by Steve Berry
The cabin appeared, a strange apparition lying at the base of a forbidding, trackless peak.
The chopper swept over the pristine rocky terrain, then wheeled back over a landing site and descended onto gravelly sand.
Everyone clambered out, Malone last, the sleds with equipment handed to him. Taperell gave him a wink as he passed Malone his pack, signaling that he’d done as requested. Noisy rotors and blasts of freezing air assaulted him.
Two radios were included in the bundles. Malone had already arranged for a check-in six hours from now. Taperell had told them that the cabin would offer shelter, if need be. But the weather looked good for the next ten to twelve hours.
Daylight wasn’t a problem since the sun wouldn’t set again until March.
Malone gave a thumbs-up and the chopper lifted away. The rhythmic thwack of rotor blades receded as it disappeared over the ridgeline.
Silence engulfed them.
Each of his breaths cracked and pinged, the air as dry as a Sahara wind. But no sense of peace mixed with the tranquility.
The cabin stood fifty yards away.
“What do we do now?” Dorothea asked.
He started off. “I say we begin with the obvious.”
EIGHTY-FIVE
MALONE APPROACHED THE CABIN. TAPERELL HAD BEEN RIGHT. Seventy years old, yet its white-brown
walls looked as if they’d just been delivered from the sawmill. Not a speck of rust on a single nailhead. A coil of rope hanging near the door looked new. Shutters shielded two windows. He estimated the building was maybe twenty feet square with overhanging eaves and a pitched tin roof pierced by a pipe stack chimney. A gutted seal lay against one wall, gray-black, its glassy eyes and whiskers still there, lying as if merely sleeping rather than frozen.
The door possessed no latch so he pushed it inward and raised his tinted goggles. Sides of the seal meat and sledges hung from ironbraced ceiling rafters. The same shelves from the pictures, fashioned from crates, stacked against one brown-stained wall with the same bottled and canned food, the labels still legible. Two bunks with fur sleeping bags, table, chairs, iron stove, and radio were all there. Even the magazines from the photo remained. It seemed as if the occupants had left yesterday and could return at any moment.
“This is disturbing,” Christl said.
He agreed.
Since no dust mites or insects existed to break down any organic debris, he realized the Germans’ sweat still lay frozen on the floor, along with flakes of their skin and bodily excrescences—and that Nazi presence hung heavy in the hut’s silent air.
“Grandfather was here,” Dorothea said, approaching the table and the magazines. “These are Ahnenerbe publications.”
He shook away the uncomfortable feeling, stepped to where the symbol should be carved in the floor, and saw it. The same one from the book cover, along with another crude etching.
“It’s our family crest,” Christl said.
“Seems Grandfather staked his personal claim,” Malone noted.
“What do you mean?” Werner asked.
Henn, who stood near the door, seemed to understand and grasped an iron bar by the stove. Not a speck of rust infected its surface.
“I see you know the answer, too,” Malone said.
Henn said nothing. He just forced the flat iron tip beneath the floorboards and pried them upward, revealing a black yawn in the ground and the top of a wooden ladder.
“How did you know?” Christl asked him.
“This cabin sits in an odd spot. Makes no sense, unless it’s protecting something. When I saw the photo in the book, I realized what the answer had to be.”
“We’ll need flashlights,” Werner said.
“Two are on the sled, outside. I had Taperell pack them, along with extra batteries.”
SMITH AWOKE.HE WAS BACK IN HIS APARTMENT. 8:20 AM.HE’Dmanaged only three hours’ sleep, but what
an excellent day already. He was ten million dollars richer, thanks to Diane McCoy, and he’d made a point to Langford Ramsey that he wasn’t someone to be taken lightly.
He switched on the television and found a Charmed rerun. He loved that show. Something about three sexy witches appealed to him. Naughty and nice. Which also seemed best how to describe Diane McCoy. She’d coolly stood by during his confrontation with Ramsey, clearly a dissatisfied woman who wanted more—and apparently knew how to get it.
He watched as Paige orbed from her house. What a trick. To dematerialize from one place, then rematerialize at another. He was somewhat like that. Slipping in, doing his job, then just as deftly slipping away.
His cell phone dinged. He recognized the number.
“And what may I do for you?” he asked Diane McCoy as he answered.
“A little more cleanup.”
“Seems the day for that.”
“The two from Asheville who almost got to Scofield. They work for me and know far too much. I wish we had time for finesse, but we don’t. They have to be eliminated.”
“And you have a way?”
“I know exactly how we’re going to do it.”
DOROTHEA WATCHED ASCOTTONMALONE DESCENDED INTO THEopening beneath the cabin. What had her
grandfather found? She’d been apprehensive about coming, both for the risks and unwanted personal involvements, but she was glad now that she’d made the trip. Her pack rested a few feet away, the gun inside bringing her renewed comfort. She’d overreacted on the plane. Her sister knew how to play her, keep her off balance, rub the rawest nerve in her body, and she told herself to quit taking the bait.
Werner stood with Henn, near the hut’s door. Christl sat at the radio desk.
Malone’s light played across the darkness below.
“It’s a tunnel,” he called out. “Stretches toward the mountain.”
“How far?” Christl asked.
“A long-ass way.”
Malone climbed back to the top. “I need to see something.”
He emerged and walked outside. They followed.
“I wondered about the strips of snow and ice streaking the valley. Bare ground and rock everywhere, then a few rough paths crisscrossing here and there.” He pointed toward the mountain and a seven-to eight-yard-wide path of snow that led from the hut to its base. “That’s the tunnel’s path. The air beneath is much cooler than the ground so the snow stays.”
“How do you know that?” Werner asked.
“You’ll see.”
HENN WAS THE FINAL ONE TO CLIMB DOWN THE LADDER.MALONEwatched as they all stood in
amazement. The tunnel stretched ahead in a straight path, maybe twenty feet wide, its sides black volcanic rock, its ceiling a luminous blue, casting the subterranean path in a twilight-like glow.
“This is incredible,” Christl said.
“The ice cap formed a long time ago. But it had help.” He pointed with his flashlight at what appeared to be boulders littering the floor, but they reflected back in a twinkly glow. “Some kind of quartz. They’re everywhere. Look at their shapes. My guess is they once formed the ceiling, eventually fell away, and the ice remained in a natural arch.”
Dorothea bent down and examined one of the chunks. Henn held the other flashlight and offered illumination. She joined a couple of them together: They fit like pieces in a puzzle. “You’re right. They connect.”
“Where does this lead?” Christl said.
“That’s what we’re about to find out.”
The underground air was colder than outside. He checked his wrist thermometer. Minus twenty degrees Celsius. He converted the measurement. Four below Fahrenheit. Cold, but bearable.
He was right about length—the tunnel was a couple of hundred feet long and littered with the quartz rubble. Before descending they’d lugged their gear into the hut, including the two radios. They’d brought down their backpacks and he toted spare batteries for the flashlights, but the phosphorescent glow filtering down from the ceiling easily showed the
way.
“Seems we’re at the right place,” Christl said.
Two doors, perhaps twelve feet tall, were barred shut. He stepped close and caressed their exterior. “Bronze.”
Bands of running spirals decorated the smooth surface. A metal bar spanned their width, held in place by thick clamps.
Six heavy hinges opened toward them.
He grasped the bar and lifted it away.
Henn reached for the handle of one of the doors and swung it outward. Malone gripped the other, feeling like Dorothy entering Oz. The door’s opposite side was adorned with the same decorative spirals and bronze clamps. The portal was wide enough for all of them to enter simultaneously.
What had appeared topside as a single mountain, draped in snow, was actually three peaks crowded together, the wide cleaves between them mortared with translucent blue ice—old, cold, hard, and free of snow. The inside had once been bricked with more of the quartz blocks, like a towering stained-glass window, the joints thick and jagged. A good portion of the inner wall had fallen, but enough remained for him to see that the construction feat had been impressive.
More iridescent showers of blue-tinted rays rained down through three rising joints, like massive light sticks, illuminating the cavernous space in an unearthly way.
Before them lay a city.
STEPHANIE HAD SPENT THE NIGHT ATEDWINDAVIS’ APARTMENT,a modest two-bedroom, two-bath affair
in the Watergate towers. Canted walls, intersecting grids, varying ceiling heights, and plenty of curves and circles gave the rooms a cubist composition. The minimalist décor and walls the color of ripe pears created an unusual but not unpleasant feel. Davis told her the place had come furnished and he’d grown accustomed to its simplicity.
They’d returned with Daniels to Washington aboard Marine One and managed a few hours’ sleep. She’d showered, and Davis had arranged for her to buy a change of clothes in one of the ground-floor boutiques. Pricey, but she’d had no choice. Her clothes had seen a lot of wear. She’d left Atlanta for Charlotte thinking the trip would take one day, at best.
Now she was into day three, with no end in sight. Davis, too, had cleaned up, shaved, and dressed in navy corduroy trousers and a pale yellow oxford-cloth shirt. His face was still bruised from the fight but looked better.
“We can get something to eat downstairs,” he said. “I can’t boil water, so I eat there a lot.”
“The president is your friend,” she felt compelled to say, knowing last night was on his mind. “He’s taking a big chance for you.”
He cracked a brittle smile. “I know. And now it’s our turn.”
She’d come to admire this man. He was nothing like she imagined. A bit too bold for his own good, but committed.
The house phone rang and Davis answered.
They’d been waiting.
In the apartment’s hushed quiet she could hear the caller’s every word.
“Edwin,” Daniels said. “I have the location.”
“Tell me,” Davis said.
“You sure? Last chance. You might not come back from this one.”
“Just tell me the location.”
She cringed at his impatience, but Daniels was right. They might not come back.
Davis shut his eyes. “Just let us do this.” He paused. “Sir.”
“Write this down.”
Davis grabbed a pen and pad from the counter and wrote quickly as Daniels provided the information.
“Careful, Edwin,” Daniels said. “Lots of unknowns here.”
“And women can’t be trusted?”
The president chuckled. “I’m glad you said it and not me.”
Davis hung up and stared at her, his eyes a kaleidoscope of emotions. “You need to stay here.”
“Like hell.”
“You don’t have to do this.”
His cool assumption made her laugh. “Since when? You’re the one who involved me.”
“I was wrong.”
She stepped close and gently caressed his bruised face. “You would have killed the wrong man in Asheville if I hadn’t been there.”
He grasped her wrist in a light embrace, his hand jittery. “Daniels is right. This is wholly unpredictable.”
“Hell, Edwin, that’s my whole life.”
EIGHTY-SIX
MALONE HAD SEEN SOME IMPRESSIVE THINGS.THETEMPLAR TREASURE.The Library of Alexandria. The
tomb of Alexander the Great. But none of those compared to what he now saw.
A processional way of irregularly shaped and polished slabs, lined on both sides with close-packed buildings of varying shapes and sizes, stretched ahead. Streets crisscrossed and intersected. The cocoon of rock that encased the settlement reached hundreds of feet into the air, the farthest wall maybe two football fields away. Even more impressive were the vertical rock faces rising like monoliths, polished smooth from ground to ceiling, etched with symbols, letters, and drawings. His flashlight revealed in the wall nearest him a melding of whitish yellow sandstone, greenish red shale, and black dolerite wedges. The effect was like that of marble—of standing inside a building rather than a mountain.
Pillars lined the street at defined intervals, and supported more of the quartz that gently glowed, like night-lights, investing everything with a dim mystery.
“Grandfather was right,” Dorothea said. “It truly does exist.”
“Yes, he was,” Christl proclaimed, her voice rising. “Right about everything.”
Malone heard the pride, felt her flush of excitement.
“All of you thought him a dreamer,” Christl continued. “Mother berated him and Father. But they were visionaries.
They were right about it all.”
“This will change everything,” Dorothea said.
“Of which you have no right to share,” Christl said. “I always believed in their theories. It’s why I pursued that line of study. You laughed at them. No one will laugh at Hermann Oberhauser anymore.”
“How about we hold off on the accolades,” Malone said, “and have a look.”
He led the group forward, peering down the side streets as deep as their flashlight beams would allow. A strong foreboding rocked through him, but curiosity nudged him forward. He almost expected people to drift out from the buildings and greet them, but only their footsteps could be heard.
The buildings were a mixture of squares and rectangles with walls of cut stone, laid tight, polished smooth, held together with no mortar. The two flashlights revealed façades ablaze with color. Rust, brown, blue, yellow, white, gold.
Low-pitched roofs produced pediments filled with elaborate spiral designs and more writing. Everything seemed tidy, practical, and well organized. The Antarctic freezer had preserved it all, though there was evidence of geological forces at work. Many of the quartz blocks in the towering light crevices had fallen. A few walls had collapsed, and the street contained buckles.
The thoroughfare drained into a circular plaza with more buildings lining its circumference, one a colonnaded temple-like structure with beautifully decorated square columns. In the center of the plaza stood the same unique symbol from the book cover, an enormous shiny red monument surrounded by tiers of stone benches. His eidetic memory instantly recalled what Einhard had written.
The Advisers stamped their approval to enactments with the symbol of righteousness. Its shape, carved into red stone, centers the city and watches over their annual deliberations. Atop is the sun, half ablaze in glory. Then the earth, as a simple circle, and the planets represented by a dot within the circle. The cross beneath them reminds of the land, while the sea waves below.
Square pillars dotted
the plaza, maybe ten feet tall. Each crimson and topped with swirls and ornamentation. He counted eighteen. More writing had been etched onto their façades in tight rows.
Laws are enacted by the Advisers and inscribed upon the Righteous Columns in the center of the city so that all will know the provisions.
“Einhard was here,” Christl said. She’d apparently realized the same thing. “It’s as he described.”
“Since you didn’t share what he wrote with us,” Dorothea said. “It’s hard to know.”