by Layton Green
He leaned on the edge of a building and watched Jax walk to the end of the street and approach a pair of locals with stringy blond hair and unkempt beards. Though Grey wanted desperately to question Jax’s contact, if Dag found out Grey had followed him to Iceland, then Charlie would suffer.
The scene looked tense for a moment. The Icelanders slid their hands under their coats, until Jax said something that made them chuckle and relax. They frisked him and opened the door.
Jax disappeared inside. Grey watched both ends of the street, scanned every door and window. He didn’t like how isolated the street was.
His fears receded when Jax strolled out of the warehouse, nodded to the guards, and disappeared down the block. As discussed, Grey circled around to meet him at a fish and chips restaurant they had passed.
“You get what you need?” Grey asked.
“Some of it. I’ll make do.”
A few minutes later, working their way back to the center via a different route, they found themselves on a deserted street fronting a handsome, leaf-strewn cemetery. Jax veered inside the gates. He found a corner shielded by birch trees and held out a holster attached to a firearm belt, along with a pistol Grey recognized as a Glock 26. An excellent handgun for concealed carry, easy to deploy and with stopping power.
“Good choice,” Grey said, as he slipped the belt around his waist.
Unlike most ex-military, Grey did not have an affinity for firearms. He preferred his weapons more up close and personal.
But if he needed, he would drop a small nuclear bomb on the people who took Charlie.
Ten p.m.
No one Grey recognized had entered the Odin Bar all day. Jax had slipped inside to see if he noticed anything unusual, though neither of them spoke a lick of Icelandic. It was risky, but Jax was smooth and most people in the capital spoke English to varying degrees.
Grey had camped out down the street at a late night coffee bar with red carpet and wood paneling, full of students and young professionals. A tourist popped up here and there, enough that Grey didn’t stand out, but it was definitely off-season.
Earlier in the day, Grey had called Viktor back on a burner cell, told him where he was, and explained the situation. The professor understood but said he had to move forward. There were other lives at stake, maybe many more.
Grey understood, too. But he was only worried about one life.
They caught each other up on recent events, discussing the virus and the players involved. After he hung up, Grey kept an eye on the Odin Bar while he did some research on Iceland’s Nazi ties. Maybe he could gain some insight into Dag’s motives or potential location.
Though Grey could barely believe what Viktor had told him about the Ahnenerbe, Grey’s own research confirmed the Nazis had an entire division focused on political propaganda and pseudo-scientific research. Occult research. That was fact. As part of their deranged effort to prove that a Nordic master race had once ruled the world, the Ahnenerbe planned an expedition to Iceland to study the homogenous population and conduct archaeological digs. Plumb the volcanoes and crack the glaciers. Anything to serve their ends. Due to Scandinavian protest and the British occupation of Iceland, the expedition was shelved before it began.
At least that was the official statement. The mythology and remote location of Iceland possessed a strong magnetism on Himmler, and Nazi scholars had long speculated that the Ahnenerbe had continued their mission in secret, using U-boats to land on remote beachheads, sending small teams of scientists and soldiers to explore the uncharted interior.
Among other missions, such as confirmation of the ridiculous World Ice Theory, the Nazis sought the location of a magical Aryan homeland called Thule, as well as a set of tablets containing runic instructions from Odin, similar to the Ten Commandments, with instructions not to mix their blood with “inferior” races.
Grey set down his phone in disgust. He wanted to think the world had progressed, that Nazi Germany was a rip in the fabric of time, but the Wodan Society and similar organizations around the world said otherwise. Rwanda and Bosnia and Cambodia said otherwise. ISIS said otherwise. Hell, the daily news said otherwise.
12:30 a.m.
A steady trickle of people had entered and left the Odin bar. No one Grey recognized. Nor did the patrons look any different than anyone else on the street. Half looked like young professionals, half looked like Vikings with glasses and bad sweaters.
The wait gave Grey too much time to think. His guilt at losing Charlie clawed at him like a maddened bird of prey. Visions of Nya crept into his mind, those warm brown eyes so calm and collected as she fell into the abyss. He shuddered and ran a hand through his hair.
Just as Grey debated changing locations, a man exited the Odin Bar with two women. Grey froze.
The man looked familiar. He was tall and had a bundle of auburn hair tied up in a topknot. The sides of his head were shaved. It had been dark, but Grey thought he remembered him standing behind Dag on Stone Mountain.
The man shrugged into a leather jacket as he stepped into the cold, leaving it unzipped over a brown sweater. Grey had noticed that the locals dressed like they were on fall break in New York, while the tourists looked as if they were preparing to summit Mount Everest.
The two women linked arms and headed down the street. The man with the topknot walked off in the opposite direction. Grey hesitated. If he chose wrong, and it wasn’t the man he had seen, he might lose another opportunity that came up.
On the other hand, this might be his only chance.
Just as the Icelander slipped out of sight, Grey grabbed his coat and hurried out the door, deciding to trust his instincts.
Shrinking into the hood of his parka, Grey shot Jax a text and rushed to the end of the street. At first he thought he had lost the man, but Grey took another gamble and turned right, into a more residential neighborhood, and saw his quarry disappearing down a dimly lit brick street.
Grey lowered his head and followed.
-31-
Captain Waalkamp of the Cape Town police force, the supervising officer for Robey Joubert at the time of his death, canceled his meeting with Professor Radek for undisclosed reasons. Not to be deterred, Viktor scheduled another meeting for the following day, and spent the night at a well-appointed pension in Dr. Ehlers’ village.
After brunch, as Viktor headed north on the M64, straight through the lush and jagged heart of the Cape Peninsula, his thoughts turned to the impending meeting with Captain Waalkamp.
Assuming the guard they had seen was Naomi’s former classmate, what was the connection between him and van Draker? What were the circumstances of Robey’s death? Did he have an open casket funeral?
Naomi hadn’t known whether Robey was involved in a white supremacist movement, though she described him as an outstanding athlete from a wealthy Boer family who had never been shy about his racism.
After driving through the storied Constantia Wine Valley, they passed alongside the University of Cape Town and the outer suburbs before entering the city proper. Viktor caught his breath at the sight of Table Mountain looming over the city, fog roiling like dry ice atop the colossal mesa.
It brought back a rush of memories from his youth. His father in a rare jovial mood on their visit, crowing about the modernity of the infrastructure and the perfection of the weather. His mother marveling at the chic European galleries and cafés. Young Viktor enjoying the food stands at Green Market Square, the pastel houses and cobblestone streets of the Bo-Kaap, the beautiful women with their incredible range of skin tones.
The peaks of the Twelve Apostles gazing down on a string of beaches that rivaled any in the world. Exotic flowers dripping off stone walls, the smell of tanned skin and deep ocean, a sky like crushed blueberries. His parents roaring with laughter at Viktor racing out of the water, screaming about how cold it was.
Even then, Viktor was unable to live in the moment like a normal teenager and instead struggled to understand why that week wit
h his parents couldn’t last forever and why time was an unalterable thing, who created those mountains and that glorious ocean and why some people lived in gleaming hillside mansions while others pawed through the gutter for food with sores on their feet and eyes like cave mouths.
Exiting the highway and delving into the city snapped the professor back to the present. Robey had worked out of the Central Police Station, just past the Castle of Good Hope. After his driver dropped him at the curb of a monolithic red brick building, Viktor met with Captain Waalkamp to discuss his fallen officer.
The meeting was a waste of time. The captain did not stop checking his phone, and his only comments on Robey were that he was a “good lad” and a “superb officer.” He scoffed at Viktor’s inquiries into Robey’s involvement with extremist groups, though Viktor could tell the questions made him uncomfortable. When asked about Jans van Draker, the captain shook his head and said he had important matters to attend to.
Though it annoyed the captain, Viktor secured permission to talk to the police coroner. That was also a dead end. No irregularities with Robey’s body were reported. The coroner had laughed in Viktor’s face when asked if he was certain Robey was deceased. Frustrated, Viktor managed to obtain the name of the mortuary that handled Robey’s funeral.
That proved more interesting.
After lunching at an upscale steakhouse near the station, Viktor ordered a cappuccino and took out his laptop. He set up a hotspot with his phone and conducted some research during the afternoon lull.
When comparing the date and time of Robey’s death to the funeral, he noticed only eighteen hours had passed. A very short time. A bizarrely short time, for someone not Muslim or Jewish.
Viktor called the police coroner back, who said he had expedited the autopsy because of a clause in Robey’s will that requested a burial within twenty-four hours if possible, at a specific mortuary: Rhodes Funeral Home.
Who designates their own funeral home, Viktor wondered? And why?
He dug deeper. Neither Robey’s widow nor Captain Waalkamp claimed to know anything about his will. Through Jacques, Viktor obtained a list of officers killed in the line of duty in Cape Town over the previous five years. He researched where those officers were interred and discovered that two more deceased officers, from two different precincts, had been buried by the Rhodes Funeral home during that time.
Both men. Both white. Both buried within twenty-four hours of death.
Viktor spoke to the mortuary director, a man named Gerard Cronje, on the phone. Though he claimed no knowledge of irregularities, Viktor heard a hitch in his voice when asked about Robey and the other two officers with similar clauses in their wills.
Viktor had the strong suspicion that if he paid a nighttime visit to Plumstead Cemetery, where all three men happened to be buried, he would find a trio of empty caskets.
Chilled by the new information, Viktor left a hefty tip and texted his driver. His final stop of the day was the District Six Museum, a civil rights memorial in the heart of the city. Viktor knew he could research certain topics all day, but he would never progress unless he talked to someone with firsthand knowledge of the atrocities committed during Apartheid.
Someone with a reason to keep tabs on Jans van Draker.
Viktor’s driver, a Malay man named Yusuf from the Cape Flats, drove him a few blocks over, to a street crowded with tourists, vagrants, and hipsters. Just across the street, an eerily vacant ghost town sprawled to the foot of Table Mountain. Yusuf turned left on Buitenkamp Street and pulled alongside the palm-lined entrance to the District Six Museum. “You must think I’m rather lazy,” Viktor said, as Yusuf opened his door.
The driver grinned. “That’s why you have me, boss.”
Once a vibrant cultural hub, a middle-class stew of ethnicities and religious groups and artists, District Six had been a living testament to the peaceful co-existence of the races. Feeling threatened, the Apartheid government declared the district a whites-only zone and razed the entire neighborhood. Generations of homes and community ties were destroyed. No compensation was given, and the residents were forced into townships.
The government’s plans for a new, white neighborhood never came to fruition. District Six became a scar on the face of the city, and the museum became a powerful symbol for addressing the terrible legacies of Apartheid. The stripping of both land and humanity.
As instructed when he had called, Viktor walked past the floor-size map of the district and a wall of photos, into a tiny office at the rear of the first floor. He greeted an elderly lady with a wrinkled brown face peering out of a white chador.
Fatima Benting. One of the museum’s directors.
Viktor decided to be direct. The virus was spreading, van Draker knew he was being watched, and Viktor did not have time for subtlety.
“I can’t disclose details,” he said, “but I’m helping the authorities investigate the circumstances surrounding the gargoyle virus. I’m not here to accuse or malign anyone,” he leaned forward as Fatima’s eyes widened, “but I’m gathering information on Jans van Draker.”
Her pleasant expression faded.
“I realize this is a strange visit,” Viktor continued, “and I don’t expect anything. But I know how, over the years, certain voices are . . . silenced . . . by the dominant regime. I was wondering if you had any stories to tell.”
The older woman’s expression grew troubled. She didn’t speak for a moment, and when Viktor gently prodded her, she drew her arms deeper into the chador. “For your own protection,” she said finally, “you shouldn’t talk about what I am about to tell you.”
Viktor waffled. “If it’s something I might be able to use—”
“It’s not.”
“I see.”
“I’m sorry to be rude, but any actual evidence of these matters is . . . you’ll see.”
“Shouldn’t the local authorities make that decision?”
She gave him a sad smile. “They already have. After the boy’s death, and just last week. When I saw the news.”
“Boy—you mean Akhona?”
“No.”
Viktor sat back. “You said last week—who did you contact? About what?”
“I called the police and the department of health. In the past, neither cared, and in the present, both said too much time had passed.”
Viktor was getting confused. “Why don’t you tell me what happened?”
She rose to close the door, returned to her seat, and took a moment to compose herself, as if struggling with the past. “In 1993, during the last gasp of Apartheid, I was a social worker in Soweto.”
Viktor remembered van Draker’s nickname. The Surgeon of Soweto.
“I was assigned a boy of fifteen who had stumbled into a shelter. A Basotho boy from a farm in Lesotho who came to Jo’burg looking for work. He contracted syphilis, visited a clinic for medicine, and the government took him off the street, under the auspices of medical care. When the boy got to us, he was . . . damaged.” Her eyes tightened. “Tortured.”
“I hate to ask,” Viktor said, “but can you describe what was done?”
She hesitated, her eyes roving to a colorful batik on the wall depicting a lion sleeping in the long grass just outside a village.
“It might help,” he said, “if the symptoms align. Please . . . if you can.”
She shivered into the chador. “When he came in, the boy’s skin was mottled, much of it pink and raw. As if the pigment had been stripped. There were injection marks all over, and his eyes were in a permanent state of dilation. The fingertips on his left hand had been surgically removed. He was sterilized—”
“Do you mean,” Viktor began, but cut off his question when Fatima turned a haunted gaze on him.
“He had incision marks near almost every organ,” she continued, “including on top of his head.”
“Dear God. I assume he was reported to the authorities?”
Fatima’s grim look chilled him. “The b
oy also had a flu when he arrived, which grew worse by the day. The hospitals turned us away. A doctor in the township came by but couldn’t help. The boy grew mentally unstable and couldn’t remember who or where he was. He died in three days.”
Viktor sucked in a breath at the similarities to the gargoyle virus. “Did he say why he was released from the government hospital? Or did he escape?”
She nodded as if she had anticipated the question. “Someone helped him leave. As you can imagine, the boy was afraid to go to the authorities and report what had happened, for fear of being sent back. Just before he died, I managed to get him to describe the doctor who helped him flee the facility. He used a false name and wore a surgical mask, but the boy described the birthmark on his forehead.”
“Van Draker,” Viktor said, “releasing him into the world. Good God.”
She leveled a final stare at him. “Just before he set the boy free, Jans gave him a last injection. A medicine, he told the boy, that would make him all better.”
As he walked out of the museum, the beauty of the city felt soiled to Viktor, a piece of expensive jewelry covering an open sore.
The first thing he did was call Captain Waalkamp and ask about Fatima’s story. “I’ve heard it,” the captain said, with a dismissive tone. “We can hardly drag someone to the station because a deceased witness may or may not have described someone almost twenty-five years ago. In connection with something about which there is no proof.”
“There’s enough to question van Draker. At the very least.”
“I disagree. And so did the State’s attorney.”
Viktor hung up on him. The captain might be right, but Viktor vowed to use the information. Involve the press if he had to. The problem, he knew, was the timetable. The progression of the virus was outstripping the investigation, and by the time Viktor got anyone to listen, he feared the damage would be done.
Maybe it already had been.