“You’re sure about the reactor?” Ira asked, half joking.
“Of course,” Mercer said sarcastically. “This is the government we’re talking about.”
They reached the juncture that bisected one leg of the base. Turning left, Marty led the trio toward the dormitories. There were eight of them on each side of a central hallway; each was an identical room about thirty feet by thirty feet with rows of matching bunk beds. The soldiers who were stationed here had taken their footlockers but there were still a great many personal articles left behind. Near a few of the beds were pinups of women who today would be considered plump and whose bathing suits showed less skin than the average cocktail dress.
The men passed through a mess hall and another space that had been the enlisted men’s rec room, which included several pool tables and card tables. Beyond the rec room, the door at the end of the hallway ended in a tiled bathroom large enough to provide for the needs of a few hundred men.
“The officers must have been stationed in another part of the base.” Ira stated the obvious.
“That’s right,” Marty said, chiding himself with a shake of his head. “We passed a door where we turned onto this corridor. That’s where they had their quarters. My father lived in room twelve.”
Mentally, Mercer adjusted his map of the base. Where the center of the letter H met the right leg, there would be an additional line extending outward.
Backtracking, Marty rushed to the first juncture. “Check it out.” He pointed to the sign on a door they had passed but ignored. “Officers Only.” He led them down the corridor, reading numbers off the doors on each side as he went.
Mercer lagged behind. He understood that Marty wanted to see the room his father had occupied, but it went against his instinct to rush headlong. He continuously trained his light on the ceiling and walls to make sure they were solid and took a moment to peer into any of the open rooms they came across. The officers’ rooms were luxurious compared to the enlisted men’s dorms, but still they were small. Each had a single bed, a desk, and a freestanding closet. As Marty paused in front of room twelve to address the camera for posterity, Mercer craned his head into room ten.
And froze.
“This looks exactly the way my father described,” he heard Marty tell Ira Lasko.
Pushing open the door with his shoulder and centering his light on the bed, Mercer turned to the two men. “Does that include this corpse?”
The body of a dark-haired man lay on top of the bed, clothed in a leather jacket. He had been freeze-dried like a mummy.
“My God!”
“Who is it?”
Mercer studied the body for a moment longer, noting the embroidered wings on the fur-trimmed jacket. “Gentlemen, meet Major Jack Delaney, the pilot of a C-97 that crashed three months before Camp Decade was closed.”
HAMBURG, GERMANY
Sweat pouring down his face, Klaus Raeder leapt back as a callused fist brushed past his jaw, missing him by a fraction of an inch. He pivoted, raised one leg, and fired a counterkick that his opponent swept aside gracefully. Continuing with his spin, Raeder let the first leg drop, cocked the other, and landed a bare foot into the midsection of his adversary.
The man doubled over, his breathing so ragged that for a moment Raeder feared he’d caused injury. He dropped his guard, wiping his hands on the baggy pants of his martial arts gi. His opponent saw the momentary lapse and instantly exploded from his position, swinging his arms and feet in a flurry of blows. Raeder was forced to retreat in the face of such an onslaught, blocking shots by pure instinct, for they were coming too fast to actually see. Instinct told him he was nearing the mirrored wall of the dojo. When the next punch came at his face, he captured the fist in his crossed wrists, torqued his body so his adversary was pushed off balance, and rammed his knee upward, lifting his sparring partner from his feet. He had been too close to defeat to care about injuries now.
He executed a perfect throw, tossing the other man’s two-hundred-pound frame with ease. Rolling with the throw, he came up on his knees, grabbed a handful of the supine opponent’s gi, and prepared to punch his teeth through the back of his head.
“Give,” Gunther Rath croaked.
Raeder’s eyes were glazed with bloodlust, his mind empty of everything but absolute victory. He was so close to administering the killer blow that he had to jerk himself away, pounding a palm against the padded carpet to vent a portion of his raw aggression.
Just as quickly as the berserker fury washed over him, it faded. He stood and extended a hand to his special-projects director, a triumphant smile splitting his handsome face. “For a second there, I thought you had me.”
“For a second, I did,” Rath replied. An injury to his throat during his years as a professional judo instructor had left his voice box severely damaged. Each word rasped as if spoken over sandpaper.
His tortured voice, oft-broken nose, and large build combined to make Rath appear menacing, a man others intentionally avoided. People also thought him slow-witted because of his bulk but he had a street cunning that Klaus Raeder had identified early in their relationship.
He had found Rath in East Germany during a particularly difficult corporate takeover. In 1991, Raeder was trying to buy a factory that made industrial hot-water boilers but a nascent union movement would not agree to terms, putting the deal in jeopardy. The delay caused Raeder’s purchase price to spiral to the point where the purchase no longer made economic sense. Yet he would not give up. Never one to let legality interfere with his plans, Raeder went in search of a specific type of problem solver.
A few discreet inquiries led him to Gunther Rath, a former Olympic medal winner in judo working as an enforcer for an underworld leader. When they met the first time, Raeder saw a potential in Rath that went far beyond the petty intimidation he’d been using. The lawless scramble following the demise of communism opened unprecedented opportunities if one had the vision and the will. Raeder had little difficulty imagining the profits to be wrung from East Germany, and he saw that Gunther Rath, with his shadowy contacts, could help provide the means.
Raeder made him an offer. Break the union and he could have a permanent position in Raeder’s company. Rath had never considered his particular skills could be used in the legitimate world, so he jumped at the chance to escape his current situation. It was an opportunity for a new beginning and an escape from the mistakes that had tumbled him from the Olympic podium to the streets. The labor problem came to a quick end, following an arson attack against the labor leader’s house that nearly wiped out his family.
During his years in the East, Klaus Raeder relied on Rath to be his blunt instrument of corporate coercion. However, by the time Klaus Raeder came to the attention of Kohl AG, the two had tempered their tactics since their reputation alone was enough to intimidate. While Reinhardt Wurmbach, Kohl’s legal counsel, questioned Rath’s suitability in such a prestigious firm, Raeder would not have accepted the presidency if Rath weren’t brought in as his special-projects director.
After a few moments of rest, the two squared off again. Gunther Rath had begun teaching Raeder martial arts early in their partnership. Raeder excelled, very quickly becoming his teacher’s equal. In the past few years he’d actually become better than Rath, something he delighted in proving. The two had sparred thousands of times, and yet their workouts had never become stale because each had such drive. It was a contest of ego and desire as much as skill.
Before the first punch was thrown, a buzzing phone interrupted them.
Raeder bowed to Rath and turned away.