The Last Nazi (A Joe Johnson Thriller, Book 1)

by Andrew Turpin

  “Well, could he have got in another way?” Fiona asked.

  “Not possible,” Geremek said. “In any case, we have a photograph of him, which was supplied through the British Embassy in Warsaw, and there’s been nobody matching the description either in the terminal or on the airport site. We’ve been watching the closed circuit television monitors like hawks.”

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Friday, December 2, 2011

  Ludwikowice Klodzkie

  When Ignacio had finished checking his map at the T-intersection in Ludwikowice Klodzkie, he had ignored the signs pointing right to Wroclaw Airport.

  Instead, he yanked his steering wheel hard left and, with a squeal of tires, let out the clutch and accelerated away from the T-intersection.

  His destination lay only twenty-five kilometers in the opposite direction.

  Soon he was traveling southeast past schools, run-down houses, and shops at speeds almost double the legal limit.

  Ignacio swung a hard right, heading south toward Nowa Ruda, then on to Sarny and past the old border customs building at Tlumaczow before a blue sign flashed past: Česká Republika.

  Even now, having crossed the border into the Czech Republic, Ignacio didn’t allow himself a smile. In the village of Otovice, he pulled over next to a pebble-dashed gray church with a red brick bell tower and a memorial to the dead of 1939–1945.

  He dialed the same number he had called earlier, when running away from the collapsed tunnel. He exhaled with relief when the call was answered almost instantly.

  “Hola, Ignacio?”

  “Si, Alfonso, que tal? I’ll be there in five minutes, okay?”

  “Okay, I’m circling the airstrip, landing in two minutes. It’ll be a fast turnaround, so make sure you’re ready. Hasta pronto.”

  Ignacio slammed the Focus back into gear and sped off, leaving a hail of gravel splattering into the war memorial behind him.

  As he drew near his destination, he could see a small twin-engine turboprop aircraft flying above him. It banked sharply to the right and then descended rapidly, disappearing behind some buildings.

  Ignacio drove into the village of Martínkovice, then swung right at a crossroads, next to a handsome white school building behind a decorative metal fence.

  He rushed along a country lane lined with leafless trees until he saw what he was looking for.

  There were a couple of frayed wind socks billowing in the wind, a corrugated steel hangar, a few old buildings behind a rusty pink wrought-iron gate and a link fence, a two-story control tower with a few radio masts, and a small radar scanner on the roof.

  Beyond the buildings was a grass airstrip. A faded sign on one of the buildings, partly obscured by a tree, read Airport Broumov.

  Airport? It was more like an abandoned industrial unit in Barrio 31.

  On the grass, the aircraft was already taxiing toward the control tower. Its wings bobbed slightly as it bounced over the field.

  Ignacio turned into the gate and sped straight to the front of the small tarmac parking lot to the left of the control tower.

  Then he jumped out of the Ford, grabbed his backpack, and sprinted over the grass toward the plane, a Cessna 340.

  As he did so, two men emerged from the tower and ran toward him, shouting and waving their arms in a clear indication to stop.

  The pilot already had the rear door of the six-seater open, and Ignacio climbed swiftly into the aircraft. As soon as the door closed, Alfonso hit the throttle. The Cessna accelerated quickly in the direction of the grass runway. The two men were still in pursuit, shaking their fists. Then they gave up. Ignacio saw one of them throw his hands up in frustration.

  Ignacio climbed through to the copilot’s seat, where he strapped himself in. Within a minute, the plane was airborne again, flying low over Martínkovice, where it banked right and headed west at an altitude of no more than five hundred feet.

  “Todo bien?” the pilot, Alfonso, finally said.

  “Si, no hay problema. At least, not now. Thanks for getting here on time, amigo. So, is our route clear?”

  “Yes, it’s clear. We’re going probably about 650 kilometers, so roughly two-and-a-half hours in this baby. She moves. We can cruise at three hundred an hour. I just need to keep her fairly low—helps avoid the radar, mostly.”

  “Perfecto.”

  Ignacio was confident there was little chance of Johnson being able to track him on his current journey. Indeed, he hoped the investigator had been diverted onto the false trail he had left by booking a flight from Wroclaw via Frankfurt to São Paulo under his real name.

  He was also glad the pilot’s plan was to fly low. That way, his cell phone would continue to operate, which was important, as he had a call to make.

  Ignacio dialed a number in Buenos Aires.

  “Luis? Hola. Yes, it’s Ignacio here. Listen, the tunnel was a disaster. That idiot Diego set off a booby trap that blew the whole tunnel up and himself with it. We got nothing, no gold.”

  Ignacio listened as Luis tried to commiserate with him, then he interrupted.

  “I’m on my way back now. I need you to do something for me. You need to put a track on my old man. I want to know all his movements. Don’t let him out of your sight. But be subtle, got it? Vale, muchas gracias . . . ”

  When he ended the call, Ignacio reached into his inside jacket pocket and removed a single rectangular object, almost four inches long and an inch and three quarters across, yellow-brown in color, with an eagle and swastika marking on the front and the words Deutsche Reichsbank.

  Underneath there were other markings: 1 kilo Feingold, 999.9, followed by a six-digit number prefaced by the letters DR.

  Ignacio kissed it.

  A single, gleaming, solid one-kilogram gold bar, worth, he calculated, about $50,000.

  Not quite what he had hoped for but a long way better than nothing.

  He placed it carefully in his backpack and took out a small brown paper package.

  Unwrapping it, he removed a small red booklet.

  The front cover was resplendent. On it were printed several words in gold lettering:

  Europäische Union

  Bundesrepublik Deutschland

  Reisepass

  He opened the passport and managed a thin smile.

  Inside was a photograph of himself, and next to it the name of the holder: Franzes Konigen.

  Part Four

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Friday, December 2, 2011

  Wroclaw Airport

  It was only when the pushback tractor began to propel the Lufthansa Boeing 737 away from the terminal gate and onto the taxiway that Johnson finally gave up.

  He turned to Fiona. “Look’s like the bastard’s given us the slip. Neat trick. You’ve almost got to admire him.”

  “Can you get Jayne to check at other airports?” Fiona asked.

  Johnson shrugged but placed an encrypted call to Jayne’s cell phone and explained what had happened.

  “Maybe it was a decoy booking,” Johnson said. “He must have known we’d check. Can your Interpol friend down in Lyon do another scan for Guzmann at other airports and airlines within range of here? Maybe he’s taken a different route. Try airports within, say, a hundred fifty kilometers of Ludwikowice Klodzkie to start with.”

  “You’re sounding completely deflated,” Jayne said.

  “Too damn right,” Johnson said. “I think the asshole’s slipped through our fingers. We’ve wasted a huge amount of our valuable time coming here when we should have gone straight to Buenos Aires.”

  He glanced at Fiona, who turned away in embarrassment, then went on. “We’ve missed grabbing Ignacio and it’s given Brenner time to get out and away. We’ve probably lost both of them.”

  Twenty minutes later, Jayne called back.

  She had requested a check for Guzmann’s name, and also for any anomalies, such as passport details that didn’t tally with passenger names, involving anyone booked to fly from a
irports within a hundred-and-fifty kilometer radius. There was nothing so far.

  “My friend at Interpol is now widening the search to look at flights from all European hub airports to Buenos Aires, and she’ll report back within an hour or so,” Jayne said. “The thing is, it’s not an official investigation, just a friend doing me a favor, so she has to keep it low-key.”

  Johnson gently chewed the inside of his cheek. “Hmm, well, Ignacio won’t have gotten further than a hundred fifty kilometers by now, for sure. He’s driving a Ford, not a Ferrari. Sounds like he must have another plan. Maybe he’s traveling under another passport, a different name.”

  He thanked Jayne and ended the call.

  Johnson gazed around the Wroclaw departures terminal. “Fiona, perhaps you could try and get us on the next available flight to Buenos Aires, while I just work out what we do next.”

  He tried to think through the issues he was facing.

  Apart from Brenner, there was Watson. If the CIA veteran was taking remote measures such as asking other intelligence agencies across Europe to ensure he received no assistance, then it seemed logical to assume he would probably also deploy one of his own CIA assets in Argentina to try and exfiltrate Brenner to safety.

  While Fiona wandered off toward the Lufthansa ticket office, he tapped out a text message.

  Jayne, we still need to get to Argentina, and I’m going to need help there. I need someone who knows the region well, speaks Spanish, and can help me out. I’m guessing you’ve finished that Olympics report by now. If you’re so pissed there you’d like a new challenge, get yourself on the next flight. If not, do you know any other assets there who might be able to help? Let me know what you think. Joe.

  Johnson sent the message to Jayne’s cell number, then looked across the concourse at Fiona, who was standing at the back of a long line at the Lufthansa desk. He doubted she would be happy given how possessive she felt about this story, but backup was backup.

  Great Falls Park, Washington, D.C.

  Robert Watson had driven from the CIA offices at Langley to Great Falls Park, next to the Potomac River. It was one of several places he occasionally visited when he needed some thinking time or to make calls without the threat of surveillance by anyone at Langley.

  As he limped to a bench at the side of a hiking path, well away from any bushes where eavesdroppers might be concealed, he clamped his phone to his ear, using a pretend call as cover to gradually turn a full circle as he carefully scanned the area. He had no reason to think he was being tailed, but one could never be too careful.

  Watson dropped his bag, containing VANDAL’s CIA file, on the bench and sat down. He wasn’t going to take the risk of leaving the file in his car, particularly after having discovered that someone else at the Agency had been reading it just a few hours before he had retrieved it.

  He hunched his already-tense shoulders, took his encrypted phone from his pocket, and dialed a number. The plan Watson was about to suggest was a gamble, but he felt he had no other option.

  “Moshe, it’s Robert here,” he said when the call was answered.

  There was a two-second silence at the other end of the line before Moshe Peretz, sitting 5,900 miles away in Tel Aviv, replied.

  “Shalom, Robert. Do you have an update?” the Mossad intelligence chief asked. “And what’s that noise in the background?”

  “It’s water. A river. It’s where I come when I need to think. We need to decide what to do. There have been developments here.”

  “Go on, what?” Peretz asked.

  “Apart from Joe Johnson, there’s someone else out to get VANDAL.”

  “Tell me,” Peretz said.

  “It’s his son. The only difference is, he wants the old man disposed of, not put in court, my sources tell me. He could do it, too; he’s an army thug and has a long record. He’s been out of his father’s business until recently—didn’t know what was going on. But now he’s found out and has gone looking for the gold, my guys in London tell me. He drove from London to Poland yesterday with another one of his gang.”

  Watson swept his hand through his white hair and looked down at the smooth river waters upstream to his left and then the white foaming maelstrom of a waterfall just below his vantage point.

  “So what next?” Peretz asked.

  “Well, I’ve been doing a bit of thinking since we spoke last. We both have a lot to lose if the old man ends up being dragged to court by Johnson and starts squealing under pressure. A huge amount. We’ve got to protect ourselves.”

  Watson placed his hand on the bag containing VANDAL’s CIA file.

  Peretz snorted. “If that happened, the press would have a ball, whether from the CIA or the Mossad angles. But, like I told you before, the people upstairs here might take the view that if the funding has dried up, they’ll take alternative action on Brenner. But what’s your solution? Do you want me to talk to the director here and get Kidon involved?”

  “No, no, not yet,” Watson said. Calling in the Mossad’s murky assassination unit at this stage would be unnecessarily messy.

  “I think we should let the son and Johnson fight it out over the old man,” Watson said. “That’s the lowest-risk, cleanest option for us both. My money would be on the son doing VANDAL over before Johnson gets there. And then I’d put more money on him disposing of Johnson, too. As I’ve told you, I know Johnson from way back. He’s ex-CIA; I fired him. He doesn’t have what it takes: I doubt he’s going to do much when it comes down to it, but I don’t want to risk it unnecessarily.”

  “So we let the son do the wet work for us, instead?” Peretz asked.

  Watson switched his phone to his other ear, checked around him, then continued,

  “Exactly. And if he can also see off Johnson, that’s the other problem solved.”

  Watson looked up to the sky and waited.

  There was silence at the other end of the line.

  “Okay,” Peretz said eventually. “Let’s go down that route, at least for starters. There’s obviously a risk attached, though. If the son doesn’t do what you expect, we’ll have to act swiftly ourselves on Johnson. I can issue instructions at this end if you can’t handle it. I very, very definitely don’t want this going to court.”

  “Okay, agreed.” said Watson. “Me neither.”

  “So how are you going to make sure the son gets there first?”

  “I’m getting surveillance put on VANDAL,” Watson said. “I’ve got an asset in Buenos Aires. He’ll make sure.”

  He hung up, then straightaway dialed another number in Miami.

  “Simon, it’s Robert,” he said, when the call was answered. “Some good news. I’ve made progress regarding VANDAL. Tel Aviv is going to do nothing for the time being, which gives us some breathing space to get him out of harm’s way.”

  He paused. “Activate that new passport request for VANDAL as soon as possible and get it to him. We also need to put travel delays in place for Johnson en route to Buenos Aires, which is where he’s inevitably heading now. Get your team to have him blocked from using direct flights—force him to use a circuitous route or something. And once he does get there, make sure he’s held up at the airport. Get it done. Thanks.”

  “I’ll make sure that happens. Keep in touch,” Simon replied.

  Watson hung up, sat back on the bench and cursed. He really should have planned further in advance for this type of eventuality. Such a long time period with no visible threat to VANDAL had bred complacency. It was very unprofessional.

  Still, with luck, he should be able to get VANDAL out of Argentina safely without anyone doing him over. That would be a win-win.

  London

  Jayne sat and stared at the text message from Johnson for several minutes.

  I need someone who knows the region well, speaks Spanish, and can help me out . . . If you’re so pissed there you’d like a new challenge, get yourself on the next flight.

  She certainly felt pissed—and she definitel
y needed a new challenge.

  Johnson was also correct in that the Olympics security report was complete and sitting in her boss’s inbox.

  After almost three decades in the SIS machine, her plans to head for the exit in the coming months were now quite advanced. That said, she didn’t want to leave under a cloud, and taking part in some off-the-books operation in Argentina would almost certainly cause blowback of epic proportions if details found their way back to Vauxhall Cross.

  Jayne weighed her options.

  She could certainly be of help to Johnson—of that there was no doubt. She still had several highly placed contacts in Argentina with whom she had maintained relationships of sorts since her posting to the Buenos Aires station from 1996 to 2000. They included a couple of the agents she had run in the police and military machines, who had provided her with a steady flow of information about everything from naval mines and internal security to the fledgling Argentine nuclear weapons capability. The posting had been a good period for her, professionally.

  Clearly, if Joe’s plan to capture Brenner came to fruition, then that would be extremely high-profile and would trigger widespread media coverage across the globe.

  But would it be possible to keep her role under the radar? If it were simply a question of giving him some support and hopefully helping deliver a successful conclusion, she could melt into the background immediately afterward and leave Joe to deal with the aftermath.

  The problem would be if it all went tits up. That would be another story.

  Jayne stood in her office in SIS’s Vauxhall Cross headquarters and looked out the rain-spattered window across the gray expanse of the River Thames. A line of red London buses were queuing on the steel and granite structure of Vauxhall Bridge.

  There were just over three weeks until Christmas, but she knew there would be no one to prepare with, wrap presents with, or celebrate with. So why not head off and instead do something different, stimulating, and interesting? And do it with someone for whom she still had a lot of affection and respect.