Two Graves (52 page)

Fischer regarded his captive for a moment. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Herr Pendergast.”

Pendergast did not look up.

Fischer nodded to Berger and began walking toward the door of the cell. After a moment, Alban turned as well to follow him.

At the door, Fischer stopped, glanced back at Alban. A look of mild surprise came over his face. “I would have thought you’d like to witness this,” he said.

“It makes no difference,” Alban replied. “I have better things to do.”

Fischer hesitated for a moment. Then he shrugged and exited the room, followed by Alban. The door clanged shut heavily behind them and the guard stepped over to take up position before it, submachine gun at the ready.

T
HERE WAS A BRIEF CHATTER OUTSIDE. THEN THE DOOR
opened again. Three more guards came in: two bearing various chains and manacles, and another with an acetylene torch. Berger looked around. Now there were seven in the room: the four soldiers, himself, the prisoner—and the dead body of Egon.

Berger glanced at the corpse, its face still frozen in a ridiculous expression of agony, limbs stiff and angular, tongue protruding, thick as a kielbasa, streams of blood running down from the ears, nose, and mouth. He turned to the soldier on guard duty. “Get that out of the way,” he ordered.

The soldier walked over and unshackled the iron clasps from Egon’s wrists and ankles. Freed of the restraints, the corpse collapsed heavily to the ground. The soldier reached down, seized one raised claw, and hauled the body to a corner of the chamber, kicking it up against the wall.

Berger nodded at the prisoner named Pendergast, shackled to the wall. “Soften him up a bit,” he told the soldier in German.

The soldier gave a slow, cruel smile. He approached Pendergast—his arms and legs pinned to the stone wall—and over the course of several minutes administered a dozen vicious, methodical, well-placed blows to the face and, especially, the abdomen. Pendergast writhed against his restraints, and grunted with pain, but made no other sound.

At last, Berger nodded his approval. “Cover him,” he said. The guard, breathing heavily, stepped back, picked up his submachine gun, and returned to his position near the door.

Following Berger’s orders, the other three soldiers now approached. They freed Pendergast from the wall clasps, and the man fell to the ground. While the soldier with the machine gun kept a careful eye, two of the guards dragged Pendergast back to his feet, then fitted him with wrist manacles, a belly band, and leg hobbles consisting of two ankle cuffs. These were all welded in place by the guard wielding the acetylene torch. Finally, two six-foot iron chains were threaded from the manacles to the foot hobbles. When the restraints were all in place and the welds completed, the men glanced at Berger for further instructions.

“You may go,” Berger told them.

The three turned toward the door.

“Just a minute,” Berger said. “Leave the torch. I have a use for that.”

The third guard placed the rucksack containing the acetylene torch and its two canisters on the floor. Then they left. The soldier with the submachine gun closed the door, then took up his position before it.

Berger pulled a short, metal-tipped quirt from his bag, then took a moment to observe the prisoner, take his measure. He was tall and thin, and clearly weak, his arms weighed down by the chains. His head hung down listlessly, his blond hair limp, blood streaming from his nose and mouth. His skin was gray and translucent, his spirit clearly broken. No matter: Berger would make him lively before the end—very lively.

“Before we begin,” he said, “there’s something you need to know. I was chosen for this task because you killed my brother on the
Vergeltung.
In our society, victims are always given the satisfaction of carrying out justice on the perpetrator. It is my right, and my duty, to punish you, and I accept the challenge with gratitude.” He nodded at the body of Egon, crumpled up in a far corner like an oversize spider. “You will wish for a death as pleasant as his.”

The man didn’t seem to hear him, which raised Berger’s anger a notch.

“Bring him forward,” he told the soldier.

The soldier, propping his Sturmgewehr 44 rifle against the wall, approached Pendergast and pushed him roughly toward Berger. Then he moved back toward the door, picked up his rifle again, and resumed guarding the prisoner.

“Pendergast,” said Berger, tapping Pendergast’s chest with the quirt. “Look at me.”

The bedraggled man raised his head. His eyes focused on Berger.

“First, you dig your grave. Then, you will suffer. And finally, you will be buried in it, perhaps alive, perhaps not. I haven’t quite decided yet.”

No sign of comprehension.

“Get that pick and shovel.” Berger gestured toward the corner of the room.

The soldier underscored the order with a wave of his gun. “
Beweg Dich!
” he barked.

Slowly, the prisoner shuffled toward the far corner, the hobbles clanking awkwardly, the chains dragging.

“Dig here.” Berger took his heel and scraped it along the floor, outlining a crude rectangle in the volcanic dirt. “Hurry!
Spute Dich!
”

As Pendergast began digging, Berger kept a safe distance, well beyond the swinging range of the tools. He watched the man lift the pick and bring it down painfully into the dirt, again and again, until he had broken up the top layer. He labored awkwardly, heavily encumbered with steel, and the short length of the chains greatly restricted the movement of his arms. When he slowed, Berger stepped forward and gave him a few brisk lashes with the quirt for motivation. Gasping with effort, the prisoner switched to the shovel and removed the loose dirt. At one point he laid the shovel down and mumbled that he needed to rest; Berger responded to that request with a kick that sent the man sprawling. That woke him up a bit.

“No stopping,” Berger said.

The grave made slow progress. The prisoner worked doggedly, chains rattling against the cuffs, his face a mask of mental apathy and physical exhaustion. Here, thought Berger, was a man who knew he
had failed; a man who wanted nothing more than to die. And die he would.

An hour dragged by, and finally Berger’s impatience got the better of him. “Enough!” he cried. “
Schluss jetzt!
” The grave was only two and a half feet deep, but Berger had grown eager to move on to the next stage. The prisoner stood there, at the edge of the grave, waiting. Turning to the soldier, Berger said in German: “Cover me while I work on him. Take no risks. If anything happens, shoot him.”

The soldier took a few steps forward, raising his weapon.

“Drop the shovel,” Berger ordered.

The prisoner dropped the shovel and stood there, arms at his sides, head drooping, waiting for the end. Berger advanced on him, picked up the shovel, and—bracing himself—swung it against the prisoner’s side. With a
thwack
the prisoner dropped to his knees, a look of pained surprise on his face. Placing the flat of his foot on the prisoner’s chest, Berger gave him a push that sent him sprawling backward into the grave. Making sure the guard had a good bead on the prisoner, Berger stepped over and picked up the rucksack containing the torch and its heavy acetylene tanks. Holding its nozzle up like a candle, he snapped the torch on. It popped into life, an intense white light that filled the cell with harsh shadows.

“
Ich werde Dich bei lebendigem Leib verbrennen
,” he said, leering at Pendergast and gesturing meaningfully with the torch.

He stepped back to the grave and looked down. The prisoner lay there, eyes widening in fear. He tried to sit up, but Berger planted his foot on the prisoner’s chest again and stepped down, pushing him back. Keeping pressure on the foot, he leaned in and brought the needle-like flame toward the prisoner’s face. It cast a ghastly light, turning the prisoner’s eyes into gleaming points of fire. Closer and closer grew the flame. The prisoner struggled, trying to turn his face aside, first one way and then the other, but Berger pressed relentlessly with his foot, holding him in place, while the very edge of the flame began to sear the prisoner’s cheek. Now he could see a gratifying terror fill the prisoner’s eyes as the flame blistered the skin—

An extremely rapid and forceful—but slight—movement occurred;
suddenly the prisoner seemed to contort himself in the strangest way, accompanied by a grinding
pop
of dislocating bone and sinew. Berger, starting back in surprise, saw, suddenly, the prisoner’s hand rise. He felt the nozzle twitched out of his grasp, and an instant later a brilliant white light filled his field of vision. He pulled back, crying out, and was astonished to feel the cold bite of steel around the back of his neck, one of the prisoner’s chains looping around and pulling him forward into the white light, closer and closer. It seemed to last forever—and yet it could have taken no longer than a second or two. The hissing spear of white drove like a needle into his mouth, nose, and then eyes; there was a sudden boiling and a soft, bubbly explosion, followed by pain to end all pain; and then all dissolved into white, white heat.

Pendergast fell back into the makeshift grave, yanking Berger’s body on top of his own, using the hole and the body as cover while the soldier—having recovered from his surprise at this unexpected development—fired, the bullets kicking up dirt all along the rim of the grave. The depth was shallower than Pendergast would have liked, but it was enough. Still covered by Berger, he directed the needle flame of the torch to the chain that attached his left wrist to the steel belly band, slicing it away not at the wrist but at the band, leaving six feet of loose chain attached to his wrist. Bullets nicked and whined around him, several thudding into Berger’s body with a sound like a hand slapping meat. With a sudden cry, Pendergast rose from the grave, flinging aside the body and swinging his arm around, wielding the now-free chain like a whip. It swung in an arc toward the ceiling, shattering the bulb.

As the room was plunged into darkness, he came forward, avoiding the soldier’s panicked fire by staying low and moving in an arc diagonally and very fast. Meanwhile, he gave the chain another massive swing, wrapping it around the soldier’s Sturmgewehr and wrenching it out of his hands, into his own. A single burst of the weapon dropped the soldier. Pendergast dove back into the grave just as the door burst open and the guard detail outside came pouring in,
sweeping the room with fire. He waited until he was sure they were all within the room, and then—lying flat on his back in the makeshift grave—he raised the Sturmgewehr and raked them all with the weapon on full auto, emptying the massive box magazine in less than three seconds.

Suddenly all was silent.

Scrambling back out of the grave, Pendergast dropped the weapon and walked to the closest wall, stepping over still-twitching bodies. He took a deep breath, then another. And then, with all his strength, he slammed his shoulder against the wall, resetting the joint he had been forced to dislocate in order to get enough extra play with the chain to strangle Berger with it. Wincing at the pain, he waited until he was sure the shoulder was set properly and could be moved. He then grabbed the acetylene torch, switched it on, and used it to slice off his leg irons, belly band, and wrist cuffs, in his haste setting afire his shirt, which he pulled off while it was still burning. Throwing the rucksack containing the torch and tanks over his good shoulder, he looted a handgun, knife, lighter, wristwatch, flashlight, and a couple of box magazines from the corpses, scooped up the pick he’d used to dig the grave, grabbed the least bloody shirt he could find from one of the dead guards, and then charged out the door and sprinted down the tunnel beyond.

As he ran, slipping his arms into the shirt, he could already hear the commotion of shouted voices and the pounding of soldiers’ boots echoing through the stone bowels of the old fortress.

C
OLONEL SOUZA AND HIS HANDPICKED FORCE OF THIRTY
men moved through the dense evergreen forests east of Nova Godói. He could see, through the breaks in the trees, the looming hills that marked the volcanic crater within which the town was located. He stopped to consult his GPS and observed, with satisfaction, that they were only a mile from the previously determined reconnoitering point on the crater rim.