The Charlemagne Pursuit

by Steve Berry

  “You a linguist?”

  “Hardly, but Grandfather knew these things.” She pointed at one of the stone slabs. Rock art. A human figure on skis.

  “That came from Norway. Maybe four thousand years old. The other examples you see are from Sweden. Carved

  circles, disks, wheels. To Grandfather, this was the language of the Aryans.”

  “That’s nonsense.”

  “True. But it gets even worse.”

  She told him about a brilliant nation of warriors who once lived quietly in a Himalayan valley. Some event, long lost to history, convinced them to abandon their peaceful ways and turn to warmongering. Some swept south and conquered India. Others surged west, finding the cold, rainy forests of northern Europe. Along the way they assimilated their own language with those of native populations, which explained later similarities. These Himalayan invaders possessed no name. A German literary critic finally gave them one in 1808. Aryans. Then another German writer, with no

  qualifications as a historian or a linguist, linked Aryans with Nordics, concluding them to be one and the same. He wrote a series of books that became German bestsellers in the 1920s.

  “Utter nonsense,” she said. “No basis in fact. So Aryans are, in essence, a mythical people with a fictional history and a borrowed name. But in the 1930s the nationalists seized on that romantic notion. The words Aryan, Nordic, and German came to be spoken interchangeably. They still are today. The vision of conquering, flaxen-haired Aryans struck a chord with Germans—it appealed to their vanity. So what started out as a harmless linguistic investigation became a deadly racial tool that cost millions of lives and motivated Germans to do things they would have otherwise never done.”

  “Ancient history,” he said.

  “Let me show you something that isn’t.”

  She led him through the exhibits to a pedestal that supported four broken pieces of stone. Upon them were deeply carved markings. He bent down and examined the letters.

  “They’re like the manuscript,” he said. “Same writing.”

  “Exactly the same,” she said.

  He stood. “More Scandinavian runes?”

  “Those stones came from Antarctica.”

  The book. The stones. The unknown script. His father. Her father. NR-1A. Antarctica. “What do you want?”

  “Grandfather found these stones there and brought them back. My father spent his life trying to decipher them and”—

  she held up the book—“these words. Both men were hopeless dreamers. But for me to understand what they died for—

  for you to know why your father died—we need to solve what grandfather called the Karl der Große Verfolgung. ”

  He silently translated. The Charlemagne pursuit.

  “How do you know that any of this is connected with that sub?”

  “Father wasn’t there by accident. He was part of what was happening. In fact, he was the reason it was happening. I’ve been trying to obtain the classified report on Blazek for decades, with no success. But you now have it.”

  “And you still haven’t told me how you knew that.”

  “I have sources within the navy. They told me your former boss, Stephanie Nelle, obtained the report and was sending it to you.”

  “Still doesn’t explain how you knew I’d be on that mountain today.”

  “How about we leave that a mystery for the moment.”

  “You sent those two to steal it?”

  She nodded.

  He didn’t like her attitude but, dammit, he was intrigued. He was beneath a Bavarian abbey, surrounded by an array of ancient stones with strange markings, and staring at a book, supposedly from Charlemagne, that could not be read. If what Dorothea Lindauer said was true, there may well be a connection to his father’s death.

  But dealing with this woman was nuts.

  He didn’t need her. “If you don’t mind, I’ll pass.” He turned to leave.

  “I agree,” she said, as he headed for the door. “You and I could never work together.”

  He stopped, turned back, and made clear, “Don’t screw with me again.”

  “Guten abend, Herr Malone.”

  THIRTEEN

  FÜSSEN, GERMANY

  8:30 PM

  WILKERSON STOOD UNDER THE SNOWY BRANCHES OF A BEECHtree and watched the bookshop. It was

  located midway into an arcade of picturesque boutiques, just outside the pedestrian-only zone, not far from a boisterous Christmas market where the squeeze of bodies and a hot glow from floodlights infused an element of warmth into the night’s wintry blast. The aroma of cinnamon, gingerbread, and sugarcoated almonds drifted on the dry air, along with scents of sizzling schnitzel and bratwurst. High atop a church, strains of Bach rose from a brass ensemble.

  Weak lights illuminated the bookshop’s front window and signaled that the proprietor was dutifully waiting.

  Wilkerson’s life was about to change. His current naval commanding officer, Langford Ramsey, had promised him that he’d be coming home from Europe with a gold star.

  But he wondered about Ramsey.

  That was the thing about blacks. Couldn’t be trusted. He still recalled when he was nine years old, living in a small town in southern Tennessee, where carpet mills provided a living for men like his father. Where blacks and whites had once lived separately, a shift in law and attitude had started forcing the races together. One summer’s night he was curled on a rug, playing. The adjacent kitchen was full of neighbors, and he’d crept to the doorway and listened as people he knew debated their future. It had been hard to understand why they were upset, so the next afternoon, while he and his father were outside in the backyard, he’d asked.

  “They destroy a neighborhood, son. Niggers got no business livin’ around here.”

  He summoned the courage and asked, “Didn’t we bring ’em over from Africa in the first place?”

  “So what? That mean we owe ’em? They do it to themselves, son. Down at the mill, not a one of ’em can keep a job.

  Nothing matters but what white folks give ’em. People like me, and the rest of the folks on this block, work their whole lives and they just come along and destroy it.”

  He remembered the night before and what he heard. “You and the neighbors going to buy the house down the block and tear it down to keep ’em from living here?”

  “Seems the smart thing to do.”

  “You going to buy every house on the street and tear them down?”

  “If that’s what it takes.”

  His father had been right. Can’t trust none of them. Especially one who’d risen to become an admiral in the US Navy and the head of the Office of Naval Intelligence.

  But what choice did he have? His road to the admiralty passed straight through Langford Ramsey.

  He glanced at his watch. A Toyota coupe eased down the street and parked two businesses away from the bookshop. A side window descended and the driver motioned.

  He slipped on a pair of leather gloves, then approached the bookshop’s front door. A light rap and the proprietor unlatched the lock. The tinkle of a bell announced his presence as he entered the store.

  “Guten abend, Martin,” he said to a squat, overweight man with a bushy black mustache.

  “Good to see you again,” the man said in German.

  The proprietor wore the same bow tie and cloth suspenders he’d worn weeks ago when they’d first met. His shop was an eclectic mixture of old and new, with an emphasis on the occult, and he had a reputation as a discreet broker.

  “I trust your workday has gone well?” Wilkerson asked.

  “Actually, the day has been slow. Few customers, but with the snow and the Christmas market tonight, people’s minds are not on books.” Martin closed the door and twisted the lock.

  “Then perhaps I can change your luck. Time to conclude our business.”

  For the past three months this German had acted as a conduit, acquiring a variety of rare books and papers from differ
ing sources, all on the same subject and, hopefully, unnoticed by anyone.

  He followed the man through a ragged curtain into the back of the shop. During his first visit, he’d learned that the building had once, in the early twentieth century, housed a bank. Left over was a vault, and Wilkerson watched while the German spun the dial, released the tumblers, then eased open a heavy iron door.

  Martin entered and yanked the chain on a bare bulb. “I’ve been toiling with this most of the day.”

  Boxes were stacked in the center. Wilkerson examined the contents of the top one. Copies of Germanien, an archaeological and anthropological monthly published by the Nazis in the 1930s. Another box held leather-bound volumes titled The Research and Educational Society, The Ahnenerbe: Evolution, Essence, Effect.

  “Those were presented to Adolf Hitler by Heinrech Himmler on Hitler’s fiftieth birthday,” Martin said. “Quite a coup to find them. And relatively inexpensive, too.”

  The rest of the boxes held more journals, correspondence, treatises, and papers, from before, during, and after the war.

  “I was lucky to find sellers who wanted cash. They are becoming harder and harder to locate. Which brings us to my payment.”

  Wilkerson retrieved an envelope from inside his coat and handed it to the man. “Ten thousand euros, as agreed.”

  The German thumbed through the bills, clearly pleased.

  They left the vault and walked back toward the front of the store.

  Martin arrived at the curtain first and suddenly spun around, a gun pointed straight at Wilkerson. “I’m not an amateur.

  But whoever you work for must take me for one.”

  He tried to wipe the confusion from his face.

  “Those men outside. Why are they here?”

  “To help me.”

  “I did as you asked, bought what you wanted, and left no trail to you.”

  “Then you have nothing to worry about. I came solely for the boxes.”

  Martin motioned with the envelope. “Is it the money?”

  He shrugged. “I wouldn’t think so.”

  “Tell whoever is funding this purchase that they should leave me alone.”

  “How do you know I’m not funding it?”

  Martin studied him. “Somebody is using you. Or worse, you’re whoring yourself. You’re lucky I don’t shoot you.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “No need for me to waste a bullet. You’re no threat. But tell your benefactor to leave me be. Now take your boxes and go.”

  “I’ll need some help.”

  Martin shook his head. “Those two stay in the car. You carry them out yourself. But know this. One trick and I’ll shoot you dead.”

  FOURTEEN

  ETTAL MONASTERY

  DOROTHEALINDAUER STARED AT THE LUSTROUS BLUE-GRAYstones supposedly carted here by her

  grandfather from Antarctica. Through the years she’d rarely visited the abbey. These obsessions had meant little to her.

  And as she caressed the rough surface, her fingers tracing the strange letters that her grandfather and father had wrestled to understand, she was now sure.

  Fools. Both of them.

  Especially her grandfather.

  Hermann Oberhauser had been born into an aristocratic family of reactionary politicians, passionate in their beliefs, incompetent in doing much about them. He’d latched on to the anti-Polish movement that swept through Germany in the early 1930s, raising money to combat the hated Weimar Republic. As Hitler rose to power, Hermann acquired a publicity firm, sold editorial space to the National Socialists at bargain rates, and aided the rise of the Brown Shirts from terrorists to leaders. He then started a chain of newspapers and headed the German National People’s Party, which eventually aligned itself with the Nazis. He also sired three sons. Two never saw the end of the war, one dying in Russia, the other in France. Her father survived only because he was too young to fight. After the peace, her grandfather became one of the countless disappointed souls who’d made Hitler what he was and survived to endure the shame. He lost his newspapers, but luckily kept his factories, paper mills, and oil refinery, which were needed by the Allies, so his sins, if not forgiven, were conveniently forgotten.

  Her grandfather also claimed an irrational pride in his Teutonic heritage. He was enraptured with German nationalism, concluding that Western civilization was on the verge of collapse and its only hope lay in recovering long-lost truths.

  As she’d told Malone, in the late 1930s he’d spotted strange symbols in the gables of Dutch farmhouses and came to believe that they, along with the rock art from Sweden and Norway, and the stones from Antarctica, were a type of Aryan hieroglyph.

  The mother of all scripts.

  The language of heaven.

  Utter nonsense, but the Nazis loved those romantic ideas. By 1931 ten thousand men were part of the SS, which Himmler eventually transformed into a racial elite of young Aryan males. Its Race and Settlement Office meticulously determined if an applicant was genetically fit for membership. Then, in 1935, Himmler went a step farther and created a brain trust dedicated to reconstructing a golden Aryan past.

  The trust’s mission was twofold.

  Unearth evidence of Germany’s ancestors back to the Old Stone Age, and convey those findings to the German people.

  A long label lent credibility to its supposed importance. Deutsches Ahnenerbe — Studiengesellschaft für Geistesurgeschichte. German Ancestral Her itage—the Society for the Study of the History of Primeval Ideas. Or, more simply, the Ahnenerbe. Something inherited from the forefathers. One hundred thirty-seven scholars and scientists, another eighty-two filmmakers, photographers, artists, sculptors, librarians, technicians, accountants, and secretaries.

  Headed by Hermann Oberhauser.

  And while her grandfather toiled on fiction, Germans died by the millions. Hitler eventually fired him from the Ahnenerbe and publicly humiliated both him and the entire Oberhauser family. That was when he retreated here, to the abbey, safe behind walls that religion protected, and tried to rehabilitate himself.

  But never did.

  She remembered the day he died.

  “Papa.” She knelt beside the bed and grasped his frail hand.

  The old man’s eyes opened, but he said nothing. He’d long ago lost all memory of her.

  “It’s never time to give up,” she said.

  “Let me go ashore.” The words came only upon his breath and she had to strain to hear him.

  “Papa, what are you saying?”

  His eyes glazed over, the oily glare disconcerting. He slowly shook his head.

  “You want to die?” she asked.

  “I must go ashore. Tell the captain.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He shook his head again. “Their world. It is gone. I have to go ashore.”

  She started to speak, to reassure him, but his grip relaxed and his chest fluttered. Then his mouth slowly opened and he said, “Heil . . . Hitler.”

  Her spine tingled every time she thought of those final words. Why had he felt compelled, with his dying breath, to proclaim an allegiance to evil?

  Unfortunately, she would never know.

  The door to the subterranean room opened and the woman from the cable car returned. Dorothea watched as she

  strolled confidently through the displays. How had things come to this point? Her grandfather had died a Nazi, her father had perished a dreamer.

  Now she was about to repeat it all.

  “Malone’s gone,” the woman said. “He drove off. I need my money.”

  “What happened on the mountain today? Your associate wasn’t supposed to be killed.”

  “Things blew out of hand.”

  “You drew a lot of attention to something that wasn’t supposed to be noticed.”

  “It worked out. Malone came, and you were able to have that chat you wanted.”

  “You may have jeopardized everything.”

  “I did what
you asked me to do and I want to be paid. And I want Erik’s share. He definitely earned it.”

  “His death means nothing to you?” she asked.

  “He overreacted and it cost him.”

  Dorothea had quit smoking ten years ago, but she’d recently started again. Nicotine seemed to calm her constantly frayed nerves. She stepped to one of the painted cabinets, found a pack, and offered one to her guest.