Novels2Search

Episode 10

CHAPTER 65

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‘Razmik, don't you think things have gone far enough?' Abraham's voice was solid as he spoke, but there was an undertone of uncertainty. He was about to push the limits of their relationship.

They were seated alongside each other, on a bench, in the subway station that had been the center of their world over the past few hours. They clasped paper cups of coffee and to all the world looked like disinterested passengers, waiting for a train or waiting for someone to dismount from one. It mattered little how inconspicuous they looked. Nobody looked towards them. People rushed through the station in waves, crashing against the trains in an organized and efficient frenzy. They noticed the two men on the bench no more than they noticed that cool damp smell of the underground or their own blurred reflections in the shining rectangular tiles that adorned the walls and floor.

If Razmik registered the question as containing even a hint of insubordination, then he gave no sign of this. His expression remained as cool and passive as it ever did. He leaned his head to the side, closer to Abraham, but without ever taking his ever-moving eyes from the scene around them and plainly asked, ‘How so? What do you mean?'

Abraham hesitated, licking his lips before speaking, ‘This quest of Ardia’s. We’ve been halfway round the world-’

Razmik interrupted him, ‘I would hardly call Prague and Berlin halfway round the world.’

‘And South America!’

Razmik shrugged, bobbing his head in an acquiescing nod as he did so.

Abraham said, ‘What I'm saying is that we've gone to a terrific amount of trouble on behalf of her craziness. I know what happened to Patil was terrible, and I know how that must affect her, but how much longer are we going to run around chasing her? Razmik, I don't need to tell you how quickly things could slip away from you if your attention is elsewhere.'

Razmik smiled, ‘But now I have a giant ape-man and sniper priest to help me if someone tries to slip my business away from me.'

Abraham was not amused, ‘I am serious, Raz. This is serious.'

Razmik's eyes did narrow for a heartbeat. The expression could have been missed, like a hummingbird's wing beat. Abraham did not miss it. Razmik did not want to go down this road.

‘Alright then,’ said Razmik. He turned to face Abraham, resting one arm on the back of the bench, taking his attention from his environment and dedicating it to Abraham. ‘What would you have me do? Would you have me abandon her?’

Abraham made a creaking noise in his throat, like an uncertain frog. Then he steeled himself on his purpose and said, ‘Well why not, Raz? What are we going to achieve here? I know she's one of us, and I would move heaven and earth for her as well, but this is obsessive. We have our own affairs to worry about.'

Razmik bobbed his head again, seeming to agree with him. All the same, Abraham found the gesture to be somewhat predatory. Razmik said, ‘And what about Patil? She was one of us too.’

Abraham answered too quickly, not seeing the trap until he was almost finished the sentence, ‘Patil was a who-'

Razmik's eyes burned with sudden fury. It was startling how his eyes were able to express such intense anger while his facial expression remained so neutral. He held Abraham's gaze for a long time. Then, as quick as it had flared up, the anger was gone. Razmik swung back to face out towards the world and hung his arms loosely between his legs as he leaned forward.

Razmik said, ‘Patil was with me since the beginning. You’ve been around so long that I sometimes forget you don’t know all of it. You know about my father?’

Abraham nodded, slowly and cautiously, ‘I’ve heard some bits and pieces.’

Ramik said, ‘You probably haven't heard bits and pieces about why I started our whole collective thing, though, have you?'

Abraham shook his head.

‘That's because I've never really told anyone. But I'll tell you. Not all of it, not now. But a little. I didn't start it to become rich though, of course, I am now. In essence, I started it to help people, myself as much as anyone. And, when one of our own, especially Patil's daughter, needs help, I will give it.'

Abraham opened his mouth to say something but was cut off by the ringing of Razmik's phone. The older man pulled the device from his pocket and looked at the screen.

‘It’s her’, he said, ‘she must be here.’ Then he brought the phone to ear and said, ‘Yes.’

Abraham sat silently as Razmik spoke to Ardia. His voice at least remained quiet, but the thoughts in his head were loud enough. The thoughts were dominated by a major concept. Yes, you would help any of us, but I’m not sure you would go this far for anyone else.

Ardia strolled briskly down the street, feeling very conspicuous. Her own presentation was nothing that would garner more that the occasional admiring glance from a member of the opposite sex. The source of her self-consciousness was not herself at all, it was the figure walking alongside, on her left.

Homer wore clothes that had been surprisingly well adjusted by Stryker. The outer world saw nothing but an oversized trenchcoat and hat. Ardia felt certain that the illusion would have to fail at any moment. Homer was simply too big. Too wide. Sooner or later, she would have to hear excited German voices all around her as the populace realized there was a monster in their midst.

Except he was no longer a monster. Even a casual glance under the brim of the hat would not detect anything but a somewhat unusual looking man. His size did draw attention, but only veiled glances that were foreshortened by politeness.

To Homer's left walked Stryker. The idea had been that by having Stryker walk alongside Homer, then the solidly built man's bulk might disguise the scale to which Homer was so enormous. Ardia couldn't be sure if this was working or not. To her, it only acted to make Stryker seem puny in comparison.

‘We'll be there in about five minutes,' Ardia said into the mouthpiece of her phone.

‘Good. Everything is quiet. Father O’Connor is ready, as are we,’ Razmik’s voice came back to her.

‘Okay,’ she said, her voice echoing with an absolute lack of confidence, ‘here goes.’

She disconnected the call and put the phone back in her pocket. She glanced up to Homer and said, ‘How are you feeling, big guy?'

‘Excited and unhappy,’ he said, his face pointed unwaveringly straight ahead, eyes darting everywhere.

‘Care to expand?’ Ardia asked.

Homer exhaled loudly through his nose. He said, ‘Excited about where we are going, unhappy about where we are and what we-'. He stopped mid-sentence, then stopped walking. Stryker and Ardia stopped a couple of steps ahead of him and turned back.

Ardia asked, alerted, but not panicked, ‘Homer, what's wrong?'

Homer’s nostrils flared as he inhaled deeply and, in a daze, he turned to face the shop window they were standing before.

‘Did you know about this?' His voice was awed.

‘Know about what?’ Ardia asked.

Homer raised a massive hand to point at the shop windows. Inside, one patron looked terrified enough to back away from the table he had been sitting at.

‘They have coffee in Berlin!’, he said.

Ardia rushed over to him and pulled his arm down. Through gritted teeth, she said, ‘Yes Homer, they have coffee pretty much everywhere. You're from Brazil, half the coffee in the world is grown there. How can this be so new to you?'

Homer didn’t seem to hear her, but took one lumbering step towards the door of the cafe.

‘Oh no, stop right there,’ Ardia said. ‘We don’t have time.’

‘But look, I think they can give it to you in those little cardboard tubes. We could take some with us.’

‘No, no, no. I’m not exploring the guts of some ancient subway station with you if you’re high on coffee. Come with us, right now, and behave. If you do that then we’ll get some on our way back.’

Homer turned and brought his face close to hers, his expression deadly serious. He said, ‘Do you promise? If you lie to me then I won’t forget it.’

The sincerity on his face made her want to laugh. But she suppressed the urge and, barely winning the battle to keep a straight face, she said, ‘I promise. Now, let’s go. It’s most definitely time to see what’s beneath this city.’

CHAPTER 66

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...Initiating Text Communication....

...Searching For Connection...

...Connection Found....

....Decrypting...

ZEUS: Are you there?

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

UNSEEN: Yes.

ZEUS: What’s happening?

UNSEEN: I don’t know. I haven’t been able to find them.

ZEUS: Where are you?

UNSEEN: Berlin. I only arrived yesterday.

ZEUS: How do you know they are there?

UNSEEN: I don’t know where they are. I’m here for something else.

ZEUS: Troy sent you for something else? Tell me.

UNSEEN: …..

UNSEEN: …..

...connection timing out…

ZEUS: Come now. We’re only talking. It’s a little thing to let me know what you’re doing there.

UNSEEN: I’m here with Prometheus. I’m here to support him with his task.

ZEUS: Prometheus? That abominable freak?

UNSEEN: Not a freak. My brother.

ZEUS: He’s nothing to you. We’re your kin. Prometheus and the others are mistakes made by a madman.

UNSEEN: We might all be his mistakes.

ZEUS: ...

ZEUS: What is Prometheus doing in Berlin.

UNSEEN: Slayer is here.

ZEUS: You should kill him. He can be nothing but problems and danger for us.

UNSEEN: Troy needs him.

ZEUS: For what?

UNSEEN: Troy believes he knows where The Crucible is.

ZEUS: …

ZEUS: …

ZEUS: And Prometheus will extract this from him?

UNSEEN: That’s the plan.

ZEUS: Will Prometheus share it with you? If he finds out, will he tell you where it is?

UNSEEN: He might. He might not. Prometheus is peculiar. He will like the idea of having the knowledge, of having something Troy will need. Of being special to him for a while. He might not want to share.

ZEUS: You must find out.

UNSEEN: So I can tell you?

ZEUS: It is so important. I cannot express just how important. Please. Get the information. Bring it to us. We can take you in. You can be happy with us.

UNSEEN: They’re my family.

ZEUS: We’re more your family than they will ever be. They are a circus of freaks. You belong with us. Find the crucible for me, bring me its location. If there was ever something you could do to help us then it is this.

UNSEEN: I don’t know. I can’t think about this now. Slayer just went into the hostel. Prometheus will want to speak with me. I can’t be seen communicating.

ZEUS: Don’t forget about us.

….Connection Terminated….

CHAPTER 67

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Ardia, Homer, and Stryker stood near the staircase, facing the rails. The area they wanted to access was perhaps thirty yards away, behind the heavy concrete staircase. Homer stood behind them with his back to the wall. Incredibly, especially now that they were standing away from the other commuters, he was drawing virtually no attention.

Razmik and Abraham were still sitting on their bench and had made no sign of acknowledgement when the trio entered the station.

Ardia glanced up to the street entrance. Father O’Connor was due to arrive any moment. The distraction they had planned may have been completely unnecessary, but Razmik felt that if things were timed correctly then it would further limit their exposure to problems.

Homer said, ‘I think it is coming.’

‘What?’ said Stryker.

‘This train, I think this train is coming. I hear a noise, feel a vibration. Something huge.’

Ardia cocked her head and couldn't detect it. Then Stryker was nodding and in the next moment, she could hear it as well. For some reason, her stomach was churning in anticipation. She could not reach an explanation for this. Was it the excitement of possibly peeling another layer off the mystery that was daily growing to become her whole purpose for being? It might have been simply anxiety over the timing and coordination of their little plan.

She glanced back up at the opening to the street again. The rushing vibration of the train was increasing now, rising above the faint whisper that it had been. She saw a couple of heads turn amongst the other commuters.

Just as she was about to ask where he was, O'Connor appeared, descending the steps, a paper coffee cup in his hands. At the same time, Razmik and Abraham stood up and began to walk towards the opposite platform. Their path and O'Connor's appeared to make perfect vectors, destined to collide. Abraham was making a show of talking animatedly, Razmik a show of rapt interest. O'Connor produced a cell phone from his coat and appeared to be paying more attention to that than to where he was walking.

The sound of the train leaped in volume as it rounded the corner of the tunnel and screeched into the station. Homer's jaw literally fell open and he seemed to press himself further back against the wall. He held his breath as the train slowed, his eyes dancing in wonderment. The childlike amazement on his strong, massive face was incredibly endearing. It brought an easy smile to Ardia's lips. When Homer glanced down to her face he returned it with an embarrassed smile of his own, his big canines flashing but somehow not spoiling the newfound human quality that rested there.

Many of the commuters began to move towards the doors as they hissed open. At the same instant O’Connor “accidentally” collided with Razmik, dousing him in pre-cooled coffee. Razmik erupted, for some reason feigning a New England accent that was so on the nose that Ardia paused to watch the show for a second.

‘Here now!’ He-ah now! ‘Why weren't you looking where you were going? Why wahn't you looking whey-ah you wah going? ‘You’ve ruined my coat.’

Ardia brought a hand to her mouth to keep from laughing. Every head that wasn't intent on mounting the train, was now pointed at the angry American and the embarrassed priest. Then Stryker's hand was on her shoulder and he was leading both of them down the corridor, around the corner and down a concrete tunnel that was poorly lit and smelled of damp.

No-one pursued. No-one noticed. The faint sound of Razmik berating O'Connor traveled along with them for a few seconds before being lost in the heavy concrete silence and the near subaudible hum of traffic vibrations from overhead.

‘That was worth doing just to see Razmik trying to win an academy award,' Stryker said, pacing quickly into the deepening shadows. The light here was provided by small, caged lamps mounted high on the walls. They were spaced so far apart from each other that they did little to reduce the overwhelming darkness.

Ardia shook her head, still smiling, ‘That might be wish fulfillment, Stryker. Raz is obsessed, I mean fully obsessed, with America. I've heard his Californian and Texan accents before. That was the first time I've heard him do Boston.'

‘Razmik is an Americanophile?’

‘That’s a new word. It fits.’

Homer said nothing. He was fixated on the wall as they walked. When he caught a glimpse of the bricked up doorway ahead of them he accelerated his pace and passed them, reaching it first. He clenched his fist and drew it back to smash the wall.

Stryker danced up and stayed Homer's hand with his own. ‘Easy now, big fella. We might have a lot of privacy here, but it's kinda hard to quantify.'

Homer made what was becoming a familiar snort of frustration. Stryker turned from him and placed his fingertips against the face of one brick. With what seemed like no effort, he pushed the brick out of the wall. There was the hard ceramic snapping of mortar and the sharp smack of brick falling on concrete, then silence. It had been loud enough, but Ardia could not imagine the noise traveling back to the ears in the station. The eruption of the whole wall being punched away might have been another story. Stryker moved his fingers to the next brick and began to repeat the process.

‘Kinda soothing,’ he said. ‘Like popping bubble-wrap.’

Behind the wall were double steel doors. These were strong and heavy and required the combined strength of all three of them to force open. Beyond was something that felt as though it had been lifted from the past and dropped into the present day.

Stryker and Ardia each played powerful flashlights down the long corridor that revealed itself before them. There was an abandoned reception (or security desk) directly before them. Beyond that were doors. Two rows of them, stretching down either side of that long corridor, leading their eyes into the shadows at the end where it presumably stretched further.

The air smelled damp, yes. It shared a quality with the air in the rest of the subway. But at the same time, it was distant and alien. Despite having rested here for decades, there was a clinical chlorine-like stink still hanging there, matching perfectly with the waft of decaying fabrics and mustiness to create a distinctly unnerving ambiance.

Ardia shivered, ‘Trés creepy.’

Stryker shrugged, ‘I’ve seen worse.’

Homer seemed to be straining against an invisible leash. He said, ‘Can we go in there now? Have we stared for long enough?’

Ardia rolled her eyes and stepped forward, ‘How are we going to go about this?’

Stryker said, ‘Room by room, together. This place feels big, and even though we might be faster if we split up, we also might need to leave in a hurry. I'd rather we all stay within sight of each other in case something goes down.'

The first rooms they explored were all offices. Or, had been offices. It was still evident that the facility had been vacated in a hurry. Ardia could imagine the staff here rushing to fill boxes with what had to be kept. She could see them feeding documents into shredders, if they had shredders then. All because the Allies were coming, the Allies were coming.

Plenty had been left behind. The walls were adorned Nazi memorabilia. Portraits of Hitler and the rest of the Wonder-Brigade. Posters urging workers to be paranoid about the possibility of American or Russian spies.

And wall hangings. In more than a few of the rooms were ornately assembled tapestries bearing one of the most powerful pieces of branding ever created, the Nazi swastika They were all too familiar. Another one of their number had passed many years in a chest in her mother’s house, now resided in a bag in their hideout. And it was almost unquestionably of the same set that hung here. The patterns were too familiar, too similar, for it to be any different.

Some of the drawers did contain the occasional forgotten document. Mould had eaten many of them beyond the point of usefulness. The others were brittle, yellowed and unhelpfully written in German.

‘I don’t suppose you read German, do you Homer?’

Homer shook his head, ‘It might be hard for you to believe, but I had little opportunity to use German in the rainforest. I do understand Portuguese and Spanish, though.’

‘Really? A trilingual ape-man?’

‘Pass it here,’ said Stryker.

‘Oh, so you speak German on top of your other skills? I’m beginning to feel very inadequate in this company,’ she said, passing him the sheet of paper.

Peering at the sheet, Stryker said, ‘German is actually my first language.’

‘Really?’

He nodded, ‘I was raised only a couple hours from Berlin. At least for a start. And this, Ardia, looks like a shopping list for stationary supplies.’

‘Our work is done,’ Homer said. They all smiled.

Stryker continued to shuffle through pages, ‘A lot of these look like shipping manifests. They’re all coded, of course, but I see that whatever they were shipping, most of it was going to and coming from only a few places. Unpleasantly familiar places.’

‘Like what?’

‘Try Auschwitz, Dachau… They were sending and receiving from Dachau since 1934. Kept on at it till 1944. Right up to the end of the war.’

Stryker looked up and saw that Ardia was staring at a page, completely captivated.

Homer said, ‘Ardia, what’s wrong? You’re pale.’

Ardia worked her mouth but no words came out. She just pointed to the page, then waved her hand in the air. Stryker stepped closer to her.

The photograph was of a small boy, wearing nothing but underpants. He was less than five years old, perhaps a lot less. He was emaciated. His skin was covered in marks. Some of them appeared to just be bruises from rough treatment, most of them were clearly the product of surgeries and injections. What appeared to be cannulas, and other implants, were attached to his arms and legs. The child stared into the camera, eyes empty of all emotion, a hollow pitiful shell.

As she looked at the photograph, Ardia found her words. She said, ‘The… The tattoo on his chest… My mother had one, just like it. I had a copy done on me.' As she spoke she rolled up her sleeve to show the triangular symbol, filled with letters and numbers.

Stryker's face had now grown as still as hers had been. Without speaking he pulled down the collar of his shirt. There, just below the collarbone, was the same tattoo. It was identical to Ardia's, save that the identifying code within the triangle was different.

‘Where did you…’ Ardia trailed off.

Stryker slapped the photograph with the back of his hand and looked around at the place, seeing it as though for the first time. He said, ‘I reckon I must have got it here, girl. Cause that little fella in the picture? That's me.'