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

Kammler didn’t so much as twitch an eyelid.

Without warning, Narov lashed out with stunning power, swinging her pistol around in a ‘ridge-hand strike’, a martial arts technique that brought the topside of the weapon crashing into the side of Kammler’s head.

The force of the blow was such that it sent the man and chair toppling over. Of course, there was no scream from Kammler, for his mouth was firmly taped shut. Narov reached down and dragged him up into a sitting position, then settled before him again. As she did so, a series of muffled shots echoed through the darkened corridor: no doubt Jaeger and Raff, going about their clearance work.

There was little sign of injury to the side of Kammler’s head, but that was mainly because it was a mass of gaffer tape. There could be any amount of damage below.

‘So, we try again.’ Narov intoned, her voice still chillingly flat and unemotional. ‘Blink once to indicate that you understand.’

Kammler blinked.

‘Good. Now, I have only one question for you. You will answer it truthfully, or you will experience suffering of a level you would never imagine possible.’ She paused for effect. ‘Do you understand?’

Kammler blinked once.

‘Apart from those we have just destroyed in your laboratory, do you have any other INDs in existence?’

Narov wasn’t particularly worried about radiation leaking from the lab. Uranium was not nearly as radioactive as people seemed to believe. Only when a nuclear device was properly detonated did it produce a cloud of lethal fallout.

By way of answer, Kammler blinked twice.

‘There are no more INDs? Are you certain? Please think very, very carefully. You see, we are only really just getting started…’

Kammler blinked once.

‘To be clear, Mr Kammler, there are no INDs anywhere in the world that you control? They were all here?’

Kammler blinked once.

At that moment, a voice rang out from the far end of the corridor. ‘Falk Konig! Falk Konig coming through!’

Narov spun in her seat as a pathetic figure stumbled through the doorway. Kammler’s son was a pale shadow of the man that Narov had grown close to barely a few months ago. Back then, the German-educated conservationist had been running Kammler’s private game reserve at Katavi, in East Africa.

Falk had been something of a hero figure to Narov, despite the blood that ran through his veins. Disregarding that fact – no one gets to choose their parents – his tireless efforts to safeguard Africa’s big game had won her undying respect. The two of them had bonded over their mutual love of animals – the elephants and rhino first and foremost – even amidst the dark secrets of the Katavi reserve.

Kammler’s son had rebelled against the family’s legacy. His taking a different surname was all part of an effort to cut the ties to their Nazi past. But when Hank Kammler disappeared, Falk Konig had been branded an accessory to his father’s crime, and he too had become a global fugitive.

A hunted man.

Only Narov – and Jaeger to a certain extent – had chosen to believe in him; to keep the faith.

When she and Falk had first met, he had been a dashing six-foot-two wildlife warrior, who flew daring sorties across the African bush tracking the poaching gangs. His shock of wild blonde hair and straggly beard had lent him a somewhat hippyish air – an exotic if dishevelled eco-warrior look.

Or so Narov had thought. The figure that stood before her now was a pale shadow of that. His hair was matted with dried blood, his eye sockets were sunken and dark-ringed, and he hobbled on an injured leg.

Narov felt a surge of sympathy for him, quickly followed by a stab of unease.

Jaeger must have sent him here for a reason.

No doubt the son knew something of his father’s dark secrets.

Narov got to her feet. ‘Take my chair. You look like you need it.’

Konig sank into the proffered seat. For a moment he stared at the mummified figure opposite – his biological father – in horror.

Then he shook his head. ‘You brought this on yourself, Father. You would not listen to anyone, myself included, and now you’re finished. It is all finished.’

A flash of defiance burnt through Kammler’s eyes, mixed with something that Narov hadn’t expected: a fleeting look of triumph. Of victory.

It was a look he couldn’t hide.

But what did Kammler have to feel triumphant about? Unless…

‘Tell me,’ Narov urged Konig. ‘Is there anything he could have done to ensure we cannot stop him?’

Konig shrugged. ‘I don’t know. He brought me here almost as a hostage. I was being hunted; he offered me some kind of sanctuary. I was innocent of any crime, but damned because he is my father. So I came with him. What choice did I have? He said he would share with me his new dream if I could be loyal. I acted that part. For a while. But once I realised what he actually intended, I tried to call you.’

He cast a glance at his father. ‘He grew increasingly suspicious. Paranoid. He cut me off from his inner circle and pretty much locked me away. But this much I do know. He was building eight devices, eight being the sacred number of the SS. And some have already been dispersed to their targets.’

Narov glanced at Kammler. His eyes bulged with impotent rage. From that very look, she knew that he had lied to her, and that his son was telling the truth.

‘So, we have one or more INDs already at or near their targets?’ she queried. ‘Presumably he was waiting for all eight to be in place before a synchronised detonation?’

Konig nodded. ‘Nothing else makes sense.’

‘Do we know the targets?’

Konig shook his head. ‘He never said. But one thing he did boast about: he said that if you took a forty-kilo bomb and detonated it over a nuclear power station, you would achieve meltdown, so increasing the destructive power exponentially.’

As Konig spoke, his father had been making agonised noises from behind his gaffer-tape gag. Narov didn’t doubt that he was trying to stop his son selling the Kammler family’s secrets. Thank God Konig was a far better man than his father.

‘How has he delivered them?’ she probed. ‘To their targets?’

‘I can’t say. But nearly all nuclear power stations sit on the coast, as they need water for cooling purposes. Even a forty-kilo device is relatively small in size. You could sail a pleasure yacht to the location, anchor offshore and wait for the signal to detonate. It’s weird, but most of those nuclear stations don’t even have an exclusion zone. They’re sitting targets.’

Narov turned to Kammler. ‘You lied to me,’ she began, in a gentle whisper. ‘I warned you that if you lied, it would get much worse. Now I need you to tell me where your INDs have been sent, and how we stop them.’

She pulled her chair closer. ‘I am going to enjoy this next bit. And trust me, you will answer.’

Kammler stared back at Narov through the gaffer-tape mask, his eyes burning with hatred.

She delved into her daysack, pulling out a small medical pack. She removed two syringes – the same ones with which she had recently threatened Isselhorst – and held them up where he could see them.

‘Two syringes,’ she announced. ‘One full of suxamethonium chloride, a paralytic. The other contains naloxone hydrochloride, an anti-opioid. I will spare you the complex science. The first is a respiratory depressant: it stops you breathing. Completely. The second reverses the effect.’

She stared into Kammler’s eyes. ‘Too long under the first, and you suffocate to death. Not enough of the second soon enough, and the effect is irreversible. But you know the best part of it? You are fully conscious the entire time, and you get to experience in clarity what it feels like to suffocate and die.’