The Eagle's Covenant (13 page)

At that moment, Joanna stopped loving her dead husband. All feeling, all residue of love, any sadness at his death was washed away by a sense of revulsion and contempt. And she felt soiled. It did nothing to prevent Joanna feeling immensely sad though. She had loved Hansi and believed there could never be another man with those qualities that she found so endearing. How wrong she had been.

The remainder of the search through Hansi’s files became automatic; a robotic march through pages of transcript, columns, meaningless jargon. She seemed to have lost the will to carry on, but she felt there was nothing to lose now; she could no longer find anything that would hurt her.

Until she came across a list of names which appeared to represent some kind of inner council or committee. The names were alphabetically listed with a short profile alongside them.

Except one: the name of Breggie de Kok. It leapt off the screen at her. Attached to the name was the simple statement: “see file”.

Joanna found her interest had suddenly returned. She closed the file she was reading and began searching the file list until she saw the name, ‘Breggie’. She accessed the file. It opened with a personal profile.

Breggie de Kok. Born Johannesburg, South Africa, 1970. University of Witwatersrand. Left South Africa 1994 for England. Joined militant animal rights group in east England. On trial for murder of doctor. Not proven, returned to South Africa. Short stay, arrived Germany 1996.

First contact with Breggie, Christmas 1995, Cambridge (not the University). Recognised potential recruit. Cultivated strong friendship. Continued again when Breggie arrived in the Federal Republic. Despite marriage to Joanna, considered Breggie’s friendship and participation in Volkspartei work too valuable to lose. Established address at Koblenz.....

Joanna closed her eyes and shuddered. Here, virtually in her dead husband’s own hand, was an admission that Breggie de Kok was his mistress and had been probably as far back as Cambridge.

Cambridge! Joanna stiffened, sitting bolt upright in the chair. Cambridge. What was it that was significant? What was it that was leaping off the screen and shouting at her?

She kept saying the word Cambridge over and over again in her head. Joanna never knew a Breggie de Kok at Cambridge, so why should that period impinge on her now? Why should it strike a chord?

She pulled a large scribbling pad towards her and wrote:
Cambridge, Breggie de Kok. Why
?

She went back to the file and forced herself to continue reading through her dead husband’s perfidious and treasonous admissions.

It came to Joanna, not in a flash of sudden recall, but in a moment of tiredness. When she didn’t seem to be able to think, such was her state of mind and her fatigue. The moment she realised where she had seen Breggie de Kok.

Unwittingly she smiled and closed Hansi’s files down. She ejected his disc and inserted one of her own. One she had been looking through so many hours ago it seemed like a lifetime away. She went through her personal diary until she came to the period at Cambridge and the Christmas party. The first time she had been in the same room as Hansi.

The photograph came up on the screen. Her and Hansi laughing and posing for the camera. As with so many photographs of that kind, other people always appeared in the background. She enlarged the picture until it filled the screen.

Even allowing for a slight deterioration in quality, there was no mistaking those eyes; the same piercing eyes that had stared out at her from behind the ski mask. In the background, looking towards the camera was Breggie de Kok. Suddenly the emotion of it all was too much and she began to sob bitterly.

Joanna had finally identified the terrorist who had kidnapped her son.

Levi Eshkol sat on one side of a long table in a vacant room in the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset. Facing him was the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Kossof. There was nobody else in the room. Between them was the Covenant. Kossof had agreed to see Eshkol after receiving a message through an intermediary. The urgency in the message was implied rather than pronounced, but the Prime Minister knew Levi Eshkol would not waste precious time on non-urgent matters.

“Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read your brief, Levi,” the Prime Minister was saying. “I must say it’s an intriguing document. And this, I presume, is the Covenant?”

“In its entirety sir, all it needs is Manfred Schiller’s signature.”

“Then why did you bring it to Israel if Herr Schiller is in Germany?”

Eshkol shook his head. “He will not sign it until the kidnap of his grandson has been resolved. I couldn’t risk leaving it in Germany.”

Kossof was aware of events in Germany. “You think the people responsible for the kidnapping want the Covenant, and would kill to get it?”

“No question, sir.”

The Prime Minister closed his hands together. “Tell me, why should Schiller want to sign this now? Why didn’t he simply make out a will?”

Eshkol shrugged. “He has his reasons. I asked him that when he first contacted me. He told me old age is a weakness; it brings a sharp mind to a feeble end. He was afraid that he might not have the ability to oversee such a transfer of power, and that it would require strength.”

“But why us?” the Prime Minister asked. “After all; he is a German. He faced the War Crimes Commission at Nuremberg. Is it atonement?”

Eshkol shook his head. “Schiller was never a Nazi, but they made him extremely rich and very powerful. I got the impression from the conversations I have had with him that he does not want that power to fall into the hands of the Neo Nazis.”

Kossof frowned and shook his head slowly. “The
Volkspartei.
Sad bastards.” He brightened a little. “So, what legal challenge can be mounted to the Covenant?”

“None sir; the Covenant is secret. Only five men have seen the document in its entirety.” He pointed at the folders in front of the Prime Minister. “Once you have read it you will be the sixth person. But remember, Schiller will sign this document in the presence of lawyers. He will not be under any duress. He cannot be declared insane. And it is his creation.”

Kossof was trying hard not to get excited. It wasn’t in the nature of experienced politicians like him to show their hand in public and it was difficult to relax that position in private. But here was a gift from the gods and it was being bestowed upon the people of Israel. It was difficult not to show some emotion.

“Suppose Schiller changes his mind after the Covenant has been signed. Say, a year or two later?”

Eshkol had deliberately held something back, but now he was about to reveal the jewel in the Covenant’s crown.

“The legal position cannot be challenged. All the mechanisms have been put in place by the Covenant to complete the transfer across the globe. But there is another aspect to this. Schiller runs his empire, not just through Company Presidents and Corporate lawyers, but through a system of linked satellites. The satellites are owned by the Company and have all been put into orbit by the Schiller Aerospace Industry. They are activated by codes through two master satellites which, naturally, only Schiller and his immediate subordinates have access to.” Eshkol was warming to the subject; it made him feel quite good. “When the signing has been completed, Schiller will instruct the satellites to accept new codes. These will be encrypted codes which we will supply. The satellites will ask him for confirmation once he has put the new codes,
our
codes, in. The satellites will then automatically transfer control to the new codes. Once they are in, we will instruct the satellites to accept a new set of encrypted codes,
ours
, of which neither Schiller, nor his lawyers, will have any knowledge.”

He shuffled in his chair. “Now, all this has been agreed with Schiller’s cooperation. There will be no change of heart or mind. Once those new codes have been logged into the satellites, Israel will control the single biggest industrial and commercial empire, the world has ever seen. With our ability to scan the globe our potential will be almost limitless. We would be able to react favourably to the volatile financial markets, maintain armament production in less politically sensitive areas, handle a third of the globes raw materials and precious metals and, if it was in Israel’s interests, we could influence important decisions by foreign governments. We will be at liberty to intercept what might be considered as low grade, military traffic between most governments, including the Americans, although high grade traffic will not be too difficult to access using new, sophisticated technology. We will ‘see’ most of the communication links used by terrorists. We will have considerable power. We will, literally, become a super state.”

Kossof drew in a long, deep breath. The reality of Eshkol’s revelations was not lost on the Prime Minister. If he had just been told that this kind of power was being handed to an Arab state, he would have moved heaven and earth to prevent it. He would have risked an all-out war and all its consequences to stop it.

But how different it was that a country such as Israel, a country whose history was covered in its own blood, a country born out of violence, a country that wanted to live at peace and not at war with its Arab neighbours, should now be on the brink of such power.

The possibilities were endless and teased his mind like a temptress. If he stopped to contemplate the rights of such ownership, or if he consulted with his advisers on the morality of what was being offered, he would find objection. He would pit sanity against insanity, open the gates of Mammon and bring the Arabs into their midst baying like scavenging dogs. It would bring its own holocaust.

These thoughts had flashed through Kossof’s mind and brought him to the inevitable conclusion that he wanted the Covenant for Israel, but it would have to be a closely guarded secret, open to but a few of his most trustworthy colleagues.

“How long will it take to complete the signing?” He tapped the folders on the table in front of him.

Eshkol considered it for a few moments. “Probably a couple of hours. Schiller will read each page carefully with his lawyers before signing it. They won’t be too happy about him transferring complete control to us, but they will have to go along with it. They’ll all be getting a very handsome bonus anyway. So, with Schiller, his lawyers and our lawyers all reading each page.....” he turned his hands palm up. “It’ll be a lengthy session.”

“Where will the transfer take place?”

“At Schiller’s home in Germany or his company head office in Frankfurt. He has a central control room at each site, both identical. Each control room has a shift of satellite control officers working there when he is in residence.”

Kossof pushed his chair back and stood up. He stretched and rubbed the cheeks of his backside. Eshkol watched him walk the length of the room, deep in thought. He returned to the chair, sat down and ran his hand across the top of his head.

“You appreciate the position this puts me in?” Eshkol nodded. “Israel cannot be seen to be partner to something like this. It’s political dynamite.”

Eshkol had anticipated this reaction. Politically the Covenant was a hot potato; Israel could be accused of collusion, malpractice, obsessed with the idea of absolute power. In short, anything the world wished to throw at it.

“I do. But I am not asking your government to sanction the Covenant publicly.” He paused. “However, privately you might find there will be a great deal of support for it.”

Kossof smiled. “My colleagues would be falling over themselves.”

Eshkol laughed. “To get control, no doubt.”

The Prime Minister became serious. “Who will run such a huge corporation, Levi?”

“I’ve set up a private holding company,” Eshkol told him. “In my name.”

“You paid for that?” Kossof asked in surprise.

“Schiller.”

“I see. But you don’t intend holding on to control of the company, do you?”

Eshkol shook his head. “In time it will become the sole property of the Israeli Nation.”

“Administered by the Israeli Government.”

“It’s a wonderful opportunity, Prime Minister.”

Kossof’s expression became fixed. His eyes stared out at Eshkol without showing any sign that he was concentrating on anything in particular. It was vacant. Then he blinked several times and ran his hand over his balding head.

“I find myself between a rock and a hard place, Levi,” he said. “I am glad you’ve brought the Covenant here, but I wish you hadn’t. As prime minister, I want nothing to do with it, but as a citizen of Israel, I want it badly. However, seeing as you have presented me with a virtual
fait accompli
, I applaud and thank you for it.” He stood up. “But I want that document off Israeli soil the moment the German Police have found Manfred Schiller’s grandson.”     

*

Sergeant Tobias Kowalski of the Dade County’s Police Department, North-west Division in Miami, Florida wasn’t expecting a day any different to other days in the sunshine state – the usual spate of assault, theft and drug related crimes. Tourists losing their credit cards, passports, whereabouts and anything else they were capable of losing. So when he got a call from the dispatcher’s office, it pulled him up sharp.

“Got a call from Officers McNab and Gonzalez. Something pretty bizarre going down. Mac wants to talk to you. Should I patch him through?”

“Yeah, do that.”

The voice came through clearly on Kowalski speaker phone.

“Found a body, Sarge; out in the ‘glades.”

Kowalski shifted irritably in his chair. “So, why call me?”

“Well, we reckon this one’s gonna be a bit different ‘cos we found him hog tied like a roasting pig, sarge. Figure he was meant to be meat for the ‘gators, but we got to him first seems like.”

“Is he black?”

“No sir, he’s white. And he’s been drawing his pension some time, I reckon.”

“Where did you find him?”

“Like I said, in the ‘glades, ‘bout ten miles north-west.”

“Want me out there?”

“Reckon so. There’s something ‘bout this one that don’t figure right.”

Kowalski allowed himself a moment for a silent curse. Usually his officers dealt with homicides in customary fashion, calling the Homicide division and handballing it quickly to the detectives. A call like this often meant a great deal of extra paperwork which meant his officers spent more of their valuable time in the office instead of on the road.

“Where are you?”

The patrolman gave Kowalski the exact location and within five minutes the sergeant was motoring along the turnpike out of Miami.

The scene wasn’t pretty. Deep in the everglades where sawgrass grew over one metre high and mangrove roots clutched deep into the swamp, the body clung to the earth in a parody of prayer. The old man, whoever he was, had died in the kneeling position. His chin had sagged on to his chest, and from the marks on his naked body, he had been severely tortured before being shot in the back of the head.

“How come you found him out here?” Kowalski asked the obvious question because it wasn’t exactly the place to bring a patrol car.

The officer looked across the ‘hammock’, or islet, pointing with his clean shaven chin. “Had a call ‘bout a ‘still’. Someone’s bootlegging. Probably sold a cheap cut. One or two run maybe. Customer didn’t like it, reckon.”

Good hooch had to pass through the distilling process at least three times to make it nearly pure. ‘Four run’ was quality stuff. One or two run was dirty.

“We were over there. Saw the body.” He moved his arm in a loop. “Had to make a pretty big detour.”

“Did you call Homicide?”

“On their way.”

Kowalski looked at the body again. The poor wretch had been tied round his hands and feet. Whether he had been carried to his place of execution like that or not was for the detectives to decide. Not that it made much difference; the poor bastard had died in a very nasty way.

*

When Joanna woke, it was about twelve noon. Her trawl through Hansi’s files had been so traumatic that she had finally cried herself to sleep. Joanna had cried not because she was unhappy, because she was anyway, but for the way in which she had been misled and cheated. Her sense of values had always meant fair play and honesty in dealings with people who were very close to you. She felt now that she had been duped and used by a man who saw her as nothing more than a decorative bauble; a useful appendage to accompany his quest for power.

Joanna did not want to find satisfaction in Hansi’s death; no woman could bear a man’s child willingly and wish that upon him. But she discovered an uncomfortable sense of relief that he would no longer be around to impose his will upon so many unsuspecting people. It upset her so much that simple tears could not justify her reaction and she wanted to assuage her own guilt and loathing by making amends to Hansi’s ingenuous enemies. But that would have meant exposing Hansi’s fraud to his father, and she was afraid that such revelations would kill him.