agents in restaurants, police in resorts-beyond anything you would ever require for your safety. All we need is a live Blitzkrieger so we can learn where they get their orders. There are drugs as well as other methods that will convince a killer to tell US."
"You've never captured one?" said Giselle.
"Oh, yes. Several months ago we trapped two, but they hanged themselves in their cells before we could put them under chemicals.
Such is the dedication of psychopathic zealots. Death is their profession, even their own."
In Washington, Wesley Sorenson, director of Consular Operations, studied the secure facsimiles wired from London.
"I can't believe this," he said.
"It's incredible!" .. "That's what I thought," agreed Sorenson's young chief of staff, standing at the left of the desk.
"But we can hardly dismiss it. Those names came from Sting' the only deep cover, ever to have penetrated the Briiderschaft. It's what he was sent out to do and he did it."
"But, my God, man, so many of these people are beyond reproach, and this isn't even the complete list---certain names have been selectively withheld! Two senators, six congressmen, CEOs of four major corporations, as well as a half dozen prominent men and women in the media, faces and voices we see and hear and read every day on television, radio, and the newspapers.. .. Here, look, two anchormen and a'woman co-host, and three talk show bullies-"
"The fat one I'd say is a possible,". interrupted the head staffer.
"He attacks anything he thinks is left of Attila the Hun."
"Not at all, he's too obvious. A third-rate mind, minimally educated and filled with hate, yes, but not a bona fide Nazi. He's just a buffoon with a glib tongue."
"The names came from the Brotherhood valley, sit. Nowhere else."
"Jesus, here's a member of the President's Cabinet!"
"That one blew me away, I'll grant you," said the
Cons-Op chief of staff.
"He's down-home corn silk, hardly a political bone in his body.. .. On the other hand, such people are accomplished at deception. There were Nazis in Congress during the late thirties, and Communists all over the place in the fifties, if you believe the loyalty investigations."
"The vast majority were pure bunk, young man," said Sorenson emphatically.
"I realize that, sir, but there were successful prosecutions."
"How many? If I remember the statistics, and I do, the number of people specifically named by that son-of-abitch Hoover and that fraud McCarthy came to nineteen thousand seven hundred. And after the screaming was over, there were exactly' four convictions!
Four out of damned near twenty thousand! That comes to point zero zero zero two plus, and a lot of congressional wind, as well as a great deal of wasted taxpayers' money. Don't bring back those good old days to me, please. I was around your age then-not as bright, God knows-but I lost a lot of friends to that insanity."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Sorenson, I didn't mean to-"
"I know, I know," the director of Cons-Op broke in, "there's no way you can understand the pain those times caused. And that's what worries me."
"I don't understand, sit."
"Could we be starting our own helter-skelter persecutions? Harry Latham is probably the only real genius the CIA has in the field, a super brain who can't be tricked but this stuff is from another planet.. .. Or is it? Christ, it's crazy! "
"What is, Mr. Sorenson?"
"The ages of all these people, they're pretty much the same-late forties, early fifties, a number in their sixties."
"So ?9)
"Years ago, when I first joined the Agency, there were rumors out of Bremerhaven-actually from an old submarine base in the Heligoland Bight-that told of a last-ditch strategy designed by fanatics of the Third Reich who knew they had lost the war. It was called Operation Son-nenkinder, selected children sent out secretly all over Europe and America to families who welcomed them and would bring them up to fill positions of financial power and political influence. Their final objectives were to create a climate that was conducive to .. . the Fourth Reich."
"That's wild, sir!"
"It was also totally disproven. We had a couple of hundred agents, along with Army Intelligence and British MlSix, who tracked down every lead over a period of two years. It all came to nothing.
If there ever was such an operation, it was aborted at the start.
There wasn't a shred of evidence that it was ever put in motion."
"But you're wondering now, aren't you, Mr. Sorenson?"
"Reluctantly, Paul. Doing my goddamnedest to restrain an imagination that kept me alive in the field. But I'm not in the