Black Order (26 page)

“About the Bible,” Gray said. “Can you tell me anything else about it? Was the library always kept here?”

“
Natürlich
. Some books were taken out into the field when one or another of my relatives went abroad for research. But this book only left the household once. I only know that because I was here when it was returned. Mailed back by my grandfather. Caused a stir here.”

“Why’s that?”

“I thought you might ask. That’s why I sent Ryan out. Best he not know.”

“Ask about what?”

“My grandfather Hugo worked for the Nazis. As did his daughter, my aunt Tola. The two of them were inseparable. I learned later, whispered scandalously among the relatives, that they were involved in some secret research project. Both were noted and distinguished biologists.”

“What sort of research?” Monk asked.

“No one ever knew. Both my grandfather and Aunt Tola died at the end of the war. But a month before that, a crate arrived from my grandfather. It contained the part of the library he had taken with him. Maybe he knew he was doomed and wanted to preserve the books. Five books actually.” The man tapped the Bible. “This was one of them. Though what he might want with the Bible as a research tool, no one could tell me.”

“Maybe a piece of home,” Fiona said, softly.

Johann seemed finally to see the young girl. He slowly nodded. “Maybe. Perhaps some connection to his own father. Some symbolic stamp of approval for what he was doing.” The old man shook his head. “Working for the Nazis. Horrible business.”

Gray remembered something Ryan had said. “Wait. But you’re Jewish, aren’t you?”

“Yes. But you have to understand, my great-grandmother, Hugo’s mother, was German, with deep local family roots. Which included connections within the Nazi party. Even when Hitler’s pogrom began, our family was spared. We were classified as
Mischlinge,
mixed blood. Enough German to avoid a death sentence. But to prove that loyalty, my grandfather and aunt found themselves recruited by the Nazis. They were gathering scientists like squirrels after nuts.”

“So they were forced,” Gray said.

Johann stared out into the storm. “It was complicated times. My grandfather held some strange beliefs.”

“Like what?”

Johann seemed not to hear the question. He opened the Bible and flipped through the pages. Gray noted the hand-inked marks. He stepped forward and pointed to a few of the hand-drawn hash marks.

“We were wondering what those were,” Gray said.

“Are you familiar with the Thule Society?” the old man asked, seeming not to hear his question.

Gray shook his head.

“They were an extreme German nationalistic group. My grandfather was a member, initiated when he was twenty-two. His mother’s family had ties with the founding members. They believed deeply in the
Übermensch
philosophy.”

“
Übermensch
. Supermen.”

“Correct. The society was named after a mythical land of Thule, some remnant of the lost kingdom of Atlantis, a land of some superrace.”

Monk made a dismissive noise.

“As I said,” Johann wheezed, “my grandfather held a few strange beliefs. But he was not in the minority at the time. Especially here locally. It was in these forests that the ancient Germanic Teuton tribes held off the Roman legions, defining the boundary between Germany and the Roman Empire. The Thule Society believed that these Teutonic warriors were descendants of this lost superrace.”

Gray understood the appeal of the myth. If these ancient German warriors were supermen, then their descendants—modern Germans—still carried the genetic heritage. “It was the beginning of the Aryan philosophy.”

“Their beliefs were also mixed up with much mysticism and occult trappings. I never understood it all. But according to my family, my grandfather was unusually inquisitive. Always searching up strange things, investigating historical mysteries. In his spare time, he was ever keen about sharpening his mind. Memorization tricks, jigsaw puzzles. Always with the jigsaw puzzles. Then he discovered some of the occult stories and sought the truth behind them. It became an obsession.”

As he spoke, the old man’s attention had returned to the Bible. He riffled through the pages. He finally reached the end and searched the inside back cover.
“Das ist merkwürdig.”

Merkwürdig
. Strange.

Gray stepped closer, looking over the man’s shoulder.

“What?”

The old man ran a bony finger down the inside cover. He flipped to the front, then back again. “The Darwin family tree. It wasn’t just written on the inside of the front…but also on the back. I was only a boy at the time, but I remember that clearly.”

Johann held up the book. “The family tree at the back is gone.”

“Let me see.” Gray took the book. He examined the inside of the end cover more closely. Fiona and Monk flanked him.

He ran a finger along the binding, then examined the back cover closely.

“Look here,” he said. “It looks like someone sliced free the back flyleaf page of the Bible and glued it over the inside of the back cover.
Over
the original pastedown.” Gray glanced to Fiona. “Would Grette have done that?”

“Not a chance. She would rather rip apart the
Mona Lisa
.”

If not Grette…

Gray glanced to Johann.

“I’m sure no one in my family would’ve done that. The library was sold only a few years after the war. After it was mailed back here, I doubt anyone touched the Bible.”

That left only Hugo Hirszfeld.

“Knife,” Gray said and crossed to a garden table.

Monk reached to his pack and unhooked a Swiss Army knife. He opened it and passed it to Gray. Using the tip, Gray razored the edges of the back sheet, then teased a corner up. The thick flyleaf lifted easily. Only the edges had been glued.

Johann wheeled his chair to join them. He had to push up with his arms to see over the table’s edge. Gray did not hide what he was doing. He might need the man’s cooperation for whatever was exposed.

He removed the flyleaf and revealed the original pasteboard of the cover. Neatly written upon it was the other half of the Darwin family tree. Johann had been correct. But that was not all that was there now.

“Horrible,” Johann said. “Why would Grandfather do that? Deface the Bible so?”

Superimposed over the family tree, inked across the entire page in black, dug deep into the backboard of the Bible, was a strange symbol.

In the same ink, a single line in German had been penned below it.

Gott, verzeihen mir.

Gray translated.

God, forgive me
.

Monk pointed to the symbol. “What is that?”

“A rune,” Johann said, scowling and dropping back into his seat. “More of my grandfather’s madness.”

Gray turned to him.

Johann explained. “The Thule Society believed in rune magic. Ancient power and rites associated with the Nordic symbols. As the Nazis took to heart the Thule’s philosophy of supermen, they also absorbed the mysticism about runes.”

Gray was familiar with the Nazi symbology and its ties to runes, but what did it mean here?

“Do you know the significance of this particular symbol?” Gray asked.

“No. It’s not a subject a German Jew would find of interest. Not after the war.” Johann turned his wheelchair and stared out at the storm. Thunder rumbled, sounding far away and close at the same time. “But I know who might be able to help you. A curator at the museum up there.”

Gray closed the Bible and joined Johann. “What museum?”

A crackle of lightning lit the conservatory. Johann pointed upward. Gray craned. In the fading light, veiled in rain, rose the massive castle.

“Historisches Museum des Hochstifts Paderborn,” Johann said. “It is open today. Inside the castle.” The old man scowled at his neighbor. “They’ll certainly know what the symbol means.”

“Why’s that?” Gray asked.

Johann stared at him as though he were a simpleton. “Who better? That is Wewelsburg Castle.” When Gray didn’t respond, the old man continued with a sigh. “Himmler’s Black Camelot. The stronghold of the Nazi SS.”

“So it
was
Dracula’s castle,” Monk mumbled.

Johann continued, “Back in the seventeenth century, witch trials were held up there, thousands of women tortured and executed. Himmler only added to its blood debt. Twelve hundred Jews from the Niederhagen concentration camp died during Himmler’s reconstruction of the castle. A cursed place. Should be torn down.”

“But the museum there,” Gray asked, directing Johann away from his growing anger. The man’s wheezing had worsened. “They would know about the rune?”

A nod. “Heinrich Himmler was a member of the Thule Society, steeped in rune lore. In fact, it was how my grandfather was brought to his attention. They shared an obsession with runes.”

Gray sensed a convergence of ties and events, all centered on this occult Thule Society. But what? He needed more information. A trip to the castle museum was doubly warranted.

Johann wheeled himself away from Gray, dismissing him. “It was because of such common interests with my grandfather that Himmler granted our family, a family of
Mischlinge,
the pardon. We were spared the camps.”

Because of Himmler
.

Gray understood the root of the man’s anger…and why he had asked his son to leave the room. It was a family burden best left undiscovered. Johann stared out into the storm.

Gray collected the Bible and waved everyone out.
“Danke,”
he called back to the old man.

Johann did not acknowledge him, lost in the past.

Gray and the others were soon out on the front porch again. The rain continued to pour out of low skies. The courtyard was deserted. There would be no biking or hiking today.

“Let’s go,” Gray said and headed into the rain.

“Perfect day to storm a castle,” Monk said sarcastically.

As they hurried across the courtyard, Gray noted a new car parked next to theirs. Empty. Engine steaming in the cold rain. Must have just arrived.

An ice-white Mercedes.

12:32
P.M
.
HIMALAYAS

“Where is the signal coming from?” Anna asked.

The woman had rushed into the maintenance room, responding immediately to Gunther’s call. She had arrived alone, claiming Lisa had wanted to remain behind in the library to follow up on some research. Painter thought it more likely that Anna still wanted to keep them apart.

Just as well that Lisa was out of harm’s way.

Especially if they were truly on the track of the saboteur.

Leaning closer to the laptop screen, Painter massaged the tips of his fingers. A persistent tingling itched behind his nails. He stopped rubbing long enough to point at the three-dimensional schematic of the castle.

“Best estimate is this region,” Painter said, tapping the screen. He had been surprised to see how extensively the castle spread into the mountain. It hollowed right through the peak. The signal came from the far side. “But it’s not a pinpoint. The saboteur would need a clear line of sight to use his satellite phone.”

Anna straightened. “The helipad is there.”

Gunther nodded with a grunt.

On the screen, the overlay of pulsing lines suddenly collapsed. “He’s ended the call,” Painter said. “We’ll have to move fast.”

Anna turned to Gunther. “Contact Klaus. Have his men close off the helipad. Now.”

Gunther swung to a phone receiver on the wall and started the lockdown. The plan had been to search everyone in the signal vicinity, discover who had an illicit sat-phone in their possession.

Anna returned to Painter. “Thank you for your help. We’ll search from here.”

“I may be of further help.” Painter had been busy typing on the laptop. He memorized the number that appeared on the screen, then detached his hand-built signal amplifier from the castle’s ground wire. He straightened. “But I’ll need one of your portable satellite phones.”

“I can’t leave you here with a phone,” Anna said, knuckling her temple and wincing. Headache.

“You don’t have to leave me. I’m going with you to the helipad.”

Gunther stepped forward, his usual frown deepening.

Anna waved him back. “We don’t have time to argue.” But something silent passed between the large man and his sister. A warning for the big man to keep an eye on Painter.

Anna led the way out.

Painter followed, still rubbing his fingers. The nails had begun to burn. He studied them for the first time, expecting the nail beds to be inflamed, but instead, his fingernails were oddly blanched, bled of color.

Frostbite?

Gunther passed him one of the castle’s phones, noted Painter’s attention, and shook his head. He held out a hand. Painter didn’t understand—then noted the man was missing the fingernails on his last three fingers.

Gunther lowered his arm and marched after Anna.

Painter clenched and unclenched his hands. So the tingling burn wasn’t frostbite. The quantum disease was advancing. He recalled Anna’s list of debilitations in the Bell’s test subjects: loss of fingers, ears, toes. Not unlike leprosy.

How much time?

As they headed toward the far side of the mountain, Painter studied Gunther. The man had lived his whole life with a sword hanging over his head. Chronic and progressive wasting, followed by madness. Painter was headed for the
Reader’s Digest
version of the same condition. He could not deny it terrified him—not so much the debilitation as the loss of his mind.

How long did he have?

Gunther must have sensed his reverie. “I will not let this happen to Anna,” he growled under his breath to Painter. “I will do anything to stop it.”

Painter was again reminded that the pair were brother and sister. Only after learning this did Painter see subtle similarities of feature: curve of lip, sculpt of chin, identical frown lines. Family. But the similarities ended there. Anna’s dark hair, emerald rich eyes contrasted sharply with her brother’s washed-out appearance. Only Gunther had been born under the Bell, one child sacrificed, a tithing in blood, and the last of the
Sonnekönige.

As they crossed hallways and descended stairs, Painter worked the back cover off the portable phone. He pocketed it, loosened the battery, and jury-rigged his amplifier to the antenna wire behind the battery. The broadcast would only be a single burst, seconds long, but it should do the job.

“What is that?” Gunther asked.

“A GPS sniffer. The amplifier recorded the chip-specs from the saboteur’s phone during the call. I may be able to use it to hunt him down if he’s close.”

Gunther grunted, buying the lie.

So far so good.

The stairs emptied into a wide passageway, large enough to trundle a tank through. Old steel tracks ran along the floor and headed straight through the heart of the mountain. The helipad was located at the other end, remote from the main castle. They mounted a flatbed car. Gunther released the hand brake and engaged the electric motor with the press of a floor pedal. There were no seats, only rails. Painter held on as they zipped down the passage, lit intermittently by overhead lamps.

“So you have your own subway system,” Painter said.

“For moving goods,” Anna replied, wincing, her brows furrowed tight in pain. She had taken two pills on the way here. Pain relievers?

They passed a series of storage rooms piled high with barrels, boxes, and crates, apparently flown in and warehoused. In another minute, they reached the terminal end of the passageway. The air had grown more heated, steamy, smelling vaguely sulfurous. A deep sonorous thrum vibrated through the stone and up Painter’s legs as he climbed off the train cart. He knew from his peek at the castle schematics that the geothermal plant was located in the nether regions of this area.

But they were headed up, not down.

A ramp continued from here, wide enough to accommodate a Humvee. They climbed up into a cavernous space. Light streamed through an open set of steel doors in the roof. It looked like the warehouse of a commercial airfield: cranes, forklifts, heavy equipment. And in the center rested a pair of A-Star Ecuriel helicopters, one black, one white, both shaped like angry hornets, made for high-altitude flying.

Klaus, the hulking
Sonnekönige
guard, noted their entrance and marched up to them, favoring his weak side. He ignored everyone except Anna. “All is secure,” he said in crisp German.

He nodded to a line of men and women off to the side. A good dozen stood under the watchful eyes of a phalanx of armed guards.

“No one slipped past you?” Anna asked.

“
Nein.
We were ready.”

Anna had positioned four
Sonnekönige
in each main quadrant of the castle, ready to lock down whichever region Painter pinpointed with his device. But what if he had made a mistake? The commotion here would surely alert the saboteur. He or she would go even deeper into hiding. This was their one chance.

Anna knew it, too. She moved stiffly as she crossed the space. “Have you found—?”

She stumbled a step, weaving a bit. Gunther caught her arm, steadying her, his face worried.

“I’m fine,” she whispered to him and continued on her own.

“We’ve searched everyone,” Klaus said, doing his best to ignore her misstep. “We’ve found no phone or device. We were about to start searching the helipad.”

Anna’s frown deepened. It was what they had feared. Rather than carrying the phone, the saboteur might easily have stashed it somewhere after the call.

Or then again, Painter might have miscalculated.

In which case, he would have to redeem himself.

Painter stepped to Anna’s side. He lifted his makeshift device. “I might be able to accelerate the search for the phone.”

She eyed him suspiciously, but their choices were few. She nodded.

Gunther kept to his shoulder.

Painter lifted the satellite phone, turned it on, and punched in the number he had memorized. Nine digits. Nothing happened. Eyes were fixed on him.

He scrunched in concentration and punched them in again.

Still nothing.

Had he got the number wrong?

“Was ist los?”
Anna asked.

Painter stared at the line of digits on the phone’s small screen. He read through them again and saw his error. “I mixed up the last two numbers. Transposed them.”

He shook his head and typed them in again, concentrating hard, going slow. He finally entered the right sequence. Anna met his eyes when he glanced up. His error was more than stress. She knew it, too. Keypad punching was often used as a test of mental acuity.

And this had only been a simple telephone number.

But an important one.

Painter’s signal net had acquired the saboteur’s sat-phone number. He pressed the transmit button and glanced up.

After a millisecond, a phone rang in the chamber, trilling loudly.

All eyes turned.

To Klaus.

The
Sonnekönig
backed up a step.

“Your saboteur…,” Painter said.

Klaus opened his mouth, ready to deny—but instead he yanked out his handgun, his face going hard.

Gunther reacted a second faster, his MK23 pistol already in hand.

A blast of muzzle fire.

Klaus’s weapon flew from his fingertips with a ricocheted spark.

Gunther lunged forward, pressing his pistol’s smoking barrel against Klaus’s cheek. Cold flesh sizzled, branded by the hot muzzle. Klaus didn’t even wince. They needed the saboteur alive, to answer questions. Gunther asked the foremost one.

“Warum?”
he growled. Why?

Klaus glared out of his one good eye. The other’s lid drooped along with his half-paralyzed face, turning his sneer into something more dreadful. He spat on the ground. “To put an end to the humiliating reign of the
Leprakönige
.”

A long-suppressed hatred shone from his twisted face. Painter could only imagine the years of anger smoldering in the man’s bones, years of ridicule while his body deteriorated. Once a prince, now a leper. But Painter sensed it was more than mere revenge. Someone had turned the man into a mole.

But who?

“Brother,” Klaus said to Gunther, “it doesn’t have to be this way. A life of the living dead. There is a cure.” A keening edge of hope and pleading entered the man’s voice. “We can be kings among men again.”

So there was the man’s forty pieces of silver.

Promise of a cure.

Gunther was not swayed. “I am not your brother,” he answered from deep in his chest. “And I was
never
a king.”

Painter sensed the true difference between these two
Sonnekönige.
Klaus was a decade older. As such, he had grown up as a prince here, only to have it all taken away. Gunther, on the other hand, had been born at the end of the test run, when the reality of the debilitation and madness had become known. He had always been a leper, knowing no other life.

And there was another critical difference between them.

“You sentenced Anna to death with your betrayal,” Gunther said. “I will make you and anyone who supported you suffer for it.”

Klaus did not retreat but became more earnest. “She can be cured, too. It can be arranged.”

Gunther’s eyes narrowed.

Klaus sensed the hesitation, the hope in his adversary. Not for himself, but his sister. “She doesn’t have to die.”

Painter remembered Gunther’s words earlier.
I will not let this happen to Anna. I will do anything to stop it
. Did that include betraying everyone else? Even defying his sister’s wishes?

“Who promised you this cure?” Anna asked in a hard voice.

Klaus laughed gutturally. “Men far greater than the sniveling things you have become here. It is only right that you should be cast aside. You have served your purpose. But no longer.”

A loud
pop
exploded in Painter’s hands. The satellite phone he’d used to expose the saboteur shattered as the battery detonated, short-circuited by his amplifier. Fingers stinging, he dropped the smoking remains of the sat-phone and glanced skyward, toward the helipad bay doors. He prayed the amplifier had lasted long enough.

He was not the only one distracted. All eyes had swung toward him when the phone blew up. Including Gunther’s.

Using the momentary inattention, Klaus freed a hunting knife and leaped at the other
Sonnekönig
. Gunther fired, catching his attacker in the gut with the large slug. Still, Klaus’s blade grazed through the meat of Gunther’s shoulder as he fell.

Gasping, Gunther twisted and threw Klaus to the floor.

The man crashed hard, sprawled out. Still, he managed to roll up on his side, his good arm clutching his belly. Blood poured heavily out of the stomach wound. Klaus coughed. More blood. Bright red. Arterial. Gunther’s wild shot had struck something vital.

Anna hurried to Gunther’s side to check his wound. He brushed her back, keeping his pistol trained on Klaus. Blood soaked through Gunther’s sleeve and dripped to the stone.

Klaus merely laughed, a grating of rocks. “You will all die! Strangled when the knot tightens!”

He coughed again, convulsive. Blood spread in a pool. With a final trembling sneer, he slumped to the floor facedown. Gunther lowered his gun. Klaus needed no further guarding. One last breath and the large man lay still.

Dead.

Gunther allowed Anna to use an oily scrap of rag from a pile nearby to tie off his wound until it could be better tended.

Painter circled Klaus’s body, nagged by something. Others in the room had gathered around, talking among themselves in voices both fearful and hopeful. They had all heard the mention of a cure.

Anna joined him. “I’ll have one of our technicians examine his satellite phone. Maybe it can lead us to whoever orchestrated the sabotage.”

“Not enough time,” Painter mumbled, tuning everything else out. He concentrated on what bothered him. It was like grasping at threads just out of reach.