She sneaked a look at Vater, who she knew was watching her from behind his block of stone. Then Elena turned toward the South Americans’ metal frame and slowly stood up.
“Jansen!” Vater’s hissing voice through the haze. A movement was visible in the dust beyond the tubes, but there was no answer.
“It is you, isn’t it, Jansen, back from the dead?” shouted Vater. “It
will be a short visit, in that case. You see how it went for your daughter here.”
“What did she have to do with us?” Lytton shouted back, lying behind his protective frame. “Your damned underworld has taken the lives of both my children.”
“The darkness demands its sacrifices. You of all people should know that,” Vater said.
The seat of the electric wheelchair slowly began to lift him up. Elena could see Vater’s half-burned face rising over the edge of the stone block.
“This is what your daughter did to me, Jansen. No one asked her and Titelman to blow up the foundation’s tower. If you dare to show yourself, you are welcome to continue with your promising experiment.”
“And what if we succeed in opening the portal?” Lytton shouted back. “If we make contact with whatever is behind it?”
Vater didn’t answer, and more lasers lit up, one by one. But this time they came from the South Americans, who had by now taken positions behind the metal frame. The lasers from the two groups crossed in the mist and formed a web of searching lights.
“I have a different suggestion,” Lytton shouted. “You ask your daughter to come over here with the ankh. Then you all disappear quietly so we can complete our task here.”
E
lena looked at the red dot that was wandering over her chest. It came from one of the weapons that was now aimed at her by Lytton’s men.
At the same time, Don saw that another red dot had begun to shine on the back of her head, from the weapon that Vater was balancing in his hand.
Elena pressed the ankh to her forehead to feel its cold clarity, and concentrated as hard as she could to search for her mother’s voice. She looked over at the black sun, which hung there weightless and unfathomable. In its smooth disc, Elena could see her own face emerge.
By now Don had also begun to move, after having placed Eva’s head
to rest in the soft dust. When he had stood up, he followed Elena’s eyes toward the underworld’s hovering sun.
It looked as though it was changing again, and its disc had become a shade lighter. He could hear Elena mumbling syllables that sounded like Italian words by his ear. With each syllable she produced, the sunlight gradually increased.
“Elena!” Vater shouted.
But it seemed as though she couldn’t hear anything.
“Elena!” Vater hissed again. “I expect you to bring the ankh here.” Don saw Elena’s mouth moving faster and faster, in time with the growing sunlight. So that he wouldn’t be blinded, he held up a hand for shade. He caught sight of Agusto Lytton, who was lying there under the shining sun. The way the light shadowed his face, his eyes looked like two black, empty sockets, but his skull was now covered with brilliant light.
E
lena could feel something tugging and yanking inside her, as though one last action were demanded of her. She was standing next to a portal that led away from the darkness, but she didn’t know how she could get it to open. “I want it,
lo voglio
,” she mumbled. “I want you to take the ankh from us.”
At that instant, something like a breath came from the white disc of the sun. A cloud of light, of shining particles, detached itself from its center and came sailing over the grayish black drifts. Don saw the cloud coming toward them, and how it enveloped Elena. Her eyes closed, she extended the ankh, and he could hear her whisper:
“I want you to take me, too.”
W
hen Elena opened her eyes, she could no longer see any part of the underworld. The mist was gone, the stone blocks, and the cold that had been so bitter and hard. The only thing that remained was the light, which shimmered around her, and it felt as though she were being held in a warming embrace.
“Take me too,” she whispered.
As an answer, from within the flowing brightness, there was a sudden motion, a swirling breeze of shining particles that gently loosened her fingers from the cross. The breeze turned into slender hands holding the ankh above her. Elena looked up toward a face that so resembled her own: the high cheekbones, the wide mouth, and the eyes that she hadn’t gazed into since she was a child.
“Elena, your time hasn’t come yet.”
Her mother’s voice had hardly faded away before Elena saw the ankh begin to burn. It was slowly consumed by the fire emanating from the hands of the glowing creature, until the cross and its star had turned as black as coal.
D
on, who was standing at Elena’s side, could feel the warmth too, but what he saw inside the shimmering cloud was impossible to understand.
To him the figure of light appeared crooked and twisted; it was bent into the shape of a very old woman. Her long, graying hair was tied up in a familiar knot. Then he looked down at the woman’s calves, which were twined with knotty scars, and he realized that he must reach the center of the cloud himself, that Elena must let him come in.
“Bubbe …” Don mumbled.
E
lena was jostled as Don moved closer, and the handcuffs clattered as they swayed in front of the glittering being. At the same time there were deafening cracks from the thousands of pillars, which were starting to bend, and somewhere one of them snapped from the weight and crashed down, broken.
Now that he was so close to what appeared to be his grandmother, Don was filled with a tremendous sense of relief, a feeling of complete lightness. He didn’t care about the terrible din as the columns cracked and fell. Nothing outside the radiance of the cloud meant anything anymore.
The creature took hold of the chain that linked him to Elena. In the next instant, Don’s black boots floated up from the floor of the cavern. The creature pulled them up above the circle of stones, away from the brilliant sun wheel.
Stones and gravel rained from the high ceiling over all the men, who were fighting to get out. Don could see Agusto Lytton rushing between the falling pillars. Vater, in his electric wheelchair, was being carried through the masses of debris by camouflage-clad soldiers.
The only ones who were standing perfectly still were Reinhard Eberlein and the Toad. They remained side by side before the furious glow of the underworld sun.
T
he chain of the handcuffs carried Don and Elena higher and higher. It was as though the figure of light had grown wings, as they could hear a flapping sound.
The last thing Don saw as he looked back was something white pouring out of Eva Strand’s forehead. It seemed as if her soul trickled out of her like a stream, back toward the white-hot embrace of the sun.
Then their speed increased so quickly that the rush of air forced his face down. Don fought to breathe as he and Elena were hauled out of the collapsing cavern.
T
he wave of pressure emanating from the collapsing vaulted passage pushed the creature of light forward at breakneck speed. When Don looked down, he saw that the tips of his boots were cutting through the dust, and the handcuff yanked and tore at his arm until he thought it would be ripped off.
Elena was somewhere in the blinding glow around him, but she was nearly impossible to see. Don could hear her careening back and forth as they turned and began to be hauled up through the vertical tunnel that led back to the surface of the earth again.
The wings were growing broader and broader above them, and they beat and lashed. All the sparkling strings went dark under Don’s feet, and the walls of the tunnel began to narrow and squeeze together.
In the whistling wind, he could still feel a peculiar serenity as he hung dangling under the shining creature. Bubbe’s voice was still speaking inside him, like a healing power that moved through the labyrinths of his memory, where she extinguished the pictures of terror and pain.
He could see her there, walking through her 1950s house, closing the cupboard he never should have opened. When its door closed, the swastika and the Schutzstaffeln’s daggers disappeared in the dark, and Don wanted to believe that they were gone for good.
“S’iz nisht dain gesheft, mein nachesdik kind,”
Bubbe whispered. Bearing all of this sadness, that should never have been your business, my beloved child.
At that second, it was as though a grip around his throat loosened; a strangling noose had finally been cut loose.
W
hen they reached the mouth of the tunnel, the being’s wings got caught in downward suction, like a vacuum. For an instant they were pressed back down toward the depths, and Don thought that they would never be released. Elena’s body came tumbling toward him, and he lost his breath as they fell together. But then the Arctic wind swept in and gave the wings the support to lift, and suddenly the creature was soaring up high in freedom, above the expanses of ice.
The snowstorm must have died down a long time ago, and when Don looked up at the vault of black velvet, he saw only the cream white arch of the Milky Way. The flame that burned brightest of all was the North Star, which came closer and closer with its flashing light. But the farther the being lifted them from the tunnel, the more it seemed to lose its strength. The radiance around it faded until almost nothing was left, and Don felt one last twitch from the handcuff.
Then he and Elena came loose and fell, joined together, from the aura that was now fading gradually. Don saw her camouflage jacket fluttering in the wind as she tried to keep her balance.
Falling through the sky, he was filled with a childlike feeling of freedom. During the short seconds when he was tumbling down, the beating of his heart stopped, and the peace that filled him extended beyond time and space. The lingering chain that had bound his life
to his grandmother’s had finally been cracked and broken. Somehow this creature had opened the door of Bubbe’s house and let him go.
But then the glittering of the North Star was drowned in a cloud of whirling snow. The strong wind had caused them to land at an angle, and they bounced across the ice like a ball of yarn. Don felt Elena’s arms holding him and their bodies each taking every other thud. Finally they were sliding across a surface as smooth and slippery as soaped glass.
When their movement had subsided and everything became still, Don fell onto his back. Elena lay beside him, and he could hear that she, too, was gasping for breath. Then their breathing gradually slackened, becoming slower and slower. They lay close to each other under a distant sky.
D
on squinted up at the North Star and thought how similar it was to the spark of light he had once watched appear above Nils Strindberg’s white ankh. Then he loosened his shoulder strap a bit, got hold of his bag, and began to grope through it out of habit. But as he rooted around among bottles and syringes, he had a feeling he wasn’t used to. Don took a deep breath and decided to take the risk of remaining in something that resembled a state of normalcy for a little while.
In all probability, not even dextroamphetamine could make the stars way up there above him any clearer. And he had never experienced from Valium the calm he felt in his chest right now.
E
lena lay listening to the blowing wind, and through their linked hands, she felt the warmth that radiated from Don. She wondered if he had seen her mother down there too, or if he had met someone else entirely in the underworld’s sun. The figure of light that had taken the ankh from her had done it for her own good. There was something behind the disc of that sun, through that portal, that a living person wasn’t prepared to see.
The frosty air and the ice under her made everything feel comfortably soft. Elena thought that she could lie here forever, gazing up at the vault of stars, and just let time go by.
For the first time since she was a child, there was no one who would demand answers from her. Maybe when her time was up, she would find out, but as it was now, she could just rest quietly here.
D
on felt his arm being dragged along by the handcuff as Elena finally stood up. She crouched down and began to inspect the tiny lock of the cuffs.
Then she asked whether he had anything with him that they could use, preferably something pointed and narrow. Don couldn’t help but smile as he dug around in his shoulder bag with his hand, and soon he produced a small syringe that was sealed in plastic.
Elena took the needle and worked it in with practiced fingers, and only a few seconds later, she had succeeded in freeing his wrist. His skin was chafed and bloody where the cuff had been, and once Elena had freed herself, she took out a small bandage. She wound it around Don’s wrist, and then she said, “We have to get out of here before the weather has time to get worse.”
Don looked despondently out over the endless ice.
“You mean we should walk all the way back to the icebreaker? Isn’t that really far?”
“Eleven miles,” said Elena. “But considering the questions that would await us there, I don’t think that’s a very good choice. But over there …”
She pointed toward the Russian helicopter.
“It’s only a few hundred yards over there, isn’t it?”
E
lena brushed the snow off herself, and before he could say anything, she had begun to walk away. Don stood up on trembling legs. Then he began to follow her as quickly as he could, because in spite of her baggy camouflage clothing, Elena was moving with lithe steps.
But she stopped suddenly by one of the snowdrifts and bent down as though she had found something. When Don came closer he saw that the thing she had picked up out of the snow was Strindberg’s star and ankh, burned black.
Elena seemed remarkably confident behind the controls of the helicopter. She tossed one helmet over to Don and helped him put on his headset and visor. Then, through the tinted glass, he was able to follow what looked like practiced movements as she looked through all those meters and systems.