David Gibbins - The Gods of Atlantis

Schoenberg eyed Jack shrewdly. ‘Where do you think it would be leading you?’

‘For anyone leaving Lixus or Mogador and intending to go west, the current takes a very predictable southern and western swing from Cape Juby towards the Caribbean.’

‘Can you be more precise?’

Jack pursed his lips. ‘My money’s on the north Caribbean, a landfall somewhere between Puerto Rico and Florida. We have another possible lead to explore, one that will become more real if that Pliny reference can be corroborated.’

‘Can I help?’ Schoenberg said.

‘No later than tomorrow, I hope. I’ll be in touch.’

‘I can tell you more about the Ahnenerbe. Some of the trails we were on that really did seem to go places, and were thwarted only by the war. We could work together.’

‘I’ll hold you to that. Tomorrow.’

Costas got up. ‘One question. Why did you remove that page from the codex? Did you want to keep this secret, for the eyes of the Ahnenerbe only? Were you planning an expedition to find that pillar?’

Schoenberg shook his head. ‘It was that name, Noah. I had seen first-hand Hitler’s rage against the Jews. I had been intimate with the Nazis; I had smelled the sweat on Hitler when he was excited, seen the glint in his eyes. Already there were book-burnings, the destruction of Jewish art. The Codex Palatinus Graecus was my passion, my life’s work, and I intended to return to it after the war. I was not the only Ahnenerbe researcher sent to the Heidelberg library; others were there to keep an eye on me. Nazi Germany was a police state, and the mentality of suspicion and counter-suspicion seeped into every corner of life. The men Himmler recruited as spies were sticklers for detail, men like himself, and would leave no stone unturned if they felt they had to check up on me. I was terrified that one of them would find this page and see that word. Anything to do with Jewish history was to be expunged. When I saw that the note had been erased by some later hand from the original text, I imagined a monk doing that because he might have been alarmed that the codex contained heretical materials, something about Noah that might contradict the Bible, but that he felt the same way that I did about the need to preserve the book. He removed the note, but didn’t see the imprint on the blank insert. If Himmler’s spies had followed me and seen it, there could only have been one outcome. The whole codex would have been destroyed.’

‘And now the time has come to reunite the page with the codex,’ Jack said.

‘That is my intention. If you are successful, this apparently blank page with the word Atlantis may become the greatest single treasure of the Heidelberg library.’

Jack thought for a moment. They had got what they wanted, and there was nothing now to be lost. He needed to know for sure. ‘You said you were intimate with the Nazi inner circle. Did you know Oberst Ernst Hoffman?’

Schoenberg went pale, then quickly regained his composure. ‘Hoffman? I knew of him, of course. He was a Luftwaffe ace, one of Hitler’s favourites. Perhaps I met him in Berlin. I don’t remember.’

‘You met him at Wewelsburg, to be precise. He was one of Himmler’s favourites too. Himmler nurtured his interest in flying.’

Schoenberg looked discomfited. ‘Perhaps. Many officers passed through the Wewelsburg indoctrination school. I can hardly be expected to remember all of them. And Himmler had plenty of favourites.’

‘Indeed,’ Jack said coldly. ‘Actually, you knew Hoffman before that. You were students together in Heidelberg before the war.’

Schoenberg raised his hands. ‘Am I being interrogated again? It was a big university. Perhaps I knew of him. But he was no scholar. He was only interested in flying.’

‘You had a professor who taught you both Greek. You excelled at it and Hoffman didn’t, but he and the professor became fast friends. The professor was forced into the Ahnenerbe, but hated it and let drink get the better of him, then spoke too much. He was last seen being led away screaming to Goebbels’ chamber of horrors in Gestapo headquarters in Berlin. Word was he was fingered by a former student of his who coveted his senior position in the Ahnenerbe hierarchy and miraculously moved into that office the next day.’

‘Who do you mean? How do you know this?’

‘Because before coming here we had a very interesting visit to Wewelsburg Castle with an expert guide. Frau Heidi Hoffman, to be precise.’

Schoenberg swallowed hard, reached for his stick to get up and then sank back again into his chair. ‘Frau Hoffman. Yes. She has talked to you about the Ahnenerbe?’

‘She has told us a great deal.’

Schoenberg rose again slightly on his stick, and for a moment his face was contorted in contempt. ‘You should be very careful what you believe. This woman is not to be trusted. Did you know she worked for the Lebensborn? She even volunteered herself to be impregnated by SS men. The Lebensborn programme was designed to create a new generation of the master race. Peasants fornicating with peasants. Do you know they even went to Poland to snatch children just because they were blond and blue-eyed? Being blond and blue-eyed is not enough to make you Aryan. They were Poles, for God’s sake. And that woman is a whore.’

Jack nodded at Costas, then got up and followed him to the door. He stopped and looked back. ‘When you scoured the ancient texts, when the Ahnenerbe went to the glaciers, to the icecaps, you weren’t just looking for Atlantis, were you? There was something else. Something Reichsfuhrer Himmler wanted. Something terrifying, from the distant past. Something that could be made into a wonder-weapon.’

Schoenberg stared at him, then narrowed his eyes. ‘I am a scholar, Jack. You know that. The Reichsfuhrer may have had other dreams, but they were not mine. These wild theories died on the funeral pyre of the Reich in 1945.’

‘Thank you for telling us what you know. We’ll be in touch.’

Jack led Costas through the door and closed it. They crossed the veranda and clattered down the wooden steps to the beach, then began to walk towards the jetty and the inflatable boat. The tide was coming in, pushing foaming sheets of water almost to their feet, backed by rolling Pacific breakers that made a muffled roar. It was time to get back to the aircraft before the wind and the water rose any more. Costas hurried up alongside Jack. ‘That was pushing it. Asking about Frau Hoffman and Himmler.’

‘I wanted him to be on edge. I want him to know that we know.’

‘It was revealing that he called Himmler Reichsfuhrer, a little respectfully I thought, after you did.’

‘That was intentional on my part.’

‘He was there in Iceland.’

Jack nodded. ‘He was there, though I’m not convinced he knew the real purpose. Anyone Himmler let in on his scheme was probably doomed to be liquidated. I don’t believe Saumerre will have told him the truth either. My guess is that Schoenberg doesn’t know a lot more than he’s told us. He evidently was not one of the Ahnenerbe men who discovered the ancient site in the Caribbean, though he must have known it was an area where they’d been searching for Atlantis. Once Himmler had decided to use the site for his own purpose, those men were probably all removed from the equation early on. If Schoenberg knew the location, we wouldn’t be here now, and the world would be a much more dangerous place.’

‘There’s a lot of contradiction in Schoenberg,’ Costas said, jerking his head back towards the house. ‘A scholar who tears a page out of an ancient manuscript to prevent it being destroyed by the Nazis. A senior Ahnenerbe man who was under the spell of Himmler, yet was perfectly aware that most of the stuff was nonsense and that many of his fellow Ahnenerbe men were beneath contempt. A Prussian aristocrat who is scornful of Nazi thugs, and of peasants. A family man fearful of his children finding out out about his past. A racist who despises Poles and Chinese. And if we’re to believe Frau Hoffman, a man capable of shopping his old professor to the Gestapo.’