The Quest for Valhalla

Chapter 21

In the smoky room no bigger than a public toilet in the slums of Germany, the old man sat crouched over on his bed. It was a misty morning outside his window where his small apartment room overlooked the outskirts of Glasgow. For a man with his heritage and an affluent family who funded his prosperous career as a literary genius and teacher in World War II Germany, his accommodations were dreadfully modest.

He was not here in Scotland for keeps, but he loved the culture and the antiquity of the castles of the country. Its history was rich and bloody, riddled with battles and cries of freedom, something he was intimately familiar with. Although at a ripe age, he was astute in his dealings, opting for an obscure life far removed from the splendor of his younger years. Still he got to utilize his studies, his decades of knowledge in fields that interested him. For all this, he was grateful, not having to slave in front of some thankless group of arrogant mites in some University lecture hall until he keels over in a high back chair with a glass of brandy at the age of 86 or something.

His feet ached, deformed tarsal claws, plagued by bunions leading into brittle, yellow toenails that he placed gently into the porcelain bowl of steaming water, infused with Epsom Salts and lavender. A crooked groan escaped him as he sank his aged feet in and immersed them both. Painful bolts of nerve twitches shot through his ankles and lower calves, evoking a moan of agony from him. On his withered frame, his white vest folded like a half mast flag, only touching him where the bones protruded under malnourished skin. On his scalp, there was nothing but grey fluff forming a halo when the morning light hit him from behind, but his body showed its old age with the longish white hair on his back, shoulders and chest.

He sighed deeply, his scowl proof of his conscience.

Helping to set Nina up for her abduction by the Order left him feeling empty and sullen, but he had to comply or there would have been consequences. As this thought passed through his mind, he could hear his mother’s voice as his own reason, “This is what you get for getting involved with them, Hermann. It is your own doing when you allow yourself to be a puppet for that caliber of company.” A sad smile of defeat crept across his thin lips as he twitched his toes in the comfort of the water.

It had been raining so much lately, even for Scotland, and he wondered if there was some design which wished to deter him from meeting with Lita Røderic today, to receive his financial rewards for the successful capture of The Brotherhood’s pet, Dr. Nina Gould. For years, Herman Lockhart had been conducting business in this way, regardless of the client involved. He did own a bank account, but only used it for utilities and bills. Every questionable or secret transaction was concluded with an exchange of cold hard cash in his pocket. Besides, by the looks of him, no-one would ever have guessed how wealthy he was.

Professor Røderic had no qualms with his old world ways. In fact, she found it amusing that he still walked in the mid-20th Century and refused to catch up to new things, an endearing quality in her opinion. At times, she could really be quite likable, he thought to himself as he dressed, fixing his cravat just so like his Greta used to.

He gathered up his fedora and buttoned his coat and just before he left, he looked back into his room once more to make sure it was impeccable in his wake. It was a remnant of a terrible childhood, which preceded a teenage life not much the better. With his one hand securing his hat in the strong gust outside his lodging, he waited for his shuttle to collect him. An address was left at the reception desk of his current residence. In an envelope it contained a card with the name of an airstrip where he was to go. From there, he would be flown to the island of Coll, where the tall tyrant kept a fortress.

As he travelled through the morning mist of the Glasgow streets, he peered from the window at the passing scenery. It was a long way still to Edinburgh and he had time to take in the sights of the people and buildings. After a short while, everything became one grey portrait with no frame or signature in the corner, only a reminiscent vision of a time long ago. Whizzing past as the car sped up, the figures of people in coats and hats, some in raincoats that resembled cowls, wandered around in the cloak of fog and drizzle. The background was more opaque, but he could discern the grand, old buildings with their pointy roofs and the occasional spire which pointed to a careless god. They stood in cold dead stone, leering darkly over the specters that roamed the city streets in their aimless existence and he envied them their ignorance.

The sound of the car radio faded into a crackle and the newscast that had been on since he stepped into the luxury car, gradually transformed into Marlene Dietrich’s rendition of ‘Lili Marleen’. Static persisted on the radio, but he could hear the deep allure of her low-toned words float seamlessly over him, the same static that maintained the grey tableau before his eyes. Without any disturbance, he watched the modern pedestrians turn into his countrymen, the tarmac streets turned to cobbles and he was transported back to the Nalewki quarter, Warsaw, 1940.

Herman Lockhart looked down at the restraint on his wrist and saw a white armband with a blue Star of David upon it. He frowned in the sway of Marlene’s intoxicating echo and closed his eyes to make sense of the experience, but his effort was instead rewarded with a most dire memory that he had carefully buried over the years. Now it reached to him again from the soft soil of the unmarked grave, bothering the beauty of the green grass he had planted over the bed of death beneath. A putrid boney hand of the past took him by the ankle and burned his sins into his skin as he tried to run.

The awful memory grew flesh as he fell to the ground and smelled fresh gun powder in his nostrils. He could hear the sweet song still playing somewhere in the sky above him, as if some unseen and ever present loudspeakers conveyed her tale across miles of barren land and barbed wiring. But in his immediate vicinity, he could hear Dr. Gould’s voice. He was still on the ground, his face inches from the grass and he dared not look behind him.

“Look at me, Professor,” Nina said in a voice so clear he thought it was his own. Her tone was firm and challenging, as always, especially when he had heard her debating with scholars and academic peers.

“No. No,” he groaned in regret, pinching his eyes shut and smelling the wet soil in the grass entwine with the smell of furnace smoke.

“Why not? We need to talk, remember? Our meeting in Warriston Cemetery, remember? Just turn around and look at me,” she insisted, but Herman Lockhart could not face the beautiful historian he had betrayed. Guilt consumed him as he heard a man speaking to her, no, two men. Then suddenly Nina Gould began to protest wildly, her voice cut off by a violent grip to her neck, from the sounds of it.

“I’m so, so sorry, Nina!” Professor Lockhart begged for pardon, but she said nothing other than spewing death threats from behind the palm of a stronger individual. Professor Lockhart wept for the fate of his long standing colleague and client, but he could not face her. He simply could not look her in the eye after he had delivered her into the foulest embrace of a psychotic right wing elitist, which, may have sealed the doom of the world.

A painful moment in time replayed itself in his mind, forced by some unnatural power he could not resist.

In the streets of the Nalewki quarter of Warsaw, where he was a youth during the World War II, he was walking with his sister. Only a few nights before the Nazis had unexpectedly closed the ghetto, not allowing anyone to leave unless they wanted to meet their end swiftly and violently. Being teenagers, their mother had sent them to Kowalski, a well- known troublemaker in the close knit community, who was still, even after the executions of several Jews in his building, trading artifacts for food that he procured in his nefarious way.

Hermann’s mother had asked her children go out at dusk to see Kowalski and trade one of her most precious possessions for a loaf of bread and some fish. It was a peculiar item they had to trade, but they asked no questions. They were thrown into a time of crude danger where life meant nothing to their captors and slavery was a blessing. No more did they question any orders for fear of a bullet to the brain, but deep inside them there still lingered the rebellious nature of free will and the need to disobey. Under the radar of the oppressors, a lot of them moved, convening and assisting one another where they could. In terrible times like these, they had no choice but to rely on the help of their neighbors and in turn offer what they had.

In the half dark of the dusk, the two snuck into the brick building where Kowalski would have a look at the item they brought to barter with. They went up the narrow dark steps, hearing the German shouts on the other side of the wall where they were no longer allowed to pass. It was a freezing cold night, the sidewalks covered with old snow, half eaten by the day. On the stairs, it reeked of burnt coal and urine. Hermann felt his hands burn even in his pockets, stiff from the cold. His sister tailed him closely as they approached the illuminated doorway of Kowalski’s front door.

He suddenly appeared, cigarette drooping from his cracked dry lips. Over his beady eyes, his hat cast a shadow that accentuated his cheek bones, making his cheeks look more sunken than they were. The stubble of his beard gleamed in silver and his raspy voice whispered, “What are you doing here? Go home.”

“But my mother told you we were coming,” Hermann said, confused by the man’s unusual behavior. Normally Kowalski would be loud and vulgar. In his house there were always people, all kinds of people, but none of them wholesome. Now, it was quiet behind him in the sharp yellow glow of his ceiling light. Usually he only had two lamps shining in his house, but now all the lights were on and a strange sound of murmurs and rummaging came from deeper in the residence.

“For god’s sake, just go home! Both of you. Now!” Kowalski gritted his teeth in the lowest tone he could muster. His eyes came into view to both the children. They were wide and serious, not in rage, but in warning. He flicked his eyes sideways a few times to gesture that they should go, planting his calloused old hands against the doorframe. Outstretched, his skinny arms blocked their way from coming in.

“Was ist hier los?” They heard a loud, authoritative voice from inside the house, and immediately Kowalski winced, closing his eyes and freezing in his position.

“Just some dumb kids, Obersturmführer,” he answered without turning away from Hermann and his sister. “They are looking for my son, but he is not here…” he raised his voice to chase them off, “…and I don’t have time for silly children now.”

The siblings could see that Kowalski was warning them, and started walking away, but that same chilling voice summoned them back from the doorway where Kowalski had now disappeared from.

“Bitte,” was all it said, but that one word filled them both to the brim with terror. In their hearts, they could feel the rising doom envelop them and they knew they had to adhere… or die. “Come inside, please.”

The man sounded cordial, but so did they all. Demons with angelic voices singing lullabies to the souls they ripped from bodies, which was the nature of the Nazi. Now, all they could do was comply and hope for the best. Kowalski was seated in the corner of his dirty living room, looking quite pitiful against the moldy stains of the chipping beige paint of his apartment. In the bright light, it looked even more down-at-heel than usual and the two siblings stood tightly against one another in the entrance hall. The officer insisted with a smile, that they have a seat on the couch. Then he took his place opposite them and leaned forward to speak.

Hermann held his sister’s hand. It was shaking in his, but he gave her a light press to reassure her.

“Now, tell me your names,” the officer said, while Kowalski pulled up his knees against his chest and chewed his nails.

“Hermann Brozek and this is my sister, Sophia,” the young boy replied quickly.

“Gut, gut. Hermann, tell me what you are doing here at Kowalski’s house? He is not a nice man and I cannot imagine children coming to seek out his company,” he said calmly, his light blue eyes like steel. As Hermann opened his mouth to speak, the Obersturmführer added, “And don’t lie. I shall know.”

The boy briefly, and with much mumbling, rushed off something about selling something for bread.

“But you do have rations. Why do you need to disobey and scheme for more food?” the cold Gestapo devil asked in words that lacked any emotion whatsoever and it ran the siblings’ blood cold. Resisting the natural urge to explain that the 300 calories the Nazis allowed common individuals per day was not even adequate for basic survival, the young Hermann elected to choose a docile and simple answer, “We are still hungry, sir.”

Knowing full well that his superiors tried to gradually starve the Jews, he merely nodded and folded his hands between his knees.

“Hermann, what did you bring to trade with Kowalski, against the orders of The Führer?” he asked so amicably that the siblings anticipated the worst. They had to reveal it, they knew. He knew that they had brought something and obviously would not take no for an answer. From under the closed door, a gust of icy wind and feathery flakes of snow intruded, as if the world itself feared the consequences. Hesitantly, Hermann pulled the item from the inside of his thick woolen coat. It was an antique of sorts, belonging to his mother and her mother before her, he explained as the German officer took it from him with uncharacteristic respect and reverence. It was a brooch of considerable age, this was clear. Made from copper alloy, oval in shape, the piece seemed to have an enthralling effect on the officer.

“I would be very interested in purchasing this piece, my boy,” the man said as he scrutinized the piece from all sides, sweeping his thumb over the surface of it. He did not even look up at Hermann once as he spoke, completely obsessed with the piece. “Where is your mother? I will discuss a price with her.”

The two siblings led the Obersturmführer along the biting cold a few houses down to where their mother had her one light on, waiting on her children’s return. In his trail, the officer had his two men following, leaving the other two behind with Kowalski. Not a word was spoken as they made their way to Frau Brozek’s door.

Of course the slight, brunette widow was unpleasantly surprised to see the Gorget patches on the uniform before her — the three diagonal squares on one side, the infamous double lightning bolt ‘S’ motif on the other. He was SS and he stood with his arms around her two children like a father: the most terrifying sight she had ever seen in her life.

“My apologies for keeping them, Frau Brozek, but your children told me that you wished to sell this?” the officer said politely.

Hesitantly, knowing the cunning of the Nazi sharks, she replied, “Yes, sir, I was hoping to get some food… for the children.”

“Of course. Of course. May we come in?” he asked. In Nazi terms those words were never a request and she stepped aside, eager for her children to enter safely. Her heart throbbed erratically inside her and her hands were sweaty.

“Certainly.”

After sitting the children and their mother down on the couch, the officer explained that his great-grandfather had just such a piece that he had unfortunately lost track of. However, he did not like the way in which the woman’s eyes accused him of being a manipulative liar.

But he kept his mask on.

He also knew that this particular artifact was of Viking origin, discovered in the 19th Century, and was said to be harbored by one of the oldest enemies of the Third Reich. They were a secret society, unknown even to the Allied Forces and the Vatican. Their purpose was specific: to resist those who pursued explicitly the treasures of the old Aryan kingdoms, the Scandinavian treasures which held great power, power Hitler and Himmler actively tracked. It came directly from the Norse god Odin, as did all Aryan bloodlines, and those who held these treasures would reign supreme over the half-breed races infesting the earth. One of those treasures, an unspeakable evil trapped in the Holiest Hall of Odin, was kept hidden from the Nazis and they would uproot the very planet to find it.

Here was a solid piece of proof, a remnant of the old kingdom in his palm. If Frau Brozek knew what it was, she would not sell it, would she? Or was her family so important that she would relinquish such a power for bread? His eyes met hers. If she knew what the relic was, she would be the perfect interrogation candidate. To uncover the location of Odin’s hall would secure him the highest rank in the Führer's Reich.

He smiled, “Frau Brozek, I would like to invite you to dinner with me tonight.”