by Max McCoy
March 20, 1902: at Camp Ziegler, on the coast of Franz Josef Land, eighty-two degrees N. The sunless arctic winter has passed and we have emerged into spring, at least as reckoned by the calendar; although one would not know it from the daily meteorological reports (we have averaged thirty-two degrees F below zero, much colder than usual, but it is now minus twenty-four—something of a heat wave!). The health and spirits of the forty-two men in my command remain good, and our diet has been augmented by fresh polar bear. Nearly eight long months have passed since we sailed from Norway, and I am anxious for summer to arrive and to proceed with the business at hand, the dash to the Pole! Strange that the word dash should have become synonymous with any attempt at the Pole; it implies a mad rush, when the truth is that no other activity on earth requires as much careful planning. Our preparations have been as thorough as humanly possible, and we have established three supply depots along a northern line as bases for our final thrust. Three more of these caches have been established along the coast of Greenland, to ease our return. I am confident that, come summer, the Stars and Stripes will be the first flag to wave at the Top of the World....
May 2, 1902: The spring thaw has not arrived as expected. We remain locked here in the ice, and I fear our flagship the America has sustained irreparable damage to her hull. But the spirits of the men remain good and our two smaller vessels and most of our four hundred dogs have survived—with luck, and the expected resupply ship, we should be able to reach the Pole by our goal of July 4.
May 17, 1902: The resupply ship has not arrived.
June 1, 1902: The situation is becoming quite serious, and all hope of reaching the Pole this year is gone. Half of our dogs have died, many of the sledges are wrecked, and our food is running dangerously low. Morale is deteriorating and more than one fight has broken out among the men. It is our dwindling supply of coal, however, that is our most pressing problem. We have stayed on here in the belief that a resupply ship must surely be on the way, and we have made liberal use of our coal for cooking and heating. The supply is now nearly exhausted. Not only do we not have enough to fire our boilers for the return trip, we will freeze to death if we remain here. Today I am sending up a balloon asking for an emergency shipment of coal.
June 25, 1902: No response yet to any of the fifteen balloons we have sent aloft asking for emergency supplies. I have been forced to place the last of the dogs under an armed guard, or risk having them eaten too soon... hunger, cold, and despair are our everlasting companions... the horror of the situation has affected the minds and the morale of the men, who waste energy fighting constantly among themselves....
June 26, 1902: The horror. I awoke this morning to find that three more of the men had died during the night, and that at least one of the poor devils had been partially cannibalized.... I will mete out an appropriate punishment should I discover the man responsible for this outrage. The last dog has been boiled and eaten.
June 27, 1902: I am forced to make an unpleasant decision. We must conclude that even if a resupply ship is en route, it will not reach us in time to help the thirty-four souls who remain here. Therefore, I will set out with a small party aboard the Pluto to seek help. We shall make use of wind and current when we can, and of anything that will burn when we can't. Another group will set out in the Proserpina, to double our rather slim chances of success. May God have mercy on our souls....
Sometime later Indy shivered. It was cold, and for a moment he did not know if he was awake or merely dreaming he was freezing to death. He reached for the covers, was annoyed to find himself lying on top of them, then opened his eyes. He was fully dressed except for his shoes, with Baldwin's open logbook lying across his chest. With the exception of the surreal neon glow of the theater marquee shining through the open window, the room was dark.
Indy pushed the logbook aside and sat up. He rubbed his eyes, stumbled across the floor, and brought the window down with a bang. Then he yawned, scratched the small of his back, turned toward the bed, and froze—he saw the glint of neon along a six-inch blade.
"You should not be so careless, Dr. Jones," a voice with a heavy German accent came from the darkness. "You will catch your death."
"Rudy?"
"No." There was a slight hesitation, as if the speaker were considering the odds of Indy living long enough to identify him to the authorities. "My name is Jaekal. My friends call me the assassin."
"What do your enemies call you?"
Indy could feel the smile in the darkness.
"They never get the opportunity," came the reply.
"Well, that's encouraging."
"There is a desk lamp to your right. Switch it on, please. Do it slowly."
Indy reached out carefully with his right hand until he found the lamp, then the switch. He blinked against the light. Jaekal was sitting in the chair, his back to the door. The knife was a wicked-looking switchblade with bone handles.
Indy's eyes flitted to the satchel hung from the bedpost.
"Not to bother," Jaekal said. "I have removed the bullets from your revolver and placed them neatly on the desk. Actually, I am rather disappointed in you. Why do you carry that clumsy piece? It is much too heavy."
"Maybe," Indy said, "But I like to throw it at people."
Jaekal laughed.
"How did you get in?"
"Your room is not too high, and a simple flick of the blade—" Jaekal made a graceful motion with the knife—"opens the window latch."
"What do you want?"
"You know what I'm here for," Jaekal said.
"The logbook is on the bed."
"There is something more, is there not?" Jaekal asked. "The lapis exilis, a smoke-colored stone. It was in the chest. What have you done with it?"
"You seem to know so much about it," Indy said. "You find it."
"We wouldn't be having this conversation," Jaekal said, "if I had not already searched the room and found nothing. The stone could be on your person, but I did not want to risk killing you without first making sure. If you have hidden it elsewhere, then I must keep you alive long enough for you to tell me."
"How do you know so much about this stone?" Indy asked.
"Don't be stupid," Jaekal spat. "It is you who will give me answers, and not the other way around."
The assassin got up from the chair and walked to the bed, all the while being careful not to turn his back on Indy. He held the switchblade casually in one hand while he picked up the logbook with the other. He slipped the book inside his leather jacket.
Then Jaekal took a length of rope from his pocket.
"Sit in the chair, please."
"No," Indy said.
"Do not be tiresome, Dr. Jones." Jaekal walked over and put a hand on his shoulder. "You will sit in the chair."
Before Indy could move away, Jaekal's thumb found a pressure point along the collarbone. Indy dropped to his knees, unable even to cry out. Waves of pain radiated down his arm.
"There is no point in resisting," Jaekal informed him. "I am in control. I can make you move this way, or go that way—" Directed by the pressure of Jaekal's thumb, Indy lurched like a puppet toward the right, then to the left. "Remarkable, no? It is something I learned in the Orient, and it never ceases to delight and amaze my friends."
Jaekal kneed him in the solar plexus, then released him. Indy fell to the floor, coughing, unable to catch his breath for a few agonizing moments.
"In the chair, please. You have wasted enough time."
Still coughing, Indy held up his hand to signal his compliance. Then he crawled over to the chair, grasped the seat, and pulled himself to his knees. He rested his forearms on the chair and said he could go no farther.
"I am growing impatient," Jaekal barked.
"I can't—"
"Schnell."
Jaekal reached out to grasp Indy by the collarbone once again, but he was unprepared for the speed at which Indy sprang at him with the chair, which burst into pieces as it came down on his
head and shoulders. He dropped the knife and staggered back, instinctively lifting his hands to his face to protect his head.
Indy kicked the knife under the bed.
"Now, you sadistic sack of—" Indy said as he punched Jaekal squarely in the chest, driving him backward into the window. The pane shattered as Jaekal sailed through the window. He hung for a moment in the window frame, largely unhurt because of his leather jacket, a bloody grin on his face.
"No!" Indy shouted as he remembered the logbook. But it was too late: Jaekal was slipping out of the window even as Indy was reaching for him.
Indy stuck his head gingerly through the broken window. The would-be assassin had snagged a drain pipe, scrambled along a narrow ledge of bricks, and was now making his way onto the marquee of the Nu-Day Theater.
Indy looked longingly at his shoes, uttered a mild curse, and followed the assassin through the broken window. The bricks were hard and cold against his stocking feet. From the porchlike marquee, Jaekal was kicking his way through a locked door. It took him several blows to force the latch, and Indy had nearly caught up with him by the time he entered the theater building.
They found themselves in a deserted projection room, but the theater was not closed. From the stage they could hear the excited yapping of dogs, followed by applause from the audience. Jaekal kicked wildly at Indy and missed. Indy countered with a classic combination, a left jab and a right cross that sent the Nazi stumbling backward.
Jaekal collided with the projector.
The machine fell over with a crash and a flash of bluish-white light as the power shorted out. But before the flickering light died, Indy could see that the logbook had fallen from the assassin's jacket.
The last reel of Stronngers Return had been knocked from the projector and now balanced mysteriously on the sill of the projection window, seeming to defy the laws of physics. Then gravity reasserted itself and the reel dropped from the window, bounced across the balcony, and rolled beneath the railing. Film stock billowed out behind it as it fell, and as it rolled down the aisle toward the stage.
Jaekal burst from the projection room.
"Hey!" shouted a man working the arc light. The spot meandered away from Professor Rand and his star performer, a dachshund named Toby who was more or less howling Yankee Doodle. "What is going on?"
Indy, who had paused at the door of the projection room after picking up the logbook, could hear the audience gasp. The theater was packed, but the light from the stage was so brilliant that it was difficult to see anything else.
Jaekal jumped onto the balcony railing. For a moment he tottered precariously, then regained his balance and stood upright. Instinctively, the arc-light operator turned the beam upon him.
"Heil Hitler!" Jaekal shouted, and threw a Nazi salute.
"I beg your pardon," a strong, clear female voice called from below, "but this is America."
Then, as he stood there squinting against the glare of the spot, he began to realize that all of the upturned faces were black.
"We had the sawbones check him over. He's all right, except for some cuts and bruises and a dog bite on his rump," the sheriff said. He was holding the logbook, slipping it from palm to palm, weighing it. "Now, that must have hurt. But he hasn't said a word to us. Are you sure he can speak at all?"
The sheriff shrugged and propped his boots up on the corner of the desk. Roy Dickerson was a lanky, red-faced man in a brown uniform who could shrug with perfect condescension.
"Look, Sheriff," Indy said. "He spoke plenty, and in English, while he was trying to kill me in my hotel room."
"I know that's what you said."
"You don't believe me?"
"There was no identification on him," the sheriff said. "No money. No weapon, not even a pocketknife. I think he might be a lunatic escaped from an asylum. Who else would jump up and salute Hitler in a theater full of—" The sheriff used an unfortunately common derogatory term.
"I dislike that word," Indy said. "Don't use it again."
The shrug again.
"You found the knife," Indy said. "You know he attacked me. You are going to charge him, aren't you?"
Another shrug.
"We also found a whip and a revolver in your room," the sheriff said. "Maybe you assaulted him. Or are you going to tell me that you're a lion tamer? Then you chased him out the window and over to the theater, where you continued the fight."
"I told you how it happened."
"Right," the sheriff said. "He's a Nazi assassin who broke into your room to steal this thirty-year-old notebook, which his buddies already killed this Baldwin guy for, and which may contain the secret to a lost civilization underneath the North Pole. Is that about it?"
"Well, when you say it like that—"
The sheriff sat up and leaned across the desk, his face just inches from Indy's. His cheeks were even redder than before.
"You know what I think, Jones? I think you are both crazy. Escaped lunatics."
"I told you who I am."
"How come I've never heard of you?"
Indy feigned surprise. "You're not a reader?"
"Shut up!" The sheriff pounded the logbook on the table. "You are going to stay put until I get that phone call from New York City. Who is this Brody character, anyway? Your doctor at the asylum?"
As if on cue, the telephone rang.
Dickerson snatched up the handset, then turned away as he barked some questions. Gradually he quieted down, and after a couple of minutes of uninterrupted listening, he handed the receiver over to Indy.
"He wants to talk to you," he said.
"Probably has a new prescription," Indy mumbled.
"Indy?" Brody asked. His voice sounded tinny and very far away. "I hear you've had some trouble. Are you all right?"
"I'm perfect," Indy said. "Except for some cuts on my feet."
"Well, I think I have managed to convince the sheriff that you are not normally a threat to yourself or others," Brody said. "Do you think the fellow who attacked you last night is a member of this Thule organization?"
"That would be my guess," Indy said.
"And an educated one at that," Brody commented. "Do be careful. I contacted our friends at army intelligence and asked them about the Thule Society."
"And?"
"The members of Thule Gesselschaft, as it is called in German, tend toward a belief in such things as ritual magic, mind control, and lost civilizations. It is named, of course, for the mythical island in the far north from which their master race is reputed to have sprung. Their philosophy is a hodgepodge of Norse mythology, Atlantis theories, and nineteenth-century spiritualism."
"What's the Nazi connection?"
"Well, the society was apparently organized shortly after the Great War by members of upper-crust Bavarian society as a sort of occult study group," Brody said. "But the group's devotion to the old Norse myths inspired a brand of nationalism that soon began to appeal to a broader audience. Not all Thule members were occultists, but the founding core certainly was, and in the 1920s the group served as a kind of nucleus around which the Nazi party formed."
"That's what Baldwin said."
"There's more," Brody said. "The man credited with being the spiritual founder of the Nazis was an expert on Norse mythology named Dietrich Eckhart. He was also a satanist and dope addict. It's unclear whether Eckhart was actually a member of the Thule Society or just an adviser, but in either case he was highly regarded by Hitler—so highly regarded, in fact, that Hitler ends Mein Kampf with a dedication to Eckhart."
"Sounds like a prince of a guy."
"The Luminous Lodge of the Vril is a part of the Thule group—sort of the most secret of societies, if you will. It was inspired by a book, The Coming Race, which told of a group of supermen who live at the center of the earth in a perfect, ordered society—"
"What?" Indy asked. "Why did you stop?"
"Indy, the fellows at army intelligence are unsure what the connection with the Arctic
means. They have asked—since you already seem to be up to your neck in the thing—if you would be interested in helping them keep track of the Germans."
"Help them?" Indy asked. "Who's going to help me?"
"You seem to have a knack for taking care of yourself," Brody said. "They offered to provide you with air transportation and other support should you need it."
"Marcus, do you remember the last time I tried to help these guys out?" Indy asked. "I nearly got thrown out of a dirigible somewhere over the Atlantic, the fascists used me for target practice across half of Europe, and I almost became part of the desert. Tell them 'Thanks, but no thanks.'"
"You're quite right."
"Besides, I have a schedule to keep. New Mexico, remember?"
"Of course," Brody said.
"You tell them no."
"Certainly."
"Good," Indy concluded. After a brief good-bye, he hung up.
The sheriff jumped as Indy slammed the receiver down.
"What are you looking at?" Indy growled.
"Judging from the half of the conversation I heard," Dickerson said, "I'm not quite sure. The Nazis are chasing you here and the fascists nearly got you in Europe?"
"It's a long story."
"I'll bet," Dickerson said. He held out the logbook, then snatched it away just before Indy could take it. "Look, Dr. Jones, I'm going to release you, but will you promise me one thing? Get out of my county just as soon as possible."
"Love to."
Dickerson handed over the logbook.
Indy left the sheriff's office and limped back through the snow to the hotel. The theater and the cafe were dark now. As he passed the desk he waved to the night clerk, but the man was asleep behind the sports section of that evening's Kansas City Star.
Indy walked upstairs to his room and unlocked the door. It was freezing inside. The curtains were billowing inward from the broken window, and snow blanketed the floor. He shook his head, because he had forgotten the window had been shattered in the fight. He gathered up his things, went back down the stairs, and woke the night clerk.
