in the ring. Fortune teller Helen Dickerson (Rosalie Crutchley) is looking into her crystal ball to read a fortune for her customer but sees the same star-like lights too. She is alarmed and asks the customer to leave. Later, at the end of the day, Geoffrey sends his assistant home then goes to a cupboard and takes out and opens a box containing a jackal's skull. Corbeck arrives and Geoffrey explains that he has seen a woman with the ring. Corbeck explains to Geoffrey she is Margaret Fuchs, daughter of Professor Fuchs, and it will soon be her birthday and soon be time. That night Margaret dreams again about the soul of Queen Tera living all these years while her mortal body has waited. Her time is drawing near and it was she who guided people to her tomb to find her. In a flashback, explorers Professor Fuchs, Geoffrey, Corbeck, Berrigan and Helen Dickerson enter Queen Tera's tomb. Around the tomb are several ornaments around including one of a cobra snake, the skull of jackal, and a cat. They open the sarcophagus and see Queen Tera's body with the hand severed. The hand is on the floor next to the sarcophagus with the red ruby ring on a finger. The Professor takes the ring off and from its inscriptions identifies the queen as Tera. At the exact same time, Mrs Fuchs is in hospital giving birth to baby but she dies in the process. The baby at first appears to be stillborn but then doctors hear its heart start beating. The severed arm of Queen Tera in the sarcophagus starts bleeding fresh blood. Margaret wakes up from her dream and tells Tod she must leave immediately. In the basement of his house Professor Fuchs opens the sarcophagus and looks at Queen Tera's body. Margaret and Tod arrive, observed by Corbeck opposite, but there is an ominous feeling and sound from the basement. They break down the door to the basement and rush to the Professor who has cuts on his neck. He instructs them to call Doctor Putnum (Aubrey Morris). They put the Professor in bed but he is unresponsive. Doctor Putnum says the Professor will be like that for a few days and cannot reveal much about Professor's wishes other than his work would astound the world of science. That night Margaret goes to the basement and looks at Queen Tera's body. Corbeck arrives and explains the ruby is the symbol of the god to come. The Professor life's work was to discover the legend of the queen and find the truth, and he and Corbeck and their team searched for her tomb together. There was an attack on one of their members in tomb and fresh blood from Tera's wrist at exactly the same time Margaret was born in the image of Tera. Tod arrives and they agree Tera has some kind of astral power which will be directed against them if they don't understand it. They agree they must contact all old members of team to help reunite Tera with her soul. Tod and Margaret visit Berrigan at the mental hospital. When he sees Margaret he is frightened. Margaret realises he thinks she is Tera so she pretends to be Tera and asks for her familiar - her snake. He says he has not got it, then breaks down causing the orderlies to enter and restrain him and Tod and Margaret have to leave. Back home, Putnum is checking on the Professor. He is still unconscious and the doctor says there will be some paralysis on one side. He says the Professor wanted to protect her from the artefacts in the basement. Tod reads the Professor's journal. The simultaneous events of the Professor entering the tomb and Margaret's birth were a unity created by Tera. Tera had prepared for an abstract metaphysical state by lying in her sarcophagus, creating an astral body with freewill and a conscious intelligence. He believes this power could be used to keep people alive for a long time in suspended animation. Margaret says she feels Tera is dreaming of loneliness, of ancient land and times, when love was a divine possession. In the mental hospital that night the orderlies tease Berrigan with the cobra then leave it on the desk where he can see it when they leave. He struggles in his strait-jacket then goes still and listens. Suddenly the snake disappears from the desk and he sees its shadow approaching him. The window bursts open and wind blows everything around but he cannot escape. The snake approaches and strikes him. He dies with his cuts to his throat. The next morning the Professor wakes up. Margaret explains he had a terrible shock. She asks about the ring and why would it protect her. The Professor explains the priest severed it because they thought it was source of her evil. She says Berrigan is dead and the snake has appeared in their basement. She mentions Corbeck but the Professor implores her not to have anything to do with him. She asks where Tera's hand is but he cannot answer. Out of the window she sees Corbeck going into house opposite and she goes across to confront him. They argue over the facts but she says they need her and she is interested in the power that she may now have. Corbeck says Tera is beyond good and evil and they need to understand her. He says the relics from her tomb are needed for her resurrection from the dead, to provide power over life and death. He says her father is weak and cannot be a part of it. She says she will do anything to have the power so Corbeck says they will do it together. At Geoffrey's, his assistant tells him about Berrigan's death as she leaves at the end of the day. He realises that the jackal skull is significant and takes it out. Margaret arrives and says she wants the skull. He panics and tries to escape out of the window and down the fire escape but he drops the box. As he looks for it he hears a jackal call. He flees in fright. Tod arrives wondering what is going on. Margaret will not tell him anything and leaves. He looks around and hears the jackal call from outside. He investigates, going down the fire escape where he finds the empty box that housed the skull. Hearing noises then a scream he finds Geoffrey's body with the throat lacerated and bloody. He sees the shadow of a jackal running away. Margaret looks at Tera's body in the sarcophagus. The wrist is still bleeding fresh blood. Corbeck arrives and together they see that both the cobra and the jackal's skull are now present in the basement. Tod arrives and tries to stop Corbeck and Margaret. When they refuse he drives away to get help. Margaret screams wishing Tod dead. Tod crashes his car into a tree, his throat lacerated and covered in blood. She is frightened but Corbeck says she must not weaken and she is coming of age. Margaret collapses to the floor. The Professor staggers down to the basement and sees Margaret lying on the floor. Corbeck explains that Margaret no longer exists and soon Tera will be reborn and the Professor cannot do anything to stop it. Corbeck leaves to get the final artefact, the third and final phase of Tera's soul. Margaret dreams in bed watched by the Professor and Doctor Putnam. The Professor insists Putnum give her an injection to ensure she will not wake but while he is preparing it she wakes up. He tries to convince her to go back to bed but she uses her willpower to kill him. He dies with a lacerated throat like the others and Margaret flees. The Professor returns to find Putnum's body, then Corbeck arrives and helps the Professor move the body downstairs. Corbeck says they need each other and they control Tera not the other way around. Corbeck knows where Margaret has gone. Margaret arrives at Helen Dickerson's house. She is afraid and tries to strike Margaret but cannot do so. Instead she concedes and gives Margaret the statue of the cat. As Margaret leaves, she uses her willpower again to kill Helen. Corbeck arrives and sees Helen's body. Margaret reappears at the door and tells Corbeck to come. The Professor finds the scroll of life in the basement then sees that the statue of the cat has appeared. He looks at the severed hand in its box, then Margaret and Corbeck arrive. Corbeck takes the severed hand and places it back in the sarcophagus next to the wrist. The Professor implores him not to read the scroll saying Tera has abused her power and to wait, but Margaret says she is ready and where there is good there must be the opposite. Corbeck reads the scroll of life, to reunite Tera's soul and body and rekindle her astral spirit. The hand reattaches itself to the wrist. Margaret says to the Professor it was Tera that lead them to the tomb. The Professor realises Tera is in Margaret and Corbeck must not finish scroll. They stab Corbeck to death with some relics but Tera awakes. They try to kill her too but she kills the Professor first. Margaret manages to stab her but the building collapses in on top of them all. In a hospital, the medical staff have no idea who the woman all bandaged in the bed is. Her eyes open wide but cannot speak clearly from underneath all the bandages.

Berlin in the 1960s is a city divided between Cold War lines with inhabitants of the Communist East trying to escape to the West. Even with the infamous Berlin Wall these escapes are common and successful. Colonel Stok (Oskar Homolka), the head of intelligence in Russia's Berlin section and the one responsible for preventing escapes over the Wall, contacts British Intelligence and informs them that he wants to defect to the West. British spy Harry Palmer (Michael Caine) is sent to West Berlin to find out if Stok's offer is genuine and arrange his escape. Palmer was once involved in black market dealings in Berlin and was given the choice of joining British Intelligence or going to jail. Returning to the city, he is re-united with his old associate, German national Johnny Vulkan (Paul Hubschmid), who also works for Palmer's superior Colonel Ross (Guy Doleman). Vulkan arranges for Palmer to go to East Berlin to meet Colonel Stok. In exchange for his co-operation with the British, Stok requests a meagre stipend, a house in the country and his escape must be carried out by Kreutzmann (Günter Meisner), a Berlin gangster responsible for the most successful escapes. Stok claims that Kreutzmann's escapes have lead his department to be investigated and that he must get out before things turn nasty. Returning to West Berlin, Palmer is picked up by a beautiful young woman called Samantha Steel (Eva Renzi), who invites him to a party but instead takes him to her flat for drinks, dinner and presumably more as Palmer is next seen leaving her place in the morning. Not taken in by Samantha's charms, Palmer hires a burglar to search her apartment to figure out who she really is. The thief discovers a number of passports of various nationalities under different variations of her name and a little black book in her safe which lists names of men next to million-dollar figures. Returning to his hotel room, Palmer finds that it too has been ransacked. Palmer negotiates an arrangement with Kreutzmann without revealing the details of the one whom the British want to get across the Wall. As part of his payment, Kreutzmann demands a set of identity papers. Palmer tests Stok in order to determine how sincere he is about defecting. The test seems conclusive and Palmer returns to London. From Hallam (Hugh Burden), the documents manager back at MI5, Palmer receives documents in the name of Paul Louis Broum. As he places the envelope in his briefcase for return to Berlin, he notices the same name on the photocopy of Samantha's little black book, with the figure $2,000,000 next to it. Palmer returns to Samantha and makes a point of letting her see the envelope with Broum's name. Dropping all pretence, she admits that she is an Israeli agent. Broum is a Nazi war criminal who stole millions from the Jews during the war and hid it in a Swiss bank account. The Israelis need the papers in order to reclaim the money. Although she threatens to kill him, Palmer refuses to give her the documents since he needs them to pay Kreutzmann. Kreutzmann and his men murder an elderly East Berliner whose body is claimed by a relative in the West - actually someone employed by Kreutzmann. A body transfer is arranged but as the hearse makes its way from the morgue to the checkpoint, it is hijacked by Kreutzmann's men and replaced with another which contains a different coffin. The coffin is taken to West Berlin and delivered to an abandoned warehouse where Palmer and his associate Vulkan are waiting. But when the coffin in opened it is found to contain the dead body of Kreutzmann! Stok's whole defection was simply a bluff to lure Kreutzmann out and put an end to the escapes he so brilliantly organised. Although well informed, he and his men never knew in advance that Stok was the intended client. Before Palmer can get away from Kreutzmann's outraged accomplices, he is knocked unconscious by Vulkan who gets hold of the Broum documents only to be held up by Samantha and two other Israeli agents who take away the papers. Vulkan tells Palmer that he was knocked out by another of Kreutzmann's men. They then go to a safe house where British officials are waiting to debrief Stok. Stok of course is not there, meaning that a lot of valuable time and money has been wasted. Palmer's boss, Colonel Ross, is also present and Palmer tells him about the Broum documents. Ross was unaware that they were being used as part of the deal with Kreutzmann. He then reveals to Palmer that towards the end of the war, Paul Louis Broum, a guard at a concentration camp, murdered a resistance fighter called Johnny Vulkan and assumed his identity. Ross got hold of the documents and used them to blackmail Broum into working for him. Now that the documents are missing, Ross has nothing with which to keep a hold on Broum/Vulkan and cannot risk him defecting. He therefore orders Palmer to kill Broum. Palmer won't kill anyone in cold blood and allows Broum/Vulkan to get away. Back in West Berlin, Palmer meets Stok who is over for a routine meeting with his Western counterparts. The affable Russian confirms that his supposed defection was just a trap to get rid of Kreutzmann. He and Palmer even joke about the latter himself defecting to the East; Stok advises: "If you need to get out in a hurry, ask Vulkan. He knows the way." Meanwhile, Broum/Vulkan goes to Samantha's flat, murders an Israeli agent and gets the documents back. He then meets Hallam, the Intelligence official who gave Palmer the Broum documents in London. However, the documents that they now have are in fact forgeries made by one of Palmer's underworld Berlin contacts. Hallam goes to Palmer, saying that he has been sent by Ross to get the real documents back. Palmer never believed Hallam's claim that he selected the Broum documents at random and forces him to admit that he is in league with Broum: they took advantage of the situation to get the documents out of London and now intend to use them in order to claim the Nazi loot that Broum deposited in the Swiss banks. Palmer and Hallam go to a quiet part of the Berlin wall through which Broum and Hallam intend to slip into the East and thus to Switzerland, but Broum kills Hallam and makes away with the documents. However he is subsequently killed by the Israeli agents who were tailing Palmer. Palmer lets them take the genuine Broum documents. When Vulkan's body is discovered, Ross is satisfied that he will just be another martyr shot while escaping to the West. Palmer however turns down Ross's offer of a bonus for his work and leaves. By the time of the next film, Billion Dollar Brain (1967), Palmer has resigned from British Intelligence.

At an RAF base the control tower reports one aircraft is missing as a squadron returns from a nighttime sortie. A title screen takes the viewer back 15 hours earlier. Veteran officer George has volunteered for one last mission, he replaces an American sergeant as tail gunner. The crew have their lunch, the officers in the wardroom and the non-coms in their mess. The Yank is upset and gives his $3 nylon stockings to another airman Wellington medium bomber B for Bertie takes off at 21:40 hrs to bomb the Mercedes-Benz plant in Stuttgart. The crew settles in for the long flight. Gunners load their weapons. They joke about German girls, a few familiar with Stuttgart from before the war. They pass over the Dutch coast. Flak guns rock the plane. They pass over the railroad to Cologne and dump a load of leaflets. They fly into searchlights, the gunners shoot down at the lights. They watch a city in flames being bombed. They open the bomb bay doors and lower altitude, drop the load and turn to home. The starboard engine is hit, the navigator plots a straight route home over Mainz. The pilot tries to evade the constant ack-ack. They make it to Holland. Now the port engine dies, they decide to bail out. They plan to follow the rail-line and join up later. The pilot John gives the jump command one by one, he slips out last. All bail out. The plane recovers and flies on by itself. In the morning the crew gather in a wooded area. They have a smoke, George takes command as Bob is missing, John seems to be in over his head. They check a map and look to the coast. George prepares and strips off his uniform tunic. Some local kids arrive, their dog barks. One flyer knows some Dutch and is able to determine the kids are friendly. The kids show their resistance symbol safety pins, and offer to take them to the school marm who knows English. In the village the crew are left in one room while the locals discuss. Els Meerten comes in and introduces herself. She grills them and says no plane has crashed nearby. She asks for proof they are who they say, suspecting they are a German trick. Frank shows a news clipping of his wife's upcoming broadcast. She leaves and they then note the orange flowers and the hidden picture of their queen, indicating their national loyalty. They are taken in to see the others. It's friendly and a pile of food is on the table, the men tuck in and are given Bols aqavit. Everyone wonders where Bob is, Els is worried if the Germans find him. They are 58 km from the coast. The Dutch offer to take them to their Catholic Church, part of the way there, two Brits are hesitant as they are Protestants. The Dutch will also dig up the parachutes and hide them better. A couple of the men are disguised as Dutch women with clogs. George gets a proper suit. They make fake travel papers. The large group bicycles down a road past windmills. A German armored car tears past with a siren. They arrive at church and sit in the pews. A man comes in and passes the word Bob's parachute has been found. A vehicle approaches, noisy Germans are outside. The priest continues the Latin rites as an Officer enters. A woman has a bit of RAF parachute under her skirt, they manage to hide it. The German looks around then leaves without a word. The organist starts up and all sing loudly. They make up another travel pass to be a wedding party. The Aircrew have a nice meal and drinks at a large house. Their host complains about quislings, upset his son is earning money from the traitors, bringing phonograph records to the Germans. The quisling DeJong comes in talking tough. George pulls his gun and the Dutch man is taken prisoner. Outside they hear their anthem playing from the German barracks. De Jong is worried the Germans will be after him for slipping the Dutch records . The older host is happy now realizing his son pulled a trick on both the quisling and the invaders. Another travel pass is made to attend the football game. The crowd surrounds a pitch but a German patrol car announces only 200 can gather. As the crowd mills about the German loudspeaker retracts and allows the Dutch to watch their game. The Brits see their lost mate Bob there. The six ride in the back of a lorry with a cow, they arrive by the North Sea. The truck drives through a heavy fortified area. Jo de Vries meets them to guide, the Germans trust her as an ally. The men sneak in a warehouse loft above a group of singing and laughing Germans. It is a barracks for 200 soldiers. de Vries takes them to her quarters, they drop in from the attic. They all relax, she has a radio and tells them to only open the door to her special V code knock. The men listen to Frank's wife singing on the BBC. The men get dressed in their uniforms. de Vries returns, Frank kisses her hand in thanks. She asks them to see her husband in London, he is an announcer for Radio Orange. She explains they just need to wait for an air raid so they can escape to a rowboat. They have to wait. The next day de Vries dresses up and toasts the men with drinks. Her family motto is We Can Take It. George graciously thanks her on behalf of the crew and promises they will sweep out the Germans. Suddenly the air raid sirens wail, the Germans run for shelter. Jo heaps scorn on the Germans wishing the rest of Europe could see how they duck and cover. The crew head downstairs for the rowboat. The Dutch woman needs to distract a couple of Germans. The Brits silently take out another enemy officer arriving in the cellar. George goes and takes out the other two Germans. de Vries gives some final guidance and says she will take care of the three bodies, wishing the Bertie crew good luck. In the dark they row down a river and must pass a guardpoint. The Germans open a swing bridge to let out fishing boats. As the bridge starts to close George gives the order to row, the German guard above whistles away his troubles. He then notices the rowboat and fires his rifle. They make it far enough away but George has been hit. They then make it to a rescue buoy out at sea. Two MTB approach. The Brits have two prisoners in the floating container but think the boats are Germans. It's the RN though, and after some inter-service ribbing they take the buoy in tow to Dover as George is too weak to be moved. Three months later PO George Corbett is OK and assigned to a Lancaster, ready to fly a sortie to Berlin.