Shadows Will Fall (3 page)

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Poenari Citadel

Wallachia Region

T
his again.

Rucker found himself stripped to the waist with his hands manacled. The manacles were attached to a chain secured to the high, vaulted ceiling. A single bright light from a klieg burned into his face. A foul, heavy scent permeated the air, a coppery cacophony of foreign odors, rotten mildew and human sweat.

If I had a nickel for every time I found myself like this, Rucker thought.

The room in the east tower looked less like a torture chamber than an operating theater. Which he thought appropriate: proper torture takes the anatomical knowledge and delicate skills of a doctor, not the brute force of a mouth-breathing butcher. And the man working on him was very much a doctor.

The likelihood that Rucker didn't have any more information was of no real consequence to Dr. Übel. The doctor had precious little to do until moonrise tomorrow, so at least he had this for entertainment.

Rucker looked over his shoulder to where they had Deitel tied to a chair, awaiting his turn.

Dr. Übel rapped loudly on the tray holding his equipment.

“Ahem!” came his impatient voice. He was holding a red-hot surgical scalpel. “I believe we were having a conversation.”

“This is absolutely—AIIIGGHHH!—absolutely insane. You can't—AAARRRHHHH—do that!” Rucker said between gasps of pain.

Übel started to respond that
Oh, yes, he could,
when he realized Rucker wasn't speaking to him.

“The goal is to bring the children together to equalize learning conditions,” Deitel said. “It teaches discipline, obedience to authority, promptness, organization, collective values.”

“It teaches them—AAAIIUUUUH!—to res . . . res . . . respond like Pavlov's dogs to a bell,” Rucker said, “and that they need permission to take—AH GOD DAMN IT!—to take a piss. It chains the swift and the creative to—AHHHHH SONOFA—to the slow.”

Rucker could barely breathe. Deitel kept him going. He had to take Rucker's mind away from what was happening to his body.

“Germany has produced more great scientists, mathematicians, philosophers, and composers than any nation in Europe,” Deitel said.

Rucker screamed and almost passed out.

“THAN ANY NATION IN EUROPE! How does your Freehold compare?” Deitel was shouting, trying to get Rucker's focus back.

Dr. Übel walked over and slapped Deitel across the mouth.

“Silence!”

Watching from a raised dais, Colonel Uhrwerk and Major Hoffstetter were shaking their heads.

“It appears you have not made the impression on the prisoners that you assumed you could,” Colonel Uhrwerk said, as always inscrutable behind the metal mask of his face.

“I can break them,” Dr. Übel said. “They will tell us their mission, their superiors in the Freehold government, and their—”

Colonel Uhrwerk raised his hand to stop him mid-sentence.

“Perhaps the prisoner isn't lying. Perhaps he does not admit to working for the Freehold because he does not work for the Freehold,” Uhrwerk said.

Hoffstetter scowled.

“This one is strong, but I will break him,” Dr. Übel said.

“I understand and concede he will break
down
at some point. All men do,” Uhrwerk said with even measure. “I simply assert that he will not break. I theorize that the worldviews are so diametrically opposed that neither of you proceed from the same axioms.”

“Then I will open up his head and see what makes him tick,” Dr. Übel said menacingly to Uhrwerk, who, if he noticed, did not acknowledge it.

“You two are giving me a headache,” Hoffstetter said, rubbing his eyes with the palms of his hands. “This is all pointless. We have all but one of the enemy agents. We are ensconced in arguably the most inaccessible and defensible fortification outside of the Reich.”

But for Dr. Übel it was a matter of his twisted personal honor. Aside from what he saw as his brilliant pioneering on the frontiers of the most important and cutting edge sciences, he also considered himself an artist at extracting cooperation through the deliberative infliction of pain.

He'd been a progeny in his youth, but after attending medical school in London in the 1890s and creating his own, nocturnal curricula of study in the alleys of White Chapel, Übel had become a virtuoso. He could inflict incredible amounts of pain while causing minimal damage. Not that he cared about the victim's welfare for its own sake; he wanted to prolong the process as much as possible.

Dr. Übel realized neither Uhrwerk nor Hoffstetter were speaking. But he heard Deitel and Rucker's voices continuing to argue.

“South Padre . . . the blondes on South Padre. Bronze skin, toned bodies—none of that milky white blubber on your Prussian blondes,” Rucker was saying to Deitel.

“If you like your women without curves, sure. May as well be a man as a maiden,” Deitel argued.

Dr. Übel ran his hand over his face.

“Will you two shut up!” he screeched.

There was a pause, and Deitel and Rucker went back to arguing.

“Major, Doctor,” Uhrwerk said to his countrymen. “Consider this: these Freeholders have something that makes them inherently dangerous to us. It is not their weapons, their science, or their industry.”

Their expressions told Uhrwerk they didn't follow.

“Consider: everything we are would fall apart with just one word—no.”

“That is insane,” Hoffstetter said. “If someone refuses to obey, you shoot them. Then the next obeys, or you shoot him. Fear brings the others in line.”

“You can't shoot the world,” Uhrwerk said. “It's not that they won't surrender to your authority. They don't even acknowledge it. They don't acknowledge any other individual's authority to submit for them. You'd have to kill every last one of them. That is not a task I would care to attempt.”

“This is ridiculous,” Dr. Übel said. “The little one, he is not even of the Freehold. He is German. He'd never set foot in Texas before.”

“Exactly, Herr Doctor,” Uhrwerk said, slower than usual. “Yet he already is thinking as they do.”

There was an uncomfortable silence among the three, interrupted by Deitel and Rucker arguing over tennis.

Hoffstetter cleared his throat.

“I don't care if Rucker and his team are agents of the Freehold or France or the Dutch East India Company. They are neutralized. They are no threat. We are done here. Tomorrow night we begin Project Gefallener. Return them to their cells. We'll keep them alive to witness the birth of the Draugrkommando Legion. Isn't that what we're supposed to do, according to their motion pictures? Torture them and then reveal our plans? Ha. They'll see that what we set into motion is the destiny of the world, and that they are not the heroes in white hats who step in to save the day.”

Hoffstetter set his monocle, took his riding crop and gloves, and started toward the door. He clicked his heels and saluted Colonel Uhrwerk.

“Do it, Dr. Übel,” Hoffstetter ordered, and left.

Dr. Übel had been ordered to return the prisoners to the dungeon, but he wasn't told he had to do it immediately. He could at least take out a little frustration. Uhrwerk wouldn't care.

Dr. Übel used a red hot scalpel to cut a long line across Rucker's chest. The heat cauterized the wound to keep it from bleeding, thus preventing a victim from losing consciousness from loss of blood.

For Rucker, the pain of the incision and the heat were almost unbearable.

“I don't—AAIIUUGHH, son of a . . . Kurt . . . I don't know how we're going to get out of this one, but trust me when I tell you whatever happens to us, it's going—AHHH GODDAMMIT!—it's to be worse for them.”

Finally Rucker turned his attention to the bald, goggled doctor. “This is the last time I try to tell you this. If you go through with your plan, you're all going to die. This isn't—AAAIIIIGHHHH!—this . . . this . . . isn't a threat. It's a—ughhh . . . it's a fact. You can't control this thing. It will consume you, consume Germany, and consume the world.”

Übel took off his goggles and got in close to Rucker's face. His eyes looked like a mole's.

“As if you would care what happens to your enemies,” he said.

“Your creations will turn on you. They turn on you and feast on you and spread. First through Romania, then your Reich, and then the world,” Rucker said.

Two storm troopers arrived. They awaited Dr. Übel's orders.

“Bah! We are not creating mindless feeders. I have spent years studying the texts, the
Necronomicon
, the Scrolls of Lemura; countless nights researching mutation and the transgenic morphology, breaking new ground in science that the brightest minds couldn't begin to fathom. I know more of the theory of radioactivity than Madame Curie herself. I alone have mastered the necrotic transmogrification and the whole of mortautological dynamics,” he said, his voice rising.

“And now I have the final element of the equation, thanks to you, Captain Rucker. The GR-68 compound in its pure form—the Spear of Destiny. Tomorrow night, when my machine is ready, I will pronounce the proper incantations and project the spear's power through a magnetic wave transformer—I will transform the Death's Head Legion of volunteers into the Black Sun's most powerful weapon. They will be the vanguard of the Reich—
draugrkommandos
. Invincible. Impervious to pain. Intelligent. They will be my crowing glory! The glory of the Reich! The glory of the New Order!”

Dr. Übel was shouting now, spittle flying from his lips.

Rucker's laugh through a parched throat and split lips was raspy, but a laugh all the same.

“What's so funny?” Übel demanded.

“ ‘This time, I will control it,' ” Rucker quoted. He shook his head. “You're not the future, Übel. You're the same witch doctor who's been feeding off fear and throwing people in the fire since the first ape stood upright.”

The storm troopers were escorting Deitel out.

As they frog-marched him past Rucker toward the door, Deitel saw for the first time the injuries Dr. Übel had inflicted. There were dozens of deep incisions along areas where nerves clustered. He blanched. He reddened. He growled.

“You are no doctor,” Deitel said. “Forget the monsters you plan to create tomorrow. You're the monster here.”

A moment later Uhrwerk—who had listened to everything in silence—took his hat and cloak and walked out of the chamber. He said nothing upon exiting.

The two guards took Deitel away.

“I am going to get my personal kit,” Dr. Übel said menacingly. “I will leave my assistant, Dr. Riehl, to entertain you. Riehl, keep him alive until I return.”

Dr. Übel left.

Riehl took a surgical implement and turned away from Rucker to place it in the burning coals. When it glowed red hot, he turned back to face his helpless victim.

“Captain Rucker, what shall we talk about now that I have you all to myself?” Riehl asked.

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Poenari Citadel

Wallachia Region

T
he guards threw Deitel back into his cell, cursing his name as a traitor to the Reich and the race. They locked the cell door and then spit in his face. Then they checked the other prisoners, and found them sitting or curled up. Listless and docile.

When the latches on the doorway to the dungeon slammed home and the prisoners were alone, they all sprang to life. Filotoma returned to working on the locks of the manacles that bound Amria's hands and arms.

“Did you see or get anything?” Terah asked.

Deitel fished into his sleeve and pulled out a pair of forceps he'd palmed.

“They post two guards outside the main door,” he said. “It looks like they're almost done with the device in the courtyard.”

Terah leaned through the cage as best she could to look at Deitel.

“Are you hurt?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Nothing serious. They didn't concentrate on me. They just made me watch.”

Every head turned toward Deitel.

“Where is Rucker? What did they do?”

“He's alive. But that Übel, he's a savage. What he did . . . I've never seen anything so evil,” Deitel said. “The pain he put Rucker through—I didn't think it was humanly possible to inflict that kind of pain. Or to survive it.”

Terah fought back her tears. Rucker wouldn't lose control. He'd know these people needed a leader. She had to be that now.

“Will he be able to . . . walk? If we figure a way out, can he make it?”

Deitel nodded.

“That's just it. Übel knew what he was doing. Maximum pain, minimal damage,” he said.

“The major, Hoffstetter, and that colonel who doesn't ever take off that metal mask said to release me back to the dungeon,” Deitel reported. “But I think Übel wants a little more time with Rucker.”

Terah wiped her eyes.

“They're going to keep us alive at least until tomorrow night,” he said. “Whatever that is they're building in the courtyard, they think it will enhance the power of the spear so that it turns their volunteers into more advanced, thinking undead.”

“Then nothing has changed,” she said. “We proceed with the plan. Escape and sabotage. And we just hope they bring Rucker back sooner rather than later. There's no telling what those SS bastards are doing right now.”

S
S Lieutenant Otto Skorzeny found himself in the unprecedented situation of doing nothing. He wasn't attached to the garrison at Poenari, so he had no current duties. His special position meant he didn't fall under the command of Major Hoffstetter. He had no real role with Project Gefallener now that he'd captured Rucker's team. And there was no ready transportation back to Germania or Wewelsburg—the airships wouldn't return until called for, and they would only come under cover of night. He could pilot the Fi-156 Storch plane on the plateau halfway down the mountain, but it was reserved for the executive staff in case of emergency. While Skorzeny had great autonomy as the Reich's premier commando, Colonel Uhrwerk was a sitting member of the Black Sun.

The Death's Head Legion was in the main courtyard doing exercise drills. Squads of storm troopers patrolled the woods and the valley below. The engineers and technicians put the finishing touches on their elaborate eldritch machinery. At the heart of it was large steel octagon with dozens of pipes running to a steam engine. The control panel featured dozens of brass levers, knobs, and gauges—none of which Skorzeny could fathom. However, a quick scan of the deployment of sentries and snipers around the citadel met with his approval.

In short, Skorzeny found he had nothing to do, and he didn't like it one bit. Then, he also didn't like what he knew Dr. Übel and that prancing Major Hoffstetter were likely doing to Rucker and his team.

Skorzeny had stripped to his undershirt and was exercising in the courtyard between glasses of a bottle of schnapps he'd come across in the major's office. He'd do a hundred push-ups and take a drink. He'd do fifty squats and take another. He'd do a hundred paratrooper leg lifts and drink another. If it seemed odd to any of the garrison staff, they didn't know the half of it. Skorzeny was known to smoke cigarettes while on a ten kilometer run.

After an hour's work he was sweaty, limber, and only a little tipsy. He set up a chair and table in the courtyard and then a phonograph player he'd requisitioned—like the schnapps—from the major's office. Propping his feet up, he poured another drink. He was now shirtless and enjoying the warmth of the afternoon sun. Most of the garrison's personnel gave him wide berth. Not so a staff captain.

“What is going on here, Lieutenant?” the captain demanded.

Without opening his eyes, Skorzeny sipped from his glass and said, “You're in my sun. Move.”

By the silence that followed, Skorzeny figured either it was a soldier who'd slunk away or a superior officer trying to figure out what the hell was happening—why he wasn't jumping to his feet.

“You will come to attention in the presence of a superior officer, Lieutenant,” the same voice said.

Skorzeny opened one eye, regarded the thin captain, and then closed it.

“You be sure to let me know when one comes along,” he said dryly.

By now Skorzeny was accustomed to the sputtering that came at moments like this.

“Soldier! You will come to attention and you will do so immediately. Clearly you do not know who I am and
YILP!
—”

Skorzeny had reached out, grabbed the captain's wrist and twisted it backwards. The captain sank to his knees in pain.

“Captain, I'm going to save you some trouble. I do know exactly who you are. You're a bureaucrat they gave a uniform because every staff officer needs a middle manager to shuffle papers, even in the SS. That pistol in your belt has never been fired. If you ever heard a gun fired in anger you'd probably soil those clean, pressed trousers that have all the wear and tear on the seat. Do you see that badge on my tunic over there? That doesn't mean I am with SS special services. It means I
am
SS special services. There are only two men I answer to, and both have mustaches and the word ‘Führer' in their title. The only mustache I see on you is whatever brown gets on your lip when you're kissing Major Hoffstetter's backside. Now get out of my perimeter.”

He released the captain's hand.

“You . . . that is . . . very well. But that music,” the captain said, indicating the phonograph player.

“Verklärte nacht,”
Skorzeny said. The soft string sextet music was complex and beautiful. It was one of his favorites. “What of it?”

“The works of Arnold Schoenberg have been banned by the Ministry of Propaganda as degenerate and dangerous,” the captain said.

Skorzeny poured another schnapps.

“Captain, Schoenberg's brilliance reaches its apex in this work. It's a programmatic, atonal creation that develops a number of leitmotifs, each eclipsing and subordinating the last and at once suggesting a Wagnerian motif and a Brahmsian approach to tonal cohesion.”

The captain's expression said he didn't understand a word.

“I like it. It relaxes me,” Skorzeny said. He closed his eyes and leaned back. “Captain, if you speak to me again for any reason, I will kill you. This is not hyperbole.”

The captain hesitated, opened then closed his mouth, then marched off silently.

Given time, these bureaucrats would dull the razor edge of the SS, Skorzeny thought with disgust. Little men with little minds.

The captain disappeared inside just as that young
untersturmführer
—what was his name . . . Bonhoeffer?—marched out toward the east tower that housed Übel's impromptu torture chamber.

The
untersturmführer
was carrying something in a bundle. Poor kid—probably ordered to run errands for that sadistic scientist.

Skorzeny reached toward the table where his pistol belt was hanging. He pulled out his cigarettes, lighted one, leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes as the music swelled in the third act. This was his favorite part. It was the doorway to the climax.

F
ilotoma was still trying to pick the elaborate locks on Amria's manacles. Terah and Deitel were taking turns watching out for the guards, and it was Deitel's turn to rest. He needed it more, Terah figured.

In her cell, Amria sneered at their efforts.

“This is hopeless. We're going to die. And you're all playing like you can resist fate. Because of you my people will not have their vengeance,” she spat.

When Deitel opened his mouth, Terah shook her head.

“Their souls will forever walk the night, unable to rest,” Amria continued. “There will be no justice for the dead. Because of you.”

“Oh for heaven's sake,” Terah finally said. “We're alive. Where there's life, there's a chance. There's always hope. Look, I understand what you've been through, and I'm sorry for your pain, but either do something to help or shut the hell up.”

Amria wasn't ready for that. She fairly hissed at Terah. “What is it with you people?”

The Romani girl threw the tin cup in her cell against the bars.

“God damn you all. At least when they come for me I can take a few of them to hell with me, even if it means I have to bite through their throats and tear out their eyes,” she said.

“Fine,” Terah said. “Give up. Just be quiet about it.”

Amria's laugh was part mockery, part pain.

“What is it with you people,” she said again, shaking her head.

That's when Deitel had enough.

“What it is with these people is that they don't accept fate,” he said. “And because they don't accept it, they don't give in to it.”

Terah started to say something then thought better of it.

“What does that even mean?” Amria asked.

“Fate is just a little man that casts big shadow,” Filotoma chimed in without looking up from the manacle locks. “You can beat off that man if you use the both hands and refuse to take it on the chin.”

“Bah. It's four against an army,” Amria said dismissively. “All your faith doesn't change that.”

“Five,” Terah corrected. “Five against an army. Rucker is still alive.”

“And while he's alive, our chances of surviving are double,” Deitel said.

“You're putting that much faith in a man you met just ten days ago?” she asked with clear disdain.

“Yes. Yes I am,” Deitel said.

“What is it about this man?” Amria said. “All he has done is get me captured.”

Terah smiled to herself.

“The things I've seen him do, Amria. It's not that he's not scared or that he's especially strong. He's just an ordinary man. But he doesn't accept defeat,” she said.

“And because he just won't quit, he inspires other people to push themselves harder,” Deitel added.

Terah nodded.

“That's what it is about him. It's that he brings out the best—or worst—in everyone.”

Terah looked at her watch.

“Amria, we have less than thirty hours until the Nazis pull the switch on their project,” she said. “After that we will be put against a wall and shot—or worse, fed to whatever monsters their machine and the spear create. We have to use it as best we can. You can plan on attacking the guards when they open your cell, and you'll be dead within a minute. At best you might hurt one guard. Or you can join us.”

B
onhoeffer said a little prayer, latched the door behind him, spun around with his weapon drawn and was about to say “
everybody freeze!
”

He only got to the “Every” before he stopped short at the tableau before him.

Dr. Übel's assistant, Riehl, was on the floor facedown. By the angle, it was clear his neck was broken. Rucker, shirtless and bleeding from a dozen or more nasty cuts and burns all over his torso, was crouched over the man's motionless form. The expression on Rucker's face was like that of a feral animal. There were no guards.

Before Bonhoeffer could say a word, Rucker was on him. The pilot grabbed the wrist of his gun hand and slammed it against the wall. The Walther service pistol fell to the floor. At the same time, Rucker pressed his left forearm into Bonhoeffer's throat, cutting off the blood flow to his head. Bonhoeffer was starting to see spots, and he struggled to get the words out.

“Zor . . . Zorr . . . Robin . . . wid . . . widow's . . .” he rasped in English. Just as everything went dark, Rucker released the pressure. Bonhoeffer felt the pistol at his head.

“What did you say to me?” Rucker hissed. “Speak, but speak quiet-like.”

Bonhoeffer gasped deep breaths of air.

“I said Zorro, I'm Robin. I . . . I bring ‘help for the widow's son,' ” he said finally.

Rucker took the pistol away from the young officer's head. He'd said Zorro. Spanish for Fox. Lysander's code name for Rucker.

“Robin, huh?” Rucker said.

“I was born in the Freehold, actually. Raised speaking German. After the war there was enough confusion and lost records that Lysander managed to get me in like a native,” the younger man said. “I'm his boy wonder.”

Rucker handed the agent his pistol.

Robin was aghast at Rucker's condition.

“Are you okay? I mean . . .”

Rucker nodded. “It's a lot more painful than it looks.”

“Right.”

Bonhoeffer started pulling bundles out of the bag. When he finished unloading it, Rucker groaned at what he saw. Storm trooper uniforms.

“Now we get to see if Chuy was right that I'd make a great Nazi,” he said.

Ciampino Aerodrome

Rome

S
omething wasn't right and Chuy knew it. It had been two days since the last radio contact with Rucker. Something was up and he was anxious to get back in the air, but he was still cooling his heels in Rome at the Ciampino Aerodrome.