The Bormann Testament Read online

  Praise for the thrillers of Jack Higgins

  DARK JUSTICE

  “A mesmerizing tale…Higgins cements readers to the pages.”

  —Times Colonist (Victoria, B.C.)

  “High-speed narration.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  BAD COMPANY

  “Higgins writes with spare velocity, racing through a complex plot…[and] has no equal in the realm of ex-Nazis wreaking havoc…. Higgins maintains the suspense and even manages a series of nasty surprises along the way.”

  —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  “Fans will find enough gnarly action and sentiment here to make them anticipate [Higgins’s] next.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  MIDNIGHT RUNNER

  “The fun comes from the wisecracking band of dangerous but bighearted secret soldiers Higgins wheels out to save the world—and his galloping Hollywood-ready pace.”

  —People

  “Swift and coursing with dark passion…as credible and steel-hearted as Higgins’s best.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  EDGE OF DANGER

  “This is Higgins near the top of his game…another winner.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “His 32nd triumphant exercise in keeping readers hugely entertained.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “The action is non-stop.”

  —Minneapolis Star Tribune

  DAY OF RECKONING

  “The action is sleek and intensely absorbing, but the supreme pleasure is in those Higgins celebrates—tarnished warriors who value honor over life and who get the job done no matter what the cost.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  THE WHITE HOUSE CONNECTION

  “The White House Connection has one heckuva heroine…[who] begins a one-woman assassination spree that will keep you turning the pages.”

  —Larry King, USA Today

  “Masterful…a satisfying, suspense-filled book.”

  —Roanoke Times & World News

  “[A] page-turning thriller.”

  —The Indianapolis Star

  THE PRESIDENT’S DAUGHTER

  “A tight story with plenty of action.”

  —Chattanooga Free Press

  NIGHT JUDGEMENT AT SINOS

  “This is one you won’t put down.”

  —The New York Times

  DRINK WITH THE DEVIL

  “A most intoxicating thriller.”

  —The Associated Press

  “It is Dillon’s likability and the author’s adroitness in giving his character the room he needs that make Higgins’s novels so readable.”

  —The Washington Times

  YEAR OF THE TIGER

  “Higgins spins as mean a tale as Ludlum, Forsythe, or any of them.”

  —Philadelphia Daily News

  ANGEL OF DEATH

  “Pulsing excitement…Higgins makes the pages fly.”

  —New York Daily News

  “The action never stops.”

  —San Francisco Examiner

  “A terrific read.”

  —The Associated Press

  EYE OF THE STORM

  Also published as Midnight Man

  “Heart-stopping…spectacular and surprising.”

  —Abilene Reporter-News

  “Razor-edged…will give you an adrenaline high. It’s a winner.”

  —Tulsa World

  ON DANGEROUS GROUND

  “A whirlwind of action, with a hero who can out-Bond old James. It’s told in the author’s best style, with never a pause for breath.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  SHEBA

  “When it comes to thriller writers, one name stands well above the crowd—Jack Higgins.”

  —The Associated Press

  THUNDER POINT

  “Dramatic…authentic…one of the author’s best.”

  —The New York Times

  “A rollicking adventure that twists and turns.”

  —The San Diego Union-Tribune

  Titles by Jack Higgins

  THE BORMANN TESTAMENT

  WITHOUT MERCY

  DARK JUSTICE

  HELL IS ALWAYS TODAY

  BAD COMPANY

  MIDNIGHT RUNNER

  THE GRAVEYARD SHIFT

  EDGE OF DANGER

  DAY OF RECKONING

  THE KEYS OF HELL

  THE WHITE HOUSE CONNECTION

  IN THE HOUR BEFORE MIDNIGHT

  EAST OF DESOLATION

  THE PRESIDENT’S DAUGHTER

  PAY THE DEVIL

  FLIGHT OF EAGLES

  YEAR OF THE TIGER

  DRINK WITH THE DEVIL

  NIGHT JUDGEMENT AT SINOS

  ANGEL OF DEATH

  SHEBA

  ON DANGEROUS GROUND

  THUNDER POINT

  EYE OF THE STORM (also published as MIDNIGHT MAN)

  THE EAGLE HAS FLOWN

  COLD HARBOUR

  MEMORIES OF A DANCE-HALL ROMEO

  A SEASON IN HELL

  NIGHT OF THE FOX

  CONFESSIONAL

  EXOCET

  TOUCH THE DEVIL

  LUCIANO’S LUCK

  SOLO

  DAY OF JUDGMENT

  STORM WARNING

  THE LAST PLACE GOD MADE

  A PRAYER FOR THE DYING

  THE EAGLE HAS LANDED

  THE RUN TO MORNING

  DILLINGER

  TO CATCH A KING

  THE VALHALLA EXCHANGE

  THE KHUFRA RUN

  A GAME FOR HEROES

  THE WRATH OF GOD

  THE BORMANN TESTAMENT

  Jack Higgins

  Previously published as

  The Testament of Caspar Schultz

  BERKLEY BOOKS, NEW YORK

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

  Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr. Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Originally published in a slightly different form as The Testament of Caspar Schultz by Martin Fallon.

  THE BORMANN TESTAMENT

  A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

  Copyright © 1962 by Martin Fallon.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, a
ddress: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ISBN: 0-7865-8614-1

  BERKLEY®

  Berkley Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  BERKLEY is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  The “B” design is a trademark belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I’ve explored the history of Nazi Germany and the Second World War in a number of novels, the most famous of them being The Eagle Has Landed. For me, the German connection has always been very personal. During the Cold War, I soldiered in the Royal Horse Guards in Berlin and patrolled the East German border, trying to stem the flood both of illegal refugees fleeing to the West as well as gangs of black marketers, usually ex-SS, who operated out of East Germany, using it as a refuge.

  My uncle, a regular soldier in the British Army and a former prisoner of war, married a German war widow. Her nephew, Konrad, was a chief inspector in the Hamburg Criminal Investigation Department, and during the war had been drafted into the Gestapo, which needed experienced detectives. His stories about the top Nazis he had met fired my imagination, particularly anything to do with Martin Bormann, Hitler’s right-hand man, who, according to legend, escaped from the bunker in Berlin in the last few days of the war.

  So, The Bormann Testament was born. For legal and security reasons, however, my publishers in 1962 were only prepared to put it out if changes were made. The major result was that Martin Bormann vanished from the book and a fictional Nazi leader took over, as indicated by the title under which the novel was finally published, The Testament of Caspar Schultz.

  But times have changed and this present offering, after so many years, is a return to what the original intended…and a little more.

  —JACK HIGGINS

  1962

  London

  Germany

  CHAPTER 1

  Chavasse lay with his head pillowed on one arm and stared up at the ceiling through the darkness. He was tired—more tired than he had been in a long time, and yet he couldn’t sleep. He switched on the bedside lamp and reached for a cigarette. As he struck a match, the telephone started to ring.

  He lifted the receiver quickly and a woman’s voice sounded in his ear, cool and impersonal. “Paul, is that you?”

  He pushed himself up against the pillow. “Who’s speaking?”

  “Jean Frazer. Your flight got into London Airport from Greece three hours ago. Why haven’t you checked in?”

  “What’s the rush?” Chavasse said. “I made a preliminary report from Athens yesterday. I’ll see the Chief in the morning.”

  “You’ll see him now,” Jean Frazer said. “And you’d better hurry. He’s been waiting for you since that flight got in.”

  Chavasse frowned. “What the hell for? I’ve just done two months in Greece and it wasn’t pleasant. I’m entitled to a night’s sleep, at least.”

  “You’re breaking my heart,” she told him calmly. “Now get your clothes on like a good little boy. I’ll send a car round for you.”

  Her receiver clicked into place and he cursed softly and threw back the bedclothes. He pulled on a pair of pants and padded across to the bathroom in his bare feet.

  His eyes were gritty from lack of sleep and there was a bad taste in his mouth. He filled a glass with water and drank it slowly, savoring its freshness, and then quickly rinsed his head and shoulders in cold water.

  As he toweled himself dry, he examined his face in the mirror. There were dark circles under the eyes, and faint lines of fatigue had drawn the skin tightly over the high cheekbones that were a heritage from his French father.

  It was a handsome, even an aristocratic, face, the face of a scholar, and somehow the ugly, puckered scar of the old gunshot wound in the left shoulder looked incongruous and out of place.

  He fingered the flesh beneath the gray eyes and sighed. “Christ, but you look like hell,” he said softly, and the face in the mirror was illuminated by a smile of great natural charm. It was one of his most important assets.

  He ran a hand over the two-day stubble of beard on his chin, decided against shaving, and returned to the bedroom. As he dressed, rain tapped against the window with ghostly fingers, and when he left the flat ten minutes later, he was wearing an old trench coat.

  The car was waiting at the bottom of the steps when he went outside, and he climbed in beside the driver and sat there in silence, staring morosely into the night as they moved through deserted, rain-swept streets.

  He was tired. Tired of living out of a suitcase, of hopping from one country to another, of being all things to all men and someone very different on the inside. For the first time in five years, he wondered why he didn’t pack it all in, and then they turned in through the gates of the familiar house in St. John’s Wood and he grinned ruefully and pushed the thought away from him.

  The car braked to a halt before the front door, and he got out without a word to the driver and mounted the steps. He pressed the bell beside the polished brass plate that carried the legend BROWN & COMPANY—IMPORTERS & EXPORTERS, and waited.

  After a few moments, the door opened and a tall, graying man in a blue serge suit stood to one side, a slight smile on his face. “Nice to see you back, Mr. Chavasse.”

  Chavasse grinned and punched him lightly on the shoulder as he passed. “You’re looking fine, Joe.”

  He went up the curving Regency staircase and passed along a thickly carpeted corridor. The only sound was a slight, persistent hum from the dynamo in the radio room, but he moved past the door and mounted two steps into another corridor. Here, the silence was absolute, and he opened a large, white-painted door at the far end and went in.

  The room was small and plainly furnished, with a desk in one corner on which stood a typewriter and several telephones. Jean Frazer was bending over a filing cabinet and she looked up, a slight smile on her round, intelligent face. She removed her spectacles with one hand and frowned. “You look pretty rough.”

  Chavasse grinned. “I usually do at this time of the morning.”

  She was wearing a plain white blouse and a tweed skirt of deceptively simple cut that molded her rounded hips. His eyes followed her approvingly as she walked across to her desk and sat down.

  He sat on the edge of the desk and helped himself to a cigarette from a packet that was lying there. He lit it and blew out a cloud of smoke with a sigh of satisfaction. “Now what’s all the fuss about? What’s the Chief got on his mind that’s so important it can’t wait until a respectable hour?”

  She shrugged. “Why don’t you ask him yourself? He’s waiting for you inside.”

  He frowned slightly. “Another job? Already?”

  She nodded. “I think it’s something pretty big.”

  Chavasse cursed softly and got to his feet. “What does he think I’m made of—iron?” Without waiting for a reply, he walked across to the far door, opened it, and went in.

  The room was half in shadow, the only light the shaded lamp that stood upon the desk by the window. The Chief was reading a sheaf of typewritten documents and he looked up quickly, a slight frown on his face. It was replaced by a smile and he waved a hand toward a chair. “So they finally managed to locate you, Paul. Sit down and tell me about Greece.”

  Chavasse slumped into the chair and pushed hi
s hat back from his forehead. “Didn’t you get my coded report from the Embassy in Athens?”

  The Chief nodded. “I had a quick look at it when it came in yesterday. It seems satisfactory. Any loose ends?”

  Chavasse shrugged. “One or two. Your hunch about Skiros was right. He was a double agent. Been working for the Commies for the past four years. They’ll have to wait a long time for his next report.”

  The Chief selected a cigarette from a silver box and lit it carefully. “How did you manage it?”

  “I traced him to Lesbos,” Chavasse said. “He was having a skin-diving holiday. Unfortunately, something went wrong with his Aqua-Lung one afternoon. By the time they got him back to the beach, it was too late.”

  The Chief sighed. “Most unfortunate.”

  Chavasse leaned across the desk. “Now I’ve explained the finer points of the affair, perhaps I can go back to bed.” He got to his feet and crossed to the window. “I feel as if I haven’t slept for a month.” He stood there, staring out into the rain for a moment, and then turned abruptly. “To be perfectly frank, on the way over here I was considering packing things in.”

  The Chief raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Could you see yourself going back to lecturing in a provincial university?” He shook his head. “Not a chance, Paul. You’re the best man I’ve got. One of these days you’ll be sitting behind this desk.”

  “If I live that long,” Chavasse said sourly.

  The Chief gestured to the chair. “Come and sit down and have another cigarette. You always feel like this when a job’s over, especially when you’ve killed somebody. What you need is a long rest.”

  “Then what about it?” Chavasse said. “Christ knows I’ve earned one. This last year’s been hell.”

  “I know, Paul, I know,” the Chief said soothingly, “and I’ll see you get one—after this next job.”

  Chavasse turned from the window angrily. “For God’s sake, am I the only man the Bureau’s got? What about Wilson or LaCosta?”