The Twisted Cross (22 page)

"The answer is they get involved in every little war they can find. It's part of their destabilization program. We know

they have special units, made up of the worst of their lot. The dregs of their own twisted society. Criminals, perverts, homicidal maniacs, and not all of Aryan origin either. These people are highly trained and conditioned to operate either behind enemy lines or in neutral territories. Their strategy is to create trouble, simple as that. And they are fanatical about it. They help heathens like Dos Chicos, whether it be with an airstrike or a long-range artillery barrage or even a direct infusion of troops. They are utterly ruthless. Their sole purpose is to weasel their way into any disruptive situation and tip the scales to the criminal side. Always using the means of ultra-violence to achieve their aims."

Hunter was genuinely surprised. "You mean the Canal Nazis have a third arm in addition to its regular military units and The Party?" he asked.

Brothers David and Paul nodded glumly.

"They're called the Skinheads," David said. "And for obvious reasons: each one has a shaved head. It's a sign of their resolve, if you will ..."

Hunter felt yet another piece of the puzzle drop in, though quite unexpectedly. Now he knew why Peg's would-be assassins and the Nazis he and Fitz iced near Sandlake's ranch all sported bald domes.

"Before the Big War there were fringe groups in the States and in England that called themselves Skinheads," Hunter said. "If I recall, they did have a neo-Nazi bent. Are you saying that this third arm of The Twisted Cross is an outgrowth of those movements?"

Brother David nodded again. "A tremendous outgrowth," he said, anger creeping into his normally pastoral voice. "A downright cancerous outgrowth. The Skinheads are no longer a fringe group. Now they are a well-equipped, organized army on their own. They are specialists. They have access to everything from Phantoms to sniper rifles. They're terrorists - car bombs, letter bombs, they even poison water supplies. The last thing they want here or anywhere in this hemisphere is stable, peaceful settlements. The Cross just lets them run wild, spreading destruction, murder, rape and misery everywhere they go.

"For instance, the Dos Chicos gang was no more than a bunch of drunken petty thieves until the Skinheads made a deal with them. They gave them weapons, radios, logistical support. Now when Dos Chicos goes to work, on us, or on some of the small villages nearby, they know they can count on air support from Skinheads. It's really an insidious marriage."

"How widespread are these Skinhead teams," Hunter wanted to know.

"Very widespread," David said with a sigh. "In fact, they seem to be everywhere but in Panama. I don't doubt that even The Twisted Cross High Command are nervous dealing with them. So that's why the Skinheads are entirely self-supporting. We know they are all over South America as well as up here in the Yucatan. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if some of them had made it up to North America as well."

"I'm afraid you're right," Hunter said grimly. He wouldn't have been surprised to learn that Skinheads were piloting the Phantoms he fought in the skies near New Orleans that day.

"They must be good at what they do," Hunter said.

"They are damn good at what they do," Brother Paul said, adding, "Lord excuse the language . . ."

"In many ways these Skinhead teams are more dangerous than The Twisted Cross's regular military units," Brother David continued. "The Skinheads are like the Gestapo of old, only worse. As I said, they operate on their own, entirely independent of The Twisted Cross High Command. No matter what the outcome in the Canal is, you can be sure that one or two or more of these Skinhead teams will be out there on the loose somewhere."

"That's a sobering thought," Hunter said. "And this is all good information.

Frightening, but useful.

"However, I am curious: How do you know so much about all this?"

Both Fighting Brothers suddenly became very nervous. Even the commodore lowered his eyes and tried not to look

at Hunter.

Finally Brother David spoke up. "We know it because we captured one of them,"

he said. "He was attached to the Dos Chicos as an advisor and during one of their raids, we wounded him and took him prisoner. And we made him talk, God help us ..."

"Well," Hunter said. "Where is he now?"

"He's gone on to his Judgment," Brother David said, trying to be matter-of-fact about it.

' "How?" Hunter asked. "Did he bite on a cyanide capsule? Or shoot himself in the head?"

Once again, both monks avoided his eyes. /

"No," Brother Paul said finally. "We executed him .

Colonel Frankel had never met the High Commander. Few people had. They said even his closest military advisors only talked to the man on the phone or through intermediaries. Now sitting in an antechamber on the top floor of the Panama City skyscraper that served as home to the High Command, Frankel was getting nervous. He suddenly longed for his boring but effortless old job. His hill, with its cool breezes and young women for taking, was heaven compared to this. The stress alone was already killing him. Here, in the High Temple of the Twisted Cross, he was just too damn close to the seat of power.

Few people knew what the High Commander looked like. Even fewer knew his real name. The high echelon of The Twisted Cross was cloaked in an almost impenetrable shroud of secrecy, attended to by the shadowy figures of The Party. And this, the top floor of the High Command was the Black Hole of that power-so intense not even the slightest ray of light could escape.

Frankel had no idea why they had picked on him. He was not expert in anything.

His own secret past included seven years as a low-level officer in the East German Army, a communist affiliation he dared not breathe to anyone. Now, suddenly, Strauberg was saddling him with questions and problems that required a broad sweep of politics and history, not to mention military intelligence to solve. Why him? he had wondered over and over. Why did they think he had all the answers?

Suddenly the door to the High Commander's chamber opened and a black uniformed officer stepped out.

"Colonel Frankel," the man said. "The High Commander will see you now."

Frankel gulped so loudly, the officer heard him.

"You know the requirements?" the officer asked him. "You will repeat them to me?"

Frankel closed his eyes and rattled off the words he had memorized the night before: "I am an officer of The Twisted Cross. All that I do is for the Cause and our Leader. I will fight where I stand. I will never surrender..." /

"Very good, Colonel," the officer replied without a hint of emotion in his voice. "And you realize that should you speak to any unauthorized individuals about your discussion with the High Commander, the penalty is death."

"I understand, sir," Frankel replied.

"A long, slow, painful death . . ." the officer added for emphasis.

Frankel gulped again. How he wished for those days of panning for gold ...

The black uniformed officer led Frankel through two inner rooms, finally stopping in the middle of a third. At its far end was a set of large black teak doors.

"Wait here," the officer said, before walking the ten paces to the doors and disappearing behind them.

In the scattering of seconds that followed, a hundred scenarios shot through Frankel's anxious mind. Normally cool and collected, he found himself uncharacteristically making up wild and disturbing flights of fancy. He imagined that the man sitting behind those black doors -the High Commander himself! - would be wrapped in a dark, fully curtained room. Ornate but in only the murkiest sense. And he would be wearing the blackest uniform of them all, patent leather black. And he would have no compunction at all against shooting Frankel on the spot should he not have the correct answers to his questions

Frankel tried to shake away the nightmarish thoughts, but they were coming like rain now. He had heard so many dark rumors about the High Commander, it was impossible to prevent his imagination from working overtime. The man behind the door would be disfigured in some way, Frankel was sure of it. His face was burned to point of disgust, or his limbs were missing, or his torso bent and twisted. Maybe he was blind. Or maybe he drank blood or ate flesh.

Or maybe, the man behind the doors was Adolph Hitler himself. . .

The door squeak echoed several times through the large empty waiting room before Frankel looked up. The officer was beckoning for him to come forward.

Oddly, Frankel felt nailed to the spot. He just couldn't move. Come, the officer beckoned again. But Frankel's legs wouldn't respond. It wasn't a dream

-he had already checked. Yet he couldn't speak, couldn't make a damn sound.

Over and over the man at the door told him to come -he was even smiling, though a bit strangely. But Frankel was frozen. There was terror in his boots.

Behind those doors he knew there was weird black-hearted craziness that this human wanted no part of. Yet, he had no choice. He had to go in.

A variation on Shakespeare suddenly popped into his head: Hell is empty, the bard had said. "Because all the devils are here . . ."

He walked slowly toward the door.

"Come in," the officer urged him with the suddenly friendly demeanor of a pub owner on opening night.

Frankel actually closed his eyes walking through the door, thinking this would somehow keep him in the real world just a bit longer.

It didn't work.

He looked up and saw that contrary to being dark, the room was so brightly lit, it hurt his eyes. Between the hot Panamanian sunlight flooding into the room through its enormous windows and the bath of fluorescent glow pouring down from the lights on the high ceiling, Frankel found himself blinking a dozen times, just to get his eyes adjusted.

Through the million reflections he could see a man standing behind a desk, which was set before the largest window of them all. He wasn't wearing patent leather black. Nor was carrying a gun or crippled in any sort of way.

In fact, he was wearing a suit and tie, a dark gray flannel Brooks Brothers and a red cotton Pierre Cardin tie, pinned neatly with a subdued tie tack. His eyeglasses were designer horn-rims and he looked as if he had just had a haircut in the last hour.

"Colonel Frankel?" the man asked in a positively upbeat tone of voice. He was out from behind the desk now, coming right at Frankel, his hand outstretched.

'•

"Colonel, thanks for coming," he said through a well-brushed smile, shaking Frankel's hand in the correct manly style. "I'm your High Commander. It's good to meet you. And thanks for coming. Sit down. Can I get you some coffee? Or tea?"

"Oh my God!" the woman cried out.

A breath had caught in her throat and she put her hands up to her mouth as if to keep it in. Her head was shaking from side to side and she couldn't have stopped it had she wanted to. The reflections of the hand lanterns were so strong, they almost hurt her eyes.

"I ... I've never . . ." she couldn't say any more. The whole world suddenly appeared as if it were made entirely

of gold.

Krupp was also speechless, as were the seven troopers with them. Almost at the same instant they had dropped their picks and shovels, and unconsciously wiped their dirty faces with their dirty hands.

"Is it all ... real?" one of them finally managed to ask.

No one answered. No one could. No one had seen this much gold in one spot at one time.

They had broken through and into the tunnel beneath Uxmaluna's second Grand Pyramid about noon earlier that day. A 90-minute, single file, bent-over journey through the low-ceilinged cave tunnels followed, Krupp pushing the woman in front him, the seven laborers, shovels and picks resting on their shoulders like rifles, obediently following

behind.

At the end of the tunnel they had reached a portal, one that had been sealed with a stone 1400 years before. It took Krupp and his men more than three hours to move it - four men pushing, four men working the hand tools. Finally it

rolled, just missing an opportunity to crush Krupp's right foot by inches.

Once removed, the stone only revealed another tunnel, this one blocked with dirt. Two more hours of attack by shovel and pick produced a four foot clearance in the tunnel and yet another stone.

But this one was thin and flat and made of soft limestone. Three blasts from the pick and it exploded into a thousand fragments. On the other side was a chamber -a large chamber.

And they found it filled to the top with gold.

"This is an incredible discovery!" the woman cried out, forgetting for the briefest of moments that she was a pris- *? oner. "There has never been a find like this -ever ..."

They stood at the entranceway for a full five minutes, as if to walk into the chamber would be unholy. Krupp was the one who finally took the first step. He played his lantern around the large, manmade cavern, its powerful beacon actually dimming before it reached the far wall or the ceiling.

"It's enormous," he uttered. "There must be tons of gold in here ..."

"At least a hundred tons," the girl whispered, at the same time realizing that, with this treasure now in their hands, the Nazis would have no further use for her.

And it was all pure bullion. There were no goblets or chalices or necklaces.

Rather the gold was laid out in odd, bowl-shaped ingots, each one looking to weigh at least fifty pounds. And there must have been four thousand of them, neatly stacked ten deep against the side and back walls and in an orderly laid-out center aisle.

"We must get the others," Krupp said, still not quite able to fathom the implications of what they had found. "We must call the helicopter here immediately."

"My Colonel," one of the troopers spoke up bravely, as if the tons of bullion were brilliant enough to make such things as rank and bearing petty by comparison. "We will need a fleet of helicopters to take it all out. And a full battalion of men!"

That's when it hit Krupp. Right between the eyes.