Ilse stood up and pantomimed a curtsey.

  “A new Reich!” Von Nemitz continued. “One with no name and no face. We will play it smart this time. We will not stand on balconies and yell and gesticulate and display our power for all to see—and envy. We will be the power behind the scenes. Our puppets will be kings, presidents, prime ministers. By the time the world truly knows what we are doing, it will already be done.

  “And we welcome our great friend and sponsor from the United States, Colonel O.E. Parker. He is a man of many accomplishments, and a high-ranking officer in the Invisible Empire of the South. Again, this is our key, our strength—invisibility.”

  Everyone in the room applauded politely, with the exception of Armless and Davis.

  Von Nemitz then returned to his seat and clapped his hands. A group of natives came into the room through a curtained doorway at the rear, next to the dais. They carried large pots of food, china, and utensils. Once they had set the table, they went and stood against the left wall.

  Armless and Davis were shoved roughly into a couple of empty chairs.

  Von Nemitz himself ladled some of the meat soup into bowls and placed them before O'Neil and Davis. It didn't look too bad. A heavy, aromatic broth with chunks of meat and vegetables. It had been a long time since his last meal.

  Armless picked up the bowl to sup some of the soup. But he never got that far. One of the villagers, evidently enraged, dashed over and slapped the bowl from O'Neil's hand and began chattering in his native tongue to nobody in particular. Another tribesman had done the same thing to Davis.

  Von Nemitz laughed. “He says that one who would defy the great white goddess and her minions is unfit to partake of food. They are quite taken with Fräulein Jordweth! I'm very sorry, Mr. O'Neil, but I'm afraid I have to defer to some of these savages' whims in order to keep the peace. You'll just have to go to your death hungry.” He glanced at his watch. “But the good news is, you won't have to suffer much longer.”

  Armless eyed the native as he slunk back to his place by the wall. Then he turned to Von Nemitz and said, “To hell with you.”

  The German grinned. “You first,” he said.

  The meal passed in near-silence. Von Nemitz had said everything that needed to be said, Armless guessed. Though they were not permitted to eat, their host had allowed Armless O'Neil and Paul Dunbar Davis to remain seated at the big table. Colonel Parker didn't seem to like it. He barely touched his food, just sucked down whiskey and glared at the black man.

  The rest of the crew, white guards and Senegalese, were served and took their plates outside to eat.

  ***

  “You know,” Ilse Koch said in a nauseatingly coquettish manner, after the dinner had been eaten and the dishes cleared away by the native servants, “all my life I have heard stories about the schwarzers, and wondered if they were true. Naturally, I would not touch any of the mongrels in this quaint village, so my curiosity is unsatisfied.” She turned her eyes upon Paul Dunbar Davis. “But this boy here is from a civilized country and he is relatively clean. In the spirit of scientific inquiry, then, I feel that I must pursue an investigation. After all, Herr Doktor Mengele is not the only good German interested in... biology.”

  Von Nemitz gave her a very cold eye and said nothing.

  “Bring this boy to my quarters,” Ilse said to the mercenaries. “I can have some fun with him—strictly in pursuit of knowledge, you understand. And after I'm done, I shall have some nice new deep-russet lampshades.”

  Poor Davis. In his shoes, Armless would gladly volunteer for lampshade duty if he could skip everything else Ilse had in mind.

  Von Nemitz fumed as Ilse flounced out of the hall with her prize, flanked by two of the Senegalese.

  “That's got to sting,” Armless observed. “I saw those looks you been giving her all night. You and her are supposed to be an item, I bet. Seems like you just got thrown over for a 'mongrel.' Say, how does she fit that in with the whole master race idea?”

  Von Nemitz glared at Armless and said, “Shut up.”

  Minutes passed in silence. Von Nemitz remained at the table after the others left, poring over some kind of ledger. He did not speak to Armless.

  O'Neil's brain was working furiously to come up with a way out of this. He was unarmed and surrounded by gun-toting guards. Two of the khaki-clad white men and two Senegalese. He didn't know how much time poor Davis had left.

  He decided to act without thinking, a desperation play. Why not? What did he—or Davis—have to lose?

  He tensed up, preparing to spring from his chair and do whatever might present itself.

  That was when he heard a terrific explosion from somewhere outside. A second later, the lights went out.

  Von Nemitz stood up. “What in hell?” He turned to the duo of Senegalese bully boys and said, “Lock this man up while we investigate! I want to question him later, then we'll shoot him.”

  The mercenaries grabbed O'Neil by the arms and escorted him none too gently across the courtyard. He could smell something burning—an aroma with the tang of an electrical fire. His “escorts” dragged him over to a small shack. The door was chained and padlocked. One of them opened it with a key and then they both picked Armless up off the ground and threw him through the open door, leaving him sprawled in the middle of the small enclosure as they secured the door again.

  The room had shelves lining the walls, like a large pantry, but they were bare. O'Neil scuttled over and, after determining that the door was too sturdy for him to break down, pressed his ear against the wood and listened. He heard the footsteps of many people, dashing this way and that. Instructions, demands, and curses were barked in German and English.

  After the noise outside had abated, Armless sat down and cursed just about everything he could think of: God, fate, mankind, diamonds, Africa, Germany—and most especially Karl Von Nemitz and Ilse Koch. He had no intention of being executed by these creeps, but he just couldn't see how he was going to get around it. His mood grew blacker and blacker, and brilliant ideas refused to come. He wondered what was keeping Von Nemitz from his promised interrogation.

  Presently, he became aware of a scratching noise that seemed to be coming from the wall against which he was leaning. He rose slowly to his feet and stepped back. No telling what was making that sound. It could be one of the huge jungle termites or some other noxious pest. There came a muffled ratcheting sound, then a click. A small panel, three feet tall and two feet wide, at the bottom of the wall swung back. A concealed door! Armless squatted down for a better look. A face appeared at the opening.

  It was Paul Dunbar Davis.

  “Come on,” he said in a whisper. “You need to be out of here before they remember about you. They've been running crazy since she blew that generator, but they're starting to calm down and reorganize.”

  “She who?” Armless whispered. “Blew it with what?”

  Squirming as quietly as he could through the aperture, Armless saw someone he had not expected to encounter here.

  “I think I found something of yours, Miss,” said O'Neil to the girl he had last seen being led from the lobby of the Hotel Imperial by the colonial police.

  “Yes,” she whispered back. “We can talk about all that later. Right now, we need to get out of this place.”

  “Where? Back to the trees?”

  The girl shook her head. “Not a good idea. They'd find us quickly. We'll just go in there long enough to circle around to where we want to be.” She looked at her wristwatch. “If we can hold out for just fifteen or twenty more minutes, we should be in the clear.”

  Armless wanted to ask her what she meant by that, but she continued speaking without pause. “To answer your question: I blew up the generator with some dynamite. They have a small cache of it on hand in case it is needed for the mine. Then I freed Mister Davis from the clutches of that awful witch. He seemed to be in immediate danger of a very undesirable experience.”

  They made their way toward the Great Hall, which now seemed to be deserted. They picked their way around to the back. When they rounded the corner, Armless stopped and motioned to the others to do likewise. Someone was very close by.

  “Call me a drunkard,” came a slurred voice a few feet in front of them. “The nerve. I'm the only one didn't pass out. Know how to hold my liquor, that's what. Difference between a man and a boy.”

  At that moment, they heard the sound of a generator being fired up and all the lights came back on. The girl gasped.

  Colonel O.E. Parker, who had been relieving himself against the wall, caught sight of the three. He flew into a rage and ran at them, yanking a pistol from his belt. He had neglected to button his trousers.

  “Hey!” the old man shouted. “You there! Come here! You're prisoners of war!”

  Armless and his companions turned and ran toward the trees. The Colonel was in hot pursuit and fumbling with the safety on his sidearm.

  “What do we do?” Davis panted. We have no weapons and no way to get any.”

  “Don't be too sure of that,” Armless said with a lopsided smile. He trotted along toward the trees, his manner uncertain, his eyes darting this way and that. Then he appeared to have spotted something he liked and made a swift beeline for a particular spot. His two companions were right behind him. The Colonel was still 40 or 50 yards back, but gaining rapidly.

  Armless crashed through the first of the brush and made for a particular tree.

  He dropped to his knees and felt around the ground at the base of the tree. “Ah!”

  “Now,” said the Colonel, huffing and puffing from the exertion. “I think it's time to finish up the business between us, right here and now.”

  “I agree,” said Armless, as he turned and started to raise his hands. “You might want to check your fly first.”

  “Huh?” Parker looked down at the front of his trousers.

  There was a sudden, flat crack. Parker raised his head, his eyes wide and empty. Davis saw that a little red hole had appeared in the center of the Colonel's forehead. The man's jaw worked spasmodically, his left eye twitched once, and he toppled over onto the ground.

  “That's one down,” O'Neil said cheerfully, waving the small derringer he held in his hand. A thin wisp of smoke rose from the tiny barrel. “I'm obliged to you, Miss, for leaving one bullet in that gun of yours. Actually, we all are.” He extended his hook in her direction. Dangling from it was the little handbag that had started so many big doings. “Lucky I remembered where I dropped it when the Colonel caught us. I guess those diamonds are yours, too?”

  “Well, not really mine as such,” the girl said. “They belong to my family. My people.” She opened the bag and seemed pleasantly surprised to find all three diamonds.

  “We should try to get back to Ilse's cottage,” she said. “There are guns there. The Goddess is out of action, and maybe no one has checked in on her.”

  As they went deeper into the trees and started working their way around the perimeter of the village, the girl told her story.

  “My name is Abeni.” She pronounced it ah-beh-NEE. “Abeni Adeyemi. I live here. I've lived here my whole life, except for when I went away to school. I returned here just over a year ago. Not long at all before the Germans first showed up. Or perhaps I should call them Nazis. It isn't fair to impugn a whole nationality over the actions of a few.”

  “I agree completely,” Davis said with great enthusiasm. He had a sort of starry look in his eye, Armless noted with amusement. Can't really blame him though. This Abeni is quite a looker. And she's obviously smart and capable. Just the kind of woman... No. No point opening a can of worms like that.

  “Yes, well... It wasn't just Germans, of course. It was a German who found out about the little diamond mine the Baindada have been sitting on for such a long time. Then others came. We had kept it a secret, you see. Honestly, we didn't know what to do with it. My great-grandfather discovered it sixty years ago, almost. It's pretty far off the beaten track as mines go, and nobody ever came through here looking for one. Not for a long time, anyhow. We dreaded the day we could no longer keep it a secret.”

  “Why did you want to keep it secret?” Davis asked.

  “Do you really have to ask that question?” the girl said. “Whenever a tribe of natives comes into possession of a treasure, and white men find out about it, the result is invariably catastrophic for the natives.”

  Armless nodded his head, and laughed mirthlessly. It was sometimes catastrophic for the white men, too. He vividly and painfully remembered a recent adventure involving just such a scenario—the Affair of the Glittering Fetish, as he had titled it in his journal. And that was but one of many such disasters that he knew of, first and second-hand.

  “In any event,” Abeni continued, “they found us a year or so ago. They moved in and started working the mine. I guess you heard what they're planning on. Well, after they'd been at it for a while, got it down to a routine, they reckoned it was time to let a few 'outsiders' in on the secret. People who could help them financially and in other ways. All those insane plans of theirs, they couldn't carry out all by themselves. They were still paranoid and secretive, though. Rather than give out the location, they sent an envoy to meet this group of monsters in Brazzaville. They gave him a few diamonds for show-and-tell with the visitors.

  “Something had to be done about that,” Abeni said. “I followed the envoy all the way to Brazzaville. I got to the city well before he did. I had no idea what route he had taken. I took the straightest and swiftest, and saw no sign of him. So I checked into the hotel where the meeting was to take place, and I waited.

  “I hung around in front of the place and kept my eyes open. Finally, I saw him walking up the street toward the hotel. He didn't know his way around very well. I thought about approaching him on some pretext, but I was afraid he might recognize me—in spite of the fact that I once heard him remark that 'those monkeys' all looked alike to him. I heard him ask someone where the Hotel Imperial was. Then he was heading in my direction. I decided to act. I ran in front of him and called him a nasty name. Enraged by the effrontery of a 'savage,' he gave chase. I led him into the alley and I shot him. He was a coward at the end. When he saw what was going on, he pleaded. But I was unmoved. I knew what he and his associates were capable of. Before anyone saw what had happened, I relieved him of the diamonds and the map, and hid them, along with my gun, in my handbag. I was going to run, but there were several people on the street who must have heard the shot. So I just backed into a dark corner until the alley was full of gawkers, then joined them.

  “When the police showed up at the hotel, I couldn't think of anything to do but drop the purse out the window. But they let me go after a few hours. I went back for the purse, but it was gone. Those horrible men, too. How they made their way here, I don't know. “

  Armless reckoned he knew, and he renewed his pledge to settle the score with Von Nemitz and company.

  “Do you know who she really is?” Abeni asked. “This so-called goddess?”

  “Ilse Koch,” said Paul. “The war criminal.”

  Abeni nodded. “That's her. Actually, she and her husband were such scum, they were arrested by the Nazis for all manner of malfeasance two years before the camps were liberated. Can you imagine? They were too crooked even for that accursed regime. Her husband was executed, but Ilse was released for lack of evidence. Funny thing, that. Some say she had a very high-ranking friend in the German government. But that was no help to her when the Allies arrested her later on. Everyone thinks she's in prison in Germany, but I have learned that she was set free, with the complicity of prison officials whose sympathies still lie with the Nazis. They put a double in her cell—actually, there are five doubles and they pose as Ilse in shifts. Not too difficult to get away with since Frau Koch is in solitary confinement.”

  “Why go to all that trouble for her?” Armless wondered aloud. “And how do you know all this?”

  “They went to all that trouble because Ilse is Von Nemitz's lover. Not so much an affair of the heart—I doubt either of them has one—as of the viscera. They are both hopelessly psychotic, and addicted to violent sex and murder. Von Nemitz insisted on bringing her here. He's the one that cooked up this whole insane goddess charade. I suppose he thought we were ignorant enough to fall for it.”

  “Uh, well,” said Paul, “I thought... I mean, it looks like you did.”

  “Does it?” she replied with a grim smile. “Good.”

  Armless O'Neil took note of that strange answer, and also of the fact that Abeni had not answered his second question.

  They reached the spot directly behind the White Goddess's lair. The trio got down on all fours and crawled as swiftly as they could from the tree line to the rear of Ilse Koch's cottage. They had spotted a rather indifferent guard in front of the place, but the rear was wide open.

  “They aren't expecting any trouble,” Paul said.

  “They think they already had it, and dealt with it,” Armless said.

  Abeni pushed open the rear door and they filed in.

  And there she lay, in the middle of the floor, bound and gagged. The Great White Goddess Jordweth.

  “It just dawned on me,” Paul whispered, “that the name she's using seems to be cobbled together from the names of two Norse goddesses: Jord, goddess of the earth, and Weth, goddess of anger.”

  “I guess that's appropriate,” said Abeni, “given what she had to choose from. I don't suppose there are any Norse goddesses of homicidal mania. One day there will be a name for creatures like her—a scientific designation.”

  “She looks a little green around the gills,” Armless observed. “How hard did you hit her?”

  “Just barely,” Abeni Adeyemi said. “She wasn't even completely unconscious when we tied her up and gagged her.”