Hercules stared back upstream at the approaching wave, stunned with horror and yet resigned to his fate, suddenly utterly helpless when faced by the full force of the one element that had shaped the very face of the planet – more than Man with all his machines and inventions could ever do.
“Hold on!” he shouted at the women riding the river behind him. “This could get a little rough!”
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
The Hunting Party
THE CONVOY GROUND to a halt at the edge of the ruined dam, the jeeps and half-tracks unable to go any further as the River Rhine now tumbled unhindered in front of them. An explosion of clearly devastating force had ripped open the dam as if it had been no more than a sandcastle.
Lieutenant-Colonel Teufel climbed out of his staff car at the head of the hunting party. His jackboots crunched on the mess of shell casings and metal debris that littered the impacted road surface. He stopped, at a safe distance from the spot where the road surface had collapsed altogether, gazing at the hypnotic flow of water churning through the fissure. He watched as more of the crumbling dam was worried loose by the splashing waters and carried away by the river and over the edge of the new waterfall.
Teufel’s eyes followed the stream as it disappeared over the brink and tumbled away into a fine white spray, shot through with myriad rainbows, as it cascaded down the cliff-like face of the dam. Down there in the valley, amidst the fractured stonework, he could see all that was left of a tank and a Landsknecht, crushed by the cyclopean blocks of masonry that had come down on top of them.
A stretch of dam some forty yards wide had been wiped out by the devastating explosion. On the far side, its legs half hanging over the gulf, lay a fighting machine.
The Landsknecht lay on its back, its legs frozen as if in the act of walking, one of the piston-powered limbs twisted back on itself. The hull of the fighting machine was scorched, its Nazi insignia almost entirely burnt away.
Two men were standing beside the stricken machine. A third was slumped against it, his right arm trussed up in a makeshift sling. One of the other two – a lance corporal, judging by the insignia sewn onto the sleeve of his jacket – waved at them from across the divide, a handkerchief pressed against his mouth. Teufel could see congealed blood covered the man’s nose and chin.
Isla von Haupstein joined him, as close as either of them dared stand at the edge of the precipice. “They were here,” she said enigmatically.
“Yes, thank you, my dear,” he said, enunciating slowly and clearly, “but I’d rather worked that out for myself.”
Teufel glowered at the lance corporal, an expression of weary annoyance on his face. He turned from the waving fool to address his own team.
“Bring him,” he said.
“SO, LANCE CORPORAL Riker,” the Lieutenant-Colonel began, resting his steepled fingers under his chin, “you had the enemy in your sights and you let them get away?”
Riker sighed. He was tired and wet, having been thrown a line by the Devil’s men, who then watched as he braved the freezing, torrent to get to them. Before he had even been given the opportunity to get dry again and make himself comfortable, he had been dragged before the old man to give an account of his actions and those of the men under his command.
Riker had heard of Teufel, the Devil. Everyone had. He was infamous among the officers of the German military.
“It wasn’t like that, sir,” he began.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” the old man hissed, his voice dripping with venom. “I am mistaken, am I? It wasn’t our quarry at all.” He gestured at the hole in the dam and the metal debris scattered all around them. “It was the League of German Girls, was it?”
“No. I mean...” He faltered.
“Then why don’t you enlighten us, Lance Corporal?” Teufel interjected. “Why don’t you tell us what you do mean?”
Riker met the gaze of the Lieutenant-Colonel and his adjutant in turn. Unable to bear the force of their eyes upon his, he cast his gaze at the ground.
“We were attacked,” he said.
“By our quarry?”
“No, Herr Colonel. It was something else.”
“Something else, you say?” Riker could feel the Devil’s black stare burning into him. “But what?”
“I… I’m not sure,” Riker replied weakly.
Teufel said nothing.
Unable to bear the silence, any more than he was able to bear the Devil’s eyes upon him, he gave voice to his own private thoughts, even though he knew that to do so would be to damn himself. “It looked like a man.”
“A man?” Teufel hissed, his voice barely more than a whisper.
“A giant, I suppose,” Riker went on, shoulders sagging, his tone resigned now, knowing that he had condemned himself through his confession. “That’s what it looked like.”
“One man did all this?” Teufel said, almost laughing, indicating again the ruinous damage caused to the dam with a wave of his gloved hands.
“Well no, not one man. There were actually two of them.”
“Two men did this? Two men, between them, destroyed a tank and two Landsknechts, put another Landsknecht out of action and ended up tearing a hole big enough to drive a train through in the Darmstadt Dam?”
“They were big men. Really big,” Riker persisted.
Teufel glowered at the downcast man, pure poison in his stare. “And where are these men now?”
“I’m sorry?”
“I said, where are they?”
Riker raised his head and met the Devil’s penetrating, coal-black stare at last. “I… I don’t know, sir. Gone with the dam, I suppose.”
Teufel turned away from the dejected lance corporal. “Then you are of no further use to me,” he said coldly. “On your knees!”
Such was the force of the Lieutenant-Colonel’s command that Riker dropped to his knees on the hard, broken ground immediately.
All those present waited in silence as Major Haupstein placed a gun in the Devil’s open palm. Without hesitation he turned it on the errant officer and fired a single shot, before the shocked Riker had taken in what was happening.
The report of the gunshot echoed from the walls of the gorge, over what remained of the draining reservoir. Haupstein picked up the body and threw it into the mouth of the waterfall, where it was carried over the edge of the precipice and out of sight.
The commander of Teufel’s personal squad of Stormtroopers waited a respectful moment before asking, “Where do we go from here, sir? What are your orders?”
“I rather think it’s time I sent Major Haupstein here to do what Lance Corporal Riker and his Landsknechts could not.”
The Stormtrooper cast a wary look the Major’s way.
“Well, you know what they say about a woman’s work,” Haupstein said, a predatory smile forming on her lips.
“If you would be so kind, my dear?” Teufel said, a beseeching look in his eyes.
“For you, Lieutenant-Colonel,” she purred, “anything.”
Without another word, pausing only to sniff the air once more, she turned and sprinted back to the near end of the dam. Once there she began to scramble down the rugged slope, and the craggy cliffs of the river gorge, into the valley below.
“I should have done this long ago,” Teufel confided to the Stormtrooper, never once taking his eyes off the dwindling figure of Major Haupstein as she bounded over the mossy rocks with the grace of a panther.
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
The Strange Case of
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
“ARE YOU ALRIGHT?” Hercules asked as he hauled the young woman from the shallows of the river and up onto the bank.
Cat looked up at him and smiled. Her long blonde ponytail had become unravelled and now hung in lank, dark tresses, framing a heart-shaped face with fine cheekbones and the most striking green eyes.
“I am now,” she said, holding his hand for longer than was strictly necessary.
Hercules felt his cheeks redden, despite being soaked to the skin and feeling as cold as ice after his prolonged dip in the river.
“Hey!” Cookie shouted down to them from further up the bank. “There’s a house up here!”
Cat released Hercules’ hand but held his gaze a moment longer as she turned and climbed the slope into the stands of copper beech and ash beyond. He couldn’t help noticing the way her wet fatigue trousers clung to her well-toned thighs and the proud curve of her buttocks.
“So, are you going to help me too, or what?” a fierce voice called, while Hercules enjoyed the view a moment longer.
“Yes, of course,” he said, blushing again and reaching out a hand to help Dina to safety.
The surge of floodwater unleashed when the dam burst had carried them much further downstream than Hercules had first anticipated. Fortunately the surging torrent had also kept them clear of the rapids that littered the river further downstream in the densely wooded valley below. As soon as he was able, Hercules had fought the current to reach the northern bank of the river as the flood swept them around another bend, finding shelter within a swirling pool separated from the rest of the river by a natural rocky barrier. The others had followed his example. Free of the full force of the river, from there he had been able to scramble clear of the water at last, helping his new companions to do likewise.
Once they were clear of the river’s chill clutches, the dishevelled party eventually re-grouped above the water-line, further up the slope within the bounds of the forest.
“There’s a house, did you say?” Hercules asked, joining the squad’s leader.
“Look.” She pointed.
He could see it now. Half-hidden by the pine trees higher up the slope, the place looked deserted. The forest lodge had been constructed from the same trees as those that surrounded it, keeping it from prying eyes. There were no lights visible in any of the windows, no tell-tale curls of woodsmoke rising from the chimney, and no other signs to indicate that the place was anything other than deserted.
Hercules scanned the eager faces of the young women encircling him.
“First things first,” he said, “we need to get into the dry, get out of these wet things” – he blushed – “and work out where we go from here.”
“Agreed,” Cookie said, her expression stern. “But I don’t want to take any chances. We haven’t managed to keep operating behind enemy lines for the last three months by being slapdash.”
“How long?” Hercules asked, taken aback.
“You heard. And that’s a long time to be stuck behind enemy lines, I can tell you.”
“And you’ve been passing yourselves off as a dancing troupe all that time?”
“No. Not the whole time. We’ve been the secretarial staff of a strategic centre and a medical team working out in the field as well.”
“So the Karlsruhe Incident?”
“That was us.”
“And the Stuttgart factory explosion?”
“Yup. Us too.”
She turned to her team now.
“Missy – skirt around and cover our approach from the other side of the house. Cat and Dina, I want you two to come in from the east. Trixie and Jinx – you’ll come in from the west.”
“And what will you be doing?” Cat asked, glancing at Hercules with envious eyes.
“Hercules and I will cover the approach from below.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he saluted, coming sharply to attention and grinning cheekily.
Cookie smiled back at him.
“Oh, ‘Hercules’ is it now?” he heard the blonde mutter as she strode away with the team’s demolitions expert, checking the load on her revolver as she did so.
If Cookie heard her, she chose to ignore it – and wisely so, in Hercules’ considered opinion.
Hercules turned and gave the quietening waters of the river one last glance, before setting off up the densely wooded slope after the young woman. It was then that he spotted the body.
It was drifting face-down in the river, arms and legs bobbing on the water like a limp doll, and it was wearing nothing but a torn pair of black trousers.
“It’s Jekyll!” Hercules shouted, the girls all snapping their heads around in shock and alarm at hearing the shape-changing doctor’s name again. Hercules was already running back down the slope to the pebbled foreshore of the river. “Help me!”
None of the women moved.
Hercules splashed into the shallows, great strides taking him waist deep in a matter of moments.
“Help me get him out!” he shouted again in frustration.
Grabbing hold of the drifting body by an arm, he hauled it into the shallows, dragging it up onto the pebbles, rolling Jekyll onto his back as he did so.
Jekyll’s eyes were closed, his mouth hanging slackly open. And it was Jekyll, not the hulking monster with green-tinged blood; but the question was, was he alive or dead?
Urgent fingers found the man’s carotid artery. Hercules held his breath as he waited to feel the pressure of a pulse at his fingertips.
And then it was there, weak but steady. The wretch was still alive, but only just.
Hercules leant over Jekyll, putting the damp skin of his cheek over the doctor’s mouth. He couldn’t feel anything; the man wasn’t breathing.
“Damn!” Hercules swore. Then, taking a deep breath, he clamped his own mouth over Jekyll’s and breathed out, forcing air into the doctor’s water-logged lungs.
With a sudden convulsion, Jekyll’s body heaved. Hercules broke contact as a disgusting mix of river water and vomit fountained from the doctor’s mouth.
Rolling Jekyll onto his side, so that the watery gruel might drain from his body the more easily, Hercules sat back on his heels and waited.
Jekyll started to cough between snatched gasps as his body expelled more of the river from his body.
Eventually he rolled onto his back. The women had joined them at the water’s edge. They were watching Jekyll suspiciously, weapons held loosely in their hands but ready to fire in an instant should matters dictate.
Jekyll opened his eyes. His swimming gaze found Hercules’ own stern stare.
“What happened?” he wheezed.
“You mean you don’t remember?”
“Remember what?” Then cold realisation dawned in the doctor’s eyes. “Oh no,” he said, his voice a broken whisper, turning his head away in shame. “Not him. Not again. After all this time…” Facing Hercules again, he said, “So, I take it you met Mr Hyde.”
“Come on,” Hercules said with a resigned sigh, rising onto his haunches and offering the shivering Jekyll his hand. “Let’s get you somewhere warm and dry. You and I have a lot to talk about.”
“Right, as you were,” Cookie told her team and they moved off again up the slope.
“AND SO,” DOCTOR Henry Jekyll said later that day, when the party were gathered in front of a roaring fire in the central room of the deserted lodge, “without access to my laboratory or my potions, knowing that Hyde would return – and doubtless all too soon – I wrote to my friend Dr Lanyon.”
He stared into the fire, his voice a gentle Scots brogue once more. “The transformations were occurring all the more frequently; I had realised that stress and fear, or rage, triggered my metamorphosis into the incorrigible Mr Hyde. I was hunted by the police as a murderer – wrongly, I might add, for all those crimes of which I was accused were the work of that devil – and eventually run to ground. But when the police tried to take me into custody, Hyde made his inevitable appearance and clearly, as I was to learn later, fought his way free. He was responsible for the deaths of ten policemen and a flower seller that day.”
Jekyll shuddered as he recalled the nightmare he had been forced to live through all those years ago, pulling the drape closer about his scrawny frame.
Looking at him now, Hercules still found it hard to believe that this was the same man who had transformed into the massively powerful Mr Hyde when they
were cornered atop the dam.
“Not knowing what else to do, I fled to France, then to Italy,” Jekyll went on. “I made my way to Rome, but after Hyde made his presence felt there too, I was finally snared in a honey trap, given chloroform whilst I slept in a whore’s bed after Hyde had apparently availed himself of her services the night before.”
“So how did you come to be in cryogenic stasis beneath the University Medical School?” Hercules asked, intrigued.
“It was the only way to bring Hyde’s rampage to an end.”
“Why not simply execute him?” Missy asked.
“Oh they talked about it, believe me; endlessly, if I remember rightly. But there was always the fear that if they tried to harm me in any way, Hyde would simply resurface and make even more trouble for them.
“Knox said that they’d tried to continue with your ground-breaking work,” Hercules put in, recalling his meeting with the eccentric professor back in Edinburgh.
“I bet they did,” Jekyll grumbled. “But it didn’t work, did it?”
“From the fact that you’re here, I would presume that it didn’t,” Hercules agreed.
“Of course it didn’t!” Jekyll gave a snort of derisive laughter. “As it turned out, the original batch of my elixir had been tainted. Even I couldn’t reproduce its effects.
“So now my secret’s out, and you all know the truth behind my strange story,” Jekyll said, the final words of his speech underlined with a heartfelt sigh.
His tale told, the tension seeped out of him. It seemed that, in Henry Jekyll’s case at least, confession really was good for the soul.
But, a tense silence had descended over the rest of those present, the only sound the pop and hiss of the logs burning in the grate. His mere presence had the women on edge now.
“And we were supposed to deliver you to Castle Frankenstein.” Cookie’s voice was no more than a horrified hush.
“Except we weren’t,” Hercules contradicted her. “Unknowingly, we had all been tasked with delivering Hyde to the castle; including you, doctor.
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