The Apocalypse Watch

by Robert Ludlum

  He picked up the phone, studied the printed instructions, and dialed. “Hi, I made it,” he said, the moment the phone was picked up.

  “Hey, man, then it is you!” said a male voice on the line.

  “What? Who are you?”

  “C’mon, Bronco, you can’t recognize your old roommate from the Manitoba Stars? It’s Ben Lewis! I saw you in the lobby. At first I thought I was seeing double, but I knew it was you! ’Course, then you took off your hat and I figured I was nuts, until I watched you walk to the elevators.”

  “I … I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Get with it, Bronc! Your right foot. Remember when your ankle got sliced by a guy on the Toronto Comets? You healed in a few weeks and came back on the ice, but your right foot was always angled, just slightly, to the left. Nobody who didn’t know you would notice, but I did. I knew it was you!”

  “Okay, okay, Benny, it’s me, but you can’t say anything to anybody. I’m working for the government now and you’ve got to keep your mouth shut.”

  “Hey, I understand, pal. You know, I played for the Rangers for two seasons—”

  “I know, Benny, you were terrific.”

  “The hell I was, I got cut on the third.”

  “It happens.”

  “Not if I were you, pal. You had it over all of us.”

  “That’s history. How did you find me, Ben?”

  “The concierge’s desk. I asked where the bag was going.”

  “They told you?”

  “Sure, because I said it was mine!”

  “Christ, you do bring back memories. We’d go to an expensive restaurant in Montreal, the check would come, and if it was too large, you’d say it belonged to another table, or another one after that, until it was small enough for you to accept it. What are you doing in Paris?”

  “I’m in the fast-food business, representing all of the majors; they recruit jocks like you and me ’cause we got big muscle and they hype our reputations. Would you believe my résumé says I was a star on the Rangers? What do they know over here? I was a second-rater, but I fill out a jacket.”

  “I never filled out one like you did.”

  “No, you didn’t. You were like a Toronto paper said, ‘all raw sinew and speed.’ I wished the hell they’d said that about me.”

  “Again, that’s history, Ben, but I have to tell you once more. You’ve got to forget you saw me! It’s terribly important that you remember that.”

  “Sure, old pal.” The man named Lewis burped, then hiccupped twice.

  “Benny,” said Latham firmly, “you’re not on the sauce again, are you?”

  “No,” answered the fast-food international salesman, combining another burp and a hiccup. “But what the hell, pal, this is Paris.”

  “Talk to you later, pal,” said Latham, hanging up the phone. No sooner had he done so than it rang again. “Yes?”

  “It’s me,” said Karin de Vries. “Did everything go all right?”

  “No, goddammit, someone I knew years ago recognized me.”

  “Who?”

  “An old hockey player from Canada.”

  “Is he a problem?”

  “I don’t think so, but he’s a drunk.”

  “Then he’s a problem. What’s his name?”

  “Ben—Benjamin Lewis. He’s in room three-thirty.”

  “We’ll get on it.… How are you, my darling?”

  “Wanting you with me, that’s how I am.”

  “I’ve decided.”

  “Good God, what have you decided? Do I want to hear it or not?”

  “I hope so. I do love you, Drew, and as you said, quite rightly, the bed was but a small part of it.”

  “I love you so much, I can’t find the words to tell you.… I can’t believe I just said that! I never believed it could happen—”

  “Nor did I. I hope we’re not wrong.”

  “What we feel couldn’t be wrong. In a few days we’ve been through more than most people have in a lifetime. We’ve been tested, lady, and neither of us blew apart. Instead, we found each other.”

  “The European in me might call that inconclusive, but I know what you feel, for I feel it too. I do, and I ache for you.”

  “Then come to the hotel, blond wig and all.”

  “Not tonight, my darling. The colonel would court-martial us both. Perhaps tomorrow.”

  Within the hour, as it was barely noon in New York, the president of the International Food Services Trade Association on Sixth Avenue received a call from Washington. Thirty minutes later, one of their representatives, a former star of the New York Rangers, currently in Paris, was ordered to Oslo, Norway, to pave the way for new business opportunities. There was only one minor difficulty. The salesman in question was dead drunk on his bed, and it took two of the concierge’s assistants to rouse him for the call, help him pack, and put him in a taxi for Orly Airport.

  Unfortunately, everything being rather hectic, Benjamin Lewis got in the wrong line, missed the plane, and bought a ticket to Helsinki, as he could not remember Oslo, but knew his employer had named a Scandinavian city, and he had never been to Helsinki. Such is the fate of those interfering with far-flung intelligence operations.

  Halfway through the flight, Benny suddenly recalled Oslo, and asked the stewardess if he could step out and flag down another plane. The flight attendant, a gorgeous Finnish blonde, was sympathetic but explained that it would not be a good idea. So Benny asked her for a late dinner in Helsinki. She politely refused.

  Wesley Sorenson left Cons-Op headquarters and was driven to the safe house in Fairfax, Virginia, where the two Nazi revolutionaries were being held. As the car passed through the gates into a long, circular drive that led to the imposing front entrance, once the estate of an Argentinean diplomat, the director of Consular Operations tried to remember all the tricks he had used in his field interrogations. The first, of course, was “Hey, fellas, I’d rather see you alive than dead, which won’t be my decision, I hope you understand that. We can’t play games here; there’s an underground soundproof room where the wall is pretty well pockmarked from previous executions” … et cetera, et cetera. Naturally, there was no such wall, no such room, and usually only the most fanatical prisoners would be taken down the black-draped elevator to an anticipated death. Those that chose to travel that short fifty feet were injected with scopolamine derivatives and were so thankful when they revived that they normally cooperated to a fault.

  The large two-man cell was not the prison variety. It was twenty feet long and twelve feet wide, and included two normal-size beds, a sink, a walled toilet, a small refrigerator, and a television set. It was closer to a moderately priced hotel room than to something out of the old Alcatraz or Attica. What the prisoners did not know, but probably suspected, was that concealed cameras were in the walls, covering every foot of space.

  “May I come in, gentlemen?” said Sorenson, standing outside the cell door. “Or should I speak German to make myself clear?”

  “We are well versed in English, mein Herr,” replied the relaxed Paris Two. “We have been captured, so what can we say?… No, you cannot come in?”

  “I take that as an affirmative. Thank you.”

  “Your guard and his weapon will remain outside,” said the less cordial Paris Five.

  “Regulations, not mine personally.” Sorenson was let into the cell by the intelligence patrol, who stepped back to the opposite wall, removing his sidearm from its holster. “I think we should talk, talk seriously, gentlemen.”

  “What is there to talk about?” asked Paris Two.

  “Whether you live or die, I suppose is the primary question,” replied the director of Cons-Op. “You see, it’s not my decision. Downstairs, twenty feet below ground, there’s a room.…” Sorenson described the execution chamber to the discomfort of Paris Five and a cooler reception from Zero Two, who kept staring at the director, a tight smile across his lips.

  “Do you think we
’re so committed as to give you an excuse to kill us?” he said. “Unless you’re predisposed to do so.”

  “In this country we regard the taking of a life very seriously. It’s never predisposed or accepted lightly.”

  “Really?” Paris Two continued. “Then why is it that outside of certain Arab states, China, and what’s left of selected Russian breakaways, you are the only country in the civilized world to retain the death penalty?”

  “The will of the people—in certain states, of course. However, your situation is beyond national policies. You’re international killers, terrorists operating on behalf of a discredited political party that doesn’t dare show itself, for it would be denounced throughout the world.”

  “Are you so certain of that?” interrupted Paris Five.

  “I would hope so.”

  “Then you’d be wrong!”

  “What my comrade is saying,” Two broke in, “is that perhaps we have more support than you think. Look at the extreme Russian nationalists, are they so different from the Third Reich? And your own right-wing fanatics and their brothers, the book-burning religious fundamentalists. Their agendas could have been written by Hitler and Goebbels. No, mein Herr, there is far more sympathy for our goals of cleansing than you can conceive of.”

  “I would hope not.”

  “ ‘Hope is a thing with feathers,’ as one of your finest writers suggested, is it not so?”

  “I don’t happen to believe that, but you’re a pretty well-read young man, aren’t you?”

  “I’ve lived in various countries, and—I would hope—absorbed some of their cultures.”

  “You mentioned something about being committed,” said Sorenson. “You asked me if I thought you were ‘so committed’ as to use that commitment as an excuse to have you executed.”

  “I said ‘to kill us,’ ” corrected Zero Two. “Execution implies a legal justification.”

  “For which, in your case, there’s more than ample evidence. I refer to three attempts and the final murdering of Field Officer Latham, for starters.”

  “It’s war!” cried Paris Five. “In war, soldiers kill soldiers!”

  “I’m not aware of any declaration of hostilities, no national call to arms. Therefore, it’s murder, pure and simple.… However, this is all academic and beyond my scope. I can only relay information; the decision is up to my superiors.”

  “What sort of information?” asked Two.

  “What can you offer in exchange for your lives?”

  “Where do you wish to begin—if we have such information?”

  “Who are your colleagues in Bonn?”

  “That I can tell you honestly, we don’t know.… Let me go back, mein Herr. We are an elite group who live extraordinary lives, the fantasies of all young men who are superbly trained to follow orders. These orders are issued to us by codes, codes that change constantly.” Paris Two described their lifestyles as he had told Zero Five he would do on the jet to Washington. “We are the shock troops, the storm troopers, if you wish, and we maintain contacts with our units in every country. No names are ever used, the prefix Zero is Paris—I am Paris, Zero Two—the United States is the prefix Three, the specific names preceding.”

  “How do you make contact?”

  “By revolving, secure telephone numbers issued by Bonn. Again, our digits are used, no names.”

  “Regarding this country, what can you tell me that could convince me to recommend leniency with regard to your executions?”

  “Mein Gott, where do you want to begin?”

  “Anywhere you like.”

  “Very well, let’s start with the Vice President of the United States.”

  “What?”

  “He’s one of us to the core. Then there is the Speaker of the House, German ancestry, naturally, an aging gentleman who claimed conscientious objectorship during World War Two. Of course, there are others, many others, but their names, or positions, will depend on your recommendation to the execution committee.”

  “You could be lying through your teeth.”

  “If that’s what you think, shoot us.”

  “You’re garbage.”

  “As you are in our eyes!” shouted Paris Five. “But time is on our side, not yours. Sooner or later the world will wake up and see that we’re right. The dehumanized blacks commit the vast majority of crimes; the Arabs constitute the largest groups of terrorists, and the Jews are the manipulators of the world, cheating and corrupting all within their reach—everything for themselves, nothing for anyone else!”

  “My passionate associate notwithstanding, do you want our information or not?” asked Zero Two. “I loved my privileged life in Paris, but if it is to stop, why not make it complete?”

  “Can you provide any evidence for the outrageous accusations you’ve made?”

  “We can only tell you what we’ve been told. But please remember, we are the elite of the Brotherhood.”

  “Die Brüderschaft,” said the director of Consular Operations, disgust in his voice.

  “Precisely. That name will sweep across the globe and it will be honored.”

  “Not if I have anything to say about it.”

  “But do you, mein Herr? You are no more than a small cog in many wheels, as I am. Frankly, I’m bored with the whole thing. Let history take its inevitable course, it’s beyond such men as you and me. Also, I’d much rather live than die.”

  “I’ll confer with my superiors,” said Wesley Sorenson coldly, walking to the cell gate and signaling the guard.

  When both men had disappeared through the outer door, Paris Two picked up a notepad and, covering his hand, wrote in German, “He cannot afford to execute

  “Monsieur l’Ambassadeur,” said Moreau, alone with Heinrich Kreitz in the latter’s office at the German Embassy. “I trust there is no recording made of our conversation. It would not be to the advantage of either of us.”

  “There is none,” replied the aged ambassador, his small stature, pale, lined face, and thin steel-rimmed glasses making him appear more like a weathered gnome than a giant intellect of Europe. “I have the information you requested—”

  “Requested over a secure line, n’est-ce pas?” interrupted the chief of the Deuxième Bureau, seated in front of the desk.

  “Naturally, you have my word for it.… The records go back to what’s known of Gerhardt Kroeger’s childhood and family, through his university and medical training, to his hospital appointment and his eventual resignation in Nuremberg. It’s a remarkable dossier, filled with the triumphs of a brilliant man; and with the possible exception of his abrupt resignation from the medical community, there’s nothing to indicate impropriety, much less sympathy with the neo-Nazi movements. I’ve made a copy for you, of course.” Kreitz leaned forward and placed the sealed manila envelope in front of Moreau, who picked it up, impressed by its thickness and weight.

  “Save me some time, if you’ve got the time, sir.”

  “There’s nothing more important than our combined investigations. Go on.”

  “You’ve read this thoroughly?”

  “As if it were a doctoral thesis I had to accept or reject. Very thoroughly.”

  “Who were his parents?”

  “Sigmund and Elsi Kroeger, and you’ve just struck the first note that discredits any association with the neo-Nazis. Sigmund Kroeger was officially listed as a deserter from the Luftwaffe in the final months of the war.”

  “So were thousands of others.”

  “Of the Wehrmacht, perhaps, not the Luftwaffe, and very few senior officers. The elder Kroeger was a decorated major, decorated by Goering himself. The military records, ours and yours, show that had the war continued and Kroeger been captured, he would have been court-martialed and shot. By the Third Reich.”

  “What happened to him after the war?”

  “The usual obfuscations. He had flown his Messerschmitt over the Allied lines, parachuted out, and let his plane crash into a field. British troops
kept the nearby villagers from killing him and he was given the status of prisoner of war.”

  “And after the surrender, he was repatriated?”

  “Obfuscations, what can I tell you? He was the son of a factory owner who employed hundreds of people. However, in the final analysis, he was a deserter, and no devoted follower of the Führer. Hardly the basis for his own son to become one.”

  “Yes, I see. What about his wife, Gerhardt’s mother?”

  “A stolid, upper-middle-class Hausfrau who probably detested the war. At any rate, she was never listed as a member of the National Socialist Party and never known to attend the numerous rallies.”

  “Not exactly a pro-Nazi influence.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

  “And Kroeger’s university and medical schooling, were there any student factions antagonistic to Germany’s democratizations, its rejection of the Third Reich, that might have impressed the young Kroeger?”

  “None that I can find. His professors, by and large, termed him a man who kept to himself, a born scholar and doctor in training, simply outstanding. His surgical residency was so superb, he was operating months before it was customary.”

  “His specialization?”

  “The brain. They say he had ‘golden hands and quicksilver fingers’; that’s a direct quote from the renowned Hans Traupman, another giant in the field.”

  “Who?”

  “Traupman, Hans Traupman, chief of cranial surgery, Nuremberg.”

  “Are they friends?”

  “Other than a professional association, there’s no reference to a specific friendship.”

  “Yet he was excessive in his praise of a subordinate.”

  “Not all surgeons are ungenerous, Moreau.”

  “I suppose not. Were there any conclusions or opinions as to why Kroeger resigned his post and immigrated to Sweden?”

  “Other than his own very emotional statement, no. He had been performing extremely delicate, one might say nerve-racking, operations for nearly twenty years. His personal judgment was that he had burnt himself out, that a tremble had developed in those ‘quicksilver’ fingers of his, and he would not further risk patients’ lives. Most admirable.”