The Curse of Medusa

“Don’t sweat it, mon ami,” Vincent said, tipping his head to the house to indicate Novak. “We might have lost the engine driver, but we still have the oily rag, n’est-ce pas?”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Charles Grant tried hard to fight down his fear when Klaus Kiefel took possession of some kind of mystery delivery. Seeing half of the capital city destroyed had excited the German in an almost unnatural way, but this latest arrival seemed to delight him more than ever.

Whatever it was, it took two armed men to carry it into the room and place it in front of the boss. Sprayed on the side in black paint was a serial number: X422387-0, and Grant knew one thing — items catalogued in Archive 7 with an initial ‘X’ code were always related to the vital national interest of the United States.

Kiefel stared at the steel box with undisguised glee for a few moments before ordering his men to open the outer container. They obeyed and used a pair of hardened alloy bolt cutters to snap off the six padlocks with which they had secured the lid to the heavy container back in DC. Clearly they weren’t taking any risks with the contents.

Kiefel beamed. “Brought to us courtesy of an experimental UAV borrowed from the German Luftwaffe a few days ago. It travels at nearly seven thousand miles per hour, Mr Grant — too fast for even your fighter jets to shoot down.”

“How did it get past our radar?”

“It has the latest stealth technology and flies very, very high… you’ll have to do better than that!”

Jakob swung open the lid and recoiled in horror, while Angelika gave an appreciative nod.

Kiefel peered inside for the first time, his eyes wide with an almost childish anticipation.

“Remove the inner container!” he said, taking a step back.

As the men carried out his instructions, Kiefel turned and pulled a gas mask from the bench behind him. His men, including Angelika and Jakob, secured their own masks from their belts, and Kiefel tossed two casually at the former President and Partridge.

“I strongly recommend you wear it,” the German said coolly, and pulled his own mask on over his goatee beard.

Grant picked the mask up from the floor and brushed the dirt from it. “What about her?” he asked, nodding at the female security guard tied to the distillation unit.

“She won’t be needing one, Mr Grant… You!” he snapped, pointing his finger at one of the men. “Put the box on the bench and open it.”

The man, a young shaven-headed recruit in a black boiler suit moved cautiously forward and put his hands inside the steel container. For a few moments he struggled to get a good grip on the inner box, causing Kiefel to roll his eyes and sigh, but then he lifted it from the steel container and placed it carefully on the bench.

Grant stared at it through his gas mask, and then looked over at the guard with growing concern.

Kiefel did not share his disquiet. Instead, he put on a pair of military surplus NBC gloves and opened the inner box. Grant couldn’t see through the German’s mask, but he got the feeling he was smiling as he leaned over the small black box and started to undo a series of worn leather straps. Then, he gently pulled back the lid and peered inside.

He gasped and took a step back, shaking his head in disbelief.

“What the hell is going on?” Grant said.

Partridge looked at the President, fear and confusion on his face.

Jakob stepped forward and smashed his rifle butt in between Grant’s shoulder blades and sent him crashing to his knees where he cried out in pain.

Partridge stepped forward to defend the President but Angelika cocked her pistol and pointed it at the senior USSS man. “Back in your box, puppy.”

Kiefel laughed. “Jakob is simply teaching you good manners, Mr Grant. You must learn to be patient. You are not in charge any more… I am.”

Kiefel pulled something from the box and held it in his shaking hands.

Grant stared up at it from the tiled floor. At first he thought it was some kind of rotting fruit — a blackened cantaloupe melon came to mind, but then Kiefel turned and proudly showed it to Angelika and the other men.

Grant was aghast to see it was a severed head — a badly decomposed one — with black and blue skin all covered in blotches and stretched tight over the skull like dried-out Chamois leather. He was mortified with disgust and thought things could get no worse when he noticed that the black mass at the top of the skull which he had presumed was hair was in fact dozens of dead, desiccated black snakes — tiny and twisted around in knots. He felt like throwing up, but he was also strangely fixated by the terrible object in Kiefel’s hands.

“What the hell is that?” he asked, his words muffled by the gas mask.

“This, Mr Grant, is the head of Medusa.”

Grant moved back involuntarily along the dirty floor. “What are you talking about, Kiefel? There is no such thing as Medusa! Are you insane?”

“I take offense to that remark, Mr Grant. I am calculating, scheming, and manipulative, and I also have some bad qualities… I am not, however, insane.”