by Iain King
‘Battle of Tannenberg?’
‘Correct – and World War Three started with an eclipse, as well.’
Now Myles knew he was being ribbed. ‘We haven’t had World War Three.’
Frank chuckled. ‘No – but we almost did. Remember 1999, when the NATO commander ordered his troops to take Kosovo’s main airport – the one held by the Russians? The attack was only stopped when a subordinate refused to obey. He “Didn’t want to start World War Three”, he said. Well, I discovered the centre of the big eclipse in the summer of 1999 was just a few miles from ... wait for it … Kosovo!’
Myles looked sideways at his friend, wondering whether Frank was taking the eclipses too seriously. Frank hadn’t noticed – he was too absorbed.
‘… And there was also a very local solar eclipse, exactly over Iceland in October 1986, when Reagan and Gorbachev held their big summit there. Some people say it was the summit which ended the Cold War. Did you know that?’
Myles didn’t answer, as he realised his old friend had become even more eccentric with the passing years. Trying to find sense in the movement of planetary bodies was not a good sign.
Ting …
The faint metallic noise came from far off, further down the corridor. They looked at each other, surprised.
Both men remained silent for a moment.
Frank shrugged, but Myles couldn’t dismiss it. He started walking, then jogging towards the noise – along the underground corridor, to where the lighting wasn’t so good.
He stopped to listen again.
Nothing.
His instincts were confusing him. He halted, tried to sense what could have caused the sound, then wondered if he had imagined it. He was about to turn back when he noticed an empty box file on the vault floor.
He picked it up and called over to Frank. ‘Was this you?’
Frank indicated it wasn’t.
Myles looked at the label on the empty file.
De-Nazification interviews, 1945 – box 4
It must have fallen down somehow – although that didn’t explain why it was empty.
He peered into the darkness, looking for a shelf with a space on it.
Something didn’t seem right. The shelves were messy, as if someone had been rummaging through the archives. But there was something else, too.
Myles froze, and heard movement close by.
Someone was there.
He peered into the gloom, searching for whatever he could find, whatever didn’t belong.
Then he saw them: a pair of eyes.
Scared eyes.
They were looking straight back at him.
Suddenly a man rushed out, ramming into Myles who tumbled to the floor, box files raining down on his head.
He could see the intruder running away. The man had something clutched in his hands. He was heading back towards the stairway.
Myles called out, ‘Frank – stop him!’
But Frank was too shocked to react. The thief fled past him.
Myles jumped back to his feet and started chasing him down the corridor, pounding up the museum’s metallic stairs three steps at a time. His clumsiness made him trip, but he recovered.
Myles raced back past the trench exhibition, ducking under the beam as he ran up the main staircase and towards the ground floor.
He heard Frank’s call out behind him. ‘I’ll get the police …’
But it was no time to get the police.
Myles stumbled again as he reached the top of the stairs, falling onto the polished surface of the main hallway. Quickly he pushed himself back up.
He scanned the exhibits: rockets, the American army jeep, tanks, information displays, a submarine ... The museum was full of hiding places.
Then he heard a clank: the outside doors.
Myles swivelled to see the exit doors were still moving – the thief must have just barged through them and escaped.
Myles dodged a donations bin near the entrance and grappled with the heavy glass door which swung back in his face, slowing him down. Finally he reached the park outside. At last he could see the thief again. The man was racing away from him – past the souvenir section of the Berlin wall, over the well-kept grass, towards the main road...
Myles tried calling. ‘Hey you…’
The thief turned around to see Myles’ tall frame at the entrance of the museum, and his eyes filled with terror.
Quickly he turned and kept running.
Myles sprinted on as fast as he could. Gradually he was catching up. He could see the thief’s rucksack. The man’s canvas jacket. His trainers …
The thief was approaching the end of the path, forced to slow down as he approached the busy road. The rush-hour traffic was too fast to cross. Myles had him trapped.
Myles saw the man turn and face him again, his eyes flickering around in panic. Myles was getting closer, still running straight at the man. His arms reached out to grab him, but the thief swiftly stepped aside and Myles stumbled, off balance again.
Myles saw the man dash into the traffic. A small car braked as the thief ran in front of it. Back on his feet, Myles manoeuvred around the stopped car. An angry commuter honked at him, but Myles kept on, still chasing the thief.
Their eyes connected again.
That was when Myles felt the huge force of a van smash into his side. He felt his leg bend, and his body twist away. For a moment, he was weightless as he was flung high into the air.
Then agony surged through his leg.
Cars stopped around him, and backed up all along the road. People climbed out and moved towards him.
But Myles soon realised the people were not interested in him. He tried to see through the crowd, through the cars and through the pain and saw people helping the thief, desperately trying emergency medical procedures on his blood-covered face. None of them were any use.
The man Myles had been chasing was dead.
Three
Sonnenuntergang (Sunset Nursing Home),
Potsdam, Berlin
8.45 a.m. CET (7.45 a.m. GMT)
* * *
The breakfast maid who discovered Werner Stolz’s body was not shocked by it. It was the third dead body she had found in three weeks. People came here to die, she’d been told, so dead bodies were only to be expected.
Still, she didn’t want to look at the corpse too closely. That was for the nurse. Calmly, she pressed the buzzer and waited.
Stolz hadn’t left much, so there wasn’t much for her to tidy. There were a few framed pictures on his desk. She made sure they were arranged neatly. She recognised America in one – the middle-aged Stolz seemed to be enjoying a holiday. She tilted her head to see the pictures of Stolz as a young man in military uniform. He had been quite handsome back then, she thought.
Then she saw his computer, and his ‘ephemeris’ book. She flicked through it: lots of tables and numbers, with dates and funny symbols. Old Werner had been reading some odd things before he died.
Her thoughts were disturbed by footsteps in the corridor. A nurse appeared.
The nurse acknowledged the maid with a nod, then moved straight to the body. She knelt down, ready to place two fingers on his neck and check for a pulse. It was a routine confirmation: the old man was obviously dead, but she had to follow procedure, just to make sure …
Then she noticed his ear. It was bloody. And behind it was a small dark red hole. She turned Stolz’s corpse on the floor, to reveal a much greater mass of body fluids on the carpet underneath him.
A gun tumbled from the dead man’s hand: an old 7.65 mm Luger pistol with a long silencer.
The breakfast maid felt the need to leave immediately. ‘Entschuldigen Sie,’ she apologised, hiding her eyes from the sight by staring down at her cleaning trolley.
The nurse held the door open for her, and waited until the maid had gone. Then she began the next test on Werner Stolz’s body.
Quietly, she bent down to examine the dead man’s mouth. She peered
closely and, as she expected, the dead man’s lips were blue and covered in a white froth.
She nodded to herself, her diagnosis confirmed. Like so many men of his generation, one-time SS Captain Werner Stolz had chosen to die a short time before death was inevitable. And his preferred method of death, a cyanide pill followed closely by a self-administered bullet through the brain copied the most famous suicide in history: Adolf Hitler’s.
It was only as the nurse was leaving that she noticed a scratch on the door frame. The nurse looked closer: the mark looked clean. It must have been made recently. Then she saw the metal doorframe was buckled, as if the door had been barged open.
Someone had broken in.
Four
St Simon’s Monastery, Israel
10.35 a.m. Israel Standard Time (8.35 a.m. GMT)
* * *
Father Samuel lowered his knees onto the cold marble, and allowed his ample midriff to flop into his lap. Eyes closed, he bowed his head, and kept the rosary wrapped tightly around his wrists. He was sure he didn’t have long to wait.
Faintly, he heard the chapel door open, and heard the clipped sound of shoes approaching.
‘Father Samuel.’
Samuel concluded his prayer, pocketed his rosary, then turned to see the familiar face. He judged the man’s expression, and guessed his prayers were being answered even sooner than he had hoped. ‘So, how is the Last Nazi?’
‘Dead, Father.’
Samuel absorbed the information, celebrating silently to himself. Then he sensed the man had more to tell. ‘Anything else?’
‘Stolz killed himself.’
Father Samuel stared at the man, trying to understand the news.
The man nodded slowly.
Father Samuel paused and frowned. ‘Why would a man who has already lived such a long life choose to cut it short?’ He closed his eyes in contemplation, tensing his jaw as he thought. Then he stared directly at the man obediently waiting for his next instructions. ‘We’re still missing something – you understand?’
The man bowed his head in acknowledgement and walked briskly out of the chapel once again.
Father Samuel returned to prayer, far less happy at the announcement of Stolz’s death than he had expected to be.
Five
St Thomas’ Hospital,
Central London
10.45 a.m. GMT
* * *
The accident had happened not long before the peak of the morning rush hour. The A3202, the main road outside the Imperial War Museum and one of London’s main thoroughfares, was blocked.
Within a minute, traffic had backed up half a mile to the river Thames. Several of the drivers stuck in the jam had called for an ambulance, and just four minutes later a team of paramedics was on the scene.
Myles was checked, loaded onto a stretcher and quickly driven to nearby St Thomas’ Hospital. Then he was rushed through a series of procedures: X-rays, an MRI scan, blood tests, an injection, a drip … Finally, Myles’ trolley was pushed into a private room.
Myles was oblivious to it all – he could only think about the thief. What had the man been trying to steal? What had been worth rushing into the traffic to protect?
The door creaked open. Frank poked his head in. ‘Myles, I’m so sorry.’ Frank’s face was sweaty and apologetic.
Myles waved his hand. ‘No need to apologise.’
‘What do the doctors reckon?’
‘Might just be a ligament thing,’ said Myles, looking down at his leg. ‘No real damage. But there’s also something to do with the brain scan. They won’t say what.’
‘If that’s your only injury, then you’ll just be limping around like me.’ Frank raised his own polio-ridden leg, trying to make a joke of it.
Myles smiled, then felt a shot of pain from his tibia.
Frank looked apologetic again. ‘You better stay still,’ he said. ‘They’ll put something on it soon.’ Frank was about to tap Myles’ leg in sympathy but, when his hand was mid-air, he decided not to – just as both of them realised it would hurt.
Frank looked embarrassed again, still out of his depth. Same old Frank - he’d always been that way, ever since Myles first met him.
‘Frank, can you get Helen for me?’
‘Your American woman? Yes, I’ll get her,’ nodded Frank.
Myles watched as Frank limped off to make the call, then wondered exactly what it was about his brain scan which had interested the doctors so much.
Six
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Central Moscow, Russia
11.51 a.m., Moscow Standard Time (8.51 a.m. GMT)
* * *
Zenyalena Androvsky stopped in the middle of Smolenskaya Square to admire the twenty-seven-storey building in front of her. She felt comforted by the Stalinist architecture: it was a steadfast monument to Soviet glory which had never compromised with capitalism; a single finger poking up into the Moscow skyline, telling the defeatists where to go.
Then she felt her orange trousers swish in the wind, and saw the security men at the entrance to the Ministry react to her femininity. She flirted back. It felt good to be home.
She was soon in her new office, back in the European Affairs Directorate after assignments in Cuba and Venezuela which had seemed more like distractions than proper foreign affairs work. Anonymous staff had already unpacked her effects, right down to the picture taken in 1987 of her father in his full uniform kissing goodbye to Zenyalena, then a gawky teenager. The photograph was the last image of Colonel Androvsky alive. Just ten days later, his helicopter had been eviscerated by a shoulder-launched surface-to-air missile, fired up by a lucky Mujahedeen guerrilla. Zenyalena had never blamed the Afghan who pressed the initiator. Responsibility for her father’s death, she was sure, lay with the cowardly organisation which had supplied the hardware: the CIA.
Eager to work and to make her mark as quickly as she could, Zenyalena Androvsky spent just a few moments leafing through the general briefing pack which had been left for her. Then she pressed a buzzer.
An older man entered, grey-suited and pale, refusing to notice Zenyalena’s bright clothing. ‘Ms Androvsky – welcome to your new post.’
‘Don’t tell me what I know already.’ She tossed the briefing pack to a distant part of her desk. ‘What’s happening in Europe today?’
Trying not to undermine his new boss’s authority, the man reached into the discarded briefing pack to pull out a one-page list of news items. ‘Your headlines for today, Madam.’
Zenyalena ignored the slight – her eyes were already devouring the list. Single-sentence headlines outlined events in Ukraine, Spain, Liechtenstein … she stopped when she reached an item two-thirds of the way down the page. ‘What’s this? And who was ‘Werner Stolz’?’
The older man turned the page towards him to check the name, ‘Er, I can find out for you, Ms Androvsky.’
‘Please do – this morning.’
It took only an hour for the pale man to return clutching a hefty pile of documents. Some looked even older than him, their yellowed edges straying out of the tattered cardboard.
Zenyalena swiftly filleted the files. Within minutes she had spotted yet another opportunity to embarrass the Americans. She called her secretary back in.
‘Ludchovic. You read the stuff in these files about Lieutenant Kirov, right?’
Ludchovic indicated that he had.
‘Tell me - how do you think he died?’
The grey-suited man looked at Zenyalena’s desk as he answered. ‘On balance, I think the American report is probably true, Ms Androvsky. Soviet interrogators also experienced SS captives grabbing weapons and going wild.’
Zenyalena’s eyes narrowed. ‘Yes, but we never let one kill a liaison officer working for a foreign power.’ She pulled out another sheet with Soviet-era typewriting on it. ‘And look: Kirov died just days before he flagged this Captain Stolz as “special interest”. The Nazi even spent time living in the States aft
er the war. I tell you: this one smells.’
Ludchovic accepted her superior logic. ‘How do you want to proceed, Madam?’
Zenyalena sank in her chair, fully aware that the best information about Stolz would have been lost in the turmoil of post-war Germany, seventy years ago. But there was still a chance to win one over on the Yanks.
‘Ludchovic: I want you to prepare a Demarche. Demand a full investigation of Stolz. If the Americans refuse, we’ll know they’re hiding something. Send it today.’
The secretary understood. ‘To be delivered by our embassy in DC?’
Zenyalena was about to agree, but then stopped herself, her lips pursing into a mischievous grin. ‘No – New York. We’re going to do this through the United Nations. The old United Nations.’
Seven
St Thomas’ Hospital,
Central London
10.05 a.m. GMT
* * *
A serious-looking man in an open shirt and white coat breezed into Myles’s room, then paused before he spoke. ‘Mr Munro?’
Myles nodded.
The doctor approached Myles’ trolley-bed, then exhaled, as if he had some difficult news to tell. Myles remained silent.
‘Mr Munro – er, can I call you Myles?’ asked the doctor.
‘If it makes it easier. Yes. Myles is fine.’
More silence.
‘How do you feel, Myles?’
Myles raised his eyebrows – how did he feel? ‘Er, well, I feel pain. I feel a little thirsty. I feel like I don’t like hospitals much …’ He mused some more. ‘… I feel you’re about to tell me.’
Myles watched as the doctor tried to explain.
‘You see, Mr Munro, we did a scan,’ began the doctor, barely managing to speak to Myles’ face. ‘Two scans, actually – an X-ray of your leg, and an MRI. A brain scan …’ The doctor paused again. ‘Well, Mr Munro, in a way it’s fortunate that you broke your leg, because it allowed us to look inside your head.’
