Lycanthropos (34 page)

Petra
placed the blade of the scalpel against Heine's forehead and after a moment's pause pressed it down and
pulled it quickly across the skin from temple to temple.
Then she stood back and observed. She turned to Schlacht.
"No blood, Herr Colonel. No cut, no wound, no mark."

Schlacht smiled and nodded to one of the guards. "Stand
aside, Fräulein, if you please." he said.

Petra
complied, and when she was safely away from Heine the guard l
eveled his Schmeisser submachine gun at the prisoner and opened fire. The rapid series of explosions was deafening in the confines of the small room, and the smell of gunpowder caused
Petra
to cough and close her eyes.

When she opened them again, dozens of flattened bits of lead were lying on the floor in front of Heine, and the
prisoner was still screaming,
still
weeping. Still alive.

"Yes!" Schlacht shouted. "Yes! Reload! Repeat!" The guard removed the spent clip from the gun and replaced it with a fresh one which held another thirty rounds, and then emptied the submachine gun once again into the terrified man,
with the same results. Schlacht grabbed another Schmeisser
from the hands of the other guard and walked forward. He pointed the barrel directly at the chest of Walter Heine and opened fire. Heine bounced back from the impact and then
fell forward, blood streaming from his chest. His shuddering
body ceased to move.

"He is dead?!"
Petra
asked, strangely excited. "The experiment is a failure?

"Not at all, Fräulein." Schlacht replied, laughing
loudly. "The dilution of the enzyme allows us to kill him,
but look! Look!" He gestured at the flattened bullets which littered the floor. "We shot him ninety times before we killed him! What are the chances of a soldier being hit by ninety bullets in a battle? This
is
invulnerability, practical invulnerability! This is success, Fräulein Loewenstein, undreamed of success!" He turned to Vogel.
"Assemble our volunteers. You will find the list of names on
my desk. And arrange for transportation for all of us to Hunyad. We will initiate the final stage of the experiment
there."

"
Jawohl
, Herr Colonel," Vogel replied and then rushed
off to comply.

Schlacht turned and looked happily at the dead man as he
said to
Petra
, "Find Weyrauch and tell him to report to my office. I'll have Vogel arrange for him to join me at Hunyad. But take your time about
it,
powder your nose first or something. I don't want Gottfried to know that he's going somewhere until I've already left
Budapest
. I don't want to have to ride in the same car with him. The less I see of
him, the better."

"As you wish," she said quietly.

Schlacht turned to her. "Fräulein Loewenstein, you seem surprisingly subdued." She shrugged ambiguously. "Don't forget that when the official record of this experiment is written, yours will be the credit for the discovery. Your place among the scientific elite of the Reich is secure. A month ago you were one of a dozen chemists on Mengele's
staff. A month from now, if I have anything to say about
it,
and I assure you that I will, you will have your own staff
to assist you in your own research."

She smiled at him. "Thank you, Herr Colonel, that would be very, very gratifying. The opportunity to pursue one's own independent projects is a dream to most scientists. And
I know what my own research will be."

He returned her smile. "Yes, and I approve. As I told you before, I need to know how to kill them too." He took her warm hands in his as he said, "We shall avenge your
family and secure the Reich at one and the same time,
Petra
, you and I, together."

Her smiled broadened. "You make it sound like an
alliance, Helmuth."

He nodded as he took her into his arms and drew her to
him. "The Führer has said many times that the convergence of aims is the soundest basis for cooperation."

"Well," she whispered, "if the Führer says it, then it certainly must be true," and then bent her head back slightly to receive his lips against her own. Schlacht's hands moved slowly down from her waist to her buttocks. As they kissed, he closed his eyes and pressed her body against his. She melted into his arms and sighed softly, entwining her arms around his neck and pressing her belly against him.

But her eyes remained open and cold.

"Can you hear me, Kaldy?"

"I hear you, Herr Doctor."

"Backward in time, Kaldy, backward in time..."

"Yes..."

"Back past
Hungary
, past
France
. Back past
Romania
and
Mongolia
and
Novgorod
and Britannia..."

"Yes..."

"The centuries are rolling back, year by year, Kaldy. The memories are surfacing, you are living the past once again..."

"Yes...yes..."

A long pause. "Where are you now, Kaldy? When are you
now?"

"I am in prison. I am chained to a wall in a prison."

"Are you still in the Bastille, Kaldy? Have you not gone far enough back into the past?"

"No...no...not the Bastille...a prison...not the Bastille…"

"Is Merlin imprisoning you, Kaldy? Have you not gone far enough back into the past?"

"Merlin…I kinow no Merlin…a prison…a prison…"

"Is Claudia with you, Kaldy? Is Claudia with you in
prison?"

"Claudia…Claudia…I know no Claudia…"

"You do not know a woman named Claudia? You have not yet met Claudia?"

"I know no Claudia..."

"What year is it, Kaldy? When are you in prison?"

"Non eum sed meum…non eum..sed…meum..."

"What are you saying, Kaldy? What are you speaking, Latin? ‘Not him, but me.' What does that mean, Kaldy? What are you saying?"

"Non eum sed meum...peccavi, non
peccavit..."

"You are guilty but he is not? Who, Kaldy? Who is not
guilty?"

"Non eum...non eum...non eum..."

 

Lucius Messalinus Strabo planted a powerful kick into the unprotected side of the sleeping figure that lay motionless in the dust before him. The figure did not stir, and the centurion kicked him once again, deriving some measure of satisfaction at having a helpless object upon which to vent his frustrations. At his age and with his family connections back in Rome...his third cousin married to a senator, after all!...he certainly should have a career more honorable and profitable than the one which had consigned him to the command of a mere century of soldiers in this barbaric pesthole of a city, far from
the amenities of civilization.

"Wake up, scum!" he shouted and directed yet another kick at the motionless man. People walking past the dusty alleyway in the light of early morn knew better than to stop and look, let alone attempt to interfere. Strabo laughed and the three soldiers standing beside joined in his laughter. He looked at them and joked, "He must have had a bit too much wine
last night."

"Yes," one of them agreed, still laughing, "he seems to
have built up quite a thirst." As he said this he nodded toward the two mutilated bodies which lay in the dust nearby. It was just after sunrise, but the intense heat of
the season seemed already to be putrefying the dead flesh.

"I said wake up!" Strabo shouted once again, punctuating
his command with another kick. "I don't really care if you barbarians murder each other, but you won't do it on my watch! The law is the law! Now wake up!" and he kicked the sleeping man yet again.

The supine figure's eyes opened slowly and he raised himself up on one elbow and looked around him. He saw the gutted corpses and looked away, not so much repulsed or horrified as reminded of a painful and familiar reality. "You've had a busy night, haven't you?" Strabo asked with cruel humor. "Well, get up, animal. We aren't going to carry you to your execution. I said get up!"

Two of the soldiers grabbed the man by his arms and pulled him roughly to his feet. They wrenched his arms back behind him and tied his wrists together with a strip of
leather that Strabo had pulled from his belt. "I think the
procurator has had a busy night," one of them said to Strabo. "Perhaps we should just kill him here and be done
with it, and not bother..."

"You know better than that, Plautus," Strabo said. "We
have to teach these barbarians the value of Roman law, and we can't do that if we ignore it ourselves. Besides, no matter how bad a night the procurator has had, he would send us all to the galleys if we executed a prisoner without official permission."

Plautus seemed disgruntled. "We killed enough of them
last
year..."

"That was the suppression of a revolt, the maintenance of
order," Strabo pointed out, "not the execution of an apprehended murderer. You know the difference as well as I do, Plautus, and don't pretend otherwise."
What is this Tuscan doing in the army?
Strabo wondered with disgust. He looked at the prisoner and said, "Come along, piece of filth. I'm not going to waste all morning with you." He turned and began to walk through the already crowded streets toward the procurator's official residence, a building which would have seemed modest in
Rome
but which was actually opulent in the ‘barbaric pesthole' of
Jerusalem
.

The Hellenistic structure in which the Roman procurator Gaius Pontius Pilatus lived served many functions simultaneously. The upper level was, of course, the comfortably furnished living quarters of the procurator and his family; the ground level served as the center of administrative activities, including, of course, the frequent
trials at which Pilatus sat as the judge from whose sentence there was no appeal, save to the Emperor Tiberius, who never
bothered listening to appeals anyway; and a lower level, a windowless, humid, fetid pit encased by the foundation
stones of the building, served as a prison.

The prison did not need to be large, for long-term
incarceration had no place in Roman law or Roman custom.
Punishments for the commission of crimes were clearly stated, few in number, and quickly carried out; fines for minor offenses, enslavement for not so minor offenses, mutilation for certain particularly heinous acts, and, of course, execution for any one of the long list of capital crimes. Execution for a Roman citizen meant decapitation or, if the State chose to be generous, the privilege of being allowed to commit suicide. For a non-citizen, execution meant being tied or nailed to a piece of wood which would then be hoisted up and affixed to the top of a tall stake, where the unfortunate criminal would be left
hanging to die.

For these reasons, the prison into which the centurion
Strabo threw his prisoner was neither large nor full. Strabo
sent for a scribe while his men busied themselves with the task of chaining the prisoner to one of the damp, mossy walls. As a Roman of the upper class, Strabo was, of course, literate in both Latin and Greek, but he would not demean himself by writing down information about the prisoner with his own hand.
That's why these god-cursed Greek scribes are on our payroll
, he thought with irritation.
Let them earn
their wages
.

When the scribe arrived, Strabo addressed the prisoner for the first time since arresting him. "What is your
name?"

The prisoner shook his head. "I have no idea."

This reply resulted in a resounding punch in the face
from Strabo's powerful fist. "Don't waste my time, scum. I
asked you a question and I expect an answer. Now, what is
your name?"

The prisoner looked up at the centurion with a surprising absence of fear. "I call myself Chaldaeus."

"Yes, and I am Romanus, and Plautus here is Tuscanus,
and everyone in this filthy excuse for a city is either
Judaeus or Graecus or Syrius," Strabo shouted, punching the prisoner again.
"I'm
not asking you for your nationality, Chaldean! What is your name?"

The prisoner shrugged again. "I do not know my name. I have forgotten
it.
I call myself Chaldaeus because my earliest memories are of living in
Chaldea
. It was from thence that I travelled to this place three decades ago."

Strabo's face grew red as he listened to this transparent lie, for the prisoner was obviously a man in his twenties. He drove his fist into the prisoner's face once
more, noticing but not commenting on the fact that the
placid face neither broke nor bled beneath the blows.

"Centurion," the soldier Plautus said, "let's just kill him and be done with it. What difference does it make what
his name is?"