by Paula Wynne
Matt opened his palm and stared at a metal badge.
Dad’s RAF wings.
65
Five Years Later
April 1990, Little Hollow Airfield
Matt toyed with the RAF wings. Ever since Mum had given them to him, he’d worn them secretly under his clothes. Every day. Today he took them off as he sat in a pool of dim light inside the underground bunker.
Ever since the fateful air show five years ago, he’d been dead keen to get down into the bunker again, but Bomber wouldn’t let him.
So why today?
Footsteps thudded on the cement stairs leading down from the hangar into the bunker, where Bomber had instructed him to wait.
Matt quickly tucked the RAF wings into his pocket as Bomber limped up to him with a coffee mug in each of his hands.
‘I’m proud of you, Matt.’ Bomber handed him a steaming hot drink.
Matt curled his hands around the mug, desperate for a bit of heat. The damp bunker seemed to suck every last ounce of warmth from him.
‘You’ve become a man. A good one, at that.’
‘What’s up, Bomber?’ Matt frowned at Bomber standing over him. ‘You sound like an old man giving advice to a kid.’
‘I did that once. And he listened.’ Bomber sunk into a seat beside Matt. ‘How’s the ride?’
For a moment Matt looked puzzled and then chuckled. ‘Way better than planning the destination.’
They fell silent for a moment, both remembering the day Bomber had given Matt a telling off, peppered with fatherly advice.
‘Working at Blackbushes Airport is the coolest thing I’ve ever done.’ Matt sipped his coffee, ‘Apart from that first ride with you, of course.’
‘Of course.’
‘And so what if I’m flying small planes and not RAF jets. I’m loving it!’
‘The glory of the ride,’ Bomber murmured.
‘Oh, yeah,’ Matt grinned.
Bomber placed his coffee mug on an iron bench and lifted an old leather folder. He slid out a wad of paper and placed it on his lap. Next, he pulled out an old weathered diary.
Matt stared at him, wondering if this was the reason for the sudden and urgent call from Bomber.
‘Don’t ask me why I’m doing this today rather than any other day. Just accept that today is the day.’
‘The day for what?’
‘To share some things with you. Things that I’ve lived with since I was a lad.’ Bomber patted the diary and folded paper on his lap. ‘I don’t have a son, but over the past few years, you’ve taken his place.’
‘Whose place?’ Matt tried to keep up with the strange undertones in Bomber’s voice.
‘My son’s place. The one I never had.’
‘Okay...’ Matt watched Bomber with a furrowed brow.
‘Before I show you this diary and this map, I have a story to tell.’
66
June 1945
Little Hollow, England
Seven-year-old Steven Balmaine stared out of the sitting room window. Father should land any minute now. His eyes strained to see through the gloomy afternoon.
First came the distant whine of the engine, and then suddenly the faint glow of a Cessna’s wing lights shone through the low-hanging mist. Steven leapt off the window seat, bolted to the door, yanked it open and barrelled down the path, deaf to his mother’s calls ringing in his ears.
He didn’t care about staying indoors in the rain. So what if he got wet? Father was coming home! He’d been gone for over a week, and Mother had been sitting at the kitchen table biting her nails all that time. He knew something was up and had secretly worried with her. Even though he had no idea what to worry about.
But now Father’s aeroplane was home!
At the airfield, Steven swung open the new gate Father had erected a week before he left. He raced through, leaving the gate swinging open on its hinges. After a few strides, he spun around and raced back to the gate.
Father had been adamant about keeping the gate closed. All his life he had run back and forth from their house to the airfield and never, ever had to worry about gates, so why did he suddenly have to close a gate? Steven pushed it closed and latched it, then charged off again, the rain pouring over him.
As he raced towards the hangar, he saw the Cessna taxi up to it and stop. Through the mist, he glimpsed a shadowy figure climb out beside Father.
Was this his uncle that he’d heard Mother and Father talk about?
Steven stopped dead in his tracks. His heart raced. Maybe this guest was the reason why Mother did not want him to come here. He quickly stepped behind the hangar, and squeezed into his special spot, where the metal panels had rusted and you could see in through a hole. He knelt down and peeped inside, just as the stranger marched into the hangar.
Beside Father, the man looked like a walking ironing board. The man and Father dropped a pile of old tattered leather cases onto the dry concrete floor. They both returned to the plane and came back with another armful.
Father wiped the rain off his forehead and said, ‘You’ll be safe here.’
‘Thank you,’ The man patted Father on his back.
Father just grunted. Steven could not fathom if his father liked or disliked their new uncle. As if hearing his thoughts, his father said, ‘I’m not even sure why I am helping you, really.’
‘You do it out of your love for our sweet Rita.’
‘She was my wife’s relative, not mine.’
‘I think you English people have good hearts, not hard ones like my fellow countrymen. You have a close family?’ He didn’t wait for Father to answer and added, ‘For whatever reasons you are doing this, I truly appreciate your help.’
Silence hung in the air for a moment.
Then it was broken by the man. ‘Have you heard of Hans Kammler, the number three man in the SS?’
Father didn’t say anything, but Steven strained his ears to hear properly. The man had only a slight accent, but to Steven’s ears it sounded almost like he was German, a Nazi!
‘You probably heard that he specialised in the rapid construction of bomb-proof underground facilities. His security was never breached, even by the US and British Intelligence. Even Soviets who thought they knew everything.’
Steven didn’t like the way the stranger chuckled. It was like some horrid animal croaking in the night.
‘Well, eventually all prioritisation for secret technology and weapons fell under his control.’
Father remained quiet, but Steven could see he wasn’t happy talking about this.
‘Nazi technology reached much further than most people realise. The Third Reich assembled mind-blowing intelligence. We were developing super metals, electric guns, ray weapons. If the Allies knew about some of these things they would be very afraid. Of the x-ray and laser weaponry, never mind all the bombs.’
‘What happened to all that?’
‘Kammler started finding and organising technical staff to make war-winning ideas, but he needed to keep them within Germany.’
Steven tried to absorb all this information, but wondered what it had to do with him and his family.
‘He put together a think-tank, so the Third Reich could keep all this exceptional work hidden, even when it became clear the war would soon be over. Very soon Kammler started taking over most of the highly technical wartime projects. Like him or not, you have to say the man was a genius,’ the stranger chuckled again.
A chill ran through Steven. He wanted to like his new uncle, but his laugh sounded just like when the school teacher pretended she was a monster.
‘After the first assassination attempt on Hitler, near the end of the war, the SS took control of all technology and the military. This is where Kammler’s indestructible bunkers paid off.’
Father asked, ‘But where do you fit into all this? As far as I know, you weren’t a military man, so how come you’re on the Nazi hit list?’
‘Well, that is a good question,’ He
cleared his throat. ‘Kammler recruited my cousin, Wilhelm Sommer, for his technology skills. He is the man that is being hunted. Not me. I am ashamed to say, he helped design terrible devices.’
Father’s face set into a deep scowl. ‘I’m unclear on why you think you will be hunted as a war criminal. Okay, you were in the SS, but you said you didn’t do any killing.’
‘First, my cousin Wilhelm told me he was going to be hunted as a war criminal because of the devices he helped to build. He also didn’t do any actual killings, but he was involved in making killing machines.’
Father’s scowl deepened.
‘Second, my first unit was responsible for a shocking atrocity. I will spare you the bloody details. But I was not with the unit at the time. I had lied about a delicate and embarrassing problem in my family and was given unofficial leave to go and help. Of course, the actual purpose of this time was to help Rita prepare her papers so she could escape. But the Nazis kept very efficient records, most of which the Americans now have, so I assume I will be hunted as I was documented as being present when the atrocity occurred.’
Father remained dead silent. He didn’t even mutter under his breath, like he normally did when he was angry.
‘After that, I begged Wilhelm to ensure I didn’t get involved on the front. He was not a good man in the war, but he was a family man, and he used his influence to get me a special task force position. From then on I was commissioned to mingle amongst countrymen in Europe and live among them. Spy on them. And, most importantly, find the locations to create a web of underground caves in remote and almost inaccessible places across Europe.’
‘Ah, yes, on the plane you told me you worked with languages.’
‘I spent most of the war undercover, coming and going in various European countries. That is why my English and other languages are so good. You see, for each country the Third Reich took over, Hitler wished to have a secret place to immediately start hoarding the country’s riches.’
Father exhaled hard and shook his head, the same way he did when Steven had done something wrong, but Father didn’t know how to punish him.
‘I located many, many places. And in those places I know that they built hidden vaults and stored treasure. But just gold and jewels, just their plunder. Except for one place that was different from the rest. But all of these locations I have marked on this map. You could say it’s a treasure map.’
At his spy hole, Steven gasped. He’d been shocked enough to have it confirmed that this new uncle was, indeed, a Nazi, but now he almost cried out in excitement.
A treasure map!
Mother had read him so many tales about treasure hunts. They were the best stories he’d ever heard. He crouched lower, in case Father had heard him. Worse still, in case the strange uncle caught him spying.
His new uncle was continuing, ‘The Reich was supposed to last a thousand years, but after just five they ran out of time. Kammler got very nervous after the first assassination attempt on Hitler, so he started hoarding the most valuable artefacts and the Reich’s secrets in the hidden bunkers he had built during the war.’
Father asked, ‘Where?’
‘All across Europe, but mostly in the countries surrounding Germany. One of them, in Poland, was like a military base underground. It had hangars, runways, housing, storage facilities, shops, laboratories and even maintenance facilities.’
‘Good God!’
‘Another was built in the Arctic. All those buildings confined into caverns blasted into the rock below the ice.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, that one was to test certain inventions in flying machines.’
‘And the art, jewels and gold?’ Father asked.
‘Of course, and there was an unbelievable amount of that. But most importantly, he created a treasure-trove of location maps and scientific secrets. It was the most confidential undercover operation ever undertaken, the final legacy of the Third Reich. Still only a handful of people know of this.’
‘What is so secret about it?’
Again the Nazi flicked the paper. And again it startled Steven.
‘This is what we have to hide. And it must never fall into the wrong hands, which for now means it must stay hidden.’
‘But surely the fortunes you stole―’
‘I never stole anything!’
‘Sorry,’ Father quickly rephrased his words, ‘the fortunes the SS stole, they must be returned to the people?’
‘What?’ The new uncle looked shocked. ‘And let their governments stocked with pacifiers keep it all?’
‘There must be a way,’ Father pulled his hand through his hair, like he did when he was worried or trying to work something out in his head.
The other man remained silent.
Eventually Father declared, ‘Maybe there’s a European association who can work through all these hidden riches and distribute them back to the people, or at least the survivors, the victims in the invaded countries.’
‘They could try,’ the German agreed, ‘but already there is trouble in Russia. High up officials have taken what they want for themselves. The same will happen in all countries. But anyway, no one can ever enter many of these places without secret radio codes that I neither possess nor understand. They are impenetrable tombs and hidden vaults. Sealed forever. And with devices that can mutilate or kill any man who enters. Especially the vault which contains the legacy, which I now believe perhaps only two people still living know of.’
‘Which two people?’ Father was frowning, both worried and stern as he held up his hand. ‘Wait. On the plane, you said you didn’t kill anyone. Can you promise me that?’
The new uncle’s bellow echoed around the hangar. ‘Do you infer that I might have killed the others who knew of the legacy vault? It is a good question! But, thankfully, I never had that experience. No, details of that vault were kept to a few leaders like Hitler and Kammler, now all dead, and a specialist team of engineers. That team was all on board a truck not long ago. Shortly after I left them, the truck was blown up by a resistance bomb, and I believe none survived. But not by my hand. As I told you on the way here, I have a big distaste for killing. No, the two who know of it are my cousin and myself. And my heart is broken that I am not joining my beautiful wife here in England.’
Steven had heard people on the radio say that the Nazis were an evil race of unfeeling murderers, so it was strange to suddenly see one cry like a girl.
Father placed his hand on the new uncle’s shoulder. For a long moment, they remained like that.
In silence.
Steven held his breath, hoping they would not hear him in the eerily still quiet.
Eventually, the new uncle sniffed, glanced one time towards the heavens, and then bent over and opened a leather satchel. He pulled out a Nazi uniform and they both stared at it.
Steven inhaled sharply, and then quickly clamped his hand over his mouth. The uniform was black with shiny silver buttons. Not just Nazi, but SS, the worst of the lot!
Father’s voice dropped so low that Steven almost didn’t hear him, ‘Why did you bring that?!’
‘Ah. This is not mine; it belongs to Friedrich Wollner. In a way I hope that he had it in his satchel because he was proud of what he fought for, but I fear it is more likely he kept it so he would not be shot as a spy. As for me, I promise you that I discarded all that identified me as a soldier of the Reich long before I left Germany.’
The man shrugged and said, ‘It was in one of the backpacks. Where may I keep all the evidence?’
Father spun around, his jaw hanging wide. ‘What evidence?’
The German pointed to the folders of paper. ‘I want to prove I had nothing to do with murdering Jews. I want to show them what I really did in the war, that I did not do what they think I did.’
Father’s shoulders sagged and he nodded, ‘Yes, yes, of course.’
‘They will ask me because my cousin, Wilhelm, possessed important secrets, but I do not kn
ow what happened to him. Nor would I buy my freedom by furthering the evil that he created. One day I may need to prove who I really am. Even if I manage, I know I will have a lot of explaining to do. Therefore, before I left I gathered what information I could to help me.’
Father nodded his head like a puppet. ‘Okay, we’ll have to hide it where no one will ever find it.’ He led the man towards the back of the hangar. Steven watched in surprise as Father pulled a wooden crate aside. Hidden beneath it was a secret door in the floor.
Behind Father, the man bent over and lifted something out of his baggage. ‘There’s one more thing.’
Steven started. Was that a gun? Was the man going to shoot Father in the back?
Before Steven could think what to do, Father looked back over his shoulder. ‘What is it?’
‘One more secret.’
67
Three Months Later
Steven sat on the wooden crate cleaning Father’s tools. It was a dirty chore, but he preferred it to the ones Mother had given him at home. At least here he could see the pilots and planes.
In the back of the hangar, “Uncle Keith” sat on an upturned oil barrel. Father had just taken off. His Cessna had been loaded with stuff for some rich man who didn’t want to send it on a big aeroplane across the English Channel into France.
With a stiff flick of his fingers, as if they were all glued together, Uncle Keith gestured for Steven to come closer.
‘Listen, boy. I have something for you. But before I give it to you, you have to swear a solemn oath.’
Steven just stared. Mother would be cheesed off if he swore. And he didn’t know any solemn oaths anyway.
‘You hear me, boy?’
He nodded, trying not to look so scared. It was bad enough having this stranger living in their home and working with Father at the airfield, but now he was telling him what to do as well. And not just a stranger, but a Nazi, although the one time he’d mentioned this to father he had told Steven that not all Nazis were evil and made him promise never to tell anyone about Uncle Keith.
