For a long moment he was paralyzed by indecision. The coming of the end of the war had moved from the abstract to the real the day before, when his platoon of guards had been ordered to Munich to help defend the city against the approaching Americans. General Kapp was a fool, like most of them, not a believer in how Odin could save the Reich, seeing only twenty-two more soldiers to add to his doomed effort to defend the city. Krohn obeyed, for obedience was the hallmark of a good officer, but he was relieved when he reached the city with his men to find the general’s headquarters in flames, having been hit by Jabos.
Where was the Luftwaffe? He had seen those wonderful new jet fighters, a testament to Aryan intelligence, able to fly so fast that the Allies could not shoot them down, but with many of their airfields overrun, and no more fuel, the Luftwaffe was finished. That fat man Goering was finished too. He had never been a true believer, always unwilling to render honor to the ancient gods.
Krohn had watched as General Kapp was carried out of his headquarters, still breathing, but with blood staining his face and a hole in his skull that showed gray matter chewed up by shrapnel. No need to remain in Munich any longer. Krohn turned the two trucks around and left town. Because the Americans ruled the skies, normally Krohn would only have traveled at night, but he sensed that everything was falling apart. Perhaps the Bavarian Redoubt plan would not even be implemented, where the best German units would find shelter in the forests and mountains, extending the war even with most of Germany overrun, until Churchill and Roosevelt came to their senses and realized that the Bolsheviks were the true enemy. No, not Roosevelt—that archfoe had died just two weeks ago. Now it was that man Truman, and who knew what his inner thoughts might be? How could a man from Missouri become president of the most powerful nation on Earth? The Americans made weak decisions because they were a decadent people; but in his more sober moments, Krohn acknowledged that the Americans knew how to churn out weapons at an insane rate. He had read a classified report from the Abwehr that estimated that the Americans would build over 100,000 airplanes in 1945 alone. Germany had started the war with only 3,000 airplanes of all types. The mind boggled at the number: 100,000. But it was not numbers of planes and tanks or men that won wars—those were just the tools. It was spirit, blood, and the gods that brought victory.
Odin had helped them win many victories, but not enough. Krohn knew that he was not to blame, but he wondered whether his brides to Odin would have carried the Reich beyond the mistakes and the lack of faith if he had understood the ancient ways better. He strongly believed that he could still save the Reich, even in defeat; he just needed time. What did he need from the library? Truly need, not just want?
He went to the safe. Sitting on four legs shaped like lion’s paws, the black beast weighed over five hundred kilograms. Spinning the dial, he opened it and looked at his choicest treasures. On top was a typewritten manuscript, a book that he had been writing and revising carefully for years. He had hoped to have it published in 1946 by Nordland Verlag of Berlin, the SS publishing house. An editor there had been quite enthusiastic. The manuscript went into the valise.
Next he grabbed three envelopes of money. One contained German reichsmarks, probably soon to be useless; the next contained Swiss francs, always useful; and the last contained American currency, nice and crisp, counterfeited by the Abwehr just last year.
What else?
A handwritten copy of the interrogation by an inquisitor of a heretic in Cologne in 1241. The cleric had been looking for heretics and found a man who still worshiped the old gods. The original document had been lost, but was copied many times, always by hand, never printed in a pamphlet or book. Krohn had received this copy from Himmler himself. The answers to the cleric’s questions, probably encouraged by torture, were a gold mine, including one long entry that described the sacrifice of virgins to become brides of Odin. Krohn could still recall the summer night that he had read those words, at the table of a rustic home on a large farm that the SS owned, feeling an electric charge at the thought of reviving this most sacred of rituals. How many centuries had Odin waited for new girls?
Two heavy books, weighing over a kilo each, printed in Lübeck in 1521, so rare that Krohn knew of only two other copies, one in the SS library at Wewelsburg Castle and other purported to be under lock and key at the Vatican. It had always irritated Krohn that the Führer had decided to respect the farcical international rules and treat the Vatican as its own nation, not sending troops into that warren of churches and monasteries that occupied less than half of a square kilometer. Krohn had fantasized about being with SS research teams who pushed the black-robed priests aside and went into the archives. As they say in westerns, that would have been the mother lode of all mother lodes.
These two volumes, Tales of Peasants, recounted stories that the author had recorded from among the peasants of northern Germany, Denmark, and Sweden. Written in an old dialect of German, reading them required a dictionary and sustained concentration. The stories were often only dimly remembered, having been washed by hundreds of years of Christianity. Many were useless, but that made the gems gleam that much brighter, knowledge making its way through the years directly up from the source.
A folder contained pictures of rune stones in Sweden, stark black and white, haunting images that told so much to a man who could read the runes. No one could read every one of the runes—that knowledge had died out—but Krohn was pretty good at it. All went into the valise.
The book Sacred Geodicy: Leys of the Ancients, published in Dresden in 1883, dictated where sacred buildings should be built. The leys, lines of force crossing the surface of the Earth, intersected at certain points of extraordinary power. The Vatican was built on such a nexus, which was not surprising, since the ancient Romans had known that place to be special. Jerusalem was another such nexus, as was Wewelsburg Castle. The Temple of Odin was built on a minor nexus, not as powerful as others, but one of the strongest in Germany. A master dowser from East Prussia, really just a peasant farmer, descended from a long line of peasant farmers, had done the work with two freshly cut birch rods, held out in front of his body as he walked. He refused any payment, explaining that the reichsmarks would compromise his gift.
On an inspired guess, Krohn took the farmer to Braunau am Inn in Austria. The farmer found many strong ley lines, though they lay confused across the landscape of the small town. Krohn was privately pleased. He had expected the birthplace of the Führer to be like that.
The next book was by the Austrian mystic Guido von List, The Secret of the Runes, the Leipzig edition published in 1908. He had revived Wotanism, worshiping the ancient German god Wotan. Krohn identified Wotan with Odin. Much of the information came from the Icelandic sagas, since von List had discovered that the Vikings who settled that northern island had been refugees from northern Germany, fleeing the Christian priests. This particular book was special to Krohn. He had read it when only fifteen years old and it had given him direction ever since. He often quoted long passages from it and fancied that he had memorized every word. As much as he cherished those worn pages, he put the book back. He could always find another copy.
“She’s dressed now, Standartenführer,” Karl said from the doorway.
Krohn twisted around, irritated that the soldier had violated his inner sanctum. None of his soldiers had ever even been in the house. Only his housekeeper was allowed into the house and she was forbidden to enter the library. Krohn stifled the angry outburst on his lips; times had changed. This would no longer be his home.
“Get some handcuffs from the storage shed and confine her hands. Get another set of handcuffs and attach her to the door of my car. That should free you up to go get whatever you and your brother want to take from the longhouse. Oh, and take your winter gear.”
“We are going on a trip, Standartenführer?”
“A very long trip. A trip to save Germany.”
CHAPTER NINE
Fritz Steinhauer stood near the trees at the edge of the clearing in front of the chalet, relieving himself. As he drew circles on the ground, he whistled softly to himself, a tune that he heard sung for the first time a couple of weeks earlier in a café in Munich. He and his brother had earned leave for one day. They walked the twenty kilometers