Von Seeckt’s frail shoulders moved under the hospital gown in what might have been a shrug. “I do not know. Have you ever heard of the Ahnerbe?”
Duncan shook her head. She didn’t have time for this. “Where is the Spear now?”
Von Seeckt ignored her question. “Not many people have heard of the Ahnerbe. It was the Nazi Ancestral Research branch. It was the core of forming the SS, the Schutzstafeel… what you called me when you walked in. The secret to that group was they were very, very interested in genetics.
“I was sent to the Great Pyramid, the Pyramid of Khufu on the Plateau of Giza, to search for the black box, which we found. There were other SS groups sent to search for things that the Fuhrer wanted. For the Grail. The Ark. Other relics of legend.” Von Seeckt was silent for a few moments before speaking again. “It would all have been folly. The muttering of madmen, except for the forty-seven million people who died in the war Hitler began.”
Von Seeckt slumped back in the bed, his face drawn.
Duncan stood. “Tell me more. Tell me about the Spear!”
“I am tired,” von Seeckt muttered. “I must sleep now.”
Duncan didn’t care how the old man felt. “The spear from the library… was it really the Spear of Destiny?”
“Do you think such a powerful thing would be left on display in a library?” von Seeckt asked in turn. He looked out the window. “The Night of the Long Knives,” von Seeckt said. “June thirtieth, 1934. Hitler purged his own party, the SA, and shifted allegiance to the SS. Two months later, he proclaims himself Fuhrer and all the military are to swear personal allegiance to him… not to the country, but to a man. Remarkable, isn’t it?”
Duncan was growing frustrated by von Seeckt’s refusal to answer the all-important question of where the Spear was now. “I need to know… ” she began, but the old man cut her off with a wave of his frail hand.
“Yes, yes, the Spear. In 1938, when Hitler annexed Austria, the very first day, he went to the Hofmuseum and took the so-called Spear of Destiny. He had it shipped to Nuremberg, which the Thule group believed was the spiritual capital of Nazi Germany.”
“But that wasn’t the real Spear of Destiny.” Duncan had focused on von Seeckt’s use of “so-called.”
“No, but by having a public one, he could hide the real one,” von Seeckt said. “The farce continues to this day. According to legend, it is the spear of the Roman centurion Gaius Cassius Longinus which was thrust into the side of Jesus when he was on the cross. There are four different objects that are claimed to be the Spear. One is supposed to have been sent from the Ottoman Sultan Bajazet the Second to Pope Innocent the Eighth in 1492 and was placed in one of the columns supporting the dome of Saint Peter’s Basilica. Another is supposed to be in Paris, brought there by Saint Louis following his return from the Crusades in the thirteenth century. The third… which I have seen… is in Cracow in Poland, but it is a copy of the last one which most believe to be the real Spear located in Vienna… the one Hitler saw in the library. This one has a long and strange history.”
“And it’s in Russia now?” Duncan asked.
“No. That one is back in the library. The real Spear of Destiny is none of those four, but rather an Airlia artifact. It looks like a spear, though, so perhaps that is how it was mixed up with the Longinus spear story. Who knows?”
Duncan felt her heart race. “You’ve seen it?”
Von Seeckt nodded. “We had it with us when we went to the Great Pyramid in 1942.”
Duncan waited for him to continue.
“I don’t know where Hitler got it,” von Seeckt said. “I saw it only once. The patrol leader, an SS major, carried it. He never let it out of his hands. I think they knew it was a key, they just didn’t know what it was a key to. They thought maybe a door in the Great Pyramid. So we had it. Of course, it was not for there. We had to break through the wall to find the bomb.”
“What did it look like?”
“In a black case. Metal… some kind of Airlia metal, but not the black like the skin of the mothership. It was silver. Very sharp. Perhaps sixty or seventy centimeters long by ten wide. Like a spearhead. It had a point on one end and a hole for a staff on the other.”
“What happened to it?”
“When we were ambushed by the British commandos, the patrol leader escaped into the darkness. I never heard of the Spear again. Either he made it back to Germany with it, or the Arabs caught him in the desert and took it. It is most likely the former.”
Duncan grabbed the edge of the bed. “If he made it back to Germany, where would it be now?”
“The Russians.” Von Seeckt’s voice was a whisper now, his energy drained. “They took everything after the Great War. Everything.”
Mike, Duncan thought. He was in the right place, just looking for the wrong thing. “And if the Arabs got it?”
“The Watcher of Giza. Kaji. It would probably end up in his hands.” Von Seeckt’s eyes closed. “I must sleep now.”
Duncan stood and strode out of the room. As soon as she was in the hallway, she pulled out her SATPhone and punched in the code for Turcotte’s phone.
CHAPTER 17
“Many of my countrymen have entered that building and never come out,” Yakov said. “The sky over our heads is the last bit of freedom they ever saw.”
Turcotte was impressed with Lubyanka. In the center of downtown Moscow, it dominated the square that had the same name. Seven stories high, the building was covered with yellow brick, giving it a dour facade. It had taken Yakov several frustrating hours to track down exactly where Lyoncheka’s office was and to set up a meeting. Turcotte had felt every minute of those hours pass by with a sense of impending doom, as if he were in the midst of a high-altitude jump but he had no parachute and the ground was approaching with inevitable disaster.
“There is Dyetsky Mir.” Katyenka nodded toward the large building on the opposite side of Lubyanka Square. “Children’s World. It is the largest toy store in the world. I always thought the contrast of the two buildings facing each other was quite interesting. What is the word… ah, yes, ironic… that is it?”
The three were seated at a small bistro on the south side of the square. The shop was a pathetic attempt to imitate European coffeehouses. Whatever was in his cup, Turcotte doubted a coffee bean had had anything to do with it.
“They even give tours now in the building behind the main one you see,” Katyenka said. “They have a KGB museum there. There is a disco in Lubyanka itself, on the first floor, part of a club for retired KGB. There used to be a statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky… the founder of the Cheka, the first communist secret police… in the middle of the square, but that was taken down in August 1991, when we became enlightened.”
Yakov laughed at that last statement. “‘Enlightened’?” He turned to Turcotte. “I have tried to explain something to you that I do not think can be explained.” He tapped the side of his head. “The Russian mind. It is a very strange place. We lived for so long under the Czars, then the Communists. That was bad enough. But add on top of that the threat from the outside world. The invasions over the centuries. From Napoleon to Hitler.
“You Americans have no idea what we have suffered. You did not even suffer a million casualties in your two-front battles in the Second World War. We don’t know how many of our people died. Some say twenty-seven million. One out of every four men, women, and children. With such threats the desire for power here is different than in your country. You have a Donald Trump… we come up with a Stalin. Money is not an end here, but a means to an end. The end that powerful men in Russia desire is to be able to defeat one’s enemies. To crush them.”