Ghost Flight

85

Jaeger settled into his seat for the short connecting flight to Bioko airport.

The flight from London to Nigeria had been all that he’d expected – fast, direct and comfortable, although this time his budget hadn’t quite stretched to first class. At Lagos he’d boarded some clapped-out regional airliner for the short jump across the Gulf of Guinea to the island capital of Equatorial Guinea.

The contact that he’d had from Pieter Boerke had been as unexpected as it had been intriguing. Some two weeks after bailing out of that doomed warplane as it plunged towards the jungle, Jaeger had made it out to a place of relative safety – Cachimbo airbase. And it was at Cachimbo that Boerke had managed to get a call through to him.

‘I have your papers,’ the South African had announced. ‘The seventh page of the manifest, just like you asked for.’

Jaeger hadn’t had the heart to tell Boerke that the last thing on his mind right then was an obscure Second World War cargo ship that had docked in Bioko’s harbour towards the end of the war. He’d asked the coup leader to scan the papers and email them over. He hadn’t quite got the answer he’d been expecting.

‘No, man; no can do,’ Boerke had told him. ‘You have to come see, in person. Because, my friend, this isn’t just papers. There’s something physical. Something I can’t email or post. Trust me, man – you have to come see.’

‘You got a hint?’ Jaeger had asked. ‘It’s a long way to fly. Plus, after the last few weeks—’

‘Put it this way,’ Boerke had cut in. ‘I am not a Nazi. In fact, I hate bloody Nazis. I am not the grandson of one, either. But if I were, I’d go a very long way – in fact I’d go to the ends of the earth, and maybe even have a lot of people killed – to make sure this never saw the light of day. That’s all I am willing to say. Trust me, Jaeger, you need to be here.’

Jaeger had considered his options. He was working on the assumption that Alonzo, Kamishi and Joe James were still alive, and being guided by the surviving Indians to a place where they could rejoin the outside world. He felt pretty certain that Gwaihutiga was dead, thrown from the Black Hawk along with Stefan Kral, their seemingly traitorous cameraman.

As for Leticia Santos, she was still missing, fate unknown. Colonel Evandro had promised to do all he could to find her, and Jaeger reckoned he and his B-SOB teams would leave no stone unturned.

Jaeger’s ruse with getting the Airlander to jettison the Ju 390 had doubtless saved the lives of the airship’s crew, Raff included. The Black Hawk had been forced to chase after the warplane as it had accelerated into its gliding dive, leaving the Airlander to limp in to Cachimbo.

Dale had managed to injure himself when his parachute had ploughed into the jungle canopy, and Narov had taken a shrapnel wound to the arm as the Dark Force had blasted their way into the Ju 390 cockpit. But Jaeger had managed to link up with them both on the ground and help get them moving – although it had been touch and go whether they would make it out of there.

Typically, both Dale and Narov had claimed that they’d suffered only flesh wounds and were quite capable of surviving the onward journey. Jaeger had worried that in the hot and humid jungle, and with little chance of rest, proper nutrition or medical treatment, their injuries were at risk of turning septic.

Still, he’d realised there was little chance of either Narov or Dale listening to his concerns – and in any case, there was precious little he could do to help right now. Either they made it out of the jungle under their own steam, or they would die.

Jaeger had located a small stream, and they’d followed that for two days, moving only as fast as their condition allowed. Eventually the stream had led to a tributary, leading in turn to a larger river, one that turned out to be navigable. As luck would have it, Jaeger had managed to flag down a passing timber barge – one used to shunt tree trunks downriver towards the sawmills.

A three-day river trip had followed, during which the greatest danger seemed to be Narov falling out with the drunken Brazilian captain. But only for so long.

Once Narov and Dale were aboard ship, the infections that Jaeger had feared might take hold did, and with a vengeance. By the time their journey was over – Jaeger delivering them to Cachimbo airbase and its state-of-the-art high-security hospital via a local taxi cab – they both had raging fevers.

They were diagnosed with septicaemia: their wounds had become infected and turned the entire circulatory system septic. In Dale’s case at least, the situation was exacerbated by acute exhaustion. They’d been rushed into intensive care, and were now getting treatment under Colonel Evandro’s careful watch and guard.

Having got those he could out of the worst of the danger – and with little else he could do to help Leticia Santos – Jaeger had figured he could risk booking himself a flight from Brazil to Bioko. He’d made sure the colonel kept him briefed every step of the way.

He’d promised to be back in time to bring Dale and Narov home, once they were well enough to travel. He’d got Raff to sit permanent guard outside their hospital door, as an added layer of security.

Before leaving, Jaeger had grabbed a few moments with Narov, only recently released from the intensive care unit. He’d taken a look at the papers she’d retrieved from the Ju 390. The German was still mostly lost on him, and much of the Aktion Feuerland document proved to be written in a sequence of apparently random numbers, which Narov figured had to be code.

Without breaking that code, there wasn’t a great deal more that she – or Jaeger – could glean from the document.

At one point she had asked Jaeger to wheel her into the hospital garden, so she could feel the sun on her face and get some fresh air. Once they were positioned somewhere reasonably private, she had gone a little way to explaining some of what had happened over the past few days. Predictably, in order to do so she’d had to start with the Second World War.

‘You saw the kind of technology that was on that warplane,’ she had begun weakly. ‘By the spring of 1945, the Nazis had test-fired intercontinental ballistic missiles. They had fitted warheads with sarin nerve gas, not to mention plague and botulinum toxins. With just a handful of such weapons – one each to hit London, New York, Washington, Toronto and Moscow – the fortunes of the war might have turned completely.

‘Against that we had the atom bomb, but we hadn’t yet perfected that. And remember, it could only be delivered by a lumbering bomber, not by a guided missile travelling at many times the speed of sound. We had zero defence against their missiles.

‘The Nazis had the ultimate threat, and they offered the Allies a deal – one that would allow the Reich to relocate to chosen safe havens, complete with their highest-tech weaponry. But the Allies made a counter-offer. They said: “Okay, relocate. Take all your Wunderwaffe with you. But on one condition: you join us in the real struggle – the coming global fight against communism.”

‘The Allies cut a deal to sponsor the most secret relocations. They couldn’t of course have the top Nazis turning up in mainland Britain or the USA. The public wouldn’t have stood for it. They sent them instead into their own backyards – the Americans to South America; the British to the colonies – to India, Australia and South Africa, places where it was easy enough to hide them.

‘So a new pact was forged. An unspeakable one. The Allied–Nazi pact.’ Narov had paused, digging deep to find the strength to continue. ‘Aktion Adlerflug – Operation Eagle Flight – was Hitler’s code name for the plan to relocate the Nazis’ top technology and weaponry; hence those stamps on the crates in the Ju 390’s hold. Aktion Feuerland – Operation Fire Land – was the code name for the relocation of their top people.’

She glanced at Jaeger with pained eyes. ‘We have never had a list of exactly who those people were. Never, in spite of all the years searching. The documents retrieved from that warplane – that’s what I hope they may yield. That, and a sense of where exactly the technology and the individuals went.’

Jaeger had been tempted to ask why it mattered. It was seven decades ago. It was old news. But Narov must have guessed as much.

‘There is an old saying.’ She’d motioned him closer, her voice weakening with the exhaustion. ‘The child of a snake is still a snake. The Allies had forged a pact with the devil. The longer it was kept hidden, the more powerful and controlling it became, until it was all but unassailable. We believe it persists at all levels of the military, banking and world government – even today.’

She must have seen the doubt clouding Jaeger’s eyes.

‘You think this is far-fetched?’ she had whispered defiantly. ‘Ask yourself for how long the Knights Templar legacy lasted. Nazism is less than a hundred years old; the Knights Templar legacy has lasted two thousand years, and it is still with us today. You think the Nazis just faded away overnight? You think those who were relocated to the safe havens would have allowed the Reich to die? You think their children would have abandoned what they saw as their birthright?

‘The Reichsadler with the strange circular symbol beneath the tail – we believe that is their symbol, their stamp. And as you well know, it has started to rear its head again.’

For a moment Jaeger had thought she was done, the exhaustion silencing her. But then from somewhere she’d found the strength for a final few words.

‘William Edward Michael Jaeger, if you still have doubts, there is one thing that should prove this for you. Think about the people who tried to stop us. They killed three of your team, and many more Indians. They had Predator, Black Hawks and God only knows what else. They were deep black and ultra-deniable. Imagine who might wield that kind of power, or act with such impunity.

‘The sons of the snakes are rising. They have a global network and their power grows. And as they have a network, so there is a network that aims to stop them.’ She paused, her face drained of all colour. ‘Before his death, your grandfather was the head of it. Those invited to join each get given a knife – a symbol of resistance – similar to the one that I carry.

‘But who wants this poisoned chalice thrust upon them? Who? The power of the enemy is on the rise, while ours – it is waning. Wir Sind die Zukunft. You have heard their motto: we are the future.’

Her eyes had flickered across to Jaeger. ‘Those of us who hunt them – we do not normally get to live for long.’