by Matt James
His worst injury was to his head. Jack felt warm liquid slowly making its way down his right temple. Again, no one in Emma’s group gave a damn about what condition he was in. They were wholly absorbed in the space behind Jack. So, he turned and almost fell over by what he saw.
He did his best Jackie Gleason impression and said, “Well, sumbitch.” It was a good representation of his character from Smoky and the Bandit. He would’ve made Sheriff Buford T. Justice proud.
Thanks to the beams of four high-powered LED flashlights, he saw an underground World War II-era community. The engineering on display was incredible. It screamed of a nuclear fallout shelter. In front of him was a workstation consumed entirely of communications equipment. In total, the room was thirty feet squared, and…it wasn’t the only one.
It reminded him of the video game, Fallout 4.
To Jack’s left and right were additional living and working quarters. The Vault, as the game called them, held more rooms straight ahead, for as far as the flashlights could reach. In all, there may have been a dozen rooms of similar size hiding directly beneath Auschwitz. Jack was aware that escape tunnels under Auschwitz had been found in the past, but nothing like the size of this bunker had ever been reported. It was evident that Hitler had been preparing for some of his higher-ups to disappear underground and go into hiding for an extended period.
“Over here,” Jack said, limping to the doorway on their left.
Only Karl joined him. Great. He did give Jack some much-needed light, though. Jack peeked in and saw a full-sized kitchen and living room complete with a smoke vent and electricity. The still-packaged food and equipment stacked in the corner of the room also confirmed Jack’s hypothesis that they had planned to be down here for quite a while, maybe even long after the war had ended.
“Look at this,” Emma said, standing in the doorway to the right of the entry point.
With nothing else to see in his room, Jack joined her, as did the others.
The area beyond was jam-packed with weapons of all kinds. Dozens of chests and crates lined every available inch of wall space and most of the interior of the room too. It seemed that the plan had been to re-emerge with gusto after their stay underground was complete. It was obvious that they had planned on killing a lot more people.
6
Emma and Gunter entered the weapons cache first, eager and flabbergasted. It was precisely how Jack used to react to seeing a mountain of presents on Christmas morning as a child. The awestruck look on the siblings’ faces was understandable, in a way. Even Jack was impressed with the find. They had just discovered a long-forgotten Nazi stronghold, something the historical community would drool over for years. Everything was perfectly preserved and in near-mint condition too.
He recalled the gust of air that flowed around him when he fell down the stairs. The bunker was somehow pressurized, lacking any oxygen at all. It had helped preserve everything inside the underground sanctuary.
Large metal boxes were situated around the
“weapons locker” with tight passages in between the inventory. There was a maze of access points. Jack picked one and decided to do some reconnaissance while still shaking off his fall. He strolled down the path to his left under the ever-watchful eye of Karl. Jack wasn’t going anywhere, though. He was still bound and had no way of safely navigating the dark confines of the bunker.
Jack smiled. He had chosen the correct path. On a table in the corner of the room was a bevy of run-of-the-mill German trench knives. Each would fetch a pretty penny on the private market, but they’d also be an excellent way for Jack to defend himself.
He made no sudden moves. Instead, he turned his back to the assortment and found Karl. The larger man was staring him down but couldn’t see what he was doing behind his back. Smooth and easy, Jack wrapped his fingers around the first knife he could find and moved off, slowly working it up into his jacket’s right sleeve. While he worked to conceal his find, he pretended to inspect something else. He’d attempt to cut himself free later. Either way, he now had something better than his forehead to use as a weapon.
In the auras of the other flashlights, Jack noticed an opening to his left. He inched closer and saw something he didn’t like. There, on the floor of the next room, was a boot. And It was attached to someone.
“Over here,” Jack said, motioning with his head for Emma to join him.
She did and pointed her light his way. Three steps later, the beam paused on the ground beyond Jack. Emma whispered something to her team, and they all gathered around the discovery. Unsurprisingly, it was the preserved remains of a German soldier. The man’s dated uniform confirmed that he’d been down here since World War II.
But how long after?
Could there have been a community of Nazis living beneath Auschwitz in the years following the war? If so, for how long? The first room, the one with the communications equipment, didn’t shed much light on the answer, but if they had been down here for months, or possibly even years, the rooms should’ve shown more signs of activity. Nothing, not even the food, had been unpacked.
No, Jack didn’t believe that. This man’s presence was an anomaly. He wasn’t supposed to be here.
Emma’s light focused on his nametag and then his face. They all instantly knew what had happened. The hole in his forehead made it evident.
“He was executed,” Jack said, trying to work it out. “Why?”
“The Allies must’ve known of this place,” Gunter said.
“No,” Jack said, “that doesn’t make sense. If they did, they would’ve cleared this place out shortly after finding it.” He tipped his chin to the body. “The weapons, and our friend here, would’ve been moved.”
He glanced at Emma, who took a deep breath and sighed. Like Jack, she had already figured it out. “He was betrayed.”
“By who?” Gunter asked, kneeling beside his political ancestor.
“Best guess…” Jack said. “Probably by someone who didn’t want this place to be found.”
Emma cautiously stepped through the doorway. “The killer had known what was down here and silenced anyone who knew of its location.”
Gunter grunted and stood. “Which means, we’ll find more bodies.”
Jack wasn’t sure of anything yet, but sure, he’d go with that until proven otherwise. Okay, so maybe there was a horde of treasure down here, or near here, at the very least. But Jack seriously doubted that there was anything remotely as big as a covert train station beneath Auschwitz.
Yet, here he was, in a top-secret Nazi bunker.
“How deep do you think we are?” Jack asked.
Emma shrugged. “I’d say we’re at least sixty feet beneath the Cellar’s lower level.”
I agree.
Jack felt like he’d just fallen down six stories worth of hard, metal stairs. Still…
“How has this place never been found?”
“Auschwitz sits atop it,” Emma said. “Besides that, Oswiecim doesn’t offer much else to the world besides a historic lookback.”
“It’s a small town,” Gunter added. “Less than forty thousand residents. It’s very old, but other than that, there isn’t much to see.”
Right, Jack thought, the perfect place to hide something like this.
Only World War II history buffs would care. And those looking for the gold train were busy looking for it 125 miles away in the Owl Mountains. Plus, in Piotr, Auschwitz had a Nazi sympathizer running the place. Then, enter in someone with the knowledge of the Schmidts. It was the perfect storm.
With nothing else to see here, Jack followed Emma into the next room. It was twice the size of the weapons locker and held three rows of metal-framed bunk beds. By Jack’s count, the living quarters were designed to sleep seventy-two people.
He inspected the first set of bunks and noticed that a footlocker sat at each end—one for each resident. With the tip of his boot, Jack lifted the lid of one of them. Inside were someone’s tightly packed person
al effects. It appeared that this person was never given a chance to move in but had been ready to. Jack glanced over his shoulder at the body.
Seventy-two men, he thought. He replayed Gunter’s words in his head.
“I think you might be right,” Jack said, eyeing Emma’s brother. The siblings joined Jack and were taken aback by what he found. “I think we’re gonna find more bodies.”
“What?” Emma said, lifting aframed picture out of the locker. It showed a family. They were happily posed together in the middle of some unknown park. A man dressed in German Army fatigues stood proudly next to what must’ve been his wife. There were also three young children present.
Gunter lifted the lid of another locker. It was like the one before, full of clothes and intimate belongings. Some even held handwritten letters. With a shaking hand, Emma carefully removed one and opened it, reading it to herself.
Once she finished, tears streaked down her typically stoic face.
“This man…” she explained, regaining her composure. “He left his family behind to follow the Fuhrer.” She looked at Gunter—her own flesh and blood. “He abandoned his wife and children to be here.” She wiped her eyes, looking embarrassed by the show of emotion. “It ends with him saying that he loves them and that he’ll see them again…” Emma locked eyes with Jack, “in two years.”
The bunker went silent once more.
The stillness in the dank air was haunting to Jack. In the insulated environment, the only thing he could hear was his party’s breaths and their footsteps. Quietly, they exited the living quarters and headed into the next room on their left. Inside was a quaint gymnasium. Six stations of simple free weights dotted the space. Seeing nothing of real interest, Jack and Emma led the group through the next doorway.
“A theater?” Jack asked, spotting the old-timey projector near the back of the room.
Ten simple folding chairs were set up facing a blank wall. It appeared as if the gift of entertainment would’ve been part of the lengthy stay.
“Movies?” Gunter asked.
“To keep morale high,” Jack explained. “Imagine how wound up people like this could get without a way to relax.”
Karl stepped forward. “What do you mean, ‘people like this?’”
Jack shrugged. “You know, Nazis? Filth…”
“Let’s go,” Emma said, not paying attention to Jack and Karl’s banter. Jack hustled along before Karl could physically retaliate, and he followed closely behind the Schmidts.
There wasn’t much of anything inside, except for a submarine-style hatch on the rear wall. Jack was unable to help the others open it. But Karl and Jurgen, with their combined strength, managed to get the circular wheel going. After a handful of turns, the lock fully disengaged, and the two thickly built men pulled the hatch open with hardly a sound—nor was there a rush of air like before. The void beyond already contained oxygen.
As the door swung inward, Jack noticed that Emma was fiddling with something on the right-hand wall. Gunter joined her, and between them both, their bodies concealed the discovery from Jack. Patiently, he waited for them to part, and when they did, he was impressed by the ingenuity.
Bolted to the wall was an aged electrical knife switch. Jack pictured a mad scientist “throwing the switch” and powering up one of his horrible inventions. Gunter did just that. He threw the switch, and instantly, after a pop and a grind, lights bloomed to life in the next room. Somehow, the complex still had power.
Jack was the last to step through the low opening. It took a second for his eyes to adjust, and when they did, he dared not blink. The contents of the room were too incredible. Not only was space vast, but it was also deep.
“Holy shit,” Jack said under his breath. “It does exist!”
7
A train station had been built into a natural spherical cave. Unfortunately, besides the platform and tracks, it stood empty. Still, the station existed. Train tracks typically meant a train was somewhere nearby. Whether it had billions of dollars in loot on it was another thing. Regardless, the station was a great historical find, more than anyone else had ever found concerning the gold train.
Directly in front of them, a steep staircase was cut into the natural sloping cave. Jack quickly started his descent, not waiting for the others. He wanted to see what else he could find before anyone else could.
As he moved, he felt the trench knife shift inside his jacket’s sleeve. At some point, Jack’s adventuring side needed to take a backseat to the realist side. Sooner or later, he’d need to make his escape and contact the authorities.
Halfway down the steps, Jack paused and, once more, took in his surroundings. Directly beneath his perch was a large flat slab of concrete, not unlike what a typical train station employed. But off to his left was a series of switchbacking ramps starting back up at the door they’d just entered through. The trail ended at a cluster of wheeled containers. It hit Jack. Not only was it a train station, but it was also a loading dock.
He took half a step forward but stopped when something cold struck his head. Looking up, Jack winced as a second drop hit him. This time, it was his face. The cave’s roof was leaking. It had been active for quite some time. So much so, that Jack was forced to avoid a worn section of stairs. The gently dripping water had done severe damage over the years.
As far as the train tracks were concerned, they continued straight ahead into a tunnel that was noticeably man-made. There were thick wooden supports bolted into the walls, not unlike a coal mine.
Jack made it to the platform first. He was impressed to see that it was, mostly, still intact. There were only a few cracks that he could see. Emma and Gunter headed straight for the tracks that ran to the north. They stopped at the precipice and gazed over the edge, speaking in low voices. Jurgen stayed on the staircase and kept watch.
As for Karl, he only had eyes for Jack.
Jack gave the man a playful wink and headed for the discarded, four-wheeled containers. In reality, they were closer to light-weight mine cars than anything else. He slipped past the first one and worked the trench knife out of his sleeve. He immediately went about sawing into the thick black zip tie. Jack couldn’t tell how far he had gotten when Emma approached him. He barely got the blade back into his sleeve before she also rounded the cart.
“Find anything?” she asked.
Jack shrugged and nervously looked around. Had she seen him?
Something to his right caught his eye. A classic, one-wheeled wheelbarrow was turned over up against the rocky cave wall. But it wasn’t the wheelbarrow that got his attention. It’s what was inside of it.
Emma saw it too.
Together, they headed towards it and knelt. There, inside the simple transport, was a single gold coin.
Gently, Emma reached down for the artifact, picking it up as if she expected it to turn to dust in her hand. She exhaled, hands shaking with a combination of nerves and enthusiasm. That’s one helluva cocktail! Stamped into the coin’s surface were the words Deutsches Reich, “German Reich.” Accompanying the script was a symbol the Germans had used as much as the Hakenkreuz, the hooked cross, during the war. It was the Reichsadler, the imperial eagle. The eagle had often been combined with the swastika to make the formal symbol of the Nazi party.
“This is incredible,” Emma said, standing.
She hurried off, shouting for the others to come over.
They did. Each one was as stunned as Emma. Even Jack. It proved that, at some point in the past, the Nazis had, undeniably, moved some of their collected wealth down here. It also confirmed that there was a train somewhere beneath Poland. What it didn’t prove, however, was whether or not the transport still existed today.
It’s a start, though, Jack thought.
“Look,” Karl said. His face was grimmer than usual. He lifted a single finger and pointed to somewhere off the northern end of the platform.
Jack hadn’t paid attention to the tight gap between the platform and the ca
ve wall. To his left, a second, smaller tunnel headed off to who-knows-where. When Jack stepped up to the edge and took a look, it filled him with a sense of dread. Not only were there four old-fashioned mineworker’s pump carts lined up there, but there was also a pile of corpses, and from what he could see, they all shared the same fate as their friend back upstairs.
Death by execution.
The hand carts did solve one problem, though. The Owl Mountains were over a hundred miles away. Jack couldn’t imagine walking the entire thing under the current circumstances.
“You know,” Jack said, tipping his chin toward the carts, “if we’re going to use those things, you might want to cut me free.”
“Do it,” Gunter ordered, unhappy. He drew his pistol and stepped back.
While Jurgen cut Jack free, Gunter and Karl made sure he didn’t try anything funny. Luckily for Jack, he hadn’t made much progress on his own when trying to cut through his bonds. If he had, the cut marks would’ve tipped his captors off that he was armed.
When the zip cuffs fell away, Jack relished in his newfound freedom. It lasted all of five seconds. Gunter held up a second, thick zip tie with a grin. Rolling his eyes, Jack held out his hands and was, again, restrained. He could, at least, take solace in the fact that the extra-large zip tie was in front of him and on a different, fresher spot.
One by one, they climbed down off the platform. Jack clambered aboard the teetertotter-style cart, along with Emma and Gunter. He was forced to pump backward—not that it made much of a difference. Without a flashlight of his own, Jack couldn’t see much of anything, no matter which way he faced. And, per the usual, Karl and Jurgen brought up the rear.
It took more effort to get moving than Jack would’ve thought. He’d never manned a handcart before, and once he felt comfortable and got into a rhythm, they were forced to stop.
Their track didn’t connect with the primary line.
Gunter shouted for Karl to do something. The other man obliged without argument and jumped down from his cart. He hustled over to the railroad switch and muscled the lever over to his right. With a grind of metal, their track merged with the central one. Jack, Emma, and Gunter were already in motion before Karl got back to Jurgen.