The Gods of Atlantis

by David Gibbons

  He thought about what his orderly had said. In his room. All he could think of was the crates with Schliemann’s artefacts from Troy. In the last hours of the Reich, had they come to claim their remaining loot? But with a prisoner? He reached the second-floor landing. He could see the throng of civilians below, in the emergency lighting now provided by the backup generator. The stairwell funnelled the noise upwards, a sound like the engine room of a ship, humming and pulsating. Above it he heard the occasional shriek, then a snatched voice of reason as someone tried to bargain for space, for food. Two days ago he had watched families arrive in their best clothes, carrying cardboard suitcases with thermos flasks and sandwiches. Now they surged up the stairs like a nightmare image, pressing against the line of Feldgendarmen who held them back. This was the truth of Goebbels’ Volksgenossenschaft, ‘patriotic comradeship’. These were the ordinary people of Berlin, the women who had waited in vain for their soldier husbands to return, the children, the elderly who thought they had endured the worst of war a generation ago. Two well-dressed women suddenly disintegrated into a vicious fight over a scrap, snarling and scratching until one of the Feldgendarmen slammed his elbow into them and they fell back into the melee, screaming. Hoffman remembered a line from Brecht’s Threepenny Opera. First comes food, then morals. Only for so many of these people, morality had been sucked out of them by the Nazis long ago.

  He approached the door to his room. The two Feldgendarmen had gone, and had been replaced by two men wearing Waffen-SS camouflage smocks and forage caps and carrying Sturmgewehr-44 assault rifles. Their lapels carried the round Sonnenrad sun-disc symbol of the SS Nordland Division, the same symbol Hoffman had seen in the floor at Wewelsburg Castle. One of the men put up a hand, swathed in a bandage and missing a thumb, and Hoffman halted. He suddenly felt uneasy. Perhaps he had been wrong about the Schliemann treasure. Maybe they were here for him. Had he given them some excuse, failed in his duty somehow? He remembered what he had left on the crate. His diary. He had never imagined that anyone would return to that room before the Russians arrived. If a Feldgendarm or SS man still loyal to the Reich saw even one page of it, then it was all over for him. He felt a cold trickle of sweat run down his back. A voice barked inside, and the soldier missing the thumb beckoned him forward. At that moment a shudder rent the tower as one of the big flak guns fired. Hoffman knew that the worst vibration was a whiplash effect a second later, and he instinctively put his hands to his ears. As he did so, the soldier deftly undid his holster and took the Luger from him. Hoffman dropped his arms and walked into the room. His heart began to pound. So this was it.

  He saw two men inside, wearing army greatcoats and officers’ peaked caps, their faces obscured in the gloom. They wore the shoulder insignia of SS generals, Obergruppenführer, and they were streaked with mud. Then he saw a third man, the prisoner, shorter than the other two and wearing a civilian brown leather coat, a white hood over his head and his arms tied behind his back. The door shut behind Hoffman. The smaller man suddenly released his own hands without help and ripped off the hood, then walked towards Hoffman’s makeshift desk, where the bare bulb hanging over it was lit. One of the generals gestured for Hoffman to follow. He clicked his heels, touched his Knight’s Cross, pulled down his jacket lapels and straightened his cap, then walked over briskly and came to a halt, slamming his foot down and remaining at attention. He felt strangely calm. Why there had to be three of them he did not know. A single Feldgendarm, a single bullet, was all he had expected. At least he was not being guillotined in Gestapo headquarters, or strung up with piano wire like the Hitler plot conspirators the year before.

  The smaller man threw off his greatcoat and smoothed back his oily hair, then turned round under the light and stared at him.

  Hoffman froze. It was not possible. The man in front of him should by all rights have been dead. It was Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler.

  14

  Oberstleutnant Ernst Hoffman stood inside the entrance to the concrete room that had served as his office, the two Waffen-SS guards behind him and the shadowy figures of the two SS generals in greatcoats standing against the wall to the left. For a frightening moment he felt unable to breathe, as if the closed-down ventilation shafts had finally excluded all air from the flak tower, and the remainder had been sucked out by the pulverizing Soviet bombardment overhead. When he did take a breath, his nostrils filled with the same cloying smell that had sickened him in the Führerbunker under the Chancellery a few days before, the reek of wet wool, stale sweat, nicotine and alcohol, the hint of incipient decay that had made the bunker already seem like a tomb.

  He stared at the man facing him in front of his desk. The man had been wearing an eye patch, now pulled off, and had shaved his moustache, but there was no doubting who he was. What was he doing here? Hoffman had been this close to Himmler many times over the last months of his posting in Berlin, and earlier when Himmler had taken an interest in his Luftwaffe career. The pasty complexion was there, the weak chin, the squirrelly jowls, the small, close-set eyes behind little round spectacles, looking at him with one eyebrow raised. Hoffman snapped to attention, clicked his heels and raised his right arm in the Nazi salute. ‘Herr Reichsführer-SS. Heil Hitler.’

  Himmler waved dismissively. ‘You can dispense with the Heil Hitler. Adolf is dead.’ His voice was ice-cold, precise. Under the civilian overcoat Hoffman could see that he was wearing the field grey of a Wehrmacht officer, not the usual SS black. Then Hoffman remembered that Hitler, in one of his final acts of madness, had appointed Himmler commander of Army Group Vistula. Himmler had seemed inordinately proud of his role, but had never held a field command before in his life. Everyone knew he had failed to be selected for front-line service in 1918, and it grated on him. Army Group Vistula had disintegrated weeks ago, but Hoffman knew there was a reason why Himmler was still wearing the uniform: three days earlier, Himmler had gone on his own volition over the Elbe to the advancing American army, to try to negotiate a ceasefire. An SS uniform would not have made him many friends there. His proposal that the Allies join with the remnant Wehrmacht to fight against the Russians had been rejected, but when Hitler found out about his attempt to parley he was incandescent and had him branded a traitor. Hoffman himself had been next to Hitler in the bunker and had seen the rage. Himmler had expected to be the next Führer, but instead Hitler had appointed Grand Admiral Dönitz. Himmler had disappeared, and was presumed dead. But now the man himself was standing here, very much alive. And it was Hitler who was dead.

  Himmler waved again at Hoffman’s raised arm, then offered his gloved right hand. Hoffman watched his gaze, remembering how it roved disarmingly over a person’s countenance before fixing on one’s eyes, penetratingly. He remained ramrod straight, but lowered his arm, taking the proffered hand. He felt the pudgy fingers, soft and clammy, and the limp shake. Himmler was still looking at him questioningly, one eyebrow cocked. In that instant, Hoffman knew he was being tested. Of course. The Führer is dead. Long live the Führer. He snapped his right arm back up. ‘Mein Führer. Sieg Heil.’ Himmler gave him a lopsided, humourless smile, then took off his leather gloves and slapped them against his thigh. ‘I have always been impressed by your loyalty, Hoffman. You and your family. Dear little Hans. Have you heard from your wife? These are testing times.’

  ‘They are in Elsholz, mein Führer. At my wife’s family home. The Russians are close.’

  ‘Then I have excellent news for you. Two days ago, my men took them to Plön, near the Baltic coast. They are safe from the Russians.’ He pulled a postcard with a seaside view out of his pocket and passed it to Hoffman, who glanced down at it. There were just a few lines, but it was enough. He recognized his wife’s writing. They were by the sea. Waiting for him. He felt weak with relief. Dr Unverzagt had been telling the truth about that, at least. He stared at Himmler, not betraying a flicker of emotion, and clicked his heels again. ‘I am most grateful.’

  Himmler waved his hand, then pulled a
dagger out of his belt, unsheathed it, and ran one finger over the flat of the blade, flinching as he touched the edge. It was an SS officer’s dagger, black-handled and mirror-bright, with runes etched into the steel. Hoffman remained stock still. So this was to be it. Not a bullet, but a knife. He was surprised that Himmler had the stomach for it. Himmler stopped toying with the knife and looked at Hoffman. ‘As I said, I have always been impressed by your loyalty. Not like those snivelling swine at Army Group Headquarters, always undermining me. Not like those sycophants in the Führerbunker. The only ones I have ever trusted are my beloved SS, and you, Hoffman. But now it is time to regenerate, to purify. The Nazi party is dead. The SS lives on. Kneel down.’

  Hoffman held his breath. Just get it over with. He sank to both knees, still ramrod straight, staring past Himmler. He closed his eyes, trying to imagine his son, holding him sleeping against his shoulder, standing on the lake shore at his father’s home in Bavaria, feeling the warmth of the infant’s breath on his neck. He felt a tap on his shoulder, then opened his eyes and saw Himmler resheathing the knife and looking down at him. ‘You know the SS oath?’

  Hoffman swallowed hard. ‘Meine Ehre Heisst Treue. My honour is loyalty.’

  ‘Arise, SS-Brigadeführer.’

  Hoffman rose to his feet, stood to attention and clicked his heels. He felt physically sick. ‘Mein Führer. It is the greatest honour.’

  Himmler put the dagger on the desk, slapped down his gloves beside it and then went round to Hoffman’s chair. He sat down heavily and raised his legs on the desk, rattling the half-bottle of schnapps that Hoffman had left there. He took off the shoulder satchel he had been carrying and pulled out a swaddled package, putting it on the table beside the dagger. Hoffman followed every movement, his heart pounding, keeping his eyes from straying to the top of the crate where he had left his diary. He must not see that. Himmler took off his spectacles, blew on them and wiped them clean with a handkerchief, then replaced them and stared at Hoffman. ‘I am a practical man, SS-Brigadeführer. I have absolutely no wish to go down with the rats in the sinking ship. The Americans have disappointed me. But they will do my bidding, when the time comes. Of that I can assure you.’

  The light bulb above the desk trembled, and the dust in the air shimmered. There was a screeching groan, and then another. The electricity jolted off with each shuddering percussion, and the luminous paint on the ceiling flashed pastel blue as the bulb flickered on and off. Himmler dropped his feet back to the ground and leaned over, holding his ears and grimacing; the two SS generals in the shadows did the same, unused to the terrible noise. Hoffman clapped his hands to his ears. This would be it. The final barrage. The battery commander would be firing the south-facing flak guns simultaneously in salvos, for maximum noise effect inside the tower. There would be twenty, maybe twenty-five rounds. He and Hoffman had planned the barrage to give them cover, to allow them to get out unnoticed by the Feldgendarmen and surrender the tower to the Russians before the final onslaught, to save the thousands of civilians crammed inside. It had been a desperate scheme, but now it appeared a forlorn hope. There seemed no chance that Hoffman could escape from this room – and whatever scheme Himmler had for him – in time to reach the Russians and call for a ceasefire.

  Hoffman’s mind raced. What was Himmler’s game? The man was as mercurial as the many hats he wore. Head of the Ahnenerbe, the Department of Cultural Heritage. Head of the SS and the Gestapo. All the Nazi arteries of hate seemed to lead to him. Even the Ahnenerbe was malign, a racist front. Before the war, Hoffman had thrilled as much as any schoolboy to the newsreel footage showing heroic German expeditions to Tibet and Iceland and the Andes, searching for lost Aryan civilizations. He had even applied to be a pilot on one of those expeditions, far too young but overcome by his passion to fly. Himmler had made a public spectacle of him, had called him to Berlin and paraded him as the perfect Nazi youth, willing to volunteer to serve the Fatherland even before he was of age. But then Himmler’s scientists had shown him photographs and skull measurements of Tibetans and native Greenlanders. Hoffman had said nothing, but he had realized that the treasure they were seeking was not so alluring after all. It was only later that he understood that those measurements were another instrument of hate, part of the collection of data that supposedly gave proof of the physical superiority of the German people.

  He had seen what Himmler’s other hats meant too. A few months ago he had been invited to a party at Gestapo headquarters on Prinz-Albrechtstrasse, where he had been shown the manacles for hanging prisoners and the guillotine room. The victims were so-called political prisoners, anyone who displeased Himmler. Berliners who heard the screams at night called it the House of Horrors. And there was worse. As a university student in 1938, Hoffman had witnessed Kristallnacht, the smashing and burning of Jewish shops across Germany. Later, on a tour of factories as a Luftwaffe hero, he had seen Jewish slave labour at the V-1 and V-2 rocket sites. Everyone knew how the Jews were treated; you could see them in work gangs around Berlin, with their Star of David armbands. Then one afternoon six months ago, on one of his last missions as a Stuka pilot over the Eastern Front, Hoffman’s aircraft had been leaking fuel and he had been forced to land in Poland near the town of Owiecim, where they had flown over a vast camp with barracks and a railhead. The aircraft engine had nearly choked on a thick cloud of smoke that smelled like roasted meat. His gunner in the rear seat had glimpsed the scene below: crowds of people disembarking from a train, men, women, children, a ragged line leading to an underground entrance next to the source of the smoke. He had seen the Star of David armbands, and guards kicking and beating people. The Polish labourers in the field where they had landed called it Todesmühle, the death mill. When he came to Berlin for his new posting, Hoffman discovered that it was Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, the man in front of him now, who had been the architect of that horror, something he referred to with his humourless grin as die Endlösung, the Final Solution – in his mind a logistical challenge that continued to preoccupy him even after Hitler had got bored with the Jewish question and had shut out everything except his dream of an art museum at Linz.

  The tremors stopped. The guns had ceased firing, as if a monster had expended itself in a final frenzy. Hoffman could smell the freshly pulverized paint from the walls, and the reek of vomit and shit seeping in through the door from the people crammed in the stairwell below. Himmler took his hands from his ears, dusted himself off and raised his feet back on to the planks of the desk. He reached over and picked up the bottle of schnapps, uncapped it and took a long swig. He exhaled hard, put the bottle down and looked at Hoffman. Then he smiled again, crookedly. ‘We are not a nation of partisans, are we, Herr SS-Brigadeführer?’

  Hoffman did not know what to say. He clicked his heels. ‘Mein Führer.’

  ‘No, we are not.’ Himmler took another swig from the bottle, then slammed it down, smacking his lips. ‘This new partisan army that’s supposed to carry on the war in the forests. What did Adolf call it? Werewolf.’ He sniggered. ‘And this force you were posted here to command? The 9th Luftwaffe Parachute Division Lebelstar. A crack new division? The snotty little boys on the roof.’ He cocked an ear theatrically, then stared penetratingly at Hoffman. ‘And speaking of which, is that not the end of the shooting I hear? Was that not to be your cue, to remuster the crews from the flak guns and lead them into battle?’

  Hoffman clicked his heels again. His heart was pounding. This might be his chance. ‘Mein Führer. I must go. My duty . . .’

  ‘Your duty, SS-Brigadeführer, is to me,’ Himmler snarled, slamming his hand on the plank. The bottle of schnapps tottered, then smashed on the floor.

  Hoffman felt the blood drain from his face. ‘Mein Führer. Those were to be my words exactly. I have sworn the SS oath.’ He snapped his arm up in the Nazi salute. ‘Sieg Heil!’

  Himmler suddenly relaxed, and waved again. ‘Take your arm down. We don’t need that nonsense in here, you and I.’ He loo
ked wistfully at the broken glass, than back up at Hoffman, leaning forward. ‘Now, to business. What do you know about the Wunderwaffe?’

  Hoffman stared past Himmler, unflinching. So that was it. Moments of apparent sense, moments when Himmler derided the last-ditch schemes of Hitler and his cronies, then back to the madness. The mythical Wunderwaffe was the biggest delusion of all, the wonder-weapon that was going to save the Reich. First, it was going to be unleashed on the day of President Roosevelt’s death, as some kind of a holy sign. Then on Hitler’s birthday, ten days ago. But of course nothing had happened. Hoffman cleared his throat. ‘Reichsleiter Goebbels promised it. A secret weapon to be used at the chosen moment.’

  Himmler waved his hand again. ‘Goebbels. That little monster. I always loathed him.’ He gave his disarming grin. ‘His children are dead, you know, in the bunker. Goebbels’ fallen angels. An injection of morphine, then a cyanide tablet forced into their mouths while they were asleep. Only I’m told they weren’t all asleep. Not the oldest one, anyway.’ He pushed his spectacles up his nose, then peered inquisitively at Hoffman. ‘Well? What weapons?’

  Hoffman remembered the older Goebbels girl. He swallowed hard. ‘In the Luftwaffe, we knew about the rocket programmes, the V-1 and the V-2. A few months ago I toured the test site at Peenemünde with Reichsmarschall Göring. There was talk of another rocket in secret production, a V-3.’

  Himmler waved his hand and snorted contemptuously. ‘Göring. That fat pig. He stole art from this storeroom for his chateau, you know. And the rocket factory is history now, bombed to oblivion by the English. Anyway, rockets are just vehicles, not weapons.’