by Tom Clancy
As the attendant turned to go, Herbert grabbed her wrist.
"Sorry I snapped at you," he said. "But me and these"- he patted the armrest— "we're old friends." "I understand," the young woman said. "And I'm sorry if I offended you." "You didn't," Herbert said. "Not at all." The woman took off with a smile as the government official introduced himself. He told them that a limousine was waiting to take them to the lakeside Alster-Hof Hotel once they were through customs. Then he pointed the way, standing well back as Herbert began wheeling through the terminal, past the window which looked onto busy Paul Baumer Platz.
"Well," Herbert said, "I think it's damned ironic." "What is?" Hood asked.
"I can't find a square inch of common ground with my own people, yet I'm in an airport the Allies bombed to hell along with half of Hamburg. I'm here making nice with a flight attendant and getting ready to work on the same end of the road with guys who shot at my dad in the Ardennes.
Takes some getting adjusted to." "Like you said," Hood remarked, "it's a new world." "Yeah," Herbert said. "New and darin' me to keep up with it. But I will, Paul. God in heaven help me, I will." So saying, Herbert picked up the pace. He scooted around Americans, Europeans, and Japanese— all of whom, Hood was sure, were running the same race in their own way.
CHAPTER THREE
Thursday, 9:59 A.M., Garbsen, Germany
Werner Dagover's lip curled with disgust when he rounded the hill and saw the woman sitting behind the tree.
That was fine, fine work by the road team, he thought, letting someone through. There was a time in Germany when careers were destroyed by slipups like this.
As he approached, the barrel-chested sixty-two-yearold security guard vividly recalled being seven years old and having his Uncle Fritz come to live with them. The master saddler of an army riding school, Fritz Dagover had been the ranking official on duty when a drunken army sports instructor snuck a Generalmajor's horse from the stable. He took it for a midnight ride and broke its leg. Though the instructor had committed the infraction without Fritz's knowledge, both men were court-martialed and dishonorably discharged. Despite the fact that civilian manpower was scarce during the war and Uncle Fritz was a trained leatherworker, he was unable to get work. He ended his life seven months later, swigging arsenic-laced ale from his canteen.
It's true, Werner reflected, great evil was committed during the twelve-year Reich. But a high value was placed on personal responsibility. In purging everything from the past, we've also cast out discipline, the work ethic, and too many other virtues.
Today, few guards were willing to risk their lives for an hourly wage. If their presence on a movie set, at a factory, or in a department store was not a deterrent, then it was too bad for the employer. The fact that they'd agreed to do a job didn't matter to most guards.
But it mattered to Werner Dagover of Sichern. The name of the Hamburg-based company meant "security." Whether it was a woman accidentally interrupting a shoot or a gang of thugs celebrating Hitler's birthday during this week's insidious Chaos Days, Werner would see to it that his beat was secure.
After notifying the dispatcher that there was a woman in the woods, apparently alone, Werner shut off his walkietalkie.
Drawing back his shoulders, he made sure his badge was on straight and pushed stray hairs under his hat. As he'd learned during his thirty-year tenure as a Hamburg police officer, one couldn't wield authority without looking authoritative.
As Sichern's guard-at-large for this operation, Werner had been stationed in the command trailer on the main road of the small town., When the call came from Bernard Buba, he'd biked the quarter mile to the movie location and parked by the prop trailer. Then he'd made his way inconspicuously around the crew, past the hill, and headed into the twenty acres of forest. Beyond the woods was another road where Sichern guards were supposed to be watching for picnickers or birdwatchers or whatever this woman was.
As Werner neared the tree, his back to the sun, he stepped on a nutshell. The slender young woman rose with a start and turned. She was tall, with aristocratic cheekbones, a strong nose, and eyes that seemed like liquid gold in the direct sunlight. She was wearing a loose white blouse, jeans, and black boots.
"Hello!" she said breathlessly.
"Good morning," Werner replied.
The guard stopped two paces from the woman. He tipped his hat.
"Miss," Werner said, "a film is being shot just around the hill and we must keep the area clear." He extended his hand behind him. "If you'll come with me, I can escort you back to the main road." "Of course," the woman said. "I'm sorry. I wondered what those men were doing on the road. I thought perhaps there had been an accident." "You would have heard an ambulance," Werner noted.
"Yes, of course. " She reached behind the tree. "Let me just get my backpack." Werner called his dispatcher on the walkie-talkie and explained that he was escorting a woman back to the main road.
"So— a movie," the woman said, slinging the backpack over her left shoulder. "Is anyone famous in it?" Werner was about to tell her he didn't know much about movie actors when he heard leaves rustle above him.
He looked up in time to see two men, dressed in green and wearing ski masks; jump from the lowest branch. The smaller man landed in front of him, holding a Walther P38.
Werner couldn't see the larger man who dropped behind him.
"Don't speak," the gunman told Werner. "Just give us your uniform." Werner's eyes shifted to the woman as she removed a folding-stock Uzi from the backpack. Her expression was cool now, impervious to the contemptuous look he gave her.
She stopped beside the gunman, nudged him aside with her knee, and pressed the gun muzzle under Werner's chin. She glanced at the name tag on his breast pocket.
"Just so there's no misunderstanding, Herr Dagover," she said, "we kill heroes. I want the uniform now." After hesitating a long moment, Werner reluctantly undid his belt buckle. He pressed down on the walkie-talkie to make sure it was snug in its loop, then laid the big leather belt on the ground.
As Werner began undoing the big brass buttons on his uniform, the woman crouched and scooped up the belt. Her eyes narrowed as she removed the walkie-talkie and turned it over.
The small red "transmit" light was glowing. Werner felt his throat go dry.
He knew it had been a risk to turn it on so the dispatcher could hear them. But sometimes the job required risks, and he didn't regret having done it.
The woman touched the "lock" button with her thumb, taking it off transmit. Then she looked from Werner to the man behind him. She nodded once.
Werner Dagover gasped as the man slipped two feet of copper wire around his throat and pulled tight. The last thing he felt was a ripping pain which girdled his neck and shot down his spine.
Short, powerfully built Rolf Murnau of Dresden, in what was formerly East Berlin, stood at ease beside the oak.
The nineteen-year-old was armed and attentive as he watched the hill that lay between them and the film set. He held the Walther P38 in one hand, but that was only his most obvious weapon. The ski mask tucked in his belt was lined with washers, making it a devastating and unexpected bludgeon in a fight. A sharpened hat pin hidden beneath the collar of his shirt was perfect for slitting throats. Stick in the point, drag it quickly to the side. And the crystal of his wristwatch made a surprisingly effective weapon when dragged across an opponent's eyes. The bracelet he wore on his right wrist could be slipped over his hand and used as brass knuckles in a fistfight.
Every now and then, Rolf turned to make sure no one approached from the road. No one did, of course. As planned, he and the other two members of Feuer had parked off the road and walked in when the guards were on their coffee break. The men were too busy chatting among themselves to notice.
Rolf's smoky eyes were alert, and his small, pale lips were pressed together. That, too, had been part of his training. He had worked hard to control his blinking. A warrior waited for an opponent to blink, then at
tacked. He had also learned to keep his mouth shut while drilling. A grunt told an opponent that a blow had worked or that you were struggling. And if your tongue were extended, a punch under the chin could make you bite it off.
Rolf felt strong and proud as he listened to the sluts and gays and moneymen beyond the hill on the movie set.
All of whom would die in the flames of Feuer. Some would perish today, most of them later. But eventually, through people like Karin and the famous Herr Richter, the world vision of Der Fhrer would be realized.
The young man's head was covered with a black stubble which barely concealed the fire-red swastika cut into his scalp. Perspiration from a half hour in the mask gave the hair a bristly, boyish shine. It also dribbled into his eyes, but he ignored it. Karin was big on military formality, and she would not approve if he wiped his brow or scratched an itch.
Only Manfred was permitted such liberties, though he rarely took them. Rolf enjoyed the discipline. Karin said that without it he and his comrades "are like links which are not a chain." She was right. In the past, in gangs of three or four or five, Rolf and his friends had attacked individual enemies but never an opposing force. Never the police or anti-terrorist squads. They didn't know how to channel their anger, their passion. Karin was going to change that.
To Rolf's right, behind the oak, Karin Doring finished removing Werner's uniform while the hulking Manfred Piper put it on. Once the corpse had been stripped to its underwear, the twenty-eight-year-old woman dragged it through the soft grasses toward a boulder. Rolf didn't offer to help. When they'd finally gotten a close look at the uniform, she'd told him to stand guard. And that was what he was going to do.
From the corner of his eye, Rolf saw Manfred squirm as he dressed. The plan required Karin and one of the men to get close to the movie set, which meant that one of them had to look like a Sichern guard. Because the guard had been so barrel-chested, the clothes would have looked ludicrous on Rolf. So although the sleeves were short and the collar was tight, Manfred got the job.
"I already miss my windbreaker," Manfred said as he struggled to button the jacket. "Did you watch as Herr Dagover came toward us?" Rolf knew that Manfred wasn't addressing him, so he said nothing. Karin was busy hiding Werner's body in the tall grasses behind the boulder, so she also didn't answer.
"The way he adjusted his badge and hat," Manfred went on, "took pride 9n his uniform, walked erect. I could tell he was raised in the Reich. Very possibly as a Young Wolf. In his heart, I suspect he was still one of us." The cofounder of Feuer shook his large, bald head. He finished with the buttons and tugged the jacket sleeves as far as they would go. "It's too bad that men of his pedigree get comfortable. With a little ambition and imagination, they could be of great use to the cause." Karin stood. She said nothing as she walked to the limb where she'd hung her weapon and backpack. She was not the talker that Manfred was.
Yet, thought Rolf, Manfred is right. Werner Dagover probably was like them. And when the firestorm finally came, they would find allies among people like him. Men and women who were not afraid to cleanse the earth of the physically and mentally deficient, of the foreign-colored, of ethnic and religious undesirables. But the guard had tried to signal his superiors, and Karin was not one to forgive opposition. She'd kill him if he questioned her authority, and she'd be right to. As she'd told Rolf when he dropped out of school to become a full-time soldier, if someone opposes you once, they'll do it again. And that, she'd said, was something no commander could risk.
Karin picked up her Uzi, slipped it in the backpack, and walked to where Manfred was standing. The thirty-fouryear- old wasn't as driven or well read as his companion, but he was devoted to her. In the two years that Rolf had been with Feuer, he'd never seen them apart. He didn't know whether it was love, mutual protection, or both, but he envied them their bond.
When Karin was ready, she took a moment to slip back into the girl-on-a-lark persona she'd used on the guard.
Then she looked toward the hill.
"Let's go," she said impatiently.
Putting his big hand around Karin's arm, Manfred led her toward the set. When they were gone, Rolf turned and jogged back toward the main road to wait for them.
CHAPTER FOUR
Thursday, 3:04 A.M., Washington, D.C.
As he looked at the short stack of comic books on his bed, General Mike Rodgers wondered what the hell had happened to innocence.
He knew the answer, of course. Like all things, it dies; he thought bitterly.
The forty-five-year-old deputy director of Op-Center had awakened at 2:00 and had been unable to get back to sleep. Since the death of Lieutenant Colonel W. Charles Squires on a mission with his Striker commandos, Rodgers had spent night after night replaying the Russian incursion in his mind. The Air Force was delighted with the maiden performance of their stealth "Mosquito" helicopter, and the pilots had been credited with doing everything possible to extract Squires from the burning train. Yet key phrases in the Striker debriefings kept coming back to him.
"…we shouldn't have let the train get onto the bridge…" "…it was a matter of just two or three seconds…" "…the Lieutenant Colonel was only concerned with getting the prisoner off the engine…." Rodgers had done two tours of Vietnam, led a mechanized brigade in the Persian Gulf, and held a Ph.D. in world history. He understood only too well that "the essence of war is violence," as Lord Macaulay put it, and that people died in combat— sometimes by the thousands. But that didn't make the loss of each individual soldier any easier to endure. Especially when the soldier left behind a wife and young son. They were only beginning to enjoy the compassion, the humor, and— Rodgers smiled as he thought back on the too-short life— the unique savoir faire that was Charlie Squires.
Rather than lie in bed and mourn, Rodgers had driven from his modest ranch-style home to the local 7-Eleven. He would be going to see gangly Billy Squires in the morning and wanted to bring him something. Melissa Squires wasn't big on candy or video games for her son, so comic books seemed like a good bet. The kid liked superheroes.
Rodgers's light-brown eyes stared without seeing as he thought once more about his own superhero. Charlie had been a man who cherished life, yet he hadn't hesitated to give it up to save a wounded enemy. What he'd done enobled them all— not just the close-knit members of Striker and the seventy-eight employees of Op-Center, but each and every citizen of the nation Charlie loved. His sacrifice was a testament to the compassion that was a hallmark of that nation.
Rodgers's eyes fogged with tears, and he distracted himself by thumbing through the comic books again.
He had been shocked that comic books were twenty times more expensive than when he was reading them— $2.50 instead of twelve cents. He'd gone out with just a couple of bucks in his pocket and had to charge the damn things. But what bothered him more was that he couldn't tell the comic-book good guys from the bad guys. Superman had long hair and a mean temper, Batman was a borderline psychotic, Robin was no longer clean-cut Dick Grayson but some brat, and a cigarette-smoking sociopath named Wolverine got his jollies ripping people apart with his claws.
If Melissa doesn't approve of SweetTarts, these sure aren't going to go down real easy.
Rodgers dropped the stack of comic books on the floor, beside his slippers. He wouldn't give these to a kid.
Maybe I should wait and buy him a Hardy Boys book, he thought, though he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to see what had become of Frank and Joe. The brothers probably had lip rings, choppers, and attitude. Like Rodgers, their father Fenton was probably prematurely gray and dating a succession of marriage-minded women.
Hell, Rodgers decided. I'll just stop at a toy store and pick up an action figure. That, and maybe a chess set or some kind of educational videotape. Something for the hands and something for the mind.
Rodgers absently rubbed his high-ridged nose, then reached for the remote. He sat up on his pillows, punched on the TV, and surfed through vividly colored vacu
ous new movies and washed-out vacuous old sitcoms. He finally settled on an old-movie channel that was showing something with Lon Chaney, Jr., as the Wolfman. Chaney was pleading with a young man in a lab coat to cure him, to relieve his suffering.
"I know how you feel," Rodgers muttered.
Chaney was lucky, though. His pain was usually ended by a silver bullet. In Rodgers's case, as with most survivors of war, crime, or genocide, the suffering diminished but never died. It was especially painful now, in the small hours of the night, when the only distractions were the drone of the TV and the intrusion of headlights from passing cars. As Sir Fulke Greville once noted in an elegy, "Silence augmenteth grief." Rodgers shut off the TV and switched off the light. He bunched his pillows under him and lay on his belly.
He knew he couldn't change the way he felt. But he also knew he couldn't afford to surrender to sorrow. There was a widow and her son to think about, plus the sad task of finding a new commander for Striker, and he had to run Op- Center for the rest of the week that Paul Hood would be in Europe. And today was going to be a low point on the job, what Op-Center's attorney Lowell Coffey II accurately described as "the welcoming of the Fox to the warren." In the night, in that silence, it always seemed like too much to deal with. But then Rodgers thought about the people who didn't live long enough to become oppressed by life's burdens, and those burdens seemed less crushing.
Thinking that he could understand why a middle-aged Batman or anyone else might go a little nuts at times, Rodgers finally floated into a dreamless sleep.
CHAPTER FIVE
Thursday, 10:04 A.M., Garbsen, Germany
Jody's mouth twisted as she entered the trailer and took a look at the prop list.
"Great," she said under her breath. "Just great." The good-natured exasperation which had marked her conversation with Mr. Buba was tinged with genuine concern now. The item she needed was hanging in the tiny bathroom of the prop trailer. Getting to it around the clutter of tables and trunks would require delicate maneuvering. The way her luck was running today, Lankford would print the scene he was shooting after one take and move on to the next before she returned.