by Martin Rua
“Heil Hitler! What are you doing out and about under this bombardment, sir?” asked the commander of the small group of soldiers.
“I would ask you the same question, Lieutenant,” said the Russian, whose captain’s uniform was higher in rank than the curious lieutenant’s, in perfect German. “We’ve just passed a group of civilians in distress behind that building. Please hurry.”
The lieutenant hesitated for a moment, then stood to attention and ordered his men to follow him.
Nathan motioned to the others to move before the soldiers had second thoughts and then, softly, whispered to the Russian, “Good work Vlad.”
The blonde interpreter from Sverdlovsk – which had been called Yekaterinburg before the October revolution – just nodded, while their tension at the latest hurdle began to dissipate.
Meanwhile Kirk McCourt had begun to lead the group with more conviction, and after ten minutes he stopped and turned to his companions.
“The road over there, perpendicular to this one, is Oranienburger Strasse”.
Nathan nodded, then called his men. “Well, here we are.”
*
An imposing figure appeared at the main door of the synagogue, emerging from the dust raised by the explosion of the bomb few moments before. Gingerly, it walked forward a few metres, but was halted by a voice coming from the opposite end of the aisle.
“Halt!”
The figure stopped abruptly, and Corporal Bauer walked towards him slowly, his gun pointed at the intruder.
“Lower your gun, soldier, you’re aiming your weapon at an SS officer,” said the figure, without moving an inch.
“Your name and rank, sir – then I will lower it.”
There was a moment of tense silence. The Bavarian stood holding the strange official who had emerged from the dust at gunpoint. What the hell was he doing there? Never mind – von Tschoudy’s orders were clear: no one was to enter the synagogue, unless they showed the seal.
“Captain Klaus Maria König,” said the intruder, interrupting Bauer’s thoughts, “Outremer Special Squad. I’m here with my team for the recovery.”
This Captain König seemed to be in order, thought Bauer, and the fact that he had mentioned the Outremer Special Squad proved it, since so few people were aware of the mission and its code name. The plan, in fact, was that a team with the code name would have arrived to recover the idol and take it elsewhere.
Bauer relaxed, but not completely: Captain König would have to produce the seal first to definitively remove any doubt.
“Show me the seal, but move slowly,” said Bauer.
Captain König, who had held his hands up until then, slowly slipped his hand into his jacket and pulled out a small, round metal object, like a medal.
“Throw it over,” said Bauer, still holding König at gunpoint. The metal object flew towards Bauer in a perfect parabola. The Bavarian examined the seal, then lowered his gun and stood to attention.
“Welcome, sir.”
“At ease soldier.”
König emerged from the darkness so Bauer could clearly see his features. König’s small eyes, two slits embedded in a huge square face, stared at the Bavarian for a second.
“Oh shit—!” Bauer managed to exclaim before a bullet fired from a silenced pistol hit him square in the forehead.
König approached the lifeless body of Bauer and sighed. “I’m sorry, my friend – you were born in the wrong country.”
He retrieved the seal and ran quickly towards the entrance of the synagogue, where he waved his hand. Nathan emerged from the darkness with his team and, stealthy as cats, they rushed into the building.
“Well done again, Vlad,” said Major Keller.
“Hey, I’ve already earned a couple of bottles of vodka if I’m not mistaken,” said Vladimir, raising an eyebrow as he led his companions towards the entrance of the hall.
“Well, ’Captain König’,” Nathan said wryly,“ it’s not our fault that you studied in Germany and speak German like a fucking Nazi. But yes, you have definitely earned your two bottles.”
The Russian nodded with a smile, then walked over to the body of Bauer and, with the assistance of François and Sean, hid him behind a pillar. The three of them then rejoined the rest of the group, which in the meantime had gathered in the cold, dark hallway.
“Well fellers, now comes the hard part,” said Nathan turning to his men, “even though getting here was no joke itself. Try to stay alive, please, otherwise I’ll have to do this on my own.” He paused, and the men smiled, then, with a hard stare, he continued.
“There’s no need to remind you what our orders are. If necessary, have no mercy. The important thing is to recover the idol and the traitor’s key.”
Everyone nodded, their faces serious: they must not forget that they were still at war. However, the bond between them and the fraternity to which they belonged had impressed upon their code of principles the respect for all human beings and the repudiation of violence. They had accepted this latest mission, one which included the possibility of having to eliminate the enemy, in the name of the oath that bound them, in a mystical association.
When Nathan saw the determination in their eyes, he softly uttered just three words.
“Well brothers, nakam!”
“Nakam!” They all replied, quietly.
The eight men entered the corridor without uttering a sound, their steps drowned out by the bombing that continued outside. They knew exactly where to go and what to expect. Once the recovery had taken place, a US government agency that secretly handled out of the ordinary investigations would pay very well for the information. Any unpleasant surprises that the recovery team found would be evidence of bad faith in the informant. And there would be no reward.
The corridor they were walking down veered to the left. Fifteen steps away was a door that led into the basement, where the German soldiers were guarding the idol. Nathan and his men stood just a yard away from the door and flattened themselves against the wall. It was important at this point not to be discovered. There would certainly be another soldier on guard, and he had to be eliminated.
Nathan gave Vladimir a knowing look, and he nodded in reply. The captain threw a stone at the door, and the reaction was not slow in coming.
“Who’s there?” said a voice. “Bauer, is that you?”
“Yes, I need a hand – can you come?” said Vladimir enigmatically, keeping his voice low to avoid being discovered.
“What the hell—?” said the sentry.
The few seconds that it took the soldier to reach the eight men seemed interminable. Aware of the need to keep absolutely still, they held their breath, their muscles and their nerves stretched to breaking point.
In the semi-darkness of the corridor, Nathan, who was crouching, saw the barrel of the rifle poking out of the sentry post. He knew he would have to act rapidly and with precision to prevent the man from pulling the trigger first.
The soldier stepped forward a few centimetres and had just noticed a presence against the wall when two hands grabbed his rifle and tugged at it violently. Simultaneously, Nathan’s dagger pierced his heart from below while a hand was clamped over his mouth to prevent him from screaming.
It was a quick and silent death. The group had managed once again to avoid being discovered. They moved towards the entrance of the underground basement, where Sean Bruce and François David were loading their guns with a powerful sleeping gas.
“Now we can put the lucky ones to sleep,” Nathan hissed.
The eight men poured down the narrow staircase leading to the basement, as silent as wild beasts stalking their unsuspecting prey, and continued to descend until a faint light from the lower level gave them to understand that the basement was nearby. They stopped a few steps before the bottom of the narrow staircase and stood there motionless for a few seconds – just long enough to understand that the men below were sleeping, completely unaware of them.
When everyone had p
ut on their gas masks, Nathan motioned for Sean and François to proceed. They arranged themselves in the best positions for firing their gas cannisters into the room, exchanged a glance of understanding, and fired.
The sound of the shots aroused some of the soldiers who woke their companions. “Alarm, Alarm!” they screamed, “we’re under attack, wake up!”
But thanks to the gas and its sedative effects, their reaction was limited. One attempted, coughing and stumbling, to climb to the top floor, but as soon as his nose appeared on the stairs he was shot down with devastating accuracy by Vladimir’s silenced pistol, which spared no one.
The reaction lasted only a few seconds, and then silence reigned once more in the basement. Before anyone could continue, Sean and François fired two more cannisters of sleeping gas. A few more seconds passed, then they all entered the narrow room, covering each other’s backs.
All the men guarding the idol had been put out of action, some temporarily by the gas, some permanently by the bullets.
While the others tied up the stunned soldiers, Nathan walked about the room in search of the man who had obliged them to come to Berlin, and to his surprise found him embracing the object which they had come to get, having been knocked out by the gas within seconds of approaching the idol. He had even pulled out his pistol, which was still clutched in his right hand.
“We’re done, Nathan,” said McCourt, approaching him. Nathan nodded while still gazing at the ground.
“Ah, good,” Kirk said, “it seems that you found him. The lousy traitor.”
“Yeah,” said Nathan, his voice muted by the gas mask.
“So, shall we proceed?” McCourt asked.
“Yup.”
7
The Fog Lifts
Events reconstructed by Lorenzo Aragona
Naples, January, 2013
The scooter splashed hazardously through the downtown streets, snaking its way between the cars on the road. It was almost as though Anna had been born in Naples and not in some Russian city, such was the familiarity with which she navigated each street, cut across the main roads, slipped through tight spaces and often ignored the rules of the road.
I realized she was taking a rather bizarre route: we passed the same place twice, then, suddenly, she turned round and went back up the road we’d just travelled down.
“Are you lost?” I asked foolishly.
“No, I’m trying to outrun them. Don’t turn around – there’s a red Ducati following us.”
I stiffened and checked the rear view mirror, where I caught a glimpse of the bike she was talking about.
“Are you sure?”
“They’ve been tailing us since we met. You’re not very good at not being followed.”
“Do I need to remind you that I’m an antique dealer? What the hell are you? A cop? A secret agent? How do you know all this?”
“I had to learn. But let’s wait until we get to a safe, quiet place to talk.”
Anna darted through the narrow streets leading from the Riviera di Chiaia to Corso Vittorio Emanuele with the Ducati still behind us, then cut into the Spanish Quarter, where our escape began to attract a bit too much attention.
I noticed the annoyance of some passers-by on the pavements. “Listen, unauthorized chases are not exactly welcome around here, slow down.”
“What, so we can get caught? I say, let’s turn the situation to our advantage.”
Anna gestured to a group of young people gathered at a crossroads, indicating our pursuers, and a couple of them who were sitting on a motorbike by the side of the road went into action. As soon as we’d passed, I turned and saw that the bike with the two guys had stopped in the middle of the road leading down to Via Toledo, while another motorbike had suddenly emerged from a side street. The Ducati was travelling at speed, and had no choice but to slow down.
“I can’t believe it – saved by the Spanish Quarter!” I exclaimed in amazement.
“You should have more faith in your fellow citizens.”
*
We soon reached Piazza Municipio and to avoid the risk of being located again, we left the scooter in a side street near Castel Nuovo and climbed aboard one of those double-decker tour buses.
“Let’s sit inside, at the back. That way we won’t be seen so easily,” said Anna, her hat pulled down over her face and her eyes hidden by her sunglasses.
Apart from us, there were four or five other people on board.
We sat in silence as the bus began its tour. After a few minutes, though, Anna turned to face me.
“The same thing happened to me, Lorenzo, that’s why I know so much about it.”
She paused, gazing sadly at the road that whizzed past the bus window.
“What’s going on, Anna? Because of you, or should I say thanks to you, my life has been turned upside down in a matter of hours. I don’t want to believe it, but what I’ve seen has left me in no doubt – I was living in a fiction until yesterday.”
“I don’t know if things were exactly the same for you,” said Anna, “but we are certainly part of something complex – part of the same diabolical plan.”
Another pause, accompanied by a sigh.
“My story begins six months ago. As I said, I’m Russian. I was born in Ekaterinburg, but my mother is – was – Ukrainian. I studied law in Rome, but after I graduated I returned to Russia because my mother suddenly fell very ill. And at my mother’s sickbed, I found my father. They’d divorced several years earlier, for reasons that were never entirely clear to me. I always thought he’d abandoned us, and I was very resentful towards him. Anyway, at the funeral we exchanged nothing more than a quick ’hello’. I decided to move to the village where my poor mother had come from, a small place near Kiev. When I recovered, I finally found a job there as a teacher.
At the beginning it was tough. It’s quite a small place, but in summer it’s really nice. I began to make friends and I met a nice man who I got on really well with. In short, everything was going well, and at a certain point my life had become almost perfect.
The odd thing is that from being just pleasant it suddenly became perfect, and I couldn’t tell you when it happened exactly. I just know that one day, as I was going to work, happy and carefree as usual, I bumped into someone – a very old man who was polite and kind, and somehow strangely familiar. The man told me he was an old friend of my grandfather, my father’s father. At first I was frightened. This old fellow – Konstantin was his name – said that my grandfather had given him something before he died and told him to give it to me when my life had taken a certain turn. I tried to get him to tell me what he meant, but he was vague. He just handed me a package and said not to open it in front of anyone, not even in front of the people dearest to me. And not at my house, he added, but somewhere secluded.
You can imagine my fear. I didn’t want to accept anything from him. But Konstantin insisted, and convinced me of his good faith by saying three words.”
She paused a moment, and I waited anxiously for her to reveal to me what those words were.
“He said De’ Vova-Vova – the name I used to call my grandfather as a child, truncating the word ded which means grandfather. It was a kind of secret word that only he and I knew, because I only used it when we were alone. That silly baby talk made me realise that my grandfather had given this man something important.
I took the package and tried to get more information out of him, but he just told me that the contents would reveal everything.
That day, I had an appointment with Anatoli, the man I was seeing, right after school. I went to meet him, going a longer way round than usual and walking by a beautiful lake that’s near the village. I stood on the shoreline, contemplating the still water and, not without hesitation, opened the package. Inside were a book and a small wooden box of apparently little value. The book was some kind of anthropological essay written by my grandfather many years earlier which I had never seen before, while the casket looked familiar. I tu
rned it over in my hands and little by little remembered where I had seen it. It was on a shelf in my grandfather’s house, along with a myriad of objects dating back to the last war. I had forgotten this casket.
It was empty, but what was carved into the bottom was worth perhaps more than any object I could have found: a symbol, clearly visible. A kind of four-spoked wheel.”
“Did you say a four-spoked wheel?” I broke in.
“Yes, why?”
“I think I saw the same thing in a vision I had. But it’s a vague memory. Please, go on.”
Anna’s expression became even more serious.
“It’s no coincidence, I’m sure. The exact moment I saw that symbol, I was overcome by a flood of images – of visions that invaded my mind. Faces, places, past episodes of my life, and also things that I didn’t remember ever doing. Numbers and strange symbols unknown to me flashed before my eyes.
At the end of this bizarre experience, my mind began to form a picture of this amazing reality, because the images that I had seen, including what appeared to be hallucinations, were scenes of my former life, scenes of my everyday life. Only that they didn’t correspond to the memories that I had. I didn’t know whether to trust the visions or just accept that, somehow, I was simply making them up.”
At these words, I shook my head and stared at the empty seats in front of me.
“What is it Lorenzo? You don’t believe me?”
I came back to myself and looked at her.
“Yes – yes, I do,” I said, showing her, not without some embarrassment, my old plastic Spider-Man toy. “The same thing happened to me when I touched this.”