The Curse of Medusa

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Charles Grant tried hard to fight down his fear when Klaus Kiefel took possession of some kind of mystery delivery. Seeing half of the capital city destroyed had excited the German in an almost unnatural way, but this latest arrival seemed to delight him more than ever.

Whatever it was, it took two armed men to carry it into the room and place it in front of the boss. Sprayed on the side in black paint was a serial number: X422387-0, and Grant knew one thing — items catalogued in Archive 7 with an initial ‘X’ code were always related to the vital national interest of the United States.

Kiefel stared at the steel box with undisguised glee for a few moments before ordering his men to open the outer container. They obeyed and used a pair of hardened alloy bolt cutters to snap off the six padlocks with which they had secured the lid to the heavy container back in DC. Clearly they weren’t taking any risks with the contents.

Kiefel beamed. “Brought to us courtesy of an experimental UAV borrowed from the German Luftwaffe a few days ago. It travels at nearly seven thousand miles per hour, Mr Grant — too fast for even your fighter jets to shoot down.”

“How did it get past our radar?”

“It has the latest stealth technology and flies very, very high… you’ll have to do better than that!”

Jakob swung open the lid and recoiled in horror, while Angelika gave an appreciative nod.

Kiefel peered inside for the first time, his eyes wide with an almost childish anticipation.

“Remove the inner container!” he said, taking a step back.

As the men carried out his instructions, Kiefel turned and pulled a gas mask from the bench behind him. His men, including Angelika and Jakob, secured their own masks from their belts, and Kiefel tossed two casually at the former President and Partridge.

“I strongly recommend you wear it,” the German said coolly, and pulled his own mask on over his goatee beard.

Grant picked the mask up from the floor and brushed the dirt from it. “What about her?” he asked, nodding at the female security guard tied to the distillation unit.

“She won’t be needing one, Mr Grant… You!” he snapped, pointing his finger at one of the men. “Put the box on the bench and open it.”

The man, a young shaven-headed recruit in a black boiler suit moved cautiously forward and put his hands inside the steel container. For a few moments he struggled to get a good grip on the inner box, causing Kiefel to roll his eyes and sigh, but then he lifted it from the steel container and placed it carefully on the bench.

Grant stared at it through his gas mask, and then looked over at the guard with growing concern.

Kiefel did not share his disquiet. Instead, he put on a pair of military surplus NBC gloves and opened the inner box. Grant couldn’t see through the German’s mask, but he got the feeling he was smiling as he leaned over the small black box and started to undo a series of worn leather straps. Then, he gently pulled back the lid and peered inside.

He gasped and took a step back, shaking his head in disbelief.

“What the hell is going on?” Grant said.

Partridge looked at the President, fear and confusion on his face.

Jakob stepped forward and smashed his rifle butt in between Grant’s shoulder blades and sent him crashing to his knees where he cried out in pain.

Partridge stepped forward to defend the President but Angelika cocked her pistol and pointed it at the senior USSS man. “Back in your box, puppy.”

Kiefel laughed. “Jakob is simply teaching you good manners, Mr Grant. You must learn to be patient. You are not in charge any more… I am.”

Kiefel pulled something from the box and held it in his shaking hands.

Grant stared up at it from the tiled floor. At first he thought it was some kind of rotting fruit — a blackened cantaloupe melon came to mind, but then Kiefel turned and proudly showed it to Angelika and the other men.

Grant was aghast to see it was a severed head — a badly decomposed one — with black and blue skin all covered in blotches and stretched tight over the skull like dried-out Chamois leather. He was mortified with disgust and thought things could get no worse when he noticed that the black mass at the top of the skull which he had presumed was hair was in fact dozens of dead, desiccated black snakes — tiny and twisted around in knots. He felt like throwing up, but he was also strangely fixated by the terrible object in Kiefel’s hands.

“What the hell is that?” he asked, his words muffled by the gas mask.

“This, Mr Grant, is the head of Medusa.”

Grant moved back involuntarily along the dirty floor. “What are you talking about, Kiefel? There is no such thing as Medusa! Are you insane?”

“I take offense to that remark, Mr Grant. I am calculating, scheming, and manipulative, and I also have some bad qualities… I am not, however, insane.”

“You’re wrong, Kiefel! How can you believe that thing is what you say it is, if you’re not totally crazy? Medusa was a myth, damn it!”

“I see American education does not extend to the Classics! We know from our reading of Ovid that Medusa was a real, mortal being — her head of snakes… these snakes… was given to her by Athena as punishment for desecrating her temple when she slept with Poseidon!”

“Fairy tales…” Grant said, but he was no longer sure of it.

“Sadly, we can never know the truth, but that is Ovid’s account.” Kiefel held the head up to his face and stared at it almost lovingly through the mask. “Others claim Poseidon was besotted with her, but when she rejected him he grew enraged and used his divine power to turn her hair into snakes.”

“You did all this killing just to get this thing released from Archive 7?”

Kiefel beamed. “There’s no need to congratulate me, Mr Grant — it’s implied.”

“For God’s sake, Kiefel — you need help!”

Kiefel was unmoved. “She was still incredibly beautiful, but the snakes terrified anyone who looked at her and turned them into stone… this was mighty Poseidon’s revenge on the woman who had rejected him.”

“Please, just stop this!” Grant watched the madman’s eyes through the gas mask, distorted by the warped plastic lenses.

The German ran a hand down the skull’s cheekbone. “Some say that when Perseus was sent to kill her, he took a glass shield so he could look at her reflection and never at the Gorgon herself. This was how he was victorious. This was how he beheaded Medusa without getting turned to stone!”

Grant ignored the lecture. “For God’s sake give that woman a gas mask, Kiefel!”

His voice muffled through the mask, Kiefel sighed. “When Perseus returned to Greece, he gave Athena Medusa’s head, which she wore on her shield — her aegis — as a weapon, allowing her to turn her enemies to stone simply by showing them the head.”

Grant shook his head in despair and banged his fist into the dirty floor. “You really are insane!”

“I am insane for liberating Medusa, but your government is not insane for storing it in secret for decades? How sane is it to withhold the real truth of our world from all the people?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Of course not…” Kiefel offered a low, guttural belly laugh. “Of course you know nothing about Medusa being stored in Archive 7! I expect you also know nothing about why the severed head of Medusa — a Greek Gorgon — was in northern Norway? About who took it there and why?”

“As a matter of fact I do not!”

“Have you ever heard of Valhalla, Mr Grant?”

“Of course.”

“Perhaps that will help you put the dots together, but in the meantime, I have business to attend to.”

“I’m not playing your games, Kiefel. Whatever the hell that thing is, I know you can’t possibly believe looking at some dead snakes can turn a man to stone!”

“I never said that, Mr Grant.”

Kiefel slowly walked the head over to the female security guard. She kicked and struggled against the ropes binding her to the support post of the distillation unit.

“You see, when Poseidon turned her hair to snakes, this was the act of a spurned, enraged lover, and it became her curse — the true curse of Medusa was that she could never fall in love with anyone without turning them to stone. Now the curse of Medusa will fall on the entire world, starting with America which I intend to use as a testing ground. Jakob!”

Jakob padded across the room and gripped the security guard’s head, forcing her to look at the severed, mummified head of Medusa. The young woman recoiled in terror.

“Now, Mr Grant, you will see the true power of Medusa — the world’s most ancient doomsday weapon!”

Grant wanted to look away, but his inherent sense of leadership and responsibility forced him to behold the ancient evil that was unfolding before his very eyes. He couldn’t turn his back on this poor woman, not now.

Kiefel held the skull up to the woman, whose head was now in the vice-like grip of Jakob’s broad, gloved hands. He moved the skull closer until it was almost touching her terrified, sweat-streaked face, and her screams echoed in every room and corridor of the sprawling, abandoned processing plant.