Ice Palace of Evil:
General Lord Edward Ware cannot believe where he finds himself. He looks around at the surroundings of the underground palace encased in ice on the outside so no one would ever suspect it was there in the midst of Denali National Park in Alaska. He could not believe the evil genius that had designed it and located it here. It reminded him indeed of the woman he had once known during the last war and before all the way back to the First World War. She would indeed be associated with a place like this.
Helga von Wessel took the disbelieving General Lord Edward Ware and his wife, Dora, Lady Ware for a ride on an underground train. She served as conductor and tourguide. Her unctuous, deep, throaty voice penetrated his consciousness and announced horror after horror.
“Here is where the Russians send their losers, their prisoners, and their rebels, people they don’t trust to live in Russia or thereabouts,” she revealed to them as they came to the first stop. The place was organized like an underground zoo with various enclosures. As he was soon to find out through the picture window, each enclosed a prisoner, a human being.
“Here you will find Lenin, the one whose body is supposedly idolized in Red Square. He never quite died as you will see and his now an old, old man who has no hope of ever being released and returned to Russia.”
Edward could feel the hair standing up on his head as the man called Lenin turned and started gesticulating at them, speechifying in Russian. He even threw something at this glass.
Helga laughed and showed them the next enclosure with the newest prisoner in the lot, Stalin. Edward thought he was dead. But evidently not! He could remember meeting him during the war. Supposedly he had even kidnapped his own daughter, Thomasina. And now the all powerful dictator had come to this.
“You will recognize the leader who defeated Hitler in Berlin,” Helga purred at the man bowed over his desk who did not even look at them.
Edward could hardly believe it. “Wasn’t this man once your lover?” he asked.
“Of course!” Helga answered. “That was when it suited me. Now this suits me in the service of my new commander, Khrushchev. Lovers come and go, Edward. Power and money are the only thing that remains.” She gave him a knowing look.
Edward shivered, remembering how they had once had a child out of wedlock in the days when he had been deceived by the vamp during the First World War.
Next she really made his spine tingle. They stopped in front of the Hitler enclosure, so labeled on the outside. Edward and Dora could down so as not to be seen by the prisoner who paced back and forth making speeches so that somebody might hear him someday.
“He didn’t really commit suicide, you see, and poor Martin didn’t either,” she stopped in front of the Martin Bormann enclosure. “I still visit Martin from time to time so he doesn’t get lonely,” Helga talked about the man she had almost once married when it suited her political ambitions.
They came to the end of the ride. Helga looked back at them, her expression as cold as ice. “Tell Churchill he had better come to terms with me and Khrushchev. If not, I could imprison him here, too, when he is no longer Prime Minister. Even you, Edward, are not exempt. Except that now you are the only one who can take my demands to the outside world.”
Edward traded looks with his wife. It would be worse than death to ever come to a place like this again. It was a nightmare from which he hoped he would soon awake.
