The Curse by Harold Robbins Page B

with religious magic and the supernatural.
    A special unit of storm troopers called the Ahnenerbe was formed to search the world for archaeological treasures to prove the superiority of Hitler’s imagined master race and to strengthen the people’s belief in extreme nationalism.
    In other words, the SS set out to find proof other than their own chest-pounding and ravings that they were the master race.
    Seizing Austria, they took possession of the spear called the Holy Lance or the Spear of Destiny. Said to have been used to pierce the side of Christ on the cross, the blood-stained spear had been carried into battle by kings and emperors.
    Other quests were for the Holy Grail, a cup with magic powers because it was used by Christ at the Last Supper, sacred stones and runes with mystical meanings from Teutonic tales, and even an expedition to the Roof of the World, Tibet, to find what their junk science told them would be Aryan ancestors.
    That Adolf was a psychopath who killed himself after killing thirty million people and losing a war he started didn’t matter to Kaseem. Nor did the bizarre Austrian’s sex life that ranged from the suicide of his niece after she was forced into a sexual relationship with him to getting it off by lying down and having women piss on him.
    Hitler had failed after conquering a vast territory because although he was a great talker he lacked a good military mind. He had only risen to a rank of corporal during his military service.
    General Kaseem’s worldview was that there were more than three hundred million people in the Middle East of Arabic descent and that Arabs had a proud history. Not only was Egypt of the pharaohs a world power in its day, but the great Middle Eastern civilization that followed, the Arabic followers of Islam, had conquered the lands and people from Mesopotamia to the Atlantic, replacing those cultures with the Arabic language and customs.
    In its day, the Arabians weren’t just the world’s greatest military power, but the most advanced civilization on the planet in terms of science, medicine, and mathematics.
    With several hundred million people in the Arabic world, a long-term enemy to hate and rally against, Kaseem had found his calling: to take power in the largest Arabic country, Egypt, and unite all other Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa under his command.
    He also had an object with a proven ability to excite the masses: the Heart of Egypt.
    As he told Madison Dupre, in the 1920s when nationalistic fever ran wild in Egypt, the return of King Tut’s heart scarab had been a rallying cry to drive out foreigners and bring Egypt back to the greatness it once enjoyed.
    General Kaseem was going to bring that cry back to a fever pitch.
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    The old beliefs will be brought back to honor again. The whole secret knowledge of nature, of the divine, the demonic. We will wash off the Christian veneer and bring out a religion peculiar to our race.
    â€”ADOLF HITLER

17
    I staggered out of the police station gasping for air like a fish flapping on a boat deck.
    I couldn’t believe it. It was no surprise that Kaseem had lied to me. I had already guessed that.
    But going from a victim to a murder suspect in a flash had taken my breath away.
    The whole world had turned upside down since I tumbled out of bed this morning.
    The woman ranting about a curse had been right. There was a curse for sure and it had its arms around me and was squeezing me like a giant squid.
    I was left speechless when Detective Gerdy dropped the accusation that I had killed the woman.
    When I stopped hyperventilating I got out my cell phone and told Michelangelo to meet me in Little Italy immediately.
    â€œWhat’s the rush?”
    â€œMurder!” I screeched.
    I needed a drink—several of them—and a plate of carbohydrates and a chocolate dessert because I was burning up nervous energy faster than I could manufacture it.
    My nerves