The Project 02 - The Lance

opened one of the crates and found rare paintings missing since the war. The radio had swastikas on it and one of those Enigma coding machines next to it. There was also a vault they couldn't open.
    " They called it in to Berlin. That was on Wednesday afternoon. Early Thursday morning someone showed up, blew the door off the vault and cleaned the place out. It looks like a military op. They didn't leave anyone behind to talk about it. Berlin thinks this was a secret Nazi base rumored to exist since the war, built to research experimental weapons. Everyone thought it was a myth, until now."
    " What was in the vault?"
    " No one knows. The only things left behind were files. Inventories of jewelry, gold teeth, wedding rings and other property stolen from Holocaust victims. All neatly cataloged."
    Carter thought about that. Gold teeth and wedding rings. Who could fathom the pathological cruelty of the Nazi mind?
    Harker continued. "Inside the vault were two mummified bodies in World War II German naval uniforms. They'd been shot at close range with a pistol. One of them had ID that showed they came off a submarine, U-886."
    " You think this is what Dysart was referring to in his email?"
    " It must be. There's not much happening in Antarctica. The email said the 'key' to Parsifal had been found there, whatever that is."
    " How do we use the Antarctica connection?" Nick tugged at his ear.
    " We need more data."
    Harker 's pen tapped. Nick wanted to snatch it from her and break it in half. His head was throbbing. The room vibrated with a faint light.
    " What about the sub those mummies came from?" Ronnie said. "Why was it there? If we knew that, we might know why someone came back years later and took out that research station. That's pretty cold, killing a bunch of civilian eggheads studying penguins and snow."
    " We have the number of the sub." Harker tapped her pen. "There should be records, maybe an action report. Almost all the U-Boats have been accounted for. We could start by tracking it down."
    " That's easy. We can Google it." Stephanie got her laptop and plugged it in. It booted up and routed through the mainframe sitting in the other room. Steph tapped keys and entered a search. In a few seconds the display screen showed a numerical list of all Nazi submarines. She clicked on U-886.
    U-886 was listed as a type IX D2, built in July 1944 by AG Weser at the Bremen yards. She'd been sunk with depth charges by a British destroyer on 22 February, 1945. Stephanie pulled up the Admiralty report. The co-ordinates of the action placed the sub's grave at fifteen miles east and south of Mar del Plata on the Argentine coast, on the continental shelf in 35 fathoms of water.
    Elizabeth coughed. "It looks like they were running for Argentina. Type IX D2's were converted to carry cargo. They must have had something on board."
    " Or they left something behind," Nick said. "If the sub was carrying something away, wouldn't they have taken the crates with the paintings?"
    " Why leave anything in Antarctica? The war was almost over and they were heading for safety." Selena looked at the screen. "They couldn't have planned on coming back anytime soon."
    Nick thought. "They killed two of their own. Why would they do that?"
    " Only one reason makes sense," Ronnie said. "Whoever shot those guys didn't want them talking about what was in the vault."
    " And the paintings were outside, not in the vault." Stephanie picked it up. "So whatever was in there was more important to the Nazis than a bunch of Old Masters. That's got to be something pretty special."
    " Whatever it was, they never came back for it," Ronnie said.
    " Until a few days ago." Harker tapped her pen, set it aside. "Why not before?"
    " Maybe they didn't know where it was." Ronnie cracked his knuckles. "Maybe the location went down with the sub. When the scientists found it someone jumped on it before the German government could step in."
    Harker frowned. "That means someone would have to monitor transmissions from the Antarctic or have deep contacts in Germany. Then they would have to mount an armed expedition and get it on site in less than a day. That's pretty sophisticated."
    T he pen came out again, tapping.
    "Steph hasn't been able to track the other end of those emails yet. It might be worth it to see if there's anything left on that sub. Something that could tell us what Dysart was referring to."
    " If we can find it," Nick said. "Even if we could, there's not going to