The Apocalypse Watch (30 page)

“Has the Malasol arrived, monsieur?” he asked.

“The best caviar from Iranian waters,” replied the muscular man in the rugby shirt, flipping away a cigarette and staring at Kroeger.

“Is it really better than the Russian?” continued Gerhardt.

“Anything’s better than Russian.”

“Good. Then you know who I am.”

“No, I don’t know who you are, monsieur, and I do not care to know. Just get in the back with the rest of the fish, and I’ll take you to another who does know you.”

The ride to their destination was odious for Gerhardt, both in terms of the overpowering smell of iced fish and the fact that he was forced to sit on a hard-slatted bench while the tight-springed van raced over potholed roads that might have been the remnants of the Maginot line. Finally, after nearly thirty minutes, they stopped, and a harsh voice came over an unseen speaker.

“
Out
, monsieur. And please to remember, you never saw us, and we never saw you, and you never were carried in our truck.” The rear doors of the van opened mechanically. Kroeger grabbed his luggage, bent over so as not to hit his head on the roof, and squat-walked to his exit and fresh air. A youngish man in a dark suit, with close-cropped hair, studied him in silence as the van sped away, its tires screeching in a hasty retreat.

“What kind of transport was
this
?” exclaimed Gerhardt. “Do you know who I
am
?”

“Do you know who we are, Herr Kroeger? If so, your question is foolish. Our presence must be the most secret in France.”

“We’ll discuss that when I meet your superiors. Take me to them immediately!”

“There’s no one superior to me,
Herr Doktor
. I insisted on meeting you myself.”

“But you’re—you’re …”

“So young, sir?… Only the young can do what we do. Our reflexes are at the height of their powers, our bodies superbly trained. Old men like you would be disqualified during the first hour of indoctrination.”

“That said and agreed to,
you
should be disqualified within
two
hours for not carrying out your orders!”

“Our unit is the best. May I remind you that they killed one of the targets under the most hostile conditions—”

“Not the
right
one, you imbecile!”

“We’ll find the other. It’s merely a question of time.”

“There is no time! We must talk further; you’ve missed something. Let’s go to your headquarters.”

“
No
. We talk here. No one goes to our offices. We’ve made arrangements for you; the Hotel Lutetia, once the headquarters of the Gestapo. It has changed, but the memories
are in the walls. You will be comfortable,
Herr Doktor
.”

“We must talk
now
.”

“Then talk, Herr Kroeger. You will go no farther.”

“You’re insubordinate, young man. I am now the commandant of Vaclabruck until a replacement for Von Schnabe is named. You’ll take your orders from me.”

“I beg to differ,
Herr Doktor
. Since General von Schnabe’s removal, we’ve been instructed to take our orders solely from Bonn, from our leader in Bonn.”

“Who
is
?”

“If I knew, I would have been sworn to secrecy, but since I don’t, it doesn’t matter. Codes are used, and through them we recognize their absolute authority. All our assignments must be sanctioned by him, and only him.”

“This Harry Latham must be hunted down and killed. There’s not a moment to waste!”

“We understand that, Bonn made it clear.”

“Yet you stand there and say to me quite casually that it’s ‘merely a question of time’?”

“It wouldn’t help matters to shout,
mein Herr
. Time is measured in seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, and—”

“Stop it! This is a crisis and I demand that you accept the fact.”

“I do—we do, sir.”

“So what have you done, what are you doing? And where in hell are your two men? Have you heard from them?”

The young Blitzkrieger, his body rigid but his eyes flickering with insecurity, answered slowly, quietly. “As I explained to Catbird, Herr Kroeger, there are several possibilities. They escaped but both were wounded, how severely we don’t know. If their situations were hopeless, they would have done the honorable thing, as each of us has sworn to do, and taken themselves out with cyanide or gunshots to their heads.”

“You’re saying you haven’t heard from them.”

“Correct, sir. But we know they escaped in the car.”

“How do you know it?”

“It was in all the papers and on the news broadcasts. Also, we’ve learned that there is a massive search for them, a manhunt employing the police, the Sûreté, even the Deuxième Bureau. They’ve spread out everywhere: towns, villages, even the hills and the forests, questioning every doctor within two hours of Paris.”

“Then your conclusion is dual suicide, yet you said there were several possibilities. What others?”

“That is the strongest, sir, but it is conceivable that they are getting their strength back, minimally recuperating, out of reach of a telephone. As you are aware, we are trained like animals to succor our wounds out of sight until we are strong enough to make contact. We are all schooled in advanced aid to bodily punctures and the setting of broken bones.”

“That’s splendid. I’ll turn in my license and send my patients to you.”

“It’s not a joke,
mein Herr
, we are simply trained to survive.”

“Any other ‘possibilities’?”

“You’re asking if they were captured, no?”

“Yes.”

“We’d know it if they were. Our informers in the embassy would have picked it up, and the manhunt has been established beyond question. The French government has over a hundred personnel looking for our unit. We’ve watched them, heard them.”

“You’re persuasive. So what else? Where are you? Harry Latham must be found!”

“We believe we’re closing in, sir. Latham is under the protection of the Antinayous—”

“We
know
that!” Kroeger broke in angrily. “But knowing it means nothing if you don’t know where they are or where they’ve hidden him.”

“We may learn the whereabouts of their central headquarters within two hours,
mein Herr
.”

“
What?
 … Why didn’t you say that before?”

“Because I’d prefer to present you with an accomplished fact rather than speculation. I said ‘we may learn,’ we haven’t yet.”

“How?”

“Telephone contact with the Antinayous was made by the embassy’s security chief, whose phone, like the ambassador’s, is swept for intercepts. However, there’s a sealed log of the calls he’s made; our man thinks he can get a look at it and run a handheld photocopier down the list. Once we have the numbers, we can easily bribe someone in the telephone company to unearth the locations. From that point it is a process of elimination.”

“It sounds too simple. It’s my understanding that unpublished numbers are well guarded, God knows ours are. I doubt you can walk into the office of a telephone official and put money on his desk.”

“We won’t walk into any office. I used the word
unearth
and that’s exactly what I mean. We find a worker in the underground trunk lines, for that’s where the true locations are in the computers. They have to be, for installations and repairs.”

“You seem to know your business, Herr—what is your name?”

“I have no name, none of us does. I am Number Zero One, Paris. Come, I’ve arranged transportation for you and we’ll stay in constant touch, perhaps within minutes after you reach your hotel.”

Sitting at the desk in his rooms at the Antinayous’ Maison Rouge, Drew picked up the telephone and dialed the embassy, asking the switchboard to connect him with Mrs. de Vries in Documents and Research.

“This is Harry Latham,” said Drew in response to Karin’s greeting. “Can you talk?”

“Yes, monsieur, there is no one here, but first I have instructions for you. The ambassador summoned me and asked me to deliver them to you when you next called.”

“Go on,” said Latham, now his dead brother Harry, squinting, and listening carefully. Karin was about to send him a message. He picked up a pencil as she spoke.

“You are to make contact with our courier number sixteen at the top of the funicular in Sacré-Coeur at nine-thirty
this evening. He has communiqués from Washington for you.… You understand,
non
?”

“I understand, yes,” replied Drew, knowing that the French
non
, rather than the usual
n’est-ce pas
, meant he was to disregard the information. Witkowski was setting another trap, based on the knowledge that Karin’s phone was tapped. “Anything else?”

“Yes. You were scheduled to meet your brother Drew’s friend from London’s Cons-Op office at the fountains in the Bois de Boulogne at eight forty-five, correct?”

“Yes, it was cleared.”

“It’s canceled, monsieur. It interferes with the Sacré-Coeur contact.”

“Can you reach him and call it off?”

“We have,
oui
—yes. We’ll arrange another meeting.”

“Please do. He can tell me things I want to know about Drew’s last weeks, especially the details of the Jodelle business.… Is that all?”

“For now, yes. Did you have something?”

“Yes. When can I come back to the embassy?”

“We’ll let you know. We’re convinced it’s being watched around the clock.”

“I don’t like this hiding out. It’s damned inconvenient.”

“You can always return to Washington, you know that.”

“No! This is where
Drew
was killed, this is where his killers are. I’m staying here until we find them.”

“Very well. You’ll call tomorrow?”

“Yes, I want more papers from my brother’s files. Everything he’s got on that actor.”

“Au revoir, monsieur.”

“Bye.” Latham hung up the phone and studied the brief notes he had made, brief because he quickly understood the method of Karin’s concealed instructions. The Sacré-Coeur was out and the fountains at the Bois de Boulogne in; the French
non
eliminated the first, the double
oui
-yes confirmed the second. The rest was merely “fill” to emphasize “Harry” Latham’s insistence on remaining in Paris. Whom he was to meet at the Bois, he had no way of
knowing, but he would obviously recognize whoever it was, or if he did not, someone would reach him.

At the end of his shift, the Brotherhood’s informer in Communications at the embassy had walked out into the Gabriel, waited, then suddenly crossed the avenue, brushing up against a man on a motorcycle. He slipped the cartridge to the cyclist and the motorcycle shot away down the street, weaving between the traffic. Twenty-six minutes later, at precisely 4:37 in the afternoon, the tape was delivered to the assassins’ hidden headquarters at the Avignon Warehouses.

Holding a 5-inch-by-6-inch photograph of Alexander Lassiter/Harry Latham, the Blitzkrieger’s Zero One, Paris, for a third time listened to the tape recording of the telephone conversation between Latham and the De Vries woman.

“It would seem our search has ended,” said Zero One, standing above the table and reaching down to shut off the cassette player. “Who will go to the Sacré-Coeur?” he asked, addressing his colleagues around the conference table.

As one, they all raised their hands.

“Four of you will be sufficient, more could be obvious,” continued the leader. “Split up and carry the photograph with you, remembering that Latham will no doubt disguise his appearance.”

“What can he do?” asked the Blitzkrieger nearest Zero One. “Put on a mustache and wear a beard? We know his height, the nature of his build, and his facial structure. Ultimately, he will reach a courier who will be waiting for him, a stationary man or woman we’ll certainly spot within the contact area.”

“Don’t be so optimistic, Zero Six,” said the young leader. “Bear in mind that Harry Latham is an experienced deep-cover agent. As we have tricks, so does he. And for God’s sake, remember the kill must be made through the head, a coup de grâce shattering the left side of his skull. Don’t ask me why, just don’t forget it.”

“If you have such serious doubts about us,” interjected
an older Blitzkrieger at the far end of the table, his tone of voice in the zone of implied hostility, “why don’t you go yourself?”

“Instructions from Bonn,” answered Zero One coolly. “I’m to remain here for orders that will arrive at ten o’clock. Would any of you care to take my place in the event we have not found Harry Latham and must deliver the news?”

“
Non
.” “
Nein
.” “Of course not.” These were the responses of those around the table, some chuckling, others grim.

“However, I will cover the Bois de Boulogne.”

“Why?” asked Zero Seven. “It’s canceled; you heard the tape.”

“Again, I ask
you
, would any of you
not
care to cover the Boulogne in the event that an emphatic negative was the signal for a positive, or that plans were changed again?”

“You have a point,” said Zero Seven.

“Probably a useless one,” conceded the youthful leader. “Nevertheless, it will take me no more than fifteen or twenty minutes, then I’ll drive back and be here by ten o’clock. If I were in Sacré-Coeur, I’d never make it on time.”

The unit for the Sacré-Coeur selected, Zero One, Paris, returned to his office and sat down at his desk. He was a relieved man, for his mythical instructions from Bonn had not been questioned, nor had anyone insisted that, as their superior, he should lead the assault on Harry Latham and let someone else take the call from Bonn. In truth, he wanted no part of the kill for the simple reason that it might not be successful. Any number of unforeseen contingencies could prevent it, and Zero One, Paris, could not afford another “miss” on his record, like the driver who had been no match for the late Drew Latham, or the unit sent to take out two Americans, which had missed the vital one and then disappeared, or their female comrade who had not survived Monte Carlo. Should Alexander Lassiter/Harry Latham be properly executed, shattered skull included, he could take the credit, for he had orchestrated
the assault. If the trap failed, he wasn’t there; others were to be blamed.