Introduction.
Anciently, the Garnet Gemstone was thought to have strong curative powers. As an amulet, it was said to protect and preserve health and honour; cure the wearer of all disease, and guard him from all perils during the course of a journey. In Ancient Egypt, it was called, and believed to be the “Blood of Isis.”
However; there is one stone that is the absolute antithesis of all these beliefs surrounding the many benevolent myths and legends concerning this particular gemstone. The Garnet in question is a large, seventy-carat, blood-red stone that has become known as “The Red Horseman”... and it has fallen into disreputable hands once again.
The first intimation of this malignant gem came from the pages of an ancient volume discovered in 1936, in the icy wastelands of Siberia, in the area of the great 1908 Tunguska explosion. It was unknowingly retrieved by a young, female German archaeologist as a consequence of her deciphering the ancient script contained within the pages of the ancient volume.
The ancient volume told that the gem was said to have been mounted in the sword pommel of an unspeakably evil Entity who was called by name: “Baelar... Lord of The Underdark.” According to the ancient volume; the broken sword-hilt, complete with the Gemstone still mounted in its setting, and still clutched in the claw-like severed hand of the Dark Lord, himself; had been sealed by a sword-maker in a seamless block of metal inscribed with a monitory inscription which she had succeeded in deciphering. The inscription warned...
“Behold. Herein, is trammelled The Evil of all time.
Seek not its deliverance, for there is none.
Meddle not with this Abomination,
For it is The Destroyer of Worlds.”
The volume told, that, as the sword-maker had poured the last of the metal into the mould to encase this monstrosity; he had glimpsed, deep within the heart of the Garnet, the flare of a tiny, blood-red spark of light.
Resolved not to let this appalling artefact fall into Soviet hands; the young archaeologist had brought it back to Germany; having destroyed her translation notes to prevent the Nazi hierarchy... and Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler in particular, from ever discovering the secret of the metal block. Himmler, fascinated as he was, by mysticism, accepted that it was no more than an interesting Untermensch curiosity. He had not seen this type of metal before, and decided to have it analysed in order to establish if it might be useful as a weapons-grade material.
The block was dissected on the evening of Thursday, 31st August, 1939 in a Krupp’s machine-shop in Essen, Germany. As it was exposed by the cutting away of a section of the block; the Garnet flared again with a tiny blood-red spark of light deep within its heart.
At the very moment that the Garnet flared; the clock on the workshop wall in Essen struck eight o’clock. Five hundred kilometres away to the east, at 20.00 hrs precisely; the local audience was listening to Gleiwitzer Sender... a German long-wave radio transmitter seven kilometres from the Polish border of the German-Polish frontier in the Szobiszowice district of Gliwice, Upper Silesia, Poland. The popular music programme was suddenly interrupted, and excited German voices announced that the town of Gleiwitz had been invaded by Polish irregular formations marching towards the emitting station. Then the station broadcast went dead. When the broadcast resumed, Polish was being spoken.
German army intelligence... the Abwehr; together with the SS, had put into action the first stage of “Unternehmen Himmler”... Operation Himmler; the first of twenty-one orchestrated incidents along the Germano-Polish border intended to give the appearance of Polish aggression against Germany.
All along the Polish border, units of the German Wehrmacht were taking their final positions for the launch of “Fall Weiss”... “Case White”... the German strategic plan for the Invasion of Poland, which would be the catalyst that unleashed The Second World War. Thus, was the malignant influence of the terrible Abaddon Stone loosed upon humanity.
The gemstone was first named “Der Rote Reiter”…“The Red Horseman” by no less a personage than Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring himself; who was presented with this malignant gemstone by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler as yet one more trinket for Göring’s extensive collection. With the defeat of Nazi Germany, the gemstone had disappeared; and the young archaeologist; now recruited by the American Intelligence organisation, and a naturalised American citizen, with a new identity... Charlotte Mckenna; had eventually been posted back to Berlin. Whilst there; she decided that she must try to track down this gemstone to prevent it from inflicting its malignant influence any further. Wherever it went, it seemed to inflict mayhem and and invariably caused the death of anyone who attempted to turn its malevolent power to their advantage.
The trail led her to Hamburg, and then out to the Far East... firstly, to Hong Kong; and then, on to Korea... just as the Korean War broke out. A coincidence?... Or the Red Horseman’s malignant influence once again? Charlotte Mckenna’s adventures continued as she sought to track down this malignant gemstone and destroy it, before it unleashed yet one more series of catastrophies that could lead to the destruction of Mankind.
Being an accomplished linguist, Charlotte Mckenna was eventually deployed on a perilous espionage mission into the heart of the North Korean capital; P’yǒngyang . Whilst there, she also attempted to discover the fate of her lover, another Intelligence officer who had previously been sent into the enemy capital on another covert mission.
With the stone still unaccounted for, she focussed her energy on locating her lover. She eventually found him, but discovered that as a result of an automobile accident, he had no memory of her or of their previous life together.
Undeterred, she decided to bring him out of North Korea to the relative safety of the Embassy in Seoul, from where they would be flown out of the country back to the United States.
