“Nobody speaks English,” said Egon in his usual terse manner, ignoring the woman and her friendly greetings as he walked past her to a narrow staircase. He led the way up two stories to a cheerful garret with lace curtains, steeply pitched ceilings, and dormer windows looking back over town.
“Your room,” he said. “You stay here until sunset. Then the woman give you dinner. I wait downstairs. Do not leave room.”
“I’m to stay penned up here until sunset?” Pendergast cried. “Why, I only need four or five hours’ sleep. I’d like to stroll through the town, see the sights.”
“You stay here until sunset,” Egon repeated truculently, shutting the door. Pendergast heard the key turning in the lock.
As Egon’s footsteps retreated down the stairs, Pendergast perused the old-fashioned lock with a faint smile. Then he turned to his pack and collecting jars, unpacking the many specimens he’d collected on the river trip and in the forest that night, laying the butterflies out on spreading boards with flat-tipped tweezers, holding them in place with pinning strips. When he was done, he lay down on the made bed, fully clothed, and instantly went to sleep.
He awoke suddenly an hour later, hearing a knock at the door.
“Yes?” he said in English.
The tense voice of the hausfrau sounded on the other side of the door. “Herr Fawcett, hier sind einige Herren, die Sie sprechen möchten.”
As Pendergast rose from his bed, he heard the lock turning. The door opened to reveal half a dozen men in plain gray uniforms, all armed, their weapons drawn on him. They entered smoothly and swiftly in a well-coordinated operation, led by Scheermann, circling him on both sides. The operation was done with impeccable efficiency, leaving no possibility of reaction or escape.
Pendergast’s eyes narrowed. He opened his mouth, as if to protest.
“Do not move,” said Scheermann, unnecessarily. “Hands away from your sides.”
Wordlessly, as Pendergast stood, hands extended, he was stripped, then dressed in a striped cotton gown and rude pants similar to the ones he had seen in the underground barracks. The guards led him down the stairs and pushed him into the street, weapons trained on him at all times, and he was paraded down to the docks. Strangely enough, the townsfolk paid him far less attention in his new prison garb than they had when he was wearing civilian clothes. This was clearly a sight they had seen before.
Nobody spoke. He was placed in the bow of a small barge, the guards forming a semicircle around him. With a roar from its steam engines, the barge moved slowly into the lake, leaving behind a boiling wake, heading in the direction of the gloomy fortress.
64
THE JOURNEY WAS SHORT. THEY LANDED AT A STONE quay; Pendergast was shoved forward, the soldiers prodding him with their rifles. Now the old fortress loomed directly above them, the crenellations of its outer wall like black, broken teeth. They ascended a cobbled road leading toward a massive iron gate; a small door in the gate opened and they passed through. The door clanged shut behind them.
An astonishing sight greeted Pendergast’s eye. The broken outer wall of the stronghold concealed an internal structure retrofitted to the ruins and the old stone foundations, which themselves had been sturdily rebuilt and reinforced. It had a superstructure of poured concrete, streaked with damp and done up in fascist monumental style, with smooth, massive walls, broken only infrequently by tiny windows high up along its flanks. A huge relief of the Parteiadler of the Third Reich—an eagle clutching a swastika—was carved into its side, the only adornment visible on the otherwise blank walls and towers of this fort within a fort.
Pendergast had paused to look around, and one of the soldiers jammed a muzzle into his side. “Beweg Dich!” he barked.
Pendergast moved forward, through an outer courtyard to a door leading into the main fortress itself. Here were many more soldiers—some on guard duty, others polishing their weapons, others simply looking at Pendergast with sneering expressions. Mechanics hurried past, bent on unknown tasks.
Once inside the inner fortress, they moved upward, first through old stone corridors and staircases wet with damp and whited with niter, passing a few technicians and scientists in lab coats making their way down, until they emerged in the newer, upper portion of the fortress of concrete.
At the top of a circular staircase they came to an oaken door. The door opened into a suddenly spacious and airy room, high up, with glass windows providing splendid—if small—views over the rooftops of the fortress, across the lake, and reaching to the surrounding forests and mountains. It was a beautifully appointed office, the walls of dressed stone, a Persian carpet on the floor, a massive antique desk flanked by Nazi flags, with exquisite pieces of old silver and objets d’art carefully arranged along the walls. Behind the desk sat a remarkable-looking man, a specimen of Teutonic perfection: powerful and heavily muscled, with penetrating pale eyes, a dark tan, and a neatly trimmed thatch of white hair. He smiled.
Pendergast recognized the man instantly. Fischer.
“Very good, Oberführer Scheermann,” he said.
The captain stiffened, clicked his heels. “Danke, mein Oberstgruppenführer.”
Fischer rose, plucked a Dunhill cigarette from a repoussé silver box, lit it with a gold lighter, and inhaled deeply, all the while keeping his eyes on Pendergast. Exhaling, he walked over and examined Pendergast, who remained motionless, surrounded by the guards with submachine guns. Fischer reached out with a powerful veined hand, caressed Pendergast’s ersatz beard, then grasped it and tore it off. He circled Pendergast lazily, his smile growing.
And with that he extended his hand. For a moment, it seemed he might be offering to shake hands, but that turned out to be wrong: Fischer raised his massive palm and, with great force, slapped Pendergast across the face so hard it knocked him to the ground.
“Get those things out of his mouth,” he ordered.
The soldiers kept their weapons trained on Pendergast while one of their number jammed the barrel of a Luger into the FBI agent’s mouth, keeping it open while his fingers explored. A moment later he held his hand out to show Fischer what he’d discovered. In his palm lay some tiny lock-picking tools, several plastic theatrical cheek pieces used for altering one’s appearance—and a small, glass ampoule filled with a clear liquid.
The soldier hauled Pendergast roughly back to his feet. Blood leaked from his nose. His eyes were the color of white paper.
“Now it is certain,” the man said, staring at him. “It is indeed our Agent Pendergast. How good of you to make the long journey to us. My name is Wulf Konrad Fischer. I am the man who abducted your wife.”
Another smile.
When Pendergast did not speak, Fischer went on. “I must say, your disguise was very good. I knew that a man like you would come looking for me—for us. And I assumed that, with your extraordinary abilities, you would eventually find me. What I didn’t expect was your disguise. I had assumed you would sneak in and blend with the locals, or skulk in the forest. I didn’t believe you would waltz in here, bold as brass. Your disguise was good, all that Scheiße about the Queen Beatrice. Very well done, the more so for being true. I commend you.”
He inhaled on the cigarette, holding it vertical to prevent the ever-lengthening ash from falling.
“Where you slipped up was that little stunt with Egon. You see, Egon grew up in the forest; he knows the forest. For you to give him the slip—when I heard about that, I knew you were no naturalist.”