Burning Angels (15 page)

Uncle Joe shook his head, in vexation. ‘Those two SS Lieutenants
–
amateur
archaeologists and myth hunters
–
had been tasked to “prove” that the so-called Aryan master race had ruled the earth since time immemorial. Needless to say, their mission was an impossible one, but in the process of their work they had somehow stumbled upon the
Gottvirus
.

‘Blome was ordered to isolate and culture this mystery pathogen. This he did, and it proved utterly devastating. It was perfect; a God-given germ agent. The ultimate
Gottvirus
. He wrote about it in his journal: “It is as if this pathogen has not originated on this planet; or at least has come from a time of ancient prehistory, long before modern man walked the earth”.’

Uncle Joe steadied himself. ‘There were two challenges to unleashing the
Gottvirus
. One, the Nazis needed a cure: an inoculation that could be mass-produced to safeguard the German population. Two, they needed to alter the virus’s means of infection, from fluid-to-fluid contact to airborne means. It needed to act like the flu virus: one sneeze, and it would burn through a population in a matter of days.

‘Blome worked feverishly. His was a race against time. Fortunately for us, it was one that he lost. His lab was overrun by the Allies before he could either perfect a vaccine or re-engineer the virus’s method of infection. The
Gottvirus
was categorised
Kriegsentscheidend
,
the highest security classification ever assigned by the Nazis. At war’s end, SS General Hans Kammler was determined it would remain the Reich’s topmost secret.’

Uncle Joe braced himself against his walking stick; an old soldier coming to the end of a long tale. ‘That is where the story pretty much ends. Blome’s journal made it clear that he and Kammler had safeguarded the
Gottvirus
, which they began developing again in the late sixties. There is one final thing: in his journal, Blome repeated the same phrase over and over again.
Jedem das Seine
. Over and over he wrote:
Jedem das Seine
. . .
It is German for “everyone gets what they deserve”.’

He ran his eyes around the room. There was a look in them that Jaeger had rarely if ever seen before: fear.

27

‘Excellent work – the London job. I understand there was little left of anything. And not a trace as to who was responsible.’

Hank Kammler had addressed the remark to an absolute monster of a man who was seated on the bench beside him. Shaven-headed, with a goatee beard and a fearsome cut to his hunched shoulders, Steve Jones reeked of menace.

He and Kammler were in Washington’s West Potomac Park. All around, the cherry trees were in full bloom, but there was nothing remotely joyful about the look on the big man’s scarred features. Younger – maybe half Kammler’s sixty-three years – Jones had a stone-cold expression and the eyes of a dead man.

‘London?’ Jones snorted. ‘Could’ve done it with my eyes closed. So what’s next?’

As far as Kammler was concerned, Jones’s fearsome physicality and his killer instincts were useful, but he still doubted whether he should make him a truly trusted part of his team. He suspected Jones was the kind of man best kept in a steel cage and only brought out at a time of war . . . or to blow to pieces a London edit suite, which had been his last contract.

‘I’m curious. Why do you hate him so much?’

‘Who?’ Jones queried. ‘Jaeger?’

‘Yes. William Edward Jaeger. Why the all-consuming hatred?’

Jones leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. ‘’Cause I’m good at hating. That’s all.’

Kammler lifted his face, enjoying the feel of the warm spring sunshine on his skin. ‘I would still like to know why. It would help me bring you into my . . . innermost confidence.’

‘Put it this way,’ Jones replied darkly. ‘If you hadn’t ordered me to keep him alive, Jaeger would be dead by now. I’d have killed him when I ripped his wife and child away from him. You should have let me finish this when I had the chance.’

‘Perhaps. But I prefer to torture him for as long as possible.’ Kammler smiled. ‘Revenge, as they say, is a dish best served cold . . . And with his family in my hands, I have every means to deliver it. Slowly. Painfully. Oh so satisfyingly.’

The big man gave a cruel bark of a laugh. ‘Makes sense.’

‘So back to my question: why the all-consuming hatred?’

Jones turned his gaze on Kammler. It was like looking into the eyes of a man without a soul. ‘You really want to know?’

‘I do. It would be helpful.’ Kammler paused. ‘I have lost practically all confidence in my . . . Eastern European operators. They were occupied with business of mine on a small island off the coast of Cuba. A few weeks back Jaeger hit them hard. He and his team were three, my people thirty. You can understand why I’ve lost trust in them; why I may want to use you more.’

‘Amateurs.’

Kammler nodded. ‘My conclusion also. But the hatred for Jaeger. Why?’

The big man’s gaze turned inwards. ‘A few years back, I was on SAS selection. So too was an officer name of Captain William Jaeger of the Royal Marines. He saw me supplementing my supplies and took it upon himself to impose his misjudged morals on my personal business.

‘I was flying selection. No one could touch me. Then we came to the final test. Endurance. Sixty-four kilometres over piss-wet mountains. At the penultimate checkpoint I was pulled aside by the directing staff, stripped and searched. And I knew it was Jaeger who had dobbed me in.’

‘It doesn’t sound enough for a lifetime’s hatred,’ Kammler remarked. ‘What kind of supplies are we talking about?’

‘I was popping pills – the kind athletes use to up their speed and endurance. The SAS claims to encourage lateral thinking. To value a maverick, outside-the-box mindset. What a load of horseshit. If that wasn’t lateral thinking, I don’t know what is. They didn’t just bin me from selection. They reported me to my parent unit, which meant I got thrown out of the military for good.’

Kammler inclined his head. ‘You were caught using performance-enhancing drugs? And it was Jaeger who shopped you?’

‘For sure. He’s a snake.’ Jones paused. ‘Ever tried getting work when your record shows you’ve been thrown out of the army for doing drugs? Let me tell you something: I hate snakes, and Jaeger’s the most self-righteous and venomous of the lot.’

‘It’s fortunate then that we have found each other.’ Kammler ran his gaze eye along the ranks of cherry trees. ‘Mr Jones, I think I may have work for you. In Africa. On certain business I have under way there.’

‘Where in Africa? Generally I bloody hate the place.’

‘I run a game ranch in East Africa. Big game is my passion. The locals are slaughtering my wildlife at such a rate it is heartbreaking. The elephants in particular, for ivory. The rhinos too. Gram for gram, rhino horn is now more valuable than gold. I’m looking for a man to go out there and keep a careful eye on things.’

‘Careful ain’t my hallmark,’ Jones replied. He turned over his massive, gnarled hands, balling them into fists like cannon balls. ‘Using these is. Or better still, a blade, some plastic explosives and a Glock. Kill to live; live to kill.’

‘I’m sure there’ll be ample need for those where you’ll be going. I’m looking for a spy, an enforcer and very likely an assassin, all rolled into one. So what do you say?’

‘In that case – and the money being right – I’m on.’

Kammler stood. He didn’t offer Steve Jones his hand. He didn’t exactly like the man. After his father’s tales about the English from the war years, he was loath to put his trust in any Englishman. Hitler had wanted Britain to side with Germany during the war; to cut a deal once France had fallen and unite against the common enemy: Russia and communism. But the English – stubborn and wilful to the last – had refused.

Under Churchill’s blind, mulish leadership, they had refused to see sense; to understand that sooner or later, Russia was going to become the enemy of all free-thinking people. If it weren’t for the English – and their Scots and Welsh brethren – Hitler’s Reich would have triumphed, and the rest would be history.

Instead, some seven decades later, the world was awash with deviants and misfits: socialists, homosexuals, Jews, the disabled, Muslims and foreigners of all types. How Kammler despised them. How he hated them. Yet somehow these
Untermenschen
– sub-humans – had worked their way into the highest echelons of society.

And it was up to Kammler – and a few good men like him – to bring about an end to all this madness.

No, Hank Kammler would be reluctant to put his faith in any Englishman. But if he could use Jones, then use him he would – and on that level he decided to throw him an extra bone.

‘If all goes well, you may get to have a final crack at Jaeger. To see your thirst for revenge finally quenched.’

For the first time since they’d started talking, Steve Jones smiled, but there was no warmth in his eyes. ‘In that case, I’m your man. Bring it on.’

Kammler rose to leave. Jones held out a hand to stop him.

‘One question. Why do you hate him?’

Kammler frowned. ‘In my position, I get to ask the questions, Mr Jones.’

Jones wasn’t a man to scare easily. ‘I told you my reasons. I figure I deserve to hear yours.’

Kammler gave a thin smile. ‘If you must know, I hate Jaeger because his grandfather killed my father.’

28

They’d broken off the Falkenhagen briefing for food and rest. But Jaeger never had been one for a lot of sleep. The past six years he could count on the fingers of one hand the nights he had enjoyed a full, unbroken seven hours’ kip.

It had proved just as difficult to sleep now, for his mind was stuffed to bursting with all that Uncle Joe had told them.

They reconvened in the bunker, Peter Miles taking up the thread. ‘We now believe the 1967 outbreak in Marburg was Blome’s attempt to test the
Gottvirus
on monkeys. We think he had succeeded in making the virus airborne – hence the lab workers becoming infected – but in so doing he had vastly reduced its potency.

‘We watched Blome closely,’ Miles continued. ‘He had several collaborators – former Nazis who’d worked with him under the Führer. But after the Marburg outbreak, their cover was at risk of being blown. They needed somewhere remote to brew up their cocktails of death, somewhere they would never be found.

‘For a decade we lost track of them.’ Miles paused. ‘Then, in 1976, the world said hello to a new horror: Ebola. Ebola was the second of the
Filoviridae
. Like Marburg, it was said to be carried by monkeys and to have somehow jumped species, to humans. Like Marburg, it emerged in central Africa, near the Ebola River – hence its name.’

Miles’s eyes sought out Jaeger. They drilled into him. ‘To be certain of an agent’s potency, you have to test it on humans. We are not identical to primates. A pathogen that kills a monkey may have no effect on a human. We believe Ebola was a deliberate release by Blome, as a live human test. It proved to have a 90 per cent lethality. Nine out of ten of those infected died. This was deadly, but it still wasn’t the original
Gottvirus
. Clearly Blome and his team were getting close. We presumed they were working somewhere out of Africa, but it is a vast continent with many a wild and uncharted place.’ Miles spread his hands. ‘And that’s pretty much where the trail went cold.’

‘Why didn’t you question Kammler?’ Jaeger interjected. ‘Drag him into a place like this and find out what he knew.’

‘Two reasons. One, he’d attained a position of real power within the CIA, just as many former Nazis had in American military and intelligence circles. And two, your grandfather had no choice but to kill him. Kammler had learnt of his interest in the
Gottvirus
. The hunt was on. There was a fight to the death. Kammler lost, I’m glad to say.’

‘So that’s why they pursued my grandfather in turn?’ Jaeger pressed.

‘It is,’ Miles confirmed. ‘The official verdict was suicide, but we have always believed that Brigadier Ted Jaeger was killed by those loyal to Kammler.’

Jaeger nodded. ‘He’d never have taken his own life. He had far too much to live for.’

When Jaeger was still in his teens, his grandfather had been found dead in his vehicle, a hosepipe through the window. The verdict was that he’d gassed himself, due to the cumulative trauma of the war years. But few in the family had ever believed it.

‘When all seems lost, it often makes sense to follow the money,’ Miles continued. ‘We began to trace that trail, and one path did indeed lead us to Africa. Other than Nazism, former SS General Kammler claimed to have one major passion in life: wildlife conservation. At some stage he had purchased a massive private game ranch, using what we believe was money looted by the Nazis during the war.

‘After your grandfather killed General Kammler, his son, Hank Kammler, inherited that game ranch. We feared he was carrying on his father’s secret work there. For years we watched, monitoring the reserve for any sign of a hidden germ laboratory. We detected nothing. Nothing at all.’

Miles eyed his audience, his gaze coming to rest upon Irina Narov. ‘And then we heard about a lost Second World War plane lying in the Amazon. As soon as we learned of the type of aircraft, we knew this had to be one of the original Nazi Safe Haven flights. And so Ms Narov joined your Amazon team, in the hope that that warplane might reveal something – a clue to lead us to the
Gottvirus
.

‘It did indeed yield clues. But almost of more importance, your search flushed out the enemy; it forced them to show their hand. We suspect that the force that hunted you – the force that still hunts you – is under the command of Hank Kammler, SS General Kammler’s son. He is presently the deputy director of the CIA, and we fear he has inherited his father’s mission – to resurrect the
Gottvirus
.’

Miles paused. ‘That was our state of knowledge as of a few weeks ago. Since then, you have rescued Leticia Santos, who was being held by Kammler’s people, and in rescuing her you seized her captor’s computers.’