16

I guess I'll just try to communicate with gestures

You sit companionably with Zhu while he cleans his weapon. "Dr. Spillane," he says. "You wish to converse?"

"Do you know anything more about what the Nazis are doing up here?"

Zhu nods. "I know a little more than I told you at the airbase. There is no harm in me sharing that with you now."

He lays his gun down on the ground sheet in front of him, puts his hands together, and continues.

"What is happening here is part of a huge SS operation, global in scale," he says. "They call it Operation Lyngvi, after a mythical island in Norse legend. It seems the project was devised by Heinrich Himmler. They are pursuing, as I mentioned earlier, what they refer to as the Six Relics of Power. We do not know what these objects are, or what the Nazis hope to do with them if they get them; everything we know we've had to piece together from random chatter passing though the German Embassy in Nanjing, and there are many gaps in our knowledge. But if you have specific questions, I may be able to enlighten you."