Kingdom of Darkness

Prologue

The military convoy ground through the darkness towards its next destination.

In the lead car, a Kübelwagen utility vehicle, SS-Sturmbannführer Erich Kroll used a torch to check a map of the farmland around the town of Pella. His Waffen-SS unit, soldiers of Hitler’s feared Schutzstaffel elite force, were on a mission direct from the Führer: to locate and round up any Jews remaining in the Nazi-occupied zone for deportation to the concentration camps of Treblinka and Auschwitz. The operation had by now been mostly completed to German satisfaction, but, Kroll mused, the Juden were as hard to eradicate as rats — and the task had been made harder by Jewish sympathisers amongst the local population.

The Nazis had their own sympathisers, though. Fascist collaborators had provided their new masters with lists of those suspected of harbouring fugitives, and now the SS was checking each one. On this night, they already had five prisoners in the truck behind: two Jewish women and a boy found in a farm’s loft, as well as the farmer and his wife. A good catch, but Kroll hoped to find more.

The blond man swapped the map for his list. The next target was the property belonging to the Patras family. According to his information, they liked their privacy, keeping to themselves. That alone made them worthy of a visit from the SS; even if they were not harbouring enemies of the Reich, they still needed reminding who was now in charge of their land.

The Kübelwagen’s headlights picked out a crossroads ahead. ‘Go right,’ Kroll ordered the driver, Jaekel. The young stormtrooper had already impressed the unit commander, shrugging off a vicious slash across his face from a knife-wielding Jew in order to bayonet him and the family he was protecting. The scar was still a raw red line, the stitches visible; in time, it would be a stirring reminder of his bravery and a magnet for women.

The car made the turn, the truck and half-track behind it following. The muddy road led up a hillside to an old house near its summit. Jaekel pulled up outside the front door. The truck jolted to a halt alongside, the half-track heading around the building to watch for anyone trying to run from its rear.

Kroll marched to the door and pounded on the wood with a gloved fist. ‘Open up!’ he barked in Greek. He had studied the ancient form of the language in his youth; learning its modern derivation had not been difficult. ‘This is the Waffen-SS — we are here to search your property for Jewish fugitives. You are ordered to let us in, immediately!’

He stepped back and waited impatiently. Behind him, his men readied their weapons as sounds of activity came from inside. ‘How long do we give them?’ asked SS-Obersturmführer Rasche.

‘Thirty seconds,’ Kroll told his senior lieutenant. ‘Then we kick the door down.’

Rasche smiled, manic eyes widening. ‘I hope they don’t rush.’ One hand went to a dagger in a sheath on his belt, the hilt bearing the Totenkopf death’s-head of the SS. ‘I always like to make an example of someone.’

‘Open the door at once!’ Kroll shouted. He heard voices behind it; that the occupiers had not immediately complied suggested they were trying to conceal something. ‘You have ten seconds! Nine! Eight! Seven!’

The clunk of a heavy bolt, then the door opened. An elderly man nervously peered out. ‘What do you want?’

‘You heard me,’ Kroll snapped. He shoved the door, sending the old man reeling back. ‘You are Alejo Patras?’

‘Yes, I am,’ Patras replied.

‘Who else is in the house?’

‘My wife Kaira, my two sons, and my elder son’s wife and daughter. But we have nothing to hide here, we are just farmers.’

‘Five others,’ Kroll told his men before turning back to Patras. ‘Bring them all here, now. Anyone who is not here in one minute will be shot when they are found.’ He made a show of raising his left arm to check his watch.

Patras called out urgently. Before long, others filed into the hallway: an old woman and a couple in their thirties, the wife fearfully holding a six-year-old child. The German regarded his watch again. ‘Where is your other son? He is running out of time!’

‘Dinos!’ cried Patras, with an exhortation for him to hurry. Seconds ticked by, Rasche’s malevolent smirk widening as he fingered his knife — then a door banged deeper inside the house. Running footsteps, and a man in his twenties hurried into the hall.

Kroll’s cold gaze turned upon him. ‘Why were you hiding from us?’ he demanded in Greek.

‘I–I wasn’t hiding,’ the young man insisted. ‘I was in the cellar, I didn’t hear you.’

‘Search the cellar,’ Kroll ordered, not taken in by the protestation of innocence. ‘Look for hatches, hidden doors — anywhere people might hide.’

Rasche addressed one of the troopers. ‘Rottenführer! With me.’ A squat, round-faced man named Schneider followed him out, putting a hand over his mouth to hold in a wet cough.

Kroll waited as his unit searched the house. One by one they returned, reporting no sign of fugitives. The elder Patras appeared relieved to be vindicated, but the Nazi commander detected a rising tension in his sons — particularly the younger.

Only Rasche and Schneider had not yet come back. ‘Obersturmführer!’ Kroll called. ‘Have you found anything?’

A pause, then: ‘I’m not sure. Is Walther there? We need him to move something.’

Kroll glanced at the huge stormtrooper, whose head reached to just centimetres beneath the ceiling beams. ‘Sturmmann, go and help him.’

Walther’s arm snapped into a rigid Hitler salute, his fingertips brushing the plaster overhead. ‘At once, Herr Sturmbannführer!’ Hunching down to fit through the doorway, he headed for the cellar.

There was now definite concern in the brothers’ expressions — no, Kroll realised, the whole family’s. ‘If you are hiding Jews down there, you will be treated just like them,’ he warned the group. ‘Give them up now, and I may be lenient.’

The elder Patras shook his head. ‘This is a very old house, it has many cubbyholes. But we are not hiding anyone, Ipromise.’

‘I would prefer to see for myself,’ Kroll replied with a sneer. He listened as thumping sounds echoed up from below. Then—

‘Sturmbannführer!’ Rasche shouted. ‘Come quickly!’

‘Bring them,’ Kroll snapped to his men. The prisoners were hustled along at gunpoint. The cellar entrance was a crooked door at the rear of a cramped pantry, stairs leading down a steep passage lined in whitewashed stone. A flickering lantern provided weak illumination below. The SS leader noticed the polished curve to each stone step; the passage was either regularly travelled or had been here for a very long time.

He reached the foot of the stairs. The lantern revealed a grotto-like space, sacks and boxes lining the walls. Grunts of exertion came from around a corner. Beyond it, Kroll found his three men at what appeared to be a dead end — except that Walther had managed to get his thick fingers into a gap that had been hidden behind some barrels and was pulling at it. Wood creaked with each tug.

‘There’s a mark from a hidden door,’ explained Rasche, pointing at a faint line arcing across the flagstones. ‘But we can’t get it open.’

Kroll drew his Luger and faced Patras as the family was pushed into the subterranean space. ‘How does it open? Tell me now, or I will shoot your wife!’ He pointed the gun at the old woman’s head. She gasped in fear.

A tense silence — then the younger son shoved his mother aside, lunging at Kroll—

The gunshot was deafening in the confined space.

Blood gouted across the cellar from a bullet wound in Dinos’s throat, almost black in the low light. Kroll stepped back as the young man collapsed at his feet. His mother screamed.

‘Open the door!’ yelled the Nazi leader. The young girl shrieked in terror as the other SS troopers slammed her parents against the wall. ‘Open it, or I’ll kill you all!’

‘Wait, wait!’ cried the horrified Patras. ‘I’ll open it!’

His older son shouted in protest even as gun muzzles were jammed against him, but Patras scurried to the wall and pulled aside a stack of boxes. Behind them, at floor level, was a small nook. He slipped his hand inside, fingers curling around a concealed catch.

A clack came from behind the fake wall. ‘It will open now,’ he told Kroll. ‘Please, let my family go!’

‘How many people are hiding?’ the German demanded.

‘None, there is nobody there. It is just a room. Take what you find and go, I beg you!’

Again his son protested. ‘Father, no! You can’t let them into the shrine!’

The last word caught Kroll’s attention. ‘What shrine?’ he said, rounding on the elderly man. ‘What’s back there?’

The conflict on Patras’s face told him that the Greek did not want to give up his secret. ‘It… it is our family’s heritage,’ he finally said. ‘We have protected it for many generations, many centuries.’

Kroll regarded him for a moment, then addressed Walther. ‘Open it.’

The big man slotted his fingers back into the gap. This time, there was little resistance when he pulled. The hidden door swung outwards.

The Nazi leader shone his torch into the newly revealed darkness to find another set of steps heading downwards. He directed his light to the bottom. There was a chamber below.

‘Sir,’ warned one of the stormtroopers, a thin-faced man named Gausmann, as Kroll began to descend. ‘If someone’s down there, they could be armed.’

Kroll stopped, shining his torch back at his prisoners. ‘If anyone is down there, kill the family,’ he said. Their lack of reaction told him that they did not speak German. ‘But I don’t think he’s lying. Rasche, follow me.’

The second set of stairs seemed even older than the first, the irregular stones in the whitewashed walls held in place by the weight of those above them rather than mortar. But the room beneath had been built with more care, he saw as it came into view. Elegant columns supported the ceiling of the roughly circular space. Ancient Grecian architecture, Kroll thought, directing his torch beam over the nearest. But later than the classical period…

He turned his light into the centre of the room — and froze.

‘My God!’ he gasped, astonishment reducing his voice to a whisper.

The shrine was filled with treasure.

Gold and silver glinted everywhere his torch beam darted. Coins, jewellery, statuettes, even armour and weapons; the spoils of several lifetimes. Amongst them was something that immediately seemed out of place — a clockwork mechanism, bronze or brass. He quickly dismissed the anachronism as a later addition to the collection, his gaze instead going to the figure at the chamber’s far side. The marble statue of a man, flakes of coloured paint still visible on the pale stone, watched over the room of wonders.

Kroll heard Rasche let out an exclamation, but he ignored the SS section leader, advancing on the statue. The light picked out a word on its plinth: ανδρƐας — Andreas. A common enough Greek name, but what had this man done to arouse such adulation?

Rasche’s own torch flitted excitedly over the gleaming riches. ‘It’s a fortune!’ he said. ‘It must be worth millions of marks. And those farmers were hiding it from us!’

‘Not just from us,’ Kroll said as he examined some of the items in more detail. The inscriptions upon them were in Greek — ancient Greek. ‘These are thousands of years old.’ He illuminated a line of carved text beneath the name on the plinth. ‘It says, “Servant and friend of the king Alexander”… Does it mean Alexander the Great? It must do!’

‘I’ll take your word for it, sir,’ said Rasche. ‘I never studied Greek.’

‘You should always study the past, Obersturmführer,’ Kroll replied, reading on with growing intrigue. ‘It can teach you a lot. Especially when it concerns Alexander the Great. He was born near here, near Pella — it was the capital of Macedonia.’ He stepped back, almost reflective. ‘Alexander was my childhood hero, actually; he was the greatest military leader in history, never defeated in battle. He’d conquered most of the known world before he was thirty years old. If he’d lived longer, who knows what else he could have accomplished?’

‘Sir,’ Rasche replied, with clear disinterest. He moved to prod at a pile of coins.

‘Philistine,’ Kroll muttered as he read more text. It was referring to Alexander the Great, he was sure. ‘These dates, they’re long after Alexander died. But this Andreas, the inscriptions say he knew Alexander personally…’

He regarded the statue. The man it portrayed was old, bald-headed with a long beard, yet still had the upright posture of youth. The remaining scuffs of paint on its face were enough to give the impression that it was looking back at him, expression almost challenging. ‘Andreas, Andreas…’ he whispered, searching his memory. The name was connected to Alexander’s somehow, but the link was elusive—

Suddenly it came to him.

The rational part of his mind instantly dismissed the thought as ridiculous. It couldn’t possibly be true! But…

His gaze fell upon something behind the statue. It was a pithos, an earthenware jar as tall as a man and a metre across at its broadest. More Greek text was inscribed upon it. He went to the vessel to read some of it, then stood on tiptoes to examine the wide spout. It had been sealed, black pitch around a silver stopper. The rim was silvered too, as if the jar’s interior was lined with the precious metal.

‘Silver,’ he said out loud. However ludicrous it sounded, the connection between Andreas and the Macedonian conqueror had now solidified in his thoughts.

‘And gold,’ said Rasche, coins clinking from his fingers.

‘Forget the gold — we may have found something even more valuable.’ Kroll turned, ignoring his subordinate’s look of confusion. ‘The old man and his family. Bring them down here!’

Rasche shouted an order up the stairs. The surviving members of the Patras clan were quickly hustled into the hidden chamber, their dismay at their secret having been revealed mirrored by the amazement and raw greed on the faces of the Nazis. ‘Andreas,’ Kroll said to the patriarch in Greek, indicating the statue. ‘He is who I think, isn’t he? Andreas the cook, from the Alexander Romance?’

The defeat and resignation in the old man’s voice told Kroll that he was right. ‘Yes, it is he.’

The commander’s pointing finger shifted to the pithos. ‘Then the jar — it really contains what Andreas found in the Kingdom of Darkness?’

Patras’s son gave his father a look of alarm. ‘How could he know?’ he hissed. Rasche raised his dagger to the man’s throat to warn him to be silent.

Kroll’s sneer turned upon the prisoner. ‘You think we Germans are all uneducated thugs? You need to remember that Greece is no longer the centre of civilisation. Yes, I know about Andreas, and what he discovered. But I thought it was only a legend, another of the Romance’s chapters of fantasy.’

‘Andreas wrote the Alexander Romance,’ Patras replied, a certain pride entering his tone despite his fear. ‘He hid the truth inside the fantasy.’ A flick of one hand towards an unimpressive wood and metal chest. ‘A copy of his original is in there.’

The urge to open the chest and read the ancient text rose in the Nazi leader, but he restrained it. There were more important answers he needed first. ‘Why did he hide the truth?’

‘So that only someone who believed they were a worthy successor to Alexander could find it.’

Rasche’s impatience at being shut out of the Greek exchange reached bursting point. ‘Sir, what are you both talking about? We’ve found their treasure — what else do we need from them?’

‘Information,’ Kroll told him. ‘That’s how wars are won, not with tanks or bullets. I told you, you should learn from history.’ He returned to the pithos, signalling for Jaekel to join him. ‘Open the jar.’

‘Sir!’ Jaekel snapped in reply. He raised his gun, flipping it around ready to smash the stock against the pithos’s spout—

Kroll’s yell of ‘No!’ and the horrified cry of ‘Óchi!’ from Patras were simultaneous. ‘Idiot!’ the Nazi growled. ‘Use your knife, not your gun! Take out the stopper.’

The chastened stormtrooper slung his weapon and unsheathed his combat knife. Kroll watched as he worked the plug loose, then turned his attention back to the Greeks. The adults all seemed appalled at the prospect of the great jar’s opening — or was it apprehension? He looked back at the text upon the pithos. More mentions of Alexander, but from the perspective of history. Andreas may have known the great king, but these words had been written long after his death.

Which meant that if Andreas himself had been the author of the Romance, the pithos really might contain the stuff of legends…

A crackle as Jaekel worked loose a chunk of pitch. He tossed it aside, then jemmied away at the stopper itself. More of the black resin crumbled. A sharp rasp of metal — and the cap moved.

‘Careful, now,’ Kroll warned, but Jaekel had learned his lesson. He used the knife to lever the stopper upwards. It was indeed solid silver, but the Nazi leader was now less interested in the metal’s value than in what the pithos contained. Waving Jaekel aside, he hopped up on to the statue’s plinth to look down into the container.

Water shimmered gently in the torchlight. The jar was almost full to brimming, holding hundreds of litres, maybe more. He leaned closer, briefly moving the torch away as he adjusted his balance.

The shimmering remained, even without light.

For a moment he thought it was just an after-image. But the same thing happened when he lowered the torch again to check. ‘Jaekel, point your light at the floor,’ he ordered. ‘Rasche, Gausmann, you too.’

The SS troopers obeyed. The chamber became almost fully dark as Kroll flicked off his own light. He looked back at the jar.

The water in the pithos was aglow, sparkling, but not with bubbles: with light.

It was faint, like moonlight reflected from a pond on a misty night, but definitely visible. ‘What is it, Sturmbannführer?’ asked Rasche.

‘Wait,’ said Kroll. He flicked his torch back on and cautiously dipped his little finger into the water.

The resulting sensation made him twitch. ‘Sturmbannführer!’ Rasche said again, with concern. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes, yes,’ Kroll replied, slipping his finger back into the pithos. This time, he was prepared, and did not flinch. His skin tingled, very slightly. The effect was not unlike a mild electric charge.

He withdrew his hand, thinking for a moment. Then he scooped up some energised water in his palm and raised it towards his mouth—

‘That is not for you,’ said Patras. Kroll looked sharply at him. Even surrounded by SS troopers, his family at gunpoint, the old man’s attitude was defiant.

‘Who are you to decide?’ Kroll demanded in Greek.

‘We are the descendants of Andreas — once a humble cook, and later the guardian of the Spring of Immortality. We have protected his shrine for almost two thousand years, and kept his secret from those who think themselves better than the great king. Is that what you believe, German? That you are a worthy successor to Alexander?’

Kroll bristled at the challenge. ‘The Third Reich will become the greatest empire the world has ever seen, yes.’

‘But you are not its leader.’

‘I act in the name of its leader, Adolf Hitler. Therefore I am worthy, since Hitler is the greatest leader in all of history.’ Kroll allowed himself a smug smile, pleased with his own irrefutable logic.

Patras was unimpressed. ‘You may believe what you wish to believe. But the water is not for you. Andreas first thought to keep it for himself rather than share it with Alexander, and though he soon regretted that decision, by then it was too late.’

‘Then the water is the same as in the Romance, yes?’

The old man nodded. ‘It is.’

Kroll felt almost breathless with excitement. He had been right: the gold and silver treasures were nothing compared to the value of the water. ‘And… you know how to find its source?’

A firm shake of the head. ‘No. This is a shrine to the memory and works of Andreas, marking his birthplace — but it is not his tomb. He is buried at the spring.’ Another shift in Patras’s attitude; now he seemed almost condescending, a schoolmaster looking down upon his pupils. ‘The path to the spring is hidden, but it begins here. If you truly think you are superior to Alexander, then perhaps you deserve to find it.’

‘Of course I deserve it,’ Kroll snapped. With that, he brought up his hand and sipped the water. The faint tingling was stronger upon his tongue. He gulped down the rest. For a moment he felt nothing. Then…

‘Are you all right, sir?’ Rasche again, shining his torch into his commanding officer’s face.

Kroll blinked in annoyance. ‘Get that damn light off me. Yes, I’m fine. I’m…’ He paused as an odd feeling rose through him — almost elation, the tingle swirling through his veins to every part of his body.

‘The water — it could be stagnant. Or even poisoned.’

‘I’m fine,’ Kroll repeated. The sensation passed, but somehow he knew that something good — something remarkable — had just happened to him. And his knowledge of the Alexander Romance, a Greek recension of which he had read as a student, suggested what it might be.

He made a decision. ‘Close the jar,’ he ordered Jaekel. ‘Put the stopper back in and find something to seal it with. I don’t want to lose a single drop of what’s inside.’

‘What is inside, sir?’ asked Schneider, who was holding Patras’s daughter-in-law and granddaughter. Even in the low light, Kroll noticed that he had wound his fingers into the woman’s long dark hair and was slowly stroking the strands.

‘Something that will make us very rich. All of us. Now listen. Gausmann, bring down the other men outside — I want the whole unit to hear this.’

‘What about the prisoners in the truck, sir?’ Gausmann asked.

‘Execute them. I know you have wanted to since we arrested them; now is your chance.’

Gausmann was surprised, but pleased, a cold grin crossing his face as he saluted. ‘Yes, sir.’ He hurried up the stairs.

‘If I may ask, sir,’ said Rasche, barely hiding his impatience, ‘what is this about?’

‘It’s about a long and rewarding life, Rasche,’ Kroll told him. He stepped down from the plinth and waited. Muffled gunshots soon came from above.

The prisoners flinched, the little girl beginning to cry. Schneider slid his fingers into her hair. ‘Hush now, little one,’ he said, giving her a snake-like smile. She buried her face against her mother’s neck.

The other troopers clattered into the shrine, gazing at the treasures with awe. ‘Oster, come on,’ said Kroll, waiting for the last straggler to enter. Then he stepped forward to address his men. ‘Attention!’ All those not holding the Patras family snapped upright. ‘I want everyone to listen very closely. You’ve all seen what this room contains. It’s full of treasure… and we are going to take it.’ Eyes widened in avaricious delight. ‘But the gold and silver and jewels are not the most valuable things here. The water in that jar,’ he gestured towards it, ‘is worth the most of all. I will explain why this is later, but for now, I need to make it clear that no one must know about this outside our unit. No one. You are either with me, or you leave now.’

He regarded them silently. He did not expect any departures, and there were none. ‘Good. Here is what we are going to do. We will close up the cellar and secure this house until we can arrange for the treasure to be transported safely — and quietly — out of the country.’

Rasche gave Patras and his family a sidelong glance. ‘And what about them?’

Kroll stared hard at the old man — who looked back with equal intensity. ‘You know already. And so do they, I think.’ He switched to Greek. ‘We are going to take everything we have found here.’

Patras nodded in resignation. ‘What about my family? Please, they have done nothing. My granddaughter — she is only a child. She at least deserves to live.’

The SS commander regarded the girl, then frowned at Schneider, who reluctantly withdrew his hand from her hair. ‘Very well. You have my word,’ he told Patras, before speaking again in German: ‘Take them outside and dispose of them. All of them — including the child.’

The troops encircled the prisoners, pushing them to the stairs. Patras spoke to his family, trying to reassure them, but with a leaden fatefulness they quickly understood. All three hugged and kissed the little girl as they were led away.

Rasche watched them go, then turned to Kroll. ‘Sturmbannführer, I agree that we should take the treasure, but I have to know: what is so important about the water? How can it possibly be more valuable than gold?’

Kroll smiled thinly. ‘Obersturmführer Rasche, which is more valuable to a person — gold, or their life?’

Rasche was puzzled by the question. ‘Unless they’re a fool, their life, of course.’

‘Of course. Now answer this: how much gold would you give to live for ever?’

‘I don’t know — a lot, I suppose…’ He trailed off, staring at the pithos before snapping his gaze back to his commander. ‘Wait, you think—’

‘I know,’ Kroll interrupted. ‘The moment I drank it, I knew. A long time ago, someone found the secret of immortality.’ His smile broadened. ‘And now it belongs to us.’