by Greg Iles
car, and in the confusion of the air raid I managed to escape to the
countryside east of London. I used my escape plan just as if the
mission had been accomplished. I lay low for a few days on the British
coast, with a, German agent who maintained a radio link with Occupied
France-then crossed the Channel to safety.
I served out the remainder of the war in Heydrich's SD, and near the end
fled with some others to South America.
My dream of returning to my native Russia was crushed forever in 1944. I
must live with the knowledge that the terrible shadow my Motherland
lives under is in no small part due to my failure in England in the
spring of 1941. Surely that knowledge is punishment enough for my
failure.
Signed, V V Zinoviev, Paraguay, 1951
Witnessed, Rudolf Hess, Paraguay, 1951
Stern's stomach rolled. Rudolf Hess? 1951? Good God!
What did it mean? Had Hess survived the war after all? Had he fled to
Paraguay with Zinoviev after his failed mission?
But what of Helmut, the daring German spy with the eyepatch? Had he
really died from his terrible beating? Or had he somehow managed to
escape and eventually make his way here, to South Africa? Stern felt
more confused than he ever had in his life. How are Hess and Zinoviev
connected?
he wondered. Where did their lives intersect? Nowhere in Zinoviev's
account was Hess mentioned, yet the date of the planned assassinations
simply couldn't be coincidence. Hess had flown to Britain on May 10-the
exact date that Zinoviev had been ordered to kill Churchill and the
king. So why had Hess been ordered there at all?
Abruptly Stern stood and closed the notebook. Of course!
Zinoviev's failed mission-the double assassination-as important as it
was, was merely preparatory. The real objective was the replacement of
Churchill's government-a coup d'etat. That was Hess's part of the
mission, the political side. But what had gone wrong? The bombs had
fallen as Hitler ordered, but Churchill and the king had not. As far as
Stern knew, no assassin ever got close to either leader on May 10, 1941.
So where did that leave the British conspirators who had planned to
replace them? Where did that leave the real Rudolf Hess? Whatever
Hess's mission had been, Zinoviev's failure had blown it. So where had
Hess gone? When his mission failed, why didn't he go straight back to
Germany? Why run to Paraguay, where he had ap patently witnessed
Zinoviev's document? Many Nazis fled to South America after the war.
patently witnessed Zinoviev's document? Many Nazis fled to South
America after the war. Had Hess been- one of the first to go? And had
he gone alone? No. Somehow, Stern realized, somewhere, Hess had met
Zinoviev before Paraguay.
Had it been in Germany? Or was it in England, on the run after the
failed mission? I'll bet dear Helmut of the one eye could answer that
question, Stern thought wryly. And I've got the oddestfeeling that he's
sleeping in this very house!
Stern hurriedly reconstructed Hess's flight in his mind. If what the
Spandau papers said was true, the real Hess had taken off from Germany,
picked up his double in Denmark, then flown across the Channel and
reached the Scottish Coast around ten Pm. The real Hess had bailed out
over Holy Island; then the double flew on, directly over Dungavel
Castle-his supposed target-all the way to the western coast of Scotland.
There he had turned, paralleled the coast for a while, then flown back
toward Dungavel and parachuted into a farmer's field a few miles away.
Why was the double needed at all? Stern asked himself. As a diversion?
He pictured the lonely, frightened German falling from the Scottish
sky-an image that had captivated the entire world.
What had been in the double's mind at that moment? In the Spandau
papers he had frankly admitted ignorance of the real Hess's mission.
All the double knew was that the scheduled radio signal from Hess had
not come, and rather than kill himself as ordered, he had bailed out of
the Messerschmitt, broken his ankle, and then, when a shocked and sleepy
Scottish farmer approached him, he had claimed to be Rudolf Hess-just as
he'd been ordered to do had the proper signal come.
Stern felt the breath leave his lungs in a rush. My God! he thought.
The double had not claimed to be Rudolf Hess! Not at first, anyway. He
had not given the farmer Hess's name, but another name-a name always
thought to have been a cover. But that was ridiculous, Stern realized,
because Rudolf Hess was the double's cover name! After his failure to
swallow the cyanide pill, after his bloodcurdling first-time parachute
jump, the confused pilot had given the farmer his real name. And his
real name was Alfred Horn!
Stuffing the Zinoviev book under his shirt, Stern snatched the broken
dinner fork from beneath his mattress and went to work on the door lock.
Thirty seconds later, he switched off the light and peeked outside. Two
soldiers wearing khaki uniforms and carrying South African R-5 assault
I'll guarded both ends of the dark corridor. Apparently the tive attack
held prompted Pieter'Smuts to post sentries against anyone who might
have leaked through his defenses.
Or perhaps, Stern thought desperately, perhaps Horn's Arab friends are
scheduled to return sooner than I thought. With his chest pounding, he
eased the door shut and slumped against it. He had to find a way out!
He knew exactly where he wanted to go, and it wasn't to the basement in
search of Frau Apfel's alleged nuclear weapon. Nor was it to the shrine
room telephone to call Hauer. All he could think about was something
Professor Natterman had reminded him of during the flight from Israel.
Something he had known for so long that he had forgotten it ...
Something about Rudolf Hess.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
11.40 Pm. Horn House Hans and Ilse lay in darkness in the opulent main
guest room of Horn House. They left the light off, for they knew each
other better without it. Ilse's face, wet with tears, nuzzled in the
hollow of Hans's neck, Piled upon the tortures she had already endured,
killing Lord Granville had caused Ilse's brain to spin a protective
cocoon around itself. After a time, though, the barrier began to thin
and stretch. Whin it finally broke, the tears had come, and she began
to answer Hans's questions. His first was about the baby, and Ilse's
confirmation of what he had been too frightened to believe engendered a
deep and dangerous tension within him. His left hand stroked Ilse's
cheek, but his right fist clenched and unclenched at his side.
"Don't worry," she whispered from the darkness. "Herr Stern is going to
help us."
Hans went still. "Who?"
"Herr Stern. I thought you knew about him. He came here impersonating
Opa. He's come to help us."
"What?" Hans rolled out of the bed, stumbled over to the wall and found
the light. "Ilse, what have you done?"
She sat up. "Nothing. Hans, my Oandfather is here in South Africa.
He'
s with your father in Pretoria. Herr Stern is working with your
father."
Hans's eyes grew wide. "Ilse, this must have been some kind of trick to
get you to talk! What did you tell them?"
"Nothing, Hans. I don't understand it all, but Herr Stern came here
wearing Opa's jacket, and the kidnappers plainly believe that he is my
grandfather."
"My God. Where is my father now? Did this man Stern say?"
"He told me'that he left your father, Opa, and three Israeli commandos
at a hotel in Pretoria. They're waiting for instructions from Stern
right now."
"Israeli commandos?" Hans felt as if he had stumbled into a madhouse.
"Where is Stern now?"
"I don't know. They were holding us together, but we split up when we
escaped."
"Who is this Stern?" Hans asked irritably. "How did he even become
involved?"
"He's an Israeli. He met Opa at the cabin in Wolfsburg.
He is a good man, Hans, I could feel it."
"He told you he had commandos with him? How old a man is he?"
Ilse shrugged. "Somewhere around Opa's age, I guess."
"And this is the man who's going to get us out?"
"He's done more than anyone else."
That stung Hans's pride, but he tried not to show it. If Ilse could
cling to her optimism, all the better. But might they really have a
chance? Had his father somehow managed to organize some kind of rescue?
"Ilse," he said'softly. "How can this man Stern help us?"
"I don't know," she said thoughtfully. "But I think he will."
Jonas Stern closed the infirmary door and flattened himself against the
wall. His heart beat like mad as he waited for his eyes to adjust to
the darkness. The astringent tang of isopropyl alcohol and disinfectant
wrinkled his nose. He had been forced to wait almost seven hours before
the guards outside his room finally left their posts. He had no idea if
more would be sent to take their place, but he hadn't waited to find
out. Even in the dark he could make out the high-tech gleam of stainless
steel and glass. Hd eased forward.
After eight short steps, he felt for the interior doors he remembered.
Finding one cool metal knob, he turned it and hit the wall switch. He
saw an empty hospital bed, oxygen bottles, telemetry wires, a dozen
other gadgets. Wrong room. He killed the light and closed the door.
Sliding his hands up the facing of the second door, he found the warning
sign he remembered: three inverted triangles, yellow over black.
Radiation . Stern's pulse quickened as he opened the door and slipped
inside.
There was light here, the dim red glow of a darkroom safelight.
He moved quickly around the X-ray table to the file shelves. One way or
the other, he thought, here would be the proof. He reached into the
first compartment and pulled out a six-inch stack of
fourteen-by-seventeen manila folders.
Then he crossed to the viewing screens and hit the switches.
Harsh fluorescent light flooded the room. While the viewers buzzed like
locusts, be pulled an exposed X-ray film from the top file folder and
clipped it against the screen. Chest X-ray. It took him a few moments
to orient himself.
The spinal column and ribs showed clearly as strong, graceful white
lines against the gray soft tissues and the almost burnt-black spaces of
the body cavities. After that it got tougher. A dozen shades of gray
overlapped one another in seeming chaos. Despite his initial confusion,
Stern believed that what he sought should be reasonably apparent even to
a layman. He tried to discern the subtle differences between the
anatomical parts, then groaned as the outlines of two pendulous breasts
emerged from the shadow of the internal organs.
"'It's a bloody woman!" he muttered.
Then he noticed the small radiopaque ID-plate image on the top left
corner of the film. It read: Linah #004, 4-08-86.
Stern unclipped the film, ffimst it back into the folder and dropped it
on the floor. The outside of the next folder read: Stanton, Robert B.
#005. He dropped it. Smuts, Pieter #002.
The next file also belonged to Smuts. After three more names he did not
recognize, he returned to the storage shelves.
The first folder he pulled out measured an inch thick by itself.
The top-left corner read: Horn, Thomas Alfred #001.
With shaking hands Stern removed the top film from the file and clipped
it to the viewing screen. It showed two views of a hand positioned to
reveal a hairline fracture that Stern couldn't see and cared nothing
about. He jerked the film from the screen and let it fall to the floor.
The next three films showed a series of intestinal views enhanced by the
ingestion of barium sulfate. These, too, Stern let fall. A
comprehensive X-ray anthology followed: grossly arthritic knees, lumbar
spine, cervical spine-Stern tossed them all onto the growing pile at his
feet. Finally he found what he wanted-an X-ray of Alfred Horn's chest.
With mounting anticipation, he clipped the top edge of the film into the
clamp and stepped back.
No breasts on this film. Stern began with what he clearly
recognized-the spine. The ribs climbed both sides of the spine like
curved white ladders. The lungs were the dark ovals behind them. A
triangular white blob overlaid the spine. The heart, thought Stern. He
knew the heart to be situated slightly left of center in the body-a fact
he had learned during a silent killing course as a young man in
Palestine. So the left lung should be... here. He touched the film
with his right forefinger. Now... compare. Check each lung against the
other until Ifind a discrepancy.
He immediately found several. Opaque disks the size of small coins
seemed to float like celestial bodies in the dark lung spaces.
These disks were small scars left by a mild case of tuberculosis.
Stern did not know this, but he soon dismissed the disks as unrelated to
what he sought. The first suspicious thing he saw was a kind of
widening of two rib bones at one.spot in the left lung. They seemed
thicker than the other ribs, more built up somehow, not quite as smooth.
Stern had an idea. Pulling another stack of films from Horn's folder,
he rifled through them until he found what he wanted-an oblique X-ray of
Horn's chest-a picture shot -from the side with both arms held above the
head. When he pinned this film to the screen, the mark he sought jumped
out at him like a contrail against the sky. He swallowed hard, raised a
quivering finger to the film. Crossing the dark left lung in a hazy,
transverse line was the scar of a rifle bullet. A rifle bullet fired
seventy-one years ago. The opaque track diffused rapidly into the
surrounding shadows, but the path of the old bullet fragments was
plainly visible. With his heart pounding, Stern counted downward from
the collarbone to the scarred area-one rib at a time.
... four ... five ... six ... seven."
He switched back to the first X-ray-the posterior/anterior view-and
carefully counted down again, this time searching for'the ribs with the
&
nbsp; strange built-up areas.
". . . three ... four . . . five ... six"-Stern felt sweat dropping
into his eyes- "seven."
"My God," he murmured, feeling a catch in his throat.
"Hess- is alive." Simultaneously a voice reverberated in his brain: The
bomb for Tel Aviv is real!
Folding the two stiff chest X-rays in half, Stern thrust them inside his
shirt between Zinoviev's notebook and his pounding heart.
He quickly gathered up the discarded films and folders from the floor,
shoved them back into the shelves, then slipped quietly out of the X-ray
room and into the dark hallway.
He sprinted to the library. In the musty darkness he tripped, picked
himself up, then moved carefully on toward the tall bookshelves.
Feeling his way across them to the corner, he found the tiny brass knob.
He turned it. He had already resolved that if he found anyone other
than Hess himself inside the secret shrine room, he would kill him.
The room was empty. Stern sat down behind the mahogany desk and
breathed deeply. He wanted to slow his racing heart. Above him the
bronze Phoenix screamed silently.
From the wall to his left a hundred Nazis gazed at him. As Stern
reached for the phone to call Hauer at the Protea Hof, he froze.
Someone had been in the room since his visit.
Across from the desk-where there h-ad been only red drapes before-hung 4
gigantic oil painting-twice lifesize-of Adolf Hitler.
Rendered in muted greens and browns, the dictator gazed down with sullen
intensity at the Jewish intruder. Someone had pulled back the drapes to
admire the Fuhrer. Gooseflesh rose on Stern's neck. His left cheek
began to twitch. After working his dry mouth furiously, the old Israeli
spat a wad of mucus across the desk onto the canvas. It struck Hitler
just above his groin. Stern raised his left arm, made a fist, and shook
it at the portrait.
"Never again!" he vowed. He lifted the phone.
455 A.M. Protea Hof Hotel, Pretoria
Hauer came off the bed like a fighter pilot hearing a scramble alar-m.
Gadi and Aaron sat half-conscious against the foyer walls; Professor
Natterman lay on the opposite bed, his right thigh wrapped in gauze, his
eyes half-closed from the effect of the morphine.
"Stern?" Hauer said.
"It's him!"
The young commandos leapt to their feet. Natterman tried to sit up,
