“Good day, Captain,” Von Seeckt replied in German, his voice just a whisper, amplified by the mike.
“I need some information,” Turcotte said in the same language.
Von Seeckt muttered something unintelligible.
“Dr. Von Seeckt!” Turcotte raised his voice, trying to reach the other man’s mind. A hand moved the small mike closer to the old man’s lips.
“Death,” Von Seeckt whispered. “The shatterer of worlds.”
Turcotte had heard the old German say those words before — the first time he met him, on a flight out of Area 51. It was a quote from Oppenheimer upon viewing the detonation of the first man-made atomic bomb at Trinity test site in New Mexico. Von Seeckt had been there, and his presence put an asterisk on the term “man-made” for that first explosion, because Von Seeckt had brought with him from Egypt an Airlia-made nuclear weapon.
The Nazis had interpreted enough of high rune symbols from a stone artifact under the water near Bimini — the apparent site of Atlantis, the Airlia main base — found by one of their submarines, that had pointed them to a secret lower chamber in the Great Pyramid of Giza. Von Seeckt, a young scientist of the Third Reich, had been picked to accompany the military team that traveled to Egypt, even as war raged across the desert and the Desert Fox, Rommel, closed on the British forces.
Breaking through a wall in the pyramid, the Germans found a black box that they couldn’t open. They took it with them, but in their attempt to return to their own lines were ambushed by the British and Von Seeckt and his box captured. Eventually the radioactive box — along with Von Seeckt — ended up in America as part of the Manhattan Project, because when they finally opened it, they found a nuclear weapon that gave the American scientists great insight into what they were trying to do.
“Doctor, I need some information,” Turcotte repeated.
The old man’s eyes blinked, trying to find who was speaking. “I took a vow. An oath.”
Turcotte knew he had to get through to the old man.
“Why do you obey?” Turcotte snapped in German.
Von Seeckt’s voice firmed up. “From inner conviction, from my belief in Germany, the Fuhrer, the Movement, and the SS!”
Turcotte could sense Yakov stir next to him, uncomfortable with what he was hearing. While World War II was certainly significant in American history, Turcotte knew the Russians, with over 20 million dead and half their country devastated, held a far harsher memory of that war.
“Hitler is dead,” Turcotte hissed. The words Von Seeckt had spoken had been his vow, taken when he’d joined the SS over fifty years earlier. “He’s been dead over fifty years. You are in America now. You’ve been here since the middle of the war. And you must tell me what I need to know!”
Von Seeckt’s eyes were wide open now. They focused on the screen at the foot of his bed. “Captain?”
“Yes.”
“Orders. I had to follow orders.”
“I need you to think,” Turcotte said. “Back to when you were in Egypt in the war. After you left the Pyramid with the black box.”
“The desert,” Von Seeckt whispered. “It was cold at night. I was not ready for that. It surprised me. Very cold. Always in the desert. Why have I always been in the desert?”
“When you were ambushed in the desert,” Turcotte said, “was it just chance or did the British know?”
“Know?” Von Seeckt repeated, still speaking German. He blinked. “What have you discovered?” he said in English.
“You told Major Quinn that you had heard rumors of STAAR,” Turcotte said. “That you believed it might not be made up of humans. But you also told him that it did nothing. That it just existed until recently taking action. But I don’t think that’s so. I think STAAR or a group like it has been acting all along, manipulating things, and I think it might have had a hand in your patrol getting ambushed and the Airlia bomb going from German to Allied hands.”
Von Seeckt stared at the camera, then his head nodded ever so slightly. “I always thought it was strange. Such a coincidence. We thought we were betrayed by our Arab guides, but the British killed them also, which was rather brutal for those so-called gentlemen. And they were not regular soldiers. I — who had seen the SS stormtroopers — knew these British were special commandos. What were they doing at just the right spot in the desert at just the right time?”
“So it is possible that the British were tipped off?”
“It is possible,” Von Seeckt agreed. “But so many things are possible. Who knows what the truth is?”
“I think you know more than you have told us,” Turcotte said.
Von Seeckt didn’t say anything.
“How did General Gullick and Majestic learn of the dig in Temiltepec?” Turcotte knew that was the event that had suborned the members of Majestic-12 and, if Yakov was to be believed, turned them into Guides. When Majestic uncovered the guardian computer and brought it back to Dulce, it affected the minds of those in charge, particularly Gullick, and led to the attempt to launch the mothership that Turcotte and the others had narrowly averted.
“Intelligence,” Von Seeckt said. “Kennedy, our CIA representative, forwarded a report about Jorgenson’s dig there and the discovery of something strange.”
“Bullshit,” Turcotte snapped. “I’ve had Major Quinn check both the CIA and Majestic records. A lot of them have been destroyed, but what is there suggests the guardian pyramid wasn’t uncovered until after Majestic’s team got there. And they knew exactly where to dig. What isn’t in the records is how they got that information.”
“I do not know,” Von Seeckt said.
“Again, bullshit. You were part of Majestic. You’ve played this ‘I don’t know’ game long enough.” Turcotte wished he could reach through the screen and wrap his hands around the old man’s scrawny neck. He had to give the old man credit that he had helped them stop the flight of the mothership, but with Yakov’s new information, Turcotte wasn’t so sure that Von Seeckt had acted out of altruism.
Shortly after first meeting, Kelly Reynolds had told Turcotte how the place Von Seeckt had worked at — the V-l and V-2 rocket site at Peenumunde — prior to going on the mission to Egypt had used slave labor from the nearby concentration camp and how thousands had died in those factories and camps. But Von Seeckt had conveniently claimed ignorance of that also at first.
“And I’ve also received information that the guardian was not found at Temiltepec,” Turcotte threw out.
Von Seeckt shook his head. “I have told you all I know. I was told it was Temiltepec.”
“You’re lying.”
“What difference does all this make now?” Von Seeckt sounded very tired. “I understand the Airlia fleet was destroyed. Why are you delving into these things?”
“Because this group is still around somewhere and we need to know more about it. And I think this group had something do with Majestic recovering the guardian wherever they found it.” Turcotte saw no reason to divulge to Von Seeckt the information about the Guides or The Mission yet.
“No. I know nothing of such a thing.”
“Then tell me about Dulce,” Turcotte said.
“I told you already that I only went to Dulce once. That Dulce was the province of the others.”
“The other Nazi scientists brought to the United States under Operation Paperclip to work for our government,” Turcotte clarified. “But what exactly were they doing there? What was on that lowest level where the guardian computer was stored?”
“I do not know. I never—”
“What was there?” Turcotte cut the old man off. “You do know! Tell me!”
“All they told me was that they were doing experiments. It is what Nightscape picked up the people for.”
“No.” Turcotte shook his head. “Nightscape kidnapped people, but they were brainwashed on the level above, the level where we found Johnny Simmons.” “Yes, the abductees who were returned with their disinformation. Did you ever wonder what happened to the abductees who never came back?” Von Seeckt asked. “All those people who disappear every year and are never seen again?”