The Morgenstern Project

by David Khara

  Praise

  “Fight scenes, action, mystery all come together into a taut thriller... The Morgenstern Project blew me away.”

  —Fantasio

  “A real treat for readers who love a fast read with action and conspiracies. The Consortium thrillers offer a roller-coaster ride into the past, racing back to the present. They are all action movie with a touch of X-Files thrown in, and some dark humor to remind us that this is entertainment.”

  —Phoenix Magazine

  “This book is for readers who love testosterone-filled pages-turners and World War II stories.”

  —Meelylit

  “Might remind some of Ian Fleming’s Bond novels or Adam Hall’s Quiller series.”

  —Library Journal (The Bleiberg Project)

  “A fun, fast-paced thriller.”

  —Shelf Awareness (The Bleiberg Project)

  “Fast-paced, a chilling thriller that leaves you biting your nails.”

  —Mystery Sequels (The Shiro Project)

  “Suspense done to perfection.”

  —Le Monde (The Shiro Project)

  “An impeccably written thriller.”

  —Page Library Journal (The Shiro Project)

  “A thrill-a-minute romp from Prague to Tokyo.”

  —Suspense Magazine (The Shiro Project)

  “Fluidly written and very cleverly plotted, the book is a fast-paced adventure... Lots of fun.”

  —Booklist (The Shiro Project)

  The Morgenstern

  Project

  A Consortium Thriller

  David Khara

  Translated from French by Sophie Weiner

  All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  First published in France as

  Le Projet Morgenstern

  by Editions Critic

  ©2013 Editions Critic

  Published by special arrangement with Editions Critic in conjunction with their duly appointed agents L’Autre agence, Paris and 2 Seas Literary Agency

  English translation ©2015 Sophie Weiner

  First published in English in 2015

  by Le French Book, Inc., New York

  http://www.lefrenchbook.com

  Translator: Sophie Weiner

  Translation editor: Amy Richards

  Cover designer: Jeroen ten Berge

  ISBNs:

  Trade paperback: 9781939474353

  Hardback: 9781939474377

  E-book: 9781939474360

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. For the purposes of the story, the author took license with references to historical events, places, facts, and people.

  War is horrible, but slavery is worse.

  —Winston Churchill

  CHAPTER 1

  Poland, December 1942

  Bundled in the thick gray coat swiped from an SS guard, the boy felt neither the wounds inflicted during months of abuse, nor the bitter cold of the Polish winter. The raw night air that filled his lungs as he raced on gave him unspeakable joy and fueled his drive to escape his torturers.

  He wasn’t feeling tired. His gait, in fact, was growing stronger and faster as he gained distance from that monstrous place. Eytan paced himself to the sound of his steady breathing. In his mind, he replayed the events that had led to his escape. Eytan saw himself seizing the gun that the guard had shoved in his face and firing the bullet into the man’s forehead with cold accuracy. He had then taken aim at the gas container he had seen on his many trips to the lab and pulled the trigger. The German soldiers had panicked. Eytan would never forget the furious look on Bleiberg’s face. Bleiberg, the scientist who had enslaved him and forced him to endure dozens, maybe hundreds, of injections and brutal tests.

  Of all the kids subjected to this very same treatment, he alone had survived. Why had the experiments killed all the others but made him faster, more agile, and stronger? Each time the guards carried away the wasted body of another child, his guilt grew. But over time, anger replaced the anguish.

  Now his rage was as icy as this December night.

  It would keep him alive no matter what, and he would use it to strike down those responsible for all the suffering.

  ~ ~ ~

  The Canadian Forest on the US border, present day

  The solitary traveler was struggling to make his way through the forest. With each step, his muscular legs sank deeper into the thick blanket of snow. The cruel and relentless gusts of wind refused to let up for even a second. Snowflakes collected on his face, and the cold stung his cheeks. Again and again, he had to wipe his protective goggles dry. He readjusted his hood, tightened the straps of his backpack, and looked at the compass clenched in his gloved hand to make sure he was still heading south. Despite the violent elements unleashed on him, Eytan stayed the course.

  The wind rushed past his ears, and he swore it carried the voices of long-lost friends. Vassili, the silent Siberian titan. Karol, the scrawny teacher from Krakow. And of course, the charismatic Janusz, with his sandy-colored beard. Eytan even thought he saw them emerging from behind the trees, guns in hand and their faces worn down by sorrow and combat.

  Eytan stopped and leaned against a tree. A lump was rising in his throat.

  “I miss you guys,” he told his visions.

  He took a deep breath and gathered himself. This was no time to reminisce. Mental weakness was out of the question. He had to keep going, no matter the cost.

  The lives of loved ones depended on it.

  CHAPTER 2

  Iraq, spring 2003

  With one elbow pressed against the passenger-side window and both eyes glued to his binoculars, Sergeant Terry scoped the dunes in search of the enemy. All five senses were on high alert. A low-flying backup chopper was whipping up ochre sand clouds along the tortuous route taken by the recon unit’s Humvee.

  Timothy Terry ignored the sweat trickling down his cheeks and onto his lips, chapped by the scorching afternoon sun. The seasoned soldier had only one thought on his mind: bringing his three team members back safe and sound.

  Since the start of the US invasion of Iraq three days earlier, they had completed no fewer than eight missions, five of them under enemy fire. On top of that, they were dealing with all the ordinary hurdles accompanying a disorganized war—meager supplies, shitty equipment, and inconsistent orders, to name a few.

  Tim Terry was the veteran member of his unit. The once-shy high school student from Ohio had come out of his shell during his ten years as a Marine, when wars had broken out in the Balkans, the Middle East, Africa, and Persia. The years had toughened him and given him nerves of steel, plus a real compassion for his fellow Marines. This had earned him the respect of both his superior officers and those who served alongside him. And to top it off, the guy had killer aim.

  Good thing. Killing was his job, as much as he disliked it.

  In their stories and news clips, embedded reporters liked to make heroes of the Marines. And many were, whether they were serving on the front lines or working behind the scenes as engineers, medics, or communications specialists. At the heart of it, though, they were all there to do the same thing—kill on command. And Tim Terry carried out that assignment like no one else.

  Still, this stint would be his last. He had put in his time and had no intentions of re-upping, even though he knew he would be promoted to master sergeant if he stayed in the corps. He had no desire to climb a chain of command that was more preoccupied with its own advancement than getting the job done. How many times had his unit gotten caught in friendly fire? How many ab
surd orders had he been forced to obey just to give the journalists a story to send back home? Too many. In any event, too many to fill another three to five years of his life.

  “You know what they say about guys with big guns: the bigger the gun, the smaller the dick,” the driver cracked, breaking up the two Marines in the backseat.

  Hansen had gone five minutes without making a stupid joke. A new record, Terry thought as he looked at his wise-ass buddy wearing a stupid grin. The scrawny troublemaker with the maturity level of a teenager was a regular standup comedian. He didn’t take anything seriously. His humor was usually borderline or straight-out lewd, so Terry and the other guys had to keep him as far as possible from the officers just to avoid any drama.

  Terry and Hansen were together most of the time, both on and off duty. This meant the sergeant was frequently at the butt end of the comic’s jokes. If Terry took a one-liner the wrong way, it was usually because he was fatigued. Someone who didn’t know the two might have thought they had nothing in common, but in fact, they were both driven to excel at their jobs. Hansen, the twenty-three-year-old goofball, was unparalleled when it came to operating a Humvee in difficult terrain and he had almost superhuman stamina. He could drive for three days straight. Granted, he downed vitamins by the handful.

  “Keep your eyes on the road. I’m scoping the surroundings. And you newbies back there, quit laughing at his lame jokes,” Terry ordered. “You’re just egging him on.”

  The remark set off another round of guffaws. Baker and Charlie were hard to tell apart. They were tall and buff, and despite their efforts to look brave, their eyes betrayed a certain amount of fear. The boys were fresh arrivals from Parris Island boot camp.

  “I mean seriously, what the hell are we doing here?” Hansen said. “There’s nothing but fucking rocks and sand that’ll wreck this tin can. I spend hours cleaning the engine every time we get back to base. Why’d they send only one team to check out the area if it’s a danger zone? Isn’t that messed up?”

  “You’re a Marine, man. You knew what you signed up for,” Terry teased. “We’re a recon unit, so...”

  “Chill. I know what we’re supposed to be doing. But does that mean we have to like being out here all by ourselves with our asses exposed? This is the perfect setup for an ambush.”

  “We’re not exactly by ourselves. They’ve assigned us a backup chopper. So shut up. I’m trying to focus. And you two in the back, stay alert.”

  Twenty minutes went by with only the steady roar of the Humvee engine and the whir of the helicopter blades.

  Too many hiding spots for the enemy, Terry thought as he inspected the dry rolling landscape. They could surge out at any second.

  An abrupt swerve threw all four passengers against the side of the Humvee. Hansen slammed on the brakes, inciting a chorus of protests.

  “Just a small technical problem! Instead of giving me shit, how about you cover me,” he ordered.

  Hansen opened the door and leaped out of the vehicle, followed by his fellow Marines. The newbies stationed themselves on each side of the Humvee. They lowered themselves into firing position, one knee on the ground.

  Hansen made his way around the vehicle and opened the hood.

  “God dammit! Shit!”

  “What’s going on?” Terry barked as he approached his partner, his eyes still fixed on the surroundings.

  “Broken drive shaft and an oil leak the size of Niagara Falls, Sergeant,” Hansen said, kicking the bumper. “And the tires are blown.”

  “Did you hit any rocks?” Terry asked.

  “No, I swear I didn’t!”

  “Can you get us out of here?”

  “Not in this piece of junk. It’s a good thing our loving commanders provided us with... Hold up, where’d the fucking chopper go?”

  Terry looked up and searched the sky. Preoccupied with the vehicle, he hadn’t noticed the disappearance of their aerial support.

  “I can’t believe it,” he grumbled as he held down the switch on the transmitter attached to his protective vest. “Vanguard to command, our vehicle is immobilized in the middle of unfriendly territory.”

  “Command to vanguard, copy that loud and clear,” a choppy voice confirmed.

  “Would you be kind enough to inform us of the whereabouts of our backup chopper?”

  “Command to vanguard, we’re checking on that.”

  “That’s right. Check on it, asshole. And take your sweet time,” Terry sneered after cutting off the transmission.

  Beneath the wrecked Humvee, Hansen was cursing up a storm. When he came out a few seconds later, he was wearing a worried look, one that Terry had never seen on him before.

  “Dude, there are shards of metal under there. Something busted up our ride.”

  “Are you serious? What? A mine would have vaporized us.”

  There was no time to get to the bottom of it. Terry knew they couldn’t stay out in the open.

  “Guys, we’ll station ourselves in twos behind the rocks on either side of the hill over there,” he ordered. “Hansen’s with Baker. Charlie’s with me. We’ll cover each other while we wait for the cavalry. Go!”

  The men started running toward their posts.

  The first shot snagged Charlie in the arm. He fell to the sand with all the weight of his massive body. Seconds later another blast caught Baker and sent him flying through the air. He landed on his back, a hole in his belly.

  Cut off before they could reach the hill, Terry and Hansen dashed back to the busted vehicle, their only shelter under what was now heavy fire. They hoped to cut off the invisible assailants’ field of vision.

  The fire power shrieked as it hit the vehicle. The two men tucked their heads into their shoulders like turtles and prayed for the storm to pass. When the gunfire finally died down, they could hear the newbies crying in agony.

  “Vanguard to command, under enemy fire. Two men hit.”

  Only static met the sergeant’s call. Terry peered out to check on his teammates’ status. Charlie was twisting in pain, his uniform coated in blood. Baker wasn’t moving.

  “We can’t leave them like this,” Terry said.

  “Are you nuts?” Hansen shouted back. “These aren’t some amateur schlubs defending their village. We’re dealing with pros here. It looks like a Republican Guard ambush.”

  “Do you really think they’d be waiting for us out here? Let other assholes do the analysis. Just cover me on my signal. Now!”

  Sergeant Terry left his hideout and crawled toward Baker while Hansen pointed his M4A1 into the distance and kept firing. Tim grabbed the wailing soldier’s jacket, and using all his strength, he pulled him back to the Humvee.

  Hansen shot Terry an angry look. “Not the best timing for your little rescue and recovery mission.”

  “Can you think of a better time? I’m going back out.”

  “Just give me a second to reload!”

  But his commanding officer had already sprung into the open.

  “Fucking hero,” Hansen muttered as he stepped out of hiding. He took aim and got ready to shoot another round. A snap. A splatter of blood. Crawling toward Charlie, Terry heard Hansen cry out and turned to his buddy. He saw Hansen’s assault rifle fall to the ground. The severed hand was still attached to the weapon. Terry fell to his knees like a puppet whose strings had just been cut.

  Terry didn’t know what to do. It was a moment of hesitation he immediately regretted. What summed up the life of a soldier? A hundred good decisions. One bad decision, and it was over.

  The dreaded bullet and the countless others that followed shredded his thigh. He collapsed, dizzy from the burning metal. With his eyes lost in the blue sky, he saw a helicopter soaring out from behind a hill. He sank into a delirious state where time stood still.

  Dangling between coma and death, Terry heard muffled voices. A childhood memory flashed in his mind. He saw himself, his ear glued to the door of his sister’s bedroom, where she often spent entire afterno
ons with her boyfriend. Terry had giggled at their moaning and groaning. It wasn’t until much later that he understood what those sounds meant.

  The memory faded.

  Now it was he who was groaning, and it felt anything but good. In the middle of the increasingly dense fog, a figure leaned over him.

  “He’s beat up bad, sir, but he’s alive.”

  “I sure hope so,” another ghost-like figure said before squatting beside him. “You’re gonna be all right, kid. Prepare him for the evacuation, and be careful.”

  Terry struggled to stay conscious, despite the pain in his legs and spine that felt like jolts of electricity. He clenched his teeth as hard as he could. He feared his molars would shatter.

  But as the men fussed around him, blessed relief arrived. A wave of heat rushed through his arm, and he was liberated. He had the sense of floating on air.

  In that moment, each and every shortcoming of the Marine Corps vanished. The cavalry had saved him, Hansen, and the two rookies.

  God bless America!

  “What’s the status on the other three?” asked the man leading the operation. He was walking alongside the stretcher as it carried Terry toward the helicopter.

  “Two seriously wounded, and the driver is in critical condition, sir. What are your orders, sir?”

  The superior officer placed a hand on Terry’s sweat-drenched forehead and wiped it with an unexpected tenderness.

  “Semper fi,” Terry stammered, swept away by the morphine that filled his limbs with protective numbness.

  Semper fidelis. The Marine Corps motto.

  “Sorry, boy,” the man mumbled.

  After a long silence, he gave the order.

  “As for the other three... Finish them off.”

  CHAPTER 3

  New Jersey, present day