by Greg Iles
agree 1
to allow Jews to leave their countries and also guarantee the safety of
Israel after the war."
"Madness," Natterman breathed. "What fools could have believed that a
guarantee from Adolf Hitler was worth anything?"
Stern shook his head in disgust. "One of those fools was Yitzhak
Shamir, the prime minister of Israel."
Natterman sat in stunned silence. "Shamir was a Zionist terrorist,
wasn't he? The Stern Gang ... my God."
"And that," said Stern, "brings us the the present, to the new LAKAM. I
left the agency seven years ago. At that time it was a model
intelligence organization. But under Shamir, LAKAM has grown completely
out of control. Up until two years ago, they actually ran a spy against
the United States.
Jonathan Pollard gave LAKAM information on U.S. weapons systems,
satellite capabilities, even nuclear targeting data-the most sensitive
intelligence in America. And do you know what Shamir did with this
tanned face paled with fury sent it to Moscow. That bastard risked the
life-giving support of America to prove that Israel could not be told
what to do by anyone, even the United States!"
"Does LAKAM know about the Phoenix AG warning?"
Stern answered with bitter sarcasm. "The current chief of LAKAM feels
that the Phoenix warning was fabricated by someone who wants to start us
on a destructive mole hunt.
LAKAM is pursuing the warning, but very slowly, like a man walking on
ice. There are 'constructive discussions' going on between Jerusalem
and Pretoria. The only reason I found out about the Phoenix warning at
all was that an old friend at LAKAM felt that the warning was not being
taken seriously enough."
Stern smiled mischievously. "That is the main reason I went first to
West Berlin rather than South Africa-to stay out of LAKAM's way. But
there were other reasons. The name of the company-Phoenix AG-reminded
me of Bruderschaft der Phoenix in Berlin. And when an old friend
happened to mention that Spandau Prison was being torn down only two
weeks after the warning arrived, the timing seemed impossibly
coincidental. All I could think of was the 'fire of Armageddon' note
that had mentioned Spandau.
Spandau as a city had always been too large to investigate, of course.
And while Hess-excuse me, Hess's double-was being held in Spandau
Prison, it was one of the most closely guarded buildings in the world.
But when I heard it was to be knocked into pieces, well ... it was
enough to get me on a plane to Berlin."
"But how are all these things connected?" Natterman asked.
"Where is the direct link between South Africa and Germany?"
Stern pursed his lips. "I don't think there is one, Professor. I think
the link runs through EnglandThe British governed South Africa until
1961, remember. They're a minority now, but a powerful one.
Take Phoenix AGit's a defense contractor based in South Africa, but the
majority stockholder is a young Englishman named Robert Stanton, Lord
Granville. His father and grandfather owned the company before him."
"Granville!" Professor Natterman shook his forefinger excitedly.
"That's why you brought me with you. You think this nuclear danger to
Israel could somehow be connected to the Hess case. To the English
conspirators!"
"Keep your voice down!" Stern glanced across the aisle to make sure
Gadi was still asleep. "LAKAM traced the paper used for the Phoenix AG
warning to an English mill. Lord Grenville's family has owned and
operated the corporation since 1947. But it still doesn't add up.
Britain has always been anti-Semitic, but what motive could Englishmen
have to support fascist groups now? Captain Hauer mentioned German
reunification to you. Could these Englishmen stand to make great
profits if Germany reunifies? Or could they have been blackmailed all
these years by Germans who knew their dark secret?
Germans who had secret ends of their own?"
Natterman was shaking his head. "I keep coming back to the past, Stern.
Consider our highly placed clique of Nazi sympathizers in the wartime
Parliament. I would imagine they had quite a bit of 'old boy' control
over British policy vis-A-vis Palestine, wouldn't you? Think about it.
In 1917
Britain promised the Jews a national home in Palestine. Yet while
England drifted into war with Hitler-the man who had vowed to
exter?ninate world Jewry-the British government used military force to
prevent every European Jew it could from reaching safety in
Palestine-the country Britain had already promised them. Was that
rational policy? Who really made those decisions? Could those
anti-Semitic feelings still be thriving in some families in Britain?"
Stern's face burned red with anger. "Professor, I can't even think
about those days without feeling rage toward the British."
Natterman was staring at Stern with strange intensity.
"Tell me," he said softly. "Were you part of the Stern Gang?
Is that how you know all this? Or were you Irgun?"
Stern's eyes bored in on Natterman. "Neither, Professor.
A very long time ago-before LAKAM-I helped found the Haganah."
Stern glanced past Natterman, to the small window-square of cerulean
sky. "In the winter of 1935, I emigrated with my mother to Palestine.
My father refused to leave our homeland, which happened to be Germany.
Despite my youth, I did a bit of everything for the Haganah: foug4t
Arabs, procured illegal arms, set up radio links across the Arabian
peninsula, smuggled in Jews from Europe-but mostly I fought the
British." The Israeli's face hardened.
"But I was no terrorist. Haganah was a moral army, Pr sor. The moment
Israel declared nationhood, we emerged as her legitimate defense forces.
I've never believed in senseless violence to achieve political ends. I
saw too many men start out as patriots and end up as criminals." Stern's
eyes misted with some half-forgotten emotion.
"Terror is a tempting tool in war, Professor. The easiest short-term
solution is always to lash out-to murder. I know. I tried it once."
He sighed deeply. "But 'an eye for an eye' is no road map to a better
world."
In her seat near the staircase, Swallow clenched her trembling hands.
Jonas Stern's voice-his hypocritical, Zionist voice-had hurled her back
into the past, back to Palestine.
Swallow knew all about Jonas Stern's flirtation with revenge, and she
had a very different opinion about the merits of the concept. She could
no longer even think coherently about her pain. Her clearest memory was
of her time as a mathematics prodigy studying at Cambridge, her time as
Ann Gordon. She still remerhbered the stunned expressions of the dons
as she soared through the nether reaches of theoretical calculus at age
@ixteen. When the war broke out, British Intelligence had snatched her
up with the rest of the savants and whisked her into cryptography. Her
parents lived in London, but her two brothers were stationed abroad: the
elder an RAF bombardier on Malta, the younger-A
nn's fraternal twin-a
military policeman in Palestine. Ann and her twin brother, Andrew, had
been inseparable as children, and they had danced with joy when fate
landed them both in the same theater of the war.
. The family had a splendid war-right up until the end. In 1944
both of Ann's parents were killed by one of the last V-rockets to fall
on London. Then her elder brother was shot down over Germany and
lynched by civilians while the Warren-SS looked on. That left only Ann,
decoding German signals in a stifling shed inTel Aviv, and Andrew,
caught in the escalating violence between Jews, Arabs, and the British
in Palestine. With the rest of the family dead, the twins had grown
closer than ever. They even shared a small apartment in the poor
quarter of Tel Aviv-until the night Andrew was blown into small pieces
as he sat on a toilet in the British police barracks. His brutal death
finally shattered Ann's Enghsh stoicism. During the long, desolate
months of anguish, her grief slowly metamorphosed into a dark,
implacable fury. The war with Germany ended, but she had found a new
war to fight.
With methodical fanaticism she set to work finding out who had killed
her twin brother. It didn't take long. The bomb that killed Andrew had
been a Zionist reprisal attack, revenge for some filthy Jews who had
died in a British deportation camp. And the name of the young firebrand
who had planned and carried out that reprisal? Jonas Stern.
It had taken Ann just two hours to learn everything the local
authorities knew about Stern. He had apparently helped the British
quite a bit during the war, but before and since, the young Zionist had
killed enough Englishmen to earn an unofFicial bounty of a thousand
pounds on his head. Ann Gordon didn't give a damn about the bounty.
All she cared about was avenging her dead brother.
The next day she volunteered for the operations side of British
Intelligence, and they accepted her. She was brilliant, tough, and best
of all an orphan. After rigorous training in England, they christened
her Swallow and put her to work.
As an assassin. The trouble was, she had no say in her choice of
assignments. She spent year after year luring IRA gunmen, Arab
terrorists, African communists, anti-British mercenaries and other hard
cases to their doom, instead of hunting down the Zionist demon from her
past. In all the years Swallow worked for British Intelligence, not
once did she manage to get within striking range of Jonas Stern. To her
everlasting fury, the young Zionist fanatic had evolved into a
singularly gifted field agent. And long before Swallow was pensioned
off, Stern himself had retired to a fortified haven in the Negev desert,
apparently never to emerge.
TWice since then Swallow had attempted to breach the defenses of Stern's
desert refuge. She had drawn Jewish blood on both occasions,.
but she had failed to reach her hated target. After that, the Mossad
had learned her identity and warned her off. For Swallow, crossing'into
the Holy Land meant certain death. And so she had returned to England.
And waited. Until yesterday. Yesterday, like a call from Olympus, Sir
Neville Shaw's summons had come. Something had drawn Jonas Stern out of
Israel at last. Out of his sanctuary ...
Swallow's eyes popped open as Professor Natterman's voice crackled in
her ear receiver, breaking her reverie.
"Can't you see it, Stern?" he said forcefully. "Somehow, for some
unknown reason, the past and present are coming toward some mysterious
meeting point ... a kin o completion. It's like the Bible. The sins of
the fathers, yes?
Or as the Buddhists teach, karma." The old professor raised a crooked
finger and shook it slowly. "You still think my suspicions about Rudolf
Hess are unfounded? If ghosts like Yitzhak Shamir can survive to haunt
the present, so can Hess. I tell you, Stern, the man is alive."
Stern closed a strong hand over Natterman's upraised finger, hard enough
to cause pain. It infuriated the professor, but it shut him up.
Stern leaned back in his seat and sighed.
"I do wonder sometimes who is pulling the strings of this invisible
cabal. Is it Lord Granville, the young Englishman? Is it some madman?
Some would-be Aryan Messiah? Is it another ghost from the past? Your
Helmut, perhaps?"
Natterman fixed the Israeli with a penetrating gaze. "Jonas," he said
gravely, using Stern's first name for the first time. "What will you do
if ... if we find that I am right? If we find living men who bear
direct responsibility for the Holocaust? Will you kill them?"
Stern ran a hand through his thinning hair. "If we were to find such
men alive," he said quietly, "I would take them back to Israel.
Take them to Israel for a public trial. That is the only end from which
justice can come."
Natterman scratched at his gray wisp of beard. "You're a strong man,
Jonas. It takes great strength to show restraint."
"I'm not that strong," Stern murmured. "If I couldn't get them back to
Israel, I would kill them without hesitation."
Glancing across the aisle for the first time in several minutes, Stern
saw that his three young companions had awakened. They were listening
wide-eyed, like children around a campfire. The Haganah years Stern had
spoken of resonated like myths in the hearts of the young sabres, and
they stared at him like a hero of another age.
Beyond that, they now knew something about their mission. They %yere to
be given the chance of a lifetime-the chance to strike back through the
pages of history-to punish men who had never been justly punished-men
who had tried to make the State of Israel a stillborn nation! Stern's
commandos were lean and hard in body and spirit, and from that moment on
they were as soldiers in a holy war.
Four rows ahead of them, another soldier also awaited her chance to
strike. As the El Al jetliner soared southward through the glorious
vault of sky, the woman code-named Swallow reveled in the knowledge that
she could destroy Jonas Stern right now.
Stern had the least part of the Spandau diary, but what did she care for
papers? If she killed Stern here, of course, she would die.
She thought of Sir Neville Shaw, the nerveless director general of mI-5.
She certainly felt no loyalty to that old serpent. Shaw and men like
him had used her ruthlessly throughout her career, wielding her like a
razor-sharp sword, all the while ignoring her quest for private justice.
But what of England, that hazy, increasingly obsolete concept? In spite
of her coldness, Swallow had always possessed a strong, rather maudlin
streak of patriotism.
Was preserving British honor worth deferring her sweet revenge for one
more day? Professor Natterman had spoken of ghosts from the past.
Swallow knew that once she unmasked herself-today, tomorrow,
whenever-she would be one ghost that Jonas Stern would be very surprised
to see.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
11.40 A.M. PrOtOri8
More than f
ifty knives of all types gleamed inside the brightly lit
display case. Hauer leaned over until his nose touched the glass.
This immediately drew the attention of a nearby salesman, a freckled,
red-haired man of about "Any particular style you're looking for, sir?"
he asked in a British accent. ,Are you looking for a souvenir, or might
you be doing some hunting with it?"
"Good point," Hauer said in English. "Could be doing some hunting.
Still, we don't want anythingtoo big. Quality, that's the thing."
"Of course, sir. I believe I've got just what you need."
When the young man moved down the row of display cases, Hans leaned
close to Hauer. "What about a gun?" he whispered.
Hauer didn't reply. This was their fifth stop of the day, and he was
beginning to feel overexposed. After checking into the Burgerspark
Hotel and changing their Deutsche marks for rand, they had slipped out
the rear entrance of the hotel and into their taxi. They clung to the
amuests Of the Ford while Salil made short work of their British tall
car.
The loquacious Indian had shepherded them around the city while they
purchased several changes of clothes and enough food to last two days
without leaving whatever hotel room they finally settled into.
Salil had also recommended the large sporting goods store.
"Here you are, sir," the salesman said, proudly holding out a sleek
six-inch knife for Hauer's inspection- e Hauer took the weapon and
turned it in the light. H halted it in his palm, feeling the balance.
The knife had a plain varnished handle-not nearly so ornate as the
engraved showpieces glinting in the display case-but Hauer's approval
was evident.
"I see you know your knives, sir," said the salesman.
"Made in West Gen-nany that was. Solingen steel, finest in the world."
Hauer flicked the knife back and forth with practiced ease.
"We'll take two."
The salesman's smile broadened. Already these two tourists had
purchased an expensive hunting rifle, scope, and a Nikon camera with
mini-tripod and hand-held light meter. "I notice your accent, sir," he
said with a sidelong glance at Hans. "German, are you?"
"Swiss," Hauer said quickly.
"Ah." The salesman realized he had asked the wrong question.
"I'll just wrap these for you." After another long look at Hans, he