The Apocalypse Watch (36 page)

“What in hell could that be, Wes?”

“I don’t know. Maybe making well people sick. I just don’t know.”

Drew Latham opened his eyes, annoyed by the sounds from the street, louder because of the smashed window in the bedroom. Witkowski, along with marine guards, had taken the captured Nazis to the airport under cover, and someone had had to stay in the colonel’s room. An open window was too inviting. Slowly, Drew slid over to the other side of the bed and got to his feet, cautiously avoiding fragments of glass. He grabbed his trousers and shirt from a chair, put them on, and walked to the door. He opened it and saw Witkowski and De Vries across the living room at a table in the alcove, having coffee.

“How long have you been up?” he asked of both, not really caring.

“We let you sleep, my dear.”

“There’s that ‘my dear’ again. I sincerely believe you do not mean an endearment.”

“It’s an expression, Drew,” said Karin. “You were quite wonderful last night—this morning.”

“Naturally, the colonel was better.”

“Naturally, youngster, but you held your own, by damn. You’re a cool customer in the face of the enemy.”

“Would you believe, Mr. Super Guy, that I’ve done it before? Not that I take any pride in it; it’s merely a matter of survival.”

“Come,” said De Vries, rising. “I’ll get you some coffee. Here, sit down,” she continued, heading for the kitchen. “Take the third chair.”

“I’ll bet she wouldn’t give it to me if it was hers,” said Latham, stumbling across the room. “So, what happened, Stosh?” he asked, sitting down.

“Everything we wanted, young man. At five o’clock this morning I got our scumbuckets on a jet to D.C. and nobody will know but Sorenson.”

“What do you mean,
will
? Didn’t you speak to Wes?”

“I spoke to his wife. I met her once and nobody could duplicate that half-American, half-British speech. I told her to tell the director that a package was due at Andrews at four-ten in the morning, their time, under the code name Peter Pan Two. She said she’d tell him the moment he got in.”

“That’s too loose, Stanley. You should have requested a return confirmation.”

The apartment telephone rang. The colonel got up and walked rapidly across the room; he picked it up. “Yes?” He listened for six seconds and then hung up. “That was Sorenson,” he said. “They’ve got a platoon of marines on the ground and on the roofs. Anything else, Mr. Intelligence Man?”

“Yes,” replied Latham. “Do we call off the bootmaker and the amusement park?”

“I shouldn’t think so,” answered Karin, bringing Drew his coffee and sitting down. “Two neos are dead and two on their way to America. Others have fled, an additional two, by my count.”

“Six altogether,” agreed Drew. “Hardly a platoon,” he added, looking at Witkowski.

“Not even half a squad. How many others are there?”

“Let’s try and find out. I’ll take the amusement park—”

“
Drew
,” cried De Vries, sharply interrupting.

“You’ll take nothing,” added the colonel. “You haven’t much of a short-term memory, youngster. They want you—or I should say Harry—on a slab with rigor mortis, remember?”

“What am I supposed to do, open a trapdoor and hide in the sewers?”

“No, you’ll stay right here. I’ll send two marines to guard the stairs and a maintenance man to repair the window.”

“Would you mind, I’d like to be useful?”

“You will be. This will be our temporary base camp and you’ll be the contact.”

“With whom?”

“With whoever I tell you to reach. I’ll be calling you at least once an hour.”

“What about me?” asked Karin apprehensively. “I can be of value at the embassy.”

“I realize that, specifically in my office with a guard at the door. Sorenson knows who you are and no doubt Knox Talbot as well. If either reaches me on my secure phone, you take the messages, call them to our amnesiac here, and I’ll get them from him. Now, if I can only figure out a way to get you there in case there are hostiles in the street.”

“Perhaps I can help you help us both.” De Vries reached down for her purse beside the chair, stood up, and started for the bedroom. “This will only take a moment or two, but it does require a little prodding and primping.”

“What’s she doing?” said Witkowski as Karin went through the door.

“I think I know, but I’ll let her surprise you. Maybe then you’ll promote her as your assistant.”

“I could do worse. Freddie taught her a lot of tricks.”

“Which you taught him.”

“Only the fire escape; the rest he figured out for himself and he was usually way ahead of us … all of us, except probably Harry.”

“What happens when she leaves the embassy, Stanley?”

“She won’t. There are a lot of staff rooms. I’ll throw someone out for a few days and she’ll stay there.”

“With a guard, of course.”

The colonel looked over at Latham, his eyes steady. “You care, don’t you?”

“I care,” replied Drew simply.

“Normally, I wouldn’t approve, but in this case I’ll reduce my objections.”

“I didn’t say it’ll lead anywhere.”

“No, but if it does, you’ve got a couple of miles on me. She’s in the same business.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You don’t get grandchildren because some quarter-master issued them. I was married for thirteen years to a
fine woman, a splendid woman who finally admitted she couldn’t accept what I did for a living, and all the complications it involved. For once in my life I pleaded, but to no avail—she saw through those pleas. I was too used to what I did, too primed for it every day. She was very generous though—I had unlimited visitation rights with the children. But, of course, I wasn’t around that much to visit them very often.”

“I’m sorry, Stanley. I had no idea.”

“It’s not the sort of thing you put in
Stars and Stripes
, now, is it?”

“I guess not, but you obviously get along with your kids. I mean, visiting grandchildren, and all.”

“Hell, yes, they consider me a hoot. Their mother remarried very well, and what in Sam Hill am I going to do with the money I make? I’ve got more perks than I can handle, so when they all come to Paris, well, you can figure it out.”

They were interrupted by the figure in the bedroom doorway, a very blond woman in dark glasses, her skirt hiked up above her knees, her blouse unbuttoned to mid-chest. She shifted her weight from leg to leg in mock sensuality. “What’ll the boys in the back room have?” she said, her voice low, imitating the well-worn motion picture cliché.

“Outstanding!” exclaimed the stunned Witkowski.

“And then some.” Drew spoke softly, adding a quiet whistle.

“Will this do, Colonel?”

“It surely will, except I’ll have to screen the guards, hopefully find a few gay ones.”

“Worry not, Wizard,” said Latham. “Beneath the heat is a will of ice.”

“Obviously, I can’t fool you, monsieur.” Karin laughed, released her skirt, buttoned her blouse, and started toward the table, when the telephone rang. “Shall I get it?” she asked. “I can say I’m the maid—in the proper French, naturally.”

“I’d be obliged,” answered Witkowski. “Today’s the laundry morning; he usually calls around now. Tell him to
come up, and press Six on the phone to open the foyer door.”

“
Allô? C’est la résidence du grand colonel
.” De Vries listened for a moment or two, placed her hand over the phone, and looked over at the embassy’s chief of security. “It’s Ambassador Courtland. He says he must speak to you immediately.”

Witkowski rose quickly and crossed the room, taking the phone from Karin. “Good morning, Mr. Ambassador.”

“You listen to me, Colonel! I don’t know what happened at your place last night or at the Orly Airport annex field—and I’m not sure I want to know—but if you have any plans for this morning,
scratch
them, and that’s an
order
!”

“You heard from the police, then, sir?”

“More than I care to. And more to the point, I heard from the German ambassador, who’s fully cooperating with us. Kreitz was alerted several hours ago by the German section of the Quai d’Orsay that there was a fire in a suite of offices at the Avignon Warehouses. Among the debris were remnants of Third Reich memorabilia, along with thousands of charred pages, burned beyond recognition, set on fire in wastebaskets.”

“The papers set the whole place on fire?”

“Apparently a window was left open and the breezes spread the flames, setting off the smoke alarms and the sprinklers. Get over there!”

“Where are the warehouses, sir?”

“How the hell do
I
know? You speak French, ask somebody!”

“I’ll check the telephone book. And, Mr. Ambassador, I’d prefer not to take my own car, or a taxi. Would you please call—have your secretary call—Transport, and send secure equipment to my apartment on the rue Diane. They know the address.”

“ ‘Secure equipment’? What the dickens is that?”

“An armored vehicle, sir, with a marine escort.”

“
Christ
, I wish I were in Sweden! Find out what you can, Colonel. And hurry!”

“Tell Transport to hurry, sir.” Witkowski hung up, not, however, before giving the telephone the proverbial “finger.” He turned to Latham and Karin de Vries. “Everything’s changed, at least for the time being. With any luck we may have found a jackpot. Karin, you stay the way you are. You, youngster, you go to my closet and see if you can find a uniform that fits. We’re about the same size, one of ’em will come close.”

“Where are we going?” asked Drew.

“To a group of offices in a warehouse that got torched by neos. A Nazi wastebasket brigade didn’t quite work out the way it was intended. Some asshole opened a window.”

The neo-Nazi headquarters were in shambles, the walls scorched, the few curtains burned up to their rods, and the whole mess drenched by the sprinkler system. In an office filled with computerized electronic equipment, undoubtedly used by the leader of the unit, was a huge locked steel cabinet. Smashed open, it revealed an arsenal of weapons, from high-powered rifles, telescopic sights attached, to boxes of hand grenades, miniaturized flamethrowers, garrotes, assorted handguns, and various stilettos—some automated from canes and umbrellas. Everything coincided with Drew Latham’s description of elite Nazi killers in Paris. This was their lair.

“Use pincers,” ordered Colonel Witkowski, speaking French and addressing the police while pointing to charred sheets of paper on the floor. “Get plates of glass and place anything that isn’t totally destroyed between them. You never know what we can pick up.”

“The telephones have all been torn from the walls and the receptacles destroyed,” said a French detective.

“The lines haven’t, have they?”

“No. I have a technician from the telephone company on his way. He will restore the lines and we can trace their calls.”

“Outgoing, maybe, incoming negative. And if I know these bozos, the ones made here were routed for payment
to a little old lady in Marseilles who gets a money order and a bonus once a month.”

“As it is with the drug dealers, no?”

“Yes.”

“Still, there are instructions somewhere, yes?”

“Definitely, but none you can trace. They’ll come from a Swiss or Cayman bank, the secret accounts not to be invaded. That’s the way things work these days.”

“I investigate domestically, monsieur, in Paris and its environs mainly, not internationally.”

“Then get me someone who does.”

“You would have to appeal to the Quai d’Orsay, the Service d’Etranger. These are beyond my province.”

“I’ll find ’em.”

The uniformed Latham and a blond-wigged Karin de Vries approached, stepping cautiously on the floor, their feet avoiding the charred, windblown pages. “Have you figured out anything?” asked Drew.

“Not much, but this sure was the core of their operations, whoever they were.”

“Who else but the men who attacked us last night?” said Karin.

“I’ll buy that, but where did they go?” agreed Witkowski.

“
Monsieur l’Américain
,” shouted another plainclothes police official, rushing from an outer room. “Look what I found. It was beneath a pillow on a sitting room chair! It is a letter—the beginning of a letter.”

“Let me have it.” The colonel took the piece of paper. “ ‘
Meine Liebste
,’ ” Witkowski began, his eyes squinting. “ ‘
Etwas Entsetzliches ist geschehen
.’ ”

“Give it to me,” said De Vries, impatient with Witkowski’s hesitation. She translated in English. “ ‘My dearest, tonight is most shocking. We must all leave immediately lest our cause be damaged and we are all to be executed for others’ failures. No one in Bonn must know, but we are flying to South America, to some place where we will be protected until we can return and fight again. I adore you so … I must finish later, someone is coming down
the hallway. I will post this at the air—’ … It stops there, the letters slurred.”

“The airport!” cried Latham. “Which one? Which airlines fly to South America? We can intercept them!”

“Forget it,” said the colonel. “It’s ten-fifteen in the morning, and there are a couple of dozen airlines that leave between seven and ten and end up in any one of twenty or thirty cities in South America. Those flights are well beyond us. However, there’s a positive. Our killers got the hell out of Paris fast, and their scumbucket brothers in Bonn haven’t a clue. Until others take their place, we’ve got some breathing room.”

Gerhardt Kroeger, surgeon and alterer of minds, was about to lose his own. He had called the Avignon Ware-houses a dozen times in the past six hours, using the proper codes, only to be told by an operator that all lines to the office he wished to reach were “not in service at this time. Our computers show manual disconnects.” No amount of protestations on his part could change the situation; it was all too obvious. The Blitzkrieger had shut down.
Why?
What had
happened
? Zero Five, Paris, had been so confident: The photographs of the kill would be delivered to him in the morning. Where
were
they? Where
was
Paris Five?