The Evil Long Forgotten

Chapter 13

By Christopher W. Blaine

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DISCLAIMER: All of the characters and situations contained in this story are ©2004 by DC Comics Inc. and are used without permission for non-profit, fan related entertainment purposes only. This original work of fiction is ©2004 by Christopher W. Blaine and may not be reproduced in any manner, in part or as a whole, without the express permission of the author.

The bus was black with tinted windows and wheels that shined from heavy polishing. It appeared to be the kind of vehicle a traveling rock and roll band would use and there were certainly many of them traveling through Europe. As such, the young German soldiers did not think too much of it as the bus approached the front of the estate in the early morning hours.

The officer in charge held up a hand, indicating that the bus was to stop and it complied almost immediately. With a great rush of air, the brakes were applied and the side door started to open. The officer, as well as his two escorts, wondered who it was they were going to see. Perhaps one of the little blond American pop princesses? That would certainly be a treat!

Three shots, fired from a silenced pistol, took down the three soldiers. Before their bodies had collapsed onto the gravel of the parking area, black clad figures were pouring out of the bus and separating into prearranged groups. No sound was made, even as the "clean-up" crew moved out to collect the corpses.

One small group moved away from the estate, to the area that had been clearly marked as a radiation hazard with yellow and magenta striped rope. The rest approached the estate from every entrance and exit. With military precision they ensured every guard and soldier was eliminated. No mercy was shown to any unfortunate soul in uniform.

The small barracks that had been erected to house guards off duty was the scene of the worst of the slaughter. At this hour, all of the inhabitants were sound asleep and it was as they dreamed that their throats were slit. Eyes would suddenly open as the room became filled with the sounds of gurgling and tripping as the soldiers vainly fought to remain in this world.

Inside the estate proper, most of the researchers complied like sheep being led to the slaughterhouse. They were not warriors and the sight of black clad gunmen was enough to drain away their resolve. One team moved to the private rooms, seeking out any researchers that had not yet been discovered. Now that there was no need for stealth, they wasted no time in just kicking in doors and rousting the occupants from their beds.

The door to Donna's room came open and the first two figures that entered, yelling at the top of their lungs in several languages, found themselves facing a very angry German man. Behind him was Donna, quickly putting on her costume and wishing she had some sort of power that would just let her spin in a circle to change.

Henry wasted no time with speech and punched the first intruder squarely in the face. The second one moved past his flailing comrade and went to deliver a hay maker to Henry. In a move that Donna immediately recognized as Japanese in origin, Henry stepped out at a 45 degree angle and struck out with his fist, catching his assailant's arm at the wrist. Then he applied a blow called a shudo, a strong strike to the neck.

Donna stepped back, clad in her costume sans her boots and watched as Henry dispatched the two intruders and then stepped forward to find some more. "Hey, handsome," she called out. "Maybe in Germany its fashionable to beat other men while naked, but in America its kind of weird."

Henry stopped and looked down and blushed. "I was hoping to end this quickly so we could perhaps…"

"Man of my dreams," she said with a smile. She moved past him. "I'll handle this. Find my boots for me," she said with a laugh.

In the hallway Troia found herself in the middle of chaos. Students and researchers were being forced out of their rooms, some of them only dressed in their underwear; some in even less. She moved quickly to the nearest group, grabbed someone dressed all in black and tossed them through the wall. That person's partner, a woman by the shape of the figure, turned quickly and pointed an automatic pistol at the hero.

Troia grabbed it and squeezed, crushing the weapon with her Amazonian strength. As the prisoners ran back into their room screaming, the unknown woman punched Troia in the jaw with her free hand. By her howl of pain, Troia knew she had bruised some knuckles. "Dumb ass," she said despite herself. After all of the years she had been a super-hero with world-wide press coverage, it still surprised her when normal people tried to hurt her with simple punches and kicks.

Shoving the woman aside roughly, Troia stomped towards the next group. Three men in black saw her coming and one of them had the good sense to grab a prisoner and put a weapon to their head. "Stay back, Wonder Woman," the man said, his accent placing him as Australian.

She blew out hard. "Do you see a couple of letters on my chest? Is my costume red, white and blue?" She put her arms up in the air. "I'm Troia, the other dark-haired chick."

"Don't get smart with me, Sheila," the man said, using a common term for women from his country, "you take another step and you'll be responsible for a murder."

"Yeah, yours," she bluffed, realizing that at the moment she was stuck. She had been in bad situations before, but there were simply too many civilians around for her to cut loose with her strength.

She sensed Henry coming up behind her. "You just hold it right there, big fella," another of the men said, this one with a southern American accent. Henry came up behind Troia and put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "Why don't you attack them?" he whispered.

"Hostage," she said silently.

"Okay, now," the Aussie said, stepping back with his prisoner. "I have an itchy trigger finger, Wonder Woman…"

"Troia!"

The man sneered. "Whatever! Just take it nice and easy and I won't have to kill this nice little researcher."

Henry put his hands up and followed behind Troia. "Who are you, what is this all about?" he asked. Troia was glad he was doing the talking; it gave her time to assess the situation and perhaps come up with a plan of action. The terrorists, for that was the only thing they could be, led them down the stairs and towards what had been a sitting room. Inside were the researchers and the bodies of two soldiers. Instantly she felt both rage and sadness when she saw the corpses. These were people who meant business and there was no way she could risk doing anything that could get any innocents hurt.

An entourage entered from the back entrance to the room, a man clad in black but with his mask removed at the lead. He was older than Henry, but in remarkable physical shape. His long black hair was tied back in a ponytail and there was a look of perpetual arrogance on his face.

He spoke clearly and loudly with a heavy German accent. "All of you shut up, now!" he bellowed. Almost immediately there was silence. Only the occasional sniffle broke the tension as the man looked around the room, gaging all reactions. His eyes drifted onto Troia. "An American super-hero…how interesting…Troia, is it not?"

She said nothing, but nodded her head slowly. "A member of the Titans…you are a long way from home."

"I came to view the countryside," she replied, not able to think of anything else. She knew the man's face, but could not quite place it.

"You picked a very bad time," he said. Then he turned to some of his followers and started giving orders in Arabic. This was obviously a well-ordered and well-funded group, drawing members from all over the world. She was also sure that this man who directed them was someone of importance, someone that her brain was telling her that she should be very wary of.

The man stepped into the middle of the room and addressed the crowd. "As of now, you are all my prisoners. Who we are and what we represent, our ideologies and beliefs, are of no concern to you. Comply with our demands and you might live; disobedience will result in punishment that might include death, torture, rape…whatever I decide. As of now I am your mother, your father, your god and your devil. Is there anyone here that does not understand these instructions?" He waited and then turned his attention to Troia. "You would be very hard to kill, so anything that you do will result in something unfortunate happening to the youngest member of this group, whomever that might be."

He then noticed Henry, who was clad only in pants and an open shirt. "You! Who are you?" the terrorist asked. He gave Henry a once over. "You are built like a soldier…"

"Mein Name ist Mueller, Henry Mueller. Ich bin ein freiberuflicher Berichtserstatter bei der Absicherung einer Recherche im Bezug auf Troia (My name is Miller, Henry Miller. I am a freelance reporter covering an investigation involving Troia)," he replied.

The terrorist laughed. "You will speak in English, fool; I doubt that you and I are of the same Aryan stock. You appear too…common…"

Henry stiffened at the criticism and his eyes began to smolder with a burning hatred. "I…"

"Shut up!" the dark-haired man ordered and the room became deathly quiet. "Is there anyone here who does not comprehend the predicament that you find yourselves in? You are all prisoners and you will comply with our demands!"

He then scanned the crowd once again, as if he were searching for someone. "Where is the lead scientist…the Brit?" he asked.

A young woman raised her hand and he ordered her to speak. "Your men killed him," she offered weakly.

The leader closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. After several seconds of holding his breath, he let it out slowly and then turned to face Troia. "Then your presence is of great fortune for me, young hero," he said with a smirk.

"I just got here a day ago," she said, holding her chin up so as to demonstrate she was corralled, but not beaten. "And, as you have pointed out, I'm a super-hero, not a scientist."

"You are an Amazon, correct?" he asked. She nodded and he seemed to relax. "Then you have a certain resistance to radiation, correct?"

"Yes," she said slowly, wondering exactly what the terrorist was getting to. "I'm not invulnerable, though."

The terrorist shrugged. "That is your problem, not mine." To emphasize the point, he drew his pistol, a German design, and pointed it towards the young woman who had originally answered him about the lead scientist. He pulled the trigger and after the screeches, screams and yells, the woman fell. Troia started to move forward, but Henry put a hand around her arm.

She looked at him, betrayal in her eyes, but there was sympathy in his. "You must not; too many will die…is that what you want?"

Gritting her teeth, she turned her attention back to the terrorist. "Tell me what you want."

One of the benefits of being a Justice League member was that you had access to some very handy technology. Ray Palmer and John Henry Irons, former League members the Atom and Steel, loved to tinker away at various items and make them more useful. As a way of somehow impressing Wonder Woman (which many League members except Batman tried to do), they had built a cell phone into her earrings. She normally did not wear them but had on this trip just in case her regular phone somehow got damaged.

After the battle with the armored woman, she had discovered that indeed disaster had struck her small phone. The earrings were voice activated and she had been using them for the last hour to try and contact Stephen. Next to her in the back of the police car (the local police had been kind enough to offer her a ride to the estate), Red Star read a well-worn paperback novel.

"Hallo, hier spricht Agent Hinkle (Hello, this is Agent Hinkle)," a voice on the other end said.

"Guten Nachmittag, Agent Hinkle; hier spricht Wunder Frau, die Person der Sie aus dieser Angelegenheit helfen sollten (Good afternoon, Agent Hinkle; this is Wonder Woman, the person you are supposed to be helping out on this case)," she said in a sarcastic voice.

"My apologies, Princess, but I have been doing some research into Baron Blitzkrieg," Stephen said.

She quickly gave him a brief explanation of her conversation with Mrs. Schultz and the subsequent battle afterwards. He remained very quiet until she finished. "Where are you?" he asked.

"About an hour outside the estate, so long as there is no traffic on the backroads," she said, looking out the window. He stated he was not too far behind them. "Did you find out anything interesting about Blitzkrieg?" she asked.

There was a brief wash of static over the phone and then Stephen answered. "I remembered something from my initial training for this position. The European Union has several dossiers on our super-criminals going back to the 1930's. The Baron is required reading for my agency," he joked.

"I can understand why, he was a powerful man," Wonder Woman admitted and it was not in any way a stretch of the truth. Baron Blitzkrieg had faced off against her own mother and had held his own, not to mention the many times he had battled the entire All-Star Squadron. He had been the precursor of the modern super-villain.

"Indeed he was, but he was also well connected in that his family was very involved in the Third Reich. When I started to put things together and did a little back research, I discovered something concerning our Dr. Melch…"

The connection then squealed and cut out and Wonder Woman was left listening to nothing but static. She tried dialing his number again, but it would not connect. "Strange," she said, but then she realized that while she was using advanced telecommunications equipment, Stephen was not.

"What is it?" Red Star asked, setting his novel down. His bare chest glistened with sweat and Wonder Woman determined he was using his own internal powers to burn up the cookies he had engulfed. No wonder he stayed so fit.

"Agent Hinkle was about to reveal a secret but we got cut off," she said with a sigh.

"Most likely he was going to tell you the same thing that Mrs. Shultz told us. The Baron was somehow connected to the Atoman Project or to Dr. Melch and that he is most likely the person doing the murders." Red Star was about to return to his reading when Wonder Woman put a hand on his wrist. She asked him to repeat what he had said.

He smiled and put the book once again in his lap. "I would have thought it was obvious by now. My government has suspected for some time that Blitzkrieg was alive, or that someone was pretending to be him. We believe that the Automan Project was an attempt to duplicate the science that had originally created the Baron."

Wonder Woman nodded and considered the possibilities. It would explain why an aristocrat like the Baron would have been against it. As the only person with his abilities, he had been invaluable to the Reich. If there were more of him, then he would have been disposable and worthless.

"Then why was the Seraph murdered?" she asked.

Red Star shrugged. "Again, this is only conjecture, I am not my friend Nightwing, but it is possible that all attempts to recreate the process have failed because some of the original notes were missing. Maybe agents of the enemy," he said, without actually naming a foe, "cornered him and took what he had for themselves…"

"Except we found his notes for the most part," Wonder Woman pointed out. "I would say if he was targeted for assassination, then all of his papers would have been confiscated. And that would not explain his murder. A metahuman had to do it…"

"That is where the idea that the Baron is still alive…"

Wonder Woman shook her head. By all accounts, Baron Blitzkrieg would be far too old to be a threat. There was nothing to indicate he was immortal or long-lived, merely powerful. Plus, there was his final battle with Wonder Woman's mother where his armor had been shredded and he had been beaten to within an inch of his life. "I find that hard to believe, though I will agree that there is more to the Baron's connection then he simply disagreed with the project."

"It was only a theory," Red Star offered.

"Which is more than what we have now," she said as she rubbed her temple. How did Batman do it, she wondered? How was he able to put all of the puzzle pieces together to form a clear picture?

They had a dead super-hero and diplomat, one from Israel and one from Russia, but no direct connection between them. Then they discovered that one of the dead men had been researching a Jewish scientist that had collaborated with the Nazis to create something that the Japanese could not. An idea popped into her head and she closed her eyes.

Wonder Woman had limited telepathic ability, but it was strong enough to get the attention of the Martian Manhunter in the JLA Watchtower. John, I need some help she sent out.

The low, calm voice of the alien filled her mind. Of course, Diana, how may I be of service?

Quickly she projected into his mind a picture show of what had transpired so far on the case. At one time, the Martian Manhunter had assumed a human guise as a police detective and so he was intrigued by the information and mystery surrounding the investigation. Can we somehow find out what projects the Japanese government was working on in the late 1920's to early 1940's? Anything to do with metahumans?

There was a pause. That may be very difficult as the Japanese government does not like to discuss the events of the war, even with us.

Wonder Woman considered that and realized that she was beating a dead horse, as Green Arrow would say. How about Kal? She knew that Superman was well-loved throughout the world, including Japan.

The Manhunter seemed to smile telepathically. A very good suggestion, Diana. I will contact him immediately. You are fortunate that Clark Kent and Lois Lane are in Singapore on assignment.

Wonder Woman nodded and then turned to Red Star, explaining what had transpired. He approved of the measure. "If there is anyone who can get the information, it will be Superman. Many times even my own government has been willing to open up to him when they were leery of everyone else."

She turned back to look out the window and noted that they had picked up speed. She was thankful for that and her thoughts again drifted to the seemingly impossible task of trying to once again sort out the mystery. The idea that Blitzkrieg was still alive was ludicrous, but it was also credible. The murders matched his method of operation and she knew that well enough. Her mother had spoken often about her old foe, so much that Wonder Woman believed she was as familiar with the man as anyone else.

There were other explanations, such as a clone or simply a new version of an old idea. There were still Nazis in the world, people who believed that a minute genetic difference between them and everyone else somehow made them superior.

She tried calling Stephen once more. "Princess?" he answered. "Thank goodness," Stephen said on the other end. "I was trying to tell you that Dr. Melch was Blitzkrieg's uncle. I looked it up. Is that not amazing?"

"Then perhaps it is him," Wonder Woman whispered. Suddenly pieces began to fall into place and she wondered if this was what it was like when the Batman came to a conclusion. The clarity was almost overwhelming. "The Baron was against the program not because he was afraid of being replaced, but because the candidate for the test was his cousin, his family."

Red Star shook his head. "It would go deeper than that," he said, not bothering to excuse himself for interrupting her conversation. "At the time of the experiment, according to what we have been able to discover, the Reich was falling apart. Perhaps he did not want his cousin to throw his life away for a lost cause."

"Tell your Russian friend he is very insightful because that is what I came to the conclusion of as well," Stephen said. "Do me a favor, Princess," he started. "Don't go to the estate yet. I'll give you an address to meet me at and we will go together."

"Alright," she agreed, wondering why he would want that. "Is there something I should know about?"

"No," he said and then there was a pause. "I just wanted to go in with you. Besides if I am with you will have an easier time with the guards."

"I'm sure there will be no problem; we are expected," she countered.

"Just meet me at this address," he said sternly, rattling it off. Wonder Woman repeated it to their driver who nodded and then Stephen hung up.