The Charlemagne Pursuit

FORTY-FIVE

RAMSEY SHOWED HIS CREDENTIALS AND DROVE INTO FORT LEE. The trip south from Washington had taken a little over two hours. The base was one of sixteen army cantonments built at the outset of World War I, named for Virginia's favorite son, Robert E. Lee. Torn down in the 1920s and converted into a state wildlife sanctuary, the site was reactivated in 1940 and became a bustling center of war activity. Over the past twenty years, thanks to its proximity to Washington, its facilities had been both expanded and modernized.

He wound a path through a maze of training and command facilities that accommodated a variety of army needs, mainly logistics and management support. The navy leased three warehouses in a far corner among a row of military storage units. Access to them was restricted by numeric locks and digital verification. Two of the warehouses were managed by the navy's central command, the third by naval intelligence.

He parked and left the car, drawing his coat closely around his shoulders. He stepped beneath a metal porch and punched in a code, then slid his thumb into the digital scanner.

The door clicked open.

He entered a small anteroom whose overhead lights activated with his presence. He walked to a bank of switches and illuminated the cavernous space beyond, visible through a plate-glass window.

When had he last visited? Six years ago?

No, more like eight or nine.

But his first visit had been thirty-eight years ago. He noticed that things inside weren't much different, besides the modern security. Admiral Dyals had brought him initially. Another blustery winter day. February. About two months after he returned from the Antarctic.

"We're here for a reason," Dyals said.

He'd wondered about the trip. He'd spent a lot of time at the warehouse the past month, but all that abruptly ended a few days ago when the mission was disbanded. Rowland and Sayers had returned to their units, the warehouse itself had been sealed, and he'd been reassigned to the Pentagon. On the ride south from Washington the admiral had said little. Dyals was like that. Many feared this man-not from temper, which he rarely displayed, nor from verbal abuse, which he avoided as disrespectful. More from an icy stare of eyes that never seemed to blink.

"Did you study the file on Operation Highjump?" Dyals asked. "The one I provided."

"In detail."

"And what did you notice?"

"That where I was in Antarctica corresponded precisely to a location the Highjump team explored."

Three days ago Dyals had handed him a file marked HIGHLY CLASSIFIED. The information contained inside was not part of the official record that Admirals Cruzen and Byrd filed after their Antarctic mission. Instead the report was from a team of army specialists who'd been included among the forty-seven hundred men assigned to Highjump. Byrd himself had commanded them on a special reconnaissance of the northern shoreline. Their reports had only been provided to Byrd, who'd personally briefed the then chief of naval operations. What he'd read amazed him.

"Before Highjump," Dyals said, "we were convinced the Germans had constructed Antarctic bases in the 1940s. U-boats had been all over the South Atlantic both during and shortly after the war. The Germans mounted a major exploratory mission there in 1938. Had plans to return. We thought they did and just didn't tell anybody. But it was all crap, Langford. Pure crap. The Nazis didn't go to Antarctica to establish bases."

He waited.

"They went to find their past."

Dyals led the way into the warehouse and threaded a path through wooden crates and metal shelving. He stopped and pointed to one row of shelves loaded with rocks covered with a curious mixture of swirls and curlicues.

"Our people in Highjump located some of what the Nazis found in '38. The Germans were following information they'd uncovered that dated back to the time of Charlemagne. One of their own, Hermann Oberhauser, discovered it."

He recognized the surname, from NR-1A's crew. Dietz Oberhauser, field specialist.

"We approached Dietz Oberhauser about a year ago," Dyals said. "Some of our R and D folks were researching German archives captured from the war. The Germans thought that there might be things to learn in Antarctica. Hermann Oberhauser became convinced that an advanced culture, one that predated our own, lived there. He thought they were long-lost Aryans, and Hitler and Himmler wanted to know if he was right. They also thought that if the civilization was more advanced they might know useful things. In those days, everyone was looking for a break."

Which hadn't changed.

"But Oberhauser fell out of favor. Pissed Hitler off. So he was silenced and shunned. His ideas abandoned."

Ramsey pointed to the rocks. "Apparently he was right. There was something to find."

"You read the file. You were there. Tell me, what do you believe?"

"We didn't find anything like this."

"Yet the United States spent millions of dollars to send nearly five thousand men to Antarctica. Four men died during that venture. Now eleven more are dead and we've lost a hundred-million-dollar submarine. Come now, Ramsey. Think."

He didn't want to disappoint this man who'd shown so much confidence in his abilities.

"Imagine a culture," Dyals said, "that developed tens of thousands of years before anything we know. Before the Sumerians, the Chinese, the Egyptians. As tronomical observations and measurement, weights, volumes, a realistic concept of the earth, advanced cartography, spherical geometry, navigational skills, mathematics. Let's say they excelled in all these centuries before we ever did. Can you imagine what they may have learned? Dietz Oberhauser told us that his father went to Antarctica in 1938. Saw things, learned things. The Nazis were total fools-pedantic, parochial, arrogant-so they couldn't appreciate what all that meant."

"But it seems, Admiral, that we too suffered from ignorance. I read the file. The conclusions from Highjump were that these stones, here in the warehouse, were from some sort of ancient race, perhaps an Aryan race. Everybody seemed concerned about that. It seems we bought into the myth the Nazis formulated about themselves."

"We did, which was our mistake. But that was a different time. Truman's people thought the whole thing too political to deal with publicly. They didn't want anything around that lent any credence to Hitler or the Germans. So they stamped TOP SECRET on the whole Highjump venture and sealed everything away. But we did ourselves a great disservice."

Dyals pointed ahead, at a closed steel door. "Let me show you what you never saw while you were here."

Ramsey now faced the same door.

A refrigerated compartment.

The one he'd entered thirty-eight years ago for the first and only time. That day Admiral Dyals had issued him an order-one he'd followed ever since-leave him alone. That order had now been rescinded but, before he acted, he'd come to make sure they were still here.

He grasped the latch.