“This is your car?” Stoke said.
“Schatzi gave it to me when he got bored with it.”
“And you keep it out here?”
“If I kept it at my apartment, it would get stolen. I don’t use it that much. This is probably the safest place in Berlin.”
Stoke was puzzling over the English license plate mounted on the rear. Four letters. SPQR.
“SPQR,” he said. “What’s that stand for?”
“It’s an acronym. It stands for Senatus Populusque Romanus. Which means the ‘Senate and People of Rome.’ Schatzi is a big fan of Caesar. Might help you understand who you’re up against.”
“I’ll take all the help I can get, Jet,” Stoke said. He didn’t ask her why the Q got left out in translation.
“Get in. We’ll put Blondi in the back.”
Jet thumbed the remote in her hand. “Mind your head,” she said, “the doors swing up not out. Gullwing, like the old 300SL. Load, Blondi!”
Stoke climbed in and buckled his belt. The car was so low and sleek, he was amazed there was enough room for someone his size. He looked over at Jet and saw she was adjusting a pair of night-vision goggles over her eyes.
“I take it out on the Autobahn late at night,” Jet said, “No traffic. I run three hundred kilometers per hour flat out with the lights off. No Polizei.”
“Anybody saw you, they’d think it was a UFO.”
The supercharged V-8 roared to life, a beautiful exhaust note burbling from the sidepipes. Jet let it idle for a few seconds, then blipped the accelerator. Just the sound of the thing inside the hangar was enough to push Stoke back in his seat. Then she engaged first gear, popped the clutch, and hit it. The tires lit up and they rocketed forward, went sideways out onto the tarmac, no lights, the rear wheels screeching and smoking.
It didn’t take long to get across the field. Runways built of ballast stone were ideal for cars like Jet’s. Stoke didn’t even look over at the speedometer. There was a large square building adjacent to the main structure. Jet seemed be headed in that direction but it was pretty blurry outside so Stoke wasn’t sure.
“Don’t seem to be a whole lot of guards around,” Stoke said.
“The main entrance is where all the guards are. That’s the only way in or out. They’re not expecting company tonight, either. VDI Security is still waiting for a report on us from Zum Wilden Hund, remember? Besides, nobody really knows what goes on here.”
“What does go on here?”
“You’ll see.”
Tempelhof itself, the main building, looked like something you might have seen in ancient Rome only much, much bigger. “Impressive architecture,” Stoke said as they sped closer.
“Neoclassical. Albert Speer was Hitler’s personal architect,” Jet said, “no small plans.”
Jet slowed to below a hundred and used a remote to open a door in the secondary building that was coming up fast. It looked like they were going to go right inside doing about eighty.
“What’s this building?” Stoke said, gripping the door handle with his right hand.
“Underground parking,” Jet said, tapping the brakes and spinning the wheel. Once they were inside the doors she stood on the brakes and put the wheel hard over. The SLR did a tight three-sixty on the polished cement floor. Jet put it in first and started up again in the direction of a tunnel marked Eingang.
“Four levels,” she said, pushing the NVG goggles up to the top of her head. “We’re going all the way down to Level Four. Corkscrew turns. Hold on.”
“I’m beginning to see what Alex Hawke sees in you.”
“Alex Hawke hasn’t seen anything yet,” Jet said. But she was smiling when she said it.
After they’d parked and locked up the Mercedes, Jet led him back to an anonymous grey door tucked inside an alcove. A door you’d never find unless you knew it was there.
“Wilkommen to the Unterwelt,” Jet said, pulling the rusted steel door open.
“Welcome to what?”
“The Underworld.”
Chapter Forty-four
Gulf of Oman
“YOU LOOK UNHAPPY,” HAWKE SAID TO HARRY BROCK. THEY were standing on the trawler’s stern in the dark. All the ship’s lights were doused. Ahmed was helping them get suited up in wetsuits and high-tech SEAL gear. The equipment included German Draegers, “re-breathers,” that purified and recirculated their oxygen so no tell-tale bubbles marked their progress on the surface. Now that night had fallen, Hawke was reasonably sure the recon mission could be carried out unseen and unnoticed.
Harry was upset they weren’t using the Swimmer Delivery Vehicle he’d procured from the Navy. And he hadn’t found it amusing when Hawke had said, “Don’t you think that’s a bit of overkill, Irontail? We’re just doing a light recon. We can swim it.”
The sun had set and the moon had risen while the darkened trawler Cacique poked along the northern tip of the island, looking for a suitable mooring on the rocky coast.
Cacique had to be sufficiently near the island for the two men to swim to Fort Mahoud’s entrance and back. But the trawler also had to be anchored somewhere out of sight, away from any prying eyes at the fort. After his recent experience aboard the Star of Shanghai, Hawke had a new rule of thumb when it came to unexpectedly dropping in on new friends. Always assume you’re expected, no matter what they tell you.
They’d managed a pretty good spot. The anchorage was tucked inside a deepwater cove just west of Point Arras on the northwest side of the island. Hawke figured it was maybe a half-mile swim out around the rocky point and then south two thousand yards to the fort’s entrance. The trawler would be invisible in the cove, even from atop the twin towers. He told Ali to drop anchor. Ahmed had brought up the equipment, recently arrived from the United States, from below.
“You okay?” Hawke asked.
“Yeah.” Brock was struggling with his regulator. “I’m no fucking water baby, that’s all, Your Lordship. Why do you think I went to all the trouble to get the goddamn SDV, for chrissakes.”
Hawke smiled and looked at Brock, now smearing night camo paint on his face. “Stay close to Papa. You’ll be all right.”
“Mr. Hawke, sir! Mr. Brock!” Captain Ali al-Houri was at the rail just above their heads.
“Yes?”
“A message just came in over the wire, sir. Urgent. A speech on the radio. I’ve got the shortwave tuned in to BBC, sir! It’s starting in a few minutes, sir.”
“We’ll be right there.” Hawke slipped off his tank and flippers. So did Brock, who seemed grateful for the reprieve, however temporary.
The old trawler wasn’t large enough to have a real radio room. The commo equipment was all in the main saloon, sitting on a book-crowded shelf over the nav station. When Hawke came inside the darkened room, Ali was seated at the tiny station, twisting the knob on the ancient Grundig receiver, looking for the strongest signal. They all pulled chairs from the round dining table and gathered around the radio. It was quite homey, Hawke thought.
“Somebody at Langley sent you a fax?” Brock asked Hawke, who held the flimsy two-page message in his hand, reading it in the dim light. Brock wasn’t accustomed to seeing an archaic fax machine used for the transmission of coded messages from highly sophisticated intelligence agencies.
“Your boss at Langley. He didn’t sign it, naturally, but that’s who this is from.”
“What’s he got to say?”
“Seems the new president of France is about to make a radio address to the nation. The Elysée only announced it an hour ago. According to this, Kelly believes Monsieur Bonaparte’s got some serious problems. Basically, he’s trying to put down an insurrection. He’s got the army and the navy with him, but the populace is up in arms about the assassinations and the impending invasion of Oman. The remnants of Honfleur’s old government are on the attack, too.”