They were on the German plain east of Hamburg and well north of Berlin in the state of West Pomerania. Farmland, broken with stands of trees, stretched in every direction for as far as the eye could see, some of it at or actually below sea level.
They passed through the tiny village of Neustrelitz then turned north on the secondary road around Lake Tolense. A ski chalet, the smaller version of Speyer's house outside of Kalispell, was perched on a slight rise above the lake. The town of Neubrandenburg was ten kilometers to the north. The water of the lake looked steel gray except for the whitecaps. There were no fishermen or recreational boaters out today.
“It's usually very nice up here at this time of the year,” Speyer apologized.
“A regular hotbed of tourism now that the Wall is down, I suppose,” Lane quipped.
“Actually I was born here, and until I went away to Gymnasium
in Rostock I practically lived on this lake in the summers,” Speyer said.
“It must have been pleasant.”
“But there's nothing here, Helmut, except farmland and the water,” Gloria complained. “What in God's name did you do with yourself for entire summers?”
“About the same things you did in South Dakota when you were a child,” Speyer replied with a vicious little note in his voice.
Gloria sat back and glowered at her husband, as Baumann drove up to the chalet and parked in the back by a large, weatherworn garage. An older man, perhaps in his mid-sixties, wearing a yellow foul-weather jacket, blue jeans, and boat shoes emerged from the house and came over to the car as they were all getting out and stretching.
“Welcome home, Captain, it's been too long since you were here,” he boomed. Everybody in Germany shouted.
“It's good to be back, Otto, even if for only a couple of days,” Speyer said warmly. “
Alles ist in ordnung
?”
“
Ja, natürlich, Herr Kapitän.”
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Everything was the same in this chalet as in the Kalispell house except that it was smaller and older. It smelled a little musty, too, as if it had not been occupied for a long time. The old man brought them beer and Gloria some wine.
“When the captain said that he was a married man and would be bringing his wife with him, he neglected to say how beautiful you are, Frau Speyer,” he said.
“Thanks,” she slurred insincerely. She glanced over at Lane and rolled her eyes.
“Sergeant Schaub was my top sergeant in East Berlin before our unit was dissolved,” Speyer explained. He introduced Lane.
“The captain told me yesterday that you were handy with a gun,” Sergeant Schaub said.
“I was at the right place at the right time.” Lane took a deep draught of his beer. It was very good. “I didn't think you could get beer like this up here.”
“It's not from here. That comes from Munich.”
“Otto never drank a bad beer in his life,” Baumann said, chuckling.
Schaub reached over and gave Baumann's belly a playful pat. “It looks as if that cheap American beer has done you no harm.”
“Pisswater,” Baumann pronounced. He raised his glass. “Now
this, on the other hand, is beer that you can sink your teeth into, roll your tongue around, enjoy.”
“Please,” Gloria begged sarcastically.
Baumann was about to say something to her, but Speyer shot him a dirty look, which shut him up. Eden, Lane decided, if they ever got there, was going to be lively and interesting.
Schaub offered them another drink and Lane held out his glass. “So what's the situation? How far are we from the bunker?”
Schaub poured more beer, then glanced at Speyer, who nodded. “The bunker entry is just a couple of kilometers from here, but we might have a problem. There've been some men here over the past few days, and some questions. We may have to delay the mission.”
“What kind of men, Otto?” Speyer asked. “
Bundes
?”
Schaub nodded. “Yes, probably federal police. They asked in town if there'd been an increase in visitors over the past few weeks.”
“To the lake, the town, the bunker? An increase in visitors exactly where?”
“They didn't specify.”
Speyer thought about it for a moment, but then shrugged. “Maybe it was a government survey.”
“That is possible under the new order,” Schaub conceded. He brought out a bottle of good cognac. “Perhaps Frau Speyer would like something a little stronger?”
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A back room of the chalet was devoted to hunting and fishing trophies which were mounted on the walls along with the weapons used to bag them. Schaub pushed a large wool rug aside, and lifted several boards of well-worn wood flooring up, revealing a storage area five feet long, half that wide, and eighteen inches deep. From this he withdrew several bundles and aluminum cases which he laid out and opened on a long, deeply scarred table.
In addition to a variety of pistols including SigSauers, Glock 17s, Walthers, and Berettas, along with the appropriate magazines and silencers, were a number of sniper rifles, automatic weapons, including the M-17 and AK-47, as well as a half-dozen LAWs rockets and two RPGs.
“The demolitions and other equipment are out in the garage,” Sergeant Schaub explained. “I thought it was safer out there, away from the house.”
Lane picked out a Beretta 9mm, the same as the gun he'd left in
checked luggage at the Grand Hyatt, a Polish-made silencer, and two magazines of ammunition. “That's quite an arsenal. Have you been expecting trouble for a very long time?”
“It's better to be prepared than wanting,” Schaub said.
Baumann picked out a seventeen-shot Glock, and Speyer one of the Walther PPKs, which was a very compact, flat weapon that was easy to conceal, though it didn't have much stopping power.
“If we have to use all of this we might just as well kiss off the project,” Lane prompted, looking for a response.
“If you mean shooting German authorities, I don't think it'll come to that,” Speyer replied. “But we'll almost certainly have a problem at some point with the Russians.”
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The map was very large scale, the type used by surveyors. A legend in German at the bottom advised that the starred benchmarks had been verified by satellite measurement. “It was designated Reichsamt Seventeen,” Speyer explained.
“Reichs department seventeen,” Lane translated. “Anonymous.”
“That's how they wanted it in those days. And it was smart, considering what was going on down there.”
On the map the place was marked as the Neubrandenburg War Memorial, and a small black square at the spot along the lakeshore indicated that it was a point of special interest.
“What's on the site?”
“A small parking lot, an open pavilion with an eternal flame, and a small concrete structure with a steel door made to look like a maintenance shed of some sort,” Schaub reported.
“The shed covers the actual entrance,” Speyer said.
“Guards, caretakers?”
“Oneâ” Speyer began, but Schaub interrupted.
“Sorry,
Herr Kapitän,
but in addition to the one guard, there have been two maintenance men doing repairs and painting the pavilion over the past few days.”
“In the rain?” Speyer asked.
Schaub nodded solemnly.
“Well, we'll just have to see about that, won't we. And right now might be the best time of all.”
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The memorial was much larger than Lane thought it would be. The pavilion with its eternal flame was large enough to hold a hundred visitors easily, and the concrete shed was about the size of a small
garage. Baumann was driving the Mercedes. He pulled into the parking lot. The wind off the lake was raw.
“You said that the bunker is flooded. Is it open to the lake?” Lane asked.
“There was an explosion, probably sabotage, and it opened a passage directly to the lake bottom,” Speyer replied.
“Why hasn't anyone gone in that way?”
“The walls are far too unstable, and by now they're probably collapsed.”
The grass and hedges were well maintained. There were several picnic benches above a small beach. They could see the town farther up the lake, but only woods and farmland on the opposite side two kilometers away. There was no sign of the two extra caretakers.
The guard, in a green wool uniform, came out of the small office at the rear of the pavilion and looked up at them. Speyer waved and the guard waved back.
“Even if the other two don't come back, he'll want to know what the hell we're up to when we start breaking into the place,” Lane said.
“No he won't,” Speyer assured him. “He'll be too busy to even notice.”
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They drove back to the chalet. Inside the shed Sergeant Schaub showed them the rest of the equipment.
“Everything that you asked for is here,” he said. “Two mixed-gas diving outfits, including closed circuit masks, dry suits, lights, gauges, underwater navigational equipment, and buoyancy vests.”
“You didn't purchase all of this from the same place, I presume,” Speyer demanded.
“I used different suppliers in Hamburg, Berlin, Frankfurt, and Rostock, under four different names and on four different days.”
“Who else is going down with me?” Lane asked, checking the equipment. It was all German made and first-class.
“Just you, I'm afraid,” Speyer said. “I was unable to find anyone else.”
“If something goes wrong I'm dead.”
Speyer smiled. “But this way you'll get the pay of two divers. That should help alleviate your concerns.”
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“We're going to meet with the Russians tonight, and unless a problem comes up, we make the dive tomorrow,” Speyer told them.
They were in the chalet's great room, a fire burning on the grate
in the big stone fireplace. Sergeant Schaub had put on a wild boar stew, and the entire house smelled like baking bread. Even Gloria roused herself enough to go into the kitchen and help with the hot cabbage salad and other side dishes. It reminded her, she said, of when she was a little girl.
“And it wasn't so long ago at that,” Sergeant Schaub offered gallantly.
“It bothers me that the two maintenance men were missing this afternoon,” Baumann said,
“Don't worry about it. They probably finished their job and went to another,” Speyer reassured them. He turned back to Lane. “The Russians will be bringing a German Television One panel truck with them which they'll park directly in front of the entrance shed. The three of us will be inside watching everything on the television monitors.”
“What if the guard gets suspicious and wants to check on them?” Lane asked.
“It'll be okay, because these guys really are filmmakers. They're working on a number of freelance projects.”
Lane nodded. “I assume that they'll keep the guard and any visitors who might show up busy while we peel the steel door and get inside. What then? I've never even heard of the place, let alone seen it.”
“The Russians are bringing the engineering diagrams of the entire bunker system. They'll leave them with us tonight, which will give us time to study them and figure out your route.”
Lane glanced over at Baumann, who was chewing his lip. “Of course that's providing that the explosion sixty years ago did nothing more than merely flood the bunker. There could be blown-out walls, collapsed ceilings, God only knows what other hazards.”
“It's a risk that I'm willing to take,” Speyer told him with a straight face.
“Oh, are you diving with me?”
“No. And if you want to back out now, go ahead. Ernst will drive you back to Hamburg in the morning. Of course I would have to have your word that you wouldn't say anything to anyone about the project. I could give you five thousand dollars for your efforts to this point. I think that it would not be impossible to find another diver willing to take the risk.”
Lane looked away for a long moment. “Okay, so I locate the diamonds, then what?”
Speyer smiled. “Good man. The diamonds will be sealed in a black metal box about half a meter on a side. There'll just be the one.”
“Weight?”
Speyer shrugged. “I don't know, but not so heavy, I think, that it would be impossible for one man to handle it underwater. In any event you'll be wearing a buoyancy control vest. A little extra gas in the vest should give you the needed lift.”