didn’t it? Or were they? She was tensed for a blow herself, but none came. For some reason they were leaving her alone. It didn’t make sense. “Why did you even let us come here?” She hated the way her voice broke.
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” A new voice sounded, low and sonorous, and when this figure stepped from behind a pillar the other Germans unconsciously straightened. More people emerged as well, men and women, all dressed as high-ranking professionals. Conspiracy with style. But this figure alone advanced across the room’s circle, walking erect and gracefully over the inlaid sun wheel.
“You’ve been chosen, Rominy,” the man said. “That’s why Jakob here didn’t simply kill you in America and take your blood to Tibet. He didn’t kidnap you, either. We’ve been testing you, to see if you meet our criteria as a Chosen One. It’s not that different from the hunt for the next Dalai Lama, really.”
“Jacob?” Sam wheezed. “The Jew who wrestled an angel and was renamed Israel? Have your friends checked your bloodline, Jake?”
“Shut up, or Otto will kick you again,” Jake-or Jakob-warned. “No one here is interested in your muddle of religious tripe.”
“Sam, don’t provoke them,” Rominy added. She turned to their leader. “You murdered my mother and grandmother, too?”
“Your mother and grandmother had to be disposed of because the time of discovery was not yet ripe and we didn’t want to risk them falling into American hands,” the new man said smoothly, ignoring the others. “We waited for the next heir before extermination. You’re fortunate in being alive at a pivotal time. Science has saved you.”
“You mean physics.”
“Particle accelerators,” Jake said. “Atom smashers.”
“You’re going to try to revive the Vril in that staff. You’re going to use the big supercollider near Geneva and make a weapon that can kill more people.”
“Very good,” the older man said calmly.
There was something wrong with this new individual who was clearly their leader, Rominy thought. He was still in shadow so she couldn’t pin it down, but there was an odd, mechanical manner in his movements and a sickly paleness in his face.
“So if physics hadn’t advanced, I’d be dead, too.”
“Yes. That’s why it was best you grow up not knowing too much. It made you safer. It made you happier.”
Her mind was struggling to absorb just how thoroughly she’d been duped. They’d all been duped, for decades. “What happened to my great-grandfather?”
“He never left Tibet.”
“Then who lived and died in the cabin?”
“I’ll explain all that on our journey, but first let me introduce myself.” He moved into the light and held out a hand in a leather glove. Involuntarily, she stepped back. His skin wasn’t just pale, it was partly translucent, hinting at the muscle structure beneath, like the rubber of a yellow balloon stretched over someone who had been skinned. His eyes were bloodshot and feverish, his hair iron gray, and his frame thin, cadaverous, like an ascetic prophet or concentration camp victim. He looked gaunt, fanatic, ethereal. What was wrong with him?
“Hello, Rominy.” He smiled, his teeth dull and worn. “You are witness to a miracle. I’m Kurt Raeder. I’m the man who slew your great-grandfather, and I’ve been waiting for this moment for more than seventy years.”
50
Wewelsburg, Germany
October 3, Present Day
R ominy and Sam were marched down stairs even deeper than the tower crypt to the Hexenkeller, the witches’ cellar, and shoved inside a whitewashed stone cell by Otto. The room was barren and cold.
“You’ll be leaving in the morning,” the skinhead Nazi said to Rominy. “See that you get some rest.”
“What about Sam?” Her friend was leaning painfully against one wall.
“We don’t need him anymore.” A two-inch-thick heavy oak door slammed shut. They heard a bar drop over it.
The only ventilation was a tiny grilled window in the thick castle wall, too high to reach and too narrow to crawl through. There were two mattresses on the floor with woolen military blankets.
Sam sat down heavily on one, groaning. It crackled. “Straw. Welcome to the Middle Ages.” There was a single lightbulb in a protective cage high overhead and no switch they could see to turn it off. A bucket was apparently supposed to serve as a toilet. There was no water and no privacy. “I’ll never complain about Motel Six again.”
Rominy kneeled by him. “Are you all right, Sam?”
“No, I’m not all right, Rominy. I’ve been shot in the chest, forced to walk out of the wilderness, and clubbed in the kidneys. And don’t get me started about the leg room and in-flight meal on the airline.”
“I’m a disaster for everyone who comes into contact with me. Poor Mrs. Clarkson.”
“Mrs. Clarkson apparently never came into contact with you at all. Don’t blame yourself for what these lunatic murderers have been up to. We’re victims of madmen, led by a guy who looks like he climbed out of a coffin. If a bat flies through that little window, I’m giving up.” He shifted and groaned.
“That couldn’t be Kurt Raeder. He’d be over a hundred years old.”
“Doesn’t look a day over ninety-nine.”
“Did something happen to make him live this long?”
“Who knows? These may just be inmates from the local asylum. Next up will be a guy with a Charlie Chaplin mustache giving a Hitler salute, and another with a bicorne hat and his hand tucked into his waistcoat. At least we were right about the atom smasher. They’ve been waiting for it to go to full power.”
“How are they going to make use of it? It’s a big international science project.”
“I have a feeling these Nazis aren’t going to ask permission.” He looked at the door. “And apparently we don’t get a vote. So what now?”
She sat next to him, having no idea. But the worst choice would be surrender. “I think we’d better starting acting and not reacting. I think we’d better make some plans.”
T he cell light never went out, and they dozed as best they could on the thin, scratchy mattresses. There was no heat, and the temperature hovered somewhere between barely tolerable and freezing. Rominy crawled to Sam’s mattress and curled inside him as she’d done in the wilderness of Tibet. There was a comfort to it more profound than anything she’d felt with Jake. Sam put his arm around her and actually managed to doze while she thought fretfully. He groaned sometimes in his sleep.
So the thinnest light from a gray dawn was just penetrating their distant window when he abruptly sat up.
“What is it?” she whispered.
“I hurt.”
“Sam, I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay. It woke me up enough to think. Rominy, they’re going to take you somewhere, maybe the collider-I don’t know why-and kill me. It’s the only thing that makes sense. So the only thing that makes sense to me is to get clear of these thugs and come after you. So that’s what I have to do.”
“Just save yourself.” Her tone was hopeless.
“No, that’s what people like this count on-their enemies just trying to save themselves, and being picked off one by one. Do you know what a fascist is?”
“Like a Nazi. Extreme right-wing.”
“The term came from Mussolini in Italy. And he got it from the Romans. In ceremonies, Roman leaders would carry a bundle of sticks called fasces. It symbolized the strength that comes from sticking together. Any one of the sticks could be broken, but if bundled in a bunch they were unbreakable. The Gauls or the Germans might have the biggest warriors, but when they ran into the bundled power of a Roman legion, pow! The barbarians lost. Mussolini
