Echo of the Reich

by James Becker

  “I don’t know what he’s investigating, obviously, and I wouldn’t expect you to tell me because it’s presumably some kind of undercover operation. But that word is archaic and you really wouldn’t expect to hear any German today use it in conversation. Except in one connection, and that’s a dark and disturbing story that began in Germany in the nineteen thirties, and ended in Poland in April nineteen forty-five as the Russians advanced from the east, mopping up the last pockets of Nazi resistance as they did so.”

  Angela stood up and walked across to the doorway leading to the kitchen.

  “I’ll make some more coffee,” she said, “because you’re right: this is going to take us a while. I know almost nothing about Nazi Germany and the Second World War, and I have a feeling it’s going to take you some time to educate me. I’ll bring a bottle of brandy as well,” she added as an afterthought, “just in case you need some extra stimulation to keep going.”

  Five minutes later, Steven took a sip of brandy, then put the glass down on the coffee table and leaned forward.

  “We don’t know exactly when, or even precisely where or who, but at some time during the early nineteen thirties one or more German scientists began working on an idea so radical that it led directly to the most important and highly classified weapons project ever undertaken by the Nazi regime.”

  Steven Behr had Angela’s full attention. She trusted his knowledge implicitly. He knew more about the Second World War, and especially the events that took place in Germany during that incredibly turbulent period, than anyone else she’d ever met.

  It was, she knew, going to be a long evening, but by the end of it she was certain that she’d have some kind of an answer to Chris’s question.

  25

  24 July 2012

  Urgent pressure from his bladder awakened him just after six in the morning, by which time it was already quite light, and he immediately looked all around. There was nobody in sight, so Bronson stepped out of the car, relieved himself in a nearby bush, and did a quick circuit of the area, again checking that he was unobserved.

  Then he started the car and headed out of the woods and toward Bestensee. When he reached the main road running east–west through the town, he turned left, toward the closest autobahn junction. As he cleared the western end of Bestensee, he caught a brief glimpse of a road sign, did a double take and almost immediately pulled the Hyundai to a stop at the side of the road. There was no traffic behind him—it was still very early in the morning—and he backed up the car a few yards until he could see the sign clearly.

  The word written on it was Hauptstraße, and it suddenly dawned on him that perhaps, in the half-light of the previous evening, he could have mistaken the initial letter of the street name he’d seen. He’d thought it was a “K,” but perhaps it had actually been an “H.” Had he somehow just found the road he’d been driven down?

  Bronson grabbed the map book and opened it at the correct page. He studied that section of the map for a few moments, then shook his head. The Hauptstraße he was driving along was the wrong shape—it simply had too many bends in it—and as far as he could see it didn’t cross any stretch of canal or river. But maybe Hauptstraße was a common street name in German, like “High Street” or “Main Road” in English? Bronson already knew that strasse or straße meant “street,” and it wasn’t too big a leap of logic to guess that haupt could mean “high.” If so, there could be dozens of roads with that name in the area.

  But still that might help him track it down, because he could set the satnav to take him to every single Hauptstraße in Berlin, and then in each of the outlying districts. It would take time, but he’d find it in the end.

  At eight forty local time, seven forty in the United Kingdom, he parked the car in a vacant space in the Am Kahlberg service area, put the battery back in his mobile phone, switched it on and dialed Angela’s number. She answered on the third ring; Bronson knew she was always awake by half past seven.

  “It’s me,” he said. “Any joy?”

  “And good morning to you, too,” she replied briskly.

  “Sorry. Good morning. Any joy?”

  “I suppose that depends on what you mean. I know my limitations, Chris. I’m linguistically challenged, so I asked Steven Behr to come around last night and help me out because he speaks fluent German. The first point is that the word Laterntrager doesn’t appear in German dictionaries, but Steven told me it’s a fairly uncommon proper name. It has no independent meaning, just like—oh, Burdiss, for example—has no independent meaning. It’s just a name, and not a very common one at that. So my first question is: could the person you were talking to have been referring to somebody by that name?”

  “I don’t think so,” Bronson replied. “I can’t remember the exact phrase he used, but it was something like ‘before the Laterntrager arrives,’ as if he was referring to an object of some sort. So maybe he was using the word as a code name or nickname.”

  “I suppose that’s possible,” Angela replied, not sounding particularly convinced by his argument. “Steven applied a bit of lateral thinking and suggested it could be another German word that sounds very like Laterntrager, but this word is in the dictionary: Laternenträger. Could that have been what he said?”

  Bronson murmured the word a few times, trying it on for size, as it were.

  “I suppose it could be. So what does that mean?”

  “It’s an archaic word, one that Steven wouldn’t expect most Germans to have ever spoken, purely because of what it describes, though he was sure they would be able to tell you what it means. The literal translation would be ‘lantern bearer’ or ‘lantern carrier,’ and the English equivalent is most probably ‘lamplighter,’ the men who used to walk around the streets of London and other big cities lighting the gas lamps in the days before electricity. Is that any help?”

  “I don’t know,” Bronson replied, “though I suppose it makes more sense. I’ve been thinking all along that Marcus—that was the man’s name—was probably referring to some kind of weapon, and it’s quite common in the military for weapons to be given nicknames, often names that relate to what the weapon is or what it does.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. There’s a six-barreled Gatling minigun that’s fitted to tank-busting helicopters and aircraft, and that’s often called ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ because of the effect it has on its targets.”

  “That’s a bit sick, really, Chris.”

  “Blame the military’s very basic sense of humor. Anyway, I’m just wondering if this is the same kind of thing, if this ‘lamplighter’ name describes what the weapon does, rather than what it is. It could be some kind of massive incendiary device, something that’s designed to ‘light up’ everything around it when it’s triggered. And from the way Marcus was talking, I think this weapon—assuming we’re right, of course—is a device with a high yield, and the effects of it would be devastating, quite literally.”

  “Are there weapons like that?”

  “There are lots of types of incendiary bombs, of course, but they’re usually quite small because they’re designed to start fires, not blow things apart. I’m not aware of any big incendiary weapons, apart from the really nasty stuff like napalm and Willy Pete. That’s another really inappropriate nickname for the white phosphorus bombs the Americans used to have, but I’ve been out of the army for a long time now, so I’m right out of touch.”

  For a few moments Angela was silent, then she sighed.

  “Then I suppose this is as good a time as any to explain what else Steven came up with. I told you what Laternenträger means, what the dictionary definition says. But there’s another possible interpretation of the word which is much, much older than a nineteenth-century lamplighter. It could be a fairly literal translation of an ancient name, a name that’s resonated down the ages, a name that’s synonymous with death and destruction.”

  “You’re sounding almost messianic, Angela. Or maybe apocalyptic.”
>
  “That’s not a bad description, actually. The Latin phrase lucem ferre means ‘the bearer of the light,’ and that gave us an English name that means almost the same thing. ‘He who carries the light’ is the ancient name of Lucifer, the Devil. The Devil is supposed to be the author of all evil, the fallen angel who brought death to this world. If you’re right, Chris—and I pray that you’re not—then this man Marcus might be planning to unleash a weapon on London that would be far worse than the wrath of God; it could be the Devil’s revenge.”

  26

  24 July 2012

  “That tiny island is an anachronism that Europe simply doesn’t need,” Marcus Wolf said. “We came so close in the last war to utterly destroying it, and if the Führer had not turned his attention to the east and awoken the sleeping Russian bear, we could have—we should have—succeeded.”

  Klaus Drescher nodded. The leader of Die Neue Dämmerung—The New Dawn—was treading familiar ground but, as usual, Drescher didn’t disagree with anything that Wolf said. They had both studied, in considerable detail, the history of the Second World War, and their analysis was unequivocal. If Hitler had pressed home his advantage, prevented the mass evacuation of Dunkirk that had been hailed as—and indeed was—an Allied triumph, and forced Hermann Goering to commit every aircraft he had to destroying the British Royal Air Force, Britain would certainly have been defeated in the winter of 1940. Then Hitler’s Operation Sea Lion could have proceeded as planned, and would have resulted in an overwhelming victory for the Fatherland. Only after the war had ended did it become clear just how close Britain had come to ultimate defeat and inevitable surrender.

  But now, thanks to the Laternenträger, Germany had a chance to redress the balance, though it had been a long wait.

  When it had become clear to even the most dedicated and fanatical Nazi that Hitler’s dream was over, and that Germany would be overrun by enemy forces within a matter of weeks, farsighted individuals began implementing the plans they had already drawn up. Some of these later became public knowledge. The Vatican, for example, had been perfectly happy to facilitate the transport of high-ranking Nazis out of Germany in exchange for financial donations, and even Red Cross officials knew that many of the so-called “refugees’ they were processing were actually wanted Nazis. And the Odessa—the Organization Der Ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen, the Organization of Former SS Members—had established numerous “rat lines” to allow the escape of senior SS officers from Germany and Austria to other countries, primarily South America.

  Marcus’s grandfather hadn’t needed to avail himself of any of these organizations, simply because he had been on board the Junkers Ju-390 that had spirited Die Glocke out of Poland and on to its ultimate destination in Argentina. There, he had found a number of like-minded former German officers, and within a fairly short time he had set up Die Neue Dämmerung: the group that would herald the new dawn of the Nazi dream.

  They had hoped, even after the end of hostilities, to quickly regroup and re-arm and, allied with the threat of the devastating military capability promised by Die Glocke, to force the Allies to surrender. And then they would have returned to the Fatherland in triumph. But the destruction of Germany had been so complete, so devastating, and the work required on Die Glocke so complex and time-consuming, that they were never able to realize their dream. Until now, that is, when their scientists had finally perfected the weapon that was even then on its way to London.

  Leadership of the New Dawn had been passed from father to son, to ensure that the organization never lost its focus or clarity of purpose, and now Marcus Wolf held the reins, and was preparing for the triumph that had eluded the group for so long.

  “Eventually, the people of Germany will thank us,” Klaus said now. “It was a mistake, a bad mistake, to have allowed Britain ever to become a part of the European Union. We have nothing in common with them, and they have been nothing but trouble, just as they were in the nineteen forties.”

  “You’re absolutely right,” Marcus agreed. “After we have succeeded with our mission, we will be able to ignore the United Kingdom, and that will allow Germany, the Fatherland, to again take its rightful place as the most powerful nation within Europe. The Führer failed to achieve that using tanks and soldiers and aircraft, but we are going to succeed. We will eliminate Britain as a political and economic force by the application of pure science, by the triggering of our weapon, and our nation will then go on to dominate the continent because of the power of our economy and our implacable political will. Within five years, my friend, I believe that Germany will be the fourth most important nation on Earth, and we can then, perhaps, begin making plans to topple America and Russia, and maybe even China as well.”

  “When they see what the Laternenträger can do, and they realize that there is no defense against it, the political climate will change dramatically,” Drescher agreed.

  “Exactly,” Marcus said. “There is nothing to stop us now.”

  27

  24 July 2012

  Bronson removed the battery from the mobile phone, placed the components in the Hyundai’s glovebox, then started the car and drove out of the service area and back onto route 13, heading south.

  As he pulled out into the light early-morning traffic, he glanced frequently in his rearview mirror. And what he saw confirmed his suspicions. He’d only just cleared the end of the slip road when he noticed two marked police cars heading south toward him, and traveling very quickly. A short distance behind them, a Mercedes van was matching their speed. As he watched, the two police cars slowed and turned into the service area, disappearing from view. The Mercedes van continued along the autobahn, slowing all the time, and then turned right onto the end of the slip road, partially blocking it.

  It could, of course, have been some kind of exercise, or a mere coincidence that the German police had arrived in force at a location he had just left, but Bronson didn’t believe in coincidences. He was now certain that his mobile phone was being tracked. If he’d spent just two more minutes on his call to Angela, he knew he’d now be in custody and awaiting extradition back to England to face whatever charges Detective Inspector Davidson thought he could make stick.

  The phone would have to go, obviously, but he would still need to be able to contact Angela, and using public pay phones simply wouldn’t work. He needed another mobile phone. And, just as important, so did she, because the only way the Metropolitan Police could possibly have worked out that he was using this particular mobile was if they’d placed a watch on Angela’s home, office and mobile numbers.

  He would have to risk one final call to her from that phone.

  The next exit from the autobahn was the Groß Köris junction. Bronson took the slip road and then turned east toward Klein Köris. As soon as he found somewhere to park safely beside the road, he stopped the car, reassembled the mobile phone, and called Angela’s mobile. She answered almost immediately.

  “It’s me again,” Bronson said. “This is important, so just listen and please don’t interrupt. My phone’s being tracked by the police here, and they must have discovered the number by monitoring my calls to you. I’m getting a new phone this morning, and I want you to do the same. Just buy an ordinary pay-as-you-go mobile for cash and load the SIM card with as much credit as it’ll take, but at least twenty pounds. Keep your present mobile with you, and I’ll text you the number of my new phone as soon as I’ve got it.”

  “If you do that, won’t the police also know your number?” Angela protested. “And you’re in even more trouble now, aren’t you?”

  “No, I’m at about the same depth as usual, I suppose. And sending a text should be safe. I’ll explain why later. Now, I’ve got to go. I’ll talk to you this evening.”

  Bronson again removed the battery from the phone and drove on. He hoped he was right about a text message being safe. It was one thing for the Metropolitan Police to ask a mobile phone company to locate the position of a particular handset by checking
which radio masts the unit was in contact with, or even to obtain a listing of the calls made and received by that mobile, but it was quite another to monitor the calls and messages themselves. That needed warrants or court orders, and Bronson doubted if Davidson had enough evidence to convince anybody that he needed to be able to listen to what Angela Lewis, a respected ceramics conservator working for the British Museum, a lady who had never been given so much as a parking ticket in her life, was saying, or what her texts comprised.

  And unless they had obtained a warrant to record her calls, there was no way they’d be able to track him once he’d ditched his original mobile. After that, their conversations would just be from one unregistered mobile in London to another unregistered mobile near Berlin.

  That thought gave him some comfort as he continued east toward Klein Köris. All he had to do now was find somewhere to buy a new phone.

  In fact, that didn’t prove too difficult. When he reached the town, he easily found a parking place in a side street, locked the car and walked the short distance to the main shopping area. At the end of a short parade of shops, he found the kind of retail establishment that would be instantly familiar to any British shopper: smart and glitzy, staffed by bright young things, and with examples of all the latest handsets mounted in racks on the walls.

  Bronson had no interest in the number of texts he could send at no charge, or the length of time he could spend pointlessly surfing the Internet on a phone with a screen the size of a large postage stamp. All he wanted was the cheapest pay-as-you-go phone the shop had to offer. And eventually, after a good deal of gesticulating, pointing and miming, and even trying out a bit of his French on the assistant, Bronson got what he wanted: a cheap phone with a mains charger and a SIM card in a colorful box, plus the largest amount of credit the unit would accept, all of which he paid for in cash.

  He returned to the car, opened the box and checked the phone. All the instructions were in German, obviously, but mobile phones aren’t complicated to use, and he didn’t expect to have any trouble getting it to work, especially after he went into the menu system and changed the display language to English.