Burning Angels

‘Let me remind you: if you use any personal communications devices, he will find you. He has the services of the CIA’s most technologically accomplished people at his disposal. If you use insecure email, you’re as good as done for. If you return to your home addresses, he will track you there. It’s kill or be killed. Use only the comms systems as provided: secure encrypted means. Always.’

Miles eyed each of them in turn. ‘Make no mistake, if you speak on open means; if you email on open networks — you’re dead.’

72

Five thousand miles across the Atlantic Ocean, the architect of the evil was putting the finishing touches to a momentous message. Kammler’s Werewolves — the true sons of the Reich; those who had remained steadfast for over seven decades — were poised to reap their rewards.

Stupendous rewards.

The time was almost upon them.

Hank Kammler ran his eye over the closing paragraphs, polishing them one final time.

Gather your families. Make your way to your places of sanctuary. It has begun. It is unleashed. In six weeks it will start to bite. You have that time, before those who are not with us will start to reap the whirlwind. We who are chosen — we precious few — stand on the brink of a new age. A new dawn.

It will be a new millennium in which the sons of the Reich — the Aryans — grasp our rightful inheritance once and for all.

From here we will rebuild, in the name of the Führer.

We will have destroyed to create anew.

The glory of the Reich will be ours.

Wir sind die Zukunft.

HK

Kammler read it, and it was good.

His finger punched the ‘send’ button.

He leant back in his leather chair, his eyes drifting to a framed photo on his desk. The middle-aged man in the pinstriped suit bore a striking resemblance to Kammler: they had the same thin, hawkish nose; the same ice-blue eyes brimful of arrogance; the same gaze betraying an easy assumption that power and privilege were theirs as a birthright, and due them long into old age.

It wasn’t hard to imagine them as father and son.

‘At last,’ the seated figure whispered, almost as if speaking to the photo. ‘Wir sind die Zukunft.’

His gaze dwelt upon the framed image a moment longer, but his eyes were looking inwards; menacing pools of thick darkness that sucked in all that was good. All life — all innocence — was drawn into them, suffocating mercilessly.

London, Kammler reflected. London — the seat of the British government; the site of the late Winston Churchill’s War Rooms, from where he had orchestrated resistance to Hitler’s glorious Reich when all defiance had seemed futile.

The cursed British had held on for just long enough to draw the Americans into the war. Without them, of course, the Third Reich would have triumphed and ruled as the Führer had intended — for a thousand years.

London. It was only right that the darkness had begun there.

Kammler tapped his keyboard and pulled up his IntelCom link. He dialled, and a voice answered.

‘So tell me, how are my animals?’ Kammler asked. ‘Katavi? Our elephants are thriving, despite the greed of the locals?’

‘The elephant populations are stronger by the day,’ Falk Konig’s voice replied. ‘Less attrition — especially since our friends Bert and Andrea—’

‘Forget them!’ Kammler cut in. ‘So they snuffed out the Lebanese dealer and his gang. Their motives weren’t entirely altruistic, let me assure you.’

‘I had been wondering…’ Falk’s voice tailed off. ‘But either way, they did a good thing.’

Kammler snorted. ‘Nothing compared to what I intend. I mean to kill them all. Every last poacher, every last trader, and every last buyer — all of them.’

‘So why not hire Bert and Andrea?’ Konig persisted. ‘They’re good people. Professionals. And especially in Andrea’s case, a genuine lover of wildlife. They’re ex-military and in need of work. If you want to defeat the poachers, you could use them to run an anti-poaching drive.’

‘It won’t be necessary,’ Kammler snapped. ‘You liked them, did you?’ His voice was laced with sarcasm now. ‘Made some fine new friends?’

‘In a way, yes,’ Konig replied defiantly. ‘Yes, I did.’

Kammler’s voice softened, but it was all the more sinister for it. ‘Is there something you haven’t told me, my boy? I know our opinions can tend to differ, but our key interests remain aligned. Conservation. Wildlife protection. The herds. That is what matters. There’s nothing that might threaten Katavi, is there?’