Edith Clayton and the Wisdom of Athena Page 12

  “I didn’t know you smoked,” I say.

  “I don’t usually. But having her aboard makes me nervous. She’s Zennler’s new favourite. Franz said she killed the last man. That she blew his brains out and didn’t even blink.”

  Unfortunately I do blink at precisely that moment. I shift back in time, to Gustav’s laboratory on the night of my ‘escape’ from Marzahn.

  Johann squares up to my sister, sneering in her face. “You expect me to take orders from a woman?” he complains. “A foreign woman? And where’s Dieter?”

  This nightmare again. I want to wake up, but it’s impossible to take my mind off Irene and what she’s about to do.

  “I killed him,” my sister replies casually.

  Johann’s jaw drops in disbelief. That’s the opening Irene needs. She slots the barrel of her machine gun into his mouth, sliding it along his tongue. Johann goes for his own weapon, but thinks twice after looking into my sister’s stone cold eyes. He backs off, hands raised. Irene stalks him to a blackboard, keeping her weapon pressed in. With my sister between Johann and the electric lights, he’s a barely-flinching silhouette.

  “Are you done with these, Doctor?” Irene inclines her head at the chalked equations.

  “They are not important,” Gustav says indifferently.

  He jots down brief, fragmented observations in his notebook. My sister’s about to kill a man, and he’s studying her. Zennler stands next to him, looking far more tense.

  “Please!” begs Johann.

  Saliva drips on my sister’s foot. “It’s all right,” she says, wiping the man’s chin with her sleeve. “You don’t have to follow my orders any more.”

  Her expression turns deadly serious. She fires a single shot into his mouth, steps aside, and slowly withdraws her gun. Johann’s body slides down the blackboard, leaving a trail of sticky blood through smudged chalk. Nobody utters a word as Irene strolls over to Zennler and places the weapon in his quivering hands.

  “You asked me to keep the scroll secret,” she says. “Make sure your men didn’t tell anyone. Those were your instructions.”

  “Yes,” says Zennler with a gulp.

  “Dieter had seen too much. We couldn’t trust a mindless thug like him, and Johann… was being uncooperative. I’ll leave you to clean up. I’d like a talk with my little sister.”

  A thinly-veiled order to the Wehrmacht troopers guarding me, and they’ve seen what Irene does with men who disobey her. Two soldiers escort me to the desk.

  My sister takes off her shirt, folds it neatly, and hangs it over the chair. She connects a Bunsen burner to a gas tap and lights it with a match, which she then extinguishes with a pinch of her fingers. The flickering yellow flame illuminates her body. Scars snake across her chest, seemingly slithering, and her pearly white bra glimmers like gold.

  “I had to do these myself.” Irene traces a finger along the longest cut. “Zennler didn’t want to hurt a woman.”

  “Unless she’s a Romani,” I say angrily. “Or did you only mean Nazi women?”

  Irene rotates the burner’s ring, closing off the air hole. The flame changes colour to purple-blue. My sister selects a pair of rubber handled, steel tongs from an apparatus tray.

  “It wasn’t hard,” she says, heating the loops until they turn bright red. “You taught me how to endure pain. How to detach myself, how to feel nothing.”

  This is preamble to torture. Everyone knows it. The Germans are all terrified of Irene. Looking elsewhere, fidgeting, giving one another nervous glances. Except for Gustav, whose scientific curiosity is now truly piqued. He starts a fresh page in his book, writing a paragraph on… I don’t want to know.

  Irene digs the tongs into her wounded shoulder. The surrounding flesh sizzles and turns black. She fishes out the bullet, resorting to brute force when it proves difficult to extract. My sister’s only reaction is a brief grunt, and I get the impression she’s disappointed with that. The tong loops are still red hot when she deposits her catch in a Petri dish. Did Irene shoot herself to make her ‘escape’ convincing? She’s certainly sadistic enough.

  “Romani don’t have such a high pain threshold.” My sister slips her shirt back on. “One little burn and they’ll scream all night. There are hundreds of them at Marzahn. If one dies, there’s always another to play with. You’re going to draw me some pictures. I assume that won’t be a problem.”

  There’s only one reply I could have given to a threat like that. With the worst over, I’m finally able to leave this all-too-real nightmare. Back on the present day Aegir it feels a lot colder. Even though it’s still ninety degrees.

  “My sister doesn’t like it when people say no,” I tell Matthau.

  The sailor says nothing, shaking a stoppered vial. Syrupy green liquid swirls around inside, sticking to the glass.

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “Absinthe.” Matthau quickly stows it in his trouser pocket. “Very potent alcohol. I shouldn’t be drinking it, but…”

  “Having her aboard makes you nervous. I’d better go see them.”

  The lower decks are beyond a steel hatch with a circular handle that takes forever to turn. Matthau insists on keeping all bulkheads closed, so I have to go through the strength-sapping process again on the other side. The stairway is steep and treacherous, with a shaky wooden handrail and well-trodden steps shorter than my feet. Fortunately the captain’s cabin is on the first level down, halfway along a metal-panelled corridor.

  I squeeze past the fat German engineer that’s always bumping into everyone. We only make brief contact, but it’s enough to get oily finger marks on my khaki pants. My work overalls are similar to what the ship’s crew wear. They felt peculiar at first, but I’ve gotten used to them.

  I don’t bother to knock before entering. As usual, the two doctors are poring over their giant, table-sized map of Egypt. It’s considerably messier than when we first started, with a number of additions: pencil lines cross the vast Sahara desert, maths calculations around the white border, and pinhole clusters made by Gustav’s ridiculously large compass. That’s the type used to draw circles. Zennler has an antique magnetic compass – for navigation – on his Victorian desk, beside the vessel and my father’s diary.

  “We know where to look,” says Gustav. “Thanks to Fraulein Clayton.”

  “Which one?” Irene remarks.

  My sister is by the weapon cabinet, swiping thin air with her favourite cutlass. Nasty curved blade, gold hilt inlaid with blood red rubies, and more suited to hacking off limbs than parrying. No wonder she’s fond of it.

  “Both of you,” Zennler replies quickly, pushing up his spectacles. He’s not smirking now. Without his SS thugs to back him up, Zennler’s a lot less secure. And my sister loves tormenting him.

  Gustav’s in his own world, oblivious to their mind games. He scribbles a trig calculation along the map edge, using one of the few remaining white spaces.

  “Any new theories on the symbols?” I ask him. “How do they turn into pictures?”

  “They must define the parameters of the lines. Starting points, distances, directions. But the translation method is too complex to determine without more examples. Perhaps an architect or geometry expert might…” Gustav waves away his own suggestion. “No. I will solve the problem. What matters now is the end result. The drawings.”

  My six sketches are mounted on easels along the starboard wall, arranged in the order I did them. They’re simple diagrams compared to the Norse god watercolours hung behind, but each drawing was painstakingly recreated from my visions. Gustav – with coercion from my sister – insisted the copies be exact in every detail. Lines in the right places. Same length, same angles. Then I had to redraw the corresponding symbols. Accurately. Gustav took one look at the rough sketch I did for Zennler, and tore it up. Multiple sessions per day, constantly closing my eyes. I’ve collapsed nine times. As I learned at Marzahn, using my powers too frequently wears me out. But I’m finally done… I think.


  “The first is probably a crude sketch of ancient Alexandria.” Gustav points to the city drawing with his wooden ruler. “But there are no details that could assist our search. The second sketch is much more interesting.”

  A three-tiered, square-based lighthouse on an island, constructed from rectangles. I thought that would be easier to copy than the complex city, until Gustav made me redraw the beam from the flame ten times. The angle to the sea is crucial, he kept on saying. It better be after all that work.

  “I don’t see a tomb.” Irene tosses her cutlass up and catches it. “Maybe she’s lying.”

  No point in arguing with her. She won’t believe me. Even if she does, she’ll cut me anyway. What will my sister strike this time? My arm? Head? She’s made a right mess of the floor. Scrubber marks mar the metal, and quite a few bloodstains haven’t washed off.

  “How do we find it?” Irene asks impatiently. “By following the magic beam?”

  Gustav raises a placating hand. “That is exactly what we must do,” he says, screwing his pencil in the compass. “Surely you recognise the lighthouse, Doctor.”

  Zennler shakes his head. He shifts around the table, away from Irene. She hasn’t cut him yet, but he’s taking no chances. Gustav flicks through an encyclopaedia, and stops at a page with an illustration. It’s the same lighthouse, only in colour. And a lot more detail.

  “The Pharos of Alexandria,” Zennler says. “One of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Damaged by earthquakes, and built over in the late fifteenth century.” A poor attempt to redeem himself. He read all that from the caption.

  “But we know the location from historical records.” Gustav stabs his compass needle off the coast of Egypt. “And the height of the tower. So from the angle of the beam with the ground, we can calculate the distance… allowing for human error…”

  Gustav refers to his trig calculation, and draws too arcs across the land mass, about a quarter of an inch apart.

  “And the same for the Pyramids,” says Zennler, eager to appear knowledgeable.

  The Pyramids of Giza were my third sketch. Drawing the triangles was simple, but there was another angled line coming from the apex. And this one didn’t even make sense.

  “Why is there light coming from a rock?” My sister’s concerns echo my own. “There wouldn’t be. It’s stupid.”

  “They are not beams,” says Gustav. “The lines are for triangulation, to determine the location of the… tomb.” He was about to say something else, but what?

  “Directions only Edith can read. She’d better be telling the truth.”

  Gustav adjusts his compass and draws a curve centred on the Giza plain. Zennler spreads his thumb and forefinger, estimating the distance to the lighthouse.

  “The landmarks are too far apart,” he mutters. “Nobody could see both, even with binoculars.”

  “We could not,” Gustav concurs. “But their technology is far more advanced. They have constructed moving metal, storm generators, drawings encoded as simple patterns. It is logical to assume they had a more powerful telescope, or some other means to see great distances.”

  “Able to see hundreds of miles… Who was she? This… super woman?”

  Zennler glances sideways at my fourth sketch: a hulking feminine figure. The woman – if that’s what she is - has no face. Not a human one, anyway. The featureless, ten sided ‘oval’ contains two diamonds that could theoretically be eyes, and a smaller one just above the midpoint. The outline of her body is smooth, comprised of many short lines that took me three days to draw. No clothes or jewellery feature. Is she made of black metal as my father claimed?

  “Does the idea scare you, Zennler?” asks Irene, leaning across the table. “A super woman?”

  He shudders, so I suppose it must. Or maybe it’s only my sister he’s afraid of.

  Gustav draws a fourth arc, and outlines the zone marked by the curved lines in red. “There is our search area. Ten square kilometres. We will need more men.”

  I can see why. It’s a nondescript yellow area on the map. The middle of the Sahara Desert, with no settlements for miles.

  “I know someone in Alexandria,” says Zennler. “But every day we require his services will cost more. And finding this tomb could take months.”

  “What about the other two drawings?” Irene asks.

  She’s referring to my sixth sketch, of course. Nobody paid much attention to the fifth: a circle containing eyeless, curvy monsters with fins. We all know that’s the vessel, and those fish-creatures are in my blood. My sister’s interested in the symbols. The five symbols from my final vision.

  “They’re not the same, Irene,” I tell her for the umpteenth time. “These—”

  “They look the same to me. More squares.”

  “There are five of them,” I stress. “The other symbols were in rows of three. And they had frames. These don’t, and they’re more organised. I can’t translate them. It’s not a drawing.”

  “Then what is it?”

  I have no answer to Irene’s spine-tingling gaze.

  “The pictures tell the story of the crash.” Gustav points to each in turn. “The nearest city, Alexandria. Directions from the landmarks at Pharos and Giza, the pilot, the vessel where she stored the liquid. And… And how…”

  “Pilot?” Zennler’s lost, and he’s not the only one.

  Gustav brushes past him. He walks briskly – almost runs – to the desk, takes the vessel, and… looks at the moving symbols. Organised square patterns, without frames. The answer was in plain sight the whole time.

  “How to open it,” says Gustav triumphantly. “And perhaps close it.”

  He brings the metal ball to me, lifts my arm – as he’s done so often in the past, but more roughly – and presses the vessel into my hand. Energy drains from my itching body, leaving me weak and struggling to stand upright.

  “Why does the ball glow?” Zennler stares into the dark blue light. It’s the first time he’s seen the vessel react to my touch.

  “The creatures in her blood are transferring charge to it,” says Gustav, as if stating a proven theory. “Providing it with power.”

  “We’re waiting, little sister,” says Irene, flexing her cutlass arm.

  I refer to the sketch. The vessel’s symbols change shape eight times before I spot the six pointed star the sequence starts with. I touch it, and feel a tingle up my finger as it glows brighter. I’m able to find the second symbol - a tower with windows - but take too long on the chandelier-like pattern that comes third. The symbols recede, and I have to start over, much to Irene’s annoyance.

  On my second attempt I get the sequence right. The metal petals fold upward, and the gaps between them narrow until they disappear completely. After a few seconds, the vessel is spherical, with no evidence an opening ever existed.

  “So, Edith was telling the truth.” Irene sounds disappointed. “The symbols were not a picture.”

  Zennler takes the vessel, lifting a huge weight from my hands. He rotates it, pressing raised symbols at random. He’s like an excited child trying to figure out a magic trick. Except he can’t. Only I have fish in my blood. Without me holding it, the vessel is black and unresponsive. Which means they still need me. For now.

  “Take Edith back to her cabin,” instructs Gustav.

  A few seconds pass before my sister realises he’s talking to her. “Let her crawl there herself,” she says.

  “We are due to arrive in Alexandria tomorrow. She will need rest.”

  Irene puffs in frustration. She sheathes the cutlass in her belt, stomps over, and hauls me up.

  “That girl fascinates me,” I overhear Gustav say after we leave the cabin. “Seventeen years old. She is the perfect soldier. High strength, stamina, and endurance. She kills efficiently, and without mercy. She is unwavering in her conviction, prepared to sacrifice family for what she believes. If there were more women… more men like her.”

  “One is enough.” I can pictu
re Zennler squirming as he says that.

  “Quite a list,” Irene says, escorting me away. “I think he likes me, little sister.”

  Gustav’s finished studying me. It’s my sister’s turn to be the guinea pig. She’s relishing it, going off her beaming smile. Irene half-drags me to my tiny box room, dumps me in the hammock, and shuts me in.

  I hear clinking cutlery and hoarse laughter through the open porthole. It’s evening mealtime, and sailors are dining in the galley beneath my cabin. Next thing I know it’s dark, quiet, and a touch cooler. My clothes stink of mangy sweat. Did I fall asleep? I must have been really tired to nod off in this baking heat. I stretch my legs and swing down off the hammock.

  Footsteps in the corridor outside. Soft and slow. Someone’s sneaking about after dark. Someone who doesn’t want to be heard. I feel my way round the dresser, and tiptoe over to the door. I peer outside, but see only flickering oil lanterns. No drunken sailors. No noise at all other than a distant chugging engine. Where is everybody? The Aegir is a ghost ship.

  I think the footsteps came from the right. Steel panels clunk under my leather boots as I head that way. I tread lightly to the stairwell, but it’s hard to keep quiet. I’m not eager to search the bowels of the ship, so I’ll check upper deck first. I grip the handrail firmly and start to climb. My foot slips. Good thing I had something to hold onto, otherwise I’d be tumbling back downstairs.

  Shallow pools of water glisten on the steps. And the bulkhead door is wide open. I dip my finger in a puddle and hold it up to my nostrils. Salt. Someone’s been for a late night swim. One of the sailors? Or is there an intruder on board? Maybe I should go and get help. The crew aren’t too friendly, but Matthau seems kind enough.

  Time for realism. The only reason the Nazis kept me alive was to read their symbols. I’ve completed that task. Once we’re back on land I’ll be under constant watch, and there’ll be scant - if any - opportunities to get away. I’m on my own.