Whitehall intercepted and decoded it. Dispatched by the German Foreign Secretary in 1917. Instructing his German Ambassador in Mexico City to approach the Mexicans about forming an alliance against the United States.”
“Exactly. To keep the Yanks out of Europe while the dreaded Hun polished us off?”
“Yes. The Kaiser believed the Americans would get so bogged down fighting a war on their southern border they’d leave us in the lurch. The Mexicans were leaping at the chance to recover Texas, Arizona, and California. Might have worked, too, but for the fact that we cut the Germans’ suboceanic cables and rerouted all their transmissions to—”
“Ambrose,” Hawke said, “the man you’re about to meet was somehow involved in a plot to blow up Heathrow. Herr Rudolf Zimmermann is also the former German ambassador to Brazil. C is a clever man. He’s read my report and now he’s sending us to interview someone who may possess vital information relevant to the region.”
“I still need more details before I interrogate this man.”
“I’m afraid details are incomplete.”
Congreve smiled. “I pray we make them less so.”
Hawke swung the Morgan into the car park. Twenty minutes later, the two men were standing at the dying man’s door.
A burly SIS type, an ill-concealed weapon bulging beneath his jacket, sat outside chatting up a pretty nurse.
The SIS man stood, opened the door, and waved them inside an ill-lit and ill-smelling room. It was also stifling. Someone had sealed the windows and pushed the thermostat to ninety. The bed was against the far wall, surrounded by more new technology devoted to keeping people around when by all rights they should be gone.
The patient was a sickish shade of gray and breathing rapid, shallow breaths. Tubes and electrodes ran from all parts of his being to the anti-death machinery. Hawke bent forward and peered at the fellow, bending the gooseneck light so that it shone on his face. He was clearly feverish and suffering chills beneath his blankets. There was something else, Hawke saw, lifting the covers back.
The man was covered with the beginnings of blood blisters. Identical to the same awful thing he’d seen on the man crashing through the jungle. One of the untouchables from the medical compound.
“He looks like death,” Hawke whispered, glad of his gloves and mask.
Zimmermann’s eyelids fluttered and he croaked something indecipherable. It was German all right, but not any German Hawke had ever heard before.
“It’s Hochdeutsch,” Ambrose said, as if that explained the matter. “Leavened by some strange continental accent. Must be his dementia speaking.”
Congreve leaned down close to the man’s face and spoke quietly. “Gruss Gott, Herr Zimmermann. Ich bin Dr. Franz Tobel. Wie geht es Ihnen?”
The pale face turned away and faced the wall.
After a minute or so of this, the man feebly slid his hand under his pillow and withdrew an envelope attached to a small package in gift wrapping of faded roses. His hoarse whisper was full of incomprehensible pleading as he handed these to Congreve.
“What’s he saying?” Hawke asked. “What’s he given you?”
“He says these are gifts for his wife in Manaus. A book, perhaps, and a farewell poem of some sort. He wants me to make absolutely sure she receives them.”
“One has to honor a deathbed wish,” Hawke said.
“Hmm,” Congreve allowed.
“I think I’ll bid you both auf wiedersehen,” Hawke said to Ambrose, taking the wrapped gift and letter. Hawke looked around as if searching for an escape hatch.
“Please don’t feel the need to stay. I think he’s mildly insane with fever, actually. You go. I’ll do the interrogation. Go to Reception and read a magazine. Or, that farewell letter if you really want to pry.”
“I do want to pry. It’s my metier, you know.”
Hawke turned and was out the door in an instant, his face flooded with relief at escaping the noxious oven.
Ambrose moved a chair into position beside the bed and sat down. He took the man’s skeletal hand and held it under the dim lamp, examining his skin and fingernails. After a few moments, he put the hand down and leaned in toward the face for closer inspection.
The mouth was conveniently agape. Congreve pulled the white linen handkerchief from his breast pocket, wrapped it round his fingers, and grasped the German’s tongue twixt thumb and forefinger, extracting it.
“Good lord,” he said, under his breath.
The tongue, in the small pool of light, was horribly furry and spotted white. Malarial, possibly something far more interesting. Hemorrhagic fever perhaps, although it was quite rare, and confined primarily thus far to West Africa.
“Listen to me, Herr Zimmermann,” Ambrose said to the man in flawless idiomatic German, “I perceive that you are dying. You seem to have some kind of parasitic infection. Viral, or, possibly microbial.”
“Poison,” Zimmermann croaked.
“I don’t think so. I think you caught something. Tell me, have you recently been traveling in the Amazon Basin, Ambassador Zimmermann?”
“Igapo,” the man managed to say. “The Black River. They—tried to kill me—they tried many times. I was thrown overboard. But, I am still here and—”
“Who tried to kill you, Ambassador?”
He closed his eyes and whispered in Spanish, “Las Medianoches.”
Ambrose had heard the name from Hawke.
“My wife…she’s in danger…”
“Mr. Ambassador, I want to hear your story. But I fear we haven’t a good deal of time.”
The man lay back upon the pillow and closed his eyes.
And then he began to speak softly but most volubly and Ambrose leaned in to listen, nodding his head periodically as a dead man’s tale came rolling off his discolored tongue.
While he sat there, he learned a few terrifying facts about a union of radical Islamists, guerillas, and narcoterrorists. About the size of their infrastructure, and the power of their influence in Latin politics. Their possible links to Castro and Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez.
If this man was to be believed, it seemed the whole of the southern hemisphere was about to blow up in the Americans’ faces. And, if Zimmermann’s information was correct, ground zero was going to be the Texas-Mexico borderline. It was frighteningly familiar. A third-party plot to use Mexico against the Americans. Just like 1917. Only this time it wasn’t Germans doing the plotting. It was Middle Eastern terrorists.
The German’s clawlike grip was surprisingly strong. Congreve looked down and saw the man’s head had come up off the pillow and was straining toward him, his watery eyes bulging.
“There is a man in the jungle,” he said, his voice raw. “He knows I’ve betrayed him once. You must stop him before he attacks again. Do you hear me?”
“Give us his name.”
“Muhammad. Muhammad Top.”
“Papa Top?”
“Ja.”
Congreve said, “Where will he attack next?”
“It is written.”
“I don’t have time for biblical references. Tell me where to find him.”
“It is written, I tell you! Written in…in—”
Zimmermann was gone.
18
LA SELVA NEGRA
