Rogue Angel 55: Beneath Still Waters

by Alex Archer

  Bemused, Garin leaned closer. “What, exactly, is it that you have?”

  “I’ve cracked the code.”

  “You’re kidding,” Paul said.

  But she wasn’t. She had, indeed, solved it.

  “It’s not one code, but two, nestled inside each other.” She moved the piece of paper and the cell phones so the other two could see them.

  “The first code is the combination of the Nordic runes and the Enochian letters, just as Stuggart showed us. But, again as he pointed out, that doesn’t get us anything but gibberish. The words those letters form don’t make any sense.

  “The reason that they don’t make any sense is that they are not the message itself, but simply the key to deciphering the message. The Enochian letters and their position in the alphabet tell us which Caesar cipher to use for each letter combination.

  “Decoding each paired combination, we get the third and final layer, which is the actual message.”

  “So what does it say?” Paul asked.

  Annja picked up her pen and wrote it out for them.

  “One twenty leagues east of the Phoenix, ninety-four leagues southwest of Christmas.”

  They all stared at it for a few minutes.

  Finally, Garin broke the silence. “Isn’t this the part where you excitedly tell us you know exactly what that’s referring to?”

  I wish, Annja thought. But she’d gotten this far…

  She began walking through it aloud, trying to work it out in the process.

  “All right, let’s think about this. A league is a unit of measuring distance, right?”

  Paul nodded. “Roughly three miles,” he said.

  “But it is used more in relation to boating than anything else, which makes it nautical miles instead. That means a distance of three and a half miles instead of three.”

  Garin quickly did the math. “So the place we’re looking for is 420 miles east of Phoenix and 329 miles southwest of Christmas.”

  “Southwest of Christmas? What on earth does that mean? Could it be another code?” Paul asked.

  Annja didn’t know. “We need an internet café, someplace we can do some research on something other than our cell phones.”

  “I know a place a couple of blocks from here,” Garin said. He put a stack of euros on the table to cover the cost of their meal and then rose. She and Paul followed suit.

  Turning, Annja saw him first.

  He was about as big as the men who had been guarding the entrance to the club, but this man moved with the litheness of a panther on the prowl, light on his feet and totally confident in his ability to bring down whatever game he was hunting. With him were two other men of similar ilk, one walking on either side as if they were a presidential entourage. They walked with their bodies angled slightly toward Annja and her companions, their right hands down and half hidden behind their legs.

  Annja had no doubt that they were carrying weapons in their hands.

  “Down!” she shouted, even as the man in the lead caught sight of her and brought his arm up in their direction.

  Garin didn’t hesitate, throwing himself to the ground at Annja’s command. Paul was a little slower off the mark, but Annja took care of that by tackling him in the seconds before the newcomers opened fire.

  Gunshots filled the night air, the three men using their pistols to fire indiscriminately in the direction of Annja and her companions. Several other late-night diners were struck in the process, collapsing wounded into their seats or onto the ground beneath their tables. People were screaming and trying to get away as the gunmen fired on anything and anyone that moved.

  It was utter chaos.

  Annja rolled off Paul and pointed toward an overturned table nearby. “Get behind that and stay low!” she told him. Having done what she could for him, she decided it was time for her to move as well. She had a better chance at staying alive if she could keep them guessing where she was. Annja was closer to the street than anything else so she rolled in that direction, stopping behind a parked car and putting a few thousand pounds of plastic and steel between her and the approaching gunmen.

  She glanced about quickly, trying to assess the situation.

  Like Paul, Garin was crouched behind a table a few feet away, an automatic pistol now in his hands. She’d expected him to be armed—he usually was—so she was pleased to see that she’d been right. Between the two of them they at least had a fighting chance.

  To her surprise, when she looked back at Paul she found that he, too, was armed. He’d produced a snub-nosed pistol from somewhere on his person when she wasn’t looking and was preparing to fire back at their attackers as well. Evidently the guards at the club were even more sloppy than she had imagined.

  Bullets slammed into the car in front of her, but Annja ignored them. She was safe enough for the time being; she still had a few seconds before the attackers would be upon them.

  Reaching into the otherwhere, Annja drew forth her sword. She could practically hear it sing with anticipation as it emerged, fully formed, into her grasp. The sword had seen her through many a tight spot and she had no doubt that it would do the same here.

  No way was she letting a bunch of two-bit Nazi thugs take her out. Not here and not now.

  She turned and began to duckwalk to the rear of the car, knowing the gunmen would be moving forward while firing, trying to keep Annja and her companions pinned down so that they could be finished off with ease. If she could move in behind them while Garin and Paul kept them occupied, she would be in a position to launch a surprise attack from the rear.

  There was a pause in the gunfire as the attackers stopped to reload. Annja peeked up over the edge of the car’s window just in time to see one of the thugs take a bullet to the throat and fall backward in a spray of blood.

  One down, two to go.

  The shot had to have come from Garin because the two remaining gunmen suddenly concentrated their fire on the table he was hiding behind. Bits of wood went flying each time a bullet struck its target, which was often. Annja hoped he was all right as she moved around the rear of the vehicle and peeked out the other side.

  She could see the injured man in the street, but that was all. The other two had advanced far enough that they were either in line with the car or had passed beyond.

  Now was her chance.

  Annja rose to a crouch and rushed forward along the opposite side of the car, moving back toward where she’d started, but on the opposite side of the car.

  As she drew closer to the hood, she was able to see around the front of the car. One of the gunmen stood a few feet away, firing repeatedly at either Garin or Paul. Perhaps both.

  The sound of his shots would cover her footsteps, Annja knew, and there didn’t seem to be any return fire coming this way for her to worry about. She took advantage of the moment and rushed ahead, rising from behind the front end of the vehicle at the last second, her sword already in hand and in motion as she struck out at the attacker.

  The gunman caught sight of her and tried to turn, shouting out a warning as he did so, but he’d been startled by her sudden appearance and was slow to respond. He hadn’t even completed half the turn, was still trying to bring his gun to bear on her, when the sword tore into him like a razor, cleaving him in two.

  Annja let the momentum of the strike carry her around full circle, completing her turn so that she was facing the second man, who had been standing a few feet in front of the first.

  Unfortunately for her, he’d heard his buddy’s cry of surprise and had turned in response to it. Now he was staring directly at her, gun in hand.

  Five feet separated them.

  Five feet that might as well have been five miles, for there was no way she was going to be able to cross that distance before he could pull the trigger.

  Annja braced herself for what was to come.

  Chapter 18

  A shot rang out.

  Annja jumped, releasing the sword, amazed that she wasn�
�t dead. She glanced down at herself—didn’t see any red stain blossoming across her shirt, didn’t feel any pain—then looked back up at the gunman.

  She was just in time to watch him crumple to the ground, a bullet having pierced his back and found his heart with unerring accuracy.

  The man was dead before he even hit the pavement.

  Annja found herself staring across the distance at Paul, who stood with his arm outstretched, the gun in his hand still pointed in her general direction and his expression unreadable.

  For just an instant Annja felt a cold chill wash over her at the sight of him standing there, the muzzle of his gun looming large in her view as she stared down its barrel. Then he lowered his arm and rushed forward to wrap her in his arms.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Yes, yes, I’m fine,” she told him, having recovered from her momentary shock at finding herself still alive. “Put your gun away. We’re fine now. Where’s Garin?”

  “He’s over…” Paul began, doing as he was told. Then he caught sight of the remains of the man she’d killed with her sword. The rest of what he’d been about to say apparently vanished from his thoughts. “What on earth happened to him?”

  Annja ignored the question. If he hadn’t seen her with the sword, she certainly wasn’t going to tell him about it, not now at least.

  Maybe after all this craziness passes, she thought, and then caught her breath as she realized she was honestly contemplating sharing her most closely guarded secret with someone other than Garin and Roux.

  I’m not ready for that kind of commitment, am I?

  She shook the thought away; now was definitely not the time to wonder about such things.

  She could see Garin moving among the tables, checking on the bodies that were lying unmoving among the ravaged tables and chairs. The gunmen hadn’t cared who they killed provided they also hit their targets and the evidence was all around them. It made Annja’s heart ache for their loss.

  The police were no doubt on their way; a gun battle didn’t rage in the middle of Paris without someone calling the cops. In fact, she thought she could hear sirens approaching in the distance.

  They had a few moments, no more.

  Knowing Garin would do what he could for the wounded, Annja bent and searched the man that Paul had shot, the leader of the attack. She rolled him over and looked at his face, but he wasn’t anyone she recognized. She checked his pockets, both his coat and his pants, looking for a wallet or something that could identify him. She came up empty.

  The sirens were definitely getting closer and Annja knew they had to go. She didn’t like leaving the scene of a tragedy like this, but if they were detained, even for just a few days, that could spell doom for Doug. They had to get away and out of the country as soon as possible; it was the only way they were going to remain free long enough to help her friend.

  Garin was suddenly there at her side. “Anything?” he asked.

  “Nothing. He’s clean.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.” Garin reached down, tore the man’s shirt open and pulled one side down off his shoulder, revealing a tattoo.

  It was a Nazi swastika.

  “We have something Stuggart wants,” he said.

  Neither of them had any doubt just what that something was.

  “If we’re going to go, we need to do it now, folks,” Paul said.

  He was right; the police were about to arrive.

  They stood and began to walk from the scene as quickly as they could without drawing any more attention to themselves. They knew they’d been seen; half a dozen people were probably taking their picture with their cell phones right this very minute, but it would still take time for the police to identify them. Between now and then they needed to get to the airport and get out of France as quickly as possible.

  The research would have to wait.

  Garin led the way, taking random turns at each intersection to throw anyone who might be following them off their track. Once they had gotten ten or so blocks away from the café, he flagged down a cab and told the driver to take them straight to the airport.

  It wasn’t long before Annja and her two companions were back aboard the DragonTech helicopter en route to Munich.

  * * *

  IT WAS NEARLY midnight by the time they arrived at one of the town houses Garin maintained in the city. Despite the late hour, the three of them gathered in the den to continue their attempt to make some sense out of Hitler’s secret message.

  Garin’s computer system, with its multiple monitors and touch screens, made Annja feel as if she was sitting in the command console of an alien spaceship, but after a few minutes she got the hang of it. She fired up a web browser on each screen, went to the search engine and typed a phrase into each.

  The “list of places named Christmas” search returned over 60 million results. The “list of places named Phoenix” search returned slightly over 11 million results.

  Annja decided to start with the later.

  The very first result was an entry under the title “list of places named for the Phoenix.” Clicking on it, she found two short lists: one for places in the United States named Phoenix and one for places in other countries with the same name.

  Annja dismissed the first list automatically. As tempting as places like Phoenix, Arizona, and Phoenix, Maryland, sounded, she highly doubted that Hitler would have gotten within fifty miles of the US mainland in 1945.

  That left her with a list of nine other possibilities, from Vacoas-Phoenix, Mauritius, to Camp Phoenix in Kabul, Afghanistan. She was immediately able to scratch off Camp Phoenix, followed quickly by Phoenix Park in Dublin, Ireland; the Phoenix Concert Theater in Toronto, Canada; Phoenix, British, Columbia; The Phoenix, an opera house in Venice, Italy; and the Phoenix Cinema in London, England.

  Three possibilities remained: Vacoas-Phoenix on Mauritius, Phoenix in the Durban township of South Africa, and the Phoenix Islands in Kiribati.

  Annja called up an online atlas and put a map of Mauritius on the screen for the three of them to see.

  Mauritius, actually the Republic of Mauritius, was an island nation in the Indian Ocean about 1,200 miles off the coast of Africa. The nearest large land mass was Madagascar.

  The fact that it was an island excited Annja at first, since Insel Wolf meant Island of the Wolf or Wolf Island, but it didn’t seem to go anywhere. Drawing a line straight east of Mauritius put them smack in the middle of the Indian Ocean, and there wasn’t anywhere within four hundred miles that could even remotely be called Christmas.

  They turned their attention to South Africa next. That Phoenix was an Indian settlement that officially became a township in 1976. Prior to that it had been associated with the Phoenix Settlement in nearby Durban, founded by Mohandas Ghandi in 1904 and used by him as a base for his nonviolent protests on behalf of Muslim Indians in South Africa.

  “Ghandi and Hitler?” Paul said. “I’m not seeing that one.”

  Annja and Garin agreed.

  They turned their attention at last to the Phoenix Islands in Kiribati. The map told them that the Phoenix Islands were a small chain of islands in the central Pacific Ocean, just east of the Gilbert Islands. There wasn’t much to them—six atolls and a couple of sunken reefs.

  But then came the surprise.

  “Look! Christmas!” Paul said, pointing at the screen.

  Northeast of the Phoenix Islands was another island named Kiritimati. Under the name, in parenthesis, was the subtitle “Christmas Island.”

  Annja stared. “East of Phoenix…”

  “…and southwest of Christmas,” Garin finished for her.

  Eyeballing it, Paul stuck his finger on a spot in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

  This map showed nothing but water.

  “We need a better map,” Annja said and hurriedly searched for one. She was able to locate a much more detailed version relatively quickly and threw that up on the screen for everyone to see.

&nb
sp; This time, when they followed the directions as closely as possible, they ended up with the tip of Annja’s finger sitting on a small rock of an island at the exact location the message suggested.

  It might not have a name on the map, but everyone in that room knew exactly what it was called.

  Insel Wolf.

  They had found the location of Hitler’s final headquarters!

  Chapter 19

  They caught a few hours of sleep and were back at it early the next morning. Annja could feel the pace taking a toll on her both physically and mentally, but she didn’t dare let up. They were already two days into their new deadline, and they were most likely going to lose a third by flying halfway around the world to reach their destination. Paul summed up what they were all thinking over breakfast.

  “Couldn’t he have built this thing a little closer to home?”

  Annja laughed. She had to agree; it was most definitely in the middle of nowhere, though she supposed that was the point. When the whole world wanted you dead, it was probably best to find a nice deep hole to hide in, and Hitler had certainly seemed to do just that.

  While the island’s location might have been advantageous for his needs, it certainly created a bit of a problem for Annja and her allies. It was roughly 800 miles from Samoa and just shy of 750 miles from Tahiti, the two nearest staging points. That was a lot of open ocean, she thought.

  “So how do we do this?” Paul asked, staring at the map Annja had spread out on the table.

  “Fly into Tahiti and rent a boat, I guess.”

  Paul seemed skeptical. “Do any of us know anything at all about boating across the open ocean? Because I can tell you right up front that I don’t.”

  Annja didn’t either. She’d mostly had her feet firmly planted on the ground—or somewhere under it—for the last several years. The longest she’d ever spent near the open ocean was the time it took to fly from the United States to Australia, and even then she’d been 30,000 feet above sea level.