The Apocalypse Watch

by Robert Ludlum

  “Wait a minute,” said Latham’s voice over the line, “wait a minute! Hundreds of those initial names were brought out of the Brüderschaft valley by Harry, weren’t they?”

  “Of course.”

  “And according to the MI-Six transcripts, my brother made it clear that not only should the names be examined but everyone around them.”

  “Naturally, it’s standard.”

  “And then after those names were circulated, the order to kill Harry came from the Nazi high command, right?”

  “Obviously.”

  “Why?… Why, Wes? They’ve hunted me like a starving wolf pack in search of a sheep.”

  “I’ve never understood that.”

  “Maybe I’m beginning to. It pains me to say it, but suppose Harry was fed false names. Purposely, to create the very climate you just described.”

  “What I know of your brother, I don’t think he’d buy them.”

  “Suppose he didn’t have a choice?”

  “He didn’t lose his mind. Of course he had a choice.”

  “Suppose he did—lose his mind, I mean. Gerhardt Kroeger is a brain surgeon, and he risked his life in Paris to kill Harry. In one scenario he—I—was to be decapitated; in another, a coup de grâce was to be administered that would blow his head away … the left side of his head.”

  “I’d say an autopsy is called for,” said the director of Consular Operations, then added, “when it’s feasible. At the moment, we’d all better move as fast as we can to stop whatever it is that’s going to kill hundreds of thousands of people in Paris, London, and Washington.”

  “Jäger spelled it out, Wes. Toxicity in the reservoirs.”

  “I’m no expert in waterworks, but I know something about them. Good Lord, at one time or another we’ve all considered them in terms of tactical sabotage, and, conversely, we all rejected them.”

  “Why?”

  “The task is simply too massive. To have any effect on the water of large cities would entail a supply line of heavy-duty trucks at least three or four miles long, a sight that could hardly be concealed. Then there’s the obstacle of entry into the reservoirs, which for such a number of vehicles is virtually impossible. Those fences are like prison barricades, they’re equipped with lateral sectional alarms; if penetration is made, a signal is sent to the water tower’s security and immediate inspections are made.”

  “I’d say you were quite an expert, Mr. Director.”

  “Rubbish, that information could be and probably is learned by the Boy Scouts, and certainly by any civil engineer on a government payroll.”

  “So you’ve ruled out the ground, what about the air?”

  “Just as impossible. There’d have to be at least two squadrons of low-flying cargo aircraft, pinpoint-targeting their materials nearest the water towers for sluice entry. In all likelihood they’d crash into one another, and even if they didn’t, they’d be like prolonged deafening thunder across the area, not to mention being tracked by radar.”

  “Wow, you really did consider this kind of sabotage, didn’t you?”

  “You know as well as I do, Drew, various options are basic to the games we play.”

  “This isn’t a game, Wes. That bastard meant what he said. He’s figured out a way. He’s going to do it.”

  “Then we’d all better get to work, hadn’t we? I’ll stay in contact with MI-Five and the Quai d’Orsay. You concentrate on the identities of everyone in that estate on the Rhine. Coordinate with Claude, MI-Six, and German intelligence. We want every one of those fanatics in cells by tomorrow. And zero in on the non-Germans first; don’t let them leave the country.”

  The government computers of four nations spun their disks furiously for the next twenty-one hours as isolated photographs were wired to the intelligence agencies of Germany, France, England, and America. Of the thirty-six men who roared Sieg Heil, Günter Jäger, seventeen were German, seven American, four British, and five French; three were unidentified and presumably had already boarded flights out of the country. All were secretly placed under arrest and held incommunicado in isolated prison cells, no explanations given, no telephone calls permitted. In cases where the individuals were prominent, sudden business trips and prolonged conferences were the stories told their households, issued in the names of their companies.

  “This is outrageous!” roared the owner of a German chemical factory.

  “So are you,” replied the German police officer.

  There remained only Günter Jäger, kept oblivious of the events of the last twenty-one hours, alone with his staff in his modest compound on the banks of the Rhine. It was a multilateral command decision, as none of the neo-Nazis taken prisoner could provide any specifics regarding Water Lightning. The strategies they offered up in hopes of better treatment and leniency were totally impractical and therefore false. Even the hysterical Hans Traupman, having been shown the lurid tapes of his sexual experiments, could provide nothing of substance.

  “Do you think I would withhold anything from you? My God, I’m a surgeon, I know when an operation has failed. We’re finished!”

  Only Günter Jäger had the answers, and it was the considered opinion of the behavioral scientists who had studied the tape that he would take his own life before revealing them.

  “His condition is one of manic-depressive, controlled paranoia, which simply means he’s constantly living on the edge. One shove and he’s into the abyss of complete madness.”

  Karin de Vries agreed.

  Therefore, the new Führer’s every means of communication was monitored: telephone, radio frequencies, deliveries, even the possibility of carrier pigeons. Agents with powerful electronic listening devices were in the bushes, in trees, and among the ruins of the former demolished estate, the “ears” beamed to every area of the river cottage and its grounds. All waited for Jäger to make contact with anyone or anything that would give them a clue about Water Lightning. None came, and the hours passed.

  In London, Paris, and Washington, the waterworks were virtually under siege. Platoons of armed soldiers patrolled every foot of the areas, roads leading to the reservoirs were blockaded, detours put in place. In the brick water towers of Washington, the operations and security systems were manned by experts of the Army Corps of Engineers, the most experienced personnel flown in from all over the country.

  “No son-of-a-bitch Nazi will get near this place,” said the brigadier general in command of the Dalecarlia reservoir. “It’s the same in London and Paris, we’ve conferred down to the last possibility. I think the French went a little ape though. They’ve got bazooka and flamethrower units every hundred yards, and they don’t even drink water.”

  In Bonn, because there was no evidence that Water Lightning would affect the city, the government placed all its resources at the disposal of the allies, its allies now, for no one on earth loathed the reappearance of the Nazi more than the German leadership. However, they did not consider history or its plague of repetition. For during the darkest hours of the night of Water Lightning, trucks ostensibly carrying everything from linen supplies to kitchen equipment to cleaning services drove slowly, unobtrusively, into the parking areas of the Bundestag. In reality, within those trucks were stored large tanks of high octane, highly explosive fuel attached to pumps capable of spraying an entire football or soccer field. It was a symbol Günter Jäger could not resist, a personal symbol he shared with no one but his committed disciples who would perform the task. They would torch the Bundestag, burning it to the ground.

  “Reichstag revisited,” he wrote in his private journal.

  “Nothing’s happening!” exclaimed Karin in the suite at the Königshof Hotel. It was one o’clock in the morning in Bonn; Witkowski and the two commandos from Desert Storm, exhausted from nearly two days’ lack of rest, were asleep in the other rooms. “We’re not getting anywhere!”

  “We’ve all agreed,” said Latham, his eyelids like lead shields he had to constantly pry open, “if nothin
g comes down by six o’clock this morning, we take him and put him on the rack.”

  “There won’t be a rack, Drew! Freddie never went into an operation without the means to kill himself if he was caught. He always said to me that it wasn’t heroic at all, it was only his fear of torture. If he was exposed, he knew he’d eventually be executed, so why not avoid the pain.… It was one of the reasons I couldn’t believe the Stasi file.”

  “You mean a cyanide capsule in a collar and all the rest of that crap?”

  “It’s real, you’ve seen it! Your brother Harry armed himself with the same pill!”

  “He never would have used it.” Latham’s head fell forward over his chest, then his entire body lurched slowly back on the couch.

  “Hundreds of thousands of lives are at stake, Drew! You said it yourself—he’s found a way to do it!” Her plea was not heard; Latham was asleep. “There’s another way to stop him,” said De Vries, whispering as she raced into their bedroom, yanked a blanket off the bed, and returned, covering Latham. She then returned to the bedroom and picked up the phone.

  A telephone rang, disorienting Drew, who fell off the couch, reaching for what was not there. He rose to his feet unsteadily; the ringing stopped and thirty seconds later a nearly dressed Witkowski burst out of the bedroom. “Goddammit, she’s done it!” shouted the colonel.

  “Done what …?” asked Latham, back on the couch and shaking his head.

  “Gone after De Vries herself.”

  “What?”

  “Karin used our codes and got clearance to pass through the Jäger security.”

  “When?”

  “A few minutes ago. The officer of the watch wanted to know whether to log her entry by code or by name.”

  “We’re out of here!… Where’s my weapon? It was right here on the table. My God, she took it!”

  “Put on a jacket and a raincoat,” said the colonel. “It’s been raining for the last hour.”

  “A car from German intelligence is on its way,” announced Captain Dietz, rushing out of the third-bedroom door followed by his lieutenant, both fully dressed, their automatics holstered. “I picked up the phone and heard,” he explained. “We’ve got to hurry, it’ll take at least ten minutes to get there.”

  “Call the security chief and order them to stop her, or go in after her!” said Lieutenant Anthony.

  “No,” snapped Witkowski. “Jäger’s a mad dog. If he thinks he’s cornered, he’ll go wild, killing everything in front of him. You heard the psychiatrists. Whatever the hell she thinks she’s doing, she’s better off doing it alone until we get there.”

  “And when we get there,” said Drew quietly, yanking a jacket and a raincoat off a chair, “we’re going in. Each of you has a second weapon. One of you give me his.”

  Identifying herself as a member of the N-2 unit, her name and code verified by the German intelligence officer in charge of the Jäger compound’s surveillance team, Karin de Vries was given an overview as well as specific instructions.

  “I have nine men strategically placed throughout the grounds with their equipment,” said the officer, crouched in the pouring rain behind a half-demolished wall of the old estate. “Each is camouflaged and hidden in the foliage, several actually up in trees, and the rain, though extremely uncomfortable, is advantageous for us. Günter Jäger’s two patrols stray barely twenty-five meters beyond the boathouse cottage. You say that you must reach the door without being seen, and it’s vital to our situation that you are not seen—so listen to what I tell you. Follow this old flagstone path until you reach the remnants of a burned-down gazebo where there’s a croquet field rebuilt for Jäger’s relaxation. On the opposite side is a spreading pine tree; roughly fifteen feet above the first branches is one of my men with clear sightlines to the cottage. He has a penlight he will cup in his hand: two flashes mean a guard is walking around, three mean everything’s clear. When you see the three flashes, run across the center of the croquet course, where there is another flagstone path that curves to the left. Enter it and stop after approximately forty paces, at where the curve is the sharpest. Look to your right; there’ll be another man in the brush, another penlight. He has a direct line of sight to a side door which is straight ahead at the end of the path, you can’t miss it.”

  “A side door?” Karin had interrupted, brushing the rain off her face under her black canvas hat.

  “Jäger’s living quarters,” answered the German intelligence officer. “Bedroom, bath, office, and an addition on the north wall that contains a small personal chapel with its own altar. It’s said he spends hours there in meditation. The side door is his private entrance, the closest to the riverbank and forbidden to everyone else. The front door is at the far left, the old boathouse’s original entrance; it’s the one the guards and visitors use.”

  “In other words, he’s basically separated from the rest of the household when he’s in his quarters.”

  “Definitely. Director Moreau was particularly interested in the arrangement as I described it to him. He reached me after you called him in Paris, and together we devised the plan to accommodate you with the minimum of risk.”

  “What did he tell you, if I may ask?”

  “That you knew Günter Jäger years ago and that you were a highly trained strategist who might accomplish what others could not. I along with most senior officers in our profession accept Moreau’s judgments as those of an expert. He also mentioned that you would be armed and capable of protecting yourself.”

  “I hope he’s right on both counts,” said Karin softly.

  “Oh?” The German officer stared at De Vries. “Your superiors approve of your tactics, of course.”

  “Naturally. Would the celebrated Moreau himself have reached you on my behalf if they did not?”

  “No, he wouldn’t.… Your raincoat will soon be soaked. I can’t offer you a new one, but I have an extra umbrella. You’re welcome to it.”

  “Thank you, I’m grateful. Are you in touch with your personnel by radio?”

  “Yes, but I’m sorry, I can’t let you have one. The risk is too great.”

  “I understand. Just let them know I’m on my way.”

  “Good luck and be very, very careful, madame. Remember, we can lead you to the door, but we cannot do anything else for you. Even if you cried out, we could not respond.”

  “Yes, I know. One life compared to so many thousands.” With those words Karin snapped open the umbrella and started down the flagstone path through the deluge. Constantly wiping the rain from her eyes, she reached the once-elegant gazebo, its skeletal outlines of burnt wood and coiled screening somehow akin to a wartime photograph illustrating the lesson that war was an equalizer, touching the rich and the poor alike. And then beyond, as if to purposely contradict the lesson, there was a perfectly kept croquet field, the lawn manicured, the wickets and the brightly painted poles intact.

  She raised her head, squinting under the brim of her canvas hat, studying the enormous pine tree with different, less imposing trees on either side. Suddenly there were the barely visible flashes. Two of them! A guard was on patrol. Karin lowered herself to the ground, peering into drenched darkness, waiting for another signal. It came quickly: three flashes, repeated twice. The way was clear!

  She raced across the croquet course, her flat shoes sinking into the swollen, wet grass until she felt the hard surface of the second flagstone path. Without hesitating, she raced down it, keeping in mind the approximate forty paces and the sharp curve; she found it too late, plunging headlong into the overgrown foliage as the flagstones turned abruptly left. There was no visibility, no way she could have known. She got painfully, awkwardly, to her feet and picked up the umbrella; it was broken, useless. On her knees, she looked to her right, as instructed. There was nothing but downpour and darkness, yet she dared not move until the signal came. Finally, it did: three flashes. Karin walked slowly, cautiously, to the end of the flagstone path; she was at the edge of the woods an
d saw the lair of her once and now-despised husband, Führer of the Fourth Reich. There were lights on at the far left side of the structure, darkness everywhere else.

  The former boathouse was much longer, though not necessarily larger, than she had envisioned, for it was one level. The German intelligence officer had said there was an addition on the right that housed the isolated living quarters of the man called Günter Jäger. Additions had been made on the left as well, she thought, observing the lighter, newer wood, twenty-five or thirty feet long, and considering the width to the river side, enough for two, three, or four added rooms for the staff. The officer had been correct in one area: The front door was on the far left, at the end of the gravel drive, symmetrically unbalanced, as if temporary, but removed from Jäger’s quarters. And directly ahead of her, the short dock and the great river beyond, was the porticoed side door of Günter Jäger’s suite of rooms; a dim red light was affixed to the interior roof of the small porch. Karin took several deep breaths, hoping to control the pounding in her chest, removed Drew Latham’s automatic from her raincoat pocket, and started across the grass toward the porch with the dim red light. One of them would live, the other die. It was the end of their godforsaken marriage. But first there was Water Lightning, Günter Jäger’s omega for the paralyses of London, Paris, and Washington. Frederik de Vries, once the most brilliant of agents provocateurs, had figured out a way to do it. She knew it!

  Karin reached the short porch with the eerie red light; she walked up the single step, holding on to one of the two columns that supported the overhang, the heavy rain pounding a steady tattoo on the roof. Suddenly, she gasped, fear and confusion spreading over her. The door was ajar, open no more than three inches, beyond the slit was only black darkness. She approached it, Latham’s automatic in her left hand, and pushed the door back. Again only darkness, and except for the now-torrential rain, silence. She walked inside.