“Captain!” One of the operators sitting at a computer terminal in the command truck back at the factory shouted. “The signal has just stopped.”
The captain rushed across the van to look at the operator’s screen. “Where exactly was it when it stopped transmitting?”
The operator moved the cursor across the map displayed on the screen until it hovered over a spot just outside Linz and then hit some keys and the image zoomed into the spot and an address and map co-ordinates appeared above the cursor.
“Where are the nearest MPs or police to that location?” The operator hit another couple of keys and an array of moving dots appeared on the screen. “There,” he pointed at a dot almost on top of the cursor. The captain pushed the transmit button on the radio microphone he’d picked up from the desk and issued instructions to the nearest car. Less than two minute later the driver of the car reported he was in the lorry park but there wasn’t any sign of their truck. Another five minutes passed before he came back on the radio saying they’d watched the CCTV footage from the camera at the entrance and the truck definitely entered the park but the only truck exiting around that time had a 20 foot shipping container on the back and looked completely different.
“Which way did that truck go and do you have a registration number and any distinguishing marks?”
There was a brief pause, “I cannot read the number plates however there’s a name and address painted on the driver’s door, somewhere in the Czech Republic. He turned back towards the Westbound carriageway out of Linz. Hang on a minute.”
There was another brief pause. “It’s that one for sure. It has odd-design rear light units on the trailer which are the same as those on our truck, they’ve totally disguised it, put the containment vessel into the container and must have found and disabled the transmitter.”
The captain ordered the operators in the truck to relay the information to all the pursuit vehicles. Almost immediately the dots on the screen started converging on an imaginary point somewhere to the West of Linz. They watched the dots all converge at a point just South of the town of Wels and a chatter of radio traffic accompanied this convergence.
“So where is it?” The captain yelled at the room in general. The hubbub in the command truck increased to an almost intolerable volume with radios squawking and operators talking ever louder into handsets. Finally one operator stood up and announced, “The truck has left the highway somewhere near Wels, we’ve lost him.”
“Get the helicopters to Wels and start a proper search, you can’t just lose a 40 foot trailer truck.”
Pietr swung the truck through the open gates, across the large tarmac hardstanding and past the short row of hangars to the very last one which had its doors open ready to receive them.
Once inside, an overhead gantry rapidly lifted the container off the trailer and then the containment unit onto the platform of an aircraft loading vehicle which then exited the hangar. It crossed the end of the hardstanding and turned onto the main apron where the gleaming shape of a Sukhoi Su-80 twin engined light freight aircraft sat with its cargo door open. The loading vehicle edged up to the fuselage of the Sukhoi and commenced sliding the containment vessel into the hold. They were forced to repeatedly push and pull as they turned it through 90 degrees it was such a tight fit in the freight bay. After five minutes or so it was secured and the cargo doors closed. The engines spooled up, the propellers started spinning, and the aircraft edged out towards the end of the runway. Pietr looked out of his window directly behind the cockpit and saw two police cars, blue lights flashing, screech to a halt side by side just inside the airport gates. The pilot wound up the engines and released the brakes and the Sukhoi leapt forward rapidly gaining speed until much too close to the end of the runway the nose-wheel lifted and the plane rose rapidly, nearly touching the twin booms of the tail on the ground as it rotated. Wheels up it made a gentle turn to port and disappeared into the distance on a heading of 65 degrees magnetic.
The captain held his head in both of his hands in obvious anguish as he spotted the solid red dot amongst the mass of flashing ones on the operators screen. “What’s that?” He demanded of the operator who peered closely at the screen. The operator then hit the keys necessary to remove the chase vehicles dots leaving the single red one unblinking. “That’s the container, it’s transmitting again.”
Pandemonium erupted as all the operators directed their chase vehicles to the location of the dot which was now being designated as Wels Airport. Tension in the command truck was tangible as they awaited reports from the various military and civilian police vehicles. The radio crackled and one operator spoke rapidly into his headset.
“They found the truck without its cargo, they think it was loaded into a private aircraft which has just departed.”
“Did the aircraft file a flight plan?” the captain immediately responded. A brief flurry of chatter on the radio and almost a ten minute pause as the police found the control tower and questioned the controller.
“It’s apparently heading for Kraków in Poland which is around 500 kilometres away which will take them more than an hour to get there.” One of the operators recited.
The captain thought for a few seconds. “Right, let Kraków know what is going on and make sure they have sufficient people on hand to arrest everybody on that aircraft immediately it lands. They will also need a special radiation hazard team on hand just in case. Stand down the police and get transport organised for a team to be flown to Kraków from here as well. I’ll call Berlin and let them know the latest situation. Is the transmitter on the containment vessel still sending?”
“No, it’s gone off air again. We think that its signal is being shielded by the plane as it apparently was when the contained was dropped over it.”
“You keep everything off that screen apart from the containment transmitter signal, if it re-appears I want to know immediately, understand?”
The captain received a perfunctory “Yessir.” And he exited the command truck to make a call to the Federal Minister of Defence. As he did so he could see, across the car park, that rather morose Government chap, Lukas Bieler, in deep conversation on his phone and obviously not too happy about whatever the caller was saying to him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
A Nazi Memoir
Vassili Urosov unceremoniously tore open the Fedex cardboard envelope to reveal a slim foolscap notebook with a dark red hard cover. He eagerly opened it to the first page revealing neat angular handwriting. The Brigadefuhrer had obviously used a fountain pen with black ink and the bold strokes belied his obviously advancing years when he had written it.
With some difficulty, because of the handwriting and the old style German language, Vassili read a description of the Mauthausen facilities. The whole tone of the piece was decidedly matter of fact and stated without obvious emotion, even when describing the horrific conditions the prisoners had to endure. The labour camp, factory, barracks and billets were all described in some detail although this detail did not cover exactly what was being built in the factory apart from Messerschmitt aircraft and various different types of unspecified ordnance. There was a long passage about the preparations to abandon the facilities as the Russians and Americans closed in and the planned destruction of the underground factory tunnels to prevent them capturing sensitive equipment and documents. He described in some detail his office and some items he’d had to leave behind because of insufficient time towards the end to go back and pack it up. It all pointed to a rather frantic last-minute rush to evacuate. The next page made Vassili sit up suddenly and re-read a section several times to make sure he’d fully understood it. The Brigadefuhrer described in great detail the loading of the Arado with wooden boxes each containing 8 kilogram gold bars. As astonishing as this was, what followed was even more startling. There was then a long section detailing the plan to ship a huge quantity of substances in lead-lined boxes which could only have been enriched Uranium, along with the gold. It was
all destined to go to South America where the gold was destined to finance the construction of a nuclear research facility. Their ultimate intention was the creation of a nuclear arsenal with which to facilitate the rise, phoenix like, of the Third Reich from the ashes of defeat. Thankfully, this resurrection never happened as we know. What intrigued Vassili most however was not only the mention of the gold but also over 100kg of the enriched uranium stored in 10 lead-lined wooden crates similar in size to the crates of gold.
Eagerly Vassili read the remainder of the notebook which described the hair-raising take-off from Mauthausen in the Arado and the subsequent flight through the mountains and crash landing. Their attempt to steal a truck thwarted by the farmer and his burly sons who owned the truck. It described the negotiation to purchase the truck for the exorbitant price of two crates of the gold and their subsequent drive South towards Italy. In great detail he described the confrontation with the Bolzano prisoners who relieved them of the truck and its contents, killed their pilot and the civilian engineer and left them stranded in the mountains. The long walk back to the little village where he’d stolen a motorcycle which he’d ridden back through the Stelvio pass to Italy with his adjutant clinging on behind him. Vassili now skimmed over the last part which described their near misses with the Allied troops as they rode through Italy and receiving their new papers from a Catholic priest loyal to the cause eventually boarding the boat to Paraguay.
Putting the notebook down finally, exhausted mentally by the fraught tale, he put a call through to his pet Austrian Government Inspector Lukas Bieler and instructed him to check the contents of the Brigadefuhrer’s office in the factory complex at the earliest opportunity, especially the filing cabinet. Lukas told him that Tom Stroud and Claire Owens were on some wild goose chase after gold which galvanised Vassili into action. Salvaging the gold would be nice on many fronts, not least because it would deprive Tom Stroud of it. His real motivation though was the uranium. Acquiring this would solve many difficulties he was anticipating having to face. The good news though was that, so far, it appeared that nobody else was aware that the escaping aircraft had carried anything other than gold as its freight. “Let’s hope it stays that way,” he said to himself.
Several phone calls later and a new team was loading one of Vassili’s aircraft with the necessary hardware prior to flying out to Trento to ensure Vassili Urosov took possession of whatever Tom Stroud unearthed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
A Missing Mercedes
Sitting in the bar to where they’d retired after their excellent dinner, Tom and Claire were warming brandy snifters in their hands whilst Tom battled with opening his laptop one-handed. Having accomplished this feat spilling none of the precious liquid, the email program fired up and there was the promised message from Mike in Washington with an attached MP4 file which he clicked on. Claire peered over his shoulder as the video started.
“Bit weird with no sound isn’t it?” Claire pointed out. They watched the staccato smoke puffs from the guns firing and the impact points along the roadway as the little ground explosions marched towards an open truck which had suddenly appeared in the frame. The bullets stitched their way across the bonnet and cab of the truck and continued up the ravine wall behind the truck. The next clip was from the opposite direction as the strafing fighter had obviously turned around. You could see figures on the ground pointing rifles at the camera and then diving for cover as the aircraft’s machine guns commenced firing again. This time the twin lines of bullets kicked up dust on the road until they traversed the rear of a large car and then stopped. There was another clip from the first direction again, this time the bullets impacted the front corner of the truck and ran length-ways down the side until they obviously hit the fuel tank somewhere under the rear load area which erupted in flames.
“Well, what do you make of that?” Tom asked. “It’s pretty obvious that the truck wouldn’t have made it any further than this but the car didn’t look too damaged as far as I can see. Again I’m making a few assumptions but I reckon that has to be the truck from Graun with the gold but I couldn’t make out whether the figures we saw were in German uniforms or civvies, could you?”
“No, the detail isn’t very good is it? But I agree with you about that being ‘our’ truck. It obviously was wrecked, but it also blocked the road, they would have had to remove it to get past in the car if they carried on Westwards. If I put myself in their shoes, I would have pushed the truck over the edge into the ravine after removing the gold of course.”
“I think I agree however I’m not sure that the car, assuming they took the car, could actually carry over 1/2 ton of gold plus passengers and they certainly couldn’t have hand-carried any real quantity off that mountain.”
They both watched a replay of the brief video files several times halting the playback occasionally to peer at an individual frame of the film. Tom downed his cognac and ordered replacements for them both. Whilst engaged in the lengthy process of re-warming his glass, Claire continued peering at the laptop screen.
“As the plane starts its second strafing run you can see in the background an unusually square-topped mountain in the distance through a deep gap in the mountain to the right, it’s quite distinctive.”
Claire didn’t wait for a response but pulled up Google Earth on the laptop and went to ‘street view’ once she’d located the cursor on the roadway leading to the Stelvio Pass just past the junction leading to Mals. She then slowly followed the roadway West towards Bormio looking carefully at the distant mountains as she continued. Now it was Tom’s turn to look over Claire’s shoulder as she painstakingly followed the road, stopping occasionally to back up and turn back and forth until it satisfied her that the location wasn’t correct. Tom took another swallow of his now properly warmed cognac just as his phone bleeped to signal an incoming text.
“Bomb stolen, suggest you stay away, it’s chaos here”
Tom read the text not believing what he was reading. He resisted the temptation to call Heinrich for more information instead but instead text back, “Sh1t, what about the Arado?”
“Arado fine and in process of being packed up for removal. Bomb apparently airborne and heading East to persons unknown.”
Claire paused and looked at Tom questioningly who then read the text conversation to her, still rather in shock. They both looked at each other, started to speak simultaneously and then stopped immediately.
“Go on, you first.” Tom said.
“You don’t think that could be anything to do with.” Tom interrupted her and they both spoke the same word together, “Urosov!”
A large slug of cognac later and Claire continued her virtual drive along the Strada del Passo dello Stelvio courtesy of Google Earth. As Tom was trying to attract the barman’s attention for a refill Claire suddenly shouted “Got it!” loudly enough to make several of the other occupants of the bar look around.
“Look at that mountain top through the gap to the right, does that look the same to you?”
Tom peered hard at the screen and then flicked over to the paused video frame in the background. He flicked back and forth a few times before looking up from the screen. “You’ve nailed it, that’s the same place.”
Claire put a virtual pin in the location and hit the save button and reached across Tom to pick up the map which had slid onto the floor again. Checking the Google Earth location again she drew a pencil cross on the map in the same location.
“Relaxed start tomorrow then, it’s only about 20 miles away. So where do you think the staff car ended up assuming they carried on in the same direction?”
“Who knows? But on the assumption that we have found no hint in the records of a car full of gold driven by a load of escaped political prisoners being found in 1945 I reckon they must have got away, probably to Switzerland since that was the direction they were heading. With the reputation the Swiss have for total secrecy in financial matters, particularly concerning hordes of cas
h and gold from dubious sources, there’s no reason to think they would ever have been discovered. If they made it to Switzerland they probably all spent the rest of their years living in comfortable luxury.”
Claire gathered up her things and announced she was heading off to their bedroom leaving Tom to finish his drink and idly run the gun camera footage again. He stopped and reversed the film back and forth during the plane’s second attack and then advanced it one frame at a time looking hard at the brief appearance on the film of the staff car. As the line of bullets ran across the boot and rear wing of the car, he could see the unmistakable three-pointed star logo of a badge mounted on the boot. This in itself was not unexpected as the majority of Nazi-era staff cars used by the German high command and aristocracy were manufactured by Mercedes. What really piqued Tom’s interest was the swooping, streamlined shape of the rear wings and boot and the unusual rear light mounting which appeared to be an elaborate casting of some sort. By shuffling the film frames back and forth several times he finally convinced himself that this car was an open two-seater and, as far as he was aware, the only luxury domestic models like this that Mercedes made in the 1930s and 40s were the fabled 5 and 5.4 litre supercharged ones. He made a mental note to check the recorded histories of every one of these cars when he got back home. If the car still existed, and its history was documented it would undoubtedly go a long way to explaining the eventual fate of the Bolzano prisoners who stole it.
London Stormbird Page 14
