The Apocalypse Watch

by Robert Ludlum

  “Nein!… He’s here in Paris. He must find Sting!”

  “And you thought I was Sting, correct?”

  “You are not the same man!”

  “You’re damned right I’m not. Sit up!”

  Where it came from, Drew would never know, but before he could adjust, a large pistol was in the neo’s right hand. Without any sound preceding it, a loud gunshot suddenly came from behind them; the Nazi’s head snapped back, blood flowing from his neck. Karin de Vries had saved Latham’s life. She ran down the path to him. “Are you all right?” she cried.

  “Where did he get the gun?” asked a shaken, bewildered Drew.

  “The same place you got yours,” answered De Vries.

  “What?”

  “The belt. You grabbed him and told him to sit up; that’s when I saw him reaching under his jacket.”

  “Thank you—”

  “Don’t thank me, do something. People are running away from the fountain. Soon the police will be here.”

  “Come on!” ordered Latham, shoving the automatic into his belt and pulling the cellular phone from his inside pocket. “Into the trees—way into.” Awkwardly, they raced through roughly sixty feet of dark foliage when Drew held up his hand. “This’ll do,” he said, out of breath.

  “Where did you get that?” asked Karin, pointing at the barely visible outline of the telephone in Latham’s hands.

  “The Antinayous,” replied Drew, squinting and touching the buttons in the dim, filtered light from the fountain. “They’re very high-tech.”

  “Not when anyone can scan into a mobile phone’s frequency, although in emergencies, I suppose—”

  “Stanley?” said Latham, cutting her off. “Christ, it happened again! The Bois de Boulogne; a neo was covering the area, sent to take me out.”

  “And?”

  “He’s dead, Stosh, Karin shot him when he was about to blow my head off.… But, Stanley, listen to me. He said Kroeger was here in Paris, here to find Sting!”

  “What’s your situation?”

  “We’re in the woods off a path, maybe twenty or thirty yards from the body.”

  “Now, you listen to me,” said Witkowski harshly. “If you can do it without running into the police—hell, even if you risk running into them—pick that bastard’s pockets clean and get out of there.”

  “Like I did with Harry.…” Drew’s voice dropped to a painful whisper.

  “Do it for Harry now. If what you say about this Kroeger isn’t second-hand nonsense, that corpse is our only link to him.”

  “For a moment he thought I was Harry; he’s got a photograph, he said.”

  “You’re wasting time!”

  “Suppose the police arrive …?”

  “Use your well-known bullshit officialese to talk your way out of it. If that doesn’t work, I’ll take care of it later, although I’d rather not go by the book on this. Get going!”

  “I’ll call you later.”

  “Make it sooner rather than later.”

  “Come on,” said Latham, grabbing Karin’s right wrist above the bandage and heading for the path.

  “Back there?” cried De Vries, stunned.

  “Our colonel’s orders. We’ve got to move fast—”

  “But the police!”

  “I know, so even faster.… I’ve got it! You stay on the path, and if the police come, act frightened, which won’t take much talent if you’re anything like me, and tell them your boyfriend stepped into the woods to take a leak.”

  “Not impossible,” conceded Karin, holding on and dodging the trees and the underbrush with Latham. “More American than French, but not impossible.”

  “I’ll drag our would-be killer into the woods and sweep him clean. He also has a better watch than mine; I’ll take that too.”

  They reached the path, the fountain below now practically deserted, only a few morbidly curious observers scattered about the borders. Several kept glancing down the other paths, obviously expecting the police. Drew pulled the corpse feetfirst into the brush and went through the pockets, removing everything that was in them. He did not bother to look for the weapon that came within a second of ending his life; it would tell them nothing. Finished, he rushed back to the path and Karin as the shouts came from below.

  “Les gendarmes, les gendarmes! De l’autre côté!”

  “Où?”

  “Où donc?”

  Fortunately, in answer to the two police officers’ demands of where “on the other side,” the remaining civilians pointed in various directions, including several shadowed paths. Frustrated, the policemen split and raced down different paths. It was enough; Latham and De Vries ran across the open fountain and up the north path again until it leveled out, and they found themselves in the splendor of summer gardens surrounding a small man-made pond where white swans paddled majestically under the wash of floodlights. They spotted an empty bench, and with very little breath in either of their lungs, sat down, their spines slumping against the back slats. Karin tore the blond wig from her head and shoved it into her purse, shaking her hair loose.

  “As soon as I can talk, I’ll call Witkowski,” said Drew, breathing deeply. “How’s your hand? Does it hurt?”

  “You can think of my hand at a time like this?”

  “Well, I grabbed it back there because you were still holding the gun in your left and I thought the goddamned thing might go off if I reached for it—your left hand, I mean.”

  “I know what you mean. There was no time to put it back in my purse then.… Call the colonel, please.”

  “Okay.” Latham again removed the cellular phone from his pocket and dialed, thankfully seeing the numbers clearly under the pond’s floodlights. “Stanley, we made it,” he said.

  “Someone else didn’t, lad,” interrupted the colonel. “And we don’t know how the hell it happened.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “That neo scumbucket I put on a military jet under a drape to Washington at five o’clock this morning.”

  “What about him?”

  “He arrived at Andrews Air Force Base at three-thirty A.M., D.C. time—total darkness, incidentally—and was shot while under military escort to the waiting area.”

  “How?”

  “A damned powerful rifle with an infrared scope on one of the roofs. Naturally, nothing was found.”

  “Who was looking?”

  “Who knows? As we agreed, I let the word out on a need-to-know basis to Knox Talbot’s top senior officers that we had a genuine Nazi, when he was flying in, and all the rest.”

  “So?”

  “Someone hired a gun.”

  “So where are we?”

  “Narrowing everything down, that’s where we are. We know about the AA computers, now we’ve got another four or five deputy directors on the list. That’s how it’s done, youngster, you keep closing the doors until there’s only one or two left in a room.”

  “What about me, what about Paris?”

  “It’s a cat-and-mouse, isn’t it, lad? This Kroeger wants to find Harry—you—as much as you want to find him, isn’t that so?”

  “Apparently, but why?”

  “We’ll only know that when we catch him, won’t we?”

  “You’re not very comforting—”

  “I don’t care to be, get that straight. I want you on your uppers every minute of the day and night.”

  “Thanks a lot, Stosh.”

  “Bring me whatever you’ve got—”

  “I grabbed everything there was,” Latham broke in furiously. “So don’t say ‘whatever.’ Except I forgot to take the goddamned watch!”

  “I like that,” said the colonel. “I like anger in situations like this. My place, in an hour, and make three changes of vehicles.”

  15

  The flames shot upward, bright bursts of fire illuminating the darkness. The enormous Vaclabruck complex was nearly completed, including a vast scythed-down field descending from a slopin
g hill that held fifteen hundred selected disciples of the Brüderschaft from all over the world. The night was cloudless and the torches filled the huge natural arena, both along the surrounding borders as well as in front of the dais, a fifty-foot-long table on the crest of the hill where the leaders sat. A microphone was in the center lectern, its wires leading to speakers throughout the area, and on top of tall poles behind the imposing table, spotlighted and fluttering in the breezes, were the bloodred and black flags of the Third Reich, with one startling difference. A white lightning bolt shot down across the swastikas. It was the banner of the Fourth Reich.

  A series of speakers, all in the military uniforms of Nazi Germany, had spoken, their exhortations bringing the audience to clamorous Crescendos of fanatical endorsement. Finally, the next-to-last orator approached the center of the dais; he gripped the lectern, his fiery gaze sweeping over the serrated ranks, and spoke with quiet, echoing authority.

  “You have heard it all tonight, the cries of those around the world who need us, demand us, insist that we take up the sword of global order, purifying the races and eliminating the human and ideological garbage that pollutes the civilized world. And we stand ready!”

  The applause, pulsated by roars of approval, rocked the ground, reverberating throughout the surrounding forests. The uniformed man held up his hands for silence; it came quickly, and he continued.

  “But to lead us, we must have a Zeus, a Führer greater than the last—not in thought, for no one could surpass Adolf Hitler in philosophy—but in strength and determination, a leader who will strike down the timid and not be stopped by the cautious strategies of military intellectuals; who will smite the enemies of racial progress, and will attack when he knows the time is right! History has proved that had the Third Reich invaded England when Herr Hitler ordered his armies to do so, we would have a different and far better world than we have today. He was persuaded not to by the privileged dilettantes of the Junker corps. Our new leader, our Zeus, will never submit to such cowardly interference.… However, and I know this will be a disappointment, it is not yet the time to reveal his identity, even to you. Instead, he has recorded a message for you, for each and every one of you.”

  The next-to-last orator shot his right arm up in the Nazi salute. As he abruptly snapped it back, an amplified voice came from the speakers everywhere. It was a strange voice, mid-deep, sharp, and cutting, each echoing consonant delivered like a swinging ax meeting hard wood. In some ways it evoked the memory of Hitler’s diatribes in the sense that the hysterical climaxes came numerously and rapidly, but there the similarity ended. For this speaker was more of this age; the shock value of his screaming apogees was preceded by cold words, spoken slowly, icily, followed by sudden bursts of emotional excess that lent power to his conclusions. His harangues were not diminished by the shrieking one-note delivery of Hitler; instead, they were heightened by contrast, as if he were confiding in his audience, who undoubtedly understood every point he was leading up to, then rewarded their acumen by shouting, affirming the judgments they had already made. The Age of Aquarius was long gone; the age of manipulation had taken its place. The lessons of Madison Avenue were heeded across the world.

  “We are at the beginning, and the future is ours! But you know that, don’t you? You who work tirelessly here in the Fatherland, and you who labor unceasingly in foreign countries—you can see what is happening, can’t you? And isn’t it magnificent? The message we bring is not only accepted, but zealously desired, desired in the hearts and minds of people everywhere—and you do see that and hear that, and you know it!… I cannot see you, but I hear you, and I accept your gratitude, although, to be frank, it is misplaced. I am merely your voice, the voice of the righteously discontented all over the civilized globe. And you understand that, don’t you? You understand the agony we face everywhere when inferior people make us pay for their inferiority! When industrious men and women are deprived of their hard-earned benefits by those who refuse to work, or are incapable of working, or too demented even to try! Are we to suffer for their laziness, their incompetence, or their derangement? If so, the indolent, the incompetent, and the deranged will rule the world! For they will rob us of our moral leadership by overwhelming us, draining our coffers in the name of humanity—but no, it is not humanity, my soldiers, for they are garbage!… But they cannot and will not do that, for the future is ours!

  “Everywhere our enemies are increasingly confused, bewildered by what is sweeping over them, not sure who is and who is not part of us, in their deepest thoughts applauding our progress, even as they deny those thoughts. Continue the march, my soldiers. The future is ours!”

  Again, the applause was thunderous, as the strains of the Horst Wessel anthem filled the huge stadium carved out of the forest. And in a prearranged back row, two men, alternately clapping and shouting cries of devotion, turned to each other and spoke softly, both recognizing their partially shaved opposing eyebrows.

  “Madness,” said the Frenchman in English.

  “Not unlike the newsreels we’ve seen of Hitler’s speeches,” added the Hollander from the Dutch Foreign Service.

  “I think you’re wrong, monsieur. This Führer is far more believable. He doesn’t force his judgments on the crowd by constant shouting. He leads them there by asking seemingly reasonable questions. Then suddenly explodes, delivering the answers they want to hear. He understands dynamics—very clever, indeed.”

  “Who is he, do you think?”

  “He could be any one of the far-right wingers in the Bundestag, I imagine. As instructed,. I’ve recorded him so our department can match voiceprints, if the ridiculously small machine in my pocket is sufficient for the task.”

  “I haven’t been in touch with the office in over a month,” offered the Dutchman.

  “Nor I in six weeks,” said the Frenchman.

  “We must, however, give our superiors credit. The satellites picked up the clearing of the forest the way the high-altitude planes revealed the missiles in Cuba nearly thirty years ago. They could not accept the explanation of another wealthy Far Eastern religious retreat despite the official papers. They were right.”

  “My people were convinced something was odd when foreign construction workers were recruited.”

  “I was a simple carpenter, what about you?”

  “An electrician. My father owned a magasin électrique in Lyons. I worked there until I went away to university.”

  “Now we have to get out of here, and I don’t think that’s going to be so easy. This compound is nothing short of an old concentration camp—barbed-wire fences, towers with machine guns, and all the rest.”

  “Be patient, we’ll find a way, monsieur. We’ll meet at breakfast, tent six. There has to be a way.”

  The two men turned from each other, only to be faced by a semicircle of uniformed men, their tunics emblazoned with the banner of the Fourth Reich, the white lightning bolts descending across the swastikas. “Have you heard enough, meine Herren?” said an officer, standing forward of the guards confronting the two foreigners. “You think you are so clever, nicht wahr? You even converse in English.” The soldier held up a small electronic listening device, common in police and intelligence circles. “This is a wonderful piece of equipment,” the officer continued. “One can zero in on, say, two people in a crowd and hear every word being spoken by shutting out the external noises. Remarkable.… You have both been watched since the moment you showed up among our privileged, invited guests, enthusiastically claiming to be two of them. Do you think we’re so unsophisticated? Did you really believe we had no computerized lists to scrutinize? When you were nowhere, we cross-checked the foreign labor forces. Guess what we found? Never mind, you know, of course. A gruff Dutch carpenter, and a particularly peevish French electrician.… Mitkommen! Zackig! We shall talk for a while, your accommodations unfortunately not the finest, but then you’ll find peace, your earthly remains in a deep trench along with the other worms and grubs.”
/>
  “You people are well versed in such executions, aren’t you?”

  “I regret to say, Dutchman, that I wasn’t alive to participate. But our time will come, my time will come.”

  Witkowski, Drew, and Karin sat around the colonel’s kitchen table in his apartment on the rue Diane. Spread across the surface were the articles Latham had taken from the pockets of the dead neo. “Not bad,” said the army G-2 veteran, alternately picking up the objects and studying them. “I’ll tell you this much,” he went on, “this bastard son of Siegfried didn’t expect to find any trouble at the Bois de Boulogne.”

  “Why do you say that?” asked Latham, gesturing at his empty whisky glass.

  “Get it yourself.” The colonel raised his eyebrows and nodded at the brass dry bar just beyond the archway to the living room. “In this house I pour the first, the rest is up to you. Except for the ladies—ask the lady, you jackass.”

  “That’s a pejorative term,” said Drew, standing up and looking at Karin, who shook her head.

  “A what?”

  “Never mind, Colonel, he’s childish,” interrupted De Vries. “But please answer his question. There are no papers, no identification; why is it ‘not bad’?”

  “Actually, it’s pretty good. He’d tell you that himself if he’d look at the stuff instead of swilling the sauce.”

  “I’ve had one drink, Stosh! A damn well-deserved one, I might add.”

  “I know, lad, but you still haven’t really looked, have you?”

  “Yes, I have. As I put it all on the table. There’s a matchbook from a restaurant called Au Coin de la Famille, a dry cleaning pick-up receipt for a store on the avenue Georges Cinq in the name of André—meaningless; a gold money clip with a couple of, I presume, endearing words in German and nothing else; another receipt on a credit card, that name and number so obviously false, or so buried, it would take days to trace it to another blind alley. The banks pay; that’s all the merchants want and they get paid.… The rest, I grant you, I didn’t examine, but then, what I just told you was the result of approximately eight seconds. Anything else, Colonel?”