Black Order

by James Rollins

  The large man’s feet had slowed with the telling. What his wounds couldn’t bring low, grief finally did. He slumped slowly to his knees in the hall.

  Gray paused. “Her last words…were for you, passing her love.”

  The man covered his face and curled to the floor.

  “I’m sorry…,” Gray offered.

  Monk appeared in the doorway. “Gray, what the hell are you—?” Then he spotted Gunther in a posture of pure grief. His voice died.

  Gray strode toward Monk.

  It was not over for any of them.

  3:22 P.M

  “Lower the shield!”

  Lisa glanced to see Commander Pierce stride into the chamber with Monk, both leaning their heads together. She stood over the Bell’s control suite. She had spent the past few minutes familiarizing herself with the device. On the trek here, Anna had gone over in detail how the Bell functioned. The woman had feared she might be too debilitated to oversee its use. Another had needed to know. That onus fell upon Lisa.

  “The shield!” Gray called to her again from Monk’s side.

  She nodded dully and flipped the toggle.

  Motors clattered below. She turned to watch the blast shield drop. With the Bell quiescent, light no longer blazed out from inside. A step away, Painter lay on a tarp on the floor, attended for the moment by Dr. Fairfield. To the right, Mosi and Brooks dragged another tarp over the bodies of the twins.

  What about the pair’s grandfather?

  The blast shield continued to lower, waist-high now. The Bell sat quietly in the center, waiting to be activated again. Lisa remembered Anna’s description of the bell-shaped device. The ultimate quantum-measuring tool. It scared the hell out of her.

  To the left, yelling a bit to be heard over the motor, Monk related the radioed message from Khamisi. The Zulu forces had secured the estate, driving any surviving Waalenberg forces into the mansion, where a siege was under way. A continuing firefight ensued above.

  “Gunther blocked the fire stairs,” Gray said. “And the elevator doors are jammed open. It should buy us some time.” He waved to Brooks and Mosi. “Keep a watch on the outer hall!”

  They lifted their weapons and headed out.

  As they left, Gunther stumbled inside. From the expression on his face, Lisa knew he had been told about Anna. He had shed all his weapons. Each step was leaden as he headed toward the lowering shield. He had to witness the end. A final absolution for all the blood on his hands.

  The shield settled to a stop. The motors went silent.

  Lisa feared viewing the damage herself, but she had a duty here.

  She crossed toward the Bell.

  Anna lay on her side in the shadow of the device, curled like a baby. Her skin was ash white, her dark hair turned snowy, as if she had become a marble statue. Gunther stepped over the lip of the shield and knelt beside his sister. Without a word, expressionless, he bent and scooped her in his arms. She lolled limply in death, her head coming to rest on her brother’s shoulder.

  Gunther stood, turned his back on the Bell, and headed away.

  No one tried to stop him.

  He vanished out the door.

  Lisa’s gaze fell upon the other figure still sprawled atop the blast chamber’s lead floor. Baldric Waalenberg. Like Anna, his skin had gone an unnatural white, almost translucent. But the radiation had burned away all his hair, too, leaving him bald, not even eyebrows or lashes. His flesh had also collapsed to his bones, giving him a mummified appearance. And something about his underlying osseous structure was…was wrong.

  Lisa froze, horrified to step any closer.

  With the hair gone, flesh sunken, the skull was plainly misshapen, as if partially melted, then hardened again. His hands were twisted, fingers oddly elongated, apelike. The word devolution filled her head.

  “Get him out of there,” Gray said with disgust, then faced Lisa. “I’ll help you get Painter inside.”

  Lisa slowly shook her head, stepping back. “We can’t…” She could not take her eyes off the twisted horror that was the former Waalenberg patriarch. She couldn’t let that happen to Painter.

  Gray came up to her. “What do you mean?”

  She swallowed, still staring as Monk grabbed the monstrosity by the sleeve of his shirt, plainly afraid to touch his flesh. “Painter is too far gone. The Bell only held the hope of staving off or slowing the debilitation, not reversing it. Do you want to suspend your director in his current state?”

  “If there’s life, there’s hope.”

  His words were spoken softly, gently. They almost succeeded in drawing her attention away as Monk hauled the old man’s devolved form out of the device, bumping over the lip.

  Lisa opened her mouth to argue against false hope.

  Then Baldric Waalenberg’s eyes snapped wide, milky and blind, looking more like stone than flesh. His mouth stretched in a silent and prolonged scream. His vocal chords were gone. He had no tongue. Nothing was inside him but horror and pain.

  Lisa gave voice to the man, crying out, backing away until she bumped into the console. Monk recognized the true horror here, too. He lunged away, dropping Baldric on the tiles outside the blast chamber.

  The mutated form collapsed. The limbs remained toneless, muscleless. But the mouth opened and closed, a fish out of water. Eyes stared blindly.

  Then Gray stepped between Lisa and the horror. He gripped her shoulders. “Dr. Cummings.” Her gaze, fluttering in panic, settled to his. “Director Crowe needs you.”

  “There…there’s nothing I can do.”

  “Yes, there is. We can use the Bell.”

  “I can’t do that to Painter.” Her voice rose in pitch. “Not that!”

  “It won’t happen. Monk told me how Anna instructed you. You know how to set the Bell for a minimum output, for a palliative radiation. What just happened here is different. Baldric had amped the Bell up to a maximum setting, one set to kill. And ultimately…ultimately you reap what you sow.”

  Lisa covered her face with her hands, trying to block everything out. “But what are we trying to reap?” she moaned. “Painter is at death’s door. Why make him suffer any longer?”

  Gray pulled her hands down. He leaned to catch her gaze with his own. “I know Director Crowe. And I think you do, too. He would fight until the end.”

  As a medical doctor, she had heard such arguments before, but she was also a realist. When there was no hope, all a caregiver could provide was a measure of peace and dignity.

  “If there was a chance to cure,” she said with a shake of her head, her voice steadying, “even a small one, I’d take it. If we knew what Hugo Hirszfeld had been trying to communicate to his daughter. His perfected code.” She shook her head again.

  Gray caught her chin in his fingers. She tried to break free, flaring with irritation. But his grip was sure and hard on her.

  “I know what Hugo hid in those books,” he said.

  She frowned at him, but she read the truth in his eyes.

  “I have the answer,” he said.

  16

  RIDDLE OF THE RUNES

  3:25 P.M.

  SOUTH AFRICA

  “It’s not a code,” Gray said. “It was never a code.”

  He knelt on the floor, a marker in hand. He circled the set of runes he had drawn for Baldric Waalenberg.

  The others had gathered around him, but he kept his attention fixed on Lisa Cummings. The answer Gray had discerned made no sense, but he sensed it was the lock, and this woman, who knew more about the device than anyone else in the room, might hold the key. They would have to work together.

  “Runes again,” Lisa said.

  Gray frowned at her for an explanation.

  She nodded to the floor. “I saw another set of runes, a different set, drawn in blood. They spelled out Schwarze Sonne.”

  “Black Sun,” Gray translated.

  “It was the name for Anna’s project in Nepal.”

  Gray pondered the signifi
cance. He pictured the Black Sun symbol on the workstation below. Himmler’s original cabal must have been split after the war. Anna’s group to the north. Baldric’s to the south. Once separated, the two groups diverged further and further apart until allies became adversaries.

  Lisa tapped the runes on the floor, drawing back his focus. “The runes I decoded were a simple transposition of letters for symbols. Is this the same?”

  Gray shook his head. “Baldric made the same assumption. It was why he was having so much trouble deciphering the runes. But Hugo would not bury his secret so shallowly.”

  “If it’s not a code,” Monk asked, “then what is it?”

  “It’s a jigsaw puzzle,” Gray said.

  “What?”

  “Remember back when we talked to Ryan’s father?”

  Monk nodded.

  Gray pictured that meeting with Johann Hirszfeld, the man crippled with emphysema, lost in the past, the family estate forever shadowed by Wewelsburg Castle and the family’s dirty little Nazi secret.

  “He described how inquisitive his grandfather Hugo had been. Always searching up strange things, investigating historical mysteries.”

  “It’s what drew him to the Nazis,” Fiona said.

  “And in his spare time, Hugo was all about sharpening his mind.”

  Johann’s words echoed through Gray: Memorization tricks, jigsaw puzzles. Always with the jigsaw puzzles.

  Gray tapped the set of runes. “This was just one more mental brainteaser. But not a code…a jigsaw. The runes were shapes to be manipulated, rearranged, returning order out of chaos.”

  Gray had worked the puzzle out in his head over the past day, letting the runes twist and turn in his mind’s eye until one shape formed. He knew it was the answer. Especially knowing the angst at the end of Hugo’s life, his expressed regret for his collaboration with the Nazis. But what did it mean? His eyes fell upon Lisa.

  He redrew the six runes on the floor, one after the other, reassembling them in their proper sequence. He completed the jigsaw on the floor, inscribing the last rune and completing the spell.

  Order out of chaos.

  Absolution out of collaboration.

  Holy out of unholy.

  From the pagan runes, Hugo showed his true heritage.

  “It’s a star,” Monk said.

  Lisa lifted her eyes. “Not any star…it’s the Star of David.”

  Gray nodded.

  Fiona asked the most important question. “But what does it mean?”

  Gray sighed. “I don’t know. I have no idea what it has to do with the Bell, with perfecting the device. Maybe it was merely a final declaration of who he was, a secret message to his family.”

  Gray recalled Anna’s last words.

  I am not a Nazi.

  Was Hugo’s runic code just another way to say the same?

  “No,” Lisa said sharply, her certainty resounding across the room. “If we’re going to solve this, we must act as if this is the answer.”

  Gray saw something fill her eyes, something missing a moment ago.

  Hope.

  “According to Anna,” she continued, “Hugo went into the Bell chamber alone with a baby. Without any special tools. It was just him and the boy. And once the experiment was over, tests showed that he had succeeded, produced the first true and pure Knight of the Sun.”

  “What did he do in there?” Fiona asked.

  Lisa tapped the Star of David. “This is somehow tied to it. But I don’t know the significance of the symbol.”

  Gray did. He had studied multiple religions and fields of spiritual study during his youth and while polishing his Sigma training. “The star’s meaning is diverse. It’s a symbol of prayer and faith. And maybe more. Note how the six-pointed star also is really two triangles—one atop the other. One pointing down, one up. In Jewish Kabbalah, the two triangles are the equivalent of yin and yang, the light and the dark, the body and the soul. One triangle represents matter and the body. The other our soul, our spiritual being, our conscious mind.”

  “And joined together, they’re both,” Lisa said. “Not just a particle or a wave—but both.”

  Gray saw some edge of understanding, enlightenment. “What?”

  Lisa stared toward the blast chamber. “Anna said the Bell was basically a quantum-measuring device that manipulated evolution. Quantum evolution. It’s all about quantum mechanics. That’s got to be the key.”

  Gray frowned. “What do you mean?”

  Lisa explained what Anna had taught her. Gray, having studied biology and physics in depth for Sigma, needed little elaboration.

  Closing his eyes, he sat back, trying to find a balance between the Star of David and quantum mechanics. Was there an answer between them?

  “You said Hugo went into the chamber with just the baby?” Gray asked.

  “Yes,” Lisa said softly, as if sensing she needed to let him run with his thoughts.

  Gray concentrated. Hugo had given him the lock. Lisa had given him the key. Now it was up to him. Letting go of time’s pressure, he allowed his mind to twist and turn the clues and pieces, testing, rejecting.

  Like another of Hugo’s jigsaw puzzles.

  As with the Star of David, the right combination finally formed in his head. So clean, so perfect. He should have thought of it sooner.

  Gray opened his eyes.

  Lisa must have noted something in his face. “What?”

  Gray stood. “Get the Bell powering up,” he said, crossing to the console. “Now!”

  Lisa followed him and began running through the procedure. “It will take four minutes to reach a palliative pulse.” She glanced to Gray as she worked, eyes inquisitive. “What are we doing?”

  Gray turned toward the Bell. “Hugo didn’t go into the chamber without any tools.”

  “But that’s what Anna—”

  “No.” Gray cut Lisa off. “He went in with the Star of David. He went in with prayer and faith. But mostly he went in with his own quantum computer.”

  “What?”

  Gray spoke rapidly, knowing he was right. “Consciousness has baffled scientists for centuries…going all the way back to Darwin. What is consciousness? Is it just our brain? Is it just nerves firing? Where is the line between brain and mind? Between matter and spirit? Between body and soul?”

  He pointed to the symbol.

  “Current research says its there. We are both. We are wave and particle. Body and soul. Life itself is a quantum phenomenon.”

  “Okay, now you’re babbling,” Monk said, joining him, drawing Fiona.

  Gray took a deep breath, excited. “Modern scientists reject spirituality, defining the brain only as a complex computer. Consciousness arises merely as the by-product of the firing of a complex interconnectivity of neurons, basically a neural-net computer, operating at the quantum level.”

  “A quantum computer,” Lisa said. “You mentioned that already. But what the hell is it?”

  “You’ve seen computer code broken down to its most basic level. Pages of zeroes and ones. That is how the modern computer thinks. Turning a switch on or off. The zero or the one. The theoretical quantum computer, if it could be built, offers a third choice. The old zero or one—but also a third choice. Zero and one.”

  Lisa squinted. “Like electrons in the quantum world. They can be waves or particles or both at the same time.”

  “A third choice,” Gray said with a nod. “It doesn’t sound like much, but by adding this possibility into a computer’s arsenal, it allows such a device to perform multiple algorithmic tasks simultaneously.”

  “Walk and chew gum,” Monk mumbled.

  “Tasks that would take modern computers years to perform could be done in fractions of a second.”

  “And our brains do this?” Lisa said. “Act like quantum computers.”

  “That is the newest consensus. Our brain propagates a measurable electromagnetic field, generated by our complex interconnectivity of neurons. Some scien
tists conjecture that it is this field where consciousness resides, bridging the matter of the brain with the quantum world.”

  “And the Bell is hypersensitive to quantum phenomena,” Lisa said. “So by Hugo joining the baby inside the Bell chamber, he influenced the result.”

  “What is observed is changed by the act of observing. But I think it was more than that.” Gray nodded to the Star of David. “Why this? A symbol of prayer?”

  Lisa shook her head.

  “What is prayer but a focus of the mind, a focus of consciousness…and if consciousness is a quantum phenomenon, then prayer is a quantum phenomenon.”

  Lisa understood. “And like all quantum phenomena, it will and must measure and influence the result.”

  “In other words…” Gray waited.

  Lisa stood. “Prayer works.”

  “That’s what Hugo discovered, that’s what he hid in his books. Something frighteningly disturbing but too beautiful to let die.”

  Monk leaned on the console next to Lisa. “Are you saying he willed that baby to be perfect?”

  Gray nodded. “When Hugo entered the chamber with the baby, he prayed for perfection, a concentrated and focused thought, selfless and pure. Human consciousness, in the form of prayer, acts as a perfect quantum-measuring tool. Under the Bell, the pure quantum potential in the boy was measured, swayed by Hugo’s focus and will, and as a result, all the variables settled into perfect place. A perfect roll of the genetic dice.”

  Lisa turned. “Then perhaps we can do the same to reverse the quantum damage in Painter. To save him before it’s too late.”

  A new voice intruded, coming from Marcia, who still nursed Painter on the floor. “You’d better hurry.”

  3:32 P.M.

  Monk and Gray rushed Painter into the blast chamber, slung in a tarp.

  “Put him close to the Bell,” Lisa directed.

  As they obeyed, she called out final instructions to the others. The Bell was already spinning, its two shells revolving in opposite directions. She remembered Gunther’s description of it. A Mixmaster. That pretty much described it. A soft glow also shone from its outer ceramic shell.