Her time spent hidden away inside this warehouse had been productive thus far. Its positioning allowed her to observe everything of importance to her mission, and while as yet she possessed no irrefutable proof Adolph Hitler was tucked away inside the cottage across the compound, she could not come up with a single credible scenario to explain what the woman would be doing inside the camp if it wasn’t providing care for an elderly patient.
Night had begun to fall, and Tracie’s stomach growled. She spit her gum into her hand and then placed it in the center of the foil wrapper. She crumpled the wrapper around the gum and dropped it into her pocket, then fished an energy bar out of her backpack. She began munching, still focusing her attention on the cute little cottage that looked so out of place inside this grim Nazi training camp.
A little while later, the nurse exited the building. She pulled the door closed and then retraced her steps along the gravel path, entering the much bigger building from which she had made her first appearance perhaps twenty minutes prior.
Tracie chewed her energy bar slowly as she watched the nurse disappear from view. She felt the seeds of a plan beginning to develop, but could not begin firming up the plan until full darkness had fallen.
Across the camp, sporadic activity continued at the administration building. Upon exiting, all the soldiers turned left and marched directly past Tracie’s viewing position and into just one of the five barracks buildings. Apparently the other four were as-yet unused. The structures were located to Tracie’s right, almost but not quite out of her sight.
All five barracks were identical: long, narrow wood-frame structures that had been built side by side and, for the time being at least, made up the southernmost useable portion of the camp. Beyond the barracks buildings were a mixture of forests and fields, hundreds of acres of land that lay inside the electric fence and would presumably be used for training once the camp began to be stocked with Nazi recruits.
Tracie studied the barracks, paying particular attention to the one in use. It was located directly in the middle, flanked by two still-empty structures on either side. The time would likely come—and soon—when Tracie would need to pass those buildings on foot, and it was critical to learn as much as she could about them now.
She split her time between examining the barracks and monitoring the headquarters building. The locations were on opposite sides of the camp and doing so allowed Tracie to sweep the entire compound with her eyes every few seconds.
It was on one of these visual sweeps, moving south to north, that her gaze passed the pair of blue-shuttered cottages she had seen the nurse enter and then exit earlier. The front door of the cottage on the left opened, and she stopped her sweep to focus on him. It was the first time she had seen any activity at that cottage.
A man stepped out.
Tracie’s breath caught in her throat.
It was Adolph Hitler.
22
November 18, 1987
6:55 p.m.
Phoenix Compound
Langenberg, Federal Republic of Germany
The man paused in his doorway and Tracie froze in stunned surprise. She shook her head to jumpstart her brain. Then she snatched her mini-binoculars off the floor and pressed them to her eyes.
The man was Hitler but he could not possibly be Hitler. The leader of the Third Reich, the bloodthirsty dictator who had been instrumental in plunging the world into war in the middle of the twentieth century and who had murdered millions of Jews, would be elderly now, more than forty years later. He would be well into his nineties.
Tracie trained her binocs on him and finally remembered to breathe. This man was not elderly. He appeared fit. He looked like a man in his late thirties or early forties.
But he looked exactly like every picture Tracie Tanner had ever seen of the German Führer: black hair, parted on the right side of his head and combed over, angular face with piercing dark eyes and, of course, the tiny mustache, shaved so that it was barely wider than his nostrils.
Adolph Hitler.
But not Adolph Hitler.
Tracie was adept at reading people. Their body language, expressions, attitudes. It was a skill any successful field operative needed to develop if he or she hoped to survive. But it would not take someone with her unique skill set to see that this man was not in his nineties. He was nowhere near his nineties.
Tracie watched, spellbound, as the man sauntered across the porch and down his front steps. He moved languidly, confidently, a man comfortable being in charge, a man who expected others to comply with instructions immediately.
Or else.
The man followed the gravel walkway out to the packed-dirt driveway and then turned right, moving toward the Phoenix headquarters building. He entered the building, and Tracie shook her head in equal parts wonder and revulsion. He even moved like she had seen Hitler move in the rare snatches of video that had survived the last four decades: posture erect, head up, backbone ramrod straight.
The door closed behind the ghost of Adolph Hitler and she leaned back against a stack of crates. Rubbed her eyes. Tried to determine what in the holy hell was going on here.
The plan she had begun to develop for dealing with elderly Adolph Hitler had instantly been rendered irrelevant. She needed to abandon the warehouse and somehow make her way past the five barracks buildings to the hundreds of acres of unused compound, where the thick forest would shield her from view of the Phoenix fanatics and allow her to speak freely.
She needed help.
23
November 18, 1987
9:50 p.m.
Phoenix Compound
Langenberg, Federal Republic of Germany
Tracie had almost not bothered to include her secure satellite phone among the supplies she brought inside the Phoenix camp. It was bulky and heavy and, she had thought, unnecessary. She had received her orders and was prepared to carry them out.
But something had told her to sacrifice the room and deal with its extra weight and include it inside her backpack. A little voice in the back of her mind that had whispered, you’re going to be alone inside a camp run by murderous fanatics, with virtually no intel to fall back on. Be smart. Be prepared.
So she had packed it away, certain she would not need it.
Now she needed it.
After watching the Hitler clone enter the Phoenix headquarters building, Tracie wasted no time. She returned all of the boxes and crates she had previously moved in order to carve out a viewing position, dragging and hefting them back to their original locations. Then she shrugged her backpack over her shoulder and began moving carefully to the rear of the warehouse, hoping to find an exit door.
Getting caught inside the warehouse had ceased to be a major concern. Men had come hours earlier to reposition all of the supplies Gruber dropped off, but their voices remained far in the distance toward the front of the building. They packed away the supplies in a matter of minutes, and then they disappeared, pulling the big garage door closed behind them. No one had come near the warehouse since. It sat dark and quiet.
Tracie worked her way through the rows of boxes and before long found herself at the rear wall. To the right was a door, placed directly in the center of the building, just as she had hoped. It was locked, but from the inside, a series of dead bolts that she was able to unfasten in seconds.
The warehouse was positioned in such a way that the rear door was visible only to the barracks buildings. The amount of German forest that had been cleared was barely wide enough to support construction of the camp, and Tracie thought if she exited the door and moved at a right angle to the warehouse, making straight for the cover of the trees, she would be exposed for no more than ten seconds.
Activity had been dwindling.
She liked her chances of remaining undetected.
The patrolling guards represented a dangerous wild card, but their activity—at least during the daylight hours—had been sporadic and half-hearted.
She didn’
t have many other options.
She opened the door and slipped through it, eyes glued to the barracks. Turned right and hugged the wall until reaching the corner. Then she continued across the narrow strip of field and straight into the forest, slipping into the underbrush. Finally she took a deep breath.
She walked on, struggling through the trees and underbrush, not wanting to hike any farther than necessary but determined not to take any chance of being seen or heard by anyone from Phoenix.
***
November 18, 1987
10:05 p.m. local time
Phoenix Compound
Langenberg, Federal Republic of Germany
“Do you have any idea what time it is, Tanner? Whatever you’re calling about, couldn’t it wait until morning?” CIA Director Aaron Stallings was his usual acerbic self, and Tracie had to bite back the response she wanted to make: that she doubted the time of day would make any difference in his reaction to her call.
“Nice to talk to you too, sir. And, yes, I know exactly what time it is in D.C. It’s just after two a.m., but I need to talk to you. And to answer your question, no, it couldn’t wait until morning.”
Stallings sighed theatrically for her benefit. “Fine. What is it, Tanner?”
“I just saw Adolph Hitler.”
“Congratulations. Since your assignment involved seeing him, I assume he’s no longer breathing. And I can’t help but wonder why you’re bothering with the call.”
“No sir, the job’s not done yet.”
“Explain.”
“Something’s come up. Something involving a guy who’s a dead ringer for the World War II-era Führer, a guy who can’t be more than forty-five. I’m talking about a man who’s an identical match to the photos taken of Hitler from the early 1940s.”
There was no response from the other end of the sat phone, and Stallings’s silence told Tracie the news didn’t come as a surprise to the CIA chief.
When it became clear no reply would be forthcoming, Tracie said, “Hitler had a son, didn’t he? A child no one knows about.”
“There have been persistent rumors through the years,” Stallings said. She could practically feel his shrug through the sat phone.
“Rumors? You expect me to believe the CIA was unaware of the fact that one of the most evil men of the twentieth century had an heir?”
“You seem to be under the impression that I answer to you, Tanner. It’s the other way around, remember? And to your point about Hitler having a son: the Nazis were utterly defeated by the spring of 1945. There was no reason for anyone to believe they would ever be a factor in world politics again. Therefore, Adolph Hitler became a very minor persona. A historical footnote. Did we monitor the man over the years? Yes. Did we have people watching his every single move? Of course not.”
“So you’re telling me the CIA knew Hitler had a son but didn’t care.”
“Is there a question in there, Tanner?”
“Come on, sir. I think you, of all people, recognize the implications of this. Phoenix isn’t going to use the ninety-something-year-old Adolph Hitler as the face of their uprising. Or, to be more accurate, they probably still will, but they’re going to build the actual organization around the younger Hitler, the guy who’s a spitting image of the man feared around the world back in the 1930s and 1940s. I believe a young, vital Hitler will be far more successful in rallying people to his cause than would an elderly, infirm man.”
“Again, is there a question in there somewhere?”
Tracie ground her teeth in frustration. Interacting with Aaron Stallings was like dealing with a recalcitrant five-year-old, except this five-year-old had the president’s ear and was one of the most powerful—and duplicitous—men in the world.
“Yes, there’s a question,” she growled. “What am I supposed to do about the younger Hitler?”
“His name is Adolph, also. No surprise there, I suppose.”
“So you did know about him.” Her temper was near the breaking point. She was alone, thousands of miles from home, putting her life on the line inside a Nazi training camp, and Stallings was playing his usual—and dangerous—games.
“I think you already know the answer to that question, Tanner.”
“You expect me to take him out, too? Two Hitlers for the price of one? Is that it?”
“You said yourself a young Adolph Hitler cannot be allowed the opportunity to repeat the havoc wrought decades ago by his father. Excellent analysis, by the way. Very insightful.”
“Come on, sir, how am I supposed to put down both men? The minute one of them is discovered dead Phoenix will close ranks so tightly I’ll never be able to get at the other. Plus, this camp is big but not massive. Once they know they’ve been compromised they’ll capture me within hours, maybe within minutes. It can’t be done, not by one person.”
“Spare me the sob story, Tanner. You’re the operative and you’ve been given your assignment. Figure out a way to get it done, for chrissakes.”
“My assignment has changed so many times it’s a wonder I can even keep it straight.”
“Will there be anything else, Tanner?”
She realized she was grinding her teeth again and forced herself to relax her jaw. It wasn’t easy. “No sir, there’s nothing else.”
“Then I suggest you get moving. It sounds like you have a lot of work to do.”
24
November 18, 1987
10:20 p.m.
Phoenix Compound
Langenberg, Federal Republic of Germany
Tracie replaced the satellite phone in her backpack and began retracing her steps out of the forest, trying to control her anger as she returned to the edge of the developed portion of the Phoenix compound.
She considered remaining in the woods behind the camp—it offered the least likelihood of discovery and capture—but it also provided no access to the camp and no opportunity to observe Phoenix’s activity. She had no choice but to return to her previous reconnaissance position inside the darkened warehouse. It was centrally located and once inside, would offer a relatively safe place from which to consider her next move.
She waited for the right moment and broke cover. The camp at night was illuminated by a series of sodium arc floodlights perched high atop wooden poles erected at regular intervals around the security fence, but their focus was more on the middle of the compound than the tree line. Tracie had little difficulty traversing the short distance from the edge of the woods to the side of the warehouse.
From there it was simple matter of reentering the building through the unlocked rear door. She made her way to her previous location, moving cautiously in the near-total darkness.
Finally she was situated in her familiar spot. She sat on a crate and kept watch through the window, trying to develop some semblance of plan that would allow her to complete her utterly unfair assignment. If it had been a long shot before, it was now a near-impossibility.
She sat quietly and allowed the tension to drain from her body. Tried to think, running various scenarios through her head, hoping to settle on something that would allow her to complete her mission and survive.
She couldn’t come up with one.
***
November 19, 1987
1:15 a.m.
Phoenix Compound
Langenberg, Federal Republic of Germany
Activity inside the Phoenix compound had become virtually nonexistent. Every so often a guard would pass the warehouse, ever-present rifle slung over his shoulder. The patrols seemed to occur with no regularity that Tracie could discern. By her watch, the interval between sentry sightings was at times as short as five minutes, and at other times as long as thirty.
And the routes taken by the guards seemed random as well. Sometimes they walked the perimeter, remaining just inside the electrified fence. At other times they weaved in and out among the camp’s buildings, paying particular attention to the residences clustered toward the front of the camp, but also patrollin
g around the long, mostly empty barracks buildings.
This was not ideal.
It was also not unexpected.
She shifted her attention toward the rear of the camp. Thanks to the near-blinding glare of the sodium arc lamps illuminating the main portion of the compound, the unlit area beyond the barracks buildings disappeared into a black void that was as complete as anything Tracie had ever seen.
She began to consider the possibilities such a scenario presented. Was there a way to use the extreme difference between light and dark to her tactical advantage? And if so, would it be possible to tie that advantage to what she now knew regarding the nurse’s schedule?
Over the last few hours, Tracie watched as the same nurse she had seen previously made several more trips to the cottage on the right, each one occurring approximately an hour after the last. The duration of all the visits was the same: approximately twenty minutes. Then she would exit the cottage and return to the bigger building.
A new plan began to take shape. It wasn’t a great plan. Tracie couldn’t even convince herself it was a good plan. But with a little bit of luck—okay, a lot of luck, she thought to herself—and impeccable execution, it might work.
Maybe.
She waited one more nursing cycle, paying close attention to the exact times the young woman entered and exited the cottage, and then nodded to herself, all alone in the dark silence of the Nazi warehouse.
She would make her move on the next visit.
***
November 19, 1987
1:45 a.m.
Phoenix Compound
Langenberg, Federal Republic of Germany
Exiting the rear door of the warehouse, as she had done earlier to make her sat phone call to Aaron Stallings, would not be feasible. Last time she was heading for the cover of the forest, but now she needed to move in the opposite direction.
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 86