Temple (38 page)

piedeg of etfii evefi a few animal carcasses,
e efuge pit;
) your eg; both of you,' Cfaterface growled.
ey dropped to thei¢ ees, Hands on your
ey laced- their fingeig b@hd their heads, Chick-chick!
Race heard the other N2] lea6 he safety on his G-ii.
en he ad: m step fOfl thbough the mud behind fe! ptaee the babel of
the assatt title against the bae f head,
Ti isn how it supposed to hape] his md screamed.
I's going h faSt. Aren't th sposed to dawdle or something?
Gipe yoh aanFe. . , a chance::tet— Ra44 faced foard, away 0m the
gun, bit his lip and sht hi s, and gave i to the hopelessness of
his sima-
tiofi; aitd for the end, It 4ame uickly.
Btm [
376
Nothing happened,
Race's eyes were stiJi closed.
The Gql had gone off, but for some feOfi—sog reason—his head was
still where it was gUppoSedi
And then suddeniy—whumpi—a bOdy fOiiiiifa)ct0wn into the mud right
next to his kneeling frfim.
Race immediately opened his eyes and ped bhind him
and sa Craterface standing there,
aimed a the spot where the other Nazi's headiihad beea
only moments ago
The dead Nazi now lay face-down in the mud With an
ugly soup of blood and brains oozing oat from ihole in the back Of
his head
Uii/ Renoe sid standing up and tui Over to
Craterface. She hugged him warmly.
Races mind Spurn Uii… ?
The Ree slapped th big pokfaed Nig4on the
chest, Honestiy, cOuld ofi have waited any longer? I was almost
jumping out Of my gkin thesed
'I'm sorry, Rene/CrateffdUii Said:iiigcl:t wait tfi we were far
enough ffO the the othets would have
Race turned suddenly to face the mfi
'You'e B/he said,
'Yes/he big man said, smiig. d yos
377
saved your life, Professor William Race of New York Uni versity. In
your bid to save Ren6e on the catamaran, you tackled the right man.
If I'd been a real Nazi, I would have put a bullet in your brain
right away. My name is Special Agent Uli Pieck, but around here I
am known as Unte 4harffihrer Uli Kahr.'
And then suddenly in Race's mind, it all made sense.
'The manuscript,' Race said. 'You're the one who got the BKA their
copy of the manuscript.'
'That's right,' Uli said, impressed.
Race recalled Karl Schroeder telling Frank Nash about the BKA's
plan to beat the Nazis to the idol. He remembered Schroeder's words
clearly: “To do that, we obtained a copy of tlte Santiago
Manuscript and used it to find our way here.'
It was only now, though, that Race realised he shoUld have known
from that moment that the BKA had a man inside the Stormtrooper
organisation.
The BKA's copy of the manuscript was a Xerox of the actual Santiago
Manuscript. But the actual Santiago Manu script had been stolen
from the San Sebastian Abbey in the
French Pyrenees several days earlier by the Stormtroopers, Hence,
the Xerox of the manuscript that the BKA had in their possession
must have been sent to them by someone
within the Nazi organisation.
A spy.
Uli.
'Come on,' Uli said, hurrying over to the body of the fallen Nazi.
He quickly stripped the dead man of his weapons, toss ing his G-11
and a couple of conventional hand grenades to Ren6e, and then
throwing the Nazi's black kevlar breastplate and Glock-20 pistol to
Race. 'Hurr quickl)6 we have to stop Ehrhardt before he arms the
Supernova!'
Heinrich Anistaze and Odilo Ehrhardt were standing in one Of the
glass-enclosed offices inside the boat-house, surrounded by a bank
of radio and communications equipment.
In front of them stood Dr Fritz Weber—the former member
of Adolf I-fitler's atonc bomb project the Na.i sntist WhO during
World War II had conducted exeent§ on humari subject and been
sentenced to death for i. AlthoUgh his body wa eighty-seven yeais
old, hunchbacked aiad gnafleG his mind Was/s alice as ever.
Weber leld the Incan idol out iri ftorit of himi
'It's beattiful;' he said. : .
At eighty-sven, Fritz Weber was a deeadei older than Ehfhardt and
two feet shOrce. He was a small bespectacled man with lard
appraising eyes and a wild Einsteinian mane of hair that flowed all
the way down to his sholdei:s.
'What word from the Europeat and American governments?'
Ehrhardt asked him.
'The G@rmans arid the Anericans both asked for more time to raise
the moriey. Nothing fror he oflers,' Weber said. 'It's a ruse, a
standard negotiator's sta-..”lling tactic; They're trying to buy
more time tmtil they kn(2w for sut that their own teams haVen't
found the idol firsf.'
'Then let's show them who has the idol! Ehrhard growled. He turned
to face Afiistae. 'Mak a digital image of the idol now. Time it and
dMe it nd into the computer and send it to Bon aid -W-ashingtoh
direct. Tell the presidents that the deice has iefi arned and set
to detonate in exactly thirty minutes. ::It v4ill Only be disarmed
when we have confirmation of th4itrahsfr Of one hundred billion
dollars into out acc6un in ZuriCh
'Yes, sit,' Anistaze said crossing the roorfl to witch On digital
camera
'Doeto“ Weber,' Ehthardt said.
'Yes Obersgruppenfffitrer-?'
'When the Obetgimppenffihr-r is finishedi taking the digital image,
I want you to take the idol to, the control booth and affn the
Supernova immediately. t a thirty- minute countdown arid start the
clock'
“Yes; Ober stgruppenfi.Lhre'd
379
Ree Ren and Uii hurried back up the dirt path toward the
boat-h0use.
Uii nd Rene carried G-11s, Race the small Giock that uii had tkn
from the dead Nazi at the refuse pit.
He aiG ow wor the dead Nazi' black keviar breastplate owe hig
T-shirt. He hadn't eaiiy noticed the Nazis body a?rn0u? before. But
n0w—n0w that he was wearing it he iookd at it more ClOSely.
First of fiii it was incredibly light and easy to wear—it didn't
ibit hi movement at all. Secondly, however, he noticed a tange
A-shaped unit attached to the back of the breaia ¢0veringhis
shoulderblades. The A-shaped unit was lo light, and like a spoiler
on a sports car, it had been smoothly Corporatefl into the design
of the keviar breastplate so as not to run its slick aerodynamic
appearance,
Ag always, and perhaps incongruously -with his high- teeh body
armour, Raee was still wearing his damn Yankees cap,
Digitai image is COmplete,' Anistaze said from over by the
bank of radio and electronic equipment, 'Sending it now/ Ehrhardf
fumed f6 Weber, 'Arn the Supernova,'
Weber irnediafeiy snatched up the idol and with Ehrhardt. in tow
bhlnd hirn quickly headed out of the office,
Over therei Ren6e yiieG pointing at one of the we eedi bly long
spohsiofi :idges that eoeeted tho ivevside bulldogs f6 fhe eoff61
booth the ee of me eeatee.
Race lookd of r the i ad aW 0 y fireS— one large fat, the bthe saii
arid deed a wte lab coabog ae6 the mode t@@beabied bridge.
e smai!e an as carryifig gothg wedged underneath hi a. An 0bjOct
wrapped inside a puie ¢ioth, e idol,
Uii ad Renoe left {he dirt path, plunged into a section of
low foliage heading in the direction of the crater, Race followed
them
Seconds later, the three of them arrived at the rim of the
gigantic mine and looked out over it.
'It's Ehrhardt and Weber, Uli said. 'They're taking the
idol to the Supernovai
'What do we do?' Race asked.
uii said, 'The Supernova is inside the control booth hafig= ing
over the mine, There are only two bridges that lead out to it that
one fom the north, and the other one from the south, Somehow-we
have to get to that cabin and disarm the Supernova'
'But how do we do that?
'To disarm the device,' Uli said, you have to enter a Code
into the aming computer/
'What's the code?'
'i don't know,' Uli said sadly. 'No-one knows. No-one
except Fritz Weber; He designed the device, so he;s the only
one who knows the disarming code.'
'Great;' Race aid
Uii tfined; 'Okay now, listen this is how i see it, am the only one
of g who can get to the control booth, If they see eithe of you
ifig down one of the cable bridges, they'll drop them immediatei
arid isolate the booth, Then, if they d0fi't get their morley,
they'll blow the Supernova
But the're expedting rne baek soon believing that I have
killed the two of you W-hen i get back, I will try to get to the
control booth. Then i will ty to;.. pefsuade; Weber to disarm the
deviCed
What do we do in the meantime?' Race asked;
'For this to work,' Uii said, i must be able to deal with
Weber alone. need you two to take out istaze and the remamng men n
the boat-h0used
Exactly seven hundred feet above the floor of the mine, Dr Fritz
Weber was punching buttons on a computer console.
Beside him, a laser cutting device was carefully going to work on
the thyrium idol inside a vacuum-sealed chamber.
Behind Weber stood Ehrhardt. And behind Ehrhardt, standing in the
exact centre of the control booth, stood a very imposing,
six-foot-tall silver-and-glass device.
Two thermonuclear warheads—each approximately three feet in height
and roughly conical in shape—were positioned inside a clear glass
cylinder. They were arranged in what was known as an 'hourglass
formation'—the upper warhead pointing downwards, the lower one
pointing upwards—so that the whole device looked like an enor mous
eggtimer. In between the two warheads, at the throat of the
hourglass, sat a skeletal frame made of titanium into
which a subcritical mass of thyrium would be placed.
It was the Supernova.
A pair of cylindrical lead-lined containers each the size of an
ordinary garbage bin sat beside the device. They were warhead
capsules—monumentally strong, radiation-proof containers that were
used to transport nuclear warheads in safety.
Now, as Weber knew, a conventional nuclear weapon required about
4.5 pounds of plutonium. The Supernova, on the other hand,
according to his calculations, would require much less than that,
only a quarter of a pound of thyrium.
Which was why now, with the aid of two Cray YMP
supercomputers and a high-powered laser beam that could cut to
within a thousandth of a rniilimetre, he was extracting a small
cylindrical section of thyrium out of the idol.
Nuclear science had come a long way since J. Robert Oppenheimer's
masterwork at Los Alamos in the 1940s.
With the aid of multi-tasking supercomputers like the two
Crays, complex mathematiCal equations regarding the size, mass and
force ratios of the adioactive core could be done in minutes. Inert
gas purification poton enrichment and alpha-wave augmentation could
all be done simultaneously.
And the mathematics of it all the cucial part, the part
that had taken Oppenheimer and his band of masterminds six whole
years to master with the aid of the most primitive computers-could
be done by the “¢IPs in seconds.
In truth, the hardest part for Webe had been the actual
construction of the device itself, Even with the aid of the
supercomputers, it had still taken him mote than two years to
build.
While the laser cut through the StOne in accordance with
a preset weight-for-volume ratio based on the atomic weight of
thyrium, Weber entered SOrn complex mathematical formulae on one of
the neaiby spercomputers.
Moments later, the laser cuttei behped loudly and
reverted to stand-by mode.
It was done.
Weber came over, flicked off the laser Cutter. Then, using
a robotic arm—human arms being too inexact for such a task—he
extracted the small cylindrical Section of thyrium from the base of
the idol,
The section of thyrium was then placed inside a vacuum-
sealed chamber and bombarded with uranium atoms and alpha waves,
turning the tiny section of thyrium into a subcritical mass of the
most potent substance ever to have existed on earth.
Moments later, the robotic arn carried the entire chamber over to
the Supernova where with the utmost precision
it slid the chamber—with the subctiticai mass of thyrium
inside it—into the titanium frame that was suspended in
between the two thermonuclear warheads.
The Supernova was complete.
The subcritical mass of thyrium now sat horizontally in its
vacuum-sealed throne between the two warheads, looking for all the
world as if it contained the power of God.
The thing was, it did.
Screens all around the control booth scrolled out massive amounts
of data feed. On one screen, under the heading 'DUAL AXIS
RADIOGRAPHIC HYDRODYNAMIC FACILITY' a never- ending series of ones
and zeroes scrolled downwards.
Weber ignored them, began typing on the computer keyboard that was
attached to the front of the Supernova. A
prompt appeared on the screen: INSERT ARMING CODE.
Weber did so.
SUPERNOVA ARMED.
Weber typed: INITIALIZE TIMER DETONATION SEQUENCE.
TIMER DETONATION SEQUENCE INITIALIZED. INSERT TIMER DURATION.
Weber typed: 00:30:00.
The screen changed instantly.
YOU NOW HAVE
00:30:00
MINUTES TO ENTER DISARM CODE.
ENTER DISARM CODE HERE
Weber paused as he gazed at the screen, took a slow, deep
breath.
Then he slammed his finger down on the 'ENTER' key.
00:29:59 00:29:58 00:29:57
'Where is Unterscharfiu:er Kahr?' Heinrich Anistaze asked nobody in
particular as he peered out from the boathouse office at the
immense earthen crater outside. 'He should have been back by
now.'
Anistaze turned. 'You,” he said, tossing a radio to one of the two
lab coat-wearing technicians standing at a computer terminal
nearby. 'Go to the pit and see what is taking the Unterscharfihrer
so long.'
'Yes, sir.'
Ren6e and Race slammed into the boat-house wall together.
Only moments earlier, Uli had left them. He had headed off down the
side of the massive boat-house in the direction of the crater and
the northern cable bridge.
Ren6e peered round the wide garage door next to her.
The interior of the enormous boat-house was clear—in particular,
the wide section of floor between the glass offices to her right
and the mooring slots on her left.
Nothing stirred. There wasn't a soul in sight.
She nodded to Race.
Ready?
Race acknowledged her signal by gripping his Glock a
little more tightly.
Ready.
Then without a word Ren6e quickly ducked around the doorway, her
G-11 held high, pressed against her shoulder.
Race made to follow her, but as he did so, another door behind him
suddenly burst open and he dropped to the ground in an instant,
taking cover behind an old oil barrel.