The was something manic about Eckhart’s grin as he placed the bundle at the end of the altar and began to carefully unwrap it.
“So our pleasant walk through the woods was all for a spot of amateur archaeology?” Eckhart seemed oblivious to Ernst’s barely disguised sarcasm which only fed the big man’s disrespect for authority. “Well, I’m glad you found whatever it is. Does this mean we can go back to somewhere that has cafés?”
Eckhart had finished unpicking the binding and folded the cloth back to reveal what looked like a knight’s helmet made of silver. The visor was worked to resemble the muzzle of some feral animal, the eye slits recessed into a disturbing level of blackness. Two horns or wings sat proud on either side, but it was the size of the thing that seemed most incredible. It seemed like it was fashioned for a giant.
“To answer your question,” Eckhart’s eyes remained on the helm, “You cannot go back to your cafés. We are not finished here and this particular treasure may well hold the key to shortening this war.”
“How is a knight’s… a giant’s helmet going to do that?” Christian shook his head as much in wonderment as disagreement. “I doubt its owner is still alive.”
Ernst coughed to stifle his laugh bringing Eckhart’s glower to bear.
“Ah, so you want this war to continue? All this time scrabbling around in the dirt and snow and sand, hiding from real and imagined enemies? All of it, all the operations and the missions and the battles are a means to an end, and that end is the Reich’s dreams made manifest.” He returned his attention to the helmet. “Der Albtraum is said to wear a magical cap that renders it invisible. What damage do you think one invisible tank could inflict? Or even one invisible soldier?” Eckhart fixed Ernst with the same penetrating stare. “The enclosure needs to be complete by midday tomorrow. See that it is ready Feldwebel. Dismissed.”
Ernst narrowed his eyes and seemed ready to respond when Eckhart continued seamlessly, pressing his monocle into his scarred eye and addressing his comments directly to Cosmina.
“There is a lengthy inscription that runs around the lip of the helmet,” he said. “If my research is correct, these may well be the words of binding. I can read them phonetically, but I leave you to weave them together.” He held his hands up in mock defeat.
Ernst’s lips drew into a tight line, the muscles bunching in his jaw. He shot Christian a look that said the incident wouldn’t be finished or forgotten any time soon, and then turned on his heels and marched off towards the men working on the tubular metal panels.
“Read them out please.” Cosmina’s request drew Christian’s attention back to the strange helmet. He half expected Eckhart to dismiss him as well, but the oberst merely began to recite words in a language Christian didn’t understand. Considering Cosmina’s heritage, it was probably Romanian. She listened intently, her mouth framing the odd word here and there as Eckhart rotated the helm, reading the inscription in its entirety.
“Yes. I know most of it,” she said, “It’s a variation on a bind or fetter incantation, but there are some parts I do not recognise.”
“Not to worry Fräulein. Come to my tent and we’ll work through the nuances so that your recital is word perfect by tomorrow evening.”
“And what will be happening then oberst?” Concerns about Ernst’s anger were instantly forgotten as, once again, Christian’s curiosity got the better of him.
“With luck, my young Lieutenant, we will capture the secret of invisibility. But we will need one more element in order to complete this. Tell me, when will the platform be finished?”
Christian looked across to the jigsaw of logs that was being jointed together and pursed his lips. “We are already ahead of schedule. It should be ready by this evening. Tomorrow morning at the latest.”
“Good. I had anticipated setbacks and here we are, as you say, ahead of schedule. Excellent. Guide Fräulein Stafie for me.” Eckhart picked up the over-sized helmet and strode, as best he could, back to his tent.
* * *
Night had fallen and a few of the men had grouped around the camp’s fire. The dull, red glow illuminated their tired faces as their talk drifted across tree stumps to Cosmina’s tent. Christian, trying to keep some semblance of distance between himself and this beguiling civilian — at least in the imagined eyes of his men — squatted next to the blind girl. She herself was much more relaxed. All of her earlier nervousness had dissipated and she rested back on her extended arms, her legs stretched out in front of her.
A tirade of expletives came from the ruined chapel and they both turned in the direction of the noise. It was typical of Ernst to throw himself into the job rather than festering with open resentment towards Eckhart. To Christian, though, the dogged determination of his friend to work into the night spoke of just how much the oberst had affected him. He sighed and turned back to Cosmina.
“Explain to me again what Eckhart’s intending to do?” he asked.
“He plans to summon this creature and then capture its essence within the helm.”
Christian rubbed at his eyes, a headache forming deep within his skull. “Doesn’t any of this strike you as insane?”
Cosmina laughed, “What part of this war would you consider sane, Lieutenant? That is before we pick apart Eckhart’s faith in my abilities — although I’m sure that platform you’re building is some form of insurance.”
Christian fell silent. The presence of the platform was beginning to disturbed him as much as the weird geometry of the enclosure.
“I have also,” Cosmina went on to say, “placed my faith in a ranking member of the SS that my family will be spared. What does that make me? A collaborator? A fool? I have no idea. All I can hope is that he is an honourable man. Hope, Lieutenant. That’s all I have while there’s still breath in me.”
He had no answer to that, his only personal hope being the trivial and physical one of a better night’s sleep. Just the thought of it made fatigue creep into every aching joint.
Bidding Cosmina goodnight, he walked over to where Ernst struggled with encasing a wall of the enclosure in barbed wire. It was a bleak scene. A crestfallen gefreiter held one of the powerful electrical torches and, in the pool of white light, a gloved and aproned Ernst struggled with the hellish bindings.
“Call it a night my friend. That’s not an order but advice, in case you were wondering.” The big man looked briefly up from the motions of his wire cutters and shook his head.
“Our esteemed oberst wants this finished by tomorrow and that’s what he’ll get. He most certainly will, the arrogant idiot.”
“Shhh,” Christian admonished, scowling at the torch-bearing gefreiter and indicating that this conversation should go no further on pain of some awful punishment detail yet to be invented.
“Pfft, I care not,” said Ernst. “Anyway, this is the last of the five panels. We still need to thread the silk through the whole thing once it’s up — who knows how the hell we’ll do that. Silk and barbed wire, eh?”
Christian waved an exhausted hand, indicating that he had no energy left to enter into another discussion about the absence of logic in the whole situation.
“Go to bed Ernst and dream a little dream for me will you? Dream that we’ll be away from all of this soon enough.” The big man’s shoulders sunk at his friend’s attempt at humour and he gave a defeated nod. It was enough to assuage Christian’s own guilt at being too tired to do anything more and, for the second night in a row, he shambled away towards his tent.
* * *
The dead space of night. A hiatus. A vacuum without form, and another gasping plunge from its clutches as Christian awoke with a horrid foreboding, a sense of wanting to be free. Free of his vest, this tent, the crowding presence of the trees around and, most of all, free of Eckhart.
He sat in the dim light of dawn and tried to find some kind of composure with his breathing, a reassurance in the ever present rhythms of his body instead of the wracking pain and panic that sent spasm
s through his chest.
The feeling still hadn’t departed by mid-morning and Christian didn’t know whether the dirty edge to the day was the result of yet another disturbed night’s sleep, or a natural phenomenon. True, they had exposed more of the sky with their cutting, but that didn’t appear to have cleared the air. The only tangible result was that the newly revealed light brought a slate grey tinge to the fully erect structures.
Christian found that he couldn’t let his eyes rest too long on the asymmetrical shapes of the enclosure, such was their lack of any kind of cohesion. In the centre of the twisted mass of metal, the still aproned Ernst braced a ladder for a younger man who was cautiously threading the knotted silk thread along every pipe.
This was wrong, Christian realised in observing the perverse scene, and the whole mission seemed dead set on a course away from the rational. Breathing deep, he decided to confront Eckhart.
He wasn’t sure how he reached the oberst’s tent, such was the muddle of his mind. Stooping, he prepared to step inside and then recoiled as Eckert threw back one of the flaps and pressed past him. He appeared to have some kind of firearm clutched in one hand.
“Everything is almost ready Gruber!” he called over his shoulder.
Christian began to follow the man and then glanced into the tent. A portable radio terminal was set up on a flimsy field desk, the wrapped helmet placed on the floor beside it. Again he thought of the giant that must have worn such a monstrosity and balked at the image. His repulsion was a physical reaction, one that seemed to push him away from the tent. He span and witnessed Eckhart standing near the platform. His face was turned up towards the ashen sky, a couple of stubby cans held in one hand, the wide muzzled gun in the other. It was then that Christian realised a sound was registering on the edges of his hearing. He moved closer to Eckhart and, as he did so, the noise increased from the chopping buzz of some large insect to a thudding barrage of air. There was no doubting that it was a motor of some sort, but there was also the deep boom of a field gun within its tone — albeit a field gun firing at a rate that no human gun crew could ever achieve.
“A Focke-Achgelis Gruber!” Eckhart had to raise his voice over the increasing din. “You’ll be most impressed, I can assure you.”
The noise had become a physical thing, a pounding in Christian’s diaphragm that created an odd combination of excitement and nausea. There was a fainter, but still audible, ping next to him and he looked to see Eckhart pulling the pin out of one of the canisters. A massive plume of red smoke leapt from the small device as the oberst laid it on the corner of the platform. He moved to the opposite side of the structure and placed a second spewing smoke grenade. He then pushed a shell into what Christian could now see was a flare gun and held it aloft. The muted detonation produced another trail of vapour that arched into the sky, a bright effervescent ball of light shining at the apex of the parabola it described. Its release pushed the sound to an almost unbearable level.
“What the hell is it?” Christian yelled, but his words were buffeted into obscurity.
The vehicle appeared above the treeline. It had the cabin and fuselage of a light bomber, but its propellers were massive and positioned vertically upon each wing. Christian had read about helicopters at the beginning of the war, but had no idea that the technology had become so advanced in just five short years. The machine’s twin rotors boomed as it rose and advanced making the tops of the surrounding trees cower under the force of its down draft.
A large crate dangled in a net slung beneath the craft, and positioned on each corner of the four pick up points was a heavily goggled SS soldier, arms and legs expertly linked through the large holes in the heavy weave, apparently totally at ease with this outlandish form of transport.
He felt a hand on his chest and found that Eckhart was pushing him away from the intended drop zone.
The dark, cigar-shaped vessel dipped down and the men on the netted crate floated through the camp towards the platform as if this bizarre show was a routine matter. On the ground the horses neighed and whinnied as they pulled at their tethers in distress.
The noise changed yet again as the helicopter hovered in place above the platform and slowly lowered the crate to the surface. As it dropped, Christian was able to see one of the flight crew leaning from a hatch as he closely observed the descent, his face half obscured by a radio mask. The vehicle dipped marginally and the men clinging to the cargo net quickly detached the bulky delivery. There was one final shift in tone as the wind around the camp rose to storm force, and then the helicopter powered away, passing beyond the treeline, taking its infernal engines with it.
Eckhart was more animated than Christian had ever seen him. Jumping onto the platform he greeted the arriving men with uncharacteristic warmth, shaking hands with one of them. They all wore the same dark uniform of the SS, and all bore the identical Black Sun insignia on their shoulders. A quartet of rucksacks were nestled alongside the crates and the men reclaimed these, stepping down from the platform and walking with Eckhart towards his tent. There was no introduction for Christian, only a curt comment from the oberst as he passed.
“Double bunk some of your men Gruber and re-pitch a tent for our guests.”
Your men, Christian thought. Them, and us. Eckhart couldn’t have been more divisive if he’d tried. Beckoning an engineer over, he issued the order and then inspected the large crate still nestled in the cargo net. The stencils were all vaguely familiar, a collection of swastikas, eagles and serial numbers. But there, again, the Black Sun, its angular snaking solar flares seeming to animate against the coarse wood. There was no warmth, no humanity in its design just a sense of universal power. Power at the expense of something, but what? Christian, suddenly aware that the Albtraum was the prize and that he, and all of his men, were expendable, hurried to find Ernst.
“Station the men by the horses. The first sign of trouble, go.” Christian stood in the triangular opening that served as a door to the enclosure, the chapel now resembling an intricate stage set positioned within the larger theatre of interconnected pipes.
“We should stop them,” Ernst’s tone was flat. “This wouldn’t take much to sabotage.” He indicated the structure around him. “I usually take a sense of pride in what I construct, but not this.”
“We can’t,” Christian said. “Let’s say Eckhart’s plan works.”
“You really think that he’s going to resurrect some medieval, invisible giant? Ha.” Ernst’s laugh was devoid of any humour.
Christian shook his head, “I doubt it, but I don’t know. There are stories, I know you’ve heard them too. If whatever happens here does, indeed, shorten the war what then? Would you rather go back to Africa? To Norway?” Ernst broke eye contact and looked at one of the barbed wire walls.
“Perhaps we could choose to sabotage this,” Christian continued. “Or perhaps we could just walk away, desert. Do you think Eckhart and those he represents will be forgiving? However, if we’re prepared to escape at the first sign of trouble…”
“Then we haven’t disobeyed any orders,” Ernst’s tone was grudging.
“Exactly. So will you organise the men? Stand ready with them?” Ernst pushed his tongue into his cheek and nodded. “Good. Be ready, but without drawing attention to yourself.”
“And what about you my friend?” Ernst asked.
“I’ll keep an eye on the oberst and his guests while we wait.”
The sense of vacuous anticipation that Christian had been struggling with since his arrival at the chapel, now transformed into a tangible thing as the first shadows of night fell.
Eckhart had ordered the fire to be built up, and the crackling fury of it could now be heard as well as felt. Rough edges of a path had been marked with stakes cut from branches, and this clear way ran from the platform towards the monstrosity that was the enclosure. No, Christian thought, Ernst was right. This warped and brutal structure was no enclosure, it was a cage. He had hoped the twilight gloom woul
d hide some of its deformity, but the roaring fire and the electrical torches stationed at intervals around its boundary only added to its freakishness.
Eckhart was busy within, carefully placing the helmet at the centre and then examining the interior with Ernst. Christian knew what it was taking out of his friend to keep up the obsequious charade with the oberst, but it was an act that would not have to last much longer.
Of the visiting SS guards, little had been seen. Christian, during the requested relocation of the tent, found nothing to distinguish the four men when he inspected them. Clean shaven, square jaws, intense stares, he had encountered the SS and the military stock they were chosen from before. Holed up in their tent, they were little more than silhouettes smoking and drinking in the lamp light.
Eckhart emerged from the metal structure and began to scan the campsite, his view alighting upon Christian. He waved the lieutenant over.
“It is almost time Gruber,” the oberst called as the younger man approached. “Fetch Fräulein Stafie and position her here.” He indicated the side of the structure where an open space had been left around a single strand of knotted material. “Tell her to hold the silk and begin her recital on my word. Is that understood?”
Christian nodded, not to Eckhart but to Ernst who was also leaving the structure. His friend nodded back and moved off towards the nearest group of soldiers.
“Good,” said Eckhart, and all three men went their separate ways.
Christian found Cosmina stood in the centre of her tent, her hands clutched in front of her hips, a grim set to her mouth.
“It’s time, isn’t it?” she said.
“It’s Christian,” he said for her benefit. “And, yes, it is time.”
She smiled at this. “I know it’s you Lieutenant. Tents don’t allow for the politeness of knocking, but your approach speaks of a man who would follow such civilities if he could.”
“He, Eckhart, wants you to be in position for your… um, recital.”
“I know. Such faith in me. It’s enough to make a girl blush.”
Dark Tales From the Secret War Page 6