Authors: Bear Grylls

Ghost Flight (52 page)

BOOK: Ghost Flight

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First Andy Smith had been killed, and then Jaeger and his team had been hunted across the Amazon. The Dark Force had done its damnedest to finish them and bury for ever the secrets of the Ju 390 ghost flight. They clearly had a global reach, and some serious technological and military prowess at their disposal. Plus, an official British government file had been snuffed out of existence, disappearing from the archives.

Any which way Jaeger looked at it, the sons of the Reich did indeed appear to be rising. And no one seemed to be aware of it or doing anything much to stop it – apart from him and his small, war-weary team.

When Jenkinson had cracked the Operation Werewolf papers, Jaeger had been tempted to reveal the presence in his grandfather’s war chest of a document with the same title. But something instinctive had held him back. That was a card he’d keep close to his chest until the time was right to play it.

With Colonel Evandro’s help, he had managed to set up a system of secure encrypted email, so that all the surviving team members could communicate in some degree of safety. Or rather, all bar Leticia Santos. Colonel Evandro had his best men, supported by his kidnap, ransom and extortion specialists, out scouring the country, searching for her whereabouts, but so far all leads had come to naught.

Jaeger fired up the iPad and logged on to ProtonMail – the end-to-end email encryption system they were now using. He had one message waiting, from Raff, with good news. In the last twenty-four hours, Lewis Alonzo, Hiro Kamishi and Joe James had surfaced. They had made it out of the Serra de los Dios under the guidance of Puruwehua and some of the neighbouring tribe, the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau.

All three were as well as could be expected, and Raff was now working with Colonel Evandro to ensure they were brought home as quickly and safely as possible. Jaeger emailed him back, asking for an update on the search for Leticia Santos.

While he knew there was little he could do to help, a part of him wanted to return to Brazil forthwith to support Colonel Evandro in the hunt. Once he was done in Bermuda, that was what he intended to do, as long as Santos hadn’t been rescued in the interim. He’d vowed to himself that she would be found and brought home safely.

There was a second message waiting in his inbox, this one from Pieter Boerke. He was about to click on it when there was a knock at his door.

It was Narov. ‘I am going out for a run.’

‘Okay,’ Jaeger replied, keeping his eyes on the screen. ‘And when you’re back, maybe we can have that long-overdue chat about how you knew my grandfather. And why you resent me so much.’

Narov paused. ‘Resent you? Maybe not so much now. But yes, in this place, maybe we can talk.’

The door closed and Jaeger opened the message.

First off, download the attached photograph. It’s one I missed in the vaults. Once you’ve got it, dial me on my Skype link. It’ll go through to my cell phone even if I’m out on the move, so you’ll always get me. Do it immediately. Don’t speak to anyone else.

Jaeger did as instructed. The photo was a grainy black-and-white image taken with a long lens. Once again, it was clearly of the
Duchessa
, and it showed a group of senior Nazi commanders clustered along the ship’s rail. Nothing leaped out at him, so with the image on screen, he pulled up his Skype link and dialled Boerke.

The South African answered, his voice thick with tension. ‘Look at the guy fourth from the left, in the very centre of the photo. You got him? That guy. That scowl; the appalling hairstyle; the frown marks. Remind you of anyone? Now imagine that face with a small and very bloody stupid-looking Charlie Chaplin moustache . . .’

Suddenly it was as if Jaeger couldn’t breathe. ‘No way,’ he gasped. ‘Can’t be. We cracked the code, and he wasn’t on the list. The top Nazis were, but not him.’

‘Well double-check,’ Boerke countered. ‘’Cause if that’s not Adolf bloody Hitler, then I’m a bloody Chinaman! One more thing. The photo’s date-stamped on the reverse. The date: the seventh of May 1945. And I guess I don’t need to point out the significance of that.’

Once Boerke had signed off the call, Jaeger double-clicked his cursor, zooming closer on the image. He stared at the figure’s features, hardly daring to believe the evidence before his eyes. No doubt about it: the face was the spitting image of the Führer’s – suggesting that he had been standing on a ship’s deck in Santa Isabel harbour fully a week after he had supposedly shot himself in his Berlin bunker.

It was a good while before Jaeger felt able to return to the task in hand. Boerke’s revelation – presumably the last of the
Duchessa
’s dark secrets – had totally numbed him. It was one thing to discover that many of the Führer’s deputies – the chief architects of the evil – had survived the war’s end.

It was quite another to discover evidence that the Führer himself might have done so.

Using the ProtonMail search engine, Jaeger logged into their draft email account – the one that had been compromised. He couldn’t resist the urge to take a look, and he knew that via ProtonMail his location should be pretty much untraceable. ProtonMail boasted that even the US National Security Agency – the world’s most powerful electronic surveillance outfit – couldn’t crack traffic going via their servers, which were based in Switzerland.

There was one new message sitting in the draft folder.

It had been there for several days.

Jaeger’s unease deepened.

As before, it was blank, providing only a link to a Dropbox folder. Jaeger didn’t figure it would be from any of his team. With a growing sense of dread, he opened Dropbox and clicked on the first JPEG file, fully expecting it to be another horrific photo of Leticia Santos – part of the enemy’s ongoing
Nervenkrieg
.

He told himself that he had to look, for in one of those sickening images the enemy might inadvertently have left a clue as to their whereabouts – a lead from which Jaeger and the others could start to hunt them down.

The first image appeared: six lines of lettering only.

Holidaying in Paradise . . .

While your loved ones burn.

Question: how do we know so much?

Answer: little Lukie keeps telling us.

Supplementary question: where is little Lukie now?

Answer:
Nacht und Nebel
.

Nacht und Nebel
– the night and fog.

With his heart pounding like a machine gun, Jaeger clicked on the second JPEG. The image that opened was of a once-beautiful green-eyed woman and an adolescent boy, their faces cadaverous, their gazes haunted, with dark rings around their sunken eyes.

Mother and child were kneeling in chains before some kind of Nazi flag dominated by a
Reichsadler
. They were clutching a copy of the
International Herald Tribune
. With shaking hands, he zoomed in on the newspaper’s banner: the date revealed it to be not yet a week old. It was proof positive that as of five days ago, they were both still very much alive

Two lines of lettering were typed below the image:

Return to us what is ours.

Wir sind die Zukunft.

Jaeger turned and dry-retched. He found himself shaking and hurting in a way he’d never experienced before, not even during the worst of the torture he’d endured at Black Beach. He dropped off the chair, his body folding in on itself, but even as he lay on the floor, he couldn’t drag his eyes away from that earth-shattering image.

Visions kept crashing through his head, ones so tormented and dark he felt as if his skull were about to explode. It was a long time that he lay there beside the desk, curled into a ball. Tears rolled silently down his cheeks, but they barely registered.

He lost track of time.

He felt spent. Totally void.

The noise that finally brought him back to his senses was that of the door to the bedroom opening.

Somehow he’d made it back into his chair, and was slumped before the desk and the screen.

He turned.

Irina Narov was standing behind him. She had a small towel wrapped around her midriff, the top of which was fastened just above her breasts. She must have been for a shower after her run, and beneath the towel Jaeger didn’t doubt that she was naked.

He didn’t care.

‘Once, when trapped in the jungle treetops, I explained the reasons why two people may get intimate,’ Narov remarked, in that odd, flat, matter-of-fact way of hers. ‘Such close proximity can be necessary for three reasons,’ she repeated. ‘One: practical necessity. Two: to share body warmth. Three: sex.’ She smiled. ‘Right now, I should like it to happen for reason number three.’

Jaeger didn’t reply. He wasn’t particularly surprised. He’d realised by now that Narov had a near-total lack of ability to read other people’s emotions. Even facial expressions and body language seemed strangely lost on her.

Jaeger moved the iPad to where she could see the image on the screen.

Narov’s hand went to her mouth in shock. ‘Oh, sweet Jesus—’

‘The date on the newspaper,’ Jaeger cut in, his voice sounding as if it were coming from the end of a very long and very dark tunnel. ‘It’s five days old.’

‘Oh my God,’ Narov gasped. ‘
They’re alive
.’

Their eyes locked across the space between them.

‘I will get dressed,’ Narov continued, without the vaguest hint of any awkwardness or embarrassment. ‘There is work to be done.’

She turned towards the door, but paused, flicking a troubled glance back at Jaeger. ‘I confess – I did not just go for a run. I also had a rendezvous to make . . . I met with someone who believes he knows where Leticia Santos is being held.’

‘You did what?’ Jaeger asked, trying to shake the confusion out of his head. ‘Where? And with who, for Christ’s sake? And why didn’t you warn—’

‘You would not have wanted to meet with them,’ Narov cut in. ‘Not if you knew who they are.’

‘Bloody try me!’ Jaeger snarled. He jabbed a finger at the image on the screen. ‘A lead to Leticia – that could take me back to them!’

‘I know. I know that now,’ Narov protested. ‘But an hour ago – I had no idea they were alive.’

Jaeger rose to his feet. There was real menace in his stance now. ‘So tell me – who the hell was at your secret meeting, and what did they tell you?’

Narov took a step back. She was clearly on her guard, but for once she was bereft of her knife. ‘One of the nearest landfalls to Bermuda is Cuba. Cuba is still Russian territory, as far as the Kremlin is concerned. I met with one of my contacts—’

‘You met with a bloody SVR agent? You shared news of what we’re doing with
them
?’

Narov shook her head. ‘A Russian mafiosa. A drug-runner, or rather one of the drug-running kingpins. They have their network spread right across the Caribbean. They know everything and everybody. They have to, to be able to run their cocaine through these islands.’ She glared at Jaeger resentfully. ‘But if you wish to find a devil, sometimes you have to do a deal with the devil himself.’

‘So – what did he tell you?’ Jaeger rasped.

‘Two weeks ago, a group of Eastern Europeans turned up in Cuba. They started throwing money around and partying like crazy. Nothing so unusual. But two things came to the notice of my contact. One, they were mercenaries. Two, they had a woman they were holding captive.’ Defiance blazed in Narov’s eyes. ‘That woman – she is Brazilian. And her last name – it is Santos.’

Jaeger’s eyes searched Narov’s features for a long moment. Oddly, as part of her complex psychological make-up, she seemed incapable of telling a lie. She could play a part to perfection, but with someone she trusted the truth would invariably out.

‘Okay,’ he growled, ‘screw how you found them.’ His gaze went back to the image on his iPad screen. ‘First we find Leticia, and then . . .’

A look had come into Jaeger’s eyes – one of ice-cold, steely calm. He had his team, he had a lead – and more importantly, he had the world and his family to save.

He turned back to Narov. ‘Pack your bags. We’re going on a journey.’

‘We are,’ Narov confirmed. ‘You: Will Jaeger. And me. It’s time we went hunting.’