The Methuselah Project (25 page)

The guard straightened.
“Auf Wiedersehen.”
Still looking perplexed, he stepped back to the guardhouse and reached inside the door, where he evidently pushed a button. With a hum, the chain-link gate crept open.

Inside the guardhouse, a telephone rang. Watching, Roger saw the second guard answer. In a flash, the man holding the receiver jumped to his feet. In German the man blurted,
“Was? Dr. Heinkel?”
A pause, then an expression of shock. His eyes bore into Roger.

The gate slid in slow motion.

Come on … faster!

The man holding the telephone mashed an unseen button. The gate shuddered to a halt.

“Go!” Roger hissed.

“But the gate. It’s not all the way—”

The man with the telephone made a motion that telegraphed one meaning: he was reaching for his holster.

“Sophie, go—he’s got a gun!”

Sophie stomped down the gas pedal. The Volkswagen shot through the opening, scraping its right side along the gate as it began closing again.

“I’ll bet that was Hans on the telephone. He must have worked loose from your knots.”

Sophie swore.

Roger glanced back in time to see both guards taking aim with handguns. “Duck!”

In the next instant, the rear windshield shattered. The vehicle swerved, but Sophie kept the gas pedal floored. “This isn’t how I wanted it. They’ll sound an alarm. The organization has agents all over Germany.”

“Get off the main road. Don’t take the shortest way to the airport. If you can, use any cow path where they’ll least expect to find you. Keep ’em guessing.”

She nodded. “Yes, we can travel by smaller roads. But don’t underestimate this organization. They know my car and license number.”

“Is it far to the airport?”

“It’s not close. Nearly an hour away. They’ll have time to pursue us.” She turned to look him in the eye. “And I guarantee, Roger, they definitely will give chase.”

For more than a half hour, neither Roger nor Sophie said much. She sped along, frequently turning, changing directions in case an agent had observed their passing. Meanwhile, Roger’s glimpses of twenty-first-century Germany flabbergasted him. This “Autobahn,” the architecture, the gleaming automobiles straight out of Flash Gordon adventure stories—all of these threatened to overwhelm him. He’d never moved so fast along the ground in his life. It was dizzying to watch the world flash past.

“When we get to the airport,” Sophie explained, “we have to check in. Then we’ll walk through a security area, but don’t worry. With your beard and new haircut, you resemble the passport enough to get through. Airport security isn’t connected with the organization. They mainly want to ensure no one is sneaking weapons or bombs aboard.”

“Sounds like they’re afraid of partisans. I’ll act casual.”

She flashed him a confused look, but fished a plastic sack from the floor of the back seat and handed it to him. “Here. These are some of Hans’s belongings. His watch, reading glasses, and an envelope of cash from his office at Methuselah.”

“Good girl!” He slid the watch onto his wrist, then pocketed the other items.

Roger had noticed that every few miles on this Autobahn, special exit points allowed motorists to stop and buy gasoline. As Sophie passed one such place, Roger spotted a maroon car parked alongside the ramp that funneled cars back onto the highway. Both of the car’s male occupants reacted as the orange Volkswagen sped past. The maroon car leaped into motion, pulling onto the highway behind them.

“Trouble, Sophie. We’ve got company.”

Her face revealed concern but also determination. Whatever training this mysterious “organization” had given her was paying off. She might be a female scientist, but she was no pushover. Knocking out Hans had proven that.

Twisting in his seat, Roger watched as the passenger in the pursuing car stuck his hand out the window.

“He’s going to shoot!”

Sophie cranked the steering wheel hard left, then right, jockeying to present a difficult target. Roger heard no gunfire, but the mirror outside his window shattered. Like Sophie, he hunkered low in the seat. “If only we had a gun!”

“A pistol? I have one. The organization issued it.” She reached under her seat, pulled out a leather case, and shoved it at Roger.

Inside, Roger found a pistol in pristine condition. Not the Colt .45 he had carried as an airman, but nothing so complicated he couldn’t figure it out.

“The magazine is already in place. Fully loaded. Fifteen rounds.”

“Baby, I love you!”

“Who, me or the Beretta?” Sophie yanked the wheel left again.

“Both!”

In a flash, he spotted the safety, about two inches higher than on his Colt, on the slide instead of the frame.

“Pull the hammer back if you want to take it from double action to single. Single action is easier to take that first shot.”

Roger aimed the weapon out the smashed rear window. “Eat this!” He squeezed off a round. Then another.

The windshield of the trailing car didn’t shatter, but glistening spider-webs appeared in the glass. The driver backed off, but his companion still held his own weapon out the side window.

Roger drew a bead on the gunman, then squeezed.
Crack!
A new hole appeared in the pursuers’ windshield. The gunman slumped as his weapon tumbled to the roadside.

“One down!” Roger waved a fist at the pursuer.

The organization car dropped back but didn’t stop.

“He’ll be radioing our location and direction,” Sophie said.

“Think you can shake him?”

In response, Sophie swerved onto an exit, whisking them off the Autobahn and toward Frankfurt’s city center. Saturday morning traffic grew thicker. She passed slower vehicles, weaving in and out of gaps between cars, ignoring blaring horns. Behind them, the determined pursuer duplicated each maneuver.

A traffic light turned red.

Sophie jammed the gas pedal to the floorboard. “Hang on!” They roared through the intersection, barely darting between two cars. Roger watched as the car behind them imitated her gamble. It braked violently, swung sideways, and then got T-boned by a delivery van.

“Girl, you can fly in my squadron anytime!” With the immediate threat diminished, the mere mention of flying lured Roger’s eyes to the sky. What he saw gripped his attention: “Wow, look at the size of that bomber!”

“Bomber? What?”

He pointed toward the descending aircraft.

“That’s no military airplane. It’s a normal airliner. Just like the one we’re taking to America.”

“An airliner? You said we’re traveling to America, but I didn’t know you meant directly. All the way from Frankfurt?”

She grinned. “Now you’ve got it. To Atlanta. I wanted New York, but all the seats were booked. The main thing is, you’re going home.”

The realization that such long-range flights had become routine passenger trips staggered his imagination. Roger had realized that life didn’t stand still outside the Methuselah bunker, but this revelation dumbfounded him. “I have a lot of catching up to do. How can we fly in a civilian aircraft straight to the States with a war going on?”

Sophie slowed to a less conspicuous speed. “What war?”

How could she not understand? The fighting had been going on all her life. “
The
war. You know … between the Allies and the Axis powers. Kossler didn’t spill everything, but I know that the Third Reich invaded—”

“Roger, I don’t know what nonsense Dr. Kossler fed you, but that war is over.”

Her statement smacked him between the eyes like a baseball bat. “Over? For how long?”

“A long time. Years. The States and Germany are best of friends.”

Each new chunk of information challenged his understanding. He had no reason to doubt Sophie, but these claims contradicted the picture Kossler had painted. If the States and Germany were such great pals, then why was Captain Roger Greene still a prisoner of the Nazis? Who were the men chasing them?

Sophie forced a smile, but the stress showed through. “This isn’t the time to discuss it. We have to change tactics. Get rid of this car.”

“What do you suggest?”

She screeched to a halt behind a taxi. “You have the cash. Here’s the information on our flight.” She shoved a folded sheet of paper into his hand. “Jump into that taxi. Tell him to take you to the airport. Lufthansa is the airline. Check in and follow the signs to whatever gate number they tell you at registration. It’s easy. Copy what everybody else does.”

“Why don’t you come with me?”

“There’s a chance they’re tracking my car by GPS. If we just leave it here and they find it, they’ll guess where we’re headed. But if I drive away from the airport and park where they can’t get a signal, that should buy some time.”

GPS? Roger didn’t understand, but said, “You won’t take unnecessary chances?”

She grinned. “We already have. Now hurry. I’ll meet you at the gate to the airplane.”

Clutching Hans’s briefcase, Roger hopped out and trotted to the cab. Sophie’s orange VW sped around the corner. The moment it was gone, he stopped short. Those initials—GPS. Did they stand for a homing device? Hans had bragged about the object he’d surgically implanted inside Roger being some sort of homing beacon. At the time, the claim seemed absurd—that tiny bump, dangerous? Surely Hans had been bluffing to intimidate him.

He reached for the taxi door.
Thank God for you, Sophie. See you soon!

S
ATURDAY
, M
ARCH
7, 2015

F
RANKFURT
A
IRPORT
, F
RANKFURT AM
M
AIN
, G
ERMANY

T
he modern, bustling mosaic of humanity at the airport jarred his brain. He was rubbing shoulders with bodies from unfathomable numbers of nations, some Oriental, others wearing turbans or sarongs as if from India or the Middle East. The mixture of languages astonished him. He’d expected to hear only German. Instead, a veritable babel of tongues assailed his ears from every direction. It was as though he’d taken a spin on H. G. Wells’s time machine.

He spotted a sign for Lufthansa and joined those standing in line. When Roger’s turn came, the brown-skinned woman at the counter asked for his passport. She shot him only a cursory glance before typing on the device Roger recognized as a computer.

“Here’s your boarding pass, Mr. Heinkel. Enjoy your flight.” With one glance at Hans’s American passport, she had switched from German to English, even though her darker skin suggested Turkey or some other exotic upbringing. How long had minorities been acceptable employees in the Third Reich—or Germany, or whatever they called this baffling country?

“Thank you.” He accepted the boarding pass and strolled away. Amidst a medley of voices, public address announcements, and foreign faces, Roger ambled in the direction the woman at the counter had pointed.

The spectacle of a gaunt male walking past snagged Roger’s eyes. The man’s head was shaven, except for an upside-down triangle of hair above his forehead. Lining the outer edge of both ears were a dozen shiny rings. Another metal ring pierced one of his eyebrows, yet another his lower lip. Roger realized too late he was cringing in horror.

Poor devil. The stinking Nazis must have experimented on him, too, before the war ended.

His steps slowed as he approached the security area with its uniformed personnel. Nobody paid him particular attention, but he feared looking conspicuous. He recalled Sophie’s hurried assurance that airport police searched only for weapons, not for escaped Americans. What if she’d miscalculated?

Pinpricks of sweat beaded his brow. As casually as he could, he wiped them away with the back of his hand. The whole process mystified him, but he placed his briefcase on the conveyer belt as everyone else did and let it slide into some kind of gizmo. Following other passengers’ examples, he stepped through the opening, where another uniformed man studied each individual.

“Gut.”
The man gave him a business-like nod.

Roger exhaled the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. He picked up the briefcase and continued walking. He paused at a floor-to-ceiling window and gaped at the behemoth parked outside. Beyond it, similar monsters landed and took off. Unbelievable. All that weight, and not a single propeller. Jules Verne’s imagination had sprung to life.