The Black Gate

by Michael R. Hicks

  “There it is.” Mina pointed up the hill to their left. “Schloss Arnsberg.”

  The castle, or what was left of it, stood upon a hill that had a commanding view of this part of the Ruhr River Valley. The river flowed on both sides of the hill, heading one direction on the western side before hooking back north and passing back along the eastern side. Peter could make out the remains of a wall and the ruins of the foundation of the old castle, but that was all that remained.

  “I hate to say this, but I’m a bit disappointed,” he said as he craned his neck, trying to see up the hill through the Kübelwagen’s windshield. “I was expecting something more along the lines of Castle Frankenstein. You know, the one in the movie with Boris Karloff. Except I guess this would be Castle Falkenstein, wouldn’t it? The names sort of go together.” He smiled at his own wit, but the expression evaporated at the scathing expression she gave him.

  Before he could apologize, she said, “There is perhaps more truth to what you say than what you might think. And before you say anything else that will get us killed, get your papers ready. We’re coming up to the first checkpoint.”

  Peter fished out his SS identification papers, hoping the soldiers on guard duty wouldn’t notice that his hands were shaking. His mouth suddenly went dry.

  The checkpoint wasn’t any more elaborate than those Peter had encountered during his trips to England, but the strings of barbed wire and sandbagged firing positions were imposing enough, all the same. The difference was that in England he’d had nothing to fear.

  The two men on duty were joined by two more who emerged from a small guard shack beside the gate. One of them held the leash of a German Shepherd, and the human-canine pair began a circuit around the vehicle after Mina pulled to a stop and rolled down her window.

  One of the SS men, who was so big he could probably have upended the car by himself, shone a flashlight in her face and barked, “Papers!”

  She and Peter handed the man their identification. The big soldier studied hers first, then shone the light in her face again. Then he looked over Peter’s documents, studying them carefully, before hitting him in the face with the flashlight beam and holding it there.

  It was a long, terrifying moment until Peter remembered that he was in character. He wasn’t the man he had been before Bob threw him from the plane. He was a decorated SS-Hauptsturmführer who had fought in a dozen major battles before receiving a debilitating wound, after which he had continued to serve the Reich. Such a man wouldn’t sit silent, quaking with fear under such treatment.

  “Oberscharführer,” he said quietly, having gotten a glimpse of the sergeant’s rank tab before being blinded by the flashlight, “shoot me if you like, but get that light out of my face. Now.”

  “My apologies, Hauptsturmführer Müller,” the man said as he shifted the beam of the flashlight to the ground. “I am required to be thorough, especially for new personnel.” He quickly handed back their papers.

  “Your diligence is to be commended,” Peter said, “and I shall so inform the Standartenführer.”

  The man stood at attention, drawing himself up even taller than his already impressive height. “Thank you, sir!” He snapped out his right arm in a salute. “Heil Hitler!”

  Peter raised his own right hand in a casual parody as the guards stepped away from the car and the gate was raised.

  After they’d driven through, Mina said, “You should not have done that.”

  “What?”

  “Told him that you’d tell Baumann. When you don’t, it may come back to you.”

  “Maybe I will.”

  She slowed the car to a stop after they’d come around the hill far enough that they were out of sight of the check point. “Have you heard nothing I’ve told you?”

  “I’ve heard and treasured every word. But as much as I’d like to, I can’t sneak into whatever this is and pretend to be a church mouse. This uniform won’t let me.”

  She shook her head as she stared at him. “I don’t understand.”

  “It was like back there.” Peter hooked a thumb back toward the check point. “Had I acted like I wanted to, which would have been to crawl down into the footwell of the car to hide, those men would have known I was out of place. They were expecting to see an SS officer, so I had to give them one, or as close to one as I can. It will be even more so with Baumann and von Falkenstein. Had my cover been some sort of civilian engineer, perhaps I could hide under the table and no one would notice. Unfortunately, that sort of cover wouldn’t have gotten me in here, would it?”

  “No,” she conceded. “The Herr Professor was not so concerned about the replacement beyond the technical requirements, but Baumann was very insistent that he had to be an SS man. He trusts no one else.”

  As Mina started the car up the hill again toward the stone ruins that waited above, Peter said, “You keep calling von Falkenstein the Herr Professor. You must respect him a great deal, even after what he’s done to you.”

  “He is a very great man,” she said as she parked the car in a small motor pool inside the broken walls of the ancient fortress. Guards were posted at intervals along the wall, with more patrolling the castle grounds. Her words carried an undertone of fear that left Peter wondering.

  “So you’re what, his secretary?”

  “No, I’m his mistress.”

  “Oh.”

  She got out, slammed the door closed, and stomped toward the security check point at the top of the sweeping stone steps that led to the base of the castle ruins.

  Peter hurried to catch up to her.

  ***

  Once past the outer guard post, Mina led him into what had once been part of the lower section of the castle, then down a set of spiral stairs lit by bulbs set in sconces along the stone wall. Peter could sense the age of the castle as his hand brushed against the stone.

  “How old is this place?” He asked, his voice echoing in the narrow passage.

  “The first construction probably took place around the year 1100. From the drawings I’ve seen of the castle in later years, it must have been quite beautiful, although not nearly as imposing as you might have wished.”

  Peter winced at the sarcasm.

  “It was destroyed in 1762 during the Seven Years War,” she went on, “and has been left in ruins since.”

  “Too bad the Herr Professor didn’t see fit to install an elevator,” Peter huffed. The staircase was playing hell with his bad leg, and there was no handrail to cling to.

  “We have elevators to reach the lower levels,” she said. “We’re almost there.”

  “How did von Falkenstein get any sort of large equipment down here?”

  “It was not brought in this way. The main access portal is through the railway tunnel that runs through the mountain just north of the schloss, which is also how the excavated material was removed when the facility was built. This is just for personnel.”

  “I see.”

  Just when he thought his leg was going to give out completely, the spiral staircase opened into a room with slab-sided concrete walls and floor, although the ceiling was rough hewn rock. The elevator was at the far end.

  More guards were posted beside the elevator doors, and Peter did his best to rein in his labored breathing and minimize his limp.

  The guards, who all wore dress uniforms, unlike their colleagues posted outside, saluted. “Heil Hitler!”

  Peter snapped up his right arm. “Heil Hitler!”

  “Take us to Level One,” Mina said to the soldier who stood nearest the elevator controls.

  “At once, Fräulein.” He slid open the outer door and the elevator’s safety gates and gestured for them to step inside. Peter noted that none of the men they’d encountered to this point seemed surprised or taken aback that Mina was in uniform.

  The two of them stepped in, followed by the soldier, who closed the gates. Taking a grip on what looked like a throttle control on the wall of the elevator, he pulled it down, and t
he elevator began to descend.

  Peter’s engineering mind had been at work since they took the first step down the spiral staircase. He guessed that the stairs had taken them roughly twenty meters into the hill. He was able to gauge the elevator’s rate of descent by using the bottom and top of the elevator as reference points against the rock wall of the shaft as it slid by beyond the safety cage as he counted off the seconds.

  His ears popped as they continued down…and down.

  At a depth of roughly one hundred meters, the elevator slowed to a smooth stop.

  “Level One, Fräulein, Hauptsturmführer.” The soldier pulled open the gate, and Peter followed Mina out of the elevator, only to stop dead in his tracks.

  He had expected to find himself in a drab concrete-lined tunnel. Instead, while he knew the walls, ceiling and floor must indeed be lined with concrete, the facility (or this part, at least) was decorated to the standard of a five star hotel. The flooring was Italian marble, and the walls were covered with a tasteful beige wallpaper, with illumination provided by elegant brass sconces set at precise intervals.

  They were greeted by another group of guards. A pair stood flanking the elevator, while two more sat behind what looked like a hotel concierge counter. They simply came to attention without rendering the otherwise obligatory Hitler salute. The elevator was at the top center of the T junction made by two corridors, and Mina led him down the corridor that formed the base of the T, directly away from the elevator.

  “This isn’t what you expected, I take it?”

  “Not at all,” Peter breathed. “This is…this is amazing.”

  “The Herr Professor enjoys his creature comforts when he is not in the laboratory. Your room will be here,” she pointed to one of the doors they passed, which had 136 emblazoned on it in brightly polished brass.

  “What about my bag? I left it in the car.”

  “The soldiers will bring it in. Don’t worry.”

  “What’s down the other corridors flanking the elevator?”

  “The dining hall and kitchen are down the one to the right as you face the elevator,” she told him. “To the left is the armory, supply storage, and the barracks.”

  “Good to know,” Peter said.

  Near the end of the corridor, Mina pointed to a double door with the number 100. “That is the Herr Professor’s suite.” Nodding her head to the other side of the corridor, where door 101 was located, she added, “and that is Baumann’s.”

  Just ahead was another lobby with a pair of larger elevators and more guards. There must be at least a company of troops here already, Peter thought, wondering if the additional company mentioned in the ULTRA intercept had arrived yet.

  “Take us to Level Two,” she told the senior soldier on duty.

  This elevator was somewhat different. Where the first one had been a rather crude and slow affair, this one was ultramodern. Peter cursed to himself as the stainless steel doors closed, eliminating any chance he’d have of gauging how deep the second level might be.

  When the elevator started down, Peter realized that it wasn’t moving vertically. His inner ears told him they were traveling at an angle, and they were moving absurdly fast. He had to hold on to the rail that ran around the car to keep from falling.

  “Where are we going?” He asked. “I thought the facility was under the schloss?”

  “Only the first level. Levels Two and Three are two hundred meters to the northwest, deep beneath the Ruhr River.”

  Peter remembered the map of the town. The lower levels of the facility would be about a hundred meters south of the viaduct over the river.

  The elevator finally began to slow its diagonal descent, making Peter feel absurdly heavy before it came to a smooth, nearly imperceptible stop.

  Without a word, the guard opened the door and Mina led him out.

  As he had when he stepped out onto Level One, he came to a surprised halt as he was confronted by the scene before him, but for entirely different reasons.

  “This is impossible,” he breathed. They were standing on a platform overlooking an enormous spherical cavern that was at least a hundred and fifty meters in diameter. Directly ahead of him was a control center with a dozen or more consoles festooned with gauges, dials, switches, and buttons. To his right, down a set of stairs, was a bank of enormous capacitors. Cables thicker than his arms ran from there into a cable run that disappeared into the rock wall.

  To the left, on another platform set down from the command area, was a computational bombe that was at least five times the size of the ones at Bletchley Park that were used to decipher the ENIGMA intercepts.

  But those details were peripheral to what had truly caught his attention. Suspended horizontally in the center of the cavern on stupendous metal struts anchored in the wall was a gigantic golden ring. A good hundred meters in diameter, three meters thick, and six meters from the outer to inner edge, the ring shimmered under the work lights that surrounded it. A platform bearing a large cage not unlike those found in a circus rested on the concrete floor of the chamber, directly below the center of the ring. A much smaller cage, joined by a catwalk from a brace of stairs that came from below to pass through the control platform, hung from thick cables about twenty meters above the center of the ring.

  “Mein Gott,” Peter whispered, awestruck.

  “God has no place here,” a deep voice boomed from his left. Peter turned to see von Falkenstein striding toward him from the steps that led down to the computer platform. He was a tall man, half a head taller than Peter, broad of shoulder and narrow at the waist. In addition to his brilliant mind, Falkenstein had been a champion wrestler in his earlier days, and had obviously taken pains to remain in good shape. “This is my domain.”

  Beside him was a man in an SS-Standartenführer uniform. Baumann. Like Peter, he had blonde hair and icy blue eyes. He fixed Peter with a predatory gaze, like a hawk might regard the mouse it was about to scoop up and eat.

  Peter turned toward Baumann and saluted. “Heil Hitler! Hauptsturmführer Peter Müller, reporting as ordered, sir.”

  Von Falkenstein stopped only long enough to give Peter a frigid once-over with his eyes. Turning to Baumann, he said, “Put him to work immediately. We have no time to waste.” Then he stalked off toward the elevator, Mina trailing behind him.

  Feeling foolish, Peter continued to hold his salute, focusing his eyes on the death’s head on Baumann’s hat as the man came to stand before him. “Standartenführer Baumann,” Peter said. “What are my orders, sir?”

  “Do you know anything about computational devices?”

  Peter slowly lowered his arm. “I am familiar with the theory behind them, sir, and have read a number of papers on their design.” That much was certainly true. That he had helped build some of the ones used at Bletchley Park was something Baumann didn’t need to know.

  “Then we certainly have use for you. Come.”

  “Sir…” Peter gestured at the technological marvels around him. “Sir, what is all this? What…”

  Baumann laughed. It was an unpleasant sound that set Peter’s teeth on edge. “You will learn all you need to know very soon, Müller.” His face hardened. “But for now, focus on the task at hand. As the Herr Professor said, we have no time to waste, and he is not a man you wish to disappoint.” After a moment, he added, “Nor am I.”

  Goggling at his surroundings like a country bumpkin lost among the bright lights of the big city, Peter followed Baumann down to the computer platform. The bombe, the computer, was an enormous rectangular box with hundreds of hand-sized wheels and dozens of gauges on the side facing the command platform. That face of the box was mounted to the rest of the machine on hinges, and had been swung open to reveal rows and rows of vacuum tubes and a spaghetti wilderness of wires within. After a few moments staring at the machine’s inner workings, Peter came to the conclusion that, despite its much greater size, it operated on the same principles as its smaller cousins at Bletchley Park.
>
  Scorch marks marred the rear corner of the machine’s innards, and technicians were replacing wires and inserting new vacuum tubes into a gallery of blackened receptacles

  “You are looking at the results of sabotage that has delayed our progress for several weeks now,” Baumann told him. “Despite the best efforts of our technical staff, the device still doesn’t function properly. As brilliant as von Falkenstein may be,” Baumann confided quietly, his lips curving upward in a smirk, “he does not care to understand these devices or how to repair them. He is a theorist, and such work is beneath him, fit only for technicians such as yourself. I hope for your sake that you can repair it. If not, the best outcome for you will be a posting to the Eastern Front.”

  Peter gulped. “I understand, Standartenführer, but surely the machine’s creator could fix it much more quickly than I could.”

  Baumann stepped closer, so close that the visor of his cap brushed Peter’s. “He was the saboteur,” Baumann whispered, “and I killed him for his treachery.” The smirk broadened into a smile as Baumann put a hand on Peter’s shoulder and gave a good natured squeeze. “You are his replacement. I hope you fare better. You should, of course. You’re SS. He was only a mewling civilian.”

  With that, Baumann whirled on his heel and strode back toward the elevator platform. “Dinner is at eleven o’clock sharp in the Level One dining hall,” he called back over his shoulder. “Tonight is the weekly dinner party. Dress accordingly and be prepared to present your initial assessment to the Herr Professor. Do not be late.”

  Peter looked down at his watch and cursed. He had less than an hour.

  DINNER PARTY

  As the elevator made its rapid ascent to Level One, Peter leaned against the back wall, trying to gather his wits. Exhaustion threatened to weigh him down, but he was at the same time buoyed by a sense of growing excitement. The computer, like most things German, was a marvel of precision engineering. He had spent his allotted time digging through the guts of the device, trying to ferret out what might be going wrong. But every few minutes he could not help but turn his eyes to the great ring that hung in the chamber as if it were the object of an amazing parlor trick, levitating there on its own, gleaming with reflected light. Could it be? He wondered for the hundredth time. Could the ring truly be a portal through space and time? Had von Falkenstein actually done what he claimed?