Free Kingdom of Darkness by Andy McDermott Page A

visible. He was younger in the photograph – she guessed it had been taken about fifteen years earlier – but it was definitely the same man. ‘Yes, it’s him.’
    Eddie nodded in agreement. ‘That’s the ugly bugger, yeah. Who is he?’
    ‘His name is Maximilian Jaekel,’ said Beck. ‘There’s a standing arrest warrant on him from all international and US law enforcement agencies.’
    ‘Why?’ Nina asked. ‘What did he do?’
    ‘He’s a wanted war criminal,’ Petrelli told her. ‘He got into the country undetected, but when the Beverly Hills police took fingerprints from his body to check his ID, they were immediately red-flagged.’
    ‘So what did he want with me?’ Neither agent had an answer.
    Eddie looked more closely at the photograph – not at the subject’s face, but his clothing. Only part of it was visible, the image cropped near the base of Jaekel’s neck, but the top of a dark raised collar still showed. ‘You said he’s a war criminal,’ he said slowly. ‘ Which war?’ To Nina, it sounded as if he already knew the answer.
    Beck hesitated before replying. ‘World War Two.’
    ‘What?’ said Nina, with almost a laugh of disbelief. ‘The war ended in 1945! This guy was late thirties, forty at most. Someone’s made a mistake.’
    ‘That’s what we thought too, at first,’ said Beck. ‘But the fingerprints are a perfect match to the ones on file, and everything else confirms it: dental records, the facial scar – even the SS blood group tattoo on his left arm. The body’s already en route to Quantico for further testing, but it looks like the results will be the same.’ His expression became more grim. ‘The man who tried to kill you today was a Nazi war criminal . . . and was over ninety years old.’
    The flight back to New York brought Nina and Eddie into JFK airport in the early hours of the morning. A black SUV transported them and their FBI minders to the city.
    Nina peered at the rising towers of Manhattan as they approached the East River. ‘I didn’t think I’d be back here so soon,’ she said. Her body was weary, but her eyes never tired of the sight. Even after all her travels, New York was still home.
    ‘Just hope we can get refunds for the flights we’d already booked,’ Eddie grumbled. They were taking the Queensboro Bridge to 59th Street; the United Nations complex came into view on the far bank, the glass tower of the Secretariat building alight even in the pre-dawn gloom. ‘And that we can get right back to what we were doing without any pissing about.’
    There was a pointedness to his words, but she decided to ignore it. For now. ‘Is Seretse already at the UN?’ she asked Beck.
    ‘He’s there now, yeah,’ the agent replied. ‘He should be ready to meet you by the time we arrive.’
    ‘Good.’ She leaned back, rereading the file on the mysteriously youthful Maximilian Jaekel. ‘Did you look at this on the plane?’ she asked Eddie.
    He nodded. ‘Nice guy, him and all his SS mates. France, Yugoslavia, Greece; they committed atrocities in all of ’em. Scumbags. Can’t believe that most of his unit managed to get away after the war.’
    ‘They bribed their way out of being sent to trial, apparently.’
    A disgusted snort. ‘There isn’t any amount of money you could have paid me to let those Nazi bastards go. If I’d caught them, I would’ve shot ’em on the spot.’
    Nina was a firm believer in the principle of ‘innocent until proven guilty’, but in this case, with the benefit of historical hindsight, she could entirely sympathise with the former soldier’s viewpoint. ‘It’s a shame someone didn’t do that at the time. It would have saved that kid’s life. Have you found out anything more about him?’ she asked Beck.
    ‘The victim had a US passport under the name Volker Koenig,’ said Beck, ‘but it was a fake. An extremely good fake – it held up when he arrived at JFK – but it means we don’t even know if that’s