“Lieutenant. Pierce.” Captain Loren turned to face Pierce. “I’d like you to meet SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer Lt. Col. Hans Zimmer, though you and I would otherwise know him as Doctor Wilhelm von Boch.” Zimmer turned his head upward and stared into Pierce’s eyes.

“Doctor Pierce. How nice to see you.”

He began to laugh and soon the laughter filled both the entire stockade and Pierce’s skull. Captain Loren held Pierce steady as he staggered back ever so slightly from the cell, though in his mind Boch’s figure was raised against the desert sky as Pierce tumbled into a black abyss.

“It’s been many years, Dr Pierce. Time has been good to you, no? When last we met, you were certainly undergoing, how should I say…unfortunate times?” The doctor chuckled again. His thick Bavarian side-stepping his fluent German.

“Oh, yes, how quickly we forget. I am Bavarian. Not all of us,” he gestured to the other prisoners, who watched the confrontation listlessly, “are the kin and kinder of the Fatherland, though many across the road are certainly the verheizt.” He turned his eyes, again, towards Pierce.

“Perhaps the tomb of Queen Pu-Abi was too much for such a young, and if I may, not yet so experienced Doctor?”

“And what would you know about Pu-Abi, Doctor, that I don’t already know?” Pierce dropped his expression to a dead pan feint. The element of surprise had been lost, but there were things yet to be discovered.

“Oh, Dr. Pierce. Oh, my good man. There are things yet to be learned, there are. Yes, there are many things yet to be learned. I took up your research after your disappearance, you know. Yes, the City of the Dead yielded some very inspiring finds. Some good for man. Some, well.” He smiled and closed his lips against another word.

“Come on, Pierce, let’s talk” Captain Loren turned and led Pierce out of the stockade and closed the door.

§