“You be sure to let me know when one comes along,” he said dryly.
By now Skorzeny was accustomed to the sputtering that came at moments like this.
“Soldier! You will come to attention and you will do so immediately. Clearly you do not know who I am and YILP!—”
Skorzeny had reached out, grabbed the captain’s wrist and twisted it backwards. The captain sank to his knees in pain.
“Captain, I’m going to save you some trouble. I do know exactly who you are. You’re a bureaucrat they gave a uniform because every staff officer needs a middle manager to shuffle papers, even in the SS. That pistol in your belt has never been fired. If you ever heard a gun fired in anger you’d probably soil those clean, pressed trousers that have all the wear and tear on the seat. Do you see that badge on my tunic over there? That doesn’t mean I am with SS special services. It means I am SS special services. There are only two men I answer to, and both have mustaches and the word ‘Führer’ in their title. The only mustache I see on you is whatever brown gets on your lip when you’re kissing Major Hoffstetter’s backside. Now get out of my perimeter.”
He released the captain’s hand.
“You . . . that is . . . very well. But that music,” the captain said, indicating the phonograph player.
“Verklärte nacht,” Skorzeny said. The soft string sextet music was complex and beautiful. It was one of his favorites. “What of it?”
“The works of Arnold Schoenberg have been banned by the Ministry of Propaganda as degenerate and dangerous,” the captain said.
Skorzeny poured another schnapps.
“Captain, Schoenberg’s brilliance reaches its apex in this work. It’s a programmatic, atonal creation that develops a number of leitmotifs, each eclipsing and subordinating the last and at once suggesting a Wagnerian motif and a Brahmsian approach to tonal cohesion.”
The captain’s expression said he didn’t understand a word.
“I like it. It relaxes me,” Skorzeny said. He closed his eyes and leaned back. “Captain, if you speak to me again for any reason, I will kill you. This is not hyperbole.”
The captain hesitated, opened then closed his mouth, then marched off silently.
Given time, these bureaucrats would dull the razor edge of the SS, Skorzeny thought with disgust. Little men with little minds.
The captain disappeared inside just as that young untersturmführer—what was his name . . . Bonhoeffer?—marched out toward the east tower that housed Übel’s impromptu torture chamber.
The untersturmführer was carrying something in a bundle. Poor kid—probably ordered to run errands for that sadistic scientist.
Skorzeny reached toward the table where his pistol belt was hanging. He pulled out his cigarettes, lighted one, leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes as the music swelled in the third act. This was his favorite part. It was the doorway to the climax.
Filotoma was still trying to pick the elaborate locks on Amria’s manacles. Terah and Deitel were taking turns watching out for the guards, and it was Deitel’s turn to rest. He needed it more, Terah figured.
In her cell, Amria sneered at their efforts.
“This is hopeless. We’re going to die. And you’re all playing like you can resist fate. Because of you my people will not have their vengeance,” she spat.
When Deitel opened his mouth, Terah shook her head.
“Their souls will forever walk the night, unable to rest,” Amria continued. “There will be no justice for the dead. Because of you.”
“Oh for heaven’s sake,” Terah finally said. “We’re alive. Where there’s life, there’s a chance. There’s always hope. Look, I understand what you’ve been through, and I’m sorry for your pain, but either do something to help or shut the hell up.”
Amria wasn’t ready for that. She fairly hissed at Terah. “What is it with you people?”
The Romani girl threw the tin cup in her cell against the bars.
“God damn you all. At least when they come for me I can take a few of them to hell with me, even if it means I have to bite through their throats and tear out their eyes,” she said.
“Fine,” Terah said. “Give up. Just be quiet about it.”
Amria’s laugh was part mockery, part pain.
“What is it with you people,” she said again, shaking her head.
That’s when Deitel had enough.
“What it is with these people is that they don’t accept fate,” he said. “And because they don’t accept it, they don’t give in to it.”
Terah started to say something then thought better of it.
“What does that even mean?” Amria asked.
“Fate is just a little man that casts big shadow,” Filotoma chimed in without looking up from the manacle locks. “You can beat off that man if you use the both hands and refuse to take it on the chin.”
“Bah. It’s four against an army,” Amria said dismissively. “All your faith doesn’t change that.”
“Five,” Terah corrected. “Five against an army. Rucker is still alive.”
“And while he’s alive, our chances of surviving are double,” Deitel said.
“You’re putting that much faith in a man you met just ten days ago?” she asked with clear disdain.
“Yes. Yes I am,” Deitel said.
“What is it about this man?” Amria said. “All he has done is get me captured.”
Terah smiled to herself.
“The things I’ve seen him do, Amria. It’s not that he’s not scared or that he’s especially strong. He’s just an ordinary man. But he doesn’t accept defeat,” she said.
“And because he just won’t quit, he inspires other people to push themselves harder,” Deitel added.
Terah nodded.
“That’s what it is about him. It’s that he brings out the best—or worst—in everyone.”
Terah looked at her watch.
“Amria, we have less than thirty hours until the Nazis pull the switch on their project,” she said. “After that we will be put against a wall and shot—or worse, fed to whatever monsters their machine and the spear create. We have to use it as best we can. You can plan on attacking the guards when they open your cell, and you’ll be dead within a minute. At best you might hurt one guard. Or you can join us.”
Bonhoeffer said a little prayer, latched the door behind him, spun around with his weapon drawn and was about to say “everybody freeze!”
He only got to the “Every” before he stopped short at the tableau before him.
Dr. Übel’s assistant, Riehl, was on the floor facedown. By the angle, it was clear his neck was broken. Rucker, shirtless and bleeding from a dozen or more nasty cuts and burns all over his torso, was crouched over the man’s motionless form. The expression on Rucker’s face was like that of a feral animal. There were no guards.
Before Bonhoeffer could say a word, Rucker was on him. The pilot grabbed the wrist of his gun hand and slammed it against the wall. The Walther service pistol fell to the floor. At the same time, Rucker pressed his left forearm into Bonhoeffer’s throat, cutting off the blood flow to his head. Bonhoeffer was starting to see spots, and he struggled to get the words out.
“Zor . . . Zorr . . . Robin . . . wid . . . widow’s . . .” he rasped in English. Just as everything went dark, Rucker released the pressure. Bonhoeffer felt the pistol at his head.
“What did you say to me?” Rucker hissed. “Speak, but speak quiet-like.”
Bonhoeffer gasped deep breaths of air.
“I said Zorro, I’m Robin. I . . . I bring ‘help for the widow’s son,’ ” he said finally.
Rucker took the pistol away from the young officer’s head. He’d said Zorro. Spanish for Fox. Lysander’s code name for Rucker.
“Robin, huh?” Rucker said.
“I was born in
the Freehold, actually. Raised speaking German. After the war there was enough confusion and lost records that Lysander managed to get me in like a native,” the younger man said. “I’m his boy wonder.”
Rucker handed the agent his pistol.
Robin was aghast at Rucker’s condition.
“Are you okay? I mean . . .”
Rucker nodded. “It’s a lot more painful than it looks.”
“Right.”
Bonhoeffer started pulling bundles out of the bag. When he finished unloading it, Rucker groaned at what he saw. Storm trooper uniforms.
“Now we get to see if Chuy was right that I’d make a great Nazi,” he said.
Ciampino Aerodrome
Rome
Something wasn’t right and Chuy knew it. It had been two days since the last radio contact with Rucker. Something was up and he was anxious to get back in the air, but he was still cooling his heels in Rome at the Ciampino Aerodrome.
Literally.
He was sitting in a folding lounger on the starboard wing of the Raposa and had his bare feet propped up in front of a little portable fan. Today he was wearing a vented black bowler, a green velvet waistcoat, pin-stripped trousers rolled up to the knees, and a crimson blouse. His leather harness and belt matched the bowler, which also matched the boots he’d doffed.
Chuy had watched at least a dozen airships of all sizes arrive and depart. He’d fiddled with the engines. He’d restocked the usual payload, food, medical supplies, and ammunition. He’d packed additional equipment that might come in handy in Romania, like climbing gear, considering the mountainous terrain on the border between Wallachia and Transylvania. He’d also packed wooden stakes, silver bullets, glass vials of concentrated wolfsbane and garlic powder, a rosary, and a supply of holy water straight from the Vatican. One couldn’t be too cautious. Of course, he always packed them on almost any job. Rucker had his ideas about being prepared by bringing lots of guns. Chuy had his own ideas on what being prepared meant. Rucker thought mostly in terms of earthly foes. Chuy knew there was more on earth and in heaven to deal with.
Chuy wanted to take off, but he was still awaiting a priority delivery from Austin. From the Prometheus Society, to be precise.
When he turned his gaze back to the main terminal, he saw a porter pulling a dolly bearing a wooden crate that was about eight feet to a side. He was heading straight toward the Raposa. The crate was marked fragile and THIS END UP!
“Finally,” Chuy said, packing up his folding chair and fan, then leaping to the tarmac.
Loading the crate would be tricky. But tricky was exactly what the Raposa was. While the porter pulled the crate around to the tail, Chuy fired up the plane’s generator and pulled a switch in the rear cargo bay.
The porter stared in awe as the entire upper tail assembly rose upward and folded on hinges and a ramp extended from the open tail to the tarmac.
“Load her up,” Chuy said with a wink.
He didn’t know what was in the crate, but he knew it was important. He’d expected written instructions from Lysander. But there was nothing. Just the crate.
Grabbing a crowbar, he went to work where it said OPEN HERE. When he yanked the side panel it opened like a drawbridge.
He was more than a little surprised at the contents.
Inside the crate, a man sat in a padded lounging chair, writing notes by means of a battery powered lantern. He wore a wrinkled purple linen suit and a fanciful dress shirt with green trim on the collar. Despite the comfortable spring temperature, he wore an overly long and colorful scarf and a floppy wide-brimmed hat. He was writing something down on what looked like an old napkin.
“Ahem?” Chuy said.
“One second,” the man responded, finishing his note.
The man looked up, saw Chuy and smiled.
“Lysander Benjamin, as I live and breathe,” Chuy said. “Welcome to Rome!”
“I told you I considered the cargo the most valuable thing you’d ever carried.”
Chuy noticed that Lysander wasn’t the only thing in the crate. There was something under a tarp behind him.
“Sorry for the roundabout and the scuttle-doo,” Lysander said. “I can’t have agents from the Third Reich seeing me travel about. Takes the whole ‘covert’ out of ‘covert operation.’ ”
“So you’re the cargo I’m taking back to Wallachia? Or wherever? Because I haven’t heard from the team in two days now.”
“Oh heavens no. Er, yes. But, no. There’s this,” Lysander said, yanking the tarp away.
Chuy whistled.
“We’ll be taking that, too. To a place north of Tigovista. Poenari Citadel.”
“What is that thing?” Chuy asked. He was already revving up the Raposa’s engines.
“It’s . . . it’s, er . . . it’s Tesla’s latest. It’s . . . untested. But it may be the only thing that stands between us and the apocalypse.”
Poenari Citadel
Wallachia Region
A truck stood between where Skorzeny was reclining and the tower with the torture chamber. Workers were offloading boxes of additional components for Dr. Übel’s spear device. Skorzeny didn’t like the idea of Project Gefallener, but he could see its value strategically, and he would, of course, do his duty.
Stubbing out his cigarette, he saw Untersturmführer Bonhoeffer and a storm trooper walking across the courtyard toward the dungeon. Odd, Skorzeny thought. The requirements for acceptance in the Waffen-SS were strict and extensive, as was training. One of the requirements was that a storm trooper had to be at least five-foot-eleven, but the SS man walking alongside Bonhoeffer looked a little short.
The truck fired up and rolled out, blocking his view of the two in the courtyard. When it passed, they were nowhere to be seen.
Skorzeny reached toward his pistol belt and grabbed the bottle of schnapps. Another drink.
Rucker needed something to drink. Badly. The Senf mask he wore—a black rubber gas mask with goggle eyes and breathing filters, filtered out natural moisture in the air and left him parched. He was already dehydrated from the torture, and the respirator made it worse. It also made him feel all closed in.
Bonhoeffer—Robin—gave orders to the guards to open the main door to the dungeon. At the loud clacking of the latch, Terah, Deitel, Filotoma, and Amria hid their tools and pretended to be asleep, praying or sitting listlessly. Out of the corner of her eye Terah saw a young SS officer and a storm trooper close the main door behind them.
“I hope you folks are busier than this when the boss isn’t looking,” the storm trooper said, his voice deepened by the mask. And yet it sounded . . .
“Because the boss man is here,” came Rucker’s voice as he pulled off the Senf mask.
“Fox!” Terah said.
“You’re alive!” Deitel said.
“Apparently,” Rucker said smiling.
“Who’s the boche?” Filotoma asked.
“Ladies and gentlemen, meet Lysander’s man in Wewelsburg,” Rucker said.
“You have a plan?” Terah said.
“I . . . uh . . . No. You have any ideas?” Rucker said.
Terah just stared at him. It turned into a glare.
“Easy,” Rucker said. “We can’t just walk you out of here. In fact, Robin here needs to get back to his post. Look, I do have a plan, but you’re not going to like it.”
“Why not?” Deitel asked.
“It involves me getting out of here and you four having to stay,” Rucker said. “I have to get to Nick’s portable shortwave and get outside the citadel.”
Bonhoeffer said to the others, “All of your personal effects and equipment the guards took is stored in the alcove outside the main door.”
“What do we do in the meanwhile?” Terah asked. “Wait for them to take us out and shoot us?”
“No,” Ru
cker said. “From what I heard, they want to make you the first victims of Project Gefallener. So you’ll all be safe until at least tomorrow night.”
“Hoffstetter wants you all to witness the transformation of the Death’s Head Legion into draugrkommandos, and to be the undead soldiers’ first kill,” Bonhoeffer added. “You and the handful of villagers the storm troopers captured in their patrols of the countryside. The people of the tiny Arefu hamlet. There are women and children among them.”
“Draugrkommandos?” Terah asked.
“Walking dead,” Rucker explained. “Only smart. Perfect soldiers.”
Everyone started talking at once, arguing about what was happening. There was fear in their voices. Their anxiety fueled each other.
Amria, who hadn’t said a word yet, finally spoke. Her eyes were alight with anger, but there was something else there.
“Captain Rucker?”
Everyone stopped talking and listened.
“Can you really stop them?”
They all looked at Rucker.
Rucker looked Amria in the eye.
“Just you watch me,” he said.
For the first time, Amria smiled. She was starting to believe him.
The alarm klaxon in the courtyard started to bleat. Over the hastily installed loudspeaker, a German voice shouted.
“Alert! Prisoner has escaped! This is not a drill! Prisoner Rucker is missing. Storm troopers to the assembly area! Prepare to release the wehr-wolves and nachtmenn!”
Rucker cursed.
“What does this mean?” Terah asked.
“It means that little bald little snake Übel found out I’m missing from the torture chamber,” Rucker said. “Look, Robin and I have to go.”
Terah reached through the bars of her cell and pulled Rucker to her. She kissed him deeply.
Bonhoeffer was at the door.
“Rucker!” he said impatiently.
“I’ll be back for you, for you all, by tomorrow night,” Rucker said, putting the Senf mask and his helmet back on.
“I’ll order the guards to the muster area,” Bonhoeffer said. “You get the shortwave and your other equipment and put it in this duffel. They’re already mustering out squads, so just tag along with one to get out of the citadel, and then slip away. You’ll need to be at least five miles away before you use the shortwave. The command center is jamming shortwave signals all around here. And stay downwind from the nachtmenn, if at all possible. I have to get back to the command post. Good luck.”
Shadows Will Fall Page 4
