Part 15 (2/2)

The largest mountain range in Europe and some would say the equal in beauty to the more renowned Alps, the Carpathians-especially to the south in Wallachia-were a treasure trove of diversity in terms of artworthy landscapes, untrammeled forests, piedmont plains, and the abundance of wildlife. The eastern and southern portions of the mountain range were home to the largest concentrations of brown bears, wolves, chamois, and lynxes-making it prime hunting ground for Eastern European n.o.bility going back centuries. The hollows and fields, the deep virgin forests and placid lakes, and the mazes of verdant, hidden valleys meant one could travel for days without seeing a soul or a sign of civilization.

It was therefore little wonder why so many tribes of the nomadic Romani people-”Gypsies,” as they were called by the ignorant-made this part of the world a primary encampment site for so many months of the year. Romani clans would travel throughout Wallachia, Moldova, and Transylvania, setting up camp outside the cities and villages to do business and celebrate life as travelers.

On this particularly gorgeous spring evening one Romani camp set up outside the town of Piteti was definitely focused on celebration-a family wedding. Of course, it was also true that for the Romani, marriage was also a business proposition, but that was far from everyone's mind.

The encampment was perfectly located to maximize G.o.d's wedding decorations, Jaelle Lunc reflected. It centered on the terraces above the right bank of the Arge where the river met its tributary, and right at the edge of the deep sylvan forests and water meadows. The fifteen-year-old bride was br.i.m.m.i.n.g with life and love. Even the colors of the blooms seemed more vibrant than Jaelle's dreams. Off to the north she could just make out the Fgra Mountains. The flowers along the bank looked ever so slightly wilted. Waving her hands, she muttered a few syllables of the ancient language and the flowers s.h.i.+mmered and then blossomed brighter. She smiled at her handiwork.

This was her day, Jaelle thought, the day she would become a bori, a bride, and a fully grown woman, a Romni, after all the years of adhering to the purity required by the marhime laws. But even better, the union would join her into her husband's family, which would end a decades old conflict between the families. Love would restore the balance in the community, creating a bond that transcended conflicting truths.

She smiled at the mothers and daughters cooking the vast quant.i.ties of treats that would be consumed well into the night and likely into the next day, as such festivities go for the Romani. Crusty bread was laid out with jars of spicy-sweet ajvar canned the previous autumn. The alluring aroma of paprika-laden dishes like stuffed cabbage and chicken paprikash competed for attention against the smoky taste of lamb and beef roasting on spits over open fires. Spinach crepes and musaka were being piled high on platters.

She saw the men pouring drinks from barrels, while boys not yet in their teens hovered on the periphery, smoking cigarettes. One of her bridesmaids sat outside her tent, filing her nails with an emery board. Nearby, the lutari were warming up their instruments with a jaunty, almost jazzy tune.

As the sun set over the Arge, Jaelle almost wept at how perfect the day had turned out, and at the promise of pa.s.sion that the night ahead held.

The policeman's favorite calling hour is 4:00 A.M. It is the time when people enter their deepest level of sleep. Being suddenly awakened at the hour causes maximum disorientation and confusion, rendering suspects most helpless. Thus it would have been the prime hour to commence the raid on the Gypsy camp. But it was not. The wedding party was still going on at 4:00 A.M.

Even in the darkness, the sickly white s.h.i.+ne of the Skull's head stood in stark contrast to the black gas-mask apparatus he wore. Beside him stood an angular figure in a steel mask. Where the Skull's breathing always seemed labored, Colonel Uhrwerk made no sound at all.

The whole situation at this camp tonight was suboptimal for Colonel Uhrwerk. Given the uncertainty in trying to pick up the trail of the Spear of Destiny because of the sloppy fieldwork of Himmler's ”scholar soldiers,” he needed to maximize the shock in these encampment attacks so they could conduct their search and get out quickly.

A few deaths wouldn't matter-Romanian officials cared almost as little about Gypsy life as did the Reich. But Uhrwerk's team were on foreign soil, and the more disruption and violence they caused-even against these dirty nomads-the more the Germans risked discovery by Romanian authorities. And there were still twenty-three Gypsy camps remaining on their target list.

It wasn't just that these camp raids were suboptimal for Uhrwerk. It was the whole operation. It was a game of random guesswork disguised as a proper search matrix. Thus, Uhrwerk was left trying to impose efficient and logical tactics on a fundamentally inefficient and illogical strategy. If he were capable of frustration, he would have felt it.

Certainly, he considered, this flawed and wasteful approach to finding the spear did not originate with Reinhard Heydrich. No. The man was too fundamentally intelligent and methodical. This was Himmler's doing, the Reichsfuhrer-SS having been goaded by the impatience of both Drexler and Hitler.

Uhrwerk made a mental note: cultivate Heydrich.

Again he scanned the Gypsy camp some two miles away and shrouded in the gloom of the predawn hours. He summoned Jager to his side.

Haupsturmfuhrer Karl Jager was commander of Heydrich's newly created Einsatzkommando 2, composed of ten of the most ruthless SS storm troopers and three nachtmenn. They traveled through the Romanian countryside in a covered troop truck and field car with no markings.

Like Uhrwerk and Der Schadel, Jager and his storm troopers wore the light olive overcoats, caps, and paraphernalia of Romanian state police officers. They did not wear their Senf masks.

The deception had its limits. The SS men were too proud as soldiers to operate like slinking spies. Under their Romanian coats, they all wore their proper SS uniforms. And no one would mistake the nachtmenn for human, much less Romanian; they were kept leashed in the troop truck. So far, in five other such night raids on Gypsy camps in the past two days, they had not been loosed.

”Haupsturmfuhrer, are your men in position?” Uhrwerk asked.

”Jahwohl, Herr Colonel.”

”Then you will commence the raid on my signal.”

Uhrwerk admired speed and efficiency, and once again Einsatzkommando 2 had shown just that in securing the camp mere minutes after he gave the order. Of course, there were five Gypsies dead-well within acceptable limits and within the range of calculated expectation, given the variables and the state of the camp at the moment of a.s.sault.

Now all of the adult Gypsies-thirty-four men and forty-one women-were huddled on their knees in the camp center, with their hands on their heads, while the disguised storm troopers tore violently through their possessions.

Separately, one old Gypsy woman had been a.s.signed by a storm trooper to watch over the twenty-eight adolescents and thirteen infants who were kept separate from the center of the camp. Having them out of the area of activity pacified worried adult prisoners.

Uhrwerk calculated the elapsed time and the total area of the occupied campsite, and allowing for standard deviation and several x variables, calculated the odds of finding the spear in this physical search to the fifth decimal point. Success was unlikely. As he expected.

After the search, Der Schadel would employ his unique gifts to interrogate every likely adult who might have some knowledge of which clan claimed the spear. Der Schadel's methods were admirably quiet and efficient compared to the methods traditional Gestapo interrogators employed, if more disturbing to onlookers. Then the Gypsies would be bound, blindfolded, and warned to never speak of this under orders from the ”Romanian state police.”

”Neither item is here, Herr Colonel,” Jager reported in due time. The search was finished within just three minutes of Uhrwerk's predicted calculations.

”Very well, Haupsturmfuhrer. Withdraw your men to encircle the Gypsies at a distance while Der Schadel conducts his own search,” Uhrwerk ordered.

Nine SS storm troopers stood guard over the seventy-five Gypsy adults but at a distance. As hardened and indifferent to human suffering as the troopers were, they wanted as much distance as possible from what Der Schadel would be doing.

The tall, lanky figure approached the neat semicircle of crowded, kneeling Gypsies, who were following the order to stare at the ground. None saw him reach up and remove his gas mask, opening his mind to the chaotic swirl of thoughts. He almost lost himself in the maelstrom of emotion and information. But then his mind, like a raptor soaring above a hive of insects, caught scent of what it so craved. It was the sweet taste of their collective fear. In their minds, each victim felt the chill in their soul of being touched by darkness so alien and wrong, it made them want to flee into the night. They saw in their minds' eyes the rising silhouette of a many tentacled, formless Otherness, a thing so hideous its very gaze was like tendrils encircling and freezing their hearts. They felt the dark presence grow, enveloping them all in a helplessness and hopelessness beyond all despair.

Der Schadel feasted on their mental screams, gaining the strength to seize control of the vortex of chaotic thought. He focused it on one after another of the sobbing Gypsies. When he fixed on a single subject, their fear was amplified, and he in turn consumed their very essence-his mind growing in dominance. They turned out their minds, revealing all he asked.

One by one he sifted through their minds, demanding to know who was the keeper of the spear, and not finding the answers he sought. His anger only fueled his hunger, and the more he slaked, the more he himself became lost in the terrible ecstasy of their suffering.

Slowly, so as not to traumatize his own grip on reality, Der Schadel withdrew from their collective consciousness. He replaced his mask, severing the final link. Every Gypsy collapsed like bodies on a battlefield..

Uhrwerk knew Der Schadel had found nothing before he even reported. Der Schadel retreated to the field car, his energy spent. Uhrwerk was about to give orders to withdraw from the camp when a new variable arose that he hadn't factored: a drunken Gypsy man hiding in one of the caravans fell on two of the storm troopers. Faster than the eye could follow, the Gypsy attacker slashed the first soldier's throat quite cleanly. A fountain of warmth sprayed in the Gypsy's eyes, and his second attack was therefore sloppy. He ripped open the second soldier's overcoat before he finally found the jugular. He then picked up one of the dropped machine pistols and turned it on Uhrwerk. The exhausted, drained ma.s.s of Gypsies recovered enough to watch what happened next.

The long burst from the Schmeisser and better than average aim put twenty of the thirty-two rounds fired into Uhrwerk's upper body, groin, and head. The bolt fell on the empty chamber after the last bullet.

Every soul-even the storm troopers-froze. Uhrwerk stood his ground, examining the impact points in his body with casual curiosity. The Gypsies began whispering in their Romi tongue about the devil walking among men. Then, almost too quick for the human eye, Uhrwerk stepped forward and stabbed his hand through the drunken Gypsy's sternum, seizing and crus.h.i.+ng the man's heart. His other hand grabbed the top of the Gypsy's skull and spun the head 180 degrees with a sickening crackle that sounded like a dry bundle of twigs being broken.

The Gypsies screamed. Some tried to crawl away in abject terror, only to be kicked by the remaining storm troopers. One Gypsy man pointed at both the dead storm trooper and Uhrwerk, where the Romanian police overcoats were torn, revealing their unmistakable foreign pedigree. The word ”n.a.z.i” spread through the clan immediately.

Uhrwerk was disappointed in what had to happen next. Not because he had any emotion about killing all the adults in the village. It was because of the waste of the time it would take to eliminate the evidence.

”Haupsturmfuhrer Jager, you know what must be done. Release the nachtmenn,” Uhrwerk ordered. He strode calmly over to where Der Schadel was resting.

There was a snarl and a howl as the nachtmenn leapt from the truck, bounding like panthers across the open ground. They tore into the band of Gypsies with tooth, claw, and tusk. Bones crunched between teeth and the nachtmenn fed as their victims still cried out. Even the most hardened of storm troopers found something else to look at.

Ignoring the carnage, Uhrwerk gave orders to Der Schadel.

”Take care of the children,” he said dispa.s.sionately.

Der Schadel nodded. Taking a labored breath, he removed his mask, revealing his true countenance. The mask s.h.i.+elded his mind from the outside world. There was only so much he could take, but the harder the illusion he had to cast, the more direct his mind had to be.

Der Schadel reached out to the mind of the old Gypsy crone the storm trooper sergeant had put in charge of the children and infants. He saw through her eyes the children gathered in the tent at the edge of the camp. They were all huddled together and crying in fear at the sound of the nearby gunfire. The old woman's mind was tired and weak, but her innate protective instinct toward the kinder was remarkably strong. Der Schadel used that very instinct against her. He reached out and spoke, his words becoming her thoughts.

The old woman, cradling one of the children and squeezing her eyes shut, opened her eyes and was horrified. Spiders. Giant spiders all about her and the child, crawling about on hairy arms toward them.

She reached into the folds of her dress and pulled her dagger. The spiders crawled all about the tent, but they were too slow to escape her blade. She went about the tent methodically stabbing each one,.. She found the last spider climbing on her chest, plunged her dagger into it and collapsed. It was a mercy that she died not knowing that what she'd seen as spiders were the children.

Der Schadel's head rolled back. If he'd possessed anything like lips on his disfigured face, they would have peeled back into a smile. His body tensed for a long moment and he let out a heaving cry of pa.s.sionate release. Taking a few deep breaths, he replaced his rubber mask, shutting out the chaos of thoughts from his mind.

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