David Sakmyster - The Cydonia Objective

Nuremburg, Germany—April 30, 1945

The three American tanks rumbled through the devastation, drove around Panzer tanks decimated from the early morning Allied air strike, and crunched over the wreckage without slowing down. Buildings were still smoldering, entire housing blocks flattened. Locals moved about the wreckage, calling for loved ones and searching for valuables. Dogs barked, children ran fleeing from the invading tanks, and a pall of thick black smoke hung suspended between the jagged rooftops and the steel-gray sky.

The tanks continued along their determined course, following narrowed streets, heading for the southwestern corner of the city, speeding there, in fact. Despite the lack of any sort of resistance, they seemed to be on an urgent mission to get somewhere fast.

The objective soon became clear: a small church with one needle-like steeple. St. Katherine’s was a prime example of gothic architecture with yawning archways and romantic columns. Badly burnt, but otherwise structurally undamaged in the attack, it stood resolute, but defenseless.

The tanks slowed, then diverged to cover three sides of the church. Hatches opened and green-clad soldiers rushed out, climbed down the sides and hurried to set up a perimeter. They took up positions, aiming at the doors, the windows, looking for snipers.

From the center tank, two more individuals emerged. The first: a large grey-haired soldier with a cigar trapped between his lips, one that he promptly lit as soon as he touched the ground. He was helped down by what looked to be his aide: a smaller, bookish man with spectacles and a thick crop of sweaty red hair.

One of the soldiers stood up from his kneeling position and shouted back, “Church secure, General Patton, Sir! Do we move in?”

Patton drew in a huge breath of cigar smoke, let it sit in his lungs, then expelled it slowly. He stared at the church without blinking. A long, slow stare. Then he spoke quietly to his aide: “You’re sure it’s here?”

The red-haired man thought for a moment before responding. At least, it seemed he was thinking. His eyes closed, his head lowered, and his put his fist to his forehead. Sweat broke out along his temples, and he started to tremble. Patton pulled his attention from the church to study the man with rapt admiration.

Finally, the red-haired man nodded and opened his eyes. “A specially constructed vault below the foundation. Reinforced walls and steel doors that you will need to blow up to get inside. It’s inside the vault, in a crate, hidden among the church ornaments and other stolen relics.”

Patton smiled. “Guards?”

“Two just outside the door to the vault room. One inside, guarding a golden box near the back. Inside is a false relic. Don’t be fooled.”

His smile widening, Patton strode forward; he waved to his soldiers and pointed to the front door. As the men raced ahead, Patton slowed, then turned back. The red-haired man still stood in place, hugging his arms, shaking slightly as the wind blew smoke trails around him. A plane roared overhead, and he winced with the sound. He met Patton’s gaze and his dry lips parted.

“You’ll keep it safe?”

Patton drew another breath from the cigar and thought before answering. “Better than Hitler did, the egomaniac. To think, he actually let it out of his grasp. And look what happened.”

The red-haired man nodded. “So it’s true? They’re advancing on his bunker in Berlin?”

Patton shrugged. “I don’t need your skills to see that the coward will probably take his own life before we get there. It’s over. The Reich is finished, and—”

“And America? Will it take its place?”

Patton’s expression formed a look of annoyance at the question. “America will be what it’s meant to be.” He pointed to the church. “When we reclaim what Hitler stole from that museum in Austria, we’ll be unstoppable. But power is just a means to an end. Eisenhower no doubt will order that we return the relic to its rightful owner, like all the other stolen artifacts we reclaim from these Nazi bastards.”

“But you won’t let him do that, will you?” The red-haired man’s lips curled in a tight smile. “And don’t bother answering, I’ve seen it already.”

“Ah, then I suppose I must insist you keep that little vision to yourself.” Patton grinned back at him, even as gunshots sounded from inside the church: a short, brief exchange, and then quiet resumed as the church’s defenders met their quick ends. “So, if I might ask, what else have you seen?”

The red-haired man closed his eyes for a moment, as if recapturing a series of fond memories. “You are going to trick your commander. Your artists will create a perfect forgery, and you will let General Eisenhower return that to the Austrian government. Meanwhile, you are going to place the true artifact somewhere that makes perfect sense. Not only hidden in plain sight , but keeping it where it can wielded by the most important symbol of everything America stands for as the preeminent world power.”

General Patton blinked at the man for several seconds, chewing on the end of the diminishing cigar until the ashes fell, joining others from Nuremberg’s burning skyline. Then, he nodded once more.

“You have surpassed all my expectations, Jordan Crowe. I thank you. And your nation thanks you.”

The red-haired man closed his eyes. And after Patton turned and at long last strode into the church to claim his prize, Crowe spoke, directing his words into the rising wind: “Hide it well, General.”

He sighed and closed his eyes, the lids flickering with a far off vision.

“Hide it well, so that it may still be there when it’s truly needed.”

Cairo, Egypt—Present Day

As the limo violently swerved to avoid something in the road, Orlando Natch held the laptop in his weak grasp, still woozy from blood loss after being attacked by ravenous eels in the mausoleum of Genghis Khan.

But despite everything he’d gone through, he felt rejuvenated, as if his ascent from the depths of that tomb and his multiple brushes with death had transformed him like a veritable Phoenix from its own ashes. Less than twelve hours earlier, that adventure already seemed like a lifetime ago, something that had happened to someone else, someone much braver, more deserving to be here with the beautiful young woman sitting beside him.

Phoebe Crowe continued staring at the laptop screen, even as she flinched at the sound of something striking the limo’s front windshield. The image on the screen— the planet Mars , the red, dusty soil photographed from the Viking Orbiter in 1976, one of over fifty-thousand pictures taken during its mission—depicted a mesa-dotted region known as ‘Cydonia’, home to a certain famously controversial image.