Free At Sword's Point by Katherine Kurtz, Scott MacMillan

the shower and pushed the glass door open, reaching for the towel hanging on the wall. Grabbing Drummond's wrist, Trostler jerked him forward, sending him sprawling on the tile floor. Drummond tried to get up, but a sweep of Trostler's foot caught him across the ankle and he went down again. Dropping down onto one knee, Trostler pinned both of Drummond's arms behind his back as Meier bent down with a syringe.
    Drummond felt a sharp jab of pain in his neck, and then a stinging numbness shot through his body. He tried to get up, but a velvet blackness enveloped him, pinning him to the tile floor with a grip far stronger than that of the Mossad agent.

Chapter 6
    Warm sunlight flooded the courtyard of Wewelsberg Castle where a few young men and women lounged against their backpacks, waiting for the youth hostel to open for the day. Inside, the ancient caretaker carefully inspected the four small dormitories, the shower rooms, and the communal kitchen and dining hall. All was in order, as usual, but it was a far cry from what it had looked like when he first visited it in 1936. The restoration then nearing completion had suffered during the war and in half a century thereafter, though at least the castle had survived—and some of the work.
    He sighed as he remembered that day. He had been about five and his father had brought him to the castle to show his young son the heavily carved paneling on which he had labored for the past year: dark German oak, carved with acorns and oak leaves, swastikas and the sigrunen of Himmler's SS. Not all of the castle had been graced with Sepp Dornberger's artistry, of course, and much of his work had perished, but some survived.
    The old man glanced up at the ceiling, thinking of the room high above this one, never open to public view— the room in which his father had taken special pride. He could see it in his mind's eye as clearly as he had that wonderful day.
    The room was circular, with a high-vaulted gothic ceiling. The thick stone walls were pierced at regular intervals by narrow arrow-slit windows, which allowed the sunlight access through blood-red stained glass, filling the room with a warm sanguine glow. In the middle of the room was a round table, its rim inlaid with ivory runes. A gold chalice, finely wrought with runic inscriptions and encrusted with rubies and emeralds, stood in the center of the table, radiant in the red light that bled in through the high-set windows.
    Twelve heavily carved chairs, each like the throne of some legendary Teutonic god, were arranged with military precision around the table. Lying on the table in front of each of the high-backed chairs was an SS dagger, its broad Damascus blade alive with red-washed golden runes: Blood and Soil, Honor and Loyalty.
    It was the most beautiful room the young Stephen Dornberger had ever seen, and its awesome dignity far surpassed that of the parish church.
    "Papa," he had said, when at last he found his voice, "it is so very beautiful…"
    "Yes, Stephen, and its beauty will last a thousand years," his father had replied.
    Stephen had been going to say more to his father when a handsome young SS officer entered the room.
    "So, Sepp, showing the young one your work?"
    "Yes, Obersturmführer Kluge. I was telling my boy that it would last a thousand years."
    Kluge bent down to young Stephen.
    "A thousand years, lad, will only be the beginning. Our race and our Führer are immortal. Remember that." Kluge had tousled the boy's thick blond hair, then stood up and walked out of the room. That had been their first meeting, but not their last. No, by no means had that been their last meeting.
    The old man looked around him. That had been more than a half century ago, and yet the memory of that day still sent a tingle of excitement through him. He had been too young to fight in the war, although after the bomb fell on their cottage, killing his mother and father…
    He looked at the worn face of the watch on his scarred left arm.