“Weapons-grade?”
“Why, enough to drive an atomic explosion.” The corners of von Berg’s thin lips turned up into a smile. “Come, Herr Andros, allow me to complete your education. I wouldn’t want you to die an ignorant animal, unaware of how close you came before failing miserably. That would never do.”
They proceeded across the floor, passing technicians and engineers busy at the controls. Andros was aware of von Berg watching him, obviously reevaluating everything through his nemesis’s eyes and not wholly displeased with the effect it had on him.
“The process is called magnetic isotope separation,” von Berg explained. “The vacuum pumps and piping move the chemically processed uranium from one centrifuge to another. It is this cascade that separates the U-235 component and produces weapons-grade uranium.”
“I see,” said Andros. “Quite a production you’ve pulled together here.”
“I’m sure someday we’ll consider this arrangement quite crude,” von Berg replied. “But for the present it suits our purposes. You no doubt are familiar with the Flammenschwert legend of Greek mythology. How man stole fire from the gods. That’s what I’ve done. I’ve stolen fire from heaven. The key to unlocking the power of the universe: Germany’s first atomic bomb. And now we are about to transfer it from this lab to my submarine.”
Andros looked on as von Berg stepped behind some oscilloscopes while several assistants began pressing buttons on another instrument panel. A low humming began.
“Synchronizing the centrifuges has been my biggest challenge,” von Berg said over the noise. “Thanks to precision parts from Switzerland, I’ve been able to keep the centrifuges aligned and minimize friction. But I’m boring you with these details. Franz?”
At the snap of von Berg’s fingers, the trusted aide materialized before Andros’s eyes.
“Herr Andros has seen enough, I think. Would you do the honors?”
Before Andros could react, he felt a crash on the back of his head and remembered nothing more.
PRESENT DAY
118
The light faded, and Sam Deker woke up strapped to a chair inside the DARPA labs beneath the VA Hospital in Los Angeles.
Nobody was there.
He removed the fiber-optic shunt from his skull and jerked from the spark inside his eyes. It was as if he had pulled a plug from its socket. Then he carefully removed the IV drip that had been pumping photosynthetic algae into his veins.
He staggered to his feet. He felt weak and exhausted as he looked around the lab. He was all alone. The computer systems were up and running, but there were no people. Only surveillance cameras. Always surveillance cameras.
He sat down at a console and got to work to hack into the security feeds. He didn’t care who saw him. But when he called up the surveillance of the lab he was sitting in, he could see only himself in the chair. He dialed it back a few minutes, then a few hours, then a few days, and finally, weeks. Always he was strapped in the chair, completely out.
Just how long had he been here? And where had everybody gone?
He was about to get up when he caught sight of a label on one of the surveillance feeds: Advanced Sleep Labs. He felt the hair on the back of his neck rise as he tapped into the feeds, found the sleep lab in Century City, and eventually found a feed named “Sam Deker.”
He dialed in to his last night at the sleep lab, before he’d ever heard of the 34th Degree.
There he was, checking in the night before at nine p.m. Giselle the “sleep aide” had helped strap him into his heart and sleep apnea monitor to record biology, given him some sleeping pills to help, and tucked him in.
The surveillance footage showed him restless for a full four hours. Finally, shortly after one a.m. he fell asleep. The image looked like a still photograph as he fast-forwarded. He stopped at 1:45 when a stab of light shot into the room. He expected to see Giselle again, checking in on him.
What he saw instead were three figures gather around his bed like phantoms. The sight froze his veins. They set up an IV drip and plugged a glowing purple line to his head.
“Goddamn monsters,” he muttered.
They had been experimenting on him from the start, planting ideas, driving him insane.
He smashed his fist on the console and stood up. He had seen enough.
He looked at the camera in the corner and marched to the doors outside, where he expected to find a couple of MPs.
Here, too, however, he found nobody. Only the long dark corridor he had come through. He started walking into the black.
THE 34TH DEGREE
119
A dazed and bewildered Sam Deker woke up to find himself tied up again. Only it wasn’t the steel chair beneath the VA Hospital in Los Angeles. It was a deep leather chair in Baron Ludwig von Berg’s study at the Achillion on Corfu. Franz slapped him into consciousness.
“Wake up, Andros,” Franz said.
When Deker came to, he saw no sign of Marshall Packard, Wanda Randolph, or young Prestwick. Nor did he see any sign of Aphrodite. Only Ludwig von Berg behind a desk. A brass clock on the desk said it was five-thirty, but Deker had trouble focusing. He looked around the large, ornate study to get his bearings in this smashed-up world of present-day Los Angeles and 1943 Corfu.
“Aphrodite,” he said. “What have you done with her?”
Von Berg narrowed his penetrating eyes. “Is she all you were searching for?”
“What else would I want?”
“I had in mind the Maranatha text.”
Deker refused to confirm or deny von Berg’s words, in case this was all a trick, so he kept a straight face and said nothing.
Von Berg smiled knowingly. “Truly, Herr Andros, I can only marvel at the audacity of the OSS,” he said. “Planting a cipher in a phony Maranatha text and allowing it to fall into our hands in the form of a microfilm-it’s beyond belief. The irony is that you succeeded in duping the Fuhrer. I suppose the plan would have worked had I not found the real text and you hadn’t prompted me to take a closer look.”
Deker watched the Baron remove a large portrait of King Ludwig II of Bavaria from the wall to reveal a secret safe. Out of this safe he removed a leather briefcase, and from there drew out what looked like a text pressed between two plates of glass.
“Here it is, Herr Andros,” said von Berg, walking up to him. “The text that has cost the lives of many good men throughout the centuries.”
The papyrus was brown and fragmented, and the ancient Greek characters looked dark and foreboding, as if they were indeed hiding some eternal mystery. Deker could understand Hitler’s and Prestwick’s interest in unlocking the text’s secrets. He wanted to reach out and touch the glass, but his hands were tied.
“So close, Herr Andros, yet so far.” Von Berg pulled the text away from him. “And it was all for nothing, you see, because I already knew the Allies intend to invade Sicily and that Greece is only a cover.”
Deker sank in his chair. Von Berg knew everything. There was nothing to hide now.
“The truly astonishing irony,” von Berg continued, “is that this text is nothing but a forgery.”
Deker looked up. “A forgery?”
“Foisted upon gullible believers by a false apostle in the first century. If he were alive today, I suspect he’d be working for Himmler or Donovan.”
“A forgery,” Deker repeated, watching von Berg carefully slip the glass containing the text into his leather briefcase.
Von Berg laughed. “Don’t despair, Herr Andros! Your failure has been my inspiration. This text may yet serve a greater purpose than anyone ever intended. You see, I intend to convince the Fuhrer that he has indeed tapped the source of Greek Fire and that the formulas encoded in the text are atomic in nature. Anything to make him a believer in the Flammenschwert.”