sThe Quiet Wart (8 page)

‘That's great. Can I talk to her?'

‘She's in bed, sorry. But I'll tell her you congratulated her.'

‘Anna said she might be able to help with the Home Office.' Sean felt his stomach tighten even mentioning her name.

The line went silent briefly. ‘Really? Why? She doesn't know us,' Liz said.

‘I know, but she's an MEP and may have some influence,' he said, surprised by Liz's response.

‘I don't like her, Sean. There's something about her.'

‘She's okay. She's just trying to help,' Sean said.

‘We'll see. Be careful around her,' Liz warned.

Sean shivered.
Could she know? Did she sense something?

‘Terry finally called at 5:30 a.m. He followed the car to a house on the outskirts of Leipzig. I've forwarded the photos to both Liz and Anna, to see if they know who the passenger is,' Clive said, before slurping on a coffee.

‘It's seven now, only six in London. Liz won't be up yet. Have you heard from Anna?' Sean asked.

‘She's joining us for breakfast. She'll be here any minute.'

When Anna entered the breakfast room just a few minutes later, dressed in a dark blue pinstriped suit and carrying a black designer briefcase, Sean noticed again how her image changed: one minute the vulnerable shy girl; next the temptress; then the formidable business woman, hard and unapproachable. After pouring herself a coffee and grabbing a croissant, she joined them at the table.

‘Do you know the person in the photos I sent you?' Clive asked.

‘Yes, unfortunately I do,' she said. ‘It's Ulrich Wagner, one of the less satisfying by-products of German re-unification. He owns steel mills across the old East Germany, and is reputed to be one of Germany's richest men.' She paused to take a sip of coffee. ‘Mr Wagner holds some very unhealthy political ideas.'

‘Such as?' Sean asked.

Considering her response before speaking, Anna placed her coffee back on the table and lowered her eyes. ‘You have to understand that East Germans were trapped in time following the Second World War, unable to communicate with the outside world and fed a diet of communist propaganda. Many of them have very outdated ideas about Europe and the wider world.'

Sensing that Anna was holding back, giving the politician's answer rather than the direct response, Sean pressed further. ‘And what are his views?' he said quickly.

Following another sip of coffee, Anna lifted her head, looking straight at Sean. ‘He believes that 1945 was only the end of the second battle of the war for Europe; 1918 being the end of the first battle.'

‘Jesus Christ!' Clive exclaimed.

‘So he thinks there'll be another war in Europe?' Sean asked.

‘Not exactly. He believes that we're still at war and have been since 1914. Not an armed war anymore, but a quiet war: one which he believes Germany will ultimately win and take its rightful place as the leader of Europe.'

‘Is he a Nazi? Why hasn't he been arrested?' Clive asked.

‘Yes, he would also be considered a Nazi, but we don't arrest people for their opinions in Germany,' Anna said.

‘So he doesn't condone violence then?' Sean queried.

‘On the contrary, he openly advocates it. But he believes that Germany has been made too weak by the treaties signed at the end of both World Wars, so it's incapable of mounting a third military attempt at domination. He does, however, think that Germany has been winning the ceasefire, and that it can win the war by using its financial and political influence.'

‘Why would an EU Commissioner agree to meet somebody like that?' Sean asked.

‘I don't know, but I understand why it was done so secretively. If any EU official was seen in the presence of Wagner, it would be political and career suicide.'

‘Do you think the people that Blom met with earlier could be part of some conspiracy involving Wagner?' Clive asked.

‘No, in the case of Ten Harkel and Piquering. Wagner would consider France an enemy and the Netherlands as neutral at best. Only Glas, as an Austro-Hungarian, would be thought of as an ally.'

‘Austro-Hungarian?' Sean questioned. ‘Isn't that a bit outdated?'

‘People like Wagner don't use the same map of Europe that we do. In his mind, Germany stretches all the way east to the Russian border, and Austria-Hungary forms virtually all of its southern border, stretching south to Montenegro and east to Romania. France is always the enemy, and the Netherlands are sometimes neutral, but never an ally.'

‘You said people like Wagner: does that mean there're more of them?' Sean asked.

Anna smirked. ‘Yes, a lot of people in Germany and elsewhere in Europe believe the same, particularly in the East. But Wagner stands out because he's wealthy and powerful.'

Glancing at her watch, Anna made her apologies and left for work, followed closely by Phil, while Sean and Clive continued their discussion. They agreed that Terry should stay on Wagner for a little while and watch him from a distance.

*

They were updated on Wagner's movement by Terry and received various snippets of background from Liz during the day, but nothing out of the ordinary. Wagner had gone to work in an office block in central Leipzig and hadn't left, other than to have lunch, which he did alone. Liz had uncovered lots of newspaper clippings, but all were in German and she hadn't yet had them translated. Though some of the photos showing him wearing a military style uniform, similar to the SS uniforms of the Third Reich, were unnerving.

At 7 p.m., Sean collected Anna from her apartment to join him and Clive for dinner. When he arrived she was dressed in jeans and knee-high boots, with a leather jacket tied at the waist, again showing her chameleon-like ability to change her image. Now she looked young and trendy, not the efficient business woman of the morning. Sean was beginning to wonder just how many outward personalities Anna could portray.

When they stepped out to cross the road to Place Jourdan, she linked arms with him and smiled at him affectionately. Again, guilt shot through his veins, and he was glad they were meeting Clive.
Have I got anything to feel guilty about though?
he thought. The only thing that he was guilty of was not telling Liz about Anna's advances.
But our relationship is just so brittle at the moment.
Sean feared that a revelation like that could be the straw that broke the camel's back.

It was a warm night and they meandered slowly across the road, catching up on the events of the day. Then, just as they crossed the central line, Sean felt a sudden powerful thump in his back, forcing him forward and onto the ground. Almost immediately, Anna fell beside him with a thud, as she landed.

At the same time, right behind him, Sean heard a crunching bang and looked over his shoulder. The sight of Phil's body being thrown into the air, landing headfirst some twenty metres further along the road, churned his stomach.

With screeching tyres, the vehicle that had hit Phil stopped some fifty metres further on, then the white reversing lights came on as it accelerated backwards towards them. Scrambling to his feet and pulling Anna up, Sean wondered how he hadn't heard the car approaching, then he suddenly realised that he still couldn't hear it: it was a Prius, running silently on electric power. He ran towards Phil to pull him from the road, but he was too late, the car got there first and ran straight over him, crushing his chest as the tyres bounced over his ribcage.

‘Run!' Sean shouted to Anna as he dived out of the way and the car continued in her direction.

Responding quickly, Anna started to run awkwardly in the opposite direction.
Clearly she doesn't run often,
Sean thought.

The car gained ground quickly as she ran clumsily away. With less than twenty metres to go to the corner of Place Jourdan, the car mounted the kerb taking out a post box. Seeing the collision just behind her, Anna ran onto the road, but the car followed, just metres behind her. Then, just as it was about to hit her, Anna dived athletically to one side and onto the verge of the park, rolling herself into the grass.

As the Prius stopped, Clive came sprinting around the corner and ran to Anna, just as Sean reached her. Seeing that she was okay, Clive jumped forward, running towards the Prius. When he was just five metres away from it, it shot away silently, turning left at the end of the park.

Leaving Anna trembling with Clive, Sean sprinted back in the direction of Phil. When he reached him, his body was twisted into an awkward position, with his spine bent at a ninety-degree angle below his rib cage. Sean dropped onto his knees and carefully lifted his blood-covered head. His lifeless eyes stared back at Sean without any recognition.

The remainder of the previous evening had been spent with the Belgian police. Sean had stopped short of implicating Blom or Wagner, because he knew there was just no evidence and, upon Clive's advice, Anna had done the same.

‘They were definitely after you,' Sean said to Anna, who was sitting in his hotel room wrapped in a blanket, still shaken from the experience. ‘If they'd been after me they'd have stopped when they passed me.'

‘Have you called in sick?' Clive asked.

‘Yes. I said I'll be back in a week or so,' she replied.

Reluctantly, Sean agreed that Anna should go to London and stay with Liz for a while. He was yet to tell Liz, which wouldn't be easy following her comments about Anna.

‘We need to take a good look at Ten Harkel. He was the only person that Anna spoke to yesterday beyond her normal activities,' Clive said.

‘Are you okay to carry on after what happened to Phil?' Sean asked.

‘I won't do anything
but
carry on, until I find the bastards that killed him,' Clive replied.

*

‘It'll only be for a week or so,' Sean said to Liz on the phone.

‘I don't care. I don't like her. There's something fake about her,' Liz replied.

Knots formed in Sean's stomach. He hated to put Liz in such an awkward position, especially given their precarious situation, but he felt obliged. ‘She's a politician. They're all fakes,' Sean said. ‘Please. She's scared and has nowhere else to go.'

A loud sigh came from Liz. ‘She's got one week and then she's out,' she said, hanging up.

‘Thanks,' Sean said into the dead line.

‘Terry's just called. Wagner's on the move and he thinks something's going on. There were a lot of people at his house today before he left,' Clive said.

‘What?' Sean said, snapping quickly out of the daydream he'd been in since the call with Liz.

‘He thinks we should get over there?'

‘What? Where?' Sean said shaking his head.

‘Prague. Wagner's just crossed into the Czech Republic, on the road to Prague. He's not sure that it's the final destination, but if we get there, John can collect us and take us wherever.'

*

The short flight to Prague landed at 5 p.m. When John collected Sean and Clive at the airport, in the same blue Audi they'd followed Wagner in, he looked tired and unkempt. ‘I've not been able to shower yet, smart arse,' he said, as Clive intimated that he stank.

‘They're out at an old steel mill about half an hour away. Terry's still there. We should pick him up on the radio when we get close. There's a vantage point on a hill overlooking the yard and there's a lot of activity down there,' John said.

‘What kind of activity?' Sean asked.

‘Better you see it for yourself; it looks like they're setting up for something big,' John replied.

After about twenty minutes driving through the rolling hills outside Prague, John pulled the car over onto a dirt track, which led up the side of a densely wooded hill. ‘This is as close as we can get. The other side's crawling with guards. From the top we can get a good view.'

‘Terry,' Clive said over the concealed radio.

‘Welcome to the 1930s,' Terry replied.

‘What?' Clive said.

‘You'll see.'

Intrigued by Terry's comment, they ran quickly up the footpath to the top of the hill and linked up with him, as he lay in a prone position, peering through a bush. The activity below drew Sean's gaze and he quickly looked down, through the trees into the huge factory yard. The area was teeming with people, scurrying around, setting out staging and equipment. Then a lone figure began to test a PA system from the stage.

‘Test ein, zwei, drei,'
the voice sounded out.

From their vantage point they could hear the sound system clearly.

‘Why are they speaking German? Why not Czech?' Clive asked.

‘Maybe it's something to do with that,' Sean said, as two huge vertical blue flags were unfurled on the stage behind the podium. In the centre of each flag a white circle with a black swastika centred in it was surrounded by a ring of gold stars.

‘Fucking hell!' John commented on the unfurling of the combination of the EU and Nazi flags.

‘Does this remind you of anything?' Clive said.

‘The Nuremburg rally?' Sean replied.

‘Precisely, and that flag clearly ties this lot back to whatever's going on in the EU.'

‘Blom,' Sean added.

‘Yep, it would seem so.'

Two more hours passed before the daylight started to dwindle and the powerful floodlights were turned on. The surge in the activity level below signified that something was about to happen. It was impossible to count, but at least 2,000 men and women stood in block ranks facing the huge stage. They were all dressed identically in brown Nazi uniforms, bearing blue swastika armbands.

On the stroke of 8 p.m. the hoard fell silent, then, from behind a curtain on the left of the stage, a slight man appeared and walked quickly to the podium. Unlike the crowd, he was dressed in a full-length black leather coat, topped with a leather peaked military cap, curved down at the sides. Sean squinted through the binoculars to see his face, but it wasn't Wagner.

‘Meine Damen und Herren … ,'
the speaker started, as Sean reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone to video the proceedings.

‘Es ist mir eine Ehre, Ihnen Ulrich Wagner, Irren Führer vorzustellen.'
The announcement boomed out and from behind the same curtain, Wagner stepped out wearing full military uniform, complete with lines of medals. The noise that greeted him was cacophonous, as the gathered crowd cheered and clapped.

‘I don't speak German, but did he say
Führer?'
Clive asked.

‘I think so,' Sean said, concentrating on his filming.

‘Bloody hell!' Clive said, as the massed ranks performed the Nazi salute and shouted
‘Sieg heil,'
in unison.

Wagner's speech lasted twenty-two minutes and used up the memory capacity on three phones. Having seen enough, Sean, Clive, Terry and John started to make their way down the hill in the opposite direction from the rally.

‘Wait,' John said, dropping to one knee and pulling Sean and Clive down with him. ‘I heard something.'

They held their breath listening for another sound. Then it came again: a broken twig under a foot, then footsteps through the woods, as four soldiers carrying machine guns came up the hill from the direction of their car.

‘Sie sind hier,'
one of the soldiers shouted.

‘Shit! I think they're onto us,' Terry said. ‘We'd better get out of here.'

‘What about the car?' Clive asked.

‘I guess they've found that and that's why they're coming this way.'

Staying low, they scurried down the hill in the opposite direction from the soldiers, getting ever closer to the rally. The noise of their movement had alerted the soldiers to their position and they followed behind, gaining ground all the time. Sean could hear their boots cracking through the branches behind them as he followed Terry's movement in and out of the trees, so they that couldn't get a clear shot.

When they reached the bottom of the hill, hundreds of parked cars lined the road in front of them and there were at least twenty more armed guards lurking around the gates to the factory. When he looked up the line of cars, Sean noticed that the vast majority had German plates, even though they were in the Czech Republic.

Indicating to the others to stay still, John quickly crawled out from the edge of the forest and hid behind an old Audi. When he was happy that he'd not been seen, he beckoned for them to follow.

Only a matter of seconds after Sean had crouched down behind the car, the four soldiers that had been following them emerged from the woods, holding their weapons at the ready. They had come out onto the path, roughly 100 metres away from where they were hiding, and were scouring the area, looking for the intruders.

‘What now?' Sean whispered to Terry.

‘Wait here,' the reply came.

Terry rolled onto his side and slid along the car, using the shadow cast by the floodlights to hide from the soldiers. He quickly fiddled with the lock and after only a few seconds, he was inside the vehicle, beckoning the others to get in.

Following the same manoeuvre, using the shadow of the car to hide from the soldiers, one by one they climbed into the old Audi. Once inside, Sean was told to stay down in the footwell in the back of the car, but before he could get in position, he saw people moving out of the gates towards their cars. First it was just a trickle of people, then more, until they filled the road. When the first of them reached their cars, they started to change out of their Nazi uniforms.

‘They're going back to Germany. The swastika's illegal there,' Clive said.

After ripping off the plastic cover under the steering wheel, Terry played with some wires that he'd pulled down. Then suddenly there was a small spark and the engine started. The noise made the soldiers turn in their direction and point their weapons, but it was too busy: they couldn't shoot into the crowd that was filling the area quickly. Taking the opportunity, Terry pulled out into the throng of people and beeped his horn, moving through them as they parted in front of the car. Shouting and pushing people out of the way, the soldiers tried to get to them.

When they were clear enough, Terry accelerated hard, forcing the last few people to dive out of the way. Lifting his head, Sean looked out of the rear window as the soldiers stopped giving chase, and instead commandeered a new looking BMW 5 series from a man dressed in a full brown uniform.

Out on open road, the old Audi's engine screamed as Terry took the car to its limits, but through the trees, Sean could see the lights of the BMW making up ground quickly. The Audi was just too old.

‘They're gaining on us,' he said.

‘We can't outrun them in this heap of shit,' Terry said, swerving the car round a tight bend.

Stabilising himself with the door handle, Sean quickly looked behind again. He could still see the lights; they were less than a kilometre behind.

‘Get ready to jump out,' Terry said suddenly.

‘What?' Sean started, but stopped when Terry slammed the brakes on and skidded to a halt in a dirt lane, just around a sharp corner.

‘Out!' Terry shouted.

Without thinking, Clive, John and Sean jumped out of the car and ran into the edge of the dense woodland by the road.

When they stopped, Sean saw that Terry had turned off the lights on the Audi and had spun the vehicle around to face the road. The lights of the BMW were approaching quickly through the trees, the engine straining as its tyres screeched around the tight corners at high speed.

Just as the BMW approached their position, the engine revved hard and the tyres spun on the Audi. It shot forward in the direction of the BMW, blocking the road, but still moving forward, as Terry rolled out of the driver's door and into a ditch.

When the BMW came hurtling at full-pelt around the corner, the driver had no time to react as he saw the Audi coming in his direction with its lights turned off. The crunching collision smashed the Audi clean off the road, with the BMW jammed onto the front of it, in a tangled mess of glass and twisted metal. Two of the soldiers were hurtled forward through the windscreen and onto the road, before a burst of flames spread throughout the two wrecked cars.

Springing to his feet, Terry quickly ran forward and collected the machine guns from the dead soldiers in the road, then joined the others.

‘Fuck me, Terry! This isn't actually the war you know,' Clive said, surveying the carnage on the road in front of them.

In response, Terry just smiled and passed John a machine gun. ‘Captain Hook here can't handle one anymore,' he said winking. ‘Now let's get the hell out of here before One Ball back there misses his friends.'

It took them over two hours to reach the outer suburbs of Prague on foot, staying away from the roads. When they arrived, they dumped the guns in a river and found a taxi to take them to the airport.

None of them had spoken about what they'd seen; their time taken by moving quietly through dense woodland to avoid discovery.

‘What the hell did we just see?' Sean said.

‘I don't know, but it's terrifying to think that kind of thing goes on today,' Clive said.

‘We need to get Anna to translate exactly what he was saying,' Sean added.

‘I think we should head back to London to regroup anyway. It's moving too quickly and we're not keeping up,' Clive suggested, to unanimous agreement.