“The ‘Lost Squadron’ we were talking about earlier was just such a flight,” Mercer added.
“Yes. The radioactive heat generated within the stones had melted the fragments down to bedrock. Because of these flights, the Germans couldn’t risk tunneling to them from the surface, so they approached from the sea in submarines, eventually finding a cavern under a glacier that was within five miles of where the meteor landed. They planned to use the cave as a staging area before driving a long tunnel through ice and rock to reach the fragments.” Erwin looked over to Anika, who still had the journal open on her lap. “You don’t need to finish Schroeder’s journal. I’ve already read it. They had completed the air shaft and pier for the sub and had just commenced the tunnel to the cache when Schroeder was injured. He didn’t know what happened here after he was injured.”
“Do you?” Marty asked.
“No one knows except the poor slave Mercer found in Camp Decade.”
Something Puhl had said struck Anika. Her brow furled and her thin eyebrows arched. Her tone was accusatory. “When did you read Schroeder’s journal?”
Erwin looked away, pained. “Shortly after you went to interview him,” he said evasively.
“How shortly?” Her anger rose because she was pretty sure of the answer.
“We found it in his house after driving off Rath and his neo-Nazi thugs.”
Anika exploded. “Those snipers were your people? You son of a bitch! You were there the whole time and you let Schroeder die. You let me get shot.” And then everything else came clear. “It was you who set this whole thing up — my opa, me. You fucking bastard!”
She lunged from her seat and would have reached Puhl had she not gotten tangled in her sleeping bag and fallen. Mercer dove to pin her to the deck, holding her arms over her head so she couldn’t squirm free. She was a foot shorter than he, eighty pounds lighter, but for a few desperate seconds he was afraid she’d beat him. Fury augmented her strength, so she was like an enraged animal.
“Anika, stop it,” Mercer pleaded, his teeth gritting against the pain as she bit his shoulder.
She got a hand free and went for his eyes, her fingers cocked like talons. Mercer ducked his head and felt her try to tear a piece of skin from his cheek. And then it was over. Anika went completely limp. Mercer opened his eyes, confused, wondering what had calmed her. Chef Hilda stood over them massaging one fist. She said something over her shoulder for Erwin to translate.
“She knew you would never strike a woman, so she did it for you.”
Hilda gave Mercer a proud smile and a wink.
“Danke,” he replied, checking on Anika. She had a growing bruise under her left eye, but otherwise she’d be fine. He moved her back to her seat, secured her seat belt to stop her from charging the instant she woke and leveled a gaze at Erwin. “She’s right, you know. You are a son of a bitch. What gives you the right to drag innocent people into your fight?”
“In this fight, no one is innocent. The Brotherhood of Satan’s Fist has spent nearly a century protecting the world from what we know. I think for that kind of dedication we should be allowed to involve others if we need them.”
“But why involve Anika and her grandfather? Or me?”
“I will answer your second question first,” Erwin said calmly. “We did not get you involved. You were already scheduled to come to Greenland with Geo-Research. It was just luck on our part. We mentioned your name to Schroeder as a possible ally in case something went wrong with our plans. You have a reputation for being a very capable man.”
Mercer remained unconvinced, but if Erwin was revealing the truth about the cavern and Anika’s grandfather, why would he lie about him?
“I don’t know this Charles Bryce you mentioned earlier,” Puhl continued, “so I think his invitation for you to join the expedition to Camp Decade was legitimate.”
“And Anika?”
“We sent information to her grandfather that would lead him to Schroeder in the hopes that he would be able to expose the Kohl Company and the Pandora Project. It wasn’t until we followed Anika to Schroeder’s house that we realized our security had been compromised. Gunther Rath, who is the special-projects director for Kohl, somehow learned about Schroeder and had beaten us there. We suspect that Anika’s grandfather’s office in Vienna was bugged.
“Igor and I chased off Rath and his group. Well, Igor and another Brother chased them off. I don’t know the first thing about guns. We broke into Schroeder’s house and found the diary he kept hidden. We gave it to a lawyer in Munich to forward to you. The operation was falling apart and once we reached Greenland we feared we would need your help, considering Rath’s brutality. By this time Anika had vanished, so we couldn’t warn her off. I didn’t know her whereabouts until we heard the SOS from that helicopter. We never intended for anyone to get hurt. None of us were supposed to be here. Geo-Research’s expedition would have been canceled had Anika been able to reveal what we intended her to learn.” His voice trailed off.
Mercer sat back in his seat, trying to absorb everything. It would take a while, he knew, maybe forever. It was an amazing story. Meteors, radiation, secret brotherhoods, Rasputin, Nazis, neo-Nazis, Nazi hunters, and a planeload of innocent people trapped on a glacier between a Gunther Rath and his goal. “What do you think, Ira?”
“Since we kicked ass in W.W. Two, we can assume that the Germans never got the meteorites. Which means they’ve been down there for the sixty years since the start of the Pandora Project.”
“Go on.”
“Makes me wonder why this Rath character is so hot to find them now. This thing’s been in the works for a while, considering Kohl bought Geo-Research to spearhead their hunt a year ago. What I want to know is what happened last year to make this such a priority. Any ideas, Erwin?”
“We don’t know,” he admitted.
“Ah, guys,” Marty called. “This has been very interesting but it doesn’t help us. We’ve survived one murder attempt but I doubt we’ll survive the next if we stick around.”
“We should try for the air shaft,” Mercer said, looking at Puhl. “Rath knows that Igor Bulgarin was part of the Brotherhood because of his interest in the body. Do you think he’s aware you’re part of it too?”
“Since they didn’t kill me at the base, I doubt it. There have been only a few Brothers who weren’t Russian and Rath knows I’m German. When Igor set up our being here, he falsified some of my records so it didn’t show I had studied in Moscow when East Germany was their vassal state. Rath has nothing to connect me to the Brotherhood.”
Mercer remembered Erwin making certain that none of the Geo-Research people were in earshot when he explained how he knew about Igor’s alcoholism aboard the Njoerd. In retrospect, his secrecy seemed well warranted.
“Better and better. Rath doesn’t know we’re aware of the cave. When he finds this plane abandoned, he’ll assume we made a run for the coast, our only logical choice. If we can reach the air shaft before him, we can seal ourselves inside and wait until he gives up looking for it. He can’t search forever because Geo-Research has obligations to other scientific teams coming to their camp in a few weeks. We can make it until then.”
“How?” Marty asked. “That cave is full of deadly radiation, for Christ’s sake.”
“No, it isn’t. And the survivor we found at Camp Decade proves it. He lived down there for ten years, eating supplies left by the Nazis, no doubt, until loneliness or madness forced him to leave.”
“And how do you know a sudden radiation leak didn’t force him out?”
“Erwin said that Russian villagers exposed to the radiation died within days. If he’d been dosed, he never would have made it to Decade.”
“Okay, but why do you think we can beat Rath? His company dug the damned air shaft. The rotor-stat is probably moving them there as we speak.”