John Gardner - Seafire

Bond felt a cold sweat clouding his forehead. Tarn's voice, gestures, and manner were almost exact replicas of those that had belonged to Adolf Hitler sixty-odd years before. Even the last words – " Ein Reich … Ein Volk … Ein Führer! " – were Hitler's words, and they were a signal to the crowd, which bellowed back in a great series of waves like crashing surf: " Sieg Heil … Sieg Heil … Sieg Heil! " Hail Victory.

Then came the moment that made Bond's stomach turn over and the cold sweat envelop his entire body. The sudden launching into song – one that he knew from old films and recordings and that conjured up the whole Nazi horror:

Die Fahnen hoch, die Reihe dicht geschlossen!

The flags held high! The ranks stand tight together.

It was the Nazi hymn, its marching song, its anthem, the "Horst Wessel."

The very tune brought images, culled from books, news films, documentaries, and photographs, sharply to his mind: the young men shot to pieces on the ground, the sea, and in the air; he almost heard the jackboots stamping, his mind seeing the flamboyant uniforms of the SS, and the sinister faces of the Gestapo. Europe a ruin, and the thousands who had disappeared to the camps. The six million Jews who had gone to the gas chambers. It was as though an entire montage of terror had filled his head: the walking dead of Auschwitz, Belsen, Dachau, and the other death camps; the piles of skin and bone; the smoke from the dread chimneys. The horror of those past years early in this century when the whole of the continent shrank under the Nazi yoke. Was it all returning again?

There was no doubt now that Sir Max Tarn had already captured the leadership of the new Nazi Party, resurrected from its brutal past, fed by the indecision of the present German leadership, and watered by the requirements of a new age ripe for the taking.

Max Tarn, he knew, had banked on some spectacular act that would bring him forgiveness for former dealings in death, and set him up as a figure to be reckoned with on a global scale. It was, the unhappy Trish Nuzzi had told him, going to happen in the Caribbean. So this obscenity he now watched was but a prelude of what would come if by any chance the obsessive man could pull off some incredible coup that might make him untouchable in the eyes of the world.

Through all the flashing pictures in Bond's head, the words of the infamous "Horst Wessel Song" seemed even more prophetic:

Kam'raden, die Rotfront und Reaktion erschossen,

Marschieren im Geist in unsern Reihen mit.

Comrades who, though shot by Red Front or Reaction,

Still march with us, their spirits in our ranks.

Indeed, old Nazi ghosts would revel and caper among this crowd, while the once-defeated leadership – from Hitler to Himmler – would stand close to this would-be Führer, smiling and nodding at what he was intent on bringing back, plunging the world into yet another dark age and dragging the old abominations from their very graves.

Bond was so wrapped up in revulsion that he failed to catch any sign of danger to himself. He had been oblivious to the security patrols that were obviously circling the perimeter of the Tarnenwerder estate. His first glimpse of an emergency came as a sudden flash of movement from within the grounds and to his left.

He turned to see two brown-uniformed men about fifty yards away, unleashing a pair of German shepherd attack dogs. The trained animals had sensed him as an intruder, and now they flew toward him with low growls.

He was on his feet and blundering down through the shrubbery heading back to the car, as the two beasts came bounding over the rise. He pulled his knife with his left hand and unholstered the automatic pistol with his right, running for his life and aware of the dogs closing like a pair of express trains.

He did not quite make the car before the first animal attacked, snarling and leaping for his right arm, its weight carrying him against the car, knocking the breath from his body. He felt a sharp pain as the dog's teeth sank into his forearm and pulled. For a second the heavy shepherd made a mistake, snapping at his arm again but putting itself between Bond's body and the pistol. He put a bullet into the beast, which seemed to stop dead before being thrown backward with a long yelp of agony.

The other shepherd, hearing its partner yelp and seeing it fall, hesitated for a fraction of a second, but it gave him enough time to slide into the car and close the door.

The dog landed heavily on the hood, barking and clawing against the windshield, saliva running from its jaws, the sharp teeth clearly visible. Bond started the engine, slammed the vehicle into gear, and shot from the cave of overgrown shrubbery, wrenching hard at the wheel and throwing the dog to the ground, as he accelerated onto the road.

Two bullets struck the rear of the Corrado. He felt the heavy thumps but could not detect damage. Hunched over the wheel and driving as though the hounds of hell were after him, he screeched around a long bend and headed back toward Wasserburg. If his mission was to be truly successful, he had one more important thing to do, and he knew only too well that he had jeopardized the whole business by making the trip out to Tarnenwerder.

After ten minutes he was sure that nobody had followed, but he considered that would only be a matter of time. The dog handlers had got a good look at the car, so it would not take them long to report the matter. When that was done, Tarn's orders could take only one form – Bond's death warrant.

It was almost ten-thirty as he steered the car into the parking lot, where he chose a space close to the exit. For a few moments he sat in the driver's seat, examining the damage to his forearm. There was blood, but the dog's fangs had not gone deep. He counted four long lacerations, which he covered with a handkerchief tied tightly and soaking up the blood immediately.

Time was now at a premium, so he rolled down his sleeve over the makeshift bandage, removed the miniature camera from the glove compartment, and left the car, jogging away toward the rear of the buildings on the side of the Marienplatz in which Saal, Saal u. Rollen was situated.

It took less than five minutes to reach the back of the lawyers' offices, and only thirty seconds to slide a credit card between the curved bolt and its housing. Nobody, it seemed, had bothered to clip down the retainer, which would have posed difficulties.

He stood for a moment in the darkness inside the office, switching on the flashlight and shielding it with his hand, then making his way along the passage that led to the large entrance hall. All was silence, and he could see the computers under their protective hoods. Again he stood listening. Not a sound, so he began to move silently up the stairs, across the landing, and to the door with its little notice that read "H. Saal."

He had expected to need his lockpicks to get into Helmut's office, but the door was open and he was able to swing the flashlight beam around the room. The huge desk was similar to the one in Fritz's office, but the wall opposite was lined with a tall bank of gray filing cabinets.

Listening again for a few seconds, he went over to the one window and pulled down the blind, then made for the cabinets, which were neatly lettered by alphabet. The letter T took up half of the wall, so it took little brain to realize that Helmut kept a large number of documents on Tarn and Tarnenwerder there in his office.

The latest legal work for Tarn, Bond decided, would be in the last drawer labeled T . Slowly he removed his lock-picks, in their Swiss Army Knife disguise, and got down to the business at hand.

The cabinets were normal commercial pieces of equipment, about as easy to unlock as a child's money box. This was either all too simple, he thought, or Helmut was a lawyer with a very trusting nature. The last drawer clicked and slid open, displaying about ten files hanging neatly on their rails. As he removed the first folder, Bond tried to use some logic on the situation. Helmut Saal had installed no special alarms or security equipment because Wasserburg, in all probability, had a low crime rate. The people of this unique little town were all descendants of families who had lived and died here over the centuries. Wasserburg was not the kind of place you moved into from somewhere on the other side of the country. This, being a given fact, meant that few would ever want to look at the files concerning Tarn and the estate. True, there had been small legal skirmishes over the years, when consortiums, and even the authorities in Munich, had tried to take over the estate, but even that would not be any cause for concern. Possibly there were very old documents that traced the estate's history back over centuries, but they would be stored in some safe vault. More recent papers could be kept here in the office with impunity. Any legal firm that still clung to archaic laws concerning generations of Saals and Rollens would not give a thought to having its documents behind ultra-secure locks and warning devices.