The Windchime Legacy

by A. W. Mykel

  The Nazi hunts continued heatedly for many years after the war, often fueled by the “special branch” of Niederlage, to keep attention focused in the right place or, more correctly, away from the right place. Eichmann was one of our best.

  Many Nazis were fortunate to escape from the holocaust of the defeat, many with sizable fortunes “stolen” from the treasury. The regular section of Niederlage had responsibility for protecting these people. Odessa and Die Spinne were set up for this purpose. We drew from this well to keep the fires going.

  Entry No. 40 from the partially

  recovered Wolf Journal

  Justin watched the face of his friend as they streaked eastward in the modified Lear. He had noticed the reaction to Honeycut’s news about Otto Ten Braak and wondered about it. But Justin wouldn’t ask. If Fanning wanted him to know, he’d tell him. He continued looking into the face. There was an expression he had never seen there before. It was fear.

  “I guess you want to know about it,” Fanning said suddenly.

  “Know about what?” Justin asked, in feigned ignorance.

  Fanning cast a quick glance through the corner of his eye. “You know goddamn well that you wanna hear about Otto Ten Braak, and why I’d be so interested in him being the one we’re after.”

  “If you want to talk, I’ll listen,” Justin said.

  There was another long silence.

  “It was six years ago,” Fanning finally began. “The agency was just getting started, and we weren’t nearly as sophisticated as we are now. That’s because we didn’t have you around to fuck things up for us, yet,” he joked, then became quickly serious. “I was on a job in South Africa. Baby-sitting a fat industrialist name of Lothengarr. There were two of us. Me and a guy named Nicolosi. First job for him. He was a smart, good-looking kid.” Fanning’s eyes were far away as he talked.

  “This guy, Lothengarr, was some kind of big shot to the agency. Someone wanted him dead, so we were sent to keep him alive. I never found out why they wanted to kill him. It doesn’t matter, I guess.

  “Anyway, Lothengarr used to like taking these long walks along the beach. So, once each day, we’d drive him to the beach in his limousine. We’d leave the car, walk for an hour, then go to his estate to eat lunch. We did this regular for about two weeks. It was nice, an easy hour for us.

  “Well, this one day we drove up the long, single-lane dirt road that led to his favorite spot. It was about three miles off the nearest highway. On our way in, we passed this broken-down car. It had its hood up, and a short little fat guy was working away on the engine. I remember looking at him as we drove by. He looked like the heat was beating the hell out of him, all covered with sweat and grease and sand. Poor bastard, I thought.

  “We continued up the road for about four or five hundred yards and stopped. The road twisted and bent like hell, and there was thick brush cover and trees all around, so we couldn’t see the guy or his car anymore. We walked through the thick brush along a narrow path to the isolated beach. Then we walked, me in front, Nicolosi behind. We spaced ourselves about twenty feet away from Lothengarr.

  “We kept our eyes open for movement in the brush cover or for small craft approaching the beach.

  “The beach was about a hundred and fifty feet wide and real long. There was one point, though, just past this natural jetty, where the beach got real narrow and curved way back into a crescent-shaped cove. We couldn’t see the road through the thick brush, normally. It was about fifty yards back.

  “When we’d get near this crescent, I’d walk way out ahead, maybe a hundred to a hundred and fifty feet. This was so that I could check out the crescent before Lothengarr got near it.

  “Anyway, when I had spaced myself out, I began to walk along the narrow crescent. That was the first time that I noticed that the road was visible from the beach. The brush cover was very low there, and the crescent went back almost to the road. I realized this because I saw that disabled car with its hood still up, but no fat man.

  “There was this woman and a little girl playing in the water in the cove. I figured they belonged to the fat man, and that maybe he was catching some shade and a rest, or something.

  “I continued to walk back toward the road, along the cove, looking for the fat man. Something about the whole deal was beginning to feel bad to me. I turned to wave Lothengarr and Nicolosi back until I could check it out, but I was already around the point and couldn’t see them anymore. Little mistakes came easy back then.

  “I kept walking until I got closer to the taller, thicker brush and trees at the other side of the crescent. I could see Lothengarr and Nicolosi now, waiting at the point. I was just about to wave them back when I saw the fat man. He was standing there in the dark shade of the trees, holding something in his arms. It was too long to be a tool. I squinted, because the sun was right in my face, and saw him smile. Then I saw him raise something. It was a rifle. I saw it too late. I reached for my gun, but before I could get off a shot, I was kicked backwards. I didn’t feel anything, I went right out, never even heard the shot,” he said.

  He hadn’t seen the rest of it, as Ten Braak took out Nicolosi with a head shot. Lothengarr had seen Fanning get knocked back about six feet, then heard the dull cracking thud as the bullet hit Nicolosi’s skull. Ten Braak then pumped two quick ones into Lothengarr. But his work still wasn’t done. There was still the woman and the child he had paid to accompany him.

  “I came to in a hospital. I had been left for dead by Ten Braak. He had gotten them all, Lothengarr, Nicolosi, the woman, and the little girl. The doctors said I should have been dead, too. The bullet hit me in the upper left chest, smashed and fragmented a rib, and deflected up and out the top of my left shoulder. They operated on me for six hours, pulling out bone fragments and the pieces of lead that spread out. But I made it. Took almost a year to recuperate before they assigned me again.

  “I’ve learned and heard a lot about Ten Braak since then,” Fanning said. “I made it my business to learn.”

  Justin had gone over Ten Braak’s dossier on his way out to Meigs Field. The file was rather extensive and indicated him to be one of the deadliest men alive. He was cunning and skilled in the many arts of destruction. He was also crudely inventive, as Ross’s murder had demonstrated. Despite his portly physique, he was as agile and quick as a cat, especially with his hands, which dispatched destruction with the certainty of a well-aimed slug, by adroitly finding one of the many death spots on the human body. He had been the maestro in his earlier days. Now, age had slowed him, but only slightly, and his reputation had become a disadvantage. The dossier listed him as about to be “retired.”

  Fanning spent the next few minutes attesting to the facts in the dossier, by recounting some of Ten Braak’s adventures that he had heard of over the years. They had never met again, although he had hoped each mission would develop that possibility.

  “I can tell you one thing for certain,” Fanning said. “We’ll never take him alive, like Pegasus wants us to. And we’ll have to surprise him. We’ve talked about that sixth sense that develops in this job? Well, he’s got seven. Like nothing you’ve ever seen.”

  Justin nodded slowly, looking up from the dossier to glance at Fanning. “Then why do they want to retire him?”

  “Too well known,” Fanning answered. “I’m surprised they used him on this one.”

  Justin thought. “No, not really. It gives some strength to SENTINEL’s analysis of the plan. That would make it easier for us to find him, while at the same time all the tougher to stop him. Makes good sense to use him.”

  Fanning nodded absently. His mind was deep into a fantasy of how he would do it. He had thought of a hundred different ways. But now that they were on their way to actually do it, only one way stood out in his mind, the one he used for all the tough jobs—the “Runt.”

  The rest of the trip was finished in near silence. Each man used the time for mental preparation. Without every edge, without maximum psyching,
they stood less chance. And Fanning was determined to fulfill the plan that had been his obsession since that day six years ago, to get Otto Ten Braak.

  As the swift Lear streaked eastward, the blue Dodge Monaco left the Holiday Inn. As soon as it left the parking lot, the remnants of the Division Two team entered Kuradin’s room to search and sample his garments.

  They would find nothing, because Kuradin had changed clothes in Beloit before returning to the Holiday Inn the day before. The coat, pants, even the shoes and socks, were disposed of and would never be recovered. He had anticipated everything.

  The Dodge Monaco pulled into the parking lot of Beloit General Hospital. Kuradin went directly to admitting. An hour later, he was settling into his semiprivate room. He had checked in under the name of Roger Caneway.

  After unpacking his small bag, he put on his pajamas and climbed into the bed. He let everything play back through his head once more.

  No doubt, they’d be racing after Ten Braak by now. The leak from Moscow should have reached them already, even if it was rather indirect. Moscow had no idea of how to leak the information directly to the SENTINEL agency, so it let it out through a series of known CIA contacts, hoping it would swiftly find its way to their attention. They must have penetrated the KGB, he reasoned, so chances were good that they would also learn it themselves directly. They must have some deep contacts. It was unrealistic to think otherwise. Even so, by now they had figured out Bridges’s cause of death and had discovered Ten Braak’s fingerprints. The way it was set up, they couldn’t help but find him by Tuesday evening.

  The late morning passed quickly, as the initial blood samples were drawn. He had not eaten for twenty-four hours as his physician, Dr. Awadi, had supposedly requested. Early that afternoon Dr. Awadi came to visit him.

  Awadi entered the room. He was a tall, slender Indian. His features were sharp and handsome, the eyes as black as ebony and sparkling with warmth and intelligence. Awadi was a sleeper agent who had never been utilized in the past.

  “How are you today, Mr. Caneway?” Awadi greeted him with a distinct Indian accent.

  “Fine, Dr. Awadi. Fine,” Kuradin answered.

  “I see that our nurses have already begun prodding and sticking you for your blood.” He laughed.

  “Yes, they have.” Kuradin smiled. “Quite gently, I might add.”

  The fellow occupying the other bed was an older man. He had smiled politely to Kuradin when he entered, but had remained silent. He was now sleeping.

  “I am sorry that your lunch was so skimpy,” Awadi apologized. “By tomorrow evening we can put you on a normal diet. We should have all of our initial tests completed by that time. I see no reason why you shouldn’t be able to eat normally after that,” he said.

  Awadi gave Kuradin a swift examination, during which time the watch containing the film cartridge was exchanged for an identical one. The normal diet reference had been made to indicate when the microdots should be ready. The film would be taken into Madison, Wisconsin, for processing that afternoon.

  The examination was concluded shortly. Awadi left Kuradin to continue his rounds. The Russian was alone now, with his thoughts.

  He knew what the results of the tests would show—chronic lymphatic leukemia. There was no doubt about it. But, deep within him, there was the secret hope that the results would be normal. Every man wants to live, Kuradin was no exception. But his logic denied that possibility. If it could only go away to let him live. Hope is a fragile thing, at once a weakness and again a strength. And he was only a man, possessed by both.

  He forced his mind to return to the encounter he had had the evening before. He hadn’t really expected it, but had prepared for that possibility. They were probably going through his room now, he figured. They wouldn’t miss a trick. But he had prepared carefully. At five o’clock, the real David Fromme would pick up the car at the hospital and return to the Holiday Inn. Fromme was also an unused sleeper. He matched Kuradin’s physical description very closely. His cover was airtight. He would fill in the time that Kuradin would be confined to the hospital. He was scheduled to be discharged Wednesday morning. From there, if all things went smoothly, he’d be out of the United States and in Paris in fourteen hours from the time he left the hospital. Five hours later he’d be in Russia.

  Russia. His mind filled with thoughts of his grandchildren and his daughter. He wanted to hold them, to tell them how much he loved them and how he was making the world safe for them. But Russia was eighty-four hours away for him. He wondered how many more hours he had left in his hourglass of life.

  The thought of time and life made him think back to England. He had sensed something during that mission a year ago—a feeling. Certainly it was fear, but he was no stranger to fear. It had whispered in his ear many times before that. It was also a sense of time, time slipping away. Irretrievable time. As though it were counting down the minutes of his life. He felt it again.

  One of those men had been Pilgrim. He knew it. He could feel it. He thought about them, remembering their faces. He knew the moment his wrist had been seized by the steel grip. Which one was it? he wondered.

  He thought back to the silhouette standing in the doorway at Maynard’s Pub—the tall, thin figure who nearly took his life. There was no mistake in his mind as to which one it was. It was the dark one, the one in charge. Pilgrim. The face he gave to the name was Justin’s.

  He felt the sands slipping away through the tiny hole in the hourglass, once more. He wondered if he would ever see Russia again.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Nobody in Odessa or Die Spinne knew even the slightest fact as to the existence of Operation Raptor. They were all too notable to be used, and too vulnerable to be trusted.

  Raptor was loosely planned at first. Five Fuehrungszentrale (steering center) locations were established across the globe. These were in Argentina, Spain, the United States, South Africa, and Germany.

  The plan was too broad to know where to focus it so early, but time and patience would give us the answers as to where the Fourth Reich would have its birth.

  Entry No. 41 from the partially

  recovered Wolf Journal

  Sunday afternoon had developed as forecasted for New Jersey. The day was sparkling, clear, and crisp. The promise of spring filled the air.

  The 1955 Ford Fairlane pulled into the Roxbury Township rest area and came to a stop in one of the diagonal parking spaces. The young driver turned off the ignition and stretched behind the wheel. He reached over to the lovely girl beside him and gave a gentle caress of her soft breast with his finger. They kissed tenderly for a few moments.

  The occupants of the car were two students from Fairleigh Dickinson University, enrolled at the Teaneck campus. They had just spent their first weekend together at the girl’s uncle’s cabin in the Poconos and were on their way back to school, for the last few days of classes before the spring recess. The short vacation normally would have been welcomed, but it meant ten unbearable days apart from one another.

  They were only about forty-five minutes from the campus and wanted to stretch the privacy of their wonderful weekend to the fullest. They left the car to walk in the beauty of nature’s awakening. Soon the trees would begin to bud and grow, and all nature would be vibrant with the colors of life. It seemed as though the day were planned just for them, symbolizing their own budding love.

  They started down the gently sloping decline, wrapped in one another’s loving embrace. It had been a dream come true for him. She was everything he could ever hope for. He let his eyes play across her long, straight blond hair. His hand settled on her soft ass in a confident gesture of ownership. She was his, her loveliness, her femininity, her body. He had never seen such total beauty in his life. He studied the features, the small, straight nose, the beautiful soft lips that had caressed his entire body, and the eyes—as blue as the lovely spring sky above. The smell of her Emeraude excited his senses. He remembered its exotic smell and the sweet clean
taste of her skin, as he had kissed her body in their unending passion. It would go on forever.

  They walked through the high, dead grass of last summer’s growth, going further down the slope. He continued to drink in the beauty of her lovely features when he saw her eyes blink, suddenly lose the rosiness of love, and change to undisguised terror.

  With all of the good intentions of a knight about to defend the honor of his lady he looked to the cause of her great alarm—and threw up all over himself.

  They had found the spider.

  Leonid Travkin tossed restlessly in his bed. The information that the KGB investigation teams had turned up looked bad regarding Chakhovsky.

  It was no mystery to him where Chakhovsky had been taken and by whom. He was somewhere in the United States, all right, safely in the hands of SENTINEL’s security force.

  Things looked grimmer by the minute for Centaur’s chances. If only there were some way he could let him know about it. But that was impossible.

  The news of Ten Braak’s involvement had been let out on schedule, but he could only hope it had gotten into the right hands in time.

  From this point on, Kuradin would have to be lucky. But luck was one factor that couldn’t be relied upon or stretched far enough. Kuradin would have to make his own lucky breaks.

  It was a good thing that Kuradin had chosen Ten Braak, after all. Ten Braak was a survivor. There was always the remote possibility that he could deliver the goods in New York City, if he got lucky. That word again. But who could tell? When the shit hit the fan, enough of it might just go in the right direction.

  Division Two had gotten into Kuradin’s room moments after he left. They searched his belongings carefully, giving special attention to his clothing. They knew precisely what type of materials they were looking for, but nothing matched up.

  They lifted prints from around the room and found a few hairs in the bathtub and on a towel. A tiny bloodstained tissue told them that Fromme had cut himself shaving. They took it. All they needed to go over now were the clothes he was wearing. It was possible that he was wearing the same overcoat and pants as the previous day.