What have I done? Raeder finally saw that he didn’t control Gunther Rath, never had. Thinking he was using Rath’s special propensities in the business world, Raeder had allowed the neo-Nazi into corridors of power he’d never known existed, showing him the real meaning of strength. Now Rath was turning the tables, unveiling to Raeder what depravity actually lurked in his heart. And Raeder had handed Rath the tools he needed to execute the plans of his fascist masters.
“We are proceeding with the rest of the operation,” Rath continued, misunderstanding Raeder’s silence as tacit approval for his actions. “From corporate records we have the general area of the air vent, but a weather front has delayed our establishment of the northern base. Using the rotor-stat and Sno-Cats we’ll find the tunnel in a day or two.”
What is the man talking about? He’s killed a dozen people and thought that everything was going according to plan. How could I have possibly thought that I could civilize a man like Rath? He’s an animal who worships a cult of evil and death. Raeder knew he had to put a stop to this. He couldn’t let Rath continue. Not like this. He made his decision quickly. It was an effort to keep revulsion from his voice when he spoke. “I’m leaving for Greenland immediately, Gunther.”
“Why? We haven’t found the cavern yet.”
“Watch what you say! This is an open channel.” Like facing a rabid dog, Raeder had only one choice: put the animal down. He would send Rath back to Germany and take over the recovery of the Pandora boxes. Once that was done, he would decide what to do with his special-projects director.
“I will be there sometime tomorrow,” Raeder snapped. “I don’t want you to take any more actions until I arrive. Is that clear?”
“Klaus, I’m close. You don’t need to be here.”
He had another agenda, Raeder realized. The only thing that made sense was that Rath wanted the boxes for his Nazi bosses. He’d told them what was in that cavern and was under orders to recover them so they could either be used or sold. Either option was too horrifying to consider
Raeder softened his voice. He had no idea what the neo-Nazi hierarchy had in store for him if he interfered. “I know I don’t need to be there, my friend. It’s just that I want to be. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He killed the connection before losing control of his emotions. He raced for the private bathroom next to his office because he thought he was going to vomit. He heaved and heaved but nothing came out. Responsibility and remorse couldn’t be so easily purged. He studied himself in the mirror above the gold-and-marble vanity. He looked the same. His hair was in place, his complexion smooth, his teeth brilliantly white. It was in his eyes that he saw the corruption.
“Get through this and you’ll be fine,” he told himself. He liked how that sounded so he repeated it, adding, “I didn’t kill those people. He did. It was his choice, not my order. No matter what, I am not a murderer. We’ll pay the commission, destroy all the Pandora boxes, and I’ll fire Rath. He’ll remain silent because to reveal what he knows would be an admission of guilt. He’s trapped himself.”
He drank a palmful of water and went back to his desk, hitting the intercom. “Kara, is Reinhardt still out there?”
“Yes, Herr Raeder. Would you like me to send him back in?”
“No. Tell him to pay whatever the commission is currently asking for. I think it’s two hundred and twenty-five million marks. Then page our pilots and have the company jet ready for an immediate flight to Iceland. Have my car brought around to the front of the building.”
“Yes, sir.”
Raeder dialed his summer house in Bavaria, hoping to reach his wife. His eleven-year-old son, Jaegar, answered the phone. “Papa!” the boy cried before restraining his emotions as his father had taught him. “How are you, sir?”
Squeezing his eyes at hearing how he’d turned his son into an automaton, Raeder needed a moment to answer. When this was over, a lot of things in his life were going to change. Oh, God, please let me see them one more time. “I miss you. I miss all of you. Is your mama home?”
“No. She went shopping with Frau Kreiger from next door. Fatima is watching Willi and me.” Willi was Jaegar’s six-year-old brother; Fatima, their Turkish housekeeper.
“I need you to take a message for me. Tell Mama that I had to go away this weekend on a trip.”
“You aren’t coming to Bavaria?” The boy’s en-grained reserve could not contain his fierce disappointment.
“I’m sorry, son. I just can’t.”
“When will you be coming?”
Reader considered his reply, knowing a lie would only add to his family’s disillusion. “Not for a long time, I’m afraid. I love you, Jaegar. I’m sorry. Tell your brother that I love him too. And your mother” — God, this hurt — “give her a big hug for me.”
Raeder knew his uncommon burst of concern would confuse the boy. But if things didn’t go as planned in Greenland, he’d be glad he’d made the call. It could be the last his family heard from him. On his way out of the office, he opened his safe to retrieve his licensed pistol, a holdover from the kidnapping threats he’d received before coming to Kohl.
THE PANDORA CAVERN
The flashlight beam pushed back the gloom for only a few dozen yards before being swallowed by impenetrable darkness. With Mercer in the lead, the group chased the retreating ring of light, marching downward at a steady pace, protected by a thin bubble of illumination in an otherwise cold black realm. Otto Schroeder had engineered the sloping tunnel so those walking through it would never lose traction on the icy floor, and every hundred feet the entire shaft leveled out for a yard or two in case someone did fall.
Without the wind, the air was a constant thirty-two degrees, and after so long in below-freezing conditions, many of them had unzipped their parkas. None of them were yet comfortable enough to speak. The walk through the passage was punctuated only by the rustle of equipment and the slap of their boots. Even the Geiger counter in Mercer’s free hand had remained silent since they’d slipped past the corpse at the tunnel’s entrance. They continued ever downward, wending through living rock and glacial ice.
After thirty minutes, Mercer estimated they had walked nearly two miles into the mountain and had descended a thousand feet. He knew they had to be approaching sea level. Suddenly the light that had cocooned them no longer brushed the walls. It had vanished into an enormous gallery. Mercer stopped, checking the floor to see that it had leveled out. The ground was bare rock, mined smooth during World War Two.
“I think we’ve reached the bottom.”
Training the light upward, he could just barely see the underside of the cavern, an ugly mixture of ice and rock hanging fifty feet above them. Others snapped on their own lights and more details emerged. The cavern was roughly circular, at least five hundred feet in diameter, and domed. All around them, huge tongues of glacial ice were being forced into the cave through fissures in the stone. In a few centuries, the ice would eventually reclaim the space that the Nazis had carved for themselves. Ahead, the floor dropped off to still black water. Mercer imagined that somewhere across the water was another entrance to the cavern, a submerged grotto accessible only by submarine. He strode across the cavern to the water’s edge. By the high-tide lines staining the edge of the quay he knew that the path to the open ocean had remained clear after all this time.
“Must be the tides that keep it open,” Ira said as he approached. “If you look closely you can see currents in the water.”
Mercer dropped to his belly so he could reach over the side of the pier that Otto Schroeder had built and dipped his hand in the frigid water. He tasted it and spat back into the pool. “Typical salinity. It hasn’t been diluted by ice melt.”
“I bet if we had a submarine we could get out of here without Rath ever knowing it.”