by Bill Walker
Rainer led the way out of the room and the building. Not surprisingly, the Kübelwagen awaited them just outside the door, exhaust billowing out of the tailpipe. The leather-faced sergeant sat hunched behind the wheel, his expression grim and wary, the stub of a cheroot clenched in his yellowed teeth.
Thorley was barely inside the vehicle when the sergeant tromped down on the accelerator and the Kübelwagen fishtailed, sending up plumes of mud from both tires as it sped toward the airstrip. When they crested the first rise, they saw a Maybach staff car flying SS pennants drive into the camp. It slowed for an instant, then sped up, heading on the road toward them. Rainer whirled back to the sergeant. “Go!” he said, slamming his fist on the dash.
The sergeant grimaced, slapped the gearshift into first, then popped the clutch; the little Kübelwagen lurched forward, its Porsche engine racing. The car nosed over the rise and plunged down the road at breakneck speed, its metal frame shrieking and clattering in protest as it jounced and joggled over rocks and deep ruts in the muddy track. Thorley gripped the edges of his seat, every muscle in his body tensed, his jaw aching from the effort.
Rainer swiveled to face Thorley his face contorted as he shouted over the engine noise. “The Maybach is a fast car on city streets. However, it can’t hope to match our agility. With any luck it will break an axle or rip out its sump.” He smiled then, the thought apparently pleasing him.
The rain had stopped some minutes before, and the clouds boiled overhead, pushed eastward by a brisk wind that made Thorley shiver.
The rest of the drive back to the airstrip was made in silence, except for the occasional curses from the sergeant as he negotiated the rocky ground. Always there was the Maybach behind them, tailing them at a distance that varied from one to two miles, moving steadily and inexorably. Rainer’s previous confidence drained away. Müller, it seemed, would not be deterred.
As the airstrip came into view over the last rise, the weather-beaten sergeant, his cheroot long since chewed into oblivion, began leaning on the horn. It sounded like a goose with a head cold: loud and obnoxious. “This’ll wake the bastards up!” the sergeant laughed, his voice a guttural growl.
Rainer’s expression remained grim, while Thorley let himself smile in spite of their dire situation. He couldn’t help admiring a man who laughed adversity in the face. He scanned the road behind them, but the rise in the landscape blocked his view. Ahead, he saw the Heinkel’s engines spewing blue-colored smoke, the propellers beginning to turn. They quickly picked up speed, and the mighty roar of the two Jumo engines was reduced to a high-pitched buzz. Still, the sound made his heart race, knowing that his salvation lay a scant quarter mile distant.
The sergeant brought the Kübelwagen to a sliding stop yards from the plane and all three hopped out. The sergeant drew a P38 from a holster and thumbed off the safety.
Rainer shook his head. “Put it away, Axel.”
The sergeant looked crestfallen, but obeyed the order, his jaw grinding angrily. Thorley felt the same. From what little he knew of the SS, they deserved to be hung, drawn and quartered, much less shot. Rainer motioned for him to move to the plane.
“This is goodbye, my friend,” he said, offering his hand. Thorley took it and smiled warmly. “I think you now realize what’s at stake here. Churchill and the others must be shown that they cannot trust the Russian Bear.”
“I’ll do what I can, but I can’t guarantee my government will believe your people had nothing to do with this.”
“This will convince them,” he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a roll of Leica film. He dropped it into Thorley’s outstretched palm. It felt surprisingly heavy and warm to the touch.
“Perhaps.... But even if they do, they’ll never deal with any of you, as long as Hitler is in power. You know that.”
Rainer fixed him with a burning gaze. “Those of us within Der Weisse Adler do not hold with ‘Der Führer’s’ policies. To have attacked in the east is madness.”
“But if he had not done that, he would have invaded England.”
Rainer looked guilty. “Yes, it is a nasty business. Take the film, show them. We are willing to negotiate, anything to—”
“They are coming,” the sergeant interjected.
Rainer and Thorley turned and spotted the Maybach racing toward them, spurts of mud streaming out behind it. Rainer reached inside his tunic and pulled out a buff-colored envelope and thrust it into Thorley’s hands. He leaned forward and began shouting over the engine noise. “These are the names of those within Der Weisse Adler. Put it in a safe place. If we are not successful, then the world must know the truth. Good luck, my friend. The fate of millions rests with you.”
Thorley nodded and started to speak, but Rainer silenced him. “Go. Now!” he said, pushing Thorley toward the Heinkel.
The Maybach staff car was closer now, and Thorley could now see the SS pennant—two silver lightning bolts laid against a field of black—flying from the antenna. He turned and dashed for the plane.
The instant his feet cleared the rim of the hatch, the Major slammed it shut and the Heinkel’s engines throttled up to a full-throated roar. In moments they were airborne, heading back to Lisbon. Settling back into his seat, Thorley felt his pockets for the film and the documents, then remembered the badge. He took it out once more and held it in his hands, the dim light inside the plane casting tiny shadows across it. If nothing else, Thorley mused, this and the names of Rainer’s co-conspirators would be his insurance that his government would do the right thing. Not surprisingly, Thorley had a sneaking suspicion that he would need it.
Friedrich Rainer watched the Heinkel disappear into the cloud bank and felt a great weight lifting from his shoulders. They were not alone anymore. Der Weisse Adler could now carry out their mission with the sure knowledge that there would be others working toward the same goal. As Major White had said, he couldn’t be sure that those in charge of Britain’s government would heed the warning, or would aid them directly. There were powerful elements in England who were still sympathetic to Hitler.
But the seeds had been planted and he had to be content with that. And even more so, Rainer felt as if he’d made a fast and true friend. The irony of that made him smile.
The smile died when he faced the approaching staff car. It slid to a halt, its brakes squealing. As soon as it stopped moving a tall whippet-thin man dressed in the new field-grey uniform of the Waffen-SS leaped out.
The new feldgrau was meant to make the SS look more like soldiers, the old black uniform having become an object of scorn to those who felt the SS was shirking its duty by remaining home instead of fighting at the front. Now, ever since Hitler had decreed that the SS would carry arms into battle, it had taken supreme acts of will to tolerate their presence. This one made the task all the harder. He was the officer in charge of their military district.
You might have changed your spots, Müller, but you’re still scum.
Rainer plastered a conciliatory smile on his face and watched while Müller marched up to him, his polished boots gleaming. He strutted rather than walked, carrying himself with the air of the congenitally arrogant, blue eyes staring out of a face that was all sharp angles and jutting planes.
“Obersturmbannführer Müller, what a surprise,” he said. “I must confess that I did not expect you until this evening.”
One of Müller’s long-fingered hands stabbed the air in the direction of the departed Heinkel. “Who was that man, Herr Hauptmann?”
Rainer arched his brows in mock innocence. “Why that, Obersturmbannführer, was Major Wenner...from the Inspector General’s Office.”
This spurious revelation only seemed to make Müller even angrier. “You should have reported his arrival to me, at once. I was ordered to contain the situation here!”
“And I was ordered to cooperate. Perhaps Berlin has its wires crossed?”
Müller sneered at Rainer, then looked toward the sky where the Heinkel had disappeared
. “We shall see whose wires are crossed, Herr Hauptmann, Berlin’s...or yours.”
Müller turned back and fixed him with a piercing glare. It made Rainer’s blood run cold. For in the man’s ice-blue eyes he saw only death, destruction, and rivers of his countrymen’s blood.
THE SON: 1984
Chapter Nine
Friedrich Rainer awoke from a restless night of vague and disturbing dreams, covered in a sheen of sweat and feeling every minute of his sixty-eight years. Muscles in his lower back spasmed painfully, and his prostate throbbed with a dull and persistent ache that radiated down through his rectum. Perhaps the most annoying of all was that it now took several minutes for his tired eyes to focus every morning, even after putting on his trademark pair of eight-hundred Mark tortoise shell-rimmed bifocals.
Getting old was shit, but that all paled in comparison with what ran through his mind this mild June morning.
Hans Kleisner was dead, killed by some Arab fanatic they said. Hans had become a controversial writer known the world over for his searing fictional portraits of real-life despots and other politicos, a man who had made many enemies and very few friends. But mere words had not motivated the nervous ascetic young man to wrap his arms around him as the semtex strapped to his youthful body had detonated, blasting them both to atoms.
Rainer knew the real truth: what had killed Hans Kleisner was not his books, but his membership in a nearly forgotten cabal of young German officers dedicated to wresting control of their country from a sputtering madman bent on world domination, a group dedicated to restoring true democracy. Hans Kleisner, like Rainer, had been a member of Der Weisse Adler: The White Eagle.
Rainer put on his glasses, squinting while he eased himself off the mattress, careful not to awaken his wife. He turned, looked down on her and smiled.
Thirty years his junior, she’d come into his life two years before during a Lufthansa shuttle flight from Bonn to Frankfurt, where he’d been traveling to close a deal on new factory space for his company. The closing had gone exceptionally well, and Ilse, one of the flight attendants on the return leg of the journey, had flashed her expensive capped teeth and her ample cleavage, leaving no room for doubt that she found the distinguished-looking industrialist to her liking.
And the truth be told, Rainer hadn’t been looking.
Managing to survive both the war and Hitler’s purging of the Wehrmacht officer corps in the wake of the assassination attempt on July 20, 1944, Rainer elected to stay and help rebuild his ravaged country after the surrender, rather than flee to the Americas as others had done. His patriotism paid off in an opportunity to join a fledgling pharmaceuticals firm, which soon became the preeminent company in West Germany. And his beloved Gerda had been there every step of the way, indispensable to both his life and his business, until breast cancer stole her beauty and her life at the age of fifty-four.
A widower now for nearly a decade, he’d grown accustomed to his solitude, preferring to satisfy the occasional urge with discreet high-priced escorts who knew how to pleasure a man and asked for nothing but their fee in return. The rest of his energies he devoted to his business. Now the “Direktor” of the firm of Horst und Freideke, he was one of the most respected businessmen in Germany, and one of the richest. Still, he hadn’t realized how lonely it all had become...until Ilse.
With her, there had been an immediate attraction, which surprised him as much as it had delighted her. They’d dated for six months, getting together whenever their hectic schedules permitted, spending most of that time in bed. Ilse turned out to be a consummate mistress in the art of lovemaking, approaching the act with a joyous abandon and a practiced hand. She was what his old Wehrmacht comrades would have called a Nerz, after the libidinous weasel-like mammals farmed for their luxurious pelts. That she also loved to wear mink coats was an irony not lost on Rainer.
They were married after a short engagement, and the wedding made the society pages of all the major papers. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung called it “a zestful and elegant affair.” But what surprised nearly every one of those invited to the ceremony was that Ilse was an intelligent, well-bred woman who had a great sense of humor, and knew how to throw a party.
Now, after two years of wedded bliss, Rainer was beginning to wonder if he would be able to keep up with her for much longer. Their lovemaking the night before had been as strenuous and as deeply satisfying as always, but now he felt like a pugilist’s punching bag: bruised and pummeled. He sighed, thinking that if she killed him with her appetites it would not be such a bad way to go.
Smiling again, he walked to the window, wincing when the muscle in his back spasmed yet again. He stifled a groan and focused his attention on the black Mercedes idling just inside the gate of his estate. Including the man in the house, and the two roamers on the grounds, the two men in the car brought the number to five. He’d hired them after the first of his old comrades had died mysteriously six months before. That crime remained unsolved, a seemingly random mugging.
Oh, these bastards were clever, he had to give them that. They were meticulous in making sure that every death appeared to be the work of a common criminal or the cruel hand of fate. Kleisner was only the most recent, and the most personal. He’d been a close and dear friend. Rainer had kept in touch with the others in Der Weisse Adler only sporadically. They never held reunions. Their secrets were still feared by many in power. Now, it looked as if their existence would no longer be tolerated.
How long could he hope to elude them? How long could he hope to remain alive?
He forced those questions from his mind, turned from the window, and limped into the bathroom, his bare feet slapping against the rose-colored Tuscan marble that covered the four hundred square foot expanse. He examined himself in the full-length mirror, appraising his physique with a critical eye:
Waist a still trim thirty-four inches.
Hair still full, though now a luxuriant white.
No ugly wattle under the chin.
All in all, not bad for nearly seventy.
He turned and stepped into the multi-nozzle Swedish shower and turned on the water, adjusting the temperature to just this side of scalding, and let the spray sluice over his aching flesh. It felt like a tiny bit of heaven.
While he lathered his body with the scented soap his wife insisted he use, he went over his schedule for the day: 9:00 meeting with his board of directors, 10:00 conference call with the Wehrmacht Veterans Association to help gain additional funds for disabled soldiers, 11:00 meeting with the engineers planning the new robotic production line, Noon lunch with Ilse. He smiled, remembering her lusty cries from the night before and felt himself growing hard.
Not now, you old fool.
Then again, why not? Men of his age had to count themselves lucky they could perform at all.
Rinsing off the soap lather, he turned the water cold, not surprised to find the old cold shower cliché had the desired effect. He toweled off and dressed in one of his charcoal gray double-breasted suits, accenting the robin’s-egg blue shirt with a yellow paisley “power tie.” He laughed at the American expression. Power had nothing to do with one’s tie, and everything to do with one’s actions.
He then snuck past Ilse’s still sleeping form and took the wide curving staircase down to the ground floor.
The house man, a thuggish-looking Westphalian named Rudi, sat at the kitchen table thumbing through the newspaper, a steaming cup of black Turkish coffee resting on the table next to his Hechler & Koch MP5K machine pistol with integral silencer. Rudi raised his dark eyes as Rainer entered the room and started to stand up. “Please, sit down,” Rainer said, motioning with his hand as he moved to the walk-in larder. “And please put the gun away. If we are attacked by marauding hordes, I think you will have time to draw it.”
“Sorry, Herr Rainer,” he said, slipping the “Hech” back into a shoulder harness.
As he did every morning, Rainer fixed himself a simple breakfast of Muesli c
ereal and hot black coffee. He joined Rudi at the small circular table and they conversed while he ate, each talking about the other’s experiences. Rainer nodded at the tiny demitasse cup filled with the acrid Turkish brew. “How can you drink that, Rudi? It tastes like something a camel spat up.”
Rudi shrugged, an easy smile softening his rough features. “Got used to it when I lived in Istanbul. Now, I can’t drink anything else.”
“You’re lucky there’s a Turkish contingent in the Fatherland, now. Otherwise, I’d think it would be hard to come by.”
Rudi nodded, his face suddenly clouding. “Maybe so, but I wish they’d stay home. Too many of ‘em here now.”
This last comment disturbed Rainer, not only because the young security man seemed like a pleasant fellow, but because it sounded exactly like the neo-Nazi drivel that so many of the young were spouting these days. Didn’t history teach them anything? Then again, perhaps it was human nature to trivialize the advice of one’s elders. Either way, it amounted to the same thing. Hate was making a comeback. Rainer decided to change the subject. “Anything in the paper?”
Rudi knew what that meant. He shook his head. “Nothing new, anyway. The latest on your friend is that no terrorist organization is claiming responsibility. They’re saying the bomber was some kind of lone wolf.”
Rainer nodded, his mind churning. It’s them. It’s them. It’s them....
Rudi started to say something, then cocked his head, listening intently to something coming in over his earpiece radio. The microphone, into which he now spoke, was hidden inside his sleeve. “Ja.... All is quiet.... Jawohl, I’ll be right out.” He turned to Rainer. “That was Baldric. Our shift is ending. I’m to meet him outside. Erich will be right in.”
“Very good. I’ll see you tonight.”
Rainer watched the big man lumber out of the kitchen, then turned on the tiny Blaupunkt television resting on the counter. He switched channels until he found the news, hoping to hear more about Hans, but knowing that if he did it would add nothing to what he knew to be the truth. He sat staring into his cereal while listening to the latest statistics of rapes and murders.
