Authors: Matthew Reilly
Daylight came to the rainforest.
Race awoke to find himself propped up against the wall
of the ATV. His head ached and his clothes were still damp.
The sliding side door of the ATV lay open. He heard
voices outside.
'—what are you doing here?'
'—my name is Marc Graf, and I am a lieutenant in the
Fallschirmjger—'
Race got up and went outside.
It was morning and a low fog had descended upon the
village. The ATV was now parked in the centre of the main street,
and as he stepped out of the big armoured vehicle, it took him a
moment to adjust his eyes to the wall of grey all around him.
Slowly, however, the main street of Vilcafor
began to take shape.
Race froze.
The street was completely deserted.
All the bodies from the previous night's slaughter were
gone. Indeed all that remained in their place were large
pools of mud and water, peppered by the falling rain.
The cats, he saw, were also gone.
He saw Nash, Lauren and Copeland standing off to his left, over by
the citadel. With them stood the six Green Berets and Gaby
Lopez.
Before them, however, stood five other people.
Four men and one woman.
The surviving Germans, he guessed.
Race also noticed that only two of the Germans wore military
fatigues—soldiers. All the others wore civilian clothing, including
two—a man and a woman—who looked like undercover cops. All of them
had been disarmed.
Sergeant Van Lewen caught sight of Race, came oven 'How's the
head?' he said.
'Awful,' Race said. 'What's happening here?'
Van Lewen indicated the five Germans. 'They're the only ones who
survived the night. Two of them jumped inside the ATV during the
battle and uncuffed us. We managed to
pick up the other three just before we got you at the jetty.'
Race nodded.
Then he turned suddenly to face his bodyguard. 'Say, I
have a question for you.'
'Yes?'
'How did you know about that rubber button inside the Humveethe one
that started it after the Germans had shut it down?'
Van Lewen smiled at him. 'If I tell you I'll have to kill
you.'
'Fine, go ahead.'
Van Lewen grinned at that. Then he said, 'It's fairly stan dard
practice in armed forces around the world to use field vehicles
like Humvees and ATVs as portable prisons. You lock the prisoners
in the car and then you disable it.
'The United States, however, is the leading supplier of field
vehicles worldwide. Humvees, for example, are made by the AM
General Company in South Bend, Indiana.
'The thing is—and this is something that not everyone knows—all
American-made field vehicles are fitted with a safety release
button, a button that allows the vehicle to be restarted in the
event that it is shut down. The theory is that no U.S. vehicle will
ever be used as a prison to hold U.S. per sonnel. Hence, only U.S.
military personnel are informed of the whereabouts of those safety
buttons. It's a trapdoor, known only to American soldiers.'
With that, Van Lewen smiled and headed off to join the others over
by the citadel. Race hurried after him.
He and Van Lewen joined the others at the citadel.
They arrived there to find Frank Nash interrogating one of the
disarmed German commandos—the man Race had heard identify himself
as Marc Graf, a lieutenant in the Fallschirmjiger.
'So are you here for the idol too?' Nash demanded.
Graf shook his head.
“I do not know the details,' he said in English. 'I am only a
lieutenant, I do not have clearance to know the full extent of the
mission.'
He nodded with his chin at one of the other Germans, the
burly-looking man wearing jeans and a holster. 'I think it would be
better if you asked my associate here, Mr Karl Schroeder. Mr
Schroeder is a special agent with the Bundes Kriminal Amt. The
Bundeswehr is working in conjunction with the BKA on this
mission.'
'The BKA?' Nash said, perplexed.
Race knew what he was thinking.
The Bundes Kriminal Amt was the German equivalent of the FBI. Its
reputation was legendary. It was often said to be the finest
federal investigative bureau in the world. But still, it” was
essentially a police force, which was why Nash was confused. It had
no reason to be in Peru looking for an idol.
'What does the BKA want with a lost Incan idol?' he asked.
Schroeder paused a moment, as if he were contemplating just how
much he should reveal to Nash. And then he sighed—like it would
matter now after the previous night's slaughter.
'It is not what you think,' he said.
'What do you mean?'
'We do not want the idol to make a weapon,' Schroeder said simply.
'In fact, contrary to what you probably believe, my country does
not even possess a Supernova.'
'Then what do you want the idol for?'
'What we want it for is simple,' Schroeder said. 'We want to get it
before somebody else does.'
'Who?' Nash said.
'The same people who were responsible for the massacre of those
monks in the Pyrenees,' Schroeder said. 'The same people who were
responsible for the kidnap and murder of the academic Albert
Mueller after he published that article
about the meteor crater in Peru late last year.'
'So who are they?'
'A terrorist organisation who call themselves the Schutz Staffel
Totenkopfverbnde—the Death's Head Detachment of the SS. They are
named after the most brutal unit of Hitler's SS, the soldiers who
ran the Nazi concentration camps in
World War II. They call themselves the “Stormtroopers'.'
'The Stormtroopers?' Lauren said.
'They are an elite paramilitary force of expatriate Germans, based
in a heavily fortified Nazi retreat in Chile called Colonia
Alemania. They were formed at the end of the Second World War by an
ex-Auschwitz lieutenant named Odilo Ehrhardt.
'According to Auschwitz survivors, Ehrhardt was a psychopath-an ox
of a man who relished the sheer act of killing.
Apparently, Rudolph H6ss, the Commandant of Auschwitz, took a
liking to him, and during the latter years of the war groomed him
as his prot6g6. At twenty-two, Ehrhardt was elevated to the SS rank
of Obersturmfiihrer, or lieutenant. After that, if H6ss pointed at
you, a second later you would find
yourself looking down the barrel of Ehrhardt's P-38.'
Race swallowed.
Schroeder went on. 'According to our records, Ehrhardt would now be
seventy-five years of age. But within the Storm- trooper
organisation, his word is law. He goes by the supreme SS rank of
Oberstgruppenfidhrer, General.
'The Stormtroopers are a singularly repulsive organisation,'
Schroeder said. 'They advocate the forcible incarceration
and execution of all Negroes and Jews, the destruction of
democratic government worldwide and, most importantly, the
restoration of a Nazi government to the unified Germany and the
establishment of the Herrenvolk—the “master race”— as the ruling
elite on earth.'
“The restoration of a Nazi government in Germany? The establishment
of the master race as the ruling elite on earth?'
Copeland said in disbelief.
“Wait a second,' Race said. 'You're talking about Nazis. In the
nineties.”
'Yes,' Schroeder said. 'Nazis. Modern-day Nazis.'
Frank Nash said, 'Colonia Alemania has long been believed to be a
safe haven for former Nazi officers. Eisler stayed there for a
short time in the sixties. Eichmann, too.'
Schroeder nodded. 'Colonia Alemania consists of pas tures and lakes
and Bavarian-style houses, all of which are surrounded by barbed
wire fences and guard towers that are patrolled by armed guards and
Doberman Pinschers twenty-four hours a day.
'It was said that during the Pinochet regime, in exchange for
protection from the government, Ehrhardt allowed Colonia Alemania
to be used by the dictatorship as an unof ficial torture centre. It
was a place where people were sent to “disappear”. And with the
protection of the military r.egime, Ehrhardt and his Nazi colony
remained immune from search by foreign agencies like the
BKA.'
'All right, then,' Nash said, 'so how do they come into this
equation?'
'You see, Herr Nash, that is the problem,' Schroeder said.
'It is the Stormtroopers who have a Supernova.'
'The Stormtroopers have a Supernova?' Nash said flatly.
'Yes.'
'Jesus…“
'Herr Nash, please. You must understand. In twenty years of
counter-terrorist work, I have never encountered a group like the
Stormtroopers. It is well financed, well organised, strictly
hierarchical, and totally and utterly ruthless.
'It is made up of two types of person—soldiers and scientists. The
Stormtroopers recruit mainly experienced soldiers, often men who
have been dishonourably discharged from the former East German Army
or the Bundeswehr for their predilections for using excessive
force. Men like Hein- rich Anistaze, men trained in the arts of
terror, torture and assassination.'
'Anistaze is a Stormtrooper?” Nash said. 'I was under the
impression he was working for German intellig—'
'Not anymore,' Schroeder said bitterly. 'After the Eastern Bloc
collapsed, Anistaze was hired by the German government on a
contract basis only—to take care of certain “problems”. But it
appears our leash wasn't short enough.
'Anistaze is a mercenary, a killer for hire. It wasn't long before
someone offered him more than we were paying him, and he betrayed
two of his case officers and turned them over to the enemy.
'It came as no surprise to us when, not long after that incident,
his rather distinctive methods of persuasion started showing up in
Stormtrooper-related incidents.
Apparently, Anistaze's rise through the Stormtrooper ranks has been
swift. We believe he is now an Obergruppenfiihrer in their ranking
system. A lieutenant-general. Second only to Ehrhardt
himself.'
'Son of a bitch…'
'As for scientists,' Schroeder shrugged, 'the same principles
apply. The Stormtroopers lure many highly educated men and women
who are working on projects that are not seen as in keeping with
modem Germany's collective guilt.
'For example, when the Wall came down, certain East German
scientists developing NA grenades—grenades filled with nitric acid,
designed to inflict horrific injuries but not to kill their
victims—soon found themselves out of a job.
The Stormtroopers, on the other hand, are always on the lookout for
those kinds of people, and they are willing to pay handsomely for
their services.'
'How?' Copeland asked. 'How can they afford all this?'
“Doctor Copeland. The modem Nazi movement has never been short of
cash. In 1994, an illegal BKA trace of a suspected Nazi account in
a Swiss bank estimated the Stormtroopers' total cash reserves at
more than half a billion dollars—the proceeds of the sale of
priceless artefacts stolen during World War II.'
'Half a billion dollars,' Race breathed.
'Gentlemen,' Schroeder said, 'the Stormtroopers, they do
not hijack aeroplanes. They do not murder federal officials or blow
up federal buildings. They look for greater victories-victories
that will overthrow the entire world order.'
'And now you think they have a Supernova?' Nash said.
'Up until about three days ago, all we had were unprove- able
suspicions,' Schroeder said. 'But now we are certain of it. Six
months ago, BKA surveillance agents in Chile photographed a man
strolling around the grounds of Colonia Alemania with Odilo
Ehrhardt himself. He was later identified as Doctor Fritz Weber.
Herr Nash, I imagine that you would know who Doctor Weber
is.'
'Yes, but…' Nash paused, frowning. 'Fritz Weber was
a German scientist during the Second World War, nuclear
physicist, borderline genius, but also a borderline sociopath. He
was one of the first people to state that the creation of a
planet-destroying device was possible. In 1944, when he was only
thirty, he worked on the Nazis'
atomic bomb project. But before that, it was said that Weber worked
on the infamous Nazi torture experiments-they would put a man in
freezing water and monitor how long it took for him to die. But I
thought Weber was executed after the war…'
Schroeder nodded. 'He was. Doctor Fritz Weber stood trial at
Nuremberg for crimes against humanity in October 1945. He was found
guilty and sentenced to death. He was officially executed on 22
November 1945 at Karlsburg prison. Whether it was actually Weber
who was executed has been disputed for many years. There have been
numerous sightings of him over the decades by people who claim to
have been tortured by him—in Ireland, in Brazil, in Russia.'
Schroeder said seriously, 'We believe that the Soviets spirited
Weber out of Karlsburg the night before he was to be executed and
replaced him with an impostor. In return for saving his life, the
Soviets used Weber's considerable skills to advance their own
nuclear weapons program. But when the Soviet Union collapsed in
1991, and the BKA went looking for Weber, there was no sign of him
at all. He had disappeared off the face of the earth.'
'Only to turn up eight years later at the headquarters of a Nazi
terrorist organisation,' Nash added.
'Correct. So at that stage, we were thinking that the Nazis were
constructing a conventional nuclear device. But the Stormtroopers
raid that monastery in France after it was discovered to possess
the legendary Santiago Manuscript,'
Schroeder said. 'When one pieced together the murder of Albert
Mueller and his discovery of a meteorite crater in Peru and the
supposed tale in the Santiago Manuscript of an idol with rather
strange properties, suddenly our suspicions took on a whole new
reality. Maybe, under Weber's tutelage, the Stormtroopers were
doing more than just building a regular
nuclear bomb, maybe they had succeeded in creating a Supernova and
were now on the hunt for thyrium.
'And then, three days agothe same day as the raid on the French
monastery-our surveillance team in Chile picked up this.'
Schroeder pulled out a folded sheet of paper from his breast pocket
and handed it to Nash.
'It's a transcript of a telephone conversation that was made from a
cellular phone somewhere in Peru to the main laboratory at Colonia
Alemania three days ago,' Schroeder said.
Nash showed the German transcript to Race, who translated it
aloud.
VOICE 1: —-ase of operations has been established—-rest
of the—-wili be—-mne—-