The Blood Gospel (Page 61)

Erin felt a sinking in her gut. Barely an inch of the map didn’t contain an arrow.

And yes, most were depressingly red.

“If all these are not cleared,” Erin said, “how come you know they’re even there? What do you mean by suspected Nazi bunkers?”

“We hear stories of them. Local folklore. Sometimes we can guess from half-destroyed Nazi documents.”

Jordan squinted at the screen. “But that’s not the only way you’re pinpointing these places, is it?” He nodded to the crowded screen. “From the sophistication of this survey, I’m guessing you must be using satellite telemetry and ground-penetrating radar to identify hidden, underground structures.”

Brother Leopold smiled. “It almost feels like cheating. But in the end, all that wonderful technology has only succeeded in adding more red arrows to the screen. The only way to know if there’s anything really there—or if those hidden structures contain anything significant—is to search them in person, one by one.”

Rhun’s eyes flicked from side to side as he scanned the map from top to bottom. “What we seek could be in any of those hundreds of locations.”

Brother Leopold pushed back his chair and crossed his legs. “I’m sorry I don’t have a better answer for you.”

Rhun twitched. Erin sensed his impatience. The Belial were on the trail of the book as avidly as she and Jordan and Rhun were. Every minute mattered.

Jordan tapped one of the red arrows. “Then it’s grunt work from here, guys. We go through the sites and assign them high and low probabilities and work through them. Use a grid pattern. It won’t be quick, but it’ll be thorough.”

His idea sounded logical—but it felt wrong.

3:42 A.M.

Jordan watched Erin step to the desk and remove the medallion from under the magnifying lens. He could tell she was frustrated from the pinch of her brows and the stiffness of her back. He didn’t like the idea of searching hundreds of sites either, but what other choice did they have?

As Erin turned in his direction, a light flickered deep in her eyes. That usually meant things were about to change, not always for the better.

He touched her shoulder. “Erin, you got something?”

“I don’t know.” She rubbed the rune on the back of the medal with her thumbs.

Rhun cocked his head, his eyes fixed on Erin with an intensity that somehow rankled Jordan; as if that gaze would consume her.

Jordan shifted to stand between them. “Talk it out,” he said. “Maybe we can help.”

Erin’s brown eyes remained far away. “Symbols were crucial to the Ahnenerbe. Why that symbol on the stolen badge?”

Leopold’s chair creaked. “The Odal rune indicates inheritance. If the Odal rune was written next to a person’s name or an object, it meant ownership.”

“Like writing your name on your sneakers,” Jordan said. He looked over at the badge with the swastika in the center of the rune. “So does that emblem mean the Ahnenerbe owned the Nazis?”

He knew he probably sounded like an idiot to the scholars, but sometimes an idiot’s perspective ended up getting more things done.

“I think it’s more like the Ahnenerbe thought they owned the Third Reich,” Erin clarified. “They believed they were the true protectors of Aryan heritage.”

“But what does that signify?” Rhun pressed her, leaning toward her as if trying to draw the answer from her physically.

Erin leaned back. “I’m not sure, but at the end of the war, Berlin was being bombed. The Third Reich was on the run.” Her words came out slowly, as if she searched for words to a once-familiar story. “And the Ahnenerbe scientists would have known that the war was over long before the formal surrender.”

Leopold nodded. “They would have. But they thought in terms of centuries. To them, the present was a pale thing of little importance. They were interested in the history of the Aryan race going back ten thousand years—and forward the same number of millennia.”

“To the Fourth Reich!” Erin said, her eyes lighting up. “That group would have been planning for the long term. They would have wanted to keep their most important objects hidden until the coming of the Fourth Reich.”

“Which means that they would have hidden them somewhere unknown to the leaders of the Third Reich,” Leopold said, swinging back to his deck. “So we can eliminate any bunkers documented by the Nazi government.”

The monk tapped hurriedly at his keyboard and half the red arrows vanished.

“That helped,” Jordan said.

“There are still too many,” Erin concluded, and began to pace the small office, plainly trying to discharge nervous energy and stay focused.

Rhun did not move, but he tracked her with his eyes.

Erin pointed at the screen but didn’t glance at it. “Where would they hide their more precious artifacts to ensure that some future Aryan scientists could find them?”

“How about Atlantis?” Jordan asked with a roll of his eyes. “With the mermaids?”

She slapped her forehead with her palm. “Of course!”

All three men looked at her as if she were mad.

“Erin,” Rhun warned, his voice gentle. “I must remind you that the Nazis did not know the location of Atlantis.”

She waved such details aside. “Legend has it that the Fourth Reich would rise like Atlantis from the sea, returning the Aryan race to supremacy.” She faced Leopold. “What if the last of the Ahnenerbe tried to hedge that bet, to force the prophecy to be true?”

Rhun stirred next to Jordan, as if something Erin said had disturbed him.

Erin forged on. “To match that legend, they might have hidden their most important and significant artifacts near water. Trapped and surrounded by Allied forces, the last of the Ahnenerbe couldn’t reach the sea at the end of the war—and they would’ve wanted to keep their treasures buried in the soil of the Fatherland anyway. So they might have sought the next best thing.”

Leopold’s voice grew hushed. “A German body of water.”

“A lake,” Erin said.

Leopold typed in a command and all but a dozen red arrows disappeared, marking unexplored lakeside bunkers.

Jordan’s fist tightened with excitement.

Even Rhun came dangerously close to smiling.

“Let me bring up a satellite view of each one,” Leopold said.

In a few minutes, a checkerboard of images filled the large screen, displaying ground-penetrating images of each of the suspected bunkers.