The Guardian Chronicles

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Book excerpt

Prologue

Germany 1945

The concrete bunker was ready to fall.

Mortar shells rained down relentlessly and the explosions shook the foundations. Hitler’s generals reported that the Chancellery building which contained the bunker had sustained heavy damage from the barrage. His minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, entered the office, flushed and out of breath.

“Sir, my apologies but I have a bit of bad news. Your trusted advisor, Hermann Goring, has abandoned you.” Goebbels’ mouth tightened. “I’m sorry but he fled the country,”

 Adolf Hitler flew into a frenzy. “Traitor!” he cried and hurled a vase into the corner of the room, where it shattered, scattering porcelain chunks all over the concrete floor. Everyone in the room braced for the impending tirade.

“Joseph, I must give you my personal items in case they breach this bunker,” he growled. “Time is critical and I smell their foulness as they approach.”

The constant assault upon his personal bunker, the Führerbunker, created great stress. Soldiers reported that the enemy continued to approach despite their best defensive measures. With sweaty palms he thrust his last will and testament toward Goebbels. He accepted it with a small nod.

Hitler glanced at his new bride, Eva Braun, and frowned. Her brown eyes, riddled with fear and knowledge of their looming demise, locked on his. He grasped her arm and escorted her toward his private quarters. Once inside, he slammed the door and turned to her.

“Eva my love, I fear we may soon be overrun.” Hitler threw up his arms and looked at the ceiling. “The Jews continue to influence the world against us as they worship their false gods and spread their dirty money around the world. They bought those demons knocking on our doors with this very same money. Those swindlers—they don’t realize I am their messiah! I’ve been handpicked by the gods to rule the world and lead the master race into the dawning of a new age.”

He clenched his fist and stared at the door, cursing under his breath.

“These dogs won’t deter me from achieving my objective.”

Hitler suddenly whirled toward her. Eva looked at his eyes and spotted something which caused her to recoil and back up against the wall. His eyes, full with a reflective reddish tint, resembled tiny pools of blood. They burned with rage. A maniacal grin stretched the lower part of his face, twisting his facial features into something unearthly. She rubbed her eyes, trying to wipe away the demonic visage to no avail. His features continued to twist unnaturally.

As she cowered in a shadowy corner, a man burst into the room. The mysterious interloper glanced at her before focusing his gaze toward Hitler.

“Mein Fuhrer!” he cried out.

Once the shock wore off, Eva absorbed the strangeness of his uniform. Although he wore the typical armband of the Schutzstaffel, also known as Hitler’s elite guard, the uniform itself was different from the normal type used by the German army. The color of the uniform was white like ivory which differed from the darker uniforms normally worn by the soldiers. The stranger held in his right hand the normal sidearm of Hitler’s elite guard, a Mauser S/42 pistol. In his left was an object resembling a small dart, black in color with a tip glistening with a clear, viscous substance.

Hitler directed his rage toward this latest disruption. “What do you want? Can’t you see I’m—”

Before he could finish the sentence, the stranger shot him. The bullet punctured his left eye and exploded out of the back of his head like a volcano. The shriek radiating from Hitler’s twisted expression penetrated the walls of the room. Where there was once an eye there now stood a fountain which sprayed blood all across his face, covering it like a mask. His body lurched in one final spasm before it hit the floor and landed in the pool of blood that collected on the floor. The stranger walked to the body and looked at it with contempt.

“I’ve sent you back to the underworld where you belong you son of a bitch. I have ended your war. Your quest is lost.” He scowled at the corpse before shifting his eyes toward Eva.

His facial features softened and he uttered a humorless laugh. “Oh wait, I forgot about you,” he said, caressing the dart in his left hand.

“No please, I beg you! This war was all his idea!” She cowered and pointed to Hitler’s corpse. “Listen to me! I hold no control over the German people. You have killed their leader. You’ve stopped the massacres and claimed your victory. His generals have either been killed or surrendered. You have won,” she insisted.

“You’re so naive! Either that or you think I’m a fool. You’ve been at his side for so long like a whipped lap dog that you don’t understand the evil he was.”

The soldier motioned toward the corpse and targeted her with an icy stare. “You’re no better than him and you are due no mercy.” For emphasis on the final word his left hand swept outward so fluidly that she never saw the dart as it plunged into her neck. With perfect precision he struck his target. She was dead as soon as she hit the floor.

He approached her body, bent to one knee and checked her pulse to verify that the poison did its job. Satisfied he moved toward the door but more rockets exploded around the bunker, showering him with bits of plasters and concrete. When he looked back he noticed that the dart had vanished.

“I truly enjoyed your ingenious toys, Hephaestus.” The stranger chuckled.

A commotion came from upstairs, stealing his attention. Gunshots rang out and several German voices yelled out in unison. Another explosion rumbled through the bunker, causing the room to shake violently. Suddenly new voices intermingled with the Germans. The voices sounded like they belonged to the Russians. Footsteps descended the stairs outside the door. Fists pounded on the door and the Russians yelled for Hitler.

“Boy they sound irate. I guess it’s time for me to make my exit.” The stranger walked over to the corpse of Adolf Hitler and placed the Mauser in his hand. It must look like a suicide. He recalled the words as he closed Hitler’s fingers around the gun. Suddenly the blows on the door became more frantic. He could not afford to have soldiers burst in the room and see him hunched over the body. Discretion was the primary objective of the mission. He must not be discovered. Estimating the strength of the door, he wondered how to escape the room when an intense light quickly surrounded him. The light radiated so brightly that he had to shut his eyes to prevent an onset of temporary blindness.

“Guardian, your mission is complete and man will begin the healing process from the evil that Hitler unleashed on them. We appreciate your efforts—as always.” The disembodied melodic voice echoed in his ears. “You don’t have to linger any longer. The immediate threat is gone, but you must understand that evil never rests. Hades will regroup and when he does, I will once again need to call upon you.” He felt a soothing calmness as the light wrapped around him like a blanket.

The stranger formerly known as Joachim Schaeffer, average fruit vendor from Dusseldorf, completed his mission. The gods were pleased.

“I’m ready, Gaea,” Schaeffer replied.

Chapter 1

“Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help you God?” The court reporter asked.

Gabriel Crane sighed. He didn’t mean to do it intentionally but he’d been through this before. It was the same situation but a different courthouse. All of his cases were beginning to blend together into one large pile of tedium. As a private investigator he testified in numerous fraud cases. He specialized in insurance fraud which encompassed anything from exploitation of state worker compensation programs to lawsuits against auto insurance companies that involved bogus auto claims. Insurance fraud was a huge racket that could cost insurance companies billions of dollars annually. Despite the banality of the job, it paid the bills.

“I do,” Gabriel said, sliding into the chair. His eyes drifted over toward the claimant and watched as the guy squirmed in his chair. Gabriel chuckled to himself. Claimants, especially in cases like this one, rarely knew they were under surveillance. Based on the evidence obtained on this case, this guy should be lucky it was only a hearing and not a full trial.

“Mister Crane, can you please state your qualifications and position for the record?” Randy Wurrlein, lead attorney for the Virginia Workers’ Compensation Commission, asked.

Gabriel looked around the room. He was surrounded by stuffed shirts. The judge sat at the end of the conference room table, looking bored. The court reporter, despite looking hot in her tight suit jacket and even tighter pleated skirt, looked as if she would rather be somewhere else. The claimant’s lawyer eyeballed him, apparently lining up his cross examination. Gabriel put his palms calmly on the cherry wood table and gave Randy a smile.

“I’m a private investigator licensed by the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services with six years of experience investigating Medicare, worker compensation and auto accident cases,” Gabriel casually stated. “But I’m also licensed to conduct investigations in North Carolina, Maryland, Delaware and West Virginia.”

“In my hand I have a disk that contains footage of the claimant, Jerry Summerlin. This video was obtained by you over a period of three days.” Randy motioned to Gabriel as he held up the disk. “Do you validate the authenticity of this recording?”

Gabriel leaned over and examined the label on the CD. Satisfied that the handwriting was his he answered, “I do.”

Randy placed the CD into a laptop located on the conference room table and flipped on the overhead projector. He switched the lights off in the room and clicked play on the media player. The video popped up on the screen and started with the claimant as he raked leaves in his front yard. Summerlin was observed as he cut grass, pulled weeds, and carried various objects across his yard. Normally this wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for your average middle-class suburbanite, but it should have been for the claimant. Jerry Summerlin had been out of work for the past eight months while he collected worker compensation funds for a lower back injury and broken left leg. As all of the eyes in the room locked on the video, Gabriel shot a glance at the claimant’s attorney and rolled his eyes. He knew this case would end the way most of his other cases did when a claimant was caught red-handed. First he would “confer” with his attorney then his attorney would meet with Randy and then the negotiations would begin. The two parties would agree on a monetary settlement and consider the case closed. Sorry kids the park’s closed, the shady claimant outside with the bogus injury should have told you.

Most of Gabriel’s work could be reduced to nothing more than posturing because the only result of these cases was the insurance company stopped paying the claimant. All money paid at that point would still be kept by the claimant, which meant they got paid for milking the system. The time that Gabriel spent inside his car, eating crackers, pissing into a bottle and holding a camera for hours equated to nothing but money for the lawyers. Granted he got paid for his services, but most of the time he felt empty inside. It was like a never-ending cycle of monotony for him that he couldn’t stop.

After the judge declared the claimant’s injury healed and that he was able to go back to work, the two parties settled on the claim. The money that was paid up to this point will be kept but the claim is closed. And that’s the game, folks, Gabriel sighed.