on the sunroof, which was covered with candy-striped lounge chairs and bright beach towels. They started to laugh and slap palms like athletes from America.
The French salesman didn’t understand this. Not at all.
What an amazing life to be able to play King of the Castle at six-thirty on a Thursday morning, he thought. No wonder he had to pay more than thirty thousand francs for his piggy little Renault. These silly rich bastards were probably part of the idiot government of that pretender to the throne, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing.
Merde.
Double merde.
As he zipped up, the salesman no longer had to worry about the travails of modern France. He felt a sharp pain in his back.
An Italian stiletto was plunged between his shoulder blades. It was twisted hard and driven forward until it nearly came out of the Frenchman’s burly chest. Then it was pulled back out in the manner of a corkscrew. The salesman’s body convulsed and he was dead in seconds.
What the poor man had accidentally witnessed had been the first rough rehearsal for Dachau Two.
The Frenchman’s killer, Colonel Ben Essmann, had very closely watched the first draft maneuver as well.
Very soon, nearly two billion people around the world would get to watch it.
Greatly polished, of course.
With frightening Kolnikov and Dragunov assault rifles instead of scrub pine branches. With formal business suits and swastika armbands instead of bikini bathing suits.
CHAPTER 36
At midnight on June 29, David and Alix bumped along in one of two funereal Austin cabs tootling down Knights-bridge in London.
A quick night tour, as it were.
The cabs beetled past Harrods and Hyde Park. Under a few unfortunate billboards they read
Beenz means Heinz. Drink your daily pinta!
Past the perdurable Claridges, and the Edwardian Connaught on sleepy Carlton Square.
Finally, the cabs stopped in a Chelsea square, which looked very much like New York’s Gramercy Park.
They stopped in front of a gilded hotel awning that read “Rosecraft Gardens Inn.” “A sort of an elegant English safe-house,” Harry Callaghan called it.
Inside the Rosecraft Gardens, David and Alix observed a certain majesty to the high-ceilinged, chandeliered lobby. Yet there was intimacy as well.
A log-burning fireplace. Comfy sitting chairs filled with comfy-looking Britishers. Floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on the square and nearby Thames.
Grace. Standards. Civilization. And a few neo-Nazis, of course.
Because the Nazi-hunter Michael Ben-Iban couldn’t be located that first weekend (his Frankfurt secretary confirmed that Ben-Iban was on business in England), David and Alix thought they would uncoil in London.
With no Fourth-Reich Nazis.
No nerve-racking interviews.
No nothing.
Silly, romantic touch, but each day they stayed on in London they bought each other a present.
On Friday it was a riding jacket from Sterling Cooper for Alix, a silly bowler from Harrods for David. Then a bottle of port from Berry Brothers and Rudd. Dinner and a night on the town. Then a stickpin from Hatton Garden, tied to a clip of heather from a Chelsea gypsy (“Good luck, Dearie,” she’d promised David). An enormous Winston Churchill cigar.
Also on Sunday afternoon, Alix and David received a surprise present of sorts from Harry Callaghan.
Harry let them go for a day trip around London. Without any bodyguards.
CHAPTER 37
“Relax,” they told each other.
“Try not to think about the Nazis.”
London was in marvelous full bloom.
“It feels so strange to be out here alone,” David said, as they roamed the handsomely landscaped streets between Chelsea and Knightsbridge. “It feels very good, doesn’t it!”
Two tall, impressive Yanks.
Alix was wearing a bluestocking disguise: long skirt, cashmere sweater, scarf, Chelsea Cobbler pumps, dark glasses, sheer blue stockings. David looked smart in charcoal slacks and a loose, preppy crew-necked sweater.
The loose sweater neatly covered a .38 Smith &
The French salesman didn’t understand this. Not at all.
What an amazing life to be able to play King of the Castle at six-thirty on a Thursday morning, he thought. No wonder he had to pay more than thirty thousand francs for his piggy little Renault. These silly rich bastards were probably part of the idiot government of that pretender to the throne, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing.
Merde.
Double merde.
As he zipped up, the salesman no longer had to worry about the travails of modern France. He felt a sharp pain in his back.
An Italian stiletto was plunged between his shoulder blades. It was twisted hard and driven forward until it nearly came out of the Frenchman’s burly chest. Then it was pulled back out in the manner of a corkscrew. The salesman’s body convulsed and he was dead in seconds.
What the poor man had accidentally witnessed had been the first rough rehearsal for Dachau Two.
The Frenchman’s killer, Colonel Ben Essmann, had very closely watched the first draft maneuver as well.
Very soon, nearly two billion people around the world would get to watch it.
Greatly polished, of course.
With frightening Kolnikov and Dragunov assault rifles instead of scrub pine branches. With formal business suits and swastika armbands instead of bikini bathing suits.
CHAPTER 36
At midnight on June 29, David and Alix bumped along in one of two funereal Austin cabs tootling down Knights-bridge in London.
A quick night tour, as it were.
The cabs beetled past Harrods and Hyde Park. Under a few unfortunate billboards they read
Beenz means Heinz. Drink your daily pinta!
Past the perdurable Claridges, and the Edwardian Connaught on sleepy Carlton Square.
Finally, the cabs stopped in a Chelsea square, which looked very much like New York’s Gramercy Park.
They stopped in front of a gilded hotel awning that read “Rosecraft Gardens Inn.” “A sort of an elegant English safe-house,” Harry Callaghan called it.
Inside the Rosecraft Gardens, David and Alix observed a certain majesty to the high-ceilinged, chandeliered lobby. Yet there was intimacy as well.
A log-burning fireplace. Comfy sitting chairs filled with comfy-looking Britishers. Floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on the square and nearby Thames.
Grace. Standards. Civilization. And a few neo-Nazis, of course.
Because the Nazi-hunter Michael Ben-Iban couldn’t be located that first weekend (his Frankfurt secretary confirmed that Ben-Iban was on business in England), David and Alix thought they would uncoil in London.
With no Fourth-Reich Nazis.
No nerve-racking interviews.
No nothing.
Silly, romantic touch, but each day they stayed on in London they bought each other a present.
On Friday it was a riding jacket from Sterling Cooper for Alix, a silly bowler from Harrods for David. Then a bottle of port from Berry Brothers and Rudd. Dinner and a night on the town. Then a stickpin from Hatton Garden, tied to a clip of heather from a Chelsea gypsy (“Good luck, Dearie,” she’d promised David). An enormous Winston Churchill cigar.
Also on Sunday afternoon, Alix and David received a surprise present of sorts from Harry Callaghan.
Harry let them go for a day trip around London. Without any bodyguards.
CHAPTER 37
“Relax,” they told each other.
“Try not to think about the Nazis.”
London was in marvelous full bloom.
“It feels so strange to be out here alone,” David said, as they roamed the handsomely landscaped streets between Chelsea and Knightsbridge. “It feels very good, doesn’t it!”
Two tall, impressive Yanks.
Alix was wearing a bluestocking disguise: long skirt, cashmere sweater, scarf, Chelsea Cobbler pumps, dark glasses, sheer blue stockings. David looked smart in charcoal slacks and a loose, preppy crew-necked sweater.
The loose sweater neatly covered a .38 Smith &
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