The Apocalypse Watch

by Robert Ludlum

  “Poppycock,” said Mrs. Graham, “we’ve both had our share of subterfuge. I submit to you the battles of Plassy, as well as Henry Two’s marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine.”

  “May we please stop this all too-unenlightening colloquy,” said the MI-6 director, turning to an aide. “Gather up the materials, call Beauvais and Washington, and fax everything to them. Someone’s got to make sense out of this.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Quickly,” added the American colonel.

  At the Dalecarlia reservoir in Georgetown, analysts from Central Intelligence, G-2, and the National Security Agency studied the faxes from London. A deputy director of the CIA threw up his hands.

  “There’s nothing we’re not prepared for! I don’t give a damn if the attacks come from every point on the compass, we’ll blow them away. Like London and Paris, we’ve got the grounds covered, and our heat-seeking rockets will knock any missiles out of the air. What the hell’s left?”

  “Then why are they so confident?” asked a lieutenant colonel from G-2.

  “Because they’re fanatics,” answered a young intellectual from the National Security Agency. “They must believe what they’re instructed to believe, that’s drummed into them. It’s called the Nietzsche imperative.”

  “It’s called crap!” said the brigadier general in charge of Dalecarlia. “Aren’t those bastards in the real world?”

  “Not really,” replied the NSA analyst. “They have their own world, sir. Its parameters are those of total commitment, nothing else matters or can interfere.”

  “You’re saying they’re fruitcakes!”

  “They’re fruitcakes, General, but they’re not stupid fruitcakes. I agree with that Consular Operations officer in Beauvais. They think they’ve found a way, and I can’t dismiss the possibility that they have.”

  Beauvais, France. Zero hour minus three. It was exactly one-thirty A.M. Everyone’s eyes continuously darted to wall clocks and watches, the tension growing as the minutes ticked by and four-thirty grew nearer.

  “Let’s go back to the photographs, okay?” said Latham.

  “We’ve been over them and over them,” replied Karin. “Every question we’ve asked has been answered, Drew. What else is there?”

  “I don’t know, I just want to look again.”

  “At what, monsieur?” asked the major.

  “Well … those silos, for example. You said the local police had investigated them. Were they qualified? Silos can be packed with feed or hay and there can be something else entirely underneath.”

  “They were told what to look for, and one of my officers accompanied them,” said the general. “The ground-level contents were studied.”

  “The more I think about missiles, the more plausible they seem.”

  “We are as prepared as we can be,” said the general’s son. “Mobile units with launchers for heat-seeking rockets surround the reservoir, I’ve told you that, monsieur.”

  “Then let’s go back over the stuff from London. For Christ’s sake, what’s a Daedalus or Daedaluses?”

  “I can explain it again, sir,” offered Lieutenant Anthony. “You see, according to the myth, Daedalus, who was both an artist and an architect, studied the birds on Crete, mostly sea gulls, I guess, and figured that if man could attach feathers to his arms, feathers being close to air in density, and in motion almost as light as air—”

  “Please, Gerry, if I hear that one more time, I’m going to burn every Bulfinch I come across for the rest of my life!”

  “We keep returning to air, don’t we?” said De Vries. “Missiles, rockets, Daedalus or Daedaluses.”

  “Speaking of air,” the balding major interrupted with a touch of irritation, “no missile or rocket or plane can penetrate our airspace without being detected far in advance and getting shot down either by antiaircraft cannon fire or by our own missiles. And as we’ve all agreed, to carry out the objective of Water Lightning, there would have to be several very large cargo aircraft or dozens of smaller ones, sweeping down from nearby fields to achieve the element of surprise.”

  “Have you checked the airports in Paris?” pressed Latham.

  “Why do you think all the airlines’ schedules are delayed?”

  “I didn’t know they were.”

  “They are, causing a great deal of anger among their passengers. It is the same at Heathrow and Gatwick in England, and Dulles and National in Washington. We can’t say why without risking riots and far worse, but every aircraft is being inspected before it’s given clearance to enter a runway.”

  “I didn’t realize that. Sorry. But then why are the neos so goddamned sure they’ve figured it out?”

  “That is beyond me, monsieur.”

  London. Zero hour minus two and eight minutes. It was 1:22 A.M., Greenwich Mean Time, and the MI-6 director in Vauxhall Cross was on the phone to Washington. “Any developments over there?”

  “Not a wrinkle,” answered an angry American voice. “I’m beginning to think this whole frigging exercise is a pile of shit! Somebody’s laughing his ass off in Germantown.”

  “I’m inclined to agree, old man, but you saw that tape and the materials we sent you. I’d say they were pretty convincing.”

  “I’d say they’re a bunch of paranoid freaks, playing out some kind of Götterdämmerung that guy Wagner wouldn’t touch, or is it Vagner?”

  “We’ll know soon enough, Yank. Keep steady.”

  “I’ll try to keep from falling asleep.”

  Washington D.C. Zero hour minus forty-two minutes. It was 9:48 P.M., the July sky overcast, the rain imminent, and the brigadier general in charge of the Dalecarlia reservoir was pacing back and forth across the floor of the waterworks office. “London doesn’t know anything, Paris is a bust, and we’re sitting on our duffs, wondering whether we’ve been conned! This is one fucking joke that’s costing the taxpayers millions, and we’ll be blamed for it! God, I hate this job. If it’s not too late, I’ll go back to school and become a dentist!”

  Zero hour minus twelve minutes. It was 4:18 in Paris, 3:18 in London, 10:18 in Washington, D.C. Miles away from the reservoirs of the three cities, and synchronized down to minutes, six powerful jets went airborne, instantly sweeping away from their targets.

  “Activités inconnues!” said the radar specialist in Beauvais.

  “Unidentified aircraft!” said the specialist in London.

  “Two blips, unknown!” said the specialist in Washington. “Not in sync with Dulles or National communications.”

  Then, although separated by small and large distances, each spoke seconds later.

  “Superflu,” corrected Paris.

  “False alarm,” corrected London.

  “Forget it,” corrected Washington. “They’re headed the other way. Probably rich kids with their private jets who forget flight plans. Hope they’re sober.”

  Zero hour minus six minutes. In the dark skies over the outskirts of Beauvais, Georgetown, and North London, the jets continued their maneuvers, sweeping away from the three targets, climbing at incredible accelerations, each millisecond counted off by the computers. The precomputed flight patterns were instantly activated. The jets turned, their engines cut back to minimum, and as rapidly as they had ascended, they descended with equal speed, entering air corridors chosen for their minimum populations, and that would lead them to the fields where their tail hooks would lash out and down, snaring the heavy steel cables that would pull the massive Messerschmitt ME 323 gliders aloft.

  There was one final command that each flight leader was-prepared to issue when deceleration was complete. He would give it over a determined radio frequency to each glider, his signal to deliver it being a red light on his computerized panel. It would come in one minute and seven seconds, give or take seconds, due to airspeeds and head winds or tailwinds. Everything now was sheer distance.

  Beauvais. Zero hour minus four minutes. Drew stared out the huge window overlooking the reservoir, while Kar
in sat at the desk with the major on a second red telephone, both linked to London and Washington. The two commandos stood with the general behind the radar specialist and his screen.

  Suddenly Latham turned from the window and spoke in a loud voice. “Lieutenant, what did you say about that Daedalus’s wings?”

  “They were made of feathers—”

  “Yes, I know, but after that, something about the feathers? What was it?”

  “Just feathers, sir. Some people—mostly poets—liken their density to air, the way they kind of float in the wind, born to the air, as it were, which is why they’re on birds.”

  “And birds swoop down silently, it’s how the predators catch their quarry.”

  “What are you talking about, Drew?” asked De Vries, the red phone still at her ear, as was the major’s. He looked up at the Cons-Op officer.

  “They glide, Karin, they glide!”

  “So, monsieur?”

  “Gliders, goddammit! That may be it! They’re using gliders!”

  “They would have to be extremely large,” said the general, “or dozens of them, perhaps more, far more.”

  “And they would have been picked up by the radar, monsieur,” added the major. “Especially the airborne radar.”

  “They were, in the photographs! Those two aircraft for Saudi Arabia—how many times have end-user clearances been manipulated? But they wouldn’t be picked up by your heat-seeking missiles. There are no engines, no heat! Probably very little metal either.”

  “Mon Dieu!” exclaimed the general, his eyes wide, intense, as if sudden memories consumed him. “Gliders! The Germans were the experts, the final authority. In the early forties they developed the prototype for all the cargo gliders the world over, far more advanced than the British Airspeed-Horsing or the American WACOs. Actually, we all stole their designs. The Messerschmitt factories turned out the Gigant, a huge bird from hell that could silently float over borders and battlefield, delivering its deadly merchandise.”

  “Could there be any left, mon père?” asked the major.

  “Why not? All of us, on both sides, have kept our fleets—sea and air—in ‘mothballs,’ as the Americans say.”

  “Could they be made operational after so many years?” pressed Karin.

  “The enemy notwithstanding,” answered the old soldier, “the Messerschmitt companies built for the ages. Undoubtedly, certain equipment would have to be replaced or upgraded, but again, why not?”

  “Still, they would appear on the screen,” insisted the radar specialist.

  “But how strong? How strong an image would you get on that screen of yours with a flying object that has little or no metal, no motors, the struts made of replaced bamboo, maybe, which in the Far East they use for scaffolds—they claim it’s stronger and safer than steel.”

  “My English is adequate, sir, but you speak so rapidement—”

  “Someone tell him what I just said, just asked.”

  The major did so, and the radar specialist replied, never taking his eyes off the screen. “It would be less strong than that of a conventional aircraft, that is true.”

  “I mean, even clouds can produce some image, can’t they?”

  “Yes, but one can tell the difference.”

  “And people who own boats carry radar reflectors on board in case they get in trouble and want the radars to pick them up.”

  “Again, quite normal.”

  “So radar is basically interpretive, isn’t it?”

  “As are medical X rays. One doctor will see one thing, another something else. Then there are experts, and I am one of them with radar, monsieur.”

  “Good for you. Could you possibly be distracted?”

  “By what? You become insulting, if I am permitted to say so.”

  “You’re permitted, and, honestly, I don’t mean to insult you—”

  “Wait!” said Karin, searching her pockets feverishly, finally yanking out a torn piece of paper. “This was in a carton from, I think, Jäger’s outer living room. I kept it because I didn’t understand it, it was only a partial sentence. It has just two words in German, ‘Aircraft made’ … the rest was ripped away.”

  “Good God almighty,” muttered Gerald Anthony, reaching into the breast pocket of his French military fatigues and pulling up a scrap of a wrinkled note. “I did the same damn thing. I found this in Jäger’s chapel, at the foot of an altar that shouldn’t be there. Since then I’ve looked at it every once in a while, trying to figure out the handwriting. I did, and it fits with Mrs. de Vries’s information. These are the words: ‘Aus Stoff und Holz,’ that’s ‘of cloth and wood.’ ”

  “ ‘Aircraft made of cloth and wood,’ ” said De Vries.

  “Gliders,” added Latham quietly. “Gliders.”

  “Arrêtez!” cried the radar specialist, breaking off the conversation. “The aircraft have reentered our space! They are within forty kilometers of the water!”

  “Prepare to activate the missiles!” shouted the general’s son into a third telephone.

  London. Zero hour minus three minutes ten seconds. “Unidentified aircraft reappearing on screen! Direction, Code Intolerable!”

  Washington, D.C. Zero hour minus two minutes forty-nine seconds. “Son of a bitch! The unknowns are back and heading our way!”

  * * *

  Beauvais. Zero hour minus two minutes twenty-eight seconds. “Scramble military aircraft everywhere!” roared Latham. “Get that to London and Washington!”

  “But the missiles,” cried the general’s son.

  “Blast them off!”

  “Then why the fighter planes?”

  “For what the missiles don’t get! Inform London and Washington. Do it!”

  “It is done.”

  In the dark skies above Beauvais, London, and Washington, the computerized neo-Nazi jets swept down toward their respective fields, their tail hooks released for the final approach.

  “Fire rockets!”

  “Fire rockets!”

  “Fire rockets!”

  Below, in three separate stretches of cut grass, there were instant explosions of ballistic fire below the wings of all six Messerschmitt cargo gliders. Each reached a pre-released ground thrust of four hundred miles an hour as the jets raced above them, their hooks grappling the cables, the huge gliders instantaneously matching the acceleration of their lifting crafts. Within seconds all were airborne, and at barely a hundred feet the underside rockets were released into the fields. Unencumbered, the gliders above London, Beauvais, and Georgetown were pulled to the prescribed, computerized altitude of twenty-seven hundred feet. The cables were snapped, the gliders free to begin their circling descents to the targets.

  Suddenly, at higher altitudes, the skies were lit up like compressed bolts of lightning as the jets were blown out of the air, each exploding in erratic splashes of fire. Yet below, each glider pilot, aided by his own computers, knew his mission well. Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer!

  Beauvais. Zero hour. “We’ve got them!” yelled the general as the splotches of white appeared on the radar screen. “They’re utterly destroyed. We’ve beat Water Lightning!”

  “London and Washington agree!” shouted the major. “The results were the same. We have won!”

  “No, you haven’t!” roared Drew. “Look at the radar grids! Those explosions took place thousands of feet above the initial entry level. Look at them! Tell London and Washington to do the same.… Now look below at those far less visible, skeletonlike images. Look. They’re the gliders!”

  “Oh, my God!” said Captain Dietz.

  “Jeezus!” exclaimed Lieutenant Anthony.

  “What do you estimate the altitude, Mr. Radar?”

  “I can more than estimate, monsieur. Those ‘images’ are between eighteen and nineteen hundred feet. They rotate in slow, descending, wide circles of between three and four hundred feet—”

  “Why would they do that, Radar Man?”

  “One must presume for accu
racy.”

  “How about the time to touch down? Can you give us a figure?”

  “The winds change, so here I will estimate. Between four and six minutes.”

  “That’s four or six hours in jet time. Major, alert London and D.C. and tell them to get their fighter planes to circle the perimeters of the reservoirs starting at fifteen hundred feet! Yours too. Now!”

  “If they are there, we will shoot them out of existence,” said the general’s son, picking up his red telephone.

  “Are you crazy?” screamed Latham. “Those aircraft are loaded with poison, probably liquid, and the casings will self-destruct instantly when they hit water or land. Maneuver the fighters so their jet streams blow the gliders off course, into unpopulated areas, fields or woods, but for Christ’s sake, not where there are people. So instruct Washington and London!”

  “Yes, of course. Understood, monsieur. I have both on a combined line.”

  The next few minutes were like waiting for mass slaughter, everyone present a part of that mass. All eyes were on the radar screen, when suddenly the skeletal images veered in different directions, violently to the left and the right, away from the target zone, the Beauvais reservoir.

  “Check London,” said Drew, “check Washington.”

  “They’re on the line now,” replied the major. “They’re experiencing precisely what we have experienced. The gliders have been blown away from the water reserves, and are being forced to land in isolated areas.”

  “Everything was computerized down to minutes, wasn’t it?” said Latham breathlessly, his face pale. “Bless high technology, it microwaves a corned beef sandwich and melts the plastic container. Now, perhaps, we have won, but only a battle, not the war.”

  “You’ve won, Drew.” Karin de Vries walked toward him, placing her arms on his shoulders. “Harry would have been so proud.”

  “We’re not finished, Karin. Harry was killed from within, and so was Moreau. Each was betrayed. So was I, but I was lucky. Someone has a telescope that looks into the core of our operations. And that someone knows more about the Nazi movement and the legacy of a mad general in the Loire Valley than all of us put together.… The strange thing is, I suddenly think I know who it is.”