The Black Gate (14 page)

Baumann stared at the girl, then the old man. “Spies,” he hissed.

BETRAYAL

“Spies,” Baumann repeated. Stepping closer, he backhanded the girl so hard she was torn from the big NCO’s grip, her thin body slamming into the wall beside the elevator.

“No, please!” The old man struggled valiantly, but in vain. “We live across the river and Greta was curious only curious because of the things that sometimes happen at night and…”

In a smooth motion, Baumann drew his weapon and pistol whipped the old man in the temple. He grunted in pain and his legs collapsed under him. “Back in the elevator,” Baumann ordered the guards. “We’ll take care of this right now. Müller, with me.”

The soldiers dragged the two civilians back into the elevator, followed by Baumann.
 

Peter stood rooted to the floor, frozen.

“Müller!”

Peter was shocked back to reality by the anger in Baumann’s voice. “Yes, sir,” he rasped. As the elevator rose back toward the surface level entry, Peter ventured, “Perhaps it’s just as the old man said and the girl meant no harm. She was just curious. Who wouldn’t be?”

Baumann glared at him. “It has been made clear to the local folk not to come here. If they are not spies, then they were not bright enough to obey the warnings and will pay the price.”

“But sir, she’s only a young girl…she’s one of our own people.”

“Mercy, sir,” the old man pleaded, a trickle of blood running from the gash in his forehead. He reached out and took Peter’s hand. “At least for Greta. I beg you.”

The door opened. “Out,” Baumann ordered.
 

The man lost his grip on Peter’s hand as the soldiers hauled him up the narrow, twisting stairway. The girl screamed as the NCO dragged her by the hair.
 

Once outside, the soldiers heaved the two captives down the wide steps. Peter hadn’t even realized what time it was. Darkness reigned in this part of the world.

“Müller, shoot them.”

Peter’s head snapped up at Baumann’s command. “Sir?”

Baumann, his face illuminated by moonlight filtering through the clouds, looked like a ghost. “Is there something wrong with your hearing,
Hauptsturmführer?
” He raised his pistol, aiming it at Peter’s head. “Shoot them!”

Bob’s words came back to haunt Peter.
You shoot him or slit his throat, and you think no more of it than if you were shooting or bleeding out a deer
. Peter had been prepared to kill, but not a defenseless little girl and an old man. Not in cold blood.

Clamping down on his emotions, he clutched the two books in the crook of his left elbow and drew his Luger with his right hand. Flicking off the safety, he pointed it first at the old man, who was on his knees, crying, begging for his granddaughter’s life. His head was illuminated by the flashlights held by the guards like the lead actor on a Broadway stage.

Peter fired. A spray of blood and gore, sparkling crimson in the flashlight beams, erupted from the back of his head and his body slumped to the ground, a neat red hole in the center of his forehead.

The girl shrieked and crawled to the spasmodically twitching body. She knelt beside him, crying out, “
Opa! Opa!
”
 

Peter shot her just above the right ear. Her body fell atop her grandfather like a marionette whose strings had been severed.

After Peter lowered his weapon, a wisp of smoke from the muzzle curling up like a wraith through the stark beams of light, Baumann grabbed him by the shoulder and roughly whirled him around. “What was that all about, balking like a jackass?”

“I…I’ve never had to kill anyone like that. Especially not a girl.”

Baumann’s eyes bored into him. “If you ever hesitate in carrying out my orders again I’ll kill you.”

Turning on his heel, Baumann stalked back toward the entrance. He bellowed over his shoulder. “Get that trash cleaned up!”

***

He had been informed, respectfully but firmly by the big NCO, that disposing of the bodies did not mean burying them. Instead, they were quickly dumped into body bags and hauled all the way down to Level Three. There, Kleist directed them to deposit the bags in a massive walk-in freezer that Peter realized was the larder for the carnivores in the good doctor’s care. The freezer was very well stocked.

Kleist tried to engage him in conversation, but rather than shooting him as he would have liked, Peter politely begged forgiveness and turned to leave. He only stopped to take a brief look at Subject 98-7, drawn to the jar by morbid fascination. She turned her head in his direction, as if she could sense him. His skin prickled with goose flesh when she opened her mouth. There was no mistaking the words she spoke, soundless in the liquid.

“
Kill me
.”

Peter fled to his room. Opening the door, he found Mina there waiting for him, sitting in the chair beside the bed.

“Peter…”

Ignoring her, he tossed the books on the desk inside the door and rushed into the bathroom. Dropping to his knees, he flung up the lid of the toilet and vomited his last hasty meal. After his stomach had purged its contents and the heaves had stopped, he flushed the toilet and flipped the polished wooden lid down. He crossed his arms over the lid and rested his head on them. Unashamed, he wept.
 

He flinched as a hand gently touch his shoulder after his tears were spent.

“A girl and an old man,” he whispered. “I thought I was prepared to do whatever was necessary, but…”

“You should never have come here,” Mina told him softly. “You have no heart for this. But now you have your own reasons to destroy the gate, beyond any orders you may have been given.”
 

She helped him struggle to his feet, wincing as she did so. Moving to the sink, he rinsed out his mouth. Looking at her in the mirror, he said, “I expected to see bruises.”

Her reply was a bitter laugh as she led him back out into the main part of his suite. “The
Herr Professor
only hit me in the face once.” Her fingers traced the scar on her cheek. “This was made by his ring. Since then, he has taken more care.” With a grimace, she lifted her blouse high enough that Peter caught a glimpse of her bra…and the series of dark bruises welling up on her ribs just below it.

“Why haven’t you killed him?” Peter wondered aloud.
 

She looked away. “Because I love him,” she admitted. Turning back to face Peter, she said, “But that doesn’t matter. What does is that you find a way to destroy the gate, and soon.”

Taking a deep breath, Peter said, “I can’t. I won’t. Not yet. I have to learn how it works. The technology is simply too valuable to destroy.”

She stared at him with wide, disbelieving eyes. “You’re a fool! No one should have this power. We are not ready for it, none of us! And if you don’t stop them now, it will be too late for the Allies. Even Baumann and a handful of his men transformed along the trajectory used by Subject 98-7 could turn the tide of the war. You don’t truly understand just how powerful they will become.”

“You’re right,” he said, thinking furiously. “I need time. If I could only delay them a few days without causing irreparable damage, it might be enough.”

Taking him by the arms, she implored, “Peter, please don’t do this!” She looked down at his knee. “I can understand why you would want full use of your leg back, but you can’t give in to such a selfish purpose.”

He stepped back, brushing her hands away. “You think I would take such a risk for myself?” He asked, suddenly flushed with anger. He walked to where the two books rested on his desk. “It’s not for me. It would never be for me.”

“Then for whom?”

Running his fingertips across the ancient leather of
The Black Gate
, Peter said, “Have you ever visited a military hospital?”

“No,” she admitted, “I haven’t, but I can imagine…”

“No, you couldn’t,” he snapped, cutting off her reply. “No more than I could have imagined what awaited me here. The men we send off to war who die are the lucky ones, I sometimes think. Or maybe the ones who don’t see too much of war before they take a bullet in the hand or the leg that sends them home. But many of them, most, maybe, aren’t so lucky.” He turned to face her. “My older brother Manfred — Mannie, we called him — couldn’t wait to get into the war. Even before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, he went off to England and served in the RAF as a volunteer. He shot down four German planes before the Luftwaffe returned the favor. He crashed while attempting to land and nearly died.” He felt a familiar warmth in his eyes, which always came when he thought of his brother. “He sustained serious head injuries and was sent home. He seemed like he was recovering, but then one day…” He paused. “Even now, years later, it’s hard to get the words out. One day he just snapped. He got one of the hunting rifles and shot our mother, then our father, killed them in cold blood at point blank range. My father shouted a warning to me before Mannie killed him, and I ducked down behind the couch in the living room. Mannie fired through it three times, shattering my knee with the last shot. I think my scream must have brought him partway back to reality, because he began screaming, too. He saw what he’d done to our parents, then came around and saw me, helpless and bleeding on the floor. Then he put the muzzle of the gun into his mouth and pulled the trigger. If our doctors had this technology, they might have been able to heal whatever injury his brain had suffered, might have been able to save him. All the men in those hospitals, especially the ones with irreparable disfigurement to their faces, wouldn’t have to suffer the rest of their lives. It might even be able to help those suffering from battle psychosis. And disease, every disease, could be eradicated. I’m sorry, but I think that’s something worth saving.” He looked down at his hands, which were still trembling. “It might also help give some measure of meaning to all those who have died here.”

“Nothing will do that more than destroying the gate and burying its secrets forever,” she told him. “Men can never be trusted with controlling its power and using it only for good. If you don’t believe me, read the book.” She nodded toward
The Black Gate
. “I’ve read the
Herr Professor’s
translation. Nothing in it gave me any hope.” She went to the door and opened it. “Good night, Peter. Sleep, if you can.”
 

He stood there for a long time, staring at the black-bound book on the desk. Yes, he would read it, but not now. There would be time later, assuming his plan worked. He took a deep breath, making up his mind.
 

Placing his hat on his head, he straightened out his uniform before stepping out of his apartment. He closed the door and turned down the hall toward the elevator that would take him down to the gate on Level Two.
 

***

“Good evening,
Fräulein
.”

Mina rewarded the guard with an absent nod as she stepped out into the cold. It wasn’t really evening, of course. It was two-thirty in the morning. A smattering of snowflakes drifted down from the sky, and the snow crunched under her boots as she headed out along the path she took nearly every night — or morning — at this hour while von Falkenstein dozed. She looked up at the moon and realized that she hadn’t seen the sun for weeks. She and the others trapped in this asylum may as well have been vampires, condemned to live their lives in darkness, physical and spiritual.

She passed and greeted other guards on her long, slow walk around the darkened castle grounds, noting that all were on their regular patrol schedules. Even men of the SS fell into predictable habits when faced with boring, monotonous duty. Her own rounds had become part of that routine, a few of the soldiers even being so bold as to inquire about her health when she missed a nightly walk.

After making the first circuit of the grounds to make sure that nothing was amiss, she began her second. She reached the northernmost part of her circuit, about two hundred meters from the opposite end of the grounds, and took a seat on a bench just as a pair of patrolling guards passed in the opposite direction, this time acknowledging her with nothing more than a polite nod. She checked her watch, the luminous hour and minute hands glowing green in the darkness. Right on time.

Waiting until the guards were out of earshot, she darted into the trees inside the perimeter fence that lined this part of the hill. Crouching down, out of sight just in case a patrol came by off-schedule, she reached into her coat and removed a small radio, not much larger than her hand, that had been provided by the OSS. After attaching a small fold-out antenna in the shape of a T, she plugged in a pair of tiny earphones and pressed one into each ear. Switching on the set, she pressed the push-to-talk button and began to speak in a low voice.

***

A highly modified twin-engine Mosquito, originally built as a photo reconnaissance version of the RAF’s fastest bomber, was flying a high speed orbit at thirty-five thousand feet over Arnsberg. Assigned to the 492
^nd
Bomb Group and flown by an American crew, its sole purpose was to maintain contact with OSS agents dropped deep behind enemy lines, including into Germany itself. The photographic equipment, installed where the bomb bay had been in the original design, had been removed and replaced with the specially designed “Eleanor” transceiver and recording equipment, the airborne companion to the small hand-held “Joan” transceivers used by the agents.

The radio operator rolled his shoulders, trying to get the kinks out of his muscles from being hunched over in the tiny radio compartment, isolated from the pilot and navigator. His feet were cold, as they always were when flying these missions. The fleece boots helped and his heated suit kept him from freezing, but it was like being crammed into an ice box loaded with radio gear.

His headphones crackled to life. “Doghouse, this is Garbo, come in,” a sultry female voice said in German. The Mosquito had flown a mission to communicate with the agent whose codename was Garbo every three nights for the last month, with the frequency stepped up to every night for the last four days. It was a grueling mission schedule, but the crew had been given orders to fly every night to maintain contact until further notice. While he hated the boredom and the ever present fear of having an encounter with a German night fighter, unlikely as that was as fast and high as the Mosquito was flying, he had enjoyed the Garbo missions. He thought her voice was sexy as hell.