Bear Grylls - Burning Angels

‘You know what? I think we should talk about you.’ Jaeger had a thousand questions he’d never got to ask of Narov, and now was as good a time as any.

Narov shrugged. ‘It is not so interesting. What is there to say?’

‘You can start by telling me how you knew my grandfather. I mean, if he was like a grandfather to you, what does that make us – some kind of long-lost siblings or something?’

Narov laughed. ‘Hardly. It is a long story. I will try to keep it short.’ Her face grew serious. ‘In the summer of 1944, Sonia Olschanevsky, a young Russian woman, was taken prisoner in France. She had been fighting with the partisans and serving as their radio link to London.

‘The Germans took her to a concentration camp, one that you already know of: Natzweiler. It was the camp for the Nacht und Nebel prisoners – those that Hitler decreed would disappear into the night and the fog. If the Germans had realised that Sonia Olschanevsky was an SOE agent, they would have tortured and executed her, as they did all captured agents. Fortunately, they did not.

‘They set her to work at the camp. Slave labour. A senior-ranking SS officer was visiting. Sonia was a beautiful woman. He chose her as his bedfellow.’ Narov paused. ‘Over time, she found a means to escape. She managed to wrestle some wooden slats off a pigpen and built herself an escape ladder.

‘Using that ladder, she and two fellow escapees clambered over the electrified wire. Sonia made it to the American lines. There she met a pair of British officers embedded with US forces – fellow SOE agents. She told them about Natzweiler, and when the Allied forces broke through, she led them to the camp.

‘Natzweiler was the first concentration camp found by the Allies. No one had ever imagined such horrors could exist. The effect of liberating it was incalculable for those two British officers.’ Narov’s face darkened. ‘But by then Sonia was four months pregnant. She was carrying the child of the SS officer who had raped her.’

Narov paused, her eyes searching the skies above. ‘Sonia was my grandmother. Your grandfather – Grandpa Ted – was one of those two officers. He was so affected by what he had witnessed, and by Sonia’s fortitude, that he offered to be the godfather to the unborn child. That child was my mother. And that’s how I came to know your grandfather.

‘I am the grandchild of Nazi rape,’ Narov announced, quietly. ‘So you will understand why for me this is personal. Your grandfather saw something in me from an early age. He honed me – he shaped me – to take up his mantle.’ She turned to Jaeger. ‘He schooled me to be the foremost operative of the Secret Hunters.’

They sat in silence for what seemed like an age. Jaeger had so many questions, he didn’t know where to start. How well had she known Grandpa Ted? Had she ever visited him at the Jaeger family home? Had she trained with him? And why had this been kept a secret from the rest of the family, Jaeger included?

Jaeger had been close to his grandfather. He’d admired him, and he’d been inspired by his example to join the military. He felt hurt, somehow, that he’d never once breathed the slightest word.

Eventually the cold got the better of them. Narov moved in closer to Jaeger. ‘Pure survival, that’s all,’ she murmured.

Jaeger nodded. ‘We’re grown-ups. What’s the worst that can happen?’

He was drifting off to sleep when he sensed her head drop on to his shoulder, and her arms snake around his torso as she snuggled in tight.

‘I’m still cold,’ she murmured sleepily.

He could smell the whisky on her breath. But he could also smell the warm, sweaty, spicy tang of her body so close to his, and he felt his head spinning.

‘It’s Africa. It’s not that cold,’ he muttered, as he slipped an arm around her. ‘Better now?’

‘A little.’ Narov held on to him. ‘But remember, I am made of ice.’

Jaeger suppressed a laugh. It was so tempting just to go with it; to go with the easy, intimate, intoxicating flow.

A part of him felt tense and jumpy: he had Ruth and Luke to somehow find and rescue. But another part of him – the slightly inebriated part – remembered for a moment what it was like to feel the caress of a woman. And deep within himself he longed to return it.

After all, this wasn’t just any woman he was holding right now. Narov had a startling beauty. And under the moonlight, she looked utterly arresting.

‘You know, Mr Bert Groves, if you play an act for long enough, sometimes you start to believe it’s for real,’ she murmured. ‘Especially when you have spent so long living close to the thing you really want, but you know you cannot have it.’

‘We can’t do this,’ Jaeger forced himself to say. ‘Ruth and Luke are out there, somewhere beneath that mountain. They’re alive, of that I’m certain. It can’t be long now.’

Narov snorted. ‘So, better to die of the cold? Schwachkopf .’

But despite her signature curse, she didn’t relinquish her grip, and neither did he.

The last twenty-four hours had been an absolute whirlwind. The kit they’d ordered from Raff had arrived as requested, and was now stuffed deep in the rucksacks they carried.

The one thing they’d forgotten to ask for was two black silk balaclavas to hide their features. They’d had to improvise. In keeping with their honeymooning cover, Narov had brought with her some sheer black stockings. Pulled over their heads and with eyeholes slashed in them, they were the next best thing.

Once Raff had warned them that the tracker had gone stationary, Jaeger and Narov knew they had their target. As a bonus, the building the tusks had been taken to turned out to be known to Konig. It was where the Lebanese dealer was thought to have his base, complete with a hand-picked contingent of bodyguards.

Konig had explained how the dealer was the first link in a global smuggling chain. The poachers would sell the tusks to him, and once the deal was done the goods would be smuggled onwards, on a journey that invariably ended in Asia – the prime market for such illegal wares.

Jaeger and Narov had moved out from Katavi using their own transport – a white Land Rover Defender that they’d hired in-country under false names. It had the hire company name – Wild Africa Safaris – emblazoned across its doors, as opposed to the Katavi Lodge’s Toyotas, which carried the reserve’s distinctive logo.

They had needed someone trusted to remain with their vehicle when they went in on foot. There was only one person it made sense to use: Konig. Once acquainted with their plans – and assured that the coming action could never be traced back to Katavi – he was fully on side.

As dusk had fallen, they’d left him with the Land Rover, well hidden in a wadi, and melted into the flat, ghostly light, navigating on GPS and compass across dry savannah and scrub. They were equipped with SELEX Personal Role Radios, plus headsets. With a good three miles’ range, the SELEX sets would enable them to keep in touch with each other and with Konig.

They’d had no opportunity to test-fire the main weapons they carried, but their sights were factory-zeroed to 250 yards, which was good enough for tonight.

Jaeger and Narov came to a halt three hundred yards short of the building pinpointed by the tracker. They spent twenty minutes lying prone on a ridge of higher ground, silently observing the place. Beneath Jaeger’s belly, the soil still held the warmth from the day.

The sun was well down, but the windows of the building before them were lit up like the proverbial Christmas tree. So much for security. The poachers and the smugglers clearly didn’t believe there was any real and present danger; any threat. They figured they were above the law. Tonight they were going to learn otherwise.