Bear Grylls: The Hunt (Will Jaeger Book 3) Page 3

  Well, tonight should go a good distance to proving it.

  Isselhorst leant closer. She could smell the alcohol upon him. ‘Not so far now . . . You will find I have a particular taste in decor . . . a certain nostalgic bent. For the war years. For when Germany was truly great. One nation. One people. I hope you won’t find it offputting.’

  Narov steeled herself. ‘On the contrary.’ She gazed deep into his eyes. ‘People still fear even to speak his name. But I find the original aspirations of Hitler strangely appealing.’ She paused. ‘We all know the kind of man he was. His legacy. His lessons for posterity. Even now, we can learn from them.’

  ‘Exactly. My point entirely,’ Isselhorst enthused. He was speaking English, which lent a certain stilted tone to his words. Narov had yet to let on that she was fluent in German. He sighed contentedly. ‘I am so glad we met,’ he whispered, closer to her ear. ‘Fate, the gods – they must be smiling upon us.’

  ‘You are just a hopeless romantic,’ Narov teased.

  ‘Perhaps, and maybe if the mood takes us . . . I have a few nostalgic uniforms . . . most dashing . . .’ He let the words hang in the air suggestively.

  ‘A little dressing up?’ Narov smiled. ‘Erich, you naughty boy. But why not? Tell me – you do not have Hanna Reitsch’s flying jacket, by any chance? That would be something.’

  With those with whom she felt no special connection, Narov could play a part to perfection. She could be a chameleon beyond compare. But those she was close to, she found it impossible to deceive. It made for challenging relationships. But not here. This was simple. This was a man she utterly despised, and tonight’s little charade came easily.

  ‘My dear, you never cease to amaze,’ Isselhorst murmured, stroking her hair. ‘You know of Hanna Reitsch? My God, what a woman! What a pilot. What a hero of the Reich.’

  ‘You sound as if you are obsessed with her. Or with her memory.’ Narov laughed. ‘But Erich, you have a problem. Right now, she would be a hundred and four years old. To be in love with Hanna Reitsch would be a great waste for a man of your . . . potency.’

  Isselhorst chuckled, but before he could reply, the taxi pulled into the secluded woodland surrounding his home. He had a cleaner-cum-housekeeper – the ancient, hatchet-faced Frau Helliger, who looked as if her features would crack were she ever to smile – but Narov knew that at this hour, the house would be deserted.

  She had watched from the woods and logged Frau Helliger’s movements; her routines. She knew she would have a clear run of things until 10 a.m., when the housekeeper came to start her daily round of chores.

  Isselhorst paid off the driver and they moved towards the house.

  Inside, it was all polished chrome, granite and wood, and clean, minimalist lines. But it wasn’t that that would strike any visitor; it was the artwork and Nazi memorabilia that hung from the walls. The place felt more like a gallery or museum – or perhaps a shrine – than it did a normal home.

  Narov feigned surprise. From her hide she had observed some of the priceless paintings, though not the full-length portrait of Adolf Hitler that hung in the entrance hall. Encased in a heavy gilt frame, it showed the Führer, resplendent in uniform, standing on the field of battle, his posed expression stern and heroic, eyes on the distant horizon.

  Below it was a black swastika, inset in a gold circle, with a point at one end and a mount at the other; she presumed this was the topmost piece of some kind of ceremonial Nazi staff. She turned, acting as if awestruck, noting Isselhorst’s obvious enjoyment as he watched.

  In a cabinet opposite was a silver-bound edition of Mein Kampf, Hitler’s hate-filled rant written prior to the war years. Above it was an ornately carved wooden eagle, wings flared and talons outstretched as if to seize the Führer’s magnum opus and rise aloft victorious.

  The whole effect suddenly made Narov want to vomit, but she fought the reflex. She was in. And she was here to wring from Isselhorst his darkest secrets.

  He gestured to the flight of steel stairs that led to the living room, set on the upper floor. ‘After you.’

  As Narov started up the steps, she could feel Isselhorst’s eyes feasting upon her figure.

  Let him feast, she told herself, calmly. Soon now.

  5

  Isselhorst led her to the plate-glass window that filled one entire side of the living room. At the press of a button, the dark blinds whisked aside and the expanse of the city appeared before them: the Neckar floodlit and beautiful, the ancient bridges that spanned the river casting a rich orange glow upon the waters.

  At any other time Narov would have found the view breathtaking. But not tonight.

  Isselhorst stepped away, returning a moment later with two shot glasses. Peach schnapps, she could tell from the aroma.

  He glanced at the view, raising his glass. ‘To beauty. To the beautiful of this world. To us.’

  ‘To us,’ she echoed, throwing the fiery contents down her throat.

  Isselhorst smiled appreciatively. ‘You drink like Hanna Reitsch, that’s for certain!’ He reached for the bottle and poured them both a refill, then leant closer. ‘So, I let you in on a little secret: I sleep in Hitler’s bed. The one that he had in the Berghof. I purchased it recently at a rather unusual auction. Cost me . . . an arm and a leg, as I think you say. Perhaps you may like to see it?’

  ‘I would love to,’ Narov demurred, ‘but first I would like to say hello to Oscar. I just love animals, as I think you must, with your home set here in the woodland.’

  ‘You would like to meet my dog? But of course. Come.’ Isselhorst ushered her towards a doorway. ‘But tell me – how do you know about Oscar? Did I say something?’

  For the briefest of moments Narov feared she’d messed up, but she recovered just as quickly. She nodded towards the entranceway. ‘You have a dog’s collar and lead in the hallway, printed with his name.’

  Isselhorst smiled. ‘Very observant. Smart as well as beautiful. Come. I introduce you to Oscar. Very big, but very lovable, as you will soon discover.’

  Narov had watched Isselhorst take the dog – a large and powerful German Shepherd – with him on his runs. While she was an unapologetic lover of animals, that wasn’t why she’d asked to meet his dog. She needed to do so in the company of his master so that Oscar would see her as a friend.

  They passed a large oil painting that Narov figured had to be a Matisse. No doubt stolen from its original Jewish owners during the war years, and now hanging on the wall of an ultra-wealthy German lawyer. So much of the Nazis’ ill-gotten loot had never been returned, largely thanks to men like Isselhorst.

  She paused before it. It showed a naked woman draped across a yellow-and-green-striped sofa, legs dangling provocatively over one arm. The woman had a strip of light, chiffon-like material laid across her lap, obscuring her feminine parts.

  ‘Beautiful. Captivating,’ she remarked. ‘Do I recognise the artist?’

  Isselhorst hesitated for just an instant. ‘Matisse, actually,’ he boasted, an arrogant curl to his lip. ‘Woman in an Armchair, 1923.’

  Narov feigned amazement. ‘An original Matisse? Wow. Just what kind of lawyer are you?’

  Isselhorst flashed a glittering, perfect smile. ‘A very talented one. And some of my clients choose to pay me in kind.’

  They moved towards the kitchen, where Narov was introduced to a decidedly sleepy-looking Oscar. She had a magical way with animals. Always had done. She and the German Shepherd quickly bonded, but Isselhorst soon pulled her away, steering her towards the bedroom and Hitler’s bed; impatient to get the real agenda for tonight started . . . the one he believed they were here for.

  Just as they were about to enter, Narov paused, her head tilted towards the lounge. ‘The schnapps. Come on! Just one more.’

  She could tell that Isselhorst – a man not used to being denied – was growing impatient.
But at the same time he appeared to thrill to his guest’s apparently wild ways.

  He smiled. ‘And why not? One for the road, as you say . . .’

  Isselhorst believed Narov to be an American. That was what she’d told him, and indeed these days she mostly was. Recently, she’d taken US citizenship, but she’d been born British and had spent her youth in Russia, for her family was originally Russian.

  That part she had kept from him. The Russians and the Nazis had never been the best of friends.

  He poured two fresh shots. As he handed Narov hers, she feigned drunken clumsiness, the glass slipping through her fingers. It hit the floor with a sharp crack, shattering into tiny pieces, the schnapps spattering across the marble.

  For the briefest of instants, Narov saw a look of anger, bordering on rage, flit across Isselhorst’s features. He killed it just as quickly, but still, she’d glimpsed the man behind the mask. He was just as she’d imagined him: bereft of morals, a beast bloated with money and power, and above all a control freak.

  But he covered well. ‘Not to worry.’ He shrugged. ‘I have a housekeeper. Frau Helliger. She will clear it up in the morning.’

  He turned for the bottle and a replacement glass, and as he did so, he had his hands full and was slightly off balance.

  Before he had fully turned back again, bringing Narov into his field of vision, she struck like a coiled snake, driving forwards and upwards with her right hand in a smooth but devastating strike, hammering the fleshy part of her palm directly into the underside of Isselhorst’s jaw.

  She’d practised the move a thousand times, when she’d served with the Russian Spetsnaz – their special forces. The blow was delivered with all her power and pent-up hatred, and she felt the teeth of Isselhorst’s lower jaw being driven upwards, ripping into his upper mouth savagely.

  He staggered backwards, spitting blood. Moments later, the schnapps bottle and replacement glass had joined the debris scattered across the living room floor. That blow would have felled most men, but somehow he was still on his feet.

  Narov didn’t hesitate. She unleashed an open-palmed strike with her right hand, delivering the knockout blow into exactly the desired spot on the side of his neck, three inches beneath his left ear, just where the carotid artery pumped blood to the brain.

  Time seemed to hang in the air before Isselhorst’s eyes rolled into his head, his knees buckled and he collapsed onto the floor.

  Narov glanced down at him breathlessly. He was out cold, a trickle of blood issuing from his mouth and mixing with the pool of schnapps.

  She took a few seconds to calm herself before embarking upon the next stage of her plan.

  6

  Will Jaeger couldn’t deny that he was enjoying himself.

  When his ninety-five-year-old great-uncle had first suggested the trip, Jaeger had been doubtful. But he had to admit that he needed the break, and where better to come than the place where it had all started.

  The Hotel Zum Turken in Berchtesgaden was about as close as one could get these days to Hitler’s Berghof, the mountain lair from which he had ruled Nazi Germany. The hotel had stood cheek-by-jowl with the Berghof, being commandeered by Nazi officials during the war. In fact the two had been joined by a network of tunnels burrowed beneath the mountain, but while the Berghof had been destroyed by Allied air raids, the hotel had largely survived.

  These days, powerful anti-Nazi sentiments pervaded the area. Andrea Munsch, the hotel’s owner, epitomised such feelings. When Jaeger had telephoned enquiring whether they might book rooms, she had warned him that the hotel was probably not going to be to their liking. For a moment he’d worried that the Zum Turken had been turned into some kind of a shrine to the twisted ideology of Nazism, but Andrea had quickly disabused him of that misapprehension.

  In 1933, Martin Bormann – known then as ‘Hitler’s banker’ – had seized the Hotel Zum Turken, and its long-time owners – Andrea’s parents – had been kicked out by his jackbooted thugs. At the end of the war, they had returned to discover a bare and looted shell. They had decided to rebuild the hotel, but to keep it in the state it had been at war’s end as a memorial to those who had died at Hitler’s hand. Consequently there were few mod cons, certainly no Wi-Fi or internet, and the only sound system in the place was an old gramophone. Hence Andrea’s warning.

  That morning, she had taken Jaeger and Uncle Joe into the tunnels, via the Zum Turken’s basement. From there they’d wound ever deeper into the bowels of the mountain, descending concrete steps and iron ladders bolted to walls, and stepping through puddles of yellowing water that lingered in the airless damp.

  So extensive was the subterranean network that the Bavarian government was still excavating it, to create a permanent exhibit to the dark excesses of the Nazi regime.

  At one point, Andrea had paused to allow Uncle Joe to catch his breath, and she’d used the time to relate a story. She spoke impeccable English, and was clearly passionate about keeping such wartime memories alive.

  She waved a hand around the tunnel. ‘When Bormann seized the hotel, none of this existed. Over time it became the headquarters of the SS, and a key means of maintaining control. As a result, unspeakable things happened here. Perhaps you can feel it in the air? Many visitors say they can. A sense of lingering evil.’

  Jaeger pondered this for a moment. He realised that he’d felt unsettled as soon as they’d entered the tunnels, a feeling that only grew the deeper they delved.

  ‘My parents witnessed one of the earliest horrors,’ Andrea continued. ‘Bormann seized the home of a local man for himself. The man was deeply distressed, so he waited for Hitler’s convoy to wend its way down from the Berghof, then placed himself in front of Hitler’s car where it slowed at a bend and spoke to him personally, begging that his family be allowed to keep their home.

  ‘Hitler lent an apparently sympathetic ear, and told the man it would be dealt with the very next day. The man returned to his family with the good news: the Führer himself would intercede. The next morning, the Gestapo came. They arrested him, took him into these tunnels and tortured him, then sent him to the concentration camps.

  ‘Just one example.’ Andrea paused. ‘One of thousands.’

  The tour of the labyrinthine tunnel complex had occupied most of that morning, especially as they were proceeding at Uncle Joe’s pace. In the afternoon, Jaeger had gone for a run on one of the spectacular walking trails that criss-crossed the mountains, leaving Uncle Joe to his afternoon nap.

  He had come here expecting to encounter an atmosphere of oppression and darkness, but what he had discovered was quite the opposite. The breathtaking beauty of the dramatic peaks and valleys had actually lifted his spirits.

  And he certainly needed that right now.

  The past few months had been anything but easy.

  Four years ago, his wife, Ruth, and eight-year-old son Luke had been kidnapped. Jaeger had scoured the earth in his effort to find their abductors. The trail had led him to the son of a former Nazi general, one who had risen to serve in the highest echelons of America’s post-war intelligence apparatus. He’d been recruited to help combat the rise of Soviet Russia, the Germans being the only people who had any experience of going to war against the ‘Reds’.

  That Nazi general was long dead, but his son, Hank Kammler, had good reasons to hate Jaeger, ones reaching deep into a shared family past. Kammler had kidnapped Jaeger’s wife and son as a way to exact revenge, and found the means to torture Jaeger remotely with their disappearance, emailing him videos of Ruth and Luke in captivity; bound, kneeling and pleading for help. Each taunting message had ended with the chilling words: Wir sind die Zukunft – ‘We are the future’.

  Following a global hunt, Jaeger had rescued his family, but not before Kammler had infected them with a super-virus with which he had intended to wipe out most of humankind in order to forge a brave
new world: a Fourth Reich. The chosen few had been inoculated so that they would survive what he’d named the Gottvirus.

  At the eleventh hour, Jaeger and his team had foiled Kammler, and the world’s military and law-enforcement agencies had gone after him big-time. A scorched body – later confirmed as having Kammler’s DNA – had been retrieved from his subterranean command bunker. It appeared he had ‘done a Hitler’ and committed suicide, possibly by setting himself on fire.

  But that had done little to relieve Jaeger’s suffering. While Luke had made a remarkable recovery, Ruth had not. She’d languished in the darkness that had gripped her mind, seemingly hopelessly mired within it.

  Eventually Jaeger had checked her into a London clinic that specialised in dealing with the victims of trauma. But they were months into her treatment now and going nowhere fast. If anything, Ruth’s mood swings, her unpredictability and her violence – she was prone to lashing out – were worsening.

  No doubt about it, Jaeger had needed this break big time.

  7

  The trauma that Jaeger’s wife had endured had been horrific. She had been subjected to three years of unspeakable psychological and physical torment at Kammler’s hands, and had come back a shadow of her former self.

  She was still undergoing various tests, but no one doubted that she had PTSD – post-traumatic stress disorder, a debilitating psychological illness caused by an overburden of horror. While she had recovered physically, the mental scars went far deeper.

  Jaeger had endeavoured to be patient, sympathetic and upbeat; to put up with the rage and the outbursts of moody violence.

  But in truth it had taken its toll.

  He was just glad that Luke and their newly adopted son, Simon, were at a state-run boarding school in the countryside, and so shielded from their mother’s more extreme outbursts.