The Apocalypse Watch Read online

  6

  Jean-Pierre Villier stoically accepted the criticism leveled at him by the Deuxième Bureau’s Claude Moreau. “It was, indeed, a brave gesture on your part, monsieur, and be assured we are tracing the automobile in question, but please understand, should any harm have come to you, all France would have revolted against us.”

  “I think that’s rather overstated,” said the actor. “However, I’m glad I was able to contribute in some small way.”

  “In a very considerable way, but we now understand each other, isn’t that so? There’ll be no more contributions, correct?”

  “As you wish, although it was a simple role to play, and there could be further information I might unearth—”

  “Jean-Pierre!” exclaimed Giselle Villier. “You will do no such thing, I won’t permit it!”

  “The Deuxième Bureau will not permit it, madame,” interrupted Moreau. “You’ll no doubt learn of it later in the day, so I might as well tell you now. Three hours ago a second assassination attempt was made on the American Drew Latham.”

  “My God …!”

  “Is he all right?” asked Villier, leaning forward.

  “He’s fortunate to be alive. To say the least, he’s a very observant man and has learned a few of our less advertised rules of Paris.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Everything was timed to the extremely loud and offensive noise of a street repair crew who started working at an hour when the majority of our visitors had barely gone to bed after experiencing the joys of our city, especially those to be found in the more expensive hotels.”

  “It’s summer,” said Giselle, shaking her head. “We have enough trouble because of our manners. The Ministry of Tourism would cut off heads.”

  “Our friend Latham somehow instinctively knew that. There was no repair crew, only a single man with a concrete hammer machine below his windows. Perhaps akin to the title of one of your films, Monsieur Villier, Prelude to a Fatal Kiss, if I’m not mistaken. It’s one of my wife’s favorites.”

  “It should be banned from television,” said the actor succinctly. “The kiss was from a vacuous actress who was more concerned with her camera angles than with her lines, which she rarely got right.”

  “That’s why she was perfect,” rejoined his wife. “Her insecurity was so apparent, it made your obsession terribly believable—the bewildered male driven mad because he couldn’t penetrate the mystery of the woman he thought he loved. You were really very good, my darling.”

  “If I was even tolerable, it was because I was trying to get the bitch to act.”

  “I don’t think Monsieur Moreau is here to listen to an actor’s complaints, dear.”

  “I’m not complaining, merely telling the truth.”

  “Nor in an actor’s ego—”

  “Oh, but I’m fascinated, madame. My wife will hang on every word!”

  “Aren’t police interrogations confidential beyond official circles?” asked Giselle.

  “Naturally—of course, I misspoke.”

  “Go ahead and speak, Moreau,” said Jean-Pierre, grinning, “at least to your wife. You see, my wife is a retired attorney, if you haven’t already guessed, and the actress in question has long since left the profession, having married an oil baron in the American state of Texas or Oklahoma, I forget which.”

  “May we return to the issue at hand, if you please?”

  “Of course, madame.”

  “If Drew Latham escaped being killed, do you have any information on the failed assassin?”

  “Indeed we do. He’s dead, shot by Monsieur Latham.”

  “Identification?”

  “None. Except three very small tattoo marks above his right breast. Lightning bolts, the symbol of the Nazi blitzkrieg. Latham rightly assumed the origins, but he does not know what they stand for. We do.… Those marks are very selectively issued, and only to a highly trained elite group within the neo-Nazis’ larger organization. They number, by our estimate, no more than two hundred here in Europe, South America, and the United States. They’re called the Blitzkrieger—they’re assassins, trained killers skilled in multiple means of death, chosen for their dedication, their physical prowess, and, above all, their willingness—even their need—to kill.”

  “Psychopaths,” said the former woman attorney. “Psychopaths recruited by psychopaths.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Who could well have been recruited by any number of fanatical organizations, or cults, because such groups would permit them to exercise their natural tendencies for violence.”

  “I’d have to agree with you, madame.”

  “And you haven’t told the Americans or the British or God knows who else about this—how would you call it?—this battalion of killers?”

  “The highest officials have been informed, of course. None below those levels.”

  “Why not? Why not a Drew Latham?”

  “We have our reasons. There are leaks in the lower ranks.”

  “Then why tell us?”

  “You are French and you are famous. Celebrity is vulnerable; if word leaked out, well, we’d know—”

  “And?”

  “We appeal to your patriotism.”

  “That’s fatuous, unless it’s an avenue to destroy my husband!”

  “Now, just a minute, Giselle—”

  “Be quiet, Jean-Pierre, this man from the Deuxième is here for another reason.”

  “What?”

  “You must have been an extraordinary attorney, Madame Villier.”

  “Your line of direct inquiry, mixed with obfuscated indirect, is also extraordinarily obvious, monsieur. You demand that my husband be prohibited from doing one thing—even by my lights and knowing his talents, not actually life-threatening—yet in the next breath you reveal highly secret—extraordinarily secret—information which if he revealed it might cost him his career and his life.”

  “As I said,” said Moreau, “a brilliant attorney.”

  “I don’t understand a goddamned word either of you are saying!” cried the actor.

  “You’re not supposed to, darling, leave it to me.” Giselle glared at Moreau. “You took us from one step down to another, didn’t you?”

  “I cannot deny it.”

  “And now that he’s vulnerable, knowing what he knows, what do you want us to do? Isn’t that the basic question?”

  “I imagine it is.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “Close the play, close Coriolanus, stating a part of the truth. Your husband has learned so much about this Jodelle that he can’t go on, he’s filled with remorse, and especially with loathing toward the people who did this to the old man. You’ll be protected around the clock.”

  “What about my mother and father?” shouted Villier. “How could I do this to them?”

  “I spoke with both of them an hour ago, Monsieur Villier. I told them as much as I could, including the rise of the Nazi movement in Germany. They said it would have to be your decision, but they also hoped that you would honor your natural mother and father. What more can I say?”

  “So I close the show, and by what I have not said in public, I am the man in their gun sights, my dear wife as well. Is that what you’re asking?”

  “To repeat, you’ll never, ever, be out of our protection. Streets, rooftops, armored limousines, agents in restaurants, police in resorts—beyond anything you would ever require for your safety. All we need is a live Blitzkrieger so we can learn where they get their orders. There are drugs as well as other methods that will convince a killer to tell us.”

  “You’ve never captured one?” said Giselle.

  “Oh, yes. Several months ago we trapped two, but they hanged themselves in their cells before we could put them under chemicals. Such is the dedication of psychopathic zealots. Death is their profession, even their own.”

  In Washington, Wesley Sorenson, director of Consular Operations, studied the secure facsimiles wired from Lon
don. “I can’t believe this,” he said. “It’s incredible!”

  “That’s what I thought,” agreed Sorenson’s young chief of staff, standing at the left of the desk. “But we can hardly dismiss it. Those names came from Sting, the only deep cover ever to have penetrated the Brüderschaft. It’s what he was sent out to do and he did it.”

  “But, my God, man, so many of these people are beyond reproach, and this isn’t even the complete list—certain names have been selectively withheld! Two senators, six congressmen, CEOs of four major corporations, as well as a half dozen prominent men and women in the media, faces and voices we see and hear and read every day on television, radio, and the newspapers.… Here, look, two anchormen and a woman co-host, and three talk show bullies—”

  “The fat one I’d say is a possible,” interrupted the head staffer. “He attacks anything he thinks is left of Attila the Hun.”

  “Not at all, he’s too obvious. A third-rate mind, minimally educated and filled with hate, yes, but not a bona fide Nazi. He’s just a buffoon with a glib tongue.”

  “The names came from the Brotherhood valley, sir. Nowhere else.”

  “Jesus, here’s a member of the President’s Cabinet!”

  “That one blew me away, I’ll grant you,” said the Cons-Op chief of staff. “He’s down-home corn silk, hardly a political bone in his body.… On the other hand, such people are accomplished at deception. There were Nazis in Congress during the late thirties, and Communists all over the place in the fifties, if you believe the loyalty investigations.”

  “The vast majority were pure bunk, young man,” said Sorenson emphatically.

  “I realize that, sir, but there were successful prosecutions.”

  “How many? If I remember the statistics, and I do, the number of people specifically named by that son-of-a-bitch Hoover and that fraud McCarthy came to nineteen thousand seven hundred. And after the screaming was over, there were exactly four convictions! Four out of damned near twenty thousand! That comes to point zero zero zero two plus, and a lot of congressional wind, as well as a great deal of wasted taxpayers’ money. Don’t bring back those good old days to me, please. I was around your age then—not as bright, God knows—but I lost a lot of friends to that insanity.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Sorenson, I didn’t mean to—”

  “I know, I know,” the director of Cons-Op broke in, “there’s no way you can understand the pain those times caused. And that’s what worries me.”

  “I don’t understand, sir.”

  “Could we be starting our own helter-skelter persecutions? Harry Latham is probably the only real genius the CIA has in the field, a super brain who can’t be tricked, but this stuff is from another planet.… Or is it? Christ, it’s crazy!”

  “What is, Mr. Sorenson?”

  “The ages of all these people, they’re pretty much the same—late forties, early fifties, a number in their sixties.”

  “So?”

  “Years ago, when I first joined the Agency, there were rumors out of Bremerhaven—actually from an old submarine base in the Heligoland Bight—that told of a last-ditch strategy designed by fanatics of the Third Reich who knew they had lost the war. It was called Operation Sonnenkinder, selected children sent out secretly all over Europe and America to families who welcomed them and would bring them up to fill positions of financial power and political influence. Their final objectives were to create a climate that was conducive to … the Fourth Reich.”

  “That’s wild, sir!”

  “It was also totally disproven. We had a couple of hundred agents, along with Army Intelligence and British MI-Six, who tracked down every lead over a period of two years. It all came to nothing. If there ever was such an operation, it was aborted at the start. There wasn’t a shred of evidence that it was ever put in motion.”

  “But you’re wondering now, aren’t you, Mr. Sorenson?”

  “Reluctantly, Paul. Doing my goddamnedest to restrain an imagination that kept me alive in the field. But I’m not in the field, I’m not in a situation where I have to anticipate the movements of someone in the next dark street, or over a hill at night. I have to look at the whole landscape in clear daylight, and there’s no way I can accept the Sonnenkinder operation.”

  “So why don’t you reject the premise and put the list of names on a back burner?”

  “Because I can’t. Because Harry Latham brought it out.… Set up a meeting tomorrow with the Secretary of State and the DCI over at State or Langley. Since I’m the stepchild, I’ll meet wherever they say.”

  Drew Latham sat at his desk on the second floor of the American Embassy, swallowing the dregs of his third cup of coffee. The single knock on his office door was followed by its being opened, an anxious Karin de Vries walking inside.

  “I heard what happened!” she exclaimed. “It had to be you!”

  “Good morning,” said Drew, “or is it noon? And if you brought your Scotch, you’re very welcome.”

  “It’s all over the papers,” cried the researcher from D and R, crossing to the desk and throwing down the noon edition of L’Exprèss. “A burglar attempted to rob a guest at the Meurice, shot up the room, and was killed by a floor guard!”

  “Boy, their public relations people work quickly, don’t they? That’s real security; it can’t get much better.”

  “Stop it, Drew! You were at the Meurice, you told me so. And when I called the arrondissement police, they said—very awkwardly—that no information was available.”

  “Wow, everybody in Paris protects the influx of tourist cash. Actually, they should. This sort of thing never happens except to people like me.”

  “Then it was you.”

  “You said that already. Yes, it was me.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I think that’s been asked before, but, yes, I am. I’m still scared to death—strike the last two words—but I’m here, breathing, warm, and ambulatory. Do you want to go to lunch, anyplace you want except the last joint you recommended?”

  “I have at least forty-five minutes worth of work to do.”

  “I can wait that long. I just got finished with Ambassador Courtland and his diplomatic crony, Ambassador Kreitz of Germany. They’re probably still talking, but my stomach couldn’t take their interacting, exculpatory bullshit any longer.”

  “In some ways, you are like your brother. He dislikes authority.”

  “Correction, please,” said Latham. “We both dislike authority when it doesn’t know what it’s talking about, that’s all. Incidentally, he’s flying over from London tomorrow or the next day. Would you like to see him?”

  “With all my heart. I adore Harry!”

  “Strike two against my brother.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “He’s a nerd.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “His intellect, it’s so far up in the sky, you can’t reach it, can’t talk to it.”

  “Oh, yes, I recall so well. We had such wonderful conversations about the incremental explosions of religiosity from Egypt to Athens to Rome and into the Middle Ages.”

  “Strike three against Harry. Where for lunch?”

  “Where you suggested yesterday. The brasserie across the Gabriel from the café where we talked.”

  “We’re likely to be seen together.”

  “It doesn’t matter now. I spoke to the colonel. He understands completely. As he said, ‘No sweat.’ ”

  “What else did Witkowski say?”

  “Well”—De Vries lowered her head and spoke softly—“he said you weren’t your brother.”

  “In what way wasn’t I?”

  “It’s not important, Drew.”

  “Maybe it is. In what way?”

  “Let’s say, you aren’t the scholar he is.”

  “Harry just struck out on fouls.… Lunch in an hour, okay?”

  “I’ll make the reservation, they know me.” Karin de Vries walked out of the office, closin
g the door far more quietly than she had before.

  Latham’s telephone rang. It was Ambassador Courtland. “Yes, sir, what is it?”

  “Kreitz just left, Drew, and I’m sorry you weren’t here to listen to the rest of what he had to say. Your brother hasn’t just disturbed a hornet’s nest, he’s smashed hell out of it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Kreitz couldn’t have said it in front of you anyway, actually, as a matter of security. It’s so maximum classified, even I had to get clearance to confirm it.”

  “You?”

  “Given the fact that Heinrich had broken Bonn’s seal and insofar as Harry’s your brother and is flying here tomorrow, I guess the intelligence hats felt it was useless to keep me out of the circle.”

  “What did Harry do, find Hitler and Martin Bormann in a South American gay bar?”

  “I wish it were so insignificant. Your brother brought out lists from his German operation, names of neo-Nazi supporters in the Bonn government and industry, as well as the same in the U.S., France, and England.”

  “Good old bright Harry!” exclaimed Latham. “He never ever did things halfway, did he? Damn, I’m proud of that elderly gentleman!”

  “You don’t understand, Drew. Some—no, many—of those names are among the most prominent people in our respective countries, men and women of high profiles and fine reputations. It’s all so extraordinary.”

  “If Harry brought it out, it’s also goddamned authentic. No one on earth could turn my brother.”

  “Yes, that’s what I’ve been told.”

  “So what’s the problem? Go after the bastards! Deep cover isn’t simply a matter of weeks or months or even years. It could just as easily be decades, the dream of strategists in every intelligence think tank you can name.”

  “It’s all so difficult to comprehend—”

  “Don’t comprehend. Go to work!”

  “Heinrich Kreitz totally rejects four people on the Bonn list, three men and a woman.”

  “What makes him an all-knowing God here?”

  “They have Jewish blood; they lost relatives in the camps, specifically Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen.”