The Methuselah Project (6 page)

Gray Hair snapped the heels of his brown leather shoes together and stood ramrod straight. “Then allow me to introduce myself officially. My name is Professor Heinz von Blomberg.” He bowed at the waist, as if entering a dinner party for foreign dignitaries.

“Von Blomberg?” echoed one of the RAF men. “Wasn’t that the name of the general who gave the order for your guys to invade the Rhineland?”

The professor beamed. “The general is a distant relative. He and I are not close, but he served to introduce me to the Führer. As a result of that conversation”—he waved his right hand in a majestic, sweeping gesture—“this entire complex has been constructed.”

Roger was growing weary of Blomberg. “For what reason? Can we skip to the bottom line?”

The professor opened his mouth as if to explain, then closed it. He extracted a pocket watch and popped open the cover. “I would like to elucidate more, gentlemen, but I see that time is fleeting. I have many preparations to make. Perhaps tomorrow I will provide further details.”

Blomberg turned on his heel and strode out of the chamber, despite protests of “Hey! Wait a minute” and “Come back.” The red door clanged shut, followed by the clicking of a key engaging the tumblers.

Roger kicked the cell door with his bulky, fleece-lined flight boot. “Okay, clue in the new guy on the cell block. I just got shot down today, and they hustled me straight here. No explanations. Anybody know what this is all about?”

The fellow in the neighboring cell slipped his hand through the bars and shook Roger’s. “I’m Bill Burgess, copilot with the Forty-fourth Bomb Group. From one through five, the other guys are Sedgewick, Rutledge, Lambright, Jamison, and Hazlitt. But to answer your question, no. Until just a minute ago, they haven’t told us a stinking thing. Sedgewick down there”—Burgess jerked a thumb toward the RAF pilot in cell 1—“he understands some of their lingo. What little we do know comes from what he’s overheard Blomberg telling his assistant, another professor-type named Kossler.”

From down the line, Sedgewick chimed in. “They don’t say much. Not in front of us, at any rate. Yesterday I heard Blomberg tell Kossler he was impatient to find a seventh candidate so they could begin, whatever that means. The moment you waltzed through the doorway, we understood you’re Number Seven.”

Roger grunted. “I used to claim seven as my lucky number.”

“Who knows, maybe it still is,” called one of the Americans, whose name Roger had already forgotten. “This place can’t be any worse than a POW camp. I’ve been here for three days, and the grub isn’t half bad. Especially compared to the Brussels sprouts they kept feeding us in Norfolk.”

Roger remained unconvinced. His mind raced back to the glimpse of white mice. Now here he stood, caged exactly like a laboratory rodent. “I don’t know. My gut instincts tell me I’d rather be at a regular camp. They didn’t even record my name or rank or serial number. How can they report my capture to the Red Cross if they don’t know who I am?”

“Say, you’re right,” Burgess agreed. “They didn’t ask for mine, either.”

“Or mine,” added Lambright.

Roger put a finger to the throbbing spot on his forehead. “One more thing. That character, Blomberg. Something about him strikes me as …” He trailed off when no suitable description came to mind.

“Eccentric?” Burgess suggested.

“Batty?” offered one of the RAF flyers.

“I was thinking more along the lines of
abnormal.
Did you see that unnerving gleam in his eyes? If he’d introduced himself as Dr. Frankenstein, I would’ve believed him.”

The sullen man in cell 5 spoke up. “You can bet your bottom dollar on one thing: if Hitler approves of whatever Blomberg has up his sleeve, we’re not going to like it.”

Roger let that thought settle in his heart. He nodded. “Roger that.”

Burgess cocked his head. “I must’ve said ‘Roger that’ thousands of times, but I think this is the first time I’ve heard an actual Roger say it.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve been kidded about it too many times to smile anymore. If I never hear another ‘Roger’ pun in my life, I’ll be happy.”

In cell 1, Sedgewick muttered, “Nothing’s going to make me happy until we get out of here—
if
we get out of here.”

S
ATURDAY
, D
ECEMBER
18, 1943

S
OMEWHERE IN
G
ERMANY

A
s predicted by Lieutenant Jamison, alias “Number Four,” Roger had enjoyed the supper of open-faced cold-cut sandwiches and cheese on heavy rye bread, followed by steaming potato soup. What he found disquieting, though, was the realization that surely not all Allied prisoners received such appetizing meals. His mind conjured images of cannibals fattening up naive missionaries before a feast.

However, when morning dawned, no breakfast appeared. Instead, Blomberg entered the chamber alone. “Good morning, gentlemen,” he said jovially. “I trust you all slept well?”

With clipboard and pencil in hand, Blomberg worked his way down the line of cells and asked each man a series of questions: Did he feel well rested? Was he still in good health, without cough, congestion, or other ailments? Had the prisoner experienced a bowel movement that morning?

Ever the outspoken one, Sedgewick stated that if the professor was so fascinated in his use of the water closet, he could “bloody well stick around and watch.” Roger and the other prisoners, however, figured it couldn’t do any harm to reply. If the German High Command believed it could gain a military edge by learning whether these seven had already flushed, then let it try.

When Roger, the final prisoner, had finished answering Blomberg’s queries, he posed his own questions: “So what’s this all about, Doc? What are we doing here?”

Blomberg responded with a resplendent smile. “What are we doing here, Number Seven? We are creating history. You have heard of Christopher Columbus? Galileo? Isaac Newton? All of them made history. If my calculations prove accurate, all those names will pale when compared to the name of Heinz von Blomberg.”

“How do we figure into all that?” asked Rutledge in cell 2.

“I promise to tell you all about it,” Blomberg stated. “As soon as you wake up.” He turned and strode to the door.

“Wake up?” repeated Burgess. “What’s that mean? We’re awake already.”

The professor paused. “Yes, from natural sleep. But that is not my inference.”

Without further explanation, he stepped out of the chamber and pulled the heavy metal portal shut. In seconds, they heard it lock.

“He’s daft,” declared Sedgewick.

Roger ignored the others. Blomberg was up to something new. The thousand-dollar question was, what? Beyond the metal door he barely heard garbled voices. Even though the words were foreign, he strained to hear them, wishing for a clue to the man’s meaning.

Within moments, a clunking sound drew their attention to the ceiling of the chamber. The muffled chugging of an engine or pump came to Roger’s ears. An instant later, three streams of pink gas spewed into the room through overhead vents he hadn’t noticed before.

“He’s insane! He’s going to gas us!”

Desperate to escape the gas, Roger grabbed the bars of the door and shook with all his might. Except for a rattle, nothing happened. He backed up and charged the door, impacting it with his right shoulder. The door held fast. His best effort resulted in nothing more than stabbing shoulder pain.

In the other cells, his fellow prisoners likewise shouted, banged, cursed, and kicked the bars in futile efforts to avoid the pink mist billowing toward them.

Roger’s nostrils detected a sickly sweet smell. Coughing to expel the fumes from his lungs, he dropped to all fours. He looked left, then right. His mind raced, but he found no way to escape this trap.

Closer and closer, like the wispy tentacles of some unearthly octopus, crept the pink vapor. The sweet odor reached Roger where he lay on the concrete floor. Almost immediately his nostrils began tingling. In a last bid at surviving whatever toxin filled the air, he held his breath and stripped the woolen blanket from his cot. He rapidly folded the fabric to double thickness, then again into four layers. This he pressed to his face in hopes of filtering out the fumes.

But the tingling inside his nose crept farther along his nasal passages and extended down to his lungs. He pressed his crude gas mask tighter. He wanted to hold his breath, but what would that gain him? Sixty seconds? Ninety? Then what? A man must breathe.

A high-pitched whine grew in his ears. Roger was uncertain whether the sound originated inside or outside his skull. Thousands of pinpricks stabbed inside his lungs and radiated outward to all his limbs. Roger’s muddled mind pictured countless fire ants crawling under his skin, inside his windpipe, through his veins, and to each blood vessel.

The shouts from the neighboring cells receded, growing fainter as Roger’s grip on consciousness weakened. Still he fought to keep his breathing shallow, to limit whatever was invading his system. If he passed out, the blanket would slip from his face and expose him to the full effect of the mist. But he was fighting a losing battle. An irresistible force had clamped onto his mind and was suffocating his brain, pulling his innermost self down, down into dark oblivion.

As coherent thought ebbed from his mind, a disembodied voice came echoing to him: “Children, always remember to pray!”

God, help!

Those two words were the closest shot at a prayer he could muster. Blackness engulfed him, and Roger knew no more.

S
ATURDAY
, S
EPTEMBER
6, 2014

I
VAN
A
LLEN
B
OULEVARD
,
DOWNTOWN
A
TLANTA

K
atherine Mueller did a double take at the gray-cased device mounted on her dashboard. Instead of the strong directional signal displayed just moments earlier, the miniature screen flashed two amber words: “Signal lost.”

How could that be? He couldn’t vanish into nothingness.

The traffic signal turned green. As soon as the last pedestrian ambled out of the crosswalk, she slid her foot to the gas pedal and continued along Ivan Allen Boulevard. Annoyed at both the lost signal and the discomfort of the clammy blouse sticking to her body, she powered down both front windows a few more inches. Why did the air-conditioning have to pick today of all days to conk out?

The increased cross-breeze swept away some of the stifling heat, but open windows also permitted an influx of everything Katherine detested about traffic in Atlanta: the noxious concentration of car exhaust and the cacophony of screeching tires, honking horns, and people talking, shouting, sometimes cursing. Worse, that MARTA bus blocking her vision was pumping reeking diesel fumes straight at her. Sitting here was like being gassed.

Katherine breathed as shallowly as possible.
Okay, girl, think. I’m not geocaching with Uncle anymore. This is the big league now. The target is mobile. What could make you lose the signal?

Her mind conjured and discarded possibilities. She slowed her car. Her target had been extremely close when she lost him. He must be nearby. She reminded herself to stay alert, especially for a glimpse of the vehicle she stalked. She’d heard of geocachers who focused so intently on locating a hidden trinket that they stepped in front of speeding motorcycles or tumbled into ditches. If stationary targets presented danger, then tracking a moving target as cunning as her prey only ratcheted the threat level higher. She didn’t want to risk her two-year-old car—or her life—on this mission. So what could make the signal disappear?

Her eyes flitted from the lumbering blue, gold, and orange-striped MARTA bus to the organization-issued homing device, or “Pigeon” as it was commonly called, mounted on her dash.
Okay, if the locator chip in his car went dead, that would cut the signal.
She ruled out that likelihood. But what if he drove through a car wash or something? She rejected that solution, too.
No, the chips are sealed against moisture. It could drop into a mud puddle, and I’d still get a signal. So what’s the—