No Dawn for Men (20 page)

Vaclav eyed Professor Tolkien as he said this.

“How do you know about Metten?” Korumak asked.

“I told him,” said Tolkien.

The group was silent. They were sitting on the floor between the two pools. They had eaten honey cakes and bread and drank a tart beer-like drink, all produced by the river-dwelling brothers from the room beyond the arch, to which they had returned, leaving the three men and three dwarfs to discuss their business.

“How do we know he is who he says he is?” Korumak said finally.

“We have followed you here,” Tolkien said. “We have trusted you and your friends. I now choose to trust our ranger captain as well.”

“Does he know what our mission is?”

“Yes, I told him,” Tolkien replied.

They now all turned to Franz Shroeder. He had said nothing. He was fingering the amulet through the spun woolen material at the front of his tunic. He remained silent, his thoughts seemingly elsewhere.

“How will you land a plane here?” Korumak asked.

“There are a half dozen possibilities nearby,” Vaclav said. “My friends have flown in and out of tighter spots.”

“And in Metten? How will we land there?” the dwarf asked. “There will be German soldiers everywhere.”

“I daresay we’ll jump,” said Tolkien, unable to suppress a smile. Ever since Vaclav told him of his flight through the air of the evening before, he had been imagining what it would be like to float easily from on high, to land with a quiet thud in a farm field or on a leafy street in Oxford.
That
would surprise the neighbors.

“Yes,” Vaclav answered, “we will, and it will have to be at night.”

Professor Tolkien was the only one who had developed any rapport with Vaclav, whose main pleasures seemed to be to kill Nazis and to talk about killing Nazis. He looked around at the group now, knowing what he would see: the faces of the dwarfs white as ghosts. And that’s exactly what he saw. They were brave men but they looked now like they were about to vomit.

“You can’t be serious,” said Korumak.

“I’ll jump,” Franz Shroeder said. “This man is right. We have to get to the abbey as quickly as possible.”

“Professor . . .” Korumak said, but before he could say another word, Shroeder interrupted him. “My dear Trygg, my faithful friend, you know more than anyone the weight I am carrying. You have known it for many years. I alone must carry it, but I cannot bear it much longer.”

They all looked at Shroeder, who had seemed a different man since the episode in the forest. The raising of the amulet had nearly killed him, yet, afraid that more soldiers were on their trail, they had had to push on, dragging and carrying the old man through dense forest to their rendezvous with the river dwellers. He had slept on the raft and all morning in the cave, fourteen hours in all, and had eaten and drunk with the rest of them, but still he looked worn and haggard.

“It’s settled, then,” said Vaclav. He rose and picked up the rucksack containing his radio.

“Wait,” said Korumak. “Talagan or Narunir will have to take you out and back.”

“I can find my way.”

“No, you can’t,” said Talagan, who was now standing in the arched doorway. “It is forbidden.”

“What is forbidden?” the Czech asked.

“For anyone to enter or exit this river dwelling except in the presence of a river dweller.”

“River dweller?” said Vaclav. “You are boys who have found a cave.”

“You must cooperate, my dear captain,” said Tolkien. “These boys, these dwarfs, they are not what you think they are. There is a war coming, and we will need their help to win it.”

43.

The Bavarian Forest, Near Deggendorf

October 9, 1938, 2:00 p.m.

“What did you get?” Rex Dowling asked.

“Rat poison,” Ian Fleming replied. “We delivered it to Father Schneider and came right here.”

“What did you tell him?”

“To wait for word from us.”

“You better go back and tell him to deliver it now, to be served à la carte at tonight’s dinner.”

“What? Why?”

“A message came through from the Three Kings in Prague. Our boys are being dropped tonight in a field near the abbey.”

“Dropped? Where are they?”

“Somewhere north on the Niesse River. One of Moravec’s men found them. He made contact today, asked for a plane to pick them up and take them to Metten.”

“Do you have the coordinates?”

“Yes, a field about two miles east of the abbey. They’ll be dropping them tonight at ten or so. They have taken on some help, two men, two
small
men to be precise, plus Moravec’s man.”

“What were they doing up north.”

“I wasn’t told.”

“Do they know we’ll be meeting them?”

“Yes.”

“It’s settled,” Fleming said without hesitation, “the good padre must deliver the rat poison this afternoon. I’m sure they can use another sack of flour at the abbey. Billie, can you ride over to tell him? I’ve shown my face enough in Deggendorf. I’ll stay and help get ready.”

“Yes,” Billie said. “Of course. It will be a pleasure.”

“Rat poison,” Dowling said. “Appropriate. Will it kill them?”

“We told the chemist we needed to kill a dozen big rats,” Billie answered. “He said what he gave us would do the trick. It’s arsenic, basically, in a white powder. It causes massive internal hemorrhaging. They may not die immediately, but they will be on their backs very quickly, in agony.”

“Let’s kill them all,” said Hans Kaufman. “I can operate the radio.”

44.

Over The Niesse River Valley

October 9, 1938, 8:15 p.m.

“Why can’t we land in Metten?” Trygg Korumak asked.

“The pilot does not know the terrain,” Vaclav replied. “It will be dark. This plane needs a lot of runway. We have to jump.”

“How high are we?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Ten feet or ten thousand feet, I’m in the air, it doesn’t matter.”

“We’re at fifty-one hundred feet,” Vaclav replied, after glancing at the altimeter.

Korumak and Vaclav were in the stripped down Avia 158’s cockpit. Vaclav, in the co-pilot’s seat, had to twist around and look down at Korumak, who was sitting on the floor just behind him over the hinged sheet metal door that they would be jumping out of in two hours. The plane had no actual jump door as the pilot and co-pilot would jump from the cockpit doors if and when they had to eject. A mechanic had hurriedly jerry-rigged this door in the floor that afternoon. Vaclav and Korumak were shouting at each other over the roar of the plane’s twin engines. In the fuselage, sitting hands to knees, were the rest of the fellowship of six, as Tolkien had dubbed them. The pilot, grinning happily, was the same boy who had dropped Vaclav the night before. “My king,” he had said, as he greeted his countryman in the potato field he had landed in almost precisely on time at eight o’clock.

“We will jump together,” Vaclav said. “Just hug me tight and hold on. Think of me as a beautiful woman that you are madly in love with. When we hit the ground, it will be orgasmic.”

* * *

In the rear, there was no banter. Professor Tolkien and Professor Shroeder, their chutes strapped to their backs, sat next to each other, leaning against the hull. Directly across sat Gylfi and Dagna, their faces pasty white. They were afraid of heights and afraid of jumping, and the loud, bumpy ride did not help.

“Are you alright, Franz?” Tolkien asked.

“It’s almost done,” the German professor replied.

“The flight? No, we just took off.”

“Not the flight. Our journey.”

“The ritual?”

“Yes. I am being drawn like a magnet.”

“Tell me about it.”

“It’s simple. I pile kindling around the base of the Devil’s Oak. I light the kindling. I kneel at the black stone alter. I recite the
Vedo
until the tree is fully in flames. I throw the parchment and the amulet into the flames.”

“You will need help,” said Tolkien.

“I took the amulet and the parchment from Father Adelbert’s dead body. I unleashed this evil. I must destroy it.”

“Yes, but Professor, you say the tree is a hundred feet tall, the trunk ten feet in diameter. It will not burn. You will need fuel, not just kindling.”

“Petrol, perhaps,” said Shroeder.

“How will we get it?”

“Not petrol, lamp oil,” Shroeder replied. “The monks use it at the abbey.”

“You mean when you were a student?”

“Yes.”

“But that was sixty years ago.”

“The monks throw nothing away.”

“How will we get it?”

“I don’t know. But we will.”

“Do you know where the tunnel entrance is?”

“Yes, I will find it.”

“I will go down with you.”

“Where do the monks keep the lamp oil?” asked Dagna.

“You have been listening,” said Shroeder.

Dagna nodded, as did Gylfi.

“In a large store room next to the kitchen,” Shroeder replied. “There is a large drum and tins for pouring.”

“We’ll get the oil,” said Dagna.

“And we’ll go with you into the canyon,” said Gylfi.

“God be with us,” said Tolkien.

45.

Metten Abbey

October 8, 1938, 8:15 p.m.

“Are they dead?” Fleming asked.

“Yes,” Rex Dowling replied.

The Englishman and the American, their faces blackened with soot scraped from the interior walls of the mill’s crumbling fireplace, were standing over the bodies of four Waffen-SS troops lying on the ground along the five-foot-high stone wall that stretched out on either side of Metten Abbey’s filigreed wrought iron front gate. A fire blazed in a two-hundred-liter steel drum a few feet away. Tin mess kits littered the ground near the drum.

The small party of four men and Billie had waited until nightfall to make the two-mile hike through the forest to the abbey. It had been very slow going as they were constantly stopping to listen for the German patrol. When they got near the front gate, Fleming and Dowling, the group’s de facto, unspoken co-leaders, had told the Kaufmans and Billie to stay in the darkness of the tree line while they approached.

Now Fleming put two fingers to his mouth and let out a short, shrill whistle. He counted to ten and did it again. He and Dowling watched as Hans, Jonas and Billie, all in rough gear, their faces blackened as well, all carrying machine guns, approached them at a crouching run.

“They’re dead,” he said when they reached the wall. “Take their weapons and ammo, scatter them. Hans, Jonas, drag the bodies into the woods.”

“What now?” Billie whispered.

“The machine gun,” said Fleming.

“He should be dead too,” said Dowling.

“One can only hope,” said Fleming, smiling. “Nevertheless, we’ll go around back.”

As Hans and Jonas were returning from dumping the bodies, the sound of the abbey’s front door swinging open could be distinctly heard. Dowling got down on all fours and crawled to the corner where the foot of the gate joined the wall.

“It’s a priest,” the American said, “and a soldier with a gun at his head.”

Fleming crawled over to have a look at the scene perhaps thirty yards away. “Christ,” he said. “It’s Father Wilfrid.”

“
Unteroffizier, sind sie da?!
” the soldier at the door shouted.

“
Ja, Stabsunteroffizier, komm,
” Fleming replied.

“Frederick?”

“
Ja, komm. Wir sind erbrochenes.
”

“He’s not coming,” said Dowling. “It must be your accent. No
unteroffizier
sounds like an English toff. You don’t sound sick either.”

Before Fleming could answer, a shot rang out, the sergeant’s head exploded and he crumpled to the ground. Father Wilfrid stood frozen in place. This tableau, Fleming and Dowling, still crouching, hidden behind the wall, could plainly see in the light spilling out through the abbey’s wide open front door.

“Who in hell?” Fleming asked and then he had to duck and pull back as machine gun fire from the abbey began peppering the wall to his left, where, come to think of it, he said to himself, the shot that had felled the German sergeant had come from. He looked that way and saw Hans and Jonas crouching behind the wall, their heads together. Billie was crouching next to them. Fleming caught her eye and waved her over. Covered by the wall, she ran to his position. The machine gun fire had stopped but now began again, this time strafing along the top of the wall as if the gunner could see or sense Billie running behind it. Fleming ducked low and took a look through the gate up at the tower, where he could see the muzzle flashes of the machine gun in a turret window on the second floor. Father Wilfrid was kneeling over the German sergeant.