Thomas Greanias - The 34th Degree

When she had freed the glass plate from the case, she slowly turned around. Standing there beside his desk, smiling at her, was the Baron.

“So that’s what Herr Andros was looking for in Athens,” he told her. “The Maranatha text!”

She went cold and almost dropped the text on the floor. She glanced at the doorway, wondering how he’d gotten in.

His eyes lit up as if he had finally fathomed some great mystery. “I never would have guessed,” he said. “Your friend came to steal my secrets, but now I believe I know his.”

Aphrodite thought about what the monk Philip had told her. She had to finish what Christos had started. She couldn’t give up now. “One more step,” she warned him, “and I’ll smash this plate to the floor.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” the Baron told her in a cool tone. “Not that it would make any real difference to me. After all, I’ve had the contents translated, photographed, and copied. But then I’d have to punish you, and the world would lose another work of art.”

Aphrodite didn’t know if the Baron was referring to her or the Maranatha text. “I’d rather die than live as part of your collection.”

Before the Baron could answer her, an entire section of the bookcase opened up to reveal a secret passageway. Franz entered the room, stopping abruptly when he saw her.

“Don’t mind her, Franz,” said the Baron. “What is it?”

“This came in from Oberfuhrer Borgman in the field just now.”

Speechless, Aphrodite watched Franz hand the Baron a lengthy communique. When he finished skimming the report, he looked at her with his piercing eyes. “So, it’s over,” he said. “The caique carrying Andros struck a mine and blew up in the Gulf of Messenia.”

With those words, Aphrodite felt something drop to the floor and shatter. But when she looked down and saw the glass plate in her hands, she realized it was her heart that had broken. She fell to her knees, still clinging to the text, and started wailing.

“Murderers!” she cried. “Murderers!”

Von Berg sighed and gave the communique back to Franz. “And yet neither the film nor any wreckage has been found,” he said above her cries. “Why is that?”

“What can I say, Herr Oberstgruppenfuhrer?” Franz replied. “Two of our R-boat commanders saw the explosion with their own eyes. As for debris, we are searching by air, but as you can imagine, this is difficult at night. Our minesweepers with wooden hulls arrive in the morning. But it may take a good day or two.”

“And what about Spreicher?”

“His body was found next to an abandoned lorry near the Taygetos Pass.”

“That’s too bad,” the Baron said, and began to stare at Aphrodite. “How many Germans have died during Andros’s little escapade through the Peloponnese?”

Aphrodite stopped crying, the streak of tears still running down her cheeks. She glanced at Franz, who appeared to be making some mental calculations. A terrible premonition began to form in the hollow of her stomach.

Finally, Franz said, “Altogether, if we include those killed at that ammunition dump in Laconia, thirty-seven Waffen SS.”

“Thirty-seven of Germany’s finest dead,” repeated the Baron incredulously. “And how many Greeks?”

Franz said, “If we don’t include the Greek andartes at the National Bands base, then one, sir. That Greek gendarme who was gunned down when Andros crashed the checkpoint outside Sparta.”

“And he was working for us,” quipped the Baron. “How many suspected accomplices were rounded up in Sparta?”

Franz said, “Fifteen-so far.”

“That’s less than half as many Germans who have died,” the Baron observed. “That doesn’t look very good, Franz, does it?”

“No, sir.”

Aphrodite could feel her heart pounding.

“Then I suggest you do more than even the score in the revised report you’ll forward to Berlin,” the Baron ordered. “You can start by burning to the ground every single village those terrorists may have passed through and then round up two hundred locals in Sparta and Kalamata and have them shot. That would work out to about five Greeks to every one German. More than a fair rate of exchange, wouldn’t you say?”

Aphrodite could take it no longer. “No, don’t!” she cried. “Please don’t kill any more people!”

The Baron smiled. “I’ll double that number if you don’t give me the text,” he warned her. “Or I’ll cut it in half, if you’ll be reasonable.”

Choking on her tears, she nodded.

“Good,” he replied, and turned to Franz. “Make it only one hundred Greeks.”

“Of course, Herr Oberstgruppenfuhrer.”

“Numbers, Standartenfuhrer,” said the Baron. “Berlin loves numbers. And at this point I don’t want to draw any further attention by doing anything that suggests we’re slacking off in Greece. Now, help me with Aphrodite here.”

She said nothing as they helped her to her feet.

The Baron removed the glass-plated text from her hands. “There, now,” he told her. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

She watched him take the glass plate and put it in a wall safe behind the portrait of King Ludwig II. Then he and Franz led her toward the bookcase.

“Where are you taking me?” she demanded.

The Baron replied, “Why, to your new quarters in the lower levels.”

When she resisted, they dragged her by the arms and practically hurled her into the dark passageway. But it wasn’t a passageway. It was an elevator. Oh, God, she thought, what else can there be? Then the Baron and Franz stepped inside, the door closed, and the cage descended into the bowels of the earth.

A faint blue dawn was coming up over Algiers the next morning when Churchill finished reading Prestwick’s signal. Churchill then reached for a match, lit his second Havana of the morning, and settled back in his wickerwork chair on the terrace of Eisenhower’s Moorish villa.

The signal was marked: MOST SECRET AND PERSONAL. From the Commanding Officer, H.M. Submarine Cherub. Date: 31st May, 1943. To the Director of Naval Intelligence.

Churchill read it over a couple of times before he finally lowered his hand and looked up at Colonel Ellery Huntington, the OSS chief in Algiers who had personally delivered the message. “Are they sure?”

“Positive, sir,” Huntington replied. “ALSOS confirms the authenticity of the technical papers Andros photographed and the atomic nature of General von Berg’s research program.”

Churchill nodded grimly. The ALSOS team was a select group of scientists who worked with the OSS in stealing information about experiments in nuclear physics by the Germans. Their code name came from the Greek word for “grove,” after Major General Leslie R. Groves, director of the Manhattan Project, the American program to develop the atomic bomb.

General Eisenhower, who, for the last several minutes, had been pacing the terrace’s tiled floor in his riding boots and breeches, let out a long whistle. “That boy Andros found more than either he or we bargained for,” said the supreme Allied commander.

“I couldn’t agree with you more,” said Churchill, still dazed by the other signal from the Cherub, the encoded one from Captain Whyte that he would not be sharing with the Americans-for now. Her devastating revelation of Brigadier Andrew Eliot as the Minotaur would only jeopardize American confidence in future joint SOE-OSS ventures. In any case, Churchill resolved then and there that an SOE shake-up was in order, not only in Greece, but at the highest levels in SOE Cairo.

Eisenhower marched to the balustrade of the terrace, staring off to sea. “Good grief, Colonel,” he said, addressing Huntington. “You’re telling us that von Berg is building an atomic bomb below some palace on a Greek island?”