Беар Гриллс: The Hunt [=The Devil's Sanctuary]

‘Hitler lent an apparently sympathetic ear, and told the man it would be dealt with the very next day. The man returned to his family with the good news: the Führer himself would intercede. The next morning, the Gestapo came. They arrested him, took him into these tunnels and tortured him, then sent him to the concentration camps.

‘Just one example.’ Andrea paused. ‘One of thousands.’

The tour of the labyrinthine tunnel complex had occupied most of that morning, especially as they were proceeding at Uncle Joe’s pace. In the afternoon, Jaeger had gone for a run on one of the spectacular walking trails that criss-crossed the mountains, leaving Uncle Joe to his afternoon nap.

He had come here expecting to encounter an atmosphere of oppression and darkness, but what he had discovered was quite the opposite. The breathtaking beauty of the dramatic peaks and valleys had actually lifted his spirits.

And he certainly needed that right now.

The past few months had been anything but easy.

Four years ago, his wife, Ruth, and eight-year-old son Luke had been kidnapped. Jaeger had scoured the earth in his effort to find their abductors. The trail had led him to the son of a former Nazi general, one who had risen to serve in the highest echelons of America’s post-war intelligence apparatus. He’d been recruited to help combat the rise of Soviet Russia, the Germans being the only people who had any experience of going to war against the ‘Reds’.

That Nazi general was long dead, but his son, Hank Kammler, had good reasons to hate Jaeger, ones reaching deep into a shared family past. Kammler had kidnapped Jaeger’s wife and son as a way to exact revenge, and found the means to torture Jaeger remotely with their disappearance, emailing him videos of Ruth and Luke in captivity; bound, kneeling and pleading for help. Each taunting message had ended with the chilling words: Wir sind die Zukunft – ‘We are the future’.

Following a global hunt, Jaeger had rescued his family, but not before Kammler had infected them with a super-virus with which he had intended to wipe out most of humankind in order to forge a brave new world: a Fourth Reich. The chosen few had been inoculated so that they would survive what he’d named the Gottvirus .

At the eleventh hour, Jaeger and his team had foiled Kammler, and the world’s military and law-enforcement agencies had gone after him big-time. A scorched body – later confirmed as having Kammler’s DNA – had been retrieved from his subterranean command bunker. It appeared he had ‘done a Hitler’ and committed suicide, possibly by setting himself on fire.

But that had done little to relieve Jaeger’s suffering. While Luke had made a remarkable recovery, Ruth had not. She’d languished in the darkness that had gripped her mind, seemingly hopelessly mired within it.

Eventually Jaeger had checked her into a London clinic that specialised in dealing with the victims of trauma. But they were months into her treatment now and going nowhere fast. If anything, Ruth’s mood swings, her unpredictability and her violence – she was prone to lashing out – were worsening.

No doubt about it, Jaeger had needed this break big time.

The trauma that Jaeger’s wife had endured had been horrific. She had been subjected to three years of unspeakable psychological and physical torment at Kammler’s hands, and had come back a shadow of her former self.

She was still undergoing various tests, but no one doubted that she had PTSD – post-traumatic stress disorder, a debilitating psychological illness caused by an overburden of horror. While she had recovered physically, the mental scars went far deeper.

Jaeger had endeavoured to be patient, sympathetic and upbeat; to put up with the rage and the outbursts of moody violence.

But in truth it had taken its toll.

He was just glad that Luke and their newly adopted son, Simon, were at a state-run boarding school in the countryside, and so shielded from their mother’s more extreme outbursts.

Simon Chucks Bello, an orphan from the East African slums, had played a key role in defeating Kammler and neutralising his Gottvirus . Luke had always wanted a brother, and as Simon had no parents, the Jaeger family had decided to adopt him.

But right now, Ruth needed space in which to heal and Jaeger had been in desperate need of a break – hence his spur-of-the-moment visit to the Berghof.

As he sat there on the hotel patio, he let the serenity of the place and its breathtaking beauty seep into him. It was the last thing he had ever expected: to find solace where Hitler had orchestrated so much evil.

Another thought struck him as he ran his eye over the dramatic folds of the forested hills. How could anyone have looked out over all of this – over the stunning Untersberg Mountains – and planned the mass murder of so many?

It was inconceivable.

Yet it had happened.

His mind was drawn back to the present by a polite cough. He turned to find Andrea with the dinner menu.

‘No sign of your uncle yet?’ she queried. ‘He will be joining you? If not, he can take dinner in his room. He must be tired after the tunnels. Such a wonderful man. How old is he, if you don’t mind me asking?’

‘Ninety-five… going on twenty-one,’ Jaeger quipped. ‘Don’t worry, he’ll make dinner. I’ve just ordered us beer with schnapps chasers. Uncle Joe wouldn’t miss it for the world.’

Andrea smiled. ‘You have heard about this new discovery? It is all over the news. An Austrian film-maker has just uncovered an entirely unknown Nazi tunnel system not so very far away.’

‘Really? They tunnelled everywhere, didn’t they?’

‘So it seems. But what has made the headlines is what may be hidden there. Apparently this was a top-secret Nazi weapons facility. It is where they concealed the most advanced war machines.’

Andrea reached for a newspaper, handing it to Jaeger. He ran his gaze over the newsprint. ‘Secret Nazi discoveries,’ he mused. ‘Always make for good headlines.’

Andrea smiled. ‘Indeed.’

It was then that a familiar name caught his eye: SS-Oberstgruppenführer Hans Kammler.

‘I’m curious,’ he remarked. ‘What does it say there, about General Kammler?’

Andrea read aloud, translating as she went: ‘Found: Hitler’s secret plant. Vast underground complex where Nazis worked on top-secret weapons systems… The entire seventy-five-acre complex was the brainchild of SS General Hans Kammler, who recruited scientists to work on a secret end-of-war weapons programme… Austrian film-maker Andreas Sulzer said the site is “most likely the biggest secret weapons facility of the Third Reich”. Kammler, who drew up the plans for the crematoriums and gas chambers at Auschwitz, was also in charge of Hitler’s V-weapons programmes. Experts say the Nazis may have been developing a variant of the V-2, with a weapon of mass destruction as its warhead.’

Jaeger shook his head. ‘Crazy stuff. I wonder how much truth there is to it.’

‘Well, it’s at St Georgen an der Gusen, which is not so far from here. Maybe two hours’ drive. Why not go see for yourself?’

Jaeger nodded pensively. He couldn’t deny that he was curious. The possibility that General Kammler had cooked up some last-ditch Nazi super-weapon, and that it had remained hidden until today, was intriguing.

‘I’ll talk it through with Uncle Joe.’ He spied a figure over Andrea’s shoulder. ‘Talk of the devil, here he is!’

Uncle Joe moved across the patio, a shock of white hair above beady eyes, the thin cane of a walking stick his only concession to age. If Jaeger reached ninety-five and had half Joe’s vitality and spirit, he’d be happy.