There were a few whites milling around in jungle fatigues, some of them cradling rifles. The clothing bore no insignias of any kind. The outfits were, in fact, identical to the one he had seen on the dead German back in Brazzaville.

  A handful of natives strolled here and there, singly and in small groups. They were strangely dressed, it seemed to Armless. Grass skirts, odd headdresses, strange facial markings. Two or three of them actually had bones through their noses.

  “My God,” Davis whispered, “I had no idea any of the people here were so primitive.”

  Armless shook his head. “They're not. Shouldn't be, at any rate. This gets stranger and stranger. And who are those whites?”

  Strangeness was a commodity this little native village had plenty of, as the two men were to find out. They worked their way through the trees and around the perimeter of the village. The inhabited area was a little less than a mile in diameter, Armless reckoned. And on the southern edge, beyond the small dwellings, they came upon a very curious structure.

  It was made of wood and stone, and belonged to no architectural school, past or present, that O'Neil or Davis could recognize. It was impossible to estimate its age. It was weathered, streaked and stained, as was everything that spent more than a year or two in a climate like this. It vaguely suggested a temple of some sort, but it seemed to be the center of activities not of a religious nature. A number of compact trucks and jeeps were parked in a tiny clearing near the front. Three large diesel-powered generators were lined up along the west side, chugging away, sending electrical power through thick cables that snaked from the machines into apertures in the temple wall.

  “The trucks,” Armless whispered. “And look at that equipment. What are they doing in there?”

  The inside must have been brilliantly lit, judging by the illumination that showed through a few very narrow chinks in the walls.

  All of this they observed from the safety of the undergrowth at the tree line. Armless wanted a closer look. “You keep an eye out,” he said in an undertone. Davis nodded.

  Keeping low, Armless emerged from the brush and padded swiftly over to the wall of the building. This side of the structure was dark, with plenty of shadows for Armless to conceal himself in.

  He found a fairly wide aperture between two of the boards and forced his knife in, wiggling it back and forth to widen the space. He didn't need much, just enough to press an eye to. He repeated this procedure a couple more times, until he had seen everything he could reasonably hope to see.

  The temple exterior was little more than a four-sided facade. The interior was almost completely hollow, like an airplane hangar.

  Incredibly, this temple, or whatever it was, had been built around the mouth of what appeared to be a small diamond mine. It was a simple-looking hole in the ground, perhaps thirty yards in diameter. Armless had never seen anything quite like it. Heavy equipment was lined up around the opening of the shaft, and it looked like a recent development. A long platform stretched over the hole, straddling it on four great spidery legs, some twenty or thirty feet high. On one end, close to the wall, there were a few wooden chairs and a card table. In the center was a large, gas-powered motor of some kind, attached to an odd-looking winch from which a number of ropes and chains depended, reaching down into the mine. Large metal buckets attached to these lines could be filled with gravel and hauled out by the motor. Natives probably worked down in the shaft, Armless figured, while some kind of overseers occupied the platform.

  Powerful electric lights ran along the underside of the platform. They were left burning, even though no work was going on at this hour.

  Around the rim, Armless saw several familiar pieces of equipment: Large diamond pans and pan conveyers, a scrubber for eliminating clay from the diamond ore, a few small paddle jigs, and a portable bin and feeder for conveying the bort—shards of gem-grade diamonds—into the jigs. Evidently, the gravel hauled up from the hole was washed on the spot, screened, and dumped into the jigs.

  There was no activity in the building at the moment, apart from a single native sweeping the platform with a straw broom.

  It was the strangest operation O'Neil had ever seen. Had someone described the setup to him, he'd have laughed it off as unworkable. It certainly could not be operated for any great length of time before it would be necessary to demolish the “temple” and widen the mouth of the shaft. So this was not a permanent operation, not in its present form.

  Armless stood up and stretched. He removed his knife from the wall, put it in his belt, and crept back to where he had left Davis.

  “I can't figure out just what's going on here,” Armless grumbled. “It doesn't add up. I think that temple has been there for quite a while. Years, maybe decades. But all the mining equipment is brand-new.”

  They heard an excited babble of voices and the sound of tom-toms coming from the direction of the square. They went back to their original vantage point to see what was up.

  Someone had made a fire in the pit in the middle of the square. The whites stood back on the periphery of the square. A group of the strangely-dressed natives had gathered, and they began dancing around the fire, chanting some monotonous gibberish. Four of them sat on the ground, off to the side, beating on drums.

  A tall old man emerged from a hut and made his way to a throne set ten feet or so from the fire. Evidently, this was the chief. He wore an absurd cape of leopard skin and had a dilapidated old top hat on his head.

  The drumming and chanting and dancing built to a crescendo and then abruptly stopped. The dancers dropped to their knees and groveled in the dirt, foreheads pressed to the ground.

  As if this were a cue, four men appeared, carrying an ornate litter. It appeared to be made of teak, but that seemed unlikely. Whatever it was, it was lacquered black, and bore gold-painted stripes and designs. There were two long horizontal bars by which the bearers carried the thing. The bars were attached to the base of a little cabin, the kind one would find on old-fashioned horse-drawn carriage, that looked large enough to hold a person. One side of the enclosure featured an aperture that was covered by an intricately embroidered curtain.

  Armless felt Paul Dunbar Davis tense up beside him. He placed a hand on the young man's shoulder. The black men carrying the litter did not look like the other inhabitants of the village. They had the look of Senegalese mercenaries, O'Neil thought. Like the one they had left lying dead in the undergrowth near the road. He wondered if the man had been missed yet.

  The bearers brought the litter out into the middle of the square, next to the fire, and gingerly placed the thing on the ground. The curtain was pulled back and a woman stepped out. She was quite a sight, Armless thought, but not one he had any interest in seeing.

  For a jungle goddess, if that's what she was, she was awfully pale. Her mousy hair was lusterless and lank. She had on what looked like an old one-piece bathing suit made of leopard-print fabric. It didn't reveal a whole lot, but even that was too much. She had a long purple cloak draped over her shoulders. She was squat and frumpy, an impression that was only accentuated by her exotic garb. Armless made a sour face.

  “I guess we found your White Goddess after all, Paul,” O'Neil said.

  The natives squirmed on the ground and raised a monotonous chant: “Jordweth! Jordweth! Aiiii Jordweth!”

  “Those poor people,” Davis said fiercely. “How awful. It's pretty plain what's going on here. A con game! These... whatever they are, these men with the rifles, are exploiting them. Preying on their superstitions to rob them of their diamonds. Mister O'Neil, I can't stand to see a thing like this.”

  Armless said nothing.

  “Nothing burns me more,” Davis continued, “than to see ignorant people being taken advantage of by others who are more advanced than they are.”

  “Well,” Armless said after a long, thoughtful silence, “it is true that some people are just so blisteringly ignorant, it's almost a clever person's duty to take advantage of them.”

  Davis gave him an incredulous look. “Don't tell me you condone what's going on here.”

  O'Neil shrugged. “That depends on what's going on.”

  The White Goddess had begun sashaying back and forth in front of the fire. She seemed to be attempting some sort of a Mae West turn. She was babbling away in what sounded like German. Armless was strangely grateful that he couldn't understand her.

  There was something familiar about her. Armless was certain he'd seen her somewhere before. He could almost place the memory, but it remained just an inch beyond his reach.

  “Who the hell is she?” he whispered. “I know I've seen that face.”

  “You know who she looks like?” Davis said. “Ilse Koch.”

  O'Neil's eyebrows went up. “I'll be damned, you're right. I saw her in a newsreel once. Does look kind of like her. Wasn't the real one executed at Nuremberg?”

  “It looks exactly like her,” Davis said. “I saw Ilse Koch in person when I covered the Nuremberg trials for the Defender. And, no, Ilse wasn't executed. She was sentenced to life imprisonment.”

  Ilse Koch—also known as “Buchenwälder Schlampe” (“The Bitch of Buchenwald”), was the wife of Buchenwald concentration camp commandant Karl Otto Koch. Frau Koch was quite a piece of work. She took an avid and very morbid interest in the inmates of the camp her husband commanded. Stories of her depravity were almost beyond belief. Her taste in interior decoration ran to lampshades made of human skin.

  “Huh,” Armless said. “I don't suppose they sentenced her to live in this village.”

  “No. She's locked up in Germany. No possibility of parole. Just a coincidence.”

  “Maybe,” Armless said. He fell silent for a long while, his mind working on all the strange facts he had gathered. Meanwhile, the spectacle in the square had wound to a halt and the participants had gone their separate ways.

  Finally, Armless spoke. “I think this thing is getting a little too deep for you and me,” he said. “Why don't we make our way back to Brazzaville and get in touch with somebody with a lot more resources than we have.”

  “I got a better idea, boys,” came a hatefully familiar voice. “Why don't you two come with me?”

  They turned around. Tromping through the trees in their direction was their old friend from the Hotel Imperial, Colonel Parker. The man was decked out in a bizarre, ridiculous costume—a long white robe with a pointed hood that reminded O'Neil of the ceremonial headgear worn by the Pope—though it also had much in common with a traditional dunce's cap. The Colonel looked like a complete idiot, but the impression was tempered somewhat by the unmistakably lethal submachine gun he was holding.

  This vision in white was flanked by two of the men from the hotel lobby. This time, they were dressed not in the lightweight suits they had worn in the hotel, but in military uniforms of black-dyed tropical worsted. The red, white and black armbands they wore left no doubts about their political affiliation. Their black peaked caps bore the eagle-and-swastika insignia of the late Adolf Hitler's dreaded Schutzstaffel—the S.S.—and the skull-and-crossbones of the even more dreaded Totenkopfverbande—the Death's Head Units that had been responsible for carrying out the grisly Final Solution in the Nazi concentration camps.

  “Okay,” Armless said. “I know what your two playmates are dressed up as—didn't anybody tell 'em they lost? —but who the hell are you supposed to be? The Ghost of Christmas Future?”

  Parker made a face. “You're a smart boy, ain't ya? Well, it just happens that you're not too far from wrong. I am the future, that's for sure. Your friend there is soon to be a part of the past. You're Irish—a white man. Why do you take up with trash like that boy there?”

  Armless laughed. “I could explain it, but you'd never get the point. I only have one thing to say to you.”

  “What's that?”

  “To hell with you. Boy.”

  The Colonel's face reddened and he treated O'Neil to the most rancorous stare he had ever seen. “Come on,” he said, “let's go. You won't be a comedian for much longer.”

  The Colonel and his two little Nazi pals led O'Neil and Davis across the square and into a building Parker referred to as the “Great Hall.” It was a low, barn-like structure set two or three dozen yards back from the central square. It had obviously been erected very quickly and fairly recently. The exterior was whitewashed wood, just beginning to show staining and weathering.

  As he and Davis were shoved through the doorway into the building, Armless looked around the room, taking in everything. The interior walls were paneled with what appeared to be some expensive stained wood. On the wall at the far end of the hall, behind a raised dais with a podium, two flags hung side by side. One of them was unfamiliar to Armless. It had two wide vertical red bands, with a white band between them. A circle in the center of the white area contained a strange-looking cross. It was squat and fat, and the bars were of equal length. At the center of the cross was a diamond shape outlined in black, inside of which was something that looked like a drop of blood.

  The other flag, he had seen before. A red field with a white circle in the center. Inside the circle, a black swastika.

  “Look who I got here!” the Colonel announced triumphantly as he paraded into the room with his prize catch.

  Several people were seated around a long table that ran almost the whole length of the room. Among them was the “White Goddess,” in mufti. The group looked up as the Colonel spoke, their faces registering surprise. Armless recognized the sinister-looking man he had seen with Parker's company at the hotel.

  A man who was seated at the head of the table stood up. He was of medium height, thin, clean-shaven, with a shock of white hair. His face and hands were wrinkled and bronzed from exposure to the harsh African sun. He was dressed in a khaki explorer's outfit. He regarded Armless and Davis with mad, glittering eyes. O'Neil immediately went on his guard. He had learned long ago to read danger signs. This guy was bad news. The worst.

  The man barked an order in German, and two of the armed guards in nondescript khaki took over the supervision of Davis and O'Neil, allowing the Colonel and his two Nazi pals to join the rest of the company.

  Then he turned his attention to the pair of newcomers. In heavily-accented English, he said, “I am Graf Karl Von Nemitz, friend and confidante of the late German Führer, Herr Hitler.”

  “That's wonderful,” said O'Neil. “I'm sure your mother is proud.”

  “You are amusing,” Von Nemitz said icily. “An Irish comedian. Maybe you will put on some baggy pants later and do a routine for us. Or maybe you prefer to work in blackface? No answer? Well, you may as well join us for supper. We are in the jungle, but we are not obliged to behave as these black dogs do. It happens that I have heard about you already, from the Colonel. Your performance at the hotel rubbed him the wrong way, as the saying goes. Join us, and tell us why you have come here. Nobody else knows where you are, I take it?”

  Armless shrugged. “We might have told twenty or thirty people, something like that.”

  Von Nemitz laughed. “You told nobody. Nobody but the Terrier, that is. And he is no longer in a position to pass the information on to anyone else. We were wondering when and if you might show up here. It was kind of you to lead the Colonel and his comrades to the Terrier's establishment. He was most helpful, I am told.”

  Armless did not speak, and his face did not betray the rage he felt. Anger often had this remarkable cooling effect on him. When he was calmest, that's when he was most dangerous. He narrowed his eyes and silently marked Colonel Parker down as a dead man. And the same went for everyone else in the room.

  Von Nemitz moved to the front of the hall and took his place behind the podium. The two flags seemed to leer over his shoulders at the assembled company.

  “Your attention, please,” he said in a strident tone. This was a man who loved the sound of his own voice, thought Armless. “This is a special occasion, and I would like to say a few words before we sit down to our jungle repast.

  “Tonight we welcome our first visitors from the outside world. We are so glad they made it here in spite of the disappearance of our envoy. We now learn that he was, sadly, murdered in the street. Most likely by some black native who wanted to rob him of his belongings. Such incidents are all too common in Brazzaville and a hundred other towns on this blighted continent.”

  Armless shook his head. Damn near every murder for gain he'd seen committed during his time in this “blighted continent” had been done by a white man.

  “That, gentlemen, is why our current and future work is of such great importance. Fortunately, our man carried nothing on him to lead back to this place. Our secret remains our own.”

  The envoy must not have trusted his ability to navigate through the jungle to Brazzaville, Armless thought. He probably drew that map for himself in case he needed something to refer to.

  “My friends, we are the only white men in the world who know of this place. We have taken great pains to assure that this is so. Secrecy is crucial, as you certainly know. We will make our presence known to certain others when we are ready.

  “And Mister Terre'Blanche, our friend from South Africa brings good tidings.” He waved a hand at the saturnine man who sat at his left. “His comrades in the government have succeeded in enacting sweeping legislation—apartheid, it is called—that will strip the savages of the trappings of civilization they want so badly to assume. This will make it much easier for us to implement our plans: The final solution to the problem of the colored population of Africa. For too long, these creatures have stood in the way of the white man's progress. The mongrels have infested our world, breeding and multiplying while the white man does nothing.”

  As he spoke, Von Nemitz seemed to become mesmerized by the sound of his own voice. He got louder and more animated. Sweat trickled down his face, and his eyes gleamed.

  “Here, in this jungle, we will construct camps. We are fortunate to have with us someone with the knowledge, experience and enthusiasm to administer these facilities—none other than our dear Ilse Koch, otherwise known as the Great Goddess Jordweth.”