Eagles fly, p.7
Eagles Fly, page 7
“It comes down to one man, one rule, one philosophy,” Stoeffel said. “We have the philosophy—and by association the mechanism for the rule. We have only needed the man.”
“He is ready?” Dortmund asked.
“At long last yes,” Stoeffel said. His eyes were bright, and the others looked his way in expectation. Even Schey seemed eager. Dortmund felt his own pulse quickening.
“You have actually accomplished this thing? The training took? It worked?” Dortmund asked.
Stoeffel nodded. “Besides the fact he is of the correct build and age, he has an exceedingly quick mind, and since he was raised in the Midwest of the United States, he has the correct accent.”
“He has agreed to do this? To try?”
“From what I am told by the team who has worked on him these two years, that is a meaningless question. His mind no longer is his own. He is subject to total control.”
“How can he operate successfully?” Dortmund objected. “The thousands of day-to-day trivial details would be beyond any kind of control.”
Stoeffel leaned forward. “You misunderstand, Sigmund. His mind is essentially the same as it has always been, with only two differences. Like a dog, he has been trained to respond to given situations in certain very carefully defined ways. It’s as if he was in reality a German shepherd who has been thoroughly trained to act, and especially react, as a Saint Bernard.”
“If he is dressed in a Saint Bernard’s costume, he will appear to actually be a Saint Bernard,” Schey interjected.
“Exactly,” Stoeffel said.
“And the second difference?” Dortmund asked.
“The second difference is our control. Our Saint Bernard will be on a leash no matter where he is, what he is doing, or what is demanded of him; we will have absolute control.”
“Who knows of this besides us?” Dortmund asked. There was a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach.
“I’ve compartmentalized the entire project so that only those in this room as well as my personal secretary know all the details. My house staff and officers know bits and pieces, but they are loyal.” Stoeffel paused a moment. “Which leaves only the medical team who have worked on him for the past two years. There are seven of them. They will be flown out of Buenos Aires in two days. Their airplane will explode in midair over the ocean. There will be no survivors.”
“Everything has been worked out,” Dortmund said as a statement, not as a question.
“Very nearly, as you shall see for yourself,” Stoeffel said. He stood up. “Within a little more than one year our project will begin to bear fruit, and we will be headed toward a new Third Reich. Something we all have dreamed about for more than thirty years. Each of you will have a specific part in accomplishing this goal, which you will be expected to complete within the year. Later today you will be briefed on the specific details.”
Schey sat forward in his chair. “Before we proceed, Kurt, tell me about this Jew watchdog of ours.”
A brief look of consternation passed across Stoeffel’s face. “What about him?”
“Is he a threat to this?”
“No,” Stoeffel said. “There is little doubt that he is an agent for Goldmann from Tel Aviv, sent to find out who murdered the little Jew who killed Spannau. The man has found nothing—and will find nothing.”
“Does he constitute a possible threat to this plan?” Schey persisted.
“An obstacle hampering our free movement, nothing more.”
“Why not eliminate him?”
“No,” Stoeffel said sharply. “Not unless he gets in our way. If he is murdered, Goldmann will be certain something is going on. At the moment he can only guess.”
Schey did not seem satisfied, but he sat back. A moment later Stoeffel crossed the room to a large painting hung low on the wall.
“Let us begin,” he said dramatically, and he touched something on the edge of the picture frame. The painting slid silently upward, revealing a large window that looked into what appeared to be a medical examining room.
A man in a white laboratory coat stood with his back to the window. When he moved aside, the eleven old men saw a man whom they had known variously as Hempel, Holvig, Handel, Stornberg, and a dozen other names, seated calmly on the edge of an examining table.
“For the moment they can neither hear nor see us, although the doctor has been signaled it is time to begin, Stoeffel said. He turned toward the conference table.”Comrades, I give you James Locke, a mechanical engineer from London.”
Dortmund was confused. The man looked no different from the last time he had seen him three years ago. “I don’t understand,” he said to Stoeffel.
“Bear with me a moment, Sigmund, and you will understand,” Stoeffel said calmly. “Mentally he is ready. Physically the only thing we have done for him is alter his dental work to match the subject he is to impersonate. His face will be changed by the best plastic surgeon available.”
“Why hasn’t that already been done?” Dortmund asked.
“Because it would have been impossible to bring that particular man down here for various reasons which I won’t explain at the moment.”
“But our cover?”
“As I just explained, for the moment this man is James Locke, a mechanical engineer. Mr. Locke is about to have a nasty industrial accident which will require total surgical rebuilding of his face. When that is accomplished he will be ready to assume his new role.”
“Where will he be kept for recovery? And how long will it take?”
Stoeffel smiled. “It will take six months to a year. And he will be kept in Fairbanks, Alaska.”
Dortmund was about to object, but then he understood perfectly, and he, too, smiled, and for the first time since this meeting had been called, he began to relax. Perhaps it would all work out after all?
“The control words are eagles fly,” Stoeffel said. “Whenever, wherever, he hears those words, he will be compelled to make contact for instructions. Furthermore, when he hears those words, he will be compelled to do exactly as he has been trained and exactly as he is instructed.”
“Magnificent,” Dortmund said softly.
Stoeffel turned back to the picture frame and again touched something on the ornate pattern of wood. “Eagles fly,” he said, and the man seated on the examination table looked up, his face contorting into a boyish grin that was slightly reminiscent of someone else.
Stoeffel came back to the conference table as the white-coated doctor in the examining room began his work.
“Locke has been given a shot of morphine to kill most of the pain, but he knows what is coming. He has been programmed to completely accept his fate without objection. Among other things, it will be a test of how well his programming has taken,” Stoeffel explained.
The doctor donned a pair of rubber gloves, then wheeled a tall cart over to the table. “Your right hand,” the doctor said, his voice audible in the study over a loudspeaker, Locke raised his hand.
The doctor dipped a swab into a shallow metal tray on the cart and swabbed something on Locke fingertips.
“Sulfuric acid,” Stoeffel said.
Locke stiffened, strain evident on his face, but he made no move to withdraw his hand.
“It eliminates the fingerprints.”
Dortmund watched, fascinated by the absolute control the two words had imposed on the man whom they had all known as a fiercely independent operative. Locke was in great pain despite the morphine but made no move to fight the doctor’s ministrations.
When the doctor was finished with the fingerprints on both hands, he set aside the swab and rolled the cart away, pulling into its place some kind of mechanical device.
“Mr. Locke will have an accident that will disfigure him so completely that his entire face will have to be rebuilt. To our specifications,” Stoeffel said. “This device was perfected at Saschenhausen with the help of a couple of thousand more or less cooperative patients.”
The doctor strapped Locke’s head in the device, then stepped back and pushed a lever down. The machine came into a life of its own, slamming specially shaped battering rams into Locke’s face, blood gushing everywhere, the sound of crunching cartilage and breaking bones sickening over the small loudspeaker.
Locke began shaking, his legs twitching uncontrollably, but still he did not turn away from the devastating machine.
“Mr. Locke will be flown out of here tonight directly to London, where he will be admitted to the hospital we have arranged for his primary recovery.”
“And then?” Dortmund asked, not able to drag his eyes from the gruesome sight.
“Within a few days he will be placed on an air ambulance which will take him to the plastic surgeon who will perform the work.”
Dortmund looked at Stoeffel. “Where is the doctor?” he asked.
“Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. It is the Kelsey Clinic,” he said, and everyone in the room smiled broadly.
PART TWO
7
It was 7:00 A.M. Dr. Kelsey stood at the sliding glass doors in his fifth-floor condominium looking across Lake Geneva as he talked with his secretary on the telephone.
“Say that again slowly,” Kelsey said, the sleep leaving his brain.
“I said someone broke in here last night,” the young woman repeated herself.
“Drugs?”
“No, sir, that’s what’s odd about it. Our medical records section was broken into.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Kelsey said, trying to think. “What the hell would anyone want with medical records on our patients?” He stopped a moment. “Have you had a chance yet to inventory for what’s missing?”
“Not a thing is missing. In fact, we never would have known there was a break-in except for Digman, who happened on the man.”
“Man?” Kelsey asked. The lake was not yet frozen over for the winter, and a small boat with an outboard motor headed away from the public dock with two men attired in old coats and fishing hats. Kelsey wished that he were going out with them for a day on the lake.
“Digman was making his rounds about six this morning when he saw a light from the records room. He went in to investigate in time to see a man going through the medical files. The man knocked Digman on the head and got away.”
“Jesus Christ,” Kelsey swore, running the long, delicately formed fingers of his right hand through his thick shock of dark brown hair.
Kelsey was not an unhandsome man, but at six feet he was just a little too thin, his face just a little too angular and his features a little too fine to be considered masculinely good-looking. Some women found him attractive, while most found him lacking.
“Digman is all right, and the police are on their way,” his secretary was saying. “Meanwhile you have a busy day.”
Kelsey turned away from the window and, trailing the telephone’s long extension cord, went into his bedroom. “You’re sure Digman is okay, and nothing is missing, Marion?”
“Absolutely.”
“All right then, what’s on the deck besides the police?”
“At nine you have Mrs. Gardner’s rhinoplasty, after which you’ve got a couple of screening interviews. And then at noon there’s the Kiwanis talk.”
Kelsey cut her off with a groan. “Is there any way you can get me out of that one?”
“Sorry, boss, but you promised. You backed out the last time and now they’re counting on you. They’ve even sent a reporter from one of the Chicago newspapers up to listen to you.”
“Christ,” Kelsey swore again under his breath. “Why the hell me?”
“Because you’re the best there is. You’re news.”
“Bullshit,” Kelsey said.
“You’re right,” his secretary said, laughing. “At two you’ve got the augmentation mammaplasty on Shelly Hope, which not only should brighten your day, but probably is the reason for the Chicago newspaper’s interest.”
Kelsey smiled. Miss Shelly Hope was MGM’s up-and-coming answer to Marilyn Monroe and Dolly Parton all in one. The young woman could act, could sing, and could dance. Six weeks ago, however, she had been injured in a freak car accident in which her breasts had been badly damaged by flying glass.
“See what you can do for her,” a studio executive had asked Kelsey last month.
At first he had refused. Although the Kelsey Clinic did take such cases, they were booked solid for at least six months for anything other than vital emergencies.
But the executive had been persuasive. “Two things I want you to think about before you say no, Doc,” the man had argued. “The first is that without big boobs, Miss Hope is as good as dead in the entertainment world.”
“There are other doctors …” Kelsey had tried to interrupt, but the man had been firm.
“You’re the best. I don’t want some hack fucking her up. She’s too important.”
“And the second thing?” Kelsey said dryly.
“I spoke with your father. He tells me that before long you’ll be opening a research clinic. You’re getting out of the cash-and-carry business.”
Kelsey had been instantly angry. His father had promised him the research institute if he would operate the clinic for a couple of years, but the old man had also promised not to interfere, and until this moment he had not.
“At any rate,” the studio executive was saying, “do a good job for us on Shelly and you will find that MGM will be very helpful and generous when it comes time for research grants.”
Kelsey had wanted to tell the man no, but he had thought better of it, and had finally capitulated. The “cash-and-carry business,” as the man had called it, was lucrative. The research institute would not be.
“Anything else?” Kelsey finally asked, bringing his mind back to his secretary.
“You’re open tonight,” she started to say, but then stopped herself. “Oh … I almost forgot. Your father called about fifteen minutes ago. Said he wanted to talk to you as soon as you came in.”
“Is he here in town?”
“No. He said you were to call him at his office.”
“Right,” Kelsey said. “I’ll be there in a half an hour. Have Mrs. Gardner prepped.”
“Yes, sir.”
A Lake Geneva police car was parked in front of the clinic when Kelsey arrived. He parked in the back and entered by a rear door going directly to his office. The clinic’s administrative director, Stan Lowe, Kelsey’s secretary, Marion Bloggs, the night watchman, Phil Digman, and two police officers were waiting for him.
Lowe, a short, fat, bald man whom Kelsey had not liked from the first day they met, was sweating profusely. When Kelsey entered the office, he jumped up.
“Someone broke in here last night,” he said excitedly.
“I know. Marion called me half an hour ago,” Kelsey said.
The police officers got to their feet. One of them extended his hand. “I’m Leroy Wilson, and this is my partner, Ralph Granville.”
Kelsey shook their hands and then went around his desk and sat down. “Have you found anything yet?”
“No, sir,” Wilson said. “And I doubt if we ever will.”
Kelsey glanced at Digman, whose head was bandaged. “Are you all right, Phil?”
Digman nodded but said nothing.
“This obviously was the work of a professional,” Wilson said.
“A professional what?” Kelsey asked. “And why would he want to break in here? Nothing is missing.”
“That’s what we’d like to ask you,” Granville said.
“I don’t understand.”
“Have you any enemies, Dr. Kelsey?” Wilson said.
“Any competitors who might want to look at your medical records?”
“I’m not in that kind of business, if you’re talking about industrial spying. I’ve developed no new techniques that I haven’t already published. And the clinic is open to visiting doctors.
Wilson nodded as if Kelsey’s answer was the one he had expected. “Blackmail?”
“I don’t think so,” Kelsey said. “Most of my patients are proud of the fact they’ve had plastic surgery and can hardly wait to heal so that they can show their friends their new nose, or face-lift, or whatever.”
Wilson shrugged. “No one here is being worked on in secret?”
Kelsey smiled. “I’m afraid not.”
“Then we’ll probably never know who broke in here last night, or why,” Granville said.
“I thought Phil got a look at the man.”
“Only from the rear,” Digman said. “And it happened in a dark room and so fast, the only thing I could see was that the man was large and had white hair. Not much to go to the cops on.”
“I appreciate your help anyway,” Kelsey said, standing.
“But whoever it was probably came here looking for drugs. Perhaps he thought he would find inventory files or something there which would tell him what kind of drugs we stocked and where they were kept.”
“Perhaps,” Wilson said, and he and the other officer got to their feet, shook hands again with Kelsey, and left.
Lowe seemed on the verge of collapse. “I don’t understand this at all,” he said, shaking his head.
“Neither do I, Stan, but I think we’d better get back to work,” Kelsey said. He turned to his secretary. “Is Mrs. Gardner ready?”
“Yes, sir,” the woman said. She was short and trim and fairly good-looking. From the beginning she had had a crush on Kelsey, but he had never responded.
“Have someone take Phil home, but first get my father on the phone. I’ll talk to him before I do Mrs. Gardner.”
Lowe was just leaving, but he stopped at the door and turned back. “Are you going to tell your father?”
Kelsey looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“Are you going to tell your father about what happened here last night?” Lowe said. He seemed worried.
“I suppose. I don’t know,” Kelsey said. “I’m sure the man was after drugs. Why do you ask?”
“No reason,” Lowe said just a little too quickly, and he left the office, Marion and Digman right behind him.
