Blood of the Reich (55 page)

Plan One: suicide charge into a tank farm and hope the airbag worked and he was conscious enough to crawl out before he fried.

Bad plan.

So how about Plan Two? He parked in the shadows and popped the BMW’s trunk. He took his backpack, stuffed Rominy’s passport and cash with his own belongings, and slung it on his back. There was an emergency kit inside with road flares. There was also a doughnut spare tire, just the size for what he had in mind.

He drove the BMW to within a hundred yards of the cluster of tanks, aimed the wheels, and used the jumper cables in the rental trunk to clamp the steering wheel to the passenger door handle. That would keep his new robot car on course, he hoped. The Beamer was still rumbling, unaware of its impending sacrifice. Parking brake
on
. He cradled the spare tire, took it to the front seat, and leaned in.

“The rental company is going to be very, very pissed,” he whispered to himself.

He jammed the spare forward under the dash on top of the gas pedal, where it stuck, snug as a cork.

The engine screamed. Parking brake
off
. And as Sam sprang backward, the car howled, that beautiful Bavarian whine, and shot forward.

It was his very own cruise missile. The Beamer accelerated like a drag racer, tires smoking, and hit freeway speeds at the collision point. There was tragic beauty in how it ran straight and true. The coupe smashed through the fence and plowed into the tanks, knocking them sideways. The bang of the collision echoed in the peaceful night air, and he could see the white of the Beamer’s airbags deployed as a building alarm began to sound. There was a gush, and the air smelled like propane.

The car’s front end had accordioned, steam erupting, but nothing else had happened yet. Sam ran as close as he dared, snapped a highway flare to light it, and threw. Then he dashed away.

Night flashed into day. A fireball erupted skyward, pieces of tank and car arcing outward like meteors. Then another explosion, and another. He could feel the heat and punches of air.

Wow, better than the Fourth of July.

Sam ducked into the shadows. The swarm of men outside the hangarlike building had broken and were running toward the fire he’d set, shouting in German and French and waving guns.

In the distance he could hear sirens. The concussions from the explosions had set off car alarms.

“Well, it’s a start.”

He glanced about and spied a utility pipe grating. Lifting it, he saw metal rungs. He jammed the pack behind them for temporary safekeeping. Then he trotted in the shadows toward his goal.

“I’m coming, Rominy.”

There was still a sprawl of cars and vans around the entrance but most of the Nazi goons, if that’s what they were, had been drawn off to investigate. Two remained at the door, holding wicked-looking rifles. Sam didn’t hesitate; if he did, his nerve would fail him. He knew something awful was about to happen to the young woman he’d come to like so much. Sam had Otto’s automatic tucked in the small of his back and a second or two of surprise. He walked forward like he belonged. The men raised their guns.

“Raeder?” Sam demanded.

They hesitated, one giving a nod inside and then thinking better of it.

Triple bingo.

The Nazi bastard was here all right, which meant Sam’s spectacular arson and Wewelsburg killing just might be justifiable to the authorities, in the unlikely event slacker Mackenzie survived this night. He strode for the door, trying to look as important as the VIPs waved through the velvet rope at a nightclub, rather than the cheap Third World tourist guide he was. Attitude, man.

The goons hesitated, and Sam guessed these weren’t hired paramilitary but just weekend Nazis told to keep watch while the big dogs worked inside. They shouted some German crap.

“Stoppen. Wer sind sie?”

So he pulled the pistol and shot one of them in the leg. Necessity made you one motherfucker of invention, didn’t it? The man yelped in surprise and fell, writhing. Before the other could lift his assault rifle Sam was on top of him, his barrel pressed against the man’s left eye. “Droppen, you Nazi dick. I’m tired of this shit.” As the man’s gun fell he shoved him through the door, slamming and locking it behind them. “
Schnell, schnell
,” he ordered, pushing the man down a short corridor. “Yeah, I’ve seen the war movies.”

A fusillade of shots stuttered through the door he’d just locked. The wounded man didn’t care for being wounded, apparently, and was venting his frustration. The bullet holes popped through the metal like expressions of surprise.

That was okay. The noise would bring more police.

There was another door with a keypad next to it. “Open it!”

His prisoner shook his head, his courage back after the surprise attack.

So Sam shot him in the foot.

He yelled and hopped, Sam grabbing his shoulder and pistol-whipping his face. “Open it!” he screamed. He shook his gun. “Or I kill you!
Verstehen?
” Yeah, he understood.

Shaking, the guard tapped some numbers. Nothing happened.

Sam lifted his pistol to the man’s temple. “One.”

The man was sweating, but frozen.

“Two . . .” Surely this bastard knew how to count to three in English? “Three is the last word you’re going to hear, Fritz.” Nothing. “Thre . . .” He tightened on the trigger.

The guard lurched forward, blood gushing from his foot, mouth bruised, and put his eye up against some kind of reader. Now there were shouts outside and more shots. With a bang, the outer lock disintegrated. Damn. The Nazi rescue posse had arrived. They’d probably gotten tired of watching his car burn.

But now the door Sam needed to get through was opening.

He brought down his pistol as heavily as he could on the guard’s head, and with a crack the sentry went down. Then the American stepped through and the door slid shut. As he did so he could see men bursting through the outer entrance and spying him. They raised their guns.

Sam’s door hissed to a close just as another volley of bullets hit it. None penetrated.

“Good Swiss engineering.” Sam shot a keypad on his side, hoping that would disable the opening mechanism, and looked around. There was an elevator—a box to be trapped in, he feared—and flights of stairs.

Sam started down the stairs.

54

Large Hadron Collider, Geneva, Switzerland

October 4, Present Day

Y
ou’re too young to fully understand the intellectual marathon I required to get to this point,” Raeder said to Rominy. He regarded her with disappointment. “You’re shaking.”

“Please don’t hurt me.”

“I’m going to
pleasure
you. You’ll see. Pain is exquisite.”

What could she use as a weapon? Everything was bolted, wired, fused. There were danger signs and voltage warnings.

“When we found Shambhala,” Raeder went on, “it had a machine much like this one, but we were like cavemen contemplating a computer. We had no idea, really, what it was for, except that it seemed capable of energizing quite marvelous staffs. Then a blizzard of inventions. Radar. Television. Atomic bombs. Microwave ovens. Laser disks. And more than these toys, this incredible creation story being spun out by physicists. A big bang. A divorce between energy and matter. Thirteen billion years of galactic evolution. And even a microscopic wonderland of particles too tiny to ever see, which didn’t even seem to follow the laws of nature. Or rather, we had the laws all wrong at the most fundamental level. Moreover, new kinds of energy and matter we can’t even detect that nonetheless dominate the universe. I began to understand what had infused and powered me, and had infused and powered Shambhala. The legends of the Vril Society were based on truth! So I began to seek out key young physicists who wanted to do more than just watch protons collide. Men and women with ambition. Vision. A sense of history.”

“German scientists.”

“Some, but not all.”

“People of ruthless greed.”

“The ideals of National Socialism have universal appeal.”

“Nobody told you that you look embalmed?”

Some color actually came into his cheeks. “Invigorated, given my age. Potent, as you’ll see.”

She closed her eyes. “That’s the
last
thing I want to see.”

“Eventually I realized that Shambhala had been a supercollider. We began to theorize the staff’s properties. We didn’t have one to study, and no technology to make it, but bright young men could calculate a molecular structure that might carry messages from the string realm and its curled dimensions to our own. Eventually we realized that the energy levels achieved by the Large Hadron Collider at CERN might be enough, if properly diverted, to activate a dark energy flow, if it ran at full power. What we needed was an actual staff, and to get that we needed an actual heir. And if you helped us, how to reward you? By making you mother of the new master race.”

“I don’t want to be the mother of your damn race! Your stupid lectures are
not
seductive!”

The whine was growing louder. “It’s destiny, Rominy. Accept your fate. We’re locked together by blood.” He raised his pistol to aim at her face, his arm rock steady. “There will be a flash of illuminating light such as you’ve never felt before, and it will irradiate every cell in your body. Do not fear. It will only purify, not kill.”

“Will it hurt?” Her voice broke, and she was struggling not to cry.

“Yes.”

Lights flickered. The sound of the machines kept rising, like a building hurricane. Inside its fascist cage, the staff of Shambhala began to glow.

“I fell unconscious when it happened to me,” he added.

She glanced wildly about for some way to fight back. All she saw was a web of pipes and power cables, a hive of bus bars, and warning signs in English, French, and German. If she grabbed the wrong thing she would die.

But was that so bad, given the alternative?

Then, over the shrill sound of the accelerator, there was a more guttural rattling.

She looked up. The crane had moved to a point directly above them. And now, from the shadows, a great black chain that had been suspended like the cord of a swag lamp swung down with its heavy yellow hook. It was arcing toward them, a thousand pounds in weight, as powerful as a scythe.

Riding it was a wild-eyed tour guide. “Rominy, get out of the way!”

Sam! He was aiming a pistol.

Raeder shouted in rage and aimed his own gun.

Rominy leaped and bit his hand.

He howled, both men shooting as Sam swept down like some demented Tarzan, bullets ricocheting like popcorn.

Rominy bit harder. Raeder, snarling, hurled her aside, his strength immense, inhuman. She skidded on the slick floor.

But the chain, which had been suspended above, cut down through the tunnel air with the power of a wrecking ball, clearing the cement floor by inches. With a tremendous clang it smashed into the side of the metal cage where the Shambhala staff glowed and knocked the whole apparatus askew. Sam went flying toward the piping on the far wall and hit the cables. There was a crack like thunder and a flash as blinding as the sun. Then all light winked out.

With a groan, the whine of the accelerator began to drop, its power short-circuited. They’d blown the mother of all fuses, apparently.

And, much to her amazement, Rominy was still alive.

Red emergency lighting came on. Sam lay like a dead man, clothes smoking, obviously electrocuted. The great chain and hook had come to rest against the pipe it had ruptured. The break sizzled, and a fog was filling the room. The Klaxons of alarms were going off, and she thought she could hear distant shooting.

Where was Raeder?

She got to her hands and knees. She was shaking, whether from fear or adrenaline she wasn’t sure. Probably both. She crawled to Sam and bent to his lips.

The wispiest of breaths. Barely, he was alive.

Rominy looked around. Two pistols lay on the floor. And half falling out of its bent cradle and still glowing faintly was the crystalline staff.

She could smell burning rubber and plastic.

Then a figure staggered out of the smoke and mist. It was Kurt.

Now he looked every bit his hundred and ten years, gaunt, lined, exhausted, furious. He lurched toward her like a broken monster, eyes filled with disbelief.

“He displaced the magnets,” the German croaked. “Proton beam. It went out of alignment. Seven trillion volts.”

She didn’t understand what he meant. But then she saw his head droop toward his torso. His shirt had been sliced open and there was a thin black line etched halfway across his chest. Even as he stared, it began to bleed the thinnest of sheets.

“The idiot cut me in two.” Then Raeder collapsed.

Now Rominy could hear explosions in the rooms above, shouts, doors slamming. It sounded like a battle. She had to hide! She no longer knew whom to trust, except Sam, who had somehow miraculously escaped Wewelsburg only to fry here! Should she stay with him? Take a gun?