by David Wood
“There may be something to it,” Petrov went on. “In story, Priam’s son, Paris, takes Helen, the wife of King Menelaus of Sparta, for himself and refuses to surrender her, even though doing so ultimately results in the destruction of his father’s kingdom. What woman is worth that much trouble?”
He gave Maddock a surreptitious wink. Leopov just rolled her eyes.
“Helen was not merely beautiful,” Petrov went on. “She was daughter of Zeus. A demi-god. She bewitched men. Kings. Entire armies foreswore their lives, left their homes behind to die by the thousands in a foreign land.” He paused a beat. “Can you think of anyone else in history with that kind of charisma?”
Maddock immediately saw where Petrov was leading them. “You mean Hitler, right? You think he got his hands on this... this Charm. And used it to... What exactly? Bewitch the German populace into following along with his mad scheme to rule the world?” He frowned. “Okay, when I say it out loud, it doesn’t actually sound completely crazy.”
Petrov was silent for a moment, as if gathering his thoughts. “There is story, told by eyewitness, of what happened on night of November 8, 1923.”
“The Beer Hall Putsch,” Maddock supplied. “Hitler’s first attempt to seize power.”
“Yes. Hitler had been trying to gain the support of Gustav Ritter von Kahr, leader of Bavaria, for his plan to seize control of German government, but Kahr did not want to submit to Hitler, whom he viewed as rabble rouser. Eventually, Hitler decides he’s had enough of waiting and orders six hundred of his Sturmabteilung paramilitaries to surround Munich beer hall where Kahr is giving speech to three thousand supporters.
“Hitler marches in, holds crowd at point of machine gun and declares formation of new government in Bavaria, and his determination to overthrow what he called ‘the Berlin Jew government.’ One eyewitness, a history professor, said attitude of crowd changed in seconds. ‘Hitler turned them inside out as one turns a glove inside out,’ he said. Like ‘hocus-pocus, or magic.’ His words.”
A sudden shiver went down Maddock’s spine. It might have been just the chilly night air.
Petrov went on. “More than two thousand marched out of the beer hall carrying the swastika, ready to overthrow government. They failed. Sixteen Nazi stormtroopers were killed and many more arrested, including Hitler, but as you know, that was not the end.” He sighed. “I do not know if Hitler possessed Helen’s Charm, or if it exists at all, but I do know that Sergei Yukovitch believes it is real. That is what he seeks.”
Maddock nodded. “Okay, so Hitler has this Charm, uses it to seduce the German people into following him, fighting his war, even turning a blind eye to the Holocaust, but it’s not enough to guarantee victory.” He cocked his head to the side. “History repeats itself. The Trojans lost their war, too.
“Hitler chooses suicide. Müller takes the Charm, escapes Berlin, escapes Germany and then... What? Disappears?”
“That is what Sergei Yukovitch believes. And Lia Markova is first person to find a clue about where he might have gone.”
“And now he thinks she can lead him the rest of the way,” finished Leopov.
Petrov nodded, then looked thoughtful for a moment. “She is very intelligent. Maybe she can find him. But I also think she is... How do you say? A loose end?”
“That’s how you say it.”
“Da. If she helps him find it, good. But if she is out there, maybe helping someone else find it? Not so good for him.”
I guess that’s why he kept you alive, Maddock thought, but didn’t say aloud.
“What is this Charm, exactly?” asked Leopov. “Some kind of amulet?”
Petrov shook his head. “I don’t know. Among the pieces in Priam’s Treasure are two golden diadems. Schliemann called them ‘Helen’s Jewels.’ There is picture of his wife wearing them. But those are in Pushkin museum with rest of collection. Maybe there is another diadem, or some other piece of jewelry. I think Sergei Yukovitch knows what it is, but he does not tell me.”
Maddock studied Petrov’s gaunt face, looking for some hint of deception. The Russian seemed sincere, but given the circumstances, Maddock wasn’t inclined to trust him. He turned to Leopov. “What do you think?” he said, speaking in a low voice.
“If Telesh really believes the Charm can do all that, it’s no wonder he’s obsessed with finding it. But if you’re asking if I believe...” She shrugged. “It’s not the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. Even if it isn’t something real, it might have enormous symbolic power, especially in the hands of a man like Telesh.”
“Agreed. We can’t let him get to it.” He looked back to Petrov. “We need to know more about this Charm. How did Telesh learn about it in the first place?”
“Before he becomes gangster, Sergei Yukovitch works for KGB, but his father was with Red Army in Berlin. This is just speculation, but perhaps his father was one of the men who brought Priam’s Treasure to Russia. Maybe there was something in the museum records, or perhaps something revealed during interrogations, that told of Helen’s Charm. And how Hitler was able to use it.”
Maddock nodded. “Okay, that makes a lot of sense. But whatever it was they learned, it didn’t help them find the damned thing.”
“So where do we start looking?” asked Leopov.
“Let’s worry about that once we’ve made it out of Russia alive.” He hugged his arms around his chest, savoring the warmth. “Get some sleep. I’ll take first watch. We’ll leave before first light.”
TWELVE
Washington DC
The seven-hour time difference between Helsinki and the East Coast meant that, even though the trans-Atlantic flight lasted more than ten hours, it was not quite noon when the Air Force tanker plane set down at Andrews Air Force base in Prince George’s County, Maryland. Despite their collective anxiety over Maddock’s uncertain fate, the three SEALs slept through most of the flight and were fully rested and alert upon arrival. A black Ford Expedition with impenetrably dark tinted windows drove out to meet them on the tarmac.
Bones regarded the vehicle with undisguised wariness. “Nothing conspicuous about that ride,” he muttered.
Huntley looked over at him. “You’d rather hail a taxi? Or maybe take a city bus?” He jerked a thumb at Lia. “I thought you would appreciate a little discretion, but hey, if you want to stroll down the Mall with her on your arm, I’m cool with it.”
Bones frowned but offered no further protest. He didn’t like being under Huntley’s thumb, and his gut told him that the spook was probably exaggerating the degree of risk to Lia, but that was no reason not to err on the side of caution.
The SUV bore them swiftly through DC traffic on the 12th Street Expressway, passing through the National Mall, turning right onto Constitution Avenue, past the multi-museum complex collectively known as the Smithsonian Institution. The driver turned left on 9th Street and headed north around the block to the Pennsylvania Avenue entrance of the National Archives building, right across the street from the US Naval Memorial Plaza. One block further west sat the utilitarian eyesore that was the J. Edgar Hoover Building, headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The SUV pulled into the lane reserved for tour buses and, when they were directly in front of the glass door entrance, the five passengers disembarked and headed inside. Lia, despite her mental and physical exhaustion, perked up at the sight of the neo-classical monument to America’s most sacred documents. Bones supposed that, for a professional archivist, this was the equivalent of a trip to Mecca. Or maybe Disney World.
They were rushed through security, receiving visitor badges which had been set aside for them, and were escorted to a small reading room on one of the upper stories, well off the tour route, where FBI Special Agent Alexandra Vaccaro sat waiting.
Alex—Bones recalled that was what she preferred to be called—appeared little changed by the years since their last encounter. Her hair was uniformly dark brown—she had evidently eschewed the blonde highlights he recalled—but her
green eyes were every bit as vivid as he remembered, and her olive complexion was smooth and wrinkle free, even when she smiled upon seeing them. Yet, as attractive as she was, Bones felt strangely ill at ease in her presence. Alex was one of those brainy types, who seemed not only immune to his charm but actually to find it offensive, and who seemed inexplicably drawn to Maddock, despite the fact that the stick up his tailpipe had not loosened appreciably in all the years they had known each other.
Professor, who had known Alex the longest of any of them, greeted her. “Special Agent Vaccaro, it’s good to see you again. Thanks for meeting us. I hope it was no trouble.”
“Trouble? I literally had to walk a whole block and cross the street.” She smiled. “But seriously, Professor, if you call me anything but Alex, I may have to arrest you.”
She gave him a hug then turned to Bones and hugged him as well. Bones returned the embrace awkwardly, and then breathed a sigh of relief when she moved on to hug Willis. Professor introduced Lia and Huntley by name only, an omission which Bones felt certain Alex had taken note of.
After handshakes were exchanged, the historian-cum-FBI agent turned to Bones. “Where’s your fearless leader?”
“Maddock? He’s... Uh... On leave. His folks were killed in a car accident.” Bones regretted uttering the half-truth as soon as it was out of his mouth.
“My God, that’s terrible.”
“Yeah,” Bones mumbled.
An uncomfortable silence followed. Alex finally broke it. “So, why did you want to see me? I’m guessing—based on your choice of meeting places—that this is more than just a social call.” Her emerald eyes flicked to Huntley, then settled on Lia. “Official business.”
“More or less,” Professor said, equivocally. “You know how it is. You’re looking for something, turn over a rock and fall down a completely unexpected rabbit hole. We’re hoping you can help us find our way back from Wonderland.”
“No promises,” she replied, “but I do enjoy a mad tea party now and again. What’s the big mystery?”
“U-boats. Specifically, boats that went missing near the end of World War II.”
She arched an eyebrow. “So, you’re hunting Nazis now?”
Bones watched Huntley from the corner of his eye. The CIA man had repeatedly stressed the importance of keeping the exact nature of their search a secret, but if he was bothered by Alex’s deductive insights, he didn’t let it show.
“Like I said,” Professor answered. “It’s a rabbit hole.”
Alex nodded and then moved to a nearby computer workstation and immediately began entering information into the search window. As she typed, she said, “As I’m sure you know, the Germans—and the Reich in particular—were meticulous record keepers, and we captured a lot of their naval records at the end of the war, so this shouldn’t be too difficult.”
She hit the ‘enter’ key a final time to initiate the search, and a moment later, the screen changed to display the requested data. Her eyes moved back and forth as she read silently, then she resumed speaking. “So, in 1945 only four U-boats went missing, fate unknown. They are: The U-296, which disappeared in March, while on patrol in the North Channel between Ireland and Great Britain; the U-396, reported missing in April, last known location, near the Shetland Islands; also in the same month, the U-398, lost either in the North Sea or the Arctic Ocean; and the U-1055, lost in the North Atlantic while en route to the English Channel.”
As she summarized the list, Bones marked the locations on his mental map of the world. Alex clicked on the first entry and the screen changed again. “U-296 was probably damaged by an RAF torpedo, and likely went down shortly afterward.”
Click.
“Ditto, the 396.”
She clicked again and was silent for several seconds as she perused the next listing. “This is kind of interesting. There were rumors that the U-398 was refitted before leaving on its last patrol in April of 1945. Unknown changes may have been made to the external shell and there was some restructuring of the internal cabin bulkheads.”
“May have?”
“There’s nothing in the Kriegsmarine records to confirm it. The rumors probably came from the naval engineers who worked on the boat in dry dock, and were interrogated by the Allies after the end of the war. Anyway, the last reported contact was on April 17, four days after leaving Bergen. No indications that the boat encountered enemy forces.”
Bones glanced over at Lia who was nodding thoughtfully.
“And last but not least,” Alex went on, “The U-1055. Last contact, April 23, 1945. Now, seventeen days earlier, the boat was fired on by Royal Navy motor torpedo boats. They reported no damage, but they might have been worse off than they realized.”
“U-398 seems like the best candidate,” Professor said, “especially with those modifications.”
Alex swung her gaze around to meet his. “Best candidate for what, exactly? You know, I could probably help you narrow this down a lot more if you told me what you’re looking for.” She paused a beat, just long enough to ascertain that more information would not be forthcoming, and then continued, “You’ve already given me more than enough to draw my own conclusions, so there’s really no point in playing your cards close to the vest. You think the Nazis tried to smuggle out something, or maybe someone, aboard a U-boat at the end of the war. That’s actually a pretty widely believed notion, all evidence to the contrary, so whatever you’ve got, it’s probably not the earth-shattering revelation you think it is.”
Huntley finally broke his silence. “Guilty as charged, Nancy Drew.” He shifted his gaze to Bones. “I told you this was a waste of time, but now you’ve got it on expert authority. Case closed.”
“Nancy Drew?” Alex’s mouth curled in a wry grin. “If that’s your idea of witty banter, you could learn a thing or two from Bones. I grew up on Nancy Drew. Why do you think I got into law enforcement?” She regarded him for a moment, and then said, “You’re CIA, aren’t you?”
For once, Huntley was rendered speechless.
“That’s what I thought,” Alex went on. “Well, that explains the Secret Squirrel routine. Okay, so as I was saying, the someone or something you’re looking for must have dropped off the grid completely at the end of the war. And whomever it or whatever it was, it would have to be pretty important to warrant this level of attention.” She cocked her head to the side. “You’re not chasing Adolf, are you?”
“No, never found him all that attractive,” Bones said. He laughed but cut himself short and became serious. They still had no idea what the “something of great importance” was, so why couldn’t it be the Führer himself? “Why? Do you think he might have made it out? Faked his own death?”
Alex maintained a neutral expression. “I really doubt it, but it’s not completely implausible. The official story is that Hitler and Eva Braun took cyanide capsules. She died, but evidently the poison wasn’t working fast enough, so he shot himself in the head. Goebbels and several other high-ranking party officials then burned the bodies, in accordance with his final wishes. A few hours later, when the Red Army stormed the bunker, they found charred bone fragments which they took and buried in an undisclosed location.
“Now, while there isn’t any evidence to contradict the official record, there isn’t a whole lot to support it. In my line of work, we have a saying. No body, no crime. We only have the eyewitness accounts of loyal Nazi officers who might have been trying to cover up their Führer’s escape. To the best of my knowledge, the remains were never subjected to any kind of forensic examination, but you can bet the Soviets didn’t want anyone thinking that Hitler might still be alive. Even a rumor of it might have been enough to prolong the war. I would say the most compelling evidence to suggest that he didn’t fake his death and escape is the simple fact that he never showed up again.” She paused a beat. “But if he escaped on a U-boat that was subsequently lost in transit, that might explain why.”
Bones realized that she was watching th
em carefully for a reaction. He decided to give her one. “Friggin’ Hitler,” he said, shaking his head. “He’s like a cockroach that won’t die.”
Alex continued to regard them a few seconds longer, then shrugged. “Well, it’s probably just a wild conspiracy theory, but sometimes it’s fun to play them out as a thought experiment. Two U-boats actually made it to South America, so despite what I just said, it’s not impossible that one or both of these other boats made the attempt and sank en route. Either 398 or 1055, though if I were a betting girl, my money would be on 398. Those modifications might have been made to add fuel tanks to extend its range and create a secret internal compartment to conceal VIP passengers or cargo from the crew.”
“For argument’s sake,” Professor said, “Let’s say that’s what happened. How would we go about trying to track it down?”
Alex tapped her chin thoughtfully, then turned back to the computer screen. After a few more keystrokes, a map of the Atlantic Ocean and its coastlines appeared on the screen. A long red line traced a route that started in Norway, continued west around the British Isles, and then turned south in a steep diagonal line that passed near the west African coast, and then hugged the east coast of South America before eventually arriving in Argentina.
“This is the route taken by the U-977 which arrived in Argentina in August of 1945. As you can see, it’s a direct route, but with Allied forces still patrolling those waters, it would be a long and tedious journey. Unlike modern subs, the U-boats were a lot faster on the surface—they could only make about seven knots submerged—but on the surface, they were a lot more vulnerable to enemy ships and planes. Heinz Schäffer, the skipper of the 977, claims he made a continuous sixty-six day submerged run using the boat’s snorkel, which would be an impressive feat if true. Navy experts have cast doubt on his story, and I tend to agree, but if our phantom U-boat attempted something like that, then it might explain how it was lost. A lot of U-boats sank after their snorkels malfunctioned or were swamped in heavy seas.
