Black Order Read Free Page A

reached the old coal door, lifted the bar, and undid the latch.
    Using a shoulder, he creaked it open.
    The sting of smoke struck him first—then the mewling drew his eyes down. “Mein Gott im Himmel…”
    A woman had collapsed steps from the door in the buttress wall that supported the channel church. She was not moving. He hurried to her side, dropping again to his knees, a new prayer on his lips.
    He reached to her neck and checked for a sign of life, but found only blood and ruin. She was soaked head to foot and as cold as the stones.
    Dead.
    Then the cry again…coming from her far side.
    He shifted to find a babe, half-buried under the woman, also bloody.
    Though blue from the cold and just as wet, the child still lived. He freed the infant from the body. His wet swaddling shed from him with their waterlogged weight.
    A boy.
    He quickly ran his hands over the tiny body and saw the blood was not the child’s.
    Only his mother’s.
    He glanced sadly down at the woman. So much death. He searched the far side of the river. The city burned, roiling smoke into the dawning sky. Gunfire continued. Had she swum across the channel? All to save her child?
    “Rest,” he whispered to the woman. “You have earned it.”
    Father Varick retreated to the coal door. He wiped the blood and water from the baby. The child’s hair was soft and thin, but plainly snowy white. He could be no more than a month old.
    With Varick’s ministrations, the boy’s cries grew stronger, his face pinched with the effort, but he remained weak, limp limbed, and cold.
    “You cry, little one.”
    Responding to his voice, the boy opened his swollen eyes. Blue eyes greeted Varick. Brilliant and pure. Then again, most newborns had blue eyes. Still, Varick sensed that these eyes would keep their sky blue richness.
    He drew the boy closer for warmth. A bit of color caught his eye. Was ist das? He turned the boy’s foot. Upon the heel, someone had drawn a symbol.
    No, not drawn. He rubbed to be sure.
    Tattooed in crimson ink.
    He studied it. It looked like a crow’s foot.

    But Father Varick had spent a good portion of his youth in Finland. He recognized the symbol for what it truly was: one of the Norse runes. He had no idea which rune or what it meant. He shook his head. Who had done such foolishness?
    He glanced at the mother with a frown.
    No matter. The sins of the father were not the son’s to bear.
    He wiped away the last of the blood from the crown of the boy’s head and snugged the boy into his warm robe.
    “Poor Junge …such a hard welcome to this world.”

FIRST
     
     

1
ROOF OF THE WORLD
     
    PRESENT DAY
MAY 16, 6:34 A.M .
HIMALAYAS
EVEREST BASE CAMP, 17,600 FEET
     
    Death rode the winds.
    Taski, the lead Sherpa, pronounced this verdict with all the solemnity and certainty of his profession. The squat man barely reached five feet, even with his battered cowboy hat. But he carried himself as if he were taller than anyone on the mountain. His eyes, buried within squinted lids, studied the flapping line of prayer flags.
    Dr. Lisa Cummings centered the man in the frame of her Nikon D-100 and snapped a picture. While Taski served as the group’s guide, he was also Lisa’s psychometric test subject. A perfect candidate for her research.
    She had come to Nepal under a grant to study the physiologic effects of an oxygen-free ascent of Everest. Until 1978, no one had summited Everest without the aid of supplemental oxygen. The air was too thin. Even veteran mountaineers, aided by bottled oxygen, experienced extreme fatigue, impaired coordination, double vision, hallucinations. It was considered impossible to reach the summit of an eight-thousand-meter peak without a source of canned air.
    Then in 1978, two Tyrolean mountaineers achieved the impossible and reached the summit, relying solely on their own gasping lungs. In subsequent years, some sixty men and women followed in their footsteps, heralding a new goal of the climbing elite.
    She