On the High Road to Oblivion

Chapter 14—Barron Revealed

Majestic now floated once more in the sky, high above the ruins of Alamut. But her business on the Rock was not quite finished.

Tyr Sorensen leaned against the fuselage of the second autogyro, watching the airship, waiting for the signal that the objective had been achieved. He did not have to wait long.

A teardrop of light appeared in the sky beneath the dirigible. A signal flare, launched from the open tail section, burned brightly as it fell to the earth. Even before it disappeared in the rocky landscape below, Sorensen went to work.

As he strode to the round hole cut into the ruins by the wave projector, he unslung a bulky satchel charge from his shoulder and deftly removed the safety pin, activating the time-delay fuse. He then promptly dropped his burden into the hole, spun on his heel and headed back to the aircraft.

A few seconds later, the explosive charge detonated, sending out a blast wave that instantly crushed the ceramic jars containing the secret collection of the library of Alamut. Thousands of priceless, irreplaceable documents, containing secrets of the ancient world that modern scholars didn’t even know had been forgotten, were vaporized in an instant.

Sorensen did not flinch as the mountain shuddered beneath his feet, nor did he feel even a glimmer of regret at the destruction of so much history. He understood his instructions perfectly. All traces of their presence here had to be erased. If the documents were retrieved, delivered to museums or sold on the black market, people would begin to ask questions, and the search for answers posed an unacceptable risk.

All the loose ends had to be tied up, lest the entire web unravel.

Not that it would make much difference. In a few weeks… or perhaps just a few days… it wouldn’t matter in the slightest if the whole world knew what had happened at Alamut.

But Sorensen had his orders all the same.

As he climbed into the autogyro’s cockpit, he leaned forward. “Ready?”

His passenger nodded an affirmative, and Sorensen started the engine.

Dodge’s mind staggered under the weight of the revelation. Walter Barron. Baron Otto Von Heissel. One and the same.

Can it be true?

Dodge only knew of Baron Von Heissel from Hurricane’s accounts of his adventures with Captain Falcon, following the Great War. Like everything else in those stories, Captain Falcon included, Dodge had always believed the baron to be a fictional creation, perhaps loosely based on real individuals and events, but magnified and exaggerated to create an exciting narrative. He had learned otherwise of course; he vividly recalled the moment when Hurricane had told him that all the stories were true, and he had even seen proof to that effect. Nevertheless, part of him refused to believe it, even when the man standing before him — a man who looked nothing like the villain he had described as grotesquely fat, with a shaved head, a thick Austrian accent, and mannerisms that were diabolical to the point of cliché—simply folded his arms across his chest and addressed the room.

“Mr. Hurley has identified me correctly. In another life, I was Baron Von Heissel. But I would urge you to remember that what you think you know about me from Mr. Dalton’s sensational fiction, is just that.”

“Yeah?” Hurley replied, still smoldering with barely contained rage. “And what about what I know from bitter experience?”

The man who was both Barron and a baron, did not flinch under the weight of Hurricane’s stare. “It was a different time. A time of war. A war that we would all like to forget.”

“Now see, that’s where my memory gets a little fuzzy, ‘cause as I recall, you built your little clockwork army after that war, and would have started a brand new one in its place if Captain Falcon hadn’t put a crimp in your plans.” Hurricane took an ominous step forward. “Maybe you’ve got these folks buffaloed with your snake oil pitch about wanting to put an end to war, but the way I see it, you’re a criminal who’s already been sentenced to death. And I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let you put your appointment with Lady Justice off for one more day.”

Dodge felt he should do something — say something — but he didn’t know whether to implore Hurricane to show some restraint, or encourage him to make good on his threat. If even half of what Dodge had written about the battle with Von Heissel was true, then he certainly deserved death a dozen times over.

That’s just it, though. Half of what I know about this man, I fabricated out of whole cloth.

Baron Otto Von Heissel had made two appearances in the syndicated Adventures of Captain Falcon. The first, entitled The Clockwork Brigade, had been based on one of Hurley’s manuscripts, and had presented the Prussian noble as a mad genius, leading an army of steam-powered automatons with which he intended to conquer Europe and restore the Habsburg Empire to its former glory. The war machines had not been especially sophisticated; they were little more than wind-up toys on a massive scale, but had they been employed in the Great War, they would have rendered trench warfare completely obsolete. The clockwork soldiers would have charged fearlessly across No Man’s Land to crush the enemy positions beneath tons of steel.

As Hurricane had told it, Von Heissel had been building his mechanical army in the closing hours of the war, and wasn’t about to let something like an armistice keep him from using it.

Von Heissel’s second appearance in the Adventures of Captain Falcon was much fresher in Dodge’s memory: a twelve-chapter serial titled Castle Perilous, in which the evil villain had turned an entire castle into a deathtrap for Falcon and friends. Dodge had penned the epic climax of the story only a few months earlier, but that story had been entirely his own creation. Everything Von Heissel had said and done — every evil scheme, every gleeful chortle — had been purely the product of his imagination.

The man standing in front of him looked nothing at all like the villain he had described in Castle Perilous. Nearly two decades had passed since the real Captain Falcon defeated Von Heissel’s clockwork army; who was to say that the man’s heart had not changed as much as his external appearance?

Hurricane Hurley, for one.

The big man’s hands curled into sledgehammer fists as he took another step forward. His face was grim and determined, and Dodge knew this was no mere show of bravado.

He felt Nora’s hand on his arm. “Do something,” she urged.

“Sergeant!” A new voice cut through ominous tension. “Stand down!”

Though he had retired from the army, and now wore a business suit instead of a uniform, General Frank Vaughn still remembered how to give an order. And even though he was retired as well, former Sergeant Major Brian “Hurricane” Hurley had not forgotten how to follow one. While he did not exactly snap to attention, Hurricane halted his advance, and turned to face Vaughn, who stood a few paces behind Von Heissel at the entrance doors.

“General, sir,” Hurricane filled the word with more contempt than Dodge would have thought possible for the typically genteel Hurley. “This man was tried in absentia by the Hague, and sentenced to be hanged by the neck until dead.” He enunciated each word as if reading from a warrant.

“Sergeant…” Vaughn took a breath. “Hurricane, the President of the United States has signed an executive order granting asylum to the man formerly named Baron Otto Von Heissel.”

Dodge’s breath caught in his throat. “You knew?”

“Of course, I knew. At first, I wasn’t any happier about this than you. But I had my orders. Von Heissel is a mechanical genius, and he was ready to share his expertise with the War Department in exchange for protection… a new identity and a grub stake. We would have been fools to turn him down.”

“So, he’s a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch? Is that it?”

“That’s the way the world works sometimes,” Vaughn said. “You might not like me very much, Dalton, but even you must realize that I follow orders whether I agree with them or not.”

Hurley turned his gaze back to Von Heissel. “Well, sir, I don’t take orders from anyone, anymore. And in case you hadn’t noticed, we’re not in America right now, so whatever assurances you made him don’t count for diddly-squat.”

Von Heissel continued to meet the menacing stare, outwardly unperturbed. “Mr. Hurley, I would ask you to consider that you are on my ship. I have dozens of loyal crewmen aboard who have sworn to protect me and carry out my every wish. If I desired to do you harm, why would I have sent them to rescue you from that mob at Alamut? And why would I reveal myself to you now? Surely, you can see that I have no malign intent.”

Dodge saw the conflict twisting inside his friend. He felt Nora’s hand still gripping his arm, silently repeating her plea. He gave her a reassuring nod, then stepped forward, putting himself between Hurricane and Von Heissel. “Baron, would you excuse us please? I’d like to talk to my friend. And you, General.”

Von Heissel seemed pleased by this, though his expression did not change. “By all means. I have a great many matters to attend to.” With a nod to the rest of the room, the man that was both Walter Barron and Baron Von Heissel turned and headed through the exit doors.

Vaughn let out a sigh, as if he’d been holding his breath. “Dalton, I know what you’re going to say.”

“With all due respect, sir, I don’t think you do.” He led them to a corner of the hall, well out of earshot of the rest of the group. “Listen, there’s something more going on here. Barron… Von Heissel… whatever he wants to call himself… is using us. Doc Newcombe told me as much; he told me that Barron is just using his relationship with the War Department to fund his research. I don’t think he has any intention of giving you a working death ray.”

Vaughn’s eyebrows drew together. “Whether he wants to or not, we’re going to get it, by God.”

Dodge shook his head. “I don’t think it’s that simple. There’s more going on here than we realize.”

Hurricane was still breathing heavily, struggling to keep his anger in check. “Of course there is. Von Heissel’s a snake, and he’s just waiting for his chance to strike.”

“I agree, but we don’t know what his plan is.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’ll kill him, and that will be the end of that.”

There wasn’t a trace of hyperbole in Hurricane’s declaration, and Dodge knew the big man was both capable and ready to make good on this threat. But he also knew that such precipitous action would spell doom for all of them. Von Heissel’s statement about his loyal crewmen had been a none-too-subtle reminder that they were already under his thumb.

Dodge turned to Vaughn. “General, you know more about this device than any of us… save maybe Doc Newcombe. How would it be used? I mean, as a weapon.”

Vaughn spread his hands. “Deployed from an airship like this. You pull up over a target, turn it on, and everything below turns to dust.”

“And if you were the one under attack, how would you defend against it?”

“Simple. I’d either shred the airship with anti-aircraft guns, or send a squadron of fighter planes to knock this gasbag out of the sky.”

Dodge nodded. “So, as a weapon, it’s not really that useful, is it?”

Vaughn opened his mouth, then closed it again as Dodge’s comment sank in.

“It has to be something like an airship,” Dodge said, “because it takes a few seconds for the device to do what it’s supposed to do. You have to be stationary over the target, and close to it too, maybe only a few hundred feet above it. If you put the wave generator on a bomber, flying over a couple thousand feet in the air at close to two hundred knots, it wouldn’t even give the people on the ground a headache.”

Vaughn mulled this over. Dodge could see that, in his eagerness to deliver a spectacular new weapon to the War Department, the former officer hadn’t considered such practical matters.

Dodge pressed his point. “And even if you somehow managed to get the airship in place, say for some kind of sneak attack, you’d maybe get to destroy one target before the enemy retaliated.”

“Majestic is armed,” Vaughn replied, but without much conviction. “Gun turrets and a squadron of fighters.”

“I saw those Sparrowhawks in the hangar,” Hurley said, considerably calmer than he had been a few seconds earlier. “Those’d last all of about a minute against modern fighter planes.”

“Von Heissel’s up to something. I think you know that, General. We need to figure out what his plan really is, and for now, that means going along with it. Helping him find what he’s looking for.”

Hurricane looked aghast. “Help him? Help him build a weapon that can destroy a city?”

“I don’t think that’s his plan. I’m sure whatever it is, it’s going to be much worse than that.” Dodge managed a wan smile. “But all of this hinges on the belief that an ancient travelogue, based on an even older legend, will lead us to a source of some mythical metal that will enable Von Heissel to actually make his machine work. I’d say the odds of that happening are pretty long.”

The earned a chuckle from the big man. “Well, I’ve seen crazier things happen. But you should know, I’m not one for play acting.”

“I think if you made all nice with Von Heissel, he’d be suspicious. All I’m saying is, try not to kill him, okay?” Dodge waited for Hurricane to nod his assent before adding: “Not yet, anyway.”

As he entered Majestic’s library, Dodge could not help but feel he was stepping into the lion’s den. Even as he had passed the message to a steward, requesting a private audience with Von Heissel, he had been acutely aware of the potential danger of such a meeting.

He didn’t yet know whether to count Von Heissel as an enemy, and although his instincts — and perhaps more importantly, Hurricane’s immovable position on the matter — told him that the Prussian noble was every bit the villain he had been two decades before, he had to know for sure. The question was, how could he probe that issue without goading the man into precipitous action?

Von Heissel stood calmly, hands clasped behind his back, gazing out the small porthole into the sky beyond. He turned at the sound of the door closing behind Dodge and inclined his head.

“Barron Von Heissel,” Dodge began. “Thank you for seeing me.”

“Please. In the eyes of the United States government, I am Walter Barron. I have a new name and a new life. Von Heissel is an artifact of the past.”

Dodge thought it interesting the man had chosen a surname so very close to his title; that didn’t seem like the action of a man eager to put his past away. “Very well, Mr. Barron, then. First, I wanted to thank you for orchestrating our rescue from Alamut.”

“Think nothing of it. In a sense, I was merely helping you and Mr. Hurley rescue my own crewmen who were unarmed and likely would have perished in the attack. I should be the one thanking you.”

Dodge nodded politely. “My airplane is presently tied up at the dock in Bandar-e Pahlavi, on the Caspian coast. I was hoping that you could see your way clear to drop us off there.”

“And by ‘us,’ you mean yourself and Mr. Hurley?”

Barron’s answer surprised Dodge a little. “Along with Dr. Newcombe, Mr. Lafayette and Miss Holloway. I’m sure they’d all like to get back to New York.”

The master of the Majestic offered a tight smile. “Of course, if that is what they wish, I have no objection. But as you are no doubt aware, I have engaged Dr. Newcombe in a matter of scientific research, and Mr. Lafayette is assisting me with my memoirs. Have they expressed a desire to depart?”

“No. Not as such. I had just assumed…” Dodge took a deep breath. “Mr. Barron, let me be straightforward with you. After the… incident in New York… the attempted kidnapping… I was told that it had been the intention of the kidnappers to take me. They got Lafayette by mistake.”

Barron’s expression betrayed nothing, so Dodge continued: “They thought that you wanted Doc Newcombe and myself. Doc is helping you build your wave device, but I’m wondering is why you wanted me.”

“You were told? By the anarchists responsible for the abduction?”

“One of them, yes.”

Barron smiled. “The answer is quite simple. I told you that Mr. Lafayette is working on my memoirs, but I had originally hoped that you would do so. You might say that I wanted to give you the opportunity to redress some of the… shall we say, slanderous accusations, that have appeared in your fiction. I had hoped that, given the chance to hear my side of the story, you might want to set the record straight.”

“Those are just stories. Until today, I didn’t even know you were a real person.”

“Be that as it may, I am not the villain you have portrayed me as.”

“I suppose I understand that, but as you just said, you aren’t Baron Von Heissel anymore. What difference would it make? Or am I missing something?”

Barron laughed. “Touché. It was, I suppose, a rather self-indulgent motivation, and as it turns out, quite unnecessary. Mr. Lafayette is a capable author, and quite eager to wield his pen on my behalf. The point is moot.”

“So that’s it? You just wanted someone to write for you?”

“That is what you do, is it not?”

“Among other things.” Dodge took another breath. “You’ve been working with General Vaughn; I’m sure he’s told you a little about some of what I’ve been involved in of late.”

“More than a little, actually.” Barron brought his fingers together under his chin in a thoughtful gesture. “Ah, I see. You perhaps imagined that I wanted you to help find the adamantine source.”

“It had crossed my mind.”

“I have employed Miss Dunn for that task, and she has proven quite capable thus far. But since you have raised the issue… and since it is evident that, acting on your own, you located the library at Alamut simultaneously, might I infer that you are interested in participating in the search? Or is it your intention to… what’s the expression? Beat me to the punch?”

Dodge shrugged. “I wouldn’t have a clue what to do with this adamantine stuff if I found it. But Doc Newcombe is my friend, so I’m more than willing to help him look for it.” He paused a moment. “I’d certainly hate to see it fall into the wrong hands.”

Barron laughed again. “As would I.”

He’s hiding something, Dodge thought. Barron’s measured replies hadn’t exactly been incriminating, but the very fact that he had so adeptly avoided any kind of emotional response only added to Dodge’s sense that the man formerly known as Baron Von Heissel was still very much the kind of man that Captain Falcon would have counted an enemy.

“You know, maybe I can help you find this adamantine. My plane can get where you’re going a lot faster than your airship. What if I were to take the search party there? Get a head start. With a little luck, by the time you show up, we’d have what you need.”

“That’s a very interesting offer, Mr. Dalton.”

“Sure. There’s room in the plane for the Doc and Miss Dunn, and a few others, too. And that wave device that Doc used in Alamut might come in handy.” Then, with a laugh, he added: “Hell, you can even send General Vaughn along to make sure I don’t misbehave.”

Dodge could almost hear the gears grinding in Barron’s head as the man considered the implications of what was being proposed. Dodge didn’t think Barron would give his assent, but if he did, it would go a long way to disproving the idea that he harbored villainous intent.

There was an alternative choice available to Barron; one that Dodge had hoped would not occur to the man. He almost groaned aloud when Barron abruptly clapped his hands together and declared: “An excellent idea. I’ll go with you.”