Schroeder paused a moment, as if he were contemplating just how much he should reveal to Nash. And then he sighed—like it would matter now after the previous night's slaughter.
'It is not what you think,' he said.
'What do you mean?'
'We do not want the idol to make a weapon,' Schroeder said simply. 'In fact, contrary to what you probably believe, my country does not even possess a Supernova.'
'Then what do you want the idol for?'
'What we want it for is simple,' Schroeder said. 'We want to get it before somebody else does.'
'Who?' Nash said.
'The same people who were responsible for the massacre of those monks in the Pyrenees,' Schroeder said. 'The same people who were responsible for the kidnap and murder of the academic Albert Mueller after he published that article about the meteor crater in Peru late last year.'
'So who are they?'
'A terrorist organisation who call themselves the Schutz Staffel Totenkopfverbande—the Death's Head Detachment of the SS. They are named after the most brutal unit of Hitler's SS, the soldiers who ran the Nazi concentration camps in World War II. They call themselves the “Stormtroopers'.'
'The Stormtroopers?' Lauren said.
'They are an elite paramilitary force of expatriate Germans, based in a heavily fortified Nazi retreat in Chile called Colonia Alemania. They were formed at the end of the Second World War by an ex-Auschwitz lieutenant named Odilo Ehrhardt.
'According to Auschwitz survivors, Ehrhardt was a psychopath-an ox of a man who relished the sheer act of killing.
Apparently, Rudolph Hess, the Commandant of Auschwitz, took a liking to him, and during the latter years of the war groomed him as his protege. At twenty-two, Ehrhardt was elevated to the SS rank of Obersturmfuhrer, or lieutenant. After that, if Hess pointed at you, a second later you would find yourself looking down the barrel of Ehrhardt's P-38.'
Race swallowed.
Schroeder went on. 'According to our records, Ehrhardt would now be seventy-five years of age. But within the Storm- trooper organisation, his word is law. He goes by the supreme SS rank of Oberstgruppenfuhrer, General.
'The Stormtroopers are a singularly repulsive organisation,'
Schroeder said. 'They advocate the forcible incarceration and execution of all Negroes and Jews, the destruction of democratic government worldwide and, most importantly, the restoration of a Nazi government to the unified Germany and the establishment of the Herrenvolk—the “master race”— as the ruling elite on earth.'
“The restoration of a Nazi government in Germany? The establishment of the master race as the ruling elite on earth?'
Copeland said in disbelief.
“Wait a second,' Race said. 'You're talking about Nazis. In the nineties.”
'Yes,' Schroeder said. 'Nazis. Modern-day Nazis.'
Frank Nash said, 'Colonia Alemania has long been believed to be a safe haven for former Nazi officers. Eisler stayed there for a short time in the sixties. Eichmann, too.'
Schroeder nodded. 'Colonia Alemania consists of pastures and lakes and Bavarian-style houses, all of which are surrounded by barbed wire fences and guard towers that are patrolled by armed guards and Doberman Pinschers twenty-four hours a day.
'It was said that during the Pinochet regime, in exchange for protection from the government, Ehrhardt allowed Colonia Alemania to be used by the dictatorship as an unofficial torture centre. It was a place where people were sent to “disappear”. And with the protection of the military regime, Ehrhardt and his Nazi colony remained immune from search by foreign agencies like the BKA.'
'All right, then,' Nash said, 'so how do they come into this equation?'
'You see, Herr Nash, that is the problem,' Schroeder said.
'It is the Stormtroopers who have a Supernova.'
'The Stormtroopers have a Supernova?' Nash said flatly.
'Yes.'
'Jesus…“
'Herr Nash, please. You must understand. In twenty years of counter-terrorist work, I have never encountered a group like the Stormtroopers. It is well financed, well organised, strictly hierarchical, and totally and utterly ruthless.
'It is made up of two types of person—soldiers and scientists. The Stormtroopers recruit mainly experienced soldiers, often men who have been dishonourably discharged from the former East German Army or the Bundeswehr for their predilections for using excessive force. Men like Heinrich Anistaze, men trained in the arts of terror, torture and assassination.'
'Anistaze is a Stormtrooper?” Nash said. 'I was under the impression he was working for German intellig —'
'Not anymore,' Schroeder said bitterly. 'After the Eastern Bloc collapsed, Anistaze was hired by the German
