Dagger Magic

The Cortex exploded with an earsplitting crack. The deck underfoot gave a violent answering shudder. After a brief, smoldering rain of rust particles, everything fell silent.

"Now, let's see just how good you are," Raeburn muttered, urging Plunkett back toward the conning tower with a push.

He made Plunkett go first back up the ladder. The hatchway showed a blackened fringe of torn metal where the Cortex had ripped away the surrounding matrix of rust and corrosion. Slipping his work gloves back on, Plunkett gingerly seized hold of the hatch-wheel and gave it an experimental tug. There was an answering grating noise as the hatch shifted.

"It's free," he announced.

"Excellent," Raeburn said. "Let's have it open, then."

Gritting his teeth, Plunkett heaved the hatch-cover up the rest of the way. The exertion left him gasping as he dropped forward onto his knees to peer inside - and came face to face with a mummified corpse lodged on the inside access ladder.

The corpse was bearded, and wearing the grey uniform of a German naval lieutenant. It had one withered arm wound tightly around the uppermost rung. The other had dropped away from the underside wheel of the hatch-cover with a loose rattle of finger-bones against the ladder below and the flap of an empty grey sleeve. Plunkett recoiled with a yip, then froze as he felt the sudden, icy pressure of a gun barrel against the back of his head.

"Thank you, Mr. Plunkett," Raeburn said softly. "You've been very helpful. Unfortunately, your services are no longer required."

The Walther's blast sent echoes reverberating in the cavern and in the depths of the boat as the big Irishman collapsed forward, blood and brain matter seeping from the hole in the back of his skull and the larger exit wound in the center of his forehead. After pausing to holster his weapon, Raeburn hauled the body up by its jacket and sent it tumbling over the conning tower railing. It bounced heavily off the deck and slid into the water with a sucking splash as the two impassive Phurba priests started up the ladder to join him.

Eager now to be on with it, Raeburn turned his attention to clearing the hatchway. A couple of kicks knocked the German corpse loose from the ladder, sending it tumbling back into the dark womb of the ship. He stood back as the first of the two Phurba priests entered the hatch and started down, the second lighting his way and then handing down a lantern. Raeburn followed more slowly, fumbling with his own lantern until he could gain floor-level.

The hatch gave access to the control room. As he stepped off the ladder, Raeburn's wary gaze met an eerie tableau. The two Phurba priests were standing motionless near the periscope column in the center of the control room. But beyond them, the probing glare of the two electric lanterns picked out nearly a dozen mummified corpses in grey German naval uniforms, all loosely slumped at their duty stations as if death had taken them unawares.

A thin current of fresh air, filtering down the hatchway, stirred up the dust of nearly five decades and reawakened the reek of old decay. Raeburn studied the scene for a long moment, momentarily at a loss to read the riddle.

"They were gassed," said Nagpo, speaking from the shadows.

Raeburn shifted his gaze. "Why?"

"It was necessary that there should remain a command crew on board," the monk replied.

"Why?" Raeburn persisted.

This time he got no response. Impervious to the stench and the shadows, the two Phurba priests moved off toward the aft section of the control room. Raeburn followed them with the second light. Skirting the base of the periscope, he fetched up short at the sight of a third monkish figure, attired like his companions in robes of orange silk, one bony shoulder bare, seated cross-legged on the floor in an attitude of meditation.

Like all the members of the bridge crew, this monk was long dead, reduced to a mummified corpse. The hairless skull was bowed over the sunken chest as if in prayer, and the claw-like hands were curled about the dusty hilt of a Phurba much like those carried by Nagpo and Kurkar. With all the decay, Raeburn could not tell whether the blade Nagpo reverently lifted from the desiccated fingers had been the means of death or only seemed to broach the abdomen. He started slightly as Nagpo gravely saluted his living companion with the blade, then presented it to him with bowed head.

"Now is your past sacrifice made good in this present day," he declared in Tibetan. "Receive what is yours, that you may resume your destined task."

Kurkar accepted this cryptic tribute with an inclination of his shaven head, taking the Phurba that Nagpo held out to him and running a stroking hand down the blade.

"That which was surrendered now is reclaimed," he replied.