The Lance

by Alex Lukeman

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  The boat owner was hysterical.

  "Selena, talk to him," Nick said. A crowd was forming. It didn't look friendly. There was a lot of muttering.

  She began speaking to him.

  "Sir, calm down. It's not our fault. Pirates came after us. They must have thought they could take your boat from us. We had to fight them off. But we will pay to fix her. Please, be calm. We'll pay. There's no need to be upset."

  Nick took cash from his money belt and held it in front of the man. His eyes bugged as he saw the wad of hundred dollar bills. Maybe more American dollars than his boat was worth.

  Lamont and Ronnie watched the crowd. It was a lot of money, out in the open. A siren announced the approach of the local policia.

  "Give him five thousand dollars," Selena said. "He may want more. I'm going to call for help." She took out her cell phone and punched in the number for the Argentine Major.

  An hour later and eight thousand dollars lighter, plus five hundred for the Chief of Police and five hundred more for the Major, they were allowed to leave the pier. Maybe it was because of Selena's fluent Spanish, or maybe the fact that the Major couldn't stop ogling her breasts.

  Breasts or not, he made it clear they had overstayed their welcome.

  Back in the house the team was ready to move out. They sat around the table with cups of strong Argentine coffee, looking at the pouch Lamont had salvaged from the U-Boat. Carter unsealed the oilskin packet, expecting seawater to pour out. Inside was a slim, brown book. The pouch had held up. The book was dry. He opened the hard bound cover. A name was written across the flyleaf in black ink.

  Obergruppenfuhrer Dieter Reinhardt.

  Nick turned the page. The writing was in German.

  "It's a journal." Selena pointed at the first entry. It was dated in the European style, 30-4-41. April 30, 1941.

  "Can you read it?" Nick thought about how she'd looked standing on the deck of the boat just before they were attacked, the sun shining off her hair and the metal of her MP-5.

  "Yes." She scanned the entry. "It's the diary of an SS General."

  "What was an SS General doing on that sub?" Lamont sipped his coffee.

  "Probably escaping to Argentina," Carter said. "A lot of the SS made it out of Germany at the end and came down here. What does the first entry say, Selena?"

  "It's a description of his initiation into a secret SS order headed by Heinrich Himmler."

  "The chief of the SS?"

  "Yes. Listen to this. This is in the spring of 1941. Walpurgis Night, May Eve."

  "The witches' night."

  "Yes."

  30-4-41

  Tonight I was initiated into the Council, the greatest honor of my life. I knelt before the Reichsfuhrer in the holy circle. The Knights of the Grand Council looked on. Heydrich was there, and Eicke, Frank, Dietrich, Muller, Nebe, Lorenz.

  The blood offering was exchanged. I swore my oath, kneeling before Grand Master Himmler and my peers. While I knelt, Heydrich invoked the power of the Spear, chanting in the old language. Heydrich spoke the words, but it was the Reichsfuhrer himself who touched my shoulders with the most sacred talisman, the Holy Lance of Vienna, to seal the oath.

  "The Vienna Lance? Wasn't that captured by Patton in 1945?"

  "Yes. It's back in Vienna now. I wonder why Himmler had it? Hitler grabbed it when he entered Austria. He took it to Nuremberg." Selena pointed at the page. "That list of names is a who's who of the SS. Eicke commanded Dachau. Heydrich was number two after Himmler. The Czechs called him the 'Butcher of Prague'."

  "What's this Council he's talking about?" Ronnie added sugar to his coffee.

  "Himmler created a Nazi round table modeled on the legends of King Arthur, called the Grand Council of Knights. There were twelve plus Himmler, all senior SS Generals. They met in Himmler's castle."

  "How do you know this stuff? Nazi Knights?" Nick tugged on his ear.

  "Just something else I know."

  He remembered his wise ass comment about her knowing everything.

  Selena looked at him and took pity. She decided to explain.

  "I was researching Indo-European languages. Studying the evolution of archaic languages into modern ones. Himmler and the Nazis used language as one of the tests in all that pseudo-scientific nonsense about the 'Master Race'. I came across a discussion of Himmler and his so-called Council. He advocated a return to the old German religion. He was supposed to have conducted secret ceremonies in archaic German, but nobody knows what those were."

  She turned a page.

  20-1-42

  We met today in the Wannsee district to discuss the Jewish question. The conference was led by Heydrich. He was inspiring, pointing out that the conference would resolve fundamental questions of organization, transportation and coordination of efforts between all of us to achieve the final solution.

  Our aim must be to cleanse the Fatherland and all the territories the German people will occupy in the future of the corrupting stain of the Jews.

  It was decided to accelerate the transportation of the Jews to the East, where facilities for work and reeducation are available and they can receive special treatment.

  "He's talking about the death camps!" Lamont set his cup down. "Special treatment was Nazi speak for the gas chambers."

  "There's a list of the people who were there," Selena said. "SS big shots and Nazi Party officials. He says the notes were taken by Adolph Eichmann."

  "Skip ahead, Selena. See if anything jumps out at you." She turned a page.

  4-6-42

  A great Knight has fallen! Heydrich was brutally attacked in Czechoslovakia. He struggled bravely with his wounds, but succumbed to poisoning of the blood. They will pay.

  "The guy who wrote this was a real piece of work." Ronnie gestured at the book. "Heydrich was a psychopath. The Nazis burned a whole town of people alive in retaliation for Heydrich's death."

  4-2-43

  Bad news from the Eastern Front. Stalingrad has fallen. Paulus and Schrenk, both surrendered. The Fuhrer refused to recall the armies, and now 600,000 men are gone. Many rings have been sent back from the front. The Russians now have the advantage.

  "Rings? What's he talking about?"

  Selena said, "SS officers wore silver skull rings. Himmler ordered the rings sent back to him when an officer was killed. After the war they found a box with thousands of them in his castle."

  She turned another page.

  21-6-43

  Trudi and I were married today in the Chancellery. Reichsfuhrer Himmler presided over the ceremony. The Fuhrer himself was there, and Goering.

  "He got married on the Summer Solstice," Ronnie said. "This guy seems to have a thing for dates of ancient celebrations."

  "That fits with the movement toward the old German gods and pagan religion among the Nazis," Selena said. "Reinhardt was probably a believer. The SS had their own pagan versions of Christian ceremonies like baptism and marriage."

  17-4-44

  I have a son! Trudi gave birth today. I have named him Eric. Our pure Aryan heritage will carry on. We shall raise a warrior for the Cause.

  I leave for an inspection tour of the camps tomorrow. I have completed my arrangements in Switzerland. If I should fall, Trudi and Eric will be well protected.

  "I wonder if they survived the war, his wife and boy." Selena said.

  "At least here's one good Nazi who didn't. Skip to the end, Selena. See if there's anything about the sub or Antarctica." Nick emptied his cup. She turned pages.

  "Here's something."

  8-12-44

  I met with the Grand Master. He has tasked me with a sacred mission. The Holy Lance is in my care. I leave tonight for Antarctica.

  She turned a page. "This is the last entry. Three days before the sub went down."

  19-2-45

  We arrived in New Schwabia today. At last. The trip from Spain was difficult. We spent most of the time submerged. The new snorkel unit k
ept us out of sight of the enemy.

  I took the Lance to Station 211 and placed it in the vault, as instructed. When I left, I concealed the entrance. No one will find it.

  Now we are underway for Argentina. Parsifal has begun and we will continue. In time, victory will be ours.

  The journal ended there.

  "Well." Selena put the book down on the table. "Now we know what the submarine was doing in Antarctica. Hiding the Vienna Lance."

  "There wasn't much future for the Nazis in 1945," Ronnie said. "Why go all the way to Antarctica to hide a Christian relic? Who's Parsifal?"

  Selena said, "Parsifal was a knight who sought the Holy Grail. Wagner wrote a whole opera about it. Parsifal had to retrieve the Holy Spear from an evil magician named Klingsor. That must be what Dysart's email was about. The Spear. The Lance. That's the Antarctica reference, and Parsifal is some kind of code name for whatever is going on."

  "I don't get it." Lamont rubbed the bump on his head. "What's the big deal about this spear?"

  Selena brushed her hair back. "It's supposed to be the spear that pierced Christ's side on the cross. Sometimes it's called the Spear of Longinus, after the Roman legionnaire who wielded it. It's said to have mystical powers because it was bathed in the blood of Christ. There's a legend that whoever has it will rule the world. All the great conquerors of Europe carried it, starting with Charlemagne. The Holy Roman Emperors, Barbarossa, Frederick the Great. People like that. That's why Hitler wanted it."

  "Napoleon?"

  "No, it was hidden from him. Then it ended up with the Hapsburg Emperor."

  "But Patton's army found it, didn't they? So how could it be in Antarctica?" Lamont picked up his empty cup, set it down.

  "They found something that looked like the one Hitler stole in Vienna," Selena said, "but there have been tests on it since then. It's no older than the sixth or seventh century CE. It couldn't have been the actual spear at the crucifixion. It does have a first century piece of iron attached to it that's supposed to be a nail from the True Cross."

  "Then what's this one, the one he's talking about in the journal?" Lamont asked.

  "According to that diary Himmler used the Lance for his Council of Knights," Carter said. "I don't think Hitler would have let him do that. Himmler could have made a copy to fool Hitler and taken the real one."

  Selena picked up the diary, put it back in the pouch. "There have been rumors for years saying the lance Patton found is a copy and that the Nazis hid the real one. Maybe it's true."

  Ronnie peered into his cup. "So when Himmler sees that time's up for the Third Reich, he sends one of his generals down to the South Pole to hide the lance in a secret base nobody knows about."

  Selena stood up and went to the stove, poured herself some more coffee. "The journal says they will continue. He's talking about his Nazi Council. Do you think they could still exist? Could they be behind the attack in Antarctica?" She set the pot back on the stove.

  "There are plenty of Nazi groups," Nick said. "None so organized they could intercept information sent to Berlin and mount an armed expedition within hours."

  "None that we know about," said Lamont.

  "Someone knew the Vienna Lance was in that vault. They must not have known where it was until the research station notified Berlin. When they found out they went and got it. It's like they were waiting."

  "Waiting for almost seventy years? That's too weird."

  He stood up. "We need to get back and get this to Harker."

  As they walked out to the van, Nick touched Selena on the arm. He had to say it.

  "You were good out there today. I'm sorry for that crack I made about everything you know how to do. I don't know why I said that. If you hadn't been down there Lamont would have died."

  "Is that an apology?"

  "Maybe you're right about talking with someone."

  "Maybe we both should. You're not the only one on the edge."

  Two hours later they were in the air.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  It was a pleasant evening. The windows of the safe house were cracked open. A cool night breeze brought the pungent scent of burning leaves from somewhere. Nick tried to relax on the couch. A ceiling fan turned above. Selena sat across from him in a wingback chair.

  "We have a lot to talk about," Harker said. "Stephanie broke the encryption on Arslanian's drive."

  "I figured out most of it," Stephanie said. "Arslanian was researching the Holocaust. He visited Germany two weeks before he was killed and found documents written by Himmler. They were stashed away in one of the old Stasi archives in what used to be East Germany. He scanned them and that's what's on his drive."

  "Stasi?" Lamont said.

  "The East German Secret Police," Harker tapped her pen. "Kind of like the Nazi Gestapo."

  Stephanie said, "Himmler knew Germany would lose the war. Sometime in 1943 he prepared a plan for afterwards. He wanted to establish the Fourth Reich right here in the US. The plan is code named 'Parsifal'. It details money transfers, land purchases, deep cover agents in the US and South America and political action plans for subverting our electoral process and taking over the government."

  "What's the part you haven't figured out?" asked Lamont.

  "It's a separate piece in itself, written in runes. It's several pages."

  "Runes?" Selena came alive. "Nordic runes, the old Norse language?"

  Stephanie nodded.

  "Can you bring them up on screen?" Selena asked.

  "Sure." Stephanie tapped on her keyboard. "Here's the first page."

  Selena got up and went over to the monitor.

  "This is Elder Futhark," Selena said.

  "Excuse me?"

  "Elder Futhark. That's what you call this variant. Although it might be using the Nazi variation. They made up their own meanings for some of the symbols, like the SS lightning bolts. That's a double Sig rune. The SS used runes everywhere, on birth certificates, graves, military markings—everywhere." She squinted at the screen.

  "You can read it?" Harker tapped her pen.

  "Yes. Elder Futhark is an Indo-European language, Germanic. I had to study it during my Master's program."

  "What does it say?"

  "It says, 'Aufruf vom Alten'. It's a direct translation from modern German."

  "What does that mean?"

  "Invocation of the Old One. What's the next page. Steph?"

  Selena studied the writing, let out a breath. "Whoa. This says, 'By the blood of the Spear, call the Old One. With the Sacred Blade, prepare the circle with the blood of the sacrifice'."

  Ronnie and Nick looked at each other. "Okay, who's the 'Old One'," Ronnie said.

  "Someone you don't want to meet," said Selena. "A demon, or even Satan himself. I think we've got some kind of magical ritual here, something Himmler and Heydrich cooked up."

  "You think they wrote a ritual to evoke a demon? Are you serious?"

  "I have to read the rest of it. How many more pages, Steph?"

  "Another twenty-five. There are twenty-seven altogether."

  Selena nodded her head. "That fits. Twenty-seven is three times nine. Nine and three are magical numbers in the old Germanic culture, used in rituals and spells. Give me an hour and I think I can translate it all."

  It took her an hour and a half.

  "I knew the Nazis and Himmler were into the occult, but this is something else." She seemed uneasy and stopped. Everyone waited for her to go on.

  "There was a strong occultist movement in Germany. These pages are a black magic rite. Himmler created a special SS Bureau to study the occult. He sent teams all over the world looking for secrets of magical power. The Nazis even used mystical power symbols to call on supernatural forces."

  "Power symbols?" Nick finished his whiskey.

  "The swastika is a good example. It's thousands of years old. The Nazi swastika turns counter-clockwise. As a symbol it can represent the dark side, the left hand path, the path of darkness awa
y from the sun."

  "The dark side? Like Darth Vader?" Ronnie shook his head. "When you look at what the Nazis did, it must have worked."

  "The ritual on these pages is about using the Vienna Lance as a magical power object to ensure victory. According to this, it requires a blood sacrifice. Human sacrifice."

  "A magical object requiring human sacrifice?" Lamont looked at Selena in astonishment. "I thought the Lance was supposed to be something good, something associated with Christ."

  "That seems to depend on who possesses it and what they intend to do with it. That Lance was carried by the commanders of armies that slaughtered hundreds of thousands of people. People like Charlemagne and Barbarossa and Frederick the Great. There's been a lot of blood spilled under the shadow of that spear. That's a lot of psychic energy. Blood sacrifice, if you like."

  "You believe in that stuff?" Lamont asked.

  "It doesn't matter if I believe in it. It's clear Himmler and Heydrich thought the Lance was magical."

  "If people think something is imbued with mystical power, they'll act like it is," Nick said. "It doesn't mean anything more than that."

  "Are you sure about that?" Selena said. "What about all those stories of miraculous events associated with the relics of Saints or the like? Or the healing miracles that happen at places like Lourdes? Or that man down in Brazil who does operations with a rusty penknife while spirits help him out? And what about those dreams you have, the ones that foreshadow the future?"

  "That's different."

  "How is it different?"

  "Well, you can't pick up a dream. It's not an object."

  "Yes, but it's still mystical somehow. How can you know things that haven't happened yet?"

  "I don't know that. I just get images of things that later turn out to be connected to something in my life."

  Harker tapped her pen on a glass.