Promethea (4 page)

             
Nonetheless, his logic towards yesterday’s heist lacked argumentative reason. There was one fundamental fact that we both avoided up to this very last moment. His story simply did not add up and that irked me enough that I found myself unable to retain the truth no longer. I knew he was deliberately giving the spear more merit than it did deserve.

             
“Father Bauer, if you do actually believe that the Holy Lance would grant its bearer unlimited power, why didn’t you tell the inspectors that the stolen item was not the actual Holy Lance of Longinus?” I was quick to realize how my question summoned a devious grin on Bauer’s face.

              The law enforcement trio took a perceptive tour around the medieval Swiss Wing. They had no expectations or immediate guesses. Instead, they were only armed with the prospect of stumbling upon anything they would consider of value. Adam walked slowly, keeping a watchful eye over his companions. It seemed as if there was a concealed tension between Schuster and his towering, seemingly inept, assistant.

             
“Brunner!” Schuster had finally ripped apart that heavy shroud of silence he had carefully knit around the three of them. “As police investigations showed nothing extraordinary about the manner in which the intruder blew away the steel balustrade, would you mind taking us to where he later…
teleported
?” He then turned to Adam donning a patronizing smirk. “It was a military C4 plastic charge, moulded around the edges of the steel bars in very small and precise quantities. He actually presumed that the burglar had telepathically caused the explosion.”

             
Brunner clearly looked distressed. He had no supportive arguments or means of confrontation against his superior who wasted no occasion flaunting his shortcomings. He had already always considered the museum’s security to be such a hefty burden, one that he had to carry on a daily basis, and as such, he felt deeply offended and underappreciated by his statements. All he could do now, however, was to brush off these distasteful remarks and lead his escorts to the rooftops as being ordered. The Inspector backtracked the chase’s events. He began reciting them to his companions as they stepped carefully on the sloped rooftops. From up here, the place looked like a manmade industrial forest: More than thirty brick chimneys stood their ground at the Swiss Wing alone, some even towered well above three meters in height. The chimneys were surrounded by the evident aftermath of yesterday’s pursuit; a random mess of skid marks and footprints. Brunner stopped abruptly, brushed aside a scruffy, golden lock of hair that temporarily impaired his vision and ran his fingers across one of the brick towers that stood erect to his side. He was now almost certain that this was in fact where they had lost track of the intruder. He then gazed blandly at the far end of the complex, releasing a frosty gasp of air and pointed timidly at where the thief had miraculously reappeared.

             
Adam has always been practical. He carefully inspected the markings with much interest, until an unlikely idea forced its way to his head. At first, He felt the impulse to instantly share his wild hypothesis with his Austrian companions but then felt restrained by Schuster’s evident cynicism. He realized that starting from this moment, here and now, once he was willing and ready to voice his opinions, he had to first validate and practically put them to the test. He therefore turned to Brunner and asked him to lead the way to the far end of the complex.

             
“Any theories?” Schuster was quite curious, and while the Frenchman gave him an uncertain nod, Brunner appeared increasingly worried when they all jointly progressed towards that distant second position. He could very well feel his knees buckle underneath the weight of dread and panic. He feared whatever sort of new evidence that may be trapped underneath that thinning layer of snow, itching and scratching to be unearthed. He was fully convinced that the chances to clear his already tarnished reputation were constantly slimming, and there was little if anything he could now do about it. That tiny Frenchman was just about to cement his newfound stigma of inefficiency, worsening his credibility even further in front of the Senior Councillor.

             
Adam, however, was completely unaware of the psychological battle that raged within the Austrian Bigfoot. He was, instead, fully versed taking a discerning glance to his fresher, newer surroundings, until a blissful confident smile prolonged his lips and stretched them all the way to the extreme right side of his dimpled face;
Mother Nature has done it again.
If his experience had taught him anything, it was that no matter how careful wrongdoers have always tried to be, their environments seemed to have always fancied giving them away. A few looks around confirmed the Interpol agent’s suspicions; the one single feature that has been helping the intruders in their raid and eventual escape yesterday, had just given them away: Snow.

             
“Here’s a question.” The Frenchman asked. “How frequent are high-profile solo, one-man heists?” Adam probed but his questions fell flat on the blunt confused faces of his partners who provided no hint of an answer. “Never mind.” He continued. “They constitute around ten to fifteen per cent of all art robberies.”

             
Adam did not blame the Austrians much for their lack of insight; after all they most probably solely handled domestic cases while he was more versed in regional and global affairs. What sparked the agent’s interest in the beginning of this particular case was the way this heist was conducted. It immensely resembled another that had occurred almost exactly seventeen years ago in the Netherlands. In 2002, media had gleefully dubbed thirty-one year-old Dutch citizen, Octave Durham, ‘The Monkey’ for his ability to acrobatically evade police officers during the chase. He broke into the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam by sliding from a window, used ropes and ladders to get in, seized two invaluable works of art and got out. All this, however, was conducted
with the help of an accomplice.
Yet unlike this theft, the duo was very sloppy that they left all kinds of evidence and DNA traces behind and eventually got arrested a year later. Adam was clearly on to something now and Schuster knew that he was not trying to link the same, now forty-eight year old, man to the incident. Yet, there were some undeniably uncanny patterns that started to emerge.

             
“Have you heard about the children’s tale of the Tortoise and the Hare?” Adam had a thing for answering questions with ones of his own. It allowed him to engage listeners who would be willing to actively participate and reflect on the discussion. Both Schuster and Brunner nodded in agreement.

             
There are many variations of the story but this one was actually Adam’s favourite. It showed how much cunningness was a celebrated virtue in the modern world. The story begins when both creatures decide to settle their grievances with a public race but since the hare possessed a clear biological advantage over its heavier slower foe, the tortoise simply had no option but to resort to cheating. It relied on identically looking tortoises that hid at different milestones along the racecourse, so that every time the hare gets a lead, a new tortoise would appear upfront, giving the illusion of always being ahead. Adam then pointed at the snow carpeting the rooftops beneath their feet. It showed a bit more than mere skid marks. There was an irregular imprint large enough where a small man could lay down. “There! It is where the second man was hiding. You will find a comparable imprint behind the chimney where you first lost track of the first intruder.”

             
It became evident that the intruders used a decoy. They led the guards on a wild-goose chase while the original thief slipped right past them. More importantly, they seem to have gone the extra mile to leave an impression, one that could only be bolstered by the myths surrounding the holy relic. They really wanted people to believe that they were now in possession of an item of vast unlimited power.

             
Schuster looked down to validate Adam’s assumptions and by the time he gazed back up he found himself at an impasse, torn between two conflicting feelings. From one end he was impressed with the tenacity and resolve of the Frenchman he just met, even if he skilfully muffled down his emotions up to the point of full suppression. Yet from another, he felt betrayed and infuriated by Brunner’s avid incompetence. This is why he was quick to call his trademark decision-making tunnel vision into play. He expertly silenced all the loud static from the flurry of all the possible outcomes out of this situation. Then, he quickly funnelled them down into one single verbal outlet as he inspected his ultra-expensive IWC Schaffhausen Top Gun Swiss watch that was wrapped tightly around his feisty right fist.

             
“Brunner, you still have time to go back to the station. Collect your things and leave your badge there. You’re suspended.”

***

              Never have I been utterly impressed by man’s fascination with the supernatural. We had willingly abandoned the charted waters of reason in a failed attempt to explain our very own existence, alongside the many other unusual events throughout our relatively brief history here on Earth. The story of the Holy Lance had such a captivating allure that spawned at least five different unlikely versions of the spear, all claiming their authenticity, yet all but one must be forged and untrue. Both Father Bauer and I were already aware of this fact.

             
When it came to the lance on display here in Vienna, only few people knew the truth. This spear, while still of great historical significance, was hardly even present at the time of the crucifixion. Its distinct shape was one of many giveaways that refuted the Austrians claims. It simply did not match first century Roman weapons. Yet, what drove the final nail in its metaphorical coffin were the tests conducted by Dr. Robert Feather, an English metallurgist, more than a decade ago. He had conclusively disproved any assertion of its authenticity when he was given exceptional access to the spear in a contained laboratory environment as a part of a documentary that was later aired on TV.

             
The first historical record of this lance dates back to the 10
th
century, a full 940 years after the traumatic and laboured birth of the Christian faith and well into its troublesome adolescence. It came into the possession of Emperor Otto I, who carried it into battle claiming it gave him unparalleled divine authority over his Christian kingdom. He flaunted it as a godly omen when he marched in full resolve and confronted those who did not share his beliefs. Emperors Charlemagne and Barbarossa shared his enthusiasm and as such they summoned the same relic during times of conflict and credited it for most of their military successes. According to legend, both of their lives came to an abrupt end incredibly shortly after they accidentally dropped the lance in battle.

             
It was from henceforth that the fables strung around the Vienna Spear grew even more intricate, up to the point that even the once mighty Napoleon had no other ordeal in mind but to wrap his fingers around the artefact. He purposefully moved his troops in a failed attempt to obtain the relic shortly after his great victory in the battle of Austerlitz. Yet, the residents of Nuremberg, fearing what they considered a dreadful fate, smuggled the spear outside their city before he could ever lay his hands on it.

             
The lance then exchanged numerous frenzied hands, until it finally wound up with the House of the Hapsburgs in Austria and eventually, was showcased as part of the treasury collection here, at the Hofburg Museum. Until in 1912, when Adolf Hitler, then a young Austrian painter, paid a visit to the Museum premises.

             
It was said that he stood here, pinned and awestruck, almost mesmerised in front of where the lance was once displayed as he let the demons of personal glory defile and possess him. Time screeched to a complete halt, and a silent film reel rolled in the back of his head, projecting lucid visions and glimpses of the false greatness that awaits him. And as so, he nurtured this seed of madness devoutly for what some may call a lifetime, until twenty-six years later in 1938, he, after annexing Austria to Germany, ordered the spear transferred back in a specially armoured truck to the city of Nuremberg where it was once kept throughout numerous glorious past German empires.

             
It was the tip of a cloak of darkness that stretched for nearly half a decade over and above the face of the Earth. Nations trembled, and continents faltered under the punitive rule of the Nazi Swastika and its rabid warmongering ambitions. It was not until the latter part of World War II, when the Allied forces were finally able to tip the scales in their favour, that he was finally compelled to relocate the spear to an underground bunker protecting it from their heavy artillery. Yet the relic was not quite finished yet, it still had a principal role to play in the grand finale. It was rumoured that out of illogical panic and severe fright, Hitler committed suicide only a meagre 8 minutes after the advancement of the American troops led them to storm the underground vault in 1945, putting a conclusive end to an unlikely parallel storyline.

             
To say that I carry nothing but pure dread and disdain towards the absurdities committed in the spear’s name would be a terrible understatement. It served in nothing but feeding a horrific torrent of bloodshed that spanned over a millennium, forcing bizarre bends on the course of human history, based solely on an inaccurate recount of historical events.

             
“Well, child, it seems like my initial intrigue in your character was well placed. You do possess a knowledge, which in great part surpasses that of your colleague’s. Are you a qualified historian? An enthusiast perhaps?” Exclaimed Bauer as he firmly knitted his eyebrows.

             
“Neither.” I replied. “My obsession with theology and history was self-motivated. I only pursued it to derail my more devout sister off her self-consuming path.”