The Last Oracle Read Free Page B

pinheaded microcephaly, cleft lips, dwarfism. One child had no arms at all, only a torso. Inbreeding . Yuri’s skin pebbled with unease. No wonder the rural folk around here feared this Romani clan, told tales of spirits and monsters.
    “How will you know if these are the right children?” Savina asked with clear disgust in her voice.
    Yuri quoted from one of the tortured interviews recorded by Mengele. “The lair of the chovihanis .” The place was where the twins had been born, a secret kept by the Gypsies going back to the founding of the clans.
    “Are these the ones?” Savina pressed.
    Yuri shook his head. “I don’t know.”
    He continued toward a girl seated before the altar. She clutched a rag doll to her chest, though her own garb was little better than her doll’s. As Yuri neared, he noted the child seemed perfect, spared of any of the deformities. In the dim light, the pure crystal blue of her eyes shone brightly.
    So rare among the Romani.
    Like the twins, Sasha and Meena.
    Yuri knelt in front of her. She seemed not to notice him. Her gaze passed straight through him. He sensed there was something wrong with this child, possibly worse than any of the other deformities.
    Though her eyes never seemed to focus any sharper, she lifted a hand toward him. “Unchi Pepe,” she lisped in a thin Romani voice.
    A wash of fear swept through Yuri. Uncle Pepe . The pet name for Josef Mengele. It had been used by all the Gypsy children. But these children were too young to have ever seen the insides of a concentration camp.
    Yuri stared into those vacant eyes. Did the child know what Yuri and his research team intended? How could she? Mengele’s words haunted him:
    If only I’d had more time…
    That would not be Yuri’s problem. His team would be granted all the time it needed. The facility was already under construction. Far from prying eyes.
    Savina stepped closer. She needed an answer.

    Yuri knew the truth; he’d known it the moment he stared into this girl’s face. Still he hesitated.
    Savina placed a hand on his elbow. “Major?”
    There could be no turning back, so Yuri nodded, acknowledging the horror to come. “ Da . These are the chovihanis .”
    “Are you certain?”
    Yuri nodded again, but he kept his gaze fixed on the child’s blue eyes. He barely heard Savina order Dobritsky: “Collect all the children into the trucks. Eliminate everyone else.”
    Yuri did not countermand those orders. He knew why they were here.
    The child still held out her hand. “Unchi Pepe,” she repeated.
    He took the tiny fingers into his own. There was no denying it, no turning back.
    Yes, I am.

1
    Present Day
September 5, 1:38 P.M.
Washington, D.C.
    It wasn’t every day a man dropped dead in your arms.
    Commander Gray Pierce had been crossing the national Mall when the homeless man accosted him. Gray was already in a bad mood, having finished one fight and was headed toward another. The midday heat only stoked his irritability. The day steamed with the usual D.C. swelter, baking off the sidewalk. Dressed in a navy blue blazer over an untucked cotton jersey and jeans, he estimated his internal temperature had risen from medium to well done.
    From half a block away, Gray spotted a gaunt figure weaving toward him. The homeless man was dressed in baggy jeans rolled at the ankle, revealing scuffed army boots, only half laced. He hunched within a rumpled suit jacket. As the man neared, Gray noted his scrabbled beard was shot with gray, his eyes bleary and red as he searched around.
    Such panhandlers were not a rare sight around the national Mall, especially as the Labor Day celebrations had just ended this past weekend. The tourists had retreated back to their ordinary lives, the riot police had retired to the local bars, and the street cleaners had finished erasing the evidence. The last to leave were those who still sought some bit of loose change that might have fallen through the cracks, searching trash bins for