by Iles, Greg
Why doesn’t she just run? Natterman thought angrily. She has the information she wanted. And then he knew. Swallow meant to leave no witnesses behind. A horrible coughing spasm racked Aaron Haber’s body. He lunged forward, gurgled something in Hebrew, then dropped his pistol and collapsed at the mouth of the foyer.
Natterman peered around the edge of the bed. The Israeli lay on his stomach with his head pointed toward the door. Swallow’s Ingrain lay at his feet. Natterman’s heart sank. The gun might as well have been ten kilometres away. But as he jerked his head back behind the bed, he saw something that stopped the breath in his lungs—Hans’s crossbow, loaded and lying beneath the bed. Yuri Borodin’s gorillas had missed it during their sweep. Natterman lay flat and stretched his arm to its limit …
Swallow glided soundlessly out of the foyer and bobbed over the wounded Israeli. A knife flashed in the air. Swallow reached for Aaron’s hair, meaning to jerk up his head and slash his throat, but at the last moment she leaned toward his feet and grabbed for the Ingrain. The decision cost her her life. The instant she moved, Aaron flipped over onto his back and grabbed her by the waist. Unable to reach the Ingrain, Swallow twisted in his arms and brought the knife down into his chest. She raised it again for the deathblow, but Natterman struggled up over the bed, steadied the crossbow, and fired. The razor-tipped bolt speared through Swallow’s breastbone with a sickening crunch. Sucking for air she no longer needed, she pawed the air in maniacal fury. Her last cry carried all the atrophied rage and pain of her unfulfilled quest for vengeance: “Sterrm!”
Swallow collapsed on top of Aaron, preceding the young commando into death by only seconds. Natterman stumbled over to the gasping Israeli and with painful effort shoved Swallow’s corpse off his blood-soaked chest. Aaron strained to raise his head, then fell back and reached up to Natterman for succour. Natterman knelt over him. “Lie back,” he said. “You’re safe now.”
A froth of blood bubbled from Aaron’s mouth. “Did I stop her?” he asked softly. “She wanted … Stern.”
Natterman looked over at Swallow. Lying dead with the arrow buried in her chest, she looked like a locust husk spiked to a display board. Natterman smiled at the young Israeli. “You stopped her.”
“Tell … tell Gadi … I did my duty.” Aaron coughed once more; then he closed his eyes.
Natterman swallowed hard. This young soldier had given his life for Jonas Stern. Filled with a sudden rage, Natterman lurched to his feet and scrambled back to the telephone.
“Who is this?” he shouted. “Speak!”
“Who is this?” came the wary reply, the British accent clear. Natterman felt his hands shaking. “Your assassin is dead!” he yelled. “Your secret will be secret no more!”
He threw down the telephone. Moaning in pain, he stripped off his shirt, picked up Aaron’s first-aid bag, and began rummaging through the drug bottles. He wanted local anaesthetic. He needed to dull the fire of his wounds, but he could not risk losing consciousness. He had to be able to board an aeroplane under his own power. He hated the idea of leaving Ilse and the others behind, but he suspected that if he did not get out of South Africa today, he might not get out at all.
7.01 a.m. MI-5 Headquarters: London
Sir Neville Shaw dropped the phone, his face ashen. Deputy Director Wilson faced him from the doorway. “It’s over,” Shaw said quietly. “After all this time, it’s over.”
“What do you mean, sir?”
“Swallow’s dead. There’s no stopping the secret now. We’ve fired our last shell. From Churchill down to me, and all for nothing.”
“Churchill, Sir Neville? I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you? Haven’t you got it yet, man? Horn is Hess, Hess is Horn. The great bloody secret. Ever since Churchill, it’s been our sacred charge.”
“Sacred charge?”
“This service, Wilson. My office, particularly. It was MI-5 who ran the original Hess double-cross in 1941. We intercepted the first letter from Hess to the Duke of Hamilton.”
Shaw lifted two sheets of Paper from his desk. “Why don’t you read this, old man? It’s a memo to the prime minister. Typed it myself while you were getting tea.”
Wilson stepped forward uncertainly and took the proffered pages. His eyes widened as they flew over phrases that made his blood run cold.
Dear Mrs. Prime Minister:
In May 1941, Rudolf Hess, Deputy Führer of the German Reich, flew to this country to assist in a coup d’etat aimed at the government of Prime Minister Winston Churchill and King George VI. MI-5 was aware of this plot almost from its inception, and used it to buy time to forestall the German invasion of this country [Operation Sea Lion].
Regrettably, the success of the coup hinged on the participation of numerous ranking members of the wartime Parliament and the nobility, as well as a second accession of the Duke of Windsor to the throne. On 11 May 1941, Prime Minister Winston Churchill instructed this office [Secret Finding 573] to conceal all evidence of this Anglo-Nazi collusion, on the grounds that exposure of such high-ranking treason might bring down the government and possibly even prevent American entry into the war.
Events of the past five days have made the continued suppression of this information highly unlikely. I must inform you that Rudolf Hess is alive as of this writing, and is a citizen of the Republic of South Africa [living under the alias Alfred Horn]. Hess may soon reveal this fact himself, or certain papers unearthed at Spandau Prison may do so. My best efforts to silence Hess and to destroy the papers have failed. Hess’s current activities fall into the realm of the criminal, and, if exposed, could put at risk a significant number of British nationals. The family of Lord Grenville, particularly, may soon be made public in this connection, as it has owned and operated Phoenix AG [a multinational defence contractor] at the bidding of “Alfred Horn” since 1947. Other families of the peerage [one of whom boasts a member of your cabinet] have lent their names to similar enterprises in exchange for large cash payments, and possibly for ideological reasons as well.
I’m afraid issuing a D-notice at this time would be counterproductive, however, as it would tend to indicate prior knowledge by your office of these activities.
The suppression of the Hess information to date has only been possible thanks to the nerve and foresight of Prime Minister Churchill. In October 1944, Churchill flew to Moscow for a meeting with Joseph Stalin. With him he carried copies of assassination orders that were, to all appearances, signed by Stalin himself. These orders were actually forgeries fabricated by Reinhard Heydrich’s SD. They were brought into this country by a German-trained White Russian agent named Zinoviev, and recovered by MI-5 on 11 May 1941. In Moscow, Churchill warned Stalin that he would inform the world press that Stalin had ordered the murders of Churchill and King George VI, if Stalin did not cease making accusations about Anglo-Nazi collusion in the Hess affair.
Five weeks ago, on the strength of Secret Finding 573, I ordered the liquidation of Hess’s double [the real Alfred Horn] in Spandau Prison. On my order the Foreign Office file on Hess has been sanitized. I have placed in my personal safe papers which washed ashore in Scotland on 11 May 1941, which were thought to have been ditched from Hess’s plane. These papers contain the names of many of the British coup conspirators. The War Office file on Hess contains damaging information on the Duke of Windsor [which the Royal Family is frightfully anxious to keep buried], but that file is sealed until 2050. The FO file is sealed until 2016. We should meet as soon as possible: Sir Neville Shaw Director General, MI-5
PS This unfortunate situation has been complicated by the arrest yesterday of an MI-6 intelligence analyst who for seven years made some of our most sensitive intelligence secrets available to agents of “Alfred Horn”, including copies of American satellite photography. Three weeks ago, this man inferred [from information which had been requested by Phoenix AG] that some type of attack [possibly nuclear] was imminent against the State of Israel. In a belated fit of conscience, h
e sent an anonymous warning to the Israeli Embassy in London.
We cannot discount the possibility that my efforts to liquidate Hess prompted him to attempt some desperate action against Israel, but I consider this scenario unlikely. “Alfred Horn” does have significant uranium holdings in South Africa, but the possibility that he has acquired a nuclear device is infinitesimally small.
Deputy Director Wilson looked up at Shaw with horror on his face. “You don’t really mean to send this?”
Shaw raised his eyebrows. “Of course I do. As far as I’m concerned, the Hess secret is blown. I’ll be sacked tomorrow, so what do I care? I’m tired of protecting traitors, Wilson. It’s time the world learned what a heroic mission this service performed in 1941. We saved Churchill and the world! I should write it up for the King, man. We saved England’s bloody hide.”
The blood drained from Wilson’s cheeks. “Surely you’re joking, Sir Neville. You’re overwrought.”
“But I’m deadly serious.”
The deputy director glanced behind him to the closed office door. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said softly. He pulled a revolver from his coat pocket.
Shaw studied the gun. “A bit noisy for murder, don’t you think? Too many people around.”
Wilson gave his superior a wintry smile. “Not murder, Sir Neville. Suicide.”
Shaw smiled appreciatively. “Ah. I’m about to crack under the strain of a failed operation, eh? You’ll ‘discover’ me with my head bleeding over the Hess file, the mandarins will cover it up ‘for the good of the service,’ and you’ll take my chair as director general. Is that it?”
Wilson nodded. “I’ve been laying the groundwork ever since you locked yourself in here like a hermit. The secretaries are already whispering about you.”
Shaw sighed. “You were Horn’s man all along, weren’t you? As long as my efforts went toward keeping the secret, you went right along. But you and your bloody uncle—Lord Amersham, isn’t it?—you didn’t know that some of the conspirator families had asked me to liquidate both Hess and Number Seven, did you? Gutless bastards. They claimed Horn had gone senile, that he had too much power. I saw the truth, though. Glasnost had those blue-blooded cowards pissing their beds at night. Gorbachev’s whole program was openness, sweeping out the past. Couldn’t have that, could we? Our brave peers were scared silly that the Russians might not veto Number Seven’s release next time around.”
Shaw raised a forefinger. “And they were right, you know? Two days ago I learned that Gorbachev had recently indicated to Hess’s son that he was on the verge of releasing Prisoner Number Seven.”
Wilson kept his pistol pointed at Shaw’s chest. “How did you kill Number Seven without my knowledge?”
Shaw shrugged. “Easily. I used a retired SAS man, Michael Burton. The whole Hess business has always been run outside official channels. That’s why you knew nothing about the Casilda. But you found out in time, didn’t you? You warned Hess about the raid.”
Wilson’s face reddened. “I warned Horn.”
“My God,” muttered Shaw. “You didn’t even know who you were working for, did you? Just like that idiot in MI-6. At least his mother was South African.”
The revolver shook in Wilson’s hand. “Why was Hess allowed to live? Why did we let him out of England at all?”
Shaw smiled humourlessly. “We never had Hess, Wilson. We only caught Horn, the double Heydrich sent to confuse us. We never found out how Hess escaped, if he came here at all. MI-6 finally located him in Paraguay in 1958. The Israelis and other Nazi-hunters never found him because they weren’t looking. As far as they knew, Rudolf Hess was locked inside Spandau Prison.”
“Why didn’t you kill Hess in Paraguay?”
Shaw snorted. “You think your friends are afraid of the Spandau papers? Hess knew the name of every bloody British traitor involved in the coup attempt. He claimed he had taken steps that would make those names public in the event of his untimely death, and we believed him.”
“But why kill number Seven after all this time? He’d held his silence for decades. Why should he break it?”
“Because his wife and daughter were dead,” Shaw explained. “Had been for years. We kept Number Seven quiet by threatening his family, just as Hess must have. If Number Seven had been released from Spandau, he might have discovered they were dead. And we would have lost our leverage. If the Russians hadn’t vetoed his early release every year, we would have had to kill him years ago.”
Sir Neville Shaw steepled his fingers. “Tell me one thing, Wilson. How much have you told Hess’s people about Jonas Stern?”
“Nothing, until today. I assumed Swallow would kill Stern before he became a threat, and I didn’t want to risk further direct contact. Stern must have blown his cover himself Two hours ago Horn’s security chief called me and asked if I knew anything about a Jew who had come after Horn.”
Shaw nodded thoughtfully. “I suppose you intend to burn my memo?”
“Yes, actually.”
Shaw reached out his hand. “Here. Let me shred it for you.”
Puzzled, Wilson handed Shaw the letter, then watched incredulously as the MI-5 chief fed both pages into his highspeed shredder. “But … why? What are you doing?”
Shaw smiled. “Don’t worry, there’s a copy in my safe. But things haven’t quite reached the stage where I feel compelled to send it.” Shaw looked over Wilson’s shoulder to a dark corner of the large office. “Sergeant,” he said crisply, “please arrest Mr Wilson. The charge is treason.”
Like a thousand fools before him, Wilson whirled to face an imaginary threat. When he looked back at Shaw, there was a silenced Browning Hi-Power pistol in the old knight’s hand. “Sorry, old boy,” Shaw said, but he had already pulled the trigger.
Wilson’s astonished eyes went blank as the bullet tore through his heart. He dropped dead on the floor without a sound. Shaw calmly lifted his telephone and punched in a number. The call was answered immediately.
“Rose here,” said a gruff voice with a Texas twang.
“Good morning, Colonel,” said Shaw. “I am authorized to agree to your terms—if you believe the Hess secret can still be kept.”
“As if you had any choice,” Rose growled.
“About Jonas Stern,” Shaw said diffidently. “Her Majesty’s government doesn’t want the Israelis getting hold of this story.”
“I figure Stern’s dead by now, Sir Neville.” Rose said.
Shaw sighed with forbearance. “Is there any further word from South Africa?”
“Negative. Your precious secret’s in Captain Hauer’s hands now. Who knows what a friggin’ Kraut’ll do?” Rose laughed away from the phone. “Hey, Shaw, I’ve got a guy here, name of Schneider. He says Hauer’ll kill Hess if gets the chance. That make you feel any better?”
Shaw smiled with satisfaction. “Thank you, Colonel. I shall be in Berlin by noon.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
8.26 a.m. Angolan Airspace
At eighteen thousand feet the Lear 31-A turbojet knifed southward through the sky and down the length of Africa. In the sumptuously appointed passenger cabin, Prime Minister Abdul Bake Jalloud sipped from a glass of sherry and contemplated the excited face of Dr Hamid Sabri. The bespectacled young physicist could barely restrain his enthusiasm. In a matter of hours he would be shepherding back to Libya the first nuclear weapon ever to stock an Arab arsenal. Prime Minister Jalloud was more subdued. Despite Muammar Qaddafi’s repeated assurances that all was well, Jalloud could not shake a vague suspicion that something was not as it should be.
“Are you all right, Excellency?” asked Dr Sabri. “You look pale.”
“It’s the food,” Jalloud muttered. “I shouldn’t have eaten anything.”
“I’m nervous myself,” Sabri confessed. “I cannot wait to return home with the device.”
“I can’t wait to return home, period,” Jalloud murmured.
This curious statement disconcerted the young s
cientist. He glanced through his window at the clouds below. “Excellency?” he said quietly. “I must admit I am glad Major Karami is not accompanying us on this trip. He makes me uncomfortable. I do not believe Mr Horn liked him either.”
“Major Karami makes a lot of people nervous,” said Jalloud, glancing past Dr Sabri. At the rear of the cabin, sitting on a pile of embroidered pillows, six very dangerous-looking soldiers quietly smoked cigarettes. Qaddafi had assured Jalloud that he’d ordered them to help with the loading of the weapon, but Jalloud doubted this. On the last trip two security guards had been considered adequate escort. Jalloud was almost certain that these men had been handpicked from Ilyas Karami’s personal bodyguard.
“I’m not so sure we are free of Major Karami,” he whispered, cutting his eyes toward the guards.
Dr Sabri peered around the prime minister’s keffiyah and looked at the sullen group. “Don’t say that,” he said quietly. “Allah protect us, don’t even think it.”
Twenty-eight miles behind the Lear, Major Ilyas Karami stepped onto the flight deck of a Soviet-built Yakovlev-42 airliner and leaned down into the pilot’s ear. “Should I go over it for you again?” he asked.
“It’s not necessary, Major,” the pilot replied.
“Good.” Karami laid a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Because what I told my commandos goes for you pilots too. Any man that makes a mistake on this mission will lose his head when we return to Tripoli.”
The pilot strained to keep his hands steady on the controls. Ilyas Karami’s threats were never empty.
“And his testicles will be in his mouth,” Karami added.
The plane lurched violently, as if buffeted by turbulence. “I’m sorry, Major!” the pilot croaked. “Low-pressure pocket,” the copilot covered quickly.
