wires in Stern's hands. 'Deutschland!' he shrieked. 'Deutschland Uber
Alles! ' Stern swatted the skeletal arms aside, wrapped the two bare
wires together, and clenched them in his fist. He smiled sadly, then
closed his eyes.
Karami emptied his pistol as fast as his finger could pull the trigger,
but Hess's still-struggling body shielded Stern from the first bullets.
The old Nazi danced horribly in midair, and by the time a slug found
Stern it was too late.
In the blink of an eye, darkness turned to noon. Even with the nose
cone of the Leadet pointed away from the blast, the flash blinded
everyone inside. Diaz lost control of the aircraft. It pitched over
into a screaming, spinning dive, hurtling earthward at over five hundred
miles per hour.
In the cabin, people slammed into each other in the terror of
flashblindness. General Steyn screamed in pain.
Hauer half-fell past Burton into the cockpit. 'Straig] up!' he
screamed. 'Level out!'
The Lear's engines whined insanely as the plane plummeted earthward.
Hauer grabbed the Cuban's wounded shoulder and squeezed maniacafly-
'Level out, damn you!
The blast wave's coming! The blast wave!'
Somehow Diaz managed to pull out of the dive. He had almost succeeded
in stabilizing the Lear when the blast wave hit. The solid wall of
superheated air tossed the tiny jet like a wave throws a surfboard,
pitching it up and forward, then dropping it into a trough of dead air.
Hauer felt a sudden nausea, as if hydroplaning a car around a curve,
then just as suddenly the feeling passed. He heard Diaz cursing
ftiriously from the cockpit as he wrestled with the controls.
'is anyone hurt!' Hauer shouted. His vision was slowly returning'I
can't see!' someone moaned.
'Holy Mother of God,' General Steyn mumbled. 'He did it! Stern
actually did it!'
'I can't see anything!' someone cried. 'Help me!'
'The blindness will pass!' Dr. Sabri shouted from the floor.
'We were lucky! It could have been twice that bad!'
'The papers!' Gadi muttered, his voict cracking. 'The Spandau papers
are gone! Jonas is dead! Where is that German bitch?'
With Ilse now the object of all his rage and frustration, the Israeli
scrabbled blindly across the cabin floor in search of his rifle. Hauer
had finally had enough. When Gadi's hand closed around Ilse's ankle,
Hauer lifted the rifle from beneath the Israeli's sightless eyes and
struck him on the side of the head with its stock.
Gadi collapsed in a heap. Quickly Hauer collected every weapon he could
find-beginning with Burton's MP-5-and piled them all behind some pillows
at the back of the cabin. Then he took Hans's hand and led him over to
Ilse.
'It's all right,' he said. 'Just keep your eyes closed for a minute.'
Ilse's arms went around Hauer's neck as well as Hans's.
'We're alive,' she said softly. 'My God, we're alive.' She opened her
eyes. Tears of relief welled up in them and ran down her cheeks. A
smile started across her face; then she pulled up her hand and covered
her mouth. 'Stern,' she said haltingly. 'Herr Stern ...
he's dead.'
As Hauer held Hans and Ilse in his arms, he thought about that.
He suspected that the old Israeli would have called the trade more than
fair. The mystery of Rudolf Hess would probably remain 'unsolved'
forever@r at least until the British government opened its secret
vaults-but Stern had never cared much about that. What mattered was
that the State of Israel had received a new lease on life. A gift from
one of its youngest fathers, and eldest sons. EPILOGUE (WASHINGTON)-At
8:47 Pm. Eastern Standard Time last night, a National Weather Office
RORSAT a meteorological satellite recorded an intense flash and heat
bloom over the northeastern corner of the Republic of South Africa.
Weather Office analysts report that the event was consistent with data
resulting from a large underground nuclear blast. The Weather Office
recorded many such events over the Soviet Union during the 1960s, and
believes its opinion to be accurate.
Both the National Reconnaissance Office and the Pentagon have refused to
comment, but it is believed that this incident confirms the existence of
a secret nuclear weapons arsenal in South Africa. A similar event was
photographed over the Indian Ocean off the South African coast in 1984.
Weather Office analysts do not have the equipment required to measure
the release of radiation into the atmosphere, but they suggest that,
with the prevailing winds over the northern Transvaal yesterday, any
such radiation would likely have been blown out over the Indian Ocean.
Several international environmental groups have expressed outrage over
the test. National Weather Office analysts place the probable nuclear
test site less than 20 miles from the Kruger National Park, one of the
richest preserves for wildlife on the African continent. The
environmental organization Greenpeace intends to file complaints with
both the international Atomic Energy Agency and the United Nations, but
the activist group expects that 'little will be done.'
The White House has issued no statement on the event, and government
officials in Pretoria and Capetown have bluntly refused to grant
interviews, calling the charges alarmist and unfounded. A National
Weather Office analyst who refuses to be named gave this comment: 'Tell
the South Africans, 'Welcome to the Club.' (WEST BERLIN-API)-At 4:00
A.M. Central European Time yesterday, an elite counterteffor unit
consisting of GSG-9
commandos working in concert with the U.S. Army stormed a
Friedrichstrasse police station and cleared it of hostile elements.
U.S. Army Colonel Godfrey Rose, the American commander on the scene,
stated that a hostage situation had been going on for some time without
the knowledge of the press. The terrorists inside the station had not
demanded media coverage, Rose said, and it was felt that premature press
involvement 'could have impeded the rapid resolution of what was not a
critical, but rather an unpleasant situation.'
API has no further information on the terrorists who took over Abschnitt
53, but the West Berlin mayor's office has indicated that several West
