"Our man stationed himself in an automobile outside the colonel's apartment on the rue Diane. It was instinct, based on the telephone intercepts of Frederik de Vries's widow in Documents and Research."
"And?"
"Over an hour ago a man and a woman ran into the building.
They were in shadow, and he couldn't really see the man but thought he knew him. The woman he did know. It was the widow De Vries."
"The man's Latham!" exploded Paris Five.
"She's with Harry Latham; it can't be anyone else. Let's go!"
"To do what?" asked the skeptical Blitzkrieger, Zero Two.
"To complete the kill that One miscalculated."
"The circumstances are different, and considering the colonel's background in security, the location is extremely dangerous. In Zero One's absence, I suggest we get clearance from Bonn."
"I suggest we don't," Paris Six broke in.
"Sacro-Coeur was enough of a fiasco, why open a window, much less a door? If we bring in the kill, it erases the fiasco."
"And if you fail?"
"The answer to that is obvious," replied another from Sacr6Coeur, touching the outline of the shoulder holster under his jacket with his right hand, his left reaching for the- collar of his shirt, wherein were sewn three cyanide capsules.
"We may have our differences, our frictions, if you like, but the baseline is our commitment to the Brilderschaft, the emergence of the Fourth Reich. Let no one mistake that commitment."
"I don't think anyone does," said Two.
"Then you agree with Paris Six? We go to the rue Diane."
"Certainly. We'd be idiots not to."
"We present Bonn with a triple kill our leaders can only applaud," added the angry, frustrated Paris Five.
"Without Zero One, who's screwed us up enough. When he returns, he can answer to us as well as to Bonn. I suspect, at best, he'll be recalled."
"You really want to command this unit, don't you?" asked Two, looking up, wearily at the imposing figure of Five.
"Yes," answered the elder assassin, elder because he had reached the age of thirty.
"I'm the oldest and more experienced.
He's a mad teenager who acts and makes decisions before he's thought things out.. I should have been given the position three years ago, when we were assigned here."
"Why weren't you? After all, we're all mad, so madness doesn't count, does it?"
"What the hell are you saying?" pressed another Blitzkrieger, sitting up and staring at Zero Two.
"Don't mistake me, I approve of our madness. I'm the son of a diplomat and grew up in five different countries. I saw firsthand what you've only been told. We're right, absolutely right. The weak, the mentally and racially inferior, are inserting themselves in governments everywhere;
only the blind do not see that. One doesn't have to be a social historian to understand that intellectual levels everywhere are being dragged down, not propelled upward. That is why we are right.. . But my question to Paris Five started this. Why was Zero One chosen, my friend?"
"I really don't know."
"Let me try to explain. Every movement must have its zealots, its shock troops who inhabit that dark area beyond madness that compels them to hurl themselves against impenetrable barricades to make a statement heard across the land. Then they disappear into the background, supplanted-or at least they should be supplanted -by superior people. The gravest error the Third Reich made was to permit the shock troops, the, thugs, to control the party and thus the nation."
"You're a thinker, aren't you, Two?"
"The philosophical theories of Nietzsche have always appealed to me, especially his doctrine of perfectibility through self-assertion and the moral glorification of the supreme rulers."
"You're too educated for me," said Zero Six, "but I've heard the words before."
"Of course you have." Paris Two smiled.
"Variations have been drummed into us."
"We're wasting time!" Five broke in, standing erect, his eyes squinting slightly, riveted on Two.
"You are a thinker, aren't you?
I've never heard you talk so much, especially about such matters.
Is there something else beneath your words? Perhaps you believe that you should command our Paris unit."
"Oh, no, you're very wrong, I'm not qualified. What I may have in my head I lack in practical experience, as well as by my youth."
"But there is something else-"
"Indeed, there is, Number Five," interrupted Two, their eyes locked.
"When our Reich emerges, I have no intention of fading into an obscure background-any more than you do."
"We understand each other.. .. Come, I'll choose the team for the rue Diane-six men. Two of you remain here to expedite emergency procedures should they be necessary,
The chosen six rose from the table, three of them going