David Gibbins - The Gods of Atlantis

Hoffman carefully calculated what he thought Himmler would want to hear, something he had become skilled at judging over the past few months around the Nazi inner circle in Berlin. ‘The atomic programme. The research at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics.’

Himmler’s eyes glinted. ‘Now that’s a weapon. But the programme was never close to actuality. Not enough uranium.’

Hoffman watched the little eyes dart around his face, then fix squarely on him. He was playing Himmler’s guessing game. ‘Poison gas?’

Himmler gave a high-pitched laugh, and slapped the table. ‘Good. The Spandau gas research facility. Sarin and Tabin nerve gas. But no. Those were Verzweiflungswaffen, weapons of despair. Lance Corporal Hitler had too many bad memories of the last war, when the gas our side released wafted back into our own trenches and blinded him. Anyway, gas is inefficient. You need lots of it, and lots of bombs and shells to disperse it.’

Hoffman stared at Himmler, his mind racing. He had heard other rumours. A few months ago, a former professor of his had invited him for dinner in Heidelberg. After too much schnapps, he had told Hoffman of his secret work for the Ahnenerbe, the Department of Cultural Heritage. He had said that the search for Aryan roots, for precursor civilizations – for Atlantis – was not all that it seemed. And it was not just the sordid business of collecting craniological measurements to support racist theory. There had been another purpose, equally sinister and top secret. They had scoured the world for ancient medicines, for ancient cures: among primitive peoples, in mummies, under polar ice, deep underwater. But, the man had drunkenly whispered, it was not the cure they wanted. They wanted the disease. Hoffman had not been the only one the man had spoken to after too much drink, and the Gestapo had got wind of his indiscretions. He had disappeared soon after into Himmler’s House of Horrors. Hoffman pursed his lips and shook his head. It was time to allow Himmler his flourish. ‘Nothing, mein Fuhrer. I can’t think.’

Himmler slapped the table, then drew himself forward on his elbows, his face gleaming. ‘Well, I will let you in on a secret.’ He opened his arms expansively. ‘What went on in this room, here in the Zoo flak tower?’

Hoffman looked straight at him. ‘It was a storage vault for the treasures of the Berlin museums, placed here in 1942 when the English terror-bombing began.’ He glanced at the crate to Himmler’s left, then instantly regretted it. Himmler’s eye had followed his. The man saw everything. Himmler reached over and put his hand on the crate inches from the order book Hoffman had used as a diary. He rubbed a smear of dust, saw the dirt on his hand and then wiped his fingers on the cover of the order book. Hoffman could barely breathe. Himmler sat back, pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his hand again, then inspected his fingernails. He gave Hoffman an amused look.

‘You think these crates contain some kind of Wunderwaffe? They are what they say they are. They contain Schliemann’s treasure from Troy. I blackmailed that cretin Bormann into leaving these three here, on pain of telling Hitler that Bormann was actually stealing the rest for himself. Adolf dreamed that all of these treasures were going to his fantasy Fuhrermuseum in Linz, that absurd architect’s model he kept poring over in the bunker. Well, these three crates I kept for myself. I believe you have met Dr Unversagt, who was watching over them when you arrived? I had hoped to return for them once the Americans had joined us, but now they will be taken by the Russians. It is of no moment. My best treasures await me elsewhere, in another secret bunker, all of my greatest artefacts from Wewelsburg as well as the best of those from Troy, the ones the public never saw. I even have a small art collection of my own, including my favourite Raphael. You see, I am a far more discerning collector than Goring or Bormann. These men were merely gangsters.’ He jerked his head at the broken bust of Bismarck on the floor behind. ‘The Iron Chancellor was a friend of Schliemann’s, you know. Perhaps they talked of taking the world by storm, with the broken pieces of myth in these crates from Troy. You approve, Herr SS-Brigadefuhrer, of this talk of world domination?’

‘ Mein Fuhrer.’

Himmler patted his pocket, took out a silver hip flask, shook it, and then grunted. One of the SS generals in the shadows behind Hoffman reached over with a flask of his own. Himmler unscrewed the lid, sniffed it, then offered it back to the man. ‘You first, Herr Obergruppenfuhrer.’ The man clicked his heels and took the flask, and Hoffman heard the sound of trickling and swallowing. The man whipped out a handkerchief, wiped the flask and handed it back to Himmler, then stepped back into the shadows. Himmler swilled the flask around, then put it on the desk. ‘Perhaps not,’ he muttered, looking at the general and then eyeing Hoffman. ‘And certainly not for you, Herr SS-Brigadefuhrer. For what is to come, you need a clear head.’

Himmler reached over for the swaddled package he had taken from his satchel. As he did so, Hoffman realized that something was different outside. The background vibration of exploding shells against the concrete of the gun platform had ceased. The Russian infantry must have taken the Zoo grounds, and would be too close for their heavy artillery to carry on targeting the bunker. Hoffman tensed. The flak tower was now in the eye of the storm; it could only be a matter of time before the Russian tanks began firing armour-piercing rounds point-blank at the steel window shutters, punching holes for the flame-throwers to shoot through. Hoffman saw that Himmler sensed the change too, that he knew their time was running out. He leaned forward, the crooked smile gone. ‘Listen to me, Hoffman, and listen well. You said you knew about the Spandau gas research laboratories. Well, the Zoo tower was not just for the storage of treasures. There is another chamber, deep below the water reservoir. The reservoir walls act as a barrier to prevent what is inside from escaping, from being released into the atmosphere. You understand me?’

‘ Mein Fuhrer.’

‘My Ahnenerbe men searched the world for ancient diseases, for ones long thought dormant, diseases against which people today would have little resistance. They scoured the ancient literature. A particularly fastidious young researcher in Heidelberg eventually found an account of what we wanted: an extraordinarily toxic waterborne bacterium that may have killed Alexander the Great. Under the pretence of searching for a lost civilization under the ice, my explorers and scientists went to the most extreme fresh-water environments in the world, to Iceland and Greenland, seeking the deadliest strain of the bacterium they could find. Eventually they discovered it, at a place that only the most courageous of my divers could reach. We had already embarked on another quest, for a particular virus. This time we did not need to look so far back in history. It was the Spanish influenza virus that killed twenty million people at the end of the First World War. A virus that Hitler saw as divine vengeance against the world for inflicting such humiliation on the German people. A virus that I saw as the tool of ultimate power. For years my scientists thought it could never be recovered. They exhumed body after body across Germany. But the Blitzkrieg and the conquest of Europe greatly expanded the search area. Eventually, in the Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris, they found the well-preserved corpses of two influenza victims who had been buried in lead-lined coffins. They took them to a bunker laboratory deep in a forest in Upper Saxony, and they isolated the virus from the cadavers. I ordered a labour camp to be set up, disguised as a camp for forest workers. We brought in prisoners of all races, young men and women, strong, healthy, the backbone of any country. After many experiments with the virus, my scientists tested the most promising mutations on the prisoners. They added the bacterium to make it more potent. Gradually we improved it until all of the infected people died. Our work had produced a deadly weapon. A Wunderwaffe, yes?’