“So this is going to be the end of it, huh?” said Knut.
“And it’s a rotten shame, because while you guys were up here securing that drum, I did a little searching with the ROV. Not ten meters away from where we spotted the first cannister, I found the remains of the flat bed railroad car. And strapped securely on its back is the rest of the shipment, all thirty-two drums!
All I have to do is put together a big enough lifting collar, and I can raise the whole damn thing in a single stroke.”
Jon only needed to deliberate a second before responding.
“Then do it, Knut. Can you manage it alone?”
“It won’t be easy, but I can do it,” replied the giant with confidence.
“I’ve got plenty of trusted family and friends in these hills, and I can always count on them to give me a hand.”
“Then it’s settled,” said the photographer.
“Magne is going to have to be content with only three of us, because this is an opportunity that we just can’t let slip by.
Now are you certain that you can complete the salvage on your own, Knut?”
“I can do it, Jon. And I’ll make certain that those drums are under lock and key the moment I get them on dry land.”
“Excellent,” returned the photographer, while his associates readied the Zodiac raft for the trip to shore.
“God be with you, big fellow. All of our dreams are on your capable shoulders, Knut. We’re counting on you to make NUEX a part of living history.”
The two shook hands, and jon turned for the Zodiac, his palm still smarting from Knut Haugen’s powerful grip.
From the opposite shoreline, hidden in a dense thicket of Norwegian pine, a white-haired old man watched the Zodiac set sail. The veteran’s powerful Zeiss binoculars allowed him a clear view of the three young men who sat inside their grey, rubber raft. The bearded member of this trio positioned himself at the stern and started the Zodiac’s outboard engine. Even though they were over a kilometer distant, the elder could hear the whining growl of the engine as the raft sped off to the nearby shore to rendezvous with the awaiting helicopter.
Returning his line of sight back to the wooden trawler where the Zodiac had originated, he looked on as a single, muscular figure stood beside the boat’s transom.
This blond-haired giant was a bear of a man, who was busy starting up a motorized winch. A taut steel cable extended out into the water from this piece of machinery.
The old-timer had watched breathlessly as the rust-streaked drum shot up from the depths earlier. It floated innocently on the surface now, and was slowly being pulled toward the awaiting ship.
A familiar throbbing pain suddenly coursed down the entire left side of his face, causing the man to flinch and momentarily put down his binoculars. With trembling hands he reached up to gently massage the jagged scar that extended from his temple to his jaw.
For fifty long years, Mikhail Kuznetsov had been forced to live with this ugly reminder of a war that he would never forget. And though plastic surgery had somewhat masked the scarred facial skin, the deep knife wound had caused permanent nerve damage that no physician on earth could ever repair.
Certainly no stranger to physical pain, Mikhail forced himself to take a series of deep, calming breaths and gradually the discomfort dissipated. Only when his hands stopped trembling altogether did he regrip his binoculars. By the time he returned his glance back to the boat, the modern day Viking was in the process of lowering the steel drum onto the deck itself. As he proceeded to unwrap the cable that was still coiled around it, Mikhail noted that the cannister appeared to be intact.
He feared just such a thing, and knew very well that if this drum was still sealed, the others would be as well.
Inwardly cursing, Mikhail’s gut tightened as he considered the grim possibilities. When the trail had originally led to the nearby village ofRjukan one week ago, he got his first hint that his sworn enemy was after the Hydro’s treasured heavy water. They had apparently been drawn to Lake Tinnsjo when it was announced that the group known as the Norwegian Underwater Explorers were about to initiate the first salvage of the sunken ferry.
Mikhail had first heard about heavy water while a prisoner at the BergenBelsen concentration camp. He had been stricken with typhus at the time, and was laid up in the camp’s filthy, overcrowded infirmary, when his emaciated bunkmate introduced himself. As it turned out he was a Jewish physicist from Hamburg, who had been actively involved in Germany’s earliest efforts to split the atom. Though he was to die in less than a week’s time, he was able to share with Mikhail his greatest fear — the Nazis’ perfection of an atomic weapon.
Mikhail had never heard of such a device before, and could only listen in complete horror as the Jew gave him his first elementary lesson in nuclear physics. Time after time, he emphasized the utter importance of heavy water to moderate the fission process. Only when the war was finally over, and Mikhail literally crawled from the camp as one of its few survivors, did he learn how a group of brave Norwegian commandoes had destroyed the Hydro’s cargo of heavy water, which would have made Hitler’s nightmarish dreams of world conquest a reality.
With the war’s conclusion, Mikhail had returned to his homeland a sick, broken man. By the grace of fate, his twin brother Alexander had also survived, and had emerged as a hero in the People’s Navy. Their reunion was a tearful one. As Mikhail’s weakened body gradually regained its strength, he swore to devote the rest of his life to a single cause. So that the Fascist beast would never raise its ugly head again, he would roam the world in search of fledgling Neo-Nazi movements. Only by destroying their ambitions in their infancy could their dreams of a resurrected Third Reich be thwarted.
Mikhail operated under the auspices of the KGB, and even had a small staff at his disposal. Much of his early work took him to South America, where thousands of Hitler’s henchmen fled after the Axis went down in defeat.
It was in the jungles of Paraguay that he first learned of the fascist organization that went by the code name, “Werewolf”. This group was only one of many that Mikhail was attempting to infiltrate. When a photograph arrived on his desk showing Werewolfs supposed leader, Mikhail was shocked to find an unforgettable face staring back at him from a vine-encrusted veranda.
Not even forty years could mask this individual’s cruel gray eyes, highly etched cheekbones, and narrow forehead.
The only feature that was drastically different, was that in place of closely cropped white hair, he now was completely bald.
Like a nightmare come true, here was the very man responsible for not only the scar that still lined Mikhail’s face, but for the emotional scars generated by his incarceration into the living hell of a concentration camp.
After a half decade of tortured dreams and sleepless nights, at long last he was on the trail of former SS Gauleiter Otto Koch!
Like a man possessed, Mikhail dropped all other investigations to concentrate solely on bringing this demon to justice. With the assistance of a top-secret team of specially trained Soviet commandoes, Koch’s plantation was located and penetrated. Unfortunately their man had moved out only hours before and it took another two years of intense, frustrating work to once again come across the trail of this elusive quarry. This time the tracks led to the Telemark region of central Norway, where representatives from Werewolfmade contact with a local right-wing group known as the Nordic Reich’s Party, or NRP for short. Mikhail’s intelligence network was a bit stronger in this part of the world, and it was through a tip from a local KGB informant that he was drawn to the shores of Lake Tinnsjo.