The Apocalypse Watch

by Robert Ludlum

  “If you’ll calm down for a moment or two, I’ll fill you in.”

  “Me calm down? Oh, I’ve got a lot to be calm about. Courtland’s to be ordered to the Quai d’Orsay in the morning to take the whacks for you; you’re being declared persona non grata and thrown out of the country; a formal protest is being lodged against me by a foreign government, and you tell me to be calm?”

  “Moreau’s behind all this?”

  “It’s not Tinker Bell.”

  “Then we can control it.”

  “Are you listening to me? You assaulted two Deuxième agents, blindsided them, and held them hostage by roping them up without communication for hours, therefore disrupting a major French intelligence investigation!”

  “Yes, but, Stanley, I made progress, the kind of progress Moreau wants more than anything else.”

  “What …?”

  “Send a marine unit out to a Lutheran church in Neuilly-sur-Seine.” Latham gave Witkowski the address and described the bound Koenig in the bushes. “He’s the high honcho of the neo movement in Paris, higher, I think, than Strasbourg, at least his cover’s better.”

  “How did you find him?”

  “There’s no time for that now. Call Moreau and have the marines take Koenig to the Deuxième Bureau. Tell Claude from me it’s a bona fide.”

  “He’ll want more than a roughed-up Lutheran minister. Jesus, you could be a nut and he’d be drummed out of his job, facing all kinds of lawsuits!”

  “No way. Koenig’s code name is Heracles, something out of mythology.”

  “Greek mythology?” interrupted the colonel. “Heracles is a son of Zeus, known for feats of strength.”

  “That’s nice,” said Drew pleasantly. “Now, get things moving, which shouldn’t take you more than a minute or two. Then I want you to meet me—”

  “Meet you? I may blow your brains out!”

  “Postpone it, Stanley. I know where they’ve got Karin.”

  “What?”

  “Twenty-three rue Lacoste, flat unknown, but just recently rented.”

  “You sprung this from the padre?”

  “Actually, it wasn’t difficult. He was frightened.”

  “He was what …?”

  “No time, Stosh! It’s got to be just you and me. If they even sense a conversion, or see a strange car or two parking on the street at this hour, they’ll kill her. They intend to do just that in an hour or so anyway if they don’t reach me and pull me out.”

  “I’ll meet you a hundred yards east of the building, between streetlights, the darkest storefront or alley.”

  “Thank you, Stanley, I mean that. I know when a solo operation has to be added to, and there’s no one better than you.”

  “I don’t have a choice. There’s no way you could come up with a code like Heracles unless it was real.”

  Karin de Vries sat in the straight chair, her hands tied behind her, a slender, broad-shouldered neo killer sitting in front of her, his legs straddling the seat of a wooden kitchen chair, his arms across the back, a pistol casually in his right hand, a pistol with a large cylinder attached to the barrel. A silencer.

  “Why do you think your husband is alive, Frau de Vries?” asked the Nazi in German. “More to the point, if by an impossible stretch of the imagination he is, why should we know anything about him? Really, my good woman, he was executed by the Stasi, that’s common knowledge.”

  “It may be common knowledge, but it’s a lie. If you live with a man for eight years, you know his voice when you hear it, no matter how garbled or incoherent.”

  “That’s fascinating. You heard his voice?”

  “Twice.”

  “The Stasi files say otherwise, most graphically, I might add.”

  “That’s the problem,” said Karin icily. “It was too graphic.”

  “You’re not making sense.”

  “Even the most vicious of the Gestapo did not describe in detail the torture and execution of prisoners. It wasn’t in their interest.”

  “That was before my time.”

  “Mine also, but there are records. Perhaps you should read them.”

  “I don’t need instructions from you, madame.… These voices, how did you hear them?”

  “How else? The telephone, of course.”

  “The telephone? He called you?”

  “Not using his name, but with a diatribe of invective I was subjected to frequently during the last year of our marriage, before he was presumably executed by the Stasi.”

  “Of course you challenged this person on the telephone, did you not?”

  “That only made his screams become more manic. My husband’s a very sick man, Herr Nazi.”

  “I take the appellation as a compliment,” said the neo, grinning and twirling the pistol in his hand. “Why do you say your husband’s sick, or, to put it another way, why do you tell me?”

  “Because I think he’s one of you.”

  “One of us?” asked the German incredulously. “ ‘Freddie de V,’ the Amsterdam provocateur, the consummate enemy of the movement? Forgive me, Frau de Vries, but now you’ve lost your senses! How could such a thing happen?”

  “He fell in love with hate, and you people are the personification of hatred.”

  “You’re beyond me.”

  “I’m beyond myself, for I’m no psychologist, but I know I’m right. His sense of hate had nowhere else to go, but he couldn’t live without it. You did something to him—as to what, I have a theory, but obviously no evidence. You channeled him, channeled his hatred, turning him against everything he believed in—”

  “I’ve heard enough of this foolishness. You are truly a madwoman!”

  “No, I’m quite sane. I even think I know how you did it.”

  “Did what?”

  “Turned him against his friends, your enemies.”

  “And just how did we perform this miracle?”

  “You made him dependent on you. During the final months, his mood swings became more extreme.… He was away much of the time, as I was, but when we were together, he was another man, depressed one minute, violent the next. There were days when he was like a child, a little boy who wanted a toy so badly that when he didn’t get it, he ran out of the apartment and was gone for hours. Then he’d come back, contrite, begging forgiveness for his outbursts.”

  “Madame,” cried the neo, “I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about!”

  “Drugs, Herr Nazi, I’m talking about drugs. I believe you supply Frederik with narcotics, that’s why he’s dependent on you. No doubt you’re holding him in a mountain retreat somewhere, feeding his habit or habits, extracting information from him with every move that’s made against you. He is a treasure house of secrets, even secrets he’s forgotten.”

  “You are insane. If we had such a man, there are other drugs that could produce those secrets in a matter of minutes. Why should we spend time and money prolonging his life?”

  “Because the Amytals and the scopolamine derivatives cannot produce secrets that are no longer remembered.”

  “So what good is such a source?”

  “Situations change, circumstances vary. You run into an obstacle, be it a man or a strategy, you face him with it, and memories come back. Identities can be revealed, once-familiar tactics explained.”

  “My God, you’ve read too much fiction.”

  “Our world—yours, and not too long ago, mine—is largely based on fictitious hypotheticals.”

  “Enough! You’re too academic for me.… However, a question, Frau de Vries. Given a fictitious hypothetical, as you call it, say you’re correct and we have your husband under the conditions you describe. Why do you want to find him? Do you seek a reunion?”

  “That is the last thing I wish for, Nazi.”

  “Then why?”

  “You could say I want to satisfy my morbid curiosity. What makes a man become another human being from the one you knew? How can he live with himself?… Or, you mig
ht say, if it was in my power, I’d like to see him dead.”

  “Those are serious words,” said the neo, leaning back in the chair, his pistol mockingly pointed at his head. “Boom! You would do that if you could?”

  “Probably.”

  “But of course! You’ve found another, haven’t you? An officer of American intelligence, a very accomplished deep-cover operative for the Central Intelligence Agency named Harry Latham.”

  Karin froze, her expression immobile. “That is irrelevant, he is irrelevant.”

  “We don’t think so, madame. You are lovers, we’ve established that.”

  “Establish what you like, it doesn’t change the reality. Why are you interested in … Harry Latham?”

  “You know why as well as I do.” The neo grinned, placing both heels on the floor as he straddled the chair, a laughing cavalier on horseback. “He knows too much about us. He penetrated our former headquarters in the Hausruck and saw things, learned things, he should not have seen or learned. But it’s merely a question of an hour, perhaps two, and he will no longer be a thorn to our superiors. We will follow orders down to the letter, including a coup de grâce in the left side of his skull. You see how wonderfully specific we are? We’re not hypothetical at all, and certainly not fictitious. We are the reality, you’re the fiction. You can do nothing to stop us.”

  “Why his skull, the left side of his skull?” asked De Vries in a monotone, mesmerized by the Nazi’s words.

  “We wondered about that, but then one of our younger recruits, a very educated fellow, supplied the answer. It goes back to the seventeen hundreds, when condemned soldiers were executed by a single officer. If the condemned man had shown valor in battle, he was shot on the right side of his head; if he had no redeeming qualities, he was shot on the left side—sinistra in Italian, where the custom began, sinister in English. Harry Latham is filth, need I say more?”

  “That strikes me as a barbaric ritual,” said Karin, barely audibly as she stared at the lean, muscular assassin.

  “Rituals, dear lady, are the basis of all discipline. The further back they go, the more ingrained they are, the more to be worshiped.”

  There was a brief sound of static from an adjoining room, followed by a muffled male voice speaking in German. The voice stopped and moments later another neo appeared in the doorway, this one younger than De Vries’s interrogator, but no less lean and muscular. “That was Berlin on the radio,” he said. “The Paris authorities are in the dark, they’ve traced nothing, so we’re to proceed on schedule.”

  “It was a useless communication. How could they trace anything?”

  “Well, there were the bodies outside the Normandie hotel—”

  “And a Deuxième vehicle at the bottom of the Seine. So what?”

  “They said to make sure that everything—well, you know what I mean—the Château de Vincennes, north of the Bois.”

  “Yes, I know what you mean and what Berlin means. Anything else?”

  “It will begin to be light in an hour.”

  “Helmut is in place, no?”

  “He is, and with the words he’s to say.”

  “Tell him to make the call in twenty minutes.”

  “But it will still be dark.”

  “I’m aware of that. Better for us to be in place and reconnoiter, no?”

  “As always, you’re brilliant, sir.”

  “I’m aware of that too. Go!” The second neo disappeared and the interrogator turned to Karin. “I’m afraid I must tape your mouth, Frau de Vries, quite extensively. Then I will untie the ropes and you will accompany us.”

  “Where are we going, other than to my death?”

  “Do not be so pessimistic. Killing you is not a priority with us.”

  “And Hitler protected the Jews.”

  “Ach, you really can be amusing.”

  Latham made contact with Witkowski roughly eighty yards east of 23, rue Lacoste, in a dark, narrow alleyway. “Good spot,” said Drew.

  “There wasn’t any other. I don’t know who pays the electric bills for the City of Lights, but they’ve got to be horrendous.”

  “Speaking of lights, that’s the only way we’ll be able to center in on the flat.”

  “Wrong,” said the colonel. “It’s on the fifth floor, west corner.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I don’t kid when I’m carrying two automatics with custom-made silencers, four clips of ammunition, and a cut-down version of a MAC-10 under this raincoat.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “Thank Moreau, who still wants your ass, but he received your package.”

  “Koenig?”

  “That’s right. Funny thing is, the Sûreté had the good prelate in their files.”

  “As a neo?”

  “No, his predilection for choirboys. Five anonymous complaints had been registered.”

  “What about the flat?”

  “Claude ran a trace on the owner of the building, the rest was easy. Nobody wants to mess with an agency that can bring down the bureaus of taxation and public health on his head.”

  “Stanley, you are a wonder.”

  “I’m not, Moreau is, and part of the deal is that you apologize to his men, buy them very expensive gifts, and take them to a very, very expensive dinner at the Tour d’Argent. With their families.”

  “That’s two months salary!”

  “I accepted for you.… Now, let’s figure out how we do this without any backup.”

  “First we get inside, then climb the stairs,” replied Latham. “Very quietly and carefully.”

  “They’ll have patrols on the staircases. Better an elevator. We’ll be two drunks singing something like ‘Auprès de Ma Blonde,’ loud but not too loud.”

  “Not bad, Stosh.”

  “I was around when you were sending away for code rings from cereal boxes. We take the elevator to the sixth or seventh floor and walk down. But you’re right about being quiet and careful, I’ll give you that.”

  “Thanks for the compliment. I’ll put it on my résumé.”

  “If you get out of this, you may need one quicker than you think. I have an idea Wesley Sorenson would like to see you stationed in a Mongolian outpost. Now let’s go. Stay close to the buildings; from the fifth floor, their line of sight is negative.”

  Latham and Witkowski, one behind the other, scrambled up the Lacoste, successively ducking into doorways until they reached Number 23. The entrance was at ground level; they entered the hallway, tested the locked foyer door, then studied the list of flats and occupants. “Iknow how to do this,” said the colonel, his hand reaching to press the button for an apartment on the ninth floor. When a startled, sleepy female voice responded on the speaker, he answered in fluent French. “My name is Capitaine Louis d’Ambert of the Sûreté. You may call my office to confirm my identity, but time is of the essence. There is a dangerous person in this building who could bring harm to the tenants. We must gain entrance and arrest him. Here, let me give you the number of my Sûreté office so you can verify my authority.”

  “Don’t bother!” said the woman. “Crime these days, it’s everywhere—criminals, murderers, in our own buildings!” The buzzer sounded and Drew and Witkowski were inside.

  The elevator was on the left; the panel above it showed the car was on the fourth floor. Latham pushed the button; the inner machinery cranked instantly. As the door slid open, a light on the panel inside indicated that someone on the fifth floor had pressed the red button, indicating descent.

  “We’ve got the priority,” said Stanley. “Press the second floor.”

  “It’s the neos,” whispered Drew. “It’s got to be them!”

  “At this hour, I figure you’re right,” agreed the colonel. “So we’ll get off, walk down the stairs, stay way back in the hallway, and see if our instincts still have merit.”

  They did. Racing back to the ground floor, they crouched at the end of the tiled foyer and watched as th
e elevator door opened and Karin de Vries, her face taped, came into view, accompanied by three men, all dressed in ordinary civilian clothing.

  “Halt!” shouted Witkowski, lunging out of the shadows, Latham at his side, their weapons leveled. The farthest neo spun around, reaching for his shoulder holster. The colonel fired a silenced automatic; the man spun again, grabbing his arm and falling to the ground. “This was easier than I thought, chłopak,” continued Witkowski, “these super Aryans aren’t as smart as they think they are.”

  “Nein!” shrieked the obvious leader of the trio, grabbing Karin and shielding himself with her, then yanking out a pistol. “You make one move, this woman dies!” he shouted, the gun at De Vries’s right temple.

  “Then I must have shown valor in battle,” said Karin coldly, stripping the tape off her face.

  “Was?”

  “You made it plain that you had to administer the coup de grâce on Harry Latham at the left side of his skull. Your weapon is on my right.”

  “Halt’s Maul!”

  “I’m only glad that you don’t consider me filth, that I’m not a coward. My execution at least will be honorable.”

  “Be quiet!” The neo leader dragged her, heels scraping, toward the door. “Drop your firearms!” he screamed.

  “Drop it, Stanley,” said Drew.

  “Naturally,” said the colonel.

  And then a voice came from the staircase, an angry voice speaking French. “What is all this commotion?” cried an elderly woman in a nightshirt, walking down the steps. “I pay good rent to get a night’s sleep after working in the bakery all day and I have to put up with this?”

  With the sudden interruption, Karin sprang out of her captor’s arms as Witkowski pulled his second automatic from under his raincoat. When De Vries ducked, he fired two shots, one into the neo’s forehead, the other into his throat.

  “Mon Dieu!” screamed the woman on the staircase, racing up the steps.

  Latham ran to Karin, holding her fiercely, his arms two clamps of enormous strength. “I’m all right, my darling, I’m all right!” she said, seeing the tears that streamed down his face. “My poor dear,” she went on, “it’s over, Drew.”

  “The hell it is!” yelled the colonel, holding the two live neos under his gun. The Nazi he had wounded was getting up from the floor. “Here,” said Stanley, picking up his and Latham’s weapons and handing one to De Vries. “Cover this scumbucket who can walk, and I’ll shove the other sleaze after us. You, chłopak, use your fancy telephone and call Durbane at the embassy! Get us wheels back there!”