Crowley paused for a moment, let Toporov’s thoughts hang in the void. An old interrogator’s tactic, and he was surprised to see it work. The Russian broke.
“Christ,” he spat, and when he brought his hand up to rub the bridge of his nose, it shook. “It’s finally happened.”
“What, Colonel? What has happened?”
Toporov licked his lips, and this time Crowley thought that he was nervous, more nervous than he would be even if he were down on his knees in the basement of KGB headquarters.
“Every year, around the world,” he said, “people go missing. They disappear. By the thousands. Even here. Even in your country. Tens of thousands of children alone.” He snapped his fingers. “Poof. Now most can be explained, most mysteries solved, of course. If they were not, if they all stayed a mystery, perhaps someone would notice. Perhaps they would wonder. But even as it is, there remain those mysteries that are never solved. Do you know of what I speak?”
Crowley nodded, cautiously. In all honesty he wasn’t entirely sure what Toporov was getting at, but he figured there was no harm in playing along. “Sure. Of course. There’s a whole wing of the Bureau that does nothing but look for the missing.”
“But they don’t always find them, do they?”
The agent shrugged. “Not all of them. Like you said, some of them are just gone. But you can’t dwell on it. Some things you just can’t know.”
“Ah, but you are wrong, special agent. Someone does know. Someone always knows. If nothing else, the person knows. Do you ever wonder what the missing know? What the dead can tell? What they have seen that you have not? What mysteries the final moments of their lives revealed? I wonder that sometimes. And I wonder if one of the answers to such mysteries is in the place you call Golden Halo. Is there a reason you call it that, or is it random?”
Crowley shook his head. “No, not random. Stupid maybe. They named it after the color of the clouds that sometimes circle the mountain. Apparently, they glow yellow.”
Toporov chuckled, and Crowley shivered. The way the old Russian laughed. He was a study in control, but in his laughter was a touch of madness, a sign that behind the façade of calm was a man ready to collapse. “Of course they do. What other color would it be?” He waved his hand, as if dismissing the thought. “We do not call it Golden Halo of course. We have a Russian name for it, though in the tongue of the natives. Holatchahl. The Mountain of the Dead.”
“That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think?”
“Dramatic? Accurate? I cannot say. As I said, it is the name the Mansi, the natives, gave it. They do not go there, under any circumstances. Even though they still live in the area and have for millennia. Unlike your nation, we did not slaughter all the indigenous people. Even if we did try. More vodka, please. My mouth is dry from talking.”
“So the Mountain of the Dead?” said Crowley as he poured. “Is it some sort of military facility?”
Toporov hesitated, then met Crowley’s eyes. “It is, but not one that we built.”
Crowley cocked his head, looked at him sideways. “I’m not sure I follow your meaning.”
“It is as I said it is. Something built the facility long ago. We do not know who.”
“Something?”
“I chose my words deliberately, special agent. It was not an error in translation. Imagine a hole in the earth, on the mountain’s eastern slope. But imagine it sealed with a metal cap, the metallurgy of which you have never seen before and will not see again. Not that we didn’t learn from it. Our submarines dive deeper than yours for a reason.”
“Go on,” said Crowley. He’d started to take notes now, even if they read like the diary of a madman.
“It was not known to us until 1940. The Nazis discovered it.”
“Wait, what? The Nazis?”
Toporov nodded. “They had their Thule SS guards combing the world for ancient artifacts, sources of power. God only knows how they found out about this one. It is in no Russian text that I have ever read, neither ancient nor modern. From rumors and innuendo, I suppose, the way the Nazis did most things. Everything built on lies and suppositions, but sometimes lies turn out to be true. I was there when we found them, only a 16-year-old boy from Riga. My family fled the Germans as they came. I was the only one to survive, and I swore I would have my revenge.” Toporov’s eyes drifted off, above and behind Crowley’s shoulder, somewhere into the past. The interrogator let him sit, ruminate, think about the story. Whatever he was about to reveal would not be a lie. Crowley’d done this long enough to know that. But he could not wait forever.
“And did you get it that day?”
The question broke Toporov from his trance and he looked back at Crowley. “Oh no, special agent. Those poor bastards were far beyond any harm I might do them.”
The door buzzed, Stephenson again. He stepped inside, holding another folder in his hand. And like Crowley’s fifth grade math teacher, he looked at him over the rim of his glasses. “Uh, Agent Crowley, can I speak with you for a second.” Crowley felt like he was just getting to the good part, but he couldn’t exactly say no. He held up an index finger—the universal sign for “hold that thought”—and left Toporov at the table, smoking another cigarette.
“What’s up?”
Stephenson’s permanent scowl darkened. “What in the holy hell are you two talking about in there anyway?”
“I’m getting his story.”
“The one about ancient aliens and Nazis?”
“I don’t believe there was any mention of aliens.”
“Just consider that he may be playing you for time, and that’s time we do not have.” He smacked the folder into Crowley’s chest. “Newest satellite sweep. The Russians are still running like scared children. Why, we don’t know. Maybe it’s a coincidence, maybe we’ve got another Chernobyl on our hands that just happened to coincide with the greatest victory for the West since V-E Day. But whatever the case may be, somebody else is on their way to the site.”
Crowley grabbed the folder, flipped it open to the images. He furrowed his brow, confused. He’d expected to see trucks, tankers, vehicles to carry away the loot—nuclear and conventional—to be sold on the black market to the highest bidder. Instead he saw men on horseback, following a single individual who appeared to be carrying nothing but a long staff.
“What am I looking at, Stephenson?”
“Beats the hell out of me. Why don’t you ask the Russian?” He said, gesturing at Toporov who sat, arms crossed and leaned back in his chair, with the sort of self-satisfied smugness that every interrogator hates. The door buzzed, and Stephenson left, but not before making it clear, with his eyes alone, that Crowley had better find out something useful, and fast.
“In point of fact, I am not Russian. I am Latvian.”
Crowley ignored him.
“So here’s the thing, Colonel,” Crowley said as he sat back down across from Toporov, “I’m running out of time. We don’t know what’s at the site, but the energy spikes are like nothing we’ve ever seen before. There are some guys up in Strategic Command that are more of the nuke first, ask questions later types, and they figure with the government collapsing, we can probably get away with it, too, without turning the entire eastern seaboard into black glass. Me, I’m not so sure. So I’d really like you to tell me the truth, and not some bullshit story.”
“It is not bullshit, my friend.”
“Then how did a pack of Nazis get that far into the Ural Mountains in the middle of the war?”
“The Thule SS were quite resourceful. It was nothing for them to accomplish, I can assure you.”
“But you said you couldn’t hurt them?”
“Of course not. They were already dead. But it was more than that. Much more. In truth, we had never seen the likes of it. We know now the harm that radiation poisoning can bring. Bleeding from every orifice. Hair falling out. Skin burned as if by fire. Flaking away, in the worst cases.
Your body, rotting from the inside. It is a very unpleasant way to die. But of course, at the time your people had not introduced the world to the horrors of nuclear fire so what we saw that day appeared to us to be the vengeance of an angry god, one that we did not recognize from our Bibles. But even knowing what we do now, I cannot imagine how it must have happened. The amount of energy that must have surged up from the pit at the moment of awakening to leave them in that state, surrounding the seal that they had removed.”
“Slow down, Toporov, you’re confusing me.”
The old Latvian began to cackle. “As if slowing down would allow you to understand. As if your mind—or any man’s mind—could catalogue or categorize what I have seen. As if you could put it into any order that fits with your understanding of the world. No, my friend. I have been mad from the moment I stepped foot on that mountain. I have known that for a long time, but I accept it now for it is only in madness that such a thing can have any sanity at all.” To Crowley’s confusion, he simply held up his hands in surrender. “But I digress and your time is running short. So please, don’t interrupt.
“We found the men surrounding the open hole. It had not been open for long, and beside them was the metal seal that they had undoubtedly been the ones to shove aside. We could not tell, of course, how long they had been dead, but from the positioning of their bodies we could speculate. We believed that they had died shortly after—very shortly after—they had pried up the seal and pushed it to the side. They had not died quickly, but death had preoccupied them, if you take my meaning, and they did not move from where they fell save to thrash about in the ecstasy of their agony.
“My thought was to replace the seal and flee. To this day I believe that was the prudent course. In fact, I have no doubt of it. But being a young man of low rank I kept that thought to myself, though I was heartened when an older soldier who had seen much in the way of war voiced those same sentiments. But our lieutenant was a party apparatchik of the pure faith, and he believed that whatever had killed the fascists must be a weapon, one that the motherland could seize to throw back the enemy from our borders. It is as it always is, I suppose, with every war and with every people. God is always on your side, even if as a good Communist you don’t believe in a god. But I can promise you this, special agent. There are gods. But they do not care for you or me or for the petty concerns of the insignificant human vermin that team upon the face of this planet. They do not care at all.
“But our lieutenant, brave or stupid or both, would not hear of it. He would go down into the pit to see if he could discover the source of the astonishing power that had killed our enemies. There were stairs, of a sort—if you were a giant, perhaps—leading down into the depths. And a great yellow light.”
“A light? What kind of light?”
“We didn’t know at first. Do not misunderstand me. It did not allow us to see. Rather, it was in the depths, circular, as if deep below there was a single source of illumination. We could not imagine what could make such a light, or why it glowed below while leaving the path at the surface bathed in darkness. I see the doubt in your eyes, and I do not blame you. It is a thing that must be seen, not explained. You did not see, so you cannot understand.
“We begged the lieutenant not to go, but he rebuked us for our cowardice, even if it was on his own behalf. He took a flashlight and descended, assuring us that he would return soon and that we would all share in the glory. We watched him, a ball of light in the darkness, as he clambered down the mighty steps, sliding on his belly to the edge and then dropping down. His return would be even more difficult, I thought, as he would have to pull himself up again and again.”
Toporov turned wistful, picked up the faded bottle of vodka and poured another shot. Crowley admired his fortitude.
“But,” he said, raising the glass, “we need not have worried about such trivialities.” He downed the shot, fortifying himself for whatever was to come next.
“Down he went, growing closer to the source of illumination. We thought that whatever made it must have been enormous, given how with every step the light our comrade bore grew smaller and smaller until finally it faded away altogether. Just imagine the depths. Imagine what it must have taken to build such a staircase. The unfathomable technical skill. And there, in the midst of the Ural Mountains! But such thoughts were for later. We stared into the void. We awaited some sign. We soon received it. It came like a rush of wind that roared up from below and burst forth into the world. And on it rode a scream, a scream of such horror and terror and pain that I cannot imagine it even now, even though I heard it with my own ears. I tell you this, special agent, I have been on battlefields where men died cruelly, befitting the genius and brutality of our species, but I have never heard a man make that sound.”
“Did you go in after him?”
“I think we might have, though who can say for sure with the fear we felt at that moment? But we didn’t have much time to think on it. Not when we saw the truth. The light…well, it was no light. We couldn’t deny it anymore.
“Not after that great eye blinked.
“Whatever sanity we had left broke then, and in a delirium of terror we shoved the seal back in place, though we could not know if it would hold. We could not know if in breaking it the Germans had robbed it of all its power. But it did hold, for the moment at least, though it could not cover the sound of the titanic pounding from below.
“We reported exactly what happened to our headquarters. And they believed us. Don’t look so surprised. Our people have always been more willing to accept the strange and unusual than yours. Within hours, the mountain crawled with Soviet troops. It became a research station, as our scientists struggled to understand what sort of being waited beneath it. Waited for another opportunity to make its escape. And we wondered what it meant for mankind or the evolution of this planet, what it portended for other deep places around the world, or what it said of the things that lived here before man first raised his eyes to the stars.
“Death followed that place. No one could work there for more than a few months, lest they go insane. Soldiers and scientists alike hated it. Civilians were, of course, forbidden, though sometimes they would come anyway, always to their doom. I remember once that nine hikers tried to climb the mountain. By the time they were buried, not even their families could recognize the bodies. So it does not surprise me that its guardians are abandoning Temnaya Zvezda…or that the thing that lies beneath it has chosen this moment to escape.”
“What are you trying to tell me, Toporov, that this is the end of the world or something? Cause that’s not going to happen. We aren’t going to let it happen. I’ve got missiles in Turkey pointed at Golden Halo and I can atomize your little mystery facility in the blink of an eye.”
Toporov broke into laughter, and Crowley thought him truly mad.
“My dear friend, you believe that a creature that has spanned space and time can be destroyed? It would bathe in your nuclear fire and rise like a phoenix to cover the world. No, the only hope for us all…” he reached across the table and snatched the latest satellite photo, “is that those men reach their destination, and that something of the old wisdom remains with them. The wisdom of this age has no power there. They will write the next chapter. Pray that it is not the last.”
And so it was that as millions sat with rapt attention before their televisions as an empire fell, another story was unfolding on a remote mountain top, a story known to only a few, and even they were never sure what was truth and what was fiction. All they could say, in whispers over too many drinks in dimly lit bars, was that on that mountain top, men from a forgotten people stood against an ancient evil and defeated it.
For now.
BENEATH THE SHADOW OF THE HILLS
“Let’s go to Maine,” Maggie said. “We’ll watch the leaves change and get shitfaced. Just like old times.”
“Back in the ‘old times,’ we never watched the leaves change.”
“Then we’ll get shitfaced just like old times and watch the leaves change because somehow we turned into old ladies.” Maggie giggled, her eyes sparkling above that mischievous smile Carol had always loved. Forty-five years old and Maggie hadn’t changed since she was a teenager.
“And Amy?”
Maggie rolled her eyes and leaned back in one of the camp chairs she’d used to populate her spacious deck. Her glass of wine swirled in great circles and threatened to attain escape velocity. “You know Amy. She’s up for anything.”
In this case, maybe. Carol knew that both Amy and Maggie would do just about anything to cheer her up, to drag her out of this funk. Matt had been dead for six months and people were ready for her to move on. Only Maggie, and maybe Amy, knew just how hard it had been. For the first month she’d hardly gotten out of bed, and when she did, it was like she was floating above and behind herself, like she was a ghost and a zombie all at once. Her spirit watching her rotting corpse shuffle through life, what was left of it, at least.
Chrissy, her daughter, hadn’t been able to stand it. But she had college as an excuse and was able to leave her mother behind without too much guilt. Maggie and Amy couldn’t get away. They’d always been there, always would be there.
Now Maggie had a plan. Get Carol out of the house and back into the world, starting with a vacation. But of all things, leaf peeping?
The Fiddle is the Devils Instrument Page 5