The Lance

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

At Andrews, Rice ordered the Secret Service to provide Nick with transportation. They gave him a shiny black Suburban with armor reinforced doors and wheels, tinted bullet proof glass and a Remington pump twelve gauge set upright between the front seats. The vehicle was fast, too. He watched for anyone following and took a circuitous route around the city. When he was sure no one was behind, he headed for the safe house.

He pulled into the garage and went inside. Ronnie and Selena were at the kitchen table. Ronnie was flashing cards filled with diagrams and data at Selena, teaching her to store essential information in her mind with only a brief look.

"Hey, Mr. TV personality himself. Welcome home, Nick." Ronnie put the cards on the table.

"TV Personality?"

Selena said, "You've been on the news all day. The networks can't get enough of you jumping into that hole and protecting the President. Over here, you're a hero. In the Mid East, you're a murderer. You've even been hung in effigy. They've made a martyr out of the man who tried to shoot you and Rice."

Nick felt a headache starting. Harker and Stephanie came into the room. Director Harker wore casual sweats. The outfit was black and white, if not up to her usual standard of elegance. She looked tired, more frayed around the edges than he'd ever seen before.

"Nick, I know you just got here, but we need to go over what we've found out."

"You mean Dysart?"

"That and more. Let's sit down."

The silver pen came out and Harker began tapping. The sound echoed in his head like a ball ratcheting around a pinball machine.

"Dysart mentioned Antarctica in his emails. A German research station in Antarctica burned to the ground two nights ago. The fire was set with phosphorous grenades and all personnel were shot and killed. A plane landed and took off around the time of the raid. The German government has sealed the whole thing off and clamped the lid down on inquiries."

"If they aren't talking, how come we know about it?"

"Stephanie hacked into Berlin's intelligence network looking for reaction to the Jerusalem bombing. She found the Antarctica reports."

Steph made a mock curtsey.

Nick rubbed his forehead, then the back of his neck. The headache was kicking in big time. "What's got them going?"

"Nazis."

"Nazis? As in Hitler, swastikas, all that stuff? How do Nazis come into it?"

"Two scientists found an old bunker complex in the mountains the day before the station was attacked. No one knew it was there. They discovered a radio station, barracks, generators and crates marked with swastikas. They opened one of the crates and found rare paintings missing since the war. The radio had swastikas on it and one of those Enigma coding machines next to it. There was also a vault they couldn't open.

"They called it in to Berlin. That was on Wednesday afternoon. Early Thursday morning someone showed up, blew the door off the vault and cleaned the place out. It looks like a military op. They didn't leave anyone behind to talk about it. Berlin thinks this was a secret Nazi base rumored to exist since the war, built to research experimental weapons. Everyone thought it was a myth, until now."

"What was in the vault?"

"No one knows. The only things left behind were files. Inventories of jewelry, gold teeth, wedding rings and other property stolen from Holocaust victims. All neatly cataloged."

Carter thought about that. Gold teeth and wedding rings. Who could fathom the pathological cruelty of the Nazi mind?

Harker continued. "Inside the vault were two mummified bodies in World War II German naval uniforms. They'd been shot at close range with a pistol. One of them had ID that showed they came off a submarine, U-886."

"You think this is what Dysart was referring to in his email?"

"It must be. There's not much happening in Antarctica. The email said the 'key' to Parsifal had been found there, whatever that is."

"How do we use the Antarctica connection?" Nick tugged at his ear.

"We need more data."

Harker's pen tapped. Nick wanted to snatch it from her and break it in half. His head was throbbing. The room vibrated with a faint light.

"What about the sub those mummies came from?" Ronnie said. "Why was it there? If we knew that, we might know why someone came back years later and took out that research station. That's pretty cold, killing a bunch of civilian eggheads studying penguins and snow."

"We have the number of the sub." Harker tapped her pen. "There should be records, maybe an action report. Almost all the U-Boats have been accounted for. We could start by tracking it down."

"That's easy. We can Google it." Stephanie got her laptop and plugged it in. It booted up and routed through the mainframe sitting in the other room. Steph tapped keys and entered a search. In a few seconds the display screen showed a numerical list of all Nazi submarines. She clicked on U-886.

U-886 was listed as a type IX D2, built in July 1944 by AG Weser at the Bremen yards. She'd been sunk with depth charges by a British destroyer on 22 February, 1945. Stephanie pulled up the Admiralty report. The co-ordinates of the action placed the sub's grave at fifteen miles east and south of Mar del Plata on the Argentine coast, on the continental shelf in 35 fathoms of water.

Elizabeth coughed. "It looks like they were running for Argentina. Type IX D2's were converted to carry cargo. They must have had something on board."

"Or they left something behind," Nick said. "If the sub was carrying something away, wouldn't they have taken the crates with the paintings?"

"Why leave anything in Antarctica? The war was almost over and they were heading for safety." Selena looked at the screen. "They couldn't have planned on coming back anytime soon."

Nick thought. "They killed two of their own. Why would they do that?"

"Only one reason makes sense," Ronnie said. "Whoever shot those guys didn't want them talking about what was in the vault."

"And the paintings were outside, not in the vault." Stephanie picked it up. "So whatever was in there was more important to the Nazis than a bunch of Old Masters. That's got to be something pretty special."

"Whatever it was, they never came back for it," Ronnie said.

"Until a few days ago." Harker tapped her pen, set it aside. "Why not before?"

"Maybe they didn't know where it was." Ronnie cracked his knuckles. "Maybe the location went down with the sub. When the scientists found it someone jumped on it before the German government could step in."

Harker frowned. "That means someone would have to monitor transmissions from the Antarctic or have deep contacts in Germany. Then they would have to mount an armed expedition and get it on site in less than a day. That's pretty sophisticated."

The pen came out again, tapping.

"Steph hasn't been able to track the other end of those emails yet. It might be worth it to see if there's anything left on that sub. Something that could tell us what Dysart was referring to."

"If we can find it," Nick said. "Even if we could, there's not going to be much left. It's a waste of time."

He didn't usually argue with Harker, but he was tired. The headache was stabbing him in back of his left eye. He felt nauseous.

She looked at him. "Do you have a better idea?"

"No, but it sounds like a wild goose chase to me."

"We've got the coordinates in the action report. It's a long shot, but if we can find the wreck, I think it's worth a try. It's the only direct connection to Antarctica and whatever happened there. The only connection to Dysart."

"How are we going to get to it?"

"We'd have to dive on it. You must know someone, Nick."

"As a matter of fact, I do know someone. Ronnie knows him, too. His name is Lamont Cameron. He just got out of the Seals."

Ronnie nodded. "Shadow? He'd be perfect."

"Shadow?" Harker's pen stopped moving.

"His mom named him after Lamont Cranston," Nick said, "the Shadow on the radio show. That's how he got the nickname."

"Can you get hold of him?"

"Probably. His mom lives in D.C. She would know where he is. I can track him down, but I still think it's a waste of time."

Harker looked annoyed. "Do that. If he's interested, brief him and bring him here."

"What did Arslanian's flash drive have on it?"

"It's encoded. Steph hasn't cracked it yet."

Later, after he'd gone upstairs, Nick sat on the edge of the bed. His head was splitting. The stitches on his leg were inflamed and sore, he ached from being blown down twice in almost as many days, and he was jet lagging from the air journeys. His left hand was painful and stiff. He didn't know if he should lie down or throw up.

I'm getting too old for this, he thought. Not for the first time.

Selena sat down on the bed. The movement made his stomach turn over. He reached the bathroom just in time. When he came out, Selena helped him undress.

The last thing he remembered was the feel of her slipping into bed beside him and the warm curling of her naked body against his.