by Iles, Greg
Swallow had iron gray hair cropped close against her skull, perfect for wearing wigs. She carried none of the excess fat that weighted most women her age and there Shaw paused. For looking at Swallow now, he couldn’t quite get his mind round the fact that she had been in the war. She’d been practically a child, of course, but it was downright eerie. The file put her at sixty-one, but she looked nearer fifty. As he stared, the scent of perfume wafted to him; this single acknowledgment of femininity surprised him. He couldn’t name the fragrance, but it smelled expensive and vaguely French. To be honest, Shaw mused, he might have been attracted to Swallow if it wasn’t for what he knew about her. No, he decided, even if he’d known nothing of her fiendish work, her eyes would have put him off. They were like stones. Dull, flat stones. Not that they communicated intellectual dullness—quite the contrary. They were rather like slate lids on a blast furnace, protecting those outside from the fierce hatred that burned behind them. That hatred had probably served Swallow well through the years, Shaw reflected, for by trade she was an assassin.
“Yes, well,” he began again, “did Wilson tell you this regards Jonas Stern?”
Swallow nodded soberly.
“What I’d like is for you to follow him, see what he’s up to. His last known location was Berlin, but he’s probably on the move. He’s travelling under his own name, which seems odd, so he must not feel he’s in any danger.”
Swallow smiled at that.
“As soon as we pick him up, we’ll put you onto him. We think he’s trying to get hold of something … something that we’d prefer the Jews didn’t get hold of. Understood?”
“Perfectly,” said Swallow. She had, after all, done her part against the Zionist terrorists of Palestine.
Shaw cleared his throat. “Yes, well, what kind of payment would you want? Would twenty thousand pounds cover it?”
Swallow’s eyes hooded over at this. It struck Shaw just then that, from Swallow’s perspective, they had come to the point of the meeting.
“What I want,” she said in a toneless voice, “is Jonas Stern. When your little operation is over, I want a free hand with him.”
Shaw had no illusions as to what this meant. Swallow wanted official permission to kill an Israeli citizen. He knew the answer to his next question, but he asked it anyway. “What was it, exactly, that Stern did to you?”
“Killed my brother,” she replied in a voice that could have come from a corpse.
“That was quite some time ago, wasn’t it?” Shaw commented.
“And every year since, my brother has lain in his grave.” The furnace heat behind Swallow’s eyes flashed at the edges. “They scarcely found enough of him to bury. Bloody Jews.”
Shaw nodded with appropriate solemnity. “Yes, well … your condition is accepted.” He drummed his fingers on his desk. “Tell me, what’s your feeling about Stern as an agent?”
“He’s the best I ever saw. If he wasn’t, he’d have been dead long ago. He’s got the instincts of a bloody clairvoyant.”
“Any ideas on his motive? Why he would leave Israel now?”
Swallow considered this. “To protect it,” she said at length. “Israel is his weakness. He must believe the country is in imminent danger.”
“I see.”
“Is Israel in danger?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” Shaw replied thoughtfully. “Not any more than usual.”
As Swallow stood thinking, Shaw noticed that she stood with a vaguely military bearing—not tensely, but with a relaxed kind of readiness, rather like some Special Forces types he had known. They had all been men, of course.
“Is there anything else, then?” she asked.
Shaw flipped through the files on his desk with exaggerated casualness. “There is, as a matter of fact. Another job. A small one. Domestic job, actually. I thought you might take care of it for us. But it’s a rush job. It must be done by tonight.”
Swallow’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Who is it?”
“Chap named Burton. Michael Burton. Retired. Lives in a cottage outside Haslemere in Surrey. Raises orchids, I believe. I’m afraid he knows too much for his own good.” Sir Neville cleared his throat again. “There is one possible complication. He’s only forty-eight. Retired Special Air Service.”
At this Swallow seemed to withdraw into herself for consultation with whatever demon sustained her startlingly youthful appearance. At length, she asked, “Does he have any family?”
“Divorced. There’s a brother. Why do you ask?”
“Is he SAS also?”
Shaw shook his head. “Regular army. But he’s out of the country permanently. He lost his citizenship papers some years ago for mercenary work. He won’t be a problem.”
“Would you want it to look like an accident?”
“Can you run up an accident in Haslemere by tonight?”
Swallow made a sound in her throat that Shaw heard as a dry chuckle. “I doubt it. SAS men don’t have accidents like that, as a rule. They’re trained not to. They can drive, swim, run, shoot, and now it’s useless to me as a download facility also”
“I don’t care how it’s done, then,” Shaw flared. “Just do it. What’s your price?”
A satisfied smile touched the corners of Swallow’s mouth. She liked to see bureaucrats squirm. “My price is protection from the Israelis after Stern is dead.”
“Christ!” Shaw exploded. “We can’t babysit you forever. You kill Stern at your own risk.”
Swallow’s eyes turned opaque. “Don’t play coy with me, little knight. Your hands are bloody too. By lulling Stern I’m only doing what you want done. You picked me because you knew if he had to be, liquidated, you could blame his death on my vendetta.” She raised her chin defiantly. “If you try that the Israelis will certainly get me, but not before I kill you.” Shaw drew back unconsciously. “I’ll kill your SAS man for you,” she went on, “but you’ll cover for me on Stern. Otherwise, I might warn this Mr Burton instead.”
“Condition accepted,” Shaw snapped. “Now get out. All communication from this point forward will be through cutouts. No further contact between you and this office.”
Swallow made a mock curtsey and backed out of the room.
That witch should have been code-named Medusa, Shaw thought angrily. She makes my bare skin crawl. When he closed Swallow’s file, his eyes fell on the Hess dossier lying open beneath it. He sighed heavily. There lay the dreaded file, like a modern Domesday Book, a lexicon of heroism and treason, the highest and lowest expression of the English soul. And looking at it, Shaw’s anger—anger that had been building for a very long time—finally boiled to the surface. For if the truth were told, he would prefer to turn Swallow loose on the smug quislings and their moribund broods who for decades had cowered behind the shield of his service. He had no part in their crimes, or their guilt, and he felt no pity for them or their “honour.” But what of England?
He did have a stake in her honour. He had been only a child during the war, but in those heady years after Hitler was crushed, and all the years since, he had allowed himself to feel a part of the grand legend—what one British historian called the “Churchillian myth”—that in the early desperate days of the war England, all alone, had stood united, uncompromising, and unconquerable against the Nazis, and had thus saved Western Civilization from the Hun and the Bolshevik. But that, Shaw had learned to his eternal sadness, was not quite the truth. Then the truth be damned! he thought bitterly. He understood the protective urge of the aristocrats. England had given the world so much; she deserved a little moral charity. Part myth though Churchill’s history might be, the craven machinations of a few spineless lords (or, God forbid, a fool of a prince) could not be allowed to tarnish it.
If a treacherous shadow dogged the House of Windsor, should it also stain the legacies of Plantagenet and Tudor and Hanover? And what of the good people in the war? The women who fought the fires in the Blitz? The callow lads whose shattered Spitfires pr
actically clogged the Channel in 1940? The kids who crouched under the buzz bombs and the V-2s? The martyred population of Coventry? As he poured himself a large whiskey, Shaw recalled the famous quote Churchill spoke after the Battle of Britain, but he twisted it to his own secret knowledge: Never in the field of human conflict have so many nearly lost so much because of so few. Shaw hated them! Hated them all! Appeasers … knights without courage … nobles without nobility. Because of them good men had died, and more were soon to follow.
The man Swallow would kill tonight had but done his duty. It was the familiar chorus of English history: the good men had died while the scoundrels prospered. “Treason doth never prosper, what’s the reason?” Shaw muttered, quoting the old epigram, “For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
Yet in the midst of his furious meditation, Shaw felt a glimmer of satisfaction. Because if all his Machiavellian stratagems failed and the temple came tumbling down around his ears, the Judases would finally be unmasked, and the most heroic chapter in the history of his noble service would be brought to light at last.
Shaw drained his Scotch and fell instantly asleep with his head on his desk blotter.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
6.05 AM #7 Cabin. Near Wolfsburg, FRG
Hermann the forger was gone. After forty nerve-racking minutes under the gaze of Professor Natterman’s shotgun, the bearish Hamburger had gathered up his equipment and scampered out of the cabin without a word. The professor sat in his chair, contemplating the night’s events as the dawn filtered through the shattered cabin door. He had never felt so impotent in his life. His lifelong friend had been murdered, the Spandau papers had been taken from him, his granddaughter had been kidnapped, and he had been unable to prevent any of it from happening. And now the two men who proposed to stop the madness had refused his help!
Cradling the Mannlicher under one arm, he picked up his book satchel and walked out of the cabin without looking back. His suitcase lay in the slushy rut where the Audi had been parked. In their haste Hans and Hauer had not even taken the time to bring it into the cabin. The shot-riddled Jaguar waited behind the trunk of the old plane tree. Natterman walked over and looked inside to make sure the keys were still in the ignition. Tossing his satchel into the passenger seat, he retrieved his suitcase, then wriggled into the car and turned the key. In spite of the damage, the engine roared responsively. He left the Jaguar idling and clumped through the snow to the rear of the cabin. In the shade of a tall cedar, a jury-rigged crucifix marked the shallow grave of Karl Riemeck. With bowed head Natterman laid the shotgun against the cross and softly spoke a few lines from Heine over his friend. Then he shuffled back to the rumbling Jaguar, jammed it into first gear, and sped up the access road.
The morning sun had already transformed the twisted lane into a morass of slush and mud that threw the speeding car from one bank to another as it approached the main road. Two curves away from the intersection, the professor saw a black log lying across the lane. When he swerved to avoid it, the Jaguar skidded out of control and slammed nose first into some saplings. It rebounded from their springlike trunks and coughed into silence. He staggered out of the car and cautiously approached the log. Just as he bent to drag it out of the lane, he heard a crack in the trees behind him.
He stumbled back, thinking he would get the Mannlicher from the car. Then he remembered dropping it at Karl’s grave. With panic knotting inside his chest, he scrambled toward the Jag, planning to drive around or even over the log to get to the main road. He had one leg inside the car when a voice froze him motionless.
“Herr Professor?”
Natterman whirled, but saw nothing.
“Herr Professor! May I speak with you for a moment?”
Again! Where had the voice come from? The brush on the opposite side of the road? The trees further on? Natterman tried to calm himself. Might a neighbour have come out to investigate last night’s shots in the light of morning? These days even country people left such things to the police. Backing against the Jaguar, he called, “Who’s out there? What do you want?”
“Only to speak with you!” the voice replied. “I mean you no harm.”
“Come out, then! Why do you hide yourself.”
A tall dark-skinned man stepped noiselessly from the trees twenty metres up the road. “One has to be careful,” he said, and then he smiled. “I wouldn’t want to wind up like your Afrikaner friend.”
Natterman stared fearfully at the stranger. He felt he knew the man from somewhere. Suddenly he had it. “You’re the man from the train!” he cried. “Stern!”
The Israeli smiled. “You have an excellent memory, Professor.”
“My God! Did you follow me here?” Natterman took a step back toward the Jaguar. “Are you in league with the Afrikaner?”
“Yes, I followed you here. No, I’m not in league with the Afrikaner. I’m here to help you, Professor.”
Natterman pointed a finger at the Israeli. “What happened to your British accent?”
Stern chuckled. “It comes, it goes.”
“You must have been here last night. Why didn’t you help me?”
“I did help you. I stopped that Afrikaner from going back inside the cabin and killing you. By the time I’d finished dealing with him, your Polizei friends had arrived.”
“Why didn’t you come forward then?”
“For all I knew, Professor, you had come here specifically to meet that Afrikaner. The same holds true for your friends. I needed certain assurances about your motives.”
“You’re mad,” Natterman declared. “Who the devil are you?”
Stern seemed to search for words. “Call me a concerned citizen,” he said finally. “I’m retired, but I keep myself well-informed in the area that you’ve stumbled into with such dire consequences for yourself and your family.”
“And what area is that?”
“The security of the State of Israel.”
“What?” Natterman gaped. “Are you a Nazi-hunter?”
“You’re not a historian!”
Stern laughed again. “Professional jealousy, Professor? Don’t worry. I’m a historian of sorts, but not like you. You’ve studied history all your life—I have lived it.”
Natterman scowled. “And what have you accomplished, my arrogant friend?”
“Not enough, I’m afraid.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Everything you know about the document that Sergeant Apfel discovered in the ruins of Spandau Prison.”
Natterman paled. “But—how do you know?”
Stern glanced at his watch. “Professor, I haven’t been more than five hundred metres from those papers since they were discovered. I know the British—and the Russians are searching like mad for them. I know about Hauer, Apfel, and your granddaughter. I know you made a copy of the papers in your office at the Free University, which you mailed to a friend for safekeeping. I know that Hauer and Apfel have taken away the six pages which were not stolen by the Afrikaner. I know—”
“Stop!” cried Natterman. “Where are the other three pages?”
“In my pocket. Our Afrikaner friend was kind enough to give them to me, after a little friendly persuasion.”
Natterman shivered, realizing that Stern meant torture. But ambition overpowered his fear. “Give them back to me,” he demanded. “They’re mine.”
Stern smiled. “I hope you haven’t deluded yourself into believing that. These papers belong to no single man. Now, Professor, I’d like to ask you some questions.”
Natterman recoiled. “Why should I tell you anything?”
“Because you have no choice.”
“That’s what everyone keeps telling me,” Natterman grumbled.
“I assure you, Professor, if I’d wanted the papers, I could have taken them any time in the last sixteen hours.”
Natterman felt a flash of anger, but something told him Stern was telling the truth. The same instinct told him that to resist
the Israeli would be pointless, that this man who had materialized out of the snow like a ghost would get the information he wanted, one way or another. “All right,” he said grudgingly.
“Prisoner Number Seven,” Stern said brusquely. “The papers prove he was not Hess?”
“I believe they do,” the old historian said warily.
“Where was the double substituted?”
“Hess picked up the double in Denmark. They flew to Britain together. The double was part of the plan all along. Hess bailed out the moment they reached the Scottish coast, over a place called Holy Island.”
Stern digested this quickly. “And his mission?”
“The double didn’t know Hess’s mission, only his own. After Hess bailed out, the double was to fly on toward Dungavel Castle and await some sort of radio signal from Hess. If he received it, he was to parachute down and impersonate Hess for as long as he could.”
Stern’s eyes narrowed. “And if he didn’t receive the signal?”
Natterman smiled wryly. “He was to fly out to sea, take cyanide, and ditch the plane. Standard SS procedure.”
Stern smiled cynically. “Nazi melodrama. Few Occidentals have the nerve or the fanatical loyalty required to sacrifice themselves in cold blood.” The Israeli’s eyes moved restlessly as he pieced the rest of the story together. “So when the double turned back and jumped, he was disobeying orders. He went ahead and impersonated Hess as if he had received the signal … and the British believed him.”
Natterman listened to these deductions in silence. “Or perhaps they didn’t believe him,” Stern mused. “It doesn’t really matter. What matters is this: Who did the real Hess fly there to see? And why in God’s name should anyone in South Africa give a damn about it?”
“Now that you know what the papers say,” said Natterman, “what do you intend to do?”
“I told you, Professor, my interest is not in the Hess case.”
Stern’s hand slipped into his trouser pocket, fingered something there. “Long before the death of Prisoner Number Seven, I had reason to investigate Spandau. My mission had nothing to do with Hess, everything to do with the safety of Israel. But until Number Seven’s death, gaining access to Spandau was virtually impossible.”
