by Layton Green
Naomi sat cross-legged beside him, adjusting the eyepiece on her night goggles. “I looked into Kristof’s transfer today. From the local hospital to Cape Town.”
“Yes?”
“There was no record of it. I went further afield and checked every metropolitan area in the country. No hospital in South Africa has a record of admission for Kristof Heuvel within a year of his heart attack.”
Viktor was quiet for a moment. “Then I suppose he recovered on his own.”
“I suppose so.”
After a longer, more uncomfortable silence, Viktor said, “Van Draker is a physician. There is also the possibility he took Kristof’s care into his own hands.”
Sergeant Linde didn’t respond. Viktor could almost feel the tension radiating out of her.
“I think it’s time we had a discussion,” he said.
“About what?” she asked, though the strain in her voice implied she already knew.
“About your confusing involvement in this case.”
“I’m unsure what you mean.” She sounded as if she had to force the words out.
“You’ve been keeping things from me from the beginning. Van Draker’s past, the possible existence of a lab. Contrast that with your willingness to search his house, and the fact that you’re trespassing right now to get a better look at his property.”
“How do you know I don’t have a warrant?” she muttered.
“Police officers with warrants generally do not climb eight-foot walls to access the property.” When she didn’t respond, he said, “Let me be more clear. You mentioned that van Draker owns this town. Does he own you?”
When he looked at her, there was just enough light to see the rigid clench of her jaw.
“No one owns me,” she said. “Especially not him.”
“Then why not be more forthcoming? If there’s a classified or undercover investigation going on, I need to know.”
Her silence stretched for days.
“Sergeant Linde, are you keeping facts from me?”
She lowered the goggles and looked him in the eye. “The Interpol request,” she said evenly, “only compels me to disclose anything I have learned during a professional inquiry.”
That took Viktor aback.
She did, then, have an agenda—a private one.
She hadn’t been shielding van Draker. She’d been keeping Viktor at arm’s length so he wouldn’t step on her own investigation.
Viktor decided not to press the issue. He needed to know what she knew, but first would have to gain her trust. After seeing her reactions inside the manor, he was satisfied she was not working for van Draker.
Two hours passed. During the wait, Viktor pondered Grey’s recent report, the assault on the CDC doctor, and the mutilation of the body in Piedmont Park. He combined it all with the progress of his own research. Disturbing progress.
Earlier that day, he had finally realized why the symbol found on Akhona, the letter T piercing a circle, looked familiar.
At first the professor speculated the T represented a stylized version of the cross. Long before the birth and death of Jesus Christ, the cross was a sacred symbol of nature worship to a plethora of pagan cultures across the globe. The true origin of the cross was a mystery for another day, but what got Viktor thinking was an article theorizing that the cross had in fact derived from an even more ancient, pan-cultural symbol: the tree of life.
Alarm bells had started ringing in Viktor’s head, though at first he wasn’t sure why. Then he thought about the case and realized what it was.
One of the more developed tree of life mythologies was Yggdrasil, or the world tree, from Norse religion. Viktor was familiar with Yggdrasil because another cultural group, in a much more modern era, had appropriated the symbol for their own designs.
The Nazis.
More specifically, the Ahnenerbe.
Spearheaded by Heinrich Himmler in 1935, the Ahnenerbe was the occult arm of the Third Reich. The one no one wanted to believe was real. Over the years, a myriad of theories had arisen concerning the Ahnenerbe, and the organization had even been popularized in popular media, such as the Indiana Jones films. Viktor knew some of the rumors concerning the Ahnenerbe were pure fantasy—but he also knew much of it was true. In fact, many of the organization’s beliefs, experiments, and expeditions were so horrific and fantastical they defied belief.
At its core, the Ahnenerbe was dedicated to researching the history of the Aryan race. In an obsessive attempt to prove the superiority and purity of the Germanic people, Himmler sent people around the world on archaeological and fact-finding expeditions that often delved into occult and pseudoscientific arenas. An expedition was sent to Finland to photograph pagan sorcerers at work. Linguists studied runes and petroglyphs in an attempt to gather evidence of an ancient Nordic language that preceded all others. Multiple voyages to Tibet, launched to collect scientific data establishing that the Aryans had conquered most of Asia, also sought contact with black-magic adepts and the mythical kingdom of Shambhala.
Even Viktor was unsure where the real truth lay. What he did know was that the symbol for the Ahnenerbe was a circle—a stylized version of the Swastika—pierced by a T.
It was almost a replica of the symbol on Akhona’s leg, with an ouroboros replacing the swastika and the tree of life supplanted by a double helix and the unalome.
Science supplanting myth, perhaps?
Grey’s report of the gruesome initiation at Piedmont Park bore an ominous parallel to the Death’s Head Ring used by the SS. Designed by Himmler and depicting a skull surrounded by an array of Germanic symbols and runes, the ring embodied the Nazi fascination with Aryan mysticism.
Add to that the signs that W.A.R. practiced Odinism, an ancient Norse religion not uncommon among harmless neo-pagans, but which had been adopted by white supremacists eager to flee a religion—Christianity—they saw as too weak and inclusive of non-whites.
Viktor took a deep breath. He did not at all like the direction this case was taking. Was there a revival of the Ahnenerbe afoot, or a remnant that had evolved into a modern incarnation? One using the ideology of Odinism to unite the hate groups?
He had to dig deeper.
“Viktor,” Naomi whispered.
He snapped to attention. She held up a finger as she peered intently through the night goggles. He checked his watch. Just after three a.m. The witching hour.
“Two people,” she said, after a moment. “By the door to that outbuilding.”
Twenty yards past the cemetery, almost at the edge of the forest, loomed the stacked stone structure Viktor remembered from their earlier visit. Little more than a wooden doorway and a roof that sloped almost to the ground, he had guessed the building housed a wine cellar.
He hadn’t seen anyone crossing the lawn from the manor. “Where did they come from?”
“Inside the cellar. They came out for a smoke.”
“Intriguing.”
“Take a look,” she said, sounding a little uneven.
Viktor strapped on the goggles. As he honed in on the cellar, Naomi put her hands on his broad shoulders and leaned forward. The intimacy of the gesture surprised him.
The smoker, a bespectacled man with a Roman nose jutting over a weak chin, jabbed at a younger woman with a finger as he spoke. Viktor didn’t recognize either the man or the woman, who wore her whitish-blond hair in a bun and had a mouth too thin for the cherubic roundness of her face.
It wasn’t the physical features of the two people that had produced the tension in Sergeant Linde’s voice, Viktor knew.
It was the blue hospital scrubs they were wearing.
“Ever seen them before?” she asked.
“No,” Viktor said. “You?”
“Never.”
After the man pinched out his cigarette, the two disappeared through the doorway. From his vantage point, Viktor couldn’t see inside the cellar. He lowered the goggles. “We need to see what’s behind that door. If the l
ab is there, we can figure out a reason to pursue a warrant.”
“I don’t disagree.” Naomi pursed her lips and scanned the lawn. “The cemetery’s probably the best location.”
He ran his eyes over the orderly square of stone vaults and sepulchers, some as big as a small garage. Impressive for a family graveyard.
“I hate to say this,” Naomi said, “but I don’t think I should be the one to go.”
“Understood,” Viktor said. He was an outsider and would suffer fewer repercussions if caught creeping through van Draker’s cemetery.
“Are you game?” she asked.
“Of course.”
She offered a hand to help pull him up. He accepted, hoping she didn’t hear the creaking of his knees.
“Be careful,” she said. “If you can’t see inside the cellar the next time someone leaves, then come back. We’ll try something else.”
After ensuring no one was watching, lulled by a soft chorus of crickets, the professor crept across the lawn as best as a seven-foot tall man can creep. Pausing behind a yellowwood twisting up from the earth like a petrified crone, he scanned the grounds of the manor and saw nothing stirring. Viktor hunched when he resumed walking, feeling as if ten pairs of eyes were watching from behind the shuttered windows. When he neared the cemetery, the smell of musty earth wafted in, as if the disintegrating bones had seeped through the dirt and caused the air to stale.
It’s just another cemetery, Viktor thought to himself. You’ve been in thousands.
Searching for a good angle, he spied a ribbed vault with an angel perched on top, right in the middle of the cemetery. The vault afforded an unobstructed view of the wine cellar, with only a few small tombstones in between. Viktor hurried forward. He climbed over the low stone wall and cringed as his foot sank into a pile of loose dirt. The unnerving sensation of stepping into a fresh grave caused him to look behind him, just in time to reveal a spectral figure gliding out of a closet-sized crypt that Viktor had just passed.
-17-
Just before Lieutenant Palmer dropped Grey off at his hotel, they got word that a wallet left in the pocket of the decapitated corpse identified the victim as Naseem Raja, a green card holder from Yemen. Naseem had two young children, a DUI conviction, and sometimes performed the call for prayer at a local mosque.
A quick search on Google revealed that an impaled head was a common form of execution during the Crusades. A horrific practice meant to send a message to the infidels.
Grey stopped at the hotel bar and drank until they kicked him out. He stumbled to his room, took an airplane bottle of vodka out of the minibar, sloshed the contents into a glass, and carried it to the balcony. Cold air seared his lungs as the noise and lights of downtown dazzled like a monstrous pinball game.
After the horror of the night’s events, he was finished. Sick of the world and its disgusting injustices and depraved actors who never seemed to change.
He put his elbows on the railing and looked down, at the blacktop looming a hundred feet below. The siren song of vertigo lured him forward, urged him to let his body go free, embrace the timeless pull of gravity.
Suicide had never been an option for Grey. He wasn’t sure why not, because he had certainly crawled along the bottom before, inch by terrifying inch. Yet nothing had hurt like losing Nya. He couldn’t deny the feeling of peace he felt at the thought of shutting it all down, flushing away the final glimpse of her falling into that green-walled chasm, eyes full of love as she merged into the mist.
It was his fault she had died. The General had taken her to get to Grey.
And there was nothing, ever, he could do to change that fact.
As he stumbled inside and reached for his phone, ready to call Viktor and announce his resignation, he tripped over his suitcase and fell. The carpet felt soft and warm against his cheek, and he decided not to get back up.
The morning rushed at Grey like an oncoming train. Head throbbing, he splashed water on his face, fixed a double-strength coffee in his room, and stepped onto the balcony for some fresh air while the caffeine kicked in. After he woke up, he could make that call to Viktor with a clear head.
His cell phone chimed. Strange. It was the number for the shelter in Washington Heights.
“Hello?”
“Grey?” Reverend Dale’s restrained, pleasant voice sounded more tense than usual. “Do you have a moment?”
“Sure. What is it?”
“It’s about Charlie.”
Grey’s hand tightened against his coffee mug. “What do you mean?”
A pause. “I . . . I don’t know how to say this, but someone took her.”
“You mean social services? Did she finally decide to—”
“It wasn’t social services.”
Grey grew as still as the surface of a pond on a windless day. “Who was it, then?”
“We’re not sure who they were. Three men in a van, that’s about all we—”
“A van? Wait. How do you know it was her? Charlie disappears all the time. Who told you this? What do you mean?”
“Grey—someone saw it happen. Another homeless teen, from a shelter in Harlem. He was watching from a playground and recognized Charlie from the street.”
Grey held the phone against his ear for a long moment, fighting not to choke on the rage bubbling forth. “These men—what did they look like?”
“All we know is they were white and big. Dressed in street clothing. The other child wasn’t close enough to see their faces, but she thinks she saw tattoos.”
White. Big. Street clothing. Took her. Someone saw it happen. Three men in a van. Took her. White. Took her. Tattoos.
Took her took her took her took her took her
Grey dropped the phone and hurled his coffee mug against the wall. Dizzy with fury, he stumbled to the TV, yanked it off the dresser, and put his fist through the drywall. He roared and fell to his knees, palms pressed against the sides of his head. He roared and he roared and he roared, until his voice grew hoarse and his vision blurred and men with badges burst through the door.
A few hours later, Grey sat in a coffee shop down the street, hovering over a green tea. Detoxing as he struggled to order his thoughts. Thank God the two hotel security guards had not been armed, or Grey might be sitting in a jail cell instead of a coffee shop. Or a morgue. The guards had seen the look in his eyes and backed away, asking if he needed help as Grey screamed at them to leave.
By the time the cops arrived, Grey had calmed down enough to give them Lieutenant Palmer’s card and mumble an apology. After agreeing to pay for the damages to the room, they let him go with a warning, and an order to find a new hotel.
A useless admonition, Grey thought grimly. He would be in New York before nightfall.
Taking Charlie was a warning, of course. For Grey to back off.
Which meant whoever took her had something to hide. An endgame. It pained him to think about it, but he knew if they were going to kill her, they would have already.
Right now, she was leverage. More valuable alive than dead.
But he also knew that in the vast majority of these situations, once the bad guys got what they wanted, the victim was expendable. Especially a victim like Charlie, who didn’t have a parent or a guardian to look after her, not to mention a hostage-trained FBI unit ready to come swooping in like a Hollywood cast.
No, there was no knight in shining armor looking out for Charleene Desiree Watkins. No relatives, no friends, no teachers.
No one except Grey.
So yeah, he knew what they wanted him to do. Back off and pray they let her live. Leave her precious young life at the mercy of those bastards.
He knew what they wanted, he knew the odds of her going free, and he knew what he had to do.
Ten a.m.
As he drove down Peachtree Street, Grey called and booked a flight to New York for later that afternoon. He had already sent Viktor a curt email explaining the situation. Grey didn’t want to talk. He had
nothing to say.
A shiver coursed through him. It had happened again. They had taken someone he loved.
He turned east onto Ponce de Leon, relentlessly watching the road, his eyes a blazing signpost at the entrance to the gates of hell. He no longer cared about the tide of dirty dishwater flooding the earth, wondering whether his own violent nature was part of the problem. Agonizing over it, as he used to do. Reading philosophy about it late at night. Should we all lay down arms like Gandhi, he used to wonder? Protest with love and empathy? In his heart, he wanted that so much. Knew it was the better path.
What, then, he would ponder, do we do about Nazis and ISIS and the slave ships? What do you do when the Devil himself comes to your door?
He knew that if humanity gave in to the monsters, the world would live under a reign of terror. He also believed that turning the other cheek was the only path to salvation for the human race.
How those two coexisted was the question. Maybe they couldn’t, not in the world as it was.
None of it mattered anymore. The moment Charlie was taken, Grey had known he was done with moral dilemmas. He had a new credo, one flapping like a panicked bird in Grey’s head as he lay immobile on the floor of his hotel room with fists clenched and a lump the size of Texas in his throat.
To the person who took Charlie, he vowed, to anyone harming innocents for his own gain, lining his greedy pockets with a few extra dollars, ruining a child’s life to satisfy his perversions, thinking of you you you you you you you you you
To you, I have only this to say.
I no longer care whether it’s right.
I no longer care about the state of my soul. I will drown in violence if I must.
The one thing I know for sure?
