A Sikorsky helicopter picked them up thirty minutes later. Any longer and they might have frozen to death. The explosion had knocked out the power, and the inside hallways were death traps. Luckily the helicopter had been en route to provide reinforcements, but the detonation of the giant had killed all the attackers. Once the reinforcements were off-loaded to scour the complex for survivors, Eleanor Bernstein ordered it to take them to Kuttura, where they boarded a Learjet. All the way, Eleanor spoke, giddy with the idea that her plan had worked.
Ethan was frankly sick of it. Listening to Eleanor was like listening to a terrorist who was thrilled that his IEDs were working so well. There was a total disregard for human life in the woman, which was ironic for an individual who purported to be fighting for humanity.
Ethan was eager to be rid of Eleanor Bernstein, if only to continue his search for Shanny. The micro drone in his pocket could be the key to finding her. His thoughts had been drawn more and more to it in the silence between Eleanor’s rants. He had no doubt that it was what had alerted the sensors. The only reason it had been turned on when it had—right before the attack—had to be to alert Ethan to its presence, which meant whomever it belonged to could track Ethan’s movement.
At least that’s what he hoped.
That’s what he desperately hoped.
“I’m a hunter by trade,” Eleanor said for the second time. “Did I tell you my father was a Nazi hunter?”
She’d told Ethan twice, but Ethan shook his head.
“He was famous for it. Not in the way people are famous today, like the celebrities in your Hollywood, no. And not in the way Simon Wiesenthal was. He had the cachet of being a Holocaust survivor. Combine that with hunting Nazis and he was nearly worshipped for his accomplishments. But have no doubt, my father was famous among those who were part of the hunt. He tracked down and captured seventeen during his life. The last one, an SS officer who’d committed egregious atrocities against women and children in Stalingrad, killed and dismembered him.”
Ethan stared at Eleanor. This part was new. Dismembering? He shuddered.
Eleanor loosened her tie and unbuttoned the top two buttons of her shirt. She pulled out a silver necklace and displayed what was unmistakably the preserved bone of a human hand. “This is the only piece of my father we have because it was sent back to us with a note to cease the hunt for this SS lunatic.
“And cease they did. For ten years no one hunted for him. Then, during the break between my freshman and sophomore years at university, I came across some of my father’s notes and I became the hunter. For the next five years, when I wasn’t studying to be a doctor, I hunted. And each time I hunted I got closer, until I finally found him. By then he was eighty-eight years old and living in a trailer park in your country, Jacksonville in Florida. He was an old man, incapable of doing harm. I supposed a normal person would have left him alone. After all, he was about to die anyway. But I was a hunter.
“You see, hunters are different beings. They establish their goal at the outset and never stop until it’s accomplished. Whether it’s hunting game or hunting man, a hunter has laser focus, his entire being prepared for every contingency. The cuteness of a creature has no effect, nor does any other emotion. Once a hunter has decided to hunt, he is all in.”
Eleanor remained silent for a while.
Finally Ethan asked, “What happened next?”
“I dismembered him just as he’d dismembered my father,” Eleanor said in an emotionless voice. “But first I removed his tongue and snipped his vocal cords. You see, I did it in his trailer. I managed to keep him alive for three days before his old body finally gave out. It was at that moment I realized I could be the world’s greatest hunter.”
Ethan had always heard that the difference between a hunter and a killer was that a hunter killed for need and a killer killed for desire. Clearly Eleanor’s definition wasn’t the same. Ethan was glad the story was over, but hearing it begged a question he wanted to ask.
“What happened during World War Two?” he asked.
Eleanor glanced at him. “Don’t they teach history in your American schools?”
“No. I mean yes, they teach history. Sorry, it was a bad question.” Ethan paused a moment. “I’ve heard that when things are terrible on the earth the giants come and exert themselves, as if they were a herder and we were their flock.”
Eleanor nodded. “As good a metaphor as I’ve heard.”
“So why didn’t they come during World War Two, or any of the other terrible wars we’ve had in the last couple hundred years? I mean, at least sixty million people died during the war and that’s not counting the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust.”
Eleanor frowned and cursed in that strange language again. “You do not need to tell me how many Jews were murdered during those times. As a Jew born in Israel we live this tragedy every day. It’s what fuels us and keeps us from allowing ourselves to be assimilated while surrounded by those who wish us dead.”
“Sorry. It was just a question.”
Eleanor sighed. “That was a terrible time. During the first years of that war, the Council of David and the cabal were as they are now, at odds with each other. My father joined the council when he was seventeen. He told me it wasn’t until the invasion of Poland that things changed. The Blitzkrieg seemed unstoppable. The council and cabal formed a tenuous partnership during those years. Something had to be done to stop Nazi Germany.
“We were lucky in that members of our two groups are in the highest echelons of most countries. Scientists, politicians, financiers, and learned men and women from most of the modern world.”
“Sounds like the Bilderberg group,” Ethan said, remembering what Nash had told him.
Eleanor raised her eyebrows, as if she was surprised that Ethan had put the two together. “That’s what we became. Those are the moderates within our group, those who want the status quo. But that came later. What we did in those days was the Manhattan Project.”
“Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” Ethan whispered.
“We had to do something dramatic like that to show the giants that we could stop everything.
“The first bomb was sent to stop the war, the second to stop the giants.”
An announcement came through the PA system of the plane in what Ethan now believed was Hebrew.
Eleanor straightened a little. “We’re landing in a few moments.” She stared out the window as she finished her answer to Ethan’s question. “What we hadn’t anticipated were the Russians. The proliferation race and the Cold War frightened the giants. For the first time we had weapons that could obliterate them completely. Although our partnership with the cabal dissolved in 1945 after the victory in the Pacific, we met again in 1954 and held an inaugural meeting of the leaders of the world.”
“Bilderberg,” Ethan said.
“Yes.” Eleanor made a face. “This was at the behest of the giants. They wanted everyone to play nice and forced this coming together. I think it was a waste of time.”
“Have you ever been?” Ethan asked.
Eleanor scoffed. “I’d never go, and they’d never invite me. I’m a hunter, didn’t I tell you? My goal is for the total and utter obliteration of the giants, and I will not rest until they are all dead. Every last one of them.”
The plane jarred as it landed, making Ethan grab at the armrests. No one said another word until they were in a blacked-out sedan, roaring down a rain-slicked highway.