The Project (16 page)

“Gone where?” Tommy interrupted.

“They will be gone,” Gerda continued. “The world as you know it will be gone. In the context of that, what is the importance of a small kidnapping or a short nap for a couple of police officers?”

The world as you know it will be gone
.

This had begun with a book, but now it was clear they were involved in something much deeper. Something way over their heads.

That book appeared now, out of Mueller’s briefcase. He held it delicately, as if it was valuable treasure rather than just a very old, and very boring, book.

Gerda, too, was staring at the book. It was as if she were unable to take her eyes off it. Clearly it had some kind of power over them. “The last piece of the puzzle,” Gerda murmured.

Mueller noticed her gaze, and they shared a smile.

“You’re mad,” Tommy said. “You and your husband. You’re both mad.”

Gerda laughed. “You are wrong. On both counts. We are not mad, and Erich is not my husband.”

“Yet you share the same last name,” Ms. Sheck said.

“Naturally,” Gerda said. “He is my brother.”

“You’re a Werewolf, aren’t you?” Luke asked.

“Of course,” she said. She seemed proud and sad at once. “One of the very few. The years of hiding and running have taken their toll on our numbers.”

“You’ve lived in hiding for sixty years?” Tommy asked.

“No, not all that time,” she said. “But in the early years, just after the war, yes. It was not safe for us to emerge. I was born in the bunkers, and that was the world I knew, for many, many years.” She closed her eyes. “The first time I saw blue sky was on my twelfth birthday, and oh, let me tell you, it was the most wondrous birthday present a young girl could wish for.”

They remained silent, letting her speak.

“There were many of us then, children of the Wolves.
Entrusted with the great plan. But the others now are gone, from old age or illness. Only my brother and I remain.”

She glanced up toward the front of the cabin. “Of course, there are sympathizers. Hired help. But there is no one else who could understand what it was like to have stayed in hiding as the Reich crumbled around us—as invaders from the east and the west looted and ravaged our beautiful cities.”

“You started it,” Tommy mumbled, but she was lost in her memories.

Luke shifted in his seat, and her grip tightened on the pistol, raising it slightly toward him.

“Because I am old and ramble about the past, do not think that I am sentimental or weak,” she said. “I have waited all my life for this moment. I have spent my life running and hiding, enduring things that should not be endured. But when the Reich is restored, I will be a princess. The sons of diplomats and kings will court me with smiles and flowers. I will …” She trailed off, closing her eyes again, her head, no doubt, filled with elegant halls and chamber orchestras and dances with handsome young men.

“What ‘great plan’ did Hitler entrust you with?” Luke asked, but Gerda Mueller was far away, swaying to some inner music.

“She’s mad,” Ms. Sheck said, but Luke wasn’t so sure that she was. Not in the way that Ms. Sheck meant.

In a burst of understanding, it all came together. Who they were. What they were really planning. Luke had finally figured out the secret, hidden for more than a century, of the most boring book in the world.

I
t was dark when they landed, but the airport was ablaze with lights. The sign over the main terminal announced
SALZBURG
.

The plane taxied to a private hangar, and they waited on board for ages while Mueller and Mumbo disappeared. Paperwork, Luke guessed, or maybe bribes.

A large black van was inside the hangar when Luke and the others finally emerged from the plane. The lights were off in the hangar, but it was well lit by the glare of the runway lights.

Tommy was right behind Luke as they walked from the plane to the van. He moved as close as he could and whispered, “There’s an emergency GPS locator beacon built into my backpack. If I can get to it and activate it, people will come looking for us.”

Luke glanced around and saw Tommy’s backpack, and his shredded one, in the hands of Jumbo.

There were about twelve seats in the van, but Jumbo made them sit on a single row, in the center, while he and Gerda sat behind them, guns at the ready. Then he put the backpacks on the floor underneath his seat.

Mueller sat up front with Mumbo, who was driving.

Luke forced himself to ignore the guns and the fear and to concentrate on Tommy’s backpack as the glow of the airport lights slipped away behind them. The van circled around half of a figure eight–style junction and onto the highway, the autobahn.

There had to be a way to get to the backpack. Obviously he couldn’t just go and grab it. If he’d had a bit of string or number eight wire, he might have been able to hook it somehow and try dragging it underneath the seats. But he didn’t, and he was pretty sure Gerda and Jumbo would have noticed that. Still, there had to be a way.

The big van traveled fast, switching at one point onto a different autobahn via a big looping off-ramp that took them through farmland.

At a village called Neu-Anif, the van exited the autobahn and turned onto a smaller road that began to twist and wind as they climbed.

More signposts flew past, names Luke did not recognize: St. Leonhard. Schaden. Marktschellenberg. And eventually, one Luke did recognize, one he had been expecting.

Berchtesgaden.

At some point, without customs, immigration, or a barrier of any kind, they had crossed into Germany. Now they were in the alpine resort of Berchtesgaden.

Luke knew the name from the research he had done in the library. It was now a resort and a tourist attraction. But in the 1940s it was the location of the holiday homes for most of the top Nazi leaders, including Adolf Hitler.

It was also the site of the alpine fortress—the National Redoubt—from which Hitler had promised to strike back with secret weapons at one minute past twelve.

Luke had a horrible feeling that the clock was ticking toward midnight.

The van slowed in the mountains and stopped amid a thick forest. Mumbo opened the side door and motioned them out. Luke was confused but looked at Ms. Sheck and saw deep terror in her eyes.

Both Mumbo and Mueller covered them with guns, and the other two followed them out of the van to the side of the road.

“Get it done.” Mueller spoke in German, but Tommy translated it for them under his breath. “Make sure the bodies are not found.”

Luke glanced desperately around at the others.

Tommy, the kid who could talk his way out of anything, seemed to be in shock, unmoving, a statue, a horrified look frozen on his face.

Ms. Sheck had turned white.

Jumbo limped in front of them, sneering as he stared into Luke’s eyes. He raised his pistol, but Gerda moved over and put a hand on his arm.

“Erich,” she said, shaking her head slowly.

Mueller looked at her. “What does it matter?” he asked. “In a few days none of this will matter at all.”

“That’s right,” she said. “In a few days none of this will matter at all, so for now, let us not be monsters. They are children. As we once were.”

Mueller gazed at her for a while, then shook his head. “Whatever you want,” he said. “But make sure they cannot escape.”

Luke closed his eyes and clasped his hands together to stop them from shaking. He had a sudden, urgent need to pee.

Let us not be monsters
, Gerda had said. But Erich
was
a monster, someone who would kill others without feeling bad about it. And yet, he did not want to show that in front of his little sister.

They were loaded back into the van and driven higher into the mountains. A sign was caught for a moment in the headlights: Obersalzberg.

Here were the bunkers, Luke remembered from the library books, dug deep into the hillsides, beneath the buildings of the town. The last defenses of the Third Reich.

Somewhere near them was the Eagle’s Nest—Hitler’s mountaintop chalet, with spectacular views of the surrounding alps.

He glanced behind to see Jumbo rummaging through the contents of Tommy’s backpack. He examined the night-vision goggles, then put them back and pulled out the lock pick. He looked at Tommy appraisingly, impressed, Luke thought, with Tommy’s cool toys.

Luke put his mouth as close as he could to Tommy’s ear and whispered, “The GPS—how do you activate it?”

Tommy’s voice was a bare murmur in return. “It’s built into the backpack. The switch is under the left shoulder strap, at the top. What are you going to do?”

“When we get out,” Luke whispered, “Jumbo is going to give me the backpack.”

Tommy frowned, not quite believing, then shrugged.

“Stop talking,” Gerda said.

The van climbed along steep mountain roads, lined on one side with tall fir and spruce trees, their branches white and bloated with snow. The other side dropped away in a sheer cliff face. Luke began to sway in his seat, letting his head loll about a little.

“What’s wrong, Luke?” Ms. Sheck asked with concern.

“I’m not sure,” Luke said. “I just feel really dizzy.”

“Put your head between your legs for a moment,” she said, snapping a look around behind her at Gerda and Jumbo. “Is that all right?”

They said nothing, which Luke took as a yes, and he put his head low between his knees.

Jumbo’s big feet were stretched under the seat in front of him, which happened to be Luke’s seat. Luke kept his head between his knees and carefully reached down to Jumbo’s shoes, untying the laces in tiny, gentle movements, then taking one lace from each shoe and tying them together, leaving plenty of slack.

He waited a few minutes before raising his head and announcing, “I feel better now, thanks.”

The road turned to the right, skirting around a small forest and climbing up to a brightly lit building ahead.

Some overgrown foundations appeared briefly in the lights of the van, and from his memory of the book he had studied, he thought they might have been the ruins of the Berghof, Hitler’s holiday home. That was confirmed as they neared the building. A sign on the front of the building announced that it was the Hotel zum Türken, which Luke remembered was just up the road from the Berghof.

The van pulled around the side of the hotel and parked in the large parking lot. Besides the guests’ cars, it was deserted at this time of the night.

“Out,” Mueller barked.

Ms. Sheck opened the van door and stepped down. Luke indicated to Tommy with a nod that he should go in front, so Tommy rose and pushed past Luke’s seat.

“You too,” Jumbo said menacingly.

Luke got out of the van. He took a couple of steps, then turned back just in time to see Jumbo step down—or try to.

Luke had tied Jumbo’s laces loosely enough to allow him to shuffle within the confines of the van without noticing that his laces were tied together, but the moment he tried to step down to the ground, the laces snagged, and he tripped and went flying, landing facedown on the asphalt.

Tommy’s backpack flew out of Jumbo’s arms, landing by Luke’s feet. Luke picked it up. He quickly activated the beacon as Jumbo stood, wiping blood from his nose and trying to work out what had happened. He looked at Luke with
daggers in his eyes, clearly convinced that Luke was somehow responsible.

“Are you okay?” Luke asked innocently.

Jumbo scowled as Luke meekly handed him the backpack.

Gerda stepped down, carrying Luke’s backpack, and the whole group entered the hotel through a rear entrance.

There was nobody around, and Mueller led them to a door, which he unlocked. Behind it was a flight of stairs leading into a cellar. It was musty and looked unused. A rack of shelving lined one wall. Mueller reached up, flicking a hidden catch, and slid the shelving aside.

It revealed a strong metal door, which he unlocked as well, this time with a large, old-fashioned key.

The door led to a brick-lined tunnel and a circular flight of stairs that took them deep underground.

Luke sighed. All that trouble to set off the beacon and now they were descending into the earth, where the signal would be lost.

More tunnels led off in other directions as they reached a lower passageway, and doors were set into the sides of the main corridor.

It was an underground bunker.

The lair of the Werewolves.

“D
o either of you have any idea what this is all about?” Ms. Sheck asked.

They were sitting on the hard concrete floor of a bunker cell, solid rusted metal bars preventing any thought of escape.

Tommy shook his head.

“I think I do. Bits of it anyway,” Luke said.

Jumbo’s bull-shaped head and thick neck appeared at the gate as he checked on them. Luke waited quietly for him to leave, looking around at the dank, dreary walls of the bunker.

So this was where Gerda had spent her childhood. Deep underground in a world made of concrete and brick, lit only by murky yellow electric globes, learning to hate the world that had trapped her here. Dreaming of a time when Nazi Germany would rise again and she would emerge into the sunshine, as one of the chosen ones. The golden children of the Third Reich.

Jumbo’s footsteps faded away down the corridor.

“I think Leonardo da Vinci made a really big discovery,” Luke said. “Something so incredibly powerful that he knew he needed to keep it supersecret.”

“Some new kind of weapon?” Tommy asked, but Luke shook his head.

“No, not a weapon. A …” He hesitated, trying to decide the right word. “A machine. I’ll get to that. I think Benfer somehow found out about Leonardo’s discovery. He must have found Leonardo’s drawings.”

“How is that possible?” Ms. Sheck asked.

“Beats me. Benfer grew up in Italy. Maybe he stumbled across another of Leonardo’s hidden laboratories,” Luke said.

“So what did he do with them?” Tommy raised an eyebrow.

“I think that when he realized what he had found, he knew, just like Leonardo, that this discovery would be really, really bad if it got out. It could never be made public. So he hid the drawings somewhere they would never be found. I think the book is some sort of treasure map. It tells you where to find Leonardo’s drawings.”