PROJECT ARCHIMEDES
A "Way of the Gun" Sequel
2. OLD GHOSTS
December 20th, 2010
Nuremberg, Germany
Trevor Grant remembered standing here once. To him, it was a short three years ago when he'd last gazed on this town. Back then there'd been a several pennants proudly flying the colors of the Third Reich and Adolf Hitler's Master Race. To see it now, decorated for Christmas, jammed full of so many different types of people, was astounding, amazing, and enlightening.
He was morose this Christmas season. Oh the German people were trying, there was no doubt about that, the public square was bedecked in festive spirit. The entirety of the place given over to something they were calling Christmas City.
He stepped away from the crowds, bundling his coat a little tighter against the night chill and started walking. Nuremberg…
Before the war, when he'd been very young, he'd come here with his father. It wasn't what any of the folks in Eureka might have thought if he'd said that to them, his father was a very severe man who was very set in an old way of thinking. No happy walks hand in hand as the popular media of the day would show it. His governess had done most of the talking to him, it was a business trip after all.
The city had enchanted and excited him. It had always been a center for science, beginning as early as Johannes Mueller's observatory in the 1500s. Of course the trip had come at Christmas time then too, and few places went as over the top on an old world Christmas as Nuremberg. Of course, Christmas was an utter waste of time to his father. Lucius Grant was not the sort of man to clutter his life with trivialities. He had a son because society didn't respect a man of his station unless he had a family, and that was the end of it.
Of course his second trip to the city had been in a much unfriendlier time. He had been isolated for a large part of World War II. Sure, he'd known what was going on, he could see the writing on the wall, plain as any other intelligent man of the day. But in the beginning the National Socialists had fooled everyone, himself included. He decided these days that it had been wishful thinking on his part, and on the parts of so many others. Every intelligent man or woman of his day was a socialist, it was the only philosophy that made sense. When the Nazis had shown their true faces to the outside world…
Now? He sighed, conflicted more than ever by a number of issues rampaging through his head.
All this had been before the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Auschwitz had been terrible enough to witness, even half a year after the prisoners had been freed. This country had been a mess! What evils men were capable of unleashing on other men chilled him to the bone. Could humanity ever rise above this barbarism? In the sixty years he'd skipped it looked like it had got worse, not better.
He realized he'd walked away from the crowds of people and his thinking and meandering had carried him down long stretches toward once familiar places, though now they seemed ghostly and unreal. He stood at the foot of the Zeppelinfield stadium's iconic parade promontory. It was quiet tonight, a sad and lonely place with the ghosts of the past haunting it. A tattered sign blowing in the breeze celebrated a Special Olympics that had been and done almost two months prior. A lone sign decreed the impending arrival of the GT racing circuit that would land here soon enough. Indeed the paved ground he walked on was marked with the faded ghosts of a starting grid.
He'd been here in '45 when they blew up the famous swastika on the top of the building. It had been celebratory, in a way, but the dead were everywhere in this country then, the impoverished and the war orphans omnipresent. The werewolves had already started their campaign of terror against the victors. A look at the news of the day had shown him where the folks in the middle east had gotten their idea for partisan warfare.
Now the stadium was a sad old ghost, and even though he despised its origin, he felt a kinship with it. It seemed strange that the events he remembered so clearly were more than half a century in the past now. He, too, was a relic from the past. Absently he patted his pocket for a cigarette, then sighed, finding the packet he had in replacement. He pulled out the little black box and removed the cartridge, touching the familiar shape to his lips and inhaling.
These electronic cigarettes... Marvels of the modern age, but like so many other things he'd been promised were 'better' than he remembered, they just weren't the same. "I want a scotch," he muttered, blowing out some of the flavored vapor. Just not the same...
There were very few other people with him in the old field's walkway, but he wasn't alone. He stood for a while, trying to take some pleasure from the fake cigarettes and watching the other people move through the area. Two couples he saw, and wished he hadn't. He thought for a moment about a possible future denied, but if he was honest he'd been nosing in to a relationship that was already established.
"Honestly, Jack," he thought, "You owe me for that. If I hadn't pushed you, you'd have let her slip away and wondered how it happened."
Taking a last drag of the cigarette substitute he almost reflexively tossed it to the ground, and was ready to stomp it out, but that's not how you treated these things at all! It saved his life.
At that precise moment he was looking at a different angle than he had been, and saw the movement out of the corner of his eye as a shape moved at him with alarming speed out of the shadows!
On his last trip here he'd never been without a stalwart military escort, but his principle bodyguard, and old sea dog from the British SAS by name of Hughes Mason had insisted like hell that he learn at least a few things to defend himself. Mason had been one hell of a hardcase, too. It had helped then, when they'd been jumped by a couple of partisans while en route to a pick up...
Grant jumped back, trying to put distance between himself and his attacker, and there was a flash of cold steel in the harsh street lights. He had a few brief moments to get a look at the fellow. A middle-sized man, lean frame, forgettable appearance, face concealed behind a scarf. Angry green eyes locked with his as the man reoriented. In his hand was what looked like a dull metal tube that the man held in a reverse grip like a movie knife fighter. It looked like one of those newer trans-dermal hypo-spray units that the doctors in Eureka ware so happy with.
"Now see here!" he shouted at the man, confused and angry, but on the alert. After all, get attacked by a werewolf partisan once and you'll never forget it!
"Could've been easy, Trevor. Could've been easy… Time to go say hi to Adam Barlowe!" hissed the man as he lunged forward. Grant didn't have to be an expert fighter to recognize one when faced with one. Gasping in shock and outrage, he put both arms up in an attempt to block the man's assault!
He barely stopped it, just managing to catch the man's arm in both of his. His ribcage exploded in pain as the other man's free arm exploited the opening, and something made a popping noise. The pain was memorable.
Out of desperation, Grant twisted hard, rather poorly executing one of Mason's moves, but doing it nonetheless. The other man yelped in pain, as did Grant when his broken rib protested mightily, but he managed to twist around while holding onto the man's arm, and levered the man over in a judo throw.
Again, it was poorly executed, so instead of flying away from him, the man landed at Grant's feet. He had eyes only for the syringe devise though, and bent his head forward, biting hard on the meat of the man's bare hand. He tasted blood.
His assailant screamed in terrified outrage, but Grant didn't really care. "In a fight, son, you do everything you bloody well can to ensure you walk away and he doesn't!" snarled the ghost of Hughes Mason in his ear. "There is no such thing as a fair fight!"
They syringe dropped, and Grant let go of his assailant, fumbling for the device. The man reacted with speed and violence, levering a kick up from the ground striking quite hard against Grant's hip. Pain flared. Instead of limping away, however, he yelled his outrage, pivoted on the screaming leg, and snapped his hiking shoe clean into the man's face. There was a crunching sound and the man muffled a scream. Grant stumbled away, his hip not responding well and his ribs utterly protesting any movement.
His assailant rolled over, cupping his hands in his face and spitting out muffled curses. In a slipping crawl, the man finally got to his feet, glaring hate the likes of which Grant had only experienced once. No talking was going to end this, he realized. No way in hell.
He looked around, desperate for there to be a peace officer somewhere! Where were the god damned cops when you needed them? The people he had seen where nowhere to be found now, either having fled at the sight of a fight, or simply not noticing the two men in their struggle.
"It's over, smart man! You got lucky!" He moved in on Grant, now apparently ignoring the intense pain caused by the severely broken nose and lacerated forehead. Blood was pouring off the man in a grotesque display. A quick flick of his right hand produced a small and very sharp looking knife.
God, he hated knives!
The man lunged in hard and fast, and Grant was never quite sure after that why he was alive when it was over. He felt a sudden state of calm like nothing that had ever come over him, the panic just seemed to melt away, and while he somehow took a nasty cut on his right arm, he did win.
The final moment of the fight was frozen in his mind. His arm blocking the knife, a searing line of pain running along it, and the syringe device pressed against the side of the man's neck, his thumb desperately jammed against the plunger.
The man's eyes bugged out, he gagged, and staggered back, all his veins suddenly engorged and every muscle tense with agony. The man flinched, and flexed, coughed once as his eyes flooded with blood. He bent over and vomited blood and… other things… all over the ground.
Grant staggered back from the dying man, not having the presence of mind to even search the fellow for clues. It didn't matter. Beverly's people! It had to be!
But why? They hadn't stopped him from leaving Eureka. If anything, he half expected her to try again, to tempt him once more with rewriting history, but this? Assassins? What the hell?
He glanced around, suddenly fearful of a second assassin, and backed out of the light. Pain reminded him that he needed to find a doctor, and soon. He moved away from the Zeppelinfield and moved out into the night of Nuremberg. He fumbled in his pocket for his smart-phone, calling for help.
Disclaimer: I don't own Eureka, it's characters, or its concepts, I'm just playing for fun and an educational experience.
Author's Notes: So, please don't kill me for bringing Trevor Grant back, but James Callis is one of my favorite actors and I really did love to hate Trevor.
For a long while I played with the idea that Grant was enrolled at one time with the OSS, but I figured that he really was an idealized and sexed up version of J. Robert Oppenheimer. The Allies desperately needed their big brains solving problems in safe locations, not trying to be spies. Plus, having a dark fighter side to Zane was enough of a switch-up.
The socialism comment is based on an "interview" with Oppenheimer as played by humanities scholar Clay S. Jenkinson (look for him at the Dakota Sky Education website), and it was a wonderfully enlightening and engaging event.
In looking around, I was surprised to find out about Nuremberg's really over-the-top reputation as a Christmas town. It's something to see, apparently.
The werewolves were partisan soldiers that continued to fight on after the Third Reich was defeated.
Lastly the Zeppelinfield has been made famous as one of Adolf Hitler's most recognized speaking places in film history. You will probably recognize it from those old clips of the exploding swastika that History Channel must insert, seemingly by contract, into every documentary on World War II.
In a statement of irony, when you consider the regime it was founded to celebrate, it really has been used for things like Special Olympiads and is now part of the racing circuit in Europe.
And if you caught it, yes I tried for a tie to "The Rock", but John Mason would be too old, so I brought in his daddy.