Black Order

by James Rollins

  BÜREN, GERMANY

  Gray pulled open the door to the team’s BMW. He began to duck inside when a shout rose behind him. He turned toward the entrance to the hostel. Ryan Hirszfeld hurried toward them, hunched under an umbrella. Thunder echoed, and rain lashed across the parking lot of the cottage estate.

  “Get inside,” Gray ordered Monk and Fiona, waving to the sedan.

  He faced Ryan as the young man reached his side.

  “Are you heading to the castle…to Wewelsburg?” he asked, lifting the umbrella to shelter them both.

  “Yes, we are. Why?”

  “Might I hop a ride with you?”

  “I don’t think—”

  Ryan cut him off. “You were asking about my great-grandfather…Hugo. I may have more information for you. It’ll only cost you a ride up the hill.”

  Gray hesitated. The young man must have eavesdropped on their earlier conversation with Johann, his father. What could Ryan know that his father didn’t? Still, the man stared at him with earnest eyes.

  Turning, Gray popped the back door and held it open.

  “Danke.” Ryan folded the umbrella and ducked into the back with Fiona.

  Gray climbed behind the wheel. In moments, they were bumping down the driveway out of the estate.

  “Shouldn’t you be home watching the store?” Monk asked, half turned in the passenger seat to address Ryan.

  “Alicia will cover the front desk for me,” Ryan said. “The storm will keep everyone close to the fire.”

  Gray studied the young man in the rearview mirror. He looked suddenly uncomfortable under Monk’s and Fiona’s scrutiny.

  “What did you want to tell us?” Gray asked.

  Ryan’s eyes met his in the mirror. He swallowed and nodded. “My father thinks I know nothing about my great-grandfather Hugo. Thinks it best be buried in the past, ja? But it’s still whispered about. Same with Aunt Tola.”

  Gray understood. Family secrets had a way of surfacing, no matter how deeply you tried to bury them. Curiosity had plainly been instilled in Ryan about his ancestors and their role during the war. It practically shone from the man’s eyes.

  “You’ve been doing your own investigation into the past?” Gray said.

  Ryan nodded. “For three years now. But the trail goes back further. To when the Berlin Wall came down. When the Soviet Union dissolved.”

  “I don’t understand,” Gray said.

  “Do you remember when Russia declassified the older Soviet files?”

  “I suppose. But what about them?”

  “Well, back when Wewelsburg was reconstructed—”

  “Wait a sec.” Fiona stirred. She’d been sitting with her arms crossed, as if disgruntled by the intrusion of the stranger. But Gray had caught the few sidelong glances she gave the man, sizing him up. He wondered if the man still had his wallet. “Reconstructed? They rebuilt that ugly place?” she asked.

  Ryan nodded as the castle came into view on the ridgeline. Gray signaled and turned onto Burgstrasse, the road that headed up toward the castle. “Himmler had it blown up near the end of the war. Only the North Tower was untouched. After the war, it was rebuilt. Part museum, part youth hostel. Still bothers my father.”

  Gray could understand why.

  “It was finished in 1979,” Ryan continued. “The museum directors over the years have petitioned former Allied governments for documents and such related to the castle.”

  “Including Russia,” Monk said.

  “Natürlich. Once records were decommissioned, the current director sent archivists over to Russia. Three years ago, they returned with truckloads of declassified documents related to the Russian campaign in the area. The archivists had also left here with a long list of names to search for in the Russian files. Including my great-grandfather, Hugo Hirszfeld.”

  “Why him?”

  “He was intimately involved in the Thule Society rituals at the castle. He was well known locally for his knowledge of runes, which decorate the castle. He even corresponded with Karl Wiligut, Himmler’s personal astrologer.”

  Gray pictured the three-pronged mark in the Bible but remained silent.

  “The archivists returned with several boxes specifically about my great-grandfather. My father was informed but refused to participate in any way.”

  “But you snuck up there?” Monk said.

  “I wanted to know more about him,” Ryan said. “Figure out why…what happened…” He shook his head.

  The past had a way of grabbing hold and not letting go.

  “And what did you learn?” Gray asked.

  “Not much. One box contained papers from the Nazi research lab where my great-grandfather worked. He was given the rank of Oberarbeitsleiter. Head of the project.” This last was said with a tone both shamed and defiant. “But whatever they were working on must not have been declassified. Most of the papers were personal correspondence. With friends, with family.”

  “And you read through them all?”

  A slow nod. “Enough to get the feeling my great-grandfather had begun to have doubts about his work. Yet he couldn’t leave.”

  “Or he would’ve been shot,” Fiona said.

  Ryan shook his head, a forlorn expression waxing for a breath. “I think it was more the project itself…he couldn’t let it go. Not completely. It was like he was repulsed but drawn at the same time.”

  Gray sensed Ryan’s personal pursuit into the past was tinged with the same tidal push and pull.

  Monk tilted his head and cracked his neck with a loud pop. “What does any of this have to do with the Darwin Bible?” he asked, bringing the subject back around to the beginning.

  “I found one note,” Ryan answered. “Addressed to my great-aunt Tola. It mentions the crate of books my great-grandfather sent back to the estate. I remember it because of his rather strange remarks about it.”

  “What did he say?”

  “The letter is up at the museum. I thought you might like to have a copy of it…to go along with the Bible.”

  “You don’t remember what it said?”

  Ryan scrunched his brow. “Only a couple lines. ‘Perfection can be found hidden in my books, dear Tola. The truth is too beautiful to let die and too monstrous to set free.’”

  Silence settled in the car.

  “He died two months later.”

  Gray contemplated the words. Hidden in my books. The five books Hugo had mailed back home before he died. Had he done it to keep some secret safe? To preserve what was too beautiful to let die and too monstrous to set free?

  Gray fixed Ryan with a stare in the rearview mirror. “Did you tell anyone else about what you found?”

  “No, but the old gentleman and his niece and nephew…the ones who came earlier this year to speak to my father about the books. They had already been here, searching through my great-grandfather’s papers in the archives. I think they must have read the same note and come to inquire further with my father.”

  “These folks…the niece and nephew. What did they look like?”

  “White hair. Tall. Athletic. Good stock, as my grandfather would say.”

  Gray shared a glance with Monk.

  Fiona cleared her throat. She pointed to the back of her hand. “Did they have a mark…a tattoo here?”

  Ryan slowly nodded. “I think so. Shortly after they arrived, my father sent me away. Like with you today. Mustn’t speak in front of the children.” Ryan tried to smile, but he plainly sensed the tension in the car. His eyes darted around. “Do you know them?”

  “Fellow competitors,” Gray said. “Collectors like us.”

  Ryan’s expression remained guarded, disbelieving, but he didn’t inquire further.

  Gray again pictured the hand-drawn rune hidden in the Bible. Did the other four books contain similar cryptic symbols? Did it tie back to Hugo’s research with the Nazis? Was that what this was all about? It seemed unlikely these assassins would just show up here and start sifting through
records…not unless they were searching for something specific.

  But what?

  Monk still faced backward. But he swung around and settled into his seat. He spoke low, under his breath. “You know we’re being followed, right?”

  Gray only nodded.

  A quarter mile back, slowly climbing the switchbacks behind them, a car followed in the rain. The same one he had spotted earlier parked back at the hostel. A pearl white Mercedes roadster. Maybe they were just fellow tourists, out on a sightseeing excursion to the castle.

  Right.

  “Perhaps you shouldn’t follow so close, Isaak.”

  “They’ve already spotted us, Ischke.” He nodded past the rainswept windshield to the BMW a quarter mile ahead. “Note how his turns are more restrained, less enthusiastically sharp and tight. He knows.”

  “Is that something we want? To alert them?”

  Isaak tilted his head toward his sister. “The hunt is always the best when the prey is spooked.”

  “I don’t think Hans would agree.” Her manner darkened with grief.

  He reached a finger and touched the back of her hand, sharing her sadness and apologizing. He knew how sensitive she could be.

  “There is no other road down from the ridge,” he assured her. “Except for the one we are on. All is ready at the castle. All we have to do is flush them into the trap. If they are looking over their shoulder at us, they are less likely to see what’s in front of them.”

  She inhaled her agreement and understanding.

  “It’s time we cleared up all these tattered loose ends. Then we can go home.”

  “Home,” she echoed with a contented sigh.

  “We’re almost done. We must always remember the goal, Ischke. Hans’s sacrifice will not be in vain, his spilt blood will herald a new dawn, a better world.”

  “So Grandfather says.”

  “And you know it’s true.”

  He tilted his head toward her. Her lips thinned into a weary smile.

  “Careful of the blood, sweet Ischke.”

  His sister glanced down to the long steel blade of the dagger. She had been absently wiping it clean with a white chamois. A crimson drop had almost fallen onto the knee of her white pants. One loose end severed. A few more to go.

  “Thank you, Isaak.”

  1:22 P.M.

  HIMALAYAS

  Lisa stared at the raised pistol.

  “Wer ist dort? Zeigen Sie sich!” the blond woman called up to her.

  Though Lisa didn’t speak German, she understood the gist. She rose into view slowly. Hands up. “I don’t speak German,” she called down.

  The woman eyed her, so focused in intent that Lisa swore she could feel it like a laser across her body.

  “You’re one of the Americans,” the woman said in crisp English. “Come down. Slowly.”

  The pistol didn’t waver.

  With no cover on the open balcony grating, Lisa had no choice. She stepped to the ladder, turned her back, and climbed down. With every rung, she expected to hear a blast of a pistol. Her shoulders tensed. But she reached the ground safely.

  Lisa turned, arms still held a bit out to the side.

  The woman stepped toward her. Lisa stepped back. She sensed a good portion of the woman’s restraint in not immediately shooting her was due to the noise it might generate. Except for the single short cry, she had dispatched the outer guards with barely a sound, employing the sword.

  The assassin still held the bloody katana in her other hand.

  Maybe Lisa would’ve been safer staying atop the balcony, making the woman fire at her like a duck in a shooting gallery. Maybe the gunfire would have drawn others in time. She had been foolish to put herself within sword reach of the intruder. But panic had clouded Lisa’s judgment. It was hard to refuse someone when they had a gun pointed at your face.

  “The Xerum 525,” the woman said. “Is it in the safe?”

  Lisa weighed her answer for a heartbeat. Truth or lie? There seemed little choice. “Anna took it,” she answered. She waved vaguely toward the door.

  “Where?”

  She remembered Painter’s earlier lesson after they had been captured. Be necessary. Be useful. “I don’t know the castle well enough to describe it. But I know how to get there. I…can take you.” Lisa’s voice faltered. She needed to be more convincing. And how better than to barter as though her lie had value? “I’ll take you only if you promise to help me get out of here.”

  The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

  Would the woman fall for it? She was stunningly beautiful: svelte, unblemished skin, generous lips, but her glacial blue eyes glinted with cold calculation and intelligence.

  She scared Lisa witless.

  There was something unearthly about her.

  “Then you will show me,” the woman said and holstered her pistol. She kept the katana in hand.

  Lisa would’ve preferred it the other way around.

  The sword pointed at the door.

  Lisa was to go first. She circled toward the door, keeping some distance. Perhaps she could make a break for it out in the halls. It would be her only hope. She would have to watch for a moment, some distraction, a hesitation, and then just run like hell.

  A brush of air, the flicker of flame in the hearth, was her only warning.

  Lisa turned—and the woman was already there, a step away, having glided swiftly and silently from behind. Impossibly fast. Their eyes met. Lisa knew in the heartbeat before the sword fell that the woman had not believed her for a moment.

  It had all been a trap to drop Lisa’s guard.

  It would be her last mistake.

  The world froze…caught in a flash of fine Japanese silver as it plunged toward Lisa’s heart.

  9:30 A.M.

  WEWELSBURG, GERMANY

  Gray slid the BMW into a parking place beside a blue Wolters tour bus. The large German vehicle hid the sedan from direct view of the street. The arched entryway to the castle courtyard stood directly ahead.

  “Stay in the car,” he ordered the others. He twisted around. “That means you, young lady.”

  Fiona made an obscene gesture, but she stayed buckled.

  “Monk, get behind the wheel. Keep the engine running.”

  “Got it.”

  Ryan stared at him wide-eyed. “Was ist los?”

  “Nothing’s los,” Monk answered. “But keep your head down just in case.”

  Gray opened the door. A gust of rain slapped against him, sounding like machine-gun fire as it struck the flank of the neighboring bus. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

  “Ryan, may I borrow your umbrella?”

  The young man nodded and passed it forward.

  Gray climbed out. He shook out the umbrella and hurried to the far side of the bus. He took up a post near the rear door, sheltering against the rain. He hoped to appear like just another tour employee. He kept himself shielded by the umbrella while he watched the road.

  Headlights appeared out of the gloom, climbing the last switchback.

  The white two-seater roadster appeared a moment later. It slid up to the parking lot and, without slowing, passed it. He watched the taillights recede into the rain, heading toward the tiny hamlet of Wewelsburg that nestled against the flank of the castle. The car disappeared around a corner.

  Gray waited a full five minutes, circling behind the bus and signaling the all clear to Monk. Monk cut the engine. Finally satisfied that the Mercedes was not returning, Gray waved the others out.

  “Paranoid much?” Fiona asked as she passed and headed to the arch.

  “It’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you,” Monk called after her. He turned to Gray. “Are they really out to get us?”

  Gray stared into the storm. He didn’t like coincidences, but he couldn’t stop moving forward just because he was spooked. “Stick with Fiona and Ryan. Let’s talk to this director, get a copy of old Hugo’s letter to his daughter, and get the hell out of h
ere.”

  Monk eyed the hulking mass of tower and turret. Rain poured over the gray stone and sluiced from green gutters. Only a few of the windows on the lower floors shone with signs of life. The vast bulk was dark and oppressive.

  “Just so we’re clear,” he grumbled, “if I see one friggin’ black bat, I’m out of here.”

  1:31 P.M.

  HIMALAYAS

  Lisa watched the sword plunge toward her chest. It all happened between heartbeats. Time thickened and slowed. This was how she was going to die.

  Then a tinkle of glass shattered the stillness…followed by the soft crack of a gunshot, sounding impossibly far away. Near at hand, the assassin’s throat blossomed with a fountain of blood and bone, head thrown back.

  But even then, the assassin’s death stroke completed its arc.

  The sword struck Lisa in the chest, pierced skin, and collided into her sternum. But there was no weight behind it. Limp fingers released the katana’s hilt. The heel of a dying hand knocked it down before further damage could be inflicted.

  Lisa stumbled back, released from the spell.

  The length of Japanese steel pirouetted and struck the floor with the sound of a perfectly tuned bell. The body of the assassin followed next, thudding heavily beside it.

  Lisa retreated, disbelieving, numb, senseless.

  More tinkling of glass.

  Words reached her as if from underwater.

  “Are you okay? Lisa…”

  She stared up. Across the library. The single library window. Frosted and glazed before, its pane shattered away under the butt of a rifle. A face appeared in the opening, framed by shards of broken glass.

  Painter.

  Beyond his shoulder, a storm blew, swirling snow and icemelt. Something large, heavy, and dark descended out of the sky. A helicopter. A rope and harness dangled below it.

  Lisa trembled and sank to her knees.

  “We’ll be right there,” he promised.

  Five minutes later, Painter stood over the body of the assassin. The second saboteur. Anna was on one knee, searching the woman. Off to the side, Lisa sat in a chair by the hearth, her sweater off, her shirt open, exposing her bra and a bloody cut below it. Assisted by Gunther, Lisa had already cleaned the wound and now applied a series of butterfly bandages to seal the inch-long slice. She had been lucky. Her bra’s underwire had helped block the blade from penetrating deeper, saving her life. Talk about offering additional support.