His heart rate sped up when he saw the logo on the outside of the folder. The same Nazi logo he’d found on the medal earlier in the day. The symbol of the Ahnenerbe.
He opened the folder and began to read. It started with documents dated in the 1960s, written in German, but soon the language switched to Norwegian. The documents were what a U.S. corporation would call executive summaries, research results translated into high level conclusions suitable for non-scientists. They pertained to biological experiments, specifically genetic engineering. Rook couldn’t tell from these documents what the goals were, but most of the summaries detailed failures. Horrible mutations, stillborn monsters, constant returning to the drawing board.
All the documents bore the same signature, that of an Edmund Kiss, with Ahnenerbe scrawled under the signature. Rook considered this. Genetic experiments and a survivor from a Nazi group somehow tied into a remote location in Norway. It didn’t sound real, but here he was seeing it with his own eyes.
As he neared the end of the folder, the dates moved into the early nineteen-eighties, and the signatures grew less legible. Rook’s eyes were blurring, but he tried to focus, looking for any details that might tell him what had happened at the lab and to Edmund Kiss.
Then he saw it. A summary describing a success. A huge increase in size accompanied by few side effects except increased hair and odor emission. He assumed this was the origin of the yeti, not some experiment gone wrong, but an experiment gone right. They must have started with apes, not wolves, though the documents only used the word “subjects,” so it was not clear.
On this document, the handwriting was not recognizable as anything but a scribble. Perhaps Edmund Kiss suffered from progressive arthritis or some other such ailment. Rook turned to the next document, the last one in the folder.
This document was different from the others. It read like a diary entry rather than an official report: And it was written in German, just like the first few documents.
When he read its contents, he stopped breathing.
None of the others, not even my son, had the fortitude to take the necessary steps. The old ones are still waiting for a Führer who will never return, while the young ones know nothing of sacrifice. I am now a living testament to success beyond our wildest dreams.
The wolves responded well physically, but they went mad and we had to destroy them before they chewed off their own limbs. The others thought we simply needed more experiments to get rid of the behavior, but I knew better. Wolves are mad by nature, and the procedure merely enhanced that along with their physical size. Choosing a different subject was the only answer.
My influence has waned, and they rejected this approach. They tolerate me the way one tolerates a lame dog nearing the end of its life. By rights, I should be dead already, but I am convinced that my purpose is to serve the good of the Aryan people and bring about paradise. I experimented on the only subject remaining to me.
Myself.
The results have been astounding. Three months after the transformation, I have more energy than I did even as a young man, along with the strength of ten men. I can feel the madness assaulting my senses, but I hold it at bay through the force of my will.
Fear has replaced their dismissive tolerance, a reversal that pleases me. But I can sense them working up the courage to take some sort of action. I would not be the first to meet with an accident.
I could fight back, but I have no desire to shed the blood of my fellow Aryans. They are the future. I do not know how much life I have left, but I will leave them with all the signs of a lab accident to convince them that I am dead already. I will retreat to the wilderness.
I will confess to a certain amount of vanity in documenting these events. This testament I will place in the old lab, abandoned like so many other things in favor of changes that are not always improvements. Perhaps in the distant future, someone will read these words and understand the depth of true commitment.
Goodbye.
Rook had the answer he’d sought for what seemed like forever, but in reality had only been three days. Maybe a few years back, he would have felt shock and disbelief, but his capacity for surprise had diminished in recent years. This explained an awful lot of things.
The yeti was the result of an experiment by a deranged Nazi—on himself.
12
The only thing still not clear to Rook was why Kiss held a grudge. Had something else happened after he’d written those words? Rook didn’t know, but it really didn’t impact the task at hand. Now that he had found Kiss’s home base, killing him would just be a matter of picking the right moment.
As he lifted the trapdoor with the bush attached, his watch read eleven forty-five. He had to hustle, but he made it back to town by midnight and headed right for Eirek Fossen’s house. Fossen answered the door with the walkie-talkie in his hands.
“Stanislav. I was just wondering where you were.”