Page 12 - Tales the Maggid Never Told Me

The Herati Gambit

in the High Command—and it has the added benefit of causing
dissension among the Axis powers.”
“Then we should do it. Time is short.”
“Good. We shall leave here and go on the aerial tour. We shall
discourage anyone from our personal entourage from accompanying
us. The Italians will send their most senior official, of course, possibly
with an interpreter or two. The flight will probably be brief, showing
us the main route of the underground pipeline. As soon as we are
airborne we shall disable our Italian guides—shoot them if we must,
it won’t matter—and break into the cockpit when the pilot is in radio
contact with the ground. We will disable him while the channel is
open. We will then yell into the microphone in German and Japanese
that the Italian officer is an impostor, an Allied agent, and is
kidnapping us. Then we will break the radio and any other obvious
control mechanisms: the plane will crash with a full tank of fuel,
killing everyone on board in an explosive impact. Our message will
be monitored by the pilots and handlers who brought us here, and
they will get word back to Tokyo and Berlin. The Italians will be
mistrusted, considered incompetent at maintaining security, and what
is left of our bodies will never be identified as other than the genuine
article. Only our real masters will realize the meaning of what has
happened—that what we knew was so important that we could not
risk trying to return with it. They will be able to find out where the
crash occurred, that Italy was involved and put two and two together.
By this move we, the pawns in the Great Game, cannot be blocked
from making an effective sacrifice. Are you ready?”
The American stood up. He handed a pistol to the Jew. “It’s
loaded,” said Retsu Goh. “Let’s go.”

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