Алистер Маклин - Prime Target

‘As if I’d think that.’ Whitlock took out his notebook and opened it at the marker. ‘Sabrina has done a good job. In essence, her report tells us that JZ stands for Juli Zwanzig. I’ll get to that in a moment. She also established that an American, probably Harold Gibson, recruited the gunman, Yaqub Hisham, to murder Emily Selby.’ Whitlock tapped the papers lying on the table. ‘A full printout is in there.’

‘So a man who hates Arabs almost as much as he hates blacks and Jews went and hired an Arab to do his killing for him?’

‘That seems to be the case, yes.’

‘Item two?’

‘A German computer file from Mike Graham. I’ve given you a rough translation. Sabrina could have translated it more stylishly but you’ve got all the facts. He struck gold.’

‘Give me a summary.’

‘The computer file contains the constitution and objectives of Juli Zwanzig.’

‘That’s July twentieth, right?’

‘Very good. The group consists of men and women, all of them Jews, whose objective is to dismantle a highly secret Nazi outfit called Jugend von Siegfried – the Siegfried Youth. I checked with records at Central Intelligence, there’s no file on any such organization, so we’re talking about a seriously secret outfit.’

‘How young are the Siegfried Youth?’

‘Not young at all. Not any more. They were the very last squad of the Hitler Youth, inducted by the Führer himself a few days before Berlin collapsed. Apparently when Hitler addressed the boys in the street at the back of the bunker, he told them they were the embodiment of Siegfried, and years later they adopted the name.’

‘And the men on Emily’s list are the survivors of the group.’

‘Right again. She threw a lot of her life into getting that list together. The men on it are sworn to preserve the memory of Adolf Hitler and to suppress Jews by any and all means. A series of funds and other financial arrangements were used to keep the boys together during the formative years.’

‘And they managed to slip through the mid-part of the twentieth century without picking up tracers. That shows remarkable forward planning.’

‘There was a lot of smoke-screening,’ Whitlock said. ‘Several of the mechanics of the old Nazi escape routes were the very people who kept the Jugend von Siegfried shielded from any kind of public scrutiny. They were brought up and educated together – again, very secretly, at various locations in Switzerland.’

‘They were always kept together?’

‘Yes, and their bonding persisted into adult life, as Hitler intended. But on official records there’s no hint of that. Like any cross-section of Germans who were kids during the war, some of these men have early records, some have none. Some appear to have been adopted, others apparently grew up with foster parents – but it’s all meticulously fabricated bunkum. They stayed together until the time came to leak them into society, mostly into prearranged career paths.’

‘Have they lived up to Hitler’s hopes?’

‘According to the file Mike sent, the Siegfried Youth is nowadays a well-established covert organization which systematically eliminates Jews and Jewish enterprises.’

‘And JZ, I suppose, is dedicated to wiping out the Siegfried Youth.’

‘They certainly are. They’re a small amateur band, but they’re dedicated.’

‘What’s the connection with Emily Selby?’

‘Her father. Johannes Lustig. The organization was formed at his posthumous prompting. He was a scholar and an ardent Zionist, and he spent eleven years compiling a history of what he called “Hitler’s other monsters”, the villains we don’t hear so much about. During the war there were the Kultur Büroangestellter, among others. They were the culture clerks, the SS minions who went around evaluating antiques, pictures, sculpture – anything of value and artistic merit owned by Jews. They would catalogue the stuff then they would confiscate it. They ruined Lustig’s own father, a couple of years before he was taken away to Buchenwald.’

‘Was the history ever published?’

‘Apparently not. Which is a pity, because wider dissemination of the material would have alerted more people to the existence of the Jugend von Siegfried, who are apparently hinted at here and there. Lustig himself got the details of the group’s beginnings from a diary kept by one of Hitler’s aides, a General Albers. He gleaned the rest by combing police records and interviewing retired Swiss nationals who looked after the boys in the early years.’

‘So how did Lustig persuade people to set up the JZ?’

‘In his last will and testament he directed that money be set aside, quote…’ Whitlock consulted his notebook, ‘ “to create a fellowship in remembrance of those spirits and lives which were dismantled; a fellowship with the central purpose of avenging the wrongs done by the Jugend von Siegfried; a fellowship to apply vengeance in full measure and assuage the torment of our beloved dead.” ’

‘What about the group’s name? Where does that come from?’

‘The twentieth of July was the date when Johannes Lustig and his son-in-law died in Lake Cayuga. Lustig’s followers see symbolism in the fact that it was on the same date, in 1944, that the chief of staff to General Fromm, Claus von Stauffenberg, tried to blow up Hitler with a bomb under a map table.’

‘That attempt failed.’

‘I know, but I suppose the symbol’s the thing, the defiance. You’ll find a membership list among the papers – Erika Stramm did the recruiting, and she didn’t seem to have any trouble getting top people on her team.’

‘Do we know who JZ uses as executioner?’

‘There’s no mention of a name.’

Philpott was frowning at his glass. ‘I find it hard to believe our computer man, Andreas Wolff, is a member of a latter-day Nazi death-squad.’

‘You’ve met him?’

‘Several times. I’ve also met quite a few racist fanatics. The two impressions don’t gel. Wolff is a head-in-the-clouds kind of man, a greying hippie. His professional brilliance is a side issue with him. He is at his happiest using science to firm up his fantasies, his computer games, which all involve adventurer kings and distressed maidens and dragons and all that other mystical nonsense. He is bored by politics, bored by reality in general. Wolff is not bigot material.’

‘I’ll get Mike to look into it.’

Whitlock rose and Philpott went with him to the door.

‘If you hear anything important from Mike, call me,’ Philpott said. ‘Impress on him how necessary it is that we put a brake on JZ before things escalate. He has to find out who the blue-eyed executioner is.’

‘Maybe Sabrina could do us some good in Berlin.’

‘Maybe she could.’ Philpott opened the door. ‘Remember to hold the good thought.’

‘Which one is that?’

‘We are here to create havoc.’

‘I was maybe ten seconds away from switching off the phone,’ Mike Graham said. ‘If this is something that can wait until tomorrow, I’d rather it did.’

‘It won’t take long, Mike.’ Whitlock was on his balcony, watching the sun go down. ‘I want to update you on a couple of things. Where are you right now?’

‘In bed, in the Hotel Zipser. It’s the middle of the night here.’

‘I’m sorry, I forgot–’

‘I was reading,’ Mike said. ‘Lately I can’t sleep. I have to wait until it lands on me all at once.’

‘We’re in Texas.’

‘We?’

‘I’m with the old man. Maybe I’ll explain later, if I survive this junket. Tell me, have you seen Andreas Wolff yet?’