Беар Гриллс - The Hunt [=The Devil's Sanctuary]

‘Luke and Simon Jaeger, Year 8,’ he blurted out. ‘They’re both still at school? No one’s come to pick them up in the last twenty-four hours?’

‘Just a moment… Mr Jaeger, is it?’

‘Yes, it is. And it’s urgent.’

‘Just one moment while I check.’

Music began to play. Jaeger had been placed on hold. The tune was supposed to be comforting. Calming. Well, no parent had ever called as stressed out and messed up as he was right now, of that he was certain. Come on. Come on.

If felt like an age before the receptionist was back on the line. ‘Their mother came to see them yesterday evening. She took them for a bite to eat by the sea.’

Jaeger felt his blood run cold. The school lay on the Somerset coastline, and Jaeger was in the habit of taking the boys for fish and chips by the harbour. But Ruth’s visits had been few and far between, for obvious reasons.

‘Apparently she came to say goodbye, before she went off on an overseas trip. The boys were back before lights out. They’re both here. If you’re worried, I can get them to call you once class is finished.’

Jaeger forced himself to speak. ‘Please, I’d really appreciate it. As soon as they’re able to.’

‘Of course. They’ll call around three forty-five.’

‘One more thing: did my… wife leave any indication as to where she might be going?’

‘Not that I’m aware of. But the boys may know more.’

Jaeger thanked the woman and sank back against the cold concrete of the wall. How had life come to this – to a point where he was worried that his own wife might snatch their sons and return them to their tormentor? She’d been acting so unpredictably recently, and if she’d fallen under the influence of Kammler’s people anything was possible, that’s if it was them who’d taken her.

Jaeger’s mind was spinning. He didn’t know what to think anymore. But of one thing he was certain: it was Kammler who had done this to them. Directly or indirectly, it was his fault. In his dark, fucked-up, vengeful fashion, Kammler was behind it all.

It was time to end it, once and for all.

Hank Kammler bristled as he eyed the figures in the room, his gaunt face cloaked in shadow, his gaze distinctly predatory.

‘You don’t like it?’ he demanded. ‘It offends your sense of entitlement? Your precious positions of influence? Let me ask – what is the point of influence, of power, if you never see fit to use it for the sake of the Reich?’

A man of around Kammler’s age – Ferdinand Bormann, the son of Martin Bormann, Hitler’s banker – knitted his brows. He was a very different character from Kammler, as he himself was well aware. Where Kammler was driven, merciless and utterly single-minded, Ferdy, as his friends called him, was a little more circumspect and conservative. A banker by nature. Something of an accountant. A ‘bean counter’, as Kammler had once so cuttingly said. Well, Kammler might be Grey Wolf, but they were still a team, and that demanded a certain accountability.

‘It is only that the Mein Kampf settlement brings with it certain dangers, risks, in the form of scrutiny,’ he ventured. ‘A mystery figure claiming the Führer’s royalties: press interest is inevitable. We must anticipate that it will bring attention our way. Which could prove… difficult.’

Kammler stalked across the room, throwing open the curtains. Light flooded in; the fine sunlight of an early spring day. He ran his eye around the perfectly manicured grounds. Yes, Ferdinand Bormann had done well for himself. You didn’t run a Zurich bank of such global reach without being amply rewarded – this fine country estate being a case in point.

But that was just the problem. Bormann and the rest of the Kameraden had grown fat and bloated, seduced by the trappings of wealth and power. None of that did anything to bring back the Reich. To reclaim the Führer’s legacy. To purge humanity of its present sickness.

And by God, was it sick.

By contrast, he, Hank Kammler, son of SS General Hans Kammler, had sacrificed so much. His position as deputy director of the CIA. His friends. His freedom. His very face, even. He ran a hand across the recent scarring. He had sacrificed his looks – the hawkish, aristocratic Kammler features – and all for the cause.

Yet still greater sacrifice was required, and he was ready. To start a fire. A fire to burn and sear the dead wood. Destroying all to start anew. He for one would enjoy sitting back and watching it burn.

But the men in this room: how would he galvanise them?

He glanced at his watch. ‘It is six forty-five p.m. on the fourteenth of March. Tonight, the Moldovan flight will take to the air. If all goes to schedule, I expect delivery in seventy-six hours.’

He paused. ‘I should be there, overseeing the building of the last of the devices. Instead, you call me here to quibble about the Mein Kampf settlement? To complain that it may attract a little unwelcome publicity ?’

His eyes flashed a momentary rage, verging on the brink of madness. ‘ Mein Kampf , the Führer’s masterpiece, banished! His royalties going to fund the very causes we abhor! They try to do this with his message, his glorious inheritance, and I am surprised – and disappointed – that you are not as incensed as I am, Kameraden .’

Boorman and his fellows remained silent. Kammler’s words had stung them. There was a sense that they had hit home.

‘Look at us,’ Kammler continued. ‘Eight men. Eight, the sacred number of the Schutzstaffel. Eight men in the sunset of our days, yet we are so very, very close. So close to fulfilling our pledges to the Führer. And yet you call me halfway around the world to tell me this? That the Mein Kampf settlement is a little risky ?’

‘You cannot act alone,’ a figure sitting to Bormann’s right objected. ‘You did so with the Mein Kampf settlement, and out of what motive? Hubris? We do not need the money. The sum is paltry compared to the finance and power in this room. I repeat: you cannot act alone. You are not yet the Führer of the new Reich. We are the Kameraden. The Brotherhood of the Death’s Head. We act as one or not at all.’

Kammler couldn’t hide his scorn any longer. ‘Well there hasn’t been much action to date! Seventy years of in action, by my reckoning. What do you suggest? We dither for another seventy? You think we can pass such responsibility to a new generation? You really think they will care? Understand?’

He paused and tapped his chest steadily. ‘You think they will feel it? In their hearts? Do you think they will even remember?’

‘Heady rhetoric,’ the figure retorted. ‘You have your father’s flare for oratory. But that doesn’t alter the fact that we act as eight, united, or not at all. That is the way.’

Josef von Alvensleben – son of Ludolf von Alvensleben, the SS Gruppenführer who had run the infamous Valley of Death, an SS extermination camp in Poland – wasn’t about to be bullied by anyone. His father hadn’t exterminated hundreds of thousands of Polish Jews and communists for his son to scare easily.

‘We share your sense of urgency,’ he continued. ‘The world must be purged of the Untermenschen . We Aryans must take our rightful place. And we will, of course. But cautiously. And with proper planning. Don’t mistake our caution for reluctance to act.’

Kammler fought to suppress a sneer. He had grown accustomed to their reticence. To the snail’s pace at which they tended to act. To their cursed caution. And he abhorred it.

‘Eight devices; that we are agreed upon,’ von Alvensleben continued. ‘But do we have enough raw material? How much was retrieved from the tunnels at St Georgen?’