Nazi Gold

Chapter 2 — Lost in Nohra

The cries of the men echoed through the landscape, shouting orders and threats as they combed the wilderness. Dusk was fast approaching as they raced through the foliage and clawing branches that reached out over the small footpaths and the soles of their combat boots landed lightly in blunt thumps and crunching twigs. They knew the terrain very well, which was not a good thing for their human quarry, an intruder that fled the scene after they shot and killed four others. They pursued him relentlessly.

Miserable and lonely the sky stretched from one horizon to another above him, clear heavens void of any movement or life. No birds or clouds populated the pastel pink and blue overhead that hovered over the perilous woods below. With every descending hillock or sandy path the atmosphere chilled around his burning cheeks and chest as he ran for his life. In his right hand he clutched the evidence of their treachery and in his left he was still grasping a large broken brick. Breathing laboriously, their target wove from left to right through the meagre parts of the woods, hoping to evade them before the landscape opened up in a flat plain of weeds and rocks. Once a river, the dry bed was the border between their perimeter and the exposure of the national road where they could not follow.

His heart raced and his legs burned; the unsteady footing of his wet boots threatening injury with every leap over the uneven grass. Around him the cooling breeze rose as he neared open field and it stirred his hair. Sweat trickled into his eyes and blurred his vision, but he could not afford to stop. Then he heard something terrifying behind him and he listened closely to the barking to determine how far behind him they were.

“Dogs? Oh Christ, what’s next?” he panted desperately.

It occurred to Sam that he would have to change his plans, whether he wanted to or not. With those dogs on his tracks he would have no chance of making it across the open field toward the road. They would catch up to him in no time, so he had to veer right from his path, re-entering the cover of the low trees and the brush that carpeted the forest floor. He ran past the ruins of several old buildings from bygone eras, weakened by his fatigue. Sam was driven on only by his will to survive, because his body had run completely out of steam.

Now that he entered the deserted old village, barely more than a collection of concrete foundations and steel skeletons, he noticed how hungry he was. It was a totally inconvenient complaint of his body and he found it a nuisance as he navigated the lost lanes of the overgrown settlement.

Far off the dogs yelped, but the shouts had ceased. This was a cause for concern, because to Sam Cleave mercenaries were kind of like spiders — as long as he knew where they were, he knew where to flee to. But now that they were quiet there was no indication of their location. Gradually the forest grew darker, its shelter no solace for the investigative journalist. Not only would he have to worry about his chasers after dark, but the nocturnal cravings of the woodland animals. He had been to Germany before, but he hardly knew what kind of wildlife to fear out here. Sam decided to rest a while. As long as he was quiet he would be at some advantage.

He needed the rest in case he had to use the cover of night to brave the alien landscape to find salvation. There was no way he would spend the night here, sleeping. Not only was it unwise to continue on in morning light, but there was nothing that could convince him to sleep in one of the creepy ruins where many people no doubt must have died in past decades. Sam had never been superstitious, yet the past few years had swayed his opinion on the unseen forces of this world just a little — little enough for him to vehemently oppose a night out in a deserted village where God knows what was lurking once the place was draped in night.

Sam took shelter in what looked like an old shed. He sat down on a huge chunk of cement that had fallen from the crumbling side wall. Wincing in pain, he put the camera down next to him and wiggled his boot loose from his wet sock under which several blisters burned. First the one, then the other, he removed his boots and peeled the drenched socks from his wrinkled feet. Open blisters and the bright pink skin underneath greeted his eyes. Sam groaned as he removed his long sleeved shirt to dry his feet carefully. Under the shirt his vest was still relatively clean, save for the dusty sweat patches. Listening intently for any noise, he wrapped his feet in the shirt and gently dabbed them, clenching his teeth from the jolt of hell from the meeting of fabric on open tissue.

The dogs’ barking had moved away until the only sound left was the rustling of the branches under the breath of the evening wind. Above him the pink sky had turned to a sickly grey-blue and the first stars had emerged vaguely to announce the coming night to all unwelcome Scottish intruders who dared to stop running. Again his stomach growled and burned, this time undeniable to his attentions. Sam sighed and looked around for… well, he did not really know what he was hoping to see, but he was famished. He had made up his mind that he would never resort to eating rats or insects, no matter how hungry he got, so he supposed he would look for berries or something.

“Yeah right,” he scoffed to himself, “don’t be expecting to see an apple tree growing around here, mate. With your know-how you’d probably eat a poisonous thing and die right here. Have all those bastards laughing their arses off at the daft Scotsman who died swallowing his tongue.”

It felt odd to talk to himself in such deathly silence. For some reason it seemed more crazy than doing it in the shower or the kitchen. An adjacent rock face where he could hear mountain water trickling down was a godsend, but he had to venture out of the shelter of the building to get there to investigate if the water was pure before the darkness would render him blind. His cell phone had been confiscated and his lighter had gotten wet when he jumped into the slimy water tank outside where his colleagues were held before they were executed.

Sam lamented their demise, probably because of his escape no less. But he was just a hired shooter on their trip and did not know any of them very well. One was an archaeologist from Bremen, another a linguist from Copenhagen — they were a couple — and with them there was a man from Plzeň who looked like some curator of a museum to Sam, but he never learned what his purpose was on the trek to the wilds near Nohra where they all came to a brutal end a few hours earlier. All Sam knew was that they were there to expose and claim an art smuggling ring that ransacked Eastern Europe for art, but not just any art. They apparently believed that the pieces that were acquired by the smugglers had intrinsic value — in the world of the supernatural. The revelation had initially made Sam laugh out loud until he realized that the other three were dead serious. After some thought upon his last adventure with The Brotherhood in Iceland and Russia he could not very well discard such claims anymore, he had to admit. Although not entirely convinced by the magical and fantastical, Sam had to concede that there was much more credibility to the more clandestine practices out there, than he had thought.

They had not discovered what they had come to unveil, him and his colleagues, but they did uncover a bunker where some really unusual symbols were drawn upon the walls. The linguist told them that it was a forgotten dialect of Moldovan, simply Romanian. Then the linguist remarked that there was no known diversion from the original language, save for some cultural differentiation. Much as Sam found all this fascinating, it sort of caused a mental Gordian knot in his brains to which he elected to nod and ignore for fear of too much confusion.

Being a Scottish lad with a roughshod demeanor Sam was far more interested in conversation with the curator from Plzeň after he discovered the city’s other name was Pilsen. Therefore, the city, and the entire country’s reputation for first class breweries definitely enjoyed the lion’s share of Sam’s attention. Now all he had left of the entire venture was the footage and the film he had on him, some depicting the inside of the bunker and others revealing the faces of the aggressors who were at this very moment hunting him.

Cradling the camera, Sam had inadvertently reached for it while in deep thought.

“Water, idiot. It’s getting pitch dark!” Suddenly his common sense kicked in.

With a keen ear for dogs and footsteps, Sam limped from the structure and braved thorns and sharp stones amongst the debris to make his way around the wall. His mission was to find the origin of the lapping sound, but he knew he could not tarry too long, for the scent he left would surely be picked up by the animals. There was just enough time to drink some water and wrench his wounded feet back into the uncomfortable soaked boots for another few hours of hell — if he survived that long.

In the dark Sam carefully paced forward on sore feet, his arms outstretched ahead to find the water. He would rather have moved slowly than to hasten and risk injury, but the thirst urged him on. Soon he crouched down and his fingertips found the cold wet rock. He slurped like a horse, sucking in the precious liquid to soothe his throat and fill him at least somewhat until he could get something to eat. When he drank his belly full, Sam leaned with his face against the stone surface to allow the water to run over his sticky perspiring face.

Behind him something moved through the bushes. Sam was horrified. He froze in place, listening. Inside his chest his heart threatened to explode, but he held his breath just the same. Snapping branches and twigs progressed very slowly, disappearing into the structure where he had left the camera.

Oh god, no! Don’t let them find the camera! It is all I have to prove that I was here. Without it, all this torture and the death of those people would have been in vain!, he thought to himself as he breathed through the surface of the trickling water against his cheek. By the sound of the rustling leaves and recoiling branches Sam could tell that the stalker was emerging from the structure.

Panic struck him and he turned to face the narrow pathway that ran in front of the structure. Sam stretched his eyes as wide as he could to see if he could discern some sort of outline or shape among the matte black shadows from the paltry sickle moon that rose over the edge of the cliff face. Sam could feel his flesh crawl and his breathing was virtually impossible to restrain as he watched silently, praying that they would not detect him a few feet away. He could feel his blood rush through his veins, his heart pounding in his ears like a cannibal drum with him as feast. A massive shape came out from the shed and rounded the corner, but it stopped. Its treads were heavy and Sam had no idea what to do. He had to retrieve his camera, at least, but it would be foolish to get killed for it. What help would evidence of an execution be, when the only witness was shot dead claiming it?

Sam saw that the figure stood still, but he could not tell in which direction he was looking. He had to provoke some sort of action from the threat, even just to see what he was dealing with. Quietly he stole closer, sweeping the coarse polls of grass and thorns for a rock as he crouched below the tall grasses. The wind bent the dead brown stalks of weed about Sam, but he stayed low not to be seen as he hurled the stone in the direction of the shape. He braced himself for the menacing miscreant to charge the moment the stone clanked against the nearby iron beams, but instead the figure took flight in the opposite direction.

Sam’s jaw dropped as he heard the clopping of its hoofs down the decrepit little road as its brisk pace became more lenient, eventually coming to a slow walk and then ceasing again. The beast had calmed and once more it was walking into the tall grass to seek out something to chew on.

“A fucking horse,” Sam whispered to himself, uncertain whether a chuckle or a cry of relief would be more apt. He stood up and ran his hands through his unkempt hair, shaking his head. “I think I just shat meself, you bastard,” he laughed softly as he walked back to the dirt pathway and looked the indifferent animal in the eye at a short distance. It was chewing lazily and stared at him with a glare that bordered on amusement. Sam could not stop shaking his head in disbelief and embarrassment, smiling as he painstakingly got his boots laced up and collected his camera. He had never ridden a horse bareback before. In fact, he had not mounted a horse since he was seventeen and even then, it was a dire ride for the entire six minutes he stayed on.

For several minutes he scoured the shed for something he could use as reins. After all, the structure appeared to have been a stable or barn a long time ago. With all the rusted farm tools and dry troughs Sam guessed that there would be leather strapping or rope somewhere under all the timber and metal. Not long after lifting what resembled a broken stable door in the corner, Sam struck the jackpot. A wealth of helpful tools and straps were buried underneath, illuminated by the slight beams of the risen moon which fell through the gap in the wall and formed a twisted square on the shed floor.

After luring the horse with a succession of tongue clicks and coaxing, holding some succulent grass in his hand, Sam finally got the animal close enough to give him a stroke on the nose. It turned out to be a rather tame creature, even affectionate, and Sam enjoyed just petting the horse for a while. He had almost forgotten that his life was still in danger while he was in the vicinity. The skin of Sam’s feet burned profusely as he tried to mount the horse with his camera cradled in his long sleeved shirt, which he had made a sling from and used as some sort of makeshift rucksack. He winced and moaned every time he felt the inside of his boots chafe his open flesh, but he had to escape this area, or it would be the last of him.

His dark eyes scouted the road ahead to determine the course best to take.

By now the cold had become cruel on Sam’s bare arms, but his survival was of more importance. Rather get the flu or take his chances with pneumonia than to perish altogether, he reckoned, and spurred the horse onward. He made sure not to drive the horse into a full gallop, because it would sound through the dead cold night, no doubt reverberating against the rising hilltops of the valleys and alerting his pursuers. Gradually they made their way through the night, carefully navigating the trenches and dry riverbeds so that neither of them would sustain any unwelcome injuries in the pitch dark of the strange landscape.

By midnight both Sam and his horse were exhausted. He dismounted just short of the brook they had come to, a few miles before the main road he hoped was on the right track to civilization.

“Oh my god, I think I’m lost,” he finally admitted next to the slurping horse that had its snout immersed in the cascading brook. Its shoulder muscles quivered wildly every now and then as it drank, its ears rotating to the sound of the strange rider’s mouth sounds next to him.

“Do you know where we are?” Sam asked the horse. He found even the animal’s lack of interest soothing, as long as it kept him company. Sam felt utterly lonely, ravenous and cold in the godforsaken patch of German land where he was being hunted like an animal.