Soul Intent (37 page)

Val led the way down the chute and into the bat room. The soldiers came next, and I pulled up the rear. We walked down the sloping tunnel, then we squeezed through the hole Val and I had smashed through the brick wall.

The stairs were dark, and our flashlights didn’t carry far. I turned to the rifle guard. “Your men’s bodies lie in that corner,” I said.

He nodded. “We were here when the bitch shot them.” He spoke in German to his companion. Neither of them even looked in that direction.

Val and I hurried over to where we had left George and Sue. We shook them awake and helped them drink some water and eat some chocolate. I gave them each two hydrocodone tablets.

“We traded away the gold to get the Nazis to help us carry you out,” I said.

“Flora let you give away her gold?” George’s skin was gray again, and his voice was faint.

“She was almost happy to do it,” Val said.

He smiled. “You hear that, Sue? They think we’re worth at least twenty-five million bucks.”

“Maybe you can ask for a pay raise,” Sue said, and they both chuckled.

I motioned the two soldiers over. “We need your help carrying our teammates,” I said.

The rifle guard nodded. “We make a sling with the diving suit,
ja
?”

“Good idea,” I said. We tied each of my suit’s arms to its corresponding leg. This made two loops. Then we slid one loop over George’s shoulders and slipped his arms through it.

We lifted George to a sitting position. The rifle guard squatted behind him, back to back, and positioned the other loop under his arms. He stood up with a grunt and lifted George onto his back. The other guard grabbed George’s legs and set them on his shoulders. Then they turned and carried George up the stairs.

“Do you think you can ride piggy-back?” I asked Sue.

She nodded.

I handed the knapsack to Val, and I backed over to Val’s rebreather. Val helped Sue climb on top of it, and then Sue got onto my back. She gasped as I grabbed her legs and wrapped them around me.

We stumbled our way out of the cave for the last time. Val lit the path and guided us when we couldn’t see, and we all helped pass George and Sue through the small hole in the brick wall. The final guano-filled chute was tough, but with one person pushing and another pulling, we got everybody out of the bat hole and onto the ridge in less than an hour.

We took a break and ate the rest of the chocolate and granola bars. Then we carried George and Sue over the ridge and down into the clearing.

Rose and Marie met us at the bottom of the hill, right next to the now-blocked mine entrance. “We called for an ambulance, but they said it would be two more hours,” Rose said.

“The hospital suggested we drive ourselves—it’s only twenty minutes away.” Marie pointed to the green van. “We’ve already got the directions, so if you can help us load George and Sue into the back, we’ll take them down straightaway.”

“Is everybody going?” Val asked.

They shook their heads. “Grandma’s not leaving the gold,” Rose said, “and Mr. Morgan’s not leaving Grandma.”

“Damn right I’m not leaving,” Madame Flora said. She and Archie had walked over to see George and Sue.

“Then we’ll stay with you,” I said to her. I took the pistol back from the
Untersturmführer
and carried Sue over to the green van. I grabbed my mobile phone from the luggage, and I put the pistol in the glove compartment. Then we helped buckle in George and Sue. The twins sped out of the clearing, leaving Val and me with Archie, Madame Flora, and the three Nazis.

I powered up my mobile phone and called Berry and Ann.

“When your radio conked out, we thought the worst had happened,” Berry said. “But the twins called us an hour ago, and now we see the van is on the way to the hospital.”

“You’re still watching us on satellite?” I asked, looking up.

Ann laughed. “We had front row seats when you and Val climbed the ridge and surprised the men around the fire.”

“Of course, we didn’t know it was you and Val,” Berry said. “Not until the girls called and we spoke to Mr. Morgan.”

“How far away is the Budapest team?” I asked.

“Another hour or so. They can help you liberate Flora’s gold.”

“It’s not hers anymore,” I said. “I traded that gold for the Nazi’s help carrying George and Sue out of the mine.”

Silence for a moment. Then Ann said, “Scott, it’s worth a lot of money. You traded all of it?”

“All of it.” I said firmly. “George and Sue saved our lives, killed five of the bad guys, and helped us build a radio so we could contact you. We all would have died without their sacrifice.”

Silence again. Then I heard Berry clearing his throat. “We weren’t arguing about George and Sue’s value, Scott. We’re just wondering if we could renegotiate once our Budapest team arrives.”

“I gave them my word, dammit.”

“Scott, they’re Nazis,” Ann said. “They’ll use that gold to promote hate, even kill people with it.”

I thought about that. I sure didn’t want to help spread racism and hatred, but I had needed to save George and Sue, and giving up the gold for their lives made sense.

In hindsight, my decision looked like yet another example of making the wrong decision for the right reasons. Was I entitled to trade the gold for others’ lives? And even if I was entitled, was I obligated to keep my word to a bunch of killers?

It was my word I had given, and not anybody else’s. I had told the old Nazi officer that he could take the gold, and reneging on my word, no matter how rashly given, was not an option.

I hung up the phone and stuck it in my pocket. Somebody—maybe even everybody—would be unhappy with this decision.

sixty-one

Present Day

Dubnik Mine, Slovakia

Gold is heavy: a tiny half-gallon milk jug full of the stuff weighs eighty pounds. That was about the size of each of the million dollar Buddhas the old Nazi planned to make.

Gold melts at a thousand degrees Centigrade, and that was why the soldier had been stoking the furnace, and why the furnace had a ten foot stovepipe attached: it takes the combination of a high density carbon charcoal and a draft-inducing tall stovepipe to coax a furnace to produce that temperature.

The old SS officer explained all this to us while we waited for the gold to finish melting. He showed how he had attached the crucible to the furnace’s frame with a set of ratcheted hinges, allowing the gold to be poured into the cast-iron Buddha molds.

“Won’t the molds melt?” Val asked.

“Iron doesn’t melt until fifteen hundred degrees,” the old man said. He motioned the furnace man to get one of the molds, and he showed us the built-in funnel at the top. “We fill the mold with molten gold, and then we immerse it in water to cool.”

The soldier inserted a large wooden handle into the side of the furnace’s frame. He cranked the handle around three times, and the crucible tilted a half-inch toward the old Nazi’s wheelchair.

“Each crank will pour out fifty-one milliliters of gold. That’s one kilogram per crank,” the SS officer said. “Thirty-six turns for each Buddha.”

The guard stepped forward. He wore what looked like a pair of silvery oven mitts. He grasped the Buddha mold in his hands and set it on the edge of the furnace. Then he nodded at the furnace man.

The furnace man cranked the handle, and we could see the molten gold glowing bright orange and red.

“No swastikas left now,” I said.

Archie and Madame Flora came over to watch as the soldier turned the crank enough to bring the molten gold right to the crucible’s edge. A nod from the Nazi captain in the wheelchair, another turn of the crank, and the first few tablespoons of gold dribbled through a slot in crucible’s lip and fell into the Buddha mold.

The old Nazi let out a cackle, and the soldier turned the crank another thirty-five times. The Buddha mold was full, and the rifle man wrapped a pair of sturdy tongs around its funnel. The two hefted the mold off the furnace and over to the barrel of water. They dropped it in, and we heard a loud hiss. A small cloud of steam roiled off the surface. The guard grabbed the next Buddha mold and brought it to the furnace.

It took ten minutes for the two men to fill the five molds and drop them into the barrel. When they were finished, they climbed in the black truck and backed it close to the furnace.

Val pointed at the barrel. “Why isn’t the water boiling?”

“Specific heat,” the old man said. He glanced at his watch. “Gold cools thirty-three times faster than water heats. They will reach equilibrium at fifty degrees in nine more minutes.”

Fifty degrees Centigrade was one hundred twenty-two degrees Fahrenheit. The men would be able to reach into the barrel and pull out the molds without burning their hands.

“You know an awful lot about gold,” I said.

“I’ve had sixty-four years to learn everything there is to know about gold.” He stared at me. “Do you know a single ounce of gold can be stretched into a wire over eleven kilometers long?”

“If you know so much, then you know where that gold came from.” Madame Flora stepped next to me. She held her hands behind her back.

The old man turned to her. “Of course I do.”

“Yet you dare abscond with it?” she asked.

He straightened his shoulders and barked, “It is my duty!”

“That’s all I’ve ever heard you men say about this gold—it’s your
duty
to take it from me.” She swung out her arms and pointed a pistol at him. “That gold belonged to victims you had no right to kill. You have no valid claim to it.”

Madame Flora must have pulled the pistol out of the glove compartment in the van before the twins left. The Nazis were still inside the black truck: she had timed this well.

The old man sneered at her. “That gold,
fraulein
, was stripped from our enemies by me and my men to keep the Third Reich afloat during the war.”

“One of those enemies you stripped was my father,” Madame Flora said. She flipped off the pistol’s safety. “You may have ripped the gold from his body, but you lost it to me over sixty years ago.” Her voice rose to a scream “I will not let you take it back!”

“We had a deal,” he said to me.

“We did,” I replied. I turned to Madame Flora. “What are you trying to do?”

“Recover my gold.” Her voice was firm, and the pistol didn’t quiver in her hands.

I watched out of the corner of my eye as Val grabbed Archie’s arm and led him back toward the tree line. “You’re going to get us killed,” I said. I pointed to the black truck, backed up at the furnace. “What about the other two Nazis?”

“You’ll have to stop them before they shoot us,” she said.

I sighed and reached into my pocket. “Damn it, Madame Flora, why—”

Just as I pulled out my pistol, the two men hopped out of the truck and aimed their rifles at Madame Flora and me.

I pointed my pistol at the soldier aiming at me. “I’ve got this weird sense of déjà vu,” I said to the Nazi captain.

“I have it too,” he said. He called in German to his men, and they walked our way, keeping their rifles trained on us. In a minute they stood next to the furnace, about three feet away from their captain. Their rifles stayed pointed at me and Madame Flora.

I locked eyes with my soldier, and I spoke to the old man. “It takes two men to pour the gold—you can’t afford to lose another soldier.” It wasn’t much in the way of bargaining power, but it was all I had.

He looked at me and sighed. “
Ja
, we are at an impasse.”

I was happy he recognized that.

I shifted my aim to the other soldier as I spoke to Madame Flora. “You agreed to let the Nazis have the gold if they helped us save George and Sue.”

“But we can’t let them take it, Scott,” she said. “I’d rather die than give it up.”

“But you already gave it up,” I said. “An hour ago.” I took a deep breath and risked a glance at her. “Even if you’re willing to die for it, I’m not,” I said.

Silence for a minute. Then, with a cry, she swung her pistol away from the old man and pointed it at my chest. “You promised to help me recover my gold!”

“I did,” I said quietly.

“And you dare give it away?” she snarled.

With her pistol pointing at me, we were in serious danger of the Nazis shooting both of us. I swung my pistol and pointed it at the
Untersturmführer
to dampen their enthusiasm. “We spent the gold to save George and Sue,” I told her, “because people are more important than things.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Val and Archie creep from the woods and head for the black truck. Nobody else noticed; they were focused on Madame Flora.

She kept her pistol trained on my chest, a tear forming in the corner of each eye. “How could you betray me?” she cried.

I took a step backward, hoping to keep everybody looking at us and not at Val and Archie, who I could see climbing into the truck’s open doors. “Is it really your sense of justice that’s driving you right now?” I asked Madame Flora.