“Give me the key.”
“Give me answers.”
The phone went dead.
Mualama was not a professor of languages, but he didn’t feel that handicapped him. In fact, as he watched the UNAOC linguistic experts with their computers pore over the high rune text on the grave marker, he realized that not being an expert could be an asset. He was not bound by preconceived notions.
He did know much about hieroglyphics. He’d been in most of the major archaeological finds in Egypt during his lifelong quest. He’d even met Nabinger on two occasions, although the other had not shared his passion for the Ark and other artifacts just as Mualama had not shared the other’s passion for the high runes and Atlantis. And Nabinger had been the foremost interpreter of the runes and he, Mualama, had been just an archaeologist, not a linguist.
On a large computer screen at the end of the room, the UNAOC scientists had put up the symbols they knew the translation for, but it was less than a sixth of the writing on the marker.
Mualama had another advantage. He had a very good idea what the message on the marker might be about. On top of that, he also knew the mythological names the runes stood for.
So while the scientists chattered among themselves and consulted their computers, Mualama sat in a corner on a high stool from which he could look down on the marker. He had a pad of paper and a pencil in hand, along with the Nabinger interpretations of high runes that UNAOC did have. And slowly he began to write down what he saw.
In his backpack rested both Burton’s manuscript and the scepter. He was not prepared to show either to the UNAOC people until he was sure of his suspicions. He was beginning to feel he could trust Dr. Duncan, but someone had leaked word of his discovery in Ngorongoro and that someone had to be affiliated with the Americans. He had spent decades searching, and a little caution was most appropriate now, especially since this had cost Lago his life.
Lisa Duncan stared down at the old man lying in the hospital bed and tried to control her emotions. He should have been dead, but he still clung to life, although why he did, Duncan had no idea.
“Can you wake him?” she asked the doctor who had accompanied her to the room. “He’s resting and… ” the doctor began, but Duncan cut him off.
“I don’t care about his rest. I don’t care if talking kills him. Wake him up. I have the authority to order you to do it, and that’s exactly what I’m doing.”
The doctor stared at her for a few seconds, then went over to a tray and removed a needle. “I can’t take responsibility for… ”
“I don’t want to hear it,” Duncan said. “You work for the government, start taking responsibility for that decision.” She pointed. “That man worked at Peenemunde, helping to develop V-l rockets. He was a member of the SS, and he’s been lying to us all along. Don’t try to make me feel anything for him other than contempt.”
The doctor held the needle out to Duncan. “You do it. You take responsibility.”
Duncan took the needle, held it vertical, tapped the side to clear the air, squeezed a little of the fluid out, then inserted it into the IV line and pushed the plunger. She removed the needle and waited.
After a couple of minutes, the old man’s eyelids fluttered. While she waited, Duncan considered how to approach the former Nazi and scientist. Von Seeckt had been the key to her initially discovering information about Area 51 and Majestic-12. It was while investigating the history of Operation Paperclip that she first came across the name Werner von Seeckt.
Officially, Paperclip began in 1944 as the war in Europe was winding down, but Duncan felt that the real beginning of Paperclip was when von Seeckt was shipped over from England to the United States several years before that.
Von Seeckt had been captured by British Commandos in Egypt while he was on his way back from a most lower chamber of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Von Seeckt, a young scientist of the Third Reich… and a member of the SS… had been chosen to accompany the military team that traveled to Egypt to investigate this, even as war raged across the desert and the Desert Fox, Rommel, closed on the British forces.
Von Seeckt and his companions broke through a wall in the Pyramid, discovering the chamber and finding a black box inside that they couldn’t open. In their attempt to return to their own lines they were ambushed by the British and von Seeckt and his box captured. Eventually the radioactive box… along with von Seeckt… ended up in America, because when the Majestic scientists finally opened it, they found a nuclear weapon that gave the Americans great insight into what they were trying to do in the Manhattan Project.
Since 1942 von Seeckt had lived in the desert at Area 51, subsequently joined by other Nazi scientists formally brought to the States under the auspices of Operation Paperclip. As the war in Europe was ending, the United States government… and the Russians, of course… were already looking ahead. There was a treasure trove of German scientists waiting to be plundered in the ashes of the Third Reich. That most of those scientists were Nazis mattered little to those who invented Paperclip.
While other Nazis were being tried as war criminals, German scientists were being interviewed by American intelligence officers from the JIOA, Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency. Despite the fact that President Truman signed an executive order banning the immigration of Nazis into the United States, the practice went on at a feverish pitch in 1945 and 1946, all in the name of national security.
Majestic-12 had picked up Werner von Seeckt… an undisputed Nazi… and several other scientists used in the early work on the bouncers and mothership. While some of the former Germans working on the NASA space project were highly publicized, the vast majority of the work covered by Paperclip went on unobserved. When news of the project became public, the government claimed that Paperclip had been discontinued in 1947. Yet Duncan had affidavits from an interested senator’s office that the project had continued for decades beyond that date.
Now that they had the information from Devil’s Island about The Mission, Duncan was willing to cut her government a little bit more slack. It appeared as if The Mission had been behind Operation Paperclip as a means to siphon some of their best minions out of the crumbled Third Reich into new countries where they could continue their work.
While the German physicists had gone to MJ-12 and the German rocket scientists had gone to NASA, the largest group of Nazi scientists involved in Paperclip had disappeared… the biological and chemical warfare specialists, the foremost of whom had been General Hemstadt, who had died at Devil’s Island and helped invent the new Black Death The Mission had deployed in an attempt to wipe out humanity.
Von Seeckt’s eyes opened wide for a second, he saw Duncan, and they shut just as quickly.
“Schutzstafeel,” Duncan snapped in German. “Look at me, you SS pig.”
Von Seeckt’s eyes flashed open, and she could see the anger. “Do not talk to me like that,” the old man rasped. “I saved you. I warned you of the danger in Area 51.”
“Why?” Duncan leaned over his bed. “That’s what I want to know. Why did you do that?”
“I am old. I knew it would not be good to fly the mothership, and I wanted to make amends.”
“You lie.”
Von Seeckt’s shoulders slumped. “Believe what you will.”
“I want the truth.”
“‘Truth.’” Von Seeckt repeated the word as if it were a curse.
“I want the key.”
“Key?”
“The key to the lowest level of Qian-Ling. The Spear of Destiny.”