by G S Eli
Just then, the nurse entered with the scrubs. She screamed, dropping the garments at the sight of the guns. The man immediately grabbed her and pointed his weapon at her temple. Deborah never flinched. Her focus was still on the man’s eyes.
“Let him go! And step away from the girl, or I’ll shoot the nurse!” he ordered.
“Yes! Shoot her!” the other man yelled in agony from Deborah’s grip on his broken arm.
Deborah realized she was not the target: they were there for Casey. She began to analyze the situation, still never losing her focus on his eyes, not even a blink. In a matter of seconds, she understood that if he wanted, the man could point his pistol at Casey and kill her, but he would die himself when Deborah returned fire. That told Deborah that this was not a suicide mission or a terrorist act. These are hired men, she concluded, and not good ones, either. This may well be their first hit.
“Release him and step away! Or I’ll kill her at the count of three,” he said tersely.
Deborah remained unmoved. Neither the man’s threats nor the terrified look of the nurse had any effect on her. The man started his count.
“One…two…”
Bang!
The nurse screamed as the man holding her dropped to the ground, blood spraying from between his eyes. The terrified woman ran into the hallway leaving the door swinging behind her. Just before it could shut, a tan-skinned hand grabbed it and pulled it open. On the other side stood Mila, holding the door with Jack not far behind.
XIII
The Coal Miner’s Son
This was not supposed to happen, Siegfried thought as excruciating pain shot through his most certainly broken arm and wrist. Who was this woman? Her vice-like grip had never weakened a bit, even when she pulled the trigger to take out his partner.
“Jack, Mila, use the chair to jam the door,” the woman called Ms. Musef shouted to the youths who had just entered the room. The boys immediately followed her instructions.
Without a second to think, Siegfried was turned around and placed in a chair next to Casey’s bed. All the while the woman never loosened her grip on his injured arm. And now his own pistol was pointing directly at his forehead, cocked and ready to shoot.
“Don’t shoot! Please don’t shoot!” he shouted in terror.
The woman loosened her grip for a quick second, only to strike him on the side of his head with his own gun with a loud thunk! She then shoved him into a hospital chair. Dizzy from the blow, he knew he could die here like his partner. Desperately trying to keep his eyes open, he felt himself fading in and out of consciousness. Stay awake! he told himself. It’s your only chance to get out of here.
He opened his eyes and looked at Musef, who was yelling something that he fought to understand through the ringing in his ears. Finally, it diminished, and he heard her more clearly.
“Why are you here?” Musef shouted in the tone of an aggressive interrogator.
Siegfried clenched his eyes shut, desperately trying to remember his mission. He tried to think back. The only thing he could remember was that his employer told him that these were just Gypsy-loving rats. But that’s all he could recall amid the ringing and dizziness fading in and out of his head. He opened his eyes once again, but all he saw was darkness: he’d been blindfolded. Then he felt something like plastic wire squeeze against his good arm and tighten. He strained against it and realized he couldn’t move. She’s zip tied me! he thought.
Excruciating pain shot down his wounded arm and into his wrist again. The interrogation continued, but still all he heard was ringing and all he felt was the sharp stabs of pain from his injuries.
“We have to do something now! She looks terrible!” one of the boys said.
With that sentence, Siegfried remembered his mission. The girl, he thought. I was sent here for the girl. Despite the woman’s tight grip still twisting his arm and wrist, he managed to force a few words through his lips.
“We were sent to kill her!” he panted in agony. There was a second’s quiet pause, even a slight loosening of the vice-like hold on his arm. They seemed to be shocked by his answer. What have I done? Did I say too much? he wondered.
“Why? Who are you?” the American boy demanded.
“He’s from the True Nationalist Coalition. They’re a modern Nazi party,” Musef answered. “I knew I recognized that tattoo.”
Someone outside pounded on the locked door. Bang! Bang! “Ms. Musef! Are you OK? I have security here! The police are on their way!” a voice shouted from the other side.
Siegfried recognized the voice: it was the doctor who had introduced them to the woman in the first place. He’d assumed she was a teacher. Obviously, he was wrong.
“I’m going to ask you some questions, and you are going to answer them, unless you want to wind up like your friend on the floor here,” Musef said.
Before he could answer her, the pain pierced his arm again. He heard the American say, “She’s dying! What the hell are we going to do with this piece of metal?”
Musef ignored Jack’s shouting. “Why would you want to hurt this innocent girl? What does your party want with her?”
The pain continued. He felt her hands rubbing and shifting his arm once more and heard cracking noises coming from his arm along with the unbearable pain he felt. Oh my God, I’m being tortured, Siegfried thought. I’d rather just die.
“We’ve gotta get this thing to the doctors so they can identify the poison,” the American said.
“There is no poison,” the other boy said, his accent revealing his Gypsy identity.
“Poison?” the woman broke in. “What are you talking about?”
As the boys argued, Deborah ignored them and turned back to her interrogation. He knew she had to get it out of him. He had to tell her what she needed to know, or she would continue her cruel torture.
Suddenly, Siegfried felt the sting of something cold and flat against his inner arm. He didn’t know what would come next, but it couldn’t be good.
“It has something to do with the golden scepter!” he shouted in terror.
Everyone went silent. the woman stopped what she was doing.
“We caught a little Gypsy boy. A priest, a friend of my boss, he got him to talk by promising to reunite him with his twin brother.”
“Korey…” the Gypsy whispered.
“He told us how the girl got sick after running onto the subway tracks. The others searched the station. My partner and I were told to wait here. Then they called in and told us to kill the girl,” Siegfried said desperately. Then the pain took over, and he began to choke with sobs.
“Who?” Musef asked. “Who ordered that?”
“The nail is bewitched!” the Gypsy boy yelled, still debating with the American. All the while, the banging from the hospital door never ceased. “Don’t you get it? It has some kind of powers to heal her body! My great-aunt told me. That’s why his boss wants it!” the Gypsy shouted.
“Are you completely insane?” the American asked.
Siegfried could feel the woman lean in close. “So, you Nazis are still searching for bewitched objects for your murderous crusades?” she whispered menacingly into his ear.
Tears began to soak Siegfried’s blindfold. The pain had dulled a little; the emotional breakdown was probably distracting him. He tried to answer the question. Was it a bewitched item? “I was a young man when I heard of this object. No one really believed the stories,” he said.
“Do you believe the stories?” she asked.
Shaking his head, weeping at the same time, he choked on his words. “No, no, I don’t believe the stories. But I believe now that my superiors do. And they will kill for this object.”
“Well, we know one person has died already,” Musef said.
“Three people,” the Gypsy said sadly. “Gypsies are people, too.”
The room became quiet. The only thing Siegfried could hear now was the beeping of the heart monitors. The beeps got less frequent as time went on. The girl’s heart was failing.
“I’m not interested in increasing that to four people, so maybe you can help me. In less than five minutes, there are going to be about fifty police on the other side of that door,” Musef said to Siegfried. “Before they get here, you’re going to tell me what I need to know.”
He began to weep more pitifully. He put his head down. “I don’t know much. I only know what Professor Hermann taught us years ago at Wewelsburg Castle. I was staying at the youth hostel nearby.”
“Wewelsburg Castle!” she said, shocked. “This is getting better and better,” she continued sarcastically.
“What castle?” the Gypsy asked.
“It was a temple that was intended to be the center of Nazi ideology. It’s where the Thule Society gathered for their meetings. They believed they were descendants of Aryan gods, and the temple was going to be their Mecca,” the woman explained. “Those psychopaths murdered millions of people… They needed to tell a lot of lies to accomplish that. First, they invented their own history. Then the next step was to invent their own religion. If Hitler had had his way, Christianity would have been abolished along with Judaism and every other religion except his own, the one they invented.”
“How the hell do you know that?” the Gypsy questioned her.
“She’s ex-Mossad, Israeli intelligence,” the American said.
“You are NOT supposed to be repeating that,” Musef snapped.
Siegfried now knew that the woman before him was not only a skilled agent, but someone of Jewish heritage, as well. She must think my party is another pack of blood thirsty animals, he worried as fear and shame overtook him. Siegfried hated being compared to the Nazis of the past. They believed in genocide and conquest, but that was not his belief.
Musef leaned in close again. “I see why you took the job,” she hissed into his ear. “Your idols murdered millions. What would one more little girl matter to you?”
“I am not a murderer!” he declared. “I only believed in taking our country back. The SS were not the only people who paid the price for Hitler’s war. The common people paid, as well—my family most of all. My family helped build this country. We mined coal for four generations, only to lose it all to the Communists. We lost everything! We still suffer to this day. I joined this party because I believe in purity, hard work, progress. Is it so wrong to want your people to have a country all their own?”
The woman pulled back. Siegfried sensed that he had somehow struck a nerve. “That kind of thinking always leads to bloodshed,” she warned.
Bang! Bang! More pounding on the door. “This is the police! Open up at once!” an authoritative voice shouted.
“We have a hostage situation!” she shouted in return. “Pull your men back, now!”
Now Siegfried was even more frightened than before. The woman had just bought herself some time with the police. What’s more, she was a convincing liar. I’m the one that’s being held captive. What if she kills me? he thought in a panic. She could easily lie about that, too, and they’d probably believe her.
“Let me help you,” he urged. “I know about this object. If the girl is sick and dying, then maybe there’s some truth to the story.”
From the darkness under his blindfold, he heard only silence.
“Please take off the blindfold,” he pleaded. “Let me look at the object.”
He could feel the covering over his eyes being untied, and there was light. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust. The first thing he noticed was the makeshift cast on his arm and wrist. It was primitive, but impressive. Confused, he looked up at Musef.
“I keep splinting materials in my first-aid kit. I managed to set your arm,” she said matter-of-factly.
Siegfried stared at the cast a moment as Deborah drew out a penknife and cut him free of the zip tie. She raised the pistol slightly, just to remind him that she was in control.
“You didn’t think I was really a torturer, did you?” she asked.
The sight of the cast brought a tear to his eye. The strange woman’s act of grace humbled him deep inside and made him ashamed of his past. Siegfried decided he wanted to help them save the girl if it was at all possible.
The Gypsy boy brought the scepter closer. It perfectly matched the illustrations Siegfried had been shown at Wewelsburg Castle. He remembered how captivating those paintings were. The real thing was twice as entrancing. For a moment, he could only think of how beautiful the talisman was. He shook his head back and forth, trying to focus.
Then Siegfried closed his eyes, trying to remember what he’d been taught so long ago. “‘He who speaks the incantation and invokes it will gain the power of vigor, and health, strength, and vitality will be theirs,’” he quoted, remembering the words he’d been told long ago. “Quick, look at the inscriptions. Do you see the word vigoris, written anywhere?”
The Gypsy boy turned the nail over, thoroughly examining the seven sides. It was clear to Siegfried that he was struggling to decipher the etched text on the nail. “Look. Here it is,” he said, pointing to one of the seven sides. “Is this it?” He brought the nail to Siegfried’s eyes and pointed to a word.
“No, that says veritas,” Siegfried explained, “Turn it over slowly.”
The Gypsy began to turn the object clockwise. Passing through the texts, Siegfried noticed some sides had been completely filed off, as if to conceal something. As he rotated the nail, Siegfried could see the word vigoris clear as day. “That’s it!” Siegfried shouted.
“Oh, great. How is Casey supposed to read the incantation and invoke it? She’s out like a light,” the Gypsy boy said in frustration.
“Give it here. Maybe we can open her eyes or something?” said the American boy called Jack.
The Gypsy boy reached across Casey’s bed to hand over the nail to Jack. Suddenly, there was a crash of thunder. The lights flickered and went out for a moment. Everyone glanced up at the fluorescent ceiling lights as they came back on.
The Gypsy boy looked back at the nail, and his eyes went wide. He couldn’t stop staring. “It changed,” he said.
“What?” Jack said. “What are you talking about, Mila?”
“This side was in Latin before,” Mila said. “I’m sure of it.” He held it up for all to see. A series of raised dots had appeared on the scepter.
“It’s braille,” Jack marveled. He held out his hand to Mila, who seemed to understand. Mila handed him the nail, and Jack turned to Casey’s bedside. He lifted her wrist and brought her fingertips toward the object, then paused to look at Mila. The Gypsy boy nodded. Jack began to slide Casey’s fingers across the side of the nail. The tip of one finger reached the end.
A blinding flash of lightning angled in through the sheer curtains of the hospital window as if searching for someone inside the small room. Outside, a blast of thunder exploded with an earsplitting crash. The rain pounded violently down like a storm of falling rocks.
Everyone in the room shivered at the strength of the storm. They, including Siegfried, watched in amazement as Jack guided Casey’s finger along the Braille text. Can that thing really be … bewitched? he wondered.
There came another flash of lightning and another crash of thunder. The room was bathed in white light for a fraction of a second. Everyone covered their eyes. They could hear the crackle of electricity as the heart monitor short-circuited. The smell of burned plastic and rubber filled the room.
Siegfried reluctantly opened his eyes, but before he could get a good look at the girl the door burst open. A squad of armed police rushed in and dragged him from the room and the dark sorcery that enveloped it.
XIV
Blame the Gypsy
Casey awoke with a gasp, sitting upright in a bed that was not
her own. Her surroundings were new and strange. She raised her head from the hard pillows and took a quick look around. In the dark, she spotted the shape of a woman near her bed. The woman drew back the window shades, and the room was bathed in the golden light of the afternoon sun. The unseasonable rains had finally come to an end.
Squinting as she adjusted to the bright light, Casey tried to gather her thoughts after what she knew had been a long, deep slumber. It was clear she was in a hospital bed and the woman was a nurse, but why? She felt strong and aware of everything: not ill at all. The nurse was still fidgeting with the shades, revealing the large windows that looked out into a green, lush landscape at ground level.
On the other side of the bed, a medical monitor was attached to her arm. Asleep in a chair at the foot of the bed was a lumpy, blanket-clad figure with a face she recognized: Jack.
“Ahhh!” the nurse screamed, then covered her mouth with her hand, her face as white as the sheets on Casey’s bed.
Jack sat up with a start. “What happened?” he and Casey shouted in unison.
The nurse uncovered her mouth. The color returned to her face as she grimaced with embarrassment. “Die hunde,” she said. “How do you say in English, ‘stray dogs’? They’ve been outside the building all day! One was right outside the window, looking in, growling. They frightened me.”
Casey sat up and peered out the window. Sure enough, a large, mangy dog was lurking outside. It stood still, and for a moment, it seemed to be directing its fierce, aggressive gaze right at them. Then the animal calmly wandered away.
“Never mind the dogs,” the nurse said to Casey. “We’re perfectly safe in here,” she added, feeling more confident in her English. She stepped to Casey’s bedside. She held a paper bag in one hand and gestured to her patient. “Your purse and clothing are here for you,” she said.
