Pandora's Curse

MUNICH, GERMANY

Anika Klein spent her morning packing for her trip. She was leaving tomorrow, Monday, to spend a few days in Iceland before the rest of the team assembled for the ship to Greenland. Her domestic chores took her longer than expected but still she went for a run after lunch and returned to her apartment an hour and a half later.

After a long shower, she spent thirty grudging minutes in front of the mirror attending to beauty details she’d put off for too long. Her eyebrows were particularly bothersome since they hadn’t been tweezed in three months. The ritual left her eyes swimming in tears. She purposely kept her glossy black hair trimmed almost like a man’s, with short bangs and just a little length at her neck. A dollop of gel and a quick slash with a brush was all it took to tame it.

Her face was angular, with large, almond-shaped eyes, high cheekbones, and a sharp chin. Her mouth was wide, luxurious. Except on dates, she’d learned to not wear lipstick because of the distraction her pout caused. Her ears were tiny, with a total of nine rings, five in one, and four in the other. Anika was thirty-six years old but had the style of someone half that age. And she could get away with it. Studying her reflection closely, she decided she could maintain the ruse for a few more years. Because she’d rarely allowed herself to tan, her skin, which would eventually give her away, had yet to show lines.

She gave her reflection a smile. It was only then that her face lost the intensity she showed to the outside world. Her smile made Anika look like a teenager. Her ex-husband had often compared her beauty to Audrey Hepburn’s. She’d done little to dissuade him of that opinion.

Normally she wore all black in a pseudogothic look that hadn’t yet gone out of fashion in Europe. For today, she was meeting someone for her grandfather, so she threw on a bright but modest skirt, a creamy silk blouse, and flats. She was comfortable enough with her height to wear heels only when necessary.

In the kitchen on her way out of her apartment, she grabbed a liter bottle of water from the fridge and a container of oily kalamata olives. She had chewing gum in her car for her breath later. Her purse was a small leather backpack. Anika tossed the water inside, fished the keys to her battered Volkswagen Golf from the bottom, and popped a handful of the rich olives into her mouth. Her car was in the garage under her building; it started after a mere five attempts.

The town of Ismaning was only about a half hour from her apartment, which worked well for her grandfather. Had this Otto Schroeder he’d asked her to speak with lived any farther from Munich, she would have postponed the interview until after her trip to Greenland. Opa Jacob had insisted that she visit him before heading north, but he treated everything about his work as a matter of urgency.

Anika did what she could to help. He knew she would never take up the crusade, but by assisting him when she could, Anika hoped that Opa knew she wouldn’t forget either. He’d often said that people aren’t truly dead until they are forgotten. He’d told her that the first time when her own father, Opa Jacob’s son-in-law, died from a heart attack. As long as she remembered her father, he was alive. That was why Jacob worked so hard. As long as he remembered, the six million were still alive, and if Anika could carry even a part of the memory, then the victims would not fade for another generation.

The traffic was heavier than she expected. She’d forgotten that road repairs were under way even on the weekend. The Volkswagen’s air conditioner had not worked since she’d bought it thirdhand and heavy blasts of hot air percolated from the asphalt. Anika felt constricted, the seat belt like a band of iron across her chest. The back of her blouse was sticky. She tried to take a deep breath and managed to inhale a dose of diesel exhaust from the truck idling next to her.

The frustration pricking her skin was only partially due to the delay. She’d hoped the distraction of driving would banish thoughts of work but the constant starts and stops served as a reminder. Was her career going to go forward or end? The choice was hers.

She dug out her water bottle and took a gulp, forcing herself to calm down. Rather than deal with the decision, she fumbled through her bag for the directions to Otto Schroeder’s farmhouse that Opa Jacob had dictated a few days ago from Vienna. She knew from the research she’d done for him in the past not to be surprised how he had tracked the former military officer. Jacob Eisenstadt could find anyone, it seemed, once he put his mind to it.

On the sheet of paper with the directions was a list of questions Jacob wanted answered. Anika had read through the list once after writing them down and found herself more intrigued with this interview than the previous ones she’d done. It appeared that Schroeder might know the whereabouts of a huge shipment of gold spirited out of Russia in 1943. According to Jacob, this wasn’t one of the fabled “lost shipments” that had never been recovered. Until very recently neither he nor Theodor Weitzman had even known of its existence. They were convinced that they were on the trail of something completely new.

Anika doubted that anything would come of her interview. Opa had learned that Schroeder had been a career soldier from before Hitler came to power. He hadn’t been part of the Nazi elite. In fact, he hadn’t even been a member of the party. It wasn’t very likely that he would be privy to secrets of stashed gold or anything else for that matter. She had said this to Opa Jacob, and he had reminded her that, even if Otto Schroeder was simply another link in the chain, it put them one link closer to their goal. His absolute dedication and unshakable faith was something Anika knew she could learn from. She was sorely lacking in both.

In the center of Ismaning stood a tall stone tower, a medieval leftover whose original purpose was lost to time. She turned right and very quickly the urban congestion vanished. It was as if she’d traveled a hundred kilometers from the city. Plowed fields and dense forests flanked the narrow road, with farmhouses nestled at the end of long, crushed stone driveways.

She felt herself relaxing. Anika loved the country, the clean air, the open vistas, and especially the lack of people. She checked her directions again. She had to stay on this road for eight kilometers and then veer to the left for another three. There she would find Otto Schroeder’s house. According to her grandfather’s report, Schroeder owned the land but no longer worked it. That was leased to local farmers while he stayed on in the isolated house, living out the last of his years.

The sun dipped below the layer of smog covering Munich, and the reddened light made the fields of wheat look like sheets of dancing flame. Anika found her turn and popped a stick of gum in her mouth to mask the taste of the olives she’d been munching. The road this far from Ismaning was little used, and there was even grass growing across stretches of it. She noted a single set of tire tracks had cut grooves through the patches of green. She feared it meant that Otto Schroeder had just recently left his house. Possibly for a Sunday-night beer in town? Doubtful. He was near ninety years old.

She was just going to dig into her bag for her cell phone to call Schroeder’s number when from around a copse of huge oaks she saw the house. A black Mercedes sedan was parked in the drive next to an ancient Opel. The house itself was unremarkable. One story and built of dressed and mortared stone, it looked in poor repair. Several of the porch roof’s support columns had settled into the ground, giving the facade a wavy look. It was the incongruous presence of the Mercedes that gave her pause. Of course, they were common all over Germany. But out here? On the very night she was to interview an obscure ex-soldier who might know something about missing gold?

Anika was suddenly very alert. She eased her Volkswagen to a halt well short of the house. She slung her bag onto her back and in one arching bound was across the narrow irrigation ditch fronting Schroeder’s property.

The air was still. The wind that had moved through the fields earlier was gone, and the night insects had yet to come out. She could hear the Mercedes’s engine pinging in the silence as it cooled. She thought about the car. It was possible that it belonged to a well-off child out to visit his father. Yet would a child let an elderly parent live in such isolation? Something wasn’t right here, but she couldn’t place what. She kept to the lengthening shadows as she approached the house.

She reached the front door without spotting or hearing anything out of the ordinary. She chuckled silently. Her feeling of vague anxiety faded. So much for her sixth sense. It might work while climbing a sheer mountain face, but it was worthless on the ground.

She was about to knock when an agonized scream pierced the night, a high keen that rippled up her spine like static.

It came from the back of the house, not from within. As much as her training urged her to rush to its source, she held her ground. It wasn’t a question of if she would back away. Rather, she had to determine the best way to proceed. Stepping off the porch, she peered around the corner of the house. A stone wall extended beyond the back of the building as part of an enclosed backyard. She heard a sharp moan and knew the cry had come from there.

The wall was four feet tall, capped with flat blocks of slate. Guessing there would be a gate at the back, she moved along the fence, keeping low. Her acute sense of balance more than made up for the poor traction of her shoes on the loamy soil. Halfway down, she heard voices, muted at first but clearing as she got to the far end. Around this corner she could see a rotted wooden gate hanging open on one hinge.

“It is a simple question, Mr. Schroeder,” a man’s voice snarled. “We know you were a combat engineer during the war, and we know that you were attached to the Pandora Project. What we don’t know is who you’ve told. Who else knows about Pandora?”

After a moment’s pause, the answer came in the form of another screeching wail, much louder than before.

Otto Schroeder was being tortured!

Anika felt paralyzed. She turned to look behind her. She couldn’t see her car, but knew she could reach it in seconds. She even took her key ring out of her skirt pocket and got the ignition key centered between her fingers. But she could not move. The long-ago war that had claimed most of her family and drove her grandfather was continuing just a few feet away.

“I’ve told no one.” This had to be Schroeder. The words came out between wheezes of pain. “The secret of what we did dies with me.”

“You had better hope so,” said a third voice, lower than even Schroeder’s and menacing.

There were two of them, maybe more. Anika had only one option. Her cell phone was in her backpack. All she needed to do was move far enough away so her call to the police wouldn’t be heard. She took a cautious step backward and then another.

The pain came suddenly and was unlike anything she’d ever felt. A hand had come over the top of the wall and buried itself in her hair, the thick fingers threading down to her scalp. She was nearly lifted off her feet. Her skin felt like it was about to be ripped from her head. She cried out, batting at the arm, but even a small movement made the agony even more unbearable.

“I’ve got someone.” It was yet another male voice, one that sounded younger than the first two. “A woman.”

The pain forced Anika onto her toes, and still the man pulled her higher. Held immobile, she began to scream. The gate was wrenched open, and a man approached her with an automatic pistol in his hand. He was tall and fit with blond hair and a dark expression.

Only when he was behind her with the pistol pressed against her back did he speak. “Okay, Karl, I’ve got her. Let her go.”

The strain on her hair vanished, and Anika would have dropped to the ground had the gunman not propped her up with one hand while keeping the weapon screwed into her kidney. He forced her forward with a savage prod.

The walled garden was overrun with weeds and the uneven flagstones were slick with moss. There were a rusted iron table and a couple of mismatched chairs next to the door that led to the house. Otto Schroeder lay on a chipped concrete bench with two men standing over him. One of them must have been Karl, the one who’d grabbed her. A fourth figure stood back in the shadows. Anika guessed that he was the leader of the group. She couldn’t see his features, but somehow he seemed older than the others.

She focused her attention on Schroeder, and when she realized what they had done to him, hot vomit shot into her mouth. Fear had stripped away her ability to remain clinical. One of Schroeder’s legs had been flayed open, and a large slab of tissue had been carved away. Blood pooled in the gruesome wound and spilled over onto the patio. Anika looked into the old man’s gray face and was amazed to see defiance in his watery eyes. At some point in his torture, he’d bitten into his lip or tongue because more blood dripped from his face.

“Who are you?” the man who had grabbed her, Karl, asked. He was a near copy of the one with the gun, big and blond with shoulders like an executioner’s gallows. His partner was holding a long knife. In the fading light Anika saw crimson on the blade.

Her silence was from fright, not resistance. She knew that since she’d seen their faces, they would never let her live. The man with the knife had a container of salt in his free hand, and he poured a measure into the long gash in Schroeder’s thigh. The old soldier tried to fight the pain and failed. His scream echoed in Anika’s head. All the trauma experience in the world couldn’t inure her to this kind of human suffering. She prayed unconsciousness would spare him the agony.

“Who are you? Or do I dump the rest of this into his leg?”

“It doesn’t matter,” the man in the shadows said so quietly that Anika almost didn’t hear him. “Kill her.”

Karl had taken one step toward her when suddenly he flew back as if jerked on a string. Fragments of gore exploded from the side of his head. The sound of a shot came at the same instant. The man holding Anika pushed her away and wheeled toward where he thought the gunfire had originated. She fell heavily and tried to scramble under the bench, Schroeder’s blood smearing against her skin and clothes. Another shot rang out and a piece of stone above the bench exploded. The torturer who’d poured the salt into Schroeder’s leg had been at that spot a fraction of a second earlier. He had drawn his own weapon, a small machine pistol that had been under his dark jacket. He fired a long burst over the wall, the gun buzzing like a saw. Hot brass arced from the weapon in a tight necklace.

Anika pressed her hands to her ears as more shots rang out: high whipcracks of rifles, the deeper boom of handguns, and the staccato ratchet of the machine pistol. Chips of stone filled the air, carving visible streaks through the thickening gunpowder smoke. A fresh spray of blood landed on her, and she knew Schroeder had just been hit. Yet the former soldier hadn’t reacted. It was either a fatal shot or his body was now beyond pain. She peered into the smoky gloom and saw the leader of the torturers. He was backed against the house, a weapon in his hand. He spotted Anika and the pistol’s aim dropped to her position. Closing her eyes was a reflex.

She never heard the shot. A frantic burst of rifle fire covered all other sounds. She did feel the impact, a razor slash of fire that tore along her outer thigh. The fusillade pouring into the garden had distracted the leader and thrown off his aim. Crying out and clamping a hand over the long wound, she wriggled deeper under the bench. Her body was drenched in sweat. She was sobbing and didn’t care. A bullet ricocheted against a metal chair, and a burned ember of steel fell into the blood, sizzling obscenely as it cooled.

Out of the gloom, the torturer lurched toward her, his body spasming as the rifles found their mark. He took half a dozen hits before falling to his knees and then collapsing to the ground. His eyes were fixed in death. Anika noticed that his knife had fallen just out of her reach. She twisted to see if the leader was still there and saw two silhouettes running through the haze, racing toward the open farmhouse door. Bullets pounded into the building after them, sparking more shrapnel from the stone. An instant later, a car’s engine rumbled to life and the big Mercedes pulled from the house.

Just as quickly as the firefight had started, it was over. The echoes of gunfire faded even as Anika’s hearing returned.

She spat the taste of gunpowder from her mouth, not knowing if she should move from her hiding place. She wanted to lie there forever. Then she heard Schroeder moan above her and knew she had to tend to him. It was instinctive.

Okay, AK, move. Painfully, she rolled from under the bench, clutching at the oozing wound in her leg. Nothing happened when she raised her head, no gunfire, no shouts.

The bullet had caught Otto Schroeder in the lower chest. The blood bubbling from the neat hole appeared carbonated. A lung shot. Fatal if he didn’t get attention immediately. She looked into his face. Schroeder stared at her with the certainty of his own death.

“Help!” Anika shouted into the twilight, hoping to draw the attention of whoever had fired into the garden with rifles, the people who’d just saved her life. “Help us please!”

There was no response from beyond the garden walls. A minute might have passed — she didn’t know. Whoever had just saved her by killing two of Schroeder’s torturers and chasing off the others was not coming. Anika was on her own. Ignoring the throb radiating from the gash in her thigh, she turned to the old man. Schroeder’s breathing became more shallow, and less blood was coming from his injuries. Even if she called an ambulance right now, she doubted it would arrive before he died.

She knelt gingerly next to his head, taking one of his big farmer’s hands into hers. All she could offer was comfort.

“You’ll be okay, Mr. Schroeder.” Her sympathy felt flat. Both knew it was an empty platitude.

“I was told someone would come for me,” Schroeder breathed through bleeding lips. “But I beat them. They didn’t get what they wanted.”

“Who were they?” Despite everything that happened, Anika wanted to know.

“I don’t know. A call one week ago said people were coming to question me. It was a warning I ignored. Then I got two more calls, but nothing was ever said.” Anika thought that one of those calls must have been Opa Jacob. It was a favorite trick of his to make sure his quarry was around: just ring and hang up at hello. The other call could have been the torturers doing the exact same thing.

“But who are they?” She pressed, fearful that he would die before she understood what had just happened.

“My past.” Schroeder coughed up a clot of blood that Anika wiped away with her sleeve. “I was warned a week ago that it wouldn’t end with me. I thought I was the last to know.”

“Know what, Mr. Schroeder?”

“The truth.” Even with death rapidly approaching, he wouldn’t reveal why he had been tortured.

Inspiration struck her. “About the gold? They wanted to know about the gold, didn’t they?”

Pain had pulled his face in on itself, but he managed to open his eyes wide and stare at her. His voice quavered. “How do you know about that? Are you with the people who warned me?”

Anika ignored his questions. “The men who did this to you knew about the gold and wanted to know what happened to it. Is that right?”

“The gold is only a small part of it,” he dismissed and then fell silent. For a moment Anika thought he’d died, but then he squeezed her hand. “They wanted to know if I’ve told anyone about the rest of it.”

“Have you?”

“I always knew the secret was worth killing for.” He smiled a bloody smile. “I just never imagined I would have to die for it.”

“What secret?” Anika asked frantically. He wasn’t making sense. She had another minute or two before he was gone. “What secret, Mr. Schroeder?”

“Pandora’s Curse. I have prayed my entire life that the nightmare would end with me. But now I know it won’t. It’s going to continue.”

“What is Pandora’s Curse?”

Schroeder closed his eyes tightly, fighting death by force of will. “They told me there is a man who can help…”

“The people who warned you about these… torturers? They told you someone can help?” The old man nodded vaguely. “Who? Who can help?”

Schroeder’s chest rattled and he coughed another, larger mass of blood. “An American. Philip Mercer,” he wheezed, the words no more than a whisper. His grip on Anika’s hand relaxed. His arm fell off the bench and into the pool of their mingled blood. He was dead.

Anika wasn’t surprised to feel tears on her cheeks. Somehow this old soldier had kept a horrible secret, and at the end of his life, his silence had killed him. She slumped next to the body. The smoke had cleared, and the full horror of what had just happened was splashed against the garden walls and leached into the dirt between the flagstones.

With an effort, she firmed her jaw and forced herself to separate herself from what had just taken place. Anika had to think like a doctor and not a victim.

Okay, AK, get to work. There were three dead from multiple gunshot wounds and one injured. Her wounded leg was the first priority. The pain was something she could work through, but she would need stitches to close the gash. That meant a hospital. She knew that calling an ambulance would put her in the middle of a police investigation and that was out of the question. Once she explained her presence here, it was only a matter of time before Schroeder’s torturers learned her identity, and judging by their savagery, she would be killed long before they were apprehended. The nurse with the apartment next to hers could suture the wound, and Anika herself could get the drugs she needed for infection and pain if necessary.

Using the rough stone wall as a crutch to gain her feet, Anika swayed until her head cleared. It wasn’t blood loss accounting for the dizziness, she thought. It was the shock of Schroeder’s death and the others. She had to get out of here. Pausing at the gate, she considered the possibility of driving all the way home and knew she wouldn’t make it. Once she reached Ismaning, she would call her neighbor to come get her. She had to get her car away from the scene and knew that was something she could handle.

Anika was panting by the time she got to her car. She grabbed a towel from the backseat and tied a rough bandage around the foot-long slash with the strap from her backpack. The last of the water was like a flash flood on a dry desert when it reached her throat, cooling and nourishing and desperately needed. She used another towel to wipe the worst of the blood from her face, arms, and legs. In the rear-view mirror, her eyes shone with equal measures of fear and resolve.

Anika took one last look at the house, a single lamp in a front room casting a feeble glow into the night. She was certain her being here at the same time as the torturers wasn’t a coincidence. She dialed her opa’s number but cut the connection when she heard his gruff “Hello.” Anika sagged. He was all right. She’d feared that the gunmen had learned about Schroeder through Jacob Eisenstadt, using the same techniques they’d employed against the former soldier.

If the information hadn’t come from Opa, it had come from another source. When she was up to it, she’d talk to him about it. But not tonight. And that was only one of the mysteries that needed to be solved — that she needed to solve. Who had tipped off Schroeder’s killers? Who had saved her life by chasing them away? She felt they had to be the same people who warned Schroeder a week ago but she didn’t know how they knew to be here tonight. Who was this person he mentioned? Mercer? And how could he help? Finally and possibly most tantalizing, what was Pandora’s Curse?

She put her car into gear and pulled away, needing all of her concentration to keep the vehicle on the narrow road. One other question worked into the back of her mind. What could possibly be so valuable that Schroeder had dismissed an enormous shipment of gold as only “a small part of it”?