The Peregrine Omnibus, Volume Two (96 page)

“Look at these,” Akemi said, holding up one of The Peregrine’s modified handguns. “The barrels filled with miniature rounds, dozens of them.”

Imelda took the gun and lined up the sights, firing it at a nearby tree. The trunk splintered upon impact and Imelda whistled. “They might be small but those bullets pack a punch.” She stuck the pistol into her belt and claimed the other one, as well.

Käthe started back down the path, heading towards the beach. “Mueller will be here for us soon. Can you two drag The Peregrine?”

Imelda wrapped a length of rope around her hand and began moving forward. She grunted a bit but gravity assisted her since they were moving down an incline. “I can manage.”

Akemi knew better than to try and offer her assistance. Imelda liked showing off her physical strength and would take any suggestion otherwise as an insult.

The Furies reached the beach in a short amount of time and Imelda dropped the rope, gasping for air. “He weighs more than he looks,” she explained.

Käthe wasn’t listening. Though she would have been loath to admit it, she was terribly worried. Most of her concern centered on Sun Koh. The man had become an ideal in her mind and that had been cemented by their lovemaking. The notion that The Peregrine might not be the only one to know of the Prince’s return… that other forces might be massing to try and destroy Sun Koh… it filled Käthe with the kind of fear that she’d felt only a few times in her life.

Once more she looked down at The Peregrine. She’d find out everything that the vigilante knew, even if it meant that his suffering would become the stuff of which legends were made.

* * *

Sun Koh was not the pilot his friend Jan Mayen was, but he nonetheless quite adept. He’d managed to convince a loyal German at the airfield to allow him to take one of their long-range flyers, calling upon the youth’s overly impressionable nature. Like so many other Germans he had met since his revival, the young man had been a faithful reader of Sun Koh’s exploits, or at least he had before they had ceased being published. Sun Koh now wondered if the government order to no longer publish “frivolous” adventure novels had actually been an attempt to erase the impact Sun Koh had had on the populace.

Sun Koh’s plane had required refueling once along the way and he’d been forced to take up arms at the small military base at which he’d stopped. It had been belonged to a foreign power but Sun Koh was able to overpower the small squadron of men stationed there.

And now he was angling his plane in for a landing on a smooth patch of ground, deep in the frigid wastes of the Arctic. The plane settled down, kicking up large amounts of snow and ice. It skidded a bit, twisting off-course but Sun Koh was able to bring it under control.

He wore a parka and protective goggles as he jumped to the icy ground. It was possible to blind oneself here in the Arctic, as the sun reflected off the miles of white terrain. Sun Koh remembered that he had brought Alaska-Jim with him on one of his first journeys here, when he had still been scouting out for possible locations. The famed trapper and hunter had impressed upon Koh the need for adequate protection from the elements.

As Koh approached his private sanctum, he felt a momentary pang of regret. He missed his friends, having come to regard them as worthy of a place by his side in the Aryan kingdom that was still to come. Now they were all dead, including his beloved Shani. He respected her wishes and had done nothing to save her. In fact, he had not even checked the news reports to see if her mission had succeeded. In his mind, they had already parted and would not be reunited until the next life, in whatever form that might be.

The sanctum came into view as he stepped over a particularly large bank of snow. The emerald dome seemed to absorb all light, somehow rendering its surroundings so nondescript that you almost overlooked it, despite the fact that it was the only structure in sight for miles.

Upon reaching the sanctum, Sun Koh pulled off the glove covering his right hand. He pressed his open palm against the smooth surface of the sanctum, which appeared to have no windows or doors. A hum answered his touch and a moment later the dome’s surface began to part, revealing a thin entranceway. It was so small that Sun Koh had to turn sideways to slip inside.

As soon as his foot touched the dome’s floor, the interior lights came on. A fireplace flared to life, the crackling of the fire somewhat masked by a melodious tune that was piped through speakers mounted on the corner of each wall. The sanctum was furnished in leather, with a couch and two plush chairs. A polar bear rug lay on the floor and a well-stocked laboratory was arranged along two of the walls. The air was not musty at all, as it was kept recycled by a purification system devised by Sun Koh himself. The faint scent of roses reached the Prince’s nose and he smiled, remembering that he’d added that touch to the air conditioning system in hopes that Shani would like it. Unfortunately, she would never get the chance to visit the sanctum.

Sun Koh approached the lab area, kneeling to look at the storage containers built into the wall. Not a single wasted space existed in the sanctum. Everything, including the walls and the furniture, served multiple purposes. In some places he kept his devices and tools, other things could be opened up to reveal other features that one wouldn’t have assumed they’d serve. The couch doubled as a bed; the chairs could be used as long-range radios, due to the complex wiring set into the bottom of the seats; and the walls contained dozens of storage cabinets.

Sun Koh set aside a number of items that could have made a massive difference in the war effort but which didn’t suit what he had planned. A small glass capsule containing enough purple dust to render most of North America sterile within a month caught his eye and he briefly considered the possibilities before moving on. He wanted something that would instill fear in the enemies of the Aryan people and that would shatter their will to fight. He wanted something big and something flashy, the sort of thing that fathers would fearfully tell to their children in future years.

He wanted the Solar Cannon.

It didn’t look like a doomsday weapon, though that’s what it was. Fourteen inches long and about as thick around as his forearm, the device was sealed on one end and opened in a triangular shape on the other. A crystalline oval on the top of the device served to capture solar energy and amplify it. The Solar Cannon could be hooked up to a larger device that Sun Koh had invented, allowing him to project the destructive beam hundred of miles. It could literally carve up enemy cities, demoralizing enemies by killing them with virtually no defense possible.

Sun Koh froze in place, the Solar Cannon still held tightly in his hands. Amazingly, he heard movement behind him. The door had closed after he’d entered and no one besides himself should have been able to activate the fingerprint lock system… but there was no doubt about what he was hearing.

Sun Koh slowly set the Cannon down on the floor, pretending to continue sorting through the items in the cabinet. He turned his head slightly and looked behind him, his eyes opening wide as he caught sight of the intruder.

The man standing there looking quite calm and self-assured resembled a poet or orchestral conductor. He had a great mane of black hair, a high forehead and hollow burning eyes that were deep-set in a gaunt face. His body was long and thin but the most noticeable characteristic he possessed was his nose, which was long and slender, ending in a sharp point. It could almost be described as a beak, the shape and design of it was so pronounced. He wore robes of deep blue and upon his feet were fur-lined slippers of the matching color. On his right hand was a ring with a large blue stone set in its face and around his neck was another blue gem, this one glittering in the firelight.

Sun Koh stood up, turning to face this man and he kept his surprise out of his voice. “Identify yourself,” he said in German. He wasn’t sure what nationality this man was, for his features were that of almost any Western nation.

The man clasped his hands behind his back and replied so fluently that Sun Koh wondered if he wasn’t German by birth. “My name Arthur Grin. I watched you approach this place and knew that I had to speak to you. You have no idea how long I’ve waited to meet you.”

“You know who I am?”

“I have no idea.”

Sun Koh clenched his jaw. A part of him wanted to simply kill this man and be done with him. He was eager to undertake the task that Shani had set for him: the eradication of The Allies. But Sun Koh was no pawn to his emotions: he needed to know who this man was, where he came from and whether or not he had allies waiting outside. “I am Sun Koh, Prince of Atlantis.”

“Of course you are.” Grin said these words without sarcasm but Sun Koh bristled nonetheless. The thin man inclined his head towards the sofa. “May I sit?”

“If you wish. Your clothing would not provide adequate protection from the elements so you haven’t been out there long.” Sun Koh watched as Grin sat down and crossed legs at the knee.

“I’ve been living with the local Inuit tribe for quite some time. They keep me warm and well-fed, though as you can see, I don’t require much in the way of sustenance.”

Sun Koh sat down in a chair facing Arthur Grin. He locked eyes with the man, knowing that usually even the most strong-willed would melt before his gaze. Grin, however, held firm and showed no sign of weakness. “You said you’ve been waiting to meet me.”

“Oh, yes. Most assuredly. You see, I was a prisoner of the Russians but I managed to escape. When I came upon the Inuit tribe, I was able to… convince them… to take me in but I could sense that they were more afraid of something else. No matter how much I threatened or cajoled them, they would not reveal to me what secret they carried. But one day I took to wandering, surveying my new home… and I found this dome. I tried to find a way inside but could not. Returning to the village, I questioned them, realizing that this was probably what they were keeping from me. Do you know what they did? They tried to pretend that they didn’t know what I was talking about. Even when I marched their leaders out here and confronted them with the dome, they acted as if they couldn’t see it. They tried to make me think I was going insane.”

Sun Koh said nothing during all of this, though he could easily imagine it was true. The Inuit people had regarded him as some sort of terrible White God. He had made them swear secrecy about his sanctum, at the penalty of their souls.

Grin continued, not in the least bit displeased by how taciturn his host was being. “But I kept at it, kept probing and knocking. I finally got a few of them to admit to knowing about the place. They told me about the White God who had forged it out of pure magic. According to them, you would return at some point and claim the dark powers you’d trapped within.” Grin leaned forward, his dark eyes glittering. “And is that what you’re here for? To unleash dark powers?”

“What if I am?”

Grin laughed and it was as remorseless a sound as any that Sun Koh had ever heard. “Why, then I want in, of course.”

“What are you, Mr. Grin?”

“I’ve been called a criminal… a psychopath… and a manipulator. All of those might be true. But at my core I am a man who realizes that the world’s veneer of civilization is just that: a veneer. The only way we can truly find peace is for someone with an indomitable will to seize control and force people to look in the mirror. Only by recognizing the darkness within can we truly drive it out.”

Sun Koh stared at the man, wondering if he could prove useful in any way… or if he would simply prove too mad and too ambitious for his own good. Unfortunately, if Koh meant to avoid calling upon the German military to assist him, he would eventually require help in some other form. With all of his old trusted allies dead, he could use someone capable. “How did you get inside here? I know that the door closed behind me.”

“I stepped in immediately after you did, then watched to see what you were doing.”

“I would have sensed you.”

“But you didn’t.”

Sun Koh’s handsome face creased in a frown. Could Grin really be capable of evading his notice? Few human beings could claim that level of skill. Even Shani could not do it one hundred percent of the time and she was as capable of silent movement as anyone Sun Koh had ever met.

“I will allow you to assist me, Arthur Grin. But know this: if you betray me in any way, be it large or small… and I will make you suffer in ways you cannot imagine.”

Grin’s eyes took on a cautious cast but he merely nodded his assent.

Sun Koh stood up. “Then let us begin. I’m planning to turn a weapon of incredible power upon the capital of the United States. Hundreds of thousands will die.” Sun Koh watched Grin closely, to see if he would balk at that amount of mayhem. What he saw there was quite chilling: he saw not disgust or fear, but anticipation.