Blaine held his ground. “You didn’t get all the White Death, Tessen. I found two boxes of explosive devices loaded with it, ready for use. Don’t worry, I’ve already destroyed all of them, except for the ones I thought I might need.”
The screams outside continued, joined by fresh ones from the mansion’s first floor. Glass shattered. The sounds of pounding, desperate footsteps shook the walls. Louder screams followed, lessened, and then became sporadic along with the gunfire. Tessen’s face was a frozen mask of agony. He swung from the window.
“This can’t be!”
“You underestimated your enemies yet again, Tessen. Must be a Nazi trademark.”
“But I can still kill you!” he ranted, fighting to steady his gun Blaine’s way.
“Maybe. Still leaves you just a frightened old man, though. The future of any Reich ends here, no matter what happens to me.”
“Then take that to your grave!”
Tessen’s hand started back on the trigger.
A shot rang out.
The pistol flew out of the Nazi’s hand and shattered the window. He crumpled to his knees, holding his wrist.
“Took you long enough, Indian,” Blaine said to Johnny Wareagle, who stood in the room’s doorway.
“It was more difficult slipping past the exterior guards than I expected, Blainey.”
Blood sliding down his chin from where he had bitten his tongue, Tessen gazed beyond the big Indian at the tight pack of men gathering around him. All of them had thick goggles dangling around their throats, removed from their eyes because there was no longer a need for them. Downstairs and on the grounds beyond, all sounds of resistance had ceased. Tessen knew that even if he yelled out, there was no one left to hear him. He fixed his eyes on a fat, balding man who had advanced ahead of the Indian.
“Who?” he half muttered, half mouthed.
“This is Wolfgang Bertlemass, Tessen,” McCracken explained, “chief administrator of the Document Center and watchdog committed to making sure his country does not fall into the hands of animals like you again.”
“We have had enough of your kind,” Bertlemass accused Tessen, leading the others past Wareagle into the room. “All of us Germans have. And look, Nazi, not all of us are Jews.”
But Wolfgang Bertlemass was a Jew. And back at Nineteen, Tovah had explained the reason behind his role as permanent watchdog, along with his lifelong commitment to the Document Center: Bertlemass was one of the original members of the Tau! Accordingly, he had been all too happy to help them in their efforts following Tessen’s raid on the kibbutz. Bertlemass had supplied the helicopter and equipment, but only on the condition that he and the group he had founded could have a hand in the end. Blaine had agreed without hesitation. The final demise of the Nazi movement deserved to be at the hands of Germans. History had come full circle. The past had at last been atoned for.
Bertlemass and his people, few of them young, most of them carrying at least distant memories of World War II, enveloped Tessen and lifted him to his feet.
“You will watch us set the explosives, Nazi,” Bertlemass spat out. “You will watch your dream die before you do. And I have a message from someone who knows much about death at your hand from a day long ago.”
Tessen looked up at him.
“She says that the priest’s curse is finally complete.”
Bertlemass nodded, and the others led Tessen out of the room. Blaine and Johnny took their time in following. They had just started from the room when a sudden stirring behind them made both turn around fast.
The toymaker stretched his arms behind a yawn and looked their way.
“Did I miss something?” he wondered in a sleepy voice.
“No,” Blaine told him. “It’s over.”
Epilogue
“When does it end, Indian?” McCracken asked Wareagle outside the mansion, when all the explosives had at last been planted.
“With those who began it, Blainey, as we saw tonight.”
“We got lucky tonight.”
“Did we? Or is this merely the way of all things? My people have a legend that tells of a demon who rises to wage war on an entire tribe. The tribe fights bravely with its most valiant warriors, but to no avail. The demon’s evil cannot be overcome. It is fueled by the killings as it consumes the warriors’ spirits with their flesh. When all is over, and the demon has consumed all of the tribe, his lust is still not satisfied. His hunger insatiable, he consumes himself.”
“Evil doesn’t always destroy itself, Indian.”
“But it inevitably leaves us a means to help it on its way.”
Blaine’s stare had turned reflective. “It left Rothstein a means, too, and I can’t help thinking that he had things more right than we ever did. I can’t help thinking that maybe I just should have left him and his Tau alone to finish what they started.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because I was afraid it would leave me — us — with nothing to do.”
Wareagle smiled ever so slightly. “Each battle we face leads us to the next one. My people have a ghost dance, Blainey, in which the spirits recognize them and inscribe their names on the totem of our ways. There is a similar totem for our ways in the hellfire, a black granite slab incised with those whose journeys ended in the jungle. But the names of the ones we lost, the ones who traveled the jungle with us, are not there. I wonder if they can rest or if they are lost, as my people would be if the spirits bid them no regard.”
“They knew the rules, Indian. What we did over there never happened, no accounts made in Uncle Sam’s daily log. The steps of our ghost dance were different.”
“Except I never performed it with my people, Blainey. With you and the others, yes, but never with those Joe Rainwater wanted me to stand up for. And since our work in the hellfire can never be acknowledged, perhaps my name remains inscribed nowhere.”
“Better nowhere than that black granite slab.”
“True enough. But I must stand up for my people now. In my own way, my own time. I must be faithful to all that remains a part of me.”
Blaine frowned. “Maybe that’s my problem. Somehow I feel I wasn’t true to myself in destroying Rothstein.”
“It wasn’t Rothstein you destroyed so much as the White Death. You came to understand that true essence lies not in proposed ends, but in prescribed means. The White Death was wrong, Blainey, it was evil. Anyone who reached out to grasp it, then, could only be the same.”
“But more people are grasping, Indian, if not for the White Death, then something else.”
Wareagle smiled ever so slightly. “In the hellfire, we entered the dark world and survived it. When we returned, the world above lacked many things but at least it always had light. Somewhere.”
“The trick sometimes is finding it, and it seems to be getting harder. Less of it out there, if you know what I mean.”
“Not less light, Blainey, just more clouds we must part to find it. And this time, perhaps, we have a chance to part the greatest one of all.”
McCracken nodded. “Just maybe we do.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing!” Melissa protested.
She stood before the narrow opening on the bank of the dry riverbed that she and Blaine had climbed out of ten days before, stood before it as if to block the way down. She had been mounting arguments ever since McCracken had informed her of his intentions. But this last-ditch attempt seemed to be her most determined.
Blaine and Johnny looked at each other before McCracken spoke. “I think we do, Melly.”