No Dawn for Men (16 page)

“Yes, I am.”

“Where did Franz tell you the tunnel entrance was?”

“He didn’t tell me. I don’t know.”

“You don’t know where it is, or he didn’t tell you?” The priest was frightened now, but that was good. He was too addle-brained to formulate a proper lie, to even think of deception, but in case he did, well, it was not for nothing that Heydrich’s black-uniformed elite had spread terror among the German people.

“He didn’t tell me.”

“Is it far?”

“I don’t think so. The boys were not allowed to go into the forest.”

“But Franz went.”

“Yes.”

“And young Ernst, my grandfather.”

“Yes.”

“Where did they go?”

“I don’t know. What . . . ? Why do you want to know? They were good boys.”

“Father William, you are a Catholic priest. You have been taught that the end never justifies the means, that morality is not relative.”

“Yes, yes I have.”

“So you know that if you are lying to me for some higher good, you will surely have a stain on your soul.”

“Yes, I know.”

“There is also an earthly punishment in store for you if you are lying to me. I see you have some teeth left.”

“Yes, I do.”

“I will break them off with a hammer and feed them to you. After that the torture will start. Do you understand?”

“Yes, yes, I do.”

33.

The Bavarian Forest, Near Deggendorf

October 8, 1938, 9:00 a.m.

“That’s a hell of a story,” said Rex Dowling. “Raising the dead. It’s a joke of course. You’re running some kind of double reverse.”

“Double reverse?” said Fleming

Ian Fleming, Rex Dowling, and the Kauffman brothers were sitting cross-legged in a circle on the mill platform with Fleming’s map on the floor between them. Dusty rays of morning sunlight were slanting down on them through jagged gaps in the pitched roof where planking had once been. The Englishman had drawn a circle in red ink around the location of the abandoned mill and another around Metten Abbey, which was symbolized on the map with an armored angel slaying a dragon at his feet. One of the streams of sunlight fell directly on this symbol.

“It’s a football term,” Dowling said. “American football.”

“I’m afraid not.”

“You believe it’s true?”

“Shroeder says he saw it work twice and did it himself years later.”

“Like Lazarus?”

“No, animals. A lynx, a dog, and a cat.”

“Well, the Nazis are animals, I’ll give you that.”

“They do seem to be lacking souls.”

“Does Shroeder have all his marbles?”

“I believe he does.”

“Why is Tolkien with him?”

“I’m afraid I’m to blame. I told him we wanted this abracadabra for ourselves.”

“What are they up to?”

“I think they’ve set out to destroy the artifacts.”

“Are we supposed to bring them back with their toys? Is that it?”

“That’s the idea. Does Washington know you’re here, by the by?”

“Afraid they’ll steal the magic trinkets, are you?”

“It’s England that’s just a short boat ride from the continent,” Fleming replied. “America won’t be invaded any time soon.
Do
they?”

“No,” Rex Dowling answered. “But I don’t work for Washington. I work for one person in OSS.”

“Does
he
know?”

“No. He just authorized me to help.”

“Can he send more people?”

“No, we’re it.” Dowling nodded toward Hans and Jonas, who had not said a word. They watched as Hans smiled, and Jonas stood and walked over to a window. Soon they could hear the splash of his urine in the stream below.

“Can your man provide intelligence?” Fleming asked.”

“Do you know the Three Kings Group, in Prague? František Moravec’s outfit?”

“No.”

“They know the Germans will be invading soon. They run recon flights across the border all the time. Very dangerous, as you can imagine.”

“I can.”

“All the pilots carry cyanide. A half dozen have not returned.”

“Can they help?”

“They already have. They say there is a large Waffen unit, battalion strength, in the woods just west of the abbey.”

“How many is that in Germany.”

“The same as anywhere. Four to six hundred, maybe more.”

“Christ.”

“Yes, and they took pictures of recon foot patrols in all directions within a two-mile perimeter of the abbey.”

“They must be wondering what’s going on.”

“They’ll extract us if we need them to.”

“We’re a long way from that.”

“Let me guess, you have no idea where Shroeder and Tolkien are?”

“And the dwarf.”

“The dwarf?”

“Yes, Shroeder’s valet. He’s with them.”

“A real dwarf?”

“It’s a birth defect, Dowling.”

“I know what it is.”

Fleming smiled and put his hands up, palms forward, after saying this, a peace offering. He enjoyed teasing the American, but did not doubt his toughness. After all, he had just trekked two hundred kilometers to help out in a fight involving the four men in the mill against a Waffen SS battalion.

“Billie’s with us,” Fleming said, changing the subject, happy that Dowling had returned his smile. Their relationship would remain the same, even under stress. That was a good thing to know. “I’ll be leaving to collect her.”

“I thought as much,” Dowling replied. “I saw her in town this morning.”

“Saw her in town?” Fleming immediately regretted the precipitousness of this question.

“Yes,” Dowling said. “Coming out of a chemist’s.”

Now Fleming remained silent. He had told Billie to stay in their room at the Hilltop Inn. Or had he just suggested it? She was a German citizen—not a Jew—free to wander about the country. They had made love all night and at six a.m. his head, well, it was filled with the scent and feel of her. He couldn’t remember exactly what he had said.

“I decided to take a quick look,” Dowling continued, eying Fleming a bit more carefully now, “to see if there were any Nazis about.”

“I believe you’re mistaken,” said the Englishman.

Now it was Dowling’s turn to pause. During this brief interval, Jonas returned to his place on the floor.

“Yes,” Dowling replied at length, glancing casually at Hans and Jonas, “I may have been. The light was not good and I just caught a glimpse.” The brothers remained silent, their faces passive, as if they were not interested in this part of the conversation.

Fleming was wearing a woolen sweater under a weather-beaten leather flyer’s jacket and khaki field pants left over from his brief and unhappy matriculation at Sandhurst. On his feet were sturdy Alpine hiking boots. In the inside pocket of the silk-lined bomber jacket were his last pack of Morland’s Specials. In his haste yesterday he had forgotten to take the carton from the drawer of his room’s night table. He had forgotten his tortoiseshell holder as well. He wanted a Morland’s now, badly, but did not reach for the pack. He stood up and glared at Dowling until the American looked away.

“Can you give me a description?”

“Two men—the two professors—both average height, one old with white hair, the other middle-aged. And a dwarf, redheaded, with a long braided red beard.”

Dowling nodded, absorbing this information, then said, “Should they assist?”

“Yes, by all means.”

“One more thing.”

“Yes?”

The American pointed to the map. “This angel and dragon, what is it supposed to mean?”

“It’s St. Michael slaying Satan. The abbey is officially called St. Michael’s Abbey at Metten. Have you forgotten your Sunday School lessons, Dowling?”

Dowling smiled. “I suppose you had your own chapel on the manor grounds.”

“We did.”

“I skipped all that. I worked on Sundays.”

“I see. Doing what?”

“Hawking newspapers, shoveling coal.”

“How did you come to this?”

“We weren’t allowed to take a paper home. They counted before and after. But before I turned my leftovers in, I read the whole edition, start to finish. It didn’t take me long to figure out I could write a better news story than what they were printing. I applied when I was fifteen and they took me on, running copy. Now here I am.”

“And OSS?”

“I got bored. I knew a guy who knew a guy. And you?”

“I lost a bet.”

“Lost a bet?”

“Yes, I’ll tell you about it someday. I’m off.”

* * *

“What do you think, Hans?” Dowling said to the one-eyed brother after Fleming left.

“It was Miss Lillian.”

“And this magic ritual?”

“I wore a St. Michael medal all through the war. They told us the English and the French were the devil.”

“Did they tell you how to get in touch with him? We may need him after all is said and done.”

Hans’ reply was a shrug and an attempt at a wry smile, not easy with a cicatrix covering half his face.

“Jonas?” Dowling said.

“It was her.”

“And the magic? Can it be real?”

The brothers shrugged in unison.

“We want to kill Nazis,” Hans said, his smile gone. “Show us the way.”

34.

Metten Abbey

October 8, 1938, 5:00 p.m.

“I lied to the lieutenant.”

“Absolvo te.”

“There is no tunnel here, but there is one just a hundred meters away, just south of our orchard, near the Roman wall.”

“I see. What are they looking for, Father?”

“The tunnel leads to a small meadow, with sheer rock walls on all sides.”

Father Wilfrid and Father William were sitting across from each other on rough-hewn but sturdy ladder-back chairs in Father William’s cell located on the top floor front of Metten Abbey. The room’s single twenty-four-inch by twenty-four-inch leaded glass window was a square blaze of bright yellow sunshine, a portal to heaven just above their heads as it were, that they might, if they only could, slip through, leaving Nazi Germany and the woes it had brought on their tonsured heads behind forever.

“How do you know this?” Father Wilfrid, the younger man by thirty years, asked.

“One of our monks took me there. Father Adelbert.”

“When?”

“Soon after I arrived.”

“In 1872?”

“Yes. I was seventeen.”

“Why?”

“He told me he had been working in the archives, researching manuscripts over a thousand years old. He came upon a canto that, that . . .”

“Yes, that what?”

“That called upon Satan.”

“Called upon Satan?”

“Yes, and that he had found an amulet in the forest, a black stone beast with ruby eyes that was spoken of in other manuscripts. That with the canto and the amulet he could . . .”

“He could what?”

“He could raise the dead.”

The abbot realized deep in his soul, and with a sick feeling in his stomach that went far beyond mere nausea, that the tingling of the hair at the back of his neck and the sudden sweat on his brow were signs from God that the old priest sitting across from him was telling the simple, but horrific, truth. Despite this message from his soul, Father Wilfrid took a moment to look carefully into Father William’s eyes.
It cannot be, dear Lord,
he murmured,
please take this from us.
Raising the dead? Only Christ, or Satan, could do that. But the old man’s blue eyes were clear and calm, tinged only with the sadness of this burden he had been carrying for three quarters of a century. He was the sanest, the most even tempered of all the monks in the abbey.
I am sorry I doubted you, Lord,
the abbot said to himself.

“What happened to him?” Father Wilfrid asked. “Father Adelbert.”

“No one knows. A few weeks after he showed me the walled meadow he disappeared.”

“Disappeared?”

“He was seen in the kitchen yard one morning playing with Bridget, the yard dog, and then he was never seen or heard from again.”

“Was there a search? His family?”

“He had no family. There was a search. He was never heard from again.”

“Did you tell the abbot about the tunnel?”

“No. We were forbidden to leave the grounds. I was afraid I would be expelled. I wanted to serve God. I sinned.”