The Charlemagne Pursuit (23 page)

A thud echoed off the walls. Like something being forced.

Again.

He identified the direction. From one of the side chapels—St. Michael’s. Where the other exit door was located.

He raced inside and rounded the empty pews toward the stout wooden door held shut with an iron latch. He heard a pop from its other side.

“They’re forcing the door.”

“Who’s
they
?” Christl asked.

He found his gun.

“More trouble.”

FORTY-THREE

D
OROTHEA NEEDED TO LEAVE, BUT THERE WAS NO ESCAPE
. S
HE WAS
at the mercy of her mother and her husband. Not to mention Ulrich. Henn had worked for the family for over a decade, ostensibly making sure Reichshoffen was maintained, but she’d always suspected that he provided a wider range of services. Now she knew. This man killed.

“Dorothea,” her mother said. “Your husband wants to make amends. He wants you two to be as you were. Obviously, there are feelings still there or you would have divorced him long ago.”

“I stayed for our son.”

“Your son is dead.”

“His memory isn’t.”

“No, it’s not. But you’re engaged in a battle for
your
heritage. Think. Take what is being offered.”

She wanted to know, “Why do you care?”

Isabel shook her head. “Your sister seeks glory, vindication for our family. But that would involve much public scrutiny. You and I have never sought that. It is your duty to prevent that.”

“How did that become my duty?”

Her mother seemed disgusted. “You are both so like your father. Is none of me inside you? Listen to me, child. The path you’re taking is useless. I’m simply trying to help.”

She resented the lack of confidence and the patronizing. “I learned a good deal from reading those Ahnenerbe periodicals and memos. Grandfather wrote an account of what they saw in Antarctica.”

“Hermann was a dreamer, a man rooted in fantasy.”

“He spoke of areas where the snow gave way to rock. Where liquid lakes existed where none should be. He talked about hollow mountains and ice caves.”

“And what have we to show for all those fantasies? Tell me, Dorothea. Are we any closer to finding anything?”

“We have a dead man in the trunk of the car outside.”

Her mother exhaled a long breath. “You are hopeless.”

But her patience had worn thin, too. “You set the rules of this challenge. You wanted to know what happened to Father. You wanted Christl and me to work together. You gave us each part of the puzzle. If you’re so damn smart, why are
we
doing all this?”

“Let me tell you something. What your father told me long ago.”

Charlemagne listened in awe as Einhard spoke. They were safe inside the palace chapel, in the room he maintained in the octagon’s upper gallery. A summer’s night had finally arrived, the exterior windows dark, the chapel equally quiet. Einhard had only yesterday returned from his long journey. The king admired him. A tiny man but, like the bee that makes fine honey or a busy ant, capable of great things. He called him Bezalell, from Exodus, a reference to his great workmanship. No one else would he have sent, and now he listened as Einhard told him of an arduous sea voyage to a place with walls of snow so luminous that sunlight cast their heights in shades of blue and jade green. On one a waterfall formed, the flow of it like silver, and Charlemagne was reminded of the jagged mountains in the south and east. Cold beyond believing, Einhard said, and one of his hands shivered with the memory. The wind blew with such force that not even the chapel surrounding them could have survived. Charlemagne doubted that claim, but did not challenge him. People here live in mud huts, Einhard said, no windows, only a hole in the roof to let smoke escape. Beds are used only by the privileged, clothes are unlined leather. There, it is so different. Houses are all of stone and furnished and heated. Clothes are thick and warm. No social classes, no wealth, no poverty. A land of equals where night comes without end and the water remains still as death, but so beautiful.

“That’s what Einhard wrote,” Isabel said. “Your father told me, as his father told him. It came from the book I gave you, the one from Charlemagne’s grave. Hermann learned to read it. Now we must as well. That’s why I set this challenge. I want you and your sister to find the answers we need.”

But the book her mother had given her was penned in gibberish, full of fantastical images of unrecognizable things.

“Remember the words of Einhard’s will,” Isabel said. “
A full comprehension of the wisdom of heaven waiting with Lord Charles begins in the new Jerusalem.
Your sister is there, right now, in the new Jerusalem, many steps ahead of you.”

She could not believe what she was hearing.

“This is not fiction, Dorothea. The past is not all fiction. The word
heaven
in the time of Charlemagne had a much different meaning than today. The Carolingians called it
ha shemin.
It meant ‘highlands.’ We’re not talking about religion or God, we’re talking about a people who existed far off, in a mountainous land of snow and ice and endless nights. A place Einhard visited. A place where
your
father died. Don’t you want to know why?”

She did. Damn her, she did.

“Your husband is here to help,” her mother said. “I eliminated a potential problem with Herr Wilkerson. Now this quest can continue without interference. I’ll make sure the Americans find his body.”

“It wasn’t necessary to kill him,” she declared again.

“Wasn’t it? Yesterday a man burst into our home and tried to kill Herr Malone. He mistook your sister for you and tried to kill her. Thankfully, Ulrich prevented that from happening. The Americans have little regard for you, Dorothea.”

Her eyes sought and found Henn, who nodded, signaling that what her mother had said was true.

“I knew then that something must be done. Since you are a creature of habit, I found you in Munich where I knew you’d be. Imagine, if I could find you so easily, how long would it have taken the Americans?”

She recalled Wilkerson’s panic on the phone.

“I did what needed to be done. Now, child, you do the same.”

But she was at a loss. “What am I to do? You said I was wasting my time with what I obtained.”

Her mother shook her head. “I’m sure the knowledge you gained on the Ahnenerbe will be helpful. Are the materials in Munich?”

She nodded.

“I’ll have Ulrich retrieve them. Your sister will shortly follow the correct path—it is imperative you join her. She must be tempered. Our family secrets must stay within the family.”

“Where is Christl?” she asked again.

“Attempting what you were trying to do.”

She waited.

“Trusting an American.”

FORTY-FOUR

AACHEN

M
ALONE GRABBED
C
HRISTL AND FLED
S
T.
M
ICHAEL’S
C
HAPEL
, rushing back into the outer polygon. He turned for the porch and the main entrance.

More pops came from St. Michael’s.

He found the main exit doors, which he hoped opened from the inside, and heard a noise. Somebody was forcing the outer latches. Apparently Hatchet Face didn’t work alone.

“What’s happening?” Christl asked.

“Our friends from last night found us. They’ve been following all day.”

“And you’re just now mentioning it?”

He fled the entranceway and reentered the octagon. His eyes searched the dim interior. “I figured you didn’t want to be bothered with details.”

“Details?”

He heard the door within St. Michael’s give way. Behind him, the squeak of ancient hinges confirmed that the main doors had been flung open. He spied the stairway and they raced up the circular risers, all caution abandoned for speed.

He heard voices from below and motioned for quiet.

He needed Christl somewhere safe, so they sure as hell couldn’t be parading around the upper gallery. The imperial throne sat before him. Beneath the crude marble chair was a dark opening where pilgrims once passed, he recalled the guide explaining—a hollow space beneath the bier and six stone steps. Below the altar that jutted from the rear was another opening, this one shielded by a wooden door with iron clasps. He motioned for her to crawl under the throne. She responded with a quizzical look. He wasn’t in the mood to argue, so he jerked her toward the iron chain and pointed for her to crawl underneath.

Stay quiet,
he mouthed.

Footsteps sounded from the winding staircase. They’d only have a few more seconds. She seemed to realize their predicament and relented, disappearing beneath the throne.

He needed to draw them away. Earlier, when he’d surveyed the upper gallery, he’d noticed a narrow ledge with a profile that ran above the lower arches, marking the dividing line between the floors, wide enough to stand on.

He crept past the throne, rounded the bier, and hopped the waist-high bronze grille. He balanced himself on the cornice, spine rigid against the upper pillars that supported the eight arches of the inner octagon. Thankfully, the pillars were two joined together, a couple of feet wide, which meant he had four feet of marble shielding him.

He heard rubber soles sweep onto the upper gallery’s floor.

He began to rethink what he was doing, standing on a ledge ten inches wide, holding a gun with only five rounds, a good twenty-foot drop below. He risked one peek and saw two forms on the far side of the throne. One of the armed men advanced behind the bier, the other assumed a position on the far side—one probing, the other covering. The smart tactic showed training.

He pressed his head back against the marble and stared out across the octagon. Light from the windows behind the throne cast a glow on the shiny pillars of the far side, and the fuzzy shadow of the imperial chair was clearly visible. He watched as another shadow circled behind the throne, now on the side closest to where he stood.

He needed to draw the attacker closer.

Carefully, his left hand searched his jacket pocket and found a euro coin from the restaurant. He removed it, dropped his hand to one side, then gently tossed the coin in front of the bronze grille, finding the ledge ten feet away, where the next set of pillars rose. The coin tinkled, then dropped to the marble floor below, a ding echoing through the silence. He was hoping that the gunmen would realize he was the source and come forward, looking left, while he struck from the right.

But that didn’t take into account what the other armed man would do.

The shadow on his side of the throne grew in size.

He’d have to time the move perfectly. He switched the gun from his right hand to his left.

The shadow approached the grille.

A gun appeared.

Malone pivoted, grabbed the man’s coat, and yanked him out over the rail.

The body flew into the octagon.

Malone rolled over the railing as a shot popped and a bullet from the other gunman smacked off the marble. He heard the body slam into the floor twenty feet below, chairs clattering away. He fired one shot across the throne then used the momentum he’d generated to hustle to his feet and find refuge behind the marble pillar, only this time in the gallery as opposed to the ledge.

But his right foot slipped and his knee banged the floor. His spine vibrated with pain. He shook it off and tried to regain his balance, but he’d lost any advantage.

“
Nein,
Herr Malone,” a man said.

He was on all fours, holding the gun.

“Stand,” the man ordered.

He slowly came to his feet.

Hatchet Face had rounded the throne and now stood on the side closest to Malone.

“Drop the weapon,” the man ordered.

He wasn’t going to surrender that easily. “Who do you work for?”

“Drop the weapon.”

He needed to stall but doubted this man was going to allow too many more questions. Behind Hatchet Face, near the floor, something moved. He spotted two soles, toes pointed upward, in the darkness beneath the throne. Christl’s legs sprang from her hiding place and slammed into Hatchet Face’s knees.

The gunman, caught by surprise, crumpled backward.

Malone used the moment to fire, a bullet thudding into the man’s chest. Hatchet Face cried in pain, but seemed to immediately regain his senses, raising his gun. Malone fired again and the man sank to the floor, not moving.

Christl wiggled out from under the bier.

“You’re a gutsy lady,” he said.

“You needed help.”

His knee ached. “Actually, I did.”

He checked for a pulse but found none. Then he walked to the railing and glanced down. The other gunman’s body lay contorted among a rubble of chairs, blood oozing onto the marble floor.

Christl came close. For a woman who hadn’t wanted to see the corpse in the monastery, she seemed to have no problem with these.

“What now?” she asked.

He pointed below. “Like I asked you before we were interrupted, I need you to translate that Latin inscription.”

FORTY-FIVE

VIRGINIA, 5:30 PM

R
AMSEY SHOWED HIS CREDENTIALS AND DROVE INTO
F
ORT
L
EE
. The trip south from Washington had taken a little over two hours. The base was one of sixteen army cantonments built at the outset of World War I, named for Virginia’s favorite son, Robert E. Lee. Torn down in the 1920s and converted into a state wildlife sanctuary, the site was reactivated in 1940 and became a bustling center of war activity. Over the past twenty years, thanks to its proximity to Washington, its facilities had been both expanded and modernized.

He wound a path through a maze of training and command facilities that accommodated a variety of army needs, mainly logistics and management support. The navy leased three warehouses in a far corner among a row of military storage units. Access to them was restricted by numeric locks and digital verification. Two of the warehouses were managed by the navy’s central command, the third by naval intelligence.

He parked and left the car, drawing his coat closely around his shoulders. He stepped beneath a metal porch and punched in a code, then slid his thumb into the digital scanner.

The door clicked open.

He entered a small anteroom whose overhead lights activated with his presence. He walked to a bank of switches and illuminated the cavernous space beyond, visible through a plate-glass window.

When had he last visited? Six years ago?

No, more like eight or nine.

But his first visit had been thirty-eight years ago. He noticed that things inside weren’t much different, besides the modern security. Admiral Dyals had brought him initially. Another blustery winter day. February. About two months after he returned from the Antarctic.

“We’re here for a reason,” Dyals said.

He’d wondered about the trip. He’d spent a lot of time at the warehouse the past month, but all that abruptly ended a few days ago when the mission was disbanded. Rowland and Sayers had returned to their units, the warehouse itself had been sealed, and he’d been reassigned to the Pentagon. On the ride south from Washington the admiral had said little. Dyals was like that. Many feared this man—not from temper, which he rarely displayed, nor from verbal abuse, which he avoided as disrespectful. More from an icy stare of eyes that never seemed to blink.

“Did you study the file on Operation Highjump?” Dyals asked. “The one I provided.”

“In detail.”

“And what did you notice?”

“That where I was in Antarctica corresponded precisely to a location the Highjump team explored.”

Three days ago Dyals had handed him a file marked
HIGHLY CLASSIFIED
. The information contained inside was not part of the official record that Admirals Cruzen and Byrd filed after their Antarctic mission. Instead the report was from a team of army specialists who’d been included among the forty-seven hundred men assigned to Highjump. Byrd himself had commanded them on a special reconnaissance of the northern shoreline. Their reports had only been provided to Byrd, who’d personally briefed the then chief of naval operations. What he’d read amazed him.

“Before Highjump,” Dyals said, “we were convinced the Germans had constructed Antarctic bases in the 1940s. U-boats had been all over the South Atlantic both during and shortly after the war. The Germans mounted a major exploratory mission there in 1938. Had plans to return. We thought they did and just didn’t tell anybody. But it was all crap, Langford. Pure crap. The Nazis didn’t go to Antarctica to establish bases.”

He waited.

“They went to find their past.”

Dyals led the way into the warehouse and threaded a path through wooden crates and metal shelving. He stopped and pointed to one row of shelves loaded with rocks covered with a curious mixture of swirls and curlicues.

“Our people in Highjump located some of what the Nazis found in ’38. The Germans were following information they’d uncovered that dated back to the time of Charlemagne. One of their own, Hermann Oberhauser, discovered it.”

He recognized the surname, from NR-1A’s crew. Dietz Oberhauser, field specialist.

“We approached Dietz Oberhauser about a year ago,” Dyals said. “Some of our R and D folks were researching German archives captured from the war. The Germans thought that there might be things to learn in Antarctica. Hermann Oberhauser became convinced that an advanced culture, one that predated our own, lived there. He thought they were long-lost Aryans, and Hitler and Himmler wanted to know if he was right. They also thought that if the civilization was more advanced they might know useful things. In those days, everyone was looking for a break.”

Which hadn’t changed.

“But Oberhauser fell out of favor. Pissed Hitler off. So he was silenced and shunned. His ideas abandoned.”

Ramsey pointed to the rocks. “Apparently he was right. There was something to find.”

“You read the file. You were there. Tell me, what do you believe?”

“We didn’t find anything like this.”

“Yet the United States spent millions of dollars to send nearly five thousand men to Antarctica. Four men died during that venture. Now eleven more are dead and we’ve lost a hundred-million-dollar submarine. Come now, Ramsey. Think.”

He didn’t want to disappoint this man who’d shown so much confidence in his abilities.

“Imagine a culture,” Dyals said, “that developed tens of thousands of years before anything we know. Before the Sumerians, the Chinese, the Egyptians. As tronomical observations and measurement, weights, volumes, a realistic concept of the earth, advanced cartography, spherical geometry, navigational skills, mathematics. Let’s say they excelled in all these centuries before we ever did. Can you imagine what they may have learned? Dietz Oberhauser told us that his father went to Antarctica in 1938. Saw things, learned things. The Nazis were total fools—pedantic, parochial, arrogant—so they couldn’t appreciate what all that meant.”

“But it seems, Admiral, that we too suffered from ignorance. I read the file. The conclusions from Highjump were that these stones, here in the warehouse, were from some sort of ancient race, perhaps an Aryan race. Everybody seemed concerned about that. It seems we bought into the myth the Nazis formulated about themselves.”

“We did, which was our mistake. But that was a different time. Truman’s people thought the whole thing too political to deal with publicly. They didn’t want anything around that lent any credence to Hitler or the Germans. So they stamped TOP SECRET on the whole Highjump venture and sealed everything away. But we did ourselves a great disservice.”

Dyals pointed ahead, at a closed steel door. “Let me show you what you never saw while you were here.”

Ramsey now faced the same door.

A refrigerated compartment.

The one he’d entered thirty-eight years ago for the first and only time. That day Admiral Dyals had issued him an order—one he’d followed ever since—
leave him alone.
That order had now been rescinded but, before he acted, he’d come to make sure they were still here.

He grasped the latch.