David Gibbins - The Gods of Atlantis

‘Tante Heidi,’ Hiebermeyer said, concern in his voice. ‘Let’s get you back to your wheelchair immediately, and we’ll go out into the courtyard.’

She rose unsteadily, then put a hand on Hiebermeyer’s, staying him. She looked at Jack again. ‘There is something else,’ she whispered. ‘Something I’ve never told anyone, not even my son. I know where you’ve seen the shape of that reverse swastika before.’

‘Tante Heidi?’ Hiebermeyer said.

‘You’ve seen it in the bunker in the forest.’

Jack stared at her. ‘How do you know about that?’

‘In the door of that horrible death chamber. I was there too, in the autumn of 1944. You know that I was a toxicologist. I was one of the scientists who worked there. That’s my terrible secret. When you called and told me about the discovery of a lost art cache in a bunker beneath the NATO base, Maurice, I knew what was also there and that you would find it. That’s really why I called you here now. I had to tell you what I knew, a truth I had hoped would remain buried in that bunker and die with me. I will tell you everything now. But first I need the sunlight.’

J ack leaned back in his chair below the castle wall, reeling at what he had just heard. Over the past twenty minutes, Frau Hoffman had told them everything she knew about Himmler’s secret project to develop a deadly biological weapon. They had learned how two victims of the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic had been exhumed from Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris and secretly transported to the bunker in the forest, where Heidi herself had been part of the team who dissected the bodies and isolated the virus. They had learned how another lethal microbe had been sought, a waterborne bacterium hinted at in the ancient sources that Himmler’s scholars thought had been the cause of Alexander the Great’s death in the third century BC. From the late 1930s, Ahnenerbe expeditions had scoured the world looking for it, eventually finding a place where the conditions were right for its growth and returning to the laboratory with a sample. The two weapons had been kept apart, the virus and the bacterium, ready to be used as a threat against the world in a scheme by Himmler that far exceeded in horror any secret wonder-weapon the Nazis were previously known to have contemplated.

Jack in turn had told Heidi everything they knew about Saumerre and his scheme: about how Saumerre’s grandfather had been in the concentration camp next to the bunker and had come to know of the secret research being carried out there; and how he and his son and grandson had pursued the truth of it as they built up their criminal empire, the prospect of a secret Nazi weapon being the greatest prize they could offer to the terrorist clients whose cause Saumerre himself supported. Jack had begun to understand more clearly the link with Atlantis, how the search for a lost Aryan civilization had been used by the Ahnenerbe to shroud the truth of what they were really after; and how an underwater archaeological discovery somewhere in the tropics had provided the perfect place for a hideaway that allowed Himmler to continue the ruse, a place that Jack felt certain was the landfall for the western exodus from Atlantis that he had hoped to find. It was now vital that they discovered every clue they could to its whereabouts, with each moment that passed risking Saumerre losing his patience and deciding to sell to the highest bidder the phial Auxelle had stolen for him from the bunker.

Hiebermeyer walked across the terrace with a glass of water for Heidi, who sipped it gratefully. He turned to Jack and spoke quietly to him. ‘I’ve just had a call from Major Penn. He was keen to help, so this morning he went ahead and contacted my friend in the Berlin underground group and asked him for the measurements of the impressed reverse swastika symbol in that corridor under the Zoo flak tower. Apparently it’s exactly like the one we saw in the bunker, but whatever’s beyond it in the corridor is flooded and crushed beneath tons of rubble. And there’s been another development. Auxelle’s been found murdered in an abandoned warehouse in Berlin.’

‘The phial?’

‘Penn was contacted before the scene had been tampered with. Auxelle had been stripped naked and garrotted. There was no phial.’

‘That doesn’t surprise me. He’d served his purpose for Saumerre. From now on, your aunt has a full-time escort until this is over.’

‘You think Saumerre knows about her?’

‘He and his family have been on this trail for years. We have to assume they know about everyone still alive with any possible connection to Himmler’s schemes.’

Hiebermeyer pursed his lips, then resumed his seat on the other side of Heidi. Jack leaned towards her. ‘A crucial question,’ he asked. ‘Which phial was it that Auxelle took from the bunker?’

‘The bacterium. The Alexander bacterium.’

‘So that’s what Saumerre has now,’ Jack murmured. ‘And the virus was stored in the chamber under the flak tower. That’s the missing ingredient, what Saumerre assumes must have gone to Himmler’s secret lair.’

Hiebermeyer looked down, trying to say something. Jack had seen how distraught he had been after Heidi revealed that she had been in the bunker. He seemed to marshal his strength, and looked up again. ‘Tante Heidi,’ he said quietly. ‘Yesterday, inside that bunker, I saw something terrible, too awful for words. I saw the remains of the corpses on the gurneys that you must have worked on. But there were other bodies, young people, that looked as if they’d been dissected alive. They’d been left there to die in agony. I have to know…’

‘ Nein, nein, nein,’ she said, raising her arms as if to cover her face, then closing her eyes tight for a moment and shaking her head vehemently. ‘I had nothing to do with that. Nothing. But I knew it was going to happen. I knew that once the scientists had isolated the virus, they would want to experiment with it, to mutate it and try ever more potent forms. I knew they had wanted to use healthy young adults born after the 1918 epidemic, people whose bodies had not built up the resistance of those who’d lived through the outbreak. And the Alexander bacterium was a completely unknown quantity: it needed to be tested. As soon as they started to expand the concentration camp next door, originally a camp for Russian prisoners, I knew what it was for and that I had to get out. They thought I could become like the SS female auxiliaries who ran the camp. I was desperate. My salvation came in the call for women to join the Lebensborn.’

‘You were part of that? The Nazi eugenics programme?’ Hiebermeyer exclaimed, aghast.

‘It was a year before I met Ernst. None of us were forced into it, but some of us, like me, were there as an escape from worse situations. And I was the ideal physical specimen: blonde, blue-eyed, healthy, the perfect mother-to-be. We called the place the cattle farm. Truckloads of SS men would be driven up to visit us, every day. It was supposed to be a baby factory, but to them and to us it was a whorehouse.’

‘ Mein Gott,’ Hiebermeyer whispered. ‘I never knew anything about this.’

‘How did you find out about Himmler’s plan?’ Jack said. ‘I know you saw what was going on in the laboratory, but you’ve told us more than Himmler’s men would surely have revealed to a junior technician.’

‘Being a junior technician, a woman, and then volunteering for the Lebensborn programme probably saved my life,’ she replied. ‘The scientists seemed to disappear at regular intervals and be replaced. I think people were liquidated as soon as they’d done their task, and the turnover ensured that only a few knew the full picture. But remember my new job in the cattle farm. We mainly served the SS, whose ranks would have provided Himmler with the fanatical followers he could trust. In the bedroom, men will talk.’