“I’m having flashbacks to Recruit Training,” Jake said, kicking a board out of his way. “Although I’d take Parris Island over this place right now.”
Another great stone fireplace was centered on one wall. Both men stepped closer to run their hands over the stones.
“Probably a fireplace in every room,” Jake said.
Quentin nodded, then both men looked up as they heard the distinctive sounds of wood cracking.
“Lot of weight up there,” Quentin said, eyeing the ceiling.
“I’m surprised the stone fireplaces aren’t the only things left standing.”
“It’s been abandoned for what, seventy years? I’m sure it’ll hold for one more day.”
Quentin left Jake at the fireplace and walked through the rest of the sleeping quarters to the next room. Here the roof had partially collapsed along one wall, but without giving way completely to the outside elements. He had to duck as he stepped around the bowed-in ceiling.
The room was filled with two dozen old pews, many of them toppled over. An elaborately carved wooden lectern stood at the opposite end, the focal point of everyone who had once sat in the pews. Quentin approached the lectern and ran his gloved fingers over the carvings. There was a cross in the center, no surprise in a monastery, and yet it wasn’t elongated like most Christian crosses. It was squared off, more like a plus sign, and it was fixed inside a circle. A vague sense of unease had been growing in Quentin ever since he had entered this structure. Now that feeling was even more pervasive than the cold air.
“What was this place?” he asked out loud.
Quentin spotted a door leading to another room. He went to the door, pushed it open, and looked inside.
* * *
Kate watched Nick negotiate the wooden stairs to the room below, then turned on her own flashlight and followed him. The stairs creaked and groaned as she took each step, until suddenly she felt herself plunge through. Nick barely caught her, wrapping his hands around her torso and holding her there, suspended over an eight-foot drop. As they caught their breath, they were both aware of how close together their faces were.
“Another romantic moment,” Nick said. “We do know how to find them.”
They got down the rest of the stairs without incident, coming to rest on a rough stone floor. With no windows on this floor, their flashlight beams barely pierced the darkness.
“There’s the ledge this thing is built on,” Nick said, playing his flashlight across the exposed rock that formed one wall of the room. Somehow it made this lower level feel even colder, like the mountain itself was draining any last heat from the air.
“It’s like a charming split-level ranch,” Nick said. “With a great view. I’m thinking of putting in an offer.”
Nick’s flashlight settled on an old wooden crate with barely visible German words written across it. He went over to the crate and pushed it a few inches. It was empty. Kate found a similar crate, then another. Each was empty, and another two were smashed open.
“Time out,” Nick said as he kicked another crate. This one didn’t feel hollow. He dragged the crate across the rough stones, then shined his light along the top edges. He took out his knife and tried to work it around the edges.
“You got a better knife on you?”
“You’re not using my Ontario knife as a crowbar,” she said. “I’ll go find something in the kitchen.”
She went back to the stairs and climbed out of the trapdoor. When she opened the old cupboards and drawers, the best tool she could find was an old paring knife with a wooden handle. As she was sliding the drawer shut, she stopped dead. I’m being watched, she thought. She whirled around to see nothing but an empty ancient kitchen.
Almost as if to prove something to herself, she went to one window and rubbed it with her sleeve until she could look out. She saw only the ice and snow on the front side of the building, with her own footprints mixed in with those of her father, Nick, and Quentin. She went to the back window, rubbed it with her sleeve as she had done with the first, then peered through the window.
It took her a full five seconds to process what she was seeing.
“Oh my God.”
* * *
Jake caught up to Quentin and stood next to him in the doorway.
“What are we looking at here?” Jake asked.
“I’m going to say it was once a library,” Quentin said. He took a step into the room, immediately putting both boots on old paper. The shelves that lined every wall had once held thousands of books, but now every single one of them had been thrown to the floor, and most of them were torn into pieces. He picked up one page to read it. The words were German.
In the corner was yet another stone fireplace. Jake moved closer and shined his flashlight on the stones. Quentin went to the small writing desk that had been built into one of the bookshelves. The chair had been smashed into pieces. Quentin opened a drawer and found letters that were now little more than faded ink on brittle paper. At the top of one sheet of paper was a letterhead with the same symbol he had seen on the lectern in the other room, a square cross over a circle.
“What kind of monastery was this?” he asked.
“Maybe it wasn’t,” Jake said. “Just because they called it a monastery doesn’t mean they were up here saying their Vespers. Who knows what they were doing?”
“I’m getting a bad feeling about this place,” Quentin said.
“You and me both, brother.”
“How about we find the next link so we can get the hell out of here?”
Quentin came over to the fireplace, nearly falling when the remains of a book he stepped on slid from under him. He caught himself, kicking at the papers under his feet.
“What is this?” He got down on one knee and moved more of the paper aside with his hand. There was a pattern built into the wooden floor, like spokes emanating from the hub of a wheel.
Jake came over and helped him clear more of the floor. There were twelve spokes in all, and each took a sharp jag to the right before it reached the outer circle.
“You ever seen something like this before?”
“Yes,” Quentin said. “I have. It’s called the Black Sun. I saw one like this at a gallery in Wewelsburg. They held an auction for some old SS artifacts there. Which I decided I couldn’t be a part of, no matter how much I was being paid.”
“SS as in Heinrich Himmler’s old gang?”
“One and the same. So what is this doing here?”
The two men looked at each other, sharing the same chill down their spines. They both stood up and were about to leave the room when Quentin put a hand on Jake’s arm. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Fire. Light.”
“What about it?”
“Name the one thing that’s hot and bright. More than anything else.”
“The sun,” Jake said, looking at the design at his feet.
“The Black Sun,” Quentin said.
They both got back on their knees, pushing the debris away. Jake trained his flashlight on the floor as Quentin used two fingers to brush away the last shreds of paper from the very axis point of the black sun design. Both men bent down even farther to peer at the symbol that was uncovered. A tiny swastika.