Burning Angels

24

Peter Miles – Pieter Friedman as once was – stood before them in the former Soviet command bunker of the Falkenhagen complex. It made a curious setting for the coming briefing.

The bunker was massive and set impossibly deep underground: to reach it, Jaeger had had to descend six flights of switchback steps. It had a high, domed ceiling, criss-crossed by a latticework of massive steel girders, like some kind of giant robotic bird’s nest sunk far into the earth.

To left and right were bolted steel ladders, which in turn led to hatchways recessed into the walls. Where those led was anyone’s guess, for off the main rooms lay a labyrinth of tunnels, pipes, vertical shafts, tubes and ducts, plus ranks of enormous steel cylinders – presumably where the stocks of N-stoff had been produced by the Nazis.

There were few creature comforts in the bare, echoing chamber. Jaeger and his team were seated on cheap plastic chairs arranged in a semicircle, around a bare wooden table. Raff and Dale were there, along with the rest of Jaeger’s Amazon team. He eyed each in turn.

Nearest was Lewis Alonzo, a black American and former US Navy SEAL. During their Amazon expedition, Jaeger had got the measure of the man. He liked to play an act – big, muscled and indestructible, but not the sharpest tool in the box.

In actual fact, quite the reverse was true. He had a mind almost as imposing as his massive physique. In short, Alonzo combined Mike Tyson’s stature with Will Smith’s looks and sharp, incisive wit. He was also genuine, fearless and possessed of a very generous heart.

Jaeger trusted him.

Next was the comparatively diminutive figure of Hiro Kamishi, a former member of Japan’s special forces – the Tokusha Sakusen Gun. Kamishi was something of a modern-day samurai; a soldier of the higher path. A man steeped in the mystic warrior creed of the East – of bushido – he and Jaeger had developed a deep affinity during their time in the Amazon.

Third was Joe James, a giant bear of a man and arguably the most unforgettable of Jaeger’s former Amazon team. With his long, straggly hair and massive beard, he looked like a cross between a homeless bum and a Hell’s Angels biker.

In reality, he was a former member of the New Zealand SAS – perhaps the toughest and most renowned of the Special Air Service family. A natural-born bushman and tracker, he was part-Maori, which made him a natural running mate to Takavesi Raffara.

Having undertaken countless SAS combat missions, James had struggled to come to terms with losing so many mates along the way. But over the years Jaeger had learned to never judge a book by its cover. James had a can-do attitude second to none. Equally as important, he possessed an unrivalled think-outside-the box mentality.

Jaeger respected him greatly as an operator.

Plus there was Irina Narov, of course, though she and Jaeger had spoken barely a word since he had faced his brutal testing.

In the intervening twenty-four hours, Jaeger had largely come to terms with what had happened, recognising it for what it was: a classic case of resistance-to-interrogation training – what they called ‘R2I’ in the trade.

Every SAS hopeful was subjected to R2I as the culmination of the murderous selection course. It came complete with much of what Jaeger had suffered here: shock, surprise, disorientation, plus horrific mind games.

Throughout the days of simulated physical and psychological testing, they were studied minutely for anything that might betray a propensity to crack or to sell out their fellow operators. If they answered any of the questions thrown at them – answers that would betray their mission – they were thrown off the selection course.

Hence the answer learned as if it were a lifesaving mantra: I cannot answer that question, sir.

Here at Falkenhagen, it had all come so utterly out of the blue, and was executed so mercilessly, that it had never occurred to Jaeger that it might be a dark and vicious game. And with Narov playing her part to perfection, he had been convinced that he had suffered the ultimate betrayal.

He’d been tricked, beaten and taken to the edge, but he was alive, and he was one step closer to finding Ruth and Luke. And right now that was all he cared about.

‘Gentlemen, Irina, thank you for coming.’ Peter Miles’s words served to drag Jaeger’s mind back to the present. The elderly man glanced around at the concrete and steel edifice. ‘Much of what we are here for is rooted in this place. In its terrifying history. In these dark walls.’

He turned his attention fully on his audience. There was an intensity about the man’s gaze that Jaeger hadn’t seen before. It demanded attention.

‘Germany. Spring 1945,’ he announced. ‘The Fatherland had been overrun by the Allies, German resistance crumbling fast. Many of the key Nazis were already in Allied hands.

‘The top commanders were taken to an interrogation centre near Frankfurt, codenamed Dustbin. There, they tried to deny point blank that the Reich had ever possessed weapons of mass killing, or planned to use them to win the war. But, one of the captives eventually broke, and confessed to what at first seemed to be a series of incredible revelations.

‘Under intense questioning he revealed that the Nazis had developed three fearsome chemical agents: tabun and sarin nerve gases, and the fabled Kampfsoffe – poison gas – called N-stoff, or Substance N. He also confessed to the full extent of Hitler’s Chemicplan – his project to manufacture thousands of tonnes of chemical agents to crush the Allies. What was extraordinary is that this was utterly unknown to the Allies, and consequently we possessed no defence against such agents.

‘How could this have come to pass? First, as you’ll have noticed, the Falkenhagen complex is set deep underground. From the air, it is more or less invisible. And it was in places like this that the most fearsome agents were manufactured. Second, Hitler contracted out his chemical weapons programme to a civilian company: the massive industrial complex I. G. Farben.

‘They masterminded the building of these factories of death. It would have been an entirely daunting task were it not for the fact that the Nazis possessed a seemingly limitless supply of slave labour. Underground facilities like Falkenhagen were built by the millions of hapless souls sent to the Nazi concentration camps. Even better, the hazardous production lines were also staffed by concentration camp inmates – for of course, they were all destined for death anyway.’

Miles let his words hang in the air, portentously. Jaeger shifted about uncomfortably in his chair.

He felt as if a strange and ghostly presence had crept into the room, its icy fingers clutching at his fast-beating heart.