Jack Du Brul - Pandora's curse

Another cavern, about half the size of the central one, had been a dormitory and was filled with rows of bunk beds stacked four high. Mercer confirmed the slave laborers had used it when he found a Star of David painstakingly carved into the underside of one of the beds. There were enough bunks for five hundred people, double or even triple that if the workers were forced to sleep in shifts. Most were neatly made, the single blanket stretched taut. A few were rumpled and he could see the outline of the last person to sleep there. That was all that remained of the man or woman. An impression.

It was all that remained of any of them.

Fists clenched, he backed out of the dormitory, refusing to turn away until he returned to the main cavern.

Buildings for administration, planning, and housing of the Nazi overseers had been erected in the central chamber. Walking through them was like stepping into a museum. Uniforms hung neatly in closets, dishes were stacked in cupboards, and a deck of cards had been left on a table as if the players had just stepped away for a moment.

“Where are the bodies?” Marty Bishop asked when they left the Germans’ dorm.

“I’m not sure.” Mercer had been scanning everything with the Geiger counter and had yet to find any trace of the Pandora radiation.

“Hey, Mercer.” Erwin Puhl was at the water’s edge, standing between a storage dump of forty-four-gallon fuel drums and crates of other cargo.

As he approached, Mercer could see that Erwin had stripped a tarpaulin from a pile of boxes. When his light fell on the topmost, a golden reflection flashed back at him. Pandora boxes. He estimated there were at least thirty of them, and all were larger than the one they had found at the surface. These measured about five feet square and were three feet tall. He waved the counter over the neat stack, detecting nothing. The Germans had obviously learned how to properly seal the meteorite fragments.

There was a palpable amount of heat washing off the gilded crates. Meltwater dripped from the ceiling high above them, running off the pier and into the sea.

“Look at this.” Erwin indicated the top box, and Mercer climbed the pile.

This one did not have a lid and he could see that the interior was baffled with diminishing sized boxes like a Russian nesting doll, though all were made of sheets of pure gold.

“Any idea why they made them like this?” Erwin asked.

“Heat dissipation,” Mercer replied, jumping back to the ground. He felt along the edge of another box, where its internal structure would be attached to the outer shell, and found it was warmer there than on the flat sides. “They couldn’t make the boxes solid for cost and weight reasons, so they used as little gold as possible, designing them this way so the whole thing didn’t become too hot to handle.”

“Clever bastards,” Marty remarked sardonically.

A shrill scream pierced the air. Mercer led the two men as they raced across the chamber to where Hilda stood with Anika Klein. The chef’s face was pale and tears were running down her rounded cheeks. Anika stroked Hilda’s hair, trying to calm her.

“What happened?”

“In there.” Anika gestured to a small aperture in the towering rock wall that Mercer hadn’t noticed before.

Tensed as he ducked into the hole, Mercer held the Geiger counter at the ready. He moved through the cramped space, twisting his body as he scraped along the rough stone, the beam of his light showing nothing. The passage ended at a ledge overlooking another cave, the bottom of which was littered with tens of thousands of cans and a heavy scattering of bleached white bones.

Closing his eyes and taking a deep, calming breath, Mercer braced himself for a more careful examination. He studied the bones for a moment and fell back against the wall, a wave of relief momentarily robbing him of energy. He backed out of the passage to rejoin the others.

“It’s a garbage dump. Hilda saw bones in there and thought they were human. They’re not. They’re seal bones.”

“Seal?”

“To supplement the food the Germans brought here, the two survivors hunted seals that ventured into the cavern through the submarine tunnel.”

“That’s how they survived for ten years down here,” Ira said, wiping grease from his hands. “The provisions couldn’t have lasted from the war until 1953.”

“I bet they could,” Mercer countered. “With a thousand people working in here, they needed tons of stores. If the accident that killed everyone occurred right after a supply run there would have been more than enough canned goods to support two men for ten years. Especially if they killed an occasional seal.”

“That explains why the man at Camp Decade had such rotten teeth,” Anika said as Hilda composed herself once again. “Even with fresh meat, ten years without fruits and vegetables would cause scurvy.”

“But where is everybody?” Marty asked for the second time.

“Since I haven’t found any radiation,” Mercer answered, “I think the corpses have been moved to another chamber and sealed inside to protect the two men who survived the accident.”

“You think it was a radiation leak that killed them?”

“What else could it have been?” Mercer said. “They all died at the same time. Otherwise, they would have escaped on the sub. The man we found at Camp Decade and the one at the entrance must have been on the surface when the cave was dosed with radiation. They could have waited up there for the radiation to dissipate to a safe level before returning underground. Then they could have moved the bodies to a side chamber and buried them.”

“How is it they didn’t get killed by the residual radioactivity still in the bodies?” Anika asked. “The ones we found are still radioactive after sixty years.”

“I don’t know.”

“The Germans must have had protective clothing for themselves,” Erwin offered.

“Why didn’t the Navy officer use it when he opened the box when the C-97 flew over?”

No one had an answer to Ira’s question.

“Let’s get closer to the Pandora boxes, where it’s warmer, and discuss our options,” Mercer suggested. “I have a surprise and an idea.”

“I’ll meet you there in a second,” Ira said and went back to the repair shop.

Once they were settled, Mercer pulled a nearly full brandy bottle from his pack. “Surprise.”

“I couldn’t take my father’s videotapes and you brought booze?” Marty said angrily. “That’s not very fair.”

“I said essentials only.” Mercer took a pull. “I consider alcohol an essential. If you don’t want any, feel free to give up your share.”

“I didn’t say that,” Marty backpedaled. “So what’s your idea?”

A low rumbling sound prevented Mercer from replying, and from the side of the chamber, a bright glow appeared in the machine shop before being suddenly doused. “Damn!” Ira cursed. A moment later the light returned and stayed on.

“What did you do?” Mercer shouted as Ira appeared from the shop. Lasko’s grin went from ear to ear.

“Played a hunch,” Ira said. “I noticed the uniform shoulder tabs on the body up the tunnel were the brass cog wheels of the Kreigsmarine engineer corps. The guy had been the sub’s chief engineer. As a mechanic myself, I guessed that he spent the last ten years of his life making sure everything in this place was in perfect running condition. It’s what I would have done.”

“But in the fifty years since he died, wouldn’t everything rust? And wouldn’t the fuel go bad?” Erwin asked.

“In normal conditions this place would resemble a scrap heap but the low temperature means there’s virtually no humidity. Nothing rusts. Hell, the brass buttons on the uniforms are barely tarnished. As to the fuel, the Germans used diesel with a low cloud point for Arctic conditions. All I had to do was drain the water at the bottom of a can as a result of phase separation, strain out the sediment, and preheat it over a can of Sterno to put the paraffin back in the solution. I had to crank the generator like a bastard to flush the kerosene our German friend used as a rust inhibitor, but it should smooth out in a minute or two as it lubricates itself.”