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dismissed the guy immediately as a nutter.
"Is that it?" Freise said, when Drummond had faltered to a pause in his
narrative.
Drummond braced himself to go on, beginning to wonder if it had been such
a good idea to call the priest. But there was no point in holding back now. "No,
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there's more. There's a series of unsolved and seemingly unconnected murders
involving blood banks, back in the States and here except that I think they may be
connected. And the apparent suicide of an old Jew named Stucke except that I
think he was murdered. And a guy who may be a former SS officer named Kluge
except that he can't be Kluge, because Kluge would be well into his seventies by
now. I have a copy of his SS file in the glove box. Take a look, if you like." He
swung the Mercedes around to overtake a slow-moving truck in the lane ahead.
Father Freise opened the glove box and pulled out the copy of the file from
the Wiesenthal Center. On top was the buff-colored envelope von Liebenfalz had
given Drummond the previous afternoon. Ignoring the file, Freise held up the
envelope.
"What's this?" His voice was hard-edged.
"Oh, that. It's a report on the Order of the Sword, the group that belongs to
that coat of arms you sketched for me back in New Hampshire." Drummond was
distracted by something in the rear-view mirror. "Why?"
"Because this seal on the back," he held the envelope up so Drummond could
see the purple seal stamped across the envelope's opened flap, "is the seal of the
Vatican library." Father Freise stared intently at Drummond for several seconds
before he spoke again. "Are you working for the Church?"
"God, no," Drummond said. "I'm not even Catholic. I fell into this in Los
Angeles about six months ago, and the first I knew of any church involvement was
just now, when you told me about that seal. Other than their cover-up for you, of
course. Why?"
Ignoring Drummond's question, Freise opened the flap of the envelope and
took out a thick sheaf of papers. "Do you mind if I read these while you drive?"
"Not at all," said Drummond. "Go right ahead."
«» «» «»
Egon lay on the floor of the van breathing shallowly. The two wounds in his
chest had finally closed, and he was no longer wheezing air with each breath, but it
hurt less if he didn't breathe too deeply. He was still very weak. Actually, he no
longer felt very much pain just total exhaustion.
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Turning his head, he looked blearily at the girl in the torn fishnet stockings
and Doc Martens. She had been nice to him, dragging him into the van when they
were getting ready to go, instead of leaving him in the abandoned warehouse. He
thought he had overheard her talking to someone else about him, something about
it taking too long for him to recover, but he knew he was not going to die from his
wounds. Kluge had seen to that. Egon was immortal. He was going to live forever.
He had not been so sure of that last night. After impaling himself on the
railing outside of Drummond's hotel room, he had managed to free himself, with a
strength he had not known he possessed; but the superhuman strength had faded
rapidly as he sprinted for safety toward the Belvedere Park. He had lost a lot of
blood, between the fence and the running. He managed to hide himself in some
shrubbery before collapsing, and tried to pinch his wounds closed, the way he had
seen Kluge do that first night; but it hadn't seemed to work as well for him as it had
for the Master. He knew he mustn't stay there indefinitely, but he couldn't seem to
summon up enough energy to do more than lie there on his back, listening to the
wheezing in his lungs.
After an hour or so, he became aware that relief of a kind was near. A dog
had wandered into the bushes, attracted by the sound and the smell of blood on
Egon's clothes, and had come sniffing too close. Using all of his strength, Egon had
grabbed the dog and squeezed it around the throat until it passed out. Biting
through the dog's skin had been hard, especially as Egon was missing his front
teeth, but eventually he managed to chew through to a vein. He had felt the dog die
in his arms as he drank its blood, and its body had still been warm when he slid into
exhausted sleep. He mildly regretted what he had done, because Egon liked dogs.
The morning rain had revived him. The dog's body now was cold and stiff,
but Egon felt a little better. Crawling out from the bushes, he somehow managed to
stagger back to his Volkswagen van. By driving slowly, he made it all the way to
the warehouse before collapsing again behind the wheel. When next he came to, his
head was in the lap of the girl in the torn fishnet stockings, and everyone was
climbing into shiny white vans with the Euro Plasma logo on the side.
Egon let himself float and dream as the van rumbled along, not caring where
it was going. When it finally stopped, the door on the side was rolled back and
everyone hopped out, the girl and two of her friends dragging Egon to the door.
There, two clean-cut young men wearing white lab coats lifted him out of the van
and helped him walk over to a large stone barn about fifty feet away.
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Egon could hardly believe his eyes. Maybe his loss of blood was making him
hallucinate. The interior of the barn was like the audience chamber of a medieval
castle, lit only by torches. High overhead, a hammer-beam ceiling soared up to the
center of the roof, and the walls were hung from ceiling to floor with long, narrow
banners of crimson, like tapestries, each bearing the white circle and black swastika
symbol of the Third Reich.
Twelve stone seats were arranged along three of the walls, each of the seats
flanked by torches in tall, wrought-iron standards. The fourth wall was pierced by a
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