by Iles, Greg
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 counter-terror 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 arthritis 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 cruellest 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 did 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 contained 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. There is no reason. It’s like asking a bully why he drowns a cat, or a father why he molests his infant child hoping for some reason one could understand.
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 be wiped out. But he is wrong. What united the men of Phoenix exists everywhere. In Germany. South America. In the Soviet Union. The United States and Britain. Everywhere. The press calls them ultra-right organizations. All governments know about our groups, but they do nothing. A few members go to jail now and then, so what? Why are they tolerated? Because deep down, people understand these movements. They express something every civilized man feels—the justified fear of anarchy, of racial destruction. They know that one day the great struggle will come—the struggle against the Schwarze, the Asian and the Jew—”
“Didn’t you hear what I said this afternoon!” Stern cried. “The Jews don’t want to destroy anyone! That’s the difference between us and you. We have the power to vaporize our enemies, yet we choose not to.”
Hess smirked. “I’ll tell you what that tells me, Jew. It tells me that your race is weak. The Jew is clever enough to build atomic weapons, but he lacks the moral courage to use what he has created.”
“You’re mad,” Stern said quietly.
Hess chuckled. “Don’t deceive yourself. There are individuals in Israel who want to use their nuclear weapons. That is why your nation must be obliterated.”
With a profound emptiness, Stern dropped his rifle to the floor and turned away. Seeing this, Hess heaved himself away from the wall and began dragging himself slowly toward Stern. “You’ll have to kill me, Jew.”
Sweating and grunting in the darkness of the airstrip, Hans and Hauer lifted General Steyn through the main door of the Libyan Learjet. Ilse and Dr Sabri were already aboard. After laying the general on a pile of carpets at the rear of the cabin, Hauer leaned out of the plane to speak to Alan Burton.
The Englishman had disappeared. Peering into the darkness further up the runway, Hauer saw the Libyan Yak-42. Several guards patrolled beneath the big airliner, but as yet they had not spied the activity around the Lear.
“Burton!” Hauer called into the darkness. “There’s no pilot in here!”
Hearing a scuffle of footsteps at the edge of the runway, Hauer raised his pistol.
“Help me get him in!” said Burton.
“My God,” Hauer breathed, spying Diaz’s blood-soaked shirt. He slid beneath the Cuban’s shoulder and struggled up the jet’s three steps. It took both him and Burton to get Diaz to the Lear’s cockpit. Hauer looked down at the Cuban’s face. “He’s unconscious!”
“Just resting his eyes,” said Burton. “He’s a tough little bugger.” The Englishman slapped Diaz on the cheek. “Aren’t you, sport?”
The Cuban’s head lolled forward in something close to a nod.
“Jesus,” Hauer muttered.
As Hans pulled the Lear’s step-door closed, someone grabbed it from outside and tried to pull it down. “Captain!” he shouted.
Hauer darted back to the cabin, kicked the step-door down, and shoved General Steyn’s pistol through the door. Gadi Abrams stood there gasping for breath, his left trouser leg soaked with blood. Hauer pulled the Israeli into the plane and secured the door.
“Ready!” Hans shouted forward.
In the cockpit, Burton strapped Diaz into the pilot’s chair. Everyone else hunkered down in the passenger cabin. Ilse did her best to comfort General Steyn, who lay with his head propped on a small pillow. Hess’s briefcase lay on the floor at Ilse’s feet.
“Can that man fly?” she asked worriedly.
“If he wants to live,” Gadi groaned as he tied a pillowcase around his torn thigh.
Hans ducked his head and walked up to the cockpit partition. Over Hauer’s shoulder he saw Burton sitting in the copilot’s seat, massaging Diaz’s ashen face. “Can he do it?” Hans asked quietly.
Hauer shrugged. “He’s trying.”
Diaz’s hands floated forward and hit several switches. The cockpit lights came on. Hans felt a soft thrumming in the jet’s hull.
Burton glanced up at Hauer. “Those camel bumpers will come running when they hear the engines, mate. Can you handle them?”
Hauer moved back into the cabin and lifted a Libyan Uzi from the floor. Hans pulled open the rear door for him. “Put your hand in the back of my pants,” said Hauer. Then, with only Hans to keep him from falling, he leaned out and drew a bead on the black figures beneath the Libyan airliner.
Suddenly General Steyn sat up and shouted, “Can’t! Can’t…let Stern…detonate! He’ll kill thousands…millions!”
Ilse tried to calm the South African, but he would not be comforted.
“Shut him up!” Gadi snapped from the floor.
Hans glared back at the Israeli. “You shut up, you fucking fanatic!”
“Everyone be quiet,” Ilse begged. “Please!”
The Lear shuddered once, then lurched forward. Through the open hatch Hans heard distant shouts of alarm. Hauer’s Uzi barked three times in quick succession. Hans thought he saw two Libyans fall, but in the darkness it was hard to tell.
“Secure that hatch!” Burton shouted from the cockpit. Hauer fired twice more, then he pulled the steps up into the Lear’
s belly. The sleek jet gathered speed rapidly. Through a side window Hans saw the Yak-42 flash past.
Diaz pushed the engines to their limit. Everyone in the cabin clung fearfully to whatever he could.
Hauer struggled up to the cockpit and looked out through the windshield. He saw only darkness ahead. Gripping the back of Diaz’s seat, he heard the Cuban muttering a prayer. He said a silent one himself.
Suddenly Diaz pulled back hard on the stick, and with a sickening boom the Lear tore itself from the earth’s grasp. The dark veld fell away beneath them. They were airborne.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Stern peered into the darkness at the far end of the lab. Hess lay motionless beside him. The old Nazi had dragged himself too close, and Stern had clubbed him with the butt of his rifle. He looked dead. Three silent minutes had passed since the last explosion. Then—just seconds ago—Stern had thought he heard a furtive shuffle from the shadows. There… again. He recognized the sound now: the stealthy rustle of soldiers manoeuvring into position.
“Herr Horn!” called a voice from the darkness. “Guten Abend! This is Major Ilyas Karami! I have come to take delivery of my weapon!”
Squatting behind the bomb with the stripped wires in his hands, Stern leaned his cheek against the cool metal.
“Herr Horn!” Karami shouted. “There is no need for more men to die! We want the same thing, don’t we? The destruction of Israel!”
Stern glanced at his watch. He reluctantly set the detonator wires aside and picked up one of the rifles Gadi had left him.
“Herr Horn!” Karami cried. “I know you are there!”
Stern stared down at the exposed detonator wires. They were blurred now. The radiation had done its work. I could touch them together now, he thought, and end the whole mad game. But the others will barely be airborne yet—if they’ve reached the plane at all. Gadi… Hauer… Frau Apfel… the Spandau papers… Stern pulled back the bolt on the R-5 and pointed it into the darkness.
“If you do not answer,” Karami shouted, “I shall be forced to order my men forward!”
Stern rose to one knee and depressed the R-5’s trigger. The muzzle flashes seared his damaged eyes as he strafed the far end of the dark lab. He fired until the clip ran out, then picked up another rifle. His ears were ringing like fire bells.
Someone moaned in agony. A deep voice screamed Arabic in the darkness: “Don’t shoot back!” He doesn’t want his men to hit the bombs, Stern realised. That might buy me a few more minutes.
Then Stern froze. Through the groans of the wounded he could hear the rustle of the Libyans edging forward through the unfamiliar darkness. They were coming. Fighting an almost irresistible urge to twist the wires together, he cocked the second R-5, rose up, and opened fire again.
The Lear was at seventeen thousand feet and still climbing. Diaz had pointed the sleek jet dead-east, toward Mozambique and the Indian Ocean. It streaked upward like a bullet, passing four hundred miles per hour. Alan Burton sat in the cockpit beside Diaz and did his best to keep the Cuban conscious, while behind them a violent argument raged in the passenger cabin.
Gadi Abrams wanted Hess’s briefcase. He meant to obey his uncle’s last wish, and that meant taking the papers to Israel himself. The briefcase lay beside Ilse, who was ministering to General Steyn at the rear of the cabin.
“It is my duty and my right!” the Israeli repeated. “Hess was a Nazi and his mission was directed at the Jews!”
Hauer stood up from his seat beside Hans and placed himself between Gadi and Ilse. “Take it easy,” he said. “The Holocaust doesn’t give you the right to take possession of every scrap of history relating to the Nazis. The papers deal first and foremost with Germans. We should be the ones to tell this story.”
“You’ll bury them forever!” Gadi accused.
Hauer shook his head. “You idiot. Those papers don’t hurt Germany, they hurt Britain.”
“This is ridiculous!” Hans snapped. “We could all die at any moment! If you want to argue about who owns the Spandau papers, it’s me. I found them, so just shut up. Ilse will keep them until we’re safely away from here.”
“When will that be?” Ilse asked Dr Sabri.
“I’m not sure,” the Libyan replied. “It depends on how we are from the minimum distance point now.”
“Listen to me!” Gadi interrupted. “You may have found the Spandau papers, but Hess gave the Zinoviev book to my uncle.”
“In the belief that he was my grandfather,” Ilse reminded him.
Gadi wobbled uncertainly on his wounded leg. Fearing he might lose consciousness, he raised his R-5 threateningly. “Tell Frau Apfel to pass the case to me, Captain. Or I will be forced to take it.”
“Put that down, idiot!”’ Hauer bellowed. “If you fire in here you’ll kill us all!” He took a step toward the commando.
“Stop!” Gadi warned, jabbing his rifle forward.
With the mesmerizing stare he had used on the Russian KGB officer all the way back at Spandau Prison, Hauer took one more step, then pinioned Gadi’s wrist with a grip of iron.
“Let go!” Gadi cried, his face white with rage. The muzzle of the R-5 was an inch from Hauer’s left eye.
“Drop it,” Hauer said quietly. “Let’s all calm down, shall we?”
Alan Burton had spoken quietly from the cockpit door, but his MP-5 submachine gun put steel in his words. “Let the nice lad go, Captain,” he said. “So he can drop his weapon.”
“He won’t drop it.”
“I think he will,” said the Englishman. “This is a pressurized cabin, Captain. If he fires that rifle in here, he will kill us all—himself included—and the papers will be destroyed. My weapon, on the other hand, holds Teflon-coated bullets. They explode before they pass through a human body. A rather handy innovation. Our Israeli friend probably knows all about it.”
Hauer loosened his grip.
“And I must tell you, gentlemen,” Burton, added, “I rarely miss what I aim at.”
Hauer let go. Gadi reluctantly let his R-5 fall to the cabin floor.
“None of you need worry about the papers anyway,” said Burton, “because I am taking that briefcase with me.”
Hauer and Gadi gaped at the Englishman. Burton grinned. “You didn’t think I was down in that basement on vacation, did you? I was sent to do a job. To kill a man. A man using the very name his double gave when he parachuted into Scotland. How long would it have taken the Mossad to figure that one out? A week? Yet the story has never been made public. If what Stern said about Israeli/South African nuclear agreements is true, I can see how the Israelis might have let him live. Hess left Germany in the spring of ‘forty-one, and most of the atrocities weren’t committed until much later.”
“That’s not true!” Gadi argued.
“It is,” Ilse said softly. “My grandfather told me that the real crimes against humanity didn’t happen until after Hess left Germany.”
“That’s obscene!” Gadi shouted. “You’re crazy!”
“This is all terribly interesting,” Burton cut in, “but I’m not much on history.” He turned to Ilse. “Let’s have that case, love.”
“Take it!” Ilse cried. She hurled the briefcase at the Englishman.
Gadi tried to intercept it, but his wounded thigh prevented him.
The case landed at Burton’s feet. “Would you get that for me, Captain?” he said to Hauer, keeping his gun trained on Gadi. Hauer knelt and retrieved the case.
“Open it.”
The case was not locked. Hauer opened it and glanced inside. A thin smile touched the corners of his mouth.
Gadi snatched the case. Burton made no move to stop him. The young Israeli threw the case to the floor. “Where are the papers!” he demanded, his eyes on Ilse.
Ilse glared from one man to the other. “Those papers have caused enough pain! They should have been buried with the rubble of Spandau! The whole sick business should be allowed to die!”
Gadi put hi
s face in his hands. “Oh God … no.”
Ilse raised her chin defiantly and pointed toward the tail of the Lear. “Yes,” she said. “They’re back there.”
“In the tail?” Burton asked hopefully.
“In hell.”
Stern had shot three Libyans already, but he couldn’t hold out much longer. If the Libyans rushed him, he might be hit before he could detonate the weapon. He simply couldn’t afford to buy the Lear any more time. Crouching low, he laid his rifle gently on the floor and took one of the bright copper wires in each hand.
“I want to talk!” cried a voice from the shadows.
“It’s too late for talk!” Stern shouted back, the first verbal response he had given the Libyans.
“Why do you fight me, Herr Horn?” Karami asked. “Listen, please. I know who you are. Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess, yes? You visited Tripoli in 1937, I believe. You have seen my people, sir. We have the same goal, you and I—the destruction of the Jews. I was wrong to attack you, perhaps, but I need all the weapons you have here. Speak to me, please! Let me finish the job your Führer gave to the Mufti of Jerusalem! Please, Herr Hess. I do not understand your position!”
Stern laughed silently. “Come forward, Major. You’ll understand soon enough.”
Karami considered this. “All right,” he said at length. “I’m coming! I am unarmed!”
Crouched behind the bomb casing, Stern watched the tall, black-mustached Arab step from the darkness, his hands raised above his head. His onyx eyes blazed with fierce passion.
“Herr Horn?” Karami asked, puzzled.
Stern raised a hand and pointed to the motionless heap lying just in front of the bomb cart. “There,” he said.
Karami’s eyes searched the gloom until they settled on Hess. “Who is behind there?” he asked. “Mr Smuts? What happened here?”