Dagger Magic

"That's a very interesting wrinkle," he said thoughtfully. "No wonder Peregrine was picking up odd twinges. We must next ask ourselves how and where Scanlan came into possession of a Nazi flag. Since this isn't an object most people normally carry about their persons, we have to assume that he found it while he was out on patrol. Is it possible he could have stumbled onto the actual wreckage of a U-boat? Could it just have broken loose from wherever it sank, and washed ashore?"

"It's possible, I suppose," McLeod said, "but according to Somerville, the flag is minty. I can't see how something as perishable as a piece of cloth could survive fifty-odd years of weathering and immersion in salt water."

"Neither can I," Adam admitted. Leaning back in his chair, he made a steeple of his forefingers and tapped them thoughtfully against his lower lip. "All right, then, suppose the wreck was somehow sheltered."

"Lying on the rocks somewhere for fifty years?" McLeod said. "I doubt that. I'm sure every inch of the Irish coast has been combed more than once in half a century. I do remember an uncle of mine saying that during the war, Nazi sympathizers tried to claim that the Germans had built secret submarine pens along the Irish coast. Do you suppose it might have been true?"

Adam shook his head. "I don't see how. I've certainly never heard of any such installation being found. Besides, it simply isn't credible that construction on that scale could have gone unnoticed - not to mention the equally conspicuous problem of fuelling and provisioning such bases, once they were built. Nor can I imagine that the Irish would have violated their official neutrality to sanction such an operation by Germany."

"Yes, but Irish independence was hardly a generation old, when the war broke out," McLeod said. "Adam, they're still killing one another over that legacy of bitterness."

"True enough," Adam agreed. "But while it's all very well to quote that old adage about 'My enemy's enemy is my friend,' I don't think even the most rabid Irish Nationalist could have had any illusions about what would have happened to 'neutral' Ireland, if England had fallen to Germany. I think we can discount the notion that there were actual submarine pens."

"All right," McLeod conceded. "What are our other options, then?"

Adam thought a moment. "Well, that part of the Irish coast is quite rugged. It's not inconceivable that the occasional lone U-boat might have sought - and found - shelter there amongst the coves and sea caves."

"Aye." McLeod fingered his grizzled moustache. "There are certainly caves along the Scottish coast that might be big enough to hide a submarine, so who's to say there couldn't be equivalent formations to be found up in Donegal?"

Adam nodded, his mind leaping ahead to explore further possibilities. "Assume that Scanlan did find the sheltered wreck of a German U-boat," he said. "Assume that he took the flag as a souvenir of his find. The next question is, Who could possibly be sufficiently interested in such a vessel to kill a man in order to prevent the secret from leaking out?"

"I suppose that would depend on what they wanted it for," McLeod mused. "Somerville suggested that the IRA might be interested in salvaging the weaponry on board, or possibly even the sub itself, to be used in terrorist activities."

"I certainly wouldn't dismiss that notion," Adam said. "But the IRA isn't the only terrorist organization in the world. There are others I can think of who might consider themselves entitled to a prior claim on a German submarine and its contents."

McLeod stiffened slightly. "A neo-Nazi group of some kind?"

Adam cocked an eyebrow. "That would certainly explain how they knew where the sub was likely to be found in the first place."

As he spoke, he was thinking back to his recent astral encounter with the Master, and the cryptic warning he had been issued concerning an old evil once more on the rise. The adherents of this evil, the Master had said, have made their first foray into those created lands that lie under your protection. Was the mysterious death of Michael Scanlan merely a passing move in some much bigger game, one in which the opposition had already stolen the first march?

It would not be the first time that Adam and his fellow Huntsmen had encountered the resurgent spectre of Nazi evil. It was an evil that seemed capable of renewing itself time and time again, changing its form but not its substance.

On the other hand, neo-Nazis were not the only exponents of darkness at work in the world, and a dead man with a Nazi flag did not necessarily presage a neo-Nazi plot. Without more concrete information to go on, he and the other members of the Hunting Lodge might as well be shooting arrows in the dark. He could only hope that the investigation into Scanlan's death might yield up a telltale clue to what was really going on.