The Spear of Destiny
Laura Resnick
Laura Resnick is the author of dozens of short stories, as well as such fantasy novels as Disappearing Nightly, In Legend Born, The Destroyer Goddess, and The White Dragon, which made the Year’s Best lists of Publishers Weekly and Voya. You can find her on the Web at www.LauraResnick.com.
The first time he saw the Holy Lance, he knew his life and his destiny would be irrevocably entwined with its power. Beneath his fervent gaze, the somber sheen of its ancient blade gleamed with the promise of greatness. The fine edges of the spearhead, dulled by time, still held the threat of great and terrible deeds yet to come. The weapon’s hidden power sang to him, a melody of destiny that only he could hear.
“I knew with immediacy that this was an important moment in my life,” he would later say.
According to his own account of that day in 1909, young Adolph Hitler stood there quietly gazing at the spear for a long time, oblivious to his surroundings.
And they were impressive surroundings by any measure. The infamous spear lived in the Hofburg Museum, the magnificent former Imperial Palace of Vienna, the city at the heart of the Hapsburgs’ crumbling empire. The epoch of greatness still lingered uneasily over the splendid capital, but the fading glow of glory would be doused brutally within a few short years. The Great War would bring the old world to its knees, defeated, humiliated, and impoverished. New graveyards would be created across the Continent to bury a generation of young men, and the sea of tomb-stones would mark the passing of their era as well as their lives. The agonized floundering that would follow, the years of hunger and anger, would set the stage for Hitler to create his own new world and establish the Thousand Year Reich—a kingdom ruled by madmen, built on slave labor, governed by fear, and devoted to mass murder.
On that day in 1909, though, as a starving and sadly untalented artist in his twenties gazed in rapture at the Holy Lance, the tumultuous future was unknown to anyone—presumably even to him.
Prior to coming upon the spear, Hitler had looked only briefly at the jewels, gems, and rich heirlooms of the Hapsburg dynasty that which were on display in the Hofburg. He did, however, take some interest in an agate bowl with an obscure pattern that was believed to spell out “Christ.” The bowl was revered by some as the Holy Grail, the receptacle into which the blood of the Savior had flowed as he—sorry, He—hung from the Cross. Others believed it was the bowl from which the Son of God had drunk during the Last Supper.
In fact, it was neither. You can trust me on this.
The bowl was obtained—“pilfered” might be a more accurate word—in Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade. Over the centuries, it eventually made its way into the greedy hands of the Hapsburgs, rulers of a vast empire for over four hundred years. And it was no more genuine than the piece of the “True Cross” that Hitler saw that day at the museum, or a nearby bejeweled artifact identified as a nail from the Cross. Contrary to the claim of the curators, the tablecloth in the museum wasn’t from the Last Supper, either. There was no tablecloth at the Last Supper.
Then again, very little of what’s said about the Last Supper is accurate anyhow.
Heinrich Himmler, whom Hitler had yet to meet, would later become obsessed with such tawdry Crusader souvenirs, convinced that he could achieve ultimate power and resurrection through some combination of talismans, incantations, architecture, and geography. In other words, he was demented. Or at least very gullible.
But Hitler, having seen and dismissed these artifacts at the museum that day, then came upon the spear and understood that this Hofburg artifact was different from all the others. This one had power. This one was the real thing.
This object was dangerous and offered infinite possibilities—or infinite despair, depending on your point of view.
The weapon was known by many names: the Spear of Longinus, the Lance of St. Maurice, the Holy Lance, and—perhaps most fittingly—the Spear of Destiny. Its legend was long and violent. Which perhaps made its relatively humble appearance all the more surprising to the young Austrian gazing at it that day, at the dawn of a new and terrible age.
The blade was about twenty inches long and three inches wide. It was mostly made of iron, though it contained elements of other metals. It was dark gray in color with a gold sheath around its central section. At the lower end of the long blade, two winglike smaller blades were fitted to it by a combination of forging, leather, and silver wire.
There was a small iron nail in the recess of the blade, partly screened by the golden sheath. On the plain wooden shaft, which was nowhere near as old as the blade itself, was an inscription: Lancea et clavus Domini—Lance and nail of the Lord.
The nail, like the silver wire and the gold sheath, was added to the spear over the centuries, after the events on Golgotha had made it famous beyond the land of its origin.
Constantine the Great, who converted the Roman Empire to Christianity and thus turned a Middle Eastern cult into a dominant world religion, added the nail to the spear more than three hundred years after the Crucifixion. He got the nail from his mother, Helena, a narcissistic fanatic who went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem from which the city has yet to recover. She wasn’t the very first collector of Christian relics, but she was one of the most avid. Also one of the most credulous.
A mere thousand years later, Charles IV had the gold sheath added, as well as a new shaft and the Latin inscription. The appearance of the spear had remained largely unchanged since then. Though still far from elaborate, it certainly looked more impressive now, with these added flourishes, than it did in the days when Pontius Pilate governed Jerusalem and Herod Antipas was a puppet of Rome. Back then, it was just an ancient, workmanlike spear in the hands of an ordinary Roman centurion. Its history was rich with local legend, but it was nothing much to look at in those days.
Hitler wouldn’t have known all this as he stood gazing at it in fascination in the Hofburg Museum, of course. But I have followed the spear all my life and, having lived long, know more about it than anyone. Perhaps all that will ever be known.
Hitler, however, knew enough. He knew the legend of the spear, and he sensed what it could offer him.
From that day forward, he became determined to possess it. And once he did possess it, I knew that only one thing could ensure his final defeat: Someone had to get it back.
 
“A museum artifact?” Major Miller of the United States Seventh Army looked like he might be tempted to laugh at me if he weren’t so exhausted. “You’re kidding, right?”
In late April 1945, less than a year after the massive invasion at Normandy and only a few months since meeting Hitler’s winter counteroffensive in the deadly cold of the Ardennes Forest, Allied forces were rolling across Germany. The daily death toll remained high on both sides of the conflict as Reich forces fought fiercely to protect the Fatherland from the invaders. From his lair in Berlin, Hitler was sending children into battle for the greater glory of Germany, even as his empire crumbled and burned around him. The concentration camp of Buchenwald had been liberated on April 11, Bergen-Belsen on April 15, but Dachau would continue the torture, starvation, and execution of its prisoners until the U.S. Third Army arrived there on April 29. Many of the young soldiers would never quite recover from what they would see when they entered Dachau to free its skeletal inmates and uncover its mass graves of mutilated corpses. Decades later, as elderly war veterans and experienced men, they would still weep if they talked about it.
War, death, hunger, the murder of innocents, the slaughter of children, the waste, the misery . . . This was the same world I had been born into, it was just bigger and more efficient at destruction now. This was the world I had wanted to change.
And I suppose I still hoped to change it. Or at least, after all these years, I suppose I felt compelled to try again. Because, now that the Americans had reached Nuremberg, I was determined to get into the war-torn city, even before the fighting was over.
I had come to the Seventh Army as an intelligence liaison from the SPD, the resistance movement of the German Social Democrats. I wasn’t a Social Democrat—I’ve been apolitical for much longer than the modern parties have been in existence—and I wasn’t even pretending to be German, though it was one of the languages in which I was fluent. But from 1939 onward, some of the best intelligence from inside Germany had come via the exiled SPD, which maintained close ties with underground movements there. It was through the SPD that I had been able to get the information that I knew was essential for destroying Hitler with finality: the location of the Spear of Destiny.
“Not just a museum artifact,” I said to Major Miller. “The artifact. The one Hitler values above everything else he’s looted from all across Europe.”
“And you want me to assign you to the next company going into Nuremberg and instruct them to help you retrieve Hitler’s favorite artifact.”
“I can be very useful in Nuremberg,” I said, seeing he was prepared to dismiss me on the spot.
Miller’s gaze flicked over me doubtfully. I was sturdy but small by the standards of the day. The recent years spent in Europe, working with anti-Nazi movements, had brought enough pallor to my swarthy skin to make me look sallow. I was clean-shaven with short dark hair and dark eyes. I was the sort of fellow most people would pass in the street without noticing. This had not always been the case, but I had long since made a deliberate choice to cultivate anonymity.
“I speak fluent German,” I told Miller. “I know Nuremberg, and I’ve got current intelligence. And I know who among the civilian population can be helpful to your forces. You’ll need their assistance to secure the city quickly, since your orders are to push onward and cross the Danube.”
The tired gaze focused on me sharply as the major snapped, “How do you know that?”
“Knowing things I’m not supposed to know is my job,” I pointed out.
“Hmph.” The major took a breath and considered my request. I knew that President Roosevelt had died a week ago, a loss that added to the stresses of war for the Americans. I was lucky that Miller was taking the time to listen to me at all. “Look, I realize you’re highly recommended,” he said at last, “but Nuremberg is still a combat zone. It’s too dangerous to send you in there just to get Hitler’s goat by confiscating this museum piece, and I can’t spare a combat unit for a treasure hunt.”
I had gotten my recent introduction to Miller from a colonel in the Third Army, which, under General Patton’s command, had advanced across France so fast the previous year that their supplies had to be delivered to them by plane to keep up with their pace.
“I can handle myself in a combat zone, Major. I won’t panic or do something stupid that needlessly endangers your soldiers,” I assured him, sensing that this, too, was a concern. He seemed like a solid officer, one who cared about his men. “And I’m not talking about ‘getting Hitler’s goat.’ Losing possession of this artifact won’t annoy Hitler, it will destroy him.”
“An artifact?” Miller said doubtfully. “A museum piece?”
“Yes.”
“And it’s called the Spear . . .”
“The Spear of Destiny,” I said. “If we get our hands on it, Hitler won’t be able to go on. He’ll crumble.”
“It’s that important to him?”
“Yes,” I said with certainty.
“So what the hell is this thing?”
“How well do you know your Bible?” I asked.
“Pardon?”
“The story of the Crucifixion,” I specified.
“About as well as anyone raised right, I suppose.” He shrugged and added, “But not well enough to know what this spear thing is, or why Hitler cares about it.”
I began explaining. “The Gospel of John tells us that, as Jesus Christ hung upon the Cross at Golgotha, the Roman soldiers prepared to break his legs.”
“I don’t remember that part.” Miller frowned. “What’s the point of breaking the legs of someone already in the middle of his execution?”
“The victim would die more quickly that way.”
“So it was merciful?” Miller said doubtfully.
“In this case, just expedient. Christ was crucified in ancient Judea. Crucifixion was considered an especially humiliating form of execution. It was reserved for slaves and non-Romans—people whom Roman law treated as irrelevant. And this was happening during Passover, a time of big crowds and high emotion in Jerusalem. Christ was a popular figure with certain factions, just as he was unpopular with certain others. All things considered, Pontius Pilate decided it would be prudent to have the body removed from public view before the Sabbath, so he wanted to be sure the condemned would be dead by then.” I added, “It could take a few days to die on a cross, you see.”
“Yes, that part I do remember from Sunday school,” Miller said with a lift of his brow.
“Well, there was a Roman centurion named Longinus who had acquired a local souvenir while drinking and plundering in the hill country beyond Jerusalem. It was a spear. Humble looking, even by the standards of the day. But the Jewish priests from whom he had taken it called it the Spear of David, and it had certain legends attached to it.”
“Such as?”
“They said the spearhead was forged by the hand of God and that it was the weapon with which King David had defeated the Jebusites and established his kingdom on the hill.”
“What hill?”
“Er, Jerusalem.”
“Oh, right.”
“Not much Old Testament taught at your Sunday school?” I guessed.
“It was a long time ago . . . er . . .” He glanced down at the documents on his desk, searching for my name.
“Josephson,” I supplied.
“Right. Sorry.” He rubbed his red-rimmed eyes. “Go on.”
“The Jewish masses of Herod’s time had mostly forgotten the spear, which was already very ancient in those days. But Longinus had picked up some interesting tales from its guardians, while robbing them.”
I remembered him talking about it. Bragging about looting an obscure temple in the hills and terrorizing the elderly priests there. Even through the haze of mind-searing pain, I heard him. And the bewildering events that followed ensured that I never forgot what he said that day.
“The spear was full of power, Longinus claimed. The power of life and death. The power of eternity. It was rich with magic and would reward one who understood its power and cherished it properly.”
“This war is full of black marketeers who’d sure like to meet Longinus,” said Miller.
“No doubt.” I continued, “Anyhow, one version of what happened next is that Longinus felt compassion and wanted to spare Christ further pain—such as having his legs broken—so he killed him quickly with the spear.”
Legend, religion, and history have one key thing in common, which is that they get everything wrong. Longinus was a brutal bastard who wouldn’t have felt compassion for his own dying mother or wailing infant offspring, never mind for a Jewish convict.
“Another version says that the Roman soldiers thought Christ looked dead already, so they might not need to go to the trouble of breaking his legs. And Longinus pierced Christ’s side with the spear to see if the prisoner was indeed dead. You know—the ‘let’s poke him and see what happens’ school of thought.”
“So which version do you believe?” asked Miller.
“Neither. Longinus wanted to show off his new toy,” I said. “ ‘Haven’t you heard, boys?’ he said to his fellow soldiers, smirking and amused. ‘They’re saying this Jew is the Messiah. You can’t kill him by breaking his legs! He’s too powerful.’ This drew laughter from the soldiers, of course, as they glanced up at the nearly dead prisoner. Then Longinus asserted that his newly acquired magic spear, however, could kill anyone—even the King of the Jews. And he thrust it between Christ’s ribs.”
“Oh, wait, this rings a bell,” said Miller, looking a little less tired now that his interest was engaged. “Sunday school is gradually coming back to me, Josephson. Also some art museum that my wife dragged me to, back when we were dating.”
“Portraits of Christ, on the Cross and with a bleeding wound on his torso,” I guessed.
“Yeah, exactly. And a Bible verse . . .”
“ ‘One of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith there came out blood and water.’ John, chapter nineteen, verse thirty-four,” I said.
Like the rest of the Gospel of John, it was written long after John—who was illiterate—was dead. But the verse had the rare virtue of being accurate.
“Blood and water?” Miller said.
I shrugged. “The spearhead may have pierced a lung, where fluid had been gathering while Christ hung on the Cross, suffocating slowly. Or it may have pierced the fluid-filled membrane that surrounds the heart.”
All I remembered was the intense, searing pain as the blade, forged by God and once carried into battle by King David, entered my flesh, pierced my heart, and changed me forever. I did not examine the biological details of my effluvia, given the circumstances.
“So the blood of Christ got on this blade?” Miller asked, immediately grasping the essential feature of the spear’s legend in the Christian world.
“Correct. And ever since then, the spear has been imbued with legend, power, and mystique. It has been revered, treasured, sought after, fought over, and hoarded.”
“Yeah, given the way Catholics carry on about the body parts of medieval saints, I suppose an object with the actual blood of Christ on it would really be the brass ring.” Miller added, “Er, no offense intended. If you’re Catholic, I mean.”
“I’m not,” I said.
The Christian faith began spinning out of my control almost the instant I was taken down from the Cross, unconscious, and I soon thereafter stunned my followers by not being dead.
The power of life and death, Longinus had said. The power of eternity.
I had been within moments of death when he stabbed me. Believe me, when you come that close to death, you know it. There is no mistaking the feeling of your soul departing your body.
And then I was pulled back into my flesh with sudden, startling, brutal force by the blade of destiny piercing my heart. As hot as ice, as cold as fire . . . No, even now, aeons later, I still have no words to describe the sensation accurately. Not in any of the languages I have learned over the centuries that I’ve spent wandering the world in search of my purpose, trying to understand God’s plan.
I was made immortal by the grace of my wound, a remnant of ancient magic from the era before Solomon built the First Temple on Mount Moriah. Methuselah lived more than nine hundred years; I have lived more than twice that long.
Perhaps the spear was a product of Hebrew sorcery that was later lost in the mists of time. Forgotten when the tribes of Israel were scattered and the First Temple was destroyed? Abandoned during the Babylonian exile? Forbidden by kings who feared the power of the priests?
Or perhaps the spear was indeed forged by God. But if that’s so, then throughout the two thousand years that I have carried the wound it made, the Lord God has been inexplicably silent. His face has remained turned away from me for so long that I have finally turned mine away from Him, too. Especially upon seeing, century after century, the horrific deeds that people commit in my name. Most of the time, I wish I had never been born, let alone made immortal.
And sometimes, I blame myself for the way things are. In the beginning, I turned away from everyone—man, God, even myself. Shattered on the anvil of crucifixion and reborn in the icy fire of the spear’s penetrating kiss, I went mad, and I stayed that way for many years. I disappeared from Jerusalem shortly after being taken down from the Cross and regaining consciousness. I wandered in the wilderness for a generation, foraging for food and stealing from shepherds. I had visions, but I don’t remember them. I felt pain, but that seemed normal to me. I was unbearably lonely—and that has never changed.
And when sanity returned at last, and I was able to make my way home . . . my home no longer existed. My family, my teachers, and my students were all dead. The people who called themselves followers of my teachings believed things that appalled and astonished me. Conditions had become much worse in Judea since my disappearance, and people were turning to every wrong answer they could find: violence, zealotry, treachery. When I tried to teach again, I was ignored at best; oftentimes, people threw rocks and rotting food, laughing at me and ridiculing my words.
I realized, in the end, how ordinary I truly was. How unimportant.
The important thing, I eventually understood, was the spear. Not because my blood was on it, but because of its ancient power.
The power of life and death. The power of eternity.
And so I hunted for it, and have followed it ever since, always hoping—often without success—to keep it out of the wrong hands. Always trying to mitigate its influence on the world.
I have never wanted to possess it myself. I have never wanted worldly power, not the kind that the spear promises to those who understand it, who hear its silent song. In fact, from the moment it entered my body, I could not even bear to be around it. The violent intentions that men have brought to it for three thousand years permeate the spear. It drips with the stench of their craving for power, for glory—and for the immortality which, mercifully, no one has yet learned to use the spear to gain.
Only I know that secret.
Ever since Longinus drenched the blade in my blood, no one has tried to use it again to kill. Since that day, its blade has been considered too sacred to use as an actual weapon, though it has been carried into battle many times. And this, I have come to believe, is my true purpose in the world. This is why the blade was destined to be used on me: to ensure that it would never again be used on anyone else. To protect the world from that.
Imagine Hitler becoming immortal and perhaps you can see my point.
“The blood of Christ . . .” Major Miller mused now, in his temporary command post in southern Germany, as the biggest war in world history raged toward its climax. “So how did Hitler hear about this thing? How did he get his hands on it? And why does the most infamous anti-Semite in the world want a Jewish artifact?”
“Ever since it pierced the flesh of Christ,” I said, “the spear has been a Christian artifact. And you may have noticed how conveniently most Christians have ignored the fact, throughout the history of Christianity, that Jesus was a Jew. Besides, are you suggesting that what we know of Hitler’s thinking is consistent in any other way?”
“Ah. You have a point,” he said. “But, Josephson, it’s a long way from ancient Judea to modern Nuremberg.”
You have no idea, I thought.
“The spear has been a focus of obsession almost since Christ was taken down from the Cross,” I said. “The Emperor Constantine, who converted to Christianity in the fourth century, is said to have used the spear’s power to increase his own power. Later, when it came into possession of the Merovingians—”
“Who?”
“French kings in the Dark Ages.”
“Oh.”
“After acquiring the spear, their obscure kingdom grew into an empire that endured for two centuries, until they lost the spear to rivals, who acquired power along with the weapon. Charlemagne—Charles the Great—inherited the spear from his father, along with a kingdom that covered Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and part of western Germany.”
“Not bad for a ruler without radio, air power, or trains,” said Miller.
“And upon taking the throne, he immediately began expanding his territory. By the year eight hundred, his empire extended from central Italy in the south to Denmark in the north, and from the Atlantic Ocean on his western frontier to eastern Germany. As Holy Roman Emperor, he attributed his power—”
“To the Spear of Destiny,” Miller guessed.
I nodded. “He kept it with him night and day, even sleeping with it.”
“How did Mrs. Charlemagne feel about that?”
“He lived and reigned until he dropped the spear one day. Everyone, including Charlemagne himself, thought this was an ill omen, that his letting go of it—quite by accident, mind you—meant its power would now forsake him. And soon thereafter, he died.”
“Yeah, but—”
I continued, “The next ruler associated closely with the spear was Frederick Barbarossa, a German king who became Holy Roman Emperor in 1155, and whom Hitler idolizes.”
“Barbarossa . . . as in Operation Barbarossa, Hitler’s invasion of Russia in 1941?” Miller said in surprise.
“Yes. Hitler named the operation after Frederick.”
“Okay, I think I’m starting to see the connection between Golgotha and Nuremberg,” Miller conceded. “So let me guess what happened next: Barbarossa died when he lost control of the spear?”
“He dropped the spear while crossing a river, on his way to the Third Crusade in 1190. Moments later, he drowned in that same river.”
“And so on and so forth,” Miller said.
“Yes. Even Napoleon tried desperately to get his hands on the spear, believing in its power. By then, however, the Hapsburgs had it, and they weren’t about to relinquish it.”
“The Hapsburgs? Whose capital was in Vienna?” When I nodded, Miller continued, “And so Hitler, born and raised in Austria, knew about this thing?”
“He was bound to, given the company he kept: the Thule Society, people interested in magic, the occult, ancient religions, esoteric secrets. He first saw the spear in his twenties at the Hofburg Museum, where it had been resting for a number of years. By his own account, he was instantly transfixed by it, convinced that his fate depended on possessing it.”
“How did it wind up in a museum?”
“The Hapsburgs still knew it was valuable, but over the centuries, their emperors had lost the ability to hear its song.”
“Its what?”
“Er, they forgot what it was for. Or, let’s say, they no longer believed the legends associated with it.” I added, “And then, of course, their dynasty fell.”
“Hold on a minute, Josephson. You’re not saying you believe in the spear’s power?”
“I’m telling you what Hitler believes in,” I said. “With all his heart and soul. After he ‘annexed’ Austria to Germany in 1938, do you know what he did?”
“Had all the Austrian Jews killed?” Miller said grimly.
“He had the spear removed from the Hofburg in Vienna and brought to Nuremberg, the spiritual center of the Nazi movement.”
“A museum piece,” Miller said shaking his head. “Of all the things to be obsessed with when you’re taking over another country. . . .”
“And yet his belief in the spear’s power to turn his dreams into empire was soon proven,” I said. “A year later he conquered Poland, and he continued rolling across Europe, devouring nation after nation.”
Miller shook his head. “But he didn’t conquer Britain, no matter how hard he tried. Stalingrad was a disaster for the Germans, not just the Russians. And now the Allies have invaded Germany and pinned down Hitler in his bunker in Berlin.”
“As long as he has control of the spear,” I said, “Hitler knows that the current situation is just a set-back. Do you have any idea how many attempts to assassinate him have failed? He attributes his survival to the spear.” So did I. “He’s convinced he cannot be killed, cannot be beaten, and cannot lose. Because the spear’s power protects him from ultimate defeat.”
“He can believe that as fervently as he wants,” Miller said, “but it’s only a matter of time before the war ends.”
“This isn’t the first time I’ve heard those words, Major. The question is: How much time?” Seeing that he dismissed the legend of that spear as just legend, I shifted my argument. “Hitler will not give up while he still possesses the spear. And as long as he believes in his own invincibility, the war will drag on. How many more people will die because of that? How many more American soldiers will never return home?”
I could see Miller’s interest sharpen, and he looked alert, fatigue melting away as he considered the core of my argument. “You’re saying that if we get the spear, Hitler will surrender?”
“Yes,” I said firmly.
Actually, I felt sure Hitler would die soon after losing control of the spear. By now, he had taken too much from it not to lose all—including his life—when it fell from his grasp. And then someone less insane in the Third Reich’s hierarchy would assume command and surrender to the Allies. But I didn’t see much point in trying to convince Miller how closely tied to the spear Hitler’s life was by now. The important thing, I was sure Miller would agree, was that Germany would surrender when the Führer died.
Miller stared at me for a long moment, weighing the risks against the potential gain. On the one hand, there was the possibility that I was right, that Hitler—whose mental instability was not unknown to the Allies in 1945—would surrender on the basis of having lost a Christian artifact that Miller had never even heard of before today. And on the other hand was the possibility that soldiers in Miller’s command would die trying to help me secure a museum piece whose loss the unpredictable Hitler would shriek about for a few hours, but then shrug off—if he even learned of it while communications within the war-torn Reich continued breaking down.
“We’ll be in control of Nuremberg soon,” Miller pointed out. “If the spear’s there, then as soon as the Germans lose the city—”
“No.” I shook my head. “The lance is safely hidden. It could remain hidden for years. Hitler must lose possession of the spear itself, not just the city it’s hidden in.”
“Do you know where the spear is?” Miller asked.
“I know where it was. A church. Hitler had it moved after the air raids began. To protect it. I know they built a large underground vault for it, but that’s all I know so far.”
“So we’re not talking about a few hours to find it?”
“No,” I admitted. “At least a few days. Perhaps more than a week. We’ll have to search, and I’ll have to gather intelligence. But I have sources and contacts. Even in Nazi Germany, they couldn’t build an underground vault in a crowded city without anyone knowing. I will find it, Major,” I said with certainty. “If you send me into Nuremberg and give me the support I need, I will find the Spear of Destiny and turn it over to Allied forces. And Hitler will fall.”
“Because of a goddamn Holy Land souvenir?” Miller muttered.
“I’m willing to speak to your commanding officer,” I said, “and tell him what I’ve told you. Answer any questions he may have.”
“He’s not here. And if he were, he’d tell me I must be suffering from sleep deprivation to take this seriously.”
“Then I guess the only remaining question is, how seriously do you think Hitler takes this?”
Miller stared at me for another long moment, then sighed. “Okay, Josephson, request granted. I’ll sign the orders. You’ll leave with the next company moving out. In an hour. Be ready. They won’t wait for you.” He added, “And I hope to God you know what you’re talking about.”
 
Following a lead from sources inside the city, we found a tunnel in the medieval center of Nuremberg, partly exposed by bombing. At the end of the underground tunnel was a huge, thick, steel door that took us quite some time—and more than a little cursing from the Americans—to get through. Beyond the door was a subterranean vault containing the relics stolen from the Hofburg, including the lance which had pierced my heart almost two thousand years earlier.
At 2:10 p.m. on April 30, 1945, I turned the Spear of Destiny over to the U.S. Seventh Army.
Less than two hours later, inside his bunker in Berlin, Hitler committed suicide.
On May 7, a week after Hitler’s death, Germany surrendered, ending the most devastating war in the long and bloody history of Europe’s Christian nations.
And, burdened my whole life with the legend that I was born to save mankind, I thus finally found some peace of my own.
 
Miller was puzzled by the speed of Hitler’s fatal reaction to my finding the lance hidden deep beneath the bombed-out streets of rubble-strewn Nuremberg. Surely, the American major later said to me, the embattled Führer couldn’t have received word from occupied Nuremberg so quickly about the spear’s confiscation?
I shrugged and never tried to explain. Hitler hadn’t needed anyone to tell him he had lost control of the Spear of Destiny. He had always heard its seductive song, so he certainly heard its sudden silence; knowing the legend so well, he knew what this meant. And so the most prolific killer in history took one last life—his own. (And also, reports said, the life of his long-time mistress, Eva Braun.)
General Patton subsequently took possession of the spear. I hadn’t gone to so much trouble to retrieve it just to see it fall into the hands of yet another power-hungry soldier. So I petitioned General Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander and a reputedly sensible man, to order that the Christian relics looted from the Hofburg by the Nazis be returned to the museum. All the relics.
Patton died in December 1945, after reluctantly complying with orders to release the spear. So he, too, suffered the fate of those who sensed its power and seized it only to one day lose their grip on it.
Considering how much it had cost mankind, I thought about destroying the spear, but even I hesitate to obliterate something that may well have been forged by the hand of God. So a museum seemed the safest place for it. And, in the quiet, anonymous life I have led since the war, I pray daily that the Spear of Destiny forever remains where it is.
So far, I have not been disappointed. The spear is still at the Hofburg Museum in Vienna, and you can visit it there, if you choose. I, however, prefer to stay as far away from it as possible.