Chapter One
It was hot and humid in
late afternoon of a July day in Asuncion, Paraguay and even hotter, more
uncomfortable, for the man about to betray his organization and old comrades.
In the main bar of the
second-rate Hotel Grande Paraguay, a former German army officer sat and waited
with his delicate hands wrapped around a balloon glass of cognac and stared
with nervous, jerking body motions at the main entrance door. There were
actually two doors, and his eyes consistently flew from one to the other every
few seconds.
Storms of warnings whirled
through his head, confusing his positive thinking and upsetting his innards,
but nevertheless he remained in his chair. He wanted to get up and leave, but
he could not. He wanted to forget it all but this would be harder than getting
up and just leaving. The emotional pulling and tugging within him was
tremendous. But he had reached a political crossover point, which few men had
ever experienced, and he was determined to see this thing through regardless of
consequences. Anyway, when he made a decision, he felt it was impossible to
back off from it. He was that rigid.
Manfred Spiegel was a
lean, fifty-seven-year-old icy, calculating individual with an angular jaw and
resolute tattooed on his overall handsome appearance and youthful carriage.
Long behind him lay a successful career as a political officer in Hitler's
brown shirts and later an infantry soldier. Even though only a lieutenant, his
inordinate ability to assimilate many complex operational factors and make a
workable decision, caused him to be quickly noticed in particular by Colonel
Jurgen Waldman, General Staff of Branch Twelve of the German Army. He had him
transferred in early 1944 to his intelligence-gathering unit on Soviet
activities.
Spiegel had virtually no
experience in intelligence work at the time and would have preferred to stay
with his old unit. It was in 1945 when he saw a communiqué, which reported the
total destruction of his infantry regiment in Poland while fighting off
insurmountable odds of Mongolian horse soldiers. He never forgave himself for
not remaining with them.
Spiegel ended the war with
a triple row of distinguished awards and as a Hauptmann. He fled East Berlin to
Baden-Baden, West Germany, in winter of 1946. There he lived in a rented room
of a great farmhouse for two years in near poverty before a business
opportunity developed, forcing him to abruptly move to South America. At the
time, he had looked forward to leaving Germany, as his nationalistic spirit had
somewhat diminished.
It was evening, and the
bar was near empty except for Spiegel and a few loud American tourists.
Periodically, a patron came in for a quick cool drink and left. He looked over
the top of his spectacles to survey one last time its occupants. No contact
today, he thought. He left the hotel more distraught than when he had arrived.
Even the seat of his pants was soggy wet from perspiration.
He mechanically drove
through the suburbs and headed for the village of Parana. Continuously, he
checked his rearview mirror. So far, no one was following him. But why should
they? He did everything by the book. And the book was always right. He put his
headlights out and proceeded along a familiar stretch of road, climbing
westward above the dormant village. Nine more winding kilometers through a
narrow forest road brought him to Avenida Bacabal. There he turned sharp left
and had to put the car in second gear to make the steep grade past darkened,
expensive estates. As a precaution, he then turned off the engine and silently
glided the last one hundred meters down the hill and into his driveway. He
could hear nothing but the crisp crunch of pebbles under his cars wheels.
Gently he braked the giant
Mercedes-Benz sedan, scanned his house and carefully groomed gardens and swung
open the door. The dome light flicked on, making him an easy target should
someone be out there. He momentarily froze in disbelief at this blunder, and
quickly closed the door. The deserted grounds, moonless and sheltered by tall
spruces, appeared safe to him. He went to the covered porch and its double-hung
front doors. He wondered why the porch light was not on, but shook off the
second-guessing.
A motor could be heard in
the near distance and soon headlights were seen. It was a raggedy Toyota pickup
truck, belonging to the boy next door. It went speeding by. He told himself to
relax.
Spiegel opened the door.
It should have been locked, and of that he was sure. He was armed, but sensed
the house was safe and impulsively decided to enter it. He was taken aback.
Sweat blossomed on the back of his thick neck. The foyer light was on, as was a
light coming from the dining room. His eyes smarted from gunshot smoke. He
turned back to immediately leave, but again felt it secure enough to
investigate. He pulled out from his belt a Sauer 7.65mm pistol, releasing its
safety. It made a loud click. Off the foyer, he entered the rectangular dining
room, but found nothing amiss. He silently crossed the foyer to the living
room, turned on the light, and peered cautiously into it. Everything was in its
place. But the smell of gunfire was in evidence in every room he had entered.
It hung in the air like an ominous trail, which he had to follow, like it or
not. Walking across the living room to the far end, he saw magazines strewn on
the floor. He continued to the rear door, which led to a small sitting room,
furnished with a few leather chairs, bookcases, and an American-made roll-top
desk. The door was slightly ajar. He stood to the right of it and pushed it
open with the barrel of his gun. The room was unlit and a pungent smell of
gunshot smoke became all too apparent. He had reached the end of the line, he
knew. He turned on the light.
Evita Baur, his long time
live-in mistress, was slumped over on the long apricot and brown sofa. Blood
was still flowing in a steady trickle from the left side of her slender neck.
Nothing was disturbed in the room. Evita’s left shoe was off, but next to her
foot, Spiegel, a man of fanatical order, picked it up and lovingly placed it
back on her foot. He looked at her face. There was no look of terror on it;
instead, an uncanny resemblance of calm was there. She appeared to be only
sleeping, merely awaiting his return from work. He thought he would nudge her
to awaken her. But the volcanic oozing hole in her pretty neck brought him back
to reality. Dead. Not her, he wished. Not her. But why was she even here today?
She was scheduled to return home tomorrow. What had happened?
Desolated and angered, he
contemplated the sight for a few minutes, not really thinking, not knowing, and
not moving. He wanted to remember the sight for the rest of his days. His head
pounded mercilessly to be released from its cramped confinement of overwhelming
pain and sorrow. He laid his pistol down on the desk and ran to the wall
telephone in the foyer. After a second thought, he canceled out phoning and
stormed out of the house. He was certain his phone would be tapped. Throwing
open the front door lit up the grounds to where his car was parked. Outside was
as silent as a tomb. Her tomb, he thought grimly. He ran across the porch onto
the lawn and over to the driveway. He slid on the pebbled driveway, but caught
himself before falling. He jumped in his car and pulled backward at a breakneck
speed to a screeching stop in the middle of the road. Whipping the steering
wheel around, he straightened out the car and sped out to the lightless
secondary road leading back to Asuncion. After a few kilometers, he observed no
one was following him. But at this point, he didn’t care. What could he do
about it anyway? He had even forgotten his pistol.
Arriving at the city’s
main telephone and telegraph exchange, Spiegel rushed in, entered a booth, and
dialed a memorized international access code, country and city codes, and a
local number. The booth encircled him, covered him, and allowed him to
privately get hold of himself. He was back in the womb, safe where nobody could
touch him. His confusion seemed to bleed off him. He felt his powers again
turning on and thrust out his chin in contempt for anyone watching him. Maybe
it was hate that was nourishing him. Come on, he thought, if you want me, here
I stand. Can you see me? You bastards.
The telephone rang in
Aspen, Colorado.
Wes Sturm excused himself
from his pretty dinner guest and went into his bedroom. The phone was difficult
to find, because of the piles of obstructive books and unpacked boxes that
hemmed it in. He picked up the receiver and kicked the door shut.
"This is Sturm."
"Here’s Uncle
Manfred. I’m leaving Asuncion tomorrow morning."
"Has there been a
serious problem?"
"Yes, they know. No
doubt about it."
Spiegel gently replaced
the receiver and turned about. He slapped his back pocket to confirm his wallet
was there. He left the exchange and confidently crossed the near vacant street
to his car. The night was chilly, and he had no jacket. He shook from cold or
fright, he wasn’t sure which. The airport was perhaps twenty-five minutes away
the way he drove.
* * *
Sturm climbed under a
light blanket, unfortunately alone this night, and heard some late revelers pass
his home. At the moment, nothing could be done for uncle, he thought. And that
bothered him. Something must have developed unexpectedly. He never thought the
situation would ever climax, yet alone in a hang-up. It was a small closet
operation, supposedly an insignificant one. But early tomorrow, it will begin.
He had already packed a bag. First thing in the morning, he would make a call
to CIA headquarters and then be off to the predetermined destination of
Frankfurt.
Sturm didn’t look forward
to Frankfurt and never cared for having to visit it. He saw it always under
major commercial construction. It was a somber city with a first-class red
light district. Noise, dirt flying in the air, auto emissions, and packs of
foreign workers, shabbily dressed, who stood at every intersection talking in
distorted babbles, made up the gray complexion of the city. The Germans didn’t
seem to notice anything wrong and hurriedly passed by or through it all without
emotion.
A distant church bell
tolled three times, and still he was not asleep.
Chapter Two
With the first orange
streaks of dawn, Sturm swung out of bed and opened the window drapes. He peered
out. It was a cloudless day. A good day for flying, he felt. He put on a
scraggly bathrobe and went bare-footed downstairs.
In his kitchen, he made a
cup of instant coffee, which comprised his usual total breakfast. He scribbled
a hasty note for his housekeeper, telling her he’d be out of town on business
again and left her a month’s wages.
From his briefcase, he pulled
out a thin folder and extracted from it a three-paged typed document. It
contained the detailed scenario he had received from his uncle the week before.
It was datelined Asuncion:
"On May 23, 1945, a
half dozen men dressed as regular German Army soldiers were stopped without
incident at a British Army checkpoint. Their documents were closely checked and
rechecked by the officer of the guard. This was common practice, and if there
had been any doubt about anyone’s identity, they were arrested and sent under
guard to another place to be further interrogated and held. Such was the case
with all six of them. They were trucked to an interrogation camp, which was
based somewhere in the vicinity of Lunenburg, West Germany. Along the way, one
man panicked and jumped out of the vehicle and was shot dead by a guard. None
of the other prisoners showed any emotion by the incident, but merely turned to
one man for guidance, who remained staring straight ahead. Not a word of
protest followed the shooting, and the guard got back into the truck.
A Captain Silva, who was
camp commander, met the truck. The prisoners were brought before him and lined
up in a single line. All had a soldierly bearing and stood at rigid attention,
except for one who was slovenly dressed and stood slouched. When the captain
confronted this man, he revealed himself to be none other than Reich fuehrer SS
Heinrich Himmler. His notorious identity was obvious to the commander, who had
a profile album of wanted top Nazis.
Silva reportedly was struck
dumbfounded by his fortunate find and personally escorted Himmler to his
office. He then sent for a senior officer from the intelligence corps for
assistance. Within an hour, help arrived, and both men began to thoroughly
examine Himmler. They began by first searching the cooperative prisoner a
container with a potassium cyanide phial was found. Another empty one was also
recovered. Silva knew the missing vial was somewhere on Himmler, but a search
did not locate it. They began to question him with basic questions.
A second intelligence
officer arrived with an order to escort Himmler to another interrogation center
forthwith. It was nightfall when Himmler arrived at the other camp. He was put
in the charge of Sergeant Edward Dunlap. A doctor arrived to give Himmler a
standard physical examination. He refused to take off his uniform. He was then
closely searched and told by the doctor to open his mouth. The doctor saw an
object between his teeth. He tried to remove it, but Himmler suddenly bit down
on it. He was dead in seconds.
A few days later, Himmler
was secretly buried somewhere in Lunenburg, wearing the unpretentious uniform
in which he was arrested. Only a few people knew exactly where his grave was
located.
It was in 1979.when MI-6
declassified the incident under the British Secrets Act and released them all
for public consumption. Among them was an obscure and overlooked footnote with
the specific burial site.
"Wes, you know I’ve
been an active member of Das Reich..."
* * *
Sturm knew all about the
Brazilian-based organization from his father. It was a secret neo-Nazi movement
with networks connecting throughout South America and beyond. Wherever a German
colony was found, its representatives were continuously recruiting both young
and old. Das Reich originally found members from the legions of German
ex-soldiers, including war criminals sentenced in their absence at the
Nuremberg trials. Any grade of serviceman wanted for crimes against humanity
could find safe refuge and be given aid to start a new life. All had in common
an unbreakable allegiance to Das Reich and Germany.
"...However, within
the organization is a radical contingent of the new, younger breed called the
Wiking Gruppe," the report continued, "Commanded by Ernst von
Heinemann. It is supposed to be a political lobby organization nationwide. One
of its objectives is to bring about the destruction of England, as ordered by
Hitler after it declared war on Germany." Hitler never forgave the English
for causing him to fight a two-front war, and was vociferously demanding its
total destruction even in his last bunker days.
"Von Heinemann’s
group has now realistically modified the Hitlerite goal to cause only
destruction to the city of London. You are thinking how can they accomplish the
mission? Himmler’s body was the answer. The last operational order, or orders,
I don’t know for sure, was received directly by Himmler from Hitler when he
visited the Fuehrer on his last birthday in the bunker. It was code named
'Brothers Grimm' and involved Himmler insuring the passing of a signal to a
sleeper agent in London. There, the agent’s sole responsibility, and the very
reason for his existence, was to cause a terrorist attack with political,
social, and deadly magnitudes, such as never before experienced, deep in the
south end of the city. Wiking plans were to proceed with their lunatic
objective. You are now thinking what can they gain out of it? I wish I knew.
Perhaps its value to them is purely symbolic? Political? Revolutionary?"
"Wes, these people
are calculating and dangerous. Anything is possible for them to consider
undertaking in their relentless climb to political significance. They have
computed a formula where each Wiking vote-getting member equates to three
hundred disinterested but impressionable voters. An unknown quantity of Wiking
members will mean their candidates for office will be successfully elected
through voter persuasion. Sounds like a modified version of what the Brown
Shirts were once all about! Simple. Right? I cannot believe what is slowly
evolving in my Germany. It must be prevented. He must be stopped.
"...looking forward
to seeing you again -- Uncle Manfred."
Sturm had just finished
dressing as the airport limousine pulled up his driveway and impatiently honked
over and over again. With bag in hand, he closed the front door behind him and
defiantly walked slowly to the automobile. The driver leaned on the horn, and
Sturm purposefully stopped to light a cigarette before getting in.
As it sped through the
bright morning sun, barely slowing down for tight mountain curves, Sturm
inevitably reflected on his uncle’s words.
When he had first received
the report, he read it without alarm and sent it for evaluation to the CIA. He
hadn’t heard from them, one way or another since. A bizarre plot, posturing at
best, had been his own appraisal. He was now surprised it had come to this. His
uncle, a West German intelligence agent, was fleeing the country and on the
run?
Sturm first met his Uncle
Manfred when he was a youth, perhaps fifteen, and easily influenced. He had
come to visit his father. The visit, he clearly remembered, was filled with
political conversations and frequent arguments, ski experiences, family gossip,
and never-ending dinner parties. It was the dinner parties he couldn’t stand,
because he had to wear his best suit of clothes to them.
The political talks he
best remembered and liked. Uncle Manfred was, even after the war, a Nazi. His
father told him that many times. He said he was an "old Nazi fart living
in the past." No matter how much evidence his father produced to counter
his uncle’s die-hard feelings, he could not be convinced to change his views.
The war had been an important item in his life. It took him to places and
caused him to do things he would never have had the opportunity to do. The war
made him a somebody. It gave him medals. It gave him personal status and
respect from family and townspeople. And when it ended, he found himself to be
just another homeless veteran, who was arrested, interrogated, and held in a
French forced-labor camp on German soil for eighteen months.
When he was released, the
German citizenry he had so long fought for ignored him. This was his reward for
fighting Stalinism? He never understood that nobody liked a loser. He developed
a jagged hatred for the French, who had interred him, for the Americans, who
occupied his hometown, swilling down bottomless bottles of beer and bragging
about their limited war triumphs.
What did they know? His
uncle would say. They had no idea what they were even fighting for. They were
politically naive. But Germany knew. The lowest grade German soldier knew.
Through the Fuehrer, everyone in Germany knew. He alone had awakened the
sleeping Teutonic spirit in every German to rise up and forcibly confront the
world’s enemy. And that enemy was Bolshevism. It was a fight that must
continue, he said over and over. A sacred fight that only Nazi Dom understood.
A fight that did not end with Germany’s surrender but was only in a brief
recess.
His uncle had fanatically
participated to bring Nazism to power. When the war was lost, he continued his
involvement in one group or another, which was always fascist in theory and
practice. It was a never-ending search for him: To find that one leader, that
one group to lead Germany back to world influence and macht. He searched at a
feverish pace, because his age was growing rapidly against him.
On visits to West Germany,
his uncle sought out political contacts and organizations he thought would
change the German Social Democrats’ climb to power and rule. He was
continuously disappointed. The right collision of money, political objectives,
luck, and timing found no group to ordain.
Sturm’s father told his
son he believed his brother-in-law was frustrated in his quest by finding only
hollow echoes from men long burnt out, and who were too tired and old to
re-kindle the signal fires of National Socialism.
But a dramatic change in
Uncle Manfred occurred. An inner core change that reinvigorated his reason to
exist. A change that gave him new political direction and goals. He was, in a
sense, reborn back into Hitler Ian times, back to the early 1930s, when Hitler
had been street fighting, parading, and campaigning to rise to power. He was
happy again. He was again a follower. But he liked being a follower. His father
said he would never be anything else but a follower, right behind the drummer
boy.
He found one group that
stimulated his interest and which he supported with generous amounts of money
from his lucrative leather export business. They came first in his life, and he
would deny himself even the smallest luxuries and send the extra money to the
group. It was as though he were a Trappist monk and had devoutly taken the vows
of poverty, self-denial, and godlike worship. He had found a new Worshipful
Master, was duly initiated, and was paying his dues to the Wiking group.
On a business trip to
Germany, in 1978, recalled Sturm, Spiegel was approached by the German secret
service. The offer to again serve the Vaterland was the bait they offered to
him. He need only in return keep them informed of Wiking activities.
For some inexplicable
reason, and in quick time, he accepted their offer. He took and apparently
relished the taste of it. Sturm never understood the double-cross reasoning and
his uncle’s crossover to the establishment. They even gave him a rank, which
delighted him to no end. Sturm became the control officer between the CIA and
Bundesnachrichtendienst, and periodically passed along from time to time low-grade
intelligence data to the BND from his uncle. But times changed, and so did the
data base value concerning Wiking.
Spiegel was safely in
flight, but in a daze, confused, emotionally tied up, with incompatible
thoughts of what his arrival in Frankfurt would bring. The game had been
developing slowly and had suddenly exploded apart right before him.
His longtime mistress was
dead. And for what? He thought she had nothing to do with it. She was a totally
non-political person. She couldn’t even balance her checkbook. They could have
just as well come after him. Perhaps they did, but luckily he had not been
there. But now he wished he had been.
What else was left to him?
Nothing was the sterile sounding answer. His Wiking job was over. BND would
have no further need of him. He couldn’t go back to Asuncion to run his
business. Money problems were on his doorstep. Not much more could complicate
his life flows.
It was late into the night
when he finally dozed off. It was a black and restless sleep. In less than an
hour, he would be landing in Frankfurt in rain and gloom.
Chapter Three
Bernadette Spiegel
clumsily slipped on a short nightgown and lit a filter-less Camel cigarette. It
was a ritual for her after sex; and he hated smokers. That certainly was not
the magic they held in common: sex was. She wanted it to be regular and
traditional, with no variations and no double features. She had a schedule, and
he damn well better adhere to it.
"Patrick," she
called to her boyfriend, who was dressing in the bathroom.
"What is it?" he
asked in a touchy voice. He had been out of sorts lately, she thought. And she
had been unable to determine the problem, not that she’d really tried.
"I plan to leave for
Frankfurt tomorrow to see my father. He’ll be there on business for some time.
How long? I don’t know. But want to come along?"
"Sorry. I’m busy. Job
commitments, you know."
Well, the hell with him,
she thought. Who needs him? Not her. She was just being friendly. She didn’t
know herself for sure, if she really wanted him to go with her anyway. She
thought perhaps they could tour around for a week or so, after seeing her
father. She had no hidden motive for asking him.
He finished dressing,
walked back through the bedroom, and told her to send him a post card. He’d see
her on her return. She laid stone still, didn’t look at him, and didn’t even
say a farewell word to him. He closed the door behind himself and could be
heard running down the bare wood stairwell, through the tunnel-like archway,
and into a damp, drizzly London night.
In the back seat of a
taxi, Patrick McCormick once again reviewed his relationship with her.
Actually, he found he had reviewed it each time he left her. He was exhausted
from sex and sapped of strength. Nothing new, he thought. Making love to
Bernadette was a Herculean endless job. If he was tired or not in the mood, it
made no difference to her. He was scheduled to appear at an appointed hour, and
so he would. Her needs came first. Always first. She needed a partner.
Momentarily, he was it. She was like a pirate. She raped, plundered, and left
him lying there alone on his sore back in the dark. He was used and he
certainly knew it. Maybe he stayed with her because of the convenient sexual
relationship with no strings attached. He would arrive at her place, maybe they
would first have dinner, and normally he left her right after sex. Talk between
them never probed into one another’s serious feelings on any topic, but covered
current events, maybe work situations. At times, over dinner, no one spoke more
than a sentence. He never discovered much about her family, and when he tried
to question her about it, she invariably became evasive, even short with him.
After innumerable rebuffs, he no longer tried to bridge her citadel of walled
up privacy. He just accepted her for what she was, which in fact strengthened
their unusual but accommodating relationship to one another. She needed no
money from him; her father adequately supported her smart tastes and wants.
That much he knew. That much she openly flaunted in his face. There was one
love he knew she had -- history. She read it incessantly and kept a few of
London’s biggest book search services looking for long out-of-print editions.
What a bitch you are, he often found himself saying these days and knew some
day he would tell her so.
Bernadette awoke early the
next morning. It was automatic. She needed no alarm clock. Refreshed, she
sprang out of bed and threw off her nightgown. And where it landed is where it
stayed. She hesitated to admire her firm breasts in front of a full-length
dressing mirror. With a satisfactory smile, she opened the closet. She started
to dress with violet panties, a silk diaphanous brassiere that bulged to
restrain its heavy load, designer jeans, and a short-sleeved chocolate
pullover.
At thirty-three, she was
loudly attractive and much sought after. Blonde hair dropped in natural waves
to her shoulders and strangely light blue eyes complemented her high cheekbone
features. Her voice was firm and strong. She had a full mouth that seemed to
ignite her sensuality when she moved her lips slowly. She had the unique
ability to cause her lower lip to quiver at will, which men found exciting
wherever she might do it.
Bernadette was somewhat
spoiled to say the least. She never had a job of any consequence. She never
wanted any of the nine-to-five varieties with two weeks vacation a year. That
wasn’t her station in life. Public schools were out, snobby private ones in. No
picnic outings, but country clubs were satisfactory, as well as regular
European summer vacations. Her real friends were relatively few and female and
had basic common denominators: money, titles, and German ethnicity. Other
friends she made were for a definite purpose in mind. People she could use,
quite frankly. She was intelligent, moreover cunning. Abuse her and she
remembered. Be generous to her and she took advantage of it. Be her friend and
maybe you could count on her. She was capable of using any resource to reach
her objective: gifts, coaxing, threats, tantrums and sex.
She had been educated at a
list of South American universities and acquired a knack of languages, if not
anything else. She was totally fluent in Spanish, German, and English.
Nevertheless, she possessed no marketable work skills nor really wanted any.
She had been living in England for just over a year when her father had called
to tell her he was in Frankfurt.
She took no special notice
of him calling from Germany. It was normal for him to be there on business at
least a few times a year. But since the call, she mulled over his inordinate
concern for her well being. Finally, she dismissed her suspicions from her
mind. After all, she would see him shortly and could in person allay or confirm
them.
She grabbed her
overstuffed shoulder bag, one suitcase, and left the apartment. She got into
her new yellow Audi and headed to the airport, breaking all speed limits along
the way, and arrived in time to take Lufthansa flight 104 to Frankfurt. In a
few hours she’d see her father. Her body was tingling and was emotionally
charged with genuine reunion anticipation. She hadn’t felt this way in a long
time.
The relationship she had
with him had it's high and lows, but more highs than problems. Being as she
mostly got her way from childhood to adulthood, there was little chance for
argumentation. Furthermore, her father loved to give in to her ceaseless
demands after playful resistance. He was the one who had solely spoiled her.
There was a well-defined love between them and each maintained close
communication with one another, regardless of whatever distance separated them.
Bernadette’s champagne
cocktail gently shook on the tray before her. She leaned deep into a cushy seat
in the first class section, closed her eyes and hiked her dress up for added
comfort. The whistling hum of jet engines enveloped her in a cocoon of private
visions and freedom.
Chapter Four
Spiegel's suite in the
four-star Graf Zeppelin Hotel had a large living room with a wet bar, which was
an unusual accommodation for a German hotel. There sat Spiegel and Sturm,
adamantly discussing old times, family relatives, and were already primed up on
Asbach-Uralt brandy by late afternoon.
Spiegel was relaxed
because of alcohol. Inside, he felt a ravaging turmoil and periodically a
colorless shade of despair and sadness spread over his face. When he laughed,
there was no spontaneity to it. It was because it was expected. His sarcastic
wit wasn’t in the least in evidence. He sat there alone on a sofa across from
Sturm. He looked terribly alone in actuality. By his side had always been
Evita. It was she who had led him away from his compulsiveness and reputation
for having a colossal temper at the slightest irritant. She had been revered by
the whole family as a fine stabilizing influence to his erratic pursuits in
life.
"...listen, seriously
Uncle Manfred, we want you to stay low in the hotel until the situation is
worked out. There are too many loose ends yet. These people are out to ship you
to Valhalla as soon as possible," Sturm said excitedly.
"Yes, yes, I know all
that Wes, but I don’t like to run from anyone. That’s not me. I prefer to stand
up and fight." Well, he still can’t take advice from anyone, Sturm
remembered.
"Stand and fight is
fine. Just as long as they don’t find out where you are standing," he said
with a chuckle. "Don’t worry, there will be plenty of fighting going on,
and we’ll need you then, more than now, as an expert consultant at game time.
But you must play by our rules," he carefully warned. "To be a part
of the team, you must listen to the signals."
Spiegel didn’t respond.
"By the way, we took
care of the funeral arrangements for Evita, just as you requested. Everyone in
the family will miss and fondly remember her. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you
that. She was with you quite a few years, wasn’t she?"
"Yes, quite a few
years. --Where will it all end? I wonder."
"We’ll clean it up.
I’m sure."
"You were always so
sure of yourself. An admirable quality. The Americans have always been sure of
themselves. Don’t you think? Before the war and after. And look where it got
you. You may have fought on the wrong side last time. Mother Russia has now
bear hugged more lands than Hitler ever had or even anticipated, and she’s
still going strong. Middle America is next. Then Mexico. --Do you think your
country will fight when they bivouac on your Texas border?"
Sturm frowned. He didn’t
give a response, for it would only provoke an unwanted discussion that would
change neither one’s opinions. Anyway, alcohol made him a poor arguer.
"And if you destroy
Wiking, Spiegel continued, will this be good? I don’t know. They have good and
bad ideas in it. To destroy the total Wiking organization may not be in
America’s or Germany’s best interests. Your people must learn to take the good,
along with the gray areas, and the bad."
"Why do you say
that?" asked Sturm, respective of his uncle’s sentiments.
"I can answer your
question with another question: How many organizations do you know left in
Western Europe who would fight Russia to the last man? --How many? Can you
think of any?"
Sturm had no answer, nor
could he think of an evasive one, and shrugged. "Well, I suppose we must
fight them anyway, because they order us to do so, right Wes? They know
best." Sturm enjoyed the sarcasm, even when he was at the receiving end of
it.
"--You know, I think
I will get lost in Paris for a few weeks after the debriefings, of course. What
do you think of that?"
"Sure. No problem.
I’ll see you leave here unnoticed. Then you’ll be on your own for a nice
vacation. Time to pull it all together. Just keep in touch, uncle, you’re very
important to us and me in particular."
"I will play it by
the rules. Orders are orders," he said, laughing at himself at the inside
joke. He raised his empty glass in mock salute.
"How do you like your
job at the Agency?" Spiegel asked.
"Very much so. --I
guess we never talked about it. --I’ve had a few jobs since I started. Did some
campus recruiting, been pelted with eggs and splashed with animal blood at one
university. -- You know students are self-centered, always 'me first'
principle. Few want to work for an ideal that even mildly reeks of nationalism.
--Then I worked at Langley for a year or so. I made sure safes and desks were
locked when the employees left. I hated it. All night work, no social life.
From there I got involved working on the German desk because of my language
skill, and it took me to where I am now-- in field operations."
"You have a very
important position. Few people are in a position to see what is happening
inside Europe, behind locked doors and minds."
"Ifs interesting. But
what’s important today? I travel a lot and most of all I have freedom to make
operational decisions. That’s important to me."
He looked at Sturm
blankly. Once again, his thoughts were elsewhere, with Evita, around Evita, in
Evita, for Evita.
"--When you were a
schoolboy, maybe seven or eight, you were only interested in playing soldier.
You had hundreds of these little green plastic soldiers battling each other.
You pestered your father for more and more of them. Do you remember?"
"Yeah. I guess I
haven’t changed much since then. I’m still battling. Still at it."
"You know, Wes, your
father -- your father I loved. I could always get excellent advice from him on
issues that bothered me. Sometimes I would call him from anywhere hi the world
to tell him my problems. He helped me many, many times. He shared himself with
me. I regret I should have listened to him more frequently."
"He died too young.
It took me a long time to lean away from his death."
"I’ll tell you
something. He is always with me," Spiegel said, glossy eyes glistening.
"Ja, I know he approves of my work for the BND. That I’m sure of.
Certain."
Near half the brandy
bottle was empty when Karl Haushof arrived. He carried a slim briefcase.
Haushof was thirty-eight,
broad shouldered, tall, square jawed BND intelligence corps agent, originally a
Bundeswehr commissioned officer, who in three years had become a first rate
field operational officer. He was noted for occasionally acting on his piqued
emotions. He had mason hands, broad and strong, and would not think too long on
using them, especially when he had to deal with a German spy employed by the
East Germans, of which there had been many, keeping him quite busy.
He became a chief projects
officer in 1982, after only two years of service, exceptionally rated service.
Haushof had talent, organizational ability, and honed common sense to reach an
objective. He was a tough, new version German fanatic.
Faults had he. Most
apparent was his unconscious superman concept of himself, which sometimes broke
through. If it were not for his young age, one would have thought he had been
indoctrinated in Hitler’s Germany.
Haushof's favorite reading
material were documentaries on the Third Reich’s intelligence agencies, and he
personally thought Reinhard Heydrich was more effective and dynamic and would
have eventually replaced Heinrich Himmler as Reich fuehrer 55. While he definitely
was not a Nazi, he did believe Germany’s finest intelligence system was born in
Hitler’s Germany, and continued in post-war Germany to be second to none under
Reinhardt Gehlen.
Since Gehlen left, things
happened. Things he didn’t like. BND was compromised, infiltrated, and had
become a subservient but crippled arm for the Americans to use at its pleasure.
Economic and politically sensitive data it supplied were suspect. He knew it.
They all knew it. He detested what had happened to BND, and sometimes passed on
select information to his superiors and more substantial data to the Americans.
While he harbored no particular love for the CIA either, there was no
alternative but to deal with them and hope they wouldn’t sell you out.
Sturm made a brief introduction
of Spiegel to Haushof, whom he had known for a year now via his reports, and
handed both a drink.
Haushof told Spiegel he
had found his intelligence reports quite helpful and so did his superiors.
Spiegel beamed.
Methodically, Sturm began
his palms up briefing while he was still coherent. He planned to concentrate on
an update of information, which he had previously crypto graphed to Haushof
from CIA Langley. He would hold nothing back from any of them.
Sturm was similar to
Haushof in some ways. About the same age, only single, slim figured, but brown
eyes and sandy blonde hair, and also career-oriented to succeed in intelligence
work. The significant difference between them was Sturm didn’t have to work for
a living. He was moneyed from his family. While at the University of
Pennsylvania, he had been recruited by the CIA. He liked to tell the story of
how it happened. An Agency recruiter had come to the school to interview
prospects, he explained, but some students violently protested and the recruiter
packed up and left. He then cautiously tailed him back to his hotel and
successfully approached him there.
"I’ve received
instructions from British Military Intelligence, to whom I have been
functionally assigned," Sturm began. "As the focal point of Wiking is
London, MI-6 has laid down general operational orders. Our governments have
agreed to what I’m about to say." His voice reflected tautness to it.
"Karl, you may not
have been told this yet, so for your sake, I’ll repeat the orders, which you
can verify with your own people." Haushof nodded consent. "We will
operate as a unit. All data gathered will be unhesitatingly shared with one
another. Any major operational action taken within one’s own or another’s
respective country will be approved before implemented and controlled by that
country’s intelligence services."
He paused for comment.
None was made. Sturm caught Haushof’s eyes concentrating on him, his every
move, professionally gauging him. Their eyes met for a split second. Neither
one expressed any distress.
"Gentlemen, we have a
distinct challenge ahead of us," Sturm said. "A challenge to be met demands team players. --Karl, how
about giving us a report on Wiking activities."
"Ja,"said the
Stuttgarter, pausing to take a deep breath. He pulled out a reference fact
sheet and began to speak. "BND became seriously interested in Wiking in
summer of 1987. Agent infiltration of its core was and still has been extremely
limited - poor grade information--unverifiable--not able to be evaluated. Then,
in October 1987, a terrorist bomb exploded outside a Jewish synagogue in Paris,
on Rue Copernic, killing a score of people. During that winter, a Jewish day
care center, another synagogue, and a memorial to Jews deported from France to
Nazi death camps were machine-gunned. Jewish graves were regularly defaced and
fires set to kosher restaurants." He stopped and looked up. "--The
terrorism is continuing."
"French security
services and police have not made a single important arrest in connection with
over one-hundred incidents since 1987. Accused of these terrorist acts is the
extreme right-wing National Fascists of Europe. Its membership approaches
sixteen hundred and is one of the fastest growing of its kind in Europe today.
The members consist of propagandists; skin headed street soldiers,
intellectuals, followers, and a small leadership clique, who theoretically
believe in Hitler’s brand of National Socialism, and such notions as elitist
education and genetic engineering. How about that for openers?"
Haushof paused to light a
cigarette, bottomed off his drink, and was going to continue in his
professional, unemotional reciting of facts and figures when Sturm got up and
went to the bar. He sought out an absolutely clean glass, holding each one up
to the light to inspect it, found one, and filled it near halfway up. He
replaced the bottle on the shelf and went back to his seat. Haushof was thrown
off balance by Sturm’s moving around but recovered quickly.
"Then in my country,
in January 1980, I believe, our authorities raided a four-hundred man neo-Nazi
organization. What a find! Twenty-three sites in Bavaria alone were raided,
especially around Munich. Rifles, pis
