The Spandau Phoenix

exploded.

The second Russian groped at his belt for his pistol, but two bullets

hit him low in the stomach and severed his spinal cord. While Borodin

backpedaled out of the foyer and spun toward the window. Hauer and the

Israelis dropped to the carpet as slugs from his MP-5 peppered the bed

and the wall - and the ceiling. Hauer looked up just as two bright red

flowers blossomed on Borodin's shoulders.

Hauer and Gadi were on their feet by the time Borodin's body hit the

floor. Standing in the doorway, his shoulders stretching from post to

post, was a very large man holding a Walther pistol in his hand. A gray

hat was pressed down over his bloody head, and a brass gorget plate hung

from his neck. On it was a capital K, the emblem of the Berlin

Kriminalpolizei.

"Captain Hauer?" Schneider said.

Hauer stepped forward and nodded.

Schneider put his gun in his pocket. "I need to talk to YOU."

Gadi Abrams crouched over Borodin, who lay pale and shaking on the

carpet. He rifled Borodin's pocket for' Hauer's envelope, found it, and

tossed the negatives to Hauer. Then he leaned down over Borodin's face.

"Where is your sniper?" he shouted. "Where!"

Borodin smiled. "Fuck you, Jew."

Gadi snatched up a pillow, crushed it over Borodin's face and punched

him hard on his wounded shoulder. The muffled howl that followed did

not sound-human. Gadi pulled the pillow away.

"Across ... across the street," Borodin croaked. "Room 528 ...

the Stanley ... House."

Gadi closed his brown hands around Borodin's throat and began to

squeeze. "For Yosef," he said softly.

Detective Schneider crossed the room and shouldered Gadi off of the

Russian. He crouched down beside him.

"Are you Yuri Borodin?" he asked tersely. "Are you the man who killed

Major Harry Richardson?"

Borodin stared up with glassy eyes. He saw little chance of leaving

this room alive. His pale face wrinkled into a sneer. "The Swastika

was a nice touch ... don't you think?"

Schneider sighed heavily. In his mind he saw the dim, overheated

bedroom where he and Colonel Rose had examined Harry's mutilated corpse.

In the close South African heat, it wasn't hard to recall. "I should

let you bleed to death," he growled.

"Fuck you too, you stinking German."

While Hauer and the Israelis watched in disbelief, Schneider closed one

huge hand around Borodin's throat and squeezed with the remorseless

force of a root cracking concrete. Schneider did not see Hauer signal

to Gadi, or the two Israelis approach him from behind.

The moment Borodin's legs stopped thrashing, the Israeli commandos

seized him.

Schneider did not struggle, not even when Gadi took the pistol from his

pocket.

Hauer stepped forward and checked the scalp behind both of Schneider's

ears. Satisfied, he stepped back and motioned for the Israelis to

release him.

"I don't have the damned tattoo," Schneider muttered.

In the awkward silence that followed, Hauer finally noticed the weak

moaning coming from somewhere inside the room. He walked around and

looked on the floor between the beds. Professor Natterman lay there,

deathly white, both hands clutching his side. "Captain ... ?"

he whispered uncertainly.

Hauer knelt and examined the old man. The professor had been lying on

the bed when Schneider burst in, and he had been too, slow to seek

cover. Two bullets from Borodin's final spray had struck him.

One had nicked the flesh above his left hip, the other grazed his left

thigh. Hauer could see that the wounds were superficial, but the

professor obviously believed he was in danger of dying. He raised his

quivering arms to Hauer's collar and pulled him down to his face.

"There really is ... a copy, Captain," he rasped. "A copy of the

Spandau papers."

Hauer pulled himself free of the old man's grasp. "What did you say?"

"Tell Stern to remember the copy I made in Berlin!"

"What?"

Natterman nodded weakly. "Stern ... was following me.

He saw me do it. I made a copy of the Spandau papers before I ever left

Berlin for the cabin. I mailed it to one of my old teaching assistants

for safekeeping. Kurt Rossman. If ...

if you get to Ilse, don't worry about the papers. Just get Ilse out.

Tell Stern to get Ilse out!"

Hauer sat stunned. He couldn't believe that through all the warnings

against photocopying the Spandau papers, Natterman had risked Ilse's

life by not admitting that he had already done so. As he opened his

mouth to rebuke the old man, Aaron Haber appeared at his side with a

canvas overnight bag. The young commando withdrew a kit containing

@yne, Xylocaine, sutures, syringes, gauze bandages, a blood-pressure

indicator, morphine, and a cornucopia of emergency drugs. "We came

prepared for casualties," he said. He propped Natterman's legs on some

pillows to max the flow of blood to his brain.

Hauer stood up and gave his full attention to Schneider.

"What's your story, Detective?"

Schneider produced a handkerchief and wiped some blood from his face.

"I've come here to help you, Captain. You are in a great deal of

trouble in Berlin. Both you and Sergeant Apfel are wanted for murder

there."

"I'm no murderer," Hauer said gruffly.

"I didn't say you were. I know all about the Spandau papers, Captain. I

know about Phoenix. I'm working with the Americans, with Colonel Rose

of the U.S. Army. That's how I traced you."

"I suppose you want the Spandau papers?"

Schneider shrugged. "Only if they can help to crush Phoenix."

Hauer digested this slowly. "Why did you kill that Russian?"

"He killed an American intelligence officer named Richardson.

Richardson was the man who discovered that Phoenix extends into East

Germany as well as West Berlin."

"I've known that for months."

"Then why didn't you report it?"

Hauer snorted. "Report it? Phoenix has men in the police department,

the BND, the West Berlin Senate, the federal - government in Bonn, and

all the states. If I'd reported what I knew to the wrong person, you

and your Kripo friends would have been visiting me at the morgue twelve

hours later."

Schneider nodded slowly. "The Americans can help you, Captain.

Colonel Rose will help."

"You said this Russian here already killed one American officer.

That kind of help I don't need." Hauer studied the big German.

"Why do you think I should trust you?"

"Because I saved your life."

Hauer shrugged. "Anyone from Phoenix would have killed those Russians

just as quickly as. you did. They can't afford to let the Russians

know what Phoenix truly exists for. Not yet."

Schneider met Hauer's eyes. "Come back with me to Berlin, Captain. Help

us root out Funk and his men. Colonel Rose would like nothing better

than to order an assault on Abschnitt 53. But his hands are tied. His

superiors are holding him back because of the Hess business, and he

doesn't.

have nearly enough evidence against Prefect Funk. You could provide

that evidence, Captain. You must trust me.

"I want the same thing you do-to clean those scum out of Berlin."

Schneider turned his broad hands upward. "I know you don't know me, but

you must have known my father.

Max Schneider. He was a Kripo investigator too. Big like me.

Hauer searched Schneider's face for a full minute. Two rivulets of

blood trickled down from the sweatband of Schneider's hat. Behind

Schneider, Gadi was moving the dead Russians into the bathroom, while

Aaron worked on the professor. The professor's revelation that he had

made a copy of the Spandau papers pulsed in the back of Hauer's brain

like a second heartbeat. The situation had changed.

Profoundly. A copy of the Spandau papers, combined with the evidence he

and Steuben had already compiled, meant that direct action in Berlin

might now be possible. Things were moving too quickly here in South

Africa. Hans's betrayal, Stern's sudden appearance, the Russian

assault, Schneider's unexpected rescue. Schneider ...

"Your father wore a hat like yours," Hauer said absently.

"You did know him," said Schneider.

Hauer turned and stared pensively out the window. "You say you're

working with the Americans?", "Yes. Colonel Godfrey Rose, of Military

Intelligence."

"Can you get him on the phone?"

'Yes.

"Do it."

4.00 P.M. The Voortrokker Monument, Pretoria

After forty-five minutes of lying blindfolded in the backseat of the

speeding Range Rover, Jonas Stern had lost all sense of direction.

The Zulu driver who had met him at the Voortrekker Monument drove with

the windowsdown, and Stern could smell rain on the wind. He had peeked

around his blindfold once, and it seemed to him that night had fallen

early. In fact the darkness was caused by the thick ceiling of storm

clouds Hans had earlier seen rolling in from the north. It was part of

a front that had blown in from the Indian Ocean; it stretched southward

from the Mozambique border almost to PretoriaStern tensed as the Range

Rover swerved onto a rocky shoulder and shuddered to a stop.

He heard the driver's door open and close. Stern pulled off the

blindfold and looked around. Down the highway, he saw a small speck of

light. It shone from the direction they had come. Yet as he tried to

focus on the yellow glimmer, it winked out. The Zulu driver turned to

Stern, the whites of his eyes flashing angrily. He jabbed a finger

toward the blindfold. Pulling the black scarf back around his eyes,

Stern heard@r thought he heard-the sound of an automobile engine in the

distance.

The Zulu clambered back into the Range Rover and screeched onto the

highway, accelerating to a ridiculous speed. He raced on that way for

three or four minutes; then he geared down and turned off the highway

again. When the Rover finally stopped, he leaped out and ran away.

Stern moved the blindfold enough to see his surroundings.

The Rover had stopped at some type of roadside park. A knot of brightly

dressed Africans lounged around the single building. Several held

liquor bottles in their hands. Their focus seemed to be a public

telephone mounted on a wall. One of their number was talking into it.

Stern watched as his Zulu driver approached the men. Rather than slow

down, the Zulu swiped the air with a broad sweep of his arm. The

tribesmen scattered like frightened children. They knew the Zulu, Stern

thought.

The Zulu shouted into the telephone for a minute or so, bobbing his head

up and down like a bird. Abruptly he ceased this motion and looked back

down the highway. Stern followed his gaze. The light was there again,

but larger now-and it was no longer one light, but two.

Hauer Stern thought suddenly. Damn him!

As the Zulu came running back to the Rover, Stern stiffened, fearing the

bullet that had been promised if anyone followed the pickup vehicle.

None came. The driver's door slammed shut; then the Rover roared out of

the park and accelerated to 150 kilometers per hour.

Over the edge of his blindfold Stern saw the Zulu checking his rearview

mirror every few seconds. So Hauer's still there, he thought.

How the hell did he get past Gadi?

The engine screamed as the Zulu pushed the Rover to a frightening speed.

Stern wondered if the driver really expected to shake Hauer by this

simple tactic. On a paved highway Hauer's rented Ford could overtake

the Range Rover without much trouble.

Suddenly the Zulu savagely twisted the wheel, dirow the Rover into a

two-wheeled skid that hurled it down a shallow slope onto the hard,

rolling veld. The vehicle decelerated rapidly, but the torturous

terrain more than made up for the reduction in speed. No conventional

automobile could catch them now. Stern tried to keep his head from

slamming into the roof as the Rover vaulted humps, leaped ditches.

When the Rover finally shuddered to a halt, Stern collapsed against the

door and tried to catch his breath.

The Zulu wrenched the door open, jerked Stern out and I ripped off the

blindfold. On all sides Stern saw the seemingly limitless veld, lit by

an eerie blue light filtering through the storm clouds above. The first

heavy drops of African rain smacked against the roof of the Rover. Then

the clouds opened with a crash. Following the Zulu's line of sight,

Stern spotted the fast-approaching headlights, now jinking wildly up and

down as if manipulated by some mad puppeteer. The African raised his

face to the dark clouds as if beseeching some native god to lift him up

and away from his pursuer. While Stern stared through the rain,

hypnotized by the dancing headlights, a new sound rumbled into his,

ears. At first he thought it was rolling thunder.

Then the engine of the pursuing car. But the sound grew nearer much

faster than the headlights. Soon it was a buffeting roar' terrifying in

intensity. When Stern finally looked up, he saw that the roar had

blotted out the sky. He crouched beneath the blast of the rotors and

shielded his eyes against the whipping rain, but the Zulu jerked him up

and into the gaping maw of the helicopter as it hovered briefly-near the

earth.

As they lifted away from the hurricane below, Stern heard another sound

cutting through the din of the rotors-a higher sound, like the rim of a

crystal goblet singing. Then it came to him-the brief whine punctuated

by the dull thwackbullets! Two more slugs punctured the thin aluminum

skin of the chopper but miraculously missed the vitals of the

machine-the cabling, hydraulics, and precious rotors.

The helicopter yawed at a sickening angle as it climbed, but the Zulu

held Stern fast. Far below, Stern saw the pursuer's headlights,

spinning and shrinking to unreality. The chase car had stopped now.

It merged with the Rover, a tiny bright speck against the rain-swept

veld. Stern thought of Hauer, of how angry he must be at this

unexpected tactic. He pictured the furious German kicking the Rover or

even firing a few slugs into it for good measure. He couldn't help but

smile.

But the man below was not kicking the Range Rover, of stupidly firing

his pistol into the lifeless steel hulk. For the man below was not a

man at all, but a woman. An Englishwoman smelling of powder and

expensive perfume. Cia-re de Lune. And if Jonas Stern had known that,

he would not have been smiling.

4:10 Pm. Room 604 The Protea Hof Hotel, Pretoria

Hauer and Schneider sat facing each other across the narrow space

between the two double beds. Hauer held his Walther loosely in his

hand; Schneider's hands were empty. Gadi sat by the window, hands

clenched around his Uzi. After piling the dead Russians in the

bathroom, he had gone over to the Stanley House to try to capture

Borodin's sniper, but the sniper had disappeared. Professor Natterman

lay asleep on the bed, his thigh and his side wrapped in gauze. Aaron

Haber guarded the door. There would be no more surprise entries.

"Do you believe me now?" Schneider asked.

Hauer had spent five minutes on the phone with Colonel Rose. "I believe

you," he said. "But not because of what the American said."

"Why, then?"

"Your father. He was an investigator during the student riots in the

sixties. Back then a lot of police officers would just as soon have

shot a student as talked to one. Your father was different."

Schneider nodded.

"Unless the acorn fell a long way from the tree, you're not part of

Phoenix. Besides, why would Funk need to send you? Phoenix must have

an army here in South Africa."

"Will you come back to Berlin with me?"

Hauer shook his head. "Right now I care about only one thing-saving my

son's life. After that's done, I'll remember that I need to care about

cleaning Funk and his stortntroopers out of Berlin.

But by then it may be too late."

Hauer stood. "I've got a feeling I may not be coming back from this

trip, Detective. So I'm going to trust you to handle, Berlin. I have

to trust you."

Hauer felt every eye in the room upon him.

"Here is the situation as I see it: The British want to suppress the

Spandau diary, and the Hess story with it. The Americans-at least in

the past-have been willing to go ;along with the British. The Russians

want to expose the papers and force the British to accept partial blame

for what the Nazis did in the war. It's political one-upmanship."

Hauer turned his head. "Have I got that right, Professor?"

"Succinctly put, Captain."

"From the Russian point of view, one would think the Spandau papers are

a minor consideration compared to the very real danger of Phoenix. If

the Russians learn that a secret, extremely nationalistic group exists

within the police and political hierarchies in both East and West

Germany, a group bent on breaking the DDR away from Russia and uniting

with West Germany, a group that has infiltrated the Stasi, there'is

really no telling what they might do."

"What are you saying, Captain?"

"I'm saying that the Russians need to learn about Phoenix. In the right

way, of course. I didn't tell Colonel Rose any of this, so it will all

be up to you. You heard Professor Natterman. In Berlin there is a

photocopy of the Spandau papers. Also in Berlin-in the house of a dead

policeman named Josef Steuben-there is a fireproof safe. In that safe

is a year's accumulation of evidence of drug crimes against Funk and his

men. But more importantly"-Hauer paused, reluctant to reveal something

that a friend had died to protect-"there is a list of every member of

Bruderschaft der Phoenix whose name I could learn. The list names

members on both sides of the Wall. Once the Russians know what Phoenix

is, Schneider, they will give anything for that list."

The light of admiration dawned in Schneider's eyes.

"We want Phoenix crushed, yet we can't trust our own countrymen to do

the job. So, as painful as it may be, we must turn to the Allies.

That means the Americans. When YOU get to Berlin, retrieve the

photocopy and the list, then bide them. Then tell Colonel Rose what you

have, and what YOU want. at y want is c an American supervision of a

German urge of Phoenix. When the Americans agree to that, let them

present the Russians with their ..own offer. I suspect it will run

something like this: In exchange for continued silence about the Hess

@r-which is what the British and Americans want-the Russians will be

given the names of Phoenix members in the East. They can purge the

Stasi at their leisure, and get the higher-ups by interrogating the

Stasi members." Hauer cracked his knuckles.

"As far as I can see, everybody should be happy with that arrangement."

A strange smile flickered across Schneider's face. "I think you're in

the wrong line of work, Captain. You should have been a negotiator."

"I am," Hauer told him. "A hostage negotiator."

"I thought you were a sharpshooter."

Hauer sighed. "Sometimes negotiations fail."

Schneider stood. "I'd better go. Colonel Rose said there's a plane

leaving for Cairo in forty minutes, and there'll be an Army jet waiting

for me there."

Hauer offered his hand. "Good luck, Detective."

Schneider's grip was like a bear's. "You come back to Berlin, Captain.

And bring your son. We need more men like YOU."

At the door Hauer spoke softly. "It's funny, Schneider. I want the

same thing Phoenix wants, a united Germany, but-"

"We all want that," Schneider cut in. "But we don't want men like Funk

running it.

There is a better Germany than that."

Hauer met Schneider's eyes. "We'll never get them all, you know.

Not the ones at the top. Those bastards never pay-" Schneider laid a

hand on the Walther in his belt. "If the courts don't get them,

Captain, there are other ways. And don't take too long here. The local

police are going to start discovering corpses soon."

With that, Schneider turned and walked away, a hatted man whose

shoulders stretched half the breadth of the hallway.

When Hauer walked back through the foyer, Gadi said, "Isn't there

something else we can do while we wait?"

Hauer shook his head. "Stern is our only chance. We've got to wait

until he calls us."

"I've got a bad feeling about this," Gadi confided. "What if Uncle

Jonas can't find a way to call?"

Hauer shrugged. "Then he dies. Just like Hans and Ilse."

Perhaps inspired by Schneider, he touched the grip of his own pistol.

"Then we hunt the bastards down and kill them-every one of them."

Gadi exhaled in frustration. "So we just sit here?"

"We sit here."

"How longt' "As long as it takes."

"I don't like it, Captain. And I don't trust that detective, either."

Hauer lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. "Who cares."

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

4.55 Pm. mI-5 Headquarters, Charles Street, London Sir Neville Shaw sat

alone in his darkened office, clutching the telephone receiver to his

ear.

"What do you mean, you lost him?" he asked.

Swallow's low voice quavered with barely controlled hysteria.

"Someone picked him off a motorway with a helicopter. I was too far

back to stop it."

Shaw rubbed his forehead. This was bad news indeed.

"Thank you for informing me," he said at length. "Your services have

been appreciated, but they will no longer be needed."

"What?"

"There will be no further contact between you and this office."

"Don't give me that, you bastard!" Swallow shrieked. "I want to know

where Stern went! I know you know, and you had better tell me!"

Shaw straightened up at his desk. "Listen to me very carefully.

Your orders are to stand down. Stand down as of this moment. Any

further action on your part may disrupt a parallel operation, and will

thus be considered not insubordination, but treason to the Crown. Is

that clear?"

Swallow's laugh was like the cackling of a witch. "The Crown," she

scoffed. "Listen to me, little man. I know what kind of operation this

is. I know you ordered the murder of Rudolf Hess in Spandau. And if

you don't tell me where Stern is now, I'll blow this story wide open.

I'll kill Stern one way or the other, and when I've done with him, I'll

come for you. Now-" Shaw broke the connection. The light on his phone

went dark. Seconds later Deputy Director Wilson appeared in his

doorway, a darker shadow in the dim office.

"What did she want, Sir Neville?"

Shaw stared at Wilson's anxious face for a long time.

"Nothing," he said finally. "Stern's mucking about Pretoria, Swallow's

on his tail. Why don't you send out for some food, old man?

Get enough for yourself. It's going to be a long night, and I want you

with me."

Wilson nodded crisply. "Certainly, Sir Neville."

When Wilson had gone, Shaw consulted his map of southern Africa.

He checked the scale against a line he had drawn from the Mozambique

Channel to a sand-colored blank spot near the Kruger Park.

As if in a dream, he saw two tiny helicopters flying slowly across the

map, somewhere along that line. Parallel operation, he thought,

remembering his words to Swallow. He hoped Alan Burton had better luck

than Swallow did. Burton was the last chance for the secret to stay

hidden.

Shaw took his favorite pipe from the stand on his desk and began

rummaging for his tobacco. Jonas Stern Must be good indeed to have

eluded that she-devil, he thought. He wondered about Swallow's death

threat as he sucked on the, cold pipe stem, but he soon put it out of

his mind. At this point in time, a deranged assassin was the least of

his worries.

5.00 Pm. MozambiquelSouth Africa Border

The two helicopters flew in tandem, noses dipped for speed as they swept

across the coastal plain north of Maputo. In the seat next to Alan

Burton, Juan Diaz cursed under his breath. They had spent half the day

in a guerilla camp that looked like an outpost from hell.

Ragged tents pitched in the middle of a desert, cannibalized army

trucks, emaciated black men carrying rusty AK-47s, girls of twelve or

thirteen stolen from nearby villages and forced into whoredom by the

soldiers: the dogs had looked healthier than the people.

"Who were those bastards?" asked Diaz, who had a fair grasp of English.

"The MNR, sport," Burton replied. "Bloody wags. Fascists, to boot.

You're lucky they didn't know you were a communist.?' Diaz spat and

muttered something in Spanish.

"I didn't like it any more than you, Juan boy. But we had to stop to

pay them. Those fuzzy-wuzzies are providing our diversion this evening.

Plus, it was a good place to lie up.

That freighter was too exposed."

Diaz leaned out to make sure his sister ship was close behind.

"Who are they trying to divert for us, English?"

"Government air forces. There's a Mozambican base about a hundred miles

south of here, and a South African one further south."

"Ay-ay-ay," Diaz groaned. "What's based there?"

"In Mozambique? The usual African complement. Transport craft, helos,

a few outdated fighters. But the South Africans have it all."

The Cuban crossed himself and dropped the chopper even closer to the

plain.

"You didn't think an incursion into South Africa would be a stroll on

the beach, did you?"

Suddenly a torrent of what sounded like gibberish to Diaz burst out of

the African ether and filled the cabin. Burton leaned forward and began

transmitting in a slower, broken version of the same language. When he

finished, he replaced the transmitter and settled back into his seat

with a trace of a smile on his lips.

"Takes me back, that does."

"What was that shit?"

"Portuguese, sport. Language of a lost empire."

"Everything still okay?" the pilot asked nervously.

"Bloody marvelous, I'd say."

Burton felt like a different man after the confinement of the ocean

voyage. He was glad to be back in Africa. The only complication so far

had been the "observer" that the MNR guerilla chief had foisted on him.

The observer was a giant black named Alberto who carried a frightening

arsenal of grenades, knives, and pistols. But when Burton thought of

The Deal, he refused to let Alberto worry him. The guerilla looked like

more of a soldier than any of the Colombians, and if he got in the way,

Burton could always kill him. The Englishman reckoned there might be a

good deal of killing 1

before this mission was done. But that was all right. England had

never seemed closer than it did just now.

6.07 Pm. Horn House, The Northern Transvaal Jonas Stern waited alone in

the vast reception hall of Horn House, praying that Ilse Apfel possessed

more nerve and presence of mind than her overwrought husband.

By all rights she should be in worse shape, emotionally speaking.

But something about the way Natterman had talked about the girl gave

Stern hope. Maybe she had the sand to do it.

Maybe"Herr Professor?"

The voice emanated from a dark hallway to Stern's left.

He turned to see Pieter Smuts emerge from the shadows.

"That's right," said Stern, putting his full concentration into each

syllable of German. "Professor Emeritus Georg Natterman, of the Free

University of Berlin. Who are you?" Smuts smiled bleakly. "I believe

you have something for me, Professor?"

Stern regarded the Afrikaner with imperious detachment.

"Where is my granddaughter?"

"First the papers."

Playing the role of arrogant academic to the hilt, Stern raised his chin

and looked down his nose at Smuts. "I'll not give the Spandau papers to

anyone but the man who can prove they are his rightful property.

Frankly, I doubt anyone here can do that."

The Afrikaner grimaced. "Herr Professor, it is only my employer's

extreme patience which has kept me from-" An invisible bell cut Smuts

off in mid-sentence. "One moment," he said, and disappeared down the

hall from which he had come.

Glancing around the grand reception hall, Stern wondered what madman had

constructed this surreal schloss on the highveld. He took a couple of

tentative steps down the opposite corridor, but Smuts's returning

footsteps brought him back almost immediately.

"Follow me, Herr Professor," the Afrikaner said stiffly.

In the dimly lit library, Alfred Horn sat motionless behind an enormous

desk, his one good eye focused on the man he believed to be Professor

Georg Natterman.

Stern hesitated at the door. He had expected to be brought before a

young English nobleman named Granville, not a man twenty years his

senior.

"Come closer, Herr Professor," Horn said. "Take a seat."

"I'll stand, thank you," Stern said uncertainly. He saw little more

than a shadow at the desk. He tried to determine the shadow's

nationality by its voice, but found it difficult. The man spoke German

like a native, but there were other inflections too.

"As you wish," Horn said. "You wanted to see me?"

Stern squinted into the gloom. Slowly, the amorphous features of the

shadow coalesced into the face of an old man.

A very old man. Stern cleared his throat. "You are the man responsible

for my granddaughter's abduction?"

"I'm afraid so, Professor. My name is Thomas Horn. I'm a well-known

businessman in this country. Such tactics are not my usual style, but

this is a special case. A member of your family stole something that

belongs to some associates of mine . . ."

Horn sat so still that his mouth barely moved when he spoke. Stern

tried to concentrate on the old man's words, but somehow his attention

was continually drawn to the face@r what little he could see of it. A

low buzz of alarm began to insinuate itself into his brain. With a

combat veteran's sensitivity to physical wounds, Stern quickly noticed

that the old man had but one eye. Watery and blue, it flicked

restlessly back and forth while the other stared ever forward, seeing

nothing. My God! Stern thought. Here is Professor Natterman's

one-eyed man!

"... but I am a pragmatist," Horn was saying. "I always take the

shortest route between two points. In this case that route happened to

run through your family. You have a fine granddaughter, a true daughter

of Deutschiand But in matters such as this-matters with political

implications-even family must take second place."

Stern felt sweat heading on his neck. Who in God's name was this man?

He tried to recall what, Natterman had said about the one-eyed man.

Helmut ... That was the name the professor had mentioned. But of course

Natterman had thought "Helmut" was a code name for the real Rudolf Hess.

Stern felt his heart thud in his chest. It can't be, he thought

quickly. It simply cannot be.

"And so you see how simple it is, Professor," Horn concluded.

"For the Spandau papers, I give you back your family."

Stern tried to speak, but his mind no longer controlled his vocal cords.

The man murmuring to him from the shadows was at least twenty years

older than himself. The face and voice had been ravaged by time, but as

Stern stared, he began to discern the telltale marks of authority, the

indelible lines etched into the face of a man who had held great power.

Could it be? asked a voice in Stern's brain.

Of course it could, answered another. Hess's double died only weeks

ago, and he had endured the soul-killing loneliness of Spandau Prison

for almost fifty years ... This man has lived the life of a millionaire,

with access to the best medical care in the world"I've read your book,

Professor," Horn said smoothly "Germany: From Bismarck to the Bunker A

penetrating study, though flawed in its conclusions. I would be very

interested to hear your opinion of the Spandau papers."

Stern swallowed. "I-I haven't really had that much time to study them.

They deal mainly with the prisoners at Spandau."

"Prisoners, Professor? Not one prisoner in particular?"

Stern blinked.

"Not Prisoner Number Seven?" Horn smiled cagily.

"Have no fear, Professor, my interest is purely academic.

I'd simply like to know if the papers shed any light on the events of

May tenth, 1941-on the flight of Rudolf Hess.

The solution to that mystery has always eluded me"-he smiled again-"as

it has the rest of the world."

Stern fought the urge to step backward. What kind of game was this?

"There is mention of the Hess flight," he whispered.

"And are you familiar with the case, ProfessorT' "Conversant."

"Excellent. I happen to have a unique volume related to it here in my

library. The only one of its kind." Horn tilted his head slightly.

"Pieter?"

Smuts crossed to some tall shelves at the, dark edge of the library and

pulled down a thin black volume. He hesitated a moment, but Horn

inclined his head sharply and Smuts obeyed.

Stern accepted the thin volume without looking at it.

"You hold a piece of living history in your hand, Professor," Horn said

solemnly. "A piece no historian has ever seen before. May of 1941 was

a critical juncture in the march of Western civilization. A time of

great opportunities ." He sighed. "Missed opportunities. I'd like you

to read that while we verify the Spandau papers. Perhaps it will help

you to do what no one else has yet been able to do-solve the Hess

mystery."

Stern looked down at the book in his hands. It was a notebook, he saw,

bound in black leather with a name stamped in gold on its cover: V V

Zinoviev. The name meant nothing to Stern. What was he holding in his

hands? Had this man Horn threatened to kill Ilse Apfel in order to

suppress one clue to the Hess enigma, only to give the man he thought to

be her grandfather another? Was he a fool? Of course not.

He was a snake allowing the sparrow one last song before it felt the

fangs strike. Any knowledge that "Professor Natterman" gained from the

Zinoviev notebook in the next few hours would perish with him.

"Come closer, Professor," Horn said, raising his chin like a connoisseur

examining an antique for authenticity. "Do you have Jewish blood in

your family?"

The flickering blue eye fixed on Stern and bored in, searching for the

slightest hint of deception. Stern struggled to maintain his calm.

During the helicopter flight he had worried that his rusty German would

give him away, yet no one seemed to have noticed it. Would it be his

Semitic nose that betrayed him? That put the final bullet through his

heart?

"Nein, " he said, forcing a smile. "This nose has been the bane of my

life, Herr Horn. There's some Arab blood far back down the line, I

think. It almost cost me my life several times during the thirties."

"I can imagine," Horn said thoughtfully. "So. The Spandau papers. You

have brought them to me?"

Horn's cadaverous face seemed to waver ghostlike in the shadows.

As if by its own volition, Stern's right hand burrowed into his trouser

pocket and brought out the missing pages. Before he even realized what

he meant to do, he had lurched forward and laid the three sheets on

Horn's desk.

"You have it all now," he blurted. "Make what you wish of it.

Just give me back my granddaughter."

He turned and moved zombie-like toward the door. His eyes focused on

the handle as he neared it.

"Herr Professor?"

Stern froze.

Horn's warbling voice floated through the darkness like a phantom,

ancient and unreal. "I called the Document Centre in Berlin. They

informed me that you were at the Siege of Leningrad.

This shouldn't be too great an ordeal for an old Wehrmacht soldier.

Have a rest, see your granddaughter. All will soon be back to normal,

and you and I will exchange old war stories. And don't forget to read

the Zinoviev book."

Stern peered through the shadows. The conversation seemed to have tired

the old man. The face which had looked so alive at the beginning of the

meeting now sagged as if drained by chronic pain. Stern groped behind

him for the door. Pieter Smuts turned the knob and slipped into the

hall ahead of him. Stern saw Horn raise a skeletal arm in farewell, and

then Smuts pulled the door shut.

Dazed, Stern followed the tall Afrikaner down the long corridor toward

the reception hall. They crossed it, then walked the length of several

dim passages. Stern felt like Alice being led through the warrens of

the looking-glass world.

Finally, Smuts stopped before a door and opened it.

Stern saw a striking young blond woman dressed in a smart navy skirt and

white blouse. From Natterman's description, he recognized Ilse Apfel

immediately, but he was still so deep in frenzied speculation about the

old man that he failed to notice the shock on her face.'Ilse looked from

Smuts to Stern, then back to Smuts. She started to speak, then held her

tongue, waiting for the Afrikaner to explain the intrusion. Smuts said

nothing. Ilse's eyes moved up and down Stern's lean frame, lingering on

his unfamiliar face, finally settling on Professor Natterman's patched

tweed jacket. Smuts-who was nominally quite sensitive to subtleti of

human behavior-put Ilse's awkwardness down to surprise.

"I hope you both appreciate Herr Horn's generosity," he said.

The words woke Stern from his trance. Instantly he registered the

dangerous bafflement on Ilse's face. Steady, girl, he thought. Steady

"Ilse!" he cried. "My little Enkelkinder! Come to me!" He took a

step forward and held out his arms- Come on girl, get it.

Without quite understanding why, Ilse moved forward.

First hesitantly, then in apparent jubilation, she rushed to the

stranger and pressed her head against his jacket, clinging to him like a

child. She would never know why she did it. It was an impulse, a

tingling flash of inexplicable certainty like those that sometimes hit

her as she watched the stock quotes flickering across the toteboard at

work. She didn't question it, she simply obeyed.

"My little darling," Stern said soothingly, stroking Ilse's cheek.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes, Opa, yes," Ilse murmured. "Can we go home now?"

"Not yet, little one. Not quite yet. But soon."

Stern glared at Smuts over Ilse's blond hair. "Could we have some

privacy?" he asked icily.

A tight grimace plucked,at the corner of the Afrikaner'S mouth, but he

left them.

Ilse immediately pulled away from Stern and opened her mouth to speak.

Stern stifled her with an upturned palm, then pointed to the door.

Who are you? Ilse mouthed silently.

Stern leaned over until his lips touched the shell of Ilse's ear.

"A friend," he whispered. "Thank God you managed to suppress your

shock. I believe you just saved my life."

"It was the jacket," Ilse whispered excitedly. "You're wearing Opa's

jacket. At first I thought it was some kind of crazy trick, but-"

"No trick."

"Where is Opa?"

'He is safe. He's with Captain Hauer."

"And Hans? Is Hans safe?"

Stern nodded impatiently, as if Hans were merely a secondary problem to

be dealt with when and if possible. "Hans is here now. He tried to

trade the Spandau papers for your life, but failed."

Ilse's eyes widened. "Hans is here?"

"Yes, but we can't worry about that now. If we don't figure out exactly

where we are and get me to a telephone, we'll probably be dead within an

hour."

Ilse shook her head. "You'll need an airplane to get out of here."

"You know where we are?"

"Not exactly, but I've been outside. We're far out in the wilderness.

Near something called the Kruger Park, I think."

"The Kruger National Park?" Stern looked at his watch, estimating the

distance he had traveled by road and by helicopter. "Yes, that would be

about right." His voice grew urgent. "Ilse, I don't know how much you

know about the situation you are in. You may, like your grandfather,

see it as merely a squabble over the Rudolf Hess case, but much more

than that. I believe that somewhere in this country there are men who

mean to cause great harm to.my country-Israel. Damn it!" Stern cried

suddenly. "What is hiding here? That bastard asked me if I had any

Jewish blood in my veins, aifd I-an Israeli-denied that I did!"

He threw the Zinoviev notebook onto the bed and tried the doorknob

again, shaking it furiously. Ilse reached out and clutched the sleeve

of her grandfather's jacket.

"You're right," she whispered. "About Israel."

"What?" Stern turned to face her. "What do you meant' "I mean that

Horn wants to destroy Israel."

Stern clutched her arms. "How do you know that? Out with it, girl!

Speak!"

"You're hurting me!"

Stern released her. "What are you talking about?"

Ilse brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. "Last night, Herr Horn

met with some Arabs up in the central tower of the estate. For some

reason he wanted me there, I don't know why. He offered to provide

these Arabs with a nuclear weapon@ne or more than one, I'm not sure. He

said he would provide it flee of charge if the Arabs would use it as

wished. He said there was a nuclear weapon somewhere beneath this

house."

Stern swallowed hard, his eyes burning into Ilse's. "Did you believe

him?"

She hesitated a moment; then she nodded very slowly.

"How did he say he wanted the weapon used?"

"He said he wanted it exploded inTel Aviv."

Stern felt his bowels roll. "When?"

"Within ten days, he said."

Stern crossed to the bed and picked up the thin black notebook Horn had

given him. Again he read the gold letters stamped on the cover: V V

Zinoviev. Still the name meant nothing. He slipped the notebook inside

his shirt, backed against the far wall, and without a sound threw

himself across the room and against the heavy wooden door.

Ilse screamed.

The door didn't budge. Stern gasped for breath, backed up, charged

again. His wiry frame smashed into the wood with a sound like a child

falling down stairs. Ilse cringed.

Tlwice more the old Israeli flung himself at the door, but it refused to

give. Bruised and winded, Stern raised his right leg and kicked at the

knob with all his strength.

"It's no good!" Ilse cried. "Please stop! You're hurting yourself!"

Stern did not even look at her. With a howl of rage he kicked at the

knob again. When it refused to yield, he backed up and launched his

body at the door yet again. This time the impact knocked him to his

knees. He got unsteadily to his feet and prepared to try again.

Ilse caught his arm, meaning to restrain him, but,when Stern whirled,

something in his eyes moved her into some region beyond logic, beyond

reason. She counted to three, and together they flung themselves

against the wood.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

7,05 Pm. MozambiquelSouth Africa Border The helicopters stormed

northward on the Mozambique side of the border, hugging the plain

between the Lebombo Mountains and the Limpopo River. Occasionally they

jinked westward long enough for Burton to take bearings. The Englishman

knew this part of Africa well, and the Kruger Park had enough landmarks

to keep him oriented.

The border itself, a garish scar of bare earth bisected by a huge

electric fence, divided two countries that might have been different

continents. On the Mozambique side, a desolate war-ravaged plain

stretched toward the sea. On the South African side, the lushness of

the Kruger Park began immediately. Wide green troughs of river in

vegetation snaked westward out of sight. Forests of mopane, Sycamore

fig, and Natal mahogany sheltered herds of elephant and zebra, white

rhino and lion.

"Take her back up!" Alan Burton ordered.

Juan Diaz breathed a sigh of relief. The Cuban pilot prided himself on

his flying skill, but this crazy English gringo had badgered him about

the altitude until he wondered if the man had a secret death wish.

Burton pointed to the north and shouted above the rotor noise "We want

to keep on this heading until we see the Olifants River! Then we'll

veer west and cross the park at treetop level!" He showed Diaz the map.

"The house we want lies about halfway between the western edge of the

park and this little town here." Burton pointed to Giyani, then

indicated an X marked about fifteen kilometers from the western edge of

the Kruger Park.

Diaz nodded, then returned his gaze to the plain below.

"The Kruger Park's about the size of Wales," Burton told him.

"But it's thin-runs north to south."

Diaz ignored him.

"Probably never heard of Wales, eh?" Burton laughed.

"The Prince of Wales?"

Diaz shook his head. Either the Cuban hadn't understood or he simply

did not want to be bothered. Burton switched to a more relevant

subject. "That fence down there," he yelled, pointing westward, "11,500

volts! They fry a whole gang of Mozambican refugees on that thing every

year.

Bloody awful."

The Cuban grimaced. He knew about dead refugees.

Glancing back into the cabin of the JetRanger, Burton looked the

Colombian soldiers over again. The presence of 'Alberto, the big MNR

observer, made them look even more unprofessional. "What do you think

of our South American friends, Diaz?" he yelled.

The Cuban pilot did not share Burton's confidence in the deafness of the

Colombians. He pulled the Englishman's head down near his own.

"Banditos, " he muttered. "No soldiers." He cut his eyes back toward

the cabin, then crossed himself so that only Burton could see.

"Bloody hell." Burton had hoped Diaz might know something encouraging

about the Colombians that he didn't. Suddenly the Englishman sighted a

silver serpentine glittering beneath the dark clouds to the north.

"There's the river!"

he shouted, Diaz nodded, then banked westward and dove for the plain.

Their sister ship followed closely, behind and to the right.

The green sea of the Kruger Park rushed toward them.

The JetRangers skimmed over the border fence and swept westward over the

verdant foliage below. Burton saw a herd of antelope raising a huge

cloud of dust as they fled the noise of the approaching choppers. Diaz

pointed to the dark cloud ceiling above them.

"Much rain when it comes?"

"Buckets this time of year!"

Diaz frowned, but Burton smiled wryly. The weather didn't worry him;

that was the pilots' problem. But the accuracy of his intelligence

reports did. Who in hell was the English informer who supposedly waited

inside the target house? Probably anything but a soldier, Burton

thought ruefully. The informer had reported that Alfred Horn relied

primarily upon isolation for security-isolation and a neo-Nazi security

chief. Burton wondered if the informer would even recognize defensive

measures if he saw them. Swallowing his anxiety, he slapped Diaz on the

back and grinned.

"Rain's good for us!" he yelled. "Better cover!"

Diaz glanced doubtfully back into the cabin where the bearded Colombians

crouched. He dropped a little closer to the trees.

Horn House: The Northern Transvaal

Ilse sat opposite Alfred Horn at the long mahogany dining table and

stared sullenly at her plate. All the other chairs were empty. In

spite of their furious efforts, she and Stern had been unable to break

out of the bedroom before Linah arrived to take them to dinner. Stern

had pleaded an unsettled stomach, so Ilse had come alone. She wondered

if the old Israeli was still trying. As Linah leaned over her left

shoulder to pour white wine, she looked up at Horn.

"Where is everyone?" she asked, trying to hold her voice steady.

"Pieter has work to do," Horn replied. "And of course your grandfather

remains in your bedroom." He smiled. "I believe he would rather finish

reading that notebook I gave him than eat."

Ilse lifted her fork and tried to make a show of eating.

Stern had advised her to carry on as she had been, but now that she knew

Hans was almost surely somewhere inside the house, she couldn't contain

herself. "Where is my husband?" she cried suddenly.

Horn looked up slowly from his plate. "He has not yet arrived, my

dear."

"Liar! He's here!"

Horn swallowed some wine, then set his crystal goblet on the table.

"Who told you that?" he asked quietly. "Your grandfather?"

"No one. I ... I just feel it."

"Ah, woman's intuition. An overrated faculty, I've found.

Do not worry, your Hans will arrive soon."

Ilse 9 uivered with anger. "You're lying," she said stubbornly.

'Hans is here."

Horn slammed his frail hand against the table, rattling the silver.

"I will not tolerate this at my table! You will behave as a German

woman should or-" At that moment Pieter Smuts marched into the dining

room with Jiirgen Luhr on his heels. "Aircraft approaching the house,

sir," he announced. "fwo blips, so far. They're at the edge of the

Kruger Park now."

"What type of aircraft, Pieter?"

Smuts smiled coldly. "No radio contact, no IFF, but from their speed I

would guess helicopters."

Horn sighed deeply. "@ the bunkers manned?"

"Yes, sir." Smuts's face was taut. "Everyone's in place."

"And Lord Granville?"

The Afrikaner shook his head. "I'm not sure where he is."

While the men spoke, Ilse slid her right arm off of the table, taking

her silver dinner fork and salad fork with it.

"Take Frau Apfel to her room," said Horn. "Then get to the tower.

I'll be in my study."

"But, sir, with Granville loose-" Horn silenced the Afrikaner by ringing

a hand bell that summoned Linah. "To the tower, Pieter," he commanded.

"I am in no danger."

"Bring the girl," Smuts told Luhr, and hurried out.

"Frau Apfel?" Luhr motioned for Ilse to stand. He forced himself to

smile. As soon as Linah had wheeled Horn Out Of the dining room,

however, he snatched Ilse up by the arm and dragged her into the hall.

"Lock her in!" Smuts called from up the corridor. "Then meet me at the

reception hall elevator!"

When Ilse and Luhr reached the bedroom door, she reached into her pocket

and closed her hand around one of the forks. She thought of driving it

into Luhr's neck, but she did not. Better to let Stern make a move if

he thought the time was right.

Stern didn't get the chance. Luhr turned the knob quickly and kicked

open the door, knocking, the Israeli backward onto the floor.

He laughed, then shoved Ilse inside and jerked the door shut.

Ilse pulled the silver forks from her pocket and tossed them to Stern.

"Get us out of here!" she snapped. "Now!"

When the elevator door opened in the domed observatory tower, Jiirgen

Luhr stepped into a room unlike any he had ever seen. He had once been

admitted to the control tower of Frankfurt International Airport, but

even that see primitive compared to this futuristic command post.

Computer screens, satellite receivers, amplifiers, massive banks of

switches, closed-circuit television monitors, and countless other pieces

of high-tech equipment hung from the ceiling and rose from the carpeted

floor. An eerie green glow bathed the circular room, silhouetting three

men dressed in khaki who ceaselessly monitored the various surveillance

consoles.

One man made way for Smuts, who took a seat before a phosphorescent

radar screen.

"Who is in the helicopters?" Luhr asked.

Smuts smiled thinly. "I'm not sure, but you can bet they're friends of

Lord Granville, our pet English nobleman.

You see those switches there? The red ones?"

"Here?" asked Luhr, reaching.

"Don't touch them! Christ! Look at the markings. North, East, South,

West. When I call a direction, pull the first switch for that heading.

When I call it again, pull the second. Got it?"

Luhr nodded. "What do they do?"

"You'll find out soon enough."

Taking a last look at the radar screen, Smuts moved to the center of the

room, ascended a short ladder, 'and climbed into the strangest

contraption Luhr had ever seen. A monstrosity of steel tubing, pedals,

gears, and hydraulic lines, it looked like something stripped from the

belly of a World War Two vintage bomber. Protruding from this strange

machine were six long narrow metal tubes joined at the center and

extending to within an inch of the dome's wall. Suddenly, Luhr realized

what he was looking at: a Vulcan 20mm rotary cannon. He had seen them

many times in Germany, jutting from the stubby snouts of American A-IO

tank-killing warplanes.

"Hit the blue switch," Smuts ordered.

Luhr obeyed, and watched in wonder as a narrow oblong section of the

domed ceiling receded into a hidden slot in the wall. Smuts touched a

button; the barrels of the Vulcan gun moved forward through the opening

like the barrel of a telescope. Now the gun could be traversed on a

vertical axis.

"Hit the next switch down." Luhr gasped as the middle four feet of the

circular wall sank into the floor with . a deep hum. Through the

bulletresistant polycarbonate glass that now served as the wall, Luhr

could see a 360-degree panorama of the grounds surrounding Horn House.

The sky was heav and nearly black with impending rain. Four hundred

meters to the north, Horn's Leadet and helicopter sat like toys in the

fast-fading light.

"Next," said Smuts.

Luhr hit the final blue switch, immersing the room in near-total

darkness. Only the luminous green radar screens competed with the gray

light outside the turret. Smuts pulled down a leather harness and

buckled it across his chest. Then he grasped two elongated tubes and

positioned them directly over his eyes. Luhr realized they were laser

targeting goggles.

"Sit down and strap yourself in," Smuts ordered.

"Why?ll Scowling, Smuts jabbed a foot pedal. Instantly the turret began

to rotate, throwing Luhr to the floor.

"Don't ever question my orders, Lieutenant."

Luhr scrambled to his feet and buckled himself into the chair. On the

radar screen to his left, two tiny blips crossed the line indicating the

western edge of the Kruger National Park, then turned southwest toward

an H marked on the screen in grease pencil.

"Fifteen kilometers and closing," announced a khaki-clad technician.

"Approach speed 110 knots."

Luhr watched the fuzzy green specks pass slightly to the north of the H,

then veer left and bore straight in. "Who are they?" he asked, unable

to suppress his apprehension.

"Dead men," Smuts replied from the gun cage.

Hans Apfel could not move. He lay in the absolute darkness of a cell

one hundred meters below the earth. This was the same cell in which

Jiirgen Luhr had spent his first night in South Africa. Hans was bound

to a heavy cot with rope and gagged with a thick strip of cloth.

He could only breathe through his nose. No sound had reached his ears

for hours, save the occasional sibilant hiss of a ventilator blowing air

into his cell.

Suddenly, a deep, buzzing alarm blasted through the basement complex.

Every muscle in Hans's body contracted in shock. What was happening? A

fire? For the hundredth time he expelled every ounce of air from his

lungs and tried to shift his body on the cot. It was no use. He had

never felt so

'

helpless in his life. Yet despite his fear for Ilse, one desperate hope

flickered in his brain: Is it my father?

"I've almost got it," Stern grunted, working feverishly at the lock on

the bedroom door. By intertwining the tines of Ilse's stolen forks and

snapping off several, he'd managed to fashion the dinner fork into a

serviceable lock pick.

"Hurry!" Ilse urged. "I don't think we have much time."

"Did Horn seem upset?" Stern asked, still working. "Surprised?

Frightened?"

"Not really. Please, hurry. We must find Hans!"

At that moment the clouds opened. The rain lashed the roof of Horn

House in great sheets, then settled into a steady torrent that would

soon turn the surrounding gullies into raging rivers.

"Got it!" Stern cried. He cracked the door slightly, then flung it

wide.

Ilse darted into the hall. "Where should we start?"

"Beat on every locked door you can find. If Hans is here, he'll be

behind one."

"Aren't you coming?"

"You don't need me to find your husband. I've got something else to

do."

"What?"

"After what you told me, you ask me that? Move girl!"

Stern spun Ilse around, put a hand between her shoulder blades and

shoved her down the hall. She hesitated a moment; then, seeing that the

Israeli meant what he said, she started slowly up the corridor.

Stern clenched the broken fork tightly in his fist and set out in the

opposite direction.

The JetRanger helicopters skimmed across the veld like great steel

dragonflies. In the distance Burton could just make out the copper dome

of Horn's "observatory" glinting through the heavy rain. He flattened

his palm and dropped it close.to his thigh, indicating that Diaz should

fly still closer to the earth. The Cuban muttered something in Spanish,

but the scrub brush rose up into the Plexiglas windshield until Burton

felt he was tearing across the veld on a horse gone mad. Even the few

stunted trees they passed rose higher than the chopper's rotors.

"See it?" Burton yelled, pointing.

The Cuban nodded.

"We should see an airstrip soon. That's our objective.

Set right down on it!"

Burton poked his head back into the crowded cabin and gave the

Colombians a thumbs-up signal. Most of them looked airsick, but

Alberto-the guerilla observer-grinned back, his square white teeth

flashing in the shadows.

Forty seconds later, Diaz wheeled the JetRanger in a wide circle and

settled onto the freshly laid asphalt fifty meters from Horn's Leadet.

Burton punched open the Plexiglas door and jumped to the ground. Just

as they had practiced a dozen times on the Casilda's afterdeck, the

Colombians poured out of the chopper one after another, looking, for all

their amateurishness, like a squad of marines securing a hot LZ. A

quick glance across the tarmac told Burton that the men on the other

chopper were doing the same. "See you after the party!" he shouted to

Diaz.

The Cuban shook his head. "English loco, he muttered, twirling his

forefinger beside his temple.

The Colombians crouched at the edge of the rotor blast, waiting for

Burton to take the lead. The mercenary jumped to the ground and

immediately started toward the distant dome at an easy trot. The

Colombians, twenty-two in all, followed closely.

Thirty seconds' running brought them up short at the rim of the Wash.

Burton stared angrily into the ravine. He'd been told to expect a

shallow trench, no more than a thirtysecond delay. But the summer

cloudburst had turned this steep-sided gully into a treacherous river

that would take minutes, not seconds, to cross. Three feet of muddy

runoff churned through the undergrowth near the bottom, and the water

was rising fast, "Move!" Burton shouted, and leaped over the lip of the

ravine. He half-fell, half-slid toward the torrent below.

Looking back, he saw the Colombians skidding down behind him. Two

minutes later they all stood en the opposite rim of the Wash, huddling

against the rain. Burton started slogging westward again without a

word. For a few minutes he saw nothing ahead but rain. Then, like a

mirage, the whole stunning specter of Horn house appeared out of the

downpour.

Burton's blood ran cold. One glance told him that his "inside" informer

didn't know his ass from his elbow. The "soft" objective he had been

briefed to expect stood like a medieval fortress on a hill at the center

of a huge expanse of open ground. Ten men armed with medium machine

guns could defend,that house indefinitely against a force the size he

had brought.

His ragtag outfit had only one hopesurprise.

The Colombians had not yet picked up on the alarming deterioration of

their situation, and Burton didn't intend for them to. "All right,

lads!" he barked. "Change of plan! I'd intended to use the mortar to

soften the target for you"Burton paused while a bilingual Colombian

interpreted"but this open ground changes everything. If I open up

before you go in, the target will be warned. Many of you could die in

the charge." Burton saw several faces nod warily as the interpreter

conveyed his words. "My suggestion is that you all go in at the

double-a quick, silent run. You go in very fast and close to the

ground. The Israelis favor this tactic, and they've surprised a lot of

Arabs with it, I can tell you." He summoned a bluff grin. "Ready,

lads?"

Two or three Colombians nodded, but most looked a shade paler than they

had when they thought Burton's mortar barrage would precede their

attack. The Englishman took a final look at his unit. They were a

ragged lot by any standard, standing there in the rain, weighted down by

bandolero ammo belts, grenades, and LAW rockets. They would have been

comic but for the near certainty of their impending deaths.

Looking past them to the distant house, Burton felt a sudden, almost

irresistible urge to order them back to the choppers, to save'their

miserable lives before they charged the fortress that waited beyond the

gray wall of rain. But then he remembered The Deal.

"Move out!" he shouted angrily. "Goddamn it, charge!"

The Colombians stared dumbly for a moment; then they turned and trotted

down the slope into the shallow bowl.

One hung back-a teenager named Ruiz, whom Burton had tried to instruct

in the finer points of mortar operationwaiting to see if he was needed.

Burton started to nod, then he sensed someone behind him.

He turned to see Alberto, the huge MNR guerilla observer. Burton

pointed to the mortar tube he had dropped onto the grass and eyed the

guerilla questioningly. When Alberto nodded with confidence, Burton

decided he would prefer skill to g6w company today.

He motioned for Ruiz to follow the charge.

Alberto immediately began setting up the mortar, but Burton, impelled by

some morbid instinct, crouched on the rim of the grassy bowl and watched

the Colombians go in. As his eyes followed the camouflaged

figures-running now-he suddenly noticed something odd about the floor of

the bowl. Subdividing the approaches to Horn House into measured

sections were dozens of small, grass-covered mounds. At first glance

they seemed only natural irregularities in the ground-animal spoor,

perhaps-but Burton soon realized that the humps were anything but

natural. His mind faltered for a moment, not wanting to accept it; then

his gut instinct grasped the whole, ghastly scene.

A killing ground.

Those innocent-looking mounds concealed land mines. Burton shouted a

warning, but the Colombians had already passed out of earshot.

Alberto raised his head at Burton's shoutThen it started.

Sixteen Claymore mines exploded simultaneously, sending thousands of

steel balls scything through the air at twice the speed of sound.

Half the Colombians were shredded into bloody pulp before they could

scream. The sound came in waves, deep, shuddering concussions muted by

the rain.

Most survivors of the first blast staggered to the ground, mortally

wounded. Shrapnel detonated some of the Colombian ordnance.

Grenades flashed in the dusk; one of the LAW rockets exploded in a

blinding fireball, consuming the man who carried it.

Burton lay stomach-down, shielding his eyes against the flashes.

Alberto tugged at Burton's pack, groping for mortar rounds so that he

could return fire. Burton'slai)ved the hie guerilla's hand away.

"Bloody hell! All you'd do now is pin-point our position!" He punched

his fist into the soggy veld.

"Poor bastards."

In spite of the Englishman's pessimism, Alberto grinned and pointed down

the slope to where, unbelievably, a halfdozen Colombians still crawled

doggedly toward Horn House. Having gone too far to retreat with any

hope of survival, they went blindly on. Forty meters from the great

tliangular structure, one of them rose to one knee and let off a LAW

rocket. The smoke trail arrowed across the grass, and the exploding

warhead tore a jagged hole in the wall above a shuttered window.

Emboldened by their comrade's success, three wounded Colombians got up

and cheered, then charged the main entranee with their AK-47s on full

automatic.

At that moment-with a sound like a handsaw n'ppi' tin-Smuts's,Vulcan gun

opened up from the observatory.

From the tower, Jijrgen Luhr watched the carnage with morbid

fascination. He could not quite comprehend the fact that he had

obliterated a dozen human beings with the flick of a switch. The land

around Horn House looked as if a hundred plows had passed over it,

sowing blood and fire. The remotely detonated Claymores had churned the

earth into a smoking graveyard. When the Vulcan gun began to fire, Luhr

thought he had gone deaf. White flame spat out of the six spinning

barrels; the unbelievable rate of fire made the scarlet tracers look

like laser beams arcing across the slope below. Anywhere the gun

lingered for a full second, more than a hundred depleted-uranium-tipped

slugs impacted in a steady stream of death.

The rain and darkness obscured the remaining attackers, but Smuts seemed

to have no trouble finding them. Wearing ear protectors now, he worked

the pedals with practiced skill, traversing the gun with remorseless

accuracy. Watching Smuts's slit-eyed face behind the Vulcan, Luhr

actually pitied the men who remained alive.

Four floors below the observatory, Robert Stanton, Lord Granville,

watched the weapons he had known nothing about blast his dreams of power

into oblivion. If Alfred survives this night, he thought desolately,

what will Shaw give me?

Not afucking thing, that's what! He shook his head in wonder.

Not one member of the assault teaxn remained standing!

Unbelieving, Stanton pressed his palm against the windowpane, watching

in horror as the Vulcan's terrible tracer beam climbed the slope, then

disappeared over the ridge. Seconds later a fireball mushroomed into

the sky. Probably a helicopter, he realized. Stanton could bear no

more. He knew he had but one chance now: to find Horn and allay any

suspicion that he was connected with the attack. If Burton is killed,

he thought hopefully, I might just bring it off. He dashed into the

dark hallway and made for the study, almost sure that Horn would be

closeted there.

Scurrying through the vast reception hall, he saw Ilse jerk back into

one of the corridors, but she meant nothing to him now. In seconds he

would be fighting for his life. A quick sprint brought him to the study

door, which he found unlocked. He burst through it like a man in blind

panic. A green-shaded lamp burned at Horn's desk, but the old man was

not there. Then, slowly, Stanton made out the wheelchair, silhouetted

against the rain-spattered picture window.

Scarlet tracers sliced through the darkness outside, giving the room a

surrealistic sense of drama, like the bridge of a ship during battle.

"Alfred!" Stanton cried with exaggerated relief. "Thank God you're

safe!"

Slowly Horn rotated his wheelchair until he faced the young Englishman.

His face was haggard, but his solitary eye burned with black contempt.

"So, Robert," he rasped, "you would be my Judas."

Ilse tore through the halls like a madwoman. She had searched every

unlocked room and pounded on every locked door in the house, but she'd

found no sign of Hans. Nor had she seen Stern since they parted at the

bedroom door. She had found one useful thing. In a spartan bedroom

decorated only by an eight-by-ten photograph of a younger, uniformed

Pieter Smuts, she'd found a Beretta 9mm semi-automatic pistol in a

holster hanging from the bedpost. She wasn't sure she could use it, but

she had no doubt that Stern could. Or Hans, if she could find him.

Approaching the reception hall at a full run, she saw Lord Granville

sprint across it in another direction. She skidded and tried to

backpedal into the narrow corridor, but she was, too late-Stanton had

seen her. Yetjust as she turned to flee, she heard the Englishman's

footsteps echoing down one of the main passageways-away from her.

Carefully she crossed the reception hall and peered down the corridor

into which Stanton had vanished. What's he after? she wondered.

What is so important that he would ignore me running loose?

Another prisoner, perhaps? Hans?

Ilse darted down the hallway after Stanton. Toward the far end of the

dark corridor she saw a vertical crack of light. As she neared it, she

heard voices. One was unmistakably Stanton's,the other ... she couldn't

be sure. Pulling off her shoes, she slipped quietly through the door.

She pressed herself flat against the paneled wall of the study.

Alfred Horn sat hunched in his wheelchair before a large picture window,

barely discernible in the shadows. Beside an ornate desk four meters

away stood Lord Granville.

He was gesticulating wildly with his hands.

"I told you, Alfred!" he shouted. "Smuts is insane! He knows nothin,9

of my loyalty! I'm your partner for God's sake!"

"You are a liar and a coward," Horn said evenly. "And you care for

nothing but money." He swept a hand toward the window, where sporadic

tracer fire still illuminated the grounds in short bursts.

"You see how your greed ends, Roberl,?"

Stanton raised his arms in supplication. "But I know nothing of that!

It's another of Smuts's schemes to discredit me!

He's always been jealous of me, you know that!"

Horn shook his head sadly. "Dear Robert. How is it that great men

produce heirs such as you? It is the bane of the world."

"Please!" Stanton begged. "What proof is there against me?"

Horn rubbed his wizened forehead. "Reach beneath the desktop, Robert."

Stanton did. His fingers touched a toggle switch. He flipped it

reflexively. A mate voice boomed from speakers on the bookshelf: "Good

Christ, are you mad?"

Stanton felt faint. "Shut up and listen!" snapped a voice he

recognized as his own. "I had to call from here. They won't let me go

anywhere else. Look, you've got to call it off."

"What?" asked the incredulous voice, the British accent unmistakable.

"He knows, I'm telling you. Horn knows about Casilda- I don't know how,

but he does."

"He can't know."

"He does!"

"There's no stopping it now," said Sir Neville Shaw. "And your

information on Horn's defenses had better turn out to be good,

Granville, or-" Alfred Horn's bitter voice rose above the recording.

"You don't even make a good Judas, Robert! You're pathetic!"

"But ... but it's not what you think!" Stanton wailed.

"That call was about the gold we're expecting!"

"Liar! You've betrayed me! I will coddle you no more!"

With a sudden straightening of his body, Stanton pulled a .45

caliber pistol from his belt. "You're the fool!" he cried, his eyes

burning with maniacal hatred. "Doddering around this carnival house,

clinging to your rotting fortune like a sick lion. Blubbering your

idiotic racial philosophies through these empty halls. You're daft!

Your day is past, old man!

It's my turn now!" Stanton aimed the pistol at Horn's head.

"Put down the gun, Robert," Horn said quietly. "I will forgive you.

Please, for your grandfather's sake."

"Shut up! You'd never let me live now!"

"I will forgive you, Robert. But first you must tell me all about your

friends from London."

Stanton shook his head like a terrified child. "I can't! I tried to

protect you, you know. They wanted me to kill you myself, but I

refused. They offered me the bloody moon!

They threatened to blackmail me, to expose some horrible secret about my

grandfather"-Stanton grinned wildly"but then I realized they were more

afraid of the secret than I was!" The petulant scowl returned. "But

they mean to kill you, Alfred. One way or the other.

Don't you see? I had no choice. London will only send someone else for

you."

"Perhaps," Horn said wearily. "Perhaps I made a mistake, Robert.

Because you are ... like you are, I never revealed to you my true

identity. My true mission. Even your father kept it from you-wisely, I

thought. But the time has come for you to know. I will forgive your

treachery, but first you must put down the gun. Put it down, and learn

the true story of your noble heritage."

"You bastard!" Stanton screamed. He charged forward and kicked Horn's

wheelchair over, spilling him onto the parquet floor.

Drawn inexorably forward by the madness of the scene, Ilse edged along

the wall until she could see Horn lying on his back. Erratic flashes

through the picture window fell on his gaunt face, contorted with pain

and confusion, Above him, Stanton, his eyes alight with maniacal fury,

held the gun in his quivering right hand. "You talk of forgiveness!"

he shouted. "Who are you to forgive?" He jerked back the slide of the

.45 and aimed at Horn's glass eye. "What did you make my grandfather

do?"

"Nothing!" Horn said pleadingly. "You have it all backward!

Please, Robert! I do not fear death, but I fear for my mission.

For your grandfather's mission. For mankind!"

Horn's voice rose in desperation. "Do not end the work of half a

century!"

Stanton laughed wildly, then he tightened his mouth into a grimace and

steadied the gun with both hands.

last, Alfred!" ' he cried. "It's long overdue!"

As if in a dream, Ilse raised Smuts's Beretta and pulled back the slide,

just as she had seen Hans do a hundred times in their apartment.

Stanton heard the metallic click. He whirled, trying to pinpoint the

source of the sound ...

Ilse fired.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Stern ran silently, swiftly through the house.

Ilse had described the triangular layout of Horn House to him, but from

inside, the myriad halls and passages seemed only to lead back upon

themselves. He had tried to always turn inward, toward the central

tower that Ilse had told him would lead to the basement, but each time

he was eventually stopped by the same obstacle-an impenetrable sheet of

black anodized metal. The heavy shields blocked every inward-facing

door and window he could find. The central tower and basement complex

had obviously been sealed for battle.

Stern paused for breath beside a wide metal door marked @NKENHAUS.

He had yet to find a telephone, and even if he found one, he could only

give Hauer the most general idea of where he was being held. He needed

a map. Who is attacking this house? he thought angrily. The Arabs

come for their damned bomb, if it even exists? In any other country,

the idea that a private citizen had gained possession of a nuclear

weapon would be ludicrous. But Stern knew that in South Africa no

normal rules applied. In a nuclear-capable state that had developed

beyond the scrutiny of any regulatory entity, anything was possible. A

man of Horn's wealth might well have been instrumental in South Africa's

nuclear weapons program, and God alone knew what price he would have

exacted for his aid. And if he does have the bomb?

Stern asked himself. What then? Visions of Israeli commandos

parachuting into the courtyards of Horn House made his pulse race, but

he knew that such a raid would not happen here. When he finally found a

telephone, he would not have time to make the six or eight calls it

would take to reach the proper members of the Israeli General Staff-if

they weren't out playing golf somewhere. And even if he did reach them,

what action could they take? South Africa wasn't Lebanon or Iraq.

Violating South African airspace would be a dangerous act of war.

The unofficial mot-to of the South African Army was "Thirty days to

Cairo"-meaning that the South African Defense Forces could fight their

way up the entire length of Africa in a month. Few experts argued the

point.

No, Stern realized, Hauer was his only chance. Hauer was in South

Africa, he was one phone call away, and he was ready to act. Stern

wondered what the mandarins in Jerusalem would say if they knew the

future of Israel might depend on a single German.

Stern pushed open the infirmary door and looked for a telephone.

He saw an EKG machine, an IV stand, several laboratory instruments-but

no telephone. There were two doors set in the far wall. One was marked

INTENSIVE CARE, the other bore the international warning symbol for

radiation. Behind the first Stern found a plethora of life-support

equipment, but no telephone. Behind the second he found an X-ray

machine and table, a paneled door marked DARKRoom, fluorescent screens

for examining printed X-ray films, and shelves of manila folders for

stoning them. No telephone.

Stern hurried back into the hallway. After trying another half-dozen

rooms, he found himself standing in the library where he had initially

confronted Horn. Though empty now and shrouded in darkness, the room

seemed to retain some residue of human presence. Stern saw no one, yet

he felt something, a strange aura of awareness. Was someone watching

him from a corner? Uneasy, he moved toward the desk from which Horn had

interrogated him. His common sense told him to get out of the library

fast, yet his intuition told him he was close to something important.

He switched onthe green-shaded desk lamp and stared at the books lining

the library walls. They were standard volumeg, the generic fare that

adorns the shelves of gentlemen of great wealth but little culture.

Driven by a vague premonition, he stepped closer to the shelves.

He touched the books first, then the wood between them, working his way

to the corner of the library, probing with his long fingers. As he

neared the corner he felt cool metal graze his fingertips.

He peered between the shelves. Just where the wood met the wall was a

tiny brass knob.

He closed his thumb and forefinger over it, then gently pulled.

The resulting snick made him jump, but instantly a thin crack appeared

around a three-by-six-foot section of shelving. He pushed forward

slowly, slipped his arm into the dark cavity, and felt for a

switchplate. There. After ten silent seconds, he flipped the switch

and lunged through the secret door.

Stern recoiled in dread as blood red and black assaulted his senses.

The room beyond the door was small but high-ceilinged, like an upended

coffin. Great scarlet drapes fell from the vaulted ceiling, to be

gathered chest-high by black silk sashes. He felt an involuntary

shudder pass through his body. Sewn into the center of each black sash

was a glittering white medallion, and crowning the center of each

medallion-a black-painted swastika! From the wall opposite Stern, a

grouping of black-and-white photographs leaped out like phantoms from a

mass grave. Thousands of gray uniforms stood in endless rigid ranks;

hundreds of jackboots goose-stepped down a depopulated Paris boulevard;

dozens of young lips smiled beneath eyes that had witnessed the

unspeakable. As Stern stared, individual faces emerged from the collage

of depravity. Goring and Himmler ... Heydrich ... Stretcher ... Hess

and Bormann ... Goebbels ... they were all here. Fighting a growing

sense of dislocation, Stern turned, only to confront still another demon

from his past.

Rearing high above him, its enormous bronze wings stretching from one

corner of the red-draped wall to the other, was an imperial Nazi eagle.

Speer's eagle, he thought with a chill, risen again. Yet the great bird

was not an eagle. - For its legs were engulfed in bronze flames, and

clutched in its talons like a world snatched from the primordial fire

was a blood red globe emblazoned with a swastika. The Phoenix!

exulted a voice in Stern's brain. Professor Natterman's voice.

Stern stared in wonder. The head of the mythical bird was turned in

profile. Its sharp beak was stretched wide in a defiant scream, its

solitary eye blazed with fury. Stern felt his knees tremble. Here is

your Egypti@n eye, Professor The exact design! The tattoo used by the

murderers of Phoenix ... the mark sketched on the last page of the

Spandau papers. With dreamlike clarity Stern remembered Natterman's

explanation of Rudolf Hess's Egyptian connection. This Phoenix looked

almost identical to the old Nazi eagle, but the Egyptian character of

its eye could not be denied. The eye did not match the rest of the

sculpture at all. Neither did the flames at the bird's feet. They

added long after the original sculpture was cast. But by whom? Stern

wondered. By a man who spent the first fourteen years of his life in

Egypt? By a man who lost one eye sometime after 1941? By Rudolf Hess?

Under other circumstances, Stern reflected, this strange sanctum might

pass for a private trophy room-a perverted version of the narcissistic

shrines one often found in the homes of vain old generals.

But here-hidden in a fortress at the end of a twisted trail that began

at Spandau Prisonthese relics suggested something else altogether.

This room was no museum, no maudlin monument to the past. It was a time

warp, a place where the past had not been merely preserved, but

reanimated by a personality bent on resurrecting it. Stern felt a wild

urge to leap up and tear the effigy down, like Marshal Zhukov's Russians

atop the Reichstag. He stretched up on tiptoe, then froze.

Mounted on the wall beneath the huge Phoenix he saw what he had come

looking for: maps. And not only maps, but a telephone! The map on the

left-a projection of the African continent-Stern ignored. But the

other-a topographic survey of the northern Transvaal-was just what he'd

wanted. Quickly orienting himself to Pretoria, he slid his finger

northeast toward the splash of 'green that represented the Kruger

National Park. His fingernail stopped an inch short of the park border.

"There you are," he said aloud. Just as on the radar screen in the

turret high above, the location of Horn House had been clearly marked

with a large red H. Stern figured the distance from the H to Pretoria at

just under three hundred kilometers. Roughly three and a half hours

overland, making allowances for what appeared to be trackless wilderness

surrounding Horn House itself He snatched up the telephone from the

desk, his heart pounding.

Then-as he punched in the number of the Protea Hof Hotel-he heard muted

voices. He dropped into a crouch behind the desk, taking the phone with

him.

The voices were not coming from the telephone. Nor were they getting

any closer. Stern got cautiously to his feet. By moving to different

parts of the room, he soon located the source of the sound.

The voices were coming from behind the wall of photographs. He

flattened his ear to the wood.

Both voices were male, one much stronger than the other.

The stronger voice spoke with a British accent.

Feeling his way across the wall to get closer to the voices, Stern

touched cold metal with his right hand. Another knob.

Now he understood. This unholy shrine adjoined the library and study by

means of two hidden doors. Horn had made sure that his secret sanctuary

had two routes of egress. Taking a deep breath, Stern turned the knob.

He heard the familiar snick of metal, but the voices went on talking. He

pushed open the door.

The study beyond was dim but not lightless. Flashes from the picture

window intermittently lit the room. Stern could hear the rattle of

small arms fire outside, punctuated by the occasional burp of some

heavier weapon. He edged into the room and pressed himself against the

paneled wall. By the greenish light of a desk lamp he picked out the

man with the British accent. He was pointing a large pistol across the

desk at a shadow seated before the window.

Stern jumped when he heard the voice of the man in the chair, a gravelly

rasp, full of contempt. It was Horn. He couldn't make out all the

words, but the old man-despite his vulnerable position-seemed to be

offering the Englishman mercy. This only infuriated the younger man.

With a cry of rage he charged the wheelchair, kicked Horn over, then

raised his pistol and jerked back the slide. By God, he means to kill

him, Stern realized. He started forward instinctively, then he stopped.

A broken fork was not much good against a semi-automatic pistol.

Yet beyond that, something deep in Stern's soul, something angry and

crusted black, told him to do absolutely nothing. If the old man lying

helpless on the floor actually had gained possession of a nuclear

weapon, Stern could neutralize him now by simply allowing the enraged

Englishman to blow his brains out. Perhaps that was best ...

The next moments passed like chain lightning. Stern heard Horn mutter

something from behind the sofa. The young Englishman, driven beyond his

limit of endurance, steadied his gun with both hands and prepared to

fire.

"Death at last, Alfred!" he cried. "It's long overdue!"

Stern stopped in his tracks. Alfred? He felt a jolt of disorientation.

Alfred Horn? But the old man had introduced himself as Thomas HomA

sharp metallic click froze everyone in the room. The sound was

unmistakable-an automatic pistol being cocked.

As if controlled by the same brain, Jonas Stern and Robert Stanton

whirled toward the sound. Stern glimpsed a swatch of blond hair in the

shadows; then the muzzle flash blinded him.

Five in a row, very fast. The first shots went wild, but the last two

snatched the Englishman off his feet and drove him through the picture

window, shattering the panes into a thousand glittering razors.

Stern dropped to the floor. The blond hair he had seen told him one

thing: Peter Smuts had arrived to save his master.

As Stern peered through the darkness, trying to pick out the Afrikaner,

the study door burst open and the overhead lights flashed on. What

Stern saw next stopped the breath in his lungs. Ilse Apfel stood rigid

at the center of the room, a smoking pistol clenched in both hands. She

was the blond who had saved Horn from his would-be executioner! Pieter

Smuts bounded across the room and tackled her, one hand immobilizing the

pistol as he knocked her to the floor. She went down without a sound.

The Afrikaner came to his feet almost instantly, scanning the room for

his master.

"Pieter," cried a weak voice. "Behind the sofa."

Smuts darted to the old man and fell to his knees. "Are you hit?"

"What ... ? No. You saved me, Pieter."

"Linahi" Smuts shouted. "Get the doctor!"

Stern heard footsteps scurrying down the hall.

Only now did Smuts notice the broken window. Stanton's mangled corpse

lay half in and half out of it, his lifeless eyes turned upward, open to

the rain. The Afrikaner's mouth dropped open in wonder as he realized

what must have happened.

"Thank God you arrived, Pieter," Horn mumbled. "The swine meant to kill

me. I didn't think he had it in him."

Watching Ilse closely, Smuts righted the wheelchair, lifted the old man

into it, then crossed the study and pulled Ilse to her feet.

She looked no more alert than she had when Smuts bowled her to the

floor. The Afrikaner led her gently over to Horn.

"Sir, when I got here I saw Frau Apfel standing over there with a pistol

raised. It was she that saved you." Smuts made a sudden sound of

astonishment. "It's my Beretta! By God, she shot Lord Granville with

my bloody Beretta!"

Ilse's face remained expressionless, but Horn's eyes began to shine. "I

knew it, Pieter," he said triumphantly. "She couldn't stand by and

watch me die. She is a true German!"

Horn rolled his chair forward and took Ilse's hand. "Did you kill Lord

Granville, my child?"

Ilse said nothing.

"She's in shock," Horn murmured, shaking his head. "It is a miracle,

Pieter. Fate brought this woman here to me."

While appreciative of Ilse's actions, Smuts would not have carried the

praise so far. "Sir," he said carefully, "it appears to me that Frau

Apfel acted purely by reflex. She was trying to escape. She saw a

murder about to be committed; she fired blindly to prevent it. I don't

think we should attach more significance to it than that."

Ignoring Smuts, Horn squeezed Ilse's hand in his own.

"My child," he said softly, "by your action tonight you not only saved

my life, but your husband's also."

"But sir!" Smuts protested. "Think what you're saying."

"Silence, Pieter!" Horn exploded. "I want half a million rand

transferred to the Deutsche Bank in Berlin, under Frau Apfel's name."

He smiled at Ilse. "For the child," he said.

"Pieter told me that you are pregnant, my dear."

Smuts stared incredulously at his master. This was insane.

He had never seen the old man make decisions based on sentimentality.

Somehow, the Apfel woman had acquired a dangerous amount of influence

over Alfred Horn, and that influence was obviously growing. A tragic

accident might soon be required.

A sudden roar from outside rattled the shattered window.

From his position by the hidden door, Stern saw a line of tracers arc

out toward the rim of the bowl.

"What of the attack?" Horn asked.

"The house is secure," Smuts said tersely.

"And Oberieutnant Luhr?"

"A good man. That's him firing the Vulcan."

Horn smiled. "I imagine your little toys came as something of a

surprise to Robert's friends. eh?"

Smuts grinned nastily.

"Do you know who they are yet?"

"We'll round up the bodies tonight. Then we'll see."

Horn nodded, then turned to Ilse and spoke softly. "Pieter will take

you to your husband now. A matter of minutes. Do you hear me, child?"

Motionless until now, Ilse suddenly began to shiver. A single tear

streaked her face. She looked as if she might collapse.

"Take her now, Pieter," Horn commanded. "Schnel "Sir!" The Afrikaner

snapped into motion.

Realizing that he had only moments to reach safety, Stern ducked back

into the shrine room and reached for the telephone. He was about to

punch in the number of the Protea Hof when he heard a voice coming from

the phone. His throat tightened in disbelief. Who could it be?

One of Smuts's soldiers? Did it really matter? Closing his palm over

the mouthpiece, Stern stuck his head back through the little door.

He saw the Vulcan's bright red tracer beam climb the distant ridge,

searching out more victims. Horn, too, had wheeled his chair around to

watch. The tracer beam jinked back and forth beyond the dark horizon,

steadied a moment, then lurched into the sky. For an instant the end of

the deadly arc became visible-then it detonated in a huge fireball.

The shock wave blasted a sheet of rain and glass into the room.

Several shards fell onto Horn's lap, but the old man didn't seem to

notice. He reached for a button on the arm of his wheelchair, preparing

to turn. Stern hunkered down, hoping to see the gray face once more in

the light. He heard the hum of the wheelchair's electric motor, saw the

face in profile-then his survival instinct overrode his curiosity. He

scrambled back into the secret room and pulled the door shut behind him.

When he put the phone to his ear, the voice was still talking. With a

silent curse he slipped the receiver back into its cradle. There would

be no call to Hauer. Stern estimated he had less than a minute to

become Professor Natterman again.

Alan Burton lay belly-down in the mud, humping it with the infantryman's

desperate love. Even before he heard the apocalyptic roar of the Vulcan

gun, he had seen the deadly tracer beam reach out from the tower. Now

the gunner was raking repeatedly over the corpses of the Colombians-for

corpses they surely were. When a stream of armor-piercing slugs

intersects a human body at the rate of sixty-six hundred rounds per

minute, the result cannot be described.

Burton had seen it before; he had no desire to again.

Apparently Alberto did. Four times already the big guerilla had lifted

his head over the rim of the bowl to watch the slaughter. The last time

he must have gotten his fill, because Burton could hear the giant

African whimpering beside him in the mud. When one of their escape

helicopters exploded behind them, Alberto began babbling to himself. The

incoherent syllables sounded vaguely religious to Burton, and the

Englishman decided that a bit of prayer might not be out of order, even

for a confirmed old sinner like himself.

When the terrible roar of the Vulcan diminished to desultory bursts,

Alberto tried to jump up and race back to the airstrip. Burton pressed

him violently back into the mud. As far as Burton knew, they still had

one operable helicopter and, hopefully, a pilot. But to run for it now

would be suicide. Any idiot could see that the gunner in the turret was

using night-vision equipment. Burton could picture the smug bastard,

perched up there behind his monstrous weapon, waiting for one desperate

survivor to jump up and bolt for the airstrip. Burton didn't intend to

be the moron who tried that.

But Alberto did. After the Vulcan had lain silent for ninety seconds,

the big African rose tentatively to his knees and beckoned Burton to

follow. The Vulcan burped just once: the three-second burst flashed up

the slope like a lightning bolt. Approximately ninety bullets tore into

Alberto's body, eviscerating and then decapitating him. The mangled

hulk that thudded into the mud next to Burton would be food for the

jackals in an hour.

The Englishman decided not to wait around to see the feast. The Deal be

damned, he thought bitterly. Maybe Shaw will give me another chance.

God knows I didn't have much of one today. With movements so subtle

only a serpent would perceive them, Burton slithered backward through

the mud until he dropped below the Vulcan's angle of fire.

Then he jumped to his feet and ran as he never had in his life, low to

the ground, but fast. When he felt the ground rising beneath his feet,

he knew he was nearing the airstrip.

The Wash brought him up short. Three feet of water raged through its

bottom now, but Burton tobogganed down the steep slope as if the torrent

represented safety rather than potential death. Hoisting his MP-5

submachine gun high above his head, he waded into the flood. It took

superhuman strength to hold himself upright against the current, but he

made it across. He scrambled up the far side of the ravine in twenty

seconds flat and found himself staring into the face of Juan Diaz.

"Madre de Dios!" the Cuban cried.

"The helo?" Burton gasped, his chest heaving.

"They got ours, English. But Fidel-the other pilot-he's waiting for us.

Come! Before they shoot the runway again!"

They ran. Burton could see the airstrip ahead, a glistening asphalt

line. Horn's Learjet waited silently on the apron like a falcon sitting

out a storm. The surviving helicopter stood about forty meters from the

Lear, only twenty meters from the still-burning wreck of its sister

ship. Burton heard its rotors whining as he neared the runway, running

full out.

Then the whine was swallowed by the furious ripping sound of the Vulcan.

Burton looked back. He saw the tenible tracer beam race across the

bowl, leap over the Wash, and streak up behind them. "Run!"

he screamed at Diaz.

The Cuban needed no prodding; he was ahead of Burton already. The

tracer beam actually passed between the two men as it raced toward

Fidel's chopper, churning the earth into a furrow of death.

Then it happened. Fidel lost his nerve. Seeing the tracers closing in

on him, he simply could not control his panic.

With the only survivors of his team less than thirty meters from his

chopper, the terrified Cuban lifted off. Diaz screamed for his comrade

to wait, but the @errified pilot ignored him.

Burton had seen this a hundred times before. Slowing his sprint, he

unslung his MP-5 and dropped to his knees. The only way to stop a

panicked man from bolting was to put an equal or greater throat in front

of him. Burton sighted his submachine gun in on the windshield of

Fidel's chopper and squeezed off a three-round burst.

"Are you loco?" Diaz screamed. "You'll crash him."

"Signal him to put down!"

Fidel's chopper bucked wildly, hovering ten meters off the ground.

Unaccustomed to firing the Vulcan, Jijrgen Luhr had missed the chopper

on the first pass. Tracers danced wildly above the chopper's rotors.

Diaz signaled frantically for his compadre to put down, but Fidel still

seemed uncertain of where the greater danger lay. Burton convinced him

with a sustained burst that fragmented the chopper's windshield. The

JetRanger dropped until it hovered a meter above the runway. Burton

dashed for its side door, passing Diaz on the way. He leaped into the

shuddering machine and trained his weapon on Fidel.

"Don't take off till Diaz is in!"

The little Cuban was close, but not close enough. Without even meaning

to, Fidel jinked his ship two meters higher.

"Down!" Burton roared.

The JetRanger settled, then jerked up again.

Luhr backed his tracers off about forty meters from his target and began

vectoring in again. This time the deadly beam held steady as he walked

it in on the struggling helicopter.

"Jump!" Burton yelled.

Diaz leaped for the chopper's right skid, caught it. Burton got one

hand on the Cuban's collar, saw the fear and anger in his eyes-then he

felt the wild impact. For the briefest instant the tracer beam had

sliced up and nicked Diaz in the side. One bullet plucked him off the

skid as deffly as the finger of God.

The chopper yawed wildly as Fidel sought to avoid the tracer beam.

"Set this whore down!" Burton cried. He fired a round through the

Plexiglas two inches from Fidel's head. The panicked Cuban shrieked in

ten-or. Leaning out of the side door, Burton saw Diaz lying in the mud

below, one arm raised in supplication.

Without any warning the chopper tilted ninety degrees and, whether by

Fidel's design or not, Burton tumbled out.

He caught himself on the skid and hung on with claws of desperation. He

felt the JetRanger start to rise. Fidel had made his decision: he was

clearing out. In a split second Burton made his own.

With a curse on his lips he let go of the skid and fell six meters to

the ground.

He landed badly, but the muddy earth cushioned his fall.

Above him, Fidel's chopper climbed rapidly, but not rapidly enough. Luhr

had finally got the hang of the Vulcan. The fiery stream of slugs

intersected the JetRanger amidships and nearly cut it in two before the

fuel tank_ blew. The chopper fireballed like its sister ship, blasting

wreckage all over the runway.

Burton threw himself over Diaz as the shrapnel tore the asphalt all

around them. Without waiting for any further fire from the Vulcan, he

took hold of the Cuban, heaved him over his shoulder like a sack and

started slogging toward the Wash. If that gunner's still watching the

fireball, he thought, we might just make it. But if he saw me jump,

he's sighting -in on us right now. Ten meters to the edge ... seven ...

ton sped up, leaned forward ...

He leaped.

The two men tumbled head over heels down the steep slope and skidded to

a stop at the edge of a raging flood.

Burton made sure Diaz wasn't about to be swept into the water, and then

he glanced around for a hiding place. The Cuban caught his sleeve and

pulled his face down close.

"Gracias, " he coughed. "Gracias, English."

Burton looked down at the tough little Cuban. Diaz's camouflage shirt

was soaked with dark blood, but his lips and eyes showed the trace of a

smile. "Don't thank me yet, lad," the Englishman said quietly. "It's

going to be a long bloody night."

With the stealth that had carried him safely through four wars and

countless intelligence operations, Jonas Stern made his way back to the

bedroom he had briefly shared with Ilse.

His brain duummed wildly. He had to get back to that telephone.

He had scratched a mark deep in 'the library door with his broken fork

so that he could quickly find the secret room again. But would he get

another chapce? Horn's security chief would surely check the bedroom

soon. The Afrikaner would naturally assume that "Professor Natterman"

had tried to escape with his granddaughter. And when he found Stern

waiting here, what would he think?

Would he believe that "Natterman" had sat like a rabbit in an open cage

while his granddaughter risked her life to escape?

Stern had heard Horn's promise to spare Hans Apfel's life, but he

doubted if the old man's clemency would extend to Ilse's "grandfather."

To survive the next few minutes, Stern knew, he would have to find some

plausible reason for having stayed behind while Ilse fled. Boot heels

were already pounding up the hall when he remembered the Zinoviev

notebook. Snatching it from inside his shirt, he darted to the little

writing desk, mussed his hair, and opened the leatherbound volume at the

middle.

The boots stopped outside his door.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Stern did not look up when Smuts opened the door. He pored over the

thin black volume as if it were a lost book of the Bible. The Afrikaner

stood silent for some time, watching him.

"What are you doing, Professor?" he said finally.

"Reading," Stern muttered.

"I can see that," snapped Smuts. "Where is your granddaughter?"

"I have no idea."

"How did she get out of this room?"

Stern looked up at last. "She picked the lock."

"With what?"

"A fork from your dinner table, I believe."

Smuts frowned. "Why didn't you go with her?

Stern shrugged. "She is young, I am old. With me along she would have

little chance of escape. Without me ... who knows?"

"She did not escape," Smuts said, smirking.

Stern sighed and let a hand fall from the desk to his knee.

"Will you bring her back to me, please?"

"Impossible. She must pay for her insolence."

Recalling Horn's promise of mercy'to Ilse, Stern suppressed a smile as

he brought a hand to his forehead. "She's only a young girl who wanted

to find her husband. Where is the crime in that?"

"Herr Horn will decide," Smuts answered stiffly. "I think you're lying,

Professor. You tried to escape and failed, didn't you? You ran into

the shields."

"You underrate my devotion to history, young man." Stern laid a hand on

the Zinoviev notebook. "This volume is a treasure-a lost fragment of

history. Already I've learned things my colleagues would trade a limb

for."

Smuts shook his head slowly. "You're past it, old man.

You can't see anything, can you?"

"I see that this book is far more valuable than the rubbish Hans found

at Spandau."

"I'll tell you what that book is, Professor," Smuts snarled.

"It's your bloody death sentence. Only one man has read that book and

remained alive, and you've already met him."

Smuts reached for the doorknob. "Enjoy it while you can," he said, and

went out.

Stern stared at the closed door. He knew he could pick the lock again,

but the Afrikaner might be waiting for just such an attempt. He took a

deep breath and rubbed his temples.

He was sweating. Sixty seconds ago he had seen something so shocking it

had wiped the ghastly Nazi shrine room from his mind.

It was the book. Zinoviev's notebook. The moment he had opened it, the

moment before Pieter Smuts marched into his room, Stern had seen the

strange black characters marching like foreign soldiers down the page.

Cyrillic characters.

Paragraph after, paragraph of laboriously handwritten Russian covered

the left-hand page. And on the right-neatly typewritten on an old

German machine-Stern had seen what he prayed was a German translation of

the Russian handwriting. But what had so shocked him-what had blown

everything el e out of his mind-was his nearcertainty that the Cyrilslic

characters had been written by the same hand that wrote the "fire of

Armageddon" note warning of danger to Israel in 1967. The same note

which had said the secret of that danger could be found in Spandau.

Now he leafed quickly through the thin volume. The pages-twenty in

all-were merely sheets of heavy typing paper glued amateurishly into a

leather spine. The same strange configuration over and over: first

Russian, then German. Stern could not verify his intuition about the

author of the Spandau note. The note was in his leather bag, back in

Hauer's room at the Protea Hof But he did not need to verify anything.

He knew. He closed the black notebook and reread the name on the cover:

V V Zinoviev. Who was this mysterious Russian? How was he tied to the

Rudolf Hess case? If Zinoviev had warned Israel in 1967 of some

apocalyptic danger, had he voluntarily given this book to Alfred Horn?

Stern shivered with a sudden rush of deja vu. Alfred Horn.

The name buzzed in his brain like a swarm of bottleflies. Where had he

seen it before? In some intelligence report? On some tattered list of

Nazi sympathizers crossing a desk inTel Aviv?

He forced his mind away from the question. He forced himself to think

of the telephone, the phone that waited in the bizarre Nazi shrine room.

To think of Hauer and Gadi, waiting anxiously for his call. He had to

make contact with them. Yet in spite of Ilse's warning about a nuclear

weapon, in spite of his conviction that Israel actually was in danger,

Stern felt oddly certain that the key to the whole insane business-both

past and present-lay within the thin volume in his hand.

If the papers Hans Apfel found in Spandau Prison proved that Prisoner

Number Seven was not Rudolf Hess, what did this strange book reveal?

Horn had said-it related to May of 1941. Did this book, finally, reveal

the secret of Rudolf Hess's real mission to England? Did it name Hess's

British contacts? Did it reveal the full scope of the threat to Israel?

Could it silence the maddening hum at the back of Stern's brain when he

heard the name Alfred Horn?

This notebook, he thought, not the Spandau papers, is Professor

Natterman's Rosetta stone of 1941. I only hope I live to tell the

oldfool about it. Stern opened the black cover and began to read: I,

Valentin Vasilievich Zinoviev, here record for posterity thefacts of my

service to the German Reich, specifically my part in the special

operation undertaken in Great Britain in May 1941 known as "Plan

Mordred. " I do so at the request of the surviving Reich authorities,

to the best of my ability, adding or omitting nothing.

I was born in Moscow in 1895 to Vasili Zinoviev, a major in the army of

Alexander II. At seventeen I became a soldier like my father, but after

rising to the rank of sergeant I was recruited into the Okhrana, the

Tsar's secret police. I was promoted rapidly there. Some of my

colleagues criticized my methods as overly harsh, but no one denied the

results I achieved. Looking back on the bloodbath of 1917, I believe

many of those same colleagues would say that my methods were not harsh

enough. But they are dead now, and that is another story.

When I received word in 1918 that Tsar Nicholas II and his family had

been executed by the Bolsheviks, I decided to make my way to Germany.

Strange to choose the vanquished nation as my sanctuary, but I did. Of

all the Western nations, I had admired Prussia's military most. The

journey was a nightmare. Europe was a shambles, but by using Okhrana

contacts I finally managed to pass through the frontier into Poland.

From there I had little trouble.

Germany was in chaos. The people were starving. Armed gangs roamed the

streets at will, preying on the unwary and stripping returning soldiers

of their decorations. Chief among these gangs were the Spartacist

Communists. I could scarcely believe I had fled Lenin's revolution only

to find more of the same madness awaiting me. Quickly seeing how things

stood, I offered my services to a band of Friekorps, one of the groups

of German ex-officers and enlisted men who were trying to reestablish

order in their country. The Friekorps leadership appreciated my special

talents and put me to work immediately.

These were farsighted men. Even at that early stage they were planning

for the next war At their request I refrained from joining the Nazi

Party throughout Adolf Hitler's rise to power They preferred to use me

as a "cat"s paw" whenever actions were required where absolutely no risk

of being traced back to the Party could be tolerated.

Because the chief enemy of the Nazis was the Communist Party, I proved

invaluable, and soon came to the attention of Heinrich Himmler, Reichs

hrer of Hitler's newly created SS.

.M Though I never developed more than the most superficial personal

relationship with this strange character I admired his efficiency.

Himmler saw to it that some of my Okhrana methods were taught to members

of his counter intelligence unit-the SD. It was through these endeavors

that I came to know a promising young officer named Reinhard Heydrich.

Because of what happened later, I should mention my service in Spain. In

1936 I accompanied Germany's Condor Legion to Spain, to help

Generalissimo Franco in his struggle against the Republican Forres-which

were actually controlled by the Spanish communists and a few generals

borrowed from Stalin. I served as an interrogator, my chief

responsibility being interrogation of communist prisoners. It was this

eighteen-month period that would later rise up to thwart my greatest

mission, but who could foresee it then?

Back in Germany, I worked closely with Heydrich on a special program

which I had helped initiate after the 1919

communist uprisings in Germany. Because yet another world war seemed

inevitable, certain Nazi leaders expressed a desire that we should

infiltrate not only the German Communist Party, but the communist

organizations in those countries likely to be enemies of Germany in the

next war By 1923 we had put a large number of agents in place, and by

1939 we had the most extensive anti-communist intelligence network in

the world. There were losses and defections, of course, but the

strategy remained sound.

Two years later (January 1941) Hitler informed Heydrich that a powerful,

highly placed clique of Nazi sympathizers existed in England, men who

wished to arrange a peace treaty with Germany. These Englishmen claimed

to be in a position to seize their government, if only two obstacles

could be got out of the way. The main obstacle was Winston Churchill,

who considered Adolf Hitler his personal nemesis.

The second was King George VI, who, unlike his dethroned older brother

was a fervent anti-Nazi. Hitler's English sympathizers saw this

dethroned brother-then called the Duke of Windsor-as a malleable

alternative British monarch.

Hitler charged Heydrich with removing the human obstacles to this

alliance, and Heydrich naturally turned to me. Because an Anglo-German

alliance would virtually guarantee the destruction of Stalin's regime, I

volunteered immediately.

Heydrich's plan, though complex in execution, was simple and ingenious

in theory. We would assassinate both Churchill and the king, then lay

the blame on our archenemies the communists-just as the Nazis had done

with the Reichstag Fire! To accomplish this, Heydrich envisioned using

one of the British communist cells infiltrated by our agents. He asked

if I thought we might dupe one of these groups into carrying out the

assassinations for us, and I must admit that I expressed pessimism. The

revelation of the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939

had disil&sioned communists around the world; consequently, I considered

the chance of finding western communists still fanatical enough to

attempt a suicide mission very small But Heydrich was undaunted On his

orders I set to work bringing his plan to fruition.

The communist cell I chose for the operation was based in London, and,

from our point of view, was under the command of one Helmut Steuer-a

former Wehrmacht sergeant. This Helmut deserves special mention, for

he-like the unit he had created-was uniq Helmut had@ been spying on .

communists since Munich, where he was "sole survivor" of the massacre at

the Hauptbanhof.

When he "fled" to Britain (on our orders) the British communists

welcomed him as a hero. His bond with them was so strong that when

these communists went to Spain to fight in the International Brigades in

1936, Helmut went with them.

Heydrich could not believe it. It was an insanely dangerous thing for

Helmut to do, but I understood. He was a young man then, a man of

action, and he craved danger In Spain he fought heroically for the

Republicans, all the while feeding to the Fascists information on the

movements of the very armies he was fighting in! Helmut lost an eye at

Guernica, and probably because of the accuracy of his own reports! It

was truly a miracle that he survived at all, yet his service in Spain

made him irreproachable in the eyes of his English comrades. After

returning to EnglandStern stopped reading. His heart was pounding. He

put his finger to the paper, traced the sentences backward and read

again: Helmut lost an eye at Guernica "My God," he muttered. "I've

found you out at last. Alfred Horn ...

You're not Rudolf Hess, and you're not'Zinoviev either."

Stern's mind raced as he tried to assimilate this new information.

There actually was a Helmut involved in the Hess affair-just as the

Oxford draft research had claimed. Professor Natterman would be

extremely disappointed to hear it! Stern heard himself laughing. It

all fits, he thought with satisfaction. I simply couldn't accept the

idea that Rudolf Hess had survived the war, that he had wormed his way

into South A ica's power elite, and I was right!

.fr "Well," he murmured, "let's find out exactly what Helmut the great

German spy did during the war." Stern picked up reading Zinoviev's

narrative where he had left off-.

After returning to England, Helmut-on our ordersorganized his own

communist cell. It was small (six men, not counting Helmut) and every

man had been seriously wounded either in the Great War or in Spain. In

his communiques Helmut called them his Verwunden Brigade-the "Wounded

Brigade. " These men had come from the British working class, and no

men everfelt more betrayed by their government than they- The flower of

their generation had been slaughtered in the Great War, yet they had

survived.

And when a neighboring republic was threatened by a newly risen German

monster, their government had not only turned its back, but disparaged

its sons who went to defend the democratic ideal that their friends and

brothers had died for in the Great War There is no hatred like that of

idealistic men who have been betrayed Even the Hitler-Stalin pact had

not disillusioned these men. They saw it merely as an adroit political

move by Stalin-a temporary alliance that would be rescinded as soon as

Russia could defend herself against Germany.

If any Englishmen could be made to take up arms against Churchill and

their king, I knew, it was Helmut's Verwunden Brigade.

I arrived in London in April of 1941, armed with secret documents

bearing the signatures of the highest officials of the Soviet Communist

Party-all excellent forgeries, of course. This deception was risky but

necessary. No communist cell, howeverfanatic, would undertake an

operation of the magnitude we planned without the full weight of the

Party International behind them. My mission was to symbolize this

authority. I was the holy messenger sentfrom Moscow, the sacred city,

and the documents I carried sanctified my crusade. They made the

planned assassinations sound like the first shot of a worldwide

communist revolution. One document even bore Stalin's signature! The

SD forgers had done their jobs so well that I myself was tempted to

believe in my newfound power Of the operation itself there is much to

tell, and yet little.

The mechanics were relatively simple. From English collaborators and

German agents-in-place we received regular reports on our targets' daily

movements, along with predictions of their future agendas. That part

was easy.

Churchill tramped all over the country with his fat cigar, inspecting

troops or viewing air-raid damage. With an assassin willing to die in

the deed, the prime minister was as good as dead King George presented a

more difficult problem, but not insurmountable. Though better protected

than Churchill, he occasionally left Buckingham Palace to put on a show

of solidarity with the common people.

What made the mission impossibly difficult was Hitler's commandment that

the operation be carried out on the tenth of May.

Limiting the mission to a single day meant that our assassins would have

to strike regardless of circumstances I wasn't concerned about their

chances of survival; on the contrary, we wanted to insure that the

assassins would be killed in the accomplishment of their mission. But I

also had to be reasonably sure that the targets would be sufficiently

exposed for our men to reach them. When I expressed my apprehension to

Heydrich, however he assured me that Hitler had devised a diversionary

ploy that would bring our targets into the open on the given day. At

the time he would tell me no more than that.

With Helmut's help I set to work selecting our assassins.

We had decided to choose three men-one man for each target, with one

backup man I . n case of unforeseen circumstances. The men we

ultimately chose were named William Banks and William Fox. I shall

neverforget them. The confusion caused by the similarity of their names

was circumvented by their nicknames. Banks, a red-haired giant, was

known as "Big Bill, " and the more diminutive Fox as "Little Bill.

" The backup man-selected by Helmut-was a distasteful little fanatic

named Sherwood This Sherwood almost wrecked the operation on the first

day. During the Spanish war he'd been captured at Jarama, and the first

time he saw me he turned pale as a fish. When Helmut asked him what was

wrong (I spoke little English) Sherwood asked if I had ever been in

Spain. Naturally I said I hadn't, whereupon the little man told his

comrades that I could have been the twin brother of a certain El Muerte@

sadistic Russian interrogator who worked for the Germans in Spain.

Helmut laughed outright, and the rest o us joined !f in. All but

Sherwood The memory had shaken him badly. It had shaken me too.

In Spain-where I had used my Okhrana methods ruthlessly-the communists

had christened me El Muerte.

My job was to motivate Banks and Fox to carry out their suicidal

attacks. Helmut had prepared them well, and this made my role much

easier From the day he founded his tiny cell, Helmut had promised his

disenchanted men that when the revolution came, they would be called on

by Moscow to carry out the first strikes against the iniperiali's't

oppressors.

My years in the Okhrana had given me an encyclopedic knowledge of

communist-methods and terminology, and I used it to the full in dealing

with these Englishmen.

I told them solemnly that Hitler intended to break his pact with Stalin

and attack Russia within thirty days. To this terrifying news I added

the usual Stalinist drivel, .e that while the industrialized nations

would eventually fall like rotten apples from the tree, the war had

presented an opportunily we could not afford to let pass. Now was the

time for revolution, I cried with passion, and the names of the martyrs

who struck down the imperialist leaders would be engraved forever in the

histories of the new world.

Stalin, I told them, had decided to save Russia and ignite the worldwide

revolution in one daring stroke. Not only were Churchill and George VI

to die, but the leaders of imperialist France and the fascist leaders of

Italy and Germany. The forged documents I carried added the weight of

holy writ to my tale, and these two Englishmen accepted it all with

grave pride. It was a sobering thing to see-two men who had fought so

bravely for their homeland agreeing to bring it to its knees.

Of course, in their minds they were liberatorsdowntrodden proletarians

who would free their fellowcountrymen from the clutches of warmongers

like Churchill.

One week before the target date we received reports that Churchill would

be spending the weekend of May 10th at Ditchley Park, a private country

house owned by a friend.

The king, of course, would be at Buckingham Palace. Soon after I

received a coded message from Heydrich, outlining the "diversion" that

Hitler would provide. The Fuhrer had ordered an air raid on London for

the night of May 10th-to occur simultaneously with our mission. And not

just any air raid, Heydrich said, but the largest bomber strike yet

visited on the city. Hitler believed that such a raid would not only

provide us with a perfect diversion, but would also demonstrate to the

English the futility of continued struggle against GermanyThe moment I

read this message I decided to change the strike date to May 11th,

regardless of Hitler's orders. I knew that our targets would not leave

their protected shelters during the air raid,- and if our assassins

attempted to break into Ditchley Park or Buckingham Palace, they would

be shot dead long before they reached their targets. But on May

11th-when both Churchill and the king would emerge to view the

unprecedented bomb damage of Hitler's raid-the chances of success would

be highest.

The weapon we chose for the attacks was the British Sten gun.

Although prone to jamming, the Sten was easily concealable and insured

that a high number of bullets would penetrate the targets. Each man was

to carry a revolver as a backup in the event of a jam.

Five days before the strike date, I suggested to Helmut that we dismiss

the alternate-Sherwood-from training.

Helmut agreed and informed Sherwood of the change. From this moment on,

things began to go wrong. First "Big Bill" Banks, the man assigned to

kill Churchill, refused to remain in the safehouse during the final days

before the strike date.

His parents lived in London, and he wanted to spend his last days with

them. Helmut's best efforts could not change the man's mind.

"Little Bill " Fox-the man assigned to King George-had no family, and

agreed to stay in the safehouse with us. Together we passed the days

playing cards and listening to the radio. At night around ten-thirty

"Big Bill" would show up to make sure the plan had not changed.

Twice during this period Sherwood found an excuse to break orders and

come to the safehouse. I should have found some way to kill the

Bolshevik rat, but since "Liule Bill" was with us all the time, I

couldn't risk doing it in the house.

I thought of ordering Helmut to slip out and kill Sherwood, but I must

confess I had some doubt as to whether he would do it. Helmut had lived

with-andfought b@these Englishmen for years, and I could see that the

inevitability of their deaths was beginning to weigh upon him.

Helmut wasn't disloyal, but the strain of living a perpetual lie had

started to build up in him to a significant degree. Because of this, I

let the Sherwood matter go unresolved.

On May 10th-the final night before the strike-the atmosphere in the

house was electric. We had a car parked behind the house, filled with

black-market petrel. Every minute it sat unattended was another minute

of increased risk.

Around ten p.m. we heard the first Luftwaffe bombs falling outside. They

were far away from us-Heydrich had seen to that-but the noise was still

frightening. I began to worry.

By eleven p.m. "Big Bill" had still not arrived. I began to wonder if

he had lost his nerve, or even-God forbid-if he might have been killed

in the air raid. His lateness did not help Fox's resolve, either The

little man paced the room like a prisoner in solitary confinement.

At eleven-fifteen, disaster struck. The door burst open and "Big Bill"

stormed into the room, his eyes blazing. "They're dead! " he shouted

like a madman. "Dead dead dead! " I will neverforget his huge redface,

shaking in anguish. I couldn't imagine what he was screaming about, but

he soon told us.

Both his parents had been killed in the air-raid, he wailed, burnt

blacker than coat He wanted revenge: revenge on Goring, on the

Luftwaffe, and most of all on Hitler I tried to turn this catastrophe to

our advantage. Banks would have his revenge, I said. Tomorrow Hitler

would be killed@just as Churchill would-by a communist martyr just like

Banks.

What better revenge could his parents have?

When I mentioned Churthill, however, a strange look crossed Banks's

face. Then an odd calm settled on him. "I won't do it, " he said

simply. I almost collapsed "What?" I cried Speaking in a voice almost

too low to hear, Banks said that all along Churchill had been the man

who had stood up to Hitler That no mauer what extremes of capitalist

greed Churchill stood for, Churchill wanted Hitler dead It seemed that

this alone was now enough for "Big Bill" Banks. The 's f man anatical

communist zeal had disappeared in the blink of an eye.

I wanted to shoot him on the spot. I could see that his uncertainty was

having a similar effect on Fox. Immediately I redoubled my efforts to

convince Banks to push on. Helmut did his best to help me, and after

several minutes of emotional appeals Banks started to come around.

Somehow Helmut had redirected Banks's anger onto ChurrhilL It was

Churchill who'd brought the air raids down on England he said, Churchill

who'd actually killed Banks's parents. "Big Bill" took hold of his Sten

and began marching around the room, a snarl on his lips and tears in his

eyes. His rededication steeled Fox for his task, and I believed that

our mission might yet succeed But disaster struck again, this time in

the form of Sherwood. We heard the group's secret knock at the door

Helmut answered it, ready to brain whatever fool had broken his order

not to come around. The moment he unlatched the door, Sherwood burst in

with a revolver and ordered me against the wall. Jabbing the gun at me,

he told the others that I really was El Muerte, the Russian torturer

from Spain.

I calmly called the man a lunatic and told him he was about to wreck the

greatest strike for world communism since 1917. Sherwood laughed

wildly. Both Helmut and "Linle Bill" Fox urged him to put the pistol

down, but the fanatic showed no reluctance to point the gun at his own

countrymen if they interfered.

Sherwood Stepped up to me and laid the barrel of the pistol between my

eyes. "Tell them, " he said. "Tell them who you really are. " I could

almost see Helmut's brain spinning.

No one suspected him yet, but he had to be careful. "Comrade Zinoviev

comes from Moscow!" he told them. "From Stalin himself!

Don't bring Stalin's wrath down upon us. " But Helmut@ words had no

effect on Sherwood. "He thinks we're fools, Bill!" Sherwood shouted to

Banks. "Wants us to kill our own King, he does! Wants us to kill

Churchill and help Hitler! " Banks looked confused "Why would a Russian

want that?" he asked Sherwood Sherwood scowled "Aye, he@ a Russian,

Bill, but he's no Communist. He's a Tsarist killer and a bloody

Nazi-lover too! Aren't you?" he said, jabbing me with the revolver I

told Sherwood he was mad, all the while praying that Helmut had a pistol

on him. This couldn't go on much longer, I knew, and it didn't.

Sherwood suddenly called out a name, and a ragged old man shambled

through the door My blood ran cold Before me stood the interrogator's

nightmare@ne of my former victims, a man whose arm I had ordered broken

in several places. I could not conceal my shock.

The man had only one arm now, but I remembered his face from Spain.

While Sherwood pointed his pistol at me, the old man raised his one arm

and slapped me in the face. "Bastard, " he said. Then he turned to the

others and said, "This is El Muerte. " Sherwood's eyes sparkled with

glee. "Little Bill" Fox stood shaking his head in disbelief. Sherwood

took two steps back and steadied his aim; he meant to kill me on the

spot.

In that moment Helmut saved my life. He jerked a knife from his pocket

and buried it in Sherwood's heart. The stunned Englishman staggered

back, gurgled once, fired the pistol and fell dead.

Everyone in the room stood still, not quite sure what had happened. I

had the insane notion that we might yet salvage the mission. Then-in

a.flash of insight-"Big Bill" Banks understood it all. "You're a Nazi,"

he said to Helmut, his face slack with astonishment. "You-you always

have been. " He looked like a shell-shocked recruit. "But you fought

with us at Jarama, " he mumbled "And Madrid. " Helmut tried to deny it,

but Banks heard nothing. His eyes narrowed and his lips grew white and

thin. It was the killing look-I'd seen it a hundred times before.

Had Banks simply shot Helmut, I would not be here today-but Banks was a

huge man, and his instinct was to smash what he hated with his hands.

Clutching the Sten gun like a bat, he smacked its stock across Helmut's

face. I felt Helmut's blood hit me as it sprayed across the room. He

staggered, but held his feet. Dazed, he tried to reason with Banks, but

the Englishman raised the Sten above his head and brought it down on

Helmut's skull Helmut crumpled to the floor Banks's fury at the loss of

his parents had been unleashed, and nothing short of death could stop

it.

Fox and the old man who had pointed me out backed against a wall, cowed

by the violence of their comrade. As Banks raised the Sten once more, I

snatched up Fox's Sten from the table, pulled back the bolt, and pointed

the gun at Banks. The man did not even notice me. I could have cut him

down at that instant, but I hesitated. By killing him, I would be

admitting that my mission hadfailed. Of course it already had, but I

could not yet accept that. My finger quivered on the trigger How could

this specter from my past have traveled to this very room after so long?

And the bombs-how could they have fallen right on Banks's house! How

could it possibly have happened!

I saw Banks bring the Sten down once more onto-or rather into-Helmut's

skull, and I pulled the trigger Whirling around the room in fury, I cut

them all down in seconds, then bolted for the car I had just got it

started when I remembered my forged papers-my "orders from .Moscow. "

Dashing back inside, I searched for my suitcase, but couldn't find it in

the main room. I checked the kitchen, found nothing, then returned to

the room where the bodies lay. I caught sight of my case in a dark

corner I started toward it, then froze. A pair of tall workboots stood

beside it. And standing in the boots was a thick pair of legs. Bill"

Banks, the red-haired giant, had somehow gotten to his feet, and he

still held his Sten.

He wobbled, then fired. He hit me twice-once in the right arm, once in

the right shoulder I had no choice but to rum At worst, I thought, the

forged papers implicated Stalin-not Hitler-so I ran. I cranked the old

car, and in the confusion of the air raid I managed to escape to the

countryside east of London. I used my escape plan just as if the

mission had been accomplished. I lay low for a few days on the British

coast, with a, German agent who maintained a radio link with Occupied

France-then crossed the Channel to safety.

I served out the remainder of the war in Heydrich's SD, and near the end

fled with some others to South America.

My dream of returning to my native Russia was crushed forever in 1944. I

must live with the knowledge that the terrible shadow my Motherland

lives under is in no small part due to my failure in England in the

spring of 1941. Surely that knowledge is punishment enough for my

failure.

Signed, V V Zinoviev, Paraguay, 1951

Witnessed, Rudolf Hess, Paraguay, 1951

Stern's stomach rolled. Rudolf Hess? 1951? Good God!

What did it mean? Had Hess survived the war after all? Had he fled to

Paraguay with Zinoviev after his failed mission?

But what of Helmut, the daring German spy with the eyepatch? Had he

really died from his terrible beating? Or had he somehow managed to

escape and eventually make his way here, to South Africa? Stern felt

more confused than he ever had in his life. How are Hess and Zinoviev

connected?

he wondered. Where did their lives intersect? Nowhere in Zinoviev's

account was Hess mentioned, yet the date of the planned assassinations

simply couldn't be coincidence. Hess had flown to Britain on May 10-the

exact date that Zinoviev had been ordered to kill Churchill and the

king. So why had Hess been ordered there at all?

Abruptly Stern stood and closed the notebook. Of course!

Zinoviev's failed mission-the double assassination-as important as it

was, was merely preparatory. The real objective was the replacement of

Churchill's government-a coup d'etat. That was Hess's part of the

mission, the political side. But what had gone wrong? The bombs had

fallen as Hitler ordered, but Churchill and the king had not. As far as

Stern knew, no assassin ever got close to either leader on May 10, 1941.

So where did that leave the British conspirators who had planned to

replace them? Where did that leave the real Rudolf Hess? Whatever

Hess's mission had been, Zinoviev's failure had blown it. So where had

Hess gone? When his mission failed, why didn't he go straight back to

Germany? Why run to Paraguay, where he had ap patently witnessed

Zinoviev's document? Many Nazis fled to South America after the war.

patently witnessed Zinoviev's document? Many Nazis fled to South

America after the war. Had Hess been- one of the first to go? And had

he gone alone? No. Somehow, Stern realized, somewhere, Hess had met

Zinoviev before Paraguay.

Had it been in Germany? Or was it in England, on the run after the

failed mission? I'll bet dear Helmut of the one eye could answer that

question, Stern thought wryly. And I've got the oddestfeeling that he's

sleeping in this very house!

Stern hurriedly reconstructed Hess's flight in his mind. If what the

Spandau papers said was true, the real Hess had taken off from Germany,

picked up his double in Denmark, then flown across the Channel and

reached the Scottish Coast around ten Pm. The real Hess had bailed out

over Holy Island; then the double flew on, directly over Dungavel

Castle-his supposed target-all the way to the western coast of Scotland.

There he had turned, paralleled the coast for a while, then flown back

toward Dungavel and parachuted into a farmer's field a few miles away.

Why was the double needed at all? Stern asked himself. As a diversion?

He pictured the lonely, frightened German falling from the Scottish

sky-an image that had captivated the entire world.

What had been in the double's mind at that moment? In the Spandau

papers he had frankly admitted ignorance of the real Hess's mission.

All the double knew was that the scheduled radio signal from Hess had

not come, and rather than kill himself as ordered, he had bailed out of

the Messerschmitt, broken his ankle, and then, when a shocked and sleepy

Scottish farmer approached him, he had claimed to be Rudolf Hess-just as

he'd been ordered to do had the proper signal come.

Stern felt the breath leave his lungs in a rush. My God! he thought.

The double had not claimed to be Rudolf Hess! Not at first, anyway. He

had not given the farmer Hess's name, but another name-a name always

thought to have been a cover. But that was ridiculous, Stern realized,

because Rudolf Hess was the double's cover name! After his failure to

swallow the cyanide pill, after his bloodcurdling first-time parachute

jump, the confused pilot had given the farmer his real name. And his

real name was Alfred Horn!

Stuffing the Zinoviev book under his shirt, Stern snatched the broken

dinner fork from beneath his mattress and went to work on the door lock.

Thirty seconds later, he switched off the light and peeked outside. Two

soldiers wearing khaki uniforms and carrying South African R-5 assault

I'll guarded both ends of the dark corridor. Apparently the tive attack

held prompted Pieter'Smuts to post sentries against anyone who might

have leaked through his defenses.

Or perhaps, Stern thought desperately, perhaps Horn's Arab friends are

scheduled to return sooner than I thought. With his chest pounding, he

eased the door shut and slumped against it. He had to find a way out!

He knew exactly where he wanted to go, and it wasn't to the basement in

search of Frau Apfel's alleged nuclear weapon. Nor was it to the shrine

room telephone to call Hauer. All he could think about was something

Professor Natterman had reminded him of during the flight from Israel.

Something he had known for so long that he had forgotten it ...

Something about Rudolf Hess.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

11.40 Pm. Horn House Hans and Ilse lay in darkness in the opulent main

guest room of Horn House. They left the light off, for they knew each

other better without it. Ilse's face, wet with tears, nuzzled in the

hollow of Hans's neck, Piled upon the tortures she had already endured,

killing Lord Granville had caused Ilse's brain to spin a protective

cocoon around itself. After a time, though, the barrier began to thin

and stretch. Whin it finally broke, the tears had come, and she began

to answer Hans's questions. His first was about the baby, and Ilse's

confirmation of what he had been too frightened to believe engendered a

deep and dangerous tension within him. His left hand stroked Ilse's

cheek, but his right fist clenched and unclenched at his side.

"Don't worry," she whispered from the darkness. "Herr Stern is going to

help us."

Hans went still. "Who?"

"Herr Stern. I thought you knew about him. He came here impersonating

Opa. He's come to help us."

"What?" Hans rolled out of the bed, stumbled over to the wall and found

the light. "Ilse, what have you done?"

She sat up. "Nothing. Hans, my Oandfather is here in South Africa.

He's with your father in Pretoria. Herr Stern is working with your

father."

Hans's eyes grew wide. "Ilse, this must have been some kind of trick to

get you to talk! What did you tell them?"

"Nothing, Hans. I don't understand it all, but Herr Stern came here

wearing Opa's jacket, and the kidnappers plainly believe that he is my

grandfather."

"My God. Where is my father now? Did this man Stern say?"

"He told me'that he left your father, Opa, and three Israeli commandos

at a hotel in Pretoria. They're waiting for instructions from Stern

right now."

"Israeli commandos?" Hans felt as if he had stumbled into a madhouse.

"Where is Stern now?"

"I don't know. They were holding us together, but we split up when we

escaped."

"Who is this Stern?" Hans asked irritably. "How did he even become

involved?"

"He's an Israeli. He met Opa at the cabin in Wolfsburg.

He is a good man, Hans, I could feel it."

"He told you he had commandos with him? How old a man is he?"

Ilse shrugged. "Somewhere around Opa's age, I guess."

"And this is the man who's going to get us out?"

"He's done more than anyone else."

That stung Hans's pride, but he tried not to show it. If Ilse could

cling to her optimism, all the better. But might they really have a

chance? Had his father somehow managed to organize some kind of rescue?

"Ilse," he said'softly. "How can this man Stern help us?"

"I don't know," she said thoughtfully. "But I think he will."

Jonas Stern closed the infirmary door and flattened himself against the

wall. His heart beat like mad as he waited for his eyes to adjust to

the darkness. The astringent tang of isopropyl alcohol and disinfectant

wrinkled his nose. He had been forced to wait almost seven hours before

the guards outside his room finally left their posts. He had no idea if

more would be sent to take their place, but he hadn't waited to find

out. Even in the dark he could make out the high-tech gleam of stainless

steel and glass. Hd eased forward.

After eight short steps, he felt for the interior doors he remembered.

Finding one cool metal knob, he turned it and hit the wall switch. He

saw an empty hospital bed, oxygen bottles, telemetry wires, a dozen

other gadgets. Wrong room. He killed the light and closed the door.

Sliding his hands up the facing of the second door, he found the warning

sign he remembered: three inverted triangles, yellow over black.

Radiation . Stern's pulse quickened as he opened the door and slipped

inside.

There was light here, the dim red glow of a darkroom safelight.

He moved quickly around the X-ray table to the file shelves. One way or

the other, he thought, here would be the proof. He reached into the

first compartment and pulled out a six-inch stack of

fourteen-by-seventeen manila folders.

Then he crossed to the viewing screens and hit the switches.

Harsh fluorescent light flooded the room. While the viewers buzzed like

locusts, be pulled an exposed X-ray film from the top file folder and

clipped it against the screen. Chest X-ray. It took him a few moments

to orient himself.

The spinal column and ribs showed clearly as strong, graceful white

lines against the gray soft tissues and the almost burnt-black spaces of

the body cavities. After that it got tougher. A dozen shades of gray

overlapped one another in seeming chaos. Despite his initial confusion,

Stern believed that what he sought should be reasonably apparent even to

a layman. He tried to discern the subtle differences between the

anatomical parts, then groaned as the outlines of two pendulous breasts

emerged from the shadow of the internal organs.

"'It's a bloody woman!" he muttered.

Then he noticed the small radiopaque ID-plate image on the top left

corner of the film. It read: Linah #004, 4-08-86.

Stern unclipped the film, ffimst it back into the folder and dropped it

on the floor. The outside of the next folder read: Stanton, Robert B.

#005. He dropped it. Smuts, Pieter #002.

The next file also belonged to Smuts. After three more names he did not

recognize, he returned to the storage shelves.

The first folder he pulled out measured an inch thick by itself.

The top-left corner read: Horn, Thomas Alfred #001.

With shaking hands Stern removed the top film from the file and clipped

it to the viewing screen. It showed two views of a hand positioned to

reveal a hairline fracture that Stern couldn't see and cared nothing

about. He jerked the film from the screen and let it fall to the floor.

The next three films showed a series of intestinal views enhanced by the

ingestion of barium sulfate. These, too, Stern let fall. A

comprehensive X-ray anthology followed: grossly arthritic knees, lumbar

spine, cervical spine-Stern tossed them all onto the growing pile at his

feet. Finally he found what he wanted-an X-ray of Alfred Horn's chest.

With mounting anticipation, he clipped the top edge of the film into the

clamp and stepped back.

No breasts on this film. Stern began with what he clearly

recognized-the spine. The ribs climbed both sides of the spine like

curved white ladders. The lungs were the dark ovals behind them. A

triangular white blob overlaid the spine. The heart, thought Stern. He

knew the heart to be situated slightly left of center in the body-a fact

he had learned during a silent killing course as a young man in

Palestine. So the left lung should be... here. He touched the film

with his right forefinger. Now... compare. Check each lung against the

other until Ifind a discrepancy.

He immediately found several. Opaque disks the size of small coins

seemed to float like celestial bodies in the dark lung spaces.

These disks were small scars left by a mild case of tuberculosis.

Stern did not know this, but he soon dismissed the disks as unrelated to

what he sought. The first suspicious thing he saw was a kind of

widening of two rib bones at one.spot in the left lung. They seemed

thicker than the other ribs, more built up somehow, not quite as smooth.

Stern had an idea. Pulling another stack of films from Horn's folder,

he rifled through them until he found what he wanted-an oblique X-ray of

Horn's chest-a picture shot -from the side with both arms held above the

head. When he pinned this film to the screen, the mark he sought jumped

out at him like a contrail against the sky. He swallowed hard, raised a

quivering finger to the film. Crossing the dark left lung in a hazy,

transverse line was the scar of a rifle bullet. A rifle bullet fired

seventy-one years ago. The opaque track diffused rapidly into the

surrounding shadows, but the path of the old bullet fragments was

plainly visible. With his heart pounding, Stern counted downward from

the collarbone to the scarred area-one rib at a time.

... four ... five ... six ... seven."

He switched back to the first X-ray-the posterior/anterior view-and

carefully counted down again, this time searching for'the ribs with the

strange built-up areas.

". . . three ... four . . . five ... six"-Stern felt sweat dropping

into his eyes- "seven."

"My God," he murmured, feeling a catch in his throat.

"Hess- is alive." Simultaneously a voice reverberated in his brain: The

bomb for Tel Aviv is real!

Folding the two stiff chest X-rays in half, Stern thrust them inside his

shirt between Zinoviev's notebook and his pounding heart.

He quickly gathered up the discarded films and folders from the floor,

shoved them back into the shelves, then slipped quietly out of the X-ray

room and into the dark hallway.

He sprinted to the library. In the musty darkness he tripped, picked

himself up, then moved carefully on toward the tall bookshelves.

Feeling his way across them to the corner, he found the tiny brass knob.

He turned it. He had already resolved that if he found anyone other

than Hess himself inside the secret shrine room, he would kill him.

The room was empty. Stern sat down behind the mahogany desk and

breathed deeply. He wanted to slow his racing heart. Above him the

bronze Phoenix screamed silently.

From the wall to his left a hundred Nazis gazed at him. As Stern

reached for the phone to call Hauer at the Protea Hof, he froze.

Someone had been in the room since his visit.

Across from the desk-where there h-ad been only red drapes before-hung 4

gigantic oil painting-twice lifesize-of Adolf Hitler.

Rendered in muted greens and browns, the dictator gazed down with sullen

intensity at the Jewish intruder. Someone had pulled back the drapes to

admire the Fuhrer. Gooseflesh rose on Stern's neck. His left cheek

began to twitch. After working his dry mouth furiously, the old Israeli

spat a wad of mucus across the desk onto the canvas. It struck Hitler

just above his groin. Stern raised his left arm, made a fist, and shook

it at the portrait.

"Never again!" he vowed. He lifted the phone.

455 A.M. Protea Hof Hotel, Pretoria

Hauer came off the bed like a fighter pilot hearing a scramble alar-m.

Gadi and Aaron sat half-conscious against the foyer walls; Professor

Natterman lay on the opposite bed, his right thigh wrapped in gauze, his

eyes half-closed from the effect of the morphine.

"Stern?" Hauer said.

"It's him!"

The young commandos leapt to their feet. Natterman tried to sit up,

then lay back groaning.

"Get a pen and paper," Stern ordered. "Write down everything I tell

you."

Hauer looked at Gadi Abrams, who stood ready to copy down every syllable

he repeated. "We're ready," he said.

'Go ahead."

Stern spoke in a rapid whisper. "I'm being held at a private estate in

the northern Transvaal. It's situated halfway between the Kruger

National Park and a village called Giyani. Have you got that?"

"Got it."

"The house belongs to a man named Thomas Alfred Horn, H-O-R-N."

"H-O-R-N, Thomas Alfred Horn."

Behind Hauer, Professor Natterman gasped. His right arm shot out and

caught Hauer's sleeve. "Captain!"

"Hold it, Stern. The professor-" "What did you say?" Natterman

croaked." What name did you just say?"

Gadi read from his notes. "Horn, Thomas Alfred. H-O-R-N."

"Mother of God. It can't be."

"Go on, Stern," Hauer said angrily. "I think the professor is

hallucinating."

"No, he recognizes the name."

"He's alive!" Natterman cried. "I was right! Hess is alive!"

Hauer pulled away from Natterman's grasp. "Stern, the professor's

yelling about Rudolf Hess."

"You can tell the old fool he was right. Rudolf Hess is alive and

reasonably well. He is also quite mad."

Natterman clawed at Hauer. "Give me the phone, Captain!"

Hauer held the receiver away. "Stern said to tell you that you were

right, Professor. That Rudolf Hess is alive. I think you're both mad."

Natterman shook his head. "Perfectly sane, Captain. I understand it

all now, every wretched bit of it. Alfred Horn was the name Hess'_

double gave the farmer when he first '@chuted into Scotland. My God,

it's so obvious!"

"Hauer!" Stern snapped, his voice strained. "Forget about @,Hess.

We've got a crisis here."

"I'm listening."

"Mounting a rescue along the lines we discussed is no longer an option.

Whatever security forces Hess has here, they were sufficient to repel a

determined attack by a force larger than yours. The stakes have gone

up, Hauer, up beyond belief. Yesterday you a@ked me what I was after.

Well, I've found it. Last night Frau Apfel witnessed negotiations

between Hess and a group of Arabs for a nuclear weapon."

Hauer's eyes met Gadi's. The young Israeli was watching him like a cat.

"I haven't seen the weapon myself," Stern continued, "but I have no

doubt whatsoever that it exists."

"What about HansT' Hauer asked. "And Ilse. Are they still alive?"

"They are. But if you want to see your son alive again 40 Captain, this

is what you must do. Go to the Union Building-that's the huge

government building on the hill in central Pretoria. It's floodlit

every night. On the diird floor you will find the office of General

Jaap Steyn, chief of the National Intelligence Service. That's

S-T-E-Y-N. Jaap Steyn is a friend to me and to Israel. Explain the

situation in the way you think best, but you tell him he needs to mount

an assault of sufficient strength to reduce a fortified position.

You're at least four hours away from me now, so you'll need to move

fast. And keep Hess's name out of this altogether, From this moment on

we speak only of Alfred Horn."

"Just a damned minute," Hauer protested. "You think T.

can waltz into the offices of South African Intelligence and demand a

paramilitary operation on the basis of wild accusations?

They'll laugh me out of the building. If they don't clap me in irons

first."

"They'll have no choice but to cooperate," Stern said evenly. "My name

should be sufficient to get Jaap Steyn moving, but in case it's not, I'm

going to give you some information that will ensure his cooperation.

Write down every single word of this."

Hauer signaled Gadi to hand over the pen and paper.

Stern spoke slowly. "There now exists between the Republic of South

Africa and the State of Israel a secret military contingency plan called

Aliyah Beth-Gadi can spell it for you later. In Hebrew, Aliyah Beth

means 'going up to Zion.' This plan mandates the clandestine removal of

..." 1

Hauer's throat went dry as Stern proceeded to describe in detail the

most sensitive protocol of the secret nuclear agreements between the

Republic of South Africa and the State of Israel. "Is that true?"

he asked, when Stern had finished.

"Captain, with that information you will be able to blackmail General

Steyn into giving you anything you want."

"Or force him to shoot me."

"No. To avoid that, leave Yosef behind at the hotel. Tell General

Steyn that if you don't check in with Yosef by telephone at prearranged

times, he will forward the details of Plan Aliyah Beth to the Western

press."

Hauer sighed heavily. "I'm sorry, Stern. Yosef is dead.

And Professor Natterman is wounded. Some Russians found us.

We've got corpses piled in the bathroom like firewood."

"Leave Aaron at the hotel instead," Stern said tersely.

"The Russians also got hold of our photos of the Spandau papers," Hauer

confessed.

"You thick-headed Kraut!" Stern exploded. "Those rags mean nothing

now! You just get those troops out here!"

Hauer forced down his anger. "Listen, Stern, South African Intelligence

isn't going to give in to blackmail no matter what I threaten them with.

German Intelligence wouldn't."

"You must force them to. I've given you the leverage. But be careful.

Horn didn't gain access to a nuclear weapon by playing recluse up in the

Transvaal. He's probably a key figure in their defense industries.

Trust only General Steyn. His loyalty to Israel is beyond dispute.

Anyone else, God only knows."

"Great."

"Oh, a tactical tip for you, Captain. There's some type Dr rotary

cannon on the roof here, and there could be any number of other

surprises as well. Bring enough firepower to flatten this place if you

have to. Now, could I speak to Gadi for a moment?"

Hauer handed over the receiver.

"Yes, Uncle?"

"Listen to me, Gadi. Captain Hauer is going to give you my

instructions. I want ypu to listen to him as if he were me.

Do you understand? On this mission Hauer will be in command."

Gadi clenched the phone tighter.

"I know it @on't be easy taking orders from a German, but I believe

Hauer is the man to carry this through."

Gadi ground his teeth. "I understand, Uncle."

"Good. Because we are dealing with a nuclear weapon here, Gadi,

possibly more than one. And it is targeted at Israel.

At Tel Aviv, maybe Jerusalem."

Gadi felt his face grow hot.

"The other crazy thing you heard is also true. Rudolf Hess is alive. If

there is any way possible, I mean to get him away from here and take him

back to Israel for trial. But if I can't-or if for any reason you and

Hauer cannot raise enough force to take this house-I will locate the

weapon and try to detonate it."

Gadi felt his heart stop. "No, Uncle-"

"I'll have no choice, Gadi. Anything could happen before you get here.

If you get here at all. It's like the Osiraq reactor in Iraq, only a

hundred times worse.

Do you understand?"

Gadi wiped the sweat from his forehead. "God in Heaven."

"Once you get within a few miles of here, you and every man with you

will be within the blast radius."

"No one else will know," Gadi said in Hebrew.

"Good boy. There's one more thing. Once you learn the exact

coordinates of Horn House, I want you to call Tel Aviv and ask for

Major-General Gur. Explain the situation, give him the coordinates,

then say 'Revelation.' That's the IAF crisis code for imminent nuclear

emergency. I doubt Jerusalem would give clearance for a raid here, but

it's worth a tiy.

If we fail, perhaps the air force will make an attempt. Now, Gadi, I

must go. It's time to become the professor again. I hope to see you

soon, my boy. Shalom."

Gadi swallowed. "Shalom, Uncle."

Stern disconnected.

Hauer stared suspiciously at Gadi for a few moments, but he decided not

to press. He shoved his Walther into his belt.

"Let's go blackmail some spies," he said.

Separated from Jonas Stern by one thin wall, Lieutenant Jiirgen Luhr

held the silent telephone to his ear. Luhr had been unable to sleep

after the exhilaration of the battle, and his wanderings through Horn

House had eventually led him to Alfred Horn's study. He'd been standing

by the shattered picture window through which Ilse had blasted Lord

Grenville when he saw a yellow light flashing on Horn's desk.

Hesitating but a moment, he had lifted the receiver and over heard the

final few seconds of Stern's conversation with Gadi.

Now he stood still as stone, trying to comprehend what he had heard. It

seemed impossible. Apparently Professor Natterman-or the Jew claiming

to be Professor Natterman!-had made a call from somewhere inside this

house.

But to whom? From the little he'd heard, Luhr could not be sure.

He would have suspected Dieter Hauer, but he'd heard the swine on the

other end of the phone speak Hebrew, and Hauer wasn't a Jew. Luhr was

sure of one thing. Alfred Horn and his Afrikaner security chief would

be very grateful to the man who informed them not only that they had a

Zionist spy in their midst, but that they might soon be the target of an

Israeli air strike! With his pulse racing, Luhr dashed into the hall to

rouse the house.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

520 A.iw. Horn House They came for Jonas Stern as the Gestapo had come

for his father in Germany. Four heavy-booted soldiers burst through the

door with pistols drawn and snapped on the overhead light, shouting at

the top of their lungs: "Up JUdin! Up!

Schnell!

The sudden light blinded Stern, for he had been lying fully clothed in

the darkness. He leaped from the bed with his broken fork raised, but

the click of pistol slides made him freeze where he stood. There was

only one explanation for this. The worst had happened. Somehow, on the

same night he had discovered that Alfred Horn was not who he pretended

to be, Alfred Horn had discovered the same thing about him.

Powerful hands seized Stern's arms and lifted him off his feet.

The soldiers-their khaki uniforms now replaced by Wehrmacht

gray-frog-marched him into the corridor and hustled him along at the

double. When Stern glanced up, he saw the cold black eye of a pistol

barrel. Above it hovered the face of Pieter Smuts.

"Where are you taking me?" asked Stern.

"Where do you think, Jew?" the Afrikaner jeered, walking backward. "To

see the Fuhrer!"

Stern stared across the mahogany desk with a lump in his, throat.

Ghostlike and gray, the old man who called himself @

I r

Alfred Horn sat hunched in his wheelchair, an expression of bemusement

on his deeply lined face. As Stern stared, he felt a sudden stab of

doubt. Concealed in his shirt were the@ X-rays that he believed would

prove beyond doubt that' Alfred Horn was Rudolf Hess. And yet ... the

old man sitting across from him no longer looked quite as he had before.

Now, instead of a glass eye, Horn wore an eyepatch.

All Stern could think of was Zinoviev's description of Helmut Steuer:

Helmut had worn an eyepatch. Had Helmut Steuer survived his mission

after all? Was Rudolf Hess really dead? Had Helmut somehow managed to

hunt down Hess's X-rays to conceal the truth? Or had both men survived?

Could it be that Hess had lived for a time as Alfred Horn, and then,

after he died, Helmut had quite naturally taken over the false identity?

Whatever his true identity, the old man across from Stern was not

wearing the plain khaki uniform Rudolf Hess had worn as Deputy Fuhrer of

the Reich. He was wearing a gray suit jacket much like the one Adolf

Hitler had worn as Supreme Commander of German Armed Forces. And

suspended around his neck was the Grand Cross-Nazi Germany's highest

military award. To Stern's knowledge, Rudolf Hess had never won that

decoration.

Pieter Smuts stood rigid behind his master, eyes smoldering, mouth set

in a grim line. Above him reared the bronze Phoenix; directly behind,

the maps from which Stern had copied the coordinates he'd given

Hauer.'Stern sensed the soldiers standing behind him.

"We seem to have a problem of mistaken identity," Horn said. "Would you

care to enlighten us, Herr Professor?"

Stern stood still as a pillar of salt.

Smuts 'nodded. One of the soldiers behind Stern smashed a savage fist

into his right kidney. Stern crumpled, but managed to stay on his feet.

As he straightened up, the two X-rays he had stolen from the medical

unit made a crackling sound. Smuts came around the desk, ripped Stern's

shirt open and jerked out the films. He handed them to Horn; who held

them up to his desk lamp and clucked his tongue softly.

"You're a clever little rat, aren't you?" he growled. "Herr Stern?"

Stern struggled to hold his face immobile as his brain raced to adapt to

the changing situation. If Horn knew his name, that meant that either

Ilse had been made to talk, or Hauer and Gadi had been captured.

Stern prayed it was the former. "I'd say we have two cases of mistaken

identity," he said coolly.

Smuts signaled for another kidney blow, but Horn raised a peremptory

hand. "I think you know who I am," he said, his watery eye twinkling.

"Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess, I suppose?"

"That title is long out of date. After the Fuhrer died, his

responsibilities passed to me."

"You've pinched his uniform and decorations, at any rate," Stern

needled. "I thought the dubious honor of the Nazi succession passed to

Hermann Goring."

Hess colored. Another vicious blow hammered Stern's left kidney,

driving him to his, knees "The Reichsmarschall is also dead," Hess said

testily.

"And the Grand Cross was awarded to me by the Fuhrer himself.

Secretly, of course."

Stern looked up at the old man and stared into the single furtive eye.

"If you are Hess," he said, "what happened to Helmut Steuer?"

"Helmut died a hero's death in 1941. He was a German patriot of the

highest order, and I immortalized his efforts by awarding him the

Knight's Cross."

"And the tattoo? The single eye?"

Hess shrugged. "I needed a symbol. I couldn't risk telling my

associates my true identity. I wanted a mystical sign that would

signify their bond to me and to each other. I remembered the All-Seeing

Eye from my childhood in Egypt."

Hess touched his eyepatch. "It certainly seemed appropriate.

As did the Phoenix."

All just as Professor Natterman guessed. "How did you lose the eye?"

Stern asked.

Hess grimaced. "A British bullet. I had no access to a doctor until it

was too late." The old man jerked his finger away from his face. "This

is ancient history! I want to know what you hoped to accomplish by your

ridiculous deception, Jew. Other than suicide, of course."

Stern stared back with cold assurance. "I have come to take you back to

Israel to stand trial'for the crimes you escaped at Nuremberg-the crimes

for which your double served a life sentence in Spandau Prison."

Hess's laugh was hoarse and hollow, but frightening all the same.

"You should see a psychiatrist, Herr Stern. You suffer from serious

delusions of the paranoid type. I will arrange for my personal

physician to visit you."

Stern waved his arm, taking in the Nazi regalia that covered the walls.

"You're the one who's mad. If you believe you're going to raise some

kind of Fourth Reich in Germany, you're hopelessly senile."

Hess's eye brightened. "Is that what you think I want? A Fourth Reich

in Germany? I'm afraid the only people with whom you share that fantasy

are paranoid Russians and writers of pulp fiction." He glanced at

Smuts. "Perhaps a few German policemen," he added.

"What is it then? I'm sure you have some master plan for German world

domination."

Hess smiled. "Do you really think I need one? The postwar world has

evolved along the very lines the Fuhrer predicted. Germany-even when

divided-is the most powerful nation in Europe. America has assumed

Britain's imperial mantle and rules the seas in her stead.

Japan rules the Pacific and a lot more besides. Which brings us to the

Soviet Union.

How far are we, really, from seeing Russia as an economic colony of

Greater Germany? The Soviet economy is almost as weak now as it was

just prior to the 1917 Revolution.

How long before it explodes? When that explosion comes, it will be

Germany who rebuilds the country. We'll trade cash for raw materials

and gain access to the enormous markets that will be opened there. The

final step toward economic hegemony over Europe. We already hold the

purse strings to half the American national debt, and our power and

influence grow stronger every day. Reunification is inevitable."

"Then why destroy Israel?"

Hess scratched beneath the black eyepatch. "For the most pragmatic of

reasons, I assure you. In a way, I almost regret having to do it.

Sometimes I think you Jews learned more from the Fuhrer than anyone.

Have you ever seen Israeli soldiers at the Wailing Wall, Herr Stern?

Praying in formation?

It is a sight worth seeing. The Israelis have become the new Germans!

Isn't that a shock? Israel has become a supernationalist, expansionist,

Blood-and-Sacred Soil state with the best-trained army in the world. It

is surrounded on all sides by enemies, just as Prussia was. The Chosen

People, yes? Just as we Germans were chosen to lead the Aryan race!"

Stern stared in wonder at the man before him. "If you strike Israel

with nuclear weapons, you'll start a war that could wipe every country

off the face of the earth. Israel has her own bombs, Hess, and she will

use them."

The old man nodded excitedly. "I'm counting on Israel using her bombs,

Stern! I know exactly what the Zionists have in their arsenal, and more

importantly, I know where their missiles and 'black' bomber squadrons

are targeted.

More than half of Israel's warheads are aimed not at the Arabs, but at

the Soviet Union. Israel does this to prevent Soviet resupply of the

Arabs in the next Mideast war."

Hess's eye gleamed. "But times change, don't they, Stern?

Old men know that best of all. Right now the Israeli warheads point at

the Soviet Union. Ten years from now they will be aimed at Greater

Germany!"

"My God," Stern breathed, "you're trying to provoke Israel into

retaliating against Russia with nukes. When the Arabs wipe out Tel Aviv

or Jerusalem with a sophisticated bomb, the Israeli government will have

no choice but to respond in kind. And where will they respond?

Where could Arabs have procured such a weapon? From the Russians, of

course."

Hess smiled thinly. "I knew you'd appreciate the simplicity of it."

Stern's mouth went dry. "But you can't predict what will happen in a

situation like that! You could ignite a full-scale thermonuclear war!

There's no telling who might be drawn into it."

"It wasn't my original plan," Hess admitted. "But when the British

started trying to kill me last month, I was forced to improvise."

'The British are trying to kill you? They know you're aliveT' "Oh, yes.

Only tonight mI-5 sent men here to kill me-a force of filthy

Colombians." Hess smiled. "But ' I'm afraid they are all dead now."

He fiddled with a pen on his desk.

"I suppose I owe the British a debt of thanks. By rushing me, they

forced me to think creatively, and it was thus I came upon the Fuhrer's

old Palestirfe strategy. The v@ry same year I flew to Britain, Hitler

armed the Mufti of Jerusalem and bade him destroy the Jews of Palestine.

Only it turned out that the Jews had been better armed by their Zionist

relatives in America. I find that quite ironic, since it is ultimately

for the Americans that I now arm the Arabs."

"What?" Stern's eyes widened in disbelief.

"Yes, Jew. The Americans are the inheritors of the Fuhrer's work. Is

that so hard to see?"

"You really are mad. America is the most liberal democracy in the

world!"

Hess chuckled. "If all the Jewish tribe were so naive as you, my work

would be greatly simplified. The Americans are a strange people, Stern.

A violent people."

"They aren't Nazis."

Hess looked bemused. "The other day I was speaking with an American

businessman on the telephone. Do you know what he said to me?

He said, 'Hitler had the right idea, Alfred, he just had a poor

marketing strategy.' "

"An off-color remark is a long way from a fascist revolution."

"Is it really?. I suppose that depends on who's doing the talking. This

man happened to be the president of a Fortune 500 company." Hess drew

an imaginary line in the air. "A very thin line divides democracy and

anarchy in America, Stern. It is concealed by vast material wealth, but

it is there.

And the Americans can be pushed over it. They have been before, and

they will be again. Think about it. Whenever the Nordic American has

felt the existence of his values and race imperiled, he has steeled

himself and done whatever was necessary to insure his survival. Did

Americans shrink from interning thousands of Japanese during World War

Two? Did they shrink from ruthlessly hounding down thousands of

communists in the fifties? In the sixties they even found a way to thin

the ranks of the mongrel blacks, by sending them to die in Southeast

Asia. Ingenious, and so subtle it would put Goebbels to shame! And

what of their precious Constitution? To hell with it! In time of

crisis, Jew, expediency rules!"

Stern was silent. He had seen that principle in operation many times in

the political councils of Jerusalem.

"And what does he face today, the Nordic American?

Abroad, violent terrorism- Arab jackals run mad with power, drunk on a

great tide of oil which willrun out in two or three decades, but not

before the savages succeed in purchasing nuclear warheads and the

delivery systems necessary to threaten the civilized nations! At home

it's even worse! White Americans cannot even walk the streets of their

cities at night. Robbery, murder, and rape are the rule, and all the

work of the mongrel races! Armed gangs roam the streets, just as in

Germany after the Great War. The defiled bloodlines drag America to her

knees, while in the highest circles of power your Zionist Rasputins work

their devious schemes."

Hess steepled his shriveled fingers. "But that is as it should be," he

said softly. "As it must be. Fascism isn't gangs of ruffians scrawling

swastikas on synagogues and tearing up Jewish cemeteries. It is the

final distillate of human society, the purest system of government, born

in the crucible of poverty, injustice, and war. That is why America is

the last hope of the world, Stern. It is there that the final struggle

will begin." Hess waved his hand in disgust.

"Germany has become too fat, too rich. The Fatherland is governed by

cowards who care only for money! Germany could have nuclear weapons of

its own now, if Bonn had any nerve. Social Democrats!" Hess spat.

"The swine should be lined up in front of the Reichstag and shot!"

Hess's solitary eye burned with evangelical fire. "But the change is

coming, Jew. And Germany will be ready. Even now loyal Germans in both

East and West work to push the communists out. When America calls,

Germany will step forward. Already immigrants choke American employment

lines; drugs poison the small towns; the people see that their

government is powerless to stop the madness. In a few years the

pressure will be so high that the smallest spark will set off the

explosion. And when the spark comes-be it war or plague or economic

catastrophe-when the price of patrol rockets to ninety dollars per

barrel, when American cars sit empty on freeways while their owners

freeze in their homes-then the great change will come. And it will come

like a crash of lightning! A new leader will rise, Jew, and it matters

not who he is! Like the Fuhrer he will be a man of the people. He will

be equal to the times, and when he steps forward the people will

recognize him! They will follow him to glory! America will finally

seize the reins of power she has shied away from for so long! Then

countries like Germany can stand up and play their part!"

"my God," Stern murmured.

"The day of reckoning is nearly upon us, Jew. That is why your race

must be purged. The incineration of Jerusalem will mark the birth of

the new millennium. By the year 2000, the Nordic race will rule over

three-quarters of the globe, and the Jews will be no more!"

Stern shook his head like a man faced with some human aberration of

nature. "But this is so utterly insane," he said

IL,

quietly. "Have you considered your family, Hess? Have you talked to

your wife? To your son?"

Hess turned his face downward. "What could I expect from my son, Stern?

A boy raised in a Germany poisoned by artificially imposed guilt ... a

Germany crippled by a psychological Versailles Treaty in which the

people can never pay enough tears for dead Jews? My family has been the

most painful burden of my life. To watch my son on television, fighting

so valiantly to free the man he believed to be his father. And now that

Horn has been murdered, to know that Wolf believes me dead. It tears my

heart to pieces! So many times I have been tempted. . ." Hess wiped a

tear from his eye and clenched his wrinkled hand into a fist. "My duty

to the Fatherland and to history comes first. I alone have survived to

carry on the Fuhrer's work!"

Stern stared thoughtfully across the desk. "How have you managed to

conceal -your true identity when you so brazenly used the name your

double gave when he landed in Scotland? Surely the name Alfred Horn is

known to anyone familiar with the Hess case?"

Hess smiled cynically. "Why do you assume that I have evaded detection?

Do you think your fellow countrymen are so constrained by moral

absolutes that they would feel compelled to send an assassin to my

(roor?"

"It's been known to happen," Stern said.

"Oh, yes," Hess agreed. "But my dear fellow, I was no Eichmann.

The so-called 'atrocities' against Jews took place long after I left

Germany. I signed a few pieces of legislation limiting Jewish social

activities, but that was simply paperwork. Hardly a reason to execute a

man who can be so helpful in vital areas of your country's national

interest."

"I don't believe you had anything to do with Israel's nuclear weapons

program," Stern said angrily. "No Jew would knowingly deal with you."

Hess leaned his head back with scorn. "Are you really so unworldly,

Stern? You know the saying, 'Don't look a gift horse in the mouth'? I