Delta Green: Denied to the Enemy (2 page)

He had already lost a comrade to this scholars’ war.

In his past Bruning had looked upon an unopened book as something beautiful and mysterious, a doorway or gate to somewhere else. If only he had known how right he had been. The policies of the Gestapo towards book burning looked more and more rational to him as time went on, as more secrets of his new masters were revealed. The two books he had studied for them already had been terrible, the most awful things he had ever seen. The writing he translated was forever burned into his brain like fire. The crude pictures scratched into the ancient pages, which showed every depravity imaginable, would never leave his mind’s eye. Monstrosities so complex that words failed them.

But what the group was really after were the codes, the formulae, the secrets hidden in the ancient texts—the mathematics which could unravel the world itself.

They were after the secrets of power mankind had pursued since its infancy.

He had only seen one attempt to utilize one of these formulae, from a book written before the birth of Alexander the Great, and it nearly killed him. It was very easy to picture what it would be like to go insane as the impossible happened in front of him. Bruning had gazed over the brink in that bunker in Offenburg, hung one foot over the edge of everything real and sane and then threw himself back to the safety of solid mental ground at the last possible moment.

Others, not so lucky, had plummeted into the abyss. But the experiments still went on.

Who knew such secrets existed? And what else was waiting out there? Even now, Bruning rolled towards Antwerp in an SS car, towards more secrets, maybe even the one which would finally consume him. Or the world.

The list distributed to every Gestapo division in the Reich contained one hundred and seventy-three books, each of which was considered a possible, promising source for the group’s special mathematics. Bruning was answering a call from the Gestapo chief of Antwerp that several of those titles had been located in the possessions of a liquidated Jew. He would gather the Jew’s library of books, as he had done at least a dozen times before, and return them to Offenburg for study by the group. A study he would most likely be involved in. A study which most likely would kill him. His mind was not as sound as it used to be.

But he had no choice except to answer that call. To the outside bureaucracy of the Reich, he was simply running another pointless errand for the mystically bedazzled Himmler, recovering books which reminded the oafish leader of the SS of some glorious and fictional Germanic past which he hoped to build through forced labor camps and the death of individuality itself. In truth, Bruning was most likely rolling towards an inconceivable number of innocent deaths. The secrets hidden between the pages of these books could do more than change ideas, they could change or destroy reality itself. But they always consumed the translator first.

So far.

He recalled the flat report of the Walther in the apartments at Offenburg, the way Erich’s head had unfolded like some obscene and wet jungle flower, the blood spread about his notes on the
Unaussprechlichen Kulten
, the way the group removed the body with a practiced speedy efficiency. They had done such deeds before and would again, regardless of the cost. Knowledge was power, and power cost dearly...

“Sir?” The driver spoke in a tone suggesting carefully metered concern. His uniform, the flat black of the Gestapo, was pressed and perfect. Bruning met the boy’s eyes in the car’s mirror, a serene almost transparent blue, and recovered his senses as the motor died.

“This is the building, sir.”

“Very good,” Bruning said and exited the car into the humid Belgian day. The squat, lopsided building the driver had indicated was awash with childishly scrawled yellow six-pointed stars. Most of its windows were broken, but the building was guarded by a detachment of Wermacht, and its interior appeared to be intact. Bruning walked, briefcase in hand, across the cobblestoned street, looking both ways as he went. In each direction, red swastika banners hung over deserted perspectives. Seeing his uniform from across the street the four Wermacht men sprung to instant attention, and their leader, a short hairy man, gave a perfunctory salute.

“Sir.”

“Sergeant, I am here to search the premises for Jewish texts for the Society for the Research and Teaching of Ancestral Heritage,” Bruning said in a quiet voice. He presented his identification, which the hairy little commander glanced at and handed back to Bruning immediately. The Wermacht men parted and all glanced away, obviously afraid. Had rumors of the group spread even this far? Did the men in the Gestapo or the Wermacht know what to make of the list of books or the special markings at his collar?

The sign which had once adorned the door had been removed forcibly, leaving behind several rough and ragged holes in the wood, in its place a freshly printed sign read in German and French:

State Auction
Property and sundries to be auctioned on January 3 1942
By order of SS-Sturmbannfürher Franz Breithaupt
Geheime Staatspolizei Amt/Antwerp

“Is there electricity?” Bruning pushed the door wide, revealing an oriental rug covered in fragments of glass on the lip of a shadow-darkened room.

“The Jew had no electricity, sir.”

“Do you have a torch?”

“Yes, sir.” The sergeant handed Bruning a bulky electric light from his kit. With a click the large room beyond the glass-covered rug was revealed in stark blues and whites.

Hanging tapestries and old blue-brown barrels lined the walls, and each available space was covered in every imaginable thing—old swords, African tribal masks, a portion of a bronze boiler engine, old fishing nets, a dozen rocking horses, but most of all there were books. Hundreds of old mismatched and dusty books, stacked like cordwood in corners and on the floor, biggest to smallest, some obviously used as makeshift tables and chairs in a midnight card game, most likely by the Wermacht men who guarded the building during the evenings.

Bruning walked further into the rickety barn-like structure, carefully stepping around the piles of useless bric-a-brac, trying to get a clear picture of the room. Behind him, the sergeant followed, a dozen or more steps behind, matching Bruning’s precise movements. Tracking the lamp across the far wall, Bruning found the beam falling upon the recently used fireplace. In it, among the fresh ashes, the slagged remnants of the handles of a Torah shone dimly back, their sanctity emptied through mindless destruction.

“Sergeant, do you handle the arrests in this district?”

“No sir, the Gestapo is responsible for that. We just clean up partisans, mostly.”

“In the future it would be suggestible to let the Society for the Research and Teaching of Ancestral Heritage decide which books were right for burning. Could you tell the Gestapo chief this for me?”

“I would not worry about it, sir.”

“And why is that?”

The sergeant smiled thinly,”Verhaeren was the last known Jew in the district.”

“I see. Can you still relay the message?” Bruning shone the lamp upon a pile of books left on top of a old writing desk in a cramped corner. The tomes there had been recently handled, as shown by the fingerprints left in the dust covering them, and the smeared handprints on the desk.

“Certainly, sir. Oh. Those are some of the books that the Gestapo found. They said they were what you were looking for.” The sergeant stumbled over something in the dark and cursed. “They did not have time to go through the whole inventory.”

Bruning lifted the first book after placing the lamp in the crux of his arm. It was a heavy, leather-bound volume from the late seventeenth century. Carefully, he opened to a random page, anticipating a cracked binding or brittle pages, but the book was intact. Dust spilled out in cascading waves through the lamp light as the leather cover let out a creaky groan. The worm-eaten monograph was written, printed really, in English. Bruning’s eyes played randomly on the text and fell upon the following words first as if drawn there:

I command thee, O Spirit Rumoar, even by Lucifer, thy mighty sovereign.

“What is in them?” the Wermacht man asked and stepped closer as Bruning quickly shut the book, kicking up a cloud of dust which smelled of old newspapers.

“Nothing.”

The Gestapo had done their job well, it seemed. Seven of the twelve books the men had found in their search were on the want lists of the Ahnenerbe SS. Praxis Magica Fausti, The Black Pullet, The Tetragrammaton.The names rattled off in Bruning’s head like a vile grocery list in some shallow attempt by his mind to downplay the fear that every one of them held for him, the chilling fear, as if each book he was picking up was a ticking bomb instead of some musty old tract...

They had done their jobs well enough, but still it seemed he would be here for days. Glancing about the room, Bruning estimated more than a thousand books, all told, were scattered here and there among the junk, each one a potential killer, a potential check on the great list, one more reason for the group not to risk him in the deadly task of translation.

One of the Wermacht men poked his head in the door to announce that a Gestapo man had arrived. The sergeant exited rapidly, saluting the newcomer, an economical man who entered without a sound. Dressed in clothes suitable for Saville row, the youngster who saluted Bruning did not look like much of a hardened military man. He looked like a well-dressed farm boy fresh from the German heartland. But his eyes consumed everything in the room with the indifference of a hangman.

“I am Oberscharführer Josef Frank of the Antwerp Gestapo. I was sent to answer any questions you may have about Verhaeren. Sorry about the timing, there was an incident on the canal.” He offered Bruning his identity card, which showed a photograph of a serious, sallow youth. Frank set his face, mimicking the photograph, only then looking like it, and offered his hand. Bruning numbly took it and shook it roughly.

“Oh. Excuse me, I am Karl Bruning. I believe your office was alerted by the Reich Central Security Department that I was coming today? I hope I am no inconvenience to the Gestapo...”

“Not at all, sir. It is rare that the home office gets out here. We are pleased to be of service.” Frank glanced about while saying this, distracted. His body language betrayed his disinterest.

“This Verhaeren, what did he do exactly?” As he casually asked the question, Bruning placed the lamp on the table and picked up another book. Outside, the Wermacht men laughed and whistled as a knot of Belgian women passed.

“The Jew was an importer-exporter. He held some lucrative contracts in the Congo, if I am not mistaken, back before the turn of the century, maybe a little after. I understand he had, in the past, two offices off the continent. He must have been filthy with cash. Financially successful, as usual, like every Jewish parasite before the Reich...” Frank’s voice dropped off into a sneer.

“Where is he now?”

“Dead. Cigarette?” Frank said and took out a cigarette from a filigreed gold case.

“No. Did the Gestapo seize any papers of his during the arrest?”

Frank looked closely at Bruning for the first time, his eyes found Bruning’s and locked there.

“None on him, except a few photographs. The only reason we touched the books here is that sometimes the older ones like to hide their money there. The Jews, I mean. In between the pages.” Frank took a long drag on the cigarette and let out a bitter cloud of French tobacco.

“I recalled the bulletin—the one about the books from the Society of Ancestral Research, and one of the titles just jumped out at me while we were looking for money. The—” Frank leaned over and picked up a small modern book. “Witch Cult in Western Europe. I came back Thursday evening with the list and did my best...” He gestured at the pile.

“Many thanks. You have saved me a few miserable hours poring through this filthy place. Still, I should think I will be here for more than a week.” Bruning sorted through a stack of modern books which had been precariously balanced on top of an antique lamp, glancing momentarily at each title, one after another.

“No problem. Glad to be of assistance. Anything else I can help you with?” Frank lazily lifted a musty tarp from some sort of mold-rotted divan and considered it, as if it were some terribly engaging artifact.

“Does the Gestapo have any files on Verhaeren?”

“Of course.” Frank let out a grunt which could have been a cough or a laugh.