by Mark A Biggs
‘As will the CIA and MI6 who both want to know where Monya is. Embarrassingly, MI6 will have to come clean. They’ve denied that they had any knowledge about the whereabouts of the Professor to their counterparts in the CIA. Now, they’ll have to admit that MI6 were detaining him all along.’
‘So MI6 knew the Agency had the Professor?’ asked Max, a little surprised.
‘Absolutely not. MI6 was not informed about the Professor until this morning. Stephen will have to grin and bear the brunt of his CIA colleague Bronwyn’s anger. The Agency works in the shadows and will remain that way.’
‘That will upset Stephen,’ observed Olivia.
‘Our Stephen is having to eat some humble pie. The British Government was displeased, learning of your arrival in the UK from the CIA, not from either MI6 or MI5! Let’s just say he will smile and take one for the team.’
‘And the possibility that this is a trap set by Monya to lure out the Professor?’ inquired Max.
‘All things are possible. To the task at hand. How you go about it, is entirely up to you but, if it were me, my first job would be to determine if there is a secret library and Bible. That would help us understand Monya’s motives, which are unclear to the me. I was told to give you this guarantee: regardless of what you find, the Agency will help you rescue Penny. You should concentrate on the Bible, leave Penny to the secret services. The Americans are particularly good at this sort of thing and seem to like it. Now, your stolen Triumph will be returned this afternoon. Your friend, Inspector Axel, will be arriving in an hour’s time to take you to what will become your base in London, the St Ermin’s Hotel in Westminster.’
‘We went there during the war,’ noted Olivia. ‘It was a base for the intelligence services along with being a luxurious hotel. A converted private mansion, from memory.’
‘Really?’ said Rosie. ‘You went there? It’s still a luxury hotel and a place where Lady Olivia will enjoy staying, I’m sure. If you were there during the war, you know that the spies used the upper floors. It was a mansion built on the site of a 15th-century chapel. We use what started its life as the crypt. Our theory is lightning never strikes in the same place twice, so what better location to have a secret base than an old secret base. Even cleverer is that we promote the idea of there being a secret tunnel from the hotel to one of the Westminster’s government buildings.’
‘Is there a tunnel?’ asked Max.
‘Of course.’
* * *
Inspector Axel greeted Olivia and Max as long-lost friends, with a hug, and then took from his car their travel case. ‘I thought you might want to freshen up before the trip back to London,’ he laughed. ‘You seem to make a habit of leaving your clothes behind.’ They decided on a light lunch before setting off on the 320-km return drive to London. During the journey, Inspector Axel told them what he knew, chiefly the same as their exchange with Rosie and the security services interest in Monya. However, he went on to say that a team was being formed to find the Bible but, other than Max, Olivia, the Professor and himself, he was unaware of the other member’s identities. He told them that a separate group would work on freeing Penny. ‘Stephen Walls, the head of MI6, will be able to tell us more when we reach St Ermin’s. It’s all been a bit of a rush. For whatever reason, Monya has become a top priority. My bet is that they want you to lead them to him and if that means stealing a priceless Bible, then that’s what they will do, or more accurately, you will do,’ said the Inspector.
After booking into their St Ermin’s suite, Inspector Axel took Olivia and Max outside and they walked to the St James Underground Station. It was from here that they entered the bunker complex, which ran below the hotel. ‘You can still gain entry from the hotel but that route is rarely used, for security reasons.’ said Inspector Axel.
When they entered the secret workspace, more akin to a 1930’s style library, with wood panels and antique furniture, but with better lighting and without the books. They could hear a terse conversation taking place between MI6 Stephen and CIA Bronwyn.
‘Why didn’t you tell us you had the Professor?’ they heard Bronwyn demand.
‘It was a matter of timing. You know how these things work between friends,’ replied Stephen. ‘Perhaps, in this instance, we made the wrong call.’
‘When this is over, you’ll hand him over to us. Do we understand each other?’
‘Perfectly.’
‘Another thing, I’m not sure I like the idea of entrusting him to your octogenarians. Wherever they go, disaster always seems to follow.’
Max coughed.
‘Yes, I’m talking about you,’ continued Bronwyn, without looking at Max and unperturbed at being overheard. ‘I have begrudgingly accepted it has to be you two that steal the Bible but, if this is a trap and Monya’s men kill the Professor… Well, let’s just say I won’t be pleased. Stephen tells me that you said that Monya’s new yacht was called the Lucia? For the record, there’s no super yacht registered with that name. Were you wearing your glasses?’ she snapped. ‘Oh, don’t answer that. Then, with a more sympathetic tone, added. ‘Maybe he was just playing with you.’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Bible
The team, Max, Olivia, Inspector Axel and the Professor decided to divide the tasks of their plan. Max and Olivia would gather intelligence on Melk Abbey, its links to the Gutenberg Bible and any references to secret passages or hidden libraries. Their initial sweep would be done using the internet, utilizing sites like Wikipedia, people’s personal accounts and even conspiracy theories. They would then chunk the information into groups to digest, drilling down to look for patterns, trends and links within the data. Their job was to answer the question, “Was Monya’s story plausible?” Meanwhile, Inspector Axel and the Professor would wade through the information Monya provided on the memory stick. The team would compare notes each afternoon for thirty minutes before consolidating their conclusions into a final report, which would be presented to Stephen Walls in five weeks’ time.
Max and Olivia had been field operatives, and, unlike data analysts who were happy to pour over minute detail searching for patterns, they found the task long and laborious. Bias was a risk so, for the most part, the body of their final report was a series of “cut-and-pastes” directly from the internet with the analysis and conclusion their own work.
‘We could find few discrepancies in the recorded history of Melk Abbey.’ started Max at the presentation to Stephen Walls.
‘Olivia, if you please.’ A page from their internet searches appeared on the data projector screen. ‘You can read this in your notes, but as it’s short, I want to read it aloud to you,’ said Max.
‘The Benedictine order was among the most prolific of the various monastic societies that were active in Europe at the height of the Middle Ages; this was particularly true in Central Europe, where they founded a large number of abbeys and monasteries.
‘The founding of Melk is an interesting story, or so we read and I quote. In the late 11th century, Europe became embroiled in the Investiture Controversy. This conflict centred around the right to appoint church officials. On the one hand was the Papacy, and on the other was the Holy Roman imperium. In the 1080s, Leopold II, Margrave of Austria, his lands caught between those of the Church and the Empire, sided with the Papacy. In order to cement his relationship with the Church, and to strengthen the Papacy’s strategic position on the Danube, he gifted one of his castles to the Benedictine order.
‘In the end, Leopold’s choice to side with the Pope was a strategic disaster. He died a few years later, his lands much reduced. However, his legacy survived in his gift to the Benedictines. In 1089, several monks arrived from Lambach and began transforming the castle into the first incarnation of Melk Abbey. By the late Middle Ages, the monastery’s scriptorium was one of the major sites for the production of manuscripts and its library collection among the largest.
‘Today’s Baroque Abbey was built between 1702 and 1736 by Jakob Prandtauer. Particula
rly noteworthy are the Abbey church and the library, with its countless medieval manuscripts. As far as we could determine, the library of Melk Abbey consists of twelve rooms containing somewhere between 1800 and 1888 manuscripts dating back to the 9th century. Articles we read said, and again this is a direct quote, the library owns 750 Incunabula, that’s printed works before 1500, 1,700 works of the 16th century, 4,500 from the 17th century, and 18,000 of the 18th century, along with more modern work, approximately 100,000 volumes in total.
No longer referring to his notes, Max said, ‘There’s no doubt the Abbey has an amazing library. In our research we discovered a few odd things. Firstly, while the library has books from throughout the centuries, the bindings are all the same; they were rebound to look identical. It is said that this was because the monks wanted everything to be symmetrical. An old saying comes to mind. Where does a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest, of course. We also found a reference to Codex Sinaiticus, a handwritten manuscript of the Christian Bible in Greek, written well over 1600 years ago. Speculations have it that the Bible, or transcriptions of the Bible, were copied in the Melk scriptorium. The Codex offers a different version of the Scriptures from later editions of the Bible. If they had an original copy, it would be priceless.
‘Today, 30 monks still live in and maintain the Abbey, which also houses a school of 900 plus students. And as we know, it’s one of the most popular tourist stops along the Danube.
‘The Abbey has survived the ravishes of history. Everything we read suggested that this was due to its fame or being a national treasure. It escaped the dissolution under Emperor Joseph 11, survived the Napoleonic Wars when Napoleon made it his headquarters in his campaign against Austria, the Nazi Annexation of Austria, and the Russian “Trophy Brigades.”’
‘What were the Trophy Brigades?’ asked Stephen.
‘At the end of World War II, the retreating Red Army seized priceless artefacts from museums and libraries, including two Gutenberg Bibles from Germany.
‘If I may return to my earlier quote. Where does a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest. What does he do if there is no forest? He grows a forest to hide it in.
‘Can I take us now to the question of secret passages, doors and chambers? It’s self-evident that any building of that age will have them because they all did. As I’ve said already, the Abbey started life as a medieval castle. These fortresses often had dungeons with escape routes built into their foundations. We know that the current main library alone has six hidden doors built into the bookcases and, even when pointed out by the guides, are still difficult to see.
‘What I want to show you now, is an article that appeared in the New York Times on the 16th of February 1986, written by Max Garcia.’ Olivia, operating the overhead projector, brought up a copy of the newspaper.
To the Editor: I read with great interest the article about the restoration of the Abbey in Melk, Austria.
I read it with great interest because I was a prisoner in the concentration camp in Melk during World War II, if only for a few months between my long stay in Auschwitz, my quarantine in Mauthausen and my liberation at Ebensee, also in Austria.
What many people do not know is that Melk, like Ebensee, had sizeable tunnels dug into the surrounding granite mountains in which whole factories had been built, in which we, prisoners and civilians alike, worked on assembling V-2’s.
When my wife and I visited Melk a few years ago, we could not find a marker anywhere that a KZ (Konzentrationslager – concentration camp) had existed there. When at last I went to the police headquarters (it was a Sunday, I recall), I asked the policeman on duty where the KZ had been. He insisted that none had ever existed. When I forcefully insisted that I had been a prisoner there, he began to blush and stammer, and then apologized for “having misunderstood” me.
On our evacuation from Melk sometime in March 1945, we were marched to the Danube, where we were loaded on waiting barges and shipped upstream to Linz.
MAX R. GARCIA
‘Ladies and gentlemen, what caught our attention was the reference to sizable tunnels being dug around Melk,’ said Max after reading aloud the newspaper. ‘In 1944, with Allied forces intensifying their bombing of Germany, their military leaders sought to relocate key industrial and top-secret facilities underground, the Untertageverlagerung, or underground relocation. The Melk Concentration camp, a sub-camp of Mauthausen mentioned by Max Garcia, provided the forced labour for the tunnelling project around Melk. The construction projects were under the command of a man called Hans Kammler, a German civil engineer and high-ranking SS officer. We have provided you with an extensive dossier on Kammler, but to give you a quick insight into the man. He was Chief of Office C, which designed and constructed all the concentration and extermination camps. Later, he was put in charge of building facilities for the various Nazi secret weapons projects and the V2 rocket program. Construction around Melk started in 1944 but was abandoned and moved to St Georgen an der Gusen near Linz. You may have read in the papers recently that an Austrian filmmaker, Andreas Sulzer, rediscovered a network of underground tunnels and bunkers near Linz. We were interested in learning why the tunnelling and facilities were moved from Melk to Linz, some 100km away. Our findings suggested that it was because the hills around Melk consisted of fine sand and quartz, so cave-ins were frequent, making the area unstable for substantial construction. That should have been the end of our inquiry, however, we were curious to know what happened to Hans Kammler after the war. Like many war criminals, there is a considerable conjecture as to whether he died or escaped. After the war, US forces conducted various inquiries into Kammler’s whereabouts. A man called Wernher von Braun reported having overheard a discussion between Hans Kammler and his aide. He said Kammler planned to hide at Ettal Abbey. It was there that a section of his wartime diary was found. We carefully sifted through all the remaining entries, painstakingly converting them to English, looking for references to Melk. There weren’t many but we did find this.’ On the overhead projector, a page from Hans Kammler’s diary was displayed.
Melk – Geologische Formationen entlang der Ausrichtung instabil. Schlechte Quartsteinmassen und feiner Sand – häufige Einstürze. Fokusbemühungen Linz – stabile Erde. 1662:
Abendessen mit Maria Himmelfahrt Ezra – 2
‘The translation reads: Melk – Geological formations along alignment unstable. Poor quartz rock mass and fine sand – frequent cave-ins. Focus efforts Linz – stable earth.
‘You will note the references to fine sand, cave-ins and the relocation to Linz. These words have become the historical truth of why they moved. We will come back to the number shown, 1662.
‘Generally, names don’t translate, so the next line reads. Dinner with Maria Himmelfahrt, Ezra 2. This seems like a dinner engagement at 2 Ezra. Remember in Germany, the street number comes after the street name. For those who first examined the diary, the reference may have been a little unusual, but not noteworthy.’ Max, for a moment, struggled to contain his excitement before continuing in his measured manner. ‘Ezra is Latin for Esdras. 2 Esdras is a book in the Apocrypha. If we go back to that 1662 and add a colon between the sixteen and sixty-two, you get a Bible verse. When we put it all together, we come up with, 2 Esdras 16:62… and the spirit of Almighty God, who surely made all things and searches out hidden things in hidden places. If the diary entry is, in fact, a reference to the Apocrypha, it may be a clue. Perhaps one that references a place to visit after the war.’
‘A curious hypothesis,’ interrupted Stephen. ‘If all this information is so readily available, why has nobody seen the reference to the Apocrypha, whatever that is?’ Or have you put two and two together and come up with eight?’
‘I’m pleased you asked, Stephen,’ smiled Max. ‘The word Apocrypha comes from the Greek word apokrypha, roughly meaning hidden secrets or things that are hidden. Here, we are talking about a collection of two ancient Jewish and Christian writings, which are not canonised by the religious com
munity as a whole, meaning they are not seen as authoritative scriptures. Unless you were a religious scholar, it is doubtful that you would recognise the reference and, even if someone had, without our research as explanation, it’s a verse, just a verse.’
‘That in itself could be a problem?’ observed Stephen.
‘Indeed,’ responded Max. ‘We are conscious of our own personal bias, so on its own, the Apocrypha verse, if that is what we are seeing, would mean nothing. Let me return to your first question. If you were to search the internet for references to Melk Abbey, Mauthausen concentration camp and even Hans Kammler, most of the sites return the same information. The original stories have simply been repeated over time, with little critical analysis. One would assume, because there has been no reason to do so. What we did was to examine the stories in the context of its source material with inquisitive eyes. We examined the history and events methodically to explain and interpret it. Were there anomalies? If challenged, would they portray events in a different light?’
‘Interesting,’ said Stephen. ‘So, did you find anything other than your cryptic reference to the Apocrypha?’
‘Olivia,’ said Max, ‘this was your line of inquiry.’
‘We believe so Stephen. Please refer back to the dossier on Hans Kammler. He was a Doctor of Engineering, had 14 million people, yes 14 million, working for him, mostly on underground building projects. He was continually promoted through the SS ranks and Hitler entrusted him to develop Germany’s most advanced technologies, rocket and nuclear. If I can draw your attention to the appendix; it lists all his known underground building projects. A man of his expertise and experience would not have commenced building around Melk without first testing the local geology, now would he? Eight thousand people worked on the Melk underground project before they were relocated. An error of this magnitude would be at odds with the man’s reputation.
‘We also concluded that, with its history and scriptorium, the Abbey had rare and valuable manuscripts and books. Let me remind you of the obscure, but nonetheless important, reference to the Codex Sinaiticus we found. It beggars’ belief that the Abbey could survive the pillaging and ravages of time only because of its notoriety.’ Olivia indicated that she had finished speaking.
