Maybe Grandpa Ted and Great Uncle Joe had got their hands on some of the Nazi’s end-of-war documents, and had been unravelling the coded language as part of the hunt.
In which case, Jaeger had the answer to breaking the codes in his possession. If he could get himself, Narov and maybe Jenkinson together with the relevant books and documents, it might all start to make some kind of sense.
Jaeger smiled to himself. Boerke had been right: it had been worth making this trip out to Bioko many times over.
The South African knocked and entered the room. ‘So, man, you’re looking pleased with yourself. I guess you’ve enjoyed coming here after all?’
Jaeger nodded. ‘I’m in your debt, Pieter, a thousand times over.’
‘Not a bit of it, man. It is a debt repaid, that’s all.’
Jaeger pulled his iPhone from his flight bag. ‘Two quick emails I need to send.’
‘Go right ahead – as long as you can get a signal,’ Boerke told him. ‘Cell coverage around Malabo – it can be pretty bad.’
Jaeger powered up the phone and pulled up his email account, typing in the first message:
Simon,
I am transiting back through London, arriving tomorrow morning. Would you have the time for a meeting, just for an hour or so? I’ll come to you, wherever’s convenient. It’s urgent. I think you’ll like what we may have discovered. Let me know as soon as.
Jaeger
The message sat in his outbox ‘awaiting signal’ while he set about typing the second.
Irina (if I may),
I trust you are well and recovery is progressing. I’m en route back to Cachimbo shortly. Good news: I think I may have cracked the code. More when I see you.
Yours,
Will
He clicked ‘send’, and almost at the same time his phone beeped to indicate that it had acquired a signal, via some local network called Safaricom. The sending symbol twirled around and around for a few seconds, before the phone seemed to drop the connection.
He was about to power down, power up and try again when the iPhone appeared to fade to black of its own accord before coming back to life. A message seemed to type itself across the screen.
Question: how did we find you?
Answer: your friend told us where to look.
An instant later the screen went black again, before fading up on an image that had become sickeningly familiar: a Reichsadler.
But this Reichsadler was displayed on a Nazi-style flag pinned to a wall. Below it, Andy Smith, tied at the wrists and ankles, lay on his back on a tiled floor. By the looks of the cloth they threw over his face and the bucket of water being tipped over it, he was being waterboarded.
Jaeger stared at the horrifying image, transfixed.
He could only presume it had been taken in Smithy’s Loch Iver hotel room, before they had marched him up on to the storm-lashed hills, forced a bottle of whisky down his throat and hurled him into the dark abyss. Most likely Stefan Kral had been the one who’d tricked Smithy into opening his hotel door to his torturers.
There would have been precious little Smithy could have told his captors before he died, apart from the general location of the air wreck, for Colonel Evandro hadn’t yet released its exact coordinates.
More words typed themselves below the image:
Return to us what is ours.
Wir sind die Zukunft.
Return to us what is ours. Jaeger could only imagine they meant the documents from the Ju 390 cockpit. But how did they know Narov had retrieved them, and that they hadn’t gone down with the warplane? Jaeger just didn’t know… And then something hit him: Leticia Santos.
They’d clearly forced their Brazilian captive to talk. Like everyone else on the team, Leticia had been aware that something of crucial importance had been discovered in that cockpit. No doubt about it – under duress she must have revealed what she knew.
Jaeger heard a voice from behind him. ‘Man, who in God’s name sent you that? And why?’ It was Boerke, and he was staring at the image on Jaeger’s phone.
His words served to break Jaeger’s trance, and with it a burning jolt of realisation seared through his mind. He raised his arm and hurled the smartphone through the open window, propelling it as far as it would go into the bush outside.
Then he grabbed his flight bag and took to his heels, yelling at Boerke to follow.
‘RUN! Get everyone out! NOW!’
They sprinted out of the office block, screaming at the guards. Barely had they reached the former torture cells in the basement when the Hellfire struck. It tore into the ground where Jaeger’s phone lay, ripping a massive hole in the perimeter wall of the prison and collapsing the adjacent office building – the place where Jaeger and Boerke had just been sitting.
Down in the basement, both men were uninjured, as were most of the guards. But Jaeger wasn’t kidding himself any more: in the prison that had once almost been the death of him, the Dark Force had nearly killed him again.
And once again he, William Jaeger, was very much the hunted.
89
Fortunately, Malabo had a handful of internet cafés. Under Boerke’s guidance, Jaeger chose one and managed to send the briefest of messages.
Close all open comms. Travel as arranged. Revert as agreed.
WJ
Even in civilian life, Jaeger tended to live by the old soldier’s adage: ‘Fail to plan, plan to fail.’
Before leaving Cachimbo, he’d set up alternative travel and communications arrangements, just in case of such an eventuality – the hunt being resumed. He figured the enemy would be working to a dual agenda now: either to have the documents returned, or to kill all those who knew of their existence. Ideally, they’d want to achieve both ends.
Via an address to which his core team – Narov, Raff and Dale – had access, he proceeded to post a draft email. They would know to read the draft without it ever having been sent – hence making it all but untraceable.
The email detailed the time of a proposed meeting a couple of days hence, at a prearranged location. If the draft box received no message saying otherwise, the meeting would be on. And under the ‘travel as arranged’ instruction, Narov, Raff and Dale would know to fly back to the UK using passports provided courtesy of Colonel Evandro’s partners in Brazilian intelligence.
If necessary, they’d move under Brazilian diplomatic cover, so determined was the colonel to get them home safely and get the riddle of the Ju 390 solved.
Jaeger caught his flights from Bioko to London as planned.
There had been zero point in changing them, especially as they had been booked under the ‘clean’ passport that Colonel Evandro had provided him with, one that should be untraceable.
Upon arrival in London, he caught the Heathrow Express to Paddington and jumped in a black cab. He got the cabbie to drop him a good half-mile distant from Springfield Marina, so he could walk the last leg to his London home. It was one more precaution to ensure he hadn’t been followed.
Living on a boat had several advantages, one of which was the lack of a traceable footprint. Jaeger paid no council tax, he wasn’t on the electoral roll or the property register, and he’d chosen not to have a mailing address at the marina.
The boat itself was registered to an anonymous offshore company, likewise the mooring. In short, his Thames barge was as good a place as any to schedule the meeting.
En route to the marina, he called in at a grotty-looking internet café. He ordered a black coffee, logged on and checked the draft box. There were two messages. One was from Raff, postponing the meeting by a few hours, just to give them time enough to get there.