Two Graves

The large cage was securely locked, and it took Pendergast over five minutes, using improvised tools, to gain access. Once inside, he looked around more closely. As he’d noticed on his prior passage through this space, the Nazis had made use of a natural fissure in the old volcano to store their weapons. Despite the vast amount of shells, weapons, and casings visible within the cage, it was only the tip of the iceberg: an even greater amount of ordnance lay below the level of the floor, protected by the walls of the fissure itself. The Nazis had taken no chances that, in the event of an attack, a lucky shell hit from an invading force could accidentally touch off their magazine: it was buried deep in the lowest level of the fortress, its main bulk surrounded and shielded by protective volcanic rock.

It was also designed so that, if it did go off, the explosion would be severely confined by the natural rock. It would not destroy the fortress above.

Or would it? As he contemplated the arsenal, Pendergast remembered something else: the broad, fresh radial pattern of cracks he’d noticed in the curtain wall of the fortress. These were not cracks caused by the normal settling of an ancient wall; just the opposite. They had been caused by an upward heaving of the ground, an upsurge that had separated and dislocated the huge blocks along the castle’s foundation. That indicated only one thing: a recent resurgence of the volcano’s caldera floor by the upward movement of magma. Which meant the dead volcano was perhaps not so dead, after all.

As if on cue, a tremor—similar to the ones he’d noticed earlier—shook the floor ever so slightly beneath his feet.

The Nazis had been careful to safeguard their arsenal from any outside attack short of a tactical nuclear strike. However, in so doing, it was possible they had overlooked the possibility of an attack from within—an attack involving both high explosives… and Mother Nature. They were not, Pendergast thought with a faint smile, very good geologists.

Grabbing one of the canisters of black powder, he pierced it with his knife and poured the contents over the crates and boxes and powder kegs that made up the ammo dump. He emptied another canister over the weaponry, and then another, until the entire upper surface of the magazine was coated with a thick dusting of gunpowder. Then, taking two more cans, he slipped one under his arm while using the other to make a trail of powder away from the arsenal, out the open door of the cage and along the floor, headed back in the direction from which he’d come. Discarding the empty can, he opened the second and last, and continued the gunpowder trail, out of the domed area and down the narrow stone passageway.

The last of the gunpowder ran out and Pendergast put the can aside. Taking out his flashlight, he played it back along the narrow black trail he’d just made. It was approximately sixty feet long. He paused a minute, drew in a deep breath. Then, kneeling, he removed the lighter, held it to the end of the line of black powder, and flicked it on.

Immediately there was a spark, a puff of flame, and—with an angry hiss—the trail of powder began to burn, dissolving into a low cloud of smoke as it flared its way back toward the weapons cache. Pendergast turned and ran back down the branching passageways of the sub-basement.

He had just made it to the boat and was getting into it when a tremendous, earsplitting roar sounded behind him. This was followed by a second, and then a third, as a chain reaction of explosions began setting off more and more of the castle’s cache of arms. Even at this distance, the force of the initial blast knocked him sprawling into the bottom of the boat; ears ringing, he got up, shoved off, started the engine, jammed it into full throttle, and headed out the escape tu

He roared out of the mouth of the tu

The rumblings had ceased. The fortress remained standing, dark and silent, with only a thin trail of smoke coming from where the tu

Still he waited. And then a shiver passed over the surface of the water. A low rumble reached his ears, almost below the audible range, a vibration he felt more in his bones than his ears. The surface of the lake shivered again, tiny wavelets kicked up, the rumble growing louder. Now the water was dancing crazily and he saw, along the very bottom of the massive wall encircling the fortress, a crack of red. Slowly it enlarged, moving horizontally, with small flares and puffs of steam, like the lid of some gigantic pressure cooker bulging up and about to explode.

A bright flash, and another. This was no man-made blast: it was too vast, too loud, and it came from too deep within the earth. The thunderclap struck him a moment later, almost bowling him over the side of the boat. Several vast and spectacular sprays of lava erupted into the night air, like giant fountains, with a screaming roar of releasing gas and steam. The bellowing explosions of thunder rolled across the lake like a physical force, shivering the surface of the water. As he stared, entire sections of the fortress—towers, ramparts, walls—seemed to come apart at the seams and rise, slowly, amid roiling clouds of fire and smoke separating into mushroom clouds.

He could make out tiny figures—some in uniform, others in lab coats, still others in coveralls—scrambling like ants down to the lake, diving in and piling into boats along the shore. Several other figures, their clothes aflame, like human firebombs, rose out of the eruption of rock, lava, and fire, trailing smoke.

As he watched, unable to tear his eyes from the sight, an additional huge staccato series of explosions shuddered the island with ugly cauliflowers of red and yellow. The fortress was now rent asunder, turning night into ghastly day. The blasts reached Pendergast a moment later, one after another, punches of overpressure pushing him violently back, skidding his boat across the now violently agitated surface of the lake. This led to one monumental explosion whose gout of fire and destruction engulfed the top half of the island, a vast storm of rocks, lava, and smoke that rose as the explosion accelerated, a raging upward column of destruction. And then there was a second, even greater explosion, one so deep and muffled it seemed to stir the mountains themselves. But this one wasn’t an explosion; rather it was an implosion: and Pendergast saw the fractured, broken remains of the castle begin to collapse in on themselves—slowly at first, and then more and more quickly, until the vast ancient façade crumbled in with an unearthly shriek. Pendergast saw tongues of living lava shooting out from the rent maw of the island, streaking upward in fiery tracers before falling back down to the lake, dropping all around him like bombs, sizzling and popping as they hit the water.