Pandora's Curse - v4 (8 page)

A
nika Klein spent her morning packing for her trip. She was leaving tomorrow, Monday, to spend a few days in Iceland before the rest of the team assembled for the ship to Greenland. Her domestic chores took her longer than expected but still she went for a run after lunch and returned to her apartment an hour and a half later.

After a long shower, she spent thirty grudging minutes in front of the mirror attending to beauty details she’d put off for too long. Her eyebrows were particularly bothersome since they hadn’t been tweezed in three months. The ritual left her eyes swimming in tears. She purposely kept her glossy black hair trimmed almost like a man’s, with short bangs and just a little length at her neck. A dollop of gel and a quick slash with a brush was all it took to tame it.

Her face was angular, with large, almond-shaped eyes, high cheekbones, and a sharp chin. Her mouth was wide, luxurious. Except on dates, she’d learned to not wear lipstick because of the distraction her pout caused. Her ears were tiny, with a total of nine rings, five in one, and four in the other. Anika was thirty-six years old but had the style of someone half that age. And she could get away with it. Studying her reflection closely, she decided she could maintain the ruse for a few more years. Because she’d rarely allowed herself to tan, her skin, which would eventually give her away, had yet to show lines.

She gave her reflection a smile. It was only then that her face lost the intensity she showed to the outside world. Her smile made Anika look like a teenager. Her ex-husband had often compared her beauty to Audrey Hepburn’s. She’d done little to dissuade him of that opinion.

Normally she wore all black in a pseudogothic look that hadn’t yet gone out of fashion in Europe. For today, she was meeting someone for her grandfather, so she threw on a bright but modest skirt, a creamy silk blouse, and flats. She was comfortable enough with her height to wear heels only when necessary.

In the kitchen on her way out of her apartment, she grabbed a liter bottle of water from the fridge and a container of oily kalamata olives. She had chewing gum in her car for her breath later. Her purse was a small leather backpack. Anika tossed the water inside, fished the keys to her battered Volkswagen Golf from the bottom, and popped a handful of the rich olives into her mouth. Her car was in the garage under her building; it started after a mere five attempts.

The town of Ismaning was only about a half hour from her apartment, which worked well for her grandfather. Had this Otto Schroeder he’d asked her to speak with lived any farther from Munich, she would have postponed the interview until after her trip to Greenland.
Opa
Jacob had insisted that she visit him before heading north, but he treated everything about his work as a matter of urgency.

Anika did what she could to help. He knew she would never take up the crusade, but by assisting him when she could, Anika hoped that
Opa
knew she wouldn’t forget either. He’d often said that people aren’t truly dead until they are forgotten. He’d told her that the first time when her own father,
Opa
Jacob’s son-in-law, died from a heart attack. As long as she remembered her father, he was alive. That was why Jacob worked so hard. As long as he remembered, the six million were still alive, and if Anika could carry even a part of the memory, then the victims would not fade for another generation.

The traffic was heavier than she expected. She’d forgotten that road repairs were under way even on the weekend. The Volkswagen’s air conditioner had not worked since she’d bought it thirdhand and heavy blasts of hot air percolated from the asphalt. Anika felt constricted, the seat belt like a band of iron across her chest. The back of her blouse was sticky. She tried to take a deep breath and managed to inhale a dose of diesel exhaust from the truck idling next to her.

The frustration pricking her skin was only partially due to the delay. She’d hoped the distraction of driving would banish thoughts of work but the constant starts and stops served as a reminder. Was her career going to go forward or end? The choice was hers.

She dug out her water bottle and took a gulp, forcing herself to calm down. Rather than deal with the decision, she fumbled through her bag for the directions to Otto Schroeder’s farmhouse that
Opa
Jacob had dictated a few days ago from Vienna. She knew from the research she’d done for him in the past not to be surprised how he had tracked the former military officer. Jacob Eisenstadt could find anyone, it seemed, once he put his mind to it.

On the sheet of paper with the directions was a list of questions Jacob wanted answered. Anika had read through the list once after writing them down and found herself more intrigued with this interview than the previous ones she’d done. It appeared that Schroeder might know the whereabouts of a huge shipment of gold spirited out of Russia in 1943. According to Jacob, this wasn’t one of the fabled “lost shipments” that had never been recovered. Until very recently neither he nor Theodor Weitzman had even known of its existence. They were convinced that they were on the trail of something completely new.

Anika doubted that anything would come of her interview.
Opa
had learned that Schroeder had been a career soldier from before Hitler came to power. He hadn’t been part of the Nazi elite. In fact, he hadn’t even been a member of the party. It wasn’t very likely that he would be privy to secrets of stashed gold or anything else for that matter. She had said this to
Opa
Jacob, and he had reminded her that, even if Otto Schroeder was simply another link in the chain, it put them one link closer to their goal. His absolute dedication and unshakable faith was something Anika knew she could learn from. She was sorely lacking in both.

In the center of Ismaning stood a tall stone tower, a medieval leftover whose original purpose was lost to time. She turned right and very quickly the urban congestion vanished. It was as if she’d traveled a hundred kilometers from the city. Plowed fields and dense forests flanked the narrow road, with farmhouses nestled at the end of long, crushed stone driveways.

She felt herself relaxing. Anika loved the country, the clean air, the open vistas, and especially the lack of people. She checked her directions again. She had to stay on this road for eight kilometers and then veer to the left for another three. There she would find Otto Schroeder’s house. According to her grandfather’s report, Schroeder owned the land but no longer worked it. That was leased to local farmers while he stayed on in the isolated house, living out the last of his years.

The sun dipped below the layer of smog covering Munich, and the reddened light made the fields of wheat look like sheets of dancing flame. Anika found her turn and popped a stick of gum in her mouth to mask the taste of the olives she’d been munching. The road this far from Ismaning was little used, and there was even grass growing across stretches of it. She noted a single set of tire tracks had cut grooves through the patches of green. She feared it meant that Otto Schroeder had just recently left his house. Possibly for a Sunday-night beer in town? Doubtful. He was near ninety years old.

She was just going to dig into her bag for her cell phone to call Schroeder’s number when from around a copse of huge oaks she saw the house. A black Mercedes sedan was parked in the drive next to an ancient Opel. The house itself was unremarkable. One story and built of dressed and mortared stone, it looked in poor repair. Several of the porch roof’s support columns had settled into the ground, giving the facade a wavy look. It was the incongruous presence of the Mercedes that gave her pause. Of course, they were common all over Germany. But out here? On the very night she was to interview an obscure ex-soldier who might know something about missing gold?

Anika was suddenly very alert. She eased her Volkswagen to a halt well short of the house. She slung her bag onto her back and in one arching bound was across the narrow irrigation ditch fronting Schroeder’s property.

The air was still. The wind that had moved through the fields earlier was gone, and the night insects had yet to come out. She could hear the Mercedes’s engine pinging in the silence as it cooled. She thought about the car. It was possible that it belonged to a well-off child out to visit his father. Yet would a child let an elderly parent live in such isolation? Something wasn’t right here, but she couldn’t place what. She kept to the lengthening shadows as she approached the house.

She reached the front door without spotting or hearing anything out of the ordinary. She chuckled silently. Her feeling of vague anxiety faded. So much for her sixth sense. It might work while climbing a sheer mountain face, but it was worthless on the ground.

She was about to knock when an agonized scream pierced the night, a high keen that rippled up her spine like static.

It came from the back of the house, not from within. As much as her training urged her to rush to its source, she held her ground. It wasn’t a question of if she would back away. Rather, she had to determine the best way to proceed. Stepping off the porch, she peered around the corner of the house. A stone wall extended beyond the back of the building as part of an enclosed backyard. She heard a sharp moan and knew the cry had come from there.

The wall was four feet tall, capped with flat blocks of slate. Guessing there would be a gate at the back, she moved along the fence, keeping low. Her acute sense of balance more than made up for the poor traction of her shoes on the loamy soil. Halfway down, she heard voices, muted at first but clearing as she got to the far end. Around this corner she could see a rotted wooden gate hanging open on one hinge.

“It is a simple question, Mr. Schroeder,” a man’s voice snarled. “We know you were a combat engineer during the war, and we know that you were attached to the Pandora Project. What we don’t know is who you’ve told. Who else knows about Pandora?”

After a moment’s pause, the answer came in the form of another screeching wail, much louder than before.

Otto Schroeder was being tortured!

Anika felt paralyzed. She turned to look behind her. She couldn’t see her car, but knew she could reach it in seconds. She even took her key ring out of her skirt pocket and got the ignition key centered between her fingers. But she could not move. The long-ago war that had claimed most of her family and drove her grandfather was continuing just a few feet away.

“I’ve told no one.” This had to be Schroeder. The words came out between wheezes of pain. “The secret of what we did dies with me.”

“You had better hope so,” said a third voice, lower than even Schroeder’s and menacing.

There were two of them, maybe more. Anika had only one option. Her cell phone was in her backpack. All she needed to do was move far enough away so her call to the police wouldn’t be heard. She took a cautious step backward and then another.

The pain came suddenly and was unlike anything she’d ever felt. A hand had come over the top of the wall and buried itself in her hair, the thick fingers threading down to her scalp. She was nearly lifted off her feet. Her skin felt like it was about to be ripped from her head. She cried out, batting at the arm, but even a small movement made the agony even more unbearable.

“I’ve got someone.” It was yet another male voice, one that sounded younger than the first two. “A woman.”

The pain forced Anika onto her toes, and still the man pulled her higher. Held immobile, she began to scream. The gate was wrenched open, and a man approached her with an automatic pistol in his hand. He was tall and fit with blond hair and a dark expression.

Only when he was behind her with the pistol pressed against her back did he speak. “Okay, Karl, I’ve got her. Let her go.”

The strain on her hair vanished, and Anika would have dropped to the ground had the gunman not propped her up with one hand while keeping the weapon screwed into her kidney. He forced her forward with a savage prod.

The walled garden was overrun with weeds and the uneven flagstones were slick with moss. There were a rusted iron table and a couple of mismatched chairs next to the door that led to the house. Otto Schroeder lay on a chipped concrete bench with two men standing over him. One of them must have been Karl, the one who’d grabbed her. A fourth figure stood back in the shadows. Anika guessed that he was the leader of the group. She couldn’t see his features, but somehow he seemed older than the others.

She focused her attention on Schroeder, and when she realized what they had done to him, hot vomit shot into her mouth. Fear had stripped away her ability to remain clinical. One of Schroeder’s legs had been flayed open, and a large slab of tissue had been carved away. Blood pooled in the gruesome wound and spilled over onto the patio. Anika looked into the old man’s gray face and was amazed to see defiance in his watery eyes. At some point in his torture, he’d bitten into his lip or tongue because more blood dripped from his face.

“Who are you?” the man who had grabbed her, Karl, asked. He was a near copy of the one with the gun, big and blond with shoulders like an executioner’s gallows. His partner was holding a long knife. In the fading light Anika saw crimson on the blade.

Her silence was from fright, not resistance. She knew that since she’d seen their faces, they would never let her live. The man with the knife had a container of salt in his free hand, and he poured a measure into the long gash in Schroeder’s thigh. The old soldier tried to fight the pain and failed. His scream echoed in Anika’s head. All the trauma experience in the world couldn’t inure her to this kind of human suffering. She prayed unconsciousness would spare him the agony.

“Who are you? Or do I dump the rest of this into his leg?”

“It doesn’t matter,” the man in the shadows said so quietly that Anika almost didn’t hear him. “Kill her.”

Karl had taken one step toward her when suddenly he flew back as if jerked on a string. Fragments of gore exploded from the side of his head. The sound of a shot came at the same instant. The man holding Anika pushed her away and wheeled toward where he thought the gunfire had originated. She fell heavily and tried to scramble under the bench, Schroeder’s blood smearing against her skin and clothes. Another shot rang out and a piece of stone above the bench exploded. The torturer who’d poured the salt into Schroeder’s leg had been at that spot a fraction of a second earlier. He had drawn his own weapon, a small machine pistol that had been under his dark jacket. He fired a long burst over the wall, the gun buzzing like a saw. Hot brass arced from the weapon in a tight necklace.