Klaus emerged first from the bunker, Ajit a few steps behind. By now the three other teams had joined up with his unit.
“Find anything,” asked Lt. Sastry.
“Nothing … nothing that could be used to build a biological, chemical, or nuclear weapon… or any weapon for that matter. Any updates from Vimal?”
“He doesn’t know when the bomb squad will be available. It won’t be here tonight, that’s for sure.”
“The only thing that old man knows is when the locations of every pastry shop in the Andamans,” said Rishi. Several other soldiers laughed.
Ajit remained silent for a few seconds. He just needed some air that was all. Already feeling better.
“Any of the other teams find anything?” he asked a few seconds later.
“There’s a cemetery about a hundred meters from us. About thirty roughly-carved headstones. Found it on the way over here. Didn’t stop to investigate it though.”
“Ah, yes,” said Klaus. “I want to show you that. But I am going to tell you the rest of my story.”
“Be brief,” said Lt. Sastry. “We don’t want to be here much longer.”
“I’ve been here over twenty years. I think you can stay a little longer. But don’t worry, I don’t have much longer to go. I will try my best to be brief. Now let me begin. I was born in Germany, in—”
“We’ve heard this already,” said Rohan.
“You did. Please accept my apologies. I am an old man. Now where was I?”
“You were at a meeting in Brazil,” said Ajit.
“Ah yes, I remember. Thank you. As I said before, an amulet was created that gives us the ability to restore the time to 1943. I will explain how that works. When the amulet was created, it provides us access to the state of the world in 1943 and allows us to make the current world look like it did in 1943. It is a very complicated process, I do not fully understand it—”
“Because it’s a bunch of fucking nonsense,” said Rishi. “How can an amulet store the whole state of the universe?”
“Let him talk,” said Ajit.
“Thank you, now I will continue. But creating the amulet is easy compared to resetting the time. And to answer your question, it doesn’t. It will make more sense later.”
“I doubt it,” said one of the men from another unit.
“Anyway, the meeting was to discuss the solution to a problem. Once we complete the switch, wouldn’t you expect the world to go on as it did the first time? Wouldn’t an infinite loop be created? After all, we wouldn’t have any idea of how the future turned out. So we would lose the war just like the first time. It had been speculated that once the amulet was used, it would no longer exist in the past. But that was not certain, and when would it be destroyed? No one knew. Even if we knew that it was used, and thus assume that we lost the war, we would not know how to change our strategy. Maybe after an infinite number of times, assuming the world is not deterministic, that chance exists, we would get lucky and win. But unfortunately, after a long debate, it was determined that the amulet can only be used once, so there will be no loop. We had to find a way to get information to the past. This was a huge challenge.
“The solution came from Syria. In 1941, Germany was granted access to military facilities in Syria and neighboring Lebanon by the government of Vichy France. We were soon driven out by the Allied forces. But an anthropologist, Dr. Jürgen Gruenwaldt, was able to research the local people briefly. When he was interviewing a remote tribe that practiced some syncretic form of Islam, he heard a proverb: men are like the moon, while Jinns are like the comets. He wrote this down but did not give it much thought at the time.
“We were supported during the campaign by a large number of Islamist Syrians. Hitler was well received in the Arab world, and although an atheist, he deeply admired Islam. After all, both wanted to drive out the Jews. But it was Himmler who saw more potential than human soldiers in Syria. He was deeply interested in the Islamic Jinns, and wanted to use them to his advantage.
“Some background on the Jinns will be helpful, I believe. They were made out of a smokeless fire by Allah in the beginning of time. They have the ability to become invisible, travel at rapid speeds, and take the form of humans and animals. Obviously, their skills would be very useful. However, they have free will, so getting them to do your bidding is not easy. After German forces were driven from the Middle East and North Africa, Himmler was forced to stop the mission.
“Now back to the other mission, the time mission, it was named Operation Ragnarök, a name from Norse Mythology. After the war, its main participants were smuggled to Brazil where a compound was already prepared for them. The military strategists began devising detailed plans on how to win the war from 1943. Difficult task. Very difficult. And you only get one opportunity. It would probably be 1945 till another amulet could be made, and by then there would be no hope. But the plans would be no good if you can’t relay them to the past. That was the job of the physicists and astronomers. Came up with all these crazy plans, involving quantum mechanics, black holes, alternative dimensions, most of which I don’t understand. And from what I grasped, none of them were plausible.
“Now the social scientists—the anthropologists, the archaeologists, the historians—they did not have much to do. So they began to reread the old journals. A few of them had done some work in the Middle East, but none of them had a deep understanding of Islamic culture. One of them came across Himmler’s plan to harness the power of the Jinns. The Jinns do not normally reside in our dimension. The anthropologist thought that if we were able to contact the Jinns, the problem would be solved. But lots debated the existence of the Jinns, and those who believed in them were not sure whether their dimension would be affected by the time shift. Dr. Gruenwaldt’s quote from the tribe, ‘men are like the moon, while Jinns are like the comets,’ was used to bolster the argument that they weren’t. The interpretation was that men were like the moon, they have cycles, whereas comets have much longer cycles, so long that the tribe thought they moved linearly and not cyclically. Or at the very least they knew they wouldn’t both be affected by the same amulet, as they resided in different dimensions, they had different cycles. There were other interpretations of this quote, but as the physicists’ research was at a dead end it was thought to pursue this lead.
“The next problem was how to find a jinn. The team was divided into groups and sent to different cities in Brazil. I was sent to São Paulo with two other men. Had no idea what to look for. Wandered the streets, looking for anyone who looked like they might be of some help. On a side street off the Avenida Paulista, we encountered a young Negro fortune teller offering tarot card readings. Having no other leads, we asked him if he knew what a Jinn was. He did not respond, but his face showed recognition. I pulled out a 200 cruzeiro banknote and asked him how he knew about a Jinn. He took the bill and told us he heard about Jinns from his grandfather. I asked if he was still alive and he nodded.
“After another bribe, he agreed to take us to his grandfather. We took a cab to a favela in the southern section of Brazil. Not a very safe place to be, very dirty, trash-filled streets, dilapidated shacks, dogs running wild. Not a place you wanted to be, but we had to do it, you understand? It was our duty as Germans. Our duty to the Vaterland, the Fatherland. As we walked through the narrow streets, we felt the eyes of the whole town were upon us, people peeking out the windows, children running away to report that three strange white men had arrived. The fortune teller guided us to a two-story shack. We entered, encountering a large Negro family on the first, about ten in all. We were guided to the second floor and entered a small bedroom, where an elderly Negro sat in a straw chair, smoking a pipe. In the center of the room was an altar with a black Madonna and child at the center, surrounded by black angels and saints. The fortune teller exchanged a few words with his grandfather. The Old Negro put down his pipe, turned and faced us.
“ ‘I hear you are interested in Jinns.’ he said in Portuguese.
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“ ‘Yes,’ I replied. By that time I had become nearly fluent in Portuguese.
“ ‘Why?’ he asked.
“Obviously, we could not tell him our true motives. I made up a story, cannot recall it now, but it seemed to convince him. That or the money we showed him convinced him. He then told us his story. His grandfather was born as a Muslim slave in 1830. In 1835, the Malê Revolt occurred. Black Muslim slaves rose up against the government in the coastal city of Salvador. Afterwards, the government became frightened and tried to force Catholicism onto the Afro-Brazilian population. However, it was not fully successful. The Old Negro was taught a traditional form of Islam from his grandfather, attended Catholic school, and was exposed to Candomblé, an African-based religion, from members of his community. He claimed that he was exceptionally gifted in terms of his psychic ability, and was able to contact a wide variety of spiritual entities, including Jinns. However, once his grandfather died, his education in Islam stopped, and he practiced Catholicism with some African elements mixed in. When he was thirty, he moved south to São Paulo, to work in the orange groves. He heard from a friend the pay was decent and the quality of life good.
“While working in the fields, he met a young Syrian man, named Marwan. There is a significant population of Syrian and Lebanese immigrants in Brazil, mostly Christian, but a few Muslims, who immigrated in the late 19th and early 20th century. We did not know this or we would have visited the mosques and not a street fortune teller, but it probably worked out for the best. Anyway, this particular man was a Muslim, a mystical Sufi, and he helped rekindle the Old Negro’s interest in Islam. The Old Negro told us that he was much more powerful in the ways of Islamic spirits then he was, and gave us a card with his name and the address of a mosque where we could find him at. We thanked him.
“We drove to the mosque, a small structure with a single minaret located in the Northern fringes of the cities. Evening prayers had just gotten out, and there were about fifty people milling about. We approached them and said we had been sent by the Old Negro, whose name I cannot recall, to see Marwan. They seemed surprised, but were polite and said that Marwan was too ill to attend mosque and would be conducting his prayers at home. We got his address and planned to visit him in the morning. As we were almost in our car, we were approached by two young men, in their late teens. They asked if we were German. We said yes. Asked if we were in the war. After affirming, they invited us to dinner at their house. There was a group of about eight sitting around the table, mostly in their teens and twenties, but a few older men. Apparently, their mosque was too liberal for them, deviating from the teachings of the Holy Koran, and the Prophet Muhammad, may peace and blessings be upon him. They were unhappy with the leadership within the mosque, some members had gone as far as consorting with the local Jewish community. The Jews cause problems wherever they go, you understand. The group had a plan to stage a coup, overthrow the leadership of the mosque, and kill the Jewish interlopers. But we had a better plan. We told them it and asked if they would help. They didn’t believe it at first, but I invited them back to our compound. Three agreed to join us. Their names were—”
The voice of Vimal came across the radio. “Get back to headquarters now...”
Pratap left his office at the University of Delhi and began the three-mile trek back to his apartment. He did not like to walk alone late at night, but tonight he had no choice. Had a grant proposal due at midnight, trying to get his life back to normal after the death of Zakir. He was going to ensure that Zakir’s death would not be in vain. They were so close, so so close, to rewriting the history of the world when Zakir died. His death setback their research many years, but it would not stop it. Nothing would stop the truth from getting out.
Outside of the university grounds, he passed a bus stop, where a man, talking on a cell phone, waved to him.
“Pratap!” said Javaid, an Urdu professor who lived in the same apartment complex as Pratap. “Surprised to see you out so late.”
“Had to finish a writing a grant. Are you heading home?”
“Yeah, been waiting for the bus for thirty minutes. I’ll walk with you.”
Five minutes later, Pratap heard footsteps behind him. He turned around, coming face to face with a bearded man with a cricket bat. Before he could run, the wooden bat crashed down on his skull.
The Last Sentinel Page 5
