Echo of the Reich

by James Becker

  A few minutes later, the car bounced past the group of trees Bronson had spotted. Just beyond them, the valley opened up even more. On the left they could see a few more of the houses at the edge of Ludwikowice, but their attention was drawn immediately to a huge building, deserted and derelict, standing right in the middle of the clearing.

  “That’s the Fabrica,” Angela said, as Bronson stopped the car a few yards away. “I recognize it from the picture in the guidebook.”

  It was big. A two-story structure, the upper floor apparently with a much higher ceiling height than the ground floor. The roof had obviously collapsed long ago, and the outer walls showed signs of damage by either a fire or perhaps even an explosion, pieces of old blackened wood visible among the heaps of bricks and masonry that surrounded the structure. The grass and vegetation growing over and around the building suggested old, rather than recent, damage.

  “Maybe we should follow the railway track,” Bronson suggested, pointing over to the east of the clearing.

  He steered the car in that direction, and within a few seconds found an unpaved path that had clearly been used by vehicles at some time, because it was wide enough for even a tractor to pass along it and drive through the clumps of bushes and trees. Then the path Bronson was following vanished, and he drove the car onto a large reinforced-concrete open space, maybe originally used as a parking area, and there, at the end, stood the Henge.

  The structure was huge, and bizarre. More than anything else, it resembled a concrete cage, vertical pillars arranged in a circle and topped with equally massive horizontal bars, like some modern but marginally more delicate version of Stonehenge.

  “I’ve never seen anything like that before,” Bronson muttered.

  “People claim that it’s unique,” Angela said. “It’s known as either the Flytrap or the Henge, and nobody knows for certain exactly what it was used for. There’s the suggestion that the Nazis had designed some sort of circular aircraft, and that the structure was used as a kind of containment area to support the vehicle during testing. There are huge ducts under the Henge, which were probably used to run power cables up to whatever was inside it.”

  She paused. “That’s one explanation.”

  The way she spoke made Bronson look at her.

  “And the other?” he demanded.

  “All you have to do is look at it from the other direction,” she said. “Because, actually, you have seen something like this before.”

  Bronson shook his head. “I haven’t,” he insisted. “I’d remember if I had.”

  He looked back at the structure. There were eleven columns in all, evenly spaced, and it was about thirty yards across, he estimated, which meant a circumference of roughly ninety yards.

  “The clue is those bolts you can see on the top of the circle of concrete above the pillars,” Angela said.

  Bronson looked where she was indicating, and could clearly see a heavy-duty bolt sticking upward directly above each of the vertical columns.

  “Some people have theorized that they were used to support something being tested inside the Henge, but that doesn’t really make sense. If that were the case, surely the bolts would have been positioned on the inside of the structure, not on the top. Because the Germans stuck the bolts there, I think it’s reasonable to assume that they intended to attach something to the top of the Henge, or actually did so.”

  “Like what?” Bronson asked.

  “Like a sheet-metal cylinder.”

  “What?”

  “I think the simplest and most logical explanation for the Henge is that it was the base of a power station cooling tower, the same sort of structure you’ll see at any power station today. Think about it: the Fabrica is only a few dozen yards away, and was obviously manufacturing something—nobody knows what—but it would definitely have needed a source of power. And some parts of the Wenceslas Mine produced coal, so there was a fuel source nearby.”

  Angela paused and pointed at some concrete blocks that lay on the flat land below the slight rise where the Henge was positioned.

  “I believe that if you’d visited this plant during the Second World War, you’d have seen a coal-fired power station running down there, on those foundations, with the cooling tower right here. Cables would have been run in underground conduits from the power station over to the Fabrica building, and that would be the obvious explanation for something that is otherwise almost inexplicable.”

  Bronson nodded. What she’d said made sense—certainly much more sense than any suggestion that the Nazis had developed and been test-flying some kind of saucer-shaped craft. That, he believed, could not have been kept secret during, and certainly not after, the war. Somebody, somewhere, would have seen something or even taken a picture of it.

  “So do you mean we’re just wasting our time here?” he asked.

  “Definitely not. I’m reasonably certain I know the exact purpose of the Henge, but the Bell is something else. And, actually, if I’m right and the Henge was a power station cooling tower, that reinforces the story of Die Glocke, because every account of its operation stresses the fact that it needed huge quantities of power.”

  Bronson nodded.

  “So where do we go now?” he asked.

  Angela pointed downward.

  “According to the few surviving records, the Henge was built on the hillside almost directly above the chamber where Die Glocke was positioned. That’s also the reason for the ducts various people reported. They just had things the wrong way round. The ducts did carry power cables, but the power wasn’t being sent from the Wenceslas Mine up to some futuristic craft being tested inside the Henge, but from the power station up here down into the cave to power the Bell.”

  “So somewhere around here there has to be a way into the caves in the ground we’re standing on?” Bronson suggested.

  “Exactly. So let’s go and find it.”

  39

  26 July 2012

  It had sounded easy enough when Bronson said it, but finding their way into the cave complex of the Wenceslas Mine proved to be far more difficult than either of them had expected.

  One of the first and biggest problems was simply finding any trace of the mine entrance because of the considerable growth of trees, bushes and undergrowth that had occurred over the decades. The shape of the ground had been softened and altered by weathering and the passage of time, and although they were able to use the railway line as a guide—because Angela had discovered that during the war a spur had linked the mine entrance to the main line—it still took them over half an hour to find anything that even resembled a mine entrance.

  And when they did find it, it wasn’t much help.

  “There’s an entrance over here,” Angela called out. “At least, I think it’s an entrance.”

  Bronson trotted over to where she was standing.

  At first sight, what she was looking at didn’t appear much different to the rest of the rock face. They had been searching in the area between the remains of the railway track and the plateau upon which the Henge stood, studying a fairly steep slope about thirty feet high. It was mainly rock, except where rough grass and the occasional stunted bush grew in the cracks where there was just enough soil for the roots to gain purchase. At the foot of the slope, large boulders and smaller rocks lay scattered on the ground, where they’d fallen over the centuries.

  “Where?” he asked.

  Angela pointed.

  “This section looks a lot more tumbledown than the rest of the slope,” she said, “with more vegetation growing all over the rocks. And there’s a concave area just above it, see?”

  Once she’d pointed out the visual clues, Bronson could absolutely see what she was driving at. He nodded slowly.

  “You could be right,” he said. “If this was once a tunnel, a natural or man-made entrance, and it was blown up, this is pretty much what you’d expect it to look like, over half a century after the event.”

  For a few momen
ts they just stood there, staring at the rock face.

  “You told me that the Nazis had destroyed the entrance,” Bronson said.

  Angela nodded. “That’s in all the contemporary reports that I’ve managed to track down. When the special SS Evacuation Kommando arrived here, they removed Die Glocke and the documentation, killed everybody who wasn’t vital to the project, then blew down the entrance tunnel. And that,” she added, “is what I think we’re looking at.”

  “I presume they were in a hurry,” Bronson said. “They must have known that the Russian advance was only a matter of days, maybe even hours, away.”

  “Probably, yes. What’s your point?”

  “I don’t know too much about mining or underground facilities, but I do know that a supply of fresh air would have been essential. And I think that it would be normal practice to have more than just one source.”

  “You mean they might have destroyed the entrance used by people and vehicles, but they wouldn’t have had time to blow up all the ventilation ducts?”

  “Exactly.” Bronson nodded. “This was a huge complex—you said it covered over thirty-five square kilometers—and to keep that kind of area livable in, they would have needed plenty of sources of fresh air.”

  “So all we have to do is find one, I suppose. But at least we now know we’re looking in more or less the right place.”

  They separated again, and this time they started looking higher up the rock face, because logically the air vents would have been placed high enough to avoid animals taking refuge in them, and where undergrowth would not interfere with the flow of air. And the Nazis had repeatedly demonstrated to the world that they were logical. Implacably evil in their intentions, but supremely logical and efficient in the implementation of their intentions.

  Once again, it was Angela who spotted what they were looking for. About fifty yards from the dynamited entrance to the cave, under a natural overhang about ten feet off the ground and almost invisible in the shadow cast by that overhang, she saw a dark shape, not a perfect circle but too regular to be a natural opening in the rock.

  Bronson pulled on a pair of overalls, handed a second pair to Angela, and checked that his flashlight was working.

  “Do you really think you’ll need that in the cave?” she asked, pointing at the butt of the Walther that he’d tucked into the waistband of his trousers.

  “Not really,” Bronson replied, “but you never know. I think they have wolves in this part of the world, and maybe bears as well. I’d hate to get inside the tunnels and find that I’d arrived in a wolf den just in time for lunch.”

  “Good point. What about me? I have shot the odd pistol in my time, you know.”

  Bronson fished the Llama .22 out of his trouser pocket and handed it to her.

  “It’s loaded, with one round in the chamber, and the safety catch is on, so just click it off, point and then shoot. But only if you have to. I doubt if one of those bullets would stop a wolf, and all it would do to a bear is just piss it off, really badly, so let me do the shooting if we meet anything like that.”

  “Fine with me.”

  Bronson again checked the flashlight he was carrying, confirmed he had spare batteries for it and for the second, smaller flashlight in his pocket, then scrambled up the rock face to the opening. The hole itself was about three feet wide, and appeared to have been chiseled out of the rock, because he could see the unmistakable marks of picks or chisels on the stone.

  He crawled a few feet into the narrow tunnel, then turned round and waited for Angela to follow him, extending his hand to help her as she neared the entrance.

  “This is definitely man-made,” Bronson said, pointing at the tool marks.

  Angela shivered slightly. “It gives me a funny feeling, seeing something like this, knowing how it was constructed, and knowing that the men who were forced to dig this out of the rock were probably dead just days later.”

  There wasn’t anything Bronson thought he could say in reply to that, so he just shook his head, switched on his flashlight and shone the beam down the tunnel.

  Then the two of them began making their way, slowly and cautiously, along the horizontal shaft that had been cut through the rock and into the side of the mountain.

  40

  26 July 2012

  The shaft was fairly easy to negotiate, being wide and unobstructed apart from a few stones and bits of rock that had fallen from the roof over the years, and it wasn’t even particularly long. Bronson estimated they’d covered only about twenty yards when the beam of his flashlight suddenly no longer showed the sides of the shaft, but a heavy-looking lump of rusty machinery.

  “Stop where you are,” he murmured to Angela. “There’s something blocking the duct.”

  He crawled forward a few more feet until he could clearly see what it was.

  “It’s a fan,” he said. “I’ll need to shift it before we can go any further.”

  He reached out and gave the rusted lump of machinery a push. It moved very slightly, but he knew he didn’t have either the strength in his arms or a fulcrum that he could use to shift it. He’d have to use his feet.

  “Can you take this torch?”

  Bronson passed it back to Angela, then awkwardly turned completely around in the tunnel. He braced himself with his arms against the side of the duct, then drew up his legs and kicked out, his feet hitting the fan squarely near its center. There was a sudden squeal of tearing metal, but the obstruction stayed in place. Bronson moved slightly, then kicked out again.

  This time, whatever was holding the fan gave way, and it tumbled out of sight, landing with an echoing crash somewhere beyond.

  Angela shone the flashlight over Bronson’s body. The worked stone sides of the ventilation duct stopped a couple of feet ahead, and beyond that was an inky blackness, part of a stone wall visible some distance away.

  Bronson repeated the maneuver, turning himself round so that he was facing the open space ahead of them. Then he slid forward the last few feet until his head and shoulders projected beyond the end of the duct. He shone the flashlight downward, the beam revealing a level floor of hard-packed earth on stone and the crumpled remains of the fan.

  “The floor’s about six feet down,” he said, his voice echoing in the confined space. “I’ll go first.”

  “No bears or wolves, I hope?”

  “Not that I can see, no.”

  Bronson maneuvered himself awkwardly for the third time, turning round so that his legs dangled over the edge, then lowered himself with his hands, dropping the last couple of feet.

  “Just come straight out,” he told Angela. “I’ll take your weight.”

  Angela crawled forward, glancing with interest around the chamber, then stretched out her arms toward Bronson, who grabbed her shoulders and eased her body forward out of the shaft, then lowered her to the ground to stand beside him.

  “What is this place?” she asked, unconsciously lowering her voice to a whisper.

  “I don’t know. There doesn’t seem to be anything in it, so maybe it was just a storage room, something like that.” He aimed the beam of the flashlight toward the center of the ceiling, where a rusty electrical fixture dangled. “It had a light once,” he added, “as well as that fan, so I’m pretty sure we’re in the right place. It must be a part of the Nazi underground complex.”

  He switched the beam to the wall directly under the opening of the vent and noticed that there was a power socket attached to the stone, and a cable ran from it to the fan he’d kicked out of the duct.

  Bronson led the way toward the doorway on the opposite side of the room and shone the flashlight into the space outside. A corridor, hacked through the rock, extended in both directions.

  “Left or right?” he asked.

  “Doesn’t matter. We’ll probably need to go in both directions. For now, go left. That’ll probably take us back toward the dynamited entrance, and we can get our bearings from that.”

  As they walke
d down the corridor, Bronson stopped suddenly and shone the beam of his flashlight down at the floor.

  “Tire marks,” he said. “Not a modern tread pattern, obviously, so they clearly brought the odd vehicle in here. Maybe to take away the Bell just before they blew the entrance, or maybe just to deliver supplies.”

  He shone the flashlight at the walls. “It’s not very wide, but I guess a small truck could get down here. The tunnel’s pretty straight, as far as I can see.”

  They walked on, and within a few dozen yards they found the entrance. Or what was left of it. The damage on the inside of the complex mirrored what Angela had noticed outside. A massive pile of boulders, rocks and rubble completely blocked the tunnel. Whoever had blown the entrance had made a competent and comprehensive job of it.

  “That seems clear enough,” Angela said. “This was what the reports described, so somewhere down there”—she pointed back the way they’d come—“is the chamber that was used as the test facility for Die Glocke. All we have to do now is find it and learn what we can from whatever’s left there.”

  “Right,” Bronson said, and led the way down the corridor, the beam of his light playing over the walls as he walked.

  There were numerous openings on both sides of the corridor, all either without doors at all or with doors that were standing wide-open. Some of the rooms had clearly been used as offices, equipped with desks and chairs, and each time they looked into a room and saw anything in it, they stepped inside to investigate.

  In several rooms the chairs had toppled over, evidence of a hasty departure or possibly caused by the blast wave of the explosion that had sealed the tunnel entrance. In some, dust-covered paper littered the floor and covered the desks, but Angela scarcely gave it more than a cursory glance.

  “Isn’t it worth checking some of these documents?” Bronson asked.

  Angela shook her head. “If I was a German-speaking historian specializing in the Second World War, it might be, but my guess is that most of this stuff will just be routine administration, orders for food or fuel or equipment, that kind of thing. Anything that was important to the project would have been taken away with the device itself.”