Part 14 (2/2)
”Destroying the birth records that list his grandfather as Jewish,” Deitel said, joining in.
Terah rolled her eyes. Lysander seemed amused..
”The Holy Roman Emperors in Vienna had a lance of their own, the Hofburg spear. It was wrapped with a silver band said to be one of the nails used to crucify Him. Charles IV went so far as to have a golden sleeve put over the silver one, inscribed 'Lancea et clavus Domini-Lance and nail of the Lord,' ” Terah said. ”It was taken, this time without a body count.”
Rucker, who was eating pistachios, spit out a sh.e.l.l and said, ”Let me guess. That one's now in Germania, where Der Fuhrer sleeps with it under his pillow.”
”Close enough. He could have it in his tailpipe for all we know,” Terah said. Rucker nearly choked on a sh.e.l.l. ”Hitler has all three of these spears, and even he knows they're almost certainly not the real thing.”
”So none of these concern us?” Rucker asked.
”Not really,” Terah said.
”Oh for . . . then why are you lecturing us like you're some sort of history professor?” Rucker said.
Terah's eyes narrowed.
”She is some sort of history professor,” Deitel said quietly.
Rucker hissed.
Her eyes were Tesla death rays. ”Context, sweetheart.”
”Ahem,” Lysander said with little subtlety.
”You need to realize how far Hitler and his occult minions are willing to go to possess the Spear of Destiny,” Terah said, ”and how much history is wrapped up in this piece of steel. Even before he'd fully secured power in Germany, Hitler was willing to risk international incidents and even war. His agents murdered untold dozens in the Vatican and Constantinople. All for a biblical artifact.”
”I think we're all well aware how much respect Der Fuhrer has for human life,” Rucker said.
”Yes, we are now. With his power over Germany absolute, he's drawn the Black Iron Curtain. But these events occurred when he'd just seized the government, and his hold grip on Germany was tenuous at best,” Terah said. ”He was not eager to reveal his aims quite so openly then.”
”It's true, Herr Kapitan,” Deitel said. ”In the early days after the Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler was vying for control of his own party against the SA and rival party leaders. He also had to court the favor of the military leaders.h.i.+p, the industrialists, the noncommunist unions, and the leaders of the corporate/public inst.i.tutions. It was only in the last few years, after he and his SS secured their power, that Hitler showed his true face.”
”Such naked, murderous aggression in 1922 could have meant his ejection from party leaders.h.i.+p,” Terah said. ”Now he has his sights set on the last-and probably true-Spear of Destiny, and he has Germany in an iron grip. Imagine what he's capable of.”
There weren't a lot of sarcastic replies.
”Recently, a French historian has attacked the problem from an entirely different angle,” Terah said. ”Professor Claude Renault of the Universite de Cergy-Pontoise decided to study the Spear in a way no one else has-looking at the time back when the Spear of Destiny was just a spear.”
She clicked another slide. It showed a charcoal sketch of what looked like a true pilum. Measuring almost a foot long, it was utilitarian, clean, and deadly, wholly unlike the pointlessly ornate forgeries they'd seen in the previous slides. This was the spear tip of a Roman officer-a centurion.
”Professor Renault, we believe, is uncovering the story of the true spear even now. His work is virtually unknown. He contends the spear's story begins long before Jesus was condemned. The professor's early papers show that we are fortunate the Roman Empire kept such detailed reports on its military, and that the centurion who owned the spear in question was from a Roman patrician family that likewise kept fairly complete family doc.u.ments.”
She had a monograph in hand but didn't refer to it.
”According to Dr. Renault, the centurion who possessed what was to become legend was a former cavalry officer named Cascus Antonius. He served with the Legio III Augusta in what is present-day Algeria. His legion saw action between A.D. 17 and A.D. 24, particularly in southern Algeria, against the rebel Tacfarinas, who had organized Numidian and Mauretanian tribes against Roman rule.
”The campaign carried them deep into West Africa, farther south into sub-Saharan Africa than any Roman expedition-south of what is French West Africa and into what we know today as Niger,” Terah said.
She explained that Cascus Antonius kept a detailed journal of his unit's expedition that went well beyond a military diary. He catalogued samples of various plants and sketched the exotic animals they saw. He wrote of the African tribes they encountered, describing their foreign customs. The first three-quarters of his service journal showed a keen, educated mind and a fair military officer.
”Sometime around A.D. 22,” she said, ”Tacfarinas's rebels ambushed his unit, killing almost all of his men and capturing Cascus Antonius. He wrote later about his escape and journey north through the jungle. In particular, he describes the time he spent with a West African jungle tribe, where he used the tribe's own iron ore to forge steel weapons: a gladius-a short sword, and a pilum-a spear tip.”
Deitel raised his hand. ”That seems a bit anachronistic.”
”Very good, Doctor,” Terah said. ”At this time, metallurgy was unheard of in West Africa. They wouldn't-or shouldn't-have had the refined iron available for Antonius to use in the production of steel.
”In fact, the indigenous population of sub-Saharan Africa never developed even the most primitive iron metallurgy, nor any metallurgical technology,” she explained. ”And yet Antonius wrote he was able to forge high-quality weapons. They were so well made he continued to use them even after he made it back to Legio III Augusta's headquarters.”
Antonius's own writings showed that the centurion increasingly grew paranoid that other officers envied his weapons. His journal entries seemed less balanced after the African expedition, Terah said.
”After the Tacfarinsas expedition, Antonius's unit was transferred to a remote post in modern-day Tunisia, Ammaedara. It is known that very few members of Legio III Augusta survived the transfer. The unit and the post seem to have faded from history.”
Chuy's brow twisted. ”You mean the records are lost?”
”We believe the legion was lost. Antonius survived and was transferred to Legio III Gallica, where he was reduced in rank despite his patrician status. This legion served under the prefect of Judea, Pontius Pilate,” Terah said. ”And that's the last update from Dr. Renault's research. That's according to his unrevised notes, gathered for us by our cousins in French intelligence.”
”That's it?” Rucker said. ”That doesn't exactly get us to the spear, you know.”
”That's why we have to get to Dr. Renault before the n.a.z.is do. The n.a.z.i's expert, Dr. Otto Rahn, has led the Huns on a wild goose chase. He's the German medievalist who is simultaneously seeking the Holy Grail and the Ark of the Covenant. His days are probably numbered, owing to his lack of success so far and the fact that he's secretly a h.o.m.os.e.xual,” she said. ”For all his errors so far, he is a great scholar, and our people at Prometheus are trying to get him to defect before the Gestapo discovers his private proclivities. We're thinking he is intentionally misdirecting the German efforts.”
”Meanwhile,” Lysander said, ”we know the n.a.z.is obtained a sample of some sort related to the true spear, and now for more than merely satisfying Hitler's obsession, they want to find it.”
Biels added: ”We don't know how the spear is connected, but our Difference Engine calculations incorporating all the available data say it figures directly and perhaps even causally into Project Gefallener.”
The ability of Difference Engines to take raw numerical data and translate it into complex algorithms and statistics had grown exponentially since Babbage debuted the very first engine in London in 1851. The a.n.a.log calculating devices of yesterday had grown into bra.s.s and mechanical devices that could store entire libraries worth of data variables.
”Why do people think the spear has power?” Rucker asked. He wasn't much for dealing with belief as he was with fact.
”Theories abound in philosophical, religious, and alchemical circles,” Terah said. ”It could very well be that the Spear of Destiny has power because it was washed in His blood. Except for our visiting doctor, we've all had experiences dealing with the power of certain holy relics from various cultures. Science hasn't explained these phenomena-”
”Yet,” Rucker interjected.
”Fine, yet, but that doesn't make them any less real,” Terah continued. ”Certainly the blood of Christ is powerful in the Christian faith; it is even symbolically or, in the case of Catholics, literally consumed. But the common denominator in terms of Christ's blood is salvation and life, not power, conquest, death, and decay.”
”But it could be something about the spear itself, right?” Rucker asker her. ”The anachronistic iron ore in Africa.”
Lysander nodded.
”That's the other direction Renault's research is taking,” Terah said. ”No one has yet found the African tribe that Antonius describes in his journals.
”There is the issue of the meteoric iron,” she continued. ”The only other place with such a high degree of ancient meteoric iron is north of the Arctic Circle in Scandinavia, and south in the western fields of Antarctica. Modern expeditions to West Africa date several of the deposits of meteoric iron to as far back as 5000 B.C., so that fits. Beyond that, there seems to be nothing fantastic about the meteoric iron itself.”
”That we know of yet,” Lysander added. ”We may not know what we should be looking for, or how to look for it.”
”This is starting to sound very like H.G. Wells and Jules Verne,” Rucker said. ”I like it.”
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