Das Bell

An alternate world, WW 2 adventure and the discovery that WW 2 did not end in 1945.

Chapter Five

 

“So then Olga, what do you think?  Is this not an improvement from the hotel the FSB had assigned us to?”

“Oh yes, the room is lovely, nearly as big as my apartment! And this breakfast: I can’t get over it, everything is so good!” Olga reached across the table and squeezed Nina’s hand. “I also want to say thank you for your kindness and your friendship. I feel awful that I’m supposed to be spying on you because of . . . well, your Ukrainian citizenship.”

Nina, looking upset, replied. You know, my mother is from Kursk so that makes me half Russian.”

“Really?!  My grandmother was from Kherson!”

“Olga, my field is history and there is a lot of history between our two nations.  We are siblings of the same parent, separated in 1240 by the Mongol invasion and forcibly reunited under Stalin. When a sister or a brother in one’s family wishes to make their own way in the world, the other sibling should not oppose them.”

Olga nodding her head in agreement replied, “I understand you and I agree with you.  I want us to really be friends and to trust each other, and not debate the politics of our countries.”

Nina Shevchenko gave her a wide smile, then reached into her briefcase and withdrew a blue notebook. “Our first stop today is to see Herr Gunter Voss.  He was a German assigned to the excavation team that was preparing the first stages of the Berlin Wall.  According to the address, he lives with his granddaughter about twenty minutes from here by taxi.  I called her this morning while you were in the shower.  She was reluctant at first, but then she relented.  I told her we’d be arriving by about 10:00.  Have some more coffee if you’d like and we’ll get going. Maybe on the way back we can find time to get you a warm coat.”

****

As difficult as it was to punch in the numbers with his left hand on his cell phone, the task was made even harder as he thought about how his commandant would react to his losing his target last night.  The response he received was not at all what he expected.  Instead of a repeat of the tongue lashing he’d received from the man in Argentina, his demeanor on the phone was almost pleasant.

“Jah, I understand leutnant; it was something you had no control over. In fact it was rather fortuitous that you did not complete your mission last night.  It seems you have additional work to do in Berlin.  Your target is to meet today with a man involved in the excavation of Site Delta.  Let her speak with him and then, eliminate this man and your target, once you have acquired whatever information that has been obtained.  You also have a second task. The American, Alan Carter, arrived in Berlin this morning. We are certain that he will find his way to Site Delta. You can have some satisfaction in the fact that you have avenged your colleges in Peru once you kill him.”

****

Alan Carter let the pulsing water from the shower in his hotel room ease out the kinks in his back, put there from a long series of flights, first from Peru to Norfolk, Virginia and then on to Germany.  A cup of coffee in the lobby helped clear his head and while soaping up, his thoughts returned to the almost unbelievable telephone conversation he had had with Admiral Collis.  Was it possible, he thought, that I’ve found real hard evidence of extraterrestrial influence on an ancient culture?  And if that’s the case how do the Nazis fit in?  And why did some low level FBI agent show up at the Navy’s research institute looking for me just after I’d left?

Carter got out of the shower, dried off, and got dressed.  Going over to his laptop, he pulled up a map of the city.  It was difficult to locate, but after a few minutes he found the area that indicated what was shown on the map as Site Delta.  Using historical overlays, he suddenly realized it was just a few kilometers from the Nazi Reichstag and would have fallen on the Communist East German side of the Berlin Wall.  Using a program for checking historical cultural artifacts, he over-laid the original route of the Berlin Wall and then he saw it, standing out clearly.

“That’s pretty damn interesting,” he said under his breath. “So someone made a serious detour around this Site Delta.” I wonder why they would have done that, he thought.

The day was cold and dreary with gray clouds bringing on and off again rain to the city.  Alan decided to go downstairs and grab a bite to eat before taking a taxi over to the area marked Site Delta.  He’d certainly remember the location of the restaurant in the hotel where he’d gotten his coffee.  The two attractive women that had passed him on the way out reinforced the location in his memory.  Taking his file and his lined trench coat, he locked his hotel room door and walked to the elevator.

 

 

****

“Olga, did you notice the man we passed on the way out to the lobby?”

Olga Zhdanova thought for a moment before answering “Yes, I think so, he looked a bit tired, perhaps preoccupied, handsome though, why do you ask?”

“Well, he certainly seemed interested in us.  I know I’ve seen his face before but I can’t seem to place where  . . . that bothers me.”

The driver of the taxi slowed down coming to a spot in front of a well-kept, but non-descript apartment building.  The street in a warmer season would have been quite pleasant but now the trees, denuded of their leaves, reached upward, like weathered Skeletons toward a leaden November sky, thick with dark clouds, and lightly falling rain.

“2117 Margarert-Strasse.”Nina Shevchenko paid the fare and the two women walked together over to the entryway of the building.

Across the street, sheltered and hidden behind a stand of those gray, leafless trees, a tall blond man with a cast on his wrist and wearing a dark green trench coat was carefully watching the two women exit the cab and step briskly toward the apartment building, speaking with each other as they walked. “We have to get you a decent coat Olga.  You’re certain to get sick in this weather.”

Greeting them at the front door of the shared apartment was Gunter Voss’s granddaughter.  She was a young woman with a round face and dark blond hair, about Olga’s age.

“My grandfather was resting but he’s up now and he will see you.  It’s strange, after all these years that you want to know about the excavation.  He had a lot of trouble from you Russians over it.”

Nina spoke up. “I’m sorry to hear that but I’m not Russian, I’m Ukrainian.”

“Very well then, he had trouble from the Soviets. They took him away for a few days, wanting to know about what he’d found.  He said he’d seen nothing in the opening except smashed concrete. You see, he had been down into the tunnel before they ordered it sealed.  The Russians were looking for a reason as to why their electrical equipment kept failing so they lowered my grandfather and another man down in a basket. The only reason that I’ve agreed to let you speak to grandfather is that he insisted upon it.  He’s old now and quite ill.  He never said a word to us about anything he’d seen down there, but I know he saw something that was quite upsetting to him.  I’m afraid he hasn’t much time left to him and I think he wants to tell someone about it.  Things have changed now for the better, I hope, so when you called I asked him, and he said to come over and he would speak with you about it.  Come then, I’ll take you to his room.”

Gunter Voss was sitting in a plush red arm chair; his feet, up on a hassock, were covered by a thick wool blanket. The man was thin and drawn, but he still had a head of thick white hair.  He smiled at the two women as they entered his room.

“Ah . . . it’s not often I have the pleasure of having two such attractive young Frauleins come to visit me in my home.  Please, be seated.”

 Putting on his glasses he looked the two women over more carefully. “The last time the Soviets questioned me; I was seated before a big nasty brute of a Russian with no love for Germans. I see now that your government is sending far more pleasant interrogators.”

Nina spoke to him. “Please Herr Voss; we’re not here to interrogate you.  In fact I don’t officially work for the Russian government: I’m a historian from Kiev. In doing my research, I came across your name in the Kremlin records, and this strange excavation you worked on.  I’m trying to put some pieces of a very odd puzzle together.  I very much appreciate your willingness to talk to me about this. Would it be alright if we recorded your comments?”

“Jah, that will be alright, where would you like me to begin?”

Nina switched on her digital recorder, and began to ask questions. “Tell me about the building of the wall and the excavation, as much as you can remember.”

“It was a long time ago and I was a young man, just twenty-four.  My parents had been killed in the war . . . the American bombings.  I hated the war and I hated the Nazis.  I became a Communist. Back then I was helping with the rebuilding of my city.  But, in 1961 the orders came from Moscow, from Khrushchev himself, to construct the wall.  I was an engineer and I was assigned to the project. We were making good progress.  We were even ahead of our work schedule but then we came to the Manfred Strasse district.  The wall was supposed to go right through there.  The whole area was just rubble from the shelling at the end of the war. This was not one of the parts of the city scheduled for rebuilding so everything was a mess.  We were supposed to dig down and pour the foundations for the concrete block. That’s when our problems began.”

Nina was also taking notes.  Looking up from her writing she asked him, “What sorts of problems did you have?”

The Russians brought in their big earthmoving machines to clear the area.  The first ones we used were powered by benzene, not diesel.  Things started out all right with the clearing of the rubble, but as they got closer into to the center of the destruction, the earthmoving machines just stopped and we couldn’t restart them.  We brought in generators to charge their batteries but when we stated them, the generators blew up!  It was as if ten times more electricity was flowing into the generators than was coming out of them.  Then other strange things began to happen.  Our radios wouldn’t work and everything metal became magnetized. My team had no idea what was happening.  We tried to explain this to the Russian major in charge of the project but he became enraged, and accused us of trying to sabotage the project.  He was very, very angry, cursing us out and all, screaming at us that he’d have us arrested for anti-Soviet activities, until he went to the center of the excavation and became quite ill. His radio failed and as he stood there, he began to scream with pain.  My men and I had to rescue him.  I’ve never seen anything like it!  The metal fillings in his teeth suddenly became so hot that they burned his gums and the inside of his mouth.  We had to carry him out beyond the range of these strange effects and pour water into his mouth. Later, some of his teeth fell out!”

Olga asked a question of her own. “What was the range of these . . . effects as you call them?”

“We calculated the area to be about twenty-meters in diameter.  We discovered this phenomenon affected our compasses as well.  I had the men from my group each take a compass and form a circle, and then walk in toward where the Russian major’s fillings began to heat up. That’s how we determined the size of this odd electrical field.”

“Do you have any idea what caused this?”

Gunter Voss looked at Nina Shevchenko, debating what to answer and then he finally said to her, “No, not at the time, but I am an engineer and I researched this many years later.  The only thing remotely like this is a Tesla field: a high energy electromagnetic field that can produce scalar waves, something that’s never been proven.”

“Tesla?”  Do you mean, Nicola Tesla,” Nina asked?”

“Jah, the same.  I was a structural engineer but I have some training in electrical engineering, and the rest I’ve taught myself.  These scalar waves are not supposed to exist, they say it’s impossible, a myth, but that’s the only explanation I can offer.”

Voss was silent for a long time, pulling the blanket that covered his legs up and around his shoulders.  He looked extremely fatigued. Nina Shevchenko shut off the recorder and placed her notepad into her case.  When the two women stood up to leave, Nina spoke to Gunter Voss. “Thank you so much for your information and your willingness to speak with us.  I hope that you’ll . . .”

With a sudden flurry of motion, Voss lifted the blanket off of himself, laying it on the hassock and pulled himself upright in his chair.  “Wait, don’t go yet.  I . . . have more to tell you but please, do not turn your recorder back on.”

The two women both sat back down with Nina turning off her recorder. Olga deliberately reached into her Jacket pocket taking her ultra compact recorder supplied by the FSB, removed the batteries and handed it to Nina Shevchenko. 

A light seemed to come back into Gunter Voss’s eyes and a determination crossed his face as leaned closer to the historian. “The doctors say I do not have much time left to me and . . . I want to tell you something, something I have not ever spoken of since that terrible day so many years ago, not even to my own family. About one hundred meters from the center of the electrical field, the excavation crews broke through the surface, to an opening below the ground.  It appeared to be the remains of a tunnel.  We shined our lights down there and I thought I could see what looked like railroad tracks.  It was difficult to tell as the tunnel was filled with debris.  The next day the Russian major decided to send a young Soviet corporal and myself down to have a look.  In the morning we were lowered to the bottom, about twenty meters down.”

With a suddenness, Gunter Voss’s voice became very quiet.  He sat back in his chair as if staring at something in the distance, something that only he could see.   “Back then, I was a good Communist and I was not a believer, but . . . on that day . . . I saw with my own eyes . . . there truly is a Hell.”

****

Alan Carter stood close to the center of the dirty-white concrete plaza that bordered the park.  Behind him, looking stark and gray as the cold November sky, was an abandoned Soviet styled apartment building, built sometime in the early 1960s, for this was the half of Berlin that lay in the eastern section. The chill and blustery wind tugged at his messenger bag as he pulled out a second instrument, this one a mini-Geiger counter. He bent low to sweep the ground.  This was the location indicted on the map that Admiral Collins’s research team had revealed with the Navy’s new scanner.  It was Carter’s fear this area would gave been covered by a parking garage, or buried beneath a skyscraper, or any number of the new construction projects following the war and later, the reunification of Berlin.  Yet here is was, open and empty. 

The area marked as “Site Delta” on the map was now a big flat cement rectangular expanse without any markings or monuments to indicate its purpose save as an entryway to a park. The background level of radiation was slightly elevated near the center of the plaza. Concentrating on the clicks of the device and the bouncing needle, Carter never heard the footsteps of an old man as he approached, until he addressed him in German.  Alan had been standing alone in the center of the plaza and nearly dropped the Geiger counter when the old man spoke to him. Turning around, he slipped the device back into his messenger bag and spoke to him, trying to remember the correct phrase for this situation.

   “Ich spreche kein Deutsch.” Carter shook his head no to emphasize the words that he hoped were correct.

The old man, dressed in a brown winter coat smiled at him and then answered.  “Ach so . . . you are Amerikana, Jah? I can speak English.  “Cold day, is it not?”

Carter, breathing easier replied, “Yes it is.  Do you live around here?”

“Yes, I have lived in this part of the city for many years.  I was just a young boy at the end of the war when the Soviets came . . . terrible, terrible memories I have of that time.  Later, the Soviets came back to build the wall, but not here.  They buried this place: sealed it up with concrete like a tomb.” 

The man, looking very thoughtful stared off into the distance before finally returning his eyes to Alan Carter. “I couldn’t help noticing you out here with your equipment, measuring something.  Do you search for ghosts?”

“Ah, I’m sorry, I don’t understand; ghosts?”

“Yes I thought you might have been another one of them, those people who study the strange . . . the word in English escapes me.”

Alan made a guess. “Do you mean paranormal activity?”

“Jah! Excuse me . . . yes, that’s the word . . . paranormal. Back in 1989 and 1990 after unification, some men came to this place.  They said they were making a film for television about the stories of ghosts and odd happenings around here.”

“What sorts of odd happenings do you mean?”

“Strange lights that would sometimes appear, and seem to float just above the ground at night. It was mostly after a thunderstorm when there would be much lightening.  Many people had trouble with their televisions and their radios, and often the children became ill, sometimes screaming in the night that they heard strange noises.  Do you see that apartment building over there?  It’s empty, yes? It has been that way for many years.  Everyone moved out just a few months after it was built.  Unexplained things would happen: electrical fires, people having very bad headaches and not being able to sleep at night.  Something terrible happened here they say. This ground is supposed to be haunted. People said that during the war, thousands of men and women, Russian prisoners and Jews were buried alive below where we are standing.  This is a bad place.”

Pulling a heavy coin from his pocket, the old man walked over to the edge of the plaza.  “Come here and I will show you something.”

Alan Carter walked over with him.

“Watch this.” The old man let go of the coin and it fell to the ground in a normal manner. “Now, please come with me to the center of the plaza.”  Again, he let go of the coin.  This time it fell far more slowly, seeming to almost float to the ground.  “Try jumping and see how you feel.”

Carter, still staring at the coin, bent his knees and jumped, finding he could leap higher than he thought possible. “I . . . I don’t understand Herr . . .”

“I am Herr Kohler, Hans Kohler and it is here, just here in this very spot, that gravity seems to have taken a small holiday.  It is a mystery, but after those men came to make their film all those years ago, no one seems to have been interested . . .  until I saw you out here today.”

“Well I am interested, very interested.  Do you know anything more about this?”

“I’m sorry but I don’t.  I try to stay away from here. It’s unpleasant, even the fillings in my teeth hurt me in this place, but I wish you luck whatever you are looking for.”

Pulling his coat tighter around him, Alan Carter decided to walk back toward the hotel instead of taking a cab.  It would take him a good forty-five minutes but he wanted to think about what he had seen and what the old man, Kohler, had told him.  The instruments he had taken with him indicated the presence of a magnetic field emanating from the center of the plaza.  If this had anything to do with Nazca, then Alan was sure that the radiation levels where he was standing were elevated, but the demonstration that the old man had done with the coin had dumbfounded Carter.  In some manner, something below ground was not only interfering with the Earth’s magnetic field, but the planet’s gravitational field as well. That seemed flatly impossible but he remembered what the admiral had told him about the results of the samples he’d collected in Peru: that those tiny metallic balls seemed to partially nullify gravity.  Was it possible, he thought, that whatever the Nazis were looking for in Nazca is the same as stuff that’s buried here below ground?  Is this some sort of proof of the elusive unified field theory, that gravity, magnetism and electricity are part of the same force and did the Nazis already discover this?

As Carter walked along his cell phone began bleating.  Looking at the number, he saw it came from Norfolk and quickly answered it.

“Hello Alan? This is Admiral Collins.  Listen, I wanted to call you right away.  It’s about those samples you left, the small metallic balls?  Not only do they have some local effect on gravity, but they somehow amplify electrical power.”

Carter, immediately saw a connection between the old man’s story and what the admiral was telling him.

“How so admiral?”

Our research lab was testing their electrical conductivity and ran a small change into one of your samples.  The damn thing blew out three power supplies with some sort of a voltage surge.  It was like the sample sucked in electricity, boosted the volts and amps by at least a factor of ten and then discharged it, like a lightening bolt.  No one’s ever seen anything like it, but the strangest thing is . . .”

“Hello . . . hello . . . Admiral Collins?”

Carter hit redial on his phone but all he got was a fast busy signal.   He tried it over again and then three more times with no luck reconnecting to the navy research lab.

Damn, must be bad cell reception here, he thought, and vowed to try again once he had gotten back to the hotel.

 

 

****

“. . . The corporal, he was younger than I, perhaps eighteen. He had red hair and a pleasant smile.  I can still remember his name, Sergei . . . poor, poor boy.”

Voss stopped for a moment, trying to force a nightmarish vision that only he could see back into a dark corner of his mind.  Then he continued. “It was very bright that morning and when we reached to bottom of the opening, it took some time for our eyes to adjust to the darkness, even with our flashlights.  The sides of the tunnel were flecked with white shapes.  As we became accustomed to the dark, the corporal played his light over the tunnel walls and we both froze.  They were staring out at us with empty eye sockets: skulls, hundreds, perhaps thousands of skulls, all mixed in to the concrete with ribs, spines, leg bones . . . it was horrible!  Whatever caused the blast collapsed the tunnel, and the walls broke open.  There must have been thousands of human beings . . . people entombed within the walls.  Once I recovered my wits, I could see there was something strange about the focus of the destruction. I am a structural engineer and I knew that this explosion had not come from outside, but from inside, much further down the tunnel.  Someone had deliberately set off a bomb to seal the far end of the tunnel.   I’m sorry, Fraulein, could you please hand me my water?  It’s difficult for me to speak of this.”

            Olga got up and poured water from a pitcher into Voss’s glass and gave it to him.  Both women could see his hand was shaking as he lifted the glass to his mouth and took a long drink.

            “Danke schoen . . . I was right about the tracks.  We could both see what was left of the rails and the concrete ties in the tunnel.  They led around a curve. We followed them, only the far end of the tunnel had been completely sealed off with hundreds of tons of rock.  Sergei was very quiet. When he thought I wasn’t watching him, he made the sign of the cross.  He was afraid . . . so was I, but we were trying not to show it to each other.  Then we saw something at the opposite end of the tunnel.  A steel beam had fallen and kept the rocks from completely sealing off that section.  There was just enough room for one of us to squeeze through.  Sergei was thinner than I and he started through the opening.  I think he wanted to show me how brave he was. I told him to wait and that we should have more men and equipment with us, but he wanted to prove something to me, to show me his Russian spirit I suppose . . . foolish.”

            Voss was silent for a long time as if summoning the courage to continue. 

            “He got through to the other side and yelled back to me that the tunnel continued on for about another fifty meters.  He kept urging me to join him but something in the back of my mind, a little voice kept telling me not to go.  Instead I told him I wanted to look at a small alcove I found in the side of the tunnel wall.  I played my flashlight over the rubble and I saw something, a scrap of paper.  Just as I bent down to pick it up I heard a terrible scream and I knew it could only be Sergei.  I ran back and I could see him staggering toward opening.  I suddenly realized why I could see him.  He was silhouetted by a purple glow coming from behind him. I have no idea where it came from.  Sergei stumbled toward me. He was groping for the opening, reaching out to me.  I . . . I took one of his hands and . . . Gott in Himmel, his flesh came away like a glove when I tried to pull him though.  I looked down and all I could see was naked bone!  He kept screaming but not like a man . . . not even an animal makes a noise like that. It was a horrible sound, like nothing you have ever heard!  I grabbed him by his uniform and his belt and hauled him through the opening.  He was gasping for air and making sucking sounds.  He was trying to breathe.  Then I turned him over and I saw his face . . . I’ll never forget this as long as I live. His face . . . his face was gone!  His skin looked as if it had melted with the bones of his skull showing through.  His muscles were just hanging like strips of raw meat and his eyes!  They were still in his skull, staring at me!  The look in them, pleading with me to help him!  He could no longer speak or even make a sound because his tongue and lips were gone! His skin kept melting, dripping off into puddles right before my eyes!  I screamed and dropped my light and ran back toward the hoist but then I stopped. I knew I had to go back and try to help him, but it was too late.  He was dead.  Thank God, there was a mercy in that.  I was staring at his body, and I could see it begin to change. It became black and his remains seemed to melt into a pool of liquid right before my eyes: only his bones kept their shape!”

            Tears began to form in Gunter Voss’s eyes and he looked as if he were going to be sick.  Olga Zhdanova quickly got up and poured more water then handed the glass to him.  He drank it in gulps, trying to calm himself. Finally, breathing slowly and deeply, he continued his account.

“Again I backed away, and then I ran to the hoist.  I screamed to them to pull me up.  I was never so happy to see the sun again in my life!  My crew came running over to me along with the Russian major, all asking me what happened down there.  I could hardly speak I was shaking so badly. I just keep saying, he’s dead, he’s dead!  I was in shock so they brought me to a medical unit.  The Major ordered two of his men down to recover the corporal’s body but I heard that all they could recover was his bones. There was a rumor that two Russian soldiers had to place what remained of in into a special bag.  I was in the medical unit overnight but the next morning, two Russian soldiers came in and dragged me out of bed.  I was brought to a temporary building near the excavation where I stood before a KGB colonel.  His name was . . .”

            “His name was Yuri Stechkin, wasn’t it?”

            “Why yes it was!  How did you know that Fraulein?”

            Nina hesitated just for a moment but decided there was no harm in telling him.  “We came upon his name in a search of the Kremlin records.  Was there . . . anything unusual you can remember about him?”

            “Yes, there was.  His command of the German language was excellent, far better than any Russian I had met, and he used a particular phrase in German. He called me a very bad name that only a German would have used.  It made me suspicious that he wasn’t even a Soviet. I don’t think a Russian would have known this word, and his disposition, his temper, he was a horrible man.  He terrified me, threatened to have me shot if I ever mentioned anything about this to anyone.  He told me the corporal had accidently opened an old canister of acid but I knew that was impossible.  Nothing, no chemical I’ve ever heard of, could have done this to a human being and could have done it so fast.  After two days, they released me.  They put me in a truck along with some of the men in my crew but when we dove past the site, I saw dozens of cement trucks.  They were pouring concrete down the opening Sergei and I went into and all over the entire area, sealing everything.  After that, I never went back there again until years later.  By then the entire area had been turned into a wide, flat plaza, covered in cement.”

            The two women were riveted to their seats by the tale that Gunter Voss had told them.  Finally Nina spoke to him while helping him to recline in his chair and cover his legs with the blanket.

            “Herr Voss, everything you’ve told me . . . I’m so sorry for what you went through.  That must have been a terrible thing to experience.  Can you tell me, is that everything you can remember about what happened?”

            “No not quite everything.  Please, can you help me back up?”

            “I’ll do it.” Olga helped Voss to his feet.  Slowly he went over to a chest of draws, and removed a locked box. Opening it, he reached into the box taking out a folded and yellowed piece of paper.  The two women saw the paper was partly torn and burned on the edge. He handed it to Nina Shevchenko. It was a map but like none she’d ever seen before.  She stared at it for a long time.

            “This is the piece of paper I found just before I heard Sergei’s screams.  I must have stuffed it into my pants pocket without realizing it.  With all that had happened I’d forgotten about it.  Apparently so did the Soviets, they didn’t search my clothing when they brought me to the medical unit.  The following day, after they had released me, I discovered I still had it.  You are the first people besides myself to ever see it.”

            “Herr Voss, this is a map . . . but, it doesn’t make any sense.  What countries are these?  I don’t understand this.  Are you certain that this wasn’t some sort of a joke?”

            “No Fraulein. Look at the edge of the map.  It has been stamped ‘secret’ and has the seal of the Nazi SS on it.”

            Herr Voss, may I borrow this?  I want to have it copied.  I promise to return it to you tomorrow.”

            Voss slowly nodded his head in agreement. “Jah, you may take it with you.  And I want to say, I’m glad to finally be able to tell my story to someone . . . before I die.  That day I went down into the tunnel . . . It’s haunted me for all of my life.”

            “Thank you again for agreeing to see my friend and I.  If you can think of anything else, please call me.  I’m staying at the Grand Hyatt Berlin Hotel.  Here is the telephone number.”

****

            Klaus Hoffman remained still, cloaked behind the trunks of the leafless winter trees, watching the two women leave the apartment building and get into a cab.  They had been inside with Voss for well over an hour.  It was getting dark and the teeth of a November wind was biting at his face.  Still, he’d wait a bit longer, perhaps another half hour before knocking at Gunter Voss’s door.  It was time to take care of some unfinished business. Something that should have been attended to fifty years earlier.

 

 

Chapter Six

 

            Leaning forward in the Audi taxi-cab, Nina Shevchenko addressed the driver.  “Could you please pull over here and let my friend out?” Turning to Olga she said, “This is one of the main shopping districts.  It’s not far from out hotel.  Go get yourself a warm coat and maybe something to bring home to your family.”

            “Oh, I can’t. I don’t have enough money for shopping.”

            Nina pulled a handful of Euros from her purse and handed them to her.  “Please, go ahead.  You’ve earned it, tagging along with me and sitting through Gunter Voss’s remembrance of what occurred at the excavation.”

            “I know . . . I’m still shaken from what he said . . . horrible the way that young man died.”

            Nina shook her head in disgust. “Yes, and horrible too how the entire incident was literally covered up, under tons of concrete.  Now, go on, take my coat, it’s freezing out.”

            “Thank you Nina, I’m very happy they gave me this assignment.  If not I would have never met you.”

            The curtain of night was beginning to descend over the city with streetlights coming on, throwing an almost cheerful glow over streets still wet from the earlier rain.  Nina watched as Olga, wearing the dark red coat she had lent her, walked off toward a group of department stores. Satisfied that her friend would finally purchase the coat she needed on this cold evening, Nina spoke to the driver. “Please take me back to my hotel.”

Doctor Shevchenko paid no attention to the lights and bustle of the city passing by the windows of her taxi as the driver weaved through traffic.  Instead she was reviewing her notes.  In particular, those she wrote about the excavation from the Kremlin’s sealed files.  ‘Requisition for a lead lined body bag and decontamination supplies from a Soviet nuclear containment division requested by Col. Y. A. Stechkin-KGB . Dated: August 8^th 1961.’   That’s very curious, she thought, but how much radiation would it take to turn a human being into a pile of bones in just a few minutes? Nina had just finished entering her comments when the driver turned onto Potsdamer Platz and announced they had reached her hotel.

            Across the street, Leutnant Klaus Hoffman stood under a shop awning trying to stay dry from the chilled drizzle falling on the city as night drew near.  The old man was very helpful indeed. He had made certain Gunter Voss was comfortable in his chair since his rest this day would be an eternal one. After disposing of Voss, Hoffman had taken the Metro, avoiding the crush of traffic on the streets above.   Now all he needed to do was to keep watch for Nina Shevchenko to return to the hotel and eliminate her. Once that was accomplished, Hoffman would locate his second target, Alan Carter, and avenge the death of his comrades.   The other loose ends in Virginia and Peru would be taken care of shortly, if they hadn’t been already.

            It was freezing without her coat.  Nina exited the cab, pulling her Jacket tight around her and hurried into the lobby of the Hyatt. As she passed the front desk one of the mangers caught her attention.  “Oh, Doctor Shevchenko, you’ve had several calls while you were out from a Helga Voss.  She seemed quite upset.”

            Thanking him, Nina got on the elevator to her room on the fifth floor.  I just left her apartment, not more than forty minutes ago, she thought.  What could have happened?

Hoffman kept scanning the up and down the street and then, he caught sight of his target, She was walking down Belvuestrasse, across from the Sony Center and was waiting to cross the street.  She was carrying two bags from a local department store in each hand, her ankle length dark red coat stood out clearly under the bright lights of the intersection. Hoffman quickly crossed the street and took up a position where he could watch the woman, and then follow her.  He reached his left hand into the pocket of his trench coat, unsnapping the cover of a small case. He popped loose one of the three remaining ampoules of concentrated potassium cyanide, carefully sliding the protective cap off of the needle.  As she walked by him, Hoffman quickly fell in behind her. About thirty meters from the entrance to the hotel, he passed to the right of her and with one quick thrust, jabbed the ampoule into her side, just below her ribcage.  The deadly tool of assassination discharged its lethal contents into her body.

Olga Zhdanova felt a sharp burning pain in her side, as if she’d been stung by a wasp.  She froze, staring at the tall blond man next to her. She tried to speak, to ask him what just happened to her, but no sound would come out of her mouth, her lungs were already paralyzed. He was staring at her as well. The man’s face contorted in anger and he was saying something, they were the last words she would ever hear before being enveloped in the cold black grasp of death. It came to her ears as if from a great distance. “Damn it, the wrong one!”  Olga gasped and grabbed at her chest, dropping the bags she carried then collapsed onto the sidewalk.

Nina Shevchenko dialed the number twice; this time someone answered, it was Helga, Gunter Voss’s granddaughter. Her voice was filled with a mixture of both grief and anger.

“Why . . . why did you to do this to my grandfather?!  How could you have sent that horrible man?!  And now . . . my grandfather is dead!  He . . . he was so upset . . . I could hear him shouting, and then when your man finally left, I went in to see how he was. I thought my grandfather was sleeping, I wanted to be certain he was comfortable but . . . he was dead!”

“Helga, stop!  What are you talking about?!  What man?!  There is no one else with us, just Olga and myself.  I don’t understand?” 

Helga, fighting back her tears, answered her. “The man . . . the one with the bandaged hand . . . he, he said he was with you. He said he needed . . . needed to ask my grandfather a few more questions.  He became very abusive when grandfather wouldn’t answer him. He stormed out of my apartment . . .”

Nina at first was confused but t her confusion was quickly replaced with a rising sense of dread.  “Helga, did this man say anything else to you?”

There was silence on the phone for a moment before she answered. “Yes, he asked me what hotel you and the other woman were staying at. I did think it strange that he didn’t know that but . . . but he said you changed hotels without informing him.”         

“What?!  My hotel?!  Bozh Moi!  Helga, call the police at once!  I think this man killed your grandfather!”  Then a terrible thought came to her. “Oh no . . . Helga, I’m sorry. I’ve got to go!”

Suddenly Nina realized Olga was walking back to the hotel and that someone was stalking them and . . . Oh God, Olga!  My coat, my coat! He’ll think it’s me!”

Alan Carter stopped in front of in front of the glittering half moon shaped Potsdam Platz building and hit redial on his phone again: nothing but a fast busy signal at the Naval Research Institute.  He pushed the phone back into its holster and began to cross the wide avenue when an ambulance rushed by him, pulling up sharply just a few dozen meters further up the street.  He could see that a see a small crowd had gathered.  Someone was hurt. Carter had paramedic training and rushed to where a young woman had collapsed. Before the German medics could exit the ambulance, he turned the woman over and began CPR on her but after a few moments, he realized it was hopeless; she was dead, but something about her, an odor . . . cyanide!  As he stood up, the medics began the same futile ritual until they too realized the uselessness of it.

Nina Shevchenko raced though the hotel lobby, nearly knocking a woman over.  She burst through the doors and out on to the street.  She could see a crowd had gathered a few dozen meters away. Gawkers were bathed in the blue flashing lights of an emergency vehicle. Nina felt an icy rush of fear shoot through her body, hoping desperately that the person on the sidewalk was not Olga and then . . . she stopped horrified.  The coat . . . the coat on the woman it was hers.  It was Olga lying on the ground!  Nina rushed over to her friend’s side but she could see the medics were not working on her; instead they were removing a black body bag from the ambulance. She went up to one of the men.

“She was my friend! We, we were traveling together!  What happened to her?!”

“We don’t know Fraulein.  The witnesses said she simply collapsed.  By the time we arrived she was dead.  We tried to revive her but it was no use . . . I’m very sorry.”

“I lent her my coat . . . I sent her off to go shopping . . . I didn’t protect her . . . Someone did this!  Can you call the police?!”

“Yes, they are on their way but, why would someone wish to kill this woman?”

“Because . . . someone thought she was me!”

Nina Shevchenko saw a man standing close to the side of the building, not more than three meters from her. His hands were in his pockets.  He stepped toward her and she panicked, running back to the entrance of the hotel.  He was close behind her, trying to catch up.  She could hear him yelling to her but in her rush to escape him; she had no idea what he was saying.

Nina ran through the lobby and into an open elevator before he could catch up to her. Before he could reach her, another man, tall and blond wearing a dark green trench coat got in behind her just as the doors were closing. For the briefest moment, Alan Carter caught a glimpse of the man’s right hand.  He was wearing a cast!

Inside of the elevator, Nina grabbed Klaus Hoffman’s arm. “Oh thank God!  There’s someone following me!  He’s trying to kill me!  Please, can you help me?!”

Hoffman looked at the woman. He wanted to be certain it was her before he answered. Then he smiled. “Is that so, Fraulein?”

Across from the elevators was an emergency stairway.  In a heartbeat, Alan Carter was through the steel fire door and racing up a flight of stairs to the second floor, praying he could outrun the rising elevator. Slamming through the door on the second floor, he reached the elevator and his thumb mashed button. The elevator stopped and door slid open. She was on the floor of the elevator car, fighting for her life, kicking as hard as she could.  Hoffman was trying to hold her down, pushing against her with his right forearm.  His left hand was holding some kind of syringe.  Alan didn’t hesitate for a second, slamming into the man as hard as he could. The impact knocked the cyanide filled ampoule from his hand and it shattered on the floor, filling the car with the scent of burnt almonds.  Hit from behind, Hoffman’s head slammed into the far wall and he was knocked to the ground. Carter could see him reaching into his coat, fumbling for a pistol with his left hand. Alan jumped high, and came down with all his weight on the blonds’ broken wrist, splitting the cast open and causing the man to howl in pain.  Alan pinned him to the floor of the car and reached inside the man’s trench coat. His hand came away with a gun from the blonds’ shoulder holster. Carter backed up, leveling the Walther automatic at the prostrate German.  Not taking his eyes off of the man he called over to Nina Shevchenko “Are you okay?”

American, she knew by his accent right away. Gasping for breath she answered. “Yes, yes I’m fine but . . . he killed my friend!”

Alan Carter aimed the pistol at the German’s head. “All right you son of a b***h who the hell are you?!  By the looks of that wrist of yours, my buddy in Peru broke it, isn’t that right?”

Before Carter could even react, the German grabbed the last ampoule from his left coat pocket and Jammed the needle into his own thigh. His eyes went wide and his body jerked up, then he fell back hard against the floor of the elevator car. Alan reached down pushing his two fingers against the man’s neck, feeling for the carotid artery: nothing, no pulse, he was dead.

Extending his arm, he helped the terrified woman to her feet.  She stared at him and backed up against the far wall of the car. Carter, still holding the man’s gun, hit the elevator emergency stop button with his other hand.

Nina, looking like she was about to scream blurted out, “Who are you?!”

“I’m Alan Carter.  What the hell’s going on?!  I saw you and the dead woman together today in the lobby this morning. I saw what happened to her, or at least what the results were from this b*****d that killed her.  He’s the same guy that tried to kill my friend in Peru a few days ago.”

She looked at him closely. He was the same man that she and Olga had seen earlier in the lobby, but . . . she’d seen him somewhere else before as well, and his name . . . Alan Carter! 

“You, you’re the historical-archeologist . . . Carter. I was reading your book, just a few days ago.”

Carter could hear by her soft, almost lyrical accent that she had to be Russian or Ukrainian maybe, but her English was excellent.  “Some people actually question my credentials as a historian but . . . yeah, that’s me. What’s going on? Why was he trying to kill you and why did he kill your friend?”

“I’m sorry, my friend . . . Olga . . . I lent her my coat to go shopping.  He must have thought it was me and . . . oh God, he killed Gunter Voss as well.”

“So who are you and who is, was Gunter Voss?”

Nina put her hand to her face, tears were beginning to form, both from the loss of her friend and from the shock of nearly been killed herself. “I’m Doctor Nina Shevchenko from Kiev.  I’m a forensic historian.”

Carter’s eyes went wide with surprise. “Wait, you’re a historian?  Are you working on anything that has to do with an old excavation?”

She hesitated to speak, can I trust him, she thought? Do I even have a choice?  “Yes, I am. I went to see a man who worked on it.  He, he’s dead.  That man in the elevator . . . He killed him.”

“Come on, let’s take the stairs.  My room’s on six.  We have to talk about this; figure out what’s going on and what to do about it.”

“Are you serious?!  What about this man?!  What about the police?! We must call them!”

“Listen, I don’t know what this is all about, but ever since I caught wind of this, people have been trying to kill me too.  Just let the elevator go down to the lobby. I don’t know who’s behind this or who to trust and right now, and calling the police is about the last thing I want to do.  Anyone who’d commit suicide rather than be captured has to be part of something pretty big and pretty nasty. Come on, let’s get out of here!”

Carter helped Nina out of the elevator car and across the corridor to the stairwell. When the elevator reached the lobby and opened, two French tourists waiting for the car commented to each other on the state of alcoholism in Germany . . . that is until they realized the man lying on the floor of the car was dead.

Alan quickly slid his door card into the lock and pulled Nina Shevchenko inside. Throwing on the lights, he could see her face.  It was tear streaked and terribly pale but still beautiful.  He thought she might be going into shock. He unlocked the mini-bar, grabbing one of the tiny vodka bottles and handed it to her.

“Here, drink this; all of it, and try to calm down. “

Nina unscrewed the cap, putting the small bottle to her lips, and quickly downed the burning liquid.  She put the bottle down on the nightstand.  Finally breathing slower, she spoke to Alan Carter.  “Thank you . . . thank you for saving my life.”

Although she was in the grip of both fear and grief, she was a striking looking woman, tall with dark auburn hair and almost magnetic green eyes.  Alan cleared he throat before answering her.  “You’re welcome but, why did you run away from me?”

“I saw Olga, my friend, lying dead on the sidewalk I went over to her, and then I saw you.  You were staring at me.  I . . . I had seen you earlier at the hotel . . . I thought you had killed her.”

“Who was she?”

Drying her eyes, Nina replied, “She was assigned to me by the FSB in Moscow.  I’m Ukrainian, not Russian.  I was asked by the Kremlin to look into the possibility that Adolf Hitler might have escaped in 1945.  The skull fragment held in the Kremlin archives is not his.  Olga was here to keep an eye on me, to make certain that anything I might uncover would not become an embarrassment to Russia. Instead we became friends.  She was not a field agent just a documents translator and I have no idea why they assigned her.”

“Maybe someone in the FSB sent you two here to dig up information and then kill the both of you.  Just before my flight left for Germany I got a call about some FBI agent looking for me. When they checked him out, they were told FBI didn’t have any record of sending anyone out to question me.  Besides only my friend, Doug Markey, knew I left Peru for Virginia.”

Nina shot him a questioning look. “I don’t understand, Peru?  You flew from Peru to Virginia and then to Germany? What’s going on?  Did you discover something?”

 Doctor Shevchenko, I think we may both be working at different ends of the same mystery and I think it’s got some pretty powerful people nervous.  That’s what brought me to Germany, that excavation.  The same one you’re working on. I’ll tell you what I know. We were diving off of Peru when we discovered . . .”

The insistent chiming of Alan’s cell phone drew his attention away from the Ukrainian historian.  He was about to shut it off when he saw the call was coming from Doug Markey’s satellite phone.  That could only mean that the Geo-Explorer was at sea.  It didn’t make sense, Doug and the crew was supposed to be staying in port for another day or two. 

“Hey Doug, what’s going on?  Did you put out to sea?”

“Damn straight we did! After my run in with those two Germans I got to thinking and had the ship swept for anything unusual but we came up empty.  Then I sent Simowski down in some diving gear to check out the hull just in case. He found a bomb strapped to it!  Damn thing had enough C-4 in it to blow us right in half!”

“Holy crap! So everyone’s alright?”

“Yeah, we’re already out a hundred miles offshore and heading for San Diego and we’re not stopping ‘till we get there.”

“Doug, your other German, the guy whose wrist you busted. He was here.  He tried to kill a . . . um, never mind right now, anyway he’s dead and I . . .”

“Alan . . . wait, don’t say anything more . . . I gotta tell you something, something happened in the states. Something really bad.” Carter heard the drop in pitch of his friend’s voice.  It took on a somber tone.  “If you’re by a TV, turn it on.  It’s big news all over the world.”

Nina watched curiously as Carter went over and switched on the television, searching for a German news channel. Then he froze.  He couldn’t understand the words of the newscaster but he could read the location in English of what was obviously a huge disaster from a CNN American news feed: U.S. Naval Research Center, Norfolk, Virginia. The scene switched from ground cameras to an airborne view from a news helicopter. It was a lurid image of massive destruction.  Nothing of the research institute or any of the surrounding buildings remained.  Even the forest across from the access road looked like it had been sliced cleanly away by some giant’s scythe.  The remaining trees further out from the blast were aflame with fire crews attempting to bring the conflagration under control. Alan just stood there staring at the screen. 

Nina went over to him. “What is that place?”

Carter didn’t answer immediately; his eyes were focused on the destruction unfolding before him on the television.  Finally he spoke to her, “I was just there yesterday . . . It’s the navy’s research center.  They scanned a sealed case I found on a sunken German sub.  The information led me to the excavation site here in Germany.   I . . . damn it to hell!  Someone blew it up!  Blew it up and killed a lot of good men and women to make this whole thing go away!”

“Alan, I speak German as well, they are saying . . . a massive explosion occurred here about two hours ago.  No one knows how it happened but, there is a suspicion that it was nuclear in origin, perhaps a kiloton. There is radiation. They are just beginning to investigate but . . . perhaps fifteen hundred or more are dead. Alan, do you know something about this?”

Alan Carter was stunned, speechless, until the sound of Doug Markey voice yelling through the cell phone brought him out of his trance. 

“Doug . . . I can’t believe it.  The research center!  I left the samples from Peru with them. They scanned the sealed case and got useable data. This was no accident!”

Carter looked at the newscast again.  The time, he thought! He mentally subtracted six hours.  “Jesus Doug, I, I was on the phone with Admiral Collins when it must have happened!  The line went dead!  He was in the middle of telling me about something important. Something about one of the samples . . . Collins, he said he knew you.”

There was silence on the line for a few moments before Doug Markey answered. His usual rough edged voice was uncharacteristically somber. “Yeah, that’s right Alan, Gabby Collins . . . Admiral Collins, he was my CO when my SEAL unit went into Panama back in ‘89.  He was a good man.  You’re a good man too and I don’t want be giving a damn eulogy about you at your funeral, assuming anyone would even find your body.  I don’t know what you dug up but it’s some pretty serious s**t man!  And, whose voice was that in the room with you?  You got a lady in there?”

“Not what you think buddy. She’s the one your wounded Nazi was trying to kill.  She’s pretty shook up.  That b*****d killed her friend.  She’s onto the same mystery as me.  Listen, you take care as well.  It’s a big ocean out there.  Just be careful man.”

“Yeah, like-wise. I’ve got to go.  The weather’s starting to pick up.  Looks like we might be heading into a squall.  You take care of yourself, you hear me.” 

Carter was about to end the call when he remembered something. “Wait Doug . . . just after I left the research center for Germany, Collins called me at the airport and said an FBI agent showed up asking about me, the samples and the case.  I think the Admiral said his name was Holland or Holmgren, yeah, that was it Holmgren. Collins said he called the Bureau later on and they didn’t’ know a thing about it. He thought is was pretty damn odd.”

“Yeah, that’s a double reason for you to watch your a*s. I’ll try and call you tomorrow and be careful, yah here me.”

Nina Shevchenko suddenly put her hands up to her face in a shock of recognition. It just came to her. “Alan, did you say American FBI knew you had these samples?  I think these same people have infested both Russia and America!  Bozh Moi! The man in the elevator said to Helga that we changed hotels without informing him.  He knew! That man knew that we were supposed to be staying in the Hotel Johann! The only people who could have known that were the Russian FSB!  They’re part of this!  What are we going to do?!”

Nina sat down on the edge of the bed as her tears flowed freely.  Alan set his phone down and pulled up a chair, sitting right in front of her. He reached out taking her shoulders in both hands, trying to calm her down. “Doctor Shevchenko . . . Nina, I’m not really sure what’s going on here but you and I are going to have to trust each other and we’re going to have to work together. We’ve both gotten into something that was supposed to have stayed hidden and found out information that has to be pretty important to somebody.  I mean, my God! Blow up a naval research facility with a small nuke?!”

Nina pushed away her tears from her cheeks with both her hands, looking at Alan Carter with her red rimmed eyes. “What am I going to do?  I’m so frightened.  I’m a historian, not some kind of secret agent! Oh why did I insist on speaking with Ivanov?  I wish I’d never been involved in this!”

“Look, you can’t undo the past.  I’m pretty shaken up too, but we have to keep out heads on straight and we have to figure out just what exactly we’re into here.  I mean, what did you and I find that’s such a threat to some organization that it got those people killed?  What do you have; what sort of information did you learn from this man . . . you said his name was Voss?”

“Yes, I’m sorry, let me get my files they are in my kommnatta  . . . I . . . sorry, my room.  I’m so upset I forget my English.” 

Nina looked up to see Alan Carter opening his small travel bag and piling his clothes and toiletries into it. “What are you doing?”

“I’m packing.  Get your stuff and your files and let’s get out of here before whoever’s trying to kill us sends in the second team.  Do you have any cash on you?  I mean Euros?”

“Yes, why?”

“We can’t use my credit cards, they’re too easy to trace.  We’ve go to get out of this hotel and find another one far from here, pay with cash, and then we can sit down and go over what we each have. Maybe between the two of us we can figure out what’s so damned valuable about what we’ve found.”

Chapter Seven

 

Argentina: Site Alpha

 

Brigadefuhrer Wolfgang Drexler was seated at his desk, scrolling through the incoming data, reviewing the results of the Virginia operation. With thinning blond hair, broad high forehead and piecing blue eyes, Drexler could have been the prototype for the sick and twisted Nazi ideal, the Teutonic Ubermenschen, the master race. The morning sun filtering in though the blinds bathed his spotless and crisp black uniform.  His peaked cap hung on a hook above and to the left of him, adorned with a tiny white death’s head and the stylized lighting bolts that spelled out the letters “SS.”

The knock brought the commandant’s gaze from his computer terminal to the door of his office.  Drexler was a by any measure a handsome man but with a soul as black as the uniform he wore.

“Come!”

Drexler cast an imperious look at the young SS officer that had entered the room. The man snapped to attention, thrusting his right arm out. “Heil to the Fuhrer!”

The Commandant returned the salute. “You may be at ease Hauptmann Schroder.  What is the news of our containment operation?  I have been reviewing the broadcast and data feeds.  What I see does not please me.”

“Sir, permission to speak.”

Drexler nodded his head in the affirmative.

“The explosive device that we affixed to the research ship Geo-Explorer appears to have failed to detonate. The ship left port eighteen hours ago.  However, the operation in America in their state of Virginia has been carried out with great success.  Although, Agent Holmgren’s usefulness to us as an FBI agent has been compromised.  He is scheduled for extraction in twenty-four hours.  The use of our small nuclear device was successful.  Nothing remains of the research institute and certainly no trace of any evidence collected by this Alan Carter.”

“What of Carter, Hauptmann? I see nothing about his elimination.”

“Herr Commander, I fear that Leutnant Hoffman has failed in his mission.  There is a report from Berlin of a young woman that collapsed and died outside of the Hyatt Hotel, but it was the Russian FSB translator, not Shevchenko, and then there is this . . .” 

Schroder handed the commandant a hard copy printout from a German news service: The mysterious death a man was reported at 21:12 last night.  His body was discovered by two French tourists in an elevator in the lobby of the Grand Hyatt Berlin Hotel.  The name of the dead man is unknown as he lacked any identification, however due to the presence of cyanide; his death has been ruled as suspicions. “I’m afraid sir, that Leutnant Hoffman is dead and that both Alan Carter and this Shevchenko woman have escaped unharmed.  However, there is a bright note sir. Hoffman appears to have eliminated Gunter Voss, the last living witness to the 1961 Berlin excavation.”

Drexler slammed his fist down on his dark wooden desk with such force his water glass perched on the edge, danced off it and shattered on the floor. 

“Hauptmann, I do not want excuses or to know which parts of the containment operation are complete: all must be complete!  The agents of the Fourth Reich have grown soft and complacent.  No agent of The Third Reich in the time of our great leader, Adolf Hitler, would ever have met his death at the hands of . . . of a historian!  Bring me what information you have on this Alan Carter.  I want to see for myself what sort of man we are dealing with and how best to eliminate him. And, as for Mister Carter’s exploration ship, locate its position, then dispatch one of our aircraft and sink it.”

“Jawohl Commandant.  Is there anything else sir?”

“Jah, our sources in Russia have informed us that FSB Director, Boris Ivanov has become aware of the Andropov deception. He has begun looking into the sealed Kremlin files for information to confirm his suspicions.  See to it that he meets with an unfortunate accident as soon as possible, is that understood?  Now bring me the file on Alan Carter!”

“Jawohl Commandant!”

****

“Can you believe it?  The man asked me if we wanted the room for the night or just for an hour!  He thought I was a . . . a prostitute and you were my customer!”

“I’m sorry Doctor Shevchenko, but this is Berlin’s Red Light District and I thought it best that we find a hotel for the night that gives us anonymity, takes cash and doesn’t ask a lot of questions.”

Nina Shevchenko shot him a suspicious glance. “And how is it, Mister Carter, that you, who don’t speak German, found this Red Light District so easily?”

Alan chuckled, “I was involved in a project for my network.  It was a three part series called The History of Sex.  Berlin and Amsterdam’s Red Light Districts were both part of my research for the show . . . ah, but strictly academic though.”

Nina replied caustically, “I’m certain your program had a large audience.”

“Yeah, in fact if did.  Highest rated series we’ve ever produced.”

She rolled her eyes, “Somehow that does not surprise me.”

Alan slid the key card into the door and switched on the light.  The room was bathed in a red illumination with several erotic images decorating the walls.  The single bed was covered with a crimson comforter and loveseat-sofa in the shape of a woman’s lips sat in the corner.

Nina surveyed the room. “Charming . . . It looks like an adolescent boy’s fantasy.”

“Maybe so, Doctor, but I don’t think we’re going to have to worry about any more assassins, at least not for tonight.  I’m sorry about what’s happened to you and I am very sorry about the loss of your friend but the only way we’re going to stay alive is to try and figure out what’s going on here and who’s involved.  I don’t know exactly how, but there’s a connection between the wreck of a sixty-nine year old Nazi sub, the Berlin excavation and Hitler’s possible escape in 1945. Whatever this is about, it’s pretty damned important to somebody.  Let’s start by going over what you found out about the site here in Berlin and I’ll fill you in on what I found off the coast of Peru . . .”

“ . . .  And so, Nina continued, “after Gunter Voss was hoisted up from the entry into the tunnel, he went into shock and was taken to a medical unit.  The KGB officer that arrived the next day threatened to have Voss executed if he ever breathed a word of it to anyone.  He had told no one about his experience, ever, except for Olga and I.  Now look, Gunter Voss is dead and . . .” Nina’s eyes again filled with tears, “Olga is dead too.”

Alan felt extremely awkward.  He was sitting in a hot sheets hotel room with an extremely attractive woman, trying to comfort her while at the same time, desperately trying to find out who or what organization wanted to kill them.  “Doctor Shevchenko . . . sorry, may I call you Nina?”

Wiping her eyes and sniffling back her tears, she answered him, “Yes, yes that’s fine.  I’m sorry, let me continue.  “Voss said the KGB Colonel’s name was Yuri Stechkin.  When I spoke to Boris Ivanov about . . .”

“Sorry Nina, who’s Boris Ivanov?”

“He is the Director of the FSB. He found conclusive evidence that this Yuri Stechkin was not who he claimed to be, not even a Russian!  He was a Nazi Gestapo officer during the war and must have assumed Stechkin’s identity sometime before 1961.” 

“Wait a second; a KGB Colonel was actually a Nazi?  How could that have happened?”

“It happened because he had a patron in the Soviet Government, Yuri Andropov.”

“Andropov?  You have to be joking!  He was the most hard line Soviet leader since Stalin.  He nearly started World War Three with the United States!”

“Yes that is true and he cost the lives of many in the Ukrainian independence movement and those in Poland as well. Boris Ivanov and I spoke of this before I left for Berlin.”

Nina, I have a really bad feeling about your Director Ivanov.  If he isn’t dead already, I’m afraid he will be by morning.”

“Oh no, I don’t like him, but I would not wish to see him killed! I have to warn him.  How can I even make contact with him at this hour?  Let me try to call the FSB!”

“I’m sorry Nina but you can’t, no way. Before we left, while you were packing, I threw your cell phone away.”

“You did what?!”  She stood up, glaring at him, and Alan could see the anger flare in her eyes. 

“Wait, wait, don’t lose your temper.  I tossed mine as well.  Cell phones can be tracked by GPS and yours might have even had a transponder in it, I don’t know, but we can’t take any chances.  I’ll go with you in the morning.  We’ll pay for a phone card, cash, and you can place a call to the FSB.  Maybe, there’s a chance he’ll still be alive, but I doubt it. These people are totally ruthless. Now, let me tell you what I think this is about and please, reserve your skepticism until I finish, okay?”

Nina Shevchenko, seeing the logic in what Carter had done, relaxed and sat back down on the bed, nodding her head in agreement.

“All right, here goes. You said this man Voss saw a young solder die from what must have been exposure to a massive release of radiation.  That’s consistent with what the old Indian said in Peru.  One of the Germans must have prematurely opened a shielded container holding a substance that we translated as Xerum-525. The descriptions of a purple glow appear to be the same.  The documents we were able to retrieve from the case said this was some sort of liquid metal and highly radioactive.  By the way this soldier that died in the tunnel, I think he may have accidently broken open a container of this stuff.  Now, here comes the hard part and I’m not even sure I believe it myself. Are you familiar with Nazca in Peru?”

Nina nodded in the affirmative. “Yes, the carvings in the desert, the lines that appear to be landing areas for aircraft, I’ve studied several theories on the meaning of this place.”

“What about the theory that suggests the influence of extraterrestrial beings thousands of years in the past?”

“You can’t be serious? Oh, but then you are a television personality, so for you everything is possible, as long as it delivers a bigger audience.”

“Oh boy, I knew that was coming.  I asked you to please hold your skepticism until I finish.  I was in Nazca, at the site of a 1945 Nazi expedition.  Whatever was buried there these, gifts of the gods, as the old Indian said, had been removed, but I did find some inexplicable samples. I brought them to Virginia, to the US Naval Research Facility in Norfolk. When I got to Germany, I received a call from Admiral Collins, the commanding officer of the facility.  He told me one of those samples was element-117.”

Nina Shevchenko looked at Carter in surprise.  “But . . . there is no such element on Earth.”

“That’s right.  There is no such element on Earth, as in not from this planet.  There are only two explanations. Either it didn’t come from this world and was brought here by some alien race or, sometime in the dim past, we humans reached a technological level far beyond our current capabilities.  Since no archeological evidence has ever been found to support the second theory, I’ll put my money on it being of extraterrestrial origin. And, there’s more.  I found tiny spheres of an unknown metal.  The navy was running tests on these as well. Collins told me that they somehow amplify electricity.  When the samples were fed a mild electric charge, they put out a reverse voltage pulse that fried most of the equipment in the lab. 

"Collins said something else as well; they nullified gravity within a radius of about a millimeter or two from each sphere.  I was out at the Berlin excavation site and I spoke to a man that had lived near there for years.  He told me about some very strange occurrences, but the weirdest thing of all was one small area about a meter in diameter. Right there, right at that spot, the Earth’s gravitational field is less than half of what it should be.  The Admiral was going to tell me something else about the material I brought back, but the line went dead.  That’s when those sons of b*****s set off that bomb.  The only explanation that makes any sense is that the Nazis had access to some advanced kind of extraterrestrial technology.  Maybe they found it too late, or they couldn’t figure out how to make it work in time to be of any help in winning the war, but between what you’ve uncovered and what I’ve found, I’m positive this isn’t over yet, not by a long shot.  The Nazis had something they called the bell, some kind of device that harnessed incredible energy.  I have no clue what the purpose of it was, but if they’re still out there, killing people to cover up any trace of this, then they must be planning something and it’s damn certain that for them World War Two didn’t end in 1945.  I think the Nazis are planning a come back and it’s going to be big time.”

Nina Shevchenko sat stunned at Alan Carter’s explanation.  It was bizarre, unbelievable, but when she turned it over in her mind, it was the only explanation that made sense. If what he says is true, she thought, then these Nazis have infiltrated first the Soviet and now the Russian Government at the highest levels, maybe the American Government and others as well.  Finally in a subdued voice, she gave Alan Carter one more piece of a very big puzzle.  “I want to show you something that Gunter Voss found in the tunnel. It’s a map but it doesn’t make any sense.” 

Nina pulled the yellowed paper out of her bag and handed it to Carter. Taking it from her slim fingers, he studied it intently.  It was map of the world, dated December 3^rd, 1944 with the seal of the Nazi SS on it, but it was like no map Alan had ever seen.

The continents are all there, he thought, but what the hell are these countires?

His eyes first focused on North America, where the United States should have been, but instead of the USA, the area that encompassed two thirds of the land he knew was called The Colonial Commonwealth of America. There was no Canada; this commonwealth extended all the way up to Hudson’s Bay. In the north, where Montana and Wyoming should have been was the Lakota-Cheyenne Co-Dominion.   Texas and the Mid-West were evenly divided between the nations of New Iberia and New Normandy.  New Normandy was overlaid with a three pointed French fleur de lis. California and Alaska were part of the Kievskya-Russ Monarchy, and Central Europe was dominated by the Austro-Prussian Empire!  Whatever existed of China and the Far East was missing, with that side of the map torn and burned away.

            “Doctor Shevchenko, ah . . . Nina, what is this?  These countries, what are they? It’s like some kind of alternate world, just like ours, but with different nations created from different outcomes in history.”

            “I see, so now it is your turn to be skeptical.”

            “No, that’s not what I mean.  After what you and I’ve found so far, I’m ready to believe almost anything.  I also have one more document for you to look at.  The scanner could only recover part of it.  It’s a map with the location of another one these bells.  I think this is Eastern Europe, some where near Poland but most of it’s missing.”

            Nina looked at the document for a long time, he mind filling in the missing landmarks.  Finally she had the answer. “This is Ukraine, specifically Vinnitsa, Ukraine.  This location, the landmarks; this is Wolf’s Lair.  It was a secret Nazi underground base. No one has ever been inside.  It’s too dangerous. There are supposed to be explosive devices throughout the entire structure.”

            “Then that’s where we’re going, first thing in the morning.”

            “Alan, you can’t be serious? How will we get there and what will we do even if we can get there?”

            “Look, our evidence is gone.  All we have are some unverifiable documents, no physical samples, and a dead eyewitness.  Once they eliminate us, the cover up is complete.  If one of these devices still exists and it is the product of an extraterrestrial civilization, we’ll have the proof to blow this thing wide open.  Nina, getting to Ukraine is our only chance.  We’ll have to travel by rail and we’ll have to pay cash for everything. I know what you’ve been though and I know that you’re mourning the loss of your friend, but you’ve got to get some sleep because I want to get the hell out of Germany first thing in the morning.  Go on, you take the bed, I’ll sleep over there on the sofa.”

Author's Note

This is an uncorrected manuscript.