A trusted aide-de-camp, his grandfather had been in the Berlin bunker in late April 1945, when Adolf Hitler had taken his own life. It had been his grandfather’s grim task to secure the hundred and twenty gallons of petrol that was used to cremate the Führer and his new bride, Eva Braun. A dark and dreadful day for the Reich.
In idle moments, Dolf would sometimes fantasize about driving the Führer’s magnificent 770-K Mercedes Benz with the twelve chassis, armour plate and bullet-proof glass. Attired in a black SS jacket, jodhpurs, polished knee boots and peaked visor with silver braid and totenkampf emblem, he would cut a dashing figure. As would the Führer and the other dignitaries in the vehicle.
Smiling, Dolf closed his eyes, able to hear the roar of the crowds as they exuberantly chanted Sieg Heil! and the repetitive pound of soldiers marching in picture-perfect stechshritt, legs swinging in unison, right arms raised in a stiff salute.
‘Sleeping on the job, are you?’
Hearing that seductive purr of a voice, Dolf opened his eyes. A vision in a skintight white suit and stiletto high-heels stood over him, a mocking sneer on her painted red lips.
‘No doubt you’re exhausted from performing your important duties,’ Angelika Schwärz continued. Placing her hands on her hips, she glanced at his laptop computer. ‘Looking at a little Internet porn, were you?’
Dolf smoothed his sweaty palms against his trouser legs, uncertain what to say. If he denied the charge, it would make him appear unmanly.
‘I am waiting for Herr Doktor to issue my orders for the day,’ he muttered, purposefully changing the subject.
Angelika made a big to-do of peering around the deserted antechamber located just outside of the conference room. ‘Poor Dolfie. The great man seems to have forgotten all about you. Does anyone even know that you’re here, sitting all alone in a dark hallway on the most uncomfortable chair in the entire office suite?’ Licking her shiny red lips, she chortled nastily. ‘Or are you being punished?’
‘I’ve done nothing wrong.’
‘What do you call yesterday’s fiasco? A circus clown with a water pistol would have had greater success.’
He bit back a crude oath. For eight long years he’d made numerous sacrifices and put in long hours to prove his worth to the Herr Doktor, often forced to leave his mother unattended for extended lengths of time. He did this without complaint in the hope that he would move up the ranks and become a trusted aide. With the greatest fervency, he desired to have the same type of relationship with Herr Doktor Uhlemann that his grandfather had had with the Führer.
And though he had no proof, Dolf suspected that the blonde woman standing before him was the reason why he’d not been promoted.
Frowning, Angelika slowly tilted her head from side to side. ‘It doesn’t matter from which angle I gaze at you, with that unsightly nose you have a face that only a mother could love.’
‘Leave my mother out of this,’ he cautioned. Ire mounting, his right hand balled into a fist. Turning his head, he stared at the empty receptionist’s desk at the end of the hallway, grateful that no one was witnessing the humiliating exchange.
‘And does she love you, little Dolfie?’ Angelika jabbed him in the shin with the pointy toe of her high-heeled shoe. ‘Look at me when I speak to you, driver.’
Dolf swung his head in her direction. That he had to obey the bitch infuriated him.
‘Does your old mutti lavish you with attention, smother you with kisses and let you suckle at her breast?’ she taunted perversely. ‘I think that’s your problem, Dolfie. You’ve sucked at that withered tit for too many years.’ Red lips curved in a come-hither smile, Angelika undid the top button of her tailored jacket, exposing her bare breast. ‘If you’re a good boy, I might let you lick me. Would you like that, Dolfie? Hmm?’
Rabid with lust, he stared at the perfectly shaped white breast, torn between strangling Angelika with his bare hands and falling to his knees. Licking her from one end to the other. Submitting himself to the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
Dolf adjusted the computer on his lap, hiding the fact that he had a boner the size of a bratwurst.
Angelika shot him a pitying glance. ‘Poor Dolfie. You remind me of the eunuch standing guard at the pasha’s –’
Just then, Dolf’s stomach growled noisily.
Throwing back her head, Angelika laughed, her disdain causing his erection to instantly deflate.
‘You’re quite the ladies’ man, aren’t you? What will you do for an encore? Seduce me with a deafening fart?’
Bitch! Slut! Whore!
Mortified, Dolf glared impotently at the blonde seductress. If he put the arrogant cunt in her place, he’d lose his job. If he touched her breast, he’d lose his job. If he so much as uttered a rude word to the bitch, Herr Doktor Uhlemann would send him packing.
Herr Doktor thought the world of Angelika Schwärz. That’s because he didn’t know about his Dark Angel’s lurid predilections. But Dolf knew. He’d followed her one night when she went to one of the city’s Black Metal clubs. Standing in the shadows, he’d watched her have sex with two leather-clad, metal-studded men while bar patrons cheered her on. Herr Doktor had no idea; like every other man, he was under her spell, unable to see that she wasn’t a real woman dedicated to hearth and home. Instead, she was a promiscuous she-devil who revelled in emasculating every man she came into contact with. She possessed none of the virtues of her sex but all of the vices.
Angelika’s cell phone rang. With an exaggerated sigh, she re-buttoned her jacket before checking the caller ID.
‘I have to take this call.’ She blew Dolf a kiss. ‘Ciao, darling.’
Panting with suppressed rage, Dolf watched Angelika’s hips provocatively sway from side to side as she walked down the hallway.
That beautiful blonde bitch will be my undoing.
52
Mont de la Lune, The Languedoc
1242 hours
Mad dogs and Englishmen …
Although the dog, to his credit, knew better than to attempt a perilous mountain climb without a safety harness. Cædmon, to his regret, did not, the ascent proving a savage undertaking. Far more dangerous than he’d originally envisioned.
Or perhaps his vision had been clouded by the same obsessive desire that had led more than a few Grail knights to an untimely death.
Shoving that unpleasant thought aside, he hoisted himself upward. The trick was not to think about the fact that he was ‘balanced’ on a narrow protuberance of granite no more than fifteen inches wide, while his hands clung to a second, equally narrow, protuberance located a metre above his head. Unable to see the crescent-shaped niche from his current position, he reckoned that he had another twenty metres to traverse.
‘Shite,’ he muttered, unintentionally jabbing his index finger against a sharp-edged stone. Skin punctured, blood oozed down his hand.
He cautiously tiptoed across the granite shelf. Then, very slowly, he removed his rucksack and turned around. Leaning against the rough-hewn wall, he took a moment’s ease. In the far distance, he heard the merry tinkle of sheep bells. In the near distance, an eagle soared in graceful arabesques.
Rumour had it that Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the eighteenth-century philosopher and part-time daredevil, would spend hours perched on this very sort of sheer precipice, from which he’d gleefully toss stones as he imagined them being smashed to smithereens on the rocky gulch below.