The Lance

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The Fenris Mountains reared like black fangs against the dazzling white of the Antarctic plain. SS General Dieter Reinhardt watched two crewmen from U-886 clear ice and snow from steel doors set into the side of one of the nameless peaks. A motorized sled waited nearby. Reinhardt’s face mirrored the death’s head emblem on his high, peaked hat. He was tall and thin. In his long greatcoat and dark, round snow goggles he looked like a malevolent insect.

The doors swung inward. The crewmen picked up a wooden crate from the sled, then followed Reinhardt down a dark corridor into the heart of the mountain. The corridor ended at a steel vault with a numbered dial. Reinhardt worked the combination, turned a large, spoked wheel and pulled open the heavy door.

Numbered metal boxes lined one wall. On the opposite side, gold bars stamped with the eagle and swastika of the Riechsbank shone in the bright light of Reinhardt’s electric torch.

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