Le Roux would be happy to see the back of him, too. Perhaps when the war was over he might return to the Pacific, as governor of all French Polynesia or something. But for now he would be glad to get away from it, and from madmen like Hidaka. He had that same blankness in his eyes as one of Mullah Zaheer’s Horror Brigades.
“We shall be refueling soon, when we meet with the oiler,” Hidaka continued.
Le Roux shrugged. “Assuming you have got the mix right, at last. If not, well then . . . the game is over, yes?”
The Japanese glowered in reply. “We have followed your instructions precisely. You had better hope
“Oh, my instructions were precise,” countered Le Roux. “But I cannot know whether you primitives were able to follow them at all. You never developed jet engines, did you? So it is safe to assume that a basic jet fuel mix is also beyond your abilities. Still, we shall see.”
Hidaka looked as if he was about ready to pop a vein, which very much tickled the Frenchman’s sense of humor. He smothered a snigger and turned away, calling back over his shoulder. “I shall be in my quarters. Wake me when I am needed.”
He didn’t bother to wait for Hidaka’s reaction. The fucking savage didn’t seem to understand what an achievement it was, just getting the heads to work on a complex ship like this, what with most of her crew locked up on the other side of the world. The Germans who’d come on board were good. He got on famously with them. Even the Indonesians, he could admit, were well trained. But really, if it weren’t for Le Roux himself, they would all be completely fucked. The
He pushed into the commander’s quarters—which he had appropriated as his own—and fetched himself a cognac. Then he sat down at
There was a DNA reader on the desktop, and he wiped it down with a cloth doused in methylated spirits. Then he powered it up.
In the corner of the cabin stood a small bar refrigerator from which he withdrew a sealed specimen jar. There were many more like it in there. He carefully unscrewed the lid and, using an eyedropper, extracted a few mils of the precious liquid. Then he squeezed a drop or two of the
After all, he still had plenty left in the fridge.
Le Roux wondered how the Gestapo were doing, trying to get the rest of the
Not very well, he imagined.
Apart from the six original crewmen still on this ship, and another twelve who were helping the Germans with the missile facility at Dozenac, the entire complement of the
13
AUSCHWITZ, POLAND
The special-purposes camp lay a few kilometers away from the I. G. Farben Monovitz facilties, but Brasch fancied that he could still smell the scent of depravity that blanketed the place. Some nights he imagined that the three main camps and thirty-nine subcamps gave off a poisonous mist, a concentrated essence of the suffering and evil that took place here. It was invisible, but you could smell it as it sank into the pores of your skin, and eventually into your soul.
Nothing he had witnessed on the Russian Front had prepared him for it. Even Himmler seemed more subdued than usual when they were forced to attend one of Hess’s demonstrations. Everybody knew the
Today Brasch kept the contempt from his face as he watched Himmler dab at his lips with a perfumed handkerchief while the subjects were led in.
“Oh, my,” Skorzeny roared in mock amusement. “They are only stick men. I’m a good shot, Herr
Himmler allowed a wan but dutiful grin at the large man’s brutal jokes. Brasch suspected he’d rather not be there.
