by Iles, Greg
Stern stopped in his tracks. Alfred? He felt a jolt of disorientation. Alfred Horn? But the old man had introduced himself as Thomas Horn…
A sharp metallic click froze everyone in the room. The sound was unmistakable—an automatic pistol being cocked. As if controlled by the same brain, Jonas Stern and Robert Stanton whirled toward the sound. Stern glimpsed a swatch of blond hair in the shadows; then the muzzle flash blinded him. Five in a row, very fast. The first shots went wild, but the last two snatched the Englishman off his feet and drove him through the picture window, shattering the panes into a thousand glittering razors.
Stern dropped to the floor. The blond hair he had seen told him one thing: Peter Smuts had arrived to save his master. As Stern peered through the darkness, trying to pick out the Afrikaner, the study door burst open and the overhead lights flashed on. What Stern saw next stopped the breath in his lungs. Ilse Apfel stood rigid at the centre of the room, a smoking pistol clenched in both hands. She was the blond who had saved Horn from his would-be executioner!
Pieter Smuts bounded across the room and tackled her, one hand immobilizing the pistol as he knocked her to the floor. She went down without a sound. The Afrikaner came to his feet almost instantly, scanning the room for his master.
“Pieter,” cried a weak voice. “Behind the sofa.”
Smuts darted to the old man and fell to his knees. “Are you hit?”
“What … ? No. You saved me, Pieter.”
“Linah!” Smuts shouted. “Get the doctor!”
Stern heard footsteps scurrying down the hall. Only now did Smuts notice the broken window. Stanton’s mangled corpse lay half in and half out of it, his lifeless eyes turned upward, open to the rain. The Afrikaner’s mouth dropped open in wonder as he realized what must have happened.
“Thank God you arrived, Pieter,” Horn mumbled. “The swine meant to kill me. I didn’t think he had it in him.”
Watching Ilse closely, Smuts righted the wheelchair, lifted the old man into it, then crossed the study and pulled Ilse to her feet. She looked no more alert than she had when Smuts bowled her to the floor. The Afrikaner led her gently over to Horn.
“Sir, when I got here I saw Frau Apfel standing over there with a pistol raised. It was she that saved you.” Smuts made a sudden sound of astonishment. “It’s my Beretta! By God, she shot Lord Grenville with my bloody Beretta!”
Ilse’s face remained expressionless, but Horn’s eyes began to shine. “I knew it, Pieter,” he said triumphantly. “She couldn’t stand by and watch me die. She is a true German!”
Horn rolled his chair forward and took Ilse’s hand. “Did you kill Lord Grenville, my child?” Ilse said nothing.
“She’s in shock,” Horn murmured, shaking his head. “It is a miracle, Pieter. Fate brought this woman here to me.”
While appreciative of Ilse’s actions, Smuts would not have carried the praise so far. “Sir,” he said carefully, “it appears to me that Frau Apfel acted purely by reflex. She was trying to escape. She saw a murder about to be committed; she fired blindly to prevent it. I don’t think we should attach more significance to it than that.”
Ignoring Smuts, Horn squeezed Ilse’s hand in his own. “My child,” he said softly, “by your action tonight you not only saved my life, but your husband’s also.”
“But sir!” Smuts protested. “Think what you’re saying.”
“Silence, Pieter!” Horn exploded. “I want half a million rand transferred to the Deutsche Bank in Berlin, under Frau Apfel’s name.” He smiled at Ilse. “For the child,” he said. “Pieter told me that you are pregnant, my dear.”
Smuts stared incredulously at his master. This was insane. He had never seen the old man make decisions based on sentimentality. Somehow, the Apfel woman had acquired a dangerous amount of influence over Alfred Horn, and that influence was obviously growing. A tragic accident might soon be required.
A sudden roar from outside rattled the shattered window. From his position by the hidden door, Stern saw a line of tracers arc out toward the rim of the bowl.
“What of the attack?” Horn asked.
“The house is secure,” Smuts said tersely.
“And Oberleutnant Luhr?”
“A good man. That’s him firing the Vulcan.”
Horn smiled. “I imagine your little toys came as something of a surprise to Robert’s friends. eh?”
Smuts grinned nastily.
“Do you know who they are yet?”
“We’ll round up the bodies tonight. Then we’ll see.”
Horn nodded, then turned to Ilse and spoke softly. “Pieter will take you to your husband now. A matter of minutes. Do you hear me, child?”
Motionless until now, Ilse suddenly began to shiver. A single tear streaked her face. She looked as if she might collapse. “Take her now, Pieter,” Horn commanded. “Schnell!”
“Sir!” The Afrikaner snapped into motion. Realizing that he had only moments to reach safety, Stern ducked back into the shrine room and reached for the telephone. He was about to punch in the number of the Protea Hof when he heard a voice coming from the phone. His throat tightened in disbelief. Who could it be? One of Smuts’s soldiers? Did it really matter?
Closing his palm over the mouthpiece, Stern stuck his head back through the little door. He saw the Vulcan’s bright red tracer beam climb the distant ridge, searching out more victims. Horn, too, had wheeled his chair around to watch. The tracer beam jinked back and forth beyond the dark horizon, steadied a moment, then lurched into the sky. For an instant the end of the deadly arc became visible—then it detonated in a huge fireball. The shock wave blasted a sheet of rain and glass into the room. Several shards fell onto Horn’s lap, but the old man didn’t seem to notice. He reached for a button on the arm of his wheelchair, preparing to turn.
Stern hunkered down, hoping to see the gray face once more in the light. He heard the hum of the wheelchair’s electric motor, saw the face in profile—then his survival instinct overrode his curiosity. He scrambled back into the secret room and pulled the door shut behind him.
When he put the phone to his ear, the voice was still talking. With a silent curse he slipped the receiver back into its cradle. There would be no call to Hauer. Stern estimated he had less than a minute to become Professor Natterman again.
Alan Burton lay belly-down in the mud, humping it with the infantryman’s desperate love. Even before he heard the apocalyptic roar of the Vulcan gun, he had seen the deadly tracer beam reach out from the tower. Now the gunner was raking repeatedly over the corpses of the Colombians—for corpses they surely were. When a stream of armour-piercing slugs intersects a human body at the rate of sixty-six hundred rounds per minute, the result cannot be described. Burton had seen it before; he had no desire to do so again.
Apparently Alberto did. Four times already the big guerilla had lifted his head over the rim of the bowl to watch the slaughter. The last time he must have gotten his fill, because Burton could hear the giant African whimpering beside him in the mud. When one of their escape helicopters exploded behind them, Alberto began babbling to himself. The incoherent syllables sounded vaguely religious to Burton, and the Englishman decided that a bit of prayer might not be out of order, even for a confirmed old sinner like himself.
When the terrible roar of the Vulcan diminished to desultory bursts, Alberto tried to jump up and race back to the airstrip. Burton pressed him violently back into the mud. As far as Burton knew, they still had one operable helicopter and, hopefully, a pilot. But to run for it now would be suicide. Any idiot could see that the gunner in the turret was using night-vision equipment. Burton could picture the smug bastard, perched up there behind his monstrous weapon, waiting for one desperate survivor to jump up and bolt for the airstrip. Burton didn’t intend to be the moron who tried that.
But Alberto did. After the Vulcan had lain silent for ninety seconds, the big African rose tentatively to his knees and beckoned Burton to follow. The Vulcan burped jus
t once: the three-second burst flashed up the slope like a lightning bolt. Approximately ninety bullets tore into Alberto’s body, eviscerating and then decapitating him. The mangled hulk that thudded into the mud next to Burton would be food for the jackals in an hour.
The Englishman decided not to wait around to see the feast. The Deal be damned, he thought bitterly. Maybe Shaw will give me another chance. God knows I didn’t have much of one today. With movements so subtle only a serpent would perceive them, Burton slithered backward through the mud until he dropped below the Vulcan’s angle of fire. Then he jumped to his feet and ran as he never had in his life, low to the ground, but fast. When he felt the ground rising beneath his feet, he knew he was nearing the airstrip. The Wash brought him up short. Three feet of water raged through its bottom now, but Burton tobogganed down the steep slope as if the torrent represented safety rather than potential death. Hoisting his MP-5 submachine gun high above his head, he waded into the flood. It took superhuman strength to hold himself upright against the current, but he made it across. He scrambled up the far side of the ravine in twenty seconds flat and found himself staring into the face of Juan Diaz.
“Madre de Dios!” the Cuban cried.
“The helo?” Burton gasped, his chest heaving. “They got ours, English. But Fidel—the other pilot—he’s waiting for us. Come! Before they shoot the runway again!”
They ran. Burton could see the airstrip ahead, a glistening asphalt line. Horn’s Learjet waited silently on the apron like a falcon sitting out a storm. The surviving helicopter stood about forty metres from the Lear, only twenty metres from the still-burning wreck of its sister ship. Burton heard its rotors whining as he neared the runway, running full out.
Then the whine was swallowed by the furious ripping sound of the Vulcan. Burton looked back. He saw the terrible tracer beam race across the bowl, leap over the Wash, and streak up behind them. “Run!” he screamed at Diaz.
The Cuban needed no prodding; he was ahead of Burton already. The tracer beam actually passed between the two men as it raced toward Fidel’s chopper, churning the earth into a furrow of death. Then it happened. Fidel lost his nerve. Seeing the tracers closing in on him, he simply could not control his panic. With the only survivors of his team less than thirty metres from his chopper, the terrified Cuban lifted off. Diaz screamed and waved for his comrade to wait, but if he heard him, the terrified pilot ignored him.
Burton had seen this a hundred times before. Slowing his sprint, he unslung his MP-5 and dropped to his knees. The only way to stop a panicked man from bolting was to put an equal or greater threat in front of him. Burton sighted his submachine gun in on the windshield of Fidel’s chopper and squeezed off a three-round burst.
“Are you loco?” Diaz screamed. “You’ll crash him.”
“Signal him to put down!”
Fidel’s chopper bucked wildly, hovering ten metres off the ground. Unaccustomed to firing the Vulcan, Jürgen Luhr had missed the chopper on the first pass. Tracers danced wildly above the chopper’s rotors. Diaz signalled frantically for his compadre to put down, but Fidel still seemed uncertain of where the greater danger lay. Burton convinced him with a sustained burst that fragmented the chopper’s windshield. The JetRanger dropped until it hovered a metre above the runway. Burton dashed for its side door, passing Diaz on the way. He leaped into the shuddering machine and trained his weapon on Fidel. “Don’t take off till Diaz is in!”
The little Cuban was close, but not close enough. Without even meaning to, Fidel jinked his ship two metres higher. “Down!” Burton roared. The JetRanger settled, then jerked up again.
Luhr backed his tracers off about forty metres from his target and began vectoring in again. This time the deadly beam held steady as he walked it in on the struggling helicopter.
“Jump!” Burton yelled. Diaz leaped for the chopper’s right skid, caught it. Burton got one hand on the Cuban’s collar, saw the fear and anger in his eyes—then he felt the wild impact. For the briefest instant the tracer beam had sliced up and nicked Diaz in the side. One bullet plucked him off the skid as deftly as the finger of God.
The chopper yawed wildly as Fidel sought to avoid the tracer beam. “Set this whore down!” Burton yelled. He fired a round through the Plexiglas two inches from Fidel’s head. The panicked Cuban shrieked in terror.
Leaning out of the side door, Burton saw Diaz lying in the mud below, one arm raised in supplication. Without any warning the chopper tilted ninety degrees and, whether by Fidel’s design or not, Burton tumbled out. He caught himself on the skid and hung on with claws of desperation. He felt the JetRanger start to rise. Fidel had made his decision: he was clearing out.
In a split second Burton made his own. With a curse on his lips he let go of the skid and fell six metres to the ground. He landed badly, but the muddy earth cushioned his fall. Above him, Fidel’s chopper climbed rapidly, but not rapidly enough. Luhr had finally got the hang of the Vulcan. The fiery stream of slugs intersected the JetRanger amidships and nearly cut it in two before the fuel tank blew. The chopper fire-balled like its sister ship, blasting wreckage all over the runway.
Burton threw himself over Diaz as the shrapnel tore the asphalt all around them. Without waiting for any further fire from the Vulcan, he took hold of the Cuban, heaved him over his shoulder like a sack and started slogging toward the Wash. If that gunner’s still watching the fireball, he thought, we might just make it. But if he saw me jump, he’s sighting-in on us right now. Ten metres to the edge … seven … Burton sped up, leaned forward …he leapt.
The two men tumbled head over heels down the steep slope and skidded to a stop at the edge of a raging flood. Burton made sure Diaz wasn’t about to be swept into the water, and then he glanced around for a hiding place. The Cuban caught his sleeve and pulled his face down close. “Gracias,” he coughed. “Gracias, English.”
Burton looked down at the tough little Cuban. Diaz’s camouflage shirt was soaked with dark blood, but his lips and eyes showed the trace of a smile. “Don’t thank me yet, lad,” the Englishman said quietly. “It’s going to be a bloody long night.”
With the stealth that had carried him safely through four wars and countless intelligence operations, Jonas Stern made his way back to the bedroom he had briefly shared with Ilse. His brain drummed wildly. He had to get back to that telephone. He had scratched a mark deep in the library door with his broken fork so that he could quickly find the secret room again. But would he get another chance? Horn’s security chief would surely check the bedroom soon. The Afrikaner would naturally assume that “Professor Natterman” had tried to escape with his granddaughter. And when he found Stern waiting here, what would he think? Would he believe that “Natterman” had sat like a rabbit in an open cage while his granddaughter risked her life to escape?
Stern had heard Horn’s promise to spare Hans Apfel’s life, but he doubted if the old man’s clemency would extend to Ilse’s “grandfather”. To survive the next few minutes, Stern knew, he would have to find some plausible reason for having stayed behind while Ilse fled. Boot heels were already pounding up the hall when he remembered the Zinoviev notebook. Snatching it from inside his shirt, he darted to the little writing desk, mussed his hair, and opened the leather bound volume at the middle.
The boots stopped outside his door.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Stern did not look up when Smuts opened the door. He pored over the thin black volume as if it were a lost book of the Bible. The Afrikaner stood silent for some time, watching him. “What are you doing, Professor?” he said finally.
“Reading,” Stern muttered.
“I can see that,” snapped Smuts. “Where is your granddaughter?”
“I have no idea.”
“How did she get out of this room?”
Stern looked up at last. “She picked the lock.”
“With what?”
“A fork from your dinner table, I believe.”
Smuts frowned
. “Why didn’t you go with her?
Stern shrugged. “She is young, I am old. With me along she would have little chance of escape. Without me … who knows?”
“She did not escape,” Smuts said, smirking.
Stern sighed and let a hand fall from the desk to his knee. “Will you bring her back to me, please?”
“Impossible. She must pay for her insolence.”
Recalling Horn’s promise of mercy to Ilse, Stern suppressed a smile as he brought a hand to his forehead. “She’s only a young girl who wanted to find her husband. Where is the crime in that?”
“Herr Horn will decide,” Smuts answered stiffly. “I think you’re lying, Professor. You tried to escape and failed, didn’t you? You ran into the shields.”
“You underrate my devotion to history, young man.” Stern laid a hand on the Zinoviev notebook. “This volume is a treasure—a lost fragment of history. Already I’ve learned things my colleagues would trade a limb for.”
Smuts shook his head slowly. “You’re past it, old man. You can’t see anything, can you?”
“I see that this book is far more valuable than the rubbish Hans found at Spandau.”
“I’ll tell you what that book is, Professor,” Smuts snarled. “It’s your bloody death sentence. Only one man has read that book and remained alive, and you’ve already met him.” Smuts reached for the doorknob. “Enjoy it while you can,” he said, and went out.
Stern stared at the closed door. He knew he could pick the lock again, but the Afrikaner might be waiting for just such an attempt. He took a deep breath and rubbed his temples. He was sweating. Sixty seconds ago he had seen something so shocking it had wiped the ghastly Nazi shrine room from his mind. It was the book. Zinoviev’s notebook. The moment he had opened it, the moment before Pieter Smuts marched into his room, Stern had seen the strange black characters marching like foreign soldiers down the page. Cyrillic characters. Paragraph after paragraph of laboriously handwritten Russian covered the left-hand page. And on the right-neatly typewritten on an old German machine-Stern had seen what he prayed was a German translation of the Russian handwriting. But what had so shocked him—what had blown everything else out of his mind—was his near certainty that the Cyrillic characters had been written by the same hand that wrote the “fire of Armageddon” note warning of danger to Israel in 1967. The same note which had said the secret of that danger could be found in Spandau. Now he leafed quickly through the thin volume. The pages—twenty in all—were merely sheets of heavy typing paper glued amateurishly into a leather spine. The same strange configuration over and over: first Russian, then German. Stern could not verify his intuition about the author of the Spandau note. The note was in his leather bag, back in Hauer’s room at the Protea Hof But he did not need to verify anything. He knew.
