by Iain King
About halfway down he saw a flashlight switch on below him. ‘Watch out for the junk,’ Glenn called out, shining a small light at the bottom of the ladder. Directly below Myles was a decayed mattress, and part of an old vehicle chassis. Both must have been thrown down – or fallen into the space – several decades ago. ‘Stay to the left, Myles, and you can get round them,’ directed the American.
Myles took the cue from Glenn and lifted his immobile leg around the obstacles. He was soon standing on a firm concrete surface.
Glenn swung the light around, gradually tracing the edge of the floor. The wall was mostly intact, with only some water damage where it met the flat base they were standing on. Then something shone back – two small circles, glowing in the dark. Glenn fixed the beam at them, pointing it straight in their direction, and the reflections seemed to dart away. Myles wondered what they were. Then a squeak, and a rodent scampered into the darkness.
‘Rats!’ exclaimed Zenyalena. She shivered. ‘I’m cold. Glenn – give me the torch …’Glenn didn’t respond immediately, but kept pointing the beam around. It was several seconds before he offered to hand it over.
Zenyalena tugged it out of his hands. ‘… Thank you.’ She stepped out, away from the ladder, and pointed the light upwards. Although the beam wasn’t really powerful enough, it was clear that they were in a huge cavern. She shone the light at joints in the concrete slabs which formed the ceiling several metres above them. ‘Man-made. Probably by the Nazis.’
Glenn disagreed. ‘We know the prison was built before the Nazis came to power.’
‘Yes, Glenn, but the Nazis converted this place into … into …’ Zenyalena didn’t know what they had converted it into.
Myles called over to her. ‘There’s probably a lighting system. See if you can find a bulb somewhere.’
Zenyalena swung the beam above them until she found a 1940s-style lightbulb dangling from a cable, happy to prove Myles right. Then she traced the cable back with the flashlight. It ran down the wall, into a metal box near the floor.
Pascal walked over to the metal switching box, with Zenyalena – and her torch – close behind. For a few moments Pascal peered inside, and swapped some fuses around, muttering in frustration. ‘The fuses have blown – maybe all of them,’ he complained.
‘Do you think the Nazis vandalised it before they left?’
‘No, just abandoned ...’ Pascal pressed something and looked up, optimistic. For a moment the lights blinked on, then they went out again. ‘… And this thing’s rusted. Stolz couldn’t have used it recently.’ Angry, Pascal kicked the metal. There was crackle and some sparks, and finally the lights hummed on again – permanently this time.
The whole, huge cavern was illuminated around them. The team stared at it, eyes wide with awe and bewilderment.
There was desk in the middle of the room, next to a table covered in papers. Boxes were piled in a far corner. Maps lined the walls, many with Nazi markings.
Myles peered back up. He could see the ceiling clearly now. It was the underside of the concrete plinth beneath the prison. Oddly, bolted onto it were several small upside-down railway tracks – nine concentric circles - and from each one hung a wire with a globe attached.
He remembered the clue: ‘Where it was written – and he grew fat - minus 32 metres.’
Myles got his bearings and tried to work out exactly where in the vast underground space would be exactly below Hitler’s cell. ‘It’s somewhere in the middle of this space.’ He limped towards the table in the centre of the cavern. On top of it, half buried in papers, was a book. Myles picked it up and read the cover.
Ephemeris
Strange. ‘Anyone know what an “ephemeris” is?’ he called out, the words echoing from the concrete walls.
He was greeted by blank faces, as Glenn, Heike-Ann, Zenyalena and Pascal drew near.
Myles began flicking through – it was a book of timetables, just like the one he’d found in Stolz’s East Berlin apartment. With a different month on each page, there were several columns with a different symbol at the top of each.
Zenyalena pointed at the page. ‘Look – the crescent symbol. That must mean the moon …’
Then Glenn noticed the last column was topped with the letters ‘PL’. ‘And this must be Pluto …’
Myles understood: it was a timetable for the planets. He checked the first page and the last.
January 1st 1900 – December 31st 2099.
Someone had calculated the position of the planets on every day for the whole of two centuries.
Then an idea came to him. He turned to the middle of the book, then back a few pages to 1989 – November. He ran his finger down the column next to Pluto, and the column three away from it. ‘We can test Stolz: Saturn and Neptune …’ As Myles looked down the columns, he realised it confirmed what Stolz had written: Saturn and Neptune appeared together in the sky exactly when the Berlin Wall came down, both at ten-and-a-third degrees of longitude. The ephemeris was precise to the day.
Quickly Myles turned to 1917, to see where Saturn and Neptune were during the Russian Revolution. The planets crossed – both at four degrees this time – in exactly the month that Czar Nicholas and his royal family were kicked out by the masses. He was about to check on Stalin’s death thirty-six years later, but he was distracted.
It was Zenyalena, calling out from a corner of the cavern. ‘I think it’s a control panel.’ She had found a corroded metal desk, and was pointing to the dials and lettering. ‘I’m freezing – does this control the heat, do you think?’
Myles directed Heike-Ann towards the device. ‘Can you make sense of it?’
Heike-Ann went to join Zenyalena and nervously reached out at the dial. ‘I think it’s … it’s some sort of calculating machine ...’ Heike-Ann slowly turned the knob, experimenting as numbers rotated behind a glass display. ‘… Not a number calculating machine. This is a calendar.’ She pointed to the dials. Each was inscribed with a single word. ‘Look – this means “Uranus, Jupiter, Neptune …” It’s a calendar for calculating the position of the planets.’
Zenyalena tried turning one of the dials. There was a clunk from the ceiling as something lurched along the rail. The globe beneath it followed, swinging slightly as it juddered into a new position. Zenyalena’s jaw dropped. ‘Amazing. The Nazis must have used it to work out where the planets were.’ She turned the dial again, causing another clunk on the rail above. A different hanging ball shifted this time.
Myles shook his head, still not understanding. ‘But why? The ephemeris told them where the planets were. So, how did this help them? It just shows them what they already knew.’ He pointed again at the control panel. ‘There must be something we’re missing. Some other button or … something.’
Heike-Ann started checking out the desk for any other buttons or switches; something they hadn’t found yet. She looked all around the sides, then at the bottom of the desk. Suddenly she reacted to something. She bent down and flicked a switch. The globes lit up, projecting light onto one of the spheres near the centre.
Zenyalena ran over to it, marvelling upwards at a spectacle of 1940s engineering. ‘Look – this one’s the Earth,’ she shouted, excited. ‘It’s got the continents painted on it. And there are dots for major cities.’
Glenn squinted up. ‘It’s kind of an odd way to light up the Earth, wouldn’t you say?’
But it was Pascal who realised more. ‘The lights from the planets: they cast a shadow. It allowed the Nazis to calculate where each planet would rise in the sky, and where it would set. See this: the red light …’ Pascal was pointing to the red sphere next to the ‘Earth’ globe. ‘… It must be Mars. The light from it hits half of the Earth – the other half is in shadow.’
Realising Zenyalena was still baffled, the Frenchman tried to explain. ‘There’s a line all around Earth where the light becomes shadow,’ he said, turning his finger in a circle. ‘The line joins all the places where Mars would appear
on the horizon – either rising or setting. This model allowed them to calculate the places where the planet would be on the horizon, as viewed from Earth.’
Myles, Zenyalena, and Heike-Ann gazed up, wondering at the bizarre, antiquated invention slowly revolving above them. Then Glenn called out from the back of the cavern. While the others had been distracted by the metal control desk and the hanging spheres, the American had been rummaging through the papers on the tables behind them. ‘Hey, you guys,’ he called. He was holding up some large maps of the world. Heavy curved lines had been drawn on them. ‘Could these be Nazi satellite tracks?’
‘Not for man-made satellites,’ Myles called back, ‘Because the Nazis didn’t have them …’ Then he got it. ‘… But if you put these lines on a globe they’d divide it into two halves. Each line must show all the places on Earth where a planet was on the horizon.’
The team understood. But they were no wiser – why had the Nazis done it? And why build such a huge facility to make the calculations?
Glenn noticed one of the maps had been copied several times. First he saw the birth date and time.
18.30 Uhr, 20 April 1889, 48.15 N, 13.04 E,
(Branau am Inn, Österreich).
Then, underneath, in gothic script, two words which provoked both disgust and fascination.
Adolf Hitler
Zenyalena lifted it out, and held it flat with Glenn’s help. Heike-Ann, Pascal and Myles crowded around.
It showed several lines flowing like satellite tracks over a map of the world, each labelled with the name of a planet, written in German: Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus …
Heike-Ann pointed to places which had been circled. ‘Look: important places in Hitler’s life: Stalingrad in Russia, the Western Front in France, Warsaw …’
But Zenyalena saw them differently. ‘They’re also places with lines going through them. That line shows almost exactly how Hitler divided Poland with Stalin, and look at Hawaii – when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour it undermined his authority.’ The she noticed another line, which cut through the Ardennes and ran up into Norway. ‘And look: this is where Hitler did his Blitzkrieg – his “lightning war” which surprised the Western Allies – twice, when he attacked there in 1940 and again, in 1944.’
Glenn was cynical. ‘You mean where he lost the Battle of the Bulge?’
But Zenyalena refused to concede. ‘Don’t you see?’ She thrust her face towards Glenn to make her point. ‘His 1944 offensive was almost brilliant. If he hadn’t squandered his army in the East, it would have broken through. It was a real shock.’
Myles acknowledged the point. ‘She’s right, Glenn. Those places in France and Belgium were important to Hitler. It’s also where Hitler won his reputation in the First World War.’
Zenyalena was already pointing at another line. ‘And again: look, Mercury. The mythical “winged messenger” of the Gods. When Hitler was born, Mercury was on the horizon in a line running up through Munich, Nuremberg and Berlin – the places where he made his greatest speeches, and where propaganda gave him power.’ Her finger darted to yet another line. ‘And another – Mars, planet of war: it was just setting, just going below the horizon, over both Stalingrad and El Alamein – the two most important places where the “God of War” abandoned him.’
‘Oh come on,’ huffed Glenn, letting go of the paper. ‘This is getting ridiculous. You can’t say Hitler lost at Stalingrad because at the moment he was born in 1889, fifty years before the battle, the planet Mars happened to be setting over the city.’
‘Look at the facts, Glenn: this Mars tracks the limits of Nazi military forces …’ Zenyalena’s voice was quiet as she spoke in awe. ‘… And it’s amazingly accurate.’
‘So you’re saying if Hitler had been born an hour later,’ – Glenn could barely bring himself to say it, it sounded so ludicrous – ‘his armies would have been stopped hundreds of miles further west?’
Zenyalena didn’t answer. Instead, she began sifting through the rest of the papers on the desk. She pulled out three more maps and read the titles. ‘We have, er … 7. October 1900; 15.30 Uhr, 48.08 Nord, 11.34 Ost (München). Who’s that?’
Heike-Ann looked at the gothic script in the bottom corner of the sheet. ‘Himmler. The man who set up Hitler’s killing factories.’ She pointed to a place which had been circled in South-East Poland. ‘Look, they’ve circled Auschwitz.’ Auschwitz was on the intersection of two lines labelled ‘Uranus’ and ‘Jupiter’.
Zenyalena answered without looking up. ‘According to legends and old literature, Uranus is associated with surprises, Jupiter just exaggerates everything – which sums up Auschwitz.’
Myles noticed another line, running through western Germany. ‘And that’s Mars, setting on the horizon where Himmler surrendered to the Allies in 1945,’ he said, looking up at the others. ‘There was an old prophecy that he’d betray Hitler, and he did. With this map the Führer knew exactly where.’
Zenyalena had already picked up the next chart. ‘This one is 30th November 1874, 01.30 (51:52 North, 01:21 West Oxfordshire, England). Winston Churchill …’ She was taking in the map and the places which had been circled. ‘… So Churchill had Mars rising in Italy – where he tried to get the Allies to launch the second front. Uranus directly over Moscow – he sent shock troops to attack the Soviet Union in 1919, and Mars setting over Washington DC.’
Glenn chuckled slightly. ‘Churchill surrendered to the Yanks, huh?’
‘Yes, Glenn, in a way he did,’ admitted Myles. ‘When he was in charge, the British Empire gave way to American leadership in the world.’
Heike-Ann had the last chart. ‘Here’s Emperor Hirohito, of Japan. 29th April 1901, 22.00, Tokyo, 35 degrees 2 minutes North; 139 degrees 46 East. He has Uranus directly over Hawaii, and on the horizon where they did their Far East attacks, along with Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.’ Then she looked slightly confused. ‘And, Neptune is directly over Moscow. What does that mean?’
‘Confusion and illusion,’ explained Zenyalena. ‘Neptune is the God of the Sea – you can never see what’s underneath. It means Hirohito was successfully deceived by Moscow.’ She said it with patriotic pride. ‘If Japan had attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, we would have been forced to fight on two fronts and lost. But Stalin fooled the Japanese. Germany was forced to fight on two fronts, instead.’
Pascal eagerly started looking around. ‘There must be more than just Hitler, Himmler, Churchill, and Hirohito. Let’s look: they can’t have built all this for just four people.’
They all searched for more maps. Lifting up papers, Heike-Ann asked if there could be a chart on the Soviet leader. But Zenyalena, double-checking all the Hitler maps, explained that Stalin was born a peasant, and nobody was ever sure of his real birthday. Pascal checked under the desk, Glenn went to the other tables and Myles began looking along the edges of the room.
Myles came across a wooden crate. There was some old German writing on it, and an industrial serial number of some sort, with a large letter ‘K’ – clearly from the war. Myles wiped off a layer of dust. He lifted up one side, surprised by how heavy it was, and as he tilted it, a gentle rolling sound came from inside. Myles peered through a crack in the wood to see metallic lumps inside. Then he realised it didn’t contain maps, but grenades. Very gently, he replaced the crate on the ground, aware just how close he had been to setting them off.
‘Guys, be careful when you’re looking. If there are any more old explosives here, they could be volatile,’ he warned. ‘One touch and … the five second fuses will probably have gone already.’
Glenn answered with a call from the other side of the cavern. ‘Hey. When did the Nazis invent highlighter pens?’ The American was holding another of the Hitler maps, printed with lines just like the others. But this one had been scribbled on – in fluorescent orange. He summoned Heike-Ann over to translate.
Heike-Ann looked at the bright ink. ‘It says, “Location Three: 500 metres south of the railway
carriage, close to where he …’’’ Heike-Ann hesitated, as though the translation had become difficult. Her face turned up, half in apology. ‘The words – in German it means literally “swapped his vision”. I don’t know the English. “Where he swapped his vision, but didn’t serve”.’
Myles and Glenn looked at each other, unsure of the meaning. Then Heike-Ann turned the map over. A single word was scrawled on the back in the same deliberate handwriting they’d seen in the Vienna library.
Stolz.
She showed it to the international team, who all understood. It was Stolz’s third clue. But where was the dead Nazi sending them?
Glenn started shaking his head. ‘Typical Nazi. He writes something strange on a map, when he could have just put an X. What the hell does “swapping vision” mean?’
Myles tried to decode it for a moment, then realised he wasn’t meant to. ‘Stolz didn’t want us to know. Not us. These clues were meant for someone else. Someone who would understand them easily.’ Myles had a suspicion who the clues were for, but he didn’t say. ‘Come on. We need to get out of here.’
The team agreed: it was time to leave. Zenyalena made sure they collected the maps, while Heike-Ann checked they had switched off the metal control panel. Myles took a last look at the planets hanging from the ceiling, then turned to join Glenn and Pascal, who were preparing to go back up the ladder.
Pascal began to climb, but the ladder started to spin under his weight. The metal creaked, then a joint near the surface snapped apart. Pascal tumbled back onto the floor, the rusty ladder clattering down onto him.
Myles rushed over to help as fast as he could with his bad knee. ‘You hurt?’
The Frenchman blinked, half-dazed from the fall. ‘No, I’m … OK.’ Myles and Glenn lifted off the broken metal. Slowly Pascal sat up, dusting off his hands.
Myles inspected the ladder, wondering how it could have broken. There were fresh marks on the rust, as if a bolt had just been kicked out.
Pascal had recovered, and was standing back on his feet. ‘I am lucky to fall from only a low height, but not lucky enough to be up there when the ladder broke …’ He was pointing upwards.
