Echo of the Reich
Praise for The First Apostle
“Fast-paced action propels the imaginative and controversial plot.”
—Publishers Weekly
Praise for The Messiah Secret
“An entertaining, hunt-and-chase thriller that races from the English countryside to a hidden valley in the Middle East…appealing and clever protagonists coupled with intriguing history.”
—Publishers Weekly
In Close Quarters…
The Walther kicked in his hand, but the only sound the weapon made was a flat slap, followed by the metallic noise of the slide being forced backward by the recoil, the ejected case clattering onto the stone floor, and a fresh round being loaded into the breech.
He had no idea whether or not he’d hit his target, but because the man made no sound, Bronson assumed that he’d missed. Semi-automatic pistols are notoriously inaccurate, even in experienced hands.
But then there was another shot, the crack of a small-caliber weapon, and immediately Bronson heard a howl of pain from the intruder, followed by the sound of something heavy and metallic falling to the floor. No way was he going to stand up to see what had happened, but he still needed to know the situation. He reached up and placed his flashlight on top of the metal control panel, aimed it more or less at the door of the room, and switched it on. At the same time, he ducked down again, aimed the Walther around the corner of the control panel directly at the lantern, and squeezed the trigger.
ALSO BY JAMES BECKER
The First Apostle
The Moses Stone
The Messiah Secret
The Nosferatu Scroll
ECHO OF THE
REICH
JAMES BECKER
A SIGNET BOOK
SIGNET
Published by New American Library, a division of
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Published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in a Transworld Publishers edition. For further information contact Transworld Publishers, a division of Random House, Ltd., 61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA, England.
First Signet Printing, October 2012
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Copyright © James Becker, 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
ISBN: 978-1-101-60481-6
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
Printed in the United States of America
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.
If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
ALWAYS LEARNING
PEARSON
Any novel is a joint effort, and I’d like to thank my
brilliant agent, Luigi Bonomi, for his unswerving
support and encouragement, and Simon Thorogood
and his talented and dedicated team at Transworld
for all their work on this book.
And Sally, of course, just for being there.
Table of Contents
Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
Author’s Note
About the Author
PROLOGUE
Ludwikowice, Poland
April 1945
It was the sound of boots on concrete that puzzled him.
Footsteps were always echoing through the labyrinth of passageways and laboratories in the perpetual gloom of the mine, but these sounded different, organized almost—a squad of men marching with purpose rather than a handful of scientists ambling along. And as far as Georg Schuster knew, there were no soldiers based in the facility.
The Komplex Milkow was located in the Wenceslas Mine, a bewildering network of tunnels and chambers, some natural but others hacked from the rock, which covered an area of almost thirty-six square kilometers. It was the home of Der Riese—“The Giant”—an SS research facility and one of the most secret bases ever established by Nazi Germany. The research project being conducted there—it bore two project names: Der Laternenträger, meaning “the lantern bearer,” and Kronos, or “Saturn”—possessed the highest possible category of both secrecy and funding priority within the Third Reich. No other research of any sort, in any country, had been allocated the classification Kriegsentscheidend, “decisive for the outcome of the war.”
Schuster had no idea why soldiers should be inside the complex. Then an appalling thought struck him. Surely it couldn’t be the Russians? Not so soon? No, that was ridiculous, because if the Russians had arrived there would have been yelling and shooting, and the explosions of grenades.
Schuster opened the door of his laboratory and peered out hesitantly. Then he relaxed, reassured by the sight of the familiar uniforms of Wehrmacht soldiers.
Even so, the appearance of a uniformed German officer, accompanied by about a dozen soldiers, was unexpected, and Schuster stepped out into the corridor.
/> “Who are you?” he asked.
The officer leading the soldiers stopped and looked at the man who’d just appeared. The questioner was a middle-aged man wearing a white coat and a puzzled frown.
“I’m SS Hauptsturmführer Wolf,” the new arrival replied politely, proffering a document that bore the distinctive signature of Reichsleiter Martin Bormann. “I’m in charge of the SS Evacuation Kommando, working directly under the authority of General Kammler. And you are?”
The scientist shook his head. “I’ve never heard of an Evacuation Kommando,” he said, glancing at the order before handing it back.
“That’s because you don’t have a sufficiently high security clearance,” Wolf responded, with a slight smile that vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared. “And I still need to know your name.”
“It’s Schuster. Georg Schuster.”
Wolf took another sheet of paper from his uniform jacket and studied the list of names printed on it.
“You’re one of the electrical engineering specialists?” he asked, and Schuster nodded. “Good. Just wait over there, in that chamber,” Wolf ordered.
“What’s going on? What do you want?”
“What I want to do is complete the task I’ve been given. In case you haven’t noticed, Engineer Schuster, the Russian forces are almost upon us, and it’s vital for the future of the Reich that they don’t get their hands on the equipment you’ve been working on here. That’s what I’ve been sent here to achieve.”
“So you’re going to evacuate us?”
“There’s a Junkers Ju-390 heavy-lift aircraft waiting at Bystzyca Klodzka airfield just a few kilometers away,” Wolf replied, not quite answering the man’s question. Then he strode further into the complex, his men following on behind.
In less than an hour, Wolf had completed the first part of his assignment. He had identified all of the scientists and engineers at work within the facility, and these men and just a handful of women were now waiting in two separate stone chambers ready to leave the mine, one way or the other. But it wasn’t just the personnel that Wolf had been ordered to take care of. Far more important than them was the device itself.
The double doors to the test chamber were massive—heavy steel frames lined with copious layers of what looked like insulating or soundproofing material. Wolf ordered his men to swing them open, and then he strode inside and for a few moments just stood and stared at the object in front of him.
General Kammler had told him in broad terms what the device was supposed to do, although neither Wolf nor, probably, Kammler himself understood more than a fraction of the science involved. But they both knew that Hitler’s dream of a thousand-year Reich now lay in tatters. Not even the development and deployment of the V1 and V2 terror weapons, nor the latest generation of combat aircraft powered by jet engines, had been enough to hold back the armed forces of Germany’s enemies. Forces that Wolf knew would soon be baying at the very gates of Berlin itself.
What was left of the German army was being squeezed between the British and American forces advancing from the west and the rapidly approaching Russian army. It was now apparent that the Soviet forces were going to reach the area of Ludwikowice first, and that was the worst-case scenario by far. It would be a disaster if the Americans or the British got their hands on the device, but if the Russians took possession of it, that would be a catastrophe of global proportions.
The orders from Berlin had been unequivocal. It was essential that Die Glocke remained in German hands. There was a chance, just the faintest possibility, even when defeat seemed both imminent and inevitable, that the device could be used to snatch victory, or at least serve to prevent the total destruction of Germany.
It didn’t look like much of a weapon, Wolf thought as he stared across the chamber, though he could see exactly why it had acquired its nickname Die Glocke: what it resembled more than anything else was a bell. A big bell, almost three meters in diameter and over four meters high.
“What’s that?” one of his men asked, pointing at a number of objects positioned around the perimeter of the largely circular chamber.
Wolf walked across to the wall and looked down, then prodded one with the toe of his boot. They were small blackened lumps, largely shapeless and with a jellylike consistency. But a couple of them had appendages that gave a clue as to their origin.
“I think they’re plants,” Wolf said, “or they were plants, anyway. I can see a couple of leaves and a bit of stem on that one.”
“Quick! Over here,” another of his men said, walking around to the opposite side of the vast device.
What he’d found clearly weren’t more plants. Lying slumped against the wall, their wrists secured to chains attached to the wall, were two bodies. Both were male, both naked, and both very obviously dead. The numbers “3” and “4” were painted on the wall above the two corpses, and further over to the left were two more sets of chains and the painted numbers “1” and “2.”
“Test subjects,” Wolf commented. “I was briefed that we might see some of these. They’re of no consequence, just Jews from the Gross-Rosen camp.”
“So what killed them?”
“This, obviously,” Wolf said, gesturing at the metallic object that almost filled the chamber. “Die Glocke.”
He stepped forward and looked closely at the bodies. Whatever had killed them, whatever lethal force was generated by the Bell, their deaths clearly hadn’t been pleasant. The faces of both corpses were contorted into expressions of absolute agony, and although their arms and legs were stick-thin, as would be expected of an inmate at Gross-Rosen, their torsos were bloated and lumpy in appearance, the skin discolored by reddish-purple blotches.
One of Wolf’s men placed the sole of his boot against the stomach of one of the corpses and pressed downward. With a faint tearing sound, the skin on the side of the body ruptured and a foul-smelling black substance splashed down onto the rough concrete floor. A rank odor filled the chamber, and both the soldier and Wolf stepped quickly backward.
“What the hell?”
“Don’t touch the other one,” Wolf ordered, turning away.
But the soldier stayed where he was, staring down at the corpse with horrified fascination. “How could that, that thing,” he almost stammered, “how could it do that to a human being?”
“It’s only a Jew,” Wolf snapped, “and I’ve no idea. Right,” he went on, ignoring the two bodies and consulting a list of names, “we know what we have to do. Find Major Debus and bring him here to unhitch Die Glocke from the power supply and the other connections. Then we can load it onto the truck.”
Getting the device out of the test chamber was far from easy, because of its bulk and weight and also because of the myriad connections that needed to be detached before they could even begin the removal process.
Eventually, Wolf ordered his men to back a truck through the main entrance to the Wenceslas Mine. The driver maneuvered it carefully down the narrow corridor until it was within a few meters of the test chamber. Struggling with the object’s bulk and inconvenient shape, they used a pair of trolleys to haul it over to the truck, finally transferring it to the back of the vehicle.
As well as the device and the people who had been developing it, Wolf had also been ordered to remove the most vital sections of the reams of documentation that had been generated during the testing process. In all, it took nearly five hours to complete this part of the operation and transfer everything to the trucks waiting outside. The scientists would be easier to deal with.
Wolf consulted his list of names again. In fact, he had two lists, which corresponded with the two groups of scientists now waiting in the different chambers to leave the facility. He nodded to two of his men and led the way down the corridor. He opened the door of one room, stepped inside and carried out another roll call. It didn’t take long, because there were only three people on his list: SS Major Kurt Debus, the engineer who’d shown his men how to detach the conne
ctions and prepare Die Glocke for removal from the test chamber; Elizabeth Adler, the specialist mathematician who had previously worked with Professor Walter Gerlach, the founder of the project; and the scientist Dr. Herman Obeth. As soon as he was satisfied that he had correctly identified these three individuals, he stepped outside again and ordered his men to escort the scientists out of the mine and into one of the waiting lorries.
Only then did he instruct another group of his soldiers to place the demolition charges that would be used to collapse the roof of the main tunnel and seal the mine for all eternity. Finally, he turned his attention to the large group of men and women in the second chamber.
Wolf stepped inside the room and duplicated his earlier action with the first group, taking a careful roll call to confirm exactly who was in the room in front of him. The twenty-eighth name he called out was Georg Schuster. Nobody was missing. He nodded, replaced the paper in his pocket and gestured to two of his men who were standing just behind him.
“Unfortunately,” he began, “although the Junkers is a very big aircraft with an impressive carrying capacity, I regret that it is not big enough to take the device and all of you as a single load. But the Führer has decided that your knowledge of this project is so detailed and so important that we have to take elaborate precautions to ensure that you will not be captured by the advancing Russian forces. I wish there was some other way, but my orders leave me with no choice.”
Wolf stepped out of the chamber, ignoring the puzzled expressions on the faces of the thirty-seven men and women who were standing there, as the first questions were directed toward him.
The two soldiers who were still standing just inside the room each removed a stick grenade from their belt, primed it and tossed it into the midst of the crowd of people in front of them. As the first terrified screams echoed through the chamber, they stepped outside, slammed the heavy door closed, and threw home the two massive steel bolts to secure it.
The grenades exploded within half a second of each other, the double explosion echoing through the tunnels and bringing down a scattering of small rocks and dust from the stone ceiling above.
The loud screaming inside the room had stopped, but neither Wolf nor his two men believed that just two grenades would have been sufficient.