“Your women are blessed,” the queen said. “They have the privilege to become brides of Unterg. Their sacrifice assures a strong healthy daughter.” She reached out to touch the fifth rope. “At the exact moment when the seed of child is put into my body, I cut this rope. The brides go to their destiny, and my daughter comes into hers.”
“What destiny?” Gabriel said, his throat constricting as he spoke.
“Unterg is a jealous god,” the queen said. “We must make him satisfied or he will give me a sick son instead of a strong daughter.”
Gabriel strained against the ropes holding him down. “You can’t do this,” he said. “I won’t let you.”
“Enough,” Uta said. “It is time. First, we ask the blessings of my ancestors.”
She stepped out of Gabriel’s sight for a moment and returned with a woven basket in her arms. Setting it down, she drew from its depths an intricate oval headdress studded with crimson feathers and carnivore teeth that looked razor sharp. She placed it reverently on her head. “We must both wear the sacred objects of my ancestors. This is the crown of my grandmother’s grandmother. And for you, the crown of my grandfather’s grandfather.” She bent over the basket again. As she did this, Gabriel turned his attention to the stone knife lying on the dirt floor. It was a good six inches out of his grasp. He struggled to reach it, all the muscles in his arm stretching to their limit, but there was no way.
The queen turned back, a flat, dark cap of some sort held between her hands. This was no primitive construction of tooth and bone and feathers—it was a man’s hat, somewhat battered and faded. From the back, it looked like it had once been part of a military uniform. “My grandfather’s grandfather was the first father of our tribe. You have a great honor, Gabriel Hunt, to wear his articles.”
She bent over him and set the cap on his head, then stood to admire it. Gabriel shook it off onto the ground beside him and saw her face twist with anger. “You will wear it,” she said in a tone of cold command. “You will not cast it off!”
Gabriel turned his head, curious to see if he could figure out where the cap originally came from. Maybe whoever had flown that ancient plane…?
His jaw dropped open in speechless astonishment when he saw the tarnished metal insignia above the black patent leather bill.
An eagle.
Clutching a swastika between its claws.
Chapter 21
Queen Uta snatched the Nazi cap up off the ground and cradled it to her chest. She brushed it off gently and replaced it on Gabriel’s head, pulling it down firmly so the fit was tight. Then she strode purposefully across the room to the woven screen. “You will obey me,” she said. “You will obey, or your people will suffer the wrath of Unterg.”
She reached out and folded back the screen.
At the base of the two wooden chutes a spidery, jointed metal framework held up a round machine shaped like a fat, riveted steel onion. A verdigris-covered nozzle protruded from the bottom while above the top of the machine a giant concave lens perhaps six feet in diameter was suspended in metal clamps. The space between the lens and the top of the device seemed to shimmer and crawl with distorted waves like heat coming off summer asphalt. Looking at the shimmer made Ga-briel’s eyes ache and his head throb almost instantly.
The hum that had been buzzing softly in Gabriel’s ears since he came to was louder now.
And at the base of the two wooden chutes, trussed hand and foot and gagged, were Rue and Velda, each woman struggling furiously against her bonds. The chutes were angled directly at the shimmering space under the lens and would have deposited them there if it hadn’t been for the rope descending from the ceiling and looped tightly around their wrists.
The machine was giving off a pulsing red glow that amplified the reddish light coming down from above.
Across its side, the metal onion bore the same stiff-winged eagle-and-swastika design as the military cap Gabriel had on. Slightly off center beneath the Nazi insignia were faint red letters: UNTERG. To the right of these letters, Gabriel could barely make out the ghost of three more, faded nearly to invisibility. An A…what might have been an N…and the last nothing but a fragment of a curve that could have belonged to an O, a C or a G. If you didn’t speak German, you might puzzle over the word, but Gabriel did speak German and had no difficulty guessing what it had been. Untergang. It was a word with several meanings, none of them good.
Ruin. Extinction. Doom.
“Witness,” the queen said, “Unterg’s power.”
She picked up a loose stone from the ground and carefully threw it into the shimmering space between the lens and the top of the machine. There was a blinding flash and the ozone smell sharpened until it was almost overwhelming. The stone was gone without a trace. Velda began to shout again behind her gag, and this time Rue joined her.
“Let them go,” Gabriel said, struggling but unable to get free.
The queen shook her head. “They must be given to Unterg,” she said. “It is the only way to assure a healthy daughter.”
“But you said if I didn’t obey my people would feel Unterg’s wrath—now you’re saying they’ll be given to Unterg even if I do obey.”
“Oh,” Uta said, “I did not mean these two. I meant your people. You are American, you said. Is it not so? I meant I will spare the people of America—for a time—if you obey. If not…”
She turned a dial on a control panel at the base of the machine, near the nozzle. A metal cover slid open and Gabriel saw an old-fashioned display flip through a series of numerals with a loud clatter, like a mechanical sign in a train station. The whirling digits finally came to a stop and Gabriel strained to read them from across the room.
3853N7702W
Coordinates—38 degrees, 53 minutes North, 77 degrees, 02 minutes West.
The coordinates for Washington, D.C.
The nozzle at the base of the machine dropped an additional six inches with a loud clank, exposing a box like section at its base. A black button ringed with red protruded from its side.
“Through the earth’s core,” Uta said, “through the belly of your land and up from beneath, Unterg’s power will stream death upon your people. It was for this—to establish Unterg’s throne, and from it to stab at the depraved and greedy heart of America—that the first fathers came to this land some sixty-six cycles past.” A downcast look came over her face. “But Unterg took our fathers, one by one, before they could complete their task. When the last among them lay dying, he passed his duty to his queen. She passed it to my grandmother, who passed it to my mother, and my mother passed it to me, as I will pass it to my daughter and she to hers: to trigger Unterg’s wrath when the command comes from afar, from Defuror, Unterg’s emissary on earth.”
Gabriel winced. “Der Fuehrer,” he said.
“Yes,” Uta said, “Defuror. We are to await his instruction—as we have awaited it with patience and reverence and humility for cycle upon cycle, generation upon generation. We are told to wait, and we wait; we are prepared to wait until the end of time. Unless,” she said pointedly, “a queen shall have no heir. In this event, the last queen must trigger Unterg’s wrath before she passes. And a queen may so trigger it sooner, if she believes her breeding of an heir is at stake.” She tapped the black button gently with a forefinger. “I shall, Gabriel Hunt. I shall trigger it, if you refuse to give me a daughter. I shall trigger it before your eyes and a thousand times a thousand of your kinsmen shall die, their blood upon your head.”
Gabriel tried to picture Lawrence Silver lying where Gabriel lay now, a frightened old man, a survivor of the camps, held prisoner once more by captors in Nazi regalia, being forced into complicity with a murderous plan left over from the Third Reich. With no prospect for escape, no way of knowing his daughter was on her way with help. Gabriel could understand why, when the opportunity arose, the man had seized it and chosen to end his life.