Mack Maloney - Wingman 05 by The Twisted Cross

Author:The Twisted Cross [Cross, The Twisted]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2012-11-26T03:28:02+00:00

Chapter 33

Colonel Frankel had never met the High Commander. Few people had. They said even his closest military advisors only talked to the man on the phone or through intermediaries. Now sitting in an antechamber on the top floor of the Panama City skyscraper that served as home to the High Command, Frankel was getting nervous. He suddenly longed for his boring but effortless old job. His hill, with its cool breezes and young women for taking, was heaven compared to this. The stress alone was already killing him. Here, in the High Temple of the Twisted Cross, he was just too damn close to the seat of power.

Few people knew what the High Commander looked like. Even fewer knew his real name. The high echelon of The Twisted Cross was cloaked in an almost impenetrable shroud of secrecy, attended to by the shadowy figures of The Party. And this, the top floor of the High Command was the Black Hole of that power-so intense not even the slightest ray of light could escape.

Frankel had no idea why they had picked on him. He was not expert in anything.

His own secret past included seven years as a low-level officer in the East German Army, a communist affiliation he dared not breathe to anyone. Now, suddenly, Strauberg was saddling him with questions and problems that required a broad sweep of politics and history, not to mention military intelligence to solve. Why him? he had wondered over and over. Why did they think he had all the answers?

Suddenly the door to the High Commander's chamber opened and a black uniformed officer stepped out.

"Colonel Frankel," the man said. "The High Commander will see you now."

Frankel gulped so loudly, the officer heard him.

"You know the requirements?" the officer asked him. "You will repeat them to me?"

Frankel closed his eyes and rattled off the words he had memorized the night before: "I am an officer of The Twisted Cross. All that I do is for the Cause and our Leader. I will fight where I stand. I will never surrender..." /

"Very good, Colonel," the officer replied without a hint of emotion in his voice. "And you realize that should you speak to any unauthorized individuals about your discussion with the High Commander, the penalty is death."

"I understand, sir," Frankel replied.

"A long, slow, painful death . . ." the officer added for emphasis.

Frankel gulped again. How he wished for those days of panning for gold ...

The black uniformed officer led Frankel through two inner rooms, finally stopping in the middle of a third. At its far end was a set of large black teak doors.

"Wait here," the officer said, before walking the ten paces to the doors and disappearing behind them.

In the scattering of seconds that followed, a hundred scenarios shot through Frankel's anxious mind. Normally cool and collected, he found himself uncharacteristically making up wild and disturbing flights of fancy. He imagined that the man sitting behind those black doors -the High Commander himself! - would be wrapped in a dark, fully curtained room.

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