The Spandau Phoenix

have found the Israelis to be great lovers of that proverb.

No one can afford to quibble over moral distinctions when he's shopping

for a nuclear bomb.

Not even the Jews. It is poetic, is it not? In their lust for power,

the Jews have sown the seeds of their own destruction. In its quest for

nuclear weapons, Israel gave over its most precious secrets to South

Africa. And I intend to give them back a thousandfold!"

"You won't succeed," Stern said.

Hess smirked. "I presume you're referring to the telephone call you

made to your associates in Pretoria? Requesting the aid of the NIS? Of

General Jaap Steyn, t4O be precise?"

Stern felt his heart stutter.

"In all fairness, I should tell you not to have any great hopes on that

account. The NIS is thoroughly under the control of certain associates

of mine. Respected members of the government." A cruel smile plucked

at the corners of Hess's mouth. "So, perhaps I shall succeed, yes?"

Pieter Smuts chuckled softly. Stern tried to still his quivering hands,

but the snuffing of his solitary hope for rescue drove him beyond

reason. With a primal scream he flung himself across the desk, groping

for Hess's throat. He felt his hands grasp the beribboned jacket, then

the old man's spindly neckSmuts's Beretta crashed down on his skull and

blotted out the light.

I .

6.35 A.m. The Union Building, Pretoria Hauer sat as still as possible

and tried to control his frustration. He had been waiting this way for

almost two hours.

Across the desk from him sat a tall, sandy-haired young man of about

thirty. His name was Captain Barnard, and he was one of General Jaap

Steyn's two personal staff officers. Captain Bernard had been working a

graveyard shift when Hauer and Gadi were ushered into his third-floor

office by an armed duty officer. The young captain had listened

patiently to Hauer's requests to speak to General Steyn, but he had

acted on none of them. General Steyn, Captain Bernard explained, never

woke before seven. And'unless Hauer could be more specific about what

he meant by "national crisis," he would have to wait until then, when

Barnard would be happy to call the general at home. No, the captain had

not heard of an Alfred Horn who had an estate in the northern Transvaal.

At that point Hauer had resorted to blackmail. He mentioned plan Aliyah

Beth, which Captain Barnard blandly explained was "Greek to me." In the

face of this delay, Gadi Abrams stood and moved softly toward the door.

"Where are you going?" Captain Barnard asked sharply.

Gadi reached for the door handle'and pulled. In the doorway stood the

khaki-clad duty officer who had brought them upstairs. He leveled his

pistol at Gadi's belly.

"I'd like to call my embdssy," Gadi said evenly. He was gauging his

chances of taking the sentry before the man could pull the trigger.

The officer seemed to sense Gadi's intentions; he took a quick step

backward.

"Which embassy would that be?" Captain Barnard asked.

"The Israeli embassy."

"You'd best not," said the Afrikaner. "Let's everyone just have a seat,

shall weT' Hauer sat still and tried to remain calm. To be forced to

sit here while Hans and Ilse waited for a bullet, while Stern sweated

out his deception, and while Schneider flew toward Berlin was maddening.

Yet things could be worse. They had not yet contacted the right South

African, but they had not run into the wrong one, either.

Hauer studied the office. It was the twin of a hundred offices in

Berlin. Outside, the Union Building was a massive colonnaded block

built of ocher sandstone and crowned with twin domes. It sat high atop

a ridge over the capital city, dominating the halogen-lit valley below.

Yet inside, the building was as monotonously official as the Police

Presidium in Berlin.

"I say there," Captain Barnard said suddenly. 'You wouldn't be meaning

Thomas Horn, would you? Thomas Horn the industrialist?"

"We might," Hauer said, cutting his eyes at Gadi.

"Thomas Horn has several houses throughout the country.

I'm not sure about one near the Kruger Park, though."

Barnard's face clouded. "Here now, is Thomas Horn in danger?

He's a very important man in this country."

"He may be," Hauer said carefully.

Captain Barnard frowned. "Someone had better speak up about all this,"

he said. "And damned quickly." , "Captain Barnard," Hauer implored,

"you must see how important this is. How often do foreign law

enforcement officers come in here in the middle of the night and tell

you that your country is in danger?"

"Not very often," Barnard admitted. "And I've half a mind to let you

and your rude companion wait for the general in a police holding cell."

"For God's sake!" Hauer pleaded, coming to his feet.

"There's no time for that!", Without warning, the door to Captain

Barnard's office banged open and a short, heavy-set Afrikaner with

carrot hair and lobster-red skin marched in. The sounds of early

morning office traffic filtered through the doorway until the newcomer

slammed it shut. He looked quizzically at Hauer, then at Gadi, and

finally at Captain Barnard. Hauer was struck with a strange certainty

that the red-haired man had been summoned by the duty officer, for the

guard took up position in a corner with one hand on his holstered

pistol.

"What's all this then, Bernard?" the red-haired man asked sharply.

Captain Barnard stood. "Major Graaff, this is Captain Dieter Hauer of

the West Berlin police. Captain Hauer, this is Ma . or Graaff, General

Steyn's senior staff officer. Major, Captain Hauer claims to have very

important information for General Steyn. He refused to discuss it with

me, so I decided to wait until seven and call the general. As a matter

of fact, I was just about to call-" "Wake the general?" Graaff looked

as if he were being asked to arrange a papal audience. "What the devil

are you men doing here? Out with it!"

Hauer eyed Major Graaff uncomfortably. "Our message is for General

Steyn," he said. "I'm sorry, Major, but that's the way it has to be."

Graaff's skin grew even redder. "You've got some bloody nerve, Jerry."

He turned to Barnard. "I'm surprised you didn't throw these characters

into a cell!"

"They mentioned Thomas Horn, sir," Captain Barnard said, surprised by

Graaff's vehemence. "I think he may be in danger."

"Thomas Horn?" Graaff's eyes narrowed. "What's he got to do with

this?"

"They won't say, sir."

"They won't. We'll see about that."

"They also mentioned what they said was a code, Major.

What was it, Captain Hauer?"

Hauer didn't like the look of Major Graaff at all, but he'd already

given the code to Captain Bernard. Maybe it would light a fire under

Graaff. "The code is Aliyah Beth," he said Graaff's eyes narrowed.

"Means nothing to me, Barnard."

Gadi flushed with anger.

"Why don't I call the general?" Captain Barnard suggested. "It's

almost seven."

"Nonsense!" scoffed Major Graaff. "Not until we've found out what

these characters are up to. Send them over to Visagie police station.

Let the interrogators have a go at them. We'll soon get to the bottom

of this. Call Visagie, Bernard. Have them send over a van." While

Bernard made the call, Major Graaff glanced disapprovingly at Gadi.

"Who's this dark one then? I don't like the look of him."

Captain Barnard tried once more. "You don't think perhaps I should call

the general?"

"Don't be an idiot, Bernard. We'll know everything about this lot by

lunchtime. I'll speak to the general then if it's worth bothering him

about. They're probably journalists, trying to poke their noses where

they don't belong."

Hauer considered telling Major Graaff about Aaron Haber-the "insurance"

they had waiting at the Protea Hof-but something told him to keep

silent, at least for the time being.

Major Graaff's police escort arrived in less than fifteen minutes.

They brought handcuffs, but Gtaaff waved them aside. "These buggers

won't be making any trouble." He laughed. "They're fellow police

officers, after all. Where are their papers, Barnard?"

Captain Barnard looked sheepish.

Graaff shook his head. "Damn it, man, it's a wonder they didn't kill

you and take the place over."

"It wouldn't have mattered," Hauer told him. "We're traveling under

false papers."

"Are you, now?" Graaff said. "Well, let's just toddle down to the

police station, shall we?" The major shoved his prisoners through the

door.

Captain Barnard got up and closed the door. He was strangely irritated

by Graaff's remarks. Why didn't I ask to see their passports? he

wondered. But he knew why. Because the longer he had stared into the

earnest eyes of the German policeman, the more convinced he'd become

that the man was telling the truth. There was some kind of crisis going

on. And what was the harm in calling the general, anyway? Jaap Steyn

prided himself on keeping a hand in evy.case that directly affected his

office. And if two foreigners asking to speak to the general on a

matter of national security didn't directly affect his office, what did?

Barnard reached for the phone and dialed General Steyn's home number. He

listened to it ring three times, then hung up with an oath.

Graaff was probably right. Better to wait until they knew they had a

problem before bothering the general. The- Visagie interrogators would

know everything about the strangers in a few hours, and South Africa's

political battles kept General Steyn busy enough without jerking him

away from his morning coffee to deal with a non-event.

Captain Barnard took his car keys from his desk and wrote a note to his

secretary. He'd been working all night. He was going home to shower,

shave, and have a bite of breakfast.

He would be back around ten A.M. It will all be sorted out by then, he

thought as he slipped out of the office. But then he remembered the

German policeman's sober gaze. And he wondered.

CHAPTER FORTY

605 A. M. mI-5 Headquarters. Charles Street, Loodon Sir Neville Shaw

looked up as Wilson rushed into his dim office. His deputy shook a thin

piece of paper in his right hand.

"Cable, Sir Neville!"

"Well read it, man! What's the bloody rush?"

Wilson shoved the message across the desktop. "Personal for you, sir."

Shaw tore open the seal and read:

DIRECTOR GENERAL mIs:

THE MEN YOU SENT ARE DEAD STOP LORD GRENVILLE IS DEAD STOP YOU BROKE A

SOLEMN AGREEMENT MADE MORE THAN THIRTY YEARS AGO STOP I AM NO LONGER

BOUND BY TERMS OF THAT AGREEMENT STOP I'VE NEVER KNOWN AN ENGLISHMAN WHO

KEPT 141S WORD STOP SECRET NOW HELD AT MY DISCRETION STOP BETTER LUCK

NEXT TIME

HESS

Shaw felt his hands begin to shake. "Good God," he murmured.

"Burton's dead." He looked up, his face red and blotchy.

"Wilson! Do you have those files I told you to get?"

"In my office safe, sir. I don't believe the Foreign Office has noticed

them missing yet."

"Damn the Foreign Office! Shred those files, t en incinerate them in

the basement! Do it yourself and do it now!"

Wilson moved toward the door, then paused and looked back at his

superior.

"I was a bloody fool to order Swallow off the case," Shaw said hoarsely.

"She could have killed Hess herself."

Wilson's eyes narrowed. "You mean Horn, sir?"

Shaw looked up with red eyes. "Horn is Hess, Wilson.

Haven't you got that yet?"

Wilson took a step backward.

Shaw looked down at the wrinkled map on his desk.

"Swallow could still be in South Africa," he muttered. "By God she

might be able to save us yet. Wilson, put out a message to every

resource we have in South Africa. Anyone who contacts agent Swallow

should order her to call me here. And if she calls us for any reason,

you put her through to me immediately. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir!"

Shaw's eyes sparkled with excitement. "By God, I should have used that

harpy in the first place! Murder has always been woman's work."

655 A.M. Protea Hof Hotel, Pretoria

Swallow had been waiting outside room 604 for twelve hours, and her

patience had almost run out. In the half-dozen times she had approached

the door, only once had she heard any conversation from the two men

inside. For the hundredth time she glanced at her watch.

Almost seven A.M.

Maids would be coming on duty any moment. To hell with it, she thought,

I'm going in. She already had a plan. Taking a last glance at the

door, she headed downstairs to use the lobby telephone.

Inside room 604, Professor Natterman lay flat on the bed in a haze of

morphine, fever, and pain. Thanks to Aaron's expert medical training,

the gunshot wounds had at least stopped bleeding, if not hurting. The

professor had spent the night wrestling with despair.

Rudolf Hess was alive, as he had predicted, yet he would not be at Horn

House to confront the old Nazi. And worse, Hauer had told Detective

Schneider where to find his photocopy of the Spandau papers, wiping out

any hope of his publishing an exclusive translation of the papers. All

night Natterman had clutched his only consolation to his of the Spandau

pages. A dawn began to creep around the edges of the dra Natterman

wondered when or if Hauer would call back.

Would the South Africans give Hauer the troops Stern had told him to ask

for? And if so, could Ilse survive such an assault?

Natterman glanced over at the other bed. Aaron Haber lay there,

watching a silent television. The young commando had lain that way most

of the night, except when he took time out to check Natterman's

bandages. He'd said he muted the sound so that he could hear anyone

approaching the door. Natterman wiped a sheen of sweat from his brow.

The hotel air-conditioning whooshed straight out of the window shattered

by Borodin's sniper.

Natterman jumped as a sharp knock sounded at the door.

Aaron came to his feet like a leopard startled from sleep, his Uzi

cocked and pointed at the door. Natterman could just see the door from

where he lay. As the Israeli tiptoed toward it, the knock sounded

again. Aaron flattened himself against the foyer wall.

"Who's there?" he called.

"Messenger," said a male voice. "Telegram, sir."

Aaron's brow knit in furious thought. "Telegram from who?"

"From a Meneer Stern, sir."

The young commando's blood quickened. "Shove it under the door!"

There was a pause. "I'm sorry, sir. Meneer Stern's instructions say I

must personally give this message to one of his boys."

Aaron nervously fingered his Uzi. "Which of his boys?"

"Meneer Stern does not say, sir."

Keeping his Uzi leveled, Aaron stepped warily up to the door and peered

through the peephole. Through the blurred fisheye lens he saw a thin

young black man wearing a blue messenger's uniform buttoned to the

throat. "Hold up the telegram," he said.

The young Bantu held up a piece of yellow paper, too far back for Aaron

to read. "I must hurry, sir," he said. "I have other stops to make."

Aaron muttered something in Hebrew, then reached for the door knob.

"Don't open it!" Natterman warned, but the young Israeli signaled him

to be quiet. Natterman heard the lock click; then the door opened and

caught against the chain.

"Hand it through," Aaron said from behind the door. "I'm not letting

you in."

After a moment's hesitation, a small black hand slipped the telegram

through the crack in the door. Aaron reached out, then froze.

A faint scent of body powder and perfume had wafted into the room.

For an instant Aaron flashed back to last night. He heard Gadi's voice

saying, ". . . and the perfume, I tell you, it was the same woman, the

woman from the airplane." In a fraction of a second Aaron comprehended

the danger, but he was too late.

Already a thin white hand had snapped through the four-inch space between

the door and its frame. The hand held a silenced Ingrain machine

pistol. As Aaron looked down in astonishment, the Ingrain spat three

times, blowing him off his feet and dropping him less than a foot from

the bloody stain where Yosef Shamir had died twelve hours ago.

Natterman tried to roll off the bed, but he was tangled beneath the

covers. He heard two more spits, then a clinking rattle. Swallow had

shot off the chain latch. He heard the door close, then a heavy thud.

Somehow Natterman knew who the killer was before he saw her. He

actually stopped breathing as the pale apparition glided swiftly to

Aaron's body. With one chilling glance at Natterman, the thin woman

bent down and tugged the Uzi from Aaron Haber's clenched hands.

Swallow, Natterman thought, remembering Stern's words. What's left of

the girl whose brother Stern killed while he sat on a toilet in a

British barracks a million years ago ...

Swallow glanced into the bathroom. She saw the Russians piled like

cordwood in the bathtub, and Yosef Shamir propped against the

white-tiled wall. Then she crossed immediately to Natterman, reached

down, and jerked his gag aside. When he opened his mouth to gasp for

breath, she jammed the barrel of the Ingrain inside it.

"Hello again, Professor," she said in a low, flat voice.

"Where is Stern?"

Natterman felt the gun barrel against the back of his throat, as cold

and deadly as a snake's head. He desperately needed to gag, but he

didn't dare. The woman leaning over him was like a creature from a

mother with blue-rinse hair, yellowed pearls hanging round her wrinkled

throat"Jonas Stern!" Swallow snapped. "Where is he?"

Natterman nodded his head carefully. Swallow removed the Ingrain from

his mouth. For a moment-thinking of Stern and his mission-Natterman

considered lying. He changed his mind when Swallow jammed the gun

barrel down onto the bloody bandage that Aaron had wrapped around

Natterman's wounded thigh.

"Alfred Horn!" he gasped. "Stern went to see a man named Alfred Horn!"

Swallow jabbed the Ingrain deeper into Natterman's wound. "Where to see

Alfred Horn?"

Natterman felt his stomach heave. "Somewhere in the northern Transvaal!

That's all I know. It was a blind rendezfi vous. Stern didn't know

where he was going himsel " While Swallow considered this, Natterman

looked past her to the floor. He saw black skin and white eyes. The

messenger. Now he understood the second thud. Swallow had shot the

Bantu boy in the throat. "Stern was wrong," he said, thinking aloud.

"He thinks you're after him. But you've come to destroy the Spandau

papers, haven't you?"

Swallow's nostrils flared. "I've come for Stern. If he has the papers,

that's a bonus."

Natterman glanced back at Aaron. The Israeli had fallen with his back

against the foyer wall. Except for the blood on his chest, he looked

like he was sleeping. Natterman remembered how innocent the young

commando had looked watching the soundless television. "How do you do

it?" he asked.

"That boy was hardly more than a child."

Swallow followed Natterman's gaze to Aaron's motionless body. She

shrugged. "He was a soldier. Today was his day."

Natterman shook his head. "Every bullet has its billet, eh?"

"King William,' Swallow murmured, recalling the quote from her wartime

service. "You're a philosopher?"

"I'm a fool. And you're a murderer, and a hypocrite as well.

That boy was probably someone's brother, too."

Swallow smacked Natterman on the mouth with the Ingrain, drawing blood.

Her eyes, as cold and dark and empty as deep space, settled on his face.

Natterman had never in his life felt such fear, not even as a young

German soldier patrolling alone in the shadow of Russian tanks outside

Leningrad.

"You're going to kill me," he said sotto voce.

"Not quite yet." Swallow lifted the telephone receiver and dialed an

international number. As she waited for an answer, she casually pulled

off her blue-rinse hair. Natterman's eyes widened. Beneath the wig,

Swallow's hair was iron gray and cropped to within an inch of her skull.

She did not look like a grandmother anymore.

"Swallow," she said harshly.

In London, Sir Neville Shaw's heart leaped. "Good Christ! Where are

you?"

Swallow's knuckles whitened on the telephone. "Listen to me, little

man. I'm giving you one last chance to tell me where Stern is.

He's gone to see a man named Alfred Horn.

I want to know where@' "I'll tell you exactly where to find him!"

Without wasting a second the mI-5 chief read out the overland directions

to Horn House. Swallow repeated them as they came, her head bobbing

with birdlike impatience, her eyes locked onto Natterman. When Shaw

finished reading the directions, he said, "I'm modifying your

assignment.

You can still do what you like with Stern, but I need more than the

Spandau papers now. I need Alfred Horn dead. You shouldn't have any

trouble recognizing him. He's an old man, rides in a wheelchair most of

the time. If you kill Alfred Horn, you can name your price."

Swallow laughed, a dry rattle. Her finger slipped inside the Ingrain's

trigger guard.'As Natterman stared in horror, she reached out casually

and laid the machine pistol against his cheek. Sir Neville Shaw's voice

warbled from the telephone. Swallow drew back her lips, exposing her

teeth like an animal preparing for a kill. Then her head snapped around

toward the foyer. She dropped the telephone and raised the Ingrain.

What is it? Natterman thought wildly. Is someone at the door?

He couldn't hear anything but his hammering heart.

Following Swallow's line of sight, he finally realized what she was

looking at with such alarm. Nothing! Where less than a minute ago the

bullet-riddled body of Aaron Haber had lain against the foyer wall, only

bloodstained wallpaper remained.

Shrieking like a demon, Swallow fired a sustained burst into the foyer,

then adjusted her aim to the bathroom wz The muted barks of the silenced

weapon modulated quickly into loud bangs. Her silencer was burning out.

Natterman threw off the sheets and rolled off the far edge of the bed.

He had been on the floor for less than five seconds when the firing

stopped. What the devil was happening? He raised his head above the

line of the bed.

Swallow was crouched at the end of the bed nearest the foyer, trying

frantically to clear the jammed receiver of her Ingrain. Like a man

rising from the grave, Aaron Haber lurched up from the narrow space

between the bed and the bathroom wall. Natterman's heart leaped with

joy and astonishment. Dark blood covered the young commando's neck and

chest, but his eyes burned wildly. Swaying like a drunken madman, he

steadied his .22 automatic and fired four shots in rapid succession.

Swallow was so desperate to reach the safety of the foyer that she

actually leaped into Aaron's bullets. Two slugs slammed into her left

shoulder, but the others went wild. She staggered into the foyer, spun

around and collapsed. Hoping that the impact of the fall had cleared

her weapon, she scrambled to her knees, @st her Ingrain around the

corner and pulled the trigger.

Aaron fired the instant he saw the gun barrel appear. His bullet tore

the gun from Swallow's hand. It spun through the air and landed against

the wall, too far away for either of them to reach. All Aaron had to do

was step around the corner to finish the woman off. He started forward,

then wobbled to a standstill. Bright blood pumped through his shirt.

Why doesn't she just run? Natterman thought angrily. She has the

information she wantedt And then he knew. Swallow meant to leave no

witnesses behind.

A horrible coughing spasm racked Aaron Haber's body.

He lunged forward, gurgled something in Hebrew, then dropped his pistol

and collapsed at the mouth of the foyer.

Natterman peered around the edge of the bed. The Israeli lay on his

stomach with his head pointed toward the door. Swallow's Ingrain lay at

his feet. Natterman's heart sank. The gun might as well have been ten

kilometers away. But as he jerked his head back behind the bed, he saw

something that stopped the breath in his lungs-Hans's crossbow, loaded

and lying beneath the bed. Yuri Borodin's gorillas had missed it during

their sweep. Natterman lay flat and stretched his arm to its limit ...

Swallow glided soundlessly out of the foyer and bobbed over the wounded

Israeli. A knife flashed in the air. Swallow reached for Aaron's hair,

meaning to jerk up his head and slash his throat, but at the last moment

she leaned toward his feet and grabbed for the Ingrain.

The decision cost her her life. The instant she moved, Aaron flipped

over onto his back and grabbed her by the waist. Unable to reach the

Ingrain, Swallow twisted in his arms and brought the knife down into his

chest. She raised it again for the deathblow, but Natterman struggled

up over the bed, steadied the crossbow, and fired.

The razor-tipped bolt speared through Swallow's breastbone with a

sickening crunch. Sucking for air she no longer needed, she pawed the

air in maniacal fury. Her last cry carried all the atrophied rage and

pain of her unfulfilled quest for vengeance: "Sterrm!"

Swallow collapsed on top of Aaron, preceding the young commando into

death by only seconds. Natterman stumbled over to the gasping Israeli

and with painful effort shoved Swallow's corpse off his blood-soaked

chest. Aaron strained to raise his head, then fell back and reached up

to Natterman for succor. Natterman knelt over him.

"Lie back," he said.

"You're safe now."

A froth of blood bubbled from Aaron's mouth. 'Did I stop her?"

he asked softly. "She wanted ... Stern."

Natterman looked over at Swallow. Lying dead with the arrow buried in

her chest, she looked like a locust husk spiked to a display board.

Natterman smiled at the young Israeli. "You stopped her."

"Tell ... tell Gadi ... did my duty." Aaron coughed once more; then he

closed his eyes.

Natterman swallowed hard. This young soldier had given his life for

Jonas Stern. Filled with a gudden rage, Natterman lurched to his feet

and scrambled back to the telephone.

"Who is this?" he shouted. "Speak!"

"Who is this?" came the wary reply, the British accent clear.

Natterman felt his hands shaking. "Your assassin is dead!"

he yelled. "Your secret will be secret no more!"

He threw down the telephone. Moaning in pain, he stripped off his

shirt, picked up Aaron's first-aid bag, and began rummaging through the

drug bottles. He wanted lo anesthetic. He needed to dull the fire of

his wounds, but he could not risk losing consciousness. He had to be

able to board an airplane under his own power. He hated the idea of

leaving Ilse and the others behind, but he suspected that if he did not

get out of South Africa today, he might not get out at all.

7.01 A.Al- Mi-5 Headquailers: Ch8rigPs Street, London Sir Neville Shaw

dropped the phone, his face ashen. Deputy Director Wilson faced him

from the doorway.

"It's over," Shaw said quietly. "After all this time, it's over."

"What do you mean, sir?"

"Swallow's dead. There's no stopping the secret now.

We've fired our last shell. From Churchill down to me, and all for

nothing."

"Churchill, Sir Neville? I don't understand."

"Don't you? Haven't you got it yet, man? Horn is Hess, Hess is Horn.

The great bloody secret. Ever since Churchill, it's been our sacred

charge."

"Sacred charge?"

"This service, Wilson. My office, particularly. It was mI-5

who ran the original Hess double-cross in 1941. We intercepted the

first letter from Hess to the Duke of Hamilton."

Shaw lifted two sheets of Paper from his desk. "Why don't you read

this, old man?, It's a memo to the prime MiniSterTyped it myself while

you were getting tea."

Wilson stepped forward uncertainly and took the proffered pages.

His eyes widened as they flew over phrases that made his blood run cold.

Dear Mrs. Prime Minister:

In May 1941, Rudolf Hess, Deputy Fuhrer of the German Reich, flew to

this country to assist in a coup d'etat aimed at the government of Prime

Minister Winston Churchill and King George VI.

mI-5 was aware of this plot almost from its inception, and used it to

buy time to forestall the German invasion of this country [Operation Sea

Lion].

Regrettably, the success of the coup hinged on the participation of

numerous ranking members of the wartime Parliament and the nobility, as

well as a second accession of the Duke of Windsor to the throne. On

11May 1941, Prime Minister Winston Churchill instructed this office

[Secret Finding 5731 to conceal all evidence of this AngloNazi

collusion, on the grounds that exposure of such high-ranking treason

might bring down the government and possibly even prevent American entry

into the war.

Events of the past five days have made the continued suppression of this

information highly unlikely. I must inform you that Rudolf Hess is

alive as of this writing, and is a citizen of the Republic of South

Africa [living under the alias "Alfred Horn"]. Hess may soon reveal

this fact himself, or certain papers unearthed at Spandau Prison may do

so. My best efforts to silence Hess and to destroy the papers have

failed. Hess's current activities fall into the realm of the criminal,

and, if exposed, could put at risk a significant number of British

nationals. The family of Lord Granville, particularly, may soon be made

public in this connection, as it has owned and operated Phoenix AG [a

multinational defense contractor] at the bidding of "Alfred Horn" since

1947. Other families of the peerage [one of whom boasts a member of

your cabinet] have lent their names to similar enterprises in exchange

for large cash payments, and possibly for ideological reasons as well.

I'm afraid issuing a D-notice at this time would be counterproductive,

however, as it would tend to indicate prior knowledge by your office of

these activities.

The suppression of the Hess information to date has only been possible

thanks to the nerve and foresight of Prime Minister Churchill.

In October 1944, Churchill flew to Moscow for a meeting with Joseph

Stalin. With him he carried copies of assassination orders that were,

to all appearances, signed by Stalin himself. These orders were

actually forgeries fabricated by Reinhard Heydrich's SD.

They were brought into this country by a German-trained White Russian

agent named Zinoviev, and recovered by mI-5 on 11 May 1941.

In Moscow, Churchill warned Stalin that he would inform the world press

that Stalin had ordered the murders of Churchill and King George VI, if

Stalin did not cease making accusations about Anglo-Nazi collusion in

the Hess affair.

Five weeks ago, on the strength of Secret Finding 573, I ordered the

liquidation of Hess's double [the real Alfred Horn] in Spandau Prison.

On my order the Foreign Office file on Hess has been sanitized. I have

placed in my personal safe papers which washed ashore in Scotland on 11

May 1941, which were thought to have been ditched from Hess's plane.

These papers contain the names of many of the British coup conspirators.

The War Office file on Hess contains damaging information on the Duke of

Windsor [which the Royal Family is frightfully anxious to keep buried],

but that file is sealed until 2050. The F.O. file is sealed until 2016.

We should meet as soon as possible: Sir Neville Shaw Director General,

mI-5

P.S. This unfortunate situation has been complicated by the arrest

yesterday of an mI-6

intelligence analyst@who for seven years made available to agents of

"Alfred Horn" some of our most sensitive intelligence secrets, including

copies of American satellite photography. 'three weeks ago, this man

inferred [from information which had been requested by Phoenix AGI that

some type of attack [possibly nuclear] was imminent against the State of

Israel. In a belated fit of conscience, he sent an anonymous warning to

the Israeli Embassy in London. We cannot discount the possibility that

my efforts to liquidate Hess prompted him to attempt some desperate

action against Israel, but I consider this scenario unlikely. "Alfred

Horn" does have significant uranium holdings in South Africa, but the

possibility that he has acquired a nuclear device is infinitesimally

small.

Deputy Director Wilson looked up at Shaw with horror on his face. "You

don't really mean to send this?"

Shaw raised his eyebrows. "of course I do. As far as I'm concerned,

the Hess secret is blown. I'll be sacked tomorrow, so what do I care?

I'm tired of protecting traitors, Wilson. It's time the world learned

what a heroic mission this service performed in 1941. We saved

Churchill and the dnd! I should write it up for the King, man.

We saved England's bloody 7-imesP' The blood drained from Wilson's

cheeks.

"Surely you're joking, Sir Neville. You're overwrought."

"But I'm deadly serious."

The deputy director glanced behind him to the closed office door.

"I'm sorry to hear that," he said soffly. He pulled a revolver from his

coat pocket.

Shaw studied the gun. "A bit noisy for murder, don't you think?

Too many people around."

Wilson gave his superior a wintry smile. "Not murder, Sir Neville.

Suicide."

Shaw smiled appreciatively. "Ah. I'm about to crack under the strain

of a failed operation, eh? You'll 'discover' me with my head bleeding

over the Hess file, the mandarins will cover it up 'for the good of the

service,' and you'll take my chair as director general. Is that it?"

Wilson nodded. "I've been laying the groundwork ever since you locked

yourself in here like a hermit. The secretaries are already whispering

about you."

Shaw sighed. "You were Horn's man all along, weren't you? As long as

my efforts went toward keeping the secret, you went right along.

But you and your bloody uncle-Lord Amersham, isn't it?-you didn't know

that some of the conspirator families had asked me to liquidate both

Hess and Number Seven, did you? Gutless bastards. They claimed Horn

had gone senile, that he had too much power. I saw the truth, though.

Glasnost had those blue-blooded cowards pissing their beds at night.

Gorbachev's whole program was openness, sweeping out the past.

Couldn't have that, could we? Our brave peers were scared silly that

the Russians might not veto Number Seven's release next time around."

Shaw raised a forefinger. "And they were right, you know? ; Two days

ago I learned that Gorbachev had recently indicated to Hess's son that

he was on the verge of releasing Prisoner Number Seven."

Wilson kept his pistol pointed at Shaw's chest. "How did you kill

Number Seven without my knowledge?" Shaw shrugged. "Easily. I used a

retired SAS man Michael Burton. The whole Hess business has always been

run outside official channels. That's why you knew nothin about the

Casilda. But you found out in time, didn't YOU?

Wilson's face reddened. "I warned Horn."

You warned Hess about the raid."

"My God," muttered Shaw. "You didn't even know who you were working

for, did you? Just like that idiot in MI-6.

At least his mother was South African."

The revolver shook in Wilson's hand. "Why was Hess allowed to live? Why

did we let him out of England at all?"

Shaw smiled humorlessly. "We never had Hess, Wilson.

We only caught Ho e double Heydrich sent to confuse us. We never found

out how Hess escaped, if he came here at all. mI-6 finally located him

in Paraguay in 1958. The Israelis and other Nazi-hunters never found

him because they weren't looking. As far as they knew, Rudolf Hess was

locked inside Spandau Prison."

"Why didn't you kill Hess in Paraguay?"

Shaw snorted. "You think your friends are afraid of the Spandau papers?

Hess knew the name of every bloody British traitor involved in the coup

attempt. He claimed he had taken steps that would make those names

public in the event of his untimely death, and we believed him."

"But why kill number Seven after all this time? He'd held his silence

for decades. Why should he break it?"

"Because his wife and daughter were dead," Shaw explained. "Had been

for years. We kept Number Seven quiet by threatening his family, just

as Hess must have. If Number Seven had been released from Spandau, he

-might have discovered they were dead. And we would have lost our

leverage. If the Russians hadn't vetoed his early release every year,

we would have had to kill him years ago."

Sir Neville Shaw steepled his fingers. "Tell me one thing, Wilson. How

much have you told Hess's people about Jonas SternT' "Nothing, until

today. I assumed Swallow would kill Stern before he became a threat,

and I didn't want to risk further direct contact.

Stern must have blown his cover himself Two hours ago Horn's security

chief called me and asked if I knew anything about a Jew who had come

after Horn."

Shaw nodded thoughtfully. "I suppose you intend to burn my memo?"

"Yes, actually."

Shaw reached out his hand. "Here. Let me shred it for YOU."

Puzzled, Wilson handed Shaw the letter, then watched incredulously as

the mI-5 chief fed both pages into his highspeed shredder. "But .

.. why? What are you doing?"

Shaw smiled. "Don't worry, there's a copy in my safe.

But things haven't quite reached the stage where I feel compelled to

send it." Shaw looked over Wilson's shoulder to a dark corner of the

large office. "Sergeant," he said crisply, "please arrest Mr.

Wilson. The charge is treason."

Like a thousand fools before him, Wilson whirled to face an imaginary

threat. When he looked back at Shaw, there was a silenced Browning

Hi-Power pistol in the old knight's hand.

"Sorry, old boy," Shaw said, but he had already pulled the trigger.

Wilson's astonished eyes went blank as the bullet tore through his

heart. He dropped dead on the floor without a sound.

Shaw calmly lifted his telephone and punched in a number. The call was

answered immediately.

"Rose here," said a gruff voice with a Texas twang.

"Good morning, Colonel," said Shaw. "I am authorized to agree to your

terms-if you believe the Hess secret can still be kept."

"As if you had any choice," Rose growled.

"About Jonas Stern," Shaw said dill-;dently. "Her Majesty's government

doesn't want the Israelis getting hold of this story."

"I figure Stern's dead by now," Rose said. "Sir Neville."

Shaw sighed with forbearance. "Is there any further word from South

Africa?"

"Negative. Your precious secret's in Captain Hauer's hands now.

Who knows what a friggin' Kraut'll do?" Rose laughed away from the

phone. "Hey, Shaw, I've got a guy here, name of Schneider. He says

Hauer'll kill Hess if gets the chance. That make you feel any better?"

Shaw smiled with satisfaction. "Thank you, Colonel. I shall be in

Berlin by noon."

IL

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

826 A.M. Angolan Airspace

At eighteen thousand feet the Lear 31-A turbojet knifed southward

through the sky and down the length of Africa. In the sumptuously

appointed passenger cabin, Prime Minister Abdul Bake Jalloud sipped from

a glass of sherry and contemplated the excited face of Dr. Hamid Sabri.

The bespectacled young physicist could barely restrain his enthusiasm.

In a matter of hours he would be shepherding back to Libya the first

nuclear weapon ever to stock an Arab arsenal. Prime Minister Jalloud

was more subdued. Despite Muammar Qaddafi's repeated assurances that

all was well, Jalloud could not shake a vague suspicion that something

was not as it should be.

"Are you all right, Excellency?" asked Dr. Sabri. "You look pale."

"It's the food," Jalloud muttered. "I shouldn't have eaten anything."

"I'm nervous myself," Sabri confessed. "I cannot wait to return home

with the device."

"I can't wait to return home, period," Jalloud murmured.

This curious statement disconcerted the young scientist.

He glanced through his window at the'clouds below. "Excellency?"

he said quietly. "I must admit I am glad Major Karami is not

accompanying us on this trip. He makes me uncomfortable. I do not

believe Mr. Horn liked him either."

"Major Karami makes a lot of people nervous," said Jalloud, glancing

past Dr. Sabri. At the rear of the cabin, sitting on a pile of

embroidered pillows, six very dangerouslooking soldiers quietly smoked

cigarettes. Qaddafi had assured Jalloud that he'd ordered them loading

of the weapon, but Jallc doubted this. On the last trip two security

guards had been considered adequate escort. Jalloud was almost certain

that these men had been handpicked from Ilyas Karami's personal

bodyguard.

"I'm not so sure we are flee of Major Karanii," he whispered, cutting

his eyes toward the guards.

Dr. Sabri peered around the prime minister's kefflyah and looked at the

sullen group. "Don't say that," he said quietly.

"Allah protect us, don't even think it."

Twenty-eight miles behind the Lear, Major Ilyas Karami stepped onto the

flight deck of a Soviet-built Yakovlev-42

airliner and leaned down into the pilot's ear. "Should I go over it for

you again?" he asked.

"It's net necessary, Major," the pilot replied.

"Good." Karanii laid a hand on the young man's shoulder.

"Because what I told my commandos goes for you pilots too. Any man that

makes a mistake on this mission will lose his head when we return to

Tripoli."

The pilot strained to keep his hands steady on the controls.

Ilyas Karaiti's threats Were never empty.

"And his testicles will be in his mouth,",Karami added.

The plane lurched violently, as if buffeted by turbulence.

"I'm sorry, Major!" the pilot croaked.

"Low-pressure pocket," the copilot covered quickly.

Major Karami snorted and left the flight deck.

This Yakovlev aircraft-popularly known as the Yak-42

-had begun its life as an Aeroflot jetliner, then passed into Libyan

commercial service. But for this mission Major Karami had ordered it

configured as an Air Zimbabwe commercial airliner. Karami smiled with

satisfaction as he walked through the stripped cabin of the plane.

Lining both walls of the Yak-42 were fifty heavily-armed Libyan

commandos; and filling the center section from front to rear were

pallets stacked high with weapons, ammunition, a small truck, and at the

rear of the cabin, lashed to the fuselage by chains, a 105-millimeter

artillery piece.

Karami nodded to his company commanders as he made his way through the

tangle of legs and equipment and stopped beside the small pickup truck.

The bed of the Toyota had been Padded with wrestling mats, and its sides

fitted with cleats sized to take chains. Ostensibly the truck had been

brought along to tow the 105mm howitzer into position.

Only Major Karami knew what special eargo its bed and suspension had

been modified to accept. When they got a little closer to their

destination, however, Karami would let his men in on the secret. For

what force could withstand the fury of Arabs come to claim the weapon

that would finally wipe the Jews from the sands of Palestine?

O40 A-Ai. Northern Transvaal, Republic of South Africa

Alan Burton scrambled over the lip of the Wash and down the slope to

where Juan Diaz half-sat, half-lay in the slowly drying mud. He had

bandaged the Cuban's wound as best he could; it was crusted with blood

but not suppurating. Diaz opened his eyes when he heard Burton

approach.

"Well, English?" he croaked.

"No chance," Burton said bitterly. "It's worse than it looked last

night. Fidel's chopper blew itself all over the runway. It's a wonder

we weren't cut to pieces. The tail of that Lear looks like scrap

metal."

"The lateral finst' Diaz asked hopefully. "Or the vertical?"

"Left lateral's completely gone. Vertical's got more holes than a Swiss

cheese."

"Shit! What now, amigo?' Diaz tried to smile. "We re dead men, eh?"

"Not bloody likely," Burton said with an optimism he didn't feel.

"That's an airstrip up there, isn't it! This place is too damned remote

to service by road. It's bound to be just a matter of time before

another plane lands."

Diaz squinted skeptically at the Englishman.

"And when it does, sport," said Burton, tapping his submachine gun

against his chest, "I'm going to climb aboard and watch Captain Juan

Diaz fly our wet arses right out of here."

The Cuban grinned, exposing dazzling white teeth. Burton pulled some

more brambles around the little depression he had expanded into a hiding

place during the night. A patrol from the house had come by just after

last night's attack. It had missed them, but Burton wasn't sure the

shelter would stand up to daylight scrutiny.

"I tell you, Juan boy," he said wistfully, "it's times like this I wish

I was back in England, fishing a stream in Cotswolds."

"Why aren't you?"

Burton smiled sheepishly. "I'm persona non grata there, sport.

Occupational hazard. Her Majesty takes a rather dim view of soldiering

for pay. Not like your scruffy boss in Havana. The only thing waiting

for me in England's a bloody jail cell."

Diaz tried to smile in sympathy.

"I had a chance to go back free and clear," Burton said quietly.

"Last night. But we ballsed it up."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean while you were working for a Colombian drug baron, I was working

for Her Majesty's Government. My pay was full reinstatement of British

citizenship. I don't know why everyone wants the old man in that

fortress dead.

' 9

I don't care much, either. Maybe his dru s are ending up in London, and

the bloody House of Lords wants him discreetly blotted from their

universe." Burton grinned. "By God, if I thought I had half a chance,

I'd give it another go on my own. I know, I know-English loco, right?"

Diaz nodded, then grimaced in pain.

Burton checked the barrel of his MP-5 for mud. "Who needs England,

anyway?" he muttered. He fixed his gaze on the rim of the ravine.

"You've got one job, Juan boy- Stay alive until I can commandeer some

air transport. Then it's straight back to civilization. Comprende?"

Diaz coughed horribly.

Burton touched the Cuban's forehead. It felt cool and clammy. A fishy

paleness had spread beneath his olive skin.

"Can you do it, lad? Can you hold out?"

"Fucking-ay, English," Diaz grunted. "You get me a plane, and I'll fly

the whore out."

"That's the ticket." Burton patted the Cuban on his good shoulder.

"But you better hurry, amigo," Diaz coughed, gripping his torn side. "I

can fly drunk, stoned, or bleeding, but I can't fly dead."

Burton nodded grimly.

1.40 Piw. The Union Building. Pretoria Captain Barnard slammed down

the phone and glared at his watch. He had been trying in vain to reach

General Steyn since ten-thirty. When the general failed to show up for

work this morning, Barnard had assumed he was simply late.

But by ten A.M. Barnard knew something was wrong. No one answered at

General Steyn's home, and none of the government ministries knew where

he was. As Barnard continued his round of calls, a disturbing image

kept coming back to him: the resolute eyes dr the German police captain.

Barnard was certain that Captain Hauer believed he possessed information

vital to South Africa's security. Hauer might be insane, but he was

sincere. The Afrikaner ground his teeth in frustration.

Major Graaff had told him that the Visagie police interrogators would

have the prisoners' story by lunchtime, yet Bernard had received no

further word regarding them. Bernard had never liked Major Graaff, but

in the NIS, like the army, you had to go along to get along.

Fspecially with superiors. Barnard almost jumped out of his skin when

the phone on his desk rang.

"General Steyn's office," he answered.

"Bernard?" boomed a husky voice.

"General Steyn! Where are you?"

"I'm out at the Pretoria office of Phoenix AG. The directors here seem

to think that some type of shenanigans may be going on in their defense

division. I felt I should handle it myself Phoenix works on some very

sensitive projects, you know Captain Barnard felt sweat on the back of

his neck. "Excuse me, General, but how did you learn about this

problem?"

"Gruaff called me at home this morning. He's right on top of this.

Seems he's friendly with the people over here at Phoenix. He was the

one who suggested I handle it personally, in fact."

"Where is Major Graaff now, GeneraIT' "I haven't the foggiest, Bernard."

"General," Captain Barnard said hoarsely, "I think we've got a problem."

2.05 Pm. Visagie Straat, Pretoria When General Jaap Steyn strode

through the doors of the Visagie police station, the desk sergeant knew

that his afternoon had just been shot to hell. The chief of South

Africa's ruthlessly efficient intelligence service was a bluff,

red-faced giant of a man. He stalked straight up to the high desk and

planted himself like an admiral on the prow of a flagship.

'Sergeant!" he bellowed. "I want to see your foreign prisoners

immediately. Where are they?"

"Urn ... yes, sir. Well, one is in the cellblock and the other ... I

believe Major Graaff is supervising his interrogation. 19

"Lead on, Sergeant!"

The desk sergeant wasn't sure if the NIS general had legal authority to

give orders to a municipal police officer, but risking his career to

find out didn't seem like the best of options. He jumped down from his

stool and led General Steyn and Captain Barnard to a heavy steel door at

the back of the station. He nodded once, then fled down the hall.

General Steyn grunted and pushed open the door. Inside he saw two

bull-necked policemen holding-a shirtless, grayhaired man against a

cinder-block wall. The man's face was covered with sweat and blood.

Major Graaff held a rubber truncheon high above his head, poised to

strike.

"That will do, Major," General Steyn said icily.

Graaff whirled. When he saw his furious general filling the door, he

ftoze, the truncheon still above his head. He looked back at his

muscular accomplices, but after one look at General Steyn they released

their bruised captive and came to stiff attention. Hauer slid slowly to

his knees.

"Captain Bernard," General Steyn ordered, "place Major Graaff under

arrest. You men clean the prisoner up and bring him and his companion

to the visiting room" General Steyn stalked out.

Barnard drew a pistol and leveled it at Graaff. "Give me an excuse, you

bloody bastard."

Hauer faced General Steyn across the long wooden table used to separate

prisoners from their visitors. He had a bloody towel wrapped around his

bared shoulders. Captain Barnard stood stiffly behind his superior.

Gadi Abrams sat at Hauer's left. Hauer had brushed aside their concern

over his injuries and immediately gone over to the offensive.

"I simply don't have time to explain everything you want to know,

General," he repeated. "Stern needs your help."

"I'm afraid that's just not good enough," General Steyn said.

"Jonas Stern is a good friend of mine, a damn fine intelligence officer.

He's a friend to this country. But I simply cannot agree to help

without knowing more."

Hauer sighed. Stern had told him to call out the NISin full strength-to

request whatever was necessary to take Alfred Horn's isolated fortress

by storm. But after what he had seen of Major Graaff, Hauer didn't

share Stern's confidence in the South Africans who would be called upon

to carry out that attack.

"General, did Captain Barnard inform you of the code word Stern told me

to repeat to you?"

General Steyn's jaw muscles flexed. "He did."

"And still you won't agree to help me?"

Captain Hauer, the South African government does not yield to blackmail.

If by some remote misfortune Jonas Stern has seen fit to confide in you

the true meaning of that code word-and if you have been trumpefing it

about-I may decide that Major Graaff's tactics were lenient. Do you

understand? Now, do you know the meaning of that code word?"

Hauer nodded slowly. "It's Hebrew. Literally, it means going up to

Zion."' General Steyn's face flushed. "Leave us please, Captain

Barnard."

Barnard reluctantly obeyed.

"General," Hauer said gravely, "Aliyah Beth is a secret contingency plan

that mandates the evacuation by sea and air of South Africa's entire

nuclear weapons arsenal and fuel stocks to Israel in the event of armed

insurrection by the black population. This move will be considered a

redeployment of weapons, as the warheads will remain under the control

of the South African government@' "My God, " General Steyn breathed.

"Stern's gone mad."

"No!" Hauer argued. "General, Stern knew that the dimensions of this

crisis are such that any other consideration pales beside it. I'm

telling you that a nuclear threat exists now-inside this country!"

General Steyn slammed his fist down on the table. "Then I'll have the

bloody -details now, Captain! Even if I have to torture you to get

them!"

"You wouldn't get them in time, General. I'm sorry, but that's the way

it is. Don't you understand? Your men can't be trusted.

Major Graaff was on your personal staff, for God's sake! One phone call

from an informant could bring about the very disaster that Stern is

trying to avert. A nuclear weapon could be detonated before we leave

this building!"

General Steyn came to his feet, knocking his chair to the floor.

Startled, Captain Barnard rushed in with pistol drawn.

"It's all right, Barnard," the general said. The Afrikaner towered over

Hauer. "Tell me something, Captain. What does Stern have to do with

this? How is Israel involvedt' Hauer had been dreading this question.

"General," he said slowly, "all I can tell you is that a madman

possesses a nuclear weapon within the borders of your country.

It could be detonated at any moment. In my opinion, any political

considerations are secondary."

"Political considerations are never secondary, Captain.

More's the pity. What about Thomas Horn? What's he got to do with all

this?"

Hauer knew he had to tread carefully beri. "General, how would you

describe -Herr Horn's ties to the South African government?"

"Well, he's what some would call a power broker, a behind-the-scenes

type. Very reclusive. But I understand he's a force to be reckoned

with in the ultraconservative encloves. Very chummy with the old

Afrikaner stock. It's the military Horn's tied to, you see. As you

probably know, during the last few decades South Africa has been forced

to become self-sufficient in many areas@specially defense. We build

everything from bullets to heavy artillery and aircraft.

We're damned proud of it, too. As you.might imagine, anyone with Thomas

Horn's industrial clout is courted constantly. His money and factories

have produced untold amounts of ordnance for the army. He's involved in

some very sensitive defense projects. I imagine-" General Steyn's voice

faltered. "My God. Horn is the sourre of this nuclear threat? But ...

but he's one of the most patriotic men in the country!"

"Perhaps," Gadi said, speaking for the first time, "Mr.

Horn isn't who he appears to be."

General Steyn eyed the Israeli suspiciously. "Just who the devil do you

think he is, lad?"

When Gadi didn't reply, the general turned to Hauer.

"What is it you want me to do, Captain? Exactly?"

Hauer looked straight into General Steyn's eyes. "I want you to place a

small group of men under my command and give me until midnight before

you call out the army."

The general gaped in astonishment. "You're mad! You're asking me to

place South African officers under the command of a foreign policeman?

So that he can carry out an unsanctioned and illegal operation within

this republic? Is that what you're asking?"

"I'm not asking." Hauer's eyes were flat and steady. "I'm demanding

it."

General Steyn reddened in outrage. "You're not in a position to demand

a bloody toothpick!"

Hauer looked pointedly at his watch. "General, I have a man waiting in

Pretoria for a telephone call. He has a full description of Plan Aliyah

Beth. If he does not receive that call in the next twelve minutes, he

will call the New York Times, the London Daily Telegraph, CNN, Der

Spiegel-" General Steyn raised his hand. "And if I don't consider that

a strong enough threat?"

"You may be personally responsible for the deaths of millions of

people."

Captain Bernard stood openmouthed in astonishment. He had never heard

anyone speak to General Steyn like this, and the mention of hostile

nuclear weapons on South African soil had all but pushed him over the

brink. But General Steyn simply rubbed his right hand over his

close-cropped scalp and said, "Excuse us for a moment, gentlemen..

Barnard?"

When they had gone, Gadi leapt to his feet. "What the hell are you

doing, Hauer? My uncle told you to get enough troops to flatten Horn's

estate. You're asking for a small group of men! What are you up to?"

"I'm trying to save your damned country for you," Hauer snapped.

"Since you don't have the presence of mind to do it yourself.

Would you use your brain for one minute? Let's say I tell General Steyn

everything. Where the bomb is, who really has it, everything.

What will he do? His first impulse will be to do what Stern wants-take

a battalion up there and flatten Horn's place. But guess what? While

the good general is flying up to the Transvaal, he's going to realize

something. He's going to realize that Alfred Horn's target is not South

Africa.

Eh? Because if it was, Horn could have sabotaged it a thousand ways

before now. He'll realize that Horn's target must be outside South

Africa, as we well know. And when General Steyn's political bosses find

that out, they're going to realize that the smart thing to do for South

Africa-is to simply let the deal happen. Let whoever's buying that bomb

land their plane, load it on board, and fly it right out of South

Africa, thereby neutralizing the threat to their country."

The color drained from Gadi's face. "They wouldn'L@ -They damn well

would," Hauer asserted. "Even if they want to stop Horn, how can they?

He's got the ultimate blackmail weapon. If they attack him, he can

detonate the weapon right where he is-inside South Africa. And I

imagine someone in the South African government knows he's crazy enough

to do it."

"All right," Gadi said. "I see your point. But General Steyn isn't

going to give you any men."

"He is," Hauer said calmly. "On one condition."

"What condition?"

Suddenly, the steel door clanged open. General Steyn marched in with

Captain Bernard on his heels.

"Let's see," Hauer murmured to GadiGeneral Steyn stopped in front of

Hauer. "Before I answer," he said, "I want to hear exactly what you

want."

Hauer didn't hesitate. He'd made his shopping list while he waited in

the cell. "I want an armored car. I want it mounted with a heavy

machine gun, not a water cannon. I want five men from your elite

counterterror unit. I don't want them to know where they're going or

what the mission is, but I want them to bring along their whole bag of

tricks: flash-bang grenades, body armor, flares, combat shotguns, the

works."

"Mmm," the geneml murmured. "Is that all?"

"No. One more thing."

"yes?

"A Steyr-Mannlicher SSG.69."

General Steyn glanced at Captain Barnard-our counterterror team uses a

different sniper rifle," Barnard explained. "But I think we can get

hold of a Steyr."

Hauer was still watching General Steyn. "Do I get my men, General?"

"On one condition," the Afrikaner said stiffly. "And it's

nonnegotiable."

"I can't imagine what it is," Hauer said, almost smiling.

"I go with you."

Gadi's jaw dropped.

"But I'm in command," Hauer pressed.

General Steyn pursed his lips. "Tactical command," he allowed.

Hauer breathed a sigh of satisfaction. "Make your calls, General."

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

5.51 Pm. Horn House Jonas Stern's head, chest, and ankles had been

scraped bloody by the leather restraining straps of the X-ray table.

Blinding white light stabbed his eyes. He had counted forty blasts of

the X-ray unit already, and in between he had heard the muffled voices

of the men behind the heavy lead shield.

His murderers. They had asked no questions, given no explanations, and

Stern needed none. He was a Jew.

"That's 150 rads," said a voice Stern recognized as Pieter Smuts's.

"How much is that?" asked a second, eager voice. Jiirgen Luhr.

"How much can he take?"

"Oh, quite a bit more," Smuts replied. "And he will."

"Just a moment," said a hoarse, high-pitched voice.

Stern heard the hum of an electric wheelchair, and then Hess rounded the

lead shield. Stern tried to move his head to look, but the straps held

him fast. He saw only the brilliant white light overhead.

Hess chuckled beside his ear.

"Pieter has devised a rather ingenious method of eliminating my Jewish

problem, wouldn't you say, Herr Stern?"

Stern said nothing.

"I wanted you punished, you see," Hess explained, "but I also wanted you

to live long enough to see your country destroyed."

"He may not actually see it, sir," Smuts INTERJECTED as he stepped

around the shield. "In a few hours he will experience blindness similar

to that caused by flashburns. He may or may not recover his sight."

Hess's face darkened. "But he will live long enough to know that Israel

is no more?"

"If the Libyans stick to the schedule, yes. We could stretch this out

for months, if you like."

Hess shook his head. "Just long enough for the Jew to see what happens

to Israel. What will become of him after that?"

Smuts's voice took on a clinical detachment. "It varies.

This dosage will cause severe nausea and vomiting for the next

twenty-four hours. He'll have deep burns, bloody diarrhea, his hair

will fall out, there'll be bone marrow destruction-" Hess raised his

hand. "How much.can he stand and survive for two weeks?"

"I wouldn't push it over 500 rads, sir. Not if you want him to live

until the detonation."

When Stern finally spoke, his voice was a knife blade. "In one week,

Hess, you will stand in the dock before a war crimes tribunal in

Jerusalem."

Hess laughed. "Yes? Well, you might be interested to know that your

friend Hauer and his young Jewish companion are now in a Pretoria police

cell. And General Jaap Steyn is chasing a school of red herrings at the

request of my Pretoria office."

"You will be manacled," Stern went on stubbornly. "Israeli

schoolchildren will file past your cell and spit in your face. History

will judge you as it did your master, as one more tragic gangster with

an inferiority complex@, "Swine!" Hess shrieked. "When your skin turns

black and begins to drop off, you will regret your words!"

"Don't let him provoke you, sir," Smuts said evenly. "In ten days time,

Israel will be a dead island in a sea of Arabs."

"Yes," Hess rasped. "What do you think of that, Jew?"

"I think you should plead guilty," Stern retorted. "It will shorten the

time' you have to stand in shame before the world's cameras."

Enraged, Hess stabbed a button on'his wheelchair and wheeled away toward

the door. "Give him 500 rads! Now!"

Jtirgen Luhr's hysterical laugh was cut short by a sharp knock at the

door. A gray-uniformed soldier stepped in, saluted Hess, then turned to

Smuts. "The radar shows one aircraft approaching, sir.

Twenty kilometers out. It responded properly to the codes."

Hess smiled. "Our Libyan friends have arrived to take possession of

their new toy."

"I should get up to the tower, sir," Smuts said.

"No, finish here first. I want this Jew to get his 500 rads today."

Smuts frowned. "I should be with you when you meet the Libyans.

Lieutenant Luhr can finish here. The machine is set. All he need do is

press the button."

Hess paused. "Very well."

"Fifty more exposures," Smuts tofu Luhr.

"Jawohl," Luhr replied, his eyes exultant.

After Smuts rolled Hess out, Luhr swaggered over to the table and leaned

over Stern. "Are you enjoying this, you filthy@' Stern spat into Luhr's

open mouth. The German gagged, raised his fist high over Stern's neck,

then dropped it shaking to his side. He reached up, took hold of the

X-ray tube housing and brought its barrel to within an inch of Stern's

groin. Then he hurried behind the lead shield and peered through the

thick bubble window.

"Let's see if we can burn your balls off, Jew," he snarled.

He pressed the trigger.

604 Pm. The Northern Transvaol

The South African-built Armscor AC-200 armored car swerved off of the

last road east of Giyani and crashed down onto hard veld. Six huge

wheels hurled the long, wedge'shaped hull over berms and trenches at

forty miles per hour-the speed of a mildly agitated rhinoceros.

Machine guns bristled from the Arinscor's steel hide, giving the

lowslung fighfing vehicle the look of a tank designed for a war on the

moon. Inside, Dieter Hauer checked his watch. The hell-for-leather

journey from Pretoria had taken three hours, they still had twenty

kilometers of punishing, trackless wilderness to cover before they

reached Horn House. He estimated they would find it about dusk-the

worst possible time. It would still be light enough for the defenders

to see them coming, but too dark for accurate small-arms fire by his

assault team. He had tried to keep his mind off Hans's fight during the

trip; he'd spent most of the ride conferring quietly with General Steyn.

By concentrating on tactics, he ad almost managed to ignore the fact

that with Stern and the missing pages now in his custody, Hess had no

reason to keep Hans and Ilse alive any longer.

The scene inside the Armscor comforted Hauer, though it would have

terrified most civilians. Ever since Giyani, his team had worn their

black Kevlar helmets and anti-riot respirators. These sophisticated gas

masks concealed the entire face, giving their wearers the insectile look

of Hollywood movie aliens. Every man also wore a full suit of black

body armor. Made of Kevlar composite material fortified by ceramic tile

inserts, these suits would stop not only pistol rounds and shrapnel, but

high-velocity armor-piercing bullets.

Hauer could scarcely tell the men apart. He knew that General Steyn sat

beside him on the metal bench seat, and that one of the men sitting

across from him was Gadi Abrams. Captain Barnard was up front in the

shotgun seat.

The driver and the other two men were members of South Africa's elite

counterterror (CT) commando unit, making up the five-man force Hauer had

originally requested. All the rifles save Hauer's were South African.

Gadi did not mind this, as the South African R-5 assault rifle was

merely a carbine style variant of the Israeli Galil. Hauer carried the

long, graceful sniper rifle he had requested from General Steynthe

Austrian-built Steyr-Mannlicher SSG.69. On the floor lay an assortment

of weapons from grenades to combat shotguns.

He wrenched his respirator aside. "Stern said to expect a strong

defense!" he shouted. "And I think he knows what he's talking about."

General Steyn pulled his own buglike mask off, revealing his perpetually

red face. "He does, Captain. You're the one who insisted on one

vehicle and five men. I would have hit this place with an airborne

division!"

"And seen this corner of your country vaporized," Hauer reminded him.

"What about land mines, General? Aren't they popular down here?"

"Very. We have so many unpaved roads that mines are the weapon of

choice. The bottom of this vehicle is designed to deflect mine blasts

upward and away, but a sustained series of hits-one large minefield,

say-and we've bought it."

General Steyn grinned. "I may be getting up in age, but I don't fancy a

hot fragment in the balls!"

Hauer laughed. The closeness of the sound inside the respirator gave

him a brief flush. Wearing a full suit of armor was disorienting. It

insulated a man from lethal projectiles, but it also isolated him from

the men around him.

Staring through his bubble eyeholes, Hauer wondered about the South

African CT troops. General Steyn had vouched for their loyalty, but

Hauer didn't count that for' much. Not when one of the general's own

staff officers had been on Phoenix's payroll. Hauer would have given

his pension for a German GSG-9 assault team to replace the South

Africans.

He'd have few doubts about success then. But it was no use wishing. You

fight with what you have.

He wondered if Jonas Stern calculated the same way. He could imagine

the dilemma the Israeli was struggling with now-if Stern was still

alive. If it came to a choice between detonating a nuclear weapon on

South African soil or letting it be captured by Arab fanatics sworn to

destroy Israel, Hauer knew Stern would not hesitate to turn this corner

of South Africa into a radioactive wasteland. If the choice were

between Germany and South Africa, he knew he would do the same. He only

prayed it wouldn't come to that.

Across the narrow aisle, the South Africans sat like Sphimes behind

their black masks. Hauer ' finally discerned the smoldering gaze of

Gadi Abrams through the bubble eyes of one respirator. Hauer stared

back, trying to read the message in the Israeli's dark eyes.

The best he could come up with was, "I trust only you and me, and I'm

not too sure about you, " before the young commando turned away.

Hauer felt exactly the same.

6.11 Pm. Horn House

This time Smuts did not meet the Libyans on the runway. He waited in

the relative security of the recept@,on hall with his master. If they

don't like being met by a kaffir he thought, to hell with them.

Hess sat in his wheelchair beside Smuts, wearing a gray suit-jacket and

black eyepatch. He had once again assumed the role of Alfred Horn.

Smuts peered through a window as his Zulu driver goosed the Range Rover

up the final crescent of the drive. When the Libyan delegation climbed

out, Smuts immediately noticed the ratio of four bodyguards to two

negotiators. On the last trip, he recalled, that ratio had been

reversed. He also noted the conspicuous absence of Major Ilyas Karami.

Smuts had expected something like this, and despite Hess's optimism, he

had prepared for treachery. He had two marksmen waiting in the

corridors on either side of the reception hall, and he had

reinforcements on the way. This morning, when Major Graaff had called

to report -that he had taken Dieter Hauer into custody, Smuts had

requested a contingent of NIS men to holster his own force. Graaff had

enthusiastically agreed. Smuts,hoped they would arrive soon.

He took a last look at his marksmen, then opened the great teak door and

stepped back.

Wearing flowing white robes, Prime Minister Jalloud swept into the hall

and threw his arms wide in greeting.

"Herr Horn!" he exclaimed. "The historic day has come! Allah has

brought us here safely. May He smile upon our business!"

Hess nodded curtly. "Guten Abend, Herr Prime Minister."

Dr. Sabri and the four bodyguards stepped over the threshold.

"Where is Major Karami?" Smuts asked. "I had hoped to see him again."

Jalloud smiled. "I'm afraid Major Karami was called away at the last

moment to attend to pressing military matters.

I'll bet he was, Smuts thought wryly, flexing his fists to channel off

tension. "Sorry to hear it."

"Would anyone like refreshments?" Hess asked. "It is a long flight

from Tripoli."

"I'm afraid Our Leader has forbidden any delay, Herr Horn," Jalloud said

softly. "He awaits our return with the utmost anticipation."

"To business then. I assume you wish Dr. Sabri to verify.

the weapon's operational readiness before we load it?"

"If we might so impose," Jalloud said timidly.

In that instant, inexplicably, Smuts decided that if trouble was coming,

Prime Minister Jalloud knew nothing about it.

The Afrikaner signaled his marksmen by touching his right eyebrow with

his right hand. He intended to trigger any treachery long before the

Libyans gained access to the basement complex.

"With all respect, Mr. Prime Minister," he said, "I must ask that your

bodyguards wait here. We allow no fiream the basement."

Jalloud looked uncomfortable. "But Our ]Leader provided these men to

assist with the loading of the weapon."

"The bomb weighs more than a thousand kilograms," Smuts replied.

"It must be loaded mechanically. In fact, I have my doubts about your

jet's ability to carry both the weapon and passengers. I had assumed

you would bring a cargo plane."

"I see," Jalloud said slowly, wondering why no one in Tripoli had

thought of this. Or perhaps, he thought with a shiver, someone did. "By

all means," he said. He turned to the bodyguards. "You will wait here

while Dr. Sabri checks the weapon."

Taken aback by this request, the soldiers hesitated. Their orders had

been to wait until they gained access to the basement before carrying

out their mission. But the Afrikaner had forced their hand.

Simultaneously reaching the same conclusion, Major Karami's four

assassins raised their Uzis as one.

Their faces showed even more surprise than Prime Minister Jalloud's when

Smuts's concealed marksmen opened fire with their R-5

assault rifles. The gray-clad-Afrikaners emptied their clips into the

line of assassins from eight meters away, blowing all four backward

against the great teak door.

"The elevator!" Smuts shouted. "Everyone get inside!

Move!"

While Hess's wheelchair whirred toward the open elevator, Prime Minister

Jalloud and Dr. Sabri shouted ri-antic Arabic and crawled along behind

him. Jalloud took a bullet in the left arm, but in his panic he barely

felt it. Smuts had looked back to make sure that Hess was safe inside

the elevator when a stunned Libyan.sat up with a wild cry and let off a

long burst of bullets in his direction.

"Body armor!" Smuts shouted. "Head shots only!"

Bullets ricocheted through the marble-floored reception hall. One

Libyan took Smuts's advice before the Afrikaners did; his teflon-coated

9mm slugs exploded the head of one of Smuts's marksmen like a

cantaloupe. The surviving Afrikaner avenged this loss, then scurried to

shelter behind a large rosewood chiffonier against the far wall.

Another Libyan darted outside to use the doorway as a firing position.

Two seconds later he staggered back into the great hall, blood spurting

from his throat. Smuts's Zulu driver appeared in the doorway with a

long hunting knife in his hand. The Zulu moved quickly to another

downed Arab, dispatched him with his knife, then fell to a long burst

from the surviving Libyan assassin. Smuts's marksman knocked down the

last Libyan as Smuts himself hustled Jalloud and the dazed physicist

into the cubicle where Hess waited.

"Stay here!" Smuts ordered his marksman. "I'll reinforce you soon."

The elevator door slid shut. Ten seconds later, the last Libyan to fall

opened his eyes, brought up his Uzi and fired a sustained burst from the

floor. Two slugs struck the Afrikaner guard in the head, killing him

instantly. Groaning in agony, Major Karami's last surviving assassin

began crawling toward the elevator.

From Hans and Ilse's bedroom the skirmish in the reception hall sounded

like the Battle of the Bulge. When the firing stopped, Hans shoved open

the door.

"Where do we go?" he asked. "Should we try to get out?

They're probably guarding the main doors."

Ilse poked her head outside the door. "There's nowhere to run, I told

you! We've only got onr, chance! Stern!"

Hans could think of no better plan. "All right," he said.

"But stay behind me, understand?"

Another burst of machine gun fire rattled in the reception hall.

"Behind you," Ilse murmured, wondering where Smuts might be holding

Stern.

Keeping close to the wall, they started down the corridor, away from the

sound of the gunfire.

High in the observatory tower, Pieter Smuts searched the ' airstrip

through a pair of powerful Zei@s field glasses. Dusk was falling fast.

He saw the wreckage of the JetRangers shot down last night spread out

over the eastern end of the runway. In the midst of the debris sat

Hess's own Lear, scorched black and missing most of its tail. There was

a single guard standing beneath the Libyan Leaijet.

No one else.

Where was the main body of the assault force? Where was Major Karami?

Behind Smuts, Hess nodded restlessly in his wheelchair.

He was trying desperately to fathom the reason for the Libyan soldiers'

attempt to kill their prime minister. Jalloud himself sat propped

against a bank of satellite recei moaning from the pain of his shattered

arm. Shaking in fear, Dr. Sabri ministered to him as best he could.

"No sign of Karami yet," Smuts said, pulling the field glasses away from

his eyes. "But it will be dark soon. That's when he'll come."

"VAo?" Hess murmured, still dazed by the suddenness of the attack.

"Yes," Jalloud groaned. "It is Karami. It must be."

Smuts glanced at the Vulcan gun. A trim young Afrikaner sat in the

firing cage, his alert eyes checking the fearsome weapon's night-vision

system. Three more gray-clad South Ahicans manned the radar and

communications gear.

"Why?" Hess cried indignantly. "Has Qaddafi gone mad?"

Smuts chuckled quietly. "He always has been. We knew this was a risk.

We needed more time."

14 Sir," interrupted a radar controller, "I show one aircraft

approaching from the north. He's very close. He must have been flying

ten feet off the veld!"

Smuts pressed a button on his console. "Attention unidenfified

aircraft," he said tersely. "You have entered restricted airspace.

Turn back now or you will be fired upon. Repeat, turn or be fired

upon."

"It must be the Air Zimbabwe jet," said the radar man, "An hour ago I

marked him as a civil airliner bound for -Jo'burg. He must have sneaked

off his flight path after he went into the ground clutter."

Smuts waved his hand to the Vulcan gunner. The Afrikaner donned his

targeting goggles and depressed two foot pedals. With a deep hydraulic

hum the entire turret rotated to face the airstrip.

Inside the approaching Yak-42, Major Ilyas Karami stood behind the

anxious pilot and listened indifferently to Smuts's flint-edged threats.

"Do they have anti-aircraft guns, Major?" the pilot asked.

"Shut up!" Karaini snapped. "You know what to say."

The pilot picked up his mike. "This is Air Zimbabwe Flight 132," he

said in a quavering voice. "We are in disWe have an avionics

malfunction. Do you read?"

-"MajorKarami,"crackledSmuts'svoice."Thisisyourfi-,W warning.

Turn back now or be shot out of the sky."

"Your mother fucks goats!" Karami bellowed.

"He knows who you are!" cried the pilot. "The mission's been

compromised! We're unarmed! We must turn back!"

Suddenly a brilliant line of tracer fire flashed.up through the gray

clouds. It passed high over the nose of the jet, then swung back and

forth, searching out the airborne intruder.

"Allah protect us!" the pilot wailed, instinctively beginning an

evasive maneuver. He had flown MiG fighters in combat, but to sit

helpless in an unarmed airliner was a new and terrifying experience

for,him.

Karami pulled a pistol from his hip holster and laid the barrel against

the pilot's temple. "Land this whore!" he shouted. "Now!"

"Where?" shrieked the pilot.

"I see the flares!" the copilot yelled. "Dive!"

Steeling his nerves, the pilot banked sharply and headed down toward a

line of flares laid by Jailoud's "bodyguards."

It would be a belly-flop landing, but he didn't care. Never in his life

had he wanted so badly to get on the ground.

Smuts cursed as he saw the chain Of green starbursts light up the center

line of the runway. "Shoot out the flares!" he screamed.

"They can't land without them!"

6,M y goggles are going crazy!" the gunner protested. "I can't see a

bloody thing!"

"Take them off! Shoot!"

The roar of the Vulcan blotted out everything. Hess covered his ears

and shouted something, but no one heard him.

The gunner made a valiant effort to extinguish the flares, but only

succeeded in knocking a few out of line. The main effect of the Vulcan

was to rip the surface of the newly laid asphalt to pieces.

Suddenly Hess gasped in horror. Dropping out of the sky like a great

prrhistoric bird was the Libyan Yak-42. It roared past the turret in

profile as it fell earthkvard.

"There they are!" Smuts yelled. "Fire! Fire!"

The gunner depressed his trigger. Scarlet tracer rounds arced from the

Vulcan's flaming barrels, reaching out for the black apparition ...

Suddenly the turret's elevator door hissed open. Smuts turned in

disbelief, then dived protectively across Hess's wheelchair.

Inside the elevator-Trapped on the floor with his back against the

wall-was the surviving Libyan assassi screamed a curse, raised his Uzi

and fired. Bullets sprayed wildly throughout the confined space,

hammering the polycarbonate windows and tearing through the faceplates

of sensitive electronic gear. One of the South African technicians took

a round in the back of the head and fell dead over his console. The

radar technician managed to draw his pistol and get off three shots

before a ricochet caught him in the neck.

And then there was silence. The Libyan had run out of ammunition.

Smuts heaved himself off of Hess, picked up the dead radar man's pistol,

and shot the Libyan twice through the face. It took him three more

seconds to realize the true significance of the silence. The Vulcan had

stopped firing! When Smuts whirled he saw why. His gunner had been

blinded by flying glass. Worse, the Vulcan's electronic targeting

system had been damaged beyond repair!

"The prime minister has been hit again!" Dr. Sabri cried.

Smuts took no notice of the physicist. He darted to the broad window.

The Libyan jet had landed safely! Through his field glasses he watched

fifty commandos spill onto the tarmac. He forced himself to stay calm.

Soon the Libyans would be at the edge of the shallow bolo that

surrounded the house. Inside the killing zone. He dropped his field

glasses and jerked the bleeding gunner from the Vulcan's operating

chair, then climbed in himself. He put his eyes to the visual aiming

goggles and scanned the airstrip. Beneath a wide door in the rear of

the Yak-42 he saw Arabs lowering some type of artillery piece from the

plane by means of winches. Smuts grinned like a demon and opened fire.

The armor-piercing bullets streaked across the Wash and raced toward the

plane.

But just as the tracer beam reached the laboring Arabs, Smuts released

the trigger. Destroying the jet might not be the smartest option in

these circumstances, he realized. With no means of escape, the Libyans

might fight twice as fiercely to take the house. As he watched the

Arabs beneath the plane, Smuts noticed something sitting about ten

meters behind the Yak-42's tail. It was a pickup truck.

What the hell is that for? he wondered. Then he knew. They'd brought

the truck to tow the big gun and to haul their stolen bomb from the

house to the plane! Smuts jammed his thumb down on the Vulcan's

trigger. It took longer than normal to acquire the Toyota using visual

aiming only, but once he did, the uranium-tipped slugs chewed the Toyota

into scrap metal in seconds.

The gas tank fireballed and set aflame three Libyans beneath the plane.

Smuts climbed out of the Vulcan d went to the panel of an switches that

controlled his Claymore mines. His only real worry was the heavy gun.

He would wait until the soldiers got it away from the plane; then he

would destroy men and machine together. He pressed a button on the

console and spoke crisply: "Bunker gunners, prepare to fire at will."

He turned to Hess. "We'd better raise the shields, sir. We @an't risk

letting even one man get irito the basement complex."

"The prime minister is dead!" howled Dr. Sabri from the floor.

Hess rolled his wheelchair over to the bloodied mound of robes lying

near the base of the Vulcan. Prime Minister Jalloud-minus the lower

part of his face-stared blankly upward at the steel roof of the turret.

Two of the Libyan's bullets had found him.

"The shields, sir," Smuts repeated, reaching for the appropriate button.

"Wait!" Hess ordered. "Frau Apfel is still in the outer triangle."

Smuts grimaced with forbearance. "As are Lieutenant Luhr, Linah, the

medical staff, the rest of the servants, and the Jew. Sir, we cannot

afford to wait."

The old man's frantic eyes searched the closed-circuit television

monitors above their heads. Although the cameras showed most of the

outer rooms, he saw no sign of Ilse.

"But ... Pieter, she saved my life! If we shut her outside@' "The

Libyans will never reach the house," Smuts assured him, his voice taut.

"But we must raise the shields, just in case."

"Very well," Hess said thickly. "Raise the shields."

Smuts pressed the button. Throughout Horn House, black anodized metal

shields rose up from the floor, blocking every door, staircase, and

window leading from the outer wings to the central complex. The

Afrikaner sighed with satisfaction.

Suddenly an explosion rocked the turret. Leaping to the window in

alarm, Smuts heard the distinctive crump of a mortar. Seconds later a

round fell just short of the outer wall of the house. Two more crashed

through the roof of the west wing. Horn House was on fire. As if urged

forward by d flames, twenty Libyan commandos started across the killing

zone at a fast run.

"Damn you, Karami!" Smuts shouted. He climbed back into the Vulcan and

opened up on the Libyan mortar position&. He quickly silenced one, but

a replacement immediately took its place. After forty seconds of

continuous firing, the Vulcan's drum magazine ran out.

Smuts screamed at one of his soldiers: "Hurry, -man! Load the fucking

gun!"

While the Libyan machine guns chattered and the mortar shells rained

down on the outer walls, Smuts scanned the dark rim of the bowl.

Just as he started to look away from the horizon, he saw the help he had

desperately hoped for. A hundred meters southeast of the Libyans, a

squat black shape stood silhouetted against the lesser shadow of the

falling night. A pair of halogen headlamps winked once, twice, then

died. The black shape crept slowly forward, hesitated again.

By God, that's Graaff, Smuts thought with elation. "It's Major Graaff!"

he cried. "He made it!" Smuts hammered his fists against the Vulcan in

triumph. If he knew Graaff, that armored car was only the spearhead of

a veritable army!

"Drum loaded!" shouted the man beneath the VulcanSmuts fired a

celebratory burst into the darkening sky, then he opened up on the

Libyans with a vengeance.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Poised on the ridge above Smuts's killing zone, Hauer watched the burst

of spectacular tracer fire lance up into the sky from the observatory

turret.

"That's itf' he shouted. "They think Major Graaff sent us!

Go!"

"Wait!" General Steyn called to the Armscor's driver.

"Look at that tracer fire, Hauer. That's a rotary cannon. This

vehicle's tough, but they could blow us to pieces in seconds with that

gun."

Hauer ripped his respirator aside. "General, you gave me tactical

command of this operation!"

"I'm sorry, but I can't let you sacrifice my men without any hope.

of success."

"'They think we're here to help them! We've got a clear path to the

house!"

General Steyn shook his head. "We need reinforcements."

Hauer stared in disbelief. He had come too far to be stopped here by

one man's lack of nerve. He struggled to keep his voice steady.

"General, my only son is down there.

And the longer we wait, the greater the chance that he will be executed.

If I must, I'll go down there alone and on foot."

"You won't have to, Captain."

Gadi Abrams's pledge was punctuated by the chunk of his assault rifle

being cocked. He did not point it at anyone, but the threat was plain

enough. General Steyn's hand moved toward the pistol at his hip.

Gadi ripped his gas mask off and gave the general a look of open

contempt.

"Israel fights," he said quietly. "Germany fights. What of South

Africa?"

General Steyn's red face whitened. He knew he was being manipulated,

but in front of his men the Israeli's challenge

iL

was simply too personal to ignore. He leaned forward into the driver's

compartment and shouted, "Over the top!"

Hans and Ilse dashed down the smoky corridor with towels held over their

faces. Horn House was burning, and the inner complex was sealed against

them. They had searched nearly every room in the outer triangle of the

house, yet they had seen no sign of Stern. Only panicked servants and

their children. Hans carried an attache case in his right hand; they

had brought it from Horn's study.

"Hurry!" Ilse called. "It's the only room we haven't checked!"

As they neared the hospital unit, she wondered why she had skipped it

before. But she knew: the nauseating memory of being strapped to e

X-ray table had simply been too horrible to face again. Now she had no

choice. She felt a jolt of terror as she eased open the infirmary.

door. The room was dark, but the smell of alcohol hit her immediately.

Signaling Hans to follow, she crept through the shadows toward the

interior doors. A crack of light shone beneath one of them.

Halfway to the door, she froze. The sound had stopped her.

The terrifying buzz cut short by the low, metallic clang. Ilse closed

her eyes in remembered terror, then, opened them again. She padded over

to a countertop and felt her way along it. "Here," she whispered,

closing her hand around the base of a heavy niicroscopeHans set down the

briefcase and took the scope.

Ilse turned the doorknob as quietly as she could. As she pushed on the

metal door, the sound came again. Buzz ...

clang. In the eerie amber glow of the X-ray machine's dials Ilse saw a

blond man standing with his back to her. He was peering through the

thick bubble window in the lead radiation screen.

"Are your balls getting warm yet, Jew?" the man called.

He cackled wildly.

Ilse gasped.

The figure whirled.

"You," Hans murmured.

Luhr wore his police uniform, the green trousers tucked into his

spit-polished boots. He looked first at Hans, then at Ilse. He laughed

derisively. "You stubborn Arschloch. Don't you know when to quit?"

He dropped the cable trigger.

This time Funk isn't here to stop me."

"He's the one, Hans," Ilse said hoarsely. "The one who cut the

policeman's throat in Berlin."

"That's right," Luhr said with a laugh. "Just like slaughtering a

fucking pig."

"Steuben," said Hans, his voice trembling. He felt his throat constrict

with unspeakable hatred. He looked down at the microscope in his hand,

then let it crash to the floor.

"Frau Apfel? " cried a weak voice. "Is that you?"

Ilse darted around the lead shield. Jonas Stern lay pale and bloodied

beneath the leather straps that had bound her just two days ago. "Hans!"

she'cried. "Help me!"

Hans heard nothing. He watched Luhr's lips tighten into a thin, pale

line as he dropped his shoulders like a boxer and moved out from the

X-ray machine. Hans's nerves tingled like live wires. Luhr feinted

with his right hand and kicked Hans high in the chest. Hans took the

blow, staggered, steadied himself. Luhr jabbed with his left hand. Hans

did nothing to block it. He felt his right cheek tear, but he ignored

the pain. A crashing roundhouse struck him on the side of the head. He

absorbed the shock, but this time he raised his fists and moved forward.

Backpedaling away, Luhr fired off a right that drilled into Hans's eye

socket.

Hans roared in pain, but he shook the tears out of his eyes and lunged

blindly forward.

As Luhr pivoted to evade him, he felt his back collide with the

faceplate of the X-ray machine. At that instant Hans lashed out. His

fist moxied from his side to the bridge of Luhr's nose without seeming

to cross the space between.

One moment Luhr's face was pale with fury, the next it was covered in

blood. Hans had broken his nose. Luhr screamed in agony, then tried to

bull his way out of the corner. Hans stood him up against the machine

and hit him three times fast in the solar plexus. Luhr sank to the

floor. Hans tasted blood in his mouth. He picked up the heavy

microscope and held it high above his head. His arm shivered from the

weight. One blow would crush Luhr's skull like an eggshell.

"This is for Weiss," he muttered.

"Wait!" rasped a male voice.

Hans turned slowly, the microscope still high above his head. He saw a

tall, wiry man wearing sweat-soaked trousers and an undershirt leaning

unsteadily on Ilse's shoulder.

"Not that way," said Stern, his voice strangely flat.

Luhr lay gulping for air at Hans's feet. Slowly he got onto then turned

ha( and stared at the tanned stranger. The beaked nose ...

weathered, hawklike face. "I've seen you," Hans said.

"Yes, Sergeant," Stern replied. "You have. Now pick that man up and

put him on the table."

"We don't have time for this!" Ilse cried. "The house is burning!

We have to find a way through those shields! A few exposures won't even

hurt him!"

"Put that animal on the table!"

Hans stunned Luhr with a kick to the head, then he hoisted him onto his

shoulder and hauled him around to the X-ray table. As soon as he dumped

him there, Ilse strapped him down with the leather restraints.

"Get out!" Stern barked. "Both of you!"

Hans watched fascinated as the Israeli lifted the broken microscope from

the floor and smashed it down onto the cable trigger Luhr had dropped.

"Shut off the power," Stern commanded.

Ilse found the ON/OFF switch and flipped it. Stern fiddled with the

tangled mess in big hands for a few moments, then dropped it and stepped

up to the bubble window in the shield.

"Turn the power back on."

Ilse obeyed. The entire room seemed to vibrate for four seconds; then

it went still. Luhr's scream of terror rent the acrid air. Again the

X-ray unit fired. The indescribable buzz ... clang chilled Ilse's

heart. Stern had permanently closed the circuit in the cable trigger.

The X-ray tube would continue to fire, recharge, and fire again until

someone finally shut off the power or a fuse burned out. Luhr shrieked

like a man trapped in a pit of snakes.

Hans looked up at Stern's lined face. He saw nothing written there. Not

satisfaction, not hatred. Nothing at all.

"Let's go," said Stern, pulling his eyes away from Luhr's struggling

body.

Ilse held up the black briefcase Hans had been carrying.

"We've got the Spandau papers. We found them in Horn's study.

The other book, too."

"The Zinoviev notebook?' Ilse nodded. "Everything."

"Good girl." Stern grabbed her arm and hustled her into the hall.

Hans backed slowly out of the room, his eyes still glued to the bubble

window in the lead shield. The X-ray machine continued to fire in

four-second intervals.

Four hundred meters of open ground separated the ridge of the bowl from

Horn House. The Armscor had covered barely a hundred when a fierce

hammering assaulted Hauer's ears. They were taking fire from the Libyan

machine-gun positions on the ridge behind them. Captain Barnard was

sitting in the Armscor's shotgun seat. Hauer grabbed his shoulder.

"Can you raise the tower on that radio, Captain?"

"I can try."

"Do it! Tell them to give us cover!"

Pulling off his helmet and respirator, Bernard began working through the

frequencies on the radio. Hauer glanced back into the crew compartment.

At the Arrnscor's firing slits, the black-clad team of commandos worked

their R5

carbines like men on an assembly line. One man's head and shoulders

were thrust into the tiny turret mounted atop the Arinscor; he swiveled

the .30 caliber machine gun between the Libyan positions with deadly

accuracy. Yet Libyan bullets still pounded the vehicle's armor. Hauer

turned again and watched Horn House growing larger in the Armscor's

reinforced windshield: 250 meters and closing.

Suddenly an alien voice began speaking inside the vehicle.

"Phoenix to Graaff ... Phoenix to Graaff ... Do you read?" The tension

in Pieter Smuts's voice was like a cable stretched near to breaking.

"Phoenix to Graaff! Where are your reinforcements?"

"Answer him!" Hauer told Captain Barnard. "Tell him Graaff's manning

our turret gun!"

Hauer looked out at the house again: 160 meters. He gave Bernard an

encouraging punch on the shoulder; then he ducked back into the crew

compartment to confer with General Steyn.

The instant Hauer left the compartment, the driver lashed out with his

elbow and struck Captain Barnard in the side of the head. The Arrnscor

lurched to a halt 140 meters from Horn House. Hauer flew forward and

crashed against a steel bulkhead; only his helmet prevented him from

cracking his skull. The driver snatched u the radio microphone and be,

p gan transmitting rapidly in Afrikaans: "Arinscor to Phoenix! Armscor

to Phoenix! It's a tri( Trap!

Trap! Major Graaff isn't here -- -" Dazed, Hauer lunged back into the

driver's compartment.

He did not understand Afrikaans, but he recognized a warning.

Taking hold of the driver's head, he wrenched with all his might, hoping

to snap the man's cervical vertebrae. The driver went suddenly stiff,

then limp.

"Take the wheel!" Hauer shouted at Captain BamardWhile Hauer dragged

the driver back into the crew compartment, Captain Barnard scrambled

into the driver's seat and wrestled the Armscor into gear.

The vehicle lurched forward, back, then began rolling toward the house

again.

Hauer laid the senseless driver against the Armscor's side hatch and

tore off his own respirator. "Another traitor!" he yelled to General

SteynGeneral Steyn ripped off his gas mask. His face was flushed with

anger and disbelief. At his feet the traitor squirmed and flung his

arms upward. In a fit of rage Gadi kicked open the Armscor's side hatch

and shoved the driver out onto the veld. By the time Gadi shut the

hatch, a Libyan machine gunner had riddled the man's body with .30

caliber slugs.

The Armscor shivered as another Libyan machine gunner locked onto the

tail of the armored car. Hauer grabbed General Steyn's arm. "I don't

know if the tower heard that warning, but-" The sudden, steel-ripping

roar of the Vulcan obliterated both Hauer's voice and the rattle of the

Libyan machine guns.

Hauer leapt up to a firing slit. His stomach rolled as he watched the

blazing tracer line march toward the nose of the Armscor. He had seen

similar guns on American tank-killing planes on maneuvers in Germany.

The rotary guns mounted in their stubby snouts spewed out 5000

depleted-uranium slugs per minute-enough to turn a T-72 tank into a

burning hulk in seconds.

Captain Barnard swerved to avoid the oncoming tracer beam, but the

Vulcan gunner simply adjusted his fire.

Barnard screamed as the shells churned up the earth directly in front of

the Armscor. Then suddenly-miraculously-the fiery stream of death

winked out.

"He's jammed!" Hauer shouted. "Go! Go!"

The Annscor surged forward. Like a hailstorm from hell, slugs pounded

the vehicle from every side as Smuts's bunker gunners opened up from

their concealed positions. Hauer peered out through a gun port, trying

to pinpoint the source of the fire.

"Bunkers!" he shouted. "They're dug into the hill!"

From a slit on the Annscor's right side, Gadi fired his R5

assault rifle in careful, three-round bursts, aiming for the muzzle

flashes of the bunker guns. "Momser!" he shouted, but no one heard

him. The noise inside the Armscor had reached a deafening level.

Hauer was leaning into the driver's compartment to urge Captain Barnard

forward when Pieter Smuts detonated the first string of Claymore mines.

Two Claymores exploded directly beneath the Armscor, hurling the

eighteen tons of hardened steel into the air like a child's toy. The

vehicle tottered on its three right wheels, then crashed back onto all

six and continued toward the house. Another string of Claymores

exploded in front of the Armscor; hundreds of steel balls scythed into

its hull, shattering the polycarbonate windshield. Captain Barnard

screamed in pain, but the Arrnscor kept rolling.

Hauer's mind raced: they still had more than a hundred meters to cover.

The mines could be handled, but not under the fire of the tower gun. If

the gunner cleared his weapon in the next thirty seconds, they didn't

stand a chance. The Vulcan had to be silenced.

"Stop!" he roared. "Turn this thing sideways and stop!"

Captain Barnard-not enthusiastic about hitting any more mines

himself-gladly obeyed. Hauer turned back to General Steyn and his men.

"Pour it in! I'm going Out!"

One of the masked men jumped down from a firing slit, ripped off his

respirator and grabbed Hauer's arm. It was Gadi. "If you go out there,

you're dead!" he yelled.

Hauer jerked his arm free. "Just keep those bunker guns off me!"

While Gadi stared, Hauer snatched up his sniper rifle and unlatched the

Armscor's side hatch. The full din of battle filled the vehicle.

Holding the Steyr-Mannlicher close against his body, Hauer took a deep

breath, and leaped outside.

He hit the ground hard and rolled beneath the huge vehicle, praying no

one had seen him. He got to one knee. There was almost enough room for

him to stand beneath the Arrnscor's undercarriage. The six giant wheels

provided a wall from behind which he could fire in relative safc Bracing

his right knee behind one of the giant tires, raised the Steyr to his

shoulder and sighted in on the tower.

The last light of dusk had almost gone. He had no nightvision scope,

but the standard Kahles-Helios ZF69 optical scope was excellent.

Even in near darkness it brought the tower in nicely.

When Hauer saw the turret in detail, he groaned. At 120 meters,

accuracy wasn't the problem. With the Steyr, he could fire ten bullets

into a sixteen-inch circle from six times that distance. The problem

was the "glass" he saw for-ming part of the turret's circular wall. It

would undoubtedly be made of transparent composite armor. Through the

scope he searched for a weakness suited to his weapon. The turret

rotates, he realized, noticing the huge gears mounted beneath the

observatory dome. But I can't damage those gears. Twelve seconds later

Hauer spotted his chance. Just where the Vulcan's six barrels protruded

from the "glass," a narrow port had been cut so that the gun could be

traversed vertically. Hauer felt the hair on the back of his neck rise.

He could see men working frantically to clear the jammed weapon.

He laid his cross hairs on the tiny port and chambered a round into the

breech. The Steyr accepted a ten-round magazine, but like most sniper

rifles it was bolt-action. He would get one perfect chance, then nine

snap shots. He took a deep breath and pressed his b(>dy into the huge

tire that shielded him. He felt the reassuring weight of the rifle on

his shoulder, the wooden stock cool and familiar against his stubbled

cheek. The sound of the battle grew dim and distant as he focused on

his target, melding his eye with the tiny crack between the Vulcan's

barrels and the armored glass. In his mind, the coin-sized target

expanded into a saucer, then a dinner plate ...

His finger settled firmly on the trigger.

Squeeze ...

The instant before Hauer fired, a blast of flame erupted from the

Vulcan's spinning barrels. Tracer rounds arced out toward the rim of

the bowl. The turret began to rotate ...

He felt his shot disintegrating. His shoulder twitched, his stomach

heaved in sudden confusion. All around he heard the desperate rattle of

guns firing at the moving turret, all to no avail. The dazzling beam

marched from position to position, silencing one gun after another. He

felt a sudden surge of hope. The gunner was ignoring the Armscor! He

thinks we're out of the fight! Because we're not moving, he thinks his

bunker guns stopped us! Hauer searched swiftly for a shot. With the

turret rotating, hitting the tiny gun port was out of the question.

Instead he picked a spot a few centimeters to the left of the Vulcan's

barrel-the spot he estimated the gunner would be sitting behind.

He fired.

Nothing happened. His bullet struck the very millimeter of glass he had

aimed for, but the transparent armor was simply too strong. How many

perfect shots would it take to drill through the polycarbonate?

Like an automaton Hauer worked the bolt-action rifle, tracking his

moving target.

Fire! Eject shell, close bolt, fire! The transparent wall shuddered as

Hauer's slugs relentlessly hammered the same single square of armor. Six

shots ... seven ... eight ... Fire!

Eject shell, close bolt, fire! He jerked out the empty magazine and

loaded his spare.

Around him the battle raged on. The Vulcan whined, the bunker guns

chattered, the hull of the armored car rattled like a tin can in a

hailstorm. He smelled the burning phosphorus of tracer rounds as they

streaked across the field in brilliant, lethal arcs. Suddenly, with a

strange shiver, Hauer sensed the Vulcan's tracer beam stagger somewhere

off to his right. He jerked his eye away from the scope and scanned the

dark field. Christ! The gunner had spotted his muzzle flashes!

His mouth went dry as the Vulcan's angle of fire lowered toward him.

Every fiber of his being screamed, "Run!" He shut his eyes against the

fear, then forced himself to open them again and put his right eye back

to the scope. Somewhere out there, he thought fiercely, is the man who

is trying to kill me. He could feel the Vulcan's slugs hitting the

ground, thousands in each burst, like the first shuddering waves of an

earthquake. The roar seemed to swallow up,the very air.

And the light ... it was mesmerizing, like some lunatic laser beam.

The tracer beam slowed as it neared the Armscor. Smuts wanted to be

sure he did not miss. In that moment of hesitation Hauer steadied his

twitching muscles, fixed his eye upon the tiny square of armored glass

he had spent his first magazine against, and opened fire.

Pieter Smuts found his mark first. In the first two seconds of contact,

the Vulcan slammed two hundred shells into the Armscor's tail, shearing

off a quarter-ton of hardened si armor.

The vehicle shuddered like a great wounded beast; black smoke poured

into the air. Suddenly the Armscor's turbocharged V-8 diesel roared to

life. In a last frantic bid for survival Captain Barnard floored the

accelerator. The armored car bolted forward like a wild bronco, leaping

out of the Vulcan's line of fire and leaving Hauer exposed on the

ground.

Stunned, kneeling alone on the dark plain, Hauer raised his rifle and

pressed his eye to the scope. Dirt showered over him as the Vulcan's

bullets thundered after the Armscor just meters away. There is nothing

here, said a voice in his brain, nothing but you and the man behind that

gun ...

He fired.

His bullet starred the glass.

He fired again.

The tracer beam jinked away from, the Armscor and moved back toward him.

Too late Smuts had realized where the real danger lay.

With the Vulcan gun thundering down upon him, Dieter Hauer actually

closed his eyes as he fired his last shot. The tracer beam stuttered,

flashed again ... winked out.

The spell was broken. Hauer scrambled to his feet and dashed after the

Armscor. Gadi Abrams dragged him back through the hatch.

"You crazy German bastard!"

The Armscor was filling rapidly with oily black smoke.

"Everybody shoot!" Hauer shouted. "Clear a path through the mines!

Detonate everything in our path!"

One Claymore exploded harmlessly nearby, but no more.

The Armscor had reached the section of ground where Burton's Colombians

had been slaughtered the night before. The mines here had been spent,

no replacements laid. The Annscor roared forward and reached Horn House

in twenty seconds flat.

Captain Barnard pulled the vehicle across the main entrance like a

barricade. Instantly two South African CT troops thrust shotguns

through the ports and blasted the hinges off the teakwood door. When

Hauer shoved open the side hatch, he was staring straight into the

marble reception hall where Major Karami's assassins lay dead.

"Move out!" he shouted.

"Wait!" General Steyn was up in the driver's compartment, leaning over

Captain Barnard. Hauer remembered the young man had taken some glass in

the face when the windshield shattered, but as he peered over the

general's beefy shoulder he realized that Captain Barnard was suffering

from a mortal wound.

"Where is it, son?" General Steyn asked softly.

"My chest ... sir."

Carefully the general probed the young man's torso.

"I thought he was wearing a vest," Hauer said quietly.

General Steyn pulled a bloodstained hand from beneath Barnard's right

arm. "There's a splinter of polycarbonate sticking out of him," he

whispered. "Right where the vest stops at the underarm. God only knows

how deep it went in." He turned back to Captain Barnard. "Can you

move, lad?"

The young man tried to smile, then coughed in agony. "It feels like the

damned thing is buried in my heart. Like a sword ... swear to God. Go

on."

General Steyn's neck flushed red. "Nonsense, lad, you're coming with

us."

"Don't move me, sir," Captain Barnard gurgled. "Please don't."

General Steyn looked ready to twist off the head of the man who had

caused this pain. Setting his mouth in a grim line, he drew a .45

caliber pistol from Captain Barnard's belt and placed it carefully in

the young man's hand. "If it gets too bad," he said tersely, "you know

what to do." The general swallowed the lump in his throat. "I'll be

back for you, Barnard. You have my solemn word. Stand fast."

General Steyn turned and squeezed his broad shoulders back through the

door of the driver's compartment. His bluff face was swollen with

emotion. He looked hard into Hauer's eyes. "If it's a war they want,"

he said, his voice trembling, "then it's a bloody war they'll get." He

-drew his own pistol and jerked back the slide.

"Into the house, lads!"

Pieter Smuts staggered away from the Vulcan and wiped the blood out of

his eyes with his shirtsleeve. A dozen slivers of armored glass had

been driven into his face by Hauer's slugs. He crouched beside Hess's

wheelchair.

"They've breached the outer walls, sir. I don't know who's inside that

armored car, but they must be friends of the Jew."

Hess grimaced. "Who could it be but Captain Hauer?" he wheezed.

"I told you never to underestimate an old German soldier. Hauer

obviously outsmarted Major Graaff! Damn the man! A German! A German

attacking me!"

"We can still stop them, sir."

"How?"

"If I order our bunker gunners to cease firing, the Libyans will advance

and kill anyone left alive outside the shields."

"True," Hess said thoughtfully. "But then the Libyans will be inside

the house."

"But not inside the shields. Not near you-not near the weapons."

Hess hesitated, realizing that the order would mean certain death for

Ilse, Linah, and all of the servants. "Do it," he said finally.

Smuts pressed a button on his console and issued the order.

Outside, the rattle of the bunker guns stuttered, then died.

In the eerie silence, Major Ilyas Karami ordered three quarters of his

remaining commando force down the slope.

The rest he held back to transport the howitzer. The battle was not yet

over, and he did not intend to lose it through overconfidence.

The prize was too great.

Alan Burton rolled back over the lip of the Wash and slid down the muddy

wall into darkness. Juan Diaz lay halfburied in the mud-and-bramble

shelter Burton had built at the bottom of the ravine.

Diaz's wounds had developed an unpleasant odor, and his eyes were pale

yellow slits. Burton leaned close to his ear.

"I've got our return tickets, lad. Can you make it?"

"si, " Diaz whispered.

"There's a big jet up there, an airliner, but it's too heavily guarded.

There is also a lovely little Lear that looks like a bloody Turkish

brothel on the inside. That's our bird."

Grunting in pain, the little Cuban heaved himself to his knees, pushing

away Burton's helping hand. "Let's go, English," he rasped, forcing a

grin. "Not enough senoritas on this beach."

It took the two men ten minutes to climb out of the Wash and cover the

eighty meters to the Libyan Learjet. Burton had to carry Diaz the last

third of the way. Instead of putting the Cuban on board the jet,

however, Burton trudged to the edge of the asphalt runway and dropped

him there. Diaz yelped as the pain of his wounds hit him.

"Sorry, sport," Burton panted. "But this is the safest spot for the

time being."

"What?" Diaz exclaimed, finally guessing Burton's intent.

"But the plane is right there!"

"Sorry, lad. I told you if I got half a chance I'd have another go at

the house. When those rug-peddlers started shooting, they gave me just

that. From my point of view, sport, unless I do the job I was sent here

to do, that jet isn't an escape route for me. It's just a taxi back to

purgatory.

Diaz muttered a stream of Cuban profanity.

"Come along now, Juan boy, Crawl into that brush over there.

Wouldn't want those blighters over there to catch you out here alone."

Burton pointed up the runway to where Major Karami and his men struggled

in the dusk. "Cut your balls off with a bloody scimitar, they would."

When Diaz had settled himself in the tall grass, Burton said, "I know

you can reach that jet on your own, sport. I wouldn't want you to leave

without me. You wouldn't do that, would you?"

The Cuban pulled a wry face. "Yesterday I would have," he admitted.

"But last night you saved my life, English.

Cubano don't forget that, eh? You go play hero. Diaz be here when you

get back."

Burton took a last look the Lear-his solitary means of escape-then he

tossed Diaz his wristwatch and gave him a roguish grin. "If I'm not

back in forty minutes, sport, it's bon voyage to you with my best

wishes."

Diaz shook his head and lay back in the scrub grass. Burton unslung his

submachine gun and started back toward Horn House.

Hauer charged out of the Arinscor and into the marble reception hall

with the South Africans on his heels. Gadi brought up the rear.

The young Israeli ran straight to the corpses.

As

recogni them." "

"Look, said General Steyn, pointing to the rectangular black shield

blocking the main elevator. "That must be the way to the gun tower."

"And the bomb," Gadi murmured.

Two CT soldiers aimed their shotguns at the shield.

"Captain!" called a voice from the shadows to their right.

Hauer felt his heart thump. Peering across the great entrance hall, he

spied a figure against the darkness of a corridor to his right. It was

Hans.

"Gadi!" called a hoarse voice.

"Uncle? Where are you?"

Stern stepped into the brighter light of the reception hall.

Hans and Ilse stood in the shadows behind him.

"Jonas!" bellowed General Steyn. "You've got some bloody explaining to

do!"

Gadi started across the floor, but Stern signaled him to hold back.

Hauer watched in puzzlement as Hans slipped out of the corridor and

raced around the edge of the great hall like a runner circling a track.

When he skidded to a stop, Hauer drew back in shock. Hans's hair, face,

and clothing were covered with blood. He looked like he,had dived on a

grenade.

'Hans! What happened? Were you shot?"

"No time to explain!" Only the whites of Hans's eyes showed through the

blood. "We're dead unless we can get through those shields. We've got

a plan, but I can't explain it now. I want you to find two rooms with

windows facing the inner part of the house. There are cameras in some

rooms, not in others. Find a room without a camera. If my plan works,

the shields should come down for a few moments-just long enough for you

to get through. Skirt the wall when you go-there's a camera by that

elevator."

Hans squeezed Hauer's arm hard; then he sprinted back toward Stern.

Hauer looked questioningly@ at Gadi. The young Israeli shrugged and

started toward the hallway on their left. Hauer and the South Africans

followed.

High in the turret, Pieter Smuts watched Major Karami's commandos charge

across the bowl. In a matter of minutes Hauer and his men would be

slaughtered. Smuts smiled. His protective shields probably had claw

marks on them by now.

It was a pity about Linah, of course, but servants were replaceable.

"Pieter!" Hess cried.

When Smuts whirled, he saw his horrified master pointing at one of the

closed-circuit TV monitors. Ilse Apfel filled the screen. Her face and

clothing were smeared with blood, and she held an Uzi submachine gun in

her hands. She screamed silently at the monitor for help. Then she

turned away from the camera and fired a burst from the Uzi.

"That's the elevator camera!" Hess cried. "Open the audio link!"

Instantly the sound of gunfire filled the turret. Ilse turned back

toward the camera and screamed. "In the name of God, help us!

They're going to kill us! Herr Horn, please! My husband is wounded!"

At that moment Hans staggered backward into the camera's field of view

and fired a burst from an Uzi he had seized from a dead Libyan.

He too was covered in blood.

Both the blood and the Uzis had been provided by Major Karami's dead

assassins. Hans and Ilse had rolled in the bloody pools of the

reception hall until they looked like walking casualties.

"For God's sake, Pieter!" Hess pleaded. "Those are Germans down

there!"

Smuts shook his head angrily. "We can't risk it, sir. Hauer and his

men could already be inside the house."

"Can you drop only the elevator shield?"

"No, sir. It's all or none. That's the way they're designed."

"Then drop them all for five seconds!"

Smuts clenched his fists. Like most Germans, his master could be

infuriatingly sentimental. In the same way a man who sent millions to

the ovens could love dogs, Smuts thought. For the first time since he

began serving Hess, the Afrikaner felt mutiny in his heart. "I think

it's a trick, sir! I see no Arabs!"

Ilse whirled back to the camera, her blue eyes wild with terror.

"In the name of God, Herr Horn, save me! Save my baby!

Hess's knuckles went white on the arms of his wheelchair.

"I don't see Hauer anywhere," he said quietly, his eyes scanning the

other monitors.

"Not all the bedrooms have cameras!"

Hess's face contorted with rage. "Those are Germans dying down there,

Pieter! She saved my life last night "But-"

"Do it!"

The Afrikaner slammed his right fist down on the console.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Gadi swung himself through the bedroom window even before the black

shield had fully retracted. Hauer leaped after him and landed on the

cobblestones of a small courtyard. To his right he saw the South

African CT troops helping General Steyn to his feet.

"We've got to find my uncle!" Gadi cried.

General Steyn pointed to a large wooden door across the courtyard and

gave a circular flick of his wrist. The shotgun-armed CT troops blew

the hinges off the door. Silently they sprinted through the opening and

somersaulted into defensive positions, the others close behind them.

Hauer was the last man through. Just before he stepped over the

threshold, he realized that the firing outside the house had stopped.

He puzzled over this for a moment, then forgot it as he followed Gadi

and the South Africans down a short corridor and into a huge, windowless

room. Several large crates were stacked in the middle of the floor. A

forklift had been parked in front of a door in the far wall.

Suddenly, from a hallway to Hauer's right, Stern and Ilse came running

into the room. Sensing danger, Hauer waved them back, but before he

could call out, two men wearing Wehrtnacht gray uniforms rose up from

behind the forklift and opened fire with automatic weapons,.

Stern dived to the floor, pulling Ilse down with him. Gadi returned

fire. As the bullets flew, Hans came pelting out of the corridor,

skidded, then backpedaled into the hall.

"Ilse!" he shouted. "Crawl back here!"

Ilse looked back, but Stern had thrown himself on top of her.

Hauer and General Steyn scrambled back into the hall behind them.

The South African CT troops reacted differently. The highly trained

commandos considered their

ia

Kevlar body armor an offensive weapon. While one soldier fired covering

bursts, the other loaded a tear-gas canister into his shotgun and fired

at the forklift. Stinging vapor fogged the far side of the room.

Without even waiting to hear a cough the South Africans charged, firing

as they ran.

"Clear! Clear!" came a shout in Afrikaans.

"That's it!" said General Steyn. "Let's go!"

At the forklift, Hauer hugged Hans and Ilse fiercely, but there was no

time to speak. At their feet lay the bodies of Smuts's men, cut to

pieces by the South African commandos. The CT troops had already

secured the stairwell beyond the door. The steel steps led both up and

down. Leaning out over the rail, Hauer looked up and counted six

flights of stairs that ended on a wide landing three floors above.

Below, the stairs disappeared into darkness.

"The bomb's downstairs," said Stern. "A hundred meters down.

That's our objective."

"But the enemy's up there," Hauer argued, pointing with his sniper

rifle.

"They don't matter," said Stern. "He doesn't matter."

"Who?" asked General Steyn. "Horn?"

Hauer cut his eyes at Stern. "If we don't neutralize that tower, we

won't be able to do a damned thing about your bomb even if we find it."

Stern laughed softly. "How long do you think those shields will hold

those Arabs back, Hauer? Five minutes?

Ten? Horn will probably lower them himself, so that the Arabs can kill

us for him."

"Scheisse! " Hauer cursed. "That's why the firing stopped!

They're already coming, Stern. We've got to get control of that turret

gun. You can do what you want, but I'm taking the South Africans with

me."

Without hesitation Stern and Gadi started down the stairs.

Hauer, General Steyn, and the South Africans started up, with Hans and

Ilse bringing up the rear. On the top-floor landing Hauer put his ear

against the green metal door and listened. He thought he heard voices

on the other side, but he couldn't be sure. Backing away, he saw the

South Africans preparing to blow down this door just as they had the one

in the courtyard. He signaled them to wait. Taking hold of the

aluminum knob, he applied a very slight circular pressure.

The knob turned.

He glanced back at the South Africans, nodded toward the door, held up a

fist, and shook his head. The CT trvups gut the message: no grenades.

Hauer licked his dry lips beneath his respirator. Then he raised his

leg and kicked open the door.

Five men-Hess, Smuts, and three of Smuts's security troops-looked up in

stunned surprise. After one frozen moment, Smuts's men made the mistake

of going for their guns.

General Steyn's troops instantly killed all three with shotgun blasts.

Smuts himself did not xesist. He stepped calmly away from the

observation window and set down his field glasses.

No one seemed to know what to say. General Steyn stepped from behind

Hauer and looked down at the wizened old man in the wheelchair.

"Thomas Horn," he said rather pompously, "in the name of the Republic of

South Africa, I place you under arrest."

Still wearing his black eyepatch, Hess looked up with contempt.

The general cleared his throat. "You are Thomas Horn?"

"I am not," Hess said with disdain. "I am Rudolf Hess.

And you, General, are a traitor to your nation and to your race."

General Steyn's mouth fell open. "You're who?"

"Ignore him, General," Hauer snapped. "He's mad as a sewer rat."

Hauer turned to Smuts. "Why aren't you firing on the Arabs?"

Smuts wiped his still-bleeding face on his sleeve and smirked.

"They'll kill you too," Hauer pointed out.

"Probably," Smuts conceded. "But they might not."

Hauer moved to the bullet-starred polycarbonate wall and looked out.

Half the Libyan commandos had already crossed the bowl, and more were

coming-black phantoms gliding across the moonlit earth. Hauer looked

back and studied the cage that controlled the Vulcan gun.

"General Steyn, can your men operate that gun?"

At a nod from the general, one of the black-suited South Africans pulled

off his gas mask, climbed into the cage, and opened fire. The noise was

shattering. The gunner knocked down a dozen Libyans in less than twenty

seconds. When Smuts's bunker gunners saw the Vulcan resume firing, they

assumed that their chief had gone back over to the offensive, and they

added their machine guns to the fray.

Pieter Smuts eased his hand toward the console that controlled the

shields on the ground floor.

"Touch that and you're dead," Hauer warned.

Smuts's hand lingered over the switch until Hauer backed him off with a

flick of his rifle. The Vulcan thundered on, vomiting shells and flame

into the darkness.

"Listen to me!" Hess said, struggling to make himself heard.

"You ..." He pointed to Hauer. "You're German. In the name of the

Fatherland, join me!" The old man looked around in sudden confusion.

"Where is Frau Apfel?"

As if on cue, Ilse stepped through the door. Hans had held her outside

until he was certain the skirmish in the turret had ended.

"She understands!" Hess wailed. "You should all join-" At that instant

the first shell from Major Karmni's howitzer struck the tower.

The explosion rocked the entire structure on its foundations.

"Everyone out!" Hauer shouted. "Move!"

Pieter Smuts darted across the room, lifted Hess out of his wheelchair,

and carried him bodily into the stairwell. Everyone else hurried after

them. Only the South African manning the Vulcan remained in the turret,

probing for the howitzer through the smoke below. The group had reached

the second-floor landing when the second howitzer shell tore through the

turret window and exploded, incinerating man and machinery in a blinding

fireball. Stunned by the explosion above, everyone looked to Hauer for

instructions.

"Follow him!" Hauer shouted, pointing down at Smuts.

Even with Hess clinging to his neck, the Afrikaner.had already managed

to reach the ground floor. General Steyn and his men started after

them, but Hans and Ilse hung back.

Hans grabbed Hauer's arm. "Come with us!" he begged.

"You'll die here!"

Hauer pointed through a narrow slit-window on the second-floor landing.

With the Vulcan out of,action, a strong Libyan force had begun charging

toward the burning house.

And more dangerous, the big howitzer was actually being towed across the

bowl under human power. Its progress was slow but steady.

"Find Stern," Hauer told Hans. "There's nothing you can do here.

The basement is the only safe place now. I'll buy you all the, time I

can. Hurry!"

When Hans hesitated, Hauer shoved him down the stairs.

Hauer felt a startling surge of emotion when Ilse stood up on her toes,

threw her arms around his neck, and kissed him on the cheek. She drew

back and looked into his eyes.

"Thank you for coming for us," she said. "You are a good father."

She smiled once, squeezed Hauer's arm, then took Hans's hand and hurried

down the steel steps into the darkness.

Hauer smashed the narrow window with the butt of his sniper rifle and

thrust the long barrel through. He rolled his shoulders once, took a

deep, breath, and put his eye to the scope. The Libyan infantry were

the closest targets, but he ignored them. He had to slow down the

artillery piece. He lined up the reticle, laid his forefinger against

the Steyr's trigger, and squeezed.

He knocked down four men in eight seconds. Down on the ground, the big

howitzer slowed, then stopped as the men towing it scrambled for cover.

Hauer began searching out the infantry, hearing as he did a calm voice

in his head: Running target, fifty meters ... fire! Eject shell, close

bolt, fire! As he picked off the commandos one by one, he wondered how

long he had before the howitzer team pinpointed his muzzle flashes and

decided to redecorate the second level of the tower with a 105mm shell.

Alan Burton lay prone on the rim of the bowl, watching the Libyans cross

the killing zone. He had seen the howitzer destroy the rotating gun

turret, and he had almost decided to try to cross the bowl himself when

he saw the Libyans falling to Hauer's rifle. At least somebody up there

knows what he's doing, Burton thought with admiration. Clearly he would

have to find an alternate route into the house.

The renewed chatter of the bunker guns gave him the idea. He peered

through the darkness at the nearest one, a concrete pillbox dug into the

shallow slope forty meters to his right. All he could see was a narrow

horizontal slit with a flashing machine gun barrel protruding from it.

The bunkers serve the tower, he thought. They're permanent

installations. So how are they supplied? From the sur ce?...

.la No from the house. But how?

"Tunnels," he said aloud. "Bloody tunnels."

Crouching low, Burton crab-walked around the rim of the bowl until he

lay directly over the concrete bunker. Then he pulled three grenades

from his web belt and laid them on

-7

sporadically, searching out targets in the gloom. Pulling the pin on

the first grenade, Burton swung himself down, lobbed it through the

narrow firing slit, and rolled back up onto the lip of the bowl.

The explosion shook the ground beneath him. The machine gun fell

silent. Gray smoke poured from the firing slit.

Grabbing the other two grenades, Burton dropped down in front of the

bunker. One meter below the slit he noticed a padlocked steel handle

set in the bunker's grass-covered face. Escape hatch, he thought.

Arming another grenade, he jammed it against the lock and hopped back

onto the roof of the bunker.

The blast tore the hatch right off its hinges. Covering his nose and

mouth with his shirtfront, Burton disappeared through the smoking hatch

like a rabbit down its hole.

Hauer's lungs were on fire. He had just flung himself down the twenty

flights of stairs to the basement complex, thanking God with every step

that he had run out of ammunition before the howitzer gunners spotted

him. Now he worked his way through almost total darkness toward the

voices he heard at the far end of the dark laboratory. When he finally

reached open space, he saw eight people standing in front of a shining

silver wall with great doors set in its face. Someone was speaking

English very loudly, but Hauer didn't recognize the voice. When he was

only five meters from the group, he finally saw what held center stage.

Lying prone on a wheeled cart like truncated guided missiles were three

bulbous, metal-finned cylinders. Ominous and black, they seemed to hold

everyone away by some invisible repulsive force. No one had noticed

Hauer yet, so he hesitated, trying to gauge exactly what was happening.

Jonas Stern stood with his back to the glinting storage vault, speaking

in low, urgent tones to General Steyn, who faced him across the bomb

cart. Gadi stood on Stern's left, an assault rifle hanging loosely in

his right hand. The two surviving South African CT soldiers, still

masked and helmeted, stood directly behind General Steyn. Smuts had

propped Hess against a nearby wall, his wasted legs splayed out before

him. Hans and Ilse stood arm in arm beside Dr.

Sabri.

Hauer slung his empty rifle over his shoulder, strode 7656 GREG ILES

through the semicircle and interposed himself between Stern and General

Steyn.

"Captain Hauer!" said General Steyn. He jabbed a finger at Stern.

"Do you know what this madman wants to do?

He's talking about detonating one of these weapons!"

Hauer had already guessed as much. What he could not understand was why

Stern had told General Steyn about his plan at all. Perhaps the South

Africans had surprised the Israelis in the process of arming the bombs.

Hauer looked at Smuts and pointed to one of,the bombs.

"Exactly what are we looking at here?"

When Smuts did not respond, Dr. Sabri said, "You are looking at three

fully operational nuclear weapons, sir."

Hauer studied the bespectacled young Arab. "And you are ... ?"

"He's a Libyan physicist," Gadi said irritably. "We've established that

already."

"Hauer," Stern said evenly, "the situation is hopeless. You know that

as well as 1, and General Steyn knows it better than both of us.

There is no way out of this building. In a matter of minutes the

Libyans will break through. When they do, Israel is lost. Unless-"

"Unless you blow the northern half of South Africa to hell?" General

Steyn bellowed.

Ilse's voice rose above the others. "How much time do we have? I

haven't heard any explosions for a few minutes."

Hauer rubbed his chin with the back of his hand. "I think some of the

Arabs are already inside, but they won't be able to breach those shields

with light weapons. The main force is trying to drag their big gun

across that bowl. Three hundred meters. Plus, our armored car is

blocking the door to the house. I'd say we have fifteen to twenty

minutes before we have to fight."

"Thank you, Captain," said Stern. His voice softened as he spoke to

General Steyn. "Jaap, the, damage from these weapons might be far less

than you imagine. Dr. Sabri, what are these bombs capable of.?"

The young Libyan answered in a shaky voice. "I've only examined one of

the weapons closely. It's a forty-kiloton bomb. That's a fairly low

yield by today's standards, though it's twice the size of the Hiroshima

bomb. If it were detonated as it was designed to be-in an air burst-the

results would be catastrophic. But here ... I would guess we're about a

hundred meters underground. The walls look like inforced concrete,

that's good." He frowned. "Such ings are difficult to predict, but if

only the one bomb exploded, the result could be similar to a

medium-sized underground nuclear test. If, however, the other weapons

detonated with the first-and if they are of the same approximate

size-the explosion might blow upward and break through the surface.

Where we are standing would be the epicenter of a large crater.

As for the above-ground effects, estimating blast radius and such, my

rough guess would be ... perhaps five kilometers? The radiation is the

real problem. But if the wind is right, the whole cloud might drift

right out to sea."

"Or it might drift south and kill everyone in Pretoria and

Johannesburg!" General Steyn exploded.

Hans stepped tentatively forward. "You said you brought an armored car

with you. Is there some way we could sneak the bombs out of here?"

Hauer shook his head. "Even if we could fight our way up to the

vehicle, we'd never get the bombs up to it. God only knows how much

they weigh."

"Sixteen hundred and fifty kilograms each," Dr. Sabri volunteered.

"There it is," said Stern with a note of finality. "The bombs cannot be

gotten safely away. That leaves only one option."

"That's ridiculous!" roared General Steyn. "All we have to do is find

a way out of here ourselves! We can leave the bombs right where they

are. As soon as we reach a phone, I can call Durban airbase. The air

force can shoot these Arab pirates down before they even leave our

airspace!"

This suggestion found immediate favor in the group. But while General

Steyn expanded on his idea, Gadi Abrams eased slowly across the room to

where Hans and Ilse stood listening.

When the general finished speaking, Stern put his foot on the nearest

bomb, laid an elbow across his knee, and leaned toward the South

African. General Steyn stared back with the tenacity of a bulldog.

Behind him, his masked soldiers stood with their shotguns at the ready.

"Jaap," Stern said softly. "I simply cannot allow these weapons to fall

into Libyan hands. Not even for an hour.

The risks are simply too great."

General Steyn raised his right hand. The gesture had a distinctly

military quality to it, and it brought an immediate response. Both

South African commandos pointed their shotguns at Stern.

Their futuristic garb gave them the look of hostile aliens, and their

command over the group was total.

Or almost total. At the moment they brought their guns to bear, Gadi

swung the barrel of his assault rifle up from behind Ilse and fired from

the hip.

Ilse screamed.

Gadi's accuracy was startling. Fully aware that the South Africans wore

body armor, he fired two consecutive bursts straight through the black

gas masks, killing both men instantly. General Steyn groped for the

pistol at his belt. Gadi put one round through the general's left

shoulder, spinning him around and knocking him to the floor. Then he

darted back into position behind Stern and pointed his carbine at the

rest of the group.

Dr. Sabri's face had gone white. Smuts was grinning. Ilse was still

screaming, but Stern shouted above her: "Everyone stay calm! He had no

choice!"

"No choice!" Hans cried. "He murdered them!"

General Steyn struggled slowly to his feet, his face flushed with pain

and outrage. Hauer had already relieved him of his pistol. "You will

pay for this, Jonas," he vowed.

"Israel will pay! And you know South Africa can make it pay!"

"Yes," Stern acknowledged. "The problem is, some of you were already

planning to make us pay."

"A few fanatics!" General Steyn spat. "You've gone too far!"

Stern spoke in a monotone. "We are talking about the survival of

Israel, Jaap. If these weapons explode here in the Transvaal, it will

be a disaster, to be sure. But if only one of these bombs were to

explode over Israel, our tiny state would cease to exist, and the entire

world might be sucked into the vortex of war. It's a devil's choice,

but it's that simple. Tragedy versus a worldwide holocaust."

There was a high-pitched cackle from the far wall. "An excellent choice

of words, Jew!" Even in his helpless position, Rudolf Hess wore an

expression of triumph. "A holocaust is exactly what is going to happen!

Just as the Fuhrer planned! Even if you could persuade these cowards to

allow you to detonate the weapons, you don't have the knowledge to do

it. I have won!"

Gadi Abrams pointed his R5 at Hess's face.

"No, Gadi!" Stern cried. "God, I wanted so badly to take him back to

Israel for trial! To see him forced to tell the world his vile story.

To tell what he knows about the British."

"I'll tell you now," Hess coughed. "You'll all be dead within minutes,

anyway. I might as well entertain you while we wait for Major Karami."

"Shut up!" Stern snapped in German. "No one cares anymore!"

"Let him talk," Hauer said. "If we're going to die, I want to know why.

I want to know what this Nazi bastard had planned for Germany."

Hess smiled defiantly. "I think I'll keep that to myself, Captain. But

I will tell you about the British."

Hans stepped forward. "Maybe there is another way out of here, Captain.

Why don't we search the lab?"

Pieter Smuts laughed dryly. "Sorry, Sergeant. One way in, one way out.

That's the best security there is. You're going to die where you

stand."

"You'll die before I do," Hans shot back.

Ilse reached out and squeezed Hans's arm. "I want to hear Hess's story,

Hans. I want to know why an innocent man rotted in Spandau all those

years, and why the Allies kept silent about it. My grandfather came

here to find those answers.

He thought they were very important. I want to learn them, if I can."

Hess signaled for Smuts to set him up straighter. The gesture silenced

everyone in the room. In spite of the Libyan commandos who would soon

hammer through the protective shields above, in spite of the

incomprehensible danger that lay between them all like coals delivered

up from hell, every person in the basement crowded silently around the

old man propped against the steel wall.

"The Jew knows most of it already," Hess rasped. "What he doesn't

know-what nobody knows-is what my part of the mission was. For so long

the furor has focused on my flight to Scotland. The simple truth is

that my flight was only a small part of the plan." Hess's voice gained

strength.

"Our goal was to replace the government of England. No one in England

wanted another war, yet any idiot could see that Churchill would never

make peace with the Fuhrer. So, the answer was simple-get rid of

Churchill. The Americans and the Soviet Union did the same thing many

times after the war.

Coup d'etat is the fashionable term, yes? The Fuhrer was always years

ahead of his time." Hess scratched at a wisp of beard on his chin.

"It makes me laugh now, all that rot about how the valiant British saved

the world from Hitler. Ha! There were dozens of powerful Englishmen

ready to throw Churchill out and put a right-thinking man in Downing

Street. And I don't mean radicals. They were lords and ladies, members

of Parliament, knights of the realm.

They understood that the only,way to stop communism was to ally England

with the Reich. So they tried it! They got word to the Fuhrer that if

Churchill and his gang could be got out, they had men ready to step in.

If the king could be eliminated, they could fill his shoes also. Of

course the Fuhrer agreed immediately. While he made arrangements to

have Churchill and the king liquidated, his English friends prepared to

fill the coming power vacuum. Windsor was to take his younger brother's

place on the throne."

Hess's voice gained strength. "It was to happen on the tenth of May-the

anniversary of our victorious attack on Western Europe. My mission was

simple. The Englishmen behind the coup demanded absolute proof that the

Fuhrer would live up to his end of the bargain-that he would actually

make peace with Britain, cease the terror bombing of London and so

forth." Hess's eyes glazed with lost glory.

"So the Fuhrer asked Rudi-his faithful deputy and lifelong friend-to be

his emissary to his British friends!"

"But why was your double sent?" Ilse asked.

Hess smiled cagily. "British Intelligence learned that I was planning

to fly to Britain. They had informers everywhere. They expected me to

land near Dungavel Castlewhich was my original plan-but two weeks before

my flight, Reinhard Heydrich discovered that mI-5 knew about the

Dungavel meeting. Rather than cancel it, however, Heydrich simply

changed the actual rendezvous to the beach opposite Holy Island." Hess

nodded admiringly. "It was Heydrich's idea to send my double on to

Dungavel. To act as if nothing had changed, you see! The double's

mission was to dupe mI-5 into believing they had captured me, but just

long enough for me to complete my real mission. It was never intended

that he do what he did!"

"But you didn't complete your mission," Hauer pointed out. "Why not?"

Hess sighed. "Because by the time I jumped out of the plane over Holy

Island, mI-5 had found out about that rendezvous as well. Another

informer had betrayed us. When I landed-several hundred meters off

target, by the way-I heard shooting. I quickly realized that something

had gone wrong. When I moved closer to the firing, I saw that British

agents had already stormed the rendezvous site-which consisted of a

half-dozen autos parked on a shingle of beach.

There was a gun battle between some mI-5 operatives and my contacts."

Hess grimaced as if at some private pain. "It was there I received the

wound that eventually took my eye.

A stray bullet." He shrugged. "My part of the mission had failed. I

knew the name of a German agent who maintained a radio link to Occupied

France from a nearby coastal village, and I made my way to his house on

a stolen motorbike.

The rest is unimportant."

"But what of the plan to kill Churchill?" Ilse asked.

Hess looked tired now. "Ask the Jew."

Stern cast Hess a disparaging look. "It actually might have worked," he

said, "but for a confused Englishman who came to his senses just in time

to thwart the assassination. If my guess is right, the only man to

escape from that part of the mission-a Russian named Zinoviev-fled to

the same German agent Hess did." Stern looked at Hess.

"Isn't that right? Isn't that where the two of you met?"

Hess smiled distantly.

"Zinoviev never went back to Germany as his journal claimed, did he?"

Hess chuckled.

"And in spite of your eye wound," Stern guessed, "the two of you escaped

together to South America, and finally ended up here." Stern's eyes

flashed as he looked at Hess.

"Zinoviev tried to warn us, you know. In 1967. He must have realized

then how mad you were."

Hess flung out a scarecrow-thin arm. "Zinoviev was weak! All he cared

about in the end was his precious Mother Russia! Holy Russia.

He was practically a religious fanatic by 1967." Hess sighed.

"We found out about that warning, though, didn't we, Pieter? And dear

Vasili had to meet his maker a bit earlier than even he wanted to."

"Why didn't you return to Germany?" Hauer asked.

Hess looked genuinely sad. "I was confused. It was never even

considered that things could turn out as badly as they had. You must

understand: I had long accepted in my mind that by May eleventh I would

have succeeded in my mission or I would be dead.

Yet I had failed, and I was still alive. It seemed foolish to kill

myself at that point. And stranger still, Churchill's government had

chosen to believe-publicly at least-that my double was, in fact, me.

Day after day, hiding on the coast, I listened to reports of my capture

while Zinoviev t@ended my eye. And then came the news from Germany-from

the Fuhrer himself-that I was mad. I had suggested he say that if the

worst happened, but it was unnerving all the same! The pronouncement

told me how things stood. The Fuhrer had assumed that eidier I had

committed suicide as planned or the British had indeed captured me. His

only option was to discredit me publicly. It was the most difficult

moment of his life, I am sure. Not only had he lost his most faithful

friend, but he now faced the impossible situation we had sought to avoid

in the first place! With the failure of my mission, war -on two fronts

was inevitable."

Hess took a deep breath. His face was pale and sweating.

"Nine days later, I managed to get a message to the Fuhrer.

I told him what had happened, that I was alive, and asked for

instructions." Hess's face steeled with resolve. "I mentioned nothing

of my wound, and I offered to do what cowardice had not let me do on May

tenth-take my own life.

Hitler's reply came two weeks later. First, he awarded both myself and

Helmut the Grand Cross. As a foreign national, Zinoviev received only

the Iron Cross. Then came my orders: I was to sail to Brazil, and there

administer a massive network of assets and companies that the Fuhrer had

moved for safety to South America. The coming two-front war had sobered

him. At this time he was still of sound mind, and he knew the chances

for ultimate victory were problematical.

The Fuhrer was surrounded by traitors; Himmler plotted ceaselessly to

take his place. Some of the@ Party's top bankers had already fled

Germany. Hitler wanted-he neededsomeone he could trust outside the

country, preparing a place for him should his position become

untenable." Hess's face glowed with pride. "I was that mant When the

time came, Zinoviev killed the agent who had hidden us, and he and I

traveled to South America. Just as Alfred Horn had become Rudolf Hess

to the world, I became Alfred Horn.

Zinoviev served as my lieutenant and bodyguard until we emigrated to

South Africa." Hess looked up at Smuts. "And Pieter assumed that

position after I arrived."

"There's one question you haven't answered," Stern said, recalling

Professor Natterman and his obsession with the Hess mystery. "Was the

Duke of Windsor really a traitor?"

Hess mopped his forehead. "Who knows? Windsor was a fool. He just

wanted to be king again."

"Yes, but did he knowingly conspire with the Nazis to regain the throne?

That's what I want to know."

"It never came to the test!" Hess snapped. "Don't you understand, Jew?

It was a setup! A double-cross from the very beginning. They used us.

Me, Windsor ... even the Fuhrer.

British Intelligence discovered their own bloody traitors and played

them back against us! They lured me to England, damn them. Of course

Windsor conspired with us! Would he really have assumed the throne as

Hitler's vassal? Would he have stolen the throne from his murdered

brother? No one will ever know!" Hess shook his head in desolation.

"Lies ... all lies. Letting us hope for peace with England until it was

too late . . ."

Hess's head swayed oddly on his neck. He seemed to have forgotten his

audience. "Bor-mann," he murmured. "Ilse always knew. Abandoning the

Fuhrer in his hour of need!"

Smuts tried to calm Hess, but the old Nazi slapped the Afrikaner across

the face. "Borrnann terrorized my family! My own wife! He tried to

evict my Ilse from our house! Thank God Himmler stopped him!"

"My God," Ilse murmured. "No wonder he had a fixation on me."

Hess's eye came clear again. "The swine paid for his impudence!

In 1950 1 I saw him hanged with piano wire by members of the ODESSA!

I have the film in my study!"

"Enough!" Stern cried, stepping in front of Hess. "Everyone, stand

back! The time has come to bring down the curtain on this farce.

Dr. Sabri, prepare the weapon for detonation."

"Wait!" Hans cried, springing up to Stern. "Listen to me.

To hell with Hess! To hell with the Nazis! I understand your love for

Israel, but not everyone here is a Jew. I am German.

General Steyn is South African. We want to live. Does that make us

cowards? If it does, I'm a coward! Look at my wife. She's pregnant,

you understand? We want our child to live! What right have you to take

that away from us?"

"The right of the greater good," Stern said soffly. "I'm sorry,

Sergeant."

"You're sorry? Do you plan to murder everyone who doesn't agree with

you?" Hans pointed to the South Africans Gadi had shot. "How are you

different than the Nazis?"

Stern looked at Ilse. His face softened momentarily, but he quickly

turned away. "Captain Hauer," he said tersely, "do you believe I am

wrong about what must be done here?"

With a strange sense of fatalism Hauer looked down at the dead South

Africans. He looked at General Steyn, bleeding steadily from his

shoulder and heaving for breath. He looked at Hans, his own son, his

face flushed with passion for life, his innocent fervor mirrored in his

wife's beautiful eyes. He looked at Hess, cadaverous and gray, a living

anachronism sitting aloof on the floor beneath his Afrikaner protector.

And finally at Stern. Hauer had known the old Israeli less than a day,

yet he felt closer to him than he did to many men he had known all his

life. Stern is no fanatic, he thought.

He's a realist He's seen enough of the world to know that giving fate

one chance to beat you is one chance too many.

Or perhaps he's just my kind of fanatic. Hauer didn't want to die. But

what choice was there? To fight their way out was impossible. With all

eyes in the room turned to him, he stepped toward Hans and Ilse with a

heavy heart. Yet before he could speak, an unfamiliar voice shouted

from somewhere in the dark jungle of laboratory equipment behind them:

"Hullo the house! Hullo! White flag and truce!"

Gadi jerked his rifle toward the sound.

Hauer spun to face the darkness, but he saw nothing.

"Call off your dog, Stern! That's a British accent!"

"That doesn't make me feel any better!" Stern retorted.

"All right, Gadi," he said finally. "Stand down."

After the young Israeli lowered his weapon, a sandyhaired man of medium

height rose from beneath a soapstone lab table. He was wearing tattered

commando gear, and his left hand held a well-oiled MP-5

submachine gun. "Hullo," he said. "In a bit of a pinch, are we?"

"Who the devil are you?" General Steyn croaked.

"How did you get in?" asked Hauer. "That's the question."

"Name's Burton, sport. Ex-major in the British Army, too long a story

to tell."

"Have the shields been lowered?" Stern asked, afraid that the Libyans

might already have penetrated into the inner complex.

"Don't know about any shields. I came in through a bunker.

There's tunnels running to every one of 'em and they all intersect right

here."

Are you serious?" Hauer cried. "The Arabs didn't see you?"

""Those camel bumpers? Not bloody likely."

"But what's past the bunkers? Is there any way to get truly out of

here? Away from this place?"

"It just so happens," said Burton, "that I've got my own personal jet

and pilot waiting outside."

Hauer's mouth fell open.

Hans and Ilse ran to the Englishman. "We've got to get out of here!"

Ilse cried. "Now! The Arabs will break through any minute!"

"Boarding in five minutes," Burton said jauntily. "One carry-on bag per

person, please."

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

General Steyn threw his good arm over Hauer's shoulder, believing that

Burton's revelation of an escape route had resolved de facto all the

argument that had gone before Ilse barely had time to snatch up Hess's

black briefcase before Hans pulled her across the room toward the

Englishman. Dr.

Sabri also moved cautiously in that direction.

Yet Stern and Gadi did not move. They stood with their backs against

the gleaming steel storage vault, staring watchfully at the excited

group gathering around the British mercenary. Hauer laid his hand on

General Steyn's pistol.

He understood only too well what was passing through the minds of the

Israelis.

"Gadi," Stern said sharply.

With his rifle braced on his hip, the young Israeli marched past Hauer,

grabbed Dr. Sabri by the sleeve and pulled him back to where the three

bombs waited on their carts. He kicked the Libyan behind the knee,

dropping him to the floor, then shoved him down over the bomb in the

middle of the cart.

"Open it," Stern commanded.

"Wh-what?" the Libyan stammered.

"Open the weapon!"

"I need tools."

Gadi swung his rifle around on Smuts.

"We don't keep any down here," Smuts lied.

Gadi fired a slug into the wall beside the Afrikaner's head.

Smuts didn't flinch, but after a face-saving moment he stepped over to a

drawer and pulled out a metal tool kit. He carried it to the Libyan,

then returned to Hess's side.

General Steyn watched all this in disbelief. "What are you doing now,

Jonas? Our problem is solved! As soon as take off, I can radio the air

force from this man's plane Stern looked up from where Dr. Sabri worked

on the bomb. "This changes only two things," he said quietly.

"First, you people now have a chance to get clear. And second, Hess can

go with you."

Pieter Smuts stiffened.

Stern touched Gadi's sleeve. "Hess is your responsibility.

You'll take him out with the others."

The young Israeli's face wilted like a little boy's, then it hardened to

stone. "I shall stay behind, Uncle," he said solemnly.

"You should be the one who takes Hess to Israel."

Stern shook his head impatiently. "You-2' "I say there," Burton cut in.

"You're not talking about setting off these bombs. I've seen enough

conventional weapons to know an unconventional one when I see it. Even

if we manage to get airborne, the blast wave from one of those would

knock us right out of the sky."

Stern crouch&d beside Dr. Sabri, who had just gotten the cover plate

off the bomb's arming system. "What's the minimum safe distance for the

aircraft that delivers this weapon?"

Dr. Sabri looked up at Stern with wild eyes. "There's no way to know!

If the explosion breaks through the surface ...

Five ... perhaps six kilometers?"

Stern rose to his feet. "If you all leave now," he said loudly, "you

should be able to reach minimum safe distance before the Libyans break

through the shields. I suggest you get moving."

Hauer jabbed a finger toward the bomb cart. "Stern, that dung must have

some kind of timing mechanism. Why not set it for thirty minutes and

get out with the rest of us?"

Gadi's face lit up. "Uncle, that's it!"

Stern shook his head. "In fifteen minutes the Libyans will be inside

this room. They're almost certain to have someone with them who would

know how to stop the timer." Stern pulled Dr. Sabri to his feet.

"What kind of detonator does this weapon have? Is there a timing

mechanism?"

"A timer, yes! But not the kind you imagine. This is an air-burst

weapon. It's meant to be exploded above ground.

Once armed, its clock begins at a preprogrammed atmospheric pressure

level."

"How long does the clock run?"

"This one is set for twelve seconds. But I could set it for much

longer!"

Gadi jammed the barrel of his R5 into the terrified Libyan's stomach.

"How do we know he's telling us the truth about the detonator? What if

you stay behind and the bomb doesn't explode?

You'll have thrown your life away for nothing!"

Stern turned to Sabri. "Show me how the detonator works.

Be quick!"

While the Libyan bent, over the bomb casing, Hauer stepped up to Stern.

"Do you want to throw your life away, Stern? You have a real

alternative now. General Steyn is right-the South African air force can

easily shoot down the Libyans when they try to leave the country."

Stern smiled wryly. "And if someone in the South African air force

doesn't want to shoot them down?"

"Sir?" said Dr. Sabri, looking up from the weapon.

Hauer looked down. In the Libyan's hands, held as gingerly as if they

were coiled vipers, were four tricolored wires that led from a small

aperture in the bomb casing. Two exposed copper wire ends glinted in

the fluorescent light.

"Touch these together," Dr. Sabri said hoarsely, "and the bomb will

think it has reached the preprogrammed altitude.

The timing mechanism will run its course, and the detonator will

explode. A few nanoseconds later, nuclear fission will be initiated."

There was dead silence in the room.

"Must the wires remain connected during the timer's entire run?"

Stern asked.

The Libyan nodded.

Before anyone could stop him, Stern seized the two wires, wrapped them

together, and closed them in his fist.

Ilse screamed.

Alan Burton dived under a soapstone lab table, as if it could somehow

protect him from a nudlear blast. Hauer and Gadi froze, mesmerized by

Stern's insane act. But no one reacted with the abject terror of Dr.

Sabri. Shrieking wildly, the Libyan grabbed Stern's wrists and tried

desperately to separate the two wires. But despite the great age

difference between the two men, Sabri failed. After what Stern judged

to be nine seconds-long enough for everyone in the room to stare death

in the face-he jerked the two wires apart.

"I think he's telling the truth, Gadi."

Dr. Sabri fell to his knees and peered into the bomb's cess panel.

"There are only two seconds left on the clock!

the name of Allah, do not let the wires touch again!"

"Not until you're all safely away," Stern promised.

Hauer half-smiled. "Or until the Libyans break into this complex.

Right, Stern?"

"You'd better hurry," Stern said tersely.

Gadi laid a hand on his shoulder. "Uncle, please do not sacrifice

yourself. I am a soldier. I should be the one."

"I am a soldier too." Stern sighed deeply. "An old one.

But it doesn't matter. I'm dead already."

"What?"

"I've already been exposed to enough radiation today to kill me.

And if not enough to kill me, at least enough to make what little that

remains of my life quite unpleasant."

Stern rubbed his eyes and sighed. "I can barely see you now, Gadi.

Everything has a halo."

"What are you talking about?" Gadi cried.

"It's true," Ilse interjected. "They did the same to me. Or they

pretended to."

Gadi looked mystified.

Against the wall, Pieter Smuts shifted his body slightly away from Hess.

"X-rays, Gadi," Stern explained. "The same way I confirmed that Horn

was actually Hess. They strapped me down and dosed me with X-rays for

two hours."

The young commando blinked. "What? Who did that to you? Who!"

At that moment Smuts nodded almost imperceptibly.

Rudolf Hess slid silently to the floor.

"That man there!" Ilse shouted, pointing to Smuts.

As her accusing finger went up, the Afrikaner whipped up a Beretta

automatic he had slipped from an ankle holster and aimed it at the two

Israelis. No one had thoug t to searc him; now he had both Stern and

Gadi in his sights. From ten feet he could not miss.

With a short cry Gadi knocked Stern down with his left hand and jerked

up his carbine with his right.

The two men fired at the same instant.

Outside the front entrance of Horn House, one of Major Karami's

commandos leaned into the empty driver's compartment of the Armscor and

saw that the ignition keys had been removed. He craned his neck around

the seats just in time to see Captain Barnard's bloody face appear out

of the gloom like a ghost.

It was the last thing the Libyan would ever see. Barnard's bullet

struck him right between the eyes.

Hearing the shot, two more Libyans leaped through the Arinscor's doors.

Captain Barnard shot them both through the head. Struggling to breathe

through the blood in his throat, the South African thrust his pistol

through the shattered windshield and fired wildly at the Libyans grouped

around the howitzer.

"Hold your positions!" Major Karami shouted.

The 105mm howitzer stood only twenty meters from the Arinscor.

Two of Captain Barnard's bullets struck the barrel of the big gun,

sending several Libyans scurrying for cover, but Major Karami stood

still as stone.

"Hold your positions!" he roared. "Set elevation and blow that pile of

shit out of my way!"

For an artillery piece the shot was point blank. Everyone opened their

mouths and put both hands over their ears. Major Karami raised one

brown hand high, then dropped it.

"Fire!

Pieter Smuts's bullet struck Gadi square in the center of the chest. The

Israeli flew backward and knocked Stern down. Gadi had fired a burst,

but only one round struck the Afrikaner, splintering his left wrist in a

spray of blood and bone. Before either man could move again, the

exploding howitzer shell shook-the ceiling of the basement like a

thunderclap.

"They're coming!" Hans shouted.

Hauer saw the subsequent action in slow motion. Smuts steadied his

pistol for a second shot. Gadi-who had been saved by his body

armor-struggled to his feet. Hauer shouted a warning to Smuts, but the

Afrikaner fired anyway.

His second shot tore through Gadi's unprotected right thigh.

As Hauer heard the second howitzer shell explode above them, he raised

General Steyn's pistol, pointed it at Smuts and fired four times.

His bullets nailed the Afrikaner to the wall. Smuts hung there a

moment, wide-eyed, then dropped like a sack across his master's crippled

legs.

"Pieter!" Hess cried. "My God, no!"

Another explosion shuddered through the house.

"It's now or bloody never!" Burton shouted. He too last look at Hess

on the floor, then he turned and ran.

"Everyone out!" Stern ordered. "Now! Go!"

Hauer hustled General Steyn toward the dark laboratory aisles that led

to the tunnels, but the wounded general collapsed after ten steps.

HAuer started dragging him; Hans came back to help. Dr. Sabri glanced

fearfully at Gadi, then darted after the others.

"May I come with you, sir?" he asked Hauer.

Hauer shoved the Libyan down the aisle, then turned back to Stern.

"Give us every goddamn second you can, Stern!

These people deserve to live! Keep your fanatic nephew with you and

hold them off as long as you can!"

"Don't worry, you Kraut bastard!" Gadi yelled back, gripping his

bleeding thigh. "I'm staying! I'll kill every Arab up there!"

"No, Gadif" Stern insisted. "You're going with them! You must get Hess

out!"

"I'm staying with your" Gadi pointed his assault rifle at the old Nazi.

"Go to hell, you Nazi bastard!"

Stern grabbed his arm. "Stop! You must take Hess to Israel! Pick him

up, Gadi! Pick him up and carry him out of here! Carry him all the way

to Jerusalem! He'll hang soon enough!"

Hauer and the others had paused halfway to the tunnel.

All eyes were riveted on the surreal drama taking place in the pool of

fluorescent light before the silver storage vault.

Even facing their own deaths, those who wanted so desperately to live

could not tear their eyes away from two men so ready to die without fear

or regret. Another explosion rattled the glassware in the lab.

"The Englishman's gone!" Hans shouted. "Let's go!"

Dr. Sabri broke and ran. Hans shoved Ilse after the Libyan.

Stern squatted astride the bomb and picked up the stripped detonator

wires.

"Mother of God," Hauer murmured, blcking toward the shadows.

Gadi stubbornly took up a firing position behind Stern.

Stern turned around and gazed into the young commando's burning eyes.

His voice cracked with emotion. "In the name of Abraham, Gadi, take

Hess to Israel. That is not an order.

It is a sacred charge on the souls of your ancestors. Leave me a gun

and get Hess out!"

A tear streaked the young Israeli's face. With shaking hands he laid

his rifle against the bomb casing and crossed to where Hess lay.

Favoring his good leg, he crouched down, caught the old man under the

arms, and lifted. Hess immediately began to struggle. Gadi punched him

in the side of the head. Then he heaved the wasted body over his

shoulder.

"Yes!" Stern called. "Get him out!"

Quivering beneath his hundred-pound load, the wounded Israeli staggered

after Hauer and Hans. Yet after only four short steps his savaged thigh

muscle gave way. He crashed to the floor, screaming in agony. Hess

fell on top of him.

Gadi clenched his jaws shut and rolled the old man off.

Then, with his bloody thigh twitching uncontrollably, he struggled to

his feet again. Again he hoisted Hess to his shoulder and tried to

walk. He gasped with each step, fighting the searing fire in his leg.

Like a boxer knocked senseless but still on his feet, he reeled backward

toward Stern.

"No, Gadi!" Stern barked. "The other way! Forward!"

The young commando tottered a moment, then collapsed.

Hess hit the floor hard this time and didn't move. Sobbing with rage

and pain, Gadi got to his knees and tried once more to lift the old man.

He summoned every ounce of strength he had left, but Smuts's bullet had

done too much damage.

46I can't do it, Uncle! I'll never get him through the tunnel!"

"Hauer!" Stern shouted. "Come back and help the boy!"

"Yes!" Gadi called. "Help me, Captain!"

Hauer's answer flared out of the darkness. "Hess can go to hell!

I'm saving General Steyn! You just hold those Arabs back as long as you

can!"

"You owe it to us!" Stern shouted. "For Munich! Yes, I know you were

there! Come back, Hauer! For the Jews you let die!"

"Let it go, Stern! That war is over!"

"Leave him, (Yadi," Stern cried angrily. "Frau Apfel has the Zinoviev

book and the Spandau papers. That's all the proof you need.

Those papers alone indict the British."

"Then I'm staying with you!"

"No. You must get that evidence to Israel!"

"The others can do it."

"A Jew, Gadi. A Jew must do it. To be sure."

Gadi looked wildly at his uncle for a moment, then made his decision. He

stripped the guns from the South Africans he had killed and laid them at

Stern's feet. "Kill as many as you can, Uncle. I will get your papers

to Jerusalem."

Stern smiled. "I know you Will, MY boy. Now go." He hugged Gadi's

face to his own. "Shalom."

"Shalom, Uncle." Gadi choked back a sob. "No Jew will ever forget

you."

"Go," Stern commanded. "My time has come."

Dragging his bleeding leg behind him, Gadi picked up his rifle and went.

The barrel of Major Karami's howitzer now protruded through the

shattered front door of Horn House. Karami watched the leader of his

search detail race into the reception hall.

"We find only corpses and servants in the house, Major!"

Karami smiled. "Clear the house."

Taking a last look at the black shield blocking the elevator, the Libyan

major squeezed between the door frame and the gun carriage and took up a

position behind the howitzer.

He remembered the elevator from his first visit, and he knew that at the

bottom of its deep shaft lay Horn's basement storage facility.

And inside that basement-a sword worthy of Mohammed himself!

"Fire!" he shouted.

Alan Burton had been waiting in the darkness beside the bunker for a

full minute when Dr. Sabri poked his head through the jagged hatch.

"Come on, then!" he snapped as he pulled the Libyan out.

"I heard you speaking Arabic back there, sport. You with these

blighters out here?"

"No, sir! Those men are assassins! They murdered my prime minister!"

Before Burton could reply, Ilse squirmed out of the black hole.

She explained that Hauer and Hans were still struggling through the

tunnel with General Steyn. Burton looked anxiously at his watch.

"We can't wait any longer," he said.

"You'd better follow me.@ He turned and trotted toward the airstrip. Dr.

Sabri followed , but Ilse hung back, clinging tightly to Hess's

briefcase.

After thirty agonizing seconds, General Steyn's head appeared, his face

a bloodless mask of shock and confusion.

While Hauer and Hans pushed from behind, Ilse pulled.

Hans followed the general through the hatch, and finally Hauer wriggled

through. Ilse hugged Hans fiercely, sandwiching Hess's briefcase

between them. Only Gadi had not yet appeared.

"Come on," Hauer said harshly. "Either he makes it or he doesn't."

Jonas Stern squatted silently on his cylinder of Armageddon and waited

for the Libyans to come. Holding the stripped wires like talismans, he

surveyed the shadows around him. He was king in a world of corpses. At

his feet lay the South African counterterror troops, their futuristic.

gas masks lethally punctured by Gadi's bullets. Behind them, splayed

out on his back like a broken doll, Pieter Smuts lay in a spreading pool

of blood. Only Rudolf Hess remained alive. Too crippled by arthrifis

to drag his frail body to safety, the old Nazi had managed to struggle

into a sitting position against the wall to Stern's left. His eyepatch

had slipped off. Now a scarred, empty socket stared at Stern.

Stern listened for the slightest sound from the far end of the lab.

He heard nothing. He looked curiously at Hess.

Here was the man who had brought them all to this place.

Hess ... The name carried Stern back to a youth so torn by fear, loss,

and pain that he remembered only the ceaseless throb of grief.

He had survived the cruelest war that ever scourged the earth, and near

him now lay one of the men who had unleashed it upon the world.

Strangely, he felt no personal hatred for the bag of brittle bones-only

a detached curiosity, a desire to know if there had ever been some

reason for what was done.

"Hess," he said softly.

The old Nazi's good eye fluttered open. "What do you want, Jew?"

"Tell me something. Have you ever come to understand what Hitler did?

The obscenity of it? The inhumanity?"

Hess looked away.

"Tell me," Stern insisted. "I want to know why. Why the Holocaust? Why

murder thousands of children? What was it

the Jews ever do to him? Or to you?"

Hess looked back at Stern. Another explosion rocked the ceiling above

them, but Stern saw only Hess. A dark fire had come into the withered

Nazi's solitary eye, a blind, animal hatred so removed from the

community of man that Stern felt driven to cross the room and crush the

skull that conrained it. It was a blindness that could not see murder,

a deafness that could not hear the screams of children, a muteness that

could speak only through violence. Why did I even ask?

he thought hopelessly. It's like asking a bully why he drowns a cat ...

or a father why he molests his infant child or some reason one could

understand. There

... and hoping f

is no reason! Stern lifted an R-5 assault rifle from the floor and

brought its barrel to bear on Hess's crippled body. The old Nazi's

watery eye showed no fear.

"You want to kill me, Jew?" he said softly. "You can kill me.

But you cannot kill what I lived for. Captain Hauer said Phoenix will