Archive of Our Own ^beta

Brief references to MCU-Indiana Jones levels of torture and violence.

Use of period-appropriate word for African-Americans, e.g., "negro"

See end for many, many research notes

Thanks to freudiancascade and syrena_of_the_lake for the support and to my spawn for the idea

 29 April 1945

It should all be over now, shouldn't it? The Allies had crossed the Rhine in March. The Soviets were surrounding Berlin. Bremen had surrendered, Regensburg captured, and München would fall soon. The Germans had been pushed nearly completely out of France. Surely it was a matter of days before the Americans, Canadians and British advancing from the West met the Soviets from the East. Rumors of suicides in Nazi command were everywhere and German troops were running west as fast as they could, preferring American cooking to Russian.  Maybe Hitler could just suicide and that would finally end it.

But given what the U.S. 1st Army had just found in a salt mine in Bernterode in the Thüringer Forest, Indy suspected his part in the War was entering a whole new, even stranger stage.

"Doctor Jones? Are you coming?" Though Captain Hancock's voice was muffled, there was an edge of wonder and excitement that made following the man down a tunnel into a concealed mine seem like a really good idea. Which meant it was a terrible idea.

Here we go again.

Indy crammed his hat into his jacket, got down on his hands and knees, and started crawling. The salt and rock pricked his palms and poked through the knees of his trousers.

"The boys found it yesterday," Hancock was saying. "They thought the masonry looked too fresh." Hancock cleared the tunnel and scrambled to his feet. Indy followed and stood, dusting off his hands and jacket.

Someone had already put up some lights so they weren't trying to do this with torches or flashlights.

"This is recent, too," Indy said, looking over the lattice door. The padlock the soldiers had broken to get into the Bernterode salt mine was lying on the ground. There was minimal security; the arrangement relied more on concealment. 

Or, maybe they hadn't needed anything because something very nasty was protecting whatever was inside.

Hancock was pulling the door open but Indy held a hand up. "Wait a minute."

He looked around carefully for something that shouldn't be on a door hastily erected by a couple of Nazi foot soldiers turned bricklayers and carpenters. Pulling out a flashlight, he shined it on the area around the door, at the base, above, and along the sides.  He didn't spot anything that looked like it would kill them.

"All clear?"

Indy nodded. "This isn't a typical munitions dump, though."

"Oh, that's here too," Captain Hancock said, pushing open the door. "All 400,000 tons of it. Which will make getting what's in here, out … complicated. And urgent."

"And what do you think…"

What the hell?

Indy stopped in his tracks in an elaborately decorated central passageway. It looked like a bizarre, eclectic museum, though even that didn't do the site justice. Flags, paintings, and tapestries covered the walls of the mine, with the stain of Nazi symbols, ribbons, and Hitler's name splattered about. On a dais, he saw a jeweled orb, scepter, crowns and two magnificent swords – coronation regalia, maybe? He hoped that's all it was.

Looking around, he revised his first conclusion. "It feels like a shrine," Indy said. "There's symmetry to the design; the decoration is very purposeful."

"Yes," Hancock said. "I thought it looked prepared for a modern pagan ritual. More your area, which is why I called. This seems staged and for far more than munitions or storage of German treasures, which these undoubtedly are."

Indy walked further into the room, not touching anything, examining it carefully and closely, trying to make sense of the strange display.

"I was hoping you might have some ideas, and worried you might have seen something like this before."

"It doesn't look like any of the things I know the Nazis have attempted over the last few years." He shined his flashlight about. "They are much too interested in occult rituals and objects that should be complete frauds but some how manage to kill a lot of people once they get their hands on them."

"Fortunately, none of that so far," Hancock said. "Not even booby traps, which we've been careful to look for."

Indy tracked his flashlight along the ceiling of the mine and the heavily decorated walls looking for the types of snares, concealments, runes, rats, snakes, and dead bodies that typically signaled when someone was incautiously poking where they shouldn't be.

"I agree with you, Hancock. It looks like the typical Nazi effort to build its own ritual mythology on top of a stew pot of borrowed Christian and Norse myth and veneration of Imperial Germany and Frederick Barbarossa-Holy Roman Empire on top of that. Maybe they hadn't time to try to add occult to the mix." With the usual lethal results.

"Well, there is this."

Indy followed Hancock down the main passage to a compartment and, at its entrance, was brought up short again. He stared and then whistled, long and low. "Is that what I think it is?"

"If you think it is a coffin from the 18th century containing the remains of Frederick the Great draped in a flag of the Third Reich and decoratively festooned with a Nazi wreath and swastikas, you would be correct."

***

From examining the crowns, orb and scepter, Indy figured they were from the coronation of Frederick William I and had been taken from the Monbijou Palace in Berlin – just another beautiful Rococo place gutted by bombs in defense of Hitler's insane notions of racial purity and world domination. The treasures had probably been stashed here to await the crowning of the next great leader of Germany. It was really unpleasant to think that Hitler might have defiled them by crowning himself; he might have also hidden them here for his successor if his sought-after Holy Grail-like immortality didn't materialize.

Hancock put a call into the 12th Army Group Headquarters, and now someone else from the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Section was on the way to deal with the shrine to the dying glory of the Third Reich.

The Nazis had pillaged some 20 countries and Indy figured national treasures were probably hidden all over Europe in places like this salt mine-turned-into-pagan-temple in Bernterode. He just hoped the English, Americans, or French found all the repositories before the Russians did.

Even more worrying to him was the possibility of a mass casualty caused by a weaponized artifact of Norse mythology wielded by a desperate, crumbling Wehrmacht or some Allied soldier who didn't know any better.  But, so far, as near as he could tell, Mjölnir or its equivalent hadn't appeared. The swords stashed in the Bernterode salt mine, while beautiful, appeared dated only to the 18th century and Frederick the Great; their provenance did not include the mythical Wayland the Smith.

So emptying the mine and securing the treasures for a future, hopefully peaceful and democratic, Germany were the priorities now. Given how fast the Allies were advancing, the Monuments Men were going to be stretched really thin, really fast. Indy wasn't surprised when a sergeant roared up on a bike and sidecar outside the salt mine while he'd been helping Hancock wrap Frederick the Great's coffin in old carpet wadding.

The man didn't want to get too close.

"He's long dead, Sergeant," Indy said, cracking open the envelope.

"Unless Frederick the Great decides to rise from the dead and join in Hitler's last defense of Berlin,"  Hancock added, which wasn't going to help the Sergeant's nerves. Hancock was a very talented sculptor, a brilliant man, and a terrible archeologist. "Where is HQ sending you?"

"I'm to head south and catch up with the 7th Infantry Regiment."

Indy flipped over the orders, feeling excitement mount. "They're advancing on Berchtesgaden."

Hancock whistled. "Better get going. There's a lot more there than scenic views of the Alps and beer."

"There are salt mines there, too. Just like this one."

The U.S. Army was moving to take the Kehlsteinhaus – Eagle's Nest – in Berchtesgaden. He'd read the OSS reports. Berchtesgaden was the personal Alps retreat for Hitler and his favorite hooligans, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, Mein Doktor himself Joseph Goebbels, and the Reichsführer of the SS, Heinrich Himmler. Together, they had looted the very finest treasures of Europe and hidden them away in this personal Valhalla. And Indy bet they'd probably put up more than a padlock to protect it.

Ten minutes later, he was scrunched in the side car and they were roaring southward. He had a few hundred miles to wonder why the unit he was ordered to report to, the Howling Commandos, sounded familiar. He didn't recognize the name of their commander, M. Carter. And what rank was an Agent?

***

5 May 1945

Berchtesgaden was as pretty and picturesque as a fairy tale with dense, green forest, icy, babbling brooks, and houses that looked to be made of iced gingerbread. The jagged Watzmann peak towered over it all, just waiting for Alpine goatherders to come over the pass yodeling. Explaining its name, Kehlsteinhaus – Eagle's Nest – he could make out eagles soaring high above the fortress Hitler had carved into the mountain.

Indy got there a few hours behind the Americans who were, from the swearing, about a day behind the French. A French flag was flying 8,000 feet up, over the Kehlsteinhaus. Every soldier he saw had a bottle of wine and was toasting Hitler's suicide. Still, he was surprised at the amount of wine. There was a lot wine. A lot of wine.

He was worried that retaking the town had gone badly when he saw a bunch of French medics trudging away from the foot of the Kehlsteinhaus with heavily ladened stretchers. But there wasn't any blood or groaning. The French weren't mourning; they were ecstatic.

Strapped to the stretchers, they were carrying away a different casualty of the war – thousands of bottles of French wine the Nazis – and Göring in particular – had stolen from the restaurants and chateaux of France and hidden here. With national pride at stake, the French had beaten the Americans to Berchtesgaden, raced to the Kehlsteinhaus, climbed the mountain at dawn, broken into the Eagle's Nest fortress, and were liberating the wine and champagne imprisoned there.

He congratulated them, in French, and made a point of saying that he was glad they had won the mountain instead of the Americans who would have probably spiked the national treasure of France with grain alcohol.  For the kind words, he got a bottle of 1929 Chateau Lafite Rothschild Pauillac.

"Do you know where the Howling Commandos are?" He had to use English for "Howling Commandos" since he didn't know how it would translate in French.

A soldier carting off crates of 1928 Salon champagne gave a shout in the direction of a group of men carefully loading crates of wine into a truck.

To his surprise, a Frenchman not in uniform hurried up, waving an arm. He was probably a resistance partisan, one of the Maquis. But what was he doing here?

The man took one look at him and switched to English. "Are you Dr. Jones?"

"Yeah." He put out his hand; the Frenchman had to put down the three bottles he was carrying before he could return the handshake. 

"Jacques Dernier." No uniform or rank. Indy noticed the man's sidearm. It looked like a Luger, which wasn't surprising since every French and English Allied soldier was grabbing any German gun he could get. But this wasn't anything like what he'd seen before. "Agent Carter's expecting you. We've taken over a house in town."

Indy tucked the bottle in his bag and followed Dernier, with curiosity getting the better of him. "Were you with the Maquis?" In the OSS, he'd run with partisan cells operating in Limousin.

"Yes. I was captured and sent to a HYDRA factory in Kreischberg. I joined the Howlers once we were freed."

Indy felt like he should know what this all meant but couldn't make the pieces fit.

"Are the Howlers a French unit?"

Dernier laughed. "No, nothing like that."

They stopped in front of a gingerbread cottage. Dernier shifted the bottles of wine he was carrying to one arm, banged on the door with the other, and pushed it open. "Found our expert."

What the hell?

The Commandos lounging in the sitting room of the German cottage weren't like any unit he'd seen. A civilian Maquis was strange enough. The three Americans were in uniform but the big Sergeant was in a bowler hat, and the privates were a Negro and a Japanese man?  So, this couldn't be an American unit; they were segregated. And a British Major who, from his cap badge was special forces, maybe Popski's Army. So British?

"Agent Carter?" he tried, directing his introduction to the only officer in the room.

His confusion at the mismatched crew that fit nothing he'd ever seen before wasn't helped by everyone laughing.

"I'm Doctor Henry Jones. Got orders you needed me?"

The Brit shook his head. "I'm Falsworth." To Dernier, Falsworth said, "You've not told him yet, have you?"

"Of course not."

"It's a character test," the Negro man said. "I'm Jones by the way but if you stick around, that will be confusing, so I'll be 'Private' or 'Gabe' for the time being and not 'boy.' I'll answer since you're already wondering. Yes, some of us are Americans and no, we are not segregated and if that's a problem, Dugan here will gently show you out." The big man with the bowler gave him a salute and the temperature in the room cooled to positively lethal.

"No problem at all," Indy replied, and now he had even more questions. Someone had enough pull to put a team together without any regard for U.S. Jim Crow laws.

On the table in front of Gabe was another of those strange guns, similar to what Dernier was carrying, but bigger. It looked like a StG 44 but so heavily modified it was barely recognizable. And shiny.

"Hey, Morita, I think Doctor Jones likes your gun."

"Doctor Jones has his own," Morita replied, giving him a critical once-over. "And a whip."

"How eccentric," Falsworth said. "You should fit in well."

Dernier moved past him and set his three bottles - 1929 Chateau Haut-Brion Pessac-Leognan – on the table next to the odd gun. "That depends on what the boss says."

"And what he says about the boss," Morita added with a skepticism that was becoming very uncomfortable.

"Best take your hat off, Doctor Jones," Gabe said.

"Agent Carter!" the Sergeant bellowed. "Your expert in the crazy is here!"

Indy knew they were all holding their breath, waiting for his reaction.

"Are you done ragging our new recruit?" The voice came from the next room. A female voice.

Indy whipped off his hat.

A woman walked into the sitting room. All eyes were on him and his eyes were stuck on her. She was impossibly gorgeous, dark hair, beautiful eyes, killer pin-up, movie star figure. She made Rita Hayworth look plain.  Lipstick? How long had it been since he'd seen a woman in lipstick?

Also, she was wearing British ATS trousers and matching shirt, with neatly knotted tie, German hobnailed boots, and a wide utility belt with a Luger holstered on her shapely hip that was fancier than what Dernier was carrying.

Indy nodded. "Ma'am."

The snickers told him he'd failed the first test.

"It's Agent, Doctor Jones, Agent Carter. To borrow from what Private Jones just asked, if you have a problem with it, Dugan will show you out to the street." She paused. "And I'll help him and it won't be gentle."

He swallowed. "No problem, Ma'am."

"Agent."

"Right. No problem at all, Agent Carter. How can I help?"

***

They clustered around a table in the kitchen and Dernier fed them on spoils liberated from Eagle's Nest.

"I've got a crate of wines from the greatest Chateaux of Bordeaux."

Confirming Indy's suspicion given the pride in Dernier's voice, Gabe leaned over and whispered loudly, "He always says that because he's Bordelais. Don't mention Burgundy."

"And definitely not Loire," Morita added.

Dernier grumbled and set out jars of caviar, a wheel of hard Italian cheese, dried sausage, and olives. Falsworth flipped British biscuit rations on to the table as if they were playing cards; they looked like hardtack but didn't taste nearly as good.

"They aren't bad slathered in the finest caviar in Europe," Gabe said diplomatically.

"Just don't break a tooth on them," Dugan warned.

Indy offered to share his Hershey bar but only the other Americans were interested.

"We did this a lot when I was running with Hilaire and the Wheelwright Sector in Bordeaux," Agent Carter said, admiring the wine Dernier had poured into the finely cut crystal glass liberated from the cottage's luxuriously appointed kitchen. "Many evenings it was wine for dinner."

"Why's that?" Morita asked, holding his glass for Dernier.

"No food in Vichy France," Dernier said grimly. "So we drank instead."

Once piece fell into place. "You're with the SOE?"  The British Special Operations Executive had placed lots of agents in France, including women because they aroused less suspicion since all the men had been conscripted. A lot of SOE agents ended up dead. Wheelwright had been one of the most successful resistance cells in Vichy France and Hilaire was reputed to be a genius.

"Yes, though I'm not sure if I still am as I'm getting paid by the Americans. I was detailed to the Strategic Scientific Reserve for the Super Solider project."

The mood turned grim around the table and another big piece fell into place.

The Howlers all raised their glasses. "To the Captain," Dugan said.

Indy did the same, and with the deepest respect. That report he had read. Barely three months ago, Captain America, Steve Rogers, had crashed in the Arctic – presumed dead. Captain Rogers had been saving the Allies from a threat so serious, even he didn't know the whole story with his OSS access. And, obviously, Agent Carter was now leading in Captain Rogers' place. And as obvious, the Howlers respected her enough to accept that leadership. No wonder they were going to throw him in the street.

"I'm sorry for your loss," Indy said. Really, what else could you say?

The men all took their cue from Agent Carter, who nodded. "Thank you. And thank you for coming, Doctor Jones. As Dugan said, we have need of your reputed experience with the crazy."

And if Captain America's unit thought it was crazy, it was going to be really something.

"My expertise is the Nazi obsession with the occult and Germanic and Norse myth. Some take it very seriously and in the last ten years there've been a number of inadequately explained occurrences that have killed a lot of people. I've honestly been worried we'd see someone who thinks they have the ring of the Nibelungen or Thor's hammer try to use it to defend Berlin in the final days of the war."

The team all exchanged knowing glances and nods. So at least they didn't think he was crazy.

"We are aligned in that concern, Doctor Jones," Agent Carter said. "What brings us and you here is Johann Schmidt, who was the head of HYDRA-Abteilung, a special weapons division of the SS. He found an object that powered HYDRA weapons, including the ones you noticed we're carrying."

"An object? What kind of object?" Indy reached into his bag to pull out his notebook and a pencil.

"It's a blue, glowing cube called the Tesseract. From interrogations, we've learned Schmidt believed it came from Asgard, from Odin's own vault."

He paged through his notes on all the "crazy" he'd documented over the last few years. "Why did he think that? And we're using past tense? Is Schmidt dead?"

The muttered curses around the table confirmed that.

"Yes," Agent Carter said, so tightly he figured it had probably been one of Captain Rogers' last actions.

He finished skimming the book and shook his head. "I'm not familiar with the Tesseract as a mythical object of power."

"That may not be surprising, Doctor Jones. Again according to the interrogation of his lead researcher, Schmidt believed the Tesseract was not from Earth."

He was going to have to reassess his definition crazy after this mission.

"I don't think it's Tesseract-powered," Morita said.

There were nods around the table.

"No, but Dr. Jones might know something we don't and it explains why we're here and why we believe there is a highly credible threat," Agent Carter injected, cutting off the argument.

The men took her correction without so much as an eye roll or smirk.

"The Tesseract is now lost somewhere in the Atlantic but before he died Schmidt used it to power all sorts of weapons and objects we're now scouring Europe to try to find before someone else does."

"Bloody Russians," Falsworth muttered into his wine.

"We had intelligence of possible HYDRA activity here, which wasn't surprising, of course. Indeed we were looking for it. We apprehended a man in one of the caves at the base of the Untersberg mountain."

"Peggy ripped his tooth out before he could bite down on it," Dugan said with a rough laugh.

Indy was wondering who Peggy was then realized from the expression on her face that it was Agent Carter. He glanced at her hands delicately holding the crystal glass and saw bruised knuckles and what looked like bite marks.

"How come he gets to call you 'Peggy?'" Indy asked.

"He doesn't."

Dugan slunk down a little lower in his seat.

She jerked her head. "Private Jones?"

Gabe pushed a book on to the table. Deutsche Sagen. Translated as German Legends."He had this on him."

"The Brothers Grimm? A book of fairy tales?"

"I have been through it," Agent Carter said. "It might have been the key for codes he was sending and receiving but we didn't find any messages, incoming or outgoing."

Indy flipped through it but nothing seemed unusual, like circled words or page numbers. And he should have figured that Agent Carter had codebreaking in her background with the SOE. There was some super-secret British operation the Americans had gotten in on late.

"I didn't see anything to indicate the book had been tampered with or used," Agent Carter said, confirming his own conclusion.

Indy shrugged. "You don't think he might just like the stories?"

"But would swallow cyanide rather than tell us why he was carrying a children's book in his pocket?" Morita shook his head. "There's something else."

"I didn't know just how grim Grimm was," Gabe observed. "I really can't see reading these to children."

"It's Germans," Dernier said. Where their children's stories were concerned, Indy had to agree.

They were all staring at him, expectant.

"Doctor Jones, we all think there's something happening here. All of Hitler's high command had homes in Berchtesgaden. Besides the wine at the Kehlsteinhaus, the salt mines in town are filled with stolen art. Hitler's home, the Berghof, is crammed with looted treasure. Himmler lived here and personally recruited Schmidt into the SS and shared Schmidt's ideas that German myth and the occult have a basis in science which, from their perspective, the Tesseract confirmed. They know it can work. We've caught the agent but don't know what he intended or if it's already in motion. This is why we need your expertise to help us find it and stop it, before it's too late."

"And if that doesn't scare the hell out of you, you aren't smart enough," Dugan said.

No one laughed and Indy didn't think it was funny, at all. This was deadly serious.

Agent Carter tapped the book with a finger that had a bite mark in it. "Whatever it is, I think it's in there."

He pulled the Deutsche Sagen to him. "Got a room I can bunk in?" Though, he didn't think he'd get much sleep. German fairy tales were the stuff of nightmares.

***

"Did you find anything, Doctor Jones?" Agent Carter asked first thing the next morning.

Indy yawned. He'd been up all night reading and taking notes; Dugan snored.

She shoved a cup of coffee at him. "Morita made it, so it's American and palatable."

"Unless you're French," Dernier grumbled from the kitchen table.

"Good morning," Indy said. "Don't make me talk or think until I drink this."

The coffee was strong and cool enough that he could gulp it down in a few swallows. She'd probably done that deliberately. It was barely dawn and Agent Carter looked like she'd been up for a couple hours. Maybe she didn't sleep but she looked too fresh otherwise. If he didn't value his own skin, he'd have said she was chipper. How did women make their hair do that in a war? He could barely manage a shave.

Agent Carter was standing at the door, holding it open. Her impatiently tapping hobnail boot made a clunking sound on the wooden floor.

"I'm coming."

"Be ready to move when I get back," she called to the Commandos. It was disorienting for her to hold the door for him but he wasn't going to get into that.

Gabe had a jeep running and waiting for them and they climbed in. He let Agent Carter take the passenger front seat

She turned around in her seat. "Well?"

"Nothing solid," Indy said. "It's curious that it mostly contains German legends and folklore rather than fairy tales, like Snow White or Hänsel und Gretel."

"I'd not thought of that distinction, but you're right," Agent Carter said.

On the streets that morning, there were empty bottles of wine everywhere. And plenty of drunken soldiers who hooted and whistled at Agent Carter as they drove past.

"You should let me run them over," Gabe said, swerving just close enough to one group of Americans that they went scrambling and swearing into the roadside ditch. "In the stories,  I thought it was strange how it was sometimes presented as a documentation of oral history. I've not seen that before.  And some of the stories dated to antiquity or medieval Germany."

Morita had told him Gabe Jones was a graduate of Howard University with degrees in French and German language and history. If he'd not been a Negro, Indy was sure he would have been snatched up by the OSS.

"Well, there were ghost stories there, too," Agent Carter said. "There's a Hallowed Hunt, witchcraft, and magic."

"Yes," Indy agreed. "But many other stories are legends of great heroes and ancient kings. Between that and its emphasis upon magic, I think the Deutsche Sagen fits very well with the Nazi mythos they have tried to create."

Gabe whistled then had to swerve around a crater in the road. Agent Carter grabbed the rollbar for purchase, frowning. "That observation concerns me."

"Me, too," Gabe said.

Indy nodded. "Yeah, I felt the same way. If I was looking for inspiration for German greatness in places other than Wagner, Deutsche Sagen is a pretty good source."

Gabe pulled them up at the jail. It irked him that none of them got a salute or much of a greeting from the American privates parked in front - just suspicion and leers. He wasn't in uniform, Agent Carter was a woman, and Private Jones could be in for something ugly.

"Say something," Agent Carter muttered to him, shooting a glance at Jones.

"Private!" Indy barked. "General Hodges will be expecting my report immediately after we complete this interrogation. Stay put unless I order you otherwise."

Gabe snapped a salute, not missing a step. "Yes, sir, Major, sir."

Agent Carter kept a straight face and let him open the door for her. Once it was shut behind them, she hissed. "I'm surprised you didn't say 'Eisenhower.'"

"My orders did come through the U.S. 1st Army. That seemed good enough."

They went through a checkpoint, showed ID and were waved through. "So, what do you know so far?" he asked.

"As I said last night, we caught him in a cave in the Mount Untersberg foothills. I've held back on more aggressive interrogation until you got here."

"Not broken any more of his teeth?"

"Not yet." Her grin was wolfish. "He speaks fluent English, with appropriate idiom. We've determined that he's a member of the SS, a Colonel, named Wilhelm Eidel and…"

He whirled around. "WHAT? Eidel? Really?"

"Do you know him?"

"Yeah. I know him."

"And?"

Indy ran a hand over his face, thinking hard. "Well, the payback's going to be great. But if Eidel is involved…"

"That bad?"

He nodded. "You ever hear about the Nazis trying to get the Ark of the Covenant in '36?"

"The SSR research division looked into it. There was a reported mass casualty on an island in the Aegean?"

He nodded. At least that part hadn't been buried.

"We were concerned something like that would be very appealing to Schmidt but Colonel Phillips said the artifact was already in U.S. custody. That was Eidel?"

"Eidel was the one who ordered the search for the Ark, on Hitler's orders."

Damn. He'd learned later that Eidel had brought Dietrich and Belloq here, to Berchtesgaden, to meet Hitler before launching the dig in Egypt.

"It was Eidel's operation. His people found it. They all died. It killed them all."

A big American private unlocked the room for them. Eidel was sitting in a chair and was chained to the floor; he was dressed in an American flightsuit that he was swimming in. The intervening years had not been kind. He was ghostly pale, bald, and skeletal.

As they entered the room, he looked up from his study of the cement floor. A cadaverous and gap-toothed smile broke out on his face.

"Doctor Indiana Jones! I have been expecting you!"

Indy strode into the room, balled up his fist, and smashed Eidel in the face.

The immediate purpling of his cheek under the ghostly pallor was beautiful.

Agent Carter shut the door. "I thought you were going to let me hit him first."

Indy pulled up a chair in front of Eidel. "I'll be blunt, Eidel. We've got some questions."

Eidel rubbed his right, bruising cheek on his shoulder. "Of course you're blunt, Doctor Jones. You're a savage. You don't know any other way."

Indy switched hands and hit Eidel on the other side of his face and felt a really satisfying crunch. His hand was going to hurt later but damn it felt good now. Eidel's nose started bleeding. He'd probably broken it.

"Yeah, I'm the blunt instrument, Eidel. What you should be worried about is that she's the sharp one," and he pointed at Agent Carter.

"Doctor Jones, whilst I appreciate the compliment, I'm actually as adept at blunt as I am at sharp."

"You punch hard, Agent Carter?"

"I do indeed. And far above my weight class."

Indy plopped down in the chair. "So talk. Why are you here? What hell were you hoping to unleash this time?"

Eidel raised his shackled hand up, just far enough to wipe the trickling blood away. "Why should I tell you anything?"

"Agent Carter, you've already removed one of his teeth. Think you could manage a few more?"

"I've seen the work of Nazi dentists," Agent Carter said, sounding as icy as one of those Bavarian alpine peaks. "All those gold fillings ripped from people's jaws." She pulled something out of her pocket and rolled it between her fingers. It looked, horribly, like a human tooth. "Do you have any gold fillings, Colonel? I could use the practice. I'm sure the medics have a bone saw and a pair of pliers."

To Eidel, he said, "Because if you don't tell us, it's going to hurt, a lot, until you do tell us."

"You're fools," Eidel spat, blood mixed with spittle on the floor.

"You are," Indy told him. "It's over. Your Führer is dead by suicide. The Soviets took Berlin. General Weidling surrendered the Reich Chancellery 3 days ago. Manteuffel surrendered to the Americans."

Eidel laughed. It was manic, with an edge of madness. "The worse it gets, the sooner it comes, Doctor Jones. In her hour of greatest need, Germany's defenders will rise again."

"How?"

"As an eagle, Doctor Jones. Those eagles circling above the Kehlsteinhaus are magnificent, aren't they? Not as many birds as usual this time of year."

He cackled again.

"Sure," Indy said. He felt an idea push at him.  Why Eidel? Why here? Why now? Eidel had hired Colonel Dietrich and Belloq. He'd also sent the Gestapo agent, Toht, to Nepal to get the headpiece from Marion. Marion's bar, The Raven, had burned down.

Raven.

Ravens.

There were eagles above the Kehlsteinhaus. But no ravens.

Where were the ravens?

Indy got up from the chair. "Enjoy hell, Eidel."

Agent Carter knocked on the door and the Private on the other side immediately opened it.

Damn. It all fit. I should have seen this sooner.

"What about the eagles?" Carter murmured as they both hurried out.

"Not eagles. Ravens."

Her eyes narrowed and he could see when she made the connection and sucked in a sharp breath.

"Yeah."

They burst out of the front door, startling the guards. "Get going, Private!" Indy yelled at Gabe.

He dove into the back seat and grabbed the Deutsche Sagen.

"It's story number 23," Agent Carter said.

"Which one's that?" Gabe asked.

Indy thumbed to the page. "It's the legend of Frederick Barbarossa, the Holy Roman Emperor, one of the greatest leaders in German history"

"That one!?" Gabe exclaimed.

"What do you know about him, Jones?" Agent Carter asked.

Both of them could have answered but Gabe started talking first. "Twelfth Century. King of Germany, Italy and Burgundy. Crowned Roman Emperor by the Pope in 1155. Worked to re-establish Justinian law and developed the beginnings of the administrative state. Named Barbarossa because of his red beard. Died during the Third Crusade, in Turkey, not here, when he fell of his horse and drowned in his armor in a river."

Indy found  entry Number 23 and rushed through the translation. "'Frederick Barbarossa. They say that he is not dead, but that he shall live until the Day of Judgment.'" He skipped the middle part about the shield, trees, and Barbarossa's red beard wrapping around a stone table. "'In the year 1669 a peasant from the village of Reblingen who was hauling grain to Nordhausen was taken into the mountain by a little dwarf. He was told to empty out his grain and allowed to fill his sacks with gold in its place. He saw the emperor sitting there entirely motionless. Also, a dwarf led a shepherd into the mountain who had once played a tune on his flute that had pleased the emperor.'"

Indy slowed down, read aloud carefully so they could both hear.  "The emperor stood up and asked: 'Are ravens still flying around the mountain?' When the shepherd answered 'yes,' Emperor Frederick Barbarossa responded: 'Then I must sleep for another hundred years.'"

Gabe swung the jeep around a turn so hard, Indy almost pitched out of it. "Sorry," Gabe said. "I was just thinking that ravens and crows congregate on battlefields. They're all over France and Germany."

"Maybe that's why they aren't flying around the mountain like in the story," Indy said.  Bracing himself in the seat, he looked up and about, hoping for and not seeing any specks of black in the sky.

Agent Carter leaned over and was reading the entry upside down; he flipped it around for her. "But that story says he lies in Kyffhäuser Mountain. Not here."

"The Nazis were preparing there, too. I came here from a pagan shrine to Frederick the Great in a salt mine maybe 25 miles from Kyffhäuser. It was filled with coronation regalia." Damn, he should have seen this then.  "And there are legends that put Emperor Frederick Barbarossa under Untersberg, right where you found Eidel. Sometimes he lies with his twelve knights. The legends also say that he shall arise in a time of Germany's greatest need and restore her to her former greatness."

"That's what Eidel meant about the worse it gets, the sooner it comes," Carter put in. "With Germany's total surrender, Barbarossa will rise again."

"Unless we can put him back to sleep," Indy concluded.

"How are we going to do that?" Gabe asked. He was blaring the horn as they pulled up to the cottage and the other Howlers rushed out the door, bristling and armed to the teeth.

"Birds," Agent Carter said and pointed. "Falsworth, Dernier, Dugan, spread out around town. We need birds. Live birds. Ideally, black ones. Maybe the Americans brought a carrier pigeon. Someone's pet. Catch a crow in a net. Something. Get them, bring them, live, to the cave where we picked up Eidel."

"What about me?" Morita asked.

"Get your flute. You're coming with us. Be prepared to play it. Also…" she paused in her orders and looked at him. "The story says a shepherd left grain."

"I've got the ration biscuits," Falsworth said.

Hell no. That would make Barbarossa rise up and tear down the Untersberg.

"Wine. Grab a bottle of the wine," Indy said to Morita.

The Commandos all stood for just a moment staring at her. "So why are we doing this, boss?" Dugan asked.

Agent Carter blinked. "Oh, I suppose I didn't say. We have to prevent Germany from, literally, rising from the dead in accordance with a Grimm fairy tale and put it back to sleep. We need ravens, grain, and a flute to do it."

The pause seemed to last forever. Then Dugan shouldered his gun. "Got it. Okay, let's go."

***

Gabe drove them as fast as they could go on the cratered, crowded roads, and then took the jeep, roaring, choking and chugging, up a road that wound around the base of the Untersberg.

Indy kept hoping to see ravens circling the peak but there weren't any. Agent Carter was scanning the sky with her binoculars. There was still snow at the highest elevations and the air was getting thin. Gray rock, green moss and scrubby bushes dotted the rugged mountainside, with some brave wildflowers poking through. No black birds.

"I'd like to come back here sometime when I'm not trying to save the world," Agent Carter said.

"Again," Morita added. He was flexing his fingers and placing them over the holes of a bamboo flute and murmuring under his breath.

The jeep gave another wild lurch on the path and they could hear the wheels slide and skid on the limestone rocks.

"Is that a Japanese flute?" Indy asked.

"Yes.  It's called an uta shinobue. It's tuned for Western music."

"Do you know what you're going to play?"

Morita smiled. "Yeah."

Gabe ground the clutch and the jeep stuttered to a stop. "That's as far as we can go. We're going to have walk the rest of the way."

Indy could see a narrow path snaking its way up and around the mountain. They climbed out. Agent Carter looked through the binoculars and searched back down the road. "There's another jeep behind us. Hopefully it's the others.  They've made good time."

"Dugan is a terrible driver," Gabe said, sounding a little hurt.

"But fast." Agent Carter handed the binoculars to Gabe. "Let's go."

It was too rocky and the air was too thin to jog. Indy followed behind Agent Carter; Gabe and Morita behind him. 

"What was Eidel doing when you caught him?"

"Just poking around that cave." Agent Carter pointed.

The opening was a jagged slit, a little taller than he was and wide enough for one person to squeeze through at a time.

Indy inspected the cave opening as he had the door to the salt mine.  He didn't see any runes or markings, not even a concealment charm or basic security.  That was either really good, or really terrible.

"I'll go first. Don't come in until I say so."

Agent Carter started to object, "We…"

"I'm the expert in crazy occult, remember?"

She nodded, then gestured at Morita. "Stand here. When Doctor Jones says so, start playing."

Indy pulled out his flashlight and ducked inside. Shining the light on the walls and ceiling he looked, as he'd done at the salt mine, for anything unusual and potentially life-ending.  The cave didn't have much in the way of limestone or salt formations. It was actually small. He didn't think that all the Howlers could fit in it. It was definitely too small for the Holy Roman Emperor, his throne and a stone table for sure. Cool, dark, a little damp. He tracked his light again along the furthest wall. What had Eidel seen here? Or expected to see? He saw nothing at all, not even bones of fools who'd wandered in by mistake or tried meddling in something they didn't understand.

"Start playing, Morita."

There was a pause, he thought he heard a breath being drawn, and then the jaunty When The Saints Go Marching In floated into the cave.

"Really?" he heard Agent Carter say. Gabe was laughing.

Indy cautiously approached the back of the cave, shining his light on the bumps and ridges on the wall.  Had that been there just a minute before?  It didn't look natural now.  He rubbed a ridge lightly with the edge of his pocketknife and, under the beam of his light, an ochre red color appeared. Rubbing harder, the dirt and debris flaked away, exposing a round, red seal, about a foot across. Embossed in red stone he saw an Emperor crowned and enthroned, holding an orb and a scepter, which looked very much like the ones he'd seen a lifetime ago in the salt mine.

"This is it!" he called. "Keep playing."

He heard footsteps behind him and another light joined his own. "What did you find?" Agent Carter asked.

He pointed. "The Emperor Frederick Barbarossa's seal."

Agent Carter lifted the flap on his bag slung over his back, took out the bottle of wine, and set it on the cave floor beneath the seal. "Morita, come on in."

He paused in his playing and Agent Carter caught her breath. "Did you see that?"

"Yeah. The seal faded when he stopped playing."

"What is it?" Morita asked.

"It's working," she said. "Keep playing."

Morita switched to Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.

The seal began to glow again, generating its own light, and even a little heat. Indy pulled Agent Carter and Morita back away from the wall.

"Agent Carter! I can see the others coming up the path," Gabe called. "Looks like they got bird boxes!"

"When they get here, tell them to release as many as they can, and bring one black bird in here."

As Morita paused for breath in his playing, Indy heard indignantly squawking birds.

"Your music pleases the Emperor."

Morita sounded like he almost swallowed the flute; Agent Carter spun about and drew her Luger.

The story had said there was a dwarf. This one was straight out of the pages of a Grimm fairy tale. He was so old as to be beyond age, his face deeply lined and wizened; he was wearing black robes and was barely waist high to Agent Carter. His long beard trailed on the ground. The dwarf went around them to the cave wall and picked up the bottle of wine.

"We did not have grain and so offer wine for the Emperor," Indy said.

"The Emperor accepts your gift."

No sound, no whiff of air, no movement of any kind. The cave wall suddenly melted away.

The Emperor Barbarossa sat upon a golden throne, at a stone table. He was tall, almost a giant it seemed, in resplendent red, blue and gold robes. Like the seal, he was crowned, and had an orb and scepter in his hands. Before him, on the table, rested a shining broadsword. His long red beard fell to his feet, wound around the table, and about the floor.  He was definitely awake and very alert.

"Are ravens still flying about my mountain?" the Emperor asked.

From the racket coming from outside, Indy hoped the Howlers didn't strangle the birds.

"They are," Agent Carter said, clear and strong. "You can go back to sleep your Majesty."

The Emperor looked up, out, beyond them. Indy felt a deadly, unearthly chill.

"My country's peril is great. I am called to defend it.

"A terrible war is ending, your Majesty," Agent Carter said, turning to cajoling persuasion. "Your country and its people have suffered greatly.  Your country needs peace. It needs rest, as you do."

"I should avenge those wrongs."

The Emperor set down his orb and began to rise, his hand reaching for his glittering sword.

"No, your Majesty," Gabe called out, coming into the cave with something under his arm that Indy hoped was a black bird. "Not vengeance, but Justice, as you decreed and under the laws you built."

The Emperor paused. "Who will see this Justice done?"

"I will," Morita said immediately, with a tone of defiance.  Ironic, Indy thought, given the Japanese interred in the U.S.

"And I," Gabe said, a further irony.

"We all commit to seeing justice served on those who have harmed your country," Agent Carter announced.

"Let me speak to my birds."

Gabe stepped closer.

"I'll do it," Agent Carter murmured. Gabe handed her a bundle that was too small to be a raven.

"What is it?" she whispered.

"Mostly black carrier pigeon. They released the others. Except the parrot; it won't stop talking."

Agent Carter gulped a little and shifted the squirming pigeon in her hands, letting the towel it was wrapped in fall away. Gabe took her flashlight. Squaring her shoulders, Agent Carter walked to the stone table, carefully stepping over the red beard twining about the floor, and held out the pigeon.

The Emperor leaned forward; he seemed terrible and terrifying so close but Agent Carter didn't flinch.

"This bird is frightened and longs to be home," the Emperor said.

"With the war ending, there will be peace, your Majesty, and justice served." Her voice turned softer, imploring, "And then, all birds will be able to fly home."

"Will you sleep now, your Majesty?" Indy asked.

There was an immense stillness in the cave, a single breath held.

The Emperor settled back on his throne. His eyes began to close. "Yes. For another hundred years or until my people need me again."

And then the sight winked out, the Emperor and the Dwarf were gone, and they were all crammed in too small a space with four people staring at a mossy cave wall, holding a bamboo flute, a bird, and two flashlights.  The bottle of 1935 Chateau Latour Pauillac was missing.

***

Indy made an overdue report to the American command in Berchtesgaden, fired off a message to Hancock telling him to make sure there were black birds flying around the Kyffhäuser and to release some if there weren't, and got a shower, clean clothes, and a really long nap.

He picked up another bottle, this one a celebratory 1934 Pommery Brut Champagne and knocked on the Howling Commandos' door, hoping that only one of them would be home.

She was.

"Come in!"

Agent Carter was sitting at the kitchen table with a typewriter and a pile of papers.

"Everyone else out?"

"Yes. Jones, Dernier and Morita joined the French party. Dugan and Falsworth went to find the Americans. There may be other company involved. I don't want to know."

"So all by yourself for the evening?" He hoped so.

"Obviously not, since you are here, Doctor Jones." She pushed back from the table and gestured to the papers in front of her." "I'm trying to condense this for the report to Colonel Phillips. We've been summoned back to London for a briefing. Taking Eidel with us. You can get a ride with us, if that's where you're going."

He shook his head. "I don't know where command will send me next." And in any event, not London which was one place Marion might be. He didn't want a broken jaw.

He shrugged out of his jacket, hung it and his hat on the coat tree, set his bag on the floor, went to the kitchen counter and picked up two of those nice crystal glasses the Nazis liked so much and the half bottle of the '28 they'd not finished last night.

He poured and sat across from her. Agent Carter raised her glass. "Cheers, I suppose."

Indy raised his own. "One war ending, another beginning."

"That's very cynical, Doctor."

He shrugged. "Realistic. I was in the trenches in the last war to end all wars. There's a lot of mopping up, we're still fighting in the Pacific, and once there's a formal armistice, there'll be even more work.  Most of Europe is a ruin."

She took a deep drink and studied the glass, throwing off and scattering the light. "I do not think this is the end of it, either. It's why I want to brief Colonel Phillips personally. This event shows that, even if we track down everything HYDRA created, which we haven't, there still is more out there – things that really should never see the light of day."

He nodded and stretched his legs out. "Ten, fifteen years ago, I would have argued with you. I thought these great artifacts and discoveries should be in museums and universities where we could appreciate and study them."

Her horrified look mirrored his own, evolving feelings on it. "But that was before I saw just how evil some people can be. There's been no limit to what the Nazis tried to pervert. Had they succeeded…"

"We'd probably be dead."

It was quiet enough they could hear a phonograph or GI radio playing very loudly. There was a party outside, down the street. Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy. He'd never be able to hear the song again without smiling.

The war would go on but this tiny part of it, at least, was over for now. "Is this how your missions usually end?" Indy asked. "The boys out enjoying themselves and you," he gestured at the table, "doing the paperwork?"

"Now, yes."

That was, he thought, another reference to the missing Captain Rogers. He wondered if sex had been part of their typical after mission action.  It usually was, in his experience.  Rogers would have been a fool to not take the opportunity if it was there. 

She raised her glass. "Though the liquor usually isn't this good. And you?"

"Drinking. He raised his eyes in the direction of the upstairs bedrooms. "Other things." He put a note of hope in his voice. "We could… if you want."

"Does that ever so gallant invitation normally work for you?"

He couldn't help grinning. "Yeah.  Though I get hit first. Then the kissing starts."

"Yes, I thought you might be of that cut, Doctor Jones. Thank you for a politely worded offer, but no. While I'm sure it would enhance your reputation, it would not aid mine."

She was right about that and what the Howlers might have supported with Captain Rogers they might not like at all with him. So, probably not a good idea.  Still, Peggy was so obviously lonely and he was, too, and they should be able to do something about that, at least.

"What about with Captain Rogers? Did you have any other after-mission traditions that you're missing?"

Her expression turned hard. "Sloppy work for an academic to make assumptions without any evidence to support them."

He set his glass down and put up his hands in surrender. "Sorry. Let me try being both more direct and more polite. It's obviously still weighing on you and as the commander of this unit, you probably can't share his loss with them or your CO. War is lonely. If you want to talk about Captain Rogers, I'm glad to listen. I'd like to hear about him."

"Talk?"

"Well, as I said, I'm amenable to more than that. You're the most beautiful woman I've seen in a few years, but you've made your feelings clear and you're right about your reputation, which I apologize for not considering when I offered. I'm actually wondering if we should open the front door or take this outside. So yes, talk." He held up the bottle. "We can get another one of these and talk some more."

She turned her head in the direction of the music. Someone had a really good set going. The music had gone from I've got a Gal in Kalamazoo to In the Mood.

"Actually, yes, Doctor Jones, there is something I'd like to do."

Peggy leaned forward and for a breathless moment, he thought he might get a slap and then a kiss.

She tilted her head in the direction of the music coming through the window. "Captain Rogers had promised me a dance and I didn't get it. Hitler is dead. We've won the war in Europe. We're going to win it in Asia. There's years of work ahead but for now, let's find the dancing."

So, where to begin?

Going chronologically, the story of Frederick the Great’s casket, the Nazi pagan shrine in a salt mine in Bernterode, and the work of Monuments Man Capt. Walker K. Hancock to preserve the treasures of the German state in the last days of the war are told in Monuments Men And Nazi Treasures by Greg Bradsher.

The race to Berchtesgaden, the importance of the discovery and French recovery of their wine heritage looted during the German occupation of France and the description of this Valhalla for the Nazi elite all come from numerous sources but in particular the delightful book, Wine and War: The French, the Nazis, and the Battle for France's Greatest Treasure by Donald and Petie Kladstrup.  The French soldier carting away the 1928 Salon Champagne is Bernard de Nonancourt, from Champagne who remembered the day the Nazis stole that wonderful champagne away to Berchtesgaden and the Kladstrup book contains his oral history of climbing the Kehlsteinhaus and the idea of using medics to bring the wine back down the mountain because the elevator was broken.  The crack about Americans spiking the treasure of France with grain alcohol also comes from Kladstrup.

The Brothers Grimm Deutsche Sagen  has proven elusive indeed.  I could not find an English translation anywhere.  It was reported that story number 23 told of the legend Emperor Frederick Barbarossa sleeping under the Kyffhäuser Mountain.  This is, I believe, a translation of story number 23 and is what Indy recites.  The story of the King under the Mountain, the sleeping hero legend, has many variations across many cultures.  In some versions, the Untersberg mountain holds Charlemagne and his knights; in others it is Emperor Frederick Barabarossa. 

The Untersberg mountain may look familiar -- it features, on the Salzburg side, in the opening of The Sound of Music.

Marvel tell us Peggy was in the SOE.  My information about the women agents and life in France is from several sources including Rita Kramer's Flames in the Field and Marcus Binney's The Women Who Lived For Danger.

This story was filled with many happy coincidences.  I learned the importance of ravens to the story of the waking king and so tied that back into the ravens in Indy’s own background.  After I was committed to sending Indy off to Berchtesgaden with Peggy to find a Nazi artifact (which was originally going to be the Holy Lance of Longinus until I realized there was already an Indiana Jones comic about it -- who knew?) I learned that in addition to being filled with the looted treasures of Europe and the finest wines of France, the Bavarian peaks in the town also purportedly hosted Frederick Barbarossa.  Then, I realized that, having already written Indy discussing the pagan ritual shrine with Hancock at the beginning of the story, that that site was, in fact, very close to the Kyffhäuser Mountain, another and better known site for Emperor Frederick Barabarossa.  The Indiana Jones wiki (based on the novelization of Raiders, which I did not locate) states that Eidel (who is not in the film) set up the search for the Ark and that Belloq and Dietrich met Hitler in Berchtesgaden. 

Thank you to Gray_Cardinal for the thought-provoking and detailed prompt.  I didn’t go to Egypt but Indy was surely a Monuments Man for a time and we know from Agent Carter and Agents of Shield that she continued to be active in the European theater with the Howling Commandos after Steve’s disappearance.   I had huge amounts of fun with this story and thank you for the ideas.