Echo of the Reich

by James Becker

  “His work was to some extent complementary to that being undertaken at around the same time by Professor Gerlach, who had been involved in the creation of plasma by utilizing the spin polarization of atoms since the nineteen twenties. To me, it looks as if this entire project was conceived by Gerlach, who apparently convinced the Nazi high command that he could build a device that could transmute the element thorium into uranium, most likely using beryllium as a source of neutrons. Now you can really appreciate the significance of at least one of the code names, because I believe that it wasn’t called Projekt Tor, but Projekt Thor, a reference to thorium, and nothing to do with any kind of a gate.”

  Angela glanced across at Bronson to make sure that he was still paying attention. He was.

  “To me, as a nonscientist, the next step in the chain of logic seems to make sense. The Nazis were having a lot of trouble trying to get sufficient supplies of heavy water out of Norway, and they hadn’t got many other potential sources. I think they turned to Gerlach and his theoretical machine for converting thorium into uranium—uranium that could then be used to produce plutonium to create a nuclear bomb.”

  Angela glanced back at her notebook to refresh her memory.

  “There are a few more facts that I’ve been able to turn up but, as you’ll obviously appreciate, some of the information is pretty sketchy, just because of the circumstances and what happened at the end of the war. It seems there were at least two important laboratories involved, one at a town named Leubus—its modern name is Lubiaz—in Silesia, and another at Neumakt—which is now called Sroda Slaska—to the east of Breslau or Wroclaw. I mentioned Die Glocke, and this device was at the very heart of the project. The German name means ‘the Bell,’ and was apparently inspired by a poem penned by a man named Friedrich Schiller, entitled the ‘Song of the Bell,’ which describes the forging of a great bell from metal of extreme purity. I’m sure the Nazis would have loved the mystical overtones of this idea, creating a perfect device from perfect material, much as they were trying to do with the huge and diverse population of the European countries they had conquered.

  “The other reason for the name was because the device apparently looked very much like a large bell. Again, it depends upon which source you refer to, but it seems that Die Glocke was partly built at the laboratories in Leubus and Neumakt. The main part of the unit was a contrarotating centrifuge, and that was fabricated in Germany, at Dessau, by a company named BAMAG: the Berlin Anhaltische Maschinenbau AG.

  “The obvious question is: did it work? Well, it did do something, that much we’re quite sure of. And, if it did work, how did it function? Were the Nazis able to produce uranium in this device? Nobody knows the answer to that specific question, and there are various ideas about its form and function. This isn’t my area of expertise, obviously, but I’ve looked at various theories suggested by people who seem to know what they’re talking about.”

  Angela turned to a fresh page in her notebook and read from her notes: “The most plausible suggestion is that the device was a plasma induction coil, which worked by using the two colocated contrarotating centrifuges to spin mercury in a powerful magnetic field. This would cause a thing called a toroidal plasma to be created. Compounds of thorium and beryllium would already be in position in the core of the centrifuge, held in position in a kind of jelly made from paraffin. The thorium would then be bombarded by neutrons stripped from the beryllium, and this bombardment would result in the creation of uranium.” She looked up. “That was the theory, as far as most researchers have been able to deduce. But I have no idea if it’s scientifically plausible, or even possible, because nobody, apart from the scientists and technicians who worked on it, ever saw it.”

  Bronson glanced at her. “You mean, they didn’t find it after the war?”

  Angela shook her head. “No, but that’s another story, and we’re not there yet. First, you remember that I told you the Thor project was divided into two?”

  “Yes. The new ones were called Chronos and Laternenträger.”

  “Exactly. And I also said that there was some dispute over the spelling of the word Chronos. One reason for this is that Kronos spelt with a ‘K’ is a classical name for Saturn, and the shape that a toroidal plasma would assume is much like that planet, a central core containing the compounds of beryllium and thorium, with the plasma forming a ring around the outside. To me, that just seems too deliberate a name to be coincidental.

  “There are a few other things we know about Die Glocke. It was obviously reasonably portable. After it was manufactured, it was taken to yet another of the Nazis’ underground complexes at an airfield to the west of Breslau. That was on the first of November nineteen forty-three, and as far as I can gather it first became operational in May nineteen forty-five, with catastrophic results. According to one set of records, seven scientists were responsible for conducting that experiment, and five of them died shortly afterward from what appears to have been a massive dose of radiation poisoning. The following month, or possibly in July of the same year, they held a second test run, when the scientists were wearing protective clothing, but again some deaths—we don’t know how many—occurred soon afterward.

  “But by this time, the Soviet forces were beginning their inexorable advance toward Berlin, and in November nineteen forty-four the device was moved to the tunnels that lie under Fürstenstein Castle, along with the scientists who were still working on it. But even that proved to be only a temporary relocation and a month later, on the eighteenth of December nineteen forty-four, the Bell was moved for the last time within Europe, to the Wenceslas Mine, near the village of Ludwigsdorf, which is now known as Ludwikowice.”

  “Which is where we’re going,” Bronson commented.

  “Which is where we’re going,” Angela echoed.

  “But I thought you said that it wasn’t there—this bell thing, I mean. You said it wasn’t found at the end of the war.”

  “That’s exactly what I said,” Angela agreed. “Nobody knows where Die Glocke ended up. On either the seventeenth or the eighteenth of April nineteen forty-five, the device was removed from the tunnels of the Wenceslas Mine. It was taken to a nearby airfield, loaded onto a six-engined Junkers Ju-390 transport aircraft, and simply vanished. There were a couple of reports from South America that described sightings of an aircraft that could have been the Junkers, but to the best of my knowledge after April nineteen forty-five, the bell itself—Die Glocke—has never been seen.

  “And that’s why the fact that this German named Marcus used the word Laternenträger, which is meaningless in almost any other context, set my alarm bells ringing. If his group has managed to find Die Glocke and get it working, there’s at least a possibility that it could be used to create a genuine nuclear weapon, though that would involve a lot more than just a centrifuge, or, at least, a kind of dirty bomb that could kill by irradiation or by dispersal of radioactive particles.”

  Angela glanced at Bronson.

  “And that’s why I came out here, so that I could tell you everything I know, everything that I’ve managed to find out about it, and hopefully between us we can find some way of stopping him from deploying it. I know the Olympics start in just two days, but unless we have some idea about what this weapon is and what it can do, I don’t see how we could convince anyone in London that there was a real and believable threat to the city. And the Wenceslas Mine was the last place that Die Glocke was known to have been operating, so that’s where we need to start looking.”

  35

  25 July 2012

  Klaus Drescher knocked on the door of Wolf’s study and then walked in.

  “I’ve had a call from Oskar,” he said. “I think he was afraid to call you.”

  Wolf grunted his displeasure. “I presume that he has failed to find Bronson?”

  “You assume correctly,” Drescher confirmed. “He did as you requested. He organized a watch through the local police, for both patrol cars and surveillance cameras, b
ut so far there has been no sighting of either the car or Bronson. Of course, that situation might change at any moment.”

  “I hope that’s not all Oskar has done.”

  “No. He’s organized three teams, a driver and an observer in each one, and they’ve been on the road almost continuously, searching the area around this house and steadily moving further afield. They’ve seen absolutely no sign of Bronson or the car, and I think they’re running out of ideas.”

  Wolf nodded but didn’t reply for a few moments. Then he glanced up at Drescher.

  “I suppose there’s one other possibility that we haven’t considered. I still don’t think Bronson would have returned to Britain. I’ve given Georg details of the car so that he can put the team in place at Dover, at the ferry port, and also at the exit from the Channel Tunnel. They’ve seen nothing so far. So if Bronson isn’t somewhere near this house, trying to work out how to get inside it, and he hasn’t crossed the Channel back to England, there’s only one other place that he might have gone.”

  Wolf gave a rueful smile before he continued speaking.

  “And it could be my fault,” he added.

  “What do you mean?” Drescher asked.

  “After the execution, I talked to Bronson for a few minutes before my men drove him back to the station car park. I mentioned the Laternenträger to him, just in conversation, and I know that he noticed it, because he asked me what the word meant.”

  “But that’s ancient history, and not really relevant to what we’re doing.”

  “I know,” Wolf agreed, “but if Bronson decides to investigate the meaning of that word, we both know what he will find out. Enough has been written about Die Glocke for him to discover what happened at the Wenceslas Mine in nineteen forty-five. And if he decides to try to pick up that trail, he might think that a visit to the site where it all began would be a good place to start.”

  “But there’s nothing there,” Drescher objected.

  “We know that, but Bronson doesn’t. I think it’s worth a try. Give Oskar a call and tell him I have new orders for him. He’s to keep two of the teams searching in this area, but he himself is to proceed at once to Ludwikowice and check the Wenceslas Mine. And if Bronson is there, the mine can become his tomb.”

  36

  25 July 2012

  Bronson was staring ahead through the windscreen of the BMW. What had started out as a simple but irritating case of vandalism and damage in northeast London had suddenly taken on a nightmarish quality. Not only was Bronson himself in deep trouble, abandoned by his superiors in Britain and with a warrant issued for his arrest on firearms charges, but he was also guilty of two killings, one the murder of an undercover German police officer.

  But even that paled into insignificance compared to the threat to London that Angela had just outlined. If she was right, and he had the uncomfortable feeling that he couldn’t fault her logic or the conclusion that she had drawn, then they were facing the very real possibility of a terrorist attack on the streets of Britain’s capital city to rival the 9/11 atrocity in New York. He had no idea how many people a dirty bomb could kill, but if the device were to be triggered during, say, the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games, the death toll would be at the very least in the thousands, possibly in the tens of thousands.

  And at that precise moment, he had no idea what he could do about it. He knew that if he contacted Curtis, or even went straight to Davidson, his claims would be dismissed as the ravings of a bent copper simply trying to save his own skin, because he would have absolutely no proof of any sort to back up a single statement that he made. He couldn’t go to the German authorities because he guessed that by now the Berlin police, and possibly every force in Germany, would be looking for an ex-English copper named Christopher Bronson who was wanted for the willful murder of a policeman. They might already have a video film or still photographs of him committing the crime, and possibly also the Walther pistol with his fingerprints all over it.

  It was looking more and more as if the only way that he could do anything about Marcus’s nasty little plot was to somehow stop it by himself. Preferably with Angela’s help, if she decided to stick with him. But even as that thought crossed his mind, he knew he was being unfair. The two of them had had their differences in the past, but their ultimate loyalty to each other had never been in any doubt, at any time. The one thing he was quite certain about was that she would stick by him.

  Bronson glanced across at his former wife and smiled grimly. “You know that I’m always pleased to see you, and I hope the feeling’s mutual,” he began. “And we’ve had some interesting times together, tramping around the world trying to unravel ancient mysteries. But I have a horrible suspicion that right here and right now, we’re both completely out of our depth.”

  “Never say die, Chris. If we can find out as much as we can about this man Marcus and what he might have planned, surely we can just go to the authorities here in Germany, and probably in Britain at the same time, and hand over everything to them? Provide them with the information and let them sort out the problem?”

  For a couple of moments, Bronson debated telling her exactly what had happened to him since his arrival in Berlin, but then decided not to.

  He shook his head. “It’s not that easy, I’m afraid. I didn’t tell you before, but I left Britain under a real cloud. I ended up firing a pistol at a van-load of police officers, and that’s not a simple offense to walk away from. I’m not surprised you were being followed around London, because there’s a real live warrant out for my arrest, and if they do catch up with me—cliché or not—they’ll want to lock me up and throw away the key.”

  For a few seconds, Angela just stared at him, her face clouded with disbelief. “You did what?” she demanded. “Why the hell would you do something like that?”

  Bronson shrugged. “It’s a long story,” he said, “and it’s complicated. I believed there was a serious threat to London during the Olympic Games, and I simply couldn’t convince any of my superiors that there was any truth in it. They were going to pull me off the case, and just mop up a small and insignificant bunch of thugs who’d been breaking a few windows in northeast London, and I knew that if they did that we’d never find out about the bigger plot until it was much too late. So I did what I thought was right, not what I was told to do.”

  “But shooting at your fellow officers? That’s really serious, Chris.”

  Bronson nodded. “Tell me about it. Actually, I didn’t shoot at any of them, only at one of the tires on the van they were driving, but that’s probably splitting hairs. But I still believe I was right, and what I found out here has confirmed it.”

  “You mean the stuff I’ve told you about Die Glocke?”

  “That, obviously, but now I know a lot more about Marcus as well. I was watching his house last night, and I saw him in his full jet-black regalia, along with a group of other men who were clearly his subordinates. He was dressed as a Nazi Obersturmbannführer, a lieutenant colonel, right down to the swastika on his left arm. I even saw the lightning bolt runes on his lapel.”

  Angela was silent for a few moments, then she shook her head.

  “That’s really nasty,” she said. “The SS probably killed more people—mainly innocent people who couldn’t fight back, in the concentration camps and elsewhere—than any other single unit of the Nazi armed forces. And they were heavily involved with Die Glocke as well. One thing I didn’t tell you was that when the Bell and the equipment were taken out of the Wenceslas Mine, it was a special SS Evacuation Kommando that handled the operation.”

  “I’ve never heard of a unit like that.”

  “You won’t have done,” Angela replied, “because as far as I’ve been able to find out, it was the only one ever created. These SS men went into the mine, removed Die Glocke itself and all the documentation, and selected which scientists should accompany the device on its journey out of Germany. The rest of the scientists and technicians w
ere executed on the spot.”

  Bronson nodded grimly. “I guess that’s what you’d expect of the SS—doing what they did best and keeping up their tradition of slaughtering the innocents.”

  “That’s one way of putting it.”

  “So you’re sure that everything to do with Die Glocke was removed from the mine? In that case, why are we going there? What do you hope to find?”

  “I don’t know, but that place is the only firm lead we have. Everything else I’ve told you has just been culled from recovered documents and the recollections of the very few survivors of that period of the war who were vaguely aware of what was going on. That mine was the last location where the device was known to be operating, and I suppose I’m hoping we might find something there that other people have missed.”

  Bronson looked at her for a second or two, then turned his attention back to the road.

  “According to the satnav,” he said, “we’ll reach the Polish border in a few minutes, and I suppose we’ll find out fairly soon. Did you discover anything else about this blasted Bell?”

  “Only one thing, but it is quite significant,” Angela replied. “All Nazi projects and operations were given code names, as we’ve already discussed, but they were also allocated priorities that reflected their importance, and that priority determined what resources they could command, and how quickly requests for additional men or equipment would be processed. From the very start, both Projekt Thor and the later twin projects of Chronos and Laternenträger were allocated the priority classification Kriegsentscheidend. That meant ‘decisive for the outcome of the war.’ It was the highest possible classification in the entire Nazi system. Guess how many other German Wunderwaffen projects shared that same classification?”