The Apocalypse Watch (83 page)

“Perhaps for a while, but that will pass when the world sees the results of a cleansed state under strong, benign leadership. The democracies constantly extol the righteousness of the ballot box, but they could not be more in error! Ballots are fought for in the gutter, for that’s where the majority of votes are. And bless the Americans, they don’t even understand their own Constitution as it was conceived two hundred years ago. Originally, only the landowners, the men who had proved themselves successful and therefore superior, were to be permitted to vote. That was the consensus of the Constitutional Convention, did you know that?”

“Yes, it was an agrarian society, but I’m surprised you know it. History was never one of your strong suits, my husband.”

“All that’s changed. If you could see these shelves … they’re lined with books, new ones brought in every day. I read five or six a week.”

“Let me see them, let me see
you
. I’ve missed you, Freddie.”

“Soon, my wife, soon. There’s a certain comfort in the darkness for I ‘see’ you as I prefer to remember you. The lovely, vivacious woman who took such pride in her husband, who brought me secrets from NATO, a number of which I’m convinced saved my life.”

“You were on NATO’s side, how could I do otherwise?”

“Now I’m on a greater side. Would you help me now?”

“It depends, my husband. I can’t deny that you’re extremely convincing. Having heard your own words, I’m
very excited for you. You were always an extraordinary man, even those who disapproved of you said as much—”

“Such as my friend, my former friend, Harry
Latham
, who is now your
lover
!”

“You’re wrong, Freddie. Harry Latham is not my lover.”

“
Liar!
He was always fawning on you, waiting for you to show up, asking me when you would.”

“I will repeat my statement to you, and we lived together too long for you not to know when I’m telling the truth. It’s your profession, after all, and you’ve heard me tell a hundred lies on your behalf.… Harry Latham is not my lover. Shall I repeat it again?”

“No.” The single word echoed off the unseen walls. “Then who is he?”

“Someone who’s assumed Harry’s name.”

“Why?”

“Because you want your friend Harry killed, and Harry doesn’t care to be killed. How
could
you, Frederik? Harry loved you as a—a younger brother.”

“It was not of my doing,” said the disembodied voice of Günter Jäger quietly. “Harry penetrated our headquarters in the Alps. He was part of an experiment. I had no choice but to agree.”

“What kind of experiment?”

“A medical thing. I never fully understood it. Traupman, however, was very enthusiastic, and I could not go against Hans. He was my mentor, the man who put me where I am today.”

“And where are you, Freddie? Are you really the new Adolf Hitler?”

“It’s odd that you mention him. I’ve read and reread
Mein Kampf
, and all the biographies I could get my hands on. Have you any idea how parallel our lives are, at least our lives before we joined the movement? He was an artist, and in my own way, I’m an artist too. He was unemployed, as I was about to be. He was rejected by the Austrian Artists League, as well as the Architectural Academy, for a supposed lack of talent—an ex-corporal with nowhere to go. In my case, the same. Who employs someone
like me? And we were both penniless; in his case he had nothing, and I sold all my diamonds to save my life.… Then someone in the twenties saw a street-corner radical screaming passionately, convincingly, against the injustices of social conditions, and years later someone else watched the oratory of a superb, former agent provocateur who had fooled even them. Such men are valuable.”

“Are you saying that both you and Adolf Hitler
backed
into your awesome positions?”

“I’d put it another way, my wife. We didn’t find our causes, our causes found us.”

“That’s obscene!”

“Not at all. The convert’s convictions are always the strongest, for they must be arrived at.”

“To bring all this about will result in an
enormous
loss of life—”

“Initially, yes, but it will pass quickly, be forgotten quickly, and the world will be a far better place. There’ll be no massive war, no nuclear confrontations—our progress will be gradual but sure, for much of it is in place already. In a matter of months, governments will change, new laws will be created that benefit the strongest, the purest, and within a few years the useless
garbage
, the dregs of society who suck us dry, will be swept away.”

“It’s not necessary to deliver a speech to me … Freddie.”

“It’s all
true
! Can’t you
see
that?”

“I can’t even see you, and you do excite me when you talk like this, like the extraordinary man I know you are. Please, turn on a light.”

“I have a small problem with that.”

“Why? Have you changed so much in five years?”

“No, but I’m wearing glasses and you’re not.”

“I wear them only when my eyes are tired, you know that.”

“Yes, but mine are different. I can see in the dark, and I see the gun in your hand. It reminded me that you were left-handed. Do you remember when you decided you
should play golf with me and I bought you a set of clubs, only they were the wrong kind?”

“Yes, of course, I remember, they were for right-handed players.… I carry the gun because you taught me never to go to a meeting at night, even with you, without a weapon. You said neither of us could know if you’d been followed.”

“I was right, I was protecting you. Did your friends outside know you had a gun?”

“I didn’t see anyone. I came alone, without authority.”

“Now you’re lying, at least in part, but it doesn’t matter. Drop the gun on the floor!” Karin did so, and De Vries/Jäger turned on a light, a reflector lamp that shone down on a small chapel altar, heightening the gold crucifix on a purple cloth. The new
Führer
sat on a prayer stool on the right, in a white silk shirt, opened at the collar, his bright blond hair glistening, his handsome, sharp-featured face at its most flattering angle. “How do I look after five years, wife?”

“As beautiful as ever, but you know that.”

“It’s an attribute I cannot deny, and one Herr Hitler never possessed. Did you know he was a rather small, pinch-faced man who wore elevator shoes? My looks are a great help to me, but I wear them in brilliant humility, and pretend to be icelike when women make a point of them. Physical vanity does not become a national leader.”

“Others care. I believed they’re awed by it. I was … I still am.”

“When did you people suspect that ‘Günter Jäger’ was the new neo-Nazi leader?”

“When one of the Sonnenkinder broke under questioning. With the addition of drugs, I suspect.”

“That couldn’t be, I never revealed myself to any of them!”

“Obviously, you did, whether you realized it or not. You said you had meetings, gave speeches—”

“Only to those of us in the Bundestag! All the rest were recorded.”

“Then someone sold you out … Freddie. I heard
something about a Catholic priest who went to confession and taxed the conscience of his confessor.”

“My God, that senile idiot Paltz. Time and again I said he should be excluded, but no, Traupman claimed he had a large following among the working class. I’ll have him shot.”

Karin briefly breathed easier. She had struck the chord she so needed to strike. The name of Paltz came to her from the identifications made from the tape, and the fact that Monsignor Paltz was an old man vociferously disliked by the Catholic hierarchy in Germany, another fact established by a call to the bishop of Bonn. The bishop had not minced words. “He’s a misguided bigot who should be retired. I’ve said as much to Rome.” Karin waited until her unwanted husband calmed down.

“Freddie,” she began quietly, in control. “This Paltz, whoever he is, this priest, said that something dreadful will happen to the cities of London, Paris, and Washington. Disasters of such magnitude that hundreds of thousands will be killed. Is it true … Freddie?”

The pitch-black silence from the
Führer
was electric, exaggerated by the pounding rain. Finally Günter Jäger spoke, his voice strained, harsh, sounding like the strings of a taut cello about to snap.

“So that’s why you’re here, slut-wife. They sent you on the distinctly outside chance that I might reveal the nature of our shock wave.”

“I came on my own. They don’t
know
I’m here.”

“It’s possible, for you were never a good liar. However, the irony is sweet. I said before that nothing could stop us, and that happens to be the truth. You see, like all great leaders, I delegate responsibility, especially in areas where I lack expertise. I’m given the outlines of a plan or a strategy, in particular the final results, but not the technical aspects, nor even the names of the personnel refining them. I wouldn’t know whom to call should I want them myself.”

“We know it concerns the three cities’ water, the reservoirs or waterworks, whatever they’re called.”

“Really? I’m sure Monsignor Paltz was very technical in his disclosures. Ask him.”

“It can’t work, Frederik! Call it off. Everyone involved will be caught. There are troops by the hundreds prepared to fire at anyone or
anything
that gets near the water. They’ll be captured and you’ll be exposed!”

“Exposed?” asked Jäger calmly. “By whom? A senile old man who isn’t even sure what year it is, much less the month or the day? Don’t be ridiculous.”

“
Frederik
, there is a tape of last night’s meeting. Everyone who was there has been arrested and kept in isolation! It’s
over
, Freddie! For God’s sake, call off Water Lightning!”

“Water … 
Lightning
? My God, you’re telling the truth, it’s in your voice, your eyes.” Günter Jäger rose from the prayer stool, his face and his body like a Siegfried under an operatic spotlight. “Still, my whore-wife, it changes nothing, for no one can stop the shock wave. In less than an hour I’ll be on a jet to a country that applauds my work,
our
work, and watch as my disciples throughout the Western world move into positions of power.”

“You’ll never get away!”

“Now you’re naive, dear wife,” said Jäger, walking to the center of the altar and pressing a button under the gold crucifix. Abruptly, with his touch, a square on the floor opened, revealing the splashing waters of the river below. “Down there is a two-man submarine, courtesy of a boatworks whose chairman is one of us. It will take me up to Königswinter, where my plane waits for me. The rest is history reborn.”

“And I?”

“Have you any idea how long it’s been since I’ve had a woman?” said Jäger quietly under the altar spotlight. “How many years I’ve had to assume the mantle of rigid monastic discipline, while inferring that others who succumbed to such temptations were vulnerable to compromise and corruption?”

“Please, Frederik, I’m not interested in your posturings.”

“You should be,
wife
! For over four years I’ve lived like
this, proving that
I
, and
only
I, was the incorruptible supreme leader. I frowned on women who wore indiscreet clothing and would not even permit lewd anecdotes or jokes in my presence.”

“It all must have been unbearable for you,” said Karin, her gaze straying about the shadowed room. “Whenever you returned from one of your forays into the Eastern bloc, you invariably carried an excess of condoms and various telephone numbers, women’s names opposite them.”

“You searched my clothes?”

“They usually had to be sent to the cleaners.”

“You have an answer for everything, you always did.”

“I answer honestly, what first comes to mind as my memory tells me.… Let’s return to me, Frederik. What happens to me? Are you going to kill me?”

“I’d rather not, my wife, for that’s what you still are, legally and in the eyes of God. After all, my courtesy submarine accommodates two people. You could be my consort, my companion, eventually, perhaps, the empress to the emperor, not unlike Fräulein Eva Braun to Adolf Hitler.”

“Eva Braun committed suicide with her ‘emperor,’ accomplished by cyanide and a gunshot. It does not appeal to me.”

“You will not accommodate me, wife?”

“I will not accommodate you.”

“You will in another way,” said Günter Jäger, barely audible as he unbuttoned his white silk shirt and removed it, then began unbuckling his belt.

Karin suddenly lunged to her left, her body in midair as she tried desperately to reach Latham’s automatic that she had dropped on the floor. Jäger raced forward, lashing out his right leg, the toe of his boot crashing into her midsection with such force that she collapsed in the fetal position, moaning in pain.

“You’ll accommodate me now, wife,” said the new
Führer
, taking off his trousers leg by leg and folding them, matching the creases and laying them over the prayer stool.

“W
hen did she go in?” asked Latham, raising his voice to be heard in the downpour.

“Roughly twenty minutes ago,” answered the bilingual German officer as the intelligence vehicle, its headlights off, backed out of the compound.

“Christ, she’s been in there
that
long? And you let her inside without a wire, without any way to
reach
you?”

“She understood, sir. I made it plain that I could not give her a radio and her very words were ‘I understand.’ ”

“Don’t you think you should have checked with us before letting her pass?” Witkowski fairly shouted in German.

“
Mein Gott, nein!
” replied the officer angrily. “The great Director Moreau himself reached me and we devised the least dangerous way to get her past the patrols.”

“Moreau? I’ll strangle the son of a bitch!” exploded Latham.

“To more fully answer your question,
mein Herr
,” said the German intelligence officer, “the
Fräulein
has not been in the cottage that long; my forward scout reported by radio that she entered it only twelve minutes ago. Here, see, I wrote the exact time in my notebook with my waterproof ink. I am extremely efficient, we Germans is—are.”