Temple

by Matthew Reilly

  The jet packs and the M-22s were never recovered.

  Quite obviously, Demonaco thought, the President didn’t want another such embarrassment here. Which was why he had been called in.

  “So what is it you want me to look at?” he said.

  “This,” Mitchell said, pulling something from his pocket and handing it to Demonaco.

  It was a clear plastic evidence bag.

  In it was a blood-stained bullet.

  Demonaco sat down at a nearby table to examine the blood-smeared bullet.

  “Where was this taken from, one of the security personnel?”

  “No,” Mitchell said. “The driver of the delivery van they used to get in. He was the only one they killed with a pistol.”

  Captain Aaronson added, “After they used him to get past the garage guards, they popped him in the head at point-blank range.”

  “A calling card,” Demonaco said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Looks like a tungsten core . . .” Demonaco said, perusing the spent projectile.

  “That’s what we thought too,” Aaronson said. “And as far as we know, only one terrorist organization in the United States is known to use tungsten-based ammunition. The Oklahoma Freedom Fighters.”

  Demonaco didn’t look up from the bullet in his hands.

  “That’s true, but the Freedom Fighters—”

  “—are known to operate like this,” Aaronson cut in. “Special forces-type entry, double-taps to their victims’ heads, the theft of cutting-edge military technology.”

  “It would appear that you’ve been to one of my seminars too, Captain Aaronson,” Demonaco said.

  “Yes, I have,” Aaronson said, “but I also consider myself to be a specialist in this field too. I’ve studied these groups extensively as part of ongoing Naval security updates. We have to keep an eye on these people too, you know.”

  “Then you’d know that the Freedom Fighters are in the middle of a turf war with the Texans,” Demonaco said.

  Aaronson bit his lip, frowned. He obviously hadn’t known that. He glared at Demonaco, stung by the veiled retort.

  Demonaco looked up at the two Naval officers through his horn-rimmed glasses. There was something they weren’t telling him.

  “Gentlemen. What happened here?”

  Aaronson and Mitchell exchanged a look.

  “What do you mean?” Mitchell asked.

  “I can’t help you if I don’t know the full story of what happened here. Like, for starters, what it was that was stolen.”

  Aaronson grimaced. Then he said, “They were after a device called the Supernova. They knew where it was and how to get it. They knew all the codes and had all the cardkeys. They moved with precision and speed, like a well-oiled commando unit.”

  Demonaco said, “The Freedom Fighters’ strike team is good but it isn’t big enough to take down a place this size. It’s too small, maybe two or three men at the most. That’s why they only attack soft targets—computer labs, low-level government offices—places from which they can steal technical data like electrical schematics or satellite overpass times. But most important, they only attack sites that are lightly guarded. Not fortresses like this. They’re first and foremost techno-nuts, not a full-frontal assault squad.

  “But they are the only group known to use tungsten-based ammunition,” Aaronson said.

  “That’s true.”

  “So maybe they’ve stepped up their operations,” Aaronson said smugly. “Maybe they’re trying to make the leap into the big leagues.”

  “Possible.”

  “It’s possible,” Aaronson snorted.

  “Special Agent Demonaco, perhaps I haven’t made something clear. The device that was stolen from this facility is of the utmost importance to the future defense of the United States. In the wrong hands, its use could be catastrophic. Now, I have SEAL teams standing by right now to take out three suspected Freedom Fighter locations. But my bosses need to know that this is clean—they don’t want another Baltimore. All we need from you is an acknowledgment that this robbery could only have been done by them.”

  “Well . . .” Demonaco began.

  It all depended on the tungsten bullets, really. But for some reason that Demonaco couldn’t quite put his finger on, their use here troubled him . . .

  “Agent Demonaco,” Aaronson said, “let me make this simpler. To the best of your knowledge, is there any paramilitary group in the United States other than the Oklahoma Freedom Fighters that uses tungsten-cored ammunition?”

  “No,” Demonaco said.

  “Good. Thank you.”

  And with that, Aaronson gave Demonaco and Mitchell a withering glare and stalked away to a nearby telephone where he dialed a short number and said, “This is Aaronson. Assault operations are go. Repeat. Assault operations are go. Take the bastards down.”

  Daylight came to the rainforest.

  Race awoke to find himself propped up against the wall of the ATV. His head ached and his clothes were still damp.

  The sliding side door of the ATV lay open. He heard voices outside.

  “—what are you doing here?”

  “—my name is Marc Graf, and I am a lieutenant in the Fallschirmjäger—”

  Race got up and went outside.

  It was morning and a low fog had descended upon the village. The ATV was now parked in the center of the main street, and as he stepped out of the big armored vehicle, it took him a moment to adjust his eyes to the wall of gray all around him. Slowly, however, the main street of Vilcafor began to take shape.

  Race froze.

  The street was completely deserted.

  AU the bodies from the previous night’s slaughter were gone. Indeed all that remained in their place were large pools of mud and water, peppered by the falling rain.

  The cats, he saw, were also gone.

  He saw Nash, Lauren and Copeland standing off to his left, over by the citadel. With them stood the six Green Berets and Gaby Lopez.

  Before them, however, stood five other people.

  Four men and one woman.

  The surviving Germans, he guessed.

  Race also noticed that only two of the Germans wore military fatigues—soldiers. All the others wore civilian clothing, including two—a man and a woman—who looked like undercover cops. All of them had been disarmed.

  Sergeant Van Lewen caught sight of Race, came over.

  “How’s the head?” he said.

  “Awful,” Race said. “What’s happening here?”

  Van Lewen indicated the five Germans. “They’re the only ones who survived the night. Two of them jumped inside the ATV during the battle and uncuffed us. We managed to pick up the other three just before we got you at the jetty.”

  Race nodded.

  Then he turned suddenly to face his bodyguard. “Say, I have a question for you.”

  “Yes?”

  “How did you know about that rubber button inside the Humvee—the one that started it after the Germans had shut it down?”

  Van Lewen smiled at him. “If I tell you I’ll have to kill you.”

  “Fine, go ahead.”

  Van Lewen grinned at that. Then he said, “It’s fairly standard practice in armed forces around the world to use field vehicles like Humvees and ATVs as portable prisons. You lock the prisoners in the car and then you disable it.

  “The United States, however, is the leading supplier of field vehicles worldwide. Humvees, for example, are made by the AM General Company in South Bend, Indiana.

  “The thing is—and this is something that not everyone knows—all American-made field vehicles are fitted with a safety release button, a button that allows the vehicle to be restarted in the event that it is shut down. The theory is that no U.S. vehicle will ever be used as a prison to hold U.S. personnel. Hence, only U.S. military personnel are informed of the whereabouts of those safety buttons. It’s a trapdoor, known only to American soldiers.”

  With that, Van L
ewen smiled and headed off to join the others over by the citadel. Race hurried after him.

  He and Van Lewen joined the others at the citadel.

  They arrived there to find Frank Nash interrogating one of the disarmed German commandos—the man Race had heard identify himself as Marc Graf, a lieutenant in the Fallschirmjäger.

  “So are you here for the idol too?” Nash demanded.

  Graf shook his head.

  “I do not know the details,” he said in English. “I am only a lieutenant, I do not have clearance to know the full extent of the mission.”

  He nodded with his chin at one of the other Germans, the burly-looking man wearing jeans and a holster. “I think it would be better if you asked my associate here, Mr. Karl Schroeder. Mr. Schroeder is a special agent with the Bundes Kriminal Amt. The Bundeswehr is working in conjunction with the BKA on this mission.”

  “The BKA?” Nash said, perplexed.

  Race knew what he was thinking.

  The Bundes Kriminal Amt was the German equivalent of the FBI. Its reputation was legendary. It was often said to be the finest federal investigative bureau in the world. But still, it was essentially a police force, which was why Nash was confused. It had no reason to be in Peru looking for an idol.

  “What does the BKA want with a lost Incan idol?” he asked.

  Schroeder paused a moment, as if he were contemplating just how much he should reveal to Nash. And then he sighed—like it would matter now after the previous night’s slaughter.

  “It is not what you think,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “We do not want the idol to make a weapon,” Schroeder said simply. “In fact, contrary to what you probably believe, my country does not even possess a Supernova.”

  “Then what do you want the idol for?”

  “What we want it for is simple,” Schroeder said. “We want to get it before somebody else does.”

  “Who?” Nash said.

  “The same people who were responsible for the massacre of those monks in the Pyrenees,” Schroeder said. “The same people who were responsible for the kidnap and murder of the academic Albert Mueller after he published that article about the meteor crater in Peru late last year.”

  “So who are they?”

  “A terrorist organization who call themselves the Schutz Staffel Totenkopfverbände—tht Death’s Head Detachment of the SS. They are named after the most brutal unit of Hitler’s SS, the soldiers who ran the Nazi concentration camps in World War II. They call themselves the ‘Stormtroopers.’ “

  “The Stormtroopers?” Lauren said.

  “They are an elite paramilitary force of expatriate Germans, based in a heavily fortified Nazi retreat in Chile called Colonia Alemania. They were formed at the end of the Second World War by an ex-Auschwitz lieutenant named Odilo Ehrhardt.

  “According to Auschwitz survivors, Ehrhardt was a psychopath—an ox of a man who relished the sheer act of killing. Apparently, Rudolph Höss, the Commandant of Auschwitz, took a liking to him, and during the latter years of the war groomed him as his protégé. At twenty-two, Ehrhardt was elevated to the SS rank of Obersturmführer, or lieutenant. After that, if Höss pointed at you, a second later you would find yourself looking down the barrel of Ehrhardt’s P-38.”

  Race swallowed.

  Schroeder went on. “According to our records, Ehrhardt would now be seventy-five years of age. But within the Stormtrooper organization, his word is law. He goes by the supreme SS rank of Obersturmführer, General.

  “The Stormtroopers are a singularly repulsive organization,” Schroeder said. “They advocate the forcible incarceration and execution of all blacks and Jews, the destruction of democratic government worldwide and, most importantly, the restoration of a Nazi government to the unified Germany and the establishment of the Herrenvolk—the ‘master race’—as the ruling elite on earth.”

  “The restoration of a Nazi government in Germany? The establishment of the master race as the ruling elite on earth?” Copeland said in disbelief.

  “Wait a second,” Race said. “You’re talking about Nazis. In the nineties.”

  “Yes,” Schroeder said. “Nazis. Modern-day Nazis.”

  Frank Nash said, “Colonia Alemania has long been believed to be a safe haven for former Nazi officers. Eisler stayed there for a short time in the sixties. Eichmann too.”

  Schroeder nodded. “Colonia Alemania consists of pastures and lakes and Bavarian-style houses, all of which are surrounded by barbed wire fences and guard towers that are patrolled by armed guards and Doberman pinschers twenty-four hours a day.

  “It was said that during the Pinochet regime, in exchange for protection from the government, Ehrhardt allowed Colonia Alemania to be used by the dictatorship as an unofficial torture center. It was a place where people were sent to ‘disappear.’ And with the protection of the military regime, Ehrhardt and his Nazi colony remained immune from search by foreign agencies like the BKA.”

  “All right, then,” Nash said, “so how do they come into this equation?”

  “You see, Herr Nash, that is the problem,” Schroeder said. “It is the Stormtroopers who have a Supernova.”

  “The Stormtroopers have a Supernova?” Nash said flatly.

  “Yes.”

  “Jesus . . .”

  “Herr Nash, please. You must understand. In twenty years of counter-terrorist work, I have never encountered a group like the Stormtroopers. It is well financed, well organized, strictly hierarchical, and totally and utterly ruthless.

  “It is made up of two types of person—soldiers and scientists. The Stormtroopers recruit mainly experienced soldiers, often men who have been dishonorably discharged from the former East German Army or the Bundeswehr for their predilections for using excessive force. Men like Hein-rich Anistaze, men trained in the arts of terror, torture and assassination.”

  “Anistaze is a Stormtrooper?” Nash said. “I was under the impression he was working for German intellig—”

  “Not anymore,” Schroeder said bitterly. “After the Eastern Bloc collapsed, Anistaze was hired by the German government on a contract basis only—to take care of certain ‘problems.’ But it appears our leash wasn’t short enough.

  “Anistaze is a mercenary, a killer for hire. It wasn’t long before someone offered him more than we were paying him, and he betrayed two of his case officers and turned them over to the enemy.

  “It came as no surprise to us when, not long after that incident his rather distinctive methods of persuasion started showing up in Stormtrooper-related incidents. Apparently, Anistaze’s rise through the Stormtrooper ranks has been swift. We believe he is now an Obergruppenführer in their ranking system. A lieutenant-general. Second only to Ehrhardt himself.”

  “Son of a bitch . . .”

  “As for scientists,” Schroeder shrugged, “the same principles apply. The Stormtroopers lure many highly educated men and women who are working on projects that are not seen as in keeping with modern Germany’s collective guilt.

  “For example, when the wall came down, certain East German scientists developing NA grenades—grenades filled with nitric acid, designed to inflict horrific injuries but not to kill their victims—soon found themselves out of a job. The Stormtroopers, on the other hand, are always on the lookout for those kinds of people, and they are willing to pay handsomely for their services.”

  “How?” Copeland asked. “How can they afford all this?”

  “Doctor Copeland. The modern Nazi movement has never been short of cash. In 1994, an illegal BKA trace of a suspected Nazi account in a Swiss bank estimated the Storm-troopers’ total cash reserves at more than half a billion dollars—the proceeds of the sale of priceless artifacts stolen during World War II.”

  “Half a billion dollars,” Race breathed.

  “Gentlemen,” Schroeder said, “the Stormtroopers, they do not hijack airplanes. They do not murder federal officials or blow up federal buildings. They loo
k for greater victories—victories that will overthrow the entire world order.”

  “And now you think they have a Supernova?” Nash said.

  “Up until about three days ago, all we had were improvable suspicions,” Schroeder said. “But now we are certain of it. Six months ago, BKA surveillance agents in Chile photographed a man strolling around the grounds of Colonia Alemania with Odilo Ehrhardt himself. He was later identified as Doctor Fritz Weber. Herr Nash, I imagine that you would know who Doctor Weber is.”

  “Yes, but . . .” Nash paused, frowning. “Fritz Weber was a German scientist during the Second World War, nuclear physicist, borderline genius, but also a borderline sociopath. He was one of the first people to state that the creation of a planet-destroying device was possible. In 1944, when he was only thirty, he worked on the Nazis’ atomic bomb project. But before that, it was said that Weber worked on the infamous Nazi torture experiments—they would put a man in freezing water and monitor how long it took for him to die. But I thought Weber was executed after the war . . .”

  Schroeder nodded. “He was. Doctor Fritz Weber stood trial at Nuremberg for crimes against humanity in October 1945. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. He was officially executed on 22 November 1945 at Karlsburg prison. Whether it was actually Weber who was executed has been disputed for many years. There have been numerous sightings of him over the decades by people who claim to have been tortured by him—in Ireland, in Brazil, in Russia.”

  Schroeder said seriously, “We believe that the Soviets spirited Weber out of Karlsburg the night before he was to be executed and replaced him with an impostor. In return for saving his life, the Soviets used Weber’s considerable skills to advance their own nuclear weapons program. But when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, and the BKA went looking for Weber, there was no sign of him at all. He had disappeared off the face of the earth”

  “Only to turn up eight years later at the headquarters of a Nazi terrorist organization,” Nash added.

  “Correct So at that stage, we were thinking that the Nazis were constructing a conventional nuclear device. But the Stormtroopers raid that monastery in France after it was discovered to possess the legendary Santiago Manuscript” Schroeder said. “When one pieced together the murder of Albert Mueller and his discovery of a meteorite crater in Peru and the supposed tale in the Santiago Manuscript of an idol with rather strange properties, suddenly our suspicions took on a whole hew reality. Maybe, under Weber’s tutelage, the Stormtroopers were doing more than just building a regular nuclear bomb, maybe they had succeeded in creating a Supernova and were now on the hunt for thyrium.