She shrugged. “He doesn’t say. Mengele was very careful not to describe the project itself, and I don’t have the capacity to understand medical lingo. Don’t suppose either of you have any experience with medical R&D and human experimentation?” Of course, Yana and Hammet both shook their heads
“Is there anything else in the journal that can help us?” Hammet asked.
Zahra reached down and touched her toes, holding in for a couple of seconds. “Just something he called the
“The Reliquary?” Hammet asked.
“Yeah.” Zahra held up Mengele’s key. “I wonder if that’s where this leads.”
“The key!” Yana said, smiling wide.
“Mmhmm. It wasn’t all just nightmare fuel back there.” Talking it out calmed Zahra’s nerves some. “What about you two? Find anything?”
Yana waggled her hand. “Nothing really, just the mention of four aircrafts dubbed
“Ghost bombers?” Zahra asked.
“Yes. It seems that the Americans and Russians were mostly involved with it. Much of the research was illegible, and what was readable would take days, maybe weeks, to sift through.”
“Give me the short and sweet,” Zahra said.
Yana shrugged. “There isn’t much to tell. Like Mengele, they kept details sparse. What I did find out was that they were working on a way to cloak their bombers, if you can believe it.”
“Cloak?” Zahra asked. “You’re kidding.” But Yana’s face was all business. “How very comic book of them.”
“Nothing surprises me about these people,” Hammet said, looking up to the ceiling high overhead. Like Zahra, he looked like he longed for fresh air.
“Never mind the cloaking nonsense,” Zahra said. “Could it be a bio-warfare bomber of some kind?” No one had an answer. So, she moved on. “What about you, Hammet? Have anything for us?”
“I found enough explosives and munitions to supply an army. I also found a wall-sized map displaying their targets.”
“Black Sunset. It was a doomsday operation?”
Yana stepped forward. “One that the Sixth Seal still wants to enact.”
Zahra looked around. “Where are these Ghost bombers then?”
All three of them looked down at their feet.
“Well, at least the emblem makes sense now,” Hammet said. “The eagle clutches an inverted world.”
“The fall of nations,” Zahra mumbled.
“Yes, the fall of nations.”
Yana cleared her throat. “So, the key?”
Zahra blinked out of her stupor and lobbed it to her. “Lead the way.”
They headed toward the elevator, discussing things further. The more they talked, the less it bothered Zahra. Keeping knowledge like this bottled up wasn’t healthy for any of them.
“So,” Hammet said, talking it out, “Mengele came here first before traveling to South America?”
“Looks like it, yeah,” Zahra replied.
“What about the historical records of his time down there?” Yana asked. “There are many.”
“Falsified by the Sixth Seal, obviously,” Zahra said. “He would have been their golden goose. If I were Himmler or Krause, I would have done everything possible to protect him and his work.”
Just thinking that way made Zahra sick to her stomach.
“Did the journal have any dates?” Hammet asked.
Zahra shook her head. “Surprisingly, no.” She removed it from the chest pocket and handed it to him. “Here. Take a look. Still, I’d ballpark his time of service down here in the years, not months. There’s too much in there for this to have been only a pit stop.”
“When did Mengele die?” Yana asked.
“Records say 1979,” Hammet replied.
The Russian stopped and looked at him. “That monster lived for that long?”
“Yes,” Hammet replied. “People forget how young he was. He was only twenty-eight when the war began.”
“Okay,” Zahra said, “so the war officially ended in ’45, right? That gave Mengele a window of fifteen years between then and when this place was abandoned in 1960.”
Hammet skimmed the pages, not that he could make heads or tails of the combined language. He stopped on the sketch.
“He really became what they called him, didn’t he?” Hammet asked. He closed the journal and handed it back to Zahra.
“Yep. If you proudly live it, why not flaunt it, right?”
Hammet didn’t reply. He was too lost in his own head. Zahra was too. Thankfully, Yana broke the spell.
“Okay,” she announced, stepping into the elevator. “Here we go…” She inserted the key and waited for Zahra and Hammet to move into the center of the platform. “Hold on to your butts.”
The legendary
She turned the key.
The lift activated instantly.
“If this is the Underworld,” Hammet said, speaking above the rumble of the descending platform, “then where are we going now?”
It was a good question.
“In Greek mythology,” Zahra explained, “the
She looked down at her feet, trying to picture what it could be.
