The Vengeance of the Tau (25 page)

“As I said, we are computerized,” Bertlemass said, and led her into one of the private cubicles. “It is really a simple matter. All the material you seek is cross-filed under a variety of headings.”

He struggled into a chair but had to sit back from the keyboard, since his legs wouldn’t squeeze under the table.

“Now,” he said as the terminal whirled to life, “where should we start?”

“The battle in question was named in the journal.”

“As good a place as any. What was it?”

“Altaloon,” Melissa told him.

“Location?”

“Austrian plains.”

Bertlemass called up the proper menu and activated the search procedure.

“It always takes a few seconds,” he explained, and returned his gaze to the screen, just as the monitor beeped. “Oh,” he said.

Over his shoulder, Melissa could see the results of the computer’s search:
NO REFERENCE FOUND
.

“Not a problem,” the administrator told her. “Many battles may have been named in private journals, but relatively few of those were ever recorded for posterity. We need another reference.”

“What about the registration of the German company that participated in the battle?”

“Splendid. Our cross-referencing of all engagements is virtually complete. What was the registration?”

Melissa read it to him and Bertlemass typed it into the console. Again he waited with Melissa pressed over him until the response came seconds later:
NO REFERENCE FOUND
.

“Strange,” the administrator said.

“What’s it mean?”

“That this company never existed.”

“No,” Melissa insisted. “That’s impossible. I’ve got the evidence right here.”

“Show me.”

Melissa produced her notes and Bertlemass’s fingers worked the keyboard again, producing the same results.

“There is no record of such a company anywhere in our archives.”

“I’m telling you it existed! It had to!”

Bertlemass was looking back at her. “Mistakes, omissions, are unlikely but possible. There is nothing to worry about. The journal’s author, you said you knew his name.”

“Yes. Gunthar Brandt.”

“Spell it.”

Melissa obliged. “And I have his rank and serial number as well.”

“That should speed things along. …”

Bertlemass typed Gunthar Brandt’s serial number into the machine as Melissa recited it. The computer whirled into action.

“No,” she said in response to the results seconds later. “No. …”
NO REFERENCE FOUND
.

“Very strange indeed,” Bertlemass said, clearly exasperated.

“What’s it mean?”

“That the man who wrote this journal never existed either.”

“There’s got to be something more we can do,” Melissa said.

The fat man shrugged. “We must face the fact that this journal can only be the result of fabrication, fiction instead of fact.”

“No. I showed you my notes. I told you what I was feeling as I read it. It happened, I’m telling you, it happened!”

“The participating company doesn’t exist. The man who wrote it doesn’t exist.”

“A ruse perpetrated by those behind the battle,” Melissa insisted. “They were testing something that made it possible for them to kill a force more than ten times their size that had infinitely superior weapons. I showed you the reference. They only lost four men. Four men on one side,
two thousand
on the other! …

“The White Death,” she finished after a pause that seemed longer than it was.

“Also no reference found.”

“Which is hardly surprising.”

Bertlemass sighed impatiently. “Melissa, I am a student of the Great War. I can tell you quite assuredly that I have never come across any mention of such an occurrence, or of a weapon that made it possible. And I ask you, if the Nazis possessed this … White Death … why didn’t they employ it again? Whatever it is, clearly it could have won them the war.”

“I don’t know.”

“I do: it never existed. Gunthar Brandt, the soldier, never existed.”

That gave her another idea, a recollection that had slipped her mind until now. “His hometown was mentioned in the journal. On the front inside page underneath his name. … Arnsberg!” she remembered without consulting her notes.

“That will not help us find the reference we need.”

“Maybe not to the battle, but what about the man?”

“Melissa, I—”

“Please,
Herr
Bertlemass, for my father.”

The fat man shrugged. “I will see what I can do.”

Bertlemass was able to get the head of the local district post office in Arnsberg on the phone twenty minutes later. The conversation was brief. He made a few notes and hung up, returning his gaze to Melissa.

“Apparently there are two families named Brandt living in Arnsberg.”

“I told you!”

“Brandt is a popular name, Melissa,” Bertlemass cautioned her. “You should not get your hopes up.”

“How long a drive is it?”

“Several hours, between six and eight anyway. If you leave tomorrow morning—”

“I must leave now!”

“Then let me call you a driver.”

“No. There isn’t time. Just a car,
Herr
Bertlemass. If you could just get me a car.”

“This is that important to you?”

“It may be what my father died for,” she said truthfully.

Bertlemass nodded and extracted a set of keys from his pocket. “Then you will take mine.”

“Any minute now,” Tessen told Blaine again.

“It’s been hours.”

“Gaining access to the one we seek must go through channels.”

“Channels, I gather, you’re no longer accustomed to.”

Tessen shrugged. “The diehards in our movement continue to hope for revival. Most of us merely wish to survive undetected.”

“Which might be a problem if the latest possessor of those crates has you on their list, just as the original possessor did.”

“Precisely why we have sought you out, Mr. McCracken, as I have already explained.”

Tessen continued to maintain his vigil by the phone at this small inn located in the German countryside. McCracken paced about nervously, his thoughts locked on Melissa. He and Tessen had reached the Archaeological Museum in the center of Izmir to find that she had already departed. Against Tessen’s strident objections, Blaine then insisted on returning to the Büyük Efes, where he found that they had missed her once again. His contact, the Büyük Efes assistant manager, had helped her in every manner he could before setting her on her way again. She had not told him of her destination, however, nor had he asked. To have done so might have placed both their lives in jeopardy.

Before they had even left Turkey, the old Nazi had begun the process of tracking down someone who could tell them what was in the missing crates the Third Reich had stored in Ephesus along with the rest of the supplies. He made phone calls every thirty minutes or so. One number led to another number, each contact to the next. They were waiting at this inn now for final instructions as to how to proceed. According to Tessen, his former comrades were being remarkably cooperative. There was strong reason for hope.

Blaine had tried to reach only one person since arriving at the inn. Sal Belamo had responded finally after thirty minutes.

“Where you been, boss?”

“I was about to ask you the same question, Sal.”

“Putting a package together for the big fella. Some real goodies, you ask me. On their way to New Orleans as we speak.”

“New Orleans? What in hell for?”

“Long story.”

“I may need you, Sal.”

“Big fella might need me more.”

And Belamo proceeded to relate to Blaine the crux of what Johnny was involved in, and the crux was all it took.

“All of them torn apart,” McCracken repeated, his mind numb.

“That’s the way he described it to me, boss. Big fella ain’t one to exaggerate, either.” Sal paused. “They killed his friend, the injun police officer who called him in. Big fella didn’t sound happy.”

“How many?”

“I found a dozen already, all in the last week. Same M.O. Pretty weird shit, you ask me. … Hey, boss, you there?”

McCracken remained silent. His mind was swimming wildly. All over the world, evil was being exorcised. Justice was being extracted upon those who had managed to exist beyond it by a force even more ruthless and deadly than those it sought to destroy. But this force was not new. It had made its mark years before, as detailed by Tessen. Now it was back. While McCracken followed the trail of the pilfered crates, Johnny was following the trail of those who were surely making use once again of their contents.

“Did Johnny say anything about strange footprints?” Blaine asked finally.

“How the fuck you know that?”

“Because it’s happened before.”

“Huh?”

“He and I are after the same thing, Sal.”

“You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me. …”

“No. Different lines, different tracks, but it’s the same thing. He calls in, I want to know about it.”

“Where can I reach you?”

McCracken gave Belamo the number of the inn. But he hadn’t called over the succeeding hours. And neither had any of Tessen’s contacts.

“You were that certain I would help you?” Blaine continued, while their vigil before the phone continued.

“I was certain of nothing until our initial conversation. I knew—we knew—only that the chamber had been compromised. The fact that crates were what emerged from it instead of demons was meaningless. The threat was, in any case, the same as that we faced after World War II.”

“You still haven’t answered my question.”

Tessen’s expression was grim. “Whoever controls what was removed from that chamber, Mr. McCracken, has the power to do far more than extract vengeance. If my fears prove justified, the scope of that power is potentially unlimited.”

“That’s what the Arab said. That’s what drew me over here in the first place. That kind of power in anyone’s hands, no matter whose, is unacceptable, Tessen.”

The phone rang.

“The man is many miles from here in Mönchengladbach,” Tessen said when the brief conversation was over. “We have been granted access to him.”

“Who is this man?”

“A member of Hitler’s personal staff, some sort of liaison with the board of science. Apparently he was part of the team responsible for storing away our greatest munitions when it became obvious that the war was lost.”

“While others salted away the billions of dollars necessary to found a Fourth Reich.”

“A false rumor,” Tessen insisted. “What moderate sums there were have now been squandered by those who believed another Reich was possible. They spent it toward the formation of groups all over the world that would someday join together as the first line. But the groups fizzled. No sooner would one start up than another would die. The world had changed,
has
changed. Most of the old guard failed to see that.”

“Not you.”

Tessen shrugged. “I am merely a soldier. I see the battlefield for what it is. Come, we have a long ride ahead of us, many hours. We are expected just after nightfall.”

The elected head of the kibbutz known as Nineteen brought the news to the old woman herself. Tovah stiffened in her wheelchair behind the wrought-iron table at her approach. She looked down before the leader had a chance to speak.

“It is bad news.”

“Rothstein,” Tovah muttered.

“An attempted assassination occurred earlier today.”

Tovah looked up with a glimmer of hope. “Attempted …”

“It was an explosion. Apparently two security men saved him from the brunt of the blast. But, er …”

“Speak!”

“He was critically wounded. He is in surgery now. The prognosis is not good, even if he survives.”

The old woman’s parched lips squeezed together determinedly. “I warned him. The fool, he didn’t take it seriously. He didn’t realize …”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t hear what you said.”

Tovah’s hands clenched the sides of her wheelchair. She shoved herself backward from the table. The quickness of the action made the leader of Nineteen lurch away.

“No matter,” the old woman spoke clearly now. “Assemble the women in the cafeteria. I will address them in thirty minutes.” And then, under her breath, too softly for the leader to hear, “The time has come to go to war again.”

Chapter 24

JOHNNY WAREAGLE OBSERVED
the house in the bayou from a distance of three hundred yards through the binoculars that Sal Belamo had included in his supplies. The rest of the supplies he’d picked up in New Orleans were either worn, pocketed, or slung from his back and shoulders. There was Kevlar body armor, a 9mm pistol, an Uzi, and a British Sterling SMG. There was a killing knife and two of the throwing variety.

“Hey,” Belamo had said, “the only thing I left out was a bow and arrow.”

The British Sterling SMG was fitted with explosive bullets called Splats that Johnny had worked with once before.

“Got a friend who makes ’em up special,” Belamo had explained then. “Puts a glass capsule inside each with a mixture of ground glass and picric acid. Mixing the acid with the ground glass makes it less sensitive and allows it to be fired from a gun. When the bullet distorts on its way out of the barrel, the glass capsule breaks, which allows the acid to mix with lead, forming lead picric. Big boom when it hits its target. I call ’em Splats since that’s what happens to whatever they hit. Only problem is the Sterling’s your best bet to fire them.”

Johnny had uttered a lengthy sigh upon hearing that.

“I know how you feel ’bout the Sterling, big fella, but Splats’ll blow up in an M-16’s barrel on account of the muzzle velocity. You’ll get to love the Sterling, though. Trust me.”

Johnny was holding it in hand now. He had parked a considerable distance back on the road, geared up under cover of woods, and trudged his way through the muck and ooze forming the shore of the bayou’s water. He stood now within the shadowy cover of the mangroves and cypress trees with mud covering his boots up to his ankles. The feeling was nothing new to Johnny; he had lived it for the better part of five years in a place his memory called the hellfire. But here the jungle breathed with life, the night birds and bullfrogs haunting the sultry air with their peculiar chants. In the fetid stink of the hellfire there had been no sound and the silence had been agonizing, the silence of death itself. A branch on his right shuffled, and Wareagle gazed up to see a curious tree boa descending to inspect this new visitor to its world. Johnny smiled at it and the boa stopped, lapping at the air with its tongue.