Read Rogue Angel 55: Beneath Still Waters Online
Authors: Alex Archer
Rogue Angel 55: Beneath Still Waters
A wrecked German bomber…key to the secrets of the Third Reich?
All it took was one phone call and TV show host and archaeologist Annja Creed is in mortal danger. Her producer Doug Morrell has been abducted by a greedy treasure hunter who’s seeking the lost
raubgold
, or looted gold of Nazi Germany. The terms are simple: retrieve the bounty and Doug lives. Fail, and he dies…
Now Annja and her friends must find a missing German fighter plane that was shot down over the Alps in 1945. According to legend, the aircraft not only holds a shipment of gold the Nazis had stolen, but also carried the last letters of the
führer
himself. Letters that point to a more startling treasure buried underwater halfway around the world. But Annja isn’t interested in treasure, or even unearthing historic relics. Annja has one agenda: get Doug out alive…even if it means drawing her sword from its otherworldly sheath. Even if it means death.
Because once greed drives a man to violence, nothing will stop him…
It was Doug on the screen. He was tied to a metal chair in a nondescript room.
Annja’s anxiety propelled her closer to the hotel room’s television as she turned up the volume on the DVD player.
Not that Doug was speaking. His arms and legs were tied to the chair, leaving his hands free and his bare feet resting on what looked to be a wet concrete floor. The camera was close enough that Annja could tell his face was bloody and swollen. A thin line of dried blood ran down the side of his face. When he raised his head and looked at the camera, the one eye not swollen shut was filled with fear.
“Help me, Annja,” he said, and his voice was little better than a croak. “I don’t care what he asks you to do or who he asks you to do it to—I’ll die here if you don’t do what he wants.”
The camera zoomed in on his face and then slipped down to his body and stopped on his right hand. That close, Annja could see that his last two fingers were bent at odd angles.
She could hear Doug saying, “No, no, I didn’t do anything! Don’t!” She steeled herself but she didn’t turn away. Annja owed it to him to watch what he was having to endure.
A gloved hand reached into the camera frame. It was neither large nor small, so she couldn’t tell if it was a man’s or a woman’s, though she suspected the former. Not because a woman couldn’t be that cruel—she knew from experience that that certainly wasn’t the case—but because her mystery caller who’d sent the DVD had claimed to be the one who had kidnapped Doug.
The individual took hold of Doug’s middle finger and snapped it. Doug let out a shriek of pain and the screen went blank.
Watching the kidnapper inflict pain on Doug to coerce her into action filled Annja with a righteous fury.
He’d picked the wrong woman to tangle with.
Titles in this series:
Destiny
Solomon’s Jar
The Spider Stone
The Chosen
Forbidden City
The Lost Scrolls
God of Thunder
Secret of the Slaves
Warrior Spirit
Serpent’s Kiss
Provenance
The Soul Stealer
Gabriel’s Horn
The Golden Elephant
Swordsman’s Legacy
Polar Quest
Eternal Journey
Sacrifice
Seeker’s Curse
Footprints
Paradox
The Spirit Banner
Sacred Ground
The Bone Conjurer
Tribal Ways
The Dragon’s Mark
Phantom Prospect
Restless Soul
False Horizon
The Other Crowd
Tear of the Gods
The Oracle’s Message
Cradle of Solitude
Labyrinth
Fury’s Goddess
Magic Lantern
Library of Gold
The Matador’s Crown
City of Swords
The Third Caliph
Staff of Judea
The Vanishing Tribe
Clockwork Doomsday
Blood Cursed
Sunken Pyramid
Treasure of Lima
River of Nightmares
Grendel’s Curse
The Devil’s Chord
Celtic Fire
The Pretender’s Gambit
Death Mask
Bathed in Blood
Day of Atonement
Beneath Still Waters
BENEATH STILL WATERS
T
HE
LEGEND
…THE ENGLISH COMMANDER TOOK
JOAN’S SWORD AND RAISED IT HIGH.
The broadsword, plain and unadorned,
gleamed in the firelight. He put the tip against
the ground and his foot at the center of the blade.
The broadsword shattered, fragments falling
into the mud. The crowd surged forward,
peasant and soldier, and snatched the shards
from the trampled mud. The commander tossed
the hilt deep into the crowd.
Smoke almost obscured Joan, but she continued
praying till the end, until finally the flames climbed
her body and she sagged against the restraints.
Joan of Arc died that fateful day in France,
but her legend and sword are reborn…
Contents
April 5, 1945
Outside Potsdam, Germany
One last mission.
That’s how they’d sold it to him. One final mission that would not only provide for their future security, but would put his name in the history books alongside those of Goering, Goebbels and Himmler, men who had gone above and beyond the call of duty in their aid and support of the Fatherland.
One final mission for the glory of the Third Reich.
Major Konrad Brandt had wanted to laugh in their faces.
He didn’t give a damn about the history books, the Nazi Party, or even the survival of the Third Reich. All of it was meaningless in his eyes. All he cared about was getting out of Germany before everything fell completely into ruin. He knew that day wouldn’t be long in coming, knew that time was running out, but his personal sense of duty to the oaths he had sworn, to serve and protect the Fatherland, had so far
kept him from simply turning his back on his comrades and abandoning his post, no matter how insane matters had become. When they told him that this mission would take him beyond the borders of their lost and forsaken country without need of return, he knew his salvation had arrived and he’d practically fallen over himself to accept the responsibility.
Now, standing between two SS officers in the shadows outside the chalet that had been commandeered earlier in the week as a temporary headquarters for this mission, he wondered if he hadn’t made a mistake.
Too late to back out now, even if you did
, he thought.
He’d flown his Junkers Ju 88 into this makeshift camp in the woods outside Potsdam a week earlier, landing on a crude runway that had been plowed by tanks in the middle of a forest clearing. Once there, he found that the mission he’d been recruited for was “on hold” while they awaited the arrival of several important dignitaries.
No one, of course, could tell him who they were waiting for, just that they couldn’t begin until they arrived. He’d been treated well, at least, given a bed in a room shared by several Wehrmacht officers and three decent meals a day, which was more than he’d expected. The army officers didn’t pay him much attention—he was Luftwaffe, after all—but that was fine with him. He spent the days catching up on his sleep and thinking about what he was going to do once he was clear of this place.
* * *
E
ARLY THE NEXT
morning the cavalcade that they’d been waiting for finally arrived. Brandt was on his way back from breakfast when he noticed the flurry of activity and hoped that meant that they could start getting things worked out within a few days, at least. Those in charge apparently weren’t going to wait that long, however, for within fifteen minutes of his return there was a knock at his door. Opening it, he found a pair of Waffen SS thugs in their black uniforms and red party armbands standing outside in the hallway. The SS were the protective detail for the senior officials in the Nazi Party; their presence indicated that the dignitaries who had arrived the previous night were more than just senior army officers.
“Major Brandt?” said the man on the right, the taller and more senior of the two. “I am Major Adler. Come with us, please.”
It was common knowledge that a person crossed one of Himmler’s Shutzstaffel at his or her own peril, so Brandt did as he was told. The SS officers flanked him like an honor escort—
or a prisoner detail
, Brandt thought—and marched him across the camp to the building housing the dignitaries. They led him to a room on the second floor and then knocked on the door.
“Come,” came a muffled call from the interior.
The senior SS officer inclined his head in the direction of the door. Taking his cue, Brandt opened the door and stepped into the room.
Whatever it had once been, the room clearly now served as a planning area. Maps hung on the walls,
and another was laid out on a large table in the center of the room. There were no windows, and the only light came from a shaded lamp that stood at the edge of the table, highlighting the map but leaving much of the rest of the room in partial shadow.
Though he was half cloaked in shadow, there was no mistaking the identity of the man seated behind the table. When Brandt’s brain caught up with what his eyes already knew, he snapped to attention and whipped out a near-perfect salute.
“Heil Hitler!”
The leader of the Third Reich waved in return and regarded his visitor for a moment. At last, he spoke.
“They tell me you are a good pilot. Is that true?”
Brandt thought about it for a moment and then shrugged. “I’ve survived so far. I don’t know if that makes me a good pilot or just a lucky one.”
The remark was flirting dangerously close to disaster, for to speak ill of the war was tantamount to treason in the eyes of many Party officials, but Brandt found that he just didn’t care anymore. The Führer asked him a question; he gave a truthful answer. If that was a treasonous response, so be it.
Hitler watched him closely for several seconds and then laughed quietly. “Skilled or lucky, either one will do, I suppose.”
He stood and leaned over the map. “We are here,” he said, pointing.
Brandt stepped closer so that he could see.