“Stay where you are, Bob,” McGarvey called urgently, and Schade stopped moving. It was impossible to tell from here exactly how badly he was hurt, but McGarvey figured he couldn’t be in very good shape. By rights with two hits he should have been dead.
“Come out into the open, Mr. McGarvey, or I will kill your friend,” someone said from above.
“Ernst Spranger?” McGarvey called, but he didn’t think it was. The accent was German but the voice was different.
“Do as I say or I shall kill him.”
“In that case I would destroy your helicopter,” McGarvey shouted.
“You might damage the machine with a pistol, but repairs could be made,” the East German said. He had moved too. Now his voice came from directly overhead.
“You would be delayed.”
“That is of no consequence, Mr. McGarvey. You would be dead, and we would leave.”
“You’re forgetting something,” McGarvey said, leaning out away from the wall in an effort to catch a glimpse of the man above. But he was able only to see a section of open archway.
“It’s you who are forgetting something. There is only you against all of us. In addition we have your wife and daughter.”
McGarvey said nothing. Instead he hurried back to the right to a spot just behind Schade. The younger man lay on his side, his gun hand stretched out ahead of him, his left hand clutched to his chest. He seemed to be saying something, but McGarvey couldn’t make it out.
“Step out into the open, Mr. McGarvey, and I promise that your wife and daughter will not be harmed. We will have no further need of them once we have you.”
A door on the far side of the courtyard opened with a crash and a man carrying an assault rifle burst outside.
“Peter,” the man shouted at the same instant he spotted Schade, who had started to rise up on one elbow.
“Don’t,” McGarvey shouted.
Schade had pulled something from inside his jumpsuit and was tossing it toward the helicopter with his left hand when the man above opened fire and the man across the courtyard started to fall back.
In the last possible instant, realizing what was about to happen, McGarvey threw himself against the church wall, burying his face in the dirt and covering his head with his arms.
A tremendous thunderclap burst in the courtyard, and McGarvey was lifted off the ground two feet by the force of the explosion, the night sky lighting up as if a thousand suns had suddenly switched on.
Chapter 57
Spranger managed to fall back inside the corridor as the helicopter exploded. Nevertheless a spray of burning fuel burst through the open door, scorching his left arm to the shoulder, the sleeve of his nylon jumpsuit instantly melting, his skin turning an angry red and even black in big patches.
He howled in pure, blinding agony, the searing, white-hot pain rebounding inside his head, threatening to blow off the top of his skull.
Through the momentary haze that clouded his vision, making rational thought all but impossible, he focused on Liese and the others who’d followed him up here. They were bunched in a knot, staring in horrified fascination at him, waiting for him to collapse.
But he wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of seeing that their general was human.
He couldn’t allow it, because if he did they would no longer follow him, especially not where he was leading them and the others when they got off this island.
For a flat-footed instant, standing in the church corridor, the heat from the burning helicopter making sweat pop out all over his body, he found himself wondering if he wasn’t making a colossal mistake. He’d been married once, and had one child. But that seemed like another lifetime. They had fled to the West, leaving him to face his suspicious superiors and his contemptuous colleagues.
He had no explanation, he’d told them. But even if they had crossed to the West to trade secrets for their asylum there was nothing to worry about.
Arbeit macht frei.
Work makes one free. It had been the inscription over the gates of the concentration camp at Auschwitz, and it had become the unofficial motto of the STASI.
Thirty-six hours after his wife and child had crossed the border into West Berlin, they were dead. It was winter, and the chimney of the heater in the apartment where they’d been temporarily housed by the West German authorities had backed up, deadly carbon monoxide quickly filling the rooms.
Spranger had never looked back. Never, until now, for just this moment.
He shook himself out of it, conscious that the lapse had lasted only an instant, and must have gone unnoticed by the others under the extreme circumstances. Now, because of the pain, his awareness had become almost preternatural.
“My God, Ernst, is it the helicopter?” Liese cried.
“Yes, it’s gone,” Spranger croaked, his voice ragged. He struggled to control himself.
“But it doesn’t matter. McGarvey is dead.”
“Ernst, are you there?” Durenmatt’s voice came from the walkie-talkie slung over Spranger’s unburned shoulder.
With difficulty he pulled it around and keyed the talk button. “We’re in the dormitory corridor across from you.” He pushed the transmit button.
“… thought you were dead. The fire… it’s everywhere. Did you see him?”
Spranger’s gaze turned to his rifle which he had dropped when he’d been burned. Its stock was scorched. “What are you talking about, Peter? Where are you?”
“You don’t know?” Diirenmatt screamed. “It’s McGarvey, he brought someone with him.
He brought help.”
“Yes, I know this,” Spranger radioed, although he did not, although there had been a shout from across the courtyard, and not from the one who’d tossed the grenade.
Two of them out there? The one by the helicopter had surely been incinerated in the explosion. But the other…?
“I’m on my way,” Diirenmatt shouted breathlessly.
“We’ll meet you in front. We’ll have to slip out through Thira.”
“… stupid bastard! It’s McGarvey! He’s headed your way through the church!”
Down on the dock Bruno Lessing didn’t know what to do. He’d heard the explosion, of course, and had monitored the transmissions between Spranger and Diirenmatt, so he knew that escape by air would be impossible. But he was also convinced that someone or something was coming at them from the sea, although he couldn’t make out a thing from where he huddled out of the rain just within the rock alcove.
He had seen something on the water, maybe a thousand yards out, more or less, and he had fired at it.
He played with the Kalashnikov’s safety catch, switching it on and then off, the metallic snick barely registering in his ears.
But then what had looked to him like a small boat and several men had simply disappeared as if it had never existed. After Spranger had left, Lessing had searched the sea again with the starlight scope with no results.
“But it was there,” he muttered to himself, checking his watch again. The ten minutes were up. It was time to go, only now there was nowhere for them to go to. The chopper was no longer an option.
Spranger would get them out of this. He always had in the past, and this time would be no different. The man was nothing short of brilliant. Even though none of them had been able to figure out the real reason why they’d grabbed the two women or had brought them here, they were all equally convinced that the general knew what he was doing. With the Egk woman snapping at his heels, the man had no other choice.
Lessing grinned nervously thinking about her, and the nape of his neck prickled.
