Dead Hearts.
"(…) We carry in our hearts the true country,
And that cannot be stolen,
We follow in the steps of our ancestry,
And that cannot be broken (…)"– Midnight Oil "Dead Heart".
Warnings: Crime, racism/speciesism, xenophobia and everything that comes with it.
Timing: 2017, a year after "London Calling"
Rating: T to M.
Disclaimer: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen original comic books © Allan Moore and Kevin O'Neill. Thin Blue Line (in character of Maggie Habib) and 'Allo 'Allo (in person of Otto Flick) © BBC. Atomic Robo © Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegner. Stargate Atlantis © MGM Studios. Hellboy (in character of Karl Ruprecht Kroenen and Hellboy) © Michael Mignola. Slenderman © Eric Knudsen (as Victor Surge). Dracula (in character of Wilhelmina Murray) by Bram Stoker. Allan Quatermain by sir Henry Rider Haggard. Orlando (or his/hers alike) by Virgina Woolf.
This story © Archer Black. 2017
Voyage, voyage.
?
Thursday. September 28th.
"Boy, do I feel popular today?" The computer technician rolled his eyes as Maggie and Robo appeared at his desk the first thing in the morning.
"We're here for the IP address that emails sent to one Thomas Hill came from." Maggie hinted to the man to refresh his memory.
"A moment." He dove into his folders and produced a thin one. He peeked inside to check if it was the right one. "Got it. Your IP address is foreign."
"How foreign?" Robo asked.
"South America foreign." The technician closed the folder. "Your Thomas Hill's mysterious admirer sent his little love letters from Chile."
"Figures." Atomic Robo took the folder.
"You have specific address inside if you're interested." The technician shrugged. He did his job, now it was someone else's headache. "You're lucky that this Hill fellow knows nothing about IP addresses, otherwise he'd cleanse his inbox." He added.
"And the sender?" Maggie asked. Hill's own ignorance was one thing, but that other person seemed smarted than some knucklehead.
"It's a post office's computer, they don't come with anonymiser soft pre-installed, public computers aren't meant to provide privacy." The technician smirked. "Or personal security for that matter."
"Thank God for small miracles." Robo commented.
"Where would we be without them?" Maggie agreed.
?
The information pulled from the IP address wasn't much, but it was enough to give them place to look for the mastermind behind the grunts. The question was what to do with that knowledge.
"Yeah, but why a post office? Why not internet cafe or a library computer?" Robo wondered. "I would expect that at least an internet cafe would use some Proxy server and there seems to be none here."
"Maybe there's none available there?" Kroenen shrugged. "The internet cafe and library I mean." He elaborated. "If it's a small town then I wouldn't expect people to be willing to pay for internet access if they could have a free one at a post office. And even if they have a library, it may not have internet, or it may be only for members."
"Is it really important?" Spike asked. "What matter is that we have address. What should we do with it?"
"Theoretically we have the people responsible for the beatings. We could close this case now and just go home." Maggie stated. "But what guarantee do we have that this mysterious person won't assemble a new gang of thugs and continue?"
"None." Robo nodded. "I don't think it would happen overnight but eventually the problem would return."
"I will talk with my superiors." Maggie decided. "I will recommend going after that man. Not only he inspired local youth to perform xenophobic attacks but this thing reeks of some ODESSA leftovers."
"If you will replace Nazis with money then indeed it does." Kroenen agreed. "The depth of this connection remains to be determined though."
"The methods of wiring the money, the attacks, the punks responsible." Robo counted on his digits. "I say the depth is just right to call for intervention."
"I agree and I will tell so to my bosses and your 'M' but I can't make any promises." Maggie warned. "For now prepare your reports, no matter what will happen we do have the gang and we need to set our paperwork straight so the Police can process them properly."
?
'M's' office.
Maggie Habib sat quietly in front of 'M's' office. She seemed calm but inside she was being slowly consumed by nerves. She knew that she was asking for much. In fact it was more than anyone would anticipate at the start of it all. It was meant to be simple police operation in London, not some international ghost chase. Maggie was aware that international chases were not unheard of in League's past. But in the past centuries it was a wholly different matter, and the last one took place on EU's territory so it wasn't exactly international, not in the sense a trip to another continent was.
"The 'M' will see you now, Inspector Habib." Miss Moneypenny's voice made Maggie almost jump out of her skin; she was so engrossed in her internal deliberations that she forgot that she wasn't alone.
Maggie stood up and smiled nervously at the woman behind the desk.
"Do or die time." She murmured under her breath as she entered the office.
?
The conference room.
The table was cleared of all the documents that littered its surface earlier. Instead Slenderman sat there, writing his report. By hand. He was alone; the others left the room to do the same separately and with use of computers.
"You're alone?"
The faceless entity lifted his head to look at Maggie, and nodded in confirmation.
"What you're doing here all alone?" She asked further.
Slenderman waved a sheet of paper in the air.
"All right, carry on." She waved her hand and picked a phone only to realise that it was digital and it wouldn't work well in Slender's presence. She cursed silently and left.
The creature observed her leave, shrugged and returned to his task.
?
It was an hour later when they met again in the conference room. Their reports done in triplicate, even Slenderman's was copied. The folders packed into cardboard boxes, everything labelled and in perfect order.
"The case isn't over yet." Maggie announced when she entered the room. "I've called you to tell you that I have spoken with 'M'. Turns out that we'll go after that mystery man, but it will be tricky."
"Tricky how?" Robo asked.
"If we manage to catch him, we have no guarantees that we will be able to get him out of Chile." Maggie explained.
"You mean you haven't applied for extradition yet?" The robot sounded surprised.
"No, we did not, and we won't be."
"Why?"
"To apply for extradition we would have to know the name of the man we're after, which we don't." She started. "And even if we did somehow learn of his name, we would need to prove in front of Chilean court that what he did is illegal in both UK and Chile. Having that covered we still couldn't be sure if we could get him because we do not know what citizenship that person has and if Chile would extradite a non-British citizen to us."
"Human extradition procedure is overly complicated." Spike stated.
"And what do you know of extradition procedures." Robo sounded genuinely surprised.
"The Wraith have our own extradition laws, only ours are similar yet much simpler." The Wraith explained. "In most cases it is automatic."
"Well, on Earth it is not." Robo commented. "So, what do you want to do once we have that guy?" He turned to Maggie.
"We will simply abduct him." Maggie stated plainly.
"What? Are you crazy?" Robo sounded scandalised. "That's never a good idea."
"That's our only idea. I can't have him extradited and 'extraordinary rendition' has no application here. Therefore abduction it is."
"If it will make you feel better, Doctor Tesla, there are significant precedencies." Kroenen chimed in.
"Oh yeah?" The action scientist growled with irritation.
"Adolf Eichmann was abducted from Argentina to Israel." The German shrugged. "And if you still have doubts, Morton Sobel was abducted from Mexico to USA."
"Just because it was done before doesn't make it all good now." Robo protested.
"Enough. We're doing it. And if it will make you feel any better, Robo, we still need to catch him before we can even thing of smuggling him out of Chile." Maggie stepped in before an argument could start. "We're cleared for departure in tomorrow morning. It all depends on you, Robo, will you fly us or not?"
"What would you do if I'd say no?" He pondered.
"I would request a pilot and an aeroplane from Foreign Affairs." She replied simply.
"I'll fly us; it looks like I'm outvoted here anyway."
"No, you're not. It is not democracy." The Inspector shook her head. "This is League of Extraordinary Gentlemen."
?
South America. Southern Chile, near Argentinian border. November 2nd.
The IP address took them to southern Chile, the trip took longer than they anticipated, the small town they were heading to was far-off from the nearest airport. A sudden change of hemispheres caused small shock for Maggie – it was a jump from early autumn to early spring after all. Her mood wasn't improved by the fact that they had to travel by car. They had to fly to Chile for formal reasons, they needed to be there legally in case they needed help from Chilean authorities for any reason, but once there it was their choice how to travel and it didn't have to be by car. Slenderman offered his services and Maggie would have accepted if not for vigorous protest of Robo who in not so subtle words stated that there was no way that he would be 'teleported' if he had any other alternative. That in turn led to some tension, it took some explaining from Kroenen that Atomic Robo was reluctant to use any means of travel that he could not fully understand of explain using scientific terms and formulas that he could comprehend. It didn't improve Maggie's mood but she accepted it.
Finally they have reached the place. The air was fresh and the scenery was beautiful. There was a forest in the distance and while the area was still mountainous, it was not nearly as high as it was upper north where the Andes reach their full height.
"To be honest, I expected it to be warmer here." Maggie commented while rubbing her arms.
They were parked on the opposite side of the street from the post office.
"People usually do. Most imagine that Southern America is all Amazonian river and jungle." Robo shrugged. "Everyone forgets that Southern America reaches down to the sub-polar area. Do you know that there is even tundra at the very southern reach of the continent?"
"Not to mention that it's spring in here, think of 'late March' type of weather." Kroenen sounded suspiciously cheerful, then again, he wasn't cold, he had nice, warm looking coat. "The seasons are in reverse here after all."
"Well, if I remembered I would be better prepared." Maggie grunted and lifted the collar of her jacket. "How do you propose we should proceed now?" She changed the topic.
?
Wednesday, November 4th.
Maggie and Kroenen sat at a small table inside of the post office, they were posing as a pair of unfortunate tourists: Maggie had a post card, an envelope and she was pretending to write a letter while Kroenen, with his head bandaged, sat next to her pretending to be suffering in silence. They were alone; Robo was safely hidden in their car while Slenderman and Spike were observing the building from a convenient rooftop. It was their third day, second when they were keeping the surveillance from inside of the post office.
"Are we even sure this will work?" Kroenen murmured to Maggie, he was starting to have second thoughts about their clever plan.
"He sends his messages regularly and roughly at the same time of day." She whispered back and continued her writing. "He has to show up eventually, he wasn't here on Monday and yesterday, he'll have to come today or tomorrow."
Kroenen didn't reply. He kept his speaking to a minimum to uphold their little cover up story about his accident and because someone could overhear them and that was the problem with English around the world: one could be sure that even in small towns all around the world one could bump into someone speaking it reasonably well, especially in post office.
Fifteen minutes later Maggie finished with her letter, there was only so much time one could spend writing, she then packed the envelope and went to the clerk to send it. Pretending to be a tourist, she spent another ten minutes pestering the clerk about being sure that it will reach the intended address.
She just returned to her small table to stall a bit more by making a minor show of fussing over Kroenen, helping him up and getting his coat back on when a young girl, no more than fifteen went in and asked to use the post office computer. Kroenen discreetly observed her as she logged into an account using a login and password written on a piece of paper and then sent an email with a zip file attached to it, a zip file that she had on a pen drive.
The German whispered to Maggie who in turn nodded and sent a short text message with her phone.
?
"Are we sure this is the right one?" Kroenen asked Maggie when they left the post office.
"Most people remember at very least their login; it is the address they're giving to other people after all." She replied. "Even if you didn't remember your password, you'd still remember your own login, wouldn't you?"
"I suppose I would." He nodded. "But I don't suppose that you think a young girl is the mind behind the attacks?"
"Of course not, but perhaps she has an older sibling or a parent that can be such a mind." Maggie pointed out. "Now, I don't think she does it regularly, if she did she would know the login and probably the password by heart by now."
"And we are being expected." Kroenen stopped suddenly. "Hill's on-line absence had to alert the person behind this."
"It probably did but I don't think that we have been made. If anything, this creep would rather expect the local police to show up. I say, he sent the girl because he couldn't be sure, for all he knew it could be some connectivity issues on Hill's end. If he was sure that Hill was caught he wouldn't sent the girl, he would just disappear." Maggie's phone vibrated and she pulled it out to read the message. "It's Robo, he has her."
?
The girl was scared, that much was obvious at first sight. Her dark eyes were round in fear and she was looking around in confusion. Not that Maggie could blame her. She was apprehended by two total strangers, although Atomic Robo wasn't that much of a stranger, he was well known even in small towns in Chile. Regardless of his fame, however, he was a stranger to the girl, and Spike wasn't making the matter easier taking that he didn't exactly look human, not with his eyes, green skin, white hair or even needle-like teeth.
"Robo, just ask her who sent her to send the message, why and to whom." The woman requested. She didn't exactly speak Spanish, she could bet Spike didn't either, she wasn't sure about Kroenen and she would bet that Slenderman could communicate with just about anyone; but she trusted Robo. She trusted him for three basic reasons: a) he spoke Spanish well enough, b) unlike Slenderman he could translate directly and didn't require Spike to speak for him and c) the girl would probably prefer to speak with someone famous.
Robo did as asked and for a moment he and the girl exchanged some words. The girl sounded both impressed and intimidated with the entire situation.
"I told her that she's not in any trouble, otherwise she wouldn't talk." Robo warned.
"Of course she isn't." Maggie sighed. "Unless she really is the mastermind behind it all."
"She said that a man paid her some money to do it. He sometimes pays the local kids to do his post office biding for him when he's in town. Nothing big too, just sent a letter for him, sometimes sent or download an email for him too while he's busy with some other stuff. He always picks his own mail though." Robo related the girl's story.
"Ask her about that man." Maggie nodded. So far, so good. Robo chatted with the girl for another moment.
"She said that he's old, which I guess that for her means a man in his twenties and up. She says he's blonde and wears glasses. He introduces himself as Lutipold Heyder. That's all she said." The robot said.
Kroenen suddenly stiffened, as if he saw a ghost.
"Is everything right, Doctor?" Maggie turned to the German.
"Ahh, yes. It's the name, it sounds familiar." He admitted.
"In what sense?" Robo asked the Occultist.
"I knew someone named Lutipold once." Kroenen admitted. "It was long time ago and the one I used to know should be dead by now."
"Who was that man that you knew?" Maggie was now intrigued.
"You would only know him by his first name." Kroenen explained. "He was Heinrich Himmler."
"Heinrich Himmler's middle name was Lutipold?" Robo barely stopped himself from bursting into laughter. "As in Heinrich Lutipold Himmler?"
"Yes." Kroenen nodded.
"The name is not a common one, but surely more than one person can bear it, especially if the one that you, Doctor Kroenen, have in mind is long dead." Maggie shook her head. As entertaining as it was, it had to be a coincident.
"There's also the fact of the surname." The ex-Nazi didn't give up.
"It's not 'Himmler'." Robo pointed out.
"'Heyder' was Himmler mother's maiden name1)." Kroenen revealed.
"How do you know that?" Robo's eyes grew round, literally.
"I once looked into his documents." Kroenen confessed. "During the war it paid to know as much about your formal superiors as possible, especially if you were secretly working for someone else."
"But Himmler is dead. He has been dead since 1945." Robo protested. "There's no way that he escaped, ODESSA or no ODESSA."
"I agree. But it may be someone with ties to him." Kroenen agreed. "Or maybe some relative?"
"Ask the girl if she knows where this Mr Heyder lives." Maggie turned to Robo.
The girl was hesitant to answer but eventually she did.
"In a house outside the town, near one of the villages, but she says that she never was there." The robot translated the girl's explanation. "I'll ask her if she can give us some directions where exactly it is and how to reach it."
?
The house was a well-kept ground floor building surrounded by some trees and shrubs that made it look like an ideal, quiet place to retire in. Incidentally the trees and shrubs also provided the Group ideal cover for sneaking in close to the house without alerting anyone in it. Apparently Mr Lutipold Heyder was not expecting anyone to pay him a surprise visit.
Coming close to the house was surprisingly easy for most of them. To Spike sneaking came naturally, as all Wraith he was ambush predators. Slenderman had supernatural ability to blend into the background and remain hidden in plain sight which was consistent with his nature of stalking predator – a trait he shared with his intended prey: humans2). Kroenen and Maggie, as an ex-soldier and policewoman respectively, had their training to go by. The only one with some problems was Atomic Robo, who due to the fact that his skin was shiny metal had a hard time blending in with the foliage, but even he managed.
When they burst in, they expected some resistance but the man was taken by surprise. He was reading a newspaper and enjoying a cup of tea. When he saw five individuals invading his small house he stood up with rather disbelieving look on his face.
"Lutipold Heyder?" Maggie asked. Robo and her had their guns aimed at the man.
"I am him." The man replied in English. His accent was hard, definitely not local. If anything it sounded as if he was Scandinavian or German. "May I ask why you decided to invade my home?"
"Because you are in contact with one Thomas Hill and financed his little gang." Robo answered.
"Spike, Slender, Kroenen, go, search the house and find me some evidence." Maggie turned to the three men.
"And what are you looking for?" Heyder enquired. "What kind of evidence."
"Documents linking you to Thomas Hill. Plans, charts, financial reports. Letters and messages." Maggie listed, there was no point in keeping it a secret, he knew what he had and he couldn't dispose of it anymore.
"Then there is no need to trash my abode." He slowly gestured to a binder lying at the table he was sitting by. "It contains documents that you need."
"That's nice of you." Robo eyed the binder. "But I remain sceptical." He turned to the other three members of the Group. "Go and search the house anyway."
Spike and Slenderman looked around and left, each in different direction.
"Kroenen, do you need an invitation to join them?" Robo glared at the German.
"Forgive me but I have experienced unexpected sense of familiarity." Kroenen explained. "This man seems familiar to me, I do not recognise his face yet I believe that I've heard his voice somewhere before."
Heyder turned to face Kroenen and glared at him pointedly.
"You really do not recognise me?" He sounded amused.
"I think we have met before, but I cannot tell when or where."
"You do not recognise my face, perhaps you remember my name? Otto Flick?" The man said and extended his hand in Roman Salute that the Nazis used. "Heil Hitler!"
Kroenen only glared.
"You do not reply me in proper manner? Never mind, you never did, I suppose that you never really cared about that, you only cared about your precious Slav Master." Flick sneered.
"As a true patriot I do not believe that waging a losing war was ever in Germany's best interest, but I believed that in my best interest at the time was to stick with the NSDAP." Kroenen didn't sound moved by the other man's accusation. "And trust me; I was not the only one."
"I know that. And near the end of the war everyone knew that we could not win. This is why shortly before the invasion of Normandy I underwent a plastic surgery." Flick revealed. "Clearly it did pay off. I cannot see your face but we met enough time for me to be able to tell that you are not surprised."
"No, I cannot say I am." Kroenen shook his head.
"Another of you accomplices, Kroenen?" Robo nodded at Otto Flick. That earned him a cold glare from Kroenen; at least it seemed like it anyway.
"Definitely not." The Occultist denied. "This Herr Flick is SS-Sturmbanfuher Otto Flick of the Gestapo, the very same I have mentioned to you on our previous mission, that was pursuing me and was my personal nemesis." He continued. "Herr Flick was a captain when I was a Lieutenant Colonel, he was two ranks below me but his Godfather was Himmler himself which made Herr Flick virtually untouchable – whatever he did Himmler would always get his back. Eventually Himmler got tired of his Godson constantly barking at Hitler's pet project – the Ragna Rok. He gave him a quick promotion to a major and sent him to France to hunt down some paintings3)."
"And that's where I have spent the rest of the war." Flick confirmed.
"After the war you have vanished. I admit that I recognised you assumed name but I never connected it to you, I always thought you were dead." Kroenen admitted.
"Fortunately, for me, I am not. Thanks to my Godfather I have met Her Majesty and learned about the place in Africa to which I have travelled after I have fled from the France." Flick revealed. "I must ask, are you alive still thanks to the same circumstances. I happen to know that you also met She Who Must be Obeyed."
"I did and she shared her secret with me as well, but my 'curse' is something else entirely." Kroenen didn't divulge on the subject.
"That is all extremely educating, but where did you have the money to fun Hill's little band?" Maggie decided to step in before the two Germans could continue their conversation.
"Many who have had escaped the III Reich had money. Some used Switzerland banks; other had hid some Nazi gold... "With that he pointedly looked at Kroenen but the other German ignored the glare. "And I am one of those who have the gold. All I had to do was to discretely recover my prize. But I'll have you informed that you will never find it"
"That we will see." Maggie smirked.
"Indeed we will." Flick smirked back and all they've noticed was a gentle move of his wrist followed by flash and bang, and then the entire house was filled with smoke.
Before they could see or breathe properly, they could hear a motorbike engine. When they managed to get outside the man was long gone.
"Why haven't you followed him?" Robo shouted at Slenderman.
Theoretically the faceless entity should be the able to catch Flick without a problem; in fact he should be the only one unaffected by what had to be a stun grenade.
"He says that Otto Flick was not scared and his mind was almost blank and couldn't detect any possible destination he would head to." Spike repeated what Slenderman told him. "I can confirm that he was calm and didn't give any signs of fear that I could sense."
"Flick was always disciplined, almost always kept his emotions in check." Kroenen nodded. "He must have used that discipline the moment we came."
"And why have he give you that glare when he was talking about gold?" Robo asked Kroenen. "You didn't think I missed that one, did you?"
"He must have referred to the gold that project Ragna Rok was financed from and that were at the disposal of General von Krupt4). It is a great shame that he died and took that secret to his grave." Kroenen boldly lied. "I could surely take some of it into my custody."
"You know, I may not be able to prove that it was Slenderman that helped you to escape on our first mission, but you know what? There are no books for that L-space stunt you pulled that one time." Robo wasn't sure if Maggie Habib was aware of their mission to London Below, so he decided not to reveal any details on that one. "HB wanted me to get you back, and if asking you nicely didn't help, I can still take you by force. I'd rather have you go willingly so that offer I gave you, it's still on the table."
"I appreciate your generous offer, Doctor Tesla." Kroenen bowed his head slightly. "But I much prefer to remain a free man."
At the same moment Kroenen stepped speaking, Slenderman laid his hand on his shoulder and they both disappeared.
Robo started to say something but he stopped himself. He was so angry that he feared that he would say something he would later regret.
"I am not surprised." Spike admitted. "Kroenen would never agree to join if he didn't have a plan to remain free."
Robo glared at the Wraith in silence, then he mumbled something illegible.
"Okay, let's get back inside and finish the search." Maggie proposed.
TBC.
1) Her name was: Anna Maria Himmler nee Heyder.
2) Humans as omnivores (no matter what some vegans choose to believe). In time before the ground breaking and game changing invention of agriculture we were hunter-gatherers (and it still is in our nature) which means that in order to have something to eat we had to either pick it from some shrubs or hunt it down. Now, lacking claws or impressive fangs, humans could only depend on ambush and stalking strategies. Now, ambush could work on smaller prey, but it won't work with a beast that can trample you. This is where the stalking comes into play – humans are endurance monsters – all you have to do is to would the prey and then follow it at a safe distance until it's too tired and wounded to resist. Then you go in, deliver the mercy blow and enjoy your mammoth steak.
3) This is not exactly true, he was after three items, two of which were indeed paintings: "Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies" by Van Klomp, "Cracked Vase with the Big Daisies" by Van Gogh and the first Cuckoo Clock ever made. He also had some personal objectives involving certain "Arian Beauty" by the name Helga. He failed miserably on all accounts, as anyone who watched 'Allo 'Allo knows (and if you didn't, you certainly should watch it).
4) General Klaus Werner von Krupt, he was the official head of the Ragna Rok Project so he was controlling the money. Naturally everyone (perhaps except for von Krupt himself) knew who the real mind behind the project was. General himself died six months after being admitted to Eisenvalt Sanitarium on February 12th 1945, his corpse was infested with beetles of unidentified species, the cause of death was never explained. It doesn't take much imagination to come to a conclusion that the general didn't die of natural cause (boy oh boy, would Robo be 'delighted' to learn about the beetles – he'd be agitated for hours). Surely Rasputin and his merry band wouldn't allow the project's funds to waste away, and also they would probably (plausibly even) made sure to know where to find any other 'Nazi treasures' – and gold is the most universal currency.