DOOMSAGA I: THE BOOK OF THE TAROT
Chapter Nine: The Knight of Swords
Hungary, 1956
The two gypsies stood transfixed in front of the geology display case at the University where Werner von Doom often attended classes. They had seemingly forgotten for the moment that all around that storied Hungarian city, the Soviet army was laying siege. A handful of rebels and nationalists were banding together in a vain attempt to thwart the Soviet imperialist advance. A month prior those same rebels had ousted the Soviets from their government building, and to the surprise of most the world the Russian army had withdrawn. But now they were facing the full force of the Soviet engine, attack tanks, artillery and seasoned ground troops. The rebels had second and third hand weapons, scarce munitions, homemade bullets, scattered leadership, Molotov cocktails and other improvised explosives. They had only a few thousand fighters, stalwart nationalist pride and bravery on their side. They were being slaughtered by the hundreds.
All this was lost on the two young gypsies whose misfortune was to have been unwillingly caught in the middle of the inferno. A strange blue glow in the darkened hallway where they had taken refuge had pulled them almost unconsciously toward the glass fronted display. Werner had passed through this hallway countless times, but he had never stopped to look at the eclectic collection gathered by the proud geology department staff. Now it seemed to draw him forward. It wasn't just his curiosity, but something was actually pulling at him. Not at him, he finally realized, but at his satchel. He thought it was Cynthia for a moment, and he turned to look at her. But she was standing on his right, and his satchel was resting on his left hip as always with the strap around his shoulder. Only it wasn't resting there anymore.
"What the…?" he started to say.
"Look!" Cynthia exclaimed.
His satchel was actually levitating off of his hip, as if magnetized by something within the display case. He stepped closer to the glass. The satchel smacked against the front of the glass with a crack that startled the two gypsies. They involuntarily jumped as if another bomb had gone off. The blue glow inside the case was lighting their faces in an eerie luminescence that sparked ever brighter. It drew them closer.
"It's coming from that big rock there!" Cynthia said, pointing to a large dark rock, prominently displayed at the center of the display. "What is it?"
"It's a meteorite," Werner read from the information card next to the rock. "It says it was recovered in 1541 from the Danube river valley." There was more written there too, about how the strange rock had been in the collection of a doubtless wealthy benefactor, about how it had been handed down from generation to generation for 400 years. How the rock normally would have been melted for the trace precious ores it contained, but then it was saved from destruction by that long dead scientist who saw more worth in it for science and study, and who's ancestor later made a gift of it to the school. But Werner wasn't very interested in the history of the thing at the moment.
The big rock was brownish, reddish black, with a rough and jagged surface that appeared streaked with burn marks. It was about a foot in diameter, irregularly shaped, not quite round, with flecks of silvery metallic ore sparkling on its surface. But there on the lower right side corner, half imbedded in the rock as if the rocky substrate had grown around it like a living tissue, was a single blue gem stone with a smooth glassy surface, about the size of a small lime. From what they could see of it the blue gem appeared to be perfectly round, like a very large marble. It was glowing from within as if from some internal energy source. If the two gypsies had looked closer, they would have seen chisel marks in the stone around the blue gem, where someone had unsuccessfully tried to free the single blue stone from its rocky tomb. But they were both dazzled by the translucent, pulsating glow, each for their own unspoken but equal reasons. Werner's satchel remained plastered to the side of the glass in front of the meteorite display as if it were caught on an invisible hook.
Werner opened his satchel and reached inside. For a moment he thought that maybe the meteorite was magnetic, and the unseen force which had latched onto his canvas bag was pulling at the pistol he always carried there. But as soon as he opened the bag he knew that wasn't it at all. Next to the hand gun and buried by the pouches and vials of healing supplies that he always carried, was a small hidden pocket sewn into the side of the rucksack. He unsnapped the flap and withdrew a small blue glass stone that was virtually an exact match for the one inside the centuries' old meteorite. His familiar stone was glowing like it never had before.
He barely heard Cynthia gasp reflexively beside him when he pulled the stone out of his bag.
He had nearly forgotten about the blue gem stone he'd had since he was a boy. He had a distant, now vague memory of finding it in this very same satchel, stolen from a German soldier in a remote Yugoslavian village outside of Latveria. The heavy denim rucksack, the pistol, and the blue stone were all that was left from that adventure. The golden goblet and silver candlesticks had been sold and forgotten years ago. But despite all his troubles and hardships, he'd always kept the blue stone, hidden away within the deep recesses of his ever present school bag. He never thought much about it, although he had from time to time wondered if he should try to sell it to help put food on his table. No matter how difficult times were, he never could bring himself to get rid of it. He wasn't exactly sure why.
Now he was surprised to see that there was another one, a twin, and it was far older than he had ever imagined. As he pulled the blue gem out of his shoulder bag, the canvas bag fell back from the glass display as if released by an unseen grip, falling to its normal resting position on his hip. The glowing blue gem in his hand had always been warm to touch, but now it suddenly came alive. He realized that even though he had passed this display hundreds of times in the past, he had never walked close enough to the glass for the two gems to react in the vivid, almost sentient way in which they were reacting now. Beams of blue white energy jumped from the gem in his hand to the gem inside the rock, and back again, illuminating the whole room in an unearthly, flickering glow of cool lightning. Although the air around his hand crackled and sparked with that strange energy, it didn't hurt. They both could feel the energy in the air around them, raising the hair on their arms and tingling their senses. But the spectral energy caused them no harm as it danced silently back and forth between the two blue stones. He could also feel the blue gem in his hand pulling toward the one in the rock, as if they were magnetized. The stones crackled and flashed together for a bit, as if the two baubles were greeting each other exuberantly, and then they were both quiet, the bluish glow slowly dissipating around them until it was just a faint luminescence.
"Wow," Werner finally said with a gasp, realizing that he had been unconsciously holding his breath the whole time. He continued to hold the blue ball in his hand up to the glass, the familiar warm glow of the gem gently pulsing about his fingers. The gem in the meteorite had also gone quiet, now exhibiting just a faint, pleasant internal glow.
Cynthia stepped up closer to the glass, her eyes fixed onto the strange meteorite. Her heart was pounding in her chest, overwhelmed by what she had seen. Even the bombs and the tanks and the fearful sounds of war outside were forgotten. She turned to Werner who was standing there with a kind of curious smile on his lips. She reached up and closed his fingers around the gem.
"Hide it away," she whispered to him urgently, "keep it safe, tell no one … tell no one what we saw here."
"What?" Werner answered softly, then, "I mean, yes, sure. Of course. Who would ever believe it anyway? But you saw that, right? You saw it too? I didn't just imagine that. I've never seen anything like it before in my life!"
Cynthia almost answered, "I have," but she deferred. "A meteorite, that is a rock that falls from space?" she asked quietly, carefully subduing her own intense curiosity and desire.
Werner put the blue gem back into its pouch, and answered, "Yes, they usually burn up in the atmosphere, unless they are very large. So they say. I wonder if it's radioactive?" His scientist mind suddenly clicked off a series of serious warnings, and he stepped away from the case, pulling Cynthia back with him. The glamour had worn off. "Maybe we should keep our distance from that thing." And his mind suddenly turned back to their current predicament. "Where the hell is Boris?"
He stepped back up to the glass doors looking out onto the wide school courtyard. The sound of shelling and gunfire had receded into the distance, but a new vision caused him to gasp. A quartet of shadows was moving swiftly on the roof of the three story building that formed the long leg of an "L" with the building in which they were hiding. That building was the east wing of the Medical School. He never would have seen them if he hadn't been looking to the sky just then, for in the next instance the dark silhouettes of the four black clad soldiers disappeared in the shadows of the roof cornice and the tower that loomed above the arcade leading into the wide courtyard. Werner instinctively pulled away from the window to where he could look out without being seen by those on the roof, if they were still there. The next instant four slender ropes simultaneously dropped down from the roof, followed by the four agile, black clad operatives slithering down the ropes from their hiding places on the roof. Their actions were so precise, so well-timed, it was as if they were choreographed to a waltz. Each climber stopped at a place in front of a second floor window.
Werner gasped with sudden recognition, "That's Dr. Messler's office!"
Cynthia came quickly to his side. "What is it?" She looked out the window to see what he was looking at, and Werner grabbed her to pull her close into the shadows. There was a quick burst of gunfire, and the four soldiers swung on their ropes in unison, bursting through the second floor windows with a crash to disappear inside the building.
Werner opened his satchel and pulled out the hand gun, unclipping it from the leather holster. He didn't know what he was going to do, one against four seemed like impossible odds, but he felt like he had to do something, he had to try. He pulled the satchel straps over his shoulder and handed it to Cynthia, who clutched it reflexively in front of her.
"Hold on to this, I'll be right back," he told her. He took a step toward a wide stairwell.
"You have a gun?" Cynthia asked incredulously, and then, "Where are you going? Werner, don't leave me!"
Werner came back quickly, and kissed her. "I'll be right back, I promise. I have to make sure Dr. Messler isn't hurt." He ran back to the stairs.
"Don't do anything stupid!" Cynthia called out after him.
Werner nodded, but he was afraid that he already had. At the top of the stairs there was a rarely used passageway on the second floor that linked the two buildings. The narrow hallway ran over the arcade, and wasn't really meant for regular passage. It was behind a door that had been unlocked by mistake, and some of the more seasoned students had been surreptitiously using it as a short cut when they were late to class. Werner had used it himself, once or twice over the last few months. He hoped it would allow him to sneak up to whoever it was had burst through the second floor windows on the other side. He hoped they wouldn't expect anyone to be coming from this direction.
He cautiously opened the door into the wide, marble lined corridor where a few days ago he had waited on a hard wooden bench for an hour for his opportunity to speak to Dr. Messler about his dilemma. Then as now the hallway was quiet, dim and deserted. He quickly raced down to Dr. Messler's office, a few doors down on the left. He had a clear memory of that space, of the entry and the anteroom. Perhaps if the attackers were inside the main office they wouldn't think to guard the entry from the hall. He hoped he might find refuge behind Hauptmann's desk until he could determine if Dr. Messler was in any danger. He also hoped that his kind mentor wasn't there at all, and the four mysterious figures were only there to rob the professor. In which case he would leave as quietly as he had come, not wishing to risk his life with these obviously well-trained and well-armed saboteurs. What he would do if Dr. Messler was in there with four armed gunmen, he didn't really think about that.
Werner crouched low, and with one hand still on the pistol he used the other hand to open the unlocked door into the professor's anteroom. He slowly pushed the door open a crack, listening for any noise or disturbance from inside. It was quiet, but he could hear faint muffled voices coming from the other room, and the vague sounds of movement. Still crouching, he eased the door open a little more, pushing at it gently with the muzzle of the gun. The door was now open far enough for him to slip inside, but still he waited and listened. His heart was pounding in his chest. He couldn't tell if any of the voices he heard was the professor. He thought one of them was a woman, and that alarmed him. Could the men have taken some poor girl hostage? His pulse quickened, and he crept into the room.
He was immediately hit by a heavy body hurtling toward him. But because he was still crouched low the attacker only clipped his head and shoulder, and went crashing head first into a metal filing cabinet beside the door. It was dark inside the anteroom, and Werner heard and felt his attacker more than he saw him. The man was huge, and a bestial growl escaped its throat as he quickly recovered and turned to face Werner again. The attacker had pulled him further inside the room with its first strike, so there was no escape back out into the hallway. Werner instinctively rolled away from him in the opposite direction toward the front desk, taking refuge in the corner with the desk between him and the enormous specter that rose up in the darkness like a demon shadow. With just a sliver of light coming into the room from the now open door to the hallway, Werner could see a broad, barrel like chest, huge arms, and a shaggy head. He was dressed head to foot in black, so Werner could see little other details than what showed in silhouette. The light caught a gleam of teeth that seemed to hold sharp fangs, as the man-beast appeared to smile over the guttural growl that filled the room. Werner shuddered, knowing that he was trapped.
Instinctively Werner raised the gun and pulled the trigger. – click – Nothing happened.
"Safety," said a voice behind him, speaking in English.
Werner's heart sank, as he looked up to see that there was another man standing there in the shadows behind the desk. Werner didn't move from where he was crouched, fully expecting to be either gunned down by this man behind him or mauled by the creature in front. He had used the gun so infrequently, in actuality he hadn't fired it in over a year, and so he'd forgotten to pull down the safety latch when he took it out of his satchel.
Then the man-beast was beside him in an instant. A huge paw grabbed him by the collar and yanked him to his feet. His other hand stripped the pistol out of Werner's grip and dropped it on the desk. Werner could feel the hot breath of his assailant on his face.
"Back off, Creed," said the other man behind him. He nonchalantly picked up the gun from the desk and placed it in his belt.
The one called Creed continued to growl, but didn't heed the other's directive to "back off" and his grip tightened on Werner's collar. Both hands grasped the lapel of Werner's coat, almost lifting him off of his feet, and Werner would have sworn that he could feel the cold touch of claws upon his chest. "This worm was going to shoot me," Creed snarled.
"Before or after you almost took his head off?" the other man snidely replied. "He's just a kid, let him down." The man lit a match, bringing it up to light a stub of a cigar at his lips. As his face was illuminated, Werner gasped, suddenly recognizing the man he'd run into outside of the cobbler's shop earlier that day. This man was half the size of the beast that held him, but seemed to hold no fear of the larger man, and indeed, he was barking orders at the beast like a drill sergeant. Werner could feel Creed's grip relax ever so slightly.
"He will jeopardize the mission," Creed still protested, louder and angrier now. Werner shuddered.
"He'll do no such thing," the shorter man matched Creed's anger with his own, "he's not part of the mission, focus on that. We'll hold him till we have the package secured and then we'll be out of here. That's an order, mister."
"Logan, what's going on out here?" the door to Dr. Messler's office opened and a female poked her head into the anteroom. She was dressed like the others, in a black jumpsuit bristling with weapons. She had an exotic look about her, and long black hair that was neatly tied in a pony tail behind her head.
The one called Logan grabbed Werner as Creed reluctantly let him go. Logan pushed him toward the woman, who deftly contained him in a strong grip. "Keep an eye on this one, keep him quiet," Logan instructed. "Creed, door." Still growling, Creed turned back to the door into the hallway and quietly closed it, resuming his post guarding the door with grumbling acquiescence.
The woman pushed Werner into the Professor's main office. Once there he was relieved to see Dr. Messler, alive and well, but the office itself was a complete shambles. All of the tall windows that looked out over the courtyard were shattered. Broken glass littered the floor, a filing cabinet was toppled over, and the long, elegant red curtains were torn. One of the curtain rods was pulled out of the wall. A book case teetered precariously to one side, half of the books fallen onto the floor.
"Dr. Messler!" Werner cried out as the woman pushed him down into one of the chairs. Dr. Messler seemed unharmed, but he barely looked up to acknowledge Werner's presence. The head of the medical department was not his usual, precisely organized self. His normally neat silver hair was tousled, and his coat unbuttoned. He was frantically pulling papers out of some of the boxes on the floor, other papers were scattered about his desk, books were piled up on the floor, and a metal briefcase on his desk was overflowing with more papers than it could possibly hold. The bronze desk lamp was on the floor, along with the small Hungarian flag display. A fourth man, also dressed in black was sitting in Dr. Messler's chair, his black booted feet insolently propped up on the mahogany desk as he cradled a machine gun in his lap. He wore a terminally bored expression.
"Oh, hello, Werner," Dr. Messler said breathlessly with only a sideways glance at his startled pupil, "sorry about all this, my boy."
The man called Logan approached the other man in the chair, and placed Werner's pistol on the desk in front of him. "Check out this pop-gun the kid had, Maverick," Logan was saying. "It would have put a nice hole in Creed's hide if the rube hadn't left the safety on."
"Oh, ni-ice!" Maverick gushed with interest, dropping his feet off of the desk to inspect the hand gun. He laid his machine gun on the desk in such a way that he could swiftly grab it should he need to, but his attention was piqued by this smaller weapon. "A 9 mm Broom handle Mauser," he said, looking the weapon over enthusiastically. "Looks to be a Luftwaffe model, 1932. Beautiful. All original, missing the stock though. This is quite a rare piece you have," Maverick addressed Werner across the room, "what did the Professor call him?"
"Werner," Werner answered, "my name is Werner."
"He speaks English," the woman said with surprise.
"You're not English, are you American?" Werner asked her. She was stunningly beautiful, but coldly professional. He'd never met an American woman before. She handled the gun in her hand like a seasoned vet. He didn't know that women were also soldiers in America, and if the circumstances hadn't been more intense he would have asked her even more questions. But his throat tightened when she glared at him menacingly. He realized with insightful certainty that she was probably as dangerous as the man beast that had attacked him in the outer room.
"That's enough of that," Logan interjected, stepping away from the desk. "The less you know about us the better, bub."
Werner turned to address Dr. Messler in Hungarian, "Dr. Messler, what's going on? Who are these people?"
Dr. Messler looked up from his boxes and sighed, "I'm afraid I'm leaving, Werner," he explained. "The Soviet attack has sealed my fate, it will no longer be safe here for me and my family. But thanks to my latest research in gamma radiation, I've been offered asylum in the United States. Unfortunately, these men have left me insufficient time to pack my research papers!"
"Leaving? But what of the school? What will happen to us?"
"The school will continue of course, under the Soviets," Dr. Messler continued, "assuming they don't burn it to the ground in this infernal shelling. But being Soviets, they will rebuild, of course, when all this is over." Dr. Messler waved his hand, indicating the air above his head. He sighed and turned back to pulling files from his boxes. "I'm sorry, Werner, there's really no chance that you will be admitted to the medical school, you will just have to accept that. Not like there ever really was a chance. A gypsy boy? Impossible under the Hungarians, you see, even more so under the Soviets. I hope that I did not give you false hope. Now, everything changes. I will be better off in the Americas, you would do best to go back to your gypsies, or flee if you are able. You should never mention my name again, if you value your life." Dr. Messler tried to put some more papers in the overstuffed briefcase on his desk.
Werner was crushed by this callous rejection, and the implication that even if the Soviets hadn't attacked, he never would have been admitted to the school. It was worse than even the possibility of death at the hands of these commandos, or under the ruthless guns of the Soviet army. He was speechless, stunned and dejected.
"Time, Logan," the woman standing above him said.
Logan was alternately looking through the broken window, and watching the frantic searching of the professor. "I know, Silver Fox," he answered through gritted teeth. He glanced behind him. Maverick had busied himself taking apart Werner's gun, making rapid work of the tiny screws and springs, gleefully engaged in something other than watching the mad doctor sift through mountains of papers that no one but the doctor cared a fig about. But the weapon, that was something Maverick knew, and he field stripped and cleaned the old pistol with a born tinkerer's manic but precise abandon.
"Doctor, this is an extraction not a holiday excursion," Logan said gruffly to the professor.
"I realize that," the Doctor answered with some frustration, "but without my papers I cannot continue the research I've started here! You don't understand! This is years of work!"
"Done," said Maverick happily. He'd cleaned and reassembled the complex and elegant mechanism of Werner's Mauser pistol in record time, had anyone been timing him. He chambered a round, and lovingly placed the gun back onto the desk, carefully engaging the safety.
From outside the building there was a deep distant boom. An incoming round whistled outside, and the soldiers in the room went from relaxed tension into full battle mode in an instant. The explosion rocked the building, closer than ever before. Everyone in the room including Werner was knocked to the floor. Silt laden chalky debris rained down from above and there was black smoke billowing up from the courtyard below, filling the room through the open windows.
"That's it," Logan choked out. "We're leaving now!" The big man, Creed, entered quickly from the outer room even before Logan had shouted. As Werner finally saw Creed in the light he could see with relief that he was just a man. He could almost laugh now at the thought that what had attacked him earlier was a demon or monster of some sort. Later he would rationalize that the darkness had only made the big man seem like some sort of inhuman beast. Logan efficiently barked out orders, and the others jumped into action without question or pause, their roles well known and rehearsed. Werner could barely hear their leader's shouts over the ringing in his ears from the nearby explosion. He suddenly felt guilty for having left Cynthia alone and he hoped that she was all right. He was vaguely aware of Creed stepping over him to grab the professor, shoving the old man forcibly toward the broken windows. Maverick picked up the too full briefcase and closed it by pushing half of the papers piled inside it out onto the littered floor. He secured it with a snap and jumped to the windows. If Dr. Messler protested any of the lost papers, his complaints fell upon deaf ears. Silver Fox had already slid down one of the four ropes hanging outside of the windows, and the others quickly followed. There was a brief exchange between Creed and Logan standing by the smoke shrouded opening. Werner heard his name mentioned again. Then he heard the professor's voice one last time.
"He's just a gypsy," the professor was saying, "no one will believe him anyway."
And then Creed was taking Dr. Messler out the window, holding onto the professor with one arm as he lowered himself down the rope with the other. Only Logan remained in the smoke filled room.
Werner stood up, choking and coughing. Logan was calmly standing in front of him, there by the desk amidst the ruin of the professor's office. He picked up the hand gun Maverick had left on the desk, and Werner thought this was it, he was going to die now. To his surprise, Logan handed the pistol back to Werner, who gingerly took it. "Remember the safety next time you're in a fire fight. Good luck, bub," Logan said kindly, "you're gonna need it."
And then the small, stout soldier was leaping out the window onto his own rope, sliding down as easily as one might walk down a flight of stairs. Werner stood there for a moment as the dust and smoke settled, watching the four ropes quivering as they delivered their human cargo to the ground. Only when the ropes were no longer taut, and he could tell that they were moving only with the breeze, did he dare step up to the windows to look out and down into the courtyard below. Through the smoke he expected to be able to see something, but there was nothing there, not a soul in sight. It was as if the four black clad soldiers and their "package" had disappeared into the very haze of the burgeoning attack.
There was nothing more Werner could do here, and seeing the damage to the building he was suddenly quite anxious about Cynthia. He tucked the pistol into his belt and made his way rapidly back down the way he'd come, climbing over debris and leaping down the stairs two at a time.
