EXOSKELETON II: Tympanum

by Shane Stadler

  Cho relit the cigar, took a drag, and blew it out through his teeth. He was going to collect the man he’d been ordered to obtain at “all costs,” and, for the moment, also preserve Syncorp. Red Dragon would soon be operating at full-bore in the homeland.

  Another shipment of Exoskeletons was on the water, so he’d only need to arrange two more. More importantly, they’d begun disassembling Syncorp’s fabrication equipment. This included the specialized machining systems – computerized milling machines, lathes, and welders. Once it was all in China, his people could reverse engineer and then produce them, and Red Dragon would be completely independent. Better yet, the United States would have lost the technology, and would have to start over from scratch – if they could stomach it.

  He shook his head and smiled as he thought about what was to transpire in the next 48 hours. Why were the Americans so easy to buy? The FBI agents on his payroll weren’t rich, but they weren’t poor either. Why sell out for a couple of years of salary? They risked their freedom and, more shamefully, their honor. And for what? They weren’t friends of China – they didn’t even understand the country. In the end, if their own authorities didn’t discover them first, their lives would end in shame and dishonor. And they’d deserve it.

  The next couple of days would be pivotal. The trap was set.

  CHAPTER XII

  1

  Wednesday, 3 June (6:40 a.m. EST – Antarctica)

  Daniel followed Horace and Sylvia up to the library. Two sailors fluent in German were supposed to join them within the hour.

  They continued with their individual tasks – Sylvia on the translation of the “White Stone,” as it had been referred to in the documents, Horace on the files, and Daniel on the notebooks, although he’d passed two of them to Sylvia since they were notes on deciphering the stone.

  Most of the notebook entries had been by Mengele. However, other handwriting appeared from time to time, mostly in German. An hour later, the translators arrived. They transcribed long passages very quickly, and he could tell that they were disturbed by what they read.

  Mengele wrote numerous page-long diatribes about seemingly tangential topics. It was these streams of consciousness that Daniel thought had the highest potential of revealing the Nazis’ objective. The idea that they’d been attempting to build an army of super soldiers, or spies, was now bunk. They’d had something else in mind from the beginning, but, up to this point, the truth had eluded him.

  In one of Mengele’s passages, he’d speculated about the possibility that a person’s soul might not only leave the body, but also leave any physical structure that contained it – the Exoskeleton, the room, even the entire base. There was no reason to assume that it was physically confined. Mengele had suspected that, in the cases where the Nibbler device had been turned off, someone in an adjacent room could have done it.

  The idea was not new: Daniel had read similar things in the Red Wraith files just weeks before. What did catch him off guard, however, was Mengele’s final line: If true, we are closer to our objective than we previously thought. But it was only a teaser. Mengele went on to describe how he had “interviewed” the prisoners in the adjacent cells, to see if they had carried out the deed of turning off the Nibbler. But Daniel thought it was unlikely; why would they save someone else before freeing themselves from the same?

  At lunch, Daniel reported to the others what he’d learned, and Horace corroborated the information with what he’d gleaned from the victims’ files.

  Then it was Sylvia’s turn. “As I said before, the message on the White Stone is a set of instructions. The Nazi researchers were able to make some guesses based on the work of François Champollion in the 1820’s on interpreting hieroglyphics.”

  “So the code is broken?” Daniel asked.

  “No,” Sylvia replied. “Hieroglyphics are complex. The writing is figurative, symbolic, and phonetic all at once, and subject to interpretation. But the real problem is the unknown hieroglyphs – if that’s what they are.”

  “How many are there?” Horace asked.

  “Dozens,” she replied. “One that I think is significant is the symbol the Nazis had interpreted as drum – since that word appears so often.”

  “By ‘drum’ they mean the beacon?” Daniel asked.

  Sylvia nodded.

  “Any indication as to why the Nazis were so obsessed with it?” Daniel asked. “Any hint of its purpose?”

  Sylvia shrugged and shook her head.

  “Anyone with the slightest inquisitive nature would be intrigued by the beacon,” Horace said. “It’s a mystery for many reasons. But the obsession goes beyond scientific curiosity. The Nazis knew something.”

  Daniel agreed. He had a once-in-a-lifetime mystery on his hands. Under normal circumstances, he’d savor the process. Not this time. Something was bearing down on him. The multinational military involvement that was forming in the waters near the beacon caused some anxiety, but it was more than that.

  It was always in the back of his mind, what Horace had said when they’d first gathered in Room 713: existential implications. It occurred to him that Horace might know more than what he was sharing.

  2

  Wednesday, 3 June (5:44 p.m. CST – Chicago)

  Denise tugged at her hair, strands of which tangled in the hinge of her glasses. Rain blew against her office window and it was as dark as midnight outside despite the early hour. Her search for the personnel and Syncorp satellite companies on the list Will had sent was fruitless after a couple of days of work. The home addresses given for the personnel either didn’t exist, or led to commercial locations such as malls and movie theaters. The company profiles seemed to be legit, unless their covers were just well managed.

  She walked into Jonathan’s office. He was on the phone and motioned for her to have a seat.

  She sat down and watched through the large windows as the rain tore through the trees in the courtyard below. Jonathan ended the conversation that, from what she’d overheard, had to do with data encryption and recovery.

  “Any luck?” he asked as he walked over to her. By the look in his eye she could tell he already knew better.

  She shook her head. “I can’t verify anything, and I’m two-thirds through both lists.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  She shook her head.

  Jonathan’s face became serious to the point where she thought he looked worried. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he said, and seemed to shake away his expression. “The companies – any of them close to us?”

  “There’s one here, in Chicago, and another in Waukesha, Wisconsin,” Denise replied.

  “What’s the one in Chicago?”

  “A biotech company – nutrition enhancements,” she replied. “Not sure what that means.”

  “Sounds nondescript enough to fit the profile of a Syncorp affiliate,” Jonathan said. “Make a visit and see what they’re doing.”

  “Just walk in?” Denise asked.

  “Be creative,” Jonathan said, grinning. “You’ve done this before.”

  Denise recalled the time she’d conned her way into a forensic testing facility in southern Illinois while investigating Will’s case. That adventure had ended with the facility in flames, a car chase and, most disturbingly, two dead people. Compared to that, she figured, this should be a piece of cake.

  “I’ll start planning,” she said.

  “Get it done tomorrow,” Jonathan instructed. “We need to evaluate this information as soon as possible.”

  Denise again sensed something in Jonathan’s voice. “Something wrong?”

  “I hope not,” he said.

  She walked back to her office and pulled up the webpage for Nutrition Enhancements, Inc. Maybe they had some job openings.

  3

  Wednesday, 3 June (6:55 p.m. EST – Antarctica)

  After dinner, Daniel and Sylvia went back to the library with the translators. Horace stayed on the
North Dakota to rest.

  Daniel continued his work on the notebooks. The more he read, the more he despised Mengele. He was supposed to be able to emotionally detach himself, but it was impossible. The man was a brutal sociopath who had been given the opportunity to exercise all of his heinous whims. It was a shame that the Israelis hadn’t caught up with him.

  He finished with Mengele’s first notebook, which started in December of 1943 and ended in November 1944. At the time, the Nazis had to know the war was lost, but there was no such indication in Mengele’s notes, even in the streams of consciousness that were now beginning to read as the babblings of a madman. The second notebook logged events of the same nature as the first: gruesome, drawn-out torture treatments, strange observations construed as telekinetic events, and ideas for new horrific experiments.

  After a few hours, the translators left for a break and, on Daniel’s request, to check on Horace. He caught Sylvia’s gaze.

  “I want to go to the vault,” she said. “I need to look at the disc.”

  “You find something?”

  She shook her head. “There’s a mark on the print that’s too faint to read,” she said. “I just want to verify it. That’s all.”

  As they navigated through the hallways and staircases, the underlying darkness overshadowed the bright lights. Even the crew bustling about, working on things and taking pictures, didn’t temper the feeling of being watched. It was nonsensical, but it was hard to separate the place from what had happened there. Were the tortured souls still running about? He brushed it off. He’d debunked quite a few ghost stories in his early years as an Omni.

  He tried to imagine what it had been like for the prisoners that had been brought to the place. They’d been delivered by submarine to the bottom of the world to have the most horrible things happen to them. They were being brought to hell.

  They went through a door, and Daniel led the way through the first room and into the vault. He opened a cabinet on the right, revealing the large object wrapped in a blanket.

  Sylvia reached in and uncovered the stone. With her finger, careful not to touch the surface, she traced the circular pattern on the third ring in from the outside. She tilted her head and looked closely at a symbol. “The print missed a subtle feature,” she said. “Good thing we came.” She pulled out a small, digital camera from her pocket and took a few shots.

  They rewrapped the disk and closed the cabinet doors.

  Sylvia turned to go out, but Daniel’s attention was drawn to the bank of file drawers that filled the entire wall opposite the vault door. There were 49 of them – an array of 7 by 7. He grabbed the handle of one near the center and rolled it out. It was about six feet long, and packed solid with files. He didn’t even bother to pull out a file; they didn’t have time to read anything more than what they had, and he didn’t want to disturb the organization for those who would come later and research the place in detail. It would take years, and he only had days.

  He closed the drawer and opened others, just to see if they all were packed just as densely. Opened, closed. Opened, closed. After about 20 repetitions, he opened one from the middle right of the array that he knew was mostly empty from the moment he pulled it. All it contained was a cubic metal box, about 10 inches on a side. He pulled it out – it wasn’t very heavy – and walked it out of the vault and set it on a desk in the adjacent room.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “It’s locked,” he replied. He examined it for a label but found nothing. “Damn,” he said, looking at his watch. “I’ll ask the captain to get one of his guys to open it. Let’s get back to work.”

  She remained still, staring at the box.

  “What?” he asked. He read fear in her expression.

  “I don’t know,” she replied. Her eyes darted around, looking at the walls, and then the ceiling. She crossed her arms tightly into her midsection and bent over. She took her right palm and pressed it tightly against the center of her chest, near her sternum.

  “You okay?” he asked, touching her shoulder with his right hand.

  She flinched violently. She stood erect and backed out of the room and into the hall. Daniel followed.

  “Sylvia, what’s wrong?”

  “Let’s just go.”

  “Okay,” he said, trying to keep up with her as she hurried down the corridor.

  After a minute, she slowed but was breathing heavily. He didn’t say anything, but just walked with her. By the time they got to the library she was back to normal

  When they walked in, Horace was already back and working. “Exploring the area?” he asked.

  “We went to the vault room,” Daniel replied, and then told Horace about the locked box. He asked one of the translators to go ask McHenry to have it opened.

  “What happened to you back there?” Daniel asked Sylvia, her face still pale.

  “I don’t know,” she replied, shaking her head. “I was overcome with the need to run – to get the hell out of there. It was a dark feeling, Daniel, like fright and depression. My chest hurt, and I still feel like throwing up.”

  Daniel had felt something as well, but for him it wasn’t as strong. Perhaps it was from knowing what had happened so many years ago – from the files it was clear that many hundreds people had been tortured to death.

  When Sylvia seemed settled, they got back to work. Daniel continued reading Mengele’s third notebook. Most of the pages were covered with dense writing mixed with hand-drawn sketches and graphs. He finished a page explaining a new torture method that would tap into the nerves of a subject’s lower back. He flipped to the next page that, to his surprise, was mostly blank.

  In the middle of the page dated June 2nd, 1945 was written a phrase that Daniel was able to translate himself: Der Führer ist heute angekommen. He got light-headed for few seconds, and rubbed his eyes. He took a deep breath and read it again, slowly. There was no other interpretation.

  The Führer has arrived today.

  4

  Thursday, 4 June (1:38 p.m. CST – Chicago)

  Denise walked into Jonathan’s office with a cup of coffee and sat down at the large table.

  Jonathan hung up his desk phone, and walked over. He gave her a strange look.

  “What?” she asked, confused.

  “What’s that smell?”

  “I smell?” she asked, sniffing her sleeve, and then her hair. “No wonder the people at Moose Beard Coffee were giving me odd looks.”

  “What is it?”

  “Cheese,” Denise replied. “The suspected evil Syncorp partner I visited makes concentrated cheese products. I now know more about cheese than I ever wanted to.”

  “A front for something else?”

  “I don’t think so,” Denise replied. “I posed as a job candidate and the owner took me on a tour of the entire facility. No place to hide anything.”

  “I have people checking out a few other places. Now I want you to focus your efforts on finding the Syncorp personnel on the list,” Jonathan said. “I have a fundraiser tonight. Let’s meet after that, say ten?”

  Such late meetings weren’t unusual. Jonathan would often work past 2:00 a.m. But this time she saw something different in his eyes. He was worried about something.

  “Ten o’clock it is,” she said and went to her office. She went to work on Will’s list of Syncorp employees and, after two hours, confirmed nothing – not a single name. Something was wrong.

  5

  Thursday, 4 June (8:41 p.m. EST – Antarctica)

  Daniel ate dinner while Horace and Sylvia discussed the day’s findings with Captain McHenry.

  “Certainly you aren’t suggesting that Hitler was alive at the time,” McHenry said.

  “After seeing this place, would that really be such a surprise?” Horace asked.

  Daniel could tell by Horace’s tone that he wasn’t completely serious. McHenry seemed to catch on.

  “I suppose not,” McHenry replied, and chuckled. “Have you
made headway on anything else?”

  After they finished giving their updates, McHenry spoke. “Now I have an update for you. We’ve discovered a porthole to the surface. It was used by the Nazis to extend an antenna. If we hadn’t discovered it, tomorrow we’d have to take the North Dakota out to the lake and extend an antenna of our own.”

  “I thought we weren’t supposed to communicate,” Daniel said.

  “We’re not supposed to transmit,” McHenry corrected, “but we can receive.” He paused a few seconds and continued. “We put an antenna up the hole and got a message from the carrier group. Chinese Special Forces have moved closer – they’re within five miles.”

  “How do they know what they’re looking for?” Daniel asked. “And where to look?”

  “I don’t think they know exactly where to look,” McHenry said. “That’s our advantage, and we’ll keep radio silence as long as possible.”

  “How long do we have?” Sylvia asked.

  “If they don’t find us, then we have until we run out of food,” McHenry answered. “In that case, we have about three months.”

  “What’s realistic?” Daniel asked. “How long will it take them to find us?”

  “Ten days, tops,” McHenry replied. “That is, if the weather holds up. It’s getting pretty ugly out there right now.”

  “And if they find us?” Sylvia asked.

  “We’ll need to use force to secure the base. The President will have to decide whether or not to risk war.”

  Daniel’s feet tingled. Sleep was going to be impossible. The time pressure made the conditions unfavorable for undistracted thought. “Did you open the box?”

  “I have someone working on it right now,” McHenry replied. “It will be straightforward – we’ll just drill out the lock – once we’ve determined it’s not booby trapped. Do you think it’s important?”

  “Important enough to put into the vault,” Horace said.