The nemesis manifesto, p.32
The Nemesis Manifesto, page 32
“How do you know that’s where Nemesis is?”
“You told me, Peter.”
“I did? How? When?”
“Remember when you told me that your aunt Lyudmila showed you two or three photos of her brother, your father?”
Limas’s brows knit together. “Sure. But I thought you didn’t believe me.”
“I have an eidetic memory,” Evan said, “and this is what you told me, verbatim: ‘But he was much younger then, before he was stationed in Parechgadem, a place I never heard of and couldn’t find on any map.’” Evan glanced at Limas. “You remember saying that as well?”
“Of course I do. But—”
“I wasn’t paying close enough attention to you at the time … honestly, I was so concentrated on whether or not to believe you were Lyudmila’s nephew. You calling her ‘Aunt Lyudmila,’ it threw me.”
The day had grown dark, as if with an eclipse, and a wind had got up. It was as if the violent storm that had delayed them in Tbilisi had followed them here into the Bavarian Alps. But here snow, not rain, was coming.
“You also said that she had told you where that place was, where she had rescued me. And last night, I couldn’t sleep, I kept running our conversations back through my mind, thinking it all through. Parechgadem. It’s the Old High German name of Berchtesgaden, which, ironically, means ‘hay shed’ or ‘one-room hut.’”
Limas shook his head. “I’m still not getting it. What does that have to do with—”
“Berchtesgaden was Hitler’s summer home and home base of the Third Reich.”
“I thought that was Berlin.”
“A common misconception,” Evan told him. “In fact, Berliners hated Hitler and the Nazis in general. The Third Reich’s high command trusted only Bavarians, who embraced Hitler and his fascist policies wholeheartedly, never Berliners.”
Again, she glanced at Limas. “Do you see the other piece of irony here, Peter?”
Limas thought a moment. “The parallels to America now?”
“Exactly. Fascism is embraced in the countryside, where wealth and education are in short supply. It’s always the big cities that fight the hardest against any form of extremism. Germany then, America now.”
“So, your thought is where better for Nemesis to have its headquarters than in the Bavarian Alps.”
Evan nodded. “And somewhere in Berchtesgaden, the better to absorb his dark power.”
“Christ,” Limas breathed.
“That’s one way of putting it,” Evan said dryly.
Snow started falling, a silent curtain, muffling even the smallest sounds of the world around them.
45
Snow muffled everything but their voices.
“Almost there,” Hans said in heavily accented English, so Brenda knew he wanted her to understand what he was saying.
Fritz chuckled evilly. “Surprises galore, for this one here.”
“Surprises are hardly the word for them,” Hans said, peering ahead into the snowy road. They had turned off the A8 some twenty-five minutes ago, by Brenda’s inexact count, and had been snaking steadily up the mountain on a secondary road.
“What would you call them, then?” Fritz asked, though it seemed to her that he was only marginally interested in the answer.
“Terrors,” Hans said definitively. “I would call them terrors.”
Fritz looked over at their prisoner, chuckled again. It was definitely an evil sound, she decided, and sent a ripple of apprehension through her. “I suppose you could call separating body from mind a form of terror.” He made another sound, like an animal lowing. “But then there’s Major to think of.”
“Speak of terrors.” Hans made a show of shuddering. “I don’t like even being in the same room as Major. He gives me the creeps.”
Fritz nodded. “He is the stuff of alpträume—how do you say in English?” He clicked his fingers.
“Nightmares,” the driver said.
“Nightmares. Ah, yes.” Fritz leered at her. “Major is a fucking nightmare come to life.”
After this, what seemed to her staged back-and-forth, Fritz and Hans lapsed back into silence, punctuated, at intervals, with brief bursts of Bavarian German directed at one another.
She knew they had meant to frighten her, to soften her up, to force her mind to anticipate the hateful things that were sure to come. It was a common enough tactic used on prisoners. Nevertheless, the phrase “Almost there” was the one that reverberated most forcefully in her head, mostly because it was the one real thing they said she could be sure of.
Twenty or so minutes more brought them to another turnoff. They were quite high up now; she’d had to clear her ears three times since they left the A8.
The snow had abated enough so that she could see the Watzmann’s signature double peak, as if through her grandmother’s lace curtains. The road was snow-covered, and the BMW’s tires made a sound like a sleigh rushing over a hill.
As the way steepened, the weather changed again, sleet hammered the BMW’s top and hood, sounding to her like the warning of a rattlesnake about to strike.
Out of the corner of her eye Brenda noticed Fritz fiddling with a square package. “What is that,” she said, more to keep up her nerve than for information, “a schnitzel sandwich?”
The acrid odor hit her just before Fritz pressed the anesthetic-soaked cloth over her nose and mouth. She struggled, her legs flailing, but he was straddling her, pinioning her arms. Her eyes grew round, and just before a velvet darkness overtook her, she saw looming up ahead what looked like a huge castle out of a child’s picture book. The evil wizard’s lair, a voice echoed inside her.
Then, like the dead of winter, all was still.
* * *
“Berchtesgaden,” Limas said, shaking his head. “It was there in front of me all along.”
“The best place to hide anything,” Evan said as she maneuvered their rental car through the old town’s streets, “is in plain sight.” The cobbled streets were home to stone and half-timbered buildings straight out of The Sound of Music. It seemed as if at any moment men and women in lederhosen might appear, their voices raised in song. “Deutschland Uber Alles,” perhaps. But maybe those were simply echoes.
She pulled into a parking spot, and they got out into a mixed swirl of snow and sleet. The air was sharp and icy; their exhalations preceded them as Evan led them along the sidewalk past a haberdasher’s, a tobacconist with its wire rack of the day’s snow-specked papers, and a cabinetmaker’s shop.
“Well, we’re in the vicinity,” Limas said. “But how on earth are we going to find Nemesis’s actual headquarters?”
“Ask someone,” Evan said.
Which elicited a laugh out of Limas. “You’re joking.”
Evan smiled, opened the door into a pub. “Fancy a bite to eat, Peter?” she said in a perfect upper-class British accent. “I do.”
The pub was dark, beery, and cozy, insofar as anything on Hitler’s mountain could be termed cozy. It was that hour between lunchtime and after work, and the place was all but deserted. Only a sprinkling of inveterate drinkers and a couple of tourists seeking shelter from the snowstorm inhabited the place.
Evan chose a table against the wall opposite the front door, ordered two beers and cheese-and-sausage rolls from the buxom waitress who sauntered over. They were silent while the beer was brought over in large metal tankards. The food came soon thereafter.
“But really,” Limas said as they ate and drank, “how are we to proceed?”
“I already told you.”
Limas shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“You aren’t meant to,” Evan said sharply. She had already drained her beer. “Need a refill?”
“What? No. Thanks. I’ve half yet to drink.”
Instead of calling over the waitress, Evan rose and, tankard in hand, crossed to the gleaming hardwood bar. Leaning her hip against the bar’s edge, she smiled at the bartender and began talking to him. Limas wondered what they were saying. It had taken all of thirty seconds for the bartender to refill Evan’s tankard, but they were still engaged in conversation. Surely Evan wasn’t asking him the way to the Nemesis headquarters. That was absurd.
When she returned, Limas said, “What was that all about?”
She didn’t bother to sit again, just put several bills on the table and said, “No joy, I’m afraid. Finish your roll, we’re leaving.”
Outside, Limas felt an immediate chill after the damp heat of the pub. The sleet was ending, replaced with a weird form of fog that clung to them like the tendrils of some sea beast. He shivered inside his thick coat, stuffed his hands in his pockets.
“Where to now?”
“Aren’t you still thirsty? I know I am,” Evan said jovially, as they entered the main square of the old town with its non-working central well and fountain. She selected a biergarten across the square, seemingly at random. Its outdoor seating area was closed for the winter, looking abandoned and forlorn.
Though the biergarten was cavernous, in all other ways it was virtually indistinguishable from the pub they had just left, and Evan played out basically the same sequence of events—the only difference being that she ordered sausage and sauerkraut to go along with their draft beers. After draining her glass, she excused herself to use the facilities, then swept up her empty stein, sauntered to the bar, and engaged the bartender in conversation. This time, however, the back-and-forth was briefer and ended with the bartender’s face going red and shouting his disapproval of whatever Evan had said to him. She peeled off some euros onto the bar top. Limas was already moving, and they hurried out into the foggy late afternoon.
“Information gathering not going so well?” Limas said through a hearty burp. “What did you say to piss off the bartender?”
“That was him,” Evan said as they turned onto a side street, and ran almost headlong into another pub. “Not me.”
Limas shook his head. “What do you expect anyone here to tell you? I’m totally at sea.”
Evan shot him a look. “And so far inland.” She gestured as they entered. “Take a table and order whatever you want.”
“I couldn’t possibly eat or drink another thing.”
“Then just take a pew near the door and say you’re waiting for a friend.”
Limas nodded. “Will do.”
This pub was smaller than either of the previous ones. There was something of the hunting lodge about it, with its bare wooden beams, its huge stone hearth in which a fire crackled and flickered, and a rack of antique rifles over the center of the bar. One of them was a Mauser 98. Evan smiled to herself as she approached the bar. The bartender was a big, beefy fellow with the bloated cheeks and red-veined nose of the inveterate drinker. Evan ordered a draft beer in Bavarian German and when she tasted it, said, “Ah, this reminds me of home.”
“You’re from here, Fraulein von Feuer?” the bartender said, after Evan introduced herself. He raised one of his caterpillar eyebrows. “A noble name.” His head was otherwise entirely free of hair, skull shining in the dull light.
“Thank you, but, no. However, my father was born and raised on the mountain.” No one from here ever referred to it by its name.
“What was he in the war?”
There was only one war these people spoke of. World War I was far beyond their collective memories.
“A sniper on the Eastern Front.” Evan indicated the rack with a nod of her head. “I recognize that Mauser 98. My father used one of those.”
The bartender half-turned. “That one still works. I tend to it every month like clockwork.”
Evan sipped more of her beer. “You wouldn’t by any chance be interested in selling it, would you? It would have sentimental value, you understand.”
The bartender shook his head. “Sorry, no.”
“He made it back, one of the very few,” Evan said. “Lost four fingers and both feet to frostbite.”
“A true hero, I understand.” The bartender nodded sagely. “But there’s nothing I can do.” He spread his spatulate hands as he leaned across the bar, lowering his voice. “You see, it has the Death’s Head engraved on it.” The feared Death’s Head was the symbol of Heinrich Himmler’s Totenkopfverbände, the section of the SS responsible for running the death camps as well as overseeing Nazi-occupied Europe. “It’s against the law to sell or trade in Nazi paraphernalia.”
It interested Evan that he used this word, not memorabilia. It meant that for him, there was no nostalgia involved in these items. They were still of use to a Nazi like him.
“Even to use the swastika.” The bartender shrugged. “I mean, what can you do?”
“I understand completely,” Evan said in a mournful tone of voice. “Nevertheless, I’m thinking that my journey back to the roots of my Fatherland will be sadly lacking without my being able to take back with me some token of that period when my father was a hero.”
Now both caterpillars climbed above the bartender’s eyes. “You mean to tell me that you don’t have any of his medals, Fraulein von Feuer?”
“All was lost in the Allied bombings, I’m afraid,” Evan said with just the slightest touch of malice.
“So much was,” the bartender lamented.
“The real German way of life.”
The bartender hammered his fist onto the zinc bar top hard enough that Evan’s stein did a little jig. “Exactly so,” he agreed.
A customer at the other end of the bar summoned him and he excused himself to tend to the order. Evan stayed just where she was, part of her figuratively holding its breath. She did not look at the bartender, but rather at the Mauser 98 with a clear longing.
When the bartender returned, he resumed his low tone. “Your pain is a shared one, gnädige Fraulein. I cannot help you, but—” Reaching down under the bar he drew out a scratch pad and the stub of a pencil that looked like a squirrel had had its way with it. “Perhaps a mate of mine can.” He scribbled a name, Joachim Wenzel, an address, and mobile number. As he tore the sheet off, slid it across to her, he added, “Tell him Markus sent you. I’ll phone him in advance.”
Evan bowed her head. “I am much obliged.” She pulled out some bills, but Markus waved the money away.
“The proud daughter of the war hero von Feuer doesn’t pay here.” He smiled, showing a pair of gold teeth. “This much I can do for a comrade in arms.”
46
The Danilov Monastery, in the Danilovsky district south of central Moscow, was built in the late thirteenth century by Daniil, the first Prince of Moscow. Its white fortress-like appearance was no coincidence, as Daniil originally built it as a redoubt to defend the outskirts of the city. Nowadays it served as the headquarters for the Russian Orthodox Church.
At precisely twelve minutes to 9 A.M., General Boyko strode beneath the pink St. Simeon Stylite Gate-Church on the north wall. He entered the Church of the Holy Fathers of the Seven Ecumenical Councils. His footsteps echoed hollowly off the walls, every square inch of them covered in ornate frescoes of the Holy Fathers and of the historic Ecumenical Councils. There was still a bit over an hour until worship started. Once begun, it ran continuously every day until 5 P.M.
Crossing to the small main chapel dedicated to the Protecting Veil, he stood staring at the ornate iconostasis for a moment, contemplating the foolishness of all belief in God, as opposed to the necessity of religion to keep the populace docile and under control. He opened the battered soft-sided leather attaché case he had brought with him, took out a brown bag from which he extracted a chocolate brioche, and began to eat, slowly and with great relish.
As he ate he thought of how well he had positioned himself, even up to this moment. He thought of his mistress, dead by Gorgonov’s hands. He thought of his darling daughter, terrified by Gorgonov’s hands. He thought about how delightful it was going to be to end his enemy’s life today, this very morning. In a matter of moments. And then he would be truly free to pursue his desire to see the governing of Mother Russia turned over to the methodical, almost scientific organ based on the Third Reich’s reign in Germany. Then the real rise of the Russian Federation as a major global power could begin.
When he was finished with his breakfast he licked his fingertips one by one and returned the bag to the attaché case, which he kept open beside him.
He had no need of glancing at his watch. He knew it was nine o’clock by the sound of footsteps behind him. He turned to see his hated and feared enemy coming toward him.
“Enough of this shit,” Gorgonov said in a hushed but tense tone of voice. “You crossed the fucking line with the assassination attempt. And mere blocks from the Kremlin, no less.”
Boyko raised his hands, palms out. “I know nothing about that.”
Gorgonov’s eyes narrowed. “What d’you take me for? The attempt had your fingerprints all over it.”
“You’ve got this all wrong. I didn’t—”
“One of my men was killed by that fucking poison meant for me.”
“Better him than you.” Boyko took the brown bag from his case again, drew out another chocolate brioche. “I brought you breakfast. I ate one just before you arrived. I swear they’re the best in all of Moscow.”
Gorgonov eyed the general without so much as a glance at the pastry. “You must be joking.”
“No? Sure?” Boyko shrugged. “Well, all right then. I’ll have it myself.”
Gorgonov waited until he’d consumed the whole thing. “Your jovial demeanor ill suits the occasion. This feud must end here, now, at once before one or both of us is killed.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Boyko said, wiping his fingers on his military greatcoat.
“You started this,” Gorgonov said, looking on with distaste, “by poaching Brady Thompson, the SVR’s best American asset.”
Boyko shrugged his great shoulders. “Ah, you were so busy trying to find Shokova, I thought I’d take him off your plate,” he said smugly, sucking a flake of crust from between his teeth. Then his tone turned ugly. “Now it is what it is, Anton Recidivich. Thompson is mine.”
