Classic Indiana Jones Story from the fanzine era: Pact with the Devil
A knock at the door sends Indy on a quest to help an old friend. You will never qess who je has to work for this time.
PROLOGUE: THE GESTAPO STRIKES BACK: OCTOBER, 1938
Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap. The clawed end of Indiana Jones' hammer rapped smartly into the plaster wall, each blow loosening clouds of dust and tiny bits of masonry. The rapid fire cadence of the hammer strikes kept pace with the excited beating of Indy's heart. This dig was the stuff of which dreams are made: an undisturbed, inviolate Egyptian tomb.
At last a breach appeared in the wall. Redoubling his efforts, Jones widened the hole to the point where he could thrust his electric torch through it into the darkness beyond. The light beamed back the faint glow of gold - gold that had not reflected the light of day in over 3,000 years.
"What is it?" Marion's voice came from over his shoulder.
Indy's answer came as an awestruck whisper. "I see wonderful things… beautiful things."
He stretched out his hand toward the tantalizing glitter. Fortune and Glory…
Reality wavered and the dream began to fray around the edges like hoarfrost on a sun-warming window pane. Just as quickly, it was gone. Jones found himself in his own bed in Connecticut, lying in warm sheets and staring into the middle of the night darkness with the sound of knocking still echoing through his head. "Damn!" he muttered.
Behind him Marion stirred, her slender body curled against his back spoon-fashion. "What is it?" she repeated sleepily. "Who could that be at this time of night?"
It took a few moments to clear the last of the cobwebs from his mind and realize that the pounding noise was not merely the tag end of his dream. It was real and coming from the front door.
"I don't know. I'll go have a look."
Reluctantly, he untangled himself from Marion and kicked his feet free of the covers. His bathrobe was draped over a nearby chair and he pulled it on while feeling around on the cold floor for his slippers. He trudged down the stairs, wiping the sleep from his eyes and running a hand through his tousled hair.
The weak pool of light from the porch revealed the fine dark features of Indy's longtime friend Jakob Rosen, formerly of the University of Heidelberg and now the newest member of the archeology faculty at Marshall College. One good look at Rosen's face drove all complaints about the lateness of the hour from Indy's mind. Jones had always been amazed at how little his friend seemed to age since they first met as graduate students at Cornell University, but it looked now as if the past fourteen years had caught up with him all in one night. Rosen's face was haggard, and his knuckles bulged white as he held the neck of his overcoat closed against the cold autumn night.
As Indy held the door open, a gust of chill wind blew in across the porch, sending a flurry of dead leaves scuttering across the threshold and into the entry hall. "My God, Jake," he said, shivering. "Come inside."
As the two men headed for the study, Marion came stumbling sleepily down the hall from the opposite direction. Her long hair hung over one shoulder in a disheveled braid, and she was stifling a yawn. "Oh, hello, Jakob," she said. "Can I get you anything?"
Rosen shook his head distractedly. "No, please, I don't want to be any trouble."
"Some coffee would be nice," Indy said peremptorily. Then he took another careful look at his friend. "On second thought, Marion, you better bring the brandy."
Moving as stiffly as an automaton, Rosen continued on into the study and sank down onto the couch. Indy followed and drew up a chair facing him. Before either man could speak, Marion padded in carrying the brandy decanter and several small glasses on a tray. Indy poured and handed a glass to his friend, who accepted the drink with a trembling hand.
"So what brings you here, Jake?" Indy began. "I thought you were supposed to be in New York today, picking up Rachel and the kids."
Rosen had come ahead to Marshall, leaving his wife and children behind in Heidelberg until he could find and furnish a house for the family to live in. Their ship, the German liner, Bremen, had been due to dock in New York the previous afternoon.
"I was," Rosen answered in a hollow voice. "They weren't on board." He took a sip of his drink and went on, seemingly braced by the alcohol. "I checked with the ship's purser, who told me they were not among the group of passengers who embarked at Bremerhaven. The ship was forced to sail without them."
"Good God, Jake - what did you do then?"
"What else could I do? I went to inquire at the German Embassy in New York."
Indy's jaw line hardened in sympathy. He knew without being told how distasteful it must have been for Rosen, a Jew, to expose himself to the contempt and petty slurs of the German bureaucracy he had so recently escaped.
"They told me," Jakob continued, "that there was a problem with my wife and children's exit visas and that I would be contacted if there was any change in their status. Contacted! Try as I might, I could learn nothing more. So I took the late train home. I thought - I hoped - that if it were all some mistake and Rachel had found some other transportation I should be someplace where she knew how to reach me."
Rosen paused and took a deep breath. "I wouldn't have come to you at such a late hour but…" He reached into his breast pocket and held out a crumpled sheet of paper. "This was waiting for me when I got home, tied around a rock that had been thrown through my front window. It seems I have been contacted."
Indy took the paper and read the neatly printed message: "Tell your Jew-loving friend, Dr Jones, to be on the Kurfursten Bridge, 8:00 PM, 9/11/38." There was no signature; none was necessary. And the implied threat was all too clear.
Jones closed his eyes and winced as if in sudden pain. Throwing the note down with a stifled curse, he's sprang up from his chair and strode to the fireplace, where he stood with his back to the room, seemingly engrossed in the study of the nudes in the oil painting over the mantelpiece. But his tense, clenched posture gave the lie to that calm appearance . After a time, he said, without turning, "This is all my fault. I'm sorry, Jake."
"How can you say that, Indy?" Rosen protested. "You've been nothing but a good friend to me throughout all of this, finding me a position on the faculty here at Marshall and helping me settle in. And my family and I would never have been granted permission to enter the United States without your letter on our behalf to the State Department!"
Indy turned slowly and shook his head. "No, you don't understand, Jake. I had a… well, an unfortunate run-in with the Nazis two years ago at a dig in Egypt, and I guess you could say I'm not one of Uncle Adolph's favorite people. Somehow the Germans must have found out I knew you, probably through that letter to the State Department, and they're using you to get at me."
"I see," said Jake quietly. "You mustn't blame yourself, Indiana. It is my fault if it is anyone's. I shouldn't have waited so long to get out of Germany - I left it until too late."
Rosen took off his glasses and wiped his forehead with a weary, helpless gesture. Unfocused, his brown eyes took on a lost, inward look. "I have no excuse for myself, except to say that it all happened so slowly and insidiously that no one single thing was enough to make me take alarm. First, sanctions against Jewish businesses and quotas in the universities, then laws against intermarriage a few years later. Laws for the Protection of German Blood and Honor, they called them. Did you know Indiana, that in the small country towns there were even statutes that forbade the communally owned bulls to service the Jewish-owned cows? You see it was all so petty, even laughable, that all the while I kept expecting to wake up and find that little Austrian house painter and his gang of bullies had been put out of power. It seemed simpler to wait for it all to blow over. God knows, we Jews have ignored a few insults before!"
"What finally made you change your mind?" Marion asked.
Jakob sighed. "It's difficult to explain. You know, when I was a boy, I used to roll my eyes and smile behind my fingers when my grandmother told her tales of the pogroms. Such things seemed like relics of the Middle Ages! But one day not long ago, I suddenly realized that the situation in Germany had gone beyond mere humiliation. In my own country - the land where I was born and where my family has lived for over twenty generations - I was afraid, and I didn't want my children to have to live that way. It was time to go."
Jakob paused, a catch in his voice. "Even then, it was still hard to make the decision. It takes courage, perhaps more courage than I possess, to leave a life and a home behind. They left us nothing, Indy, only ten Marks and the clothes on our backs. That's why, when I discovered that it would be difficult for us all to book passage together - it seems every other Jew in Germany is trying to get out as well and the steamship offices are jammed - I agreed to come ahead. I wanted something for my family to come to." Jakob bent his head. "I was a fool. I should never have left them."
Rosen reached out for the decanter and poured himself another stiff drink. The liquor seemed to have taken the edge off his state of shock and the words began to spill out more freely.
"It's all so ironic, Indiana! You see, I never believed it could happen to me. I have always considered myself a German first, rather than a Jew - and not a very devout Jew at that. I haven't been to Temple since my son Dieter was born. And if it's race they talk about, why my little daughter Rebecca has blue eyes and blonde hair; she looks more Aryan than the Führer himself! Why should they want to bother us?"
Abruptly, his impassioned speech came to a halt. "Mein Gott, listen to me! I'm ashamed to hear myself!" Rosen usually spoke with only the barest trace of an accent, but the stress of the moment brought the German inflection out more thickly. "Am I any better than anyone else because I consider myself so enlightened and assimilated? Would it make the persecution any more excusable if I wore the sidelock and kept Kosher?"
Marion laid a gentle hand on Rosen's arm. "It's all right, Jakob. It's almost as if my neighbors suddenly turned against me for no better reason than because my grandmother was… oh, Welsh, or something." She sighed. "Doesn't anyone back home in Germany speak out against it?"
"Some," Jakob said wearily. "But most, and I cannot very well blame them, look the other way and thank God it isn't happening to them. That is, if they aren't actively flowing with the tide of hatred."
"Human nature, Jake," Indy said. "Hitler's no fool. He knows that nothing makes people pull together like ganging up to pick on someone else."
"That's horrible, Indy!" Marion said "It doesn't say much for the German people."
"Doesn't say much for us, either," Indy replied. At the sight of his wife's shocked expression, he went on, "You think it couldn't happen here? Well, let me tell you, the United States could be doing a lot more to help. Why do you suppose it took my pull with the government to get Jake and his family onto the immigration list? Damn quotas! 'Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free… Send these, the homeless, tempest tossed to me' - as long as they're not Jews," he concluded bitterly.
"But surely you'd never see anything like the signs our athletes reported seeing in Berlin at the 1936 Olympics!" Marion's voice caught with embarrassment as she looked at Jake. "Dogs and… Jews keep out."
"C'mon, Marion, you've traveled in the South, same as I have, and seen the signs on the washrooms and drinking fountains! And it isn't just the blacks. You know damn well that the Hartford Country Club is 'unofficially restricted' and that ninety percent of the fraternities on this very campus refuse to pledge Jews! Hell, we're no better than the Germans; we're just too well bred to put our anti-Semitism out on signs in public for all to see. A fine thing for Jake's kids to have to deal with!"
"Indiana, my old friend," Rosen said, "if all Dieter and Rebecca have to face is snubs from a few country clubs and fraternities, then I'll count myself lucky." His face darkened. "I'll count myself lucky if they even see this country at all."
Jones looked his friend in the eye. "They will, Jake. I'm sure of it. I'm going to be in Berlin on November 9th to make certain of that."
Rosen's shoulders sagged with gratitude." Indy, I…"
Jones cut him off quickly. "Don't mention it, Jake. You'd do the same for me. Now, you had better get some sleep, you look all in. You'll find the bed in the spare room made up for you - can't get any rest at your house with the wind whipping through your living room. As for anything more we'll talk about it in the morning."
Jakob nodded wearily and headed off down the hall. Marion held her peace until he was out of earshot.
"Indy, you can't go to Germany, not after what happened with the Ark! You don't know what they'll do to you!"
Jones shook his head. "Look at it logically: if the Germans wanted me dead they could have saved themselves a lot of trouble and simply shot me right here, just as easily as they heaved a rock through Jake's window. No, they want something from me. And anyway I don't have a choice - not with Jake's wife and kids at stake."
Marion smiled weakly. "I know that. You may have a lot of faults, Jones, but you wouldn't be the man I love if you thought you had a choice." She paused and bit her lip. "I just don't want to lose you again, that's all."
Indy pulled her close, resting his cheek on top of her head. "You won't," he said reassuringly. He only wished he felt as optimistic about that himself.