trained not to. They can drive, swim, run, shoot@' 'I don't care how
it's done, then,' Shaw flared. 'Just do it. What's your price?'
A satisfied smile touched the corners of Swallow's mouth.
She liked to see bureaucrats squirm. 'My price is protection from the
Israelis after Stern is dead.'
Christ!' Shaw exploded. 'We can't babysit you forever. You kill Stern
at your own risk.'
Swallow's eyes turned opaque. 'Don't play coy with me, little knight.
Your hands are bloody too. By lulling Stern I'm only doing what you
want done. You picked me because you lmew if he had to be, liquidated,
you could- blame his death on my vendetta.' She raised her chin
deflandy. 'If you try @ the Israelis will certainly get me, but not
before I kill you.' Shaw drew back unconsciously. 'I'll kill your SAS
man for you,' she went on, 'but you'll cover for me on Stern.
Otherwise-I might warn this Mr. Burton instead.'
'Condition accepted,' Shaw snapped. 'Now get out. All communication
from this point forward will be through cutouts. No further contact
between you and this office.'
Swallow made a mock curtsey and backed out of the room.
That witch should have been code-named Medusa, Shaw thought angrily. She
makes my b@ skin crawl. When he closed Swallow's file, his eyes fell on
the Hess dossier lying open beneath it. He sighed heavily. There lay
the dreaded file, like a modern Domesday Book, a lexicon of heroism and
treason, the highest and lowest expression of the English soul. And
looking at it, Shaw's anger anger that had been building for a very long
time-finally boiled to the surface. For if the truth were told,
he'would prefer to turn Swallow loose on the smug quislings and their
moribund broods who for decades had cowered behind the shield of his
service. He had no part in their crimes, or their guilt, and he felt no
pity for them or their 'honor.' But what of England?
He did have a stake in her honor. He had been only a child during the
war, but in those heady years after Hitler was crushed, and all the
years since, he had allowed himself to feel a part of the grand
legend-what one British historian called the 'Churchillian myth'-that in
the early desperate days of the war England, all alone, had stood
united, uncompromising, and unconquerable against the Nazis, and had
thus saved Western Civilization from the Hun and the Bolshevik.
But that, Shaw had learned to his eternal sadness, was not quite the
truth. Then the truth be damned! he thought bitterly. He understood
the protective urge of the aristocrats.
England had given the world so much; she deserved a little moral
charity. Part myth though Churchill's history might be, the craven
machinations of a few spineless lords (or, God forbid, a fool of a
prince) could not be allowed to tarnish it.
If a treacherous shadow dogged the House of Windsor, should it also
stain the legacies of Plantagenet and Tudor and Hanover? And what of
the good people in the war? The women who fought the fires in the
Blitz? The callow lads whose shattered Spitfires practically clogged
the Channel in 1940? The kids who crouched under the buzz bombs and the
V-2s? The martyred population of Coventry?
As he poured himself a large whiskey, Shaw recalled the famous quote
Churchill spoke after the Battle of Britain, but he twisted it to his
own secret knowledge: Never in the field of human conflict have so many
nearly lost so much because of so few. Shaw hated them! Hated them
all! Appeasers ...
knights without courage ... nobles without nobility. Because of them
good men had died, and more were soon to follow.
The man Swallow would kill tonight had but done his duty.
It was the familiar chorus of English history: the good men had died
while the scoundrels prospered. 'Treason doth never prosper, what's the
reason?' Shaw muttered, quoting the old epigram, 'For if it prosper,
none dare call it Treason.' Yet in the midst of his furious meditation,
Shaw felt a glimmer of satisfaction. Because if all his Machiavellian
stratagems failed and the temple came tumbling down around his ears, the
Judases would finally be unmasked, and the most heroic chapter in the
history of his noble ser, would be brought to light at last.
Shaw drained his Scotch and fell instantly asleep with his head on his
desk blotter.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
6.-05 A.M. ThO N8if8rMB#7 Cabin.- Near Wollsbarg, FRG Hermann the forger
was gone. After forty nerve-racking minutes under the gaze of Professor
Natterman's shotgun, the bearish Hamburger had gathered up his equipment
and scampered out of the cabin without a word. The professor sat in his
chair, contemplating the night's events as the dawn filtered through the
shattered cabin door. He had never felt so impotent in his life. His
lifelong friend had been murdered, the Spandau papers had been taken
from him, his granddaughter had been kidnapped, and he had been unable
to prevent any of it from happening.
And now the two men who proposed to stop the madness had refused his
help!
Cradling the Mannlicher under one arm, he picked up his book satchel and
walked out of the cabin without looking back. His suitcase lay in the
slushy rut where the Audi had been parked. In their haste Hans and
Hauer had not even taken the time to bring it into the cabin.
The shot-riddled Jaguar waited behind the trunk of the old plane tree.
Natterman walked over and looked inside to make sure the keys were still
in the ignition. Tossing his satchel into the passenger seat, he
retrieved his suitcase, then wriggled into the car and turned the key.
In spite of the damage, the engine roared responsively.
He left the Jaguar idling and clumped through the snow to the rear of
the cabin. In the shade of a tall cedar, a juryrigged crucifix marked
the shallow grave of Karl Riemeck.
With bowed head Natterman laid the shotgun against the cross and softly
spoke a few lines from Heine over his friend. Then he shuffled back to
the rumbling Jaguar, jammed it into first gear, and sped up the access
road.
A
The morning sun had already transformed the twisted Iz into a morass of
slush and mud that threw the speeding car from one bank to another as it
