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“But they keep a photocopy of the client’s driver’s license,” the big Fed stated.
Another image on the screen. It was a blow-up of an Alabama driver’s license, with a color photograph of one George Allen Carter and a home address in Birmingham. The photo’s subject was a crew-cut man of twenty-four, if you believed the license stats.
“Phony?” Bolan surmised.
“As the proverbial three-dollar bill. Except for the mug shot.”
“How did you trace it?”
“CIA,” Brognola said. “Computers are a miracle, you know? Put in a face, and if it’s ever shown up in a friendly nation’s dossier, voilà!”
“I’m guessing that he doesn’t come from Alabama,” Bolan said.
“Not even close. He kept his old initials, though. Meet Georg—no e on that one—Abel Kaltenbrunner. Born and raised, as far as anyone can tell, inside Colonia Victoria.”
“He got away.” It didn’t come out as a question.
“Sure he did. Clean as a whistle, with a passport in some other name. We’ll run it down, one of these days, and it will be another phony, long since shredded.”
“Well, then,” Bolan said. “It looks like I’ll be going to Colombia.”
BOLAN’S ROOM was at the northeast corner of the second floor. He occupied the small room’s only chair, a laptop humming on the table before him, with documents spread out around it. Everything he saw and read convinced him that someone before him should have undertaken this assignment long ago.
The founder of Colonia Victoria, Hans Gunter Dietrich, had been charged with genocidal actions at the Nuremberg tribunal, after World War II, but he’d slipped through the net, using the old ODESSA network, slipping out of Germany through Franco’s fascist Spain to Argentina, then to Paraguay, and finally Colombia. After the allies hanged a handful of his cronies and imprisoned several hundred more, the Nazis who escaped were basically forgotten by the world at large, except for the Israelis and a few die-hard Resistance veterans in France. Many who went to jail were sprung ahead of schedule, “rehabilitated” and recruited to the service of their former enemies, as Britain and America began their long cold war with Russia.
Names like Bormann, Eichmann, Mengele, and Barbie—Klaus, that is, who never had a doll cast in his honor—still cropped up from time to time, as they were sighted here and there around the world, sometimes kidnapped or executed by Mossad hit teams. But thousands got away and never spent a night in custody for their horrific crimes.
Hans Dietrich was a perfect case in point.
Fleeing the Reich before V-E Day, fortified with looted gold, artwork and God alone knew what else, he’d bribed politicians when they still came cheap, bought sweeping tracts of land that no one wanted, and had built himself a kingdom, welcoming his fellow fugitives from justice, acting as a law unto himself within his fiefdom, ruling those who had acquired the habit of obedience in Germany and knew no other way to live.
Dietrich had been a young man then, midtwenties when Hitler’s Thousand-Year Reich had collapsed after twelve years of pure Hell on Earth. He would be pushing ninety now, unless you bought the argument advanced by certain theorists on the Internet, that he had died and been replaced by a successor, clone or robot—take your pick.
Colonia Victoria had grown with time. More Nazis joined the fold, by one means or another. How many were born inside the colony, over the past six decades? No one knew. Some sources claimed as many as three thousand had left homes in other countries where their racial hatred was unwelcome, and had sworn allegiance to Herr Dietrich in Colombia. They straggled in from Europe, North America, South Africa, the Balkans—aging fascists, skinhead punks, veterans of cliques and Klans and fascist parties few people would even recognize by name.
Colonia Victoria was aptly named, Bolan decided. While it wasn’t huge, by any means—one hundred square miles, give or take an acre—Dietrich ruled a territory nearly twice the size of Liechtenstein. Most of his land was cloaked in montane forests, ideal for the coca crop that guaranteed his little realm would never want for cash.
That had to be a victory of sorts, in anybody’s book.
Some of the immigrants to Dietrich’s colony, upon reflection, had decided that Colonia Victoria was not their cup of tea. Those who returned from Nazi Never Land told grim, disturbing tales of what went on inside the colony. Hal’s list had barely scratched the surface with reports of slavery, polygamy, weird rites and child abuse. Some also spoke of human sacrifice to pagan gods, blood-drinking and executions without trial.
According to the information Brognola supplied, Colombian authorities had made three separate investigations of the colony, based on complaints from former residents. Meaning white residents, since tales spread by the forest-dwelling aboriginals were generally ignored by everyone except a couple of devoted missionaries living in the bush. After the missionaries disappeared, such stories passed unnoticed by the denizens of “civilized” society.
The first investigation had been launched in 1955. A couple from West Germany, Gunter and Ilse Stern, spent two years at Colonia Victoria, then left, complaining to Colombian authorities that Hans Dietrich reserved unto himself the right to “sample” wives and daughters, to ensure their fitness for the task of breeding little Aryans. A prosecutor visited the colony with two detectives, spent the night and then reported that he found no evidence of any impropriety. The fact that he immediately bought a brand-new Cadillac convertible was certainly a mere coincidence.
The next official look-see came in 1970, when a teenager named Rolf Schumacher surfaced in Mocoa, forty miles northwest of Dietrich’s colony. He’d been delirious from fever, ultimately lost one leg to hemorrhage from a snakebite, and took weeks to tell his halting story in disjointed bits and pieces. Bottom line: Schumacher claimed that Dietrich and his SS-style Home Guard had killed Rolf’s parents and two brothers when the family opposed Dietrich’s selection of their teen daughters for his breeding program. Rolf had managed to escape, eluded trackers in the forest, but had worse luck when it came to Mother Nature.
Once again, investigators made the trek to Dietrich’s hideaway. This time they spent three nights and came back empty-handed. Their report, which had been classified on grounds of “national security, then photocopied by a contract agent of the CIA and sent to Langley, found no evidence of any “organized eugenics program,” sexual abuse of minors or restraint of any resident against his-or-her will. In fact, the bureaucrats found nothing to suggest that any Schumachers had ever joined the colony.
The third and last official peek inside Dietrich’s domain occurred in 1995. On that occasion, a Mossad agent informed the DAS—Colombia’s Administrative Department of Security, equivalent to the FBI—that Dietrich was allied with certain drug cartels and with a global network of Muslim ex-tremists. DAS Deputy Director Joaquin Menendez had promised a thorough investigation, but nothing seemed to happen. Except, that is, a car-bombing in Cali that killed the complaining Mossad agent seven weeks later. Israel had not protested, since the agent’s presence in Colombia was technically illegal, but a CIA informant claimed that two low-level DAS agents were subsequently executed by Mossad, for the bombing.
Menendez, meanwhile, kept his post at DAS headquarters and compiled a record Hans Dietrich himself might have admired. In May 2000, acting on information supplied by Menendez, soldiers of the Colombian Army’s Third Brigade ambushed and killed ten members of an elite police narcotics unit trained by the DEA. In its two years of existence, the unit had captured 205 cocaine smugglers, including several who were sent to the United States for trial. The massacre—or “tragic accident,” as local newspapers described it—had occurred, Menendez said, because one of his most reliable informants had mistaken the police for leftist rebels. The list went on.
Menendez, in the photos Brognola provided, scowled behind a set of bushy eyebrows and a thick mustache. His eyes were dark brown, nearly black, and in the shots provided seemed devoid of all humanity.
As for the Sword of Allah, documents procured from the Mossad alleged that one of the group’s top planners, Nasser Khalil, spent an average four months per year at Colonia Victoria, flying in to Dietrich’s private airstrip without interference from the DAS or anybody else. Khalil was sought by Israel, France and Italy for acts of terrorism planned and carried out against them, while the CIA had placed a bounty on his head, on general principles. He was suspected of collaborating with al Qaeda and Hamas on various attacks over the past ten years, but he had never been arrested or detained for questioning by any of the governments pursuing him.
If Bolan had an opportunity to meet him…
Gentle rapping at his door distracted Bolan from the files in front of him. He rose and crossed the room, opened the door, and felt himself relax at sight of Price’s smile.
“I wasn’t sure if you’d want company,” she said.
“Always,” he told her, stepping back to clear the doorway.
“You’ve got a lot to read and memorize.”
“I’m nearly done.”
“Any surprises?”
“Anytime I see the old Hitlerian mystique crop up again, I guess a part of me’s surprised,” he said. “My father fought those guys, you know? It’s hard to fathom anyone believing in the Master Race and all that crap, after so many years.”
“Some people never learn,” she said.
“I guess they need another lesson, then.”
“You’ll be careful, right? Colombia’s no place to let your guard down for a nanosecond.”
“Hey,” he said, “careful’s my middle name.”
“Your middle name is Sam, and careful is the farthest thing from what you are,” she answered.
“Well…”
“I mean it, Mack. Nazis, the DAS and drug cartels, the Sword of Allah. Toss them all together, and you don’t have many friends down there.”
“There’s always Jorge Guzman,” Bolan said.
“I say it again, be careful. Just because he draws a paycheck from the DEA and the CIA, it doesn’t mean he’s clean. You know the kinds of characters they deal with. Watch yourself, is all I’m saying.”
Bolan said, “I always do. But at the moment…”
“What?”
“I’m busy watching you.”
“Smooth talker.”
“I’m a little out of practice,” he admitted.
“I hope so.”
She wore a jumpsuit with a zipper down the front, running from chest to somewhere south of modesty. As Bolan watched, she gripped the tab and lowered a fraction of an inch, teasing.
“I was about to have a shower,” Bolan said.
She smiled. “I thought you’d never ask.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Bogotá
They left the shooting scene in Gabriella Cohen’s car, with Guzman slumped in the backseat, holding a scarf against his bloody temple.
“That’s pure silk, you know,” Cohen said as she drove through downtown Bogotá toward some point she had yet to clarify. “I’ll never get the blood out.”
“I’ll buy you a new one,” Bolan told her. “First, though, could you tell me where we’re going?”
“What? Didn’t I tell you that already?”
“No,” Bolan replied. “I’d have remembered it.”
“Sorry. I thought your friend could use some patching up, a little quiet time. I have a small house in the Teusaquillo district, just a few miles farther on. The neighbors mind their own business.”
“I hope so.”
“I’d be more at risk than you, if they did not.”
“You think so?”
“Well…perhaps not more, but just the same. The DAS hates foreign spies. Can you imagine? And from Israel, oh my God! Due process is a fairy tale they heard when they were children, then forgot.”
“You’re pretty far afield,” Bolan replied.
She flashed a winning smile. “I like to, um…how do you say it in America—go where the action is?”
“That’s how we say it,” he agreed. “I wouldn’t think there’d be much action for Mossad in Bogotá.”
Another smile. “Not like tonight, you mean?”
“Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I’m glad you happened by—”
“You make assumptions now,” she interrupted him. “You think I’m simply driving past old factories and hear gunshots, then tell myself, ‘I simply must go join the fight, and maybe find a handsome man’?”
Bolan ignored her sarcasm and said, “Well, if it wasn’t a coincidence, you should explain yourself. If you were trailing us—”
“Not you,” she cut him off again. “The men who tried to kill you. I’ve been watching them for three weeks. Now, because of you and my softheartedness, they’re dead. My time is wasted.”
“You were tracking them?”
“Why are you so surprised? We do watch out for Nazis, young or old. Some still owe debts from their participation in the Shoa. Others must be stopped before history can repeat itself.”
Bolan had no quarrel with eliminating fascists, but he asked her, “What’s the Shoa?”
“You, perhaps, call it the Holocaust. In Israel, we say Shoa. It is Hebrew for ‘catastrophe.’ In Yiddish, it is Churb’n. Yom ha-Shoa is our Holocaust Remembrance Day, in April. We do not forget.”
“Nobody should,” Bolan replied.
“Our interest in Colombia, therefore, is not mysterious. The Nazis here, including very old ones from the Reich, are well established and protected. They grow richer by the day from sale of drugs and push the enemies of Israel toward extremist action that results in loss of life.”
“Especially in the last few days?” Bolan asked, playing out a hunch.
No smile this time as Cohen quickly glanced at him, then pulled her eyes back to the road in front of them. “I’m not sure what you mean,” she answered rather stiffly.
Bolan showed another card. “Acid in New York City. Murder in Miami Beach and Mexico. Somebody with an antique typewriter who wants the credit for his work but doesn’t have the guts to sign his name. Ring any bells?”
They covered two blocks before Cohen spoke again. “Those aren’t the only cases,” she replied, checking her rearview mirror as if someone might be crouching at her shoulder, eavesdropping.
“Where else?” Bolan asked.
“In Madrid and Athens. Two murders, a week apart. One victim was a secretary from our consulate, stabbed in a marketplace with people all around. Of course, no one saw anything. The other was a diplomat’s young daughter. An apparent hit-and-run, the rental car abandoned. Greek police considered it an accident until—”
“The note arrived?”
“Yes.”
“Same typewriter and postmark?”
“Erika Naumann Model 6,” she said, with small chips on the A and W. They also need to clean the O and Q. And, yes, the letters both were mailed from Bogotá.”
“Somebody showing off, but still feeling secure,” Bolan observed.
“Someone who may be legally untouchable,” Cohen said, “but not by other means.”
It was unusual to hear the aim stated so plainly, by a foreign agent whom he’d barely met. Still, Israel made no bones about the fact that it reached out around the world to punish terrorists and those who murdered Jews. From Adolf Eichmann to the architects of Munich’s cruel Olympic massacre, Mossad had kidnapped or eliminated mortal enemies of Israel. One unit, active during the seventies, had been nicknamed the Wrath of God. And it had lived up to its name.
“I’ve shocked you now,” she said.
“Surprised,” Bolan corrected her. “And by your candor, not the thought.”
“Then may I ask what brings you to Colombia, and why the Nazis want you dead before you have a chance to change clothes from your flight?”
He took another leap of faith. “I’d say we’re in the same line, coming at it from a slightly different angle.”
“You, of course, desire to keep such nasty business out of the United States.”
“Of course, there’s that,” he granted.
