Rogue Angel 55: Beneath Still Waters (11 page)

Annja watched the man’s eyes widen in surprise at the appearance of the sword.

While she was still congratulating herself on her clever move, her assailant pushed off with his legs and twisted up and over the gunner’s seat, putting himself in the front section of the cockpit with the seat now between them. He reached down, grabbed something off the pilot’s seat beneath his feet, and then pushed off again out of the open hatch, kicking furiously in an attempt to get away from her.

Annja did the only thing she could think of; she threw herself forward, thrusting the sword ahead of her at the same time.

The resistance of the water slowed her strike considerably. As a result she only managed to slash the edge of the blade across the man’s thigh instead of impaling him with it as she’d intended.

It might not have been what she’d planned, but it was enough.

The sudden pain across his leg made the other
diver release his grip on the object he’d retrieved from the plane. It dropped away from him toward the bottom of the lake.

Having lost what he’d come for and facing an opponent armed with a weapon much more versatile than his own, the other diver apparently decided that discretion was the better part of valor and headed off into the gloom.

Annja’s dive watch was vibrating every few seconds now, the alarm telling her that she had less than five minutes to get to the surface. She could either chase after her assailant or recover whatever it was that he had dropped; she didn’t have time to do both.

She chose the latter.

Holding her sword in one hand and flicking her dive light back on with the other, she slipped over the side of the aircraft, hunting for whatever it was that the other diver had dropped.

She moved the light across the lake bottom, searching for any object that looked out of place. At first she didn’t see anything, but then she spotted a cloud of silt slowly dispersing a few feet away and she swam in that direction, hoping that it had been the falling object and not a fish that had disturbed the sediment.

Annja almost missed it, the leather of the satchel was the same dark color as the silt along the lake bottom, but fortunately the corroded buckle that held the front flap closed had enough shine left to reflect the beam from her dive light. She swam over, snatched it up, and then followed the guide wire all the way
back to her original dive point. She released her sword back into the otherwhere as she went.

Time, unfortunately, had run out.

As she rose slowly toward the surface, one hand sliding along the guide wire, she could feel the air she was sucking out of her tank becoming thinner and thinner. The tank was down to its last meager sips of oxygen; she estimated that she had less than a minute of air left.

Annja, however, had no intention of drowning at the bottom of an Alpine lake.

She sucked in as much air as she could, grasped the guide wire, and then hit the quick release on the buckle that held her weight belt around her waist. Even as that dropped away and began its descent to the lake floor, Annja was doing the same with her dive tank, shrugging out of the harness and letting that fall away behind her, as well.

The sudden difference in buoyancy allowed her to swim upward at a much faster pace.

Annja kept her hand on the guide wire, not wanting to reach the surface only to find an unbroken layer of ice trapping her beneath it, and fought to hold on to her breath.

She could feel herself starting to get lightheaded and she struggled to force the dizziness back, knowing she was a goner if she blacked out now. She kicked furiously upward, straining to go faster with every second, knowing that her life and Doug’s depended on her survival.

Above her, she could see the circle of light marking the dive hole.

Just a little farther…

Her head was pounding and her lungs were screaming at her to take in air, but she forced herself to ignore it all, focusing on the light above her to the exclusion of everything else.

Come on, come on, almost there…

She kicked with the last of her strength, her hands reaching upward for the light even as the dizziness she’d been trying to control finally swept over her, bringing with it a tide of darkness blacker than night.

She could feel her body going limp, could feel herself starting to drop back into the depths below, but there was nothing she could do about it, her air, and her strength with it, spent.

She’d been so close. Then, just as she’d been about to surrender to the blackness that longed to drag her down, a pair of hands shot through the circle of light above and grabbed her outstretched wrists.

She grasped the person’s wrists with all she had left. Though she could feel herself being dragged upward, she succumbed to the darkness and knew no more…

Annja awoke to find herself bundled up in warm clothing and tucked into a sleeping bag in one of the prefab shelters. She luxuriated in the fact that she was still alive and then pushed herself up into a sitting position.

“Sleeping beauty awakens, I see.”

She turned at the sound of Garin’s voice and found him sitting in a camp chair on the other side of the room. “Hello, Garin.”

“Cutting it a bit close, weren’t you? If I hadn’t seen your dive light coming up…”

Annja nodded. “It wasn’t intentional, believe me. If I hadn’t tussled with that other diver, I would have had…”

“Wait! What did you say? Another diver?”

“Yes. There was someone else down on the wreck with me. He would have surfaced just before I did.”

Garin frowned. “No one came up out of that lake but you. I was standing by the dive hole the entire time.”

“That’s not possible, Garin. I’m telling you that
there was someone else down on the wreck with me. He’s the one who discovered the satchel.”

A cold thought ran over her.

“You did get the satchel, right?” she asked.

Garin nodded. “And the gold bar. Nice job on that, by the way.”

Annja shrugged. She didn’t see it as all that unusual; it was what she did, after all.

Garin frowned. “Tell me about this diver you saw.”

Annja explained what happened, including the fact that she’d managed to injure the man, though she didn’t know how severely.

“If no one came out of that hole before me…” she began.

“There has to be another way in,” Garin finished for her.

Annja had been unconscious for about two hours, so the other diver was sure to have made his getaway by this point, but they organized a search anyway, just to be sure.

Annja, Garin and Paul boarded one of the supply helicopters and began searching the surface of the lake with the floodlight mounted beneath the aircraft while Garin’s men fanned out along the shoreline, searching the area on foot.

Twenty minutes after they started, Garin took a radio call from one of the search teams. He listened to whatever the other man was saying for a moment and then leaned around the seat to speak to the pilot. The aircraft began making a sweeping turn to the right.

“Griggs found something on the far side of the lake,” Garin told them. “We’re going to take a look.”

Ten minutes later the helicopter touched down and the three of them hurried out from under the still-whirling blades to where Griggs waited for them.

He led them to the shoreline where several flares had been arranged in a large rectangle, illuminating the area within.

A set of vehicle tracks started at the edge of a hole in the ice and disappeared out of sight in a straight line away from the lake and into the mountains.

Could have been anything from a snowmobile to a Sno-Cat
, Annja thought.

“We also found this,” Griggs said, leading them farther along the water’s edge. A dry suit had been discarded a few yards away from the water. It was navy blue, which Annja thought might have been the color of the suit worn by the diver she’d encountered. The kicker was that when she picked it up and examined it, she found a long gash across one thigh.

Clearly, this was the dry suit her attacker had been wearing.

She said as much to the others.

“What do you think he was after?” Garin asked.

“Whatever is in that satchel, I guess,” Annja replied.

Paul frowned. “Doesn’t that seem kind of weird to you? You’ve got a plane full of gold bars, and this guy wants an old leather satchel?”

“It depends on what’s in that satchel.”

Annja glanced over at Garin, her eyebrows raised as if asking a question.

He shook his head. “We didn’t open it. We figured you’d want to do that yourself.”

Darn right, I do
, she thought.

To the others she said, “I don’t think we’re going to answer the puzzle standing out here in the cold. Let’s go back to base and take a look.”

Both Garin and Paul agreed, but Garin wasn’t quite ready to give up on the mysterious diver.

“Griggs, take a team and follow that trail,” Garin instructed. “If you find anything worthwhile, get me on the radio.”

“Yes, sir. Will do.”

Leaving Griggs to organize the search, the others boarded the helicopter. Once back at the base, they gathered in the command center along with Reinhold to examine the satchel.

The bag was made of a dark leather of some kind, with a clasp in the shape of a silver swastika. The satchel didn’t appear to have suffered any deterioration or significant water damage, which made Annja think it had been stored in some kind of waterproof container beneath the pilot’s seat during the years it had been there. It had obviously gotten wet when it had been removed from its hiding place, but it had dried out fairly well in the intervening hours between then and now. Annja just hoped the water hadn’t destroyed whatever was inside.

Using a digital camera she had brought along with her, Annja took several photographs of the front and
back of the satchel, preserving a record of its condition for later study. When she was satisfied, she put the camera down and turned her attention to opening the bag.

Like the leather of the satchel itself, the clasp was in excellent condition and opened without difficulty on the first try. Looking inside, Annja saw that the bag contained a smaller package sealed in some kind of dark, plastic-looking material.

She reached inside and drew it out.

The plastic was actually a sealed bag made of stiffened rubber. Annja realized that it was what would have passed for waterproof packaging during the war years and that it was most likely a document case of some kind.

Probably the pilot’s map case
, she thought.

She used the camera to take several more pictures, despite Garin’s exaggerated sighs of impatience. Without looking at him, she said, “I’m going to do this right or not at all. If you’d rather, you can wait outside in the cold.”

Garin didn’t go anywhere, but at least he stopped sighing.

Annja counted that as a victory.

When she had finished her documentation, she picked up the bag, broke the seal and looked inside.

A sheaf of papers stared back at her. She could see the official stamp of the Third Reich at the top of each page.

Now things are getting interesting. One thing is for certain—this is no ordinary map case
.

Moving very carefully, conscious of both the age and the possibility of water damage from the damp satchel to the papers themselves, she reached in and drew the stack out of the bag.

She knew just from the feel of them that they were intact and undamaged despite being underwater for so long. From her view, the guy who devised the waterproof bag from which they’d been removed deserved a medal; even today’s containers would have had a hard time providing as much protection. She laid out the pages one after another on the table in front of her.

They were yellowed with age, and fragile as a result, but still easily readable.

There was only one problem.

They were in German.

Annja’s German was rusty, but they didn’t have to rely on her translation skills.

“Garin, would you be so kind?”

“Of course,” he said, walking around to her side of the table to get a better view. He leaned over the page for a moment, scanned it, then gave a low whistle. Before anyone could ask what he meant, he began translating aloud.

Martin,

As I write this, the Soviet attack on our beloved capital has begun. I have
begun making preparations to leave the city behind and move the Party to the new Führerhauptquartiere on Wolf Island. I shall be there within two weeks. I have already sent the bulk of the treasury ahead of me to fund the next phase of our operations.

I know the existence of this new Führerhauptquartiere is most likely news to you. I’m sorry I could not take you into my confidence before this, but the eyes that are upon us are many and it is difficult to know who to trust at this late hour. Your recent exploits have assured me that you are still firmly on the side of the Reich and so I am passing this knowledge on to you. All you need to locate the island is contained herein.

This courier is carrying the funds needed to finish the final preparations. Major Adler, who accompanies them, can be trusted fully to act on behalf of the Reich in all things. Use him as you see fit to assist you in this endeavor.

I shall join you shortly.

Long live the Reich!

Adolf Hitler

Silence reigned for a moment after Garin had finished reading and then everyone tried to talk at once. Annja brought her fingers to her lips and whistled sharply, cutting them off in midsentence.

“All right, settle down. Let’s not lose our cool at this point, okay?”

The others nodded, but the excitement in the room remained high.

Annja turned to Garin. “Is there anything else?”

“There is a series of symbols below the signature, but that’s all.”

“How about the other pages?”

Garin took a few moments, examining each one. Annja could see that Paul and Reinhold were practically bursting with questions, but she held up a finger, indicating they should wait until she received her answer.

At last Garin said, “As far as I can tell, these are the cargo manifests for several freighters carrying goods on behalf of the Führer. Construction supplies, arms and equipment, even furniture are listed on the various pages, complete with number and weight of each of the items.”