apocalypse watch | Page 2

mind was on fire. It was there! He had found it! Yet, as they reached ground level, even Harry Latham was astonished at what he had really found.

The roughly three square miles of valley flatland was in reality a military base, superbly camouflaged. The roofs of the various one-story structures were painted to blend in with the surroundings, and whole sections of the fields were beneath a latticework of ropes fifteen feet high, the open spaces between the ropes and poles filled with stretched, translucent green screening--corridors leading from one area to another. Gray motorcycles with sidecars sped through these concealed “alleyways,” the drivers and their passengers in uniform, while groups of men and women could be seen in training exercises, both physical and apparently academic_ lecturers stood before black-boards in front of serrated ranks of students. Those performing gymnastics and hand-to-hand combat were in minimal clothing-briefs and halters; those being lectured were in forest-green fatigues. What struck Harry Latham was the sense of constant movement. There was an in tensity about the valley that was frightening, but then, so was the Briiderschaft, and this was its womb.

“It is spectacular, night wahr, Herr Lassiter?” shouted the middleaged German beside the driver as they reached the bottom road and entered a corridor of roofed rope and green screening.

“Unglaublich,” agreed the American.

“Thantastiscb!”

“I forget, you speak our language fluently.”

“My heart is here. It always has been.”

“Natzirlicb, denn wi@ sind im Recht.”

“Mehr als das, wir sind die Wabrbeit. Hitler spoke the truths of all truth.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” said the German, smiling with neutral eyes at Alexander Lassiter, born Harry Latham of Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

"We'll go directly to the OberbefeWsbaber. The Kommandant is eager to meet you:)

Thirty-two months of grueling serpentine work were about to bear fruit, thought Latham. Nearly three years of building a life, living a life that was not his, were about to come to an end. The incessant, maddening, exhausting travels throughout Europe and the Middle East, synchronized down to hours, even minutes, so he would be at a specific place at a given time, where others could swear on their lives that they had seen him. And the scum of the world he had dealt with-arms merchants without conscience, whose extraordinary profits were measured by super tankers of blood; drug lords, killing and crippling generations of children everywhere;

compromised politicians, even statesmen, who bent and subverted laws for the benefit of the manipulators-it was all finished. There would be no more frenzied funneling of gargantuan sums of money through laundered Swiss accounts, secret numbers, and spectrograph signatures, all part of the deadly games of international terrorism. Harry Latham's personal nightmare, as vital as it was, was over.

“We are here, Herr Lassiter,” said Latham's German companion as the mountain vehicle pulled up to a barrack door under the roped green screening high above.

“It is much warmer now, much more pleasant, nicbt wabr?”

“It certainly is,” answered the deep-cover intelligence officer, stepping down from the rear seat.

“I'm actually sweating under these clothes.”

“We'll take the outerwear off inside and have yours dried for your return.”

“I'd appreciate it. I must be back in Munich by tonight.”

“Yes, we understand. Come, the Kommandant.” As the two men approached the heavy black wooden door with the scarlet swastika emblazoned in the center, there was a whooshing sound in the air.

Above, through the translucent green screening, the large white wings of a glider swooped in descending circles into the valley.

“Another wonder, Herr Lassiter? It is released from its mother aircraft at an altitude of roughly thirteen hundred feet. Natfirlich, the pilot must be extremely well trained, for the winds are dangerous, so unpredictable. It is used only in emergencies.”

“I can see how it comes down. How does it get up?”

“The same winds, mein Herr, with the assistance of disposable booster rockets. In the thirties, we Germans developed the most advanced glider aircraft.”

“Why not use a conventional small plane?”

“Too easily monitored. A glider can be pulled up from a field, a clear pasture. A plane must be fueled, be serviced, have maintenance, and frequently, even a flight plan.”

“Thantastisch,” repeated the American.

“And-of course-the glider has few or no metal parts. Plastic and sized cloth are difficult for radar grids to pick up.”

“Difficult,” agreed the new-age Nazi.

“Not completely impossible, but extremely difficult.”

“Amazing,” said Herr Lassiter as his companion opened the door of the valley's headquarters.

“You are all to be congratulated. Your isolation is matched by your security. Superb!” Feigning a casualness he did not feel, Latham looked around the large room.

There was a profusion of sophisticated computerized equipment, banks of consoles against each wall, starchy-uniformed operators in front of each, seemingly an equal mix of men and women.... Men and women-something was odd, at least not normal.

What was it? And then he knew; to an individual, the operators were young, generally in their