Free Pandora's Curse - v4 by Jack du Brul Page B

again. She had to stay on this road for eight kilometers and then veer to the left for another three. There she would find Otto Schroeder’s house. According to her grandfather’s report, Schroeder owned the land but no longer worked it. That was leased to local farmers while he stayed on in the isolated house, living out the last of his years.
    The sun dipped below the layer of smog covering Munich, and the reddened light made the fields of wheat look like sheets of dancing flame. Anika found her turn and popped a stick of gum in her mouth to mask the taste of the olives she’d been munching. The road this far from Ismaning was little used, and there was even grass growing across stretches of it. She noted a single set of tire tracks had cut grooves through the patches of green. She feared it meant that Otto Schroeder had just recently left his house. Possibly for a Sunday-night beer in town? Doubtful. He was near ninety years old.
    She was just going to dig into her bag for her cell phone to call Schroeder’s number when from around a copse of huge oaks she saw the house. A black Mercedes sedan was parked in the drive next to an ancient Opel. The house itself was unremarkable. One story and built of dressed and mortared stone, it looked in poor repair. Several of the porch roof’s support columns had settled into the ground, giving the facade a wavy look. It was the incongruous presence of the Mercedes that gave her pause. Of course, they were common all over Germany. But out here? On the very night she was to interview an obscure ex-soldier who might know something about missing gold?
    Anika was suddenly very alert. She eased her Volkswagen to a halt well short of the house. She slung her bag onto her back and in one arching bound was across the narrow irrigation ditch fronting Schroeder’s property.
    The air was still. The wind that had moved through the fields earlier was gone, and the night insects had yet to come out. She could hear the Mercedes’s engine pinging in the silence as it cooled. She thought about the car. It was possible that it belonged to a well-off child out to visit his father. Yet would a child let an elderly parent live in such isolation? Something wasn’t right here, but she couldn’t place what. She kept to the lengthening shadows as she approached the house.
    She reached the front door without spotting or hearing anything out of the ordinary. She chuckled silently. Her feeling of vague anxiety faded. So much for her sixth sense. It might work while climbing a sheer mountain face, but it was worthless on the ground.
    She was about to knock when an agonized scream pierced the night, a high keen that rippled up her spine like static.
    It came from the back of the house, not from within. As much as her training urged her to rush to its source, she held her ground. It wasn’t a question of if she would back away. Rather, she had to determine the best way to proceed. Stepping off the porch, she peered around the corner of the house. A stone wall extended beyond the back of the building as part of an enclosed backyard. She heard a sharp moan and knew the cry had come from there.
    The wall was four feet tall, capped with flat blocks of slate. Guessing there would be a gate at the back, she moved along the fence, keeping low. Her acute sense of balance more than made up for the poor traction of her shoes on the loamy soil. Halfway down, she heard voices, muted at first but clearing as she got to the far end. Around this corner she could see a rotted wooden gate hanging open on one hinge.
    “It is a simple question, Mr. Schroeder,” a man’s voice snarled. “We know you were a combat engineer during the war, and we know that you were attached to the Pandora Project. What we don’t know is who you’ve told. Who else knows about Pandora?”
    After a moment’s pause, the answer came in the form of another screeching wail, much louder than before.
    Otto Schroeder was being tortured!
    Anika felt