a way. He's going to do it." . "Then we'd all better get to work, hadn't we? I'll stay in contact with MI-Five and the Quai d'Orsay. You concentrate on the identities of everyone in that estate on the Rhine. Coordinate with Claude, MI-Six, and German intelligence. We want every one of those fanatics in cells by tomorrow. And zero in on the non-Germans first; don't let them leave the country."
The government computers of four nations spun their disks furiously for the next twenty-one hours as isolated photographs were wired to the intelligence agencies of Germany, France, England, and America. Of the thirty-six men who roared Sieg Heil, Gunter jdger, seventeen were
German, seven American, four British, and five French; three were unidentified and presumably had already boarded flights out of the country. All were secretly placed under arrest and held incommunicado in isolated prison cells, no explanations given, no telephone calls permitted. In cases where the individuals were prominent, sudden business trips and prolonged conferences were the stories told their households, issued in the names of their companies.
"This is outrageous!" roared the owner of a German chemical factory.
"So are you," replied the German police officer.
There remained only Gunter jdger, kept oblivious of the events of the last twenty-one hours, alone with his staff in his modest compound on the banks of the Rhine. It was a multilateral command decision, as none of the neo-Nazis taken prisoner could provide any specifics regarding Water Lightning. The strategies they offered up in hopes of better treatment and leniency were totally impractical and therefore false. Even the hysterical Hans Traupman, having been shown the lurid tales of his sexual experiments, could provide nothing of substance.
"Do you think I would withhold anything from you? My God, I'm a surgeon, I know when an operation has failed. We're finished!"
Only Gunter jAger had the answers, and it was the considered opinion of the behavioral scientists who had studied the tape that he would take his own life before revealing them.
"His condition is one of manic-depressive, controlled paranoia, which simply means he's constantly living on the edge. One shove and he's into the abyss of complete madness."
Karin de Vries agreed.
Therefore, the new Fdhrer's every means of communication was monitored: telephone, radio frequencies, deliveries, even the possibility of carrier pigeons. Agents with powerful electronic listening devices were in the bushes, in trees, and among the ruins of the former demolished estate, the "ears" beamed to every area of the river cottage and its grounds. All waited for Jdger to make contact with anyone or anything that would give them a clue about Water Lightning.
None came, and the hours passed.
In London, Paris, and Washington, the waterworks were virtually under siege. Platoons of armed soldiers patrolled every foot of the areas, roads leading to the reservoirs were blockaded, detours put in place. In the brick water towers of Washington, the operations and security systems were manned by experts of the Army Corps of Engineers, the most experienced personnel flown in from all over the country.
"No son-of-a-bitch Nazi will get near this place," said the brigadier general in command of the Daleearlia reservoir.
"It's the same in London and Paris, we've conferred down to the last possibility. I think the French went a little ape though. They've got bazooka and flamethrower units every hundred yards, and they don't even drink water."
In. Bonn because there was no evidence that Water Lightning would affect the city, the government placed all its resources at the disposal of the allies, its allies now, for no one on earth loathed the reappearance of the Nazi more than the German leadership.
However, they did not consider history or its plague of repetition.
For during the darkest hours of the night of Water Lightning, trucks ostensi ibly carrying everything from linen supplies to kitchen equipment to cleaning services drove slowly, unobtrusively, into the parking areas of the Bundestag. In reality, within those trucks were stored large tanks of high octane, highly explosive fuel attached to pumps capable of spraying an entire football or soccer field. It was a symbol Gunter [email protected] could not resist, a personal symbol he shared with no one but his committed disciples who would perform the task. They would torch the Bundestag, burning it to the ground.
"Reichstag revisited," he wrote in his private journal.
"Nothing's happening!" exclaimed Karin in the suite at the K6nigshof Hotel. It was one o'clock in the morning in Bonn; Witkowski and the two commandos from Desert
Storm, exhausted from nearly two days' lack of rest,