Prime Target

by Hugh Miller

  ‘As if I’d think that.’ Whitlock took out his notebook and opened it at the marker. ‘Sabrina has done a good job. In essence, her report tells us that JZ stands for Juli Zwanzig. I’ll get to that in a moment. She also established that an American, probably Harold Gibson, recruited the gunman, Yaqub Hisham, to murder Emily Selby.’ Whitlock tapped the papers lying on the table. ‘A full printout is in there.’

  ‘So a man who hates Arabs almost as much as he hates blacks and Jews went and hired an Arab to do his killing for him?’

  ‘That seems to be the case, yes.’

  ‘Item two?’

  ‘A German computer file from Mike Graham. I’ve given you a rough translation. Sabrina could have translated it more stylishly but you’ve got all the facts. He struck gold.’

  ‘Give me a summary.’

  ‘The computer file contains the constitution and objectives of Juli Zwanzig.’

  ‘That’s July twentieth, right?’

  ‘Very good. The group consists of men and women, all of them Jews, whose objective is to dismantle a highly secret Nazi outfit called Jugend von Siegfried - the Siegfried Youth. I checked with records at Central Intelligence, there’s no file on any such organization, so we’re talking about a seriously secret outfit.’

  ‘How young are the Siegfried Youth?’

  ‘Not young at all. Not any more. They were the very last squad of the Hitler Youth, inducted by the Führer himself a few days before Berlin collapsed. Apparently when Hitler addressed the boys in the street at the back of the bunker, he told them they were the embodiment of Siegfried, and years later they adopted the name.’

  ‘And the men on Emily’s list are the survivors of the group.’

  ‘Right again. She threw a lot of her life into getting that list together. The men on it are sworn to preserve the memory of Adolf Hitler and to suppress Jews by any and all means. A series of funds and other financial arrangements were used to keep the boys together during the formative years.’

  ‘And they managed to slip through the mid-part of the twentieth century without picking up tracers. That shows remarkable forward planning.’

  ‘There was a lot of smoke-screening,’ Whitlock said. ‘Several of the mechanics of the old Nazi escape routes were the very people who kept the Jugend von Siegfried shielded from any kind of public scrutiny. They were brought up and educated together - again, very secretly, at various locations in Switzerland.’

  ‘They were always kept together?’

  ‘Yes, and their bonding persisted into adult life, as Hitler intended. But on official records there’s no hint of that. Like any cross-section of Germans who were kids during the war, some of these men have early records, some have none. Some appear to have been adopted, others apparently grew up with foster parents - but it’s all meticulously fabricated bunkum. They stayed together until the time came to leak them into society, mostly into prearranged career paths.’

  ‘Have they lived up to Hitler’s hopes?’

  ‘According to the file Mike sent, the Siegfried Youth is nowadays a well-established covert organization which systematically eliminates Jews and Jewish enterprises.’

  ‘And JZ, I suppose, is dedicated to wiping out the Siegfried Youth.’

  ‘They certainly are. They’re a small amateur band, but they’re dedicated.’

  ‘What’s the connection with Emily Selby?’

  ‘Her father. Johannes Lustig. The organization was formed at his posthumous prompting. He was a scholar and an ardent Zionist, and he spent eleven years compiling a history of what he called “Hitler’s other monsters”, the villains we don’t hear so much about. During the war there were the Kultur Büroangestellter, among others. They were the culture clerks, the SS minions who went around evaluating antiques, pictures, sculpture - anything of value and artistic merit owned by Jews. They would catalogue the stuff then they would con-fiscate it. They ruined Lustig’s own father, a couple of years before he was taken away to Buchenwald.’

  ‘Was the history ever published?’

  ‘Apparently not. Which is a pity, because wider dissemination of the material would have alerted more people to the existence of the Jugend von Siegfried, who are apparently hinted at here and there. Lustig himself got the details of the group’s beginnings from a diary kept by one of Hitler’s aides, a General Albers. He gleaned the rest by combing police records and interviewing retired Swiss nationals who looked after the boys in the early years.’

  ‘So how did Lustig persuade people to set up the JZ?’

  ‘In his last will and testament he directed that money be set aside, quote…’ Whitlock consulted his notebook, ‘“to create a fellowship in remembrance of those spirits and lives which were dismantled; a fellowship with the central purpose of avenging the wrongs done by the Jugend von Siegfried; a fellowship to apply vengeance in full measure and assuage the torment of our beloved dead.”’

  ‘What about the group’s name? Where does that come from?’

  ‘The twentieth of July was the date when Johannes Lustig and his son-in-law died in Lake Cayuga. Lustig’s followers see symbolism in the fact that it was on the same date, in 1944, that the chief of staff to General Fromm, Claus von Stauffenberg, tried to blow up Hitler with a bomb under a map table.’

  ‘That attempt failed.’

  ‘I know, but I suppose the symbol’s the thing, the defiance. You’ll find a membership list among the papers - Erika Stramm did the recruiting, and she didn’t seem to have any trouble getting top people on her team.’

  ‘Do we know who JZ uses as executioner?’

  ‘There’s no mention of a name.’

  Philpott was frowning at his glass. ‘I find it hard to believe our computer man, Andreas Wolff, is a member of a latter-day Nazi death-squad.’

  ‘You’ve met him?’

  ‘Several times. I’ve also met quite a few racist fanatics. The two impressions don’t gel. Wolff is a head-in-the-clouds kind of man, a greying hippie. His professional brilliance is a side issue with him. He is at his happiest using science to firm up his fantasies, his computer games, which all involve adventurer kings and distressed maidens and dragons and all that other mystical nonsense. He is bored by politics, bored by reality in general. Wolff is not bigot material.’

  ‘I’ll get Mike to look into it.’

  Whitlock rose and Philpott went with him to the door.

  ‘If you hear anything important from Mike, call me,’ Philpott said. ‘Impress on him how necessary it is that we put a brake on JZ before things escalate. He has to find out who the blue-eyed executioner is.’

  ‘Maybe Sabrina could do us some good in Berlin.’

  ‘Maybe she could.’ Philpott opened the door. ‘Remember to hold the good thought.’

  ‘Which one is that?’

  ‘We are here to create havoc.’

  ‘I was maybe ten seconds away from switching off the phone,’ Mike Graham said. ‘If this is something that can wait until tomorrow, I’d rather it did.’

  ‘It won’t take long, Mike.’ Whitlock was on his balcony, watching the sun go down. ‘I want to update you on a couple of things. Where are you right now?’

  ‘In bed, in the Hotel Zipser. It’s the middle of the night here.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I forgot -’

  ‘I was reading,’ Mike said. ‘Lately I can’t sleep. I have to wait until it lands on me all at once.’

  ‘We’re in Texas.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘I’m with the old man. Maybe I’ll explain later, if I survive this junket. Tell me, have you seen Andreas Wolff yet?’

  ‘Tomorrow, first thing. I used the formal approach and made an appointment. I figured it would be best to start out civilized.’

  ‘Philpott wants you to check something else while you’re there.’

  Whitlock explained what they had learned about Juli Zwanzig from Erika Stramm’s computer file, and how Philpott had strong doubts about Wolff’s legitimacy as a candidate f
or assassination. ‘I’m sure you’ll think of some way to broach it.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Erika Stramm. Is she pliant?’

  ‘Um… The short answer is no.’

  ‘We need to know who the JZ executioner is. Stramm is the one to tell us.’

  ‘She’d never tell me. She wouldn’t even admit she knows what JZ is. She also claimed she and Emily Selby were just friends.’

  ‘There’s no chance she would relent and talk to you?’

  ‘If I got close enough to put a question to her, my suspicion is she’d put me in traction before I got my mouth open.’

  ‘I’ll drop that one back in Philpott’s lap.’

  ‘Good. Now I think I’ll hang up, C.W. Suddenly I’m getting sleepy.’

  ‘Don’t you want to know what Sabrina found out about the Arab shooter?’

  ‘Another time. If I miss my sleep on this cycle, I may have to wait twelve hours before I’m ready again.’

  Sabrina was in the pale blue kitchen of her apartment on East 93rd Street, standing at the big butcher’s-block counter that divided the room. She had made coffee and was pouring it into a dark green porcelain cup.

  ‘This sensation is not loneliness,’ she told herself firmly, ‘I’m just out of time-whack.’

  She had been feeling like this since she got back from Morocco. The expected pleasure of returning to her own home had not crystallized. She had the distinct feeling, at that very moment, that all of life was happening elsewhere, and she had somehow landed in a pocket of limbo.

  She took her coffee to the couch and sat down. She picked up the TV remote and switched on the set. As soon as the picture appeared she began clicking. Women, she had read, were not so prone to channel-hopping as men. Sabrina could hop with the best of them.

  None of the images that flashed past appealed strongly enough to make her want to stop and watch. She switched off the set and sat back, inhaling the aroma of the coffee, staring at the dark night sky beyond her windows.

  She tried to imagine how different her life would be if she had gone into teaching. She had wanted to teach, once, but opportunity was a powerful side-tracker. After some postgraduate time at the Sorbonne she travelled in Europe for a couple of years, and on her return to the USA she was recruited by the FBI. That had something to do with her father: George Carver was a man with a lifelong career in politics (‘… in the machinery of political life,’ was how he described his work) who had perhaps wanted a son. Sabrina took the job because it smacked of adventure, something she felt her life might need now she had decided to come home. While she was at the FBI she discovered she had a talent with firearms. She also learned she was good at martial arts. Gradually the thoughts of a life in teaching were submerged. By the time she was gently head-hunted and won over by UNACO, Sabrina was decidedly a woman of action, with a robust, well-preserved spare-time passion for languages and European literature. Now, the thought of tenure at a small, picturesque campus seemed very attractive.

  She drained her cup and took it back to the kitchen. She washed up, put out the lights and went to the bedroom. Now that she faced it, she felt desperately tired. Her shoulders ached and her legs still felt sluggish, a hangover from the time she spent cramped and dehydrated in the stinking room in Morocco. Sleep and rest for her poor muscles, she thought, would put a whole new shine on her outlook.

  She sat on the side of the bed and smiled at the picture of her mother and father on the night table. George and Jeanne Carver lived in Florida now, she hardly ever saw them since George retired. Occasionally they would come and stay for a few days, so Jeanne could have an opportunity to see the shows and George could mingle with his old friends for a while. But they didn’t come often enough, and when they did they always believed they were intruding on her life.

  ‘If only you would,’ she told the picture.

  What she felt now was a familiar sensation she privately called her amputee state: not belonging with anyone and not wanting to belong, but feeling cut off nevertheless. Or it was simpler than that: she was merely sorry for herself.

  ‘Self-pity is a crime against your person,’ she said firmly, and stood up. ‘Snap out of it.’

  All the same, she found it hard not to feel melancholy as she got undressed and put on her nightdress. Emotionally, she made a habit of keeping the wick turned low. Early in her career at the FBI she had had an affair with a sub-controller who turned ugly when she showed signs of falling in love with him. In the end he set his wife on her. Nowadays, beyond superficial friendship, she was wary of men, and she made a point of avoiding the ones who were not entirely free from other attachments - which was difficult to do, because they always said they were.

  The telephone rang. She picked it up.

  ‘Sabrina,’ Whitlock said. ‘I hope I didn’t wake you.’

  ‘Nice try, C.W., but no. You should have waited another twenty minutes.’

  ‘You know I wouldn’t call at this hour unless it was important.’ Sabrina’s other line started ringing, then the fax machine cut in. ‘I can hear that,’ Whitlock said. ‘It’s from me. A summary of what Mike found out when he visited Erika Stramm’s apartment. Read and digest.’

  ‘Why am I getting all this attention so late at night?’

  ‘Because there’s a problem. It needs handling and Philpott thinks you’re the very person to do the job.’

  ‘Tell me,’ she said.

  ‘Erika’s response to Mike’s break-in was hostile.’

  ‘No kidding. Are you saying she caught him?’

  ‘Apparently. Anyway, Mike did manage to purloin a computer file with the stuff I’ve just faxed to you, but there’s a crucial gap in the information.’

  ‘And crucial gaps are my specialty.’

  ‘We don’t know who the killer is, the executioner, the one who’s behind two murders that we know of. As things stand between Mike and Erika Stramm, there’s not a chance she’ll tell him anything.’

  ‘But you believe she’ll tell me?’

  ‘Well the chief thinks so.’ Whitlock paused. ‘And yes, I think so, too. I’ve always admired your, how shall I put it, delicate powers of persuasion.’

  Sabrina took a moment to consider what he had said, then asked simply, ‘When do I get the travel details?’

  ‘You have them already. They’re at the end of the fax. Keep in touch. And be careful.’

  ‘Sure. You too.’

  Sabrina put down the phone. She smiled again at the picture of her parents. It was odd the way events worked on her moods. She had just been told she had to get out there and risk her neck again. Because of that, she no longer felt cut off from anything.

  20

  Russ Grundy, stout and ruddy-featured, was squeezed into a corner in the back of a big white van with BENTINCK’S WINDSHIELD REPLACEMENTS painted in blue on the side. It was parked in the street behind the offices of the Transit Authority building in downtown Fort Worth, next to the bus station.

  ‘It’s busy along here, which is good cover, and the traffic doesn’t affect the equipment,’ Russ told C.W. Whitlock. ‘I’m within a mile of Chadwick’s house, which is perfect, and if I need to move closer for any reason nobody is going to notice or care.’

  Whitlock had arrived by bus, which he believed was still the best way to travel when a low profile was important. He had entered the van by walking through the bus station from front to back and climbing in as if he owned the vehicle. He sat now on a tiny swivel stool at the opposite end of the van from Grundy. Both sides of the interior were packed with electronic equipment. Where Grundy sat was a small bench with tuning gear, speakers, tape machines and headphones.

  ‘I’m really grateful to you and Mr Philpott for this little diversion, C.W.’

  ‘Glad we can all help each other. How are you working this surveillance, exactly?’

  ‘Most of it’s way beyond you - no offence - but putting it simply, I’m aligned with a tight information band set up between this
van and the target. The ventilators out on the roof are my focusing receivers. This baby,’ he patted an oblong black-and-red box beside him, ‘collects and co-ordinates. It picks up from two bugs in Chadwick’s house, and a third one in his office, another mile out beyond the house. So far, he hasn’t been near the office.’

  ‘How did you get the bugs in place?’

  ‘Respect my secrets, C.W., and that way I’ll respect yours.’

  ‘You remembered it’s telephone calls we’re interested in?’

  ‘Of course I did. So that we don’t have to record every sound that gets made in the place every minute of the day, the recording equipment is triggered by the first dialling tone each time a call is made, and it switches off again when the line-cancel tone sounds. This is really sensitive equipment, C.W.’

  ‘Can you tell what numbers are being called?’

  Grundy put on a pitying face. ‘I could do that before any of this stuff was invented. Some guys can do it just by listening near the phone. The tones tell you the country and area codes, and the numbers. They get logged separately.’ He pointed to a cassette deck. ‘Chadwick’s dialled quite a few in the last, ah…’ he looked at his watch, ‘nine hours.’

  ‘Can you transcribe them for me?’

  ‘Sure. This thing makes a printout.’ Grundy flipped a switch on the front panel. A moment later a strip of cash-register paper began to appear from under the machine. ‘How long have you got, C.W.?’

  ‘I get a return trip on the same bus I came in on. A couple of hours yet.’

  ‘You’ll have time to listen to some of this.’ Grundy put a small DAT tape player in front of Whitlock and inserted a tape. ‘Plug in the headphones at the side.’

  Whitlock listened. For a time it was fascinating, hearing Chadwick in his own home, believing he was alone, talking business on the telephone. But it was dull stuff, business talk of a kind that conveyed nothing beyond its own narrow content. After twenty minutes Whitlock decided he would switch off, make his apologies and leave with the tape player and the other three tapes. Then the tape suddenly began to hiss and squeak. He put the machine on pause and pulled off the headphones.