“Those who work with me are extremely talented,” Morgen said.

Seth watched speechlessly as Gunther brought the briefcase to the hearth. The third man in the room, a stocky man in his mid-fifties with a skin-close haircut, joined Morgen and Gunther. Together they lifted one of the rock slabs that composed the hearth.

As the shouting outside grew louder, the three men put the briefcase in a recess in the hearth, then struggled to replace the stone. Seth shook off his momentary indecision and joined them, his healthy strong back making the chore easier.

They had barely finished when the door burst open with an explosion of sharp biting wind and a flurry of snowflakes. Two of Morgen’s men hesitated in the doorway for a moment, holding a semiconscious man by his arms. Morgen nodded to them and they walked forward, half dragging, half carrying the man, who was dressed in a warm down parka much like Seth’s, thick twill pants, and sturdy lug-soled hiking boots.

“We found him sneaking around outside,” one of the men said as they dropped the man at Morgen’s feet. The man groaned.

“Turn him over,” Morgen ordered.

When they turned him over, Zoe gasped. The man was George Stratton.

THIRTY-THREE

“The Habersam mine is a large one,” explained Gunther. “I should know. I was the superintendent there until the SS arrived.” He had taken the plan of the mine and spread it out on the table in the hut. Sitting around the table were Morgen, Ridgeway, Zoe, two of Morgen’s men, and George Stratton, his head patched in half a dozen places with bandages covering the wounds received in his battle with Morgen’s three men. All three of the men who had captured Stratton also wore bandages. None was happy about the American joining their effort.

The three men would have killed Stratton had not Zoe and Seth vouched for him. “He saved our lives,” Seth told Morgen, and recounted in detail the incident in the limousine in Marina Del Rey. Zoe followed with her own rescue in Zurich.

“You seem to be suspiciously handy, Mr. Stratton,” Morgen said. Reluctantly he agreed to allow the American to join the team.

They sat around the table now, planning their assault on the mine. They would go after the shroud and the Sophia Passion on Christmas Day. “Our sacrifice shall be our celebration,” Morgen had said.

Gunther explained in detail how he and the others, not including Morgen, had labored for several years to cut a passage from an adjoining abandoned mine into the Habersam mine.

“The entrance to the Habersam mine is so thoroughly blocked that it would take a major effort… heavy equipment, explosives, to clear it.” Gunther said. “For obvious reasons we didn’t want to attract the attention that major effort would require.”

“Not to mention the expense,” Morgen said. “It would be prohibitively expensive.”

Gunther nodded his agreement. “I have lived here all my life and have worked at some time or other in just about every mine from here to Bad Ischl. The hills are honeycombed with mines. There are so many of them that a substantial number are not even mapped.”