“You’re a clever little rat, aren’t you?” he growled. “Herr Stern?”
Stern struggled to hold his face immobile as his brain raced to adapt to the changing situation. If Horn knew his name, that meant that either Ilse had been made to talk, or Hauer and Gadi had been captured. Stern prayed it was the former. “I’d say we have two cases of mistaken identity,” he said coolly. Smuts signalled for another kidney blow, but Horn raised a peremptory hand. “I think you know who I am,” he said, his watery eye twinkling.
“Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess, I presume?”
“That title is long out of date. After the Führer died, his responsibilities passed to me.”
“You’ve pinched his uniform and decorations, at any rate,” Stern needled. “I thought the dubious honour of the Nazi succession passed to Hermann Göring.”
Hess coloured. Another vicious blow hammered Stern’s left kidney, driving him to his, knees “The Reichsmarschall is also dead,” Hess said testily. “And the Grand Cross was awarded to me by the Führer himself. Secretly, of course.”
Stern looked up at the old man and stared into the single furtive eye. “If you are Hess,” he said, “what happened to Helmut Steuer?”
“Helmut died a hero’s death in 1941. He was a German patriot of the highest order, and I immortalized his efforts by awarding him the Knight’s Cross.”
“And the tattoo? The single eye?”
Hess shrugged. “I needed a symbol. I couldn’t risk telling my associates my true identity. I wanted a mystical sign that would signify their bond to me and to each other. I remembered the All-Seeing Eye from my childhood in Egypt.” Hess touched his eyepatch. “It certainly seemed appropriate. As did the Phoenix.”
All just as Professor Natterman guessed. “How did you lose the eye?” Stern asked, genuinely curious.
Hess grimaced. “A British bullet. I had no access to a doctor until it was too late.” The old man jerked his finger away from his face. “This is ancient history! I want to know what you hoped to accomplish by your ridiculous deception, Jew. Other than suicide, of course.”
Stern stared back with cold assurance. “I have come to take you back to Israel to stand trial for the crimes you escaped at Nuremberg—the crimes for which your double served a life sentence in Spandau Prison.”
Hess’s laugh was hoarse and hollow, but frightening all the same. “You should see a psychiatrist, Herr Stern. You suffer from serious paranoid delusions! I will arrange for my personal physician to visit you.”
Stern waved his arm, taking in the Nazi regalia that covered the walls. “You’re the one who’s mad. If you believe you’re going to raise some kind of Fourth Reich in Germany, you’re hopelessly senile.” Hess’s eye brightened. “Is that what you think I want? A Fourth Reich in Germany? I’m afraid the only people with whom you share that fantasy are paranoid Russians and writers of pulp fiction.” He glanced at Smuts. “Perhaps a few German policemen,” he added.
“What is it then? I’m sure you have some master plan for German world domination.”
Hess smiled. “Do you really think I need one? The postwar world has evolved along the very lines the Führer predicted. Germany—even when divided—is the most powerful nation in Europe. America has assumed Britain’s imperial mantle and rules the seas in her stead. Japan rules the Pacific and a lot more besides. Which brings us to the Soviet Union. How far are we, really, from seeing Russia as an economic colony of Greater Germany? The Soviet economy is almost as weak now as it was just prior to the 1917 Revolution. How long before it explodes? When that explosion comes, it will be Germany who rebuilds the country. We’ll trade cash for raw materials and gain access to the enormous markets that will be opened there. The final step toward economic hegemony over Europe. We already hold the purse strings to half the American national debt, and our power and influence grow stronger every day. Reunification is inevitable.”
“Then why destroy Israel?”
Hess scratched beneath the black eyepatch. “For the most pragmatic of reasons, I assure you. In a way, I almost regret having to do it. Sometimes I think you Jews learned more from the Führer than anyone. Have you ever seen Israeli soldiers at the Wailing Wall, Herr Stern? Praying in formation? It is a sight worth seeing. The Israelis have become the new Germans! Isn’t that a shock? Israel has become a supernationalist, expansionist, Blood-and-Sacred Soil state with the best-trained army in the world. It is surrounded on all sides by enemies, just as Prussia was. The Chosen People, yes? Just as we Germans were chosen to lead the Aryan race!”
Stern stared in wonder at the man before him. “If you strike Israel with nuclear weapons, you’ll start a war that could wipe every country off the face of the earth. Israel has her own bombs, Hess, and she will use them.”
The old man nodded excitedly. “I’m counting on Israel using her bombs, Stern! I know exactly what the Zionists have in their arsenal, and more importantly, I know where their missiles and ‘black’ bomber squadrons are targeted. More than half of Israel’s warheads are aimed not at the Arabs, but at the Soviet Union. Israel does this to prevent Soviet resupply of the Arabs in the next Mideast war.” Hess’s eye gleamed. “But times change, don’t they, Stern? Old men know that best of all. Right now the Israeli warheads point at the Soviet Union. Ten years from now they will be aimed at Greater Germany!”
“My God,” Stern breathed, “you’re trying to provoke Israel into retaliating against Russia with nukes. When the Arabs wipe out Tel Aviv or Jerusalem with a sophisticated bomb, the Israeli government will have no choice but to respond in kind. And where will they respond? Where could Arabs have procured such a weapon? From the Russians, of course.”
Hess smiled thinly. “I knew you’d appreciate the simplicity of it.”
Stern’s mouth went dry. “But you can’t predict what will happen in a situation like that! You could ignite a full-scale thermonuclear war! There’s no telling who might be drawn into it.”
“It wasn’t my original plan,” Hess admitted. “But when the British started trying to kill me last month, I was forced to improvise.”
“The British are trying to kill you? They know you’re alive?”
“Oh, yes. Only tonight MI-5 sent men here to kill me—an insulting force of filthy Colombians.” Hess smiled. “But I’m afraid they are all dead now.” He fiddled with a pen on his desk. “I suppose I owe the British a debt of thanks. By rushing me, they forced me to think creatively, and it was thus I came upon the Führer’s old Palestine strategy. The very same year I flew to Britain, Hitler armed the Mufti of Jerusalem and bade him destroy the Jews of Palestine. Only it turned out that the Jews had been better armed by their Zionist relatives in America. I find that quite ironic, since it is ultimately for the Americans that I now arm the Arabs.”
“What?” Stern’s eyes widened in disbelief.
“Yes, Jew. The Americans are the inheritors of the Führer’s work. Is that so hard to see?”
“You really are mad. America is the most liberal democracy in the world!”
Hess chuckled. “If all the Jewish tribe were so naive as you, my work would be greatly simplified. The Americans are a strange people, Stern. A violent people.”
“They aren’t Nazis.”
Hess looked bemused. “The other day I was speaking with an American businessman on the telephone. Do you know what he said to me? He said, ‘Hitler had the right idea, Alfred, he just had a poor marketing strategy’.”
“An off-colour remark is a long way from a fascist revolution.”
“Is it really? I suppose that depends on who’s doing the talking. This man happened to be the president of a Fortune 500 company.” Hess drew an imaginary line in the air. “A very thin line divides democracy and anarchy in America, Stern. It is concealed by vast material wealth, but it is there. And the Americans can be pushed over it. They have been before, and they will be again. Think about it.
“Whenever the Nordic American has felt the existence of his val
ues and race imperilled, he has steeled himself and done whatever was necessary to insure his survival. Did Americans shrink from interning thousands of Japanese during World War Two? Did they shrink from ruthlessly hounding down thousands of communists in the fifties? In the sixties they even found a way to thin the ranks of the mongrel blacks, by sending them to die in Southeast Asia. Ingenious, and so subtle it would put Goebbels to shame! And what of their precious Constitution? To hell with it! In time of crisis, Jew, expediency rules!”
Stern was silent. He had seen that principle in operation many times in the political councils of Jerusalem.
“And what does he face today, the Nordic American?” Hess went on. “Abroad, violent terrorism—Arab jackals run mad with power, drunk on a great tide of oil which will run out in two or three decades, but not before the savages succeed in purchasing nuclear warheads and the delivery systems necessary to threaten the civilized nations!
“At home it’s even worse! White Americans cannot even walk the streets of their cities at night. Robbery, murder, and rape are the rule, and all the work of the mongrel races! Armed gangs roam the streets, just as in Germany after the Great War. The defiled bloodlines drag America to her knees, while in the highest circles of power your Zionist Rasputins work their devious schemes.”
Hess steepled his shrivelled fingers. “But that is as it should be,” he said softly. “As it must be. Fascism isn’t gangs of ruffians scrawling swastikas on synagogues and tearing up Jewish cemeteries. It is the final distillate of human society, the purest system of government, born in the crucible of poverty, injustice, and war. That is why America is the last hope of the world, Stern. It is there that the final struggle will begin.”
Hess waved his hand in disgust. “Germany has become too fat, too rich. The Fatherland is governed by cowards who care only for money! Germany could have nuclear weapons of its own now, if Bonn had any nerve. Social Democrats!” Hess spat. “The swine should be lined up in front of the Reichstag and shot!”
Hess’s solitary eye burned with evangelical fire. “But the change is coming, Jew. And Germany will be ready. Even now loyal Germans in both East and West work to push the communists out. When America calls, Germany will step forward. Already immigrants choke American employment lines; drugs poison the small towns; the people see that their government is powerless to stop the madness. In a few years the pressure will be so high that the smallest spark will set off the explosion. And when the spark comes—be it war or plague or economic catastrophe—when the price of petrol rockets to ninety dollars per barrel, when American cars sit empty on freeways while their owners freeze in their homes—then the great change will come. And it will come like a crash of lightning! A new leader will rise, Jew, and it matters not who he is! Like the Führer he will be a man of the people. He will be equal to the times, and when he steps forward the people will recognize him! They will follow him to glory! America will finally seize the reins of power she has shied away from for so long! Then countries like Germany can stand up and play their part!”
“My God,” Stern murmured weakly.
“The day of reckoning is nearly upon us, Jew. That is why your race must be purged. The incineration of Jerusalem will mark the birth of the new millennium. By the year 2000, the Nordic race will rule over three-quarters of the globe, and the Jews will be no more!”
Stern shook his head like a man faced with some human aberration of nature. “But this is so utterly insane,” he said quietly. “Have you considered your family, Hess? Have you talked to your wife? To your son?”
Hess turned his face downward. “What could I expect from my son, Stern? A boy raised in a Germany poisoned by artificially imposed guilt … a Germany crippled by a psychological Versailles Treaty in which the people can never pay enough tears for dead Jews? My family has been the most painful burden of my life. To watch my son on television, fighting so valiantly to free the man he believed to be his father. And now that Horn has been murdered, to know that Wolf believes me dead. It tears my heart to pieces! So many times I have been tempted…” Hess wiped a tear from his eye and clenched his wrinkled hand into a fist. “My duty to the Fatherland and to history comes first. I alone have survived to carry on the Führer’s work!”
Stern stared thoughtfully across the desk. “How have you managed to conceal your true identity when you so brazenly used the name your double gave when he landed in Scotland? Surely the name Alfred Horn is known to anyone familiar with the Hess case?”
Hess smiled cynically. “Why do you assume that I have evaded detection? Do you think your fellow countrymen are so constrained by moral absolutes that they would feel compelled to send an assassin to my door?”
“It’s been known to happen,” Stern said.
“Oh, yes,” Hess agreed. “But my dear fellow, I was no Eichmann. The so-called ‘atrocities’ against Jews took place long after I left Germany. I signed a few pieces of legislation limiting Jewish social activities, but that was simply paperwork. Hardly a reason to execute a man who can be so helpful in vital areas of your country’s national interest.”
“I don’t believe you had anything to do with Israel’s nuclear weapons program,” Stern said angrily. “No Jew would knowingly deal with you.”
Hess leaned his head back with scorn. “Are you really so unworldly, Stern? You know the saying, ‘Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth’? I have found the Israelis to be great lovers of that proverb. No one can afford to quibble over moral distinctions when he’s shopping for a nuclear bomb. Not even the Jews. It is poetic, is it not? In their lust for power, the Jews have sown the seeds of their own destruction. In its quest for nuclear weapons, Israel gave over its most precious secrets to South Africa. And I intend to give them back a thousandfold!”
“You won’t succeed,” Stern said.
Hess smirked. “I presume you’re referring to the telephone call you made to your associates in Pretoria? Requesting the aid of the NIS? Of General Jaap Steyn, to be precise?”
Stern felt his heart stutter.
“In all fairness, I should tell you not to have any great hopes on that account. The NIS is thoroughly under the control of certain associates of mine. Respected members of the government.” A cruel smile plucked at the corners of Hess’s mouth. “So, perhaps I shall succeed, yes?”
Pieter Smuts chuckled softly.
Stern tried to still his quivering hands, but the snuffing of his solitary hope for rescue drove him beyond reason. With a primal scream he flung himself across the desk, groping for Hess’s throat. He felt his hands grasp the beribboned jacket, then the old man’s spindly neck. Smuts’s Beretta crashed down on his skull and blotted out the light.
6.35 A.m. The Union Building, Pretoria
Hauer sat as still as possible and tried to control his frustration. He had been waiting this way for almost two hours. Across the desk from him sat a tall, sandy-haired young man of about thirty. His name was Captain Barnard, and he was one of General Jaap Steyn’s two personal staff officers. Captain Bernard had been working a graveyard shift when Hauer and Gadi were ushered into his third-floor office by an armed duty officer. The young captain had listened patiently to Hauer’s requests to speak to General Steyn, but he had acted on none of them. General Steyn, Captain Bernard explained, never woke before seven. And unless Hauer could be more specific about what he meant by “national crisis,” he would have to wait until then, when Barnard would be happy to call the general at home. No, the captain had not heard of an Alfred Horn who had an estate in the northern Transvaal. At that point Hauer had resorted to blackmail. He mentioned plan Aliyah Beth, which Captain Barnard blandly explained was “Greek to me.”
In the face of this delay, Gadi Abrams stood and moved softly toward the door. “Where are you going?” Captain Barnard asked sharply. Gadi reached for the door handle and pulled. In the doorway stood the khaki-clad duty officer who had brought them upstairs. He levelled his pistol at Gadi’s belly. “I’d like to call my embas
sy,” Gadi said evenly. He was gauging his chances of taking the sentry before the man could pull the trigger. The officer seemed to sense Gadi’s intentions; he took a quick step backward.
“Which embassy would that be?” Captain Barnard asked.
“The Israeli embassy.”
“You’d best not,” said the Afrikaner. “Let’s everyone just have a seat, shall we?”
Hauer sat still and tried to remain calm. To be forced to sit here while Hans and Ilse waited for a bullet, while Stern sweated out his deception, and while Schneider flew toward Berlin was maddening. Yet things could be worse. They had not yet contacted the right South African, but they had not run into the wrong one, either. Hauer studied the office. It was the twin of a hundred offices in Berlin. Outside, the Union Building was a massive colonnaded block built of ochre sandstone and crowned with twin domes. It sat high atop a ridge over the capital city, dominating the halogen-lit valley below. Yet inside, the building was as monotonously official as the Police Presidium in Berlin.
“I say there,” Captain Barnard said suddenly. ‘You wouldn’t be meaning Thomas Horn, would you? Thomas Horn the industrialist?”
“We might,” Hauer said, cutting his eyes at Gadi.
“Thomas Horn has several houses throughout the country. I’m not sure about one near the Kruger Park, though.” Barnard’s face clouded. “Here now, is Thomas Horn in danger? He’s a very important man in this country.”
“He may be,” Hauer said carefully.
Captain Barnard frowned. “Someone had better speak up about all this,” he said. “And damned quickly.”
“Captain Barnard,” Hauer implored, “you must see how important this is. How often do foreign law enforcement officers come in here in the middle of the night and tell you that your country is in danger?”
“Not very often,” Barnard admitted. “And I’ve half a mind to let you and your rude companion wait for the general in a police holding cell.”