by Greg Iles
Hess left Germany in the spring of 'forty-one, and most of the
atrocities weren't committed until much later."
"That's not true!" Gadi argued.
"It is," Ilse said softly. "My grandfather told me that the real crimes
against humanity didn't happen until after Hess left Germany."
"That's obscene!" Gadi shouted. "You're crazy!"
"This is all terribly interesting," Burton cut in, "but I'm not much on
history." He turned to Ilse. "Let's have that case, love."
"Take it!" Ilse cried. She hurled the briefcase at the Englishman.
Gadi tried to intercept it, but his wounded thigh prevented him.
The case landed at Burton's feet. "Would you get that for me, Captain?"
he said to Hauer, keeping his gun trained on Gadi.
Hauer knelt and retrieved the case.
"Open it."
The case was not locked. Hauer opened it and glanced inside. A thin
smile touched the corners of his mouth.
Gadi snatched the case. Burton made no move to stop him. The young
Israeli threw the case to the floor. "Where are the papers!" he
demanded, his eyes on Ilse.
Ilse glared from one man to the other. "Those papers have caused enough
pain! They should have been buried with the rubble of Spandau!
The whole sick business should be allowed to die!"
Gadi put his face in his hands. "Oh God ... no."
Ilse raised her chin defiantly and pointed toward the tail of the Lear.
"Yes," she said. "They're back there.' "In the tail?" Burton asked
hopefully.
"In hell."
Stern had shot three Libyans already, but he couldn't hold out much
longer. If the Libyans rushed him, he might be hit before he could
detonate the weapon. He simply couldn't afford to buy the Lear any more
time. Crouching low, he laid his rifle gently on the floor and took one
of the bright cop, wires in each hand.
"I want to talk!" cried a voice from the shadows.
"It's too late for talk!" Stern shouted back, the first verbal response
he had given the Libyans.
"Why do you fight me, Herr Horn?" Karami asked. "Listen, please.
I know who you are. Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess, yes? You visited
Tripoli in 1937, I believe. You have seen my people, sir. We have the
same goal, you and I-the destruction of the Jews. I was wrong to attack
you, perhaps, but I need all the weapons you have here. Speak to me,
please! Let me finish the job your Fuhrer gave to the Mufti of
Jerusalem! Please, Herr Hess. I do not understand your position!"
Stern laughed silently. "Come forward, Major. You'll understand soon
enough."
Karami considered this. "All right," he said at length.
"I'm coming! I am unarmed!"
Crouched behind the bomb casing, Stern watched the tall, black-mustached
Arab step from the darkness, his hands raised above his head. His onyx
eyes blazed with fierce passion.
"Herr Horn?" Karami asked, puzzled.
Stern raised a hand and pointed to the motionless heap lying just in
front of the bomb cart. "There," he said.
Karami's eyes searched the gloom until they settled on Hess. "Who is
behind there?" he asked. "Mr. Smuts? What happened here?"
"Allah took a hand in things," Stern said.
For the first time, Karami noticed the masked corpses of the South
African commandos. Not far away he saw the body of Pieter Smuts. Then
his black eyes lifted, drawn by the gleaming cylinders behind which
Stern waited.
"So there are three," he said, his voice shallow. "I knew there had to
be more. I knew it."
Stern waited in silence. In spite of what the X-rays had done to him,
he felt strangely awed by the knowledge that his life was now measured
in seconds. His mouth felt dry as sawdust.
"If Hess is dead," Major Karami wondered aloud, "and Mr. Smuts is dead
... who are you?"
Stern poked his head above the bomb casing. Then, slowly, he raised his
hands. The exposed copper wires glinted in the dim light.
With a weight like a cancer in his stomach, Ilyas Karami comprehended
what the wires meant. "What do you want?"
he asked hoarsely. "Do you want gold? Drugs? Diamonds?
For these weapons, my master will grant you a kingdom!"
Stern crouched lower. He prayed to God the Leet was well away by now.
"Why do you consider this mad thing?" Karami asked, genuinely puzzled.
"You want to die? You want to be a martyr? Martyrdom is for the sons
of Allah, my friend, not good Christians. For rescuing these weapons
you will be a hero in my nation! Come out from there and let me make
you the richest man in the world! Come out and tell me who you are."
Stern laughed. The sound was brittle as a voice from the grave.
"We're both martyrs, Major. Isn't it funny how that works out?"
His face hardened. "I'll see you in the afterlife, my Arab friend.
Shalom."
In one terrible instant Ilyas Karami realized that the man facing him
across his coveted weapons was a Jew. From the hot core of his being he
screamed a curse of pure hatred at his lifelong enemy, at the same time
jerking out the pistol he had hidden in the belt behind his back.
But at that moment Hess jerked up from the floor and clutched at the
wires in Stern's hands. "Deutschland!" he shrieked. "Deutschland Uber
Alles! " Stern swatted the skeletal arms aside, wrapped the two bare
wires together, and clenched them in his fist. He smiled sadly, then
closed his eyes.
Karami emptied his pistol as fast as his finger could pull the trigger,
but Hess's still-struggling body shielded Stern from the first bullets.
The old Nazi danced horribly in midair, and by the time a slug found
Stern it was too late.
In the blink of an eye, darkness turned to noon. Even with the nose
cone of the Leadet pointed away from the blast, the flash blinded
everyone inside. Diaz lost control of the aircraft. It pitched over
into a screaming, spinning dive, hurtling earthward at over five hundred
miles per hour.
In the cabin, people slammed into each other in the terror of
flashblindness. General Steyn screamed in pain.
Hauer half-fell past Burton into the cockpit. "Straig] up!" he
screamed. "Level out!"
The Lear's engines whined insanely as the plane plummeted earthward.
Hauer grabbed the Cuban's wounded shoulder and squeezed maniacafly-
"Level out, damn you!
The blast wave's coming! The blast wave!"
Somehow Diaz managed to pull out of the dive. He had almost succeeded
in stabilizing the Lear when the blast wave hit. The solid wall of
superheated air tossed the tiny jet like a wave throws a surfboard,
pitching it up and forward, then dropping it into a trough of dead air.
Hauer felt a sudden nausea, as if hydroplaning a car around a curve,
then just as suddenly the feeling passed. He heard Diaz cursing
ftiriously from the cockpit as he wrestled with the controls.
"is anyone hurt!" Hauer shouted. His vision was slowly returning"I
can't see!" someone moaned.
"Holy Mother of God," General Steyn mumbled. "He did it! Stern
actually did it!"
"I
can't see anything!" someone cried. "Help me!"
"The blindness will pass!" Dr. Sabri shouted from the floor.
"We were lucky! It could have been twice that bad!"
"The papers!" Gadi muttered, his voict cracking. "The Spandau papers
are gone! Jonas is dead! Where is that German bitch?"
With Ilse now the object of all his rage and frustration, the Israeli
scrabbled blindly across the cabin floor in search of his rifle. Hauer
had finally had enough. When Gadi's hand closed around Ilse's ankle,
Hauer lifted the rifle from beneath the Israeli's sightless eyes and
struck him on the side of the head with its stock.
Gadi collapsed in a heap. Quickly Hauer collected every weapon he could
find-beginning with Burton's MP-5-and piled them all behind some pillows
at the back of the cabin. Then he took Hans's hand and led him over to
Ilse.
"It's all right," he said. "Just keep your eyes closed for a minute."
Ilse's arms went around Hauer's neck as well as Hans's.
"We're alive," she said softly. "My God, we're alive." She opened her
eyes. Tears of relief welled up in them and ran down her cheeks. A
smile started across her face; then she pulled up her hand and covered
her mouth. "Stern," she said haltingly. "Herr Stern ...
he's dead."
As Hauer held Hans and Ilse in his arms, he thought about that.
He suspected that the old Israeli would have called the trade more than
fair. The mystery of Rudolf Hess would probably remain "unsolved"
forever@r at least until the British government opened its secret
vaults-but Stern had never cared much about that. What mattered was
that the State of Israel had received a new lease on life. A gift from
one of its youngest fathers, and eldest sons. EPILOGUE (WASHINGTON)-At
8:47 Pm. Eastern Standard Time last night, a National Weather Office
RORSAT a meteorological satellite recorded an intense flash and heat
bloom over the northeastern corner of the Republic of South Africa.
Weather Office analysts report that the event was consistent with data
resulting from a large underground nuclear blast. The Weather Office
recorded many such events over the Soviet Union during the 1960s, and
believes its opinion to be accurate.
Both the National Reconnaissance Office and the Pentagon have refused to
comment, but it is believed that this incident confirms the existence of
a secret nuclear weapons arsenal in South Africa. A similar event was
photographed over the Indian Ocean off the South African coast in 1984.
Weather Office analysts do not have the equipment required to measure
the release of radiation into the atmosphere, but they suggest that,
with the prevailing winds over the northern Transvaal yesterday, any
such radiation would likely have been blown out over the Indian Ocean.
Several international environmental groups have expressed outrage over
the test. National Weather Office analysts place the probable nuclear
test site less than 20 miles from the Kruger National Park, one of the
richest preserves for wildlife on the African continent. The
environmental organization Greenpeace intends to file complaints with
both the international Atomic Energy Agency and the United Nations, but
the activist group expects that "little will be done."
The White House has issued no statement on the event, and government
officials in Pretoria and Capetown have bluntly refused to grant
interviews, calling the charges alarmist and unfounded. A National
Weather Office analyst who refuses to be named gave this comment: "Tell
the South Africans, 'Welcome to the Club.' (WEST BERLIN-API)-At 4:00
A.M. Central European Time yesterday, an elite counterteffor unit
consisting of GSG-9
commandos working in concert with the U.S. Army stormed a
Friedrichstrasse police station and cleared it of hostile elements.
U.S. Army Colonel Godfrey Rose, the American commander on the scene,
stated that a hostage situation had been going on for some time without
the knowledge of the press. The terrorists inside the station had not
demanded media coverage, Rose said, and it was felt that premature press
involvement "could have impeded the rapid resolution of what was not a
critical, but rather an unpleasant situation."
API has no further information on the terrorists who took over Abschnitt
53, but the West Berlin mayor's office has indicated that several West
Berlin police hostages died in the assault. Among them was Wilhelm
Funk, the prefect of West Berlin police. Funk, along with his fellow
officers, will be buried on Friday with full police honors.
Colonel Rose, who had worked extensively with Funk in the past, called
his death "a loss that will be deeply felt, but is best put behind us."
The funeral service at the Wilmersdorf cemetery is expected to draw
thousands of loyal West Germans.
Minutes of the Special Inter-Allied Intelligence Conference on
Disposition of the Phoenix Case. Schloss Bellevue, West Berlin
[Present: (US) Colonel Godfrey Rose, Chief of Military Intelligence,
West Berlin; US Undersecretary of State John Taylor/ (USSR) Colonel Ivan
Kosov' Grigori Zemenek, Chairman of KGB/ (UK) Sir Neville Shaw, Director
General mI-5; Peter Billingsley, Special Counsel to Her Majesty/ (FRG)
-Senator Karl Holer, Aide to the Chancellor; HansDietrich Muller,
Director of Operations for the BND (West German Intelligence) Meeting
chaired by Undersecretary Taylor] Following passage excerpted from the
questioning of Julius K. Schneider, Kripo Detective First Grade:
[Taylor] Detective Schneider, is it your opinion, then, the Russians
will carry through with their purge of Stasi officers who are listed on
Captain Hauer's list?
[Zemenek] I strenuously object, Mr. Undersecretary! I have assured
this council that all appropriate measures are being taken.
[Taylor] Then you should have no objection to Herr Schneider answering
the question.
[Schneider] I believe the Russians will vigorously pursue such a purge.
(pause) It's the political members of Ph@nix I worry about, sir, on both
sides of the Wall. I doubt that Captain Hauer's list contained a
full [Miiller] Objection! There is no evidence whatsoever that the
Phoenix cult has influence in the political hierarchy of the Federal
Republic! If there is such evidence, our Russian comrades should force
the Stasi to open their infamous blackmail files, so that we may see who
is vulnerable to coercion.
[Hofer] I do not think that will be necessary, gentlemen. The
Chancellor has full confidence that our colleagues in the BND can root
out whatever remains of this atavistic, but entirely anomalous reversion
to the Nazi period of Germany's history.
[unintelligible grumbling on all sides] [Taylor] Gentlemen, I understand
the ramifications of the Phoenix matter. What I'm having difficulty
accepting is that Rudolf Hess actually survived the war and lived until
just a few days ago. The man would have been over ninety years old.
[Rose] (laughter) Ever watch the Today show, Mr. Undersecretary ?
[Taylor] I don't follow you, Col
onel.
[Rose] Every morning Willard Scott flashes up pictures of people having
their birthdays. Every picture he puts up is of someone over a hundred
years old. Hell, Prisoner Number Seven only died six weeks ago!
[Billingsley] (clears throat) Gentlemen, I am loath to waste Detective
Schneider's valuable time with trivialities. If I may, I would like to
return to the question of the Hess material. The security of the
Spandau papers, the Zinoviev papers, and other related artifacts. Her
Majesty's government is most concerned to know that all such material is
now in the possession of the United States government, particularly, in
Colonel Rose's Military Intelligence office here in West Berlin.
Detective Schneider?
[Schneider] Sir?
[Billingsley] Is it your opinion that all tangible evidence of Rudolf
Hess's actual mission in 1941 has now been suppressed? That no physical
artifacts remain?
[Schneider] Artifacts?
[Billingsley] Photocopies, photographs, tapes, et cetera?
[Schneider] (lengthy pause) To the best of my knowledge, that is true.
[Shaw] Frankly, I'm much more concerned about the Russian promise.
For the record, I want us all to be absolutely clear on that. In
exchange for the list of Phoenix members compiled by Captain Hauer, the
Soviet government will drop all public pursuit of the Rudolf Hess case.
[Kosov] (burst of unintelligible Russian) [Zemenek] Colonel Kosov!
I apologize, gentlemen. Yes, that is the agreement. My signature
carries the weight of the Politburo.
[Billingsley] Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And we are agreed,
then-unanimously-that the Israeli government will not be informed of the
contents of any of these documents?
[Rose] From what we've learned about the secret Israeli/ South African
nuclear agreements, and the involvement of Rudolf Hess, I doubt the
Israelis would make the story public even if they knew.
[sounds of agreement] [Taylor] Well, then, gentlemen. If we've finished
with Detective Schneider, may I suggest that we adjourn for lunch?
We can resume at two Pm.
[Abstract concluded] 1.45 Pm. Martin Luther Hospital. British Sector,
West Berlin Professor Natterman looked up in surprise from his hospital
bed. Framed in the doorway was the huge, hatted figure of the Kripo
detective whom Natterman had last seen killing a Russian in a South
