The Suicide Exhibition

by Justin Richards

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  For Toby—who loves this sort of thing

  SHINGLE BAY

  -----------

  REPORT INTO INCIDENT ON 30TH AUGUST 1940

  DOCUMENTS ENCLOSED:

  Official Statement (Ministry of War, 1940)

  OS Map of Shingle Bay and Environs (September 1940)

  Report of Colonel Brinkman (September 1940)

  Memo from Prime Minister (September 1940)

  Classification Review Minutes (February 1957)

  Ditto (July 1973)

  Ditto (December 1998)

  Request for file disclosure under Freedom of Information (2001) – DENIED

  Ditto (2005) – DENIED

  Ditto (2011) – DENIED

  THIS FILE IS CLASSIFIED

  Level Z

  NOT TO BE OPENED UNTIL

  1 September 2040

  BY ORDER

  (Original signed by Winston S. Churchill)

  CHAPTER 1

  Officially, on 30 August 1940, nothing happened at Shingle Bay. The government records that prove nothing happened were classified for the next hundred years.

  It was a day of heavy air raids on the south east of Britain. The sky was filled with noise and death. If there had been anyone to see Sergeant Green and his troops at Shingle Bay, the chances are their eyes would have been turned instead to the heavens. Their attention would have been drawn by the distinctive grumble of the Rolls-Royce Merlin engines that powered RAF Hurricanes and Spitfires against the might of the Luftwaffe.

  As the evening drew in, so the skies emptied. Britain held her breath, not knowing that the next day would bring RAF Fighter Command her heaviest losses of the war so far. Unaware of what would happen that night.

  “You sure about this, Sarge?” Private Goodall asked.

  “This is war, son,” Sergeant Green told him. “No one’s sure about anything.”

  “You got the shivers?” Private Wood asked, grinning.

  “I ain’t got nothing.”

  Wood’s grin widened. “That’s true enough.”

  “Shut it, both of you,” Green said. He had the shivers even if the other two hadn’t.

  They made their way back up the steep cliff path, and took up position behind a screen of bushes and grass, sheltered by the bulk of the nearby church.

  “We really going to stop an invasion?” Wood asked.

  Green stared out through the curtain of vegetation, binoculars clamped to his eyes. “If we have to.”

  “Just us, Sarge?”

  “You’ve got the radio. If it gets hairy, call it in.”

  “How will I know?” Wood wondered.

  Goodall had been at Dunkirk. “You’ll know,” he said.

  “Just you be ready at that valve,” Green warned.

  The pipeline was like a huge, dark snake curling past their position and down the side of the cliff. It split into smaller pipes on the beach below, spreading out like a black spider’s web across the shingle before disappearing under the water.

  The three soldiers settled down to wait. It could be a long night. For now the only sound was the waves dragging back over the pebbles on the beach below.

  Dusk was drawing in before anything happened.

  “What’s that?” Wood hissed.

  “Can’t see anything,” Green told him.

  “Nor me. But I can hear it.”

  “Me too,” Goodall agreed. “Plane I think.”

  Green scanned the sky. Finally he spotted it—flying high and approaching along the coast from the south.

  “Got it. It’s all right—it’s one of ours.”

  It was a large transport plane, lumbering its way on some logistical mission under the cover of approaching darkness.

  The note of the aircraft seemed to change as it approached. It became deeper, discordant, and then resolved into two different sounds. Green scanned the sea, peering out as far as he could into the gathering dusk. There they were—he just hoped the aircraft didn’t spook them …

  “Ready, lad?” Green was whispering, though there was no way the men in the approaching boats could hear him. “Do it now.”

  Wood nodded nervously, reaching for the metal wheel jutting from the side of the pipeline. It squeaked as it turned. Beside him, Goodall shouldered his rifle, scanning the beach below.

  Holding the binoculars steady with one hand, Green scrabbled for the flare pistol with the other. “Not a moment too soon,” he breathed.

  There were three boats, each containing half a dozen men. He could make out the individual soldiers now. He could see their grim, determined faces, their field gray uniforms and their rifles. At the prow of the last boat, one man stood staring toward the beach. His pale, hollow features and his wispy blond hair were clear in the binoculars despite the fading light. He seemed to be staring back at Green through dark, sunken eyes—challenging him to do his worst.

  Well, thought Green, that was a challenge he was happy to accept. With gallons of fuel flowing rapidly down the pipeline and bubbling up into the bay, Green raised the flare pistol.

  * * *

  In a stone-built room lit only by the flickering light of burning oil, Number Five was drawing, oblivious to his surroundings and the two men watching. His pencil scratched frantically across the paper, sketching outlines, impressions rather than details. As soon as the drawing was finished, he pushed it across the stone desk, and started on the blank sheet of paper beneath.

  The sound of pencil on paper mingled with the guttering of the lamps. One of the two men standing beside the desk lifted the latest drawing and angled it toward the nearest wall sconce.

  “They are almost there.”

  The other, shorter man, nodded, taking the drawing. The light glinted on his small, round spectacles as he examined the picture. Two boats, heading toward a curving beach. Pale cliffs rose up above banks of shingle. The men in the boats were barely more than silhouettes, guns at the ready. The scene was pictured as if from a third boat, just behind the first two.

  The spectacled man placed the drawing on a stone table beside him, aligning it carefully and exactly with the stack of pictures beneath.

  Number Five stared into the distance, not seeing the men standing in front of him. Not seeing the drawing evolve on the paper. Intent only on the images in his mind’s eye.

  The new drawing was similar. The boats closer to the beach now. Perhaps a hint of restlessness in the posture of the men. And high in the sky, a point of light like a blossoming star.

  The shorter man frowned. “What is that?”

  * * *

  The flare lit up the sky like an elongated burst of lightning. Green had aimed long, so that it was still burning incandescently as it fell toward the sea. As it reached the water in front of the boats. As it touched the film of oil slicked across the sea.

  The single point of brilliant light burst into a fireball spreading out
over the water. A wave of flames, crashing down on the shoreline and rushing out toward the approaching boats. In a moment, it engulfed them.

  It was like a painting of hell. The whole sea was ablaze. Green could hear the shouts and screams of the men in the boats. Between the sheets of flame, he caught confused glimpses. Burning men diving into the water. The skeletal carcasss of the fire-eaten boats. The man in the prow of the third boat—still standing staring toward the shore. Unmoving even as the flames licked at his smoldering uniform …

  Goodall’s rifle tracked back and forth as he waited for a target. If any of them made it to the beach, they’d be easy pickings. But Green could tell that none of them would.

  “You can shut off that valve now,” he told Wood.

  The man’s face was shining with sweat as he turned the wheel. They could all feel the heat coming off the sea. Slowly, the flames died down, the smoke thinned, and the screaming faded into the cries of the frightened seagulls.

  * * *

  It was a drawing of hell. Number Five’s hand jerked painfully across the page, the pencil almost ripping the paper. The heavy metal bracelet round his wrist scraping against the stone desktop. Jagged spikes of flame. Shaded smoke. The distorted suggestion of men’s agony.

  And through it all, Number Five was screaming. Mouth open, head back, screaming in pain.

  His skin seemed to shrink back from his cheekbones, blackened and dry. Blistering, peeling, smoking from the heat of the fire. His hand was a mess of charred bone, pushing the paper aside and starting on the next sheet. By the time he slumped forward in a smoking heap, all he had drawn was a mass of flames.

  But still he was screaming. The last skin was seared from his skull. Eyeballs ran with tears of their own molten flesh. His body convulsed. Number Five clawed at the table. There were blackened scorch marks across the surface where his fingers had gripped it. The pencil clattered to the floor.

  The two men watching said nothing. The shorter man snatched up the final drawing—a pencilled mass of flame and smoke. He stared at it for a moment, the fire from the nearest wall sconce reflecting in his glasses. Then Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler screwed the paper into an angry ball and threw it across the room.

  The paper hit the wall, and dropped into the sconce below. It rested intact for a moment in the pool of burning oil, then burst into smoky flame.

  CHAPTER 2

  By late April 1941, the Battle of Britain was over. The price of the Allies’ first victory was high. Nazi Germany had suffered its first defeat.

  But in the mind of Standartenfuhrer Hans Streicher of the SS the war was practically won. How long could a tiny island continue to hold out against the might of the Reich? Some of Streicher’s men were afraid Britain would surrender before they saw action. Streicher knew that Hauptsturmfuhrer Klaas in particular resented not being at the forefront of the struggle.

  “When the Wehrmacht marched into Poland, we were excavating in the Austrian Alps,” Klaas said. “When Paris fell, we were digging through Roman ruins in Northern Italy. Now, we’re stuck here in France when the battle’s over and we should be fighting the British.”

  Streicher sympathized. But he had no such reservations himself about their work. “You’ve been with me since ’34, Gerhardt,” he said quietly, glancing across at the third man with them. “You know how important our work is to the Reich. For us, the front line is here.”

  Klaas looked round, peering into the gloom. “An ancient chamber hidden beneath a churned-up field in the middle of nowhere?” He sighed and nodded. “I’m sorry, sir. I know you are right of course. It’s just … frustrating. Everything takes so long.”

  “Check on the progress,” Streicher ordered. “And remember, however long it takes, however frustrated we might get, the work we are doing here could determine the future not just of Europe but of the entire world.”

  Streicher took pride in that. He was a man who took pride in everything he did, never giving less than total dedication, commitment, and loyalty. Even the tiniest things were important to him—like the fact that his own English was more precise and grammatical than that of the American standing beside him.

  Together they watched Klaas talking to the soldiers tunnelling through the unforgiving ground. It had taken three weeks to dig their way this deep. Three weeks of unrelenting, backbreaking work. Anything less sensitive, less important, and Streicher would have rounded up able-bodied men from Oulon and the surrounding villages and used them as slave labor. But not for this … Two years of research had led Streicher here. The imminent results were for the eyes of a select few within the SS only.

  And the American. He was useful, and just as the United States as a whole maintained a studied neutrality, so the American seemed supremely unconcerned about what happened in Europe. Just so long as it did not interfere with his own researches or with sites of historic interest.

  The American certainly agreed that this site was of historic interest. Pre-historic, possibly. Despite his lazy drawl, and the scraggy beard, Professor Carlton Smith evidently knew his subject.

  Streicher was wary. America might be neutral but she was no ally. That said, Smith did seem genuinely immune to the increasing tide of pro-British feeling that was flowing over the United States.

  “Hell,” he’d told Streicher when they first met, “you guys can blow each other to Kingdom Come far as I’m concerned, just so long as you leave me to my digging and notes.”

  Smith could see for himself, he told Streicher, that the Reich was by no means the all-conquering monster that the warmonger Churchill and his cronies made it out to be. In fact, Smith’s politics, on the rare occasions when he ventured an opinion or betrayed a belief, seemed refreshingly in line with Streicher’s own.

  Of course, Streicher had checked as soon as he met him that Carlton Smith really was a professor of Archaeology at Harvard University. His credentials, it was confirmed through the Reich’s sources in New York, were impeccable. His political leanings were indeed slanted in the right direction.

  For all his arrogance and brash tone, Smith had offered invaluable advice on the dig and useful insight to some of the finds. It was a lucky coincidence that he had been touring the area making notes on local churches and chateaus for a proposed book. Especially lucky for the men who would have died with Sturmmann Hagen if Carlton Smith hadn’t seen the iron spike set in the ground under the wall and shouted a warning.

  It was a simple enough mechanism, little more than a lever primed to bring down a ton of rubble on anyone digging through the entrance of the burial mound. Perhaps the most surprising thing was that it still worked, even after thousands of years.

  They tunnelled in from the other side after that. Smith’s advice had been to abandon trying to get through the tomb’s entrance. “Who knows what other traps the cunning old bastards laid? But you cut your way in from the back, and it’s a whole different ball game.”

  Now they were digging deep underground, their work lit by electric lamps on metal tripods and by bare bulbs strung from cables fastened to the walls that ran back to the generators at the edge of the dig. Makeshift wooden props shored up the tunnels. The soldiers had worked their way through three caverns, each littered with artifacts all of which were catalogued and crated up ready for later shipment.

  Two more men had been killed by hidden traps getting this far. One fell through a thin flagstone that shattered under his weight, the second was crushed by a slab that swung down from the roof. Several others had lucky escapes.

  Now, finally, they had reached what seemed to be the final chamber. Streicher’s men were scraping the mud and dirt from the last wall. Once through that, the long hard work would be justified …

  The project was overrunning. Streicher was under pressure to get into the chamber and recover what he was sure was inside. He was cautious, wary of making rash promises, but everything pointed to this being the place. He tried not to raise the expectations of his superiors. Even so, they asked daily
for the impossible. He was aware of one of the Enigma operators pushing through the narrow tunnel behind him and into the cavern where they stood. He could guess what the message said. It would be from Reichsfuhrer Himmler, or possibly his lackey Hoffman. The wording would be clear and short and direct.

  Streicher took the flimsy message paper without looking at the operator. Glanced at it. “No reply. Just acknowledge receipt.”

  “More words of wisdom and encouragement from the Fatherland?” Smith asked, his smile masked by the beard.

  “Something of the sort,” Streicher said in English. The American spoke no German, and hardly any French. It was a miracle he’d survived in France at all before meeting Streicher.

  So the Standartenfuhrer made no effort to conceal the message slip as he handed it back to the operator. If Carlton Smith had bothered to look, he’d have seen a single line of text:

  HAVE + YOU + SECURED + THE + UBERMENSCH

  In fact, Carlton Smith did understand some German and his French was more than passable. But he knew that the less he seemed to know about what was really going on, the more likely Streicher was to keep him involved. He was under no illusions that he was dealing with the SS. If they thought he’d found out something he shouldn’t, they’d shoot him. So he smiled and nodded and feigned complete ignorance, and offered as much help and advice as he thought would be well received.

  He played a similar game with his politics—venturing only rare opinions or thoughts, and always carefully clouding what he really thought of the Third Reich and what was happening in Europe.

  As well as the historical interest of the site, Smith was fascinated by Streicher’s involvement. The Standartenfuhrer’s men, while no doubt efficient and brutal soldiers, were evidently also veterans of previous archaeological digs. They worked with care and diligence, and at least some appreciation of the past they were unearthing.

  Klaas returned, raising his arm in an abrupt Heil which Streicher reciprocated. The wall was clear—they were ready to break into the tomb.