Deitel raised his hand. “That seems a bit anachronistic.”
“Very good, Doctor,” Terah said. “At this time, metallurgy was unheard of in West Africa. They wouldn’t—or shouldn’t—have had the refined iron available for Antonius to use in the production of steel.
“In fact, the indigenous population of sub-Saharan Africa never developed even the most primitive iron metallurgy, nor any metallurgical technology,” she explained. “And yet Antonius wrote he was able to forge high-quality weapons. They were so well made he continued to use them even after he made it back to Legio III Augusta’s headquarters.”
Antonius’s own writings showed that the centurion increasingly grew paranoid that other officers envied his weapons. His journal entries seemed less balanced after the African expedition, Terah said.
“After the Tacfarinsas expedition, Antonius’s unit was transferred to a remote post in modern-day Tunisia, Ammaedara. It is known that very few members of Legio III Augusta survived the transfer. The unit and the post seem to have faded from history.”
Chuy’s brow twisted. “You mean the records are lost?”
“We believe the legion was lost. Antonius survived and was transferred to Legio III Gallica, where he was reduced in rank despite his patrician status. This legion served under the prefect of Judea, Pontius Pilate,” Terah said. “And that’s the last update from Dr. Renault’s research. That’s according to his unrevised notes, gathered for us by our cousins in French intelligence.”
“That’s it?” Rucker said. “That doesn’t exactly get us to the spear, you know.”
“That’s why we have to get to Dr. Renault before the Nazis do. The Nazi’s expert, Dr. Otto Rahn, has led the Huns on a wild goose chase. He’s the German medievalist who is simultaneously seeking the Holy Grail and the Ark of the Covenant. His days are probably numbered, owing to his lack of success so far and the fact that he’s secretly a homosexual,” she said. “For all his errors so far, he is a great scholar, and our people at Prometheus are trying to get him to defect before the Gestapo discovers his private proclivities. We’re thinking he is intentionally misdirecting the German efforts.”
“Meanwhile,” Lysander said, “we know the Nazis obtained a sample of some sort related to the true spear, and now for more than merely satisfying Hitler’s obsession, they want to find it.”
Biels added: “We don’t know how the spear is connected, but our Difference Engine calculations incorporating all the available data say it figures directly and perhaps even causally into Project Gefallener.”
The ability of Difference Engines to take raw numerical data and translate it into complex algorithms and statistics had grown exponentially since Babbage debuted the very first engine in London in 1851. The analog calculating devices of yesterday had grown into brass and mechanical devices that could store entire libraries worth of data variables.
“Why do people think the spear has power?” Rucker asked. He wasn’t much for dealing with belief as he was with fact.
“Theories abound in philosophical, religious, and alchemical circles,” Terah said. “It could very well be that the Spear of Destiny has power because it was washed in His blood. Except for our visiting doctor, we’ve all had experiences dealing with the power of certain holy relics from various cultures. Science hasn’t explained these phenomena—”
“Yet,” Rucker interjected.
“Fine, yet, but that doesn’t make them any less real,” Terah continued. “Certainly the blood of Christ is powerful in the Christian faith; it is even symbolically or, in the case of Catholics, literally consumed. But the common denominator in terms of Christ’s blood is salvation and life, not power, conquest, death, and decay.”
“But it could be something about the spear itself, right?” Rucker asker her. “The anachronistic iron ore in Africa.”
Lysander nodded.
“That’s the other direction Renault’s research is taking,” Terah said. “No one has yet found the African tribe that Antonius describes in his journals.
“There is the issue of the meteoric iron,” she continued. “The only other place with such a high degree of ancient meteoric iron is north of the Arctic Circle in Scandinavia, and south in the western fields of Antarctica. Modern expeditions to West Africa date several of the deposits of meteoric iron to as far back as 5000 B.C., so that fits. Beyond that, there seems to be nothing fantastic about the meteoric iron itself.”
“That we know of yet,” Lysander added. “We may not know what we should be looking for, or how to look for it.”
“This is starting to sound very like H.G. Wells and Jules Verne,” Rucker said. “I like it.”
Lysander took the slide projection control from Terah and inserted his own magazine of slides.
“So we don’t know what it does or why it’s important,” Rucker said.
Lysander shook his head.
“The Nazis want it for Project Gefallener, which is reason enough for us to make sure they don’t get it,” he said.
Around the room there understanding nods. Even from Rucker.
Lysander took Terah’s place in front of the group.
“Now you need to know who we’re up against. Working with our own sources inside the Third Reich and our allies in the Deuxième Bureau and British MI6, we have determined the agents from the SS and Black Sun leading this quest for the spear.”
He clicked the first slide. It showed a brutally handsome, young blond SS officer with a classically stern Germanic scowl: a service photo.
“Reinhard Heydrich. Himmler’s number two. He’s calling the shots here, but he operates from Castle Wewelsburg. Don’t let the short leash fool you—that man will be a real danger if and when he climbs out from Himmler’s shadow.”
Click. A grainy picture of a bald man in brass rim goggles and a white lab coat filled the screen.
“The scientific mastermind is Dr. Johannes Übel, a man as twisted as he is brilliant. If you look up ‘sociopath,’ you’ll find his picture. Driven from the medical profession long before the Great War for his human—his inhuman—experiments, he found a ripe field of experimental subjects serving as a field surgeon for the German army in prisoner of war camps. He escaped prosecution after the war, returning to Germany only after Hitler came to power. Given his age and the fact that he performed his medical residency in London, I have always suspected he may be the White Chapel Ripper.”
“The who?” Deitel asked.
“Jack the Ripper,” Rucker said.
The next slide was a surveillance photo at a German training camp. It showed a tall, thin German officer in a white uniform and cape, wearing a black gas mask over a scarred and hairless pate.
“This is Der Schädel,” Lysander said. “The Skull. Said to be Hitler’s personal instrument of interrogation and punishment. He wears that breathing apparatus at all times. It’s rumored he has the power to infect men’s minds, but by what magic or scientific means, we don’t know. Is he a mutant? A sorcerer? Even Heinrich Himmler himself is said to fear the man.”
Click. An older man with a poorly groomed beard and a look in his eyes that said he had only a nodding acquaintance with reality.
“Anton Drexler. The occult and spiritual heart of the Nazi party. He was Hitler’s mentor in the early days of the National Socialist party. He founded the Thule Society, a group of powerful German captains of industry obsessed with the mystical world, particularly the Aryan mythology and Atlantis.”
Another slide. Another mask.
“Colonel Uhrwerk. There’s no history on this man. He’s part of the Black Sun inner circle, but if has any records prior to 1926, they’ve been purged.”
“Uhrwerk must be his code name,” Deitel offered. “It’s not a German name I’ve ever heard, and it translates as ‘timepiece work’ or ‘clock work.’ ”
“More than you can imagine,” Lysander said. “Who he was before 1926, we don’t know. What we do know is he is more a machine than he is a man. It
could be just his body. It could even be his mind. Like Der Schädel, he’s rarely seen, and when he is, he’s wearing that metal mask. If it is a mask. Our insider says that in the Black Sun, he’s a voice of ruthless logic—maybe one of the best thinkers the Black Sun has.
“And, of course, they have the combined might of the Waffen-SS, the SD, the Gestapo, and the entire Third Reich at their disposal.”
“And the home field advantage,” Chuy added helpfully.
Lysander turned on the overhead light, then concluded the briefing that Terah had begun.
“We have two crates of equipment ready to load onto the Raposa. If things get too hot and you need heavy firepower, our friends in Paris have put the Eleventh Choc at your disposal. Here’s the frequency and code. I believe your old friend Captain Blackadder heads up the battalion now.” he said to Rucker.
The Eleventh Choc was the French elite mercenary shock parachutist battalion, a special operations unit officially unaffiliated with the French military. Like the French Foreign Legion, it accepted volunteers regardless of nationality or past crimes.
“Whoa,” Rucker said. “I don’t think it will come to that.” He pocketed the napkin on which Lysander had written the cipher and frequency he’d need.
“Pray it doesn’t. Captain, your team will consist of Terah, Dr. Deitel, and Chuy,” Lysander said.
“Make sure she,” he pointed with his chewed cigar at Terah, “understands who’s in charge.”
“Fox, your first task is to make contact with Dr. Renault and learn what you can as to where the spear is now,” Lysander said. “He’s in Rome, conducting research at the Vatican archives, working from offices at Sapienza—Università di Roma. He’s the key to finding the artifact. This cannot fall into the hands of the Nazis. The fate of the entire world hangs in the balance.”
“Business as usual, then.”
“My boy, I’m not joking or exaggerating. If the Nazis get their hands on the spear, they will bring death and darkness to the entire world.”
The look in Lysander’s eyes took Rucker aback.
“I . . . I understand. Yes. Yes, sir,” he said quietly to his old friend.
In a louder voice, Rucker addressed his team: “All right everyone—wheels up in twenty. We’re in a race against the master race. Get your war paint on and don’t get caught watching the gate swing.”
Chuy and Terah were out the door to supervise the Raposa’s loading. Lysander and Biels were destroying all the notes taken in the room—except the ones that went into Lysander’s pockets. Deitel quietly approached Rucker.
“I signed up for this fight, but I’m not sure what it is I will be able to contribute,” he said.
“I don’t think I know of a time when a doctor isn’t handy.”
“I also don’t know what it is we’re going to be doing.”
“Well, the Nazis want to bring the creatures of nightmare into this world, right?”
“Yes.”
“Seems I recall when we first met, you said that’s exactly what you Germans thought of my people during the war,” Rucker said.
He drew his pistol, spun it, and checked the load. In a flash he spun it again and slid it into the holster.
“The Nazis want nightmares? Reckon we’ll oblige them.”
Climbing back out onto the structure of Airstrip One through a ventilation shaft below had been easy. More challenging was the shear twenty-foot free climb up the side of the outer hull in the howling winds and bitter cold of the altitude. It was worth it when he pressed the diaphragm of a stolen medical stethoscope to the bottom corner of the conference room window. He mentally took notes of everything.
Skorzeny waited until the last of the group had left the conference room before opening the window and crawling in. The needles of pain in his slowly warming fingers reassured him he hadn’t developed frostbite.
Now he needed a radio.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Wallachia Region of Romania
Eastern Europe
Encampment just outside Piteşti
Proof of the Creator’s good taste, local folklore held, was his masterpiece along the southern slopes of the Carpathian Mountains. It was a splendor to even the most jaded eye, a piece of natural paradise easily the rival of the biblical Eden.
The largest mountain range in Europe and some would say the equal in beauty to the more renowned Alps, the Carpathians—especially to the south in Wallachia—were a treasure trove of diversity in terms of artworthy landscapes, untrammeled forests, piedmont plains, and the abundance of wildlife. The eastern and southern portions of the mountain range were home to the largest concentrations of brown bears, wolves, chamois, and lynxes—making it prime hunting ground for Eastern European nobility going back centuries. The hollows and fields, the deep virgin forests and placid lakes, and the mazes of verdant, hidden valleys meant one could travel for days without seeing a soul or a sign of civilization.
It was therefore little wonder why so many tribes of the nomadic Romani people—“Gypsies,” as they were called by the ignorant—made this part of the world a primary encampment site for so many months of the year. Romani clans would travel throughout Wallachia, Moldova, and Transylvania, setting up camp outside the cities and villages to do business and celebrate life as travelers.
On this particularly gorgeous spring evening one Romani camp set up outside the town of Piteşti was definitely focused on celebration—a family wedding. Of course, it was also true that for the Romani, marriage was also a business proposition, but that was far from everyone’s mind.
The encampment was perfectly located to maximize God’s wedding decorations, Jaelle Luncă reflected. It centered on the terraces above the right bank of the Argeş where the river met its tributary, and right at the edge of the deep sylvan forests and water meadows. The fifteen-year-old bride was brimming with life and love. Even the colors of the blooms seemed more vibrant than Jaelle’s dreams. Off to the north she could just make out the Făgăraş Mountains. The flowers along the bank looked ever so slightly wilted. Waving her hands, she muttered a few syllables of the ancient language and the flowers shimmered and then blossomed brighter. She smiled at her handiwork.
This was her day, Jaelle thought, the day she would become a bori, a bride, and a fully grown woman, a Romni, after all the years of adhering to the purity required by the marhime laws. But even better, the union would join her into her husband’s family, which would end a decades old conflict between the families. Love would restore the balance in the community, creating a bond that transcended conflicting truths.
She smiled at the mothers and daughters cooking the vast quantities of treats that would be consumed well into the night and likely into the next day, as such festivities go for the Romani. Crusty bread was laid out with jars of spicy-sweet ajvar canned the previous autumn. The alluring aroma of paprika-laden dishes like stuffed cabbage and chicken paprikash competed for attention against the smoky taste of lamb and beef roasting on spits over open fires. Spinach crepes and musaka were being piled high on platters.
She saw the men pouring drinks from barrels, while boys not yet in their teens hovered on the periphery, smoking cigarettes. One of her bridesmaids sat outside her tent, filing her nails with an emery board. Nearby, the lăutari were warming up their instruments with a jaunty, almost jazzy tune.
As the sun set over the Argeş, Jaelle almost wept at how perfect the day had turned out, and at the promise of passion that the night ahead held.
The policeman’s favorite calling hour is 4:00 A.M. It is the time when people enter their deepest level of sleep. Being suddenly awakened at the hour causes maximum disorientation and confusion, rendering suspects most helpless. Thus it would have been the prime hour to commence the raid on the Gypsy camp. But it was not. The wedding party was still going on at 4:00 A.M.
Even in the darkness, the sickly white shine of the Skull’s head stood in stark contrast to the black gas-mask apparatus he wore. Beside him stood
an angular figure in a steel mask. Where the Skull’s breathing always seemed labored, Colonel Uhrwerk made no sound at all.
The whole situation at this camp tonight was suboptimal for Colonel Uhrwerk. Given the uncertainty in trying to pick up the trail of the Spear of Destiny because of the sloppy fieldwork of Himmler’s “scholar soldiers,” he needed to maximize the shock in these encampment attacks so they could conduct their search and get out quickly.
A few deaths wouldn’t matter—Romanian officials cared almost as little about Gypsy life as did the Reich. But Uhrwerk’s team were on foreign soil, and the more disruption and violence they caused—even against these dirty nomads—the more the Germans risked discovery by Romanian authorities. And there were still twenty-three Gypsy camps remaining on their target list.
It wasn’t just that these camp raids were suboptimal for Uhrwerk. It was the whole operation. It was a game of random guesswork disguised as a proper search matrix. Thus, Uhrwerk was left trying to impose efficient and logical tactics on a fundamentally inefficient and illogical strategy. If he were capable of frustration, he would have felt it.
Certainly, he considered, this flawed and wasteful approach to finding the spear did not originate with Reinhard Heydrich. No. The man was too fundamentally intelligent and methodical. This was Himmler’s doing, the Reichsführer-SS having been goaded by the impatience of both Drexler and Hitler.
Uhrwerk made a mental note: cultivate Heydrich.
Again he scanned the Gypsy camp some two miles away and shrouded in the gloom of the predawn hours. He summoned Jäger to his side.
Haupsturmführer Karl Jäger was commander of Heydrich’s newly created Einsatzkommando 2, composed of ten of the most ruthless SS storm troopers and three nachtmenn. They traveled through the Romanian countryside in a covered troop truck and field car with no markings.
Black Sun Reich: The Spear of Destiny: Part One of Three Page 15
