The Apocalypse Watch

by Robert Ludlum

  “Water … Lightning? My God, you’re telling the truth, it’s in your voice, your eyes.” Günter Jäger rose from the prayer stool, his face and his body like a Siegfried under an operatic spotlight. “Still, my whore-wife, it changes nothing, for no one can stop the shock wave. In less than an hour I’ll be on a jet to a country that applauds my work, our work, and watch as my disciples throughout the Western world move into positions of power.”

  “You’ll never get away!”

  “Now you’re naive, dear wife,” said Jäger, walking to the center of the altar and pressing a button under the gold crucifix. Abruptly, with his touch, a square on the floor opened, revealing the splashing waters of the river below. “Down there is a two-man submarine, courtesy of a boatworks whose chairman is one of us. It will take me up to Königswinter, where my plane waits for me. The rest is history reborn.”

  “And I?”

  “Have you any idea how long it’s been since I’ve had a woman?” said Jäger quietly under the altar spotlight. “How many years I’ve had to assume the mantle of rigid monastic discipline, while inferring that others who succumbed to such temptations were vulnerable to compromise and corruption?”

  “Please, Frederik, I’m not interested in your posturings.”

  “You should be, wife! For over four years I’ve lived like this, proving that I, and only I, was the incorruptible supreme leader. I frowned on women who wore indiscreet clothing and would not even permit lewd anecdotes or jokes in my presence.”

  “It all must have been unbearable for you,” said Karin, her gaze straying about the shadowed room. “Whenever you returned from one of your forays into the Eastern bloc, you invariably carried an excess of condoms and various telephone numbers, women’s names opposite them.”

  “You searched my clothes?”

  “They usually had to be sent to the cleaners.”

  “You have an answer for everything, you always did.”

  “I answer honestly, what first comes to mind as my memory tells me.… Let’s return to me, Frederik. What happens to me? Are you going to kill me?”

  “I’d rather not, my wife, for that’s what you still are, legally and in the eyes of God. After all, my courtesy submarine accommodates two people. You could be my consort, my companion, eventually, perhaps, the empress to the emperor, not unlike Fräulein Eva Braun to Adolf Hitler.”

  “Eva Braun committed suicide with her ‘emperor,’ accomplished by cyanide and a gunshot. It does not appeal to me.”

  “You will not accommodate me, wife?”

  “I will not accommodate you.”

  “You will in another way,” said Günter Jäger, barely audible as he unbuttoned his white silk shirt and removed it, then began unbuckling his belt.

  Karin suddenly lunged to her left, her body in midair as she tried desperately to reach Latham’s automatic that she had dropped on the floor. Jäger raced forward, lashing out his right leg, the toe of his boot crashing into her midsection with such force that she collapsed in the fetal position, moaning in pain.

  “You’ll accommodate me now, wife,” said the new Führer, taking off his trousers leg by leg and folding them, matching the creases and laying them over the prayer stool.

  39

  “When did she go in?” asked Latham, raising his voice to be heard in the downpour.

  “Roughly twenty minutes ago,” answered the bilingual German officer as the intelligence vehicle, its headlights off, backed out of the compound.

  “Christ, she’s been in there that long? And you let her inside without a wire, without any way to reach you?”

  “She understood, sir. I made it plain that I could not give her a radio and her very words were ‘I understand.’ ”

  “Don’t you think you should have checked with us before letting her pass?” Witkowski fairly shouted in German.

  “Mein Gott, nein!” replied the officer angrily. “The great Director Moreau himself reached me and we devised the least dangerous way to get her past the patrols.”

  “Moreau? I’ll strangle the son of a bitch!” exploded Latham.

  “To more fully answer your question, mein Herr,” said the German intelligence officer, “the Fräulein has not been in the cottage that long; my forward scout reported by radio that she entered it only twelve minutes ago. Here, see, I wrote the exact time in my notebook with my waterproof ink. I am extremely efficient, we Germans is—are.”

  “Then why do all my rich friends have so much trouble getting their Mercedes fixed?”

  “Undoubtedly the American mechanics, sir.”

  “Oh, shut up!”

  “I think it’s time for me and the Thin Man,” interrupted Captain Christian Dietz, standing only feet away in the rain, Lieutenant Anthony at his side. “We’ll replay that big estate downriver and take out the guards.” The captain stepped forward and switched to German, addressing the officer. “Mein Oberführer,” he began, “how many patrols are there, and is there a routing? I speak to you in Deutsch, for I don’t care to risk any misunderstanding.”

  “My English is as good as your German, sir.”

  “But it’s a little more hesitant. And your grammar—”

  “I shall not pay my tutor next week,” broke in the officer, smiling. “To reach my next grade, I must have afternoon tea with Englishmen from Oxford.”

  “Abfall! You’ll never understand them. I don’t. They talk like they’ve got raw oysters in their mouths!”

  “Ja, so I’ve heard.”

  “What are they talking about?” yelled Drew.

  “They’re getting acquainted,” answered Witkowski. “It’s called gaining trust.”

  “It’s called wasting time!”

  “The little things, chłopak. Listen to a man in his own language for even a minute, you learn when he’s uncertain. Dietz merely wants to make sure there are no ambiguities, no hesitations.”

  “Tell them to hurry up!”

  “I don’t have to, they’ve about concluded.”

  “There are only three patrols,” continued the officer in German to the commando captain, “but there is a problem. As one guard returns to the door on the far left of the drive, another comes out a short time later, but only after the current guard returns. And I must tell you, we’ve identified two, and they are pathological killers, always with an arsenal of weapons and grenades.”

  “I see. It’s a relay. The baton is passed to the next man by his presence.”

  “Precisely.”

  “So we have to figure out a way to get the others outside.”

  “Ja, but how?”

  “Leave it to us. We’ll manage.” He turned to Latham and Witkowski. “They’re crazies in there,” said Dietz, “which doesn’t surprise us. ‘Pathological killers’ as our buddy here explained. These types would rather kill than eat; the shrinks have a word for it, but we can’t give a damn about that now. We’re going in.”

  “And this time I’m going with you!” said Drew emphatically. “Don’t even think about making any objections.”

  “Gotcha, boss man,” agreed the lieutenant, “only do us all a favor, sir.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Don’t play Errol Flynn, like in those old movies. It’s not like that.”

  “Tell me about it, junior.”

  “Give us the precise layout beyond here,” said Witkowski, turning to the German officer.

  “You follow the flagstone path to a destroyed gazebo …”

  Ten seconds later, the quartet started forward from behind the half-destroyed wall of the old estate, the commandos in front, Drew on the radio. They reached the croquet field and waited for the penlight signal from the tree. It came: three flashes, barely seen in the horrendous downpour.

  “Let’s go,” said Latham, “it’s clear!”

  “No!” whispered Dietz, his strong right arm blocking Latham. “We want the patrol.”

  “Karin’s in there!” cried Drew.

  “A few seconds ca
n’t matter,” said Lieutenant Anthony as he and his captain raced forward. “Stay there!” he added as the two of them scrambled across the croquet course and into the drenching darkness. No signal came; there was nothing. And then it was there, two flashes: A guard was on patrol. Suddenly, from the distance, came a shout, a howl, abrupt, short-lived. And then another and another after that. Then, again, came the muted flashes from the tree, three dim bursts of light; the area was clear. Latham and Witkowski rushed across the croquet field and down the flagstone path, the colonel’s flashlight illuminating the way. They reached the abrupt left turn and raced to the end of the path above the old boathouse. Far on the left, the commandos were having trouble subduing two guards who had run out of the house.

  “Go help them,” ordered Drew, looking at the side porch with the red light as described by the officer of German Intelligence. “This is my trick.”

  “Chłopak …!”

  “Get the hell out of here, Stosh, they need help. This is mine!” Latham walked down the sloping hill of grass, an automatic in his hand. He walked up on the short porch, beneath the dim red light, and over the pounding rain on the roof, he heard the screams inside. Karin’s screams! His personal galaxy blew apart into a thousand infinities. He hurled his body against the door, shattering it, hinges flying, sending the entire panel across the obscenely spot-lighted glare of the altar with its glistening gold crucifix. On the floor, stripped to his shorts, was the blond Führer, his body on top of a screaming, kicking, struggling Karin, who thrashed her legs in fury and tried to free her hands from his grip. Drew fired his automatic, blowing a hole in the roof. Jäger, in shock, spun off his abused wife, his face and body spastic; he was stunned into silence.

  “Get up, you Nazi slug,” said Latham, his voice icelike, deadly with pure hatred.

  “You’re not Harry!” said Jäger suddenly, rising slowly, hypnotically to his feet. “You look something like him … but you are not he.”

  “I’m surprised you can tell in this light.” Drew moved out of the glare. “Are you all right?” he asked Karin.

  “Give or take a few bruises.”

  “I want to kill him.” Latham spoke calmly, coldly. “In light of everything, I have to kill him.” He raised his automatic, leveling it at Jäger’s head.

  “No!” cried Karin. “I feel the same way, but you can’t, we can’t!… Water Lightning, Drew. He claims we cannot stop it, that he doesn’t know the details, but he’s lied all his life.”

  “Drew …?” interrupted Günter Jäger, a malevolent grin of relief spreading across his face. “Drew Latham, Harry’s brutish younger brother. What did he used to call him? ‘My kid brother, the jock,’ that was it. I had to ask him what it meant. So Hans Traupman was wrong, the Blitzkrieger did kill Harry, only his brother took his place. Mein Gott, we’ve been hunting the wrong man! Harry Latham is dead after all, and no one was the wiser for it.”

  “What do you mean, the wiser for it?” asked Drew. “Remember, the gun’s in my hand, and considering my unstable state, I could easily blow your head off. I repeat, what did you mean?”

  “Ask Dr. Traupman. Oh, I forgot, he’s no longer with us! And even the Polizei, including the ones who are on our side, can’t cover every frequency from the marina or know our emergency codes. As the British say, ‘Sorry, chap, can’t help you.’ ”

  “He said Harry was part of an experiment,” Karin broke in quickly as Latham again raised his weapon, “a medical experiment.”

  “Sorenson and I came pretty much to that conclusion. We can find out; Harry’s body is still in a morgue.… Okay, glamour boy, start walking out the door.”

  “My clothes,” protested Jäger, “surely you’ll permit me to put on my clothes? It’s pouring rain.”

  “Would you believe it if I told you I really don’t care if you get wet? Also, I don’t know what you’ve got in your clothes, say, in the collars. My friend here will carry them out with us.”

  “Friend? Don’t you mean your whore-lover?” screamed the new Führer.

  “You son of a bitch!” Latham swung the barrel of the automatic into Jäger’s head, when suddenly the Nazi thrust his left arm up, blocking the pistol-whip, his right fist crashing into Drew’s chest with such force that Latham was propelled backward off his feet. Jäger then pounced on the automatic, wrenching it out of Drew’s grip, and stood up, firing twice as Latham rolled first to his right, then to his left, both feet on the sides of the German’s legs, where he locked Jäger’s right ankle, smashing his foot in the Nazi’s knee with all the desperate strength he could summon. Jäger screamed in pain as he arched back, firing twice more, the bullets piercing the walls. Karin lunged across the floor, grabbing Drew’s automatic, which her husband had forced her to drop. She rose and shouted.

  “Stop it, Frederik! I’ll kill you!”

  “You couldn’t, wife!” screamed Günter Jäger, fending off Latham’s blows, trying to angle his gun into Drew’s chest as Latham pinned his wrist to the floor beside the square hole and the waves of the river below. “You adore me! Everyone adores me, they worship me!” The Nazi thrust his right arm behind him, beyond Drew’s reach. He arced his hand to his left, then his right; it was free, he could shoot.

  Karin fired.

  The commandos raced through the open door, Witkowski at their heels. They stopped abruptly, staring at the scene in front of them under the spectral wash of the reflector lamp shining on the misplaced altar. For a few seconds the only sounds were those of the downpour beyond the door, and the heavy breathing of the five individuals of the N-2 unit.

  “I assume you had to do it, chłopak,” said the colonel finally, staring at Jäger’s body, his shattered forehead.

  “He didn’t, I did!” cried Karin.

  “It was my fault, Stanley, I caused it,” Latham corrected her, gazing at the veteran G-2 officer, the death of Günter Jäger an acknowledged defeat of immense proportions. “I lost control and he grabbed the advantage. He was about to kill me with my own gun.”

  “Your own gun?”

  “I took a swing at him with it. I shouldn’t have, I know better.”

  “It wasn’t his fault at all, Stanley!” Karin exclaimed. “Even if the circumstances were different, I would have shot him! He tried to rape me, and if Drew hadn’t shown up, he would have succeeded and left me dead. He said as much.”

  “Then that’ll be our report,” said the colonel. “Things don’t always work out, and I wouldn’t care to attend Officer Latham’s funeral. Did you learn anything, Karin?”

  “Primarily how he got to where he was—the deal with the Stasi, his new identity, his oratorical talents discovered by Hans Traupman. About Water Lightning, he claimed no one could stop it, not even him, because he didn’t know the technical details or the specific personnel involved. Then, again, he was a consummate liar.”

  “Goddammit!” yelled Latham. “I’m a pissant fool!”

  “I don’t know, lad. If I’d found someone attempting such an obscene act on a good friend, I don’t think I’d have behaved much differently.… Come on, we’ll tear this whole place apart and see if we can find anything.”

  “What about the German detail out there?” asked Christian Dietz. “They could help us, maybe.”

  “I don’t think so, Captain,” said Karin quickly. “Frederik made it clear that the Polizei, even those whose sympathies were with the Nazis, could not monitor every radio frequency. That could mean the neos have infiltrated the authorities as they have the Bundestag. I suggest we do the search ourselves.”

  “It’ll be a long night,” added Lieutenant Anthony. “Let’s get started.”

  “What about the other two guards?” asked Drew. “Or the first, for that matter?”

  “They’re bound and fast asleep,” answered Dietz. “We’ll check them now and then, and when we’re finished, we’ll turn them over to whomever you say.”

  “You fellows ransack the rest of the house, we’ll concentrate on the living qua
rters,” ordered the colonel. “There are three rooms and a bath here, an office, a bedroom, and this unholy holy place. One for each of us.”

  “What are we looking for, sir?” said Gerald Anthony.

  “Anything that could possibly pertain to Water Lightning—and anything else that has numbers or names.… And one of you find a sheet and cover the corpse.”

  They left nothing to chance, and as the summer dawn broke over the eastern Rhine, cartons, discovered in the supply room, were filled with materials and brought to the chapel. Most of the contents were probably worthless, but there were experts with far more experience than anyone in the N-2 unit to make that determination. Except, perhaps, Karin de Vries.

  “Flugzeug … gebaut—there’s nothing else, the writing’s ripped away,” said Karin, studying a torn scrap of paper in her late husband’s handwriting. “ ‘Aircraft made,’ that’s all it says.”

  “Anything that connects it to Water Lightning?” asked Witkowski, taping up several other boxes.

  “No, not on the surface.”

  “Then why spend time on it?”

  “Because he wrote it in an excited state, the l’s and the b’s look alike, the rest is slurred, but the impressions are hard. I know that handwriting; he’d leave lists for me, things I should buy or make sure were available before he went under cover. He’d be on a high, his adrenaline flowing.”

  “If you’re suggesting what I think you are, I’m afraid it doesn’t make sense,” said Drew, standing beside the square hole in the floor that led to the miniature submarine below in the river. “There’s no linkage to Water Lightning. Sorenson, who I learned is something of an expert on reservoirs, ruled out aircraft.”

  “He was right,” said the colonel, pressing the tape on the last of the three cartons. “Sheer numbers and altitudes would make it impossible. It’d be a strategy designed to fail.”

  “Wes mentioned that reservoirs and other water sources were frequently considered for sabotage. I never knew that.”

  “Because it’s never been done except in desert warfare, where oases have been poisoned. First, there are humanitarian concerns—the victors have to live with the vanquished after hostilities cease. And second, the logistics are damn near insurmountable.”