The Crypt Trilogy Bundle

by Bill Thompson

  Steffen laughed and nodded. “Of course. There’s no one stopping you!”

  After a quick calculation, Paul raised his foot and gave the wall a solid kick. The drywall gave way, and he did it a few more times until there was a hole large enough to see through.

  “We need some tools,” he panted.

  “Tomorrow we will have those too!” The director aimed his light through the hole. The secret room was two meters square, exactly as the floor plan showed it would be. There were several wooden boxes stacked on the floor and covered by a layer of dust. Like eager playmates they began to rip chunks of the drywall off with their bare hands. Soon they had removed enough to step between the studs.

  They both squeezed into the narrow space, neither willing to miss this opportunity. Hans brushed dirt off the top of the nearest box. There were stenciled words and an insignia.

  They saw a coat of arms and read the words: Service chine de Louis Capet et son epouse. Chateau de Versaillles, Juillet 1792. Encadre douze des vingt.

  “Do you read French?” Hans Steffen asked his visitor, his voice quivering slightly.

  “I do. And you?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do.” Hans brushed off a second box and saw almost identical stenciling. He placed his hands on the first box and spoke reverently.

  “China service of Louis Capet and his wife. Versailles palace, July 1792. Box twelve of twenty.” He pointed to the other box he’d wiped. “That’s box fourteen.” He counted the boxes quickly. “There are twenty. They’re all here.” He paused, momentarily speechless. Clearly overwhelmed, he choked back a sob.

  “Do you recognize the coat of arms?”

  Paul shook his head. “But if I remember my European history, isn’t Louis Capet the birth name of the Bourbon monarch Louis XVI, the last king of France? If that’s correct, then his wife would be Marie Antoinette.”

  “You are correct and this is his coat of arms. This china service has been unaccounted for since the end of World War II. Most scholars thought it was destroyed by the Nazis, but now we know better!” His face glowed as he thought of what else might be hidden down these dark hallways. “After waiting my entire life to see this, I think we’ve done pretty well in our adventure so far.” He chuckled.

  After spending several more hours fruitlessly searching for another hidden room, they stopped for the day. Every small closet on the floor plan had turned out to be exactly that. There were no more surprises.

  They went straight to work the next morning, exploring for hours with no success. So far the tools Hans had brought were getting no use. Just when they were getting discouraged, things looked up. Around one, they found another secret room.

  They were in a commercial kitchen with six huge ovens, prep tables, massive dishwashers and row after row of cabinets lined with large tin cans. Most of the labels had come off and dropped to the floor, but some still had theirs. There were green beans, boiled potatoes, tomatoes and the like. The entire place was ready for cooking 1940s-style.

  As they’d done fifty times already, they consulted the floor plan. They saw the closet immediately. Its door was ajar and it was filled with what might have been linen tablecloths and napkins. The decades of musty storage had taken a toll on the cloth: everything disintegrated at the touch of a finger.

  After a quick look around, Paul said, “Ready for the next room?”

  Hans was poring over the floor plan, turning it in one direction then another. “This room has two closets. The second one should be over there where the shelves are.”

  They threw can after can onto the floor. When the shelves were empty, Paul tried to move them, but they were solidly attached to the wall. Hans tossed him a crowbar and took another for himself. They pried from the sides, and before long the wooden shelf fell forward with a tremendous bang and a huge cloud of dust. Behind the shelf was a bare wall where a door should be. More drywall was ripped away, and soon they found the next cache.

  This room was crammed full of boxes. They tore open several – each was packed with brand-new one-thousand-Reichsmark notes from the 1940s.

  “There’s no telling how much money’s here,” Paul remarked. “Many millions of Reichsmarks. These are worthless today, aren’t they?”

  Hans shook his head. “They aren’t legal tender anymore, but in this condition collectors would pay a lot for them. You’d drive down the value, of course, if you introduced a million banknotes into the numismatic marketplace at one time. But that’s not what should happen to these. While we’ve been exploring, I’ve been thinking what should be done here. This part of the Fuhrerbunker needs to become an annex of the German Historical Museum. People need to view the things we’ve found, exactly as they were discovered.”

  Paul had been thinking along the same lines, he admitted. And he’d come to respect Hans Steffen more and more as they worked together. The director’s excitement at their quest was every bit as high as Paul’s own.

  “If we don’t find anything more than we’ve already seen, it would make a great museum,” he agreed. “Once this is all over, I’m willing to provide the initial funding to make it happen. I’ll talk to the minister if that’s agreeable to you.”

  “Oh yes,” Steffen bubbled, thinking what a blessing it was that this American had come into his life.

  As they moved from room to room, they found more ruined artwork, hundreds of books and a vast array of household goods suitable for a hotel that expected a few hundred guests. That was what the Fuhrerbunker was, after all, and it had been completely outfitted for the arrival of the Nazi elite, who ultimately never checked in.

  Paul found everything interesting, but he still held out hope for the one thing he’d started this journey to find – Nicu Lepescu’s missing stationmaster ledger.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Last night over dinner Paul had joked, “How much longer are you going to be able to explore with me before the minister makes you go back to your real job?” This was the first time they’d eaten a meal together – a few beers and some good food made the conversation flow easily, and they became even better friends. Paul learned Hans’s life story, and Hans in turn heard the background Paul had manufactured for himself.

  Paul knew this couldn’t last much longer, although neither of them had heard a word from the Minister of the Interior as of yet. Once Hans was pulled off the project, Paul’s time here would be finished as well.

  “I haven’t spoken with Herr Deutsch lately, and I don’t intend to call him anytime soon,” Hans had laughingly responded. “Maybe he’s forgotten I’m not at my desk anymore. What if he’s decided he can do without me? Do you need a good museum director, Herr Silver?” That had brought forth a boisterous guffaw from Paul.

  By late morning they were examining the sixty-eighth room in the bunker. This was another dormitory full of bunk beds with mattresses torn and sagging from years of neglect. Hans pointed to a door. “There’s a bathroom through there and there will be a linen closet in it.”

  But there wasn’t. As they’d discovered twice before, there was no door where one should have been.

  Again they broke through drywall to find a hidden room. This one was different. For Paul this one was far more exciting than Louis XVI’s china or a roomful of banknotes.

  This room was packed full of books.

  Hans cleared off a table in the dormitory to hold the volumes they were bringing out. Some were individually wrapped in paper or cloth; others were in boxes. Most were simply sitting on shelves that reminded them of stacks in a library.

  Paul was inside, passing books through the narrow space between the stud walls. Like everything else, they were dusty, but they appeared to be without substantial damage. The ones he’d seen so far seemed in remarkably good condition.

  After passing out books and boxes for a while, Paul came out to take a look. Most of the works had beautiful bindings, some with lavish illustrations and gold writing in Latin or French. Some appeared very old while others were more
recent.

  Hans had opened one of the boxes on the table. There were two identically bound books inside. He took one out and examined it closely.

  “Do you know what this is?”

  Paul looked at the cover. It appeared to be leather and it was undecorated, simple and plain. “No. Do you?”

  Hans pointed at the spine, at a certain word.

  Gutenberg.

  Paul was astounded. “This is one of Gutenberg’s Bibles?”

  The director nodded and opened the book. Each page had line after line of Latin with lavish illustrations and initials. It was beautiful and in pristine condition.

  Pointing to the other book in the box, Paul asked, “Are there two of them? That one looks identical!”

  “I know a little about these Bibles because we have one in our museum too,” Hans replied. “You’ll recall that Gutenberg was the first to print multiple copies of a book using moveable type. You may not know that some of his books were printed on paper – as was the one we have in the museum – but ones like these were printed on vellum. It’s much heavier than paper stock. It took two volumes for the entire Bible, with a split after the Psalms. Only four complete vellum sets are known to exist today, although I’d wager at this moment we’ve just found set number five.”

  “I’ll be damned. Where do you think this one came from?”

  “Let’s break for lunch. I have a story to tell you about Johannes Gutenberg’s Bible.”

  Paul loved history. Although the Gutenberg Bible wasn’t what he was here to find, he was keenly interested in the lesson Hans was about to deliver.

  “You asked me where the Bibles we found came from,” he began. “We’ll have to do considerable examination to be sure, but I’d be surprised if this wasn’t the missing copy from Mainz. There was a wonderful Gutenberg Museum there before the war, and it still exists today. That museum owned the finest Gutenberg Bible set on vellum in the world. Mainz was a major trade city, and over the centuries it had built up a substantial Jewish population. In 1942, at the same time the Nazis began systematically rounding up Jewish citizens of Mainz, the Allies began an extensive bombing campaign against the city.

  “By late 1942, major buildings in Mainz were being destroyed almost nightly, and a few major Jewish benefactors of the Gutenberg Museum decided to remove the Bibles for safekeeping. According to the story, they were put into a simple box. I think we found that box today. Fascinating!”

  Paul couldn’t have agreed more. Their food arrived, but he barely nibbled at his meal. He was captivated by the story and urged Hans to keep going while they ate.

  “From here the story gets more speculative,” Steffen confessed. “Everything I’ve told you up to now is fact, but where the books went next isn’t clear. One account has the benefactors giving the Bibles to the Bishop of Mainz, a known Jewish sympathizer who helped many of them escape from Germany. Another says they were hidden in the lavish basement of a Jewish home. Wherever they went, I think we’ve just put together the end to the story. Now that we’ve found the box, I believe the Nazis found the books, someone fortunately understood their significance, and yet another priceless treasure was shipped to the Fuhrerbunker for the personal collection of Adolf Hitler.”

  “Aren’t they among the most valuable books in the world?”

  “They certainly are, and the books we found today are the most beautiful and well-preserved examples I’ve ever seen. The minister will be very pleased to hear about this!”

  Paul was eager to return to the bunker. They had spent almost no time in the first hidden rooms; they left the china and currency for others to deal with. This discovery was different. They went through the books carefully, one by one. Paul was on a mission to find the lost record of Nicu Lepescu’s tenure as stationmaster.

  The rest of the afternoon was a bibliophile’s dream. Only the most important things the Nazis stole were good enough to warrant the attention of the Fuhrer. These books were a treasure trove of first editions in French, English, German and Russian. Dostoyevsky, Shakespeare, Bacon, Poe, Dickens, Thoreau – the most important nineteenth-century authors were all represented in beautiful volumes, most of them autographed. These were wonderful old books, lovingly collected by people whose lives had been wrenched from complacency into terror by their government.

  Hans and Paul marveled over the things they found, but Paul was beginning to think he was totally on the wrong track. These books were museum-quality items, similar in rarity to the paintings by Picasso and Renoir that had been in the bunker. All this was fascinating, but he was looking for something else. Where would an ordinary, commonplace book – a train ledger – have been stored, and why had it been brought to the Fuhrer’s attention in the first place? As they saw more and more wonderful books, he worried that the one he wanted most wasn’t here at all.

  Given their magnitude, it was impossible to keep these discoveries to themselves. The minister had asked Paul to keep him advised of their progress, and Paul knew he’d be as interested as they were to see the hidden rooms and their contents. At the end of the day he made the call.

  First thing next morning Paul and Hans met the minister at the entrance to the Fuhrerbunker. Herr Deutsch was tantalized at what they wanted to show him. Paul had been deliberately evasive, revealing only that they had found some very interesting things in three secret rooms. The minister had rearranged his schedule immediately. This was top priority, and he was giddy with anticipation as Director Steffen opened the two huge padlocks and they stepped inside the tunnel.

  An hour later the minister’s tour was finished. They had found more than he ever expected, and he had been speechless throughout much of the visit. Outside on the plaza, Herr Deutsch effusively praised Paul and Hans, thanking them for their excellent work and incredible discoveries. Paul asked how much longer Hans could accompany him, and without hesitation the minister agreed to as much time as was necessary to complete the examination. He laughed and slapped the museum director on the back, telling Steffen to make sure his job duties were covered while he was off playing detective and archaeologist.

  The minister assigned a contingency of soldiers to guard the bunker around the clock. More militia would come in the next few days to remove the china and books. Those would go to the museum’s laboratory for examination and eventual public display. The currency was going to the Bundesbank, the central bank of Germany, where it would be held securely until officials determined its disposition. With a wave, a satisfied Herr Deutsch left as Paul and Hans descended into the bunker to continue their work.

  They went back to the books. As he sorted through volume after volume in the dim light, Hans came across a book he instantly recognized. It was a train ledger, identical to dozens stored at his museum. He shined the beam of his torch on the cover. Bucharest. 44-GUT-1411. The missing book! He opened the cover and a scrap of paper fluttered out. Hans picked it up and read the words on it.

  While Hans worked inside the secret room, Paul was outside cataloging the ones they brought out earlier. He heard Hans say something through the wall, but the words were muffled.

  “Sorry, I didn’t quite hear you,” he shouted.

  “I said, I think I’ve found something you’ll want to see. Take a look at this.” Hans reached through the wall and handed Paul the note from inside the ledger. As Paul read it, Hans stepped out. He saw Paul’s smile. This is what he’s been waiting for, the director knew.

  Paul translated the German words Mein Führer, hier ist der Hauptbuch für die Geisterbahn.

  My Fuhrer, here is the ledger for the Ghost Train.

  At the bottom were two initials: H.G.

  Hermann Göring – the man in charge of Hitler’s art thefts and supervisor of the train system.

  “My friend, here is something special for you.” Steffen handed him Nicu Lepescu’s stationmaster log.

  ——

  Once he found the book, Paul’s time in the Fuhrerbunker had to end. As exciting as the discoveri
es had been, the bunker was too vast and his time too limited for him to continue here. He had been after one thing, and now he had it. It was time to concentrate on the ledger and leave future exploration to others.

  He sat at the same desk in the museum basement where he’d reviewed records a few days earlier. Today’s work was far more interesting. At last he had the book that contained something Reichsmarschall Göring wanted to show Hitler himself, a book so important it was hidden away with priceless Gutenberg Bibles. What were its secrets? Where was the Ghost Train? The book lay in front of him on the desk.

  44-GUT-1411

  January 2, 1944

  August 31, 1944

  Nicu Lepescu, SS

  Stationmaster

  Bucharest, Romania

  From cover to cover, the setup of this ledger was identical to the others he’d seen. The first page bore a legend with cargo abbreviations, each subsequent page represented one train and every subentry on a page was a car – almost always a boxcar. The only trains that had passenger cars with real seats were troop transports. The soldiers were treated like humans while the prisoners were stuffed into freight cars like animals.

  Many of these trains were longer than in other cities, Paul noted. Logistics was one reason for this. Romania was situated far from the concentration camps. Trains would come through one town after another, loading prisoners at each stop. Other freight cars arrived in Bucharest empty but left loaded, sometimes with humans but more often filled with the gold and precious objects that had been stored there.

  Paul began by making a few assumptions. First he had to assume the Ghost Train existed; it wasn’t simply a rumor. He also figured the entry wouldn’t be obvious; it would probably look just like all the others. In fact, Nicu might not even have known there was something different about this train. Third, in order to narrow things down, he’d assume Hans Steffen was right: the ultimate destination of the Ghost Train was a remote place in Bulgaria or Romania. His last assumption was something Hans had also theorized. Hitler would only have ordered Operation Geist when things were grim, no earlier than summer 1944.