The Hunt

24

Hank Kammler bristled as he eyed the figures in the room, his gaunt face cloaked in shadow, his gaze distinctly predatory.

‘You don’t like it?’ he demanded. ‘It offends your sense of entitlement? Your precious positions of influence? Let me ask – what is the point of influence, of power, if you never see fit to use it for the sake of the Reich?’

A man of around Kammler’s age – Ferdinand Bormann, the son of Martin Bormann, Hitler’s banker – knitted his brows. He was a very different character from Kammler, as he himself was well aware. Where Kammler was driven, merciless and utterly single-minded, Ferdy, as his friends called him, was a little more circumspect and conservative. A banker by nature. Something of an accountant. A ‘bean counter’, as Kammler had once so cuttingly said. Well, Kammler might be Grey Wolf, but they were still a team, and that demanded a certain accountability.

‘It is only that the Mein Kampf settlement brings with it certain dangers, risks, in the form of scrutiny,’ he ventured. ‘A mystery figure claiming the Führer’s royalties: press interest is inevitable. We must anticipate that it will bring attention our way. Which could prove… difficult.’

Kammler stalked across the room, throwing open the curtains. Light flooded in; the fine sunlight of an early spring day. He ran his eye around the perfectly manicured grounds. Yes, Ferdinand Bormann had done well for himself. You didn’t run a Zurich bank of such global reach without being amply rewarded – this fine country estate being a case in point.

But that was just the problem. Bormann and the rest of the Kameraden had grown fat and bloated, seduced by the trappings of wealth and power. None of that did anything to bring back the Reich. To reclaim the Führer’s legacy. To purge humanity of its present sickness.

And by God, was it sick.

By contrast, he, Hank Kammler, son of SS General Hans Kammler, had sacrificed so much. His position as deputy director of the CIA. His friends. His freedom. His very face, even. He ran a hand across the recent scarring. He had sacrificed his looks – the hawkish, aristocratic Kammler features – and all for the cause.

Yet still greater sacrifice was required, and he was ready. To start a fire. A fire to burn and sear the dead wood. Destroying all to start anew. He for one would enjoy sitting back and watching it burn.

But the men in this room: how would he galvanise them?

He glanced at his watch. ‘It is six forty-five p.m. on the fourteenth of March. Tonight, the Moldovan flight will take to the air. If all goes to schedule, I expect delivery in seventy-six hours.’

He paused. ‘I should be there, overseeing the building of the last of the devices. Instead, you call me here to quibble about the Mein Kampf settlement? To complain that it may attract a little unwelcome publicity?’

His eyes flashed a momentary rage, verging on the brink of madness. ‘Mein Kampf, the Führer’s masterpiece, banished! His royalties going to fund the very causes we abhor! They try to do this with his message, his glorious inheritance, and I am surprised – and disappointed – that you are not as incensed as I am, Kameraden.’

Boorman and his fellows remained silent. Kammler’s words had stung them. There was a sense that they had hit home.

‘Look at us,’ Kammler continued. ‘Eight men. Eight, the sacred number of the Schutzstaffel. Eight men in the sunset of our days, yet we are so very, very close. So close to fulfilling our pledges to the Führer. And yet you call me halfway around the world to tell me this? That the Mein Kampf settlement is a little risky?’

‘You cannot act alone,’ a figure sitting to Bormann’s right objected. ‘You did so with the Mein Kampf settlement, and out of what motive? Hubris? We do not need the money. The sum is paltry compared to the finance and power in this room. I repeat: you cannot act alone. You are not yet the Führer of the new Reich. We are the Kameraden. The Brotherhood of the Death’s Head. We act as one or not at all.’

Kammler couldn’t hide his scorn any longer. ‘Well there hasn’t been much action to date! Seventy years of inaction, by my reckoning. What do you suggest? We dither for another seventy? You think we can pass such responsibility to a new generation? You really think they will care? Understand?’

He paused and tapped his chest steadily. ‘You think they will feel it? In their hearts? Do you think they will even remember?’

‘Heady rhetoric,’ the figure retorted. ‘You have your father’s flare for oratory. But that doesn’t alter the fact that we act as eight, united, or not at all. That is the way.’

Josef von Alvensleben – son of Ludolf von Alvensleben, the SS Gruppenführer who had run the infamous Valley of Death, an SS extermination camp in Poland – wasn’t about to be bullied by anyone. His father hadn’t exterminated hundreds of thousands of Polish Jews and communists for his son to scare easily.

‘We share your sense of urgency,’ he continued. ‘The world must be purged of the Untermenschen. We Aryans must take our rightful place. And we will, of course. But cautiously. And with proper planning. Don’t mistake our caution for reluctance to act.’

Kammler fought to suppress a sneer. He had grown accustomed to their reticence. To the snail’s pace at which they tended to act. To their cursed caution. And he abhorred it.

‘Eight devices; that we are agreed upon,’ von Alvensleben continued. ‘But do we have enough raw material? How much was retrieved from the tunnels at St Georgen?’

‘Two hundred and forty kilos,’ Kammler volunteered. ‘That was before the idiot film crew stumbled upon the tunnel complex. From that we hope to isolate a hundred and twenty kilos that is highly enriched and usable.’

‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but each device requires twenty kilos of HEU?’ The speaker was Walter Barbie, son of SS and Gestapo officer Klaus Barbie, the so-called ‘Butcher of Lyon’.

At war’s end, Klaus Barbie had been recruited into the CIA to serve as an agent in South America. He’d led a long and happy life, raising a family in the southern Argentinian town of Bariloche. Hence Walter, his eldest son, spoke German with a strong South American accent.

‘It does,’ Kammler confirmed.

‘Eight devices each of twenty kilos: the St Georgen haul leaves us a shortfall, does it not?’ Barbie pressed.

Kammler found the inquisitorial tone grating. He did his best to hide his resentment. ‘It does. Hence the need to go ahead with the deal offered by our friends in Moldova. Once we take delivery, we should have more than enough for our plans.’

‘You are to be congratulated,’ von Alvensleben remarked. ‘This is certainly progress.’ He paused, running his gaze around the others in the room. ‘But we also understand your plans have altered somewhat. Is that true?’

Kammler’s eyes grew cold. ‘Plans evolve, Josef.’

Von Alvensleben’s gaze didn’t falter. ‘Yes, and with each evolution we need to be kept informed. Fully briefed. We are your paymasters, your protectors. You know the protocols.’

‘Those who have money will always make money, no matter what catastrophe may befall humankind,’ Kammler remarked by way of answer. ‘The more dire the catastrophe, the more money there is to be made. This we all understand. And crucially, we have unrivalled finances and we will have ample forewarning.’

‘That’s as may be,’ von Alvensleben countered. ‘But still we need to be kept informed. We are hitting purely military and political targets, as agreed? That has not changed?’

‘It hasn’t,’ Kammler confirmed.

‘So what has changed?’ von Alvensleben pressed. ‘I have word that you have altered our plans significantly.’

Kammler eyed von Alvensleben. Who had given him word? Could there be a mole in Kammler’s set-up; a leak? He would check. Root it out mercilessly.

He brought himself to his full height. ‘It is a work in progress, Josef. Eight INDs simultaneously detonated at the targets we have agreed upon. I’m proud to say that we have managed to accurately predict the radiation envelope from each strike. We can now forecast precisely where the devastation will fall.’

Von Alvensleben gave a curt nod. ‘This is only as we intended.’

‘But it means we can better protect ourselves. Greater safety equals greater predictability for us all. A vital evolution, as I think you’ll agree?’

‘This is an improvement,’ Von Alvensleben conceded. ‘This is what we had hoped for.’

‘It is.’ Kammler smiled. ‘As for those who are not forewarned – those who are not the chosen – the results will be exactly as we intend.’

‘But this is still nothing new,’ von Alvensleben pressed.

Kammler feigned a smile. ‘I was holding back the best to last. Consider where the blame will fall. I have made certain arrangements so that responsibility will be placed at the feet of the North Koreans. Or at the very least, rogue elements in the North Korean regime.’

He gazed around triumphantly. ‘By fingering North Korea, we prove how communism really is a scourge on the earth. Doubly fertile soil for fascism to triumph. A stroke of genius, don’t you think?’

‘A stroke of genius,’ a figure sitting to the right of von Alvensleben confirmed. It was Wolfgang Eichmann, son of Adolf Eichmann, one of the chief architects of the Holocaust. ‘But how will you achieve it?’

‘North Korean teams are building the devices,’ Kammler replied. ‘Their expertise has proved critical. Without it, our plans are impossible to achieve. I’ll make sure the evidence is in place to reveal their involvement.’

The Kameraden nodded their approval. The North Korean factor was indeed a stroke of genius.

With it, Kammler figured he was winning them over.