Winter's Day

Eben Beukes

Description

APRIL 1945. AS THE WAR IN EUROPE SHUDDERS TO A HALT AND GERMANY LIES IN RUINS, HITLER LAUNCHES A LAST STRIKE AT THE HEART OF AMERICA... YOUR BROTHER IS ALIVE German engineering corps major Alex Winter is desperately constructing a pontoon bridge as the defeated Wehrmacht fights a rearguard action against the rapidly advancing Russians when he is summoned to Hitler's bunker in Berlin. His identical brother, Max, did not die in an accident at sea in 1938 but was given a new identity by his Nazi controllers and is working as a nuclear physicist on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where the world's first atomic bomb is about to be tested. Surgically separated at birth but sharing a special bond, the young brothers were subjected to a series of mind-control experiments by their fanatical Nazi parents with only Max, the weaker one, being found suitable. With the dying days of the Third Reich approaching, Hitler orders Max to activate the model version of the weapon he had secretly been working on: his final revenge. But there's a problem. Max is refusing to respond, blocking with the word "Ivan" when his controller, a New-York-based psychiatrist, gives the command. Does the answer lie in a secret pact between the twins? Winter refuses to help but the Nazis have powerful tools of persuasion and within hours, he finds himself on a U-boat and heading for the USA and Los Alamos in the company of a sinister SS Colonel, soon to face the brother he never wanted to see again, for there is unfinished business between the brothers and when the woman they both loved suddenly appears, old wounds are re-opened and the body count starts mounting as events roll on to a terrifying climax.

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Date de parution: 30 octobre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528964906
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Winter’s Day
Eben Beukes
Austin Macauley Publishers
2019-10-30
Winter’s Day About the Author About the Book Dedication Copyright © Eben Beukes (2019) Acknowledgements 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 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 Chapter 48 Chapter 49 Chapter 50 Chapter 51 Chapter 52 Chapter 53 Author’s Note
About the Author
A surgeon by profession, Eben Beukes is the author of the “Riad Ajmi” series of crime novels as well as the Shadows of a Rainbow series set in his native South Africa. Other novels include Any Way the Wind Blows and the autobiographical Pockets of Resistance .
He lives in Australia with his wife, two dogs, a cat and a dozen chickens.
About the Book
APRIL 1945. AS THE WAR IN EUROPE SHUDDERS TO A HALT AND GERMANY LIES IN RUINS, HITLER LAUNCHES A LAST STRIKE AT THE HEART OF AMERICA…
YOUR BROTHER IS ALIVE…
German engineering corps major Alex Winter is desperately constructing a pontoon bridge as the defeated Wehrmacht fights a rearguard action against the rapidly advancing Russians when he is summoned to Hitler’s bunker in Berlin.
His identical brother, Max, did not die in an accident at sea in 1938 but was given a new identity by his Nazi controllers and is working as a nuclear physicist on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where the world’s first atomic bomb is about to be tested.
Surgically separated at birth but sharing a special bond, the young brothers were subjected to a series of mind-control experiments by their fanatical Nazi parents with only Max, the weaker one, being found suitable.
With the dying days of the Third Reich approaching, Hitler orders Max to activate the model version of the weapon he had secretly been working on: his final revenge.
But there’s a problem. Max is refusing to respond, blocking with the word “Ivan” when his controller, a New-York-based psychiatrist, gives the command.
Does the answer lie in a secret pact between the twins? Winter refuses to help but the Nazis have powerful tools of persuasion and within hours, he finds himself on a U-boat and heading for the USA and Los Alamos in the company of a sinister SS Colonel, soon to face the brother he never wanted to see again, for there is unfinished business between the brothers and when the woman they both loved suddenly appears, old wounds are re-opened and the body count starts mounting as events roll on to a terrifying climax.
Dedication
This one’s for Ruby
Copyright © Eben Beukes (2019)
The right of Eben Beukes to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781528926997 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781528964906 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2019)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Lara Beukes for your invaluable editing and suggestions. And to Ruby for your ongoing support and believing in the dream.
Chapter 1
It was still bitterly cold when I parked the rental Malibu at the gates of Santa Fe’s ancient Rosario cemetery and pulled my hopelessly inadequate windcheater tighter and zipped it all the way up to the neck. At nine in the morning, the sub-zero temperature of the desert night had only started lifting and by noon would transform itself to the baking dry heat the place was known for. Jamming down the wide-brimmed Stetson which I had bought the day before in San Antonio in an attempt to shield my face and ears against the bite of the early morning breeze, I locked the car and stood for a moment casting an eye over the rough cast stone walls of the chapel where the whitewash had faded to a not unpleasant kaleidoscope of nature’s preferred colours.
In that dusty corner of New Mexico, it meant shades of brown and tan.
The ancient wrought-iron gate creaked and swung at an angle as I pushed it open and stepped onto the cobblestones lining the small courtyard. There was a musty smell about the place which I put down to piles of dead leaves from the still bare cottonwood trees piling up against the wall where the wind had blown them. The building—my pocket-sized guide book had it down as the historic Rosario Chapel—looked new by centuries old Santa Fe standards and, unlike the rest of the town, was not in the adobe style. Stepping up to the imposing wooden door set beneath a stone arch bearing an inscription in the weathered stone I could not make out, I pushed, only to find it locked.
There was a cast iron knocker which I used but no one came, and after a while I thought of studying the small plaque denoting opening hours to find myself out of luck. Today was not my day and tomorrow did not look good either. But should I care to return Saturday between twelve and three the building would be open to the public. There followed instructions and contact information regarding funerals which I read halfway through while considering my next step.
After a while, I exited the courtyard, closing the rickety gate behind, and took a stroll amongst the somewhat random scattering of the graves. The dead had been buried here since the town was founded in 1610—the oldest continuous municipality in the USA—and I reckoned there would be hundreds, possibly thousands, under that hard sun-baked soil. Some with headstones, others marked simply by a rough-hewn stone slab sunk into the ground, some with nothing at all.
The main town plaza where I had left the hotel twenty minutes earlier was already bustling with tourists and stony-faced Navajo Indians setting up their sidewalk stands but here, in this shaded corner guarded by Chinese elms and cottonwood trees, it was only the crows and me. There were two of them, sitting close together on a low branch and watching me with interest, one deciding I had nothing to offer and going back to preening its wing feathers. Its companion watched my every move with some intent, its head cocked at an angle as it followed my progress with quick eyes that seemed as black as its feathers. There was something eerie about that crow, that silent watcher over the dead, and I shrugged off the feeling and glanced around.
The place was vast; it seemed to stretch for hundreds of yards in all directions, the main entrance on Rodeo Road a distant source of traffic hum and the shudder of exhaust brakes as the eighteen wheelers rolled up to the traffic lights.
Walking to a small clearing near the centre of the graveyard, I did a slow three sixty looking for I knew not what. Well, I knew what I was after, of course, but where to start?
Which was when I spotted him. He was sitting on a low parapet surrounding a gravesite and glanced up as I strolled over. Coming closer, I could see he was at least in his seventies with an unruly mop of very white hair and a three-day stubble to give it balance. Watery-blue eyes looked me over from a deeply tanned face that cracked into a thousand wrinkles when he smiled.
‘A good day for it, mister,’ he said in a smoker’s voice waving a hand in the general direction of the graves all around as he struggled to his feet.
‘A good day for what?’ I asked as we shook hands.
‘To visit the dead,’ he said, introducing himself as Samuel Rico Pickens. Adding, after a moment’s thought, ‘the Second.’
‘Family?’ I asked, nodding at the gravestone he had been viewing.
‘Mah pappy,’ he said, ‘Samuel Pickens. His friends called him Slippery Sam, dunno why. He passed on this day, goin’ on forty nine years now.’ A small posy of wild flowers lay on the chipped stone covering the grave and after a moment’s silence Pickens lifted his gaze to meet mine and asked whose grave I had come to see.
‘I’m a writer,’ I said, ‘working on a book about the lives of the lawmen of the Old West. This town was on the old Santa Fe trail down to Mexico and many a desperado came through here. Many lawmen too. I was wondering if any lie buried here, a name or two I can look up and perhaps find a story there?’
Standing with the breeze flapping his too-short trouser legs around scrawny ankles the emaciated waistline bunched up under his belt like a drawn-back curtain; he looked more like a scarecrow than ever as he scratched his head, seemingly considering this startling bit of information. ‘I dunno,’ he began slowly. ‘There be many a graveyard about this town, each of them religions burying their own away from the others.’ This strange phenomenon merited a moment’s reflective silence culminating in a shake of the head as the thought was dismissed. ‘Ole’ Sam, he was Catholic,’ he said, stating the somewhat obvious.
‘What about strangers?’ I asked as I glanced wistfully around while wondering if I would be better served searching the archives of the local newspaper.
Sam Pickens the Second shrugged. ‘Goin’ on more’n hunnert years now they buried some, them bad ones—those they hanged or shot—on Bucket Hill other side of town. Reckoned they didn’t deserve being buried here, next to decent folk. Could be a place to look. Of course,’ he added with a frown, ‘there’d be some s