soon to be useless; the next contained Swiss francs, always useful; and the last contained American currency, nice and crisp, counterfeited by the Abwehr just last year.
What else?
A handwritten copy of the interrogation by an inquisitor of a heretic in Cologne in 1241. The cleric had been looking for heretics and found a man who still worshiped the old gods. The original document had been lost, but was copied many times, always by hand, never printed in a pamphlet or book. Krohn had received this copy from Himmler himself. The answers to the cleric’s questions, probably encouraged by torture, were a gold mine, including one long entry that described the sacrifice of virgins to become brides of Odin. Krohn could still recall the summer night that he had read those words, at the table of a rustic home on a large farm that the SS owned, feeling an electric charge at the thought of reviving this most sacred of rituals. How many centuries had Odin waited for new girls?
Two heavy books, weighing over a kilo each, printed in Lübeck in 1521, so rare that Krohn knew of only two other copies, one in the SS library at Wewelsburg Castle and other purported to be under lock and key at the Vatican. It had always irritated Krohn that the Führer had decided to respect the farcical international rules and treat the Vatican as its own nation, not sending troops into that warren of churches and monasteries that occupied less than half of a square kilometer. Krohn had fantasized about being with SS research teams who pushed the black-robed priests aside and went into the archives. As they say in westerns, that would have been the mother lode of all mother lodes.
These two volumes, Tales of Peasants, recounted stories that the author had recorded from among the peasants of northern Germany, Denmark, and Sweden. Written in an old dialect of German, reading them required a dictionary and sustained concentration. The stories were often only dimly remembered, having been washed by hundreds of years of Christianity. Many were useless, but that made the gems gleam that much brighter, knowledge making its way through the years directly up from the source.
A folder contained pictures of rune stones in Sweden, stark black and white, haunting images that told so much to a man who could read the runes. No one could read every one of the runes—that knowledge had died out—but Krohn was pretty good at it. All went into the valise.
The book Sacred Geodicy: Leys of the Ancients, published in Dresden in 1883, dictated where sacred buildings should be built. The leys, lines of force crossing the surface of the Earth, intersected at certain points of extraordinary power. The Vatican was built on such a nexus, which was not surprising, since the ancient Romans had known that place to be special. Jerusalem was another such nexus, as was Wewelsburg Castle. The Temple of Odin was built on a minor nexus, not as powerful as others, but one of the strongest in Germany. A master dowser from East Prussia, really just a peasant farmer, descended from a long line of peasant farmers, had done the work with two freshly cut birch rods, held out in front of his body as he walked. He refused any payment, explaining that the reichsmarks would compromise his gift.
On an inspired guess, Krohn took the farmer to Braunau am Inn in Austria. The farmer found many strong ley lines, though they lay confused across the landscape of the small town. Krohn was privately pleased. He had expected the birthplace of the Führer to be like that.
The next book was by the Austrian mystic Guido von List, The Secret of the Runes, the Leipzig edition published in 1908. He had revived Wotanism, worshiping the ancient German god Wotan. Krohn identified Wotan with Odin. Much of the information came from the Icelandic sagas, since von List had discovered that the Vikings who settled that northern island had been refugees from northern Germany, fleeing the Christian priests. This particular book was special to Krohn. He had read it when only fifteen years old and it had given him direction ever since. He often quoted long passages from it and fancied that he had memorized every word. As much as he cherished those worn pages, he put the book back. He could always find another copy.
“She’s dressed now, Standartenführer,” Karl said from the doorway.
Krohn twisted around, irritated that the soldier had violated his inner sanctum. None of his soldiers had ever even been in the house. Only his housekeeper was allowed into the house and she was forbidden to enter the library. Krohn stifled the angry outburst on his lips; times had changed. This would no longer be his home.
“Get some handcuffs from the storage shed and confine her hands. Get another set of handcuffs and attach her to the door of my car. That should free you up to go get whatever you and your brother want to take from the longhouse. Oh, and take your winter gear.”
“We are going on a trip, Standartenführer?”
“A very long trip. A trip to save Germany.”
CHAPTER NINE
Fritz Steinhauer stood near the trees at the edge of the clearing in front of the chalet, relieving himself. As he drew circles on the ground, he whistled softly to himself, a tune that he heard sung for the first time a couple of weeks earlier in a café in Munich. He and his brother had earned leave for one day. They walked the twenty kilometers into town, spent all their money, and managed to walk back, blurry-eyed from drink. Fritz couldn’t remember the lyrics—he always had difficulty getting words to stick in his brain—but he always remembered a tune.
There had been a prostitute in Munich, whom he shared with his brother. Pleasant memories there. And that girl, the one now in the chalet, the redheaded bride of Odin that the colonel had insisted that they take. Just thinking of her led to a frustrating erection.
Buttoning up his camouflage pants, Fritz picked up his Sturmgewehr. After so many years of carrying a bolt-action rifle, this new Storm Rifle gave him such visceral pleasure. He would love to have used it in the real battles that he had fought. The last enemy soldier that he had seen, the first in seven months, was that short American that the colonel had not allowed him to kill. Fritz was not a dumb man; he understood the need to be quiet, but why not use his knife on the man? As happened too often, that clever idea only occurred to him later.
The sound of a vehicle coming down road from the temple jerked up his head. He rushed over to a mound of dirt, pressed his body to the ground and laid his Sturmgewehr on top, sighting down the road.
Carter noticed a clearing ahead and instinctively eased the pressure of his foot on the accelerator. He noticed sparks flying off the hood of the jeep at the same time that he heard the rapid rattle of a machine gun. Part of him puzzled over why the fire sounded so odd; not from a light machine gun or from a submachine gun, something new that put too many bullets in the air too fast for his comfort.
Slamming on the brakes, Carter skewed to the left, placing the jeep to directly face the incoming fire. That positioned the engine block as a shield and made it easy to fire the .30-caliber machine gun directly back. As soon as they ground to a stop, dust and grass flying, Ferro stood and emptied Carter’s carbine towards the bad guy.
Where was their own machine gun? Carter looked to his right and saw the slack face of the greenhorn, pasty cheeks, mouth gaping open, his shirt soaked with blood. Tugging out the field dressing from his first aid pouch, Carter pressed on the man’s chest, desperate to stop the flowing blood.
Ferro finished with the carbine, stood up in the jeep, leaned over the two front men, worked the release on the .30-caliber, and let loose. Carter glanced up to see the signature of the bullets down the road—flying bark and clumps of dirt. Ferro hosed down the entire area that the enemy fire had come from. Carter raised his arm to shelter his face from the falling spent shells and links, and leaned over to use his body to shield the greenhorn. The noise reverberated through his skull.
Inexperienced in working the .30-caliber, it was not surprising that Ferro failed to conserve ammunition by making shorter bursts; after half
