Secrets of the Last Nazi (23 page)

Zenyalena staggered back to the gravel track, her eyes warily scanning Frank, Glenn, Myles, Pascal and Heike-Ann in turn. ‘We’ve worked out there must be a traitor. Now we know that the traitor is the Englishman. And he was working with this man.’ She eyed Frank, sceptically looking at his weak leg. ‘What I don’t know is whether any of you were also involved. Pascal, Heike-Ann, Glenn: do any of you want to admit something?’

Glenn, Pascal and Heike-Ann looked at each other – confused and defenceless.

Glenn tried to calm the Russian. ‘Zenyalena, I think you’re wrong.’

‘Well, I think I’m right,’ she replied, curtly. ‘Myles has a past which he has refused to mention: his involvement with terrorists from Africa. Any denials, Mr Munro?’

‘The newspapers had bad information,’ offered Myles.

‘Not good enough, Myles,’ dismissed Zenyalena. ‘We’ve always known you’re a misfit. Now, you’ve tried to kill us. To kill me. Which means, I should kill you.’

She steadied the heavy gun on her hip, preparing to fire.

Pascal shook his head. ‘Zenyalena, don’t do this. There must be some explanation.’

‘No.’ She stared back at Myles. ‘Myles: go over there.’

She was directing him to stand apart from the others. To stand next to the trench, where his body would tumble after he’d been shot.

Myles stared at the gun. Obey or resist?

Zenyalena shook the weapon in her hands, making sure the ammunition belt was hanging loose, ready to feed into the firing mechanism. Her eyes were open wider than ever. Myles knew she wasn’t bluffing.

The Russian spoke deeply and firmly, giving directions he had to obey. ‘Go. Now.’

Very slowly, his palms open and pointing down to show he was following her instructions, Myles started to walk.

Then Glenn called out. He had opened Frank’s envelope. ‘Wait. Zenyalena.’

‘What?’

‘The carbon-dating stuff. It looks genuine.’

Zenyalena didn’t seem convinced. Muscles on her face twitched: she was deciding between asking for more details and shooting Myles immediately.

Frank called out. ‘Yes, they’re genuine. I checked all the papers.’

‘And who are you?’

‘I’m the curator of the Imperial War Museum in London.’

‘Prove it,’ Zenyalena demanded.

Frank looked at her gun. ‘Er, that weapon. It’s an MG 08/15 air-cooled German machine gun. Nicknamed a ‘Spandau gun’, because it was manufactured in Spandau, near Berlin. The model you have dates from 1917. Check the serial number – it’ll prove I’m right.’

But Zenyalena refused to check. Instead she just curled her lip. ‘That just proves you know something about this ambush.’

She prepared to fire on Myles. ‘Mr Munro. You’re about to die. Anything we should know before I kill you?’

Myles thought about rushing her. Knocking her over, pushing the gun into the air… It might work, but it probably wouldn’t. She’d pull the trigger before he got close.

Instead, he’d have to convince her. ‘I told my partner, Helen, where we’d be, and I shouldn’t have, Zenyalena. I’m sorry.’

‘Sorry for setting up the machine guns?’

‘No, that wasn’t me. But there’s one more place we have to look. Maybe it’ll explain everything.’

Zenyalena’s eyes narrowed. ‘Where? We’ve checked out all of Stolz’s locations. Vienna, Munich, now here. Where else is there?’

‘There were four locations, remember.’ Myles breathed out. He started talking to the others as much as Zenyalena. ‘And the fourth location must be in Berlin.’

‘Berlin? Come on, we’ve already been there.’

‘No. The bunker in Am Krusenick street. Stolz’s last location - it must be underneath his old basement flat.’ Myles looked at Pascal. ‘Pascal: would you come?’

Pascal’s eyebrows rose. For a moment he was open-minded, then he decided. ‘Yes, Myles, I will come.’

‘Good. Thanks Pascal. Glenn?’

Glenn paused thoughtfully before he replied. ‘No, Myles. We’ve looked enough. This search has got crazy. I say we call it off now…’ The American turned to the Russian. He didn’t have a weapon, but he spoke as if he did. ‘And Zenyalena, put down that gun. Nobody gets killed. Heike-Ann needs to go to hospital. We should all just leave.’

Zenyalena swivelled her gun towards Glenn. ‘Glenn: get in that vehicle. Take the driving seat, please.’

Glenn raised his hands above his head, in an ‘if you really want me to’ gesture. He opened the door to the minibus and climbed inside. ‘Where are the keys?’

Zenyalena used her eyes to indicate the keys were in her pocket. ‘Pascal, Heike-Ann, Myles and you, Mr Imperial Curator…’

‘Er, Frank. My name’s Frank.’

Zenyalena just waved the Spandau gun towards him. ‘All of you. Get in the back.’

Pascal helped Heike-Ann into the minibus. Frank limped in after them, with Myles helping his old friend on board. Myles followed them in.

Zenyalena waited until they were all inside. Then, still clutching the heavy machine gun to her waist, she strained with the weight of the passenger door and heaved it shut. Leaving her captives in the vehicle, she walked back into the road. With one hand, she picked up the bottle of nerve agent liquid. Carefully, she placed it through the open window onto the seat next to the driver.

Glenn looked at the bottle of nerve agent, scared. Myles saw the danger, too. If Zenyalena fired at the bottle, they’d all die within seconds.

Zenyalena was several metres away from the bus now, standing in front of it. She could fire on the bottle with ease. She could kill all of them.

Instead, the Russian quickly searched the area. She picked up the papers from Stolz’ ammunition box. Then, checking around her again, she ran back towards the minibus, and climbed into the seat next to Glenn.

Glenn pointed to the glass bottle. ‘You be careful with that.’

Zenyalena nodded. She manoeuvred the machine gun onto the floor – there was barely enough space for it – then picked up the bottle. ‘I’m going to carry this…’ She turned round to make eye-contact with Myles, Pascal, Frank and Heike-Ann, all sitting in back. Her eyes sized them up. ‘…So if I die, we all die.’

Then she pulled out the keys for the minibus and handed them to Glenn. ‘Drive. Back to Berlin,’ she ordered. ‘Back to Stolz’s apartment block in ‘Am Krusenick’ Street. We’re going to discover what the old Nazi was hiding once-and-for-all, even if every one of us dies finding it.’

Glenn understood. He turned on the ignition, and started the vehicle rolling along the track, away from the forest and towards the highway.

1
.20pm CET (12.20pm
GMT)

D
ieter lifted
out his smart phone with one hand, turned it on, waited, and kept it low.

There was a new message from Father Samuel.

So the fat man had set him up – two machine guns not one. He smirked – just as globes in the underground cavern had predicted for him.

No need to reply - better to play dead, he thought. He already had the money. He wouldn’t need to contact his old paymaster again.

Instead, without looking at the screen, he began to type.

He pressed his thumb on the bottom of the screen.

‘Send’

Hiding the glow of the phone with his jacket, Dieter typed on.

He supressed a grin.

He remembered Stolz’s list – the two US Senators, the European Prime Minister and the pop star – and the dates they were due to die.

In a single motion, he pressed ‘send’ again, as he palmed the phone into his hand.

Then he bent down to slip the device back into the strap on his ankle, as if he was tying his shoelaces.

Dieter settled back in his seat, and turned to look at the scenery of eastern France as it passed his window. The international team were so, so dumb… they still hadn’t worked out how their prize information was leaking to the
Mein Kampf Now
website…

He was still invisible. Still unnoticed. Still in disguise…

And he knew his latest upload– specific individuals with clear dates when they would die – was his best yet.

Within seconds, his upload appeared on a computer screen three thousand miles away.

S
ally Wotton jolted
up in her seat. It was another message.

Frantically, she scanned through the names of the people being threatened.

Then she hovered her cursor over the names, copied the list, and pasted it into an email she began to type.

Sally knew she had to act fast. She hoped her email would save some of the people named on the website. Perhaps the psychopath behind
Mein Kampf Now
would be caught as he tried.

And she also saw: the tech boys were finally making progress. The latest upload had come from the east of France, somewhere near the historical town of Compiègne.

But it made Sally wonder. Was this really a lone psychopath, as she suspected, or was there a group behind the
Mein Kampf Now
website? How was someone in France or Germany going to kill Senators based in the US?

She had always imagined a single loner was behind the threats – a common terrorist profile: male, educated, and with a motive to hate. But this suggested there might be a network.

What sort of conspiracy was Sally dealing with?

She didn’t know, but she knew she was close to cracking it.

M
yles knew going
to Am Krusenick had only bought them time. Nothing more. They would never find Stolz’s secret – certainly not in the old Nazi’s Am Krusenick flat, because there couldn’t be a bunker hidden under Stolz’s apartment in East Berlin.

It was well-known that Hitler had built huge tunnel systems, mostly dug by slaves. These subterranean caves had stored stolen art and protected Nazis like Stolz from the Allied bombing campaign. But Myles remembered the newsreels: Soviet soldiers in May 1945 – the victorious Red Army in a destroyed Berlin, which hunted down snipers left fighting after their Führer had killed himself. When the Red Army had doubted Hitler was really dead, they had searched every room in every building. They had found thousands of German girls and women hiding underground, terrified of being raped, but not the Nazi dictator. Myles recalled the famous picture of Churchill from July of 1945: the British warlord inspecting Hitler’s bunker during a break from the Potsdam Conference, trying not to gloat. Then during the Cold War, and especially after 1961 when the Berlin Wall sealed off half the population, everywhere had been surveyed again. Berlin’s unique history meant the city had been searched for underground spaces many times over several years – and by very committed Communists. How could any remain secret?

Myles reckoned that whatever had been in the Am Krusenick Bunker, it would have been ransacked by Red Army soldiers in 1945. The ‘scientific equipment’ Stolz wrote about was probably destroyed. And that meant, when they got to Berlin, when they searched Stolz’s flat again, they would find nothing. They would be back where they had just been: to Zenyalena making accusations, to Myles being accused, and to the Spandau gun being pointed at him again.

He thought of Helen, wishing he could escape to be with her.

He looked around the minibus. Pascal was tending to Heike-Ann’s wounded forearm - their German translator was still losing blood. Myles sensed the Frenchman was eager to strike back. Glenn was driving, carefully and silently, still very self-contained. Myles could tell the American was wondering whether to call Zenyalena’s bluff. Myles tried to make eye-contact with Glenn through the rear-view mirror, but the man didn’t want to engage. Not yet. He wondered: if Zenyalena held Myles at gunpoint again, would Glenn allow Myles to be shot?

Myles didn’t trust the American. He sensed Glenn had some other agenda, although he couldn’t yet work out what it was.

Then there was Zenyalena. As the minibus chunted along the highway, from France into Germany, she was still cradling the nerve agent in her hands. The Russian woman would peer down at it, then glance at the GPS device on the dashboard. Sometimes she would turn to the back of the vehicle, checking on the four passengers who had become her prisoners - at least until they uncovered the last part of Stolz’s puzzle in Berlin. The minibus ride had not calmed Zenyalena. The woman still feared for her life. She was prepared to kill.

That left Frank. Like a schoolboy who’d tried to please but got everything wrong, Myles’ old university friend seemed the most nervous of all. Myles could tell Frank was still confused: the museum curator had come to hand-deliver some carbon-dating results. How had he ended up being held at gunpoint by a mad Russian woman? And driven to Berlin? If Frank had been less of a friend, he would have blamed Myles. Instead, Frank stayed silent. He just looked out of the window, watching as the scenery passed by and the minibus slowly travelled east.

Myles saw Frank’s envelope. ‘The carbon dating – can I see the results?’

Zenyalena’s head spun round, alert to any sort of trick Myles might pull. For a second she froze, glaring straight at Myles and Frank. Then she relaxed slightly. ‘Yes. Read them out for all of us, please.’

Slowly and deliberately, careful not to alarm Zenyalena, Myles drew the papers from the envelope. Inside were three sheets of computer print-out, with columns of numbers on each page. He tried to understand them. ‘Frank, can you explain?’

Frank looked over at the papers. ‘Certainly. I tested all the samples you posted from Berlin. This first column,’ he pointed to the left-hand margin, ‘that’s the item reference number. Each page tested was given a different code by the laboratory.’

Myles looked down the list: he had given Frank forty pages from Stolz’s file, and the carbon-dating lab had numbered each of them, from B1 to B40. ‘What does the ‘B’ stand for?’

‘Berlin. The second column shows the percentage confidence we have in the result.’

Myles skimmed the column: on all three sheets it was either 98% or 99%, with a single 97%.

‘You see, Myles, all the data is at least 97% certain,’ continued Frank. ‘The third column show the range of dates when the paper was probably written.’

Myles turned through the report. Through most of the first two pages of computer print-out, the dates were between 1939 and 1943, with a few 1944s and 1945s creeping in towards the bottom. Then, on the last page, there were anomalies: three of Stolz’s papers were more recent. ‘So everything really was written during the war, except these last three papers, from 1959?’

‘That’s right Myles. For all of them except those three, the date on the paper itself was probably accurate,’ said Frank. ‘Those last three - they must be fakes. They looked like the other Stolz papers, and had dates from 1942 on them, but they were written later.’

Myles tried to absorb the information: someone had been doctoring Stolz’s papers. He wondered why. ‘Tell me: what did these three papers say – the fake ones? What was on them?’

‘Well, you see, that’s the funny thing. One was about China attacking Soviet Russia in the 1950s, one was about Germany rising again in 1957, and the other was about Cuba – saying it would be destroyed by a volcano.’

Myles squinted in disbelief. He checked again with Frank. ‘But… but that’s all nonsense. None of that happened.’

‘Correct, Myles. You would think that someone who falsified a prediction – to write something after it happened – they’d write something true, to make themselves look wise after the event, right?’ Frank was explaining the results as if he was about to deliver a big punchline. ‘But, whoever tried to fake Stolz’s papers in 1959 was doing the opposite. They were trying to make predictions which were false.’

Zenyalena’s hand swiped out. She grabbed the computer print-outs from Myles. Then she stared at him, checking his face for any signs of resistance. Once it was clear Myles had let her take them, she checked the numbers for herself. After a few seconds she turned back to Frank. ‘How do I know these figures are genuine?’

Frank shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I suppose you have to ask the lab which did the testing. There could have been some sort of mix-up, but it’s unlikely.’

Zenyalena’s face screwed up with suspicion again. ‘Mix-up? Well isn’t that a quaint English word for all this…’ She threw the papers into the back of the minibus. They fluttered, towards Heike-Ann, whose face was looking pale. Pascal brushed them aside, careful to keep Heike-Ann’s wounded wrist high in the air.

Although the Frenchman was obviously angry, he didn’t retaliate. Just like Glenn, who kept driving, Heike-Ann who lay semi-conscious on the floor of the minibus, and Frank, who was still terrified.

‘Wait,’ demanded Zenyalena, directing her words to the American. ‘Stop here – pull over.’

The others watched as Glenn gently slowed the bus into a rest-stop. There were no other vehicles in the large layby – just a picnic bench and a postbox. None of them knew what Zenylena had in mind.

Zenyalena waited until the vehicle had come to a complete rest, then gestured towards Frank for the envelope which had contained the carbon-dating results. Frank duly handed it over, still bemused.

‘Stay still, everybody,’ ordered Zenyalena. She lifted up the gun and carefully placed the glass bottle of liquid back in her seat. Once she was outside, she took Stolz’s last set of papers, the ones they’d found in the trench, and scribbled something on the top sheet - Myles couldn’t see what it was, only that the words were in Russian. Then she wrote an address on the envelope, stuffed the papers inside, sealed it, and pushed it into the post box. Careful to keep the machine gun she was carrying low, so none of the fast-moving cars on the highway would notice it, she climbed back into the minibus. ‘Now drive, Glenn – to Berlin.’

Once more, the vehicle accelerated onto the main road, heading east.

Myles wondered whether he’d just missed a chance to disarm Zenyalena. Perhaps, but if he had tried, it would have been messy.

Then, like the rest of the team, he slumped into his thoughts, half-hypnotised by the movement of the vehicle, while his mind tried to solve the puzzle of Werner Stolz.