Chapter Ten.

Maxine Bergmann was in her office studying the files on the series of killings when her telephone rang. She picked up the handset;

'Bergmann.'

The female voice on the other end of the line replied.

'Maxine; it's Stacey. Brigittenauer Sporn spur road at eight, this evening.'

The line clicked as the connection was cut.

Maxine replaced the handset and leaned back in her chair. So; the recall extraction was arranged for tonight. That must mean that something nasty was going to take place in the city today. She glanced up at the clock on the office wall… ten-to-six. Brigittenauer Sporn was an island in the Danube; bounded on its east side by the river; and on the west side by the Donaukanal. It was about ten kilometres north of police headquarters, and would take her at least three-quarters-of-an-hour through the evening traffic to reach it. Where on the island the rendezvous had been arranged hadn't been mentioned.

She stood, and walked over to a large-scale map of Vienna affixed to the office wall. Where would the most likely place be? The west side of the island was mainly industrial, with a few historic buildings; the east side was used as a leisure and picnicking area. The meeting would probably be somewhere along this stretch. Opening her office door, she walked out into the main department and approached the desk of her senior detective, Dietmar Schega. He glanced up from the file her was studying. In a perfectly matter-of-fact voice, she said,

'Dietmar; I have to go out to meet one of my contacts in about an hour. Keep an eye on the place, would you?'

He nodded.

'Certainly Kriminalobermeister; Can you be contacted if anything urgent comes up?'

She smiled.

'I'm sure you can handle most things Dietmar; but, if it's really serious; get them to call me on the car radio.'

At seven o'clock, Maxine cleared her desk and locked her filing cabinet. Putting on her coat, she left her office and nodded to Dietmar Schega as she passed his desk.

'OK, Dietmar; it's all yours until I get back. I shouldn't be much more than about an hour.'

She left the building and walked to her car. Starting the engine, she engaged gear and drove out into Stubenring; turning right to drive down to the junction with Franz-Josefs-Kai. At the junction, she turned left and accelerated away through the last of the rush-hour traffic.

At about the same time that Maxine Bergmann turned her car into Franz-Josefs-Kai; Doktor Johannes Sporn arrived home at Prinz-Eugen-Strasse 44. Parking up, and locking his flashy BMW 2800 CS coupé; he entered the apartment block and was met by the concierge, who informed him that the telephone engineer had visited, and rectified the problem with the Herr Doktor's telephone. Sporn thanked the concierge and went up to his apartment on the second floor. At the door, he scrutinised the woodwork for signs of scratching on the paintwork; or any evidence of metallic strip that might be an electrical contact. Finding nothing; he carefully opened the door, and examined the carpet for signs of interference. Again; there was nothing. He carefully closed the door and walked into the room. Everything appeared to be exactly as he had left it; then, he noticed the two small lengths of yellow-insulated wire on the carpet.

He froze in his tracks; every one of his senses acutely intensified. He picked up a muted ticking noise. It sounded as though it was coming from the drinks cabinet. Very carefully, he eased the doors open to reveal the tin… the wires… the pocket watch.

Sporn gave a grim smile. Was that the best that they could come up with? Fucking amateurs! During his time with the SS-Totenkopf Standarte "Brandenburg"… before he transferred to the SS-Totenkopf Sturmbann... the SS Death's-Head guard battalion; he had dealt with dozens of far more sophisticated booby-traps than this; when they had been chasing Polak partisan groups. He studied the device. The contact would be made when the hour hand touched the screw in the dial face.

With infinite care, he reached in to hook a fingernail under the tip of the hour hand; intending to prise it up so that it could not possibly make contact with the screw. Very cautiously, he grasped the body of the pocket watch between two fingers to steady it and curled a finger tip over the hour hand. As his finger brushed the metal of the hour hand there was a sharp crack, and wisps of smoke bled out from under the tin lid.

Frantically, he threw himself backwards but nothing else happened. Tentatively, he approached the tin again. The metal was warm to the touch. Pulling off the lid, he stared into the tin's depths. It contained a battery and a discoloured and ruptured blasting cap; the end of which was pushed into a lump of modelling clay. It was a dummy! The blasting cap had fired when the static in his body completed the circuit! He gave a relieved grin. It was nothing more than a clever firework. The problem he now had, was who had planted it? He was involved in the prosecution of several criminal cases… it could have been contracted by any one of the defendants in any one of the cases. He would just have to stay on his toes for the foreseeable future.

He walked across the room and switched on the television; then went to the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee. Then, he could relax whilst he watched the evening news programme.

Johannes Sporn finished making his cup of coffee and came back into the living room. He placed the steaming cup on the coffee table and sat down in his favourite armchair. The massive explosion blew the apartment's elegant Biedermeier-style bay window out into Prinz Eugen-Strasse; brought half of the apartment ceiling down; and splattered Sporn's upper body all across the facing wall; driving gobbets of human tissue and splinters of bone into the plaster with such force that they remained embedded where they had impacted. The lower half of Sporn's shattered corpse remained in the splintered, smoking remnants of the armchair, with what was left of his mangled and torn intestines dangling slimily onto the floor between his legs. It looked as though someone had thrown several buckets of slaughterhouse offal around the room.

Maxine Bergmann turned off the main road and crossed the Donaukanal onto Brigittenauer Sporn with a quarter of an hour to spare. Alongside the canal lock, she took the narrow road that ran along the east side of the island and slowed her speed. It was dark out here; this road had no street lamps. Warily, and not knowing quite what to expect; she continued driving along the road beside the Danube for some two hundred metres until, in her headlamps; she saw a wide, asphalt space. A solitary figure stood there, in front of a low, industrial-type building.

As she came closer, she saw that it was the American girl, Mckenna. Maxine slowed and stopped beside her. Stacey slid into the passenger seat and told her to carry on forwards for about a hundred metres down a dirt track alongside the building towards the northern tip of the island. Maxine carefully drove down the track and saw another figure… a man; step out in front of her. She braked; but kept the engine running… just in case. The man came to her driver's side window.

'Lailah? I am Rani. You were not followed?'

She shook her head.

'No; I am supposed to be out meeting a contact.'

Rani nodded, and smiled.

'Good! Now, please get out of the car and Stacey will take you to our transport. It's better that you don't see anything of what we are about to do.'

Stolen novel; please report.

Maxine left the police Commodore idling and walked away through the bushes to where a grey Opel Kapitän B was parked. Rani and Benny walked around to the driver's side of the Commodore and opened fire with a pair of silenced Uzi submachine guns; stitching a trail of bullet-hole punctures across the driver's door and shattering the driver's-side window. Benny then climbed into the car and reversed it back down the track. He engaged first gear and accelerated hard. At a predetermined point, he slewed the Commodore off the track and down towards the river. At the last moment he jumped; hitting the ground, and rolling away to the side. The momentum of the Commodore launched it through the bushes and out over the line of low rocks strengthening the edge of the island, into the grey waters of the Danube; where it wallowed, and then, sank from sight. Benny came back through the bushes rubbing his shin and gave Rani a wry grin.

'How about that? Credible enough for you?'

Rani walked back and checked the marks on the road. He nodded.

'Yes; it looks like she went off at speed. We'll leave the shell casings where they are. It'll help to make them believe "Kriminalobermeister Bergmann" was ambushed. They'll recover the wreck, but no body… which is plausible. The river currents probably dragged her body out through the broken car window. She could be anywhere with the sort of currents that are in this part of the river.'

They walked to the tip of the island and threw the Uzi submachine guns far out into the river; then returned to the car. Stacey and Lailah were sitting in the back seat. Rani turned to them.

'I regret to announce that Kriminalobermeister Maxine Bergmann appears to have been ambushed. Her bullet-ridden car will be found in the river, but her body will not be recovered. The brave Officer will be believed to have been killed in the line of duty. Operation Nimrod is effectively now closed. Our next stop is the Israeli Embassy.'

He turned the grey Opel Kapitän B around, and drove back down the island towards the main highway into Vienna.

Phips Eberhardt; "Zellenleiter" … cell leader of the Aktionsbüro Siegfrid opened up the deserted warehouse in Kanalgasse ready for the meeting. As he made his way across the squalid floorboards of the outer room, he was wondering if it would be tonight that the former SS-Obersturmführer Joachim Hamann would return to question the Aktionsbüro as to whether their combined efforts had established where in Vienna the original Plumbat dossier was stored.

Phips Eberhardt was not looking forward to this visit. So far, regardless of how much strong-arm stuff his boys had inflicted on possible sources… not to mention beating up the odd Jew just to keep their hand in; they were no nearer to finding out the whereabouts of this fucking dossier. This whole thing was beginning to make them look as though they really were a bunch of Schluchtenscheisser, and not the spearhead of the "New Order" in Vienna.

Entering the inner chamber, he switched on the lights; and in doing so, armed the timer on Benny's little "surprise." He busied himself setting out the chairs. Having done this, he glanced around the room. The end wall looked impressive; adorned as it was, with the NSDAP Parteiadler… the Nazi Party Eagle, with outspread wings, and clutching a garlanded swastika in its talons. The side walls, draped with red-and-black swastika banners; red-and-black streamers, and Nazi symbolism… Rune symbols… the Wolfsangel… the "Wolf's-hook"; the SS-Sigrunes… the silver, twin lightning symbols; the SS-Totenkopf… the skull-and-crossbones insignia; and the Sonnenrad… the Black Sun, gave the room a certain something. They really needed repainting before much longer. He would have to arrange to collect more funds... a campaign of coercing a few more Yid shopkeepers was probably the answer... "pay-up-or-get-your-shop-fire-bombed" was always a good persuader. He walked over and straightened the framed photographs of the Führer and Reichsführer-SS Himmler. Then satisfied, he sat down and waited for the rest of the Aktionsbüro members whilst Benny's timer quietly ticked down towards the "Zerstörung des Aktionsbüro"… The complete destruction of Aktionsbüro Siegfrid.

Rani kept the Opel Kapitän B well within the speed limits as he came off Heiligenstädter Lände into Währinger Gürtel and continued on down into the city. Turning into Währinger Strasse, he glanced at the fascia clock. Five minutes to eight. He had arranged to pick Chana up in Stephanplatz at around eight o'clock after she had disposed of all traces of their occupancy at the safe house in Wallnerstrasse. Yarin and Alex would be making their own way to the Embassy on the Honda. Chana was waiting on the corner of Kärntner Strasse. She squeezed into the back seat with Stacey and Lailah; and Rani negotiated the Opel around Stephanplatz Island and accelerated away, back towards Währinger Strasse and the city centre.

He reached Währinger Gürtel in ten minutes, and, crossing the busy highway continued on through the Währing residential district to the junction with Gymnasiumstrasse. Turning right, he drove north for less than one hundred and fifty metres before turning into Anton-Frank-Gasse where the Embassy was situated. Pulling up at the gates of the Embassy brought a bored guard out from his little guardhouse. Rani flashed some sort of pass at him; and the guard hurriedly opened the gate to admit them, directing them towards the parking area at the side of the Embassy building. As Rani drove across the courtyard, the guard hurried back to his little guardhouse; picked up the telephone, and quickly dialled a number.

The Honda was already parked up in the parking area to the rear of the Embassy building. Yarin and Alex had made good time across Vienna from the safe house. Rani parked next to the motorcycle; and they entered the rear door to be met by James Hirschell, who escorted them to meet the Chief of Station, Malachi Spelling.

Yarin and Alex were sitting in Spellings reception room drinking coffee. Malachi Spelling stood and came from behind his ornate writing desk to meet them as the girls, followed by Rani and Benny entered. He smiled; an open and welcoming smile.

'Shalom. I am so pleased that you are all safe. Do sit down and have coffee whilst we undertake the debriefing.'

James Hirschell brought fresh coffee and placed the tray on Spelling's desk. He then retired to the corner of the room to begin taking notes. Rani reported that the Plumbat dossier had, indeed contained damning information implicating the Israeli Government involvement in the clandestine acquisition of processed uranium ore to support the Israeli nuclear weapons effort. The file also contained a list of names and addresses of those Europeans implicated in the acquisition process. This list included key figures in the Belgian, German, and Italian companies that initiated the acquisition of the materiel; names of those involved in the transportation and shipping of the cargo; and the names, where available, of principal members of the ship's crew. It looked very much like a hit list for retaliation against those subjects even remotely involved in the operation. In accordance with the team's mandate; the documents were destroyed by shredding and incineration. Nothing remained.

The second part of the operation involved the neutralisation of implicated Fascists in the city. The team discovered that a Neo-Nazi cell was to be used to forward the Dossier on the Lebanon; where it would be passed to the State of Israel's enemies. A file containing the names of the old Nazi businessmen who supported the Neo-Nazi cell had been discovered, and, with the information it contained; four, high-profile, fugitive former Nazi Schutzstaffel members had been eliminated within the city. The Neo-Nazi cell was also about to be eliminated. Rani glanced at his watch. It read ten minutes past eight. He smiled, coldly.

'Actually, they should be on their way to the Frozen Halls of Helheimr any time now.'

Malachi Spelling gave him a puzzled look.

'The Frozen Halls of Helheimr? What the hell is that?'

Rani grinned.

'In Norse mythology; which all these Nazi pigs seem to believe in; it's the place where the warriors who are not chosen for Valhalla end up.'

Malachi Spelling nodded.

'OK; so we can safely report that Operation Nimrod is successfully completed?'

Rani nodded in agreement.

'Yes, we can; and we have cleaned up all traces of our involvement in the city.'

Spelling motioned to James Hirschell that he could leave. As the door closed, Spelling lifted a file from one of his desk drawers and opened it. He glanced up at Stacey and Alex.

'Officers Mckenna and Shepard; I am instructed by Prime Minister Meir and Defense Minister Dayan to thank you on behalf of the State of Israel for your participation in this undertaking. You are to return to Tel Aviv with Lailah, Benny, and Yarin; where a transport will be ready to return you to Washington.'

He turned the page over, and looked at Rani.

'You are to remain here in the Embassy compound with Chana, pending receipt from Tel Aviv of new orders; which should be forthcoming in the next few days.'

Closing the file and replacing it in the desk drawer, he leaned back in his chair.

'That concludes our business, Ladies and Gentlemen. Hirschell will drive Officers Mckenna, Shepard; Lailah, Benny, and Yarin back to the safe house for tonight, after he has shown Officers Rani and Chana to their accommodation. He will pick them up in the morning to drive them up to Brumowski Air Base for their flight back to Tel Aviv.'

He stood and came around from behind his desk.

'It has been a pleasure knowing you. I wish you well. Shalom.'

As they left his office, Rani took Stacey to one side. He smiled.

'Perhaps we shall meet again, my Righteous sister-in-arms. We return home to continue protecting our Homeland; and you return home to continue protecting yours. It is our chosen way of life for those such as you, and I in this game of chance we play with the Angel of Death. Perhaps, one day; with God's Grace, I shall watch my children play amongst the Olive groves; as you will watch your children playing in the golden cornfields of your Homeland; but, until then; your American poet; Robert Frost... said it so well in one of his poems...

"The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep."

... Shalom, Stacey Mckenna.'

She nodded, and smiled,

'Shalom. Rani.'