hand on the Cuban's collar, saw the fear and anger in his eyes-then he
felt the wild impact. For the briefest instant the tracer beam had
sliced up and nicked Diaz in the side. One bullet plucked him off the
skid as deffly as the finger of God.
The chopper yawed wildly as Fidel sought to avoid the tracer beam.
'Set this whore down!' Burton cried. He fired a round through the
Plexiglas two inches from Fidel's head. The panicked Cuban shrieked in
ten-or. Leaning out of the side door, Burton saw Diaz lying in the mud
below, one arm raised in supplication.
Without any warning the chopper tilted ninety degrees and, whether by
Fidel's design or not, Burton tumbled out.
He caught himself on the skid and hung on with claws of desperation. He
felt the JetRanger start to rise. Fidel had made his decision: he was
clearing out. In a split second Burton made his own.
With a curse on his lips he let go of the skid and fell six meters to
the ground.
He landed badly, but the muddy earth cushioned his fall.
Above him, Fidel's chopper climbed rapidly, but not rapidly enough. Luhr
had finally got the hang of the Vulcan. The fiery stream of slugs
intersected the JetRanger amidships and nearly cut it in two before the
fuel tank_ blew. The chopper fireballed like its sister ship, blasting
wreckage all over the runway.
Burton threw himself over Diaz as the shrapnel tore the asphalt all
around them. Without waiting for any further fire from the Vulcan, he
took hold of the Cuban, heaved him over his shoulder like a sack and
started slogging toward the Wash. If that gunner's still watching the
fireball, he thought, we might just make it. But if he saw me jump,
he's sighting -in on us right now. Ten meters to the edge ... seven ...
ton sped up, leaned forward ...
He leaped.
The two men tumbled head over heels down the steep slope and skidded to
a stop at the edge of a raging flood.
Burton made sure Diaz wasn't about to be swept into the water, and then
he glanced around for a hiding place. The Cuban caught his sleeve and
pulled his face down close.
'Gracias, ' he coughed. 'Gracias, English.'
Burton looked down at the tough little Cuban. Diaz's camouflage shirt
was soaked with dark blood, but his lips and eyes showed the trace of a
smile. 'Don't thank me yet, lad,' the Englishman said quietly. 'It's
going to be a long bloody night.'
With the stealth that had carried him safely through four wars and
countless intelligence operations, Jonas Stern made his way back to the
bedroom he had briefly shared with Ilse.
His brain duummed wildly. He had to get back to that telephone.
He had scratched a mark deep in 'the library door with his broken fork
so that he could quickly find the secret room again. But would he get
another chapce? Horn's security chief would surely check the bedroom
soon. The Afrikaner would naturally assume that 'Professor Natterman'
had tried to escape with his granddaughter. And when he found Stern
waiting here, what would he think?
Would he believe that 'Natterman' had sat like a rabbit in an open cage
while his granddaughter risked her life to escape?
Stern had heard Horn's promise to spare Hans Apfel's life, but he
doubted if the old man's clemency would extend to Ilse's 'grandfather.'
To survive the next few minutes, Stern knew, he would have to find some
plausible reason for having stayed behind while Ilse fled. Boot heels
were already pounding up the hall when he remembered the Zinoviev
notebook. Snatching it from inside his shirt, he darted to the little
writing desk, mussed his hair, and opened the leatherbound volume at the
middle.
The boots stopped outside his door.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Stern did not look up when Smuts opened the door. He pored over the
thin black volume as if it were a lost book of the Bible. The Afrikaner
stood silent for some time, watching him.
'What are you doing, Professor?' he said finally.
'Reading,' Stern muttered.
'I can see that,' snapped Smuts. 'Where is your granddaughter?'
'I have no idea.'
'How did she get out of this room?'
Stern looked up at last. 'She picked the lock.'
'With what?'
'A fork from your dinner table, I believe.'
Smuts frowned. 'Why didn't you go with her?
Stern shrugged. 'She is young, I am old. With me along she would have
little chance of escape. Without me ... who knows?'
'She did not escape,' Smuts said, smirking.
Stern sighed and let a hand fall from the desk to his knee.
'Will you bring her back to me, please?'
'Impossible. She must pay for her insolence.'
Recalling Horn's promise of mercy'to Ilse, Stern suppressed a smile as
he brought a hand to his forehead. 'She's only a young girl who wanted
to find her husband. Where is the crime in that?'
'Herr Horn will decide,' Smuts answered stiffly. 'I think you're lying,
Professor. You tried to escape and failed, didn't you? You ran into
the shields.'
'You underrate my devotion to history, young man.' Stern laid a hand on
the Zinoviev notebook. 'This volume is a treasure-a lost fragment of
history. Already I've learned things my colleagues would trade a limb
for.'
Smuts shook his head slowly. 'You're past it, old man.
You can't see anything, can you?'
'I see that this book is far more valuable than the rubbish Hans found
at Spandau.'
'I'll tell you what that book is, Professor,' Smuts snarled.
'It's your bloody death sentence. Only one man has read that book and
remained alive, and you've already met him.'
Smuts reached for the doorknob. 'Enjoy it while you can,' he said, and
went out.
