EXOSKELETON II: Tympanum

by Shane Stadler

  McHenry nodded.

  They finished eating and McHenry went to the bay to check the progress on the box. Daniel filled his coffee mug and stood at the end of the table. “I’m going back to the library,” he said.

  “I really need sleep,” Sylvia said, “but I don’t see any other way.”

  Horace agreed.

  Daniel was impressed by the old man’s resilience. “Horace, I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I had the impression when we’d first met that you had some insight regarding what is happening right now,” Daniel said. “Do you?”

  After a few seconds of still silence, seemingly mulling over in his mind how to respond, Horace nodded slowly. “I’ve had suspicions since the end of the war,” he replied. “You see, I participated in Operation Tabarin.”

  Daniel was stunned. Horace was indeed ancient. “But that was a British mission.”

  “I have dual citizenship,” Horace replied. “I was OSS and SAS and, later, MI-6 and CIA.”

  “How were you cleared to be an Omni?” Daniel asked, astonished.

  “The ties between the US and UK run deeper than most people realize,” Horace answered.

  “What happened in Tabarin?” Sylvia asked. “What did you learn?”

  “Nothing,” Horace replied.

  Daniel was confused. “You said all of this had existential implications. What did you mean?”

  “I’d led a recon group to a location probably within 50 kilometers from here,” Horace explained. “We were looking for a Nazi SS task force.”

  “Did you find them?” Sylvia asked.

  “Yes,” Horace said. “At first we thought they’d frozen to death – but 12 soldiers don’t just freeze to death all in the same place. We searched their site and found a note explaining that they had poisoned themselves – committed suicide.”

  “Why?” Daniel asked.

  “They were frightened,” Horace said. “The note explained that the Nazis had found a way to bring back Hitler, and that he’d possess powers beyond imagination. They were aware of what Hitler had done in the extermination camps. They felt that, if he did return, they’d be responsible. They thought that Hitler might be the devil himself.”

  “It’s preposterous,” Daniel said. “The SS wouldn’t fall for such idiocy.”

  “I disagree,” Horace said. “The SS was a strange organization, deeply rooted in the occult.”

  “What do you believe?” Sylvia asked Horace.

  “When we returned from our mission with this information, we were quickly debriefed and ordered never to speak of it again,” Horace explained. “Of course, we talked about it amongst ourselves. But it wasn’t until 1960, when I met a former American submarine captain, drunk in a London pub, that I’d become suspicious to the point of paranoia. He was telling a story to some fellow drunks of how he’d been tasked with sinking a Nazi sub off the coast of Antarctica because it had been feared that Hitler was on the vessel. He’d said that that occurred in 1946, during Operation Highjump – the so-called American invasion of Antarctica.”

  “You believed him?” Sylvia asked, her face showing both surprise and skepticism.

  “No,” Horace said. “But I wish I had.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Now I remember some details of that conversation,” Horace replied. “He’d mentioned a secret tunnel, and an underwater object – a secret Nazi weapon. When I asked him questions, he clammed up. My impression at the time was that he was making up stories.”

  “Too many correct details,” Daniel said. “Probably not a coincidence.”

  “What’s happening now does have existential implications,” Horace said. “I believe that.”

  “And now, with Mengele’s notes about the Fürher arriving … well, I suppose we have to consider every possibility,” Daniel said in disbelief of his own words.

  McHenry rushed in. “Come with me,” he said, breathing heavily.

  “What is it?” Daniel asked, his heart thumped hard in his chest. His first thoughts were that Chinese forces were knocking on their door.

  McHenry waved for them to follow him. “We’ve opened the box.”

  6

  Thursday, 4 June (9:12 p.m. EST)

  Daniel followed McHenry down the roped-guided ramp from the North Dakota to the dock and onto the bay floor. Horace and Sylvia followed.

  Four sailors stared at the box at their feet. A dusting of metal shavings glittered the floor beneath the lock, and the lid was open. Daniel stepped into the group and looked down.

  Inside was a leather-jacketed ceramic canister with its lid held in place by four metal clips, like a candy jar. The sheath was fitted with rings through which leather straps were threaded to hold the canister in place. The inside of the box, including the lid, was padded and upholstered with a dark red fabric.

  “What is it?” Daniel asked.

  “No idea,” McHenry replied. “We haven’t touched it – only took pictures. It’s not booby trapped.” He pointed to a cardboard box of latex gloves.

  Daniel grabbed the end of a glove and tugged until it came out of the box with a snap. Two gloves were stuck together so he peeled them apart, put them on, and squatted close to the box.

  He struggled to release the brass clips that held the leather sheath in place. Even through the latex gloves he could tell that the burgundy padding was slippery like satin. It reminded him of the inside of a casket.

  After releasing the four clips, the ceramic vessel was free. He slipped it out of its leather jacket, and examined it at arm’s length. It was the size of a pickle jar, but heavier. He turned it slowly, but his attention was diverted to Sylvia, whose expression became distorted in what Daniel thought was fear – not unlike the expression he’d seen on her face while in the vault.

  “Look!” she said in a hoarse voice. “Turn it around.”

  He turned the vessel and read the words etched on its bulbous midsection. It read: Adolf Hitler, 20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945. The vessel was an urn.

  Daniel felt dirty – violated in some way. “This can’t be true,” he said, and looked to Sylvia and Horace for something to ease his agitation. They offered nothing.

  “Why not?” McHenry asked, and glanced at Horace. “Look at this place. We’re in a Nazi base in Antarctica. I’d think anything was possible. At least this confirms Hitler was dead when he arrived.”

  Daniel’s mind bombarded him with a thousand thoughts at once. What was going on here? What was the point of bringing Hitler’s burnt remains to the base?

  Horace donned some latex gloves and took the urn. He rotated it slowly and then lifted it up to examine the bottom. His eyes widened. “My God,” he said.

  “What?” Daniel asked as he crouched to get a look underneath. He read it aloud, his words sounding like they came from someone else, “Vatican City, 8 May, 1945.”

  “Vatican City?” Sylvia said, her face more pale than before. “I thought the allies recovered his body in Berlin.”

  Daniel shook his head. “It was never confirmed,” he said. “His body was burnt beyond recognition.”

  “But it makes sense,” Horace said. “An ODESSA ratline ran through the Vatican, or so some speculate. This might be proof.”

  “I understand why the Nazis set up escape routes for living war criminals,” Sylvia said. “But why would they go to such great lengths to smuggle a corpse out of the country?”

  “The SS was an odd group, with a cult mentality,” Horace said. “Who knows what strange rituals they had planned, or what mystical value they’d given to the remains of their leader.”

  Horace then gave Daniel and Sylvia a look indicating he was going to open it. “Shall we?” he asked as he set the urn on the floor and secured it between his feet. He disengaged the four wire clips that held the lid in place. A crust had formed between the urn and its lid, but he pried it open carefully.

  The four of them, including McHenr
y peered down, between Horace’s feet. The urn was about two-thirds filled with light gray ash and small pieces of bone. Horace replaced the lid, secured it with the clips, and set it back in the padded metal box.

  No one spoke for a full minute.

  “This is an interesting discovery,” Daniel said, “but we better get back to the library and figure out what the hell was going on here, and why the rest of the world is trying to find this place.”

  McHenry snapped the leather holders in place, and closed the lid. “I’m taking this to the North Dakota, and I think we should start moving the other important artifacts there as well. We could get the order to evacuate at any time.”

  That McHenry was even mentioning evacuation made Daniel’s heart race.

  “Let’s go,” Daniel pleaded and got them heading to the library. “We no longer have time to go through this methodically. We should start from the end – the latest information – and work backwards.”

  “I’ve been doing that,” Sylvia replied. “And I don’t understand anything yet.”

  It seemed to Daniel that she was still shaken about something – ever since the incident in the vault. “It’s okay. Keep going,” Daniel said. “I’ll start at the end of the last notebook. I probably should have been doing that from the start.”

  “That’s not how you were trained,” Horace interjected, out of breath and holding his chest as he walked. “Your skills weren’t developed to deal with time pressure. They were meant for accuracy and revealing obscure connections. But you’re right. We must deviate in this case.”

  They arrived at the library and went to work. They weren’t letting up until the Chinese knocked on the door.

  Daniel opened Mengele’s final notebook, and went to the last page, dated August 22nd, 1958. It was the book that had been strangely truncated – incomplete. Something clicked in his head, and he turned to Sylvia. “When were operations Argus and Blackfish carried out?” he asked.

  Sylvia looked up and pulled off her glasses. “The first detonations were at the end of August, 1958 – the 27th I believe. The last was September 6th.”

  Was it a coincidence that the Mengele’s last entry and the nuclear explosions were so close – both in time and location?

  He paged backwards, ignoring Mengele’s calculations, and reading only his maniac diatribes. Mengele never ranted about the progress of the war, and hardly mentioned it even as Germany surrendered. It was as if the war didn’t matter, other than to set the stage for the Antarctic base and its unknown objective.

  Daniel stood and stretched. He walked back to the stacks in the rear of the library and paced as he gathered his thoughts. Mengele was excited that his Führer was arriving because he thought he was on the verge of a breakthrough. His Führer, however, was in a compromised state – being in the form ashes at the time. Why would Mengele be so excited about that? He returned to the table and, after another hour of reading, he finally found the answer in a long dialog.

  They thought Hitler’s soul would follow his ashes. It wasn’t the primary objective of the base, but the Nazis thought that if they could get the soul of one of the torture subjects to leave his or her body, Hitler’s soul could enter it and take over. Live again.

  When the war had turned against Germany, the Nazis devised a plan. If Hitler were in danger of being captured, he was to commit suicide. His body was to be cremated and he – meaning his soul – was to follow his ashes wherever they went. They’d smuggle them to the base and put them in a room with a separated subject, giving Hitler’s soul the opportunity to occupy the subject’s body. Once he’d successfully taken over, he was supposed to utter a specific phrase to confirm that it was really him: Der Tod ist der Hirte der Menschheit.

  Daniel shuddered. Death is the shepherd of mankind.

  7

  Thursday, 4 June (9:31 p.m. CST – Chicago)

  Denise ate dinner in her apartment and returned to campus at ten minutes to ten. She’d been able to verify nothing on the lists of names or companies that Will had given her. The names were all of a common sort; every search had given results in multiple states, and none matched the associated addresses. This was in stark difference to the information he’d collected from the CP men – all of that was legit.

  The companies on Adler’s list were all real, but similar in size to the company she’d visited that morning. Jonathan had arranged to have a few of the companies inspected by his contacts in other cities, and she was eager to hear the results.

  She logged into the email account she shared with Will to see if he’d made an update. There was a new one in the draft folder, and she opened it. The message was short: “Getting the hard drives. Give you an update tomorrow.”

  Denise read it again. What did it mean? Was he doing something tonight – at Syncorp? Was he crazy?

  The clanging of keys from the hallway broke her from her thoughts. She jumped up and met Jonathan before he could unlock the door to his office. She waved him into hers.

  She pointed to the screen as he walked in.

  He pulled a set of half-rimmed glasses from his front pocket and leaned in close. After a few seconds, he leaned back, shaking his head. “This is bad,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Were you able to corroborate anything on those lists?”

  Denise shook her head.

  “I had people in Milwaukee and Detroit visit some of the companies,” he explained. “None are Syncorp-related.”

  “Will recovered bogus intelligence,” she concluded.

  “Someone must’ve known what he was doing,” he said.

  “So what’s happening now?” she asked, nodding to the message on the computer screen. She knew what he was going to say.

  “He’s getting set up is what’s happening.”

  She felt light-headed and sat in a wooden chair next to her desk.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked.

  “Call him.”

  She grabbed her phone and placed the call. “It went directly to voicemail,” she said.

  “Could he have his phone turned off?”

  “Never happened before.”

  “We can’t call the police or the FBI – we might get him killed,” Jonathan explained. “But the Foundation has friends in New Orleans. I can send them up to Baton Rouge.”

  “What will they be able to do?”

  “Not much, I’m afraid,” Jonathan replied. “There’s no time. You need to send him another email – immediately – in the off chance he reads it before he sets out on his operation.”

  Denise switched chairs and wrote a quick message: You’re being set up! Call me! She saved it in the drafts folder and then prayed that he got it before it was too late.

  8

  Thursday, 4 June (10:57 p.m. EST – Antarctica)

  “That the Nazis tried to reincarnate Hitler is mindboggling,” Daniel said, mostly to break the silence. He’d been pacing in the stacks again. He took his seat at the table. “And if that wasn’t their main objective, what in the hell was?”

  “I’ve found more pieces of the Nazi translations,” Sylvia said. “It’s clear they thought the beacon had some special function, and the White Stone gave instructions on how to access that functionality.”

  “The instructions included torture?” Daniel asked with skepticism.

  “Not exactly,” Sylvia explained. “Each concentric circle is encrypted differently, and each requires different knowledge or techniques in order to decipher it. The outermost ring was the easiest: it was coded in known languages of the time. It revealed the location of the beacon.”

  “They got the location from hieroglyphics?” Daniel asked.

  “Not all of the symbols are hieroglyphics – it’s more complicated than that.” Sylvia explained. “The translation gives the angles for longitude and latitude in units of radians, rather than degrees. Zero latitude starts at the equator, as usual, but the prime meridi
an – zero longitude – goes through Giza, Egypt.”

  “What’s special about Giza?” Horace asked.

  “It’s where the White Stone had been discovered in January of 1932,” Sylvia explained. “The Germans stole it six months later.”

  “Hitler’s rise to power came soon thereafter,” Daniel added.

  “What about the second ring?” Horace asked.

  Sylvia paged through her notes and selected a page. “The most comprehensible translation I’ve found is ‘The one who harnesses the power of the drum must suffer in body and mind.’”

  “They interpreted that as an instruction to torture people?” Daniel asked in a tone of contempt.

  Sylvia shrugged. “An alternate interpretation replaces the words suffer in with transcend.”

  “Transcend body and mind,” Daniel said. “Sounds too general to get any definitive meaning.”

  “Perhaps that’s why they went with the first one,” Horace said.

  “Fragments of the third ring translations were in another notebook,” Sylvia said. “The handwriting is different for each – it seems that different people were assigned to each ring.”

  “And?” Horace said.

  “It reads, ‘Pass through the barrier and displace to transcend this world.’ The word ‘displace’ can be replaced with ‘turn.’”

  “First transcend body and mind, and now the world. Makes no sense,” Daniel said. “What about the fourth and fifth rings?”

  “Nothing yet,” Sylvia answered. “But there’s something disturbing about the dates the first two rings had been interpreted.”

  “After the war,” Horace said.

  “No,” Sylvia replied. “Both were deciphered before the war – between 1935 and 1937.”

  Daniel’s brain went into overdrive and quickly formulated implications. It conjured up something he and Sylvia had conjectured while they were in DC. “This – the beacon, Red Falcon – was the reason for World War Two,” he said, staring blankly at the map on the wall.

  “It’s possible,” Sylvia said.