Bruning walked further into the rickety barn-like structure, carefully stepping around the piles of useless bric-a-brac, trying to get a clear picture of the room. Behind him, the sergeant followed, a dozen or more steps behind, matching Bruning’s precise movements. Tracking the lamp across the far wall, Bruning found the beam falling upon the recently used fireplace. In it, among the fresh ashes, the slagged remnants of the handles of a Torah shone dimly back, their sanctity emptied through mindless destruction.
“Sergeant, do you handle the arrests in this district?”
“No sir, the Gestapo is responsible for that. We just clean up partisans, mostly.”
“In the future it would be suggestible to let the Society for the Research and Teaching of Ancestral Heritage decide which books were right for burning. Could you tell the Gestapo chief this for me?”
“I would not worry about it, sir.”
“And why is that?”
The sergeant smiled thinly,”Verhaeren was the last known Jew in the district.”
“I see. Can you still relay the message?” Bruning shone the lamp upon a pile of books left on top of a old writing desk in a cramped corner. The tomes there had been recently handled, as shown by the fingerprints left in the dust covering them, and the smeared handprints on the desk.
“Certainly, sir. Oh. Those are some of the books that the Gestapo found. They said they were what you were looking for.” The sergeant stumbled over something in the dark and cursed. “They did not have time to go through the whole inventory.”
Bruning lifted the first book after placing the lamp in the crux of his arm. It was a heavy, leather-bound volume from the late seventeenth century. Carefully, he opened to a random page, anticipating a cracked binding or brittle pages, but the book was intact. Dust spilled out in cascading waves through the lamp light as the leather cover let out a creaky groan. The worm-eaten monograph was written, printed really, in English. Bruning’s eyes played randomly on the text and fell upon the following words first as if drawn there:
I command thee, O Spirit Rumoar, even by Lucifer, thy mighty sovereign.
“What is in them?” the Wermacht man asked and stepped closer as Bruning quickly shut the book, kicking up a cloud of dust which smelled of old newspapers.
“Nothing.”
The Gestapo had done their job well, it seemed. Seven of the twelve books the men had found in their search were on the want lists of the Ahnenerbe SS. Praxis Magica Fausti, The Black Pullet, The Tetragrammaton.The names rattled off in Bruning’s head like a vile grocery list in some shallow attempt by his mind to downplay the fear that every one of them held for him, the chilling fear, as if each book he was picking up was a ticking bomb instead of some musty old tract...
They had done their jobs well enough, but still it seemed he would be here for days. Glancing about the room, Bruning estimated more than a thousand books, all told, were scattered here and there among the junk, each one a potential killer, a potential check on the great list, one more reason for the group not to risk him in the deadly task of translation.
One of the Wermacht men poked his head in the door to announce that a Gestapo man had arrived. The sergeant exited rapidly, saluting the newcomer, an economical man who entered without a sound. Dressed in clothes suitable for Saville row, the youngster who saluted Bruning did not look like much of a hardened military man. He looked like a well-dressed farm boy fresh from the German heartland. But his eyes consumed everything in the room with the indifference of a hangman.
“I am Oberscharführer Josef Frank of the Antwerp Gestapo. I was sent to answer any questions you may have about Verhaeren. Sorry about the timing, there was an incident on the canal.” He offered Bruning his identity card, which showed a photograph of a serious, sallow youth. Frank set his face, mimicking the photograph, only then looking like it, and offered his hand. Bruning numbly took it and shook it roughly.
“Oh. Excuse me, I am Karl Bruning. I believe your office was alerted by the Reich Central Security Department that I was coming today? I hope I am no inconvenience to the Gestapo...”
“Not at all, sir. It is rare that the home office gets out here. We are pleased to be of service.” Frank glanced about while saying this, distracted. His body language betrayed his disinterest.
“This Verhaeren, what did he do exactly?” As he casually asked the question, Bruning placed the lamp on the table and picked up another book. Outside, the Wermacht men laughed and whistled as a knot of Belgian women passed.
“The Jew was an importer-exporter. He held some lucrative contracts in the Congo, if I am not mistaken, back before the turn of the century, maybe a little after. I understand he had, in the past, two offices off the continent. He must have been filthy with cash. Financially successful, as usual, like every Jewish parasite before the Reich...” Frank’s voice dropped off into a sneer.
“Where is he now?”
“Dead. Cigarette?” Frank said and took out a cigarette from a filigreed gold case.
“No. Did the Gestapo seize any papers of his during the arrest?”
Frank looked closely at Bruning for the first time, his eyes found Bruning’s and locked there.
“None on him, except a few photographs. The only reason we touched the books here is that sometimes the older ones like to hide their money there. The Jews, I mean. In between the pages.” Frank took a long drag on the cigarette and let out a bitter cloud of French tobacco.
“I recalled the bulletin—the one about the books from the Society of Ancestral Research, and one of the titles just jumped out at me while we were looking for money. The—” Frank leaned over and picked up a small modern book. “Witch Cult in Western Europe. I came back Thursday evening with the list and did my best...” He gestured at the pile.
“Many thanks. You have saved me a few miserable hours poring through this filthy place. Still, I should think I will be here for more than a week.” Bruning sorted through a stack of modern books which had been precariously balanced on top of an antique lamp, glancing momentarily at each title, one after another.
“No problem. Glad to be of assistance. Anything else I can help you with?” Frank lazily lifted a musty tarp from some sort of mold-rotted divan and considered it, as if it were some terribly engaging artifact.
“Does the Gestapo have any files on Verhaeren?”
“Of course.” Frank let out a grunt which could have been a cough or a laugh.
“I will need them before I leave.”
“Certainly, though it might take some time.” Frank laid his jacket down carefully on the dusty divan and perched like a bird on the edge of it, carefully pulling his trouser legs up before sitting.
“Do you know anything else specific about Verhaeren?”
“Let us see.” Frank pulled out a small notebook from his pants pocket, flipped two pages into it and read, squinting in the dim light. “Age: Sixty-one. Two brothers; one resides in the Congo—Jewish as well, obviously. Father was a member of the Communists. Nothing much else. Oh. No family here. Extensive trade contacts with England and America back in the Twenties and earlier... That is all I have. It goes without saying you are free to search the place. We would appreciate being informed of anything you find, of course.”
“Of course.”
Frank stood suddenly, blowing out a fan of smoke.
“Did you see the menagerie in the back?” His face found the photo grin again when he saw that Bruning had not.
“Oh, this is fine! You will like this. We expect a big turn-out for the auction, after the top men have their pick, of course.” Frank excitedly hopped his way into the dark, rapidly moving through the stacks of rubbish. Stopping he glanced back at Bruning for a moment when he reached the far wall and held out his hand.
“Can I borrow your lamp?”
Bruning joined him and handed him the lamp. Frank opened a small door in the back wall concealed beneath an old tapestry. He lifted the heavy rug out for Bruning to enter the doorway with the
hand that held the lamp, its beam playing crazily around the room. When he swung the lamp away into the interior of the room, Frank’s cigarette was the only light visible, a blood-red eye on the shadow that was his face.
The damp room beyond the tapestry was musty and smelled of chemicals. Although he could not pierce the darkness with his eyes, and the light was aimed at the floor, Bruning could sense a cramped space filled with innumerable anonymous shapes. Organic shapes. Immediately he was afraid. It reminded him of too many things. Frank held the lamp up to his face and smiled again, a head floating in darkened space, and Bruning’s hand drifted to the butt of his pistol unconsciously.
Erich’s voice, one which would never speak again, came back to him there in the dark.
“The rendering of the corpse is most important, according to the manuscript. Are you sure you translated this word correctly? The chemicals required are vital. Exact proportions are necessary. Are you listening to me?”
The ghost voice laughed again, and died again, fading off into the real world like whispers of smoke.
“Macabre, no?” Frank giggled. He tracked the light around the cramped room and dozens of sets of eyes reflected back from the dark. Bruning let out a noncommittal grunt, somewhere between fear and surprise and backpedaled, falling down hard on top of something waist height.
“You caught a gazelle, I see,” Frank said and shone his light on the stuffed animal Bruning found himself squatting on. Its glass eyes, dead, glinted crazily in the lamp light. Its fur, once a warm brown, was now a yellow-grey, and one of its horns had fallen out. It was mounted on a finely-made wooden base with a small bronze plaque, and the nails which secured it groaned under Bruning’s weight. He stood quickly, wiping his uniform down.
“Taxidermy, I see,” was all Bruning could manage as he recovered his dignity.
“If anything catches your fancy let me know. Chances are I can get it for a very reasonable price.” Frank handed back the lamp to Bruning and after briskly wiping the gazelle off in a cloud of dust, sat down, lighting another cigarette. “Take your time.”
Bruning explored the narrow room with the lamp, his eyes following its beam as it maneuvered over the dozens of mounted and stuffed animals left to rot in the dark of the dead man’s building. All seemed to be of African origin.
An eyeless ibex was poised in an artificially-coaxed leap, its stuffing spilling from a wound to its torso. A maneless lion, half eaten by mites, held its head, the only thing on it untouched by rot, high and proud, its fake eyes empty and cold. Other animals were less damaged, and some were fine pieces, worth a pretty penny to any serious collector. Back in Germany, to the new aristocracy of the Reich, they would be worth a fortune.
Bruning pushed his way past a single-legged ostrich, almost sending it tumbling to the floor. Behind the first wave of animals, a second sea of tarp-covered shapes filled the darker recesses of the room. An antelope concealed beneath a paint-spattered canvas stared dully back at him, watching his careful progress through the trophies. Another, larger profile turned out to be two small baboons, mounted on a single stand, standing at attention, their humanlike hands delicately held at their sides, like proper gentlemen.
“What is in the crate?”
Bruning’s light had discovered a man-sized shipping crate in the furthest corner of the animal filled room, stepping up to it, crowded in by the many shapes behind him, Bruning could make out the faded English words “Jermyn/England” in the thin blue-white light of his lamp. Closer examination located four other stamps on the box in different faded inks, including port stamps from Equatorville, Rabat and Antwerp, each dated within a five week period of 1913.
“Crate? I did not see it. Another piece of the ‘hunter’s art,’ I should think. We did not even know it was there.” Frank stood and pushed his way forward to see Bruning’s prize.
“Obviously.”
After placing the lamp on top, Bruning gave a solid tug on the frontispiece of the crate, which appeared to have been loosely hammered into position years before, as if it had been opened hastily and just as hastily shut away from the world again. A rusty screech of nails cut through the silence of the room, drawing Frank in closer slowly as Bruning moved the large section of wood aside, carefully balancing it on the head of a long-dead okapi. Within the shadow of the crate something rested, that much was obvious, but the light from the lamp failed to penetrate the darkness of the container. Only visible was the edge of the wooden base with its fine bronze plaque, layered in years old dust.
“What is it?” Frank climbed past the baboons and peered into the shadow of the box.
“A moment.” Bruning retrieved the lamp from the top of the box.
The creature in the crate was kin to man, that much was obvious. More so than anything known to science. Something in the arch of its forehead as it rose over the intelligent wide-set eyes spoke of secrets, of cities, of things mankind thought all its own. In between the time of the first of the great apes and the coming of humanity this thing and its kind had risen and ruled, more than ape, less than man, and had been left in the jungles to rot by its descendants centuries ago. Of all this Bruning was sure. There was no way to question such a belief, it was just there, along with the stuffed beast, the dust in the air, gravity. The truth had come to him in a box in the home of a dead Jew and now could not be discounted. A new horrible fact had plunged into his world, shredding hope and comfort as it fit violently into place, as real as the thing in the bunker at Offenburg that had almost sent him to a madman’s grave.
Standing in a defiant pose, the creature held an arm above its brow heavy head. In its large hand a crudely carved wood club was poised for a blow which would never fall. Its pale white hair, a fine haze of which covered its whole body, was so short that the pink and yellow skin beneath it was clearly visible. In places, bald spots, caused either by poor taxidermy, rot, or nature, left small portions of the beast’s anatomy bare.
The face, contorted in an artificial scream of rage, was broken by an oblong and altogether wide mouth filled with flat teeth like a man’s, over which the thin, long nose ending in a flare of nostrils was perched, too delicate to ever be born of a gorilla. Something in the stance of the beast implied intelligence; the way the club was gripped, the casual ease of the forefinger and thumb wrapped about the haft of the cudgel, the shifted weight of the front and back leg, all of these added up into a very disturbing vision of what the creature would look like seconds before it split your head down the middle and feasted on your corpse. Perhaps these details were little more than the taxidermist’s artistic vision, but Bruning did not think so. It was easy to picture how such a creature could use such a weapon, how it could fashion such a weapon.
Even now Bruning saw them, a clutch of the beasts hunting in tandem in the damp interior of some antediluvian jungle, swinging clubs, using tools, building fires. Perhaps even more.
Perhaps even now, in a world at war.
Frank stepped forward, his eyes shining with something like greed. Leaning down he dusted off the wooden base of the creature and read from the bronze plaque out loud in accented English:
“Male Specimen, Unknown Primate Species, Called Chimbote in the N’Bangu Dialect. Recovered in Thule, Belgian Congo. 1913.” Frank let out a long and low whistle. “Fantastic. I have never seen anything like it. What do you think it is?”
But Bruning could not breathe. A thousand images raced before his eyes, indivisible and fleeting, each more fantastic than the last. The shock of finding the thing in the crate continued to pound a frantic beat throughout Bruning’s fragile mind even as the facts, too many to separate and examine, filtered in past his defenses, causing a million individual ideas to connect in new and dangerous ways. Ways not meant to be contemplated by the sane.
Something inside him snapped and fell away. Thule, Bruning thought weakly, offering up the tiny word in some feeble attempt at defense to the onslaught of unwelcome pictures. Good God, Thule. The birthplace of man. Oh
God. Thule. God.
The Thule legend was intertwined in the darkest myths of Nazi racial doctrine. The tradition spoke of a land of plenty inhabited by a fair-haired race of giants—the Aryans, who were destroyed in ancient times by a great cataclysm. Rampant interbreeding with lesser creatures led to the poisoning of the race through inferior blood, and finally consumed the great people, leaving their cities in ruins, overcome by hordes of barbaric half-human beasts, the progeny of their unchecked reproduction. The Ahnenerbe spoke of the Germanic peoples as some last glimmer of the genes which traced their ancestry back to that glorious kingdom. It taught that through careful selection and breeding the German people could become as the ancient Aryans were, physically invulnerable, mentally superior, and morally just. Ironically, Himmler spoke of it often, using the downfall of the Aryans to explain the purging of the Jews and lesser races from the Reich. Why the Aryans had not been “morally just” enough to police their breeding was a question the Ahnenerbe chose not to address.
Delta Green: Denied to the Enemy Page 2