mess drenched by the sprinkler system. In an office filled with computerized electronic equipment, undoubtedly used by the leader of the unit, was a huge locked steel cabinet. Smashed open, it revealed an arsenal of weapons, from high-powered rifles, telescopic sights attached, to boxes of hand grenades, miniaturized flamethrowers, garrotes, assorted handguns, and various stilettos some automated from canes and umbrellas. Everything coincided with Drew Latham's description of elite Nazi killers in Paris. This was their lair.
"Use pincers," ordered Colonel Witkowski, speaking French and addressing the police while pointing to charred sheets of paper on the floor.
"Get plates of glass and place anything that isn't totally destroyed between them. You never know what we can pick up."
"The telephones have all been torn from the walls and the receptacles destroyed," said a French detective.
"The lines haven't, have they?"
"No. I have a technician from the telephone company on his way. He will restore the lines and we can trace their calls."
"Outgoing, maybe, incoming negative. And if I know these bozos, the ones made here were routed for payment to a little old lady in Marseilles who gets a money order and a bonus once a month."
"As it is with the drug dealers, no?"
"Yes."
"Still, there are instructions somewhere, yes?"
"Definitely, but none you can trace. They'll come from a Swiss or Cayman bank, the secret accounts not to be nvaded. That's the way things work these days."
1 investigate domestically, monsieur, in Paris and its environs mainly, not internationally."
"Then get me someone who does."
"You would have to appeal to the Quai d'Orsay, the Service d'Etranger. These are beyond my province."
"I'll find 'em."
The uniformed Latham and a blond-wigged Karin de Vries approached, stepping cautiously on the floor, their feet avoiding the charred, windblown pages.
"Have you figured out anything?" asked Drew.
"Not much, but this sure was the core of their operations, whoever they were."
"Who else but the men who attacked us last night?" said Karin.
"I'll buy that,. but where did they go?" agreed Witkowski.
"Monsieur IAmiricain," shouted another plainclothes police official, rushing from an outer room.
"Look what I found. It was beneath a pillow on a sitting room chair! It is a letter-the beginning of a letter."
"Let me have it." The colonel took the piece of paper. ""Meine Liebste," Witkowski began, his eyes squinting.
"Etwas Entsetzlicbes ist gescheben."
"Give it to me," said De Vries, impatient with Witkowski's hesitation. She translated in English. "
"My dearest, tonight is most shocking. We must all leave immediately lest our cause be damaged and we are all to be executed for others' failures. No one in Bonn must know, but we are flying to South America, to some place where we will be protected until we can return and fight again.
I adore you so .. . I must finish later, someone is coming down the hallway. I will post this at the air-' It stops there, the letters slurred."
"The airport!" cried Latham.
"Which one? Which airlines fly to South America? We can intercept them!"
"Forget it," said the colonel.
"It's ten-fifteen in the morning, and there are a couple of dozen airlines that leave between seven and ten and end up in any one of twenty or thirty cities in South America. Those flights are well beyond us. However, there's a positive. Our killers got the hell out of Paris fast, and their scum bucket brothers in Bonn haven't a clue. Until others take their place, we've got some breathing room."
Gerhardt Kroeger, surgeon and alterer of minds, was about to lose his own. He had called the Avignon Warehouses a dozen times in the past six hours, using the proper codes, only to be told by an operator that all lines to the office he wished to reach were "not in service at this time. Our computers show manual disconnects." No amount of protestations on his part could change the situation; it was all too obvious. The Blitzkrieger had shut down. Why? What had happened? Zero Five, Paris, had been so confident: The photographs of the kill would be delivered to him in the morning.
Where were they? Where was Paris Five?
There was no other option. He had to reach Hans Traupman in Nuremberg. Someone had to have an explanation!
"It's'foolish of you to reach me here," said Traupman.
"I don't have the proper telephone devices."
"I had no choice. You cannot do this to me, Bonn cannot do this to me! I'm ordered to find my creation at whatever the cost, even to the point of employing the socalled incomparable skills of our associates here in Paris-"
"What more can you