The Vengeance of the Tau (27 page)

Fascinated, McCracken ambled carefully about, treating the models with the same delicacy as expensive china. He moved toward several large tables arranged near the room’s shelves on the far left side, their models covered by thin olive-colored sheets. Blaine reached a hand out toward one and felt Tessen grasp his shoulder.

“He would not want his work in progress glimpsed,” Tessen advised softly. “And we do not want to upset him.”

McCracken nodded his understanding and pulled his hand away.

“Professor,” Tessen called one more time.

“That’s got it!” the old man said, beaming.

He popped off his drafting stool with the bounciness of a child, a figure in his hand. He brought it to a battle scene being constructed atop a table to his right, lowered it lovingly into place, and stepped back to inspect his handiwork.

“Finished!” Then he looked up. “Polish hills, September 7, 1941,” he said to his visitors. “I’m afraid it’s not for sale. None of my work is for sale.”

“We know,” Tessen said.

The old man gazed around him. He was still wearing his thick-lensed work spectacles.

“Someday I will have the whole war in this room. Every major battle, every important engagement. I can’t decide whether to organize them by year or geography. France there,” he said, pointing. “Austria here. Poland not far from where you are standing.” His eyes fell admiringly on McCracken and he continued, “Could I use you as a model? I need an American. Are you available?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether you’re willing to help me.”

“Something for your son, perhaps. Or is it a daughter?”

“Just me. And not a toy, information.”

“So boring,” the old man said, and started rearranging the figures on the model beneath him atop the re-created Polish hills. The smell of glue and paint intensified the longer they stayed in the room.

Blaine came a little closer. “Do your models include a certain chamber in Ephesus, Professor?”

The old man froze. His shoulders stiffened. He let the figure he was holding in his hand drop down randomly onto the model and turned. He looked at Tessen and then back toward Blaine.

“They let you in,” he said softly. “They must know why you’re here.”

“They know,” said Tessen.

“They are getting clever, I must admit, sending outsiders in to learn what they have been unable to. And an
American
yet.” The old man came forward and shooed them forward as if they were unwanted pets. “Sorry you’ve wasted your time. Go now. There’s the door. Close it behind you, if you don’t mind.”

“I know where the chamber is, Professor,” McCracken told him. “I’ve been inside it.”

The old man stopped in his tracks. “Impossible …”

“Is it?” And Blaine proceeded to provide a detailed description of the layout as he and Melissa had seen it. He elaborated on the placement of specific crates, canisters, containers, and drums. By the time he was finished, the old man had sunk stiffly into a leather armchair atop pieces of cut, discarded plastic.

“How did you find it?” he asked.

“Quite by accident. An archaeologist was looking for something else entirely.”

“The traps …”

“Bypassed.” And then Blaine realized. “They were installed by you. …”

The old man gazed up at him with a mixture of admiration and fear. “Who are you?
What
are you?”

“Someone who can share secrets you wish to keep,” Blaine said, recalling something Tessen had said back in the car. “Someone who can eliminate the need for these men to keep you alive.”

“No! You can’t!”

“Only if you help me.”

“Anything!”

McCracken crouched to face him. “Something was missing from the chamber, Professor. Something was hauled out.”

“Someone
else
knows of the chamber, then?” the old man raised in shock.

“Through maps left by the first party to come upon the find. It doesn’t matter. The latest to enter won’t be coming back. They have what they need.”

“Have
what
?”

“Crates, Professor. Crates that had been located just about in the center of the chamber between—”

“Stop!” The old man nearly jumped out of his chair and pushed McCracken out of his way. “I don’t believe you!”

He was pacing nervously amidst his brilliant battle reproductions, gazing down at them as if to soothe himself.

“I’m not lying, Professor,” Blaine said, close to the old man again. “Someone hauled them out, and they’re going to use what’s inside. In fact, I think they have already used it, just as it was used by Jews to gain revenge on certain Nazis at the end of the war.”

“A trick! That’s what this is, a trick!”

“People are dying horribly. Mutilated, ripped apart. Well-guarded men, men with armies protecting them. Whatever is in those crates is responsible, isn’t it? That’s what’s making it possible.”

“All the crates …”

“Every last one.”

“My God …”

“Talk to us, Professor.”

The old man walked dazedly toward what looked like a closet. Blaine and Tessen fell in behind him tentatively. The door came open with a squeak of disuse, and the old man turned toward them.

“It is better if I show you. You’ll be the first to see this model.” He flipped on the closet’s light. “The battle of Altaloon.”

Chapter 25

THE ISRAELI COMMANDO TEAM
assembled by Arnold Rothstein had arrived in the bayou just after the fall of night. Finding and dispatching the guards surrounding the house had not been a challenge for them. A far greater one would be to prepare for what would eventually be coming in their wake.

Locating the Larroux woman had proven surprisingly easy, thanks to the intelligence supplied by Rothstein himself. His logic in undertaking the pursuit was sound as always: he knew that the enemy would never leave one of its intended victims alive. That it would be returning for another go was not in question; the only issue was when.

The commandos settled back to wait.

They let themselves believe briefly that the time had come when their lookout spotted the large figure on the narrow stretch of land closest to Larroux’s house. The commandos had not been expecting this. Another party had entered the scenario. He would have to be dispatched; no other option was viable.

“Wait,” one of them said before the kill team moved out. He pressed the night-vision binoculars tighter over his eyes. “I know him.”

“An Indian,” another noted, after at last locking the large figure into focus.

“The Yom Kippur War,” the first resumed. “I fought by his side. He was part of the team the Americans secretly dropped in.” The commando lowered his binoculars. “He saved my life.”

“What could he be doing here?” the leader wondered.

“The same thing we are, perhaps.”

“He could not know.”

“You didn’t work with him,” the grizzled veteran said to the younger man.

“What are you suggesting?”

“Any attempts to kill him, successful or not, will cost us several of our number.”

The leader was looking through his own binoculars. “He’s gone.”

“I lost him, too.”

“Damn …”

The grizzled veteran, a bear of a man, smiled. The leader turned his way once more.

“So what do we do?”

“Bring him into our fold. Let me handle it.”

The force that had killed Joe Rainwater was approaching the area!

Johnny had spent the better part of his life preparing for battle, but this was a new feeling to him. Never had weapons felt so useless. Never had he felt so weak when measured against the potential of his opponents. He stood with his back against the widest of the cypress trees. Another tree boa, or perhaps the same one as before, ventured down and stuck its face into the air, as if to act as his sentry.

A sound like wind rustling through the low brush and mangroves reached him. The tree boa retreated back to its lair. Wareagle twisted away from the tree, Splat-loaded Sterling SMG aimed dead ahead, Uzi to the right. A pair of black-clad figures appeared from the thick tangle of vines behind him, weaponless with their hands in the air.

“Please don’t shoot,” the larger of the two said. “We have you surrounded.”

Johnny Wareagle stood there looking at him, the moment frozen in time.

“Wareagle,” the large figure said as it approached him.

“I know you,” Johnny followed, relaxing slightly.

“October of ’73. In the Negev.”

“And now we meet here. …”

“Different times. Different enemies. Little changes.”

Johnny lowered his guns. “Until now.”

“We must hurry,” Wareagle said to the commando leader minutes later, before they were even introduced. “I feel them approaching.”

The leader looked at the big burly man who had recognized Johnny. The man nodded.

“You have any idea what you’re dealing with here?” the leader asked him in a hushed voice.

“I am dealing with what killed my friend. I am dealing with some force that has ravaged untold numbers of people on its route here.”

“Then you know pretty much the same thing we do. Since you were one of the Americans who helped us in 1973, I’m going to assume you’ve still got a G-5 security clearance. We’re here on the orders of a rather powerful man who’s had dealings with this force before. Apparently it’s making what you Americans would call a comeback. He sent us here to pick up its trail and follow it to its source.”

Wareagle gazed around him. He had no idea how many the commando team was in number, but six of them were huddled in the small muddy grove on the shore of the bayou now. He had seen their kind before; he had
lived
with their kind. If they weren’t the best Israel had to offer, they were very close.

“Something from the past,” Johnny muttered. “I should have felt that. …”

“How far away are they?” the burly man asked him.

“Those who advise me seem … confused. They are here, yet not here.”

“We don’t need riddles right now,” the leader snapped, sliding away to find a clear view of the house.

“You will let the woman die,” Johnny said in what had started out as a question.

“We wait for what comes for her to show itself and then we move. Her life is of no concern to us.”

“She might be able to tell you something about what you face.”

The leader turned and looked at him again. “We’ve already been told everything we need to know.” He reached into a small pack hooked on his belt and came out with a pair of goggles like none Johnny had ever seen before. “Put these on. You’re going to need them.”

Gunthar Brandt had propped himself up in bed by the time Melissa made it back to his bedside. She had still not replied after the shock of hearing him speak, and now she struggled to steady her breathing.

“You never had a stroke,” she said finally.

“Oh, but I did,
Fräulein.
I merely hid the truth of my rapid recovery from them. I needed to be at peace. I needed to be isolated.”

“Because of Altaloon …”

“It has haunted me ever since that day of the battle.” Brandt shivered. “And now you return and stick that blasted journal in my face. I destroyed it, threw it away! …” He stopped. “They must have been watching. Of course! They could have no trace. I should have burned it, assuming they would have let me.” His eyes flashed with fresh alertness. “Where did you find it?”

“In an underground chamber full of stockpiled German weapons from the war. Near a collection of crates that were lifted out.” She paused briefly. “Crates containing what you called the White Death.”

Brandt’s mouth dropped. “That … can’t be.”

“It is, believe me. I almost died because of it. Several others already have.”

“Several?” Brandt tried to smirk and failed. “I watched thousands die,
Fräulein,
and that day destroyed the rest of my life.”

“What happened?” she asked softly, afraid in that instant of what the rest of the story of Altaloon might bring.

“You read my journal: a hundred and fifty men took on a regiment of nearly two thousand and wiped them out, massacred them.”

“I mean how?
How
could it have happened?”

“Simple,
Fräulein:
they couldn’t see.”

“The White Death,” the toymaker muttered to McCracken and Tessen, his sketchily drawn explanation complete. “That’s what they called it.”

The table containing the reconstructed model of the battle of Altaloon was the only content of the closet. It was wedged in the small space, lit by only a single dangling light bulb. There was scarcely enough room for the three of them to line up beside it. The bulb swung slightly above them, as if caught by a nonexistent breeze, the miniature panorama alive beneath it.

A hundred or so German troops were spread out on three papier-mâché hillsides that looked down into a large valley of green finished wood. The scene had been frozen well into the battle, perhaps even as it neared its end. The Germans had what looked like tight black goggles painted over their eyes. In the valley beneath them, plastic troops in red-smeared Allied uniforms lay in dying heaps. Some had discarded their weapons and seemed to be in the midst of searching for somewhere to hide. The carnage, even in the reconstruction, was horrifying. The old man was obviously a brilliant artist, able to re-create even agonizing pain on the faces of the tiny figures frozen near death. Not just pain, but confusion and terror as well.

“Blinded,” Tessen said, echoing the toymaker’s explanation, his gaze at the magnificent reproduction mirroring Blaine’s. “They never had a chance.”

“That was the idea, don’t you see?” the old man followed. “I had nothing to do with the weapon’s development, mind you. I was merely its caretaker once it was clear that the war was lost and we needed to salvage what we could. But I can tell you this: of all the weapons I stored in that underground chamber, this was the one I considered the most deadly and most effective.”

The toymaker’s eyes fell lovingly on the creation beneath him. He held out his arms the way a father might to a sleeping baby.

“Behold perfection. My greatest work, reconstructed with the help of a man from the board of science who traveled with the company pictured in the hillsides. Alas, it was the board of science’s greatest accomplishment as well, the ultimate battlefield weapon. If discovered earlier and produced in sufficient quantities, it could—
would—
have changed the course of the war. But by the time of Altaloon, our production and transport capabilities had already been severely reduced. Then, before more of the White Death could be turned out, the plant producing it was destroyed by an Allied bombing run. We hoarded what had been salvaged. But instead of using up our precious reserves on a few more battles that wouldn’t change the outcome of the war, we decided it would be better to save what we had for future generations to analyze and reproduce.”