Morgan reacted with the instincts of a man who had spent the better part of his life dealing with life and death. He hit the ground in a rolling crouch, even as bullets ripped through the wall above him.
The Darkling spun and sprinted towards the third-floor apartment window. He lowered his shoulder and threw himself against it, shattering the glass and tumbling out into the night air. The mocking laughter that followed his descent was full of madness.
Lazarus ran to the window, looking at the street below. There was no sign of The Darkling, though his laughter continued on for several more seconds before vanishing.
“Who the hell was that?” Morgan asked, dusting himself off. He rose a little unsteadily, shaking his head to indicate that he didn’t need any assistance from Abby.
Lazarus glanced around the room, his eyes narrowing. He knelt on the floor in front of the shattered window, picking up a torn matchbook cover. It bore an image of a Grecian urn surrounded by the words THE ODDYSSEY CLUB. “That,” Lazarus said with a grim expression, “Was our first lead.”
Sporrenberg crept along the side of the villa, pausing long enough to peek through one of the windows. There were four men inside, three of whom were agents of the S.S.. Jakob felt a pang of regret upon seeing their uniforms — not long ago, he’d been a member of their order. Despite the fact that he had not subscribed to all of the Führer’s beliefs about racial matters, he had believed in his leader because Hitler had revived German nationalism. He had made young men proud to be Aryan — and that was no small feat, considering the devastation left behind by the Great War.
The fourth man was older than the S.S. officers. He wore the rank of General but he was unfamiliar to Sporrenberg. This fellow had pockmarked cheeks, dark-ringed eyes and a slender body. He held a riding crop in his right hand and it slapped rhythmically against his leg as he watched his men search the house.
“If you want, you can stay outside and tiptoe through your memories.”
Sporrenberg frowned, turning to see Eun’s grinning face. He and the young Korean had verbally sparred during their first few weeks of knowing one another but they had finally buried the hatchet — though it had a tendency to occasionally reappear in one or the other’s back from time to time.
“Stop sparring, you two,” Samantha said, rolling her eyes. Like the men, she was armed with a rifle. Though she was a crack shot, she was no lover of guns. Given her druthers, she’d prefer to use her judo training against an enemy — something that she shared in common with Eun. “How are we going to play this? Bust in and start shooting? Or are we hoping to take one alive so we can question him?”
Sporrenberg looked back into the window, his expression suddenly shifting. The room was now empty.
“Get back!” he hissed. “They know we’re here!”
His warning came just in time. Even as Samantha and Eun began throwing themselves off the porch, landing in the snow, the Nazis were springing from the sides of the building. Two of them sported rifles and they trained these on those on the ground, the bullets causing the snow to explode in plumes of white. The third man wielded a handgun and he sprang up the steps onto the porch, eager to face Sporrenberg. Of their commander, there was no sign.
Jakob raised his rifle and slammed the butt of it into his enemy’s shoulder. The Nazi’s gun discharged, shockingly loud at such close range, but the bullet missed Sporrenberg and embedded itself in the side of the villa.
Sporrenberg slammed his forehead into the man’s face, cracking his nose. As blood streamed down over his mouth, the Nazi uttered a long stream of obscenities in German. Sporrenberg silenced him by firing two shots, both of which found a home in his enemy’s throat.
Down below, Eun and Samantha had taken temporary shelter beneath the porch, though they could hear the men outside coordinating their next move. A moment later, a grenade came rolling into the dark gloom and Eun sprang upon it without hesitation, snatching it up and hurling it back out onto the snow with all his might. It exploded just out from under the porch and the German who had initially tossed it cried out in pain. He fell forward into the snow, his smoking corpse visible to the members of Assistance Unlimited.
Eun ran out onto the snow, gun blazing. None of his bullets found a home in the remaining Nazi but they were enough to send his target scrambling for safety. Eun tried to drive the man to the right side of the house, hoping that Samantha was following along his same line of thinking.
Luckily, she was.
Just as the Nazi tried to jump behind a snowbank, he found himself face-to-face with the petite member of Assistance Unlimited. She had snuck out from the porch when Eun had sprinted out and taken up a spot where she guessed the Nazi would eventually end up.
The German hesitated for a moment and that gave Samantha the opening she needed. She performed a beautiful spinning leg kick that cracked the man’s jaw and sent two teeth flying. Before the Nazi could even think about retaliating, she’d thrust the bottom of her right palm against his jaw. Once more quick blow — this time, an elbow to his temple — and the man was out cold.
“Jakob! Are you okay?” Samantha asked, nudging the man at her feet.
Sporrenberg leaned over the edge of the porch. “I’m fine but we’re missing one of them — their leader. We should go inside.”
Samantha and Eun rejoined him and collectively they entered the villa. To their surprise, they found the German officer seated in a chair, nonchalantly lighting a pipe. The acrid aroma of the tobacco leaves flooded the air.
“Jakob Sporrenberg, ja?” the officer asked. “I recognize you from the many pictures I have seen. You were quite the disappointment. You not only turned your back on the sacred brotherhood but upon the entire nation. And now you travel with women and mongrels.”
Sporrenberg pointed his weapon at the man, who took a long puff on his pipe before exhaling. “I can’t say that I know who you are,” he said, trying to keep his voice calm. Truth be told, his heart was hammering in his chest. It was one thing to turn his back on his pledges of loyalty… to be confronted with it was another.
“I am General Luther Strauss.” Sporrenberg paused, his eyes widening. Strauss laughed softly. “Ah, you know the name. I am known to some as Geist.”
Sporrenberg sensed that his friends were looking to him for guidance. Never taking his eyes off of Geist, he said, “Hitler’s obsession with the occult has led to the formation of something known as the Occult Forces Project. Herr Strauss was one of the early successes of the OFP. But an experiment involving a Tibetan artifact left him as something less than human.”
Geist shook his head. “Ah, you are wrong, my friend. I am more than human. Much more.”
“And now you’re working as an errand boy? Digging through a dead man’s house looking for papers?”
Geist stood up quickly, making Eun and Samantha tense. He regarded them with amusement before turning back to Sporrenberg. “We learned about the communiqué being intercepted very quickly — but I never expected to see agents of the famous Lazarus Gray here.” He lowered his voice. “We can help each other, you know.”
“Unless you’re talking about keeping the body out of Hitler’s hands, I don’t see how.”
“Because there’s a race afoot. Yes, The Führer wants those bones… but there is a man known as The Darkling who does, as well. It is in everyone’s best interest to make sure he doesn’t get them first. We work together to do that, then we can sort out which of us gets them afterward.”