A Gift from the Gods

by Martin Gunn

  “We have dispensed with the concrete henge,” commented Kremer, “the gyroscopic effect of the vessel’s rotation will keep it stable on the launch.”

  “What will I have to do?” enquired Hitler.

  “Nothing Sir. We will launch it remotely, when in position.”

  Kremer walked over to a table, opened a drawer and pulled out a pair of dark goggles.

  “You will need to wear these,” stated the professor, “the light gets very intense during the jump through time.”

  Hitler nodded and they walked over to the vessel.

  “It’s time Sir,” announced Kremer, aware of the Führer’s nervousness.

  An assistant came over to help Hitler into the cabin and strapped him into the seat.

  “This is the release button Sir,” instructed the assistant, “just press it when you … err… land.”

  Kremer gave the command and a hatch in the ceiling began to slide across. He looked up at the sky and could hear the battle raging nearby. With a jolt a platform began to rise with the time machine and him on it, then as the platform rose and locked into position at ground level, Kremer could see just how close the Russians were. German troops were falling back as Russian T34 tanks were advancing.

  “The Fourth Reich starts here, Professor,” proclaimed Hitler, placing the goggles over his eyes.

  “Good luck Sir,” proffered Kremer, who promptly shut the hatch. Taking a radio out of his side pocket, he gave the command to start the launch, and as the machine became energised and started to rotate, Kremer retreated to a safe distance to observe, hoping to God that the contraption actually worked.

  On the far side of the airfield, Russian soldiers were stopped in their tracks as they watched in astonishment as this strange bell-like machine rose fifty feet into the air, giving off a loud whining drone. They hadn’t seen anything like it. Except one man, Captain Kirill Yelagin, who had witnessed the launch at Milkow. He gave the command for it to be blasted out of the sky and a volley of shells exploded close to the machine. Even the German defences had stopped and were staring, spellbound, at the apparition.

  Kremer ran for cover as the shells came in, and as debris was falling around him, he watched as the bell rotated faster and faster. Bullets were raining in now, but the force of rotation was such that they were being flung outwards in all directions. Eventually the time machine reached critical speed in a blur of white light, then with a thunder-like crack and a halo of light, it was gone.

  “My God, it worked!” Kremer blubbered, forgetting his own safety and standing up. Quickly he came to his senses and ran to the stairs that led down to level one. There was still work to be done. He approached one of his technicians.

  “Are the charges ready? We can’t let those bastards find this room intact.”

  “It’s all ready but will need someone to detonate it.”

  “Leave that to me, now the rest of you go,” urged Kremer, “it’s every man for himself now.”

  His men looked gravely at him, they knew what it meant.

  “Good luck,” simpered his assistant, then turned to leave with the rest of the staff.

  The professor sat patiently in the middle of the room with a switch in his hand. Connected to it were several thin cables radiating out to all corners of the facility. Eventually he heard the rumble of tanks above him. He closed his eyes and with a shaking hand, the professor pressed the button.

  Captain Yelagin, along with the soldiers around him flinched as a huge explosion shook the ground. A ball of fire and smoke blasted out of the hatch. Tanks were lifted off the ground by the force and one close to the gaping hole teetered and fell into the fiery chasm. Yelagin couldn’t believe it, yet again they had been cheated from capturing this strange craft and the research behind it. He looked around the beleaguered airport and considered the multitude of German soldiers taken prisoner. It would be pointless interrogating them. Clearly, they were as astonished by what transpired as he and his men were. There was nothing left to do but regroup and push on through to the Führerbunker.

  ***

  The Führerbunker, Berlin

  4th May 1945

  Picking his way through the rubble and debris out onto the veranda of the rear garden portal of the New Reich Chancellery building, Major Vasili Dementyev couldn’t help but be impressed. The building was huge and clearly designed to intimidate. The ten Romanesque pillars rose high in front of him like silent sentinels. Either side of the veranda were steps, guarded by two large statues of horses, posing proud and aloof. He walked down the steps on the right and looked around him. In the expansive area which was once made up mostly of lawn, he could just make out the ruins of the greenhouse in the distance, and as he turned his head to the right, he could see the remains of the Old Reich Chancellery – its reception hall and winter garden. Yes, these grounds must have been a very pretty spot once, he thought, but now they were ravaged by allied bombing. Craters covered the whole area, destroying the lawns and uprooting trees. Walking closer to the reception hall he guessed that the tunnel which linked the New Reich Chancellery to the bunker must be about here. The Kannenberg Passage, as it was known, named after Hitler’s house manager, Artur Kannenberg, would be unsafe to use after the bombing, he would gain access another way. Eventually he made his way back through the building and walked down the steps of the central portal with its four square pillars and into Voss Strasse. Dementyev turned and looked back at the edifice, with its large eagle emblem holding a swastika; even though rows and rows of windows had their glass blown out, and the walls were riddled with bullet holes and artillery damage, it was really quite something.

  His Gaz-64 jeep was waiting for him at the bottom of the steps, but before he climbed into it, Dementyev was distracted by a small group of Soviet soldiers who had lined up a dozen children. He walked over to them.

  “What’s going on here?” he enquired.

  “We have just rounded them up, Sir,” stated the soldier, saluting.

  Turning his attention to the children, he looked them up and down. They were boys between the ages of twelve and fifteen, all wearing badly fitting German uniforms and helmets. Their faces were covered in grey dust, and one of the boys was crying, causing two thin lines of natural skin colour to show through the dust, as tears ran down each cheek.

  “What do you intend to do with them?”

  “My orders are to put them with the other prisoners.”

  “But they are just children,” reasoned the major.

  “They had these,” stated the Russian soldier, showing Dementyev the confiscated rifles, “I’m sure if they’d had any ammunition, they would have shot at us.”

  “Wouldn’t you in their position?”

  “Yes… But, my orders.”

  “Never mind your orders,” countered Dementyev, “remove their uniforms and let them go. They are just kids, for goodness sake.”

  Press-ganged or brainwashed into service, he felt they should be with their families. These children were no threat to the Soviet cause, and as he watched them run off and disappear into the grey of the rubble and bombed out buildings, he considered his own good fortune. As a man who preferred to lead from the front, he hadn’t expected to survive the war, but much to his surprise, he had. Now all he needed to do was survive Stalin and the NKVD; the Soviet secret police. So many of his peers had disappeared at their hands. Dementyev was sick of fighting – with the death and misery that came with it. All he wanted to do was go home to his wife and children; to be left in peace. But that wouldn’t be for a while yet, there was much to do before he could go home.

  Another jeep pulled up to a halt and snapped Dementyev out of his rumination. Captain Kirill Yelagin stepped out of the jeep and walked over to the major with a slight frown; he looked tired.

  “Kirill, my friend,” greeted Dementyev ignoring protocol, “it’s good to see you. I hear y
ou took Tempelhof.”

  “It’s good to see you Sir,” replied Yelagin. With the vicissitudes of war, he had wondered whether they would ever meet up again. He looked around at the battered city, “I shall be glad to go home and put all this behind me.”

  The major sensed that something was troubling him.

  “What is it son?” enquired Dementyev.

  Yelagin sat down on the steps, sighed and took a long gulp from his canteen. After washing the dust from his throat, he looked up at the major and muttered,

  “I saw another one.”

  Dementyev guessed what he might be talking about but wanted to be sure.

  “Another what?”

  “Another contraption, just like the one at Milkow.”

  “Was it captured?” enquired the major hopefully, though deep down he knew the answer.

  “I’m afraid not,” replied Yelagin gravely, “it got away just before we could intercept it. Just like the last one. More frustratingly, all the evidence was destroyed in a huge explosion. We are still looking for any scientists that might have been involved.”

  “Come with me,” urged Dementyev after processing this information.

  They both made their way to the major’s jeep and climbed in.

  “Where are we going?” enquired Yelagin.

  “You’ll see,” replied Dementyev enigmatically.

  He fired up the jeep and they drove towards a junction in the road. Dementyev paused, looked around him, then turned left into Wilhelmstrasse. It wasn’t long before he was slowing down to halt outside the Old Reich Chancellery, standing forlorn on their left, set back from the road. Further down Wilhelmstrasse, against the backdrop of bombed out buildings and rubble, a long queue of civilians could be seen, dejected refugees, many of them holding buckets, hoping to obtain some precious water. The two men saw the line of people, mostly women and old men but it barely registered with them. It was a sight that had become all too common in Berlin.

  After dismounting from the jeep, Dementyev led a curious Yelagin into the courtyard of the Old Reich Chancellery. Making their way to the ruins of the building wasn’t easy, the courtyard was pitted with bomb craters. Inside the derelict building, they eventually came upon the kitchens. A spiral staircase led down to a large pantry which was once stocked with fine wines and gourmet food. Alas, now the shelves were forlornly bare. A large heavy door on one side lay open, allowing them to enter via some steps into the Kannenberg Passage. The concrete tunnel was a drab grey in colour and featureless. Dementyev walked through what was once a gas-tight heavy door, now off its hinges, then he led Yelagin into the central corridor of the Vorbunker; the original upper air raid shelter, later used as family quarters.

  “We are now in Hitler’s bunker system,” smiled the major triumphantly, “the sight which witnessed the end of the Third Reich.”

  Yelagin, overawed, nodded and said nothing.

  “A number of survivors were interrogated, so we have a good idea as to what happened down here,” continued Dementyev.

  “Assuming they’re telling the truth,” commented a naturally cynical Yelagin.

  “Quite,” accepted Dementyev. He turned and gestured to his right, “here is where the six Goebbels children were found. Apparently, Magda Goebbels placed cyanide capsules in their mouths, after they had been sedated.”

  “My God!” gasped Yelagin.

  “After committing suicide, the Goebbels’ bodies were found outside the bunker, partially burned, but still identifiable.”

  They continued along the corridor, then turned right and made their way down a flight of stairs which doglegged round to the left, to finally enter the Führerbunker. It was in disarray; damp, and the stale air was fetid. Again, they walked down a central corridor until Dementyev stopped, turned left and entered Hitler’s office. He continued through to a back room which served as the Führer’s sitting-room.

  “This is where he and Eva Braun committed suicide,” stated Dementyev, “they married in the evening of the 29th April and died the following afternoon.”

  “What happened to the bodies?”

  “Follow me.”

  Yelagin did so as they made their way through a series of rooms, and then up a set of stairs that led out into a courtyard.

  “This is an emergency exit,” pointed out Dementyev.

  Moving away from the door, Yelagin looked back and observed a large square concrete block with a door, the one which he had just stepped out of.

  “The bodies were found in a shell crater behind this block,” stated Dementyev, “they were carried out of the sitting-room draped in sheets.”

  Walking around the concrete block, they saw the burnt-out pit, the alleged final resting place of Hitler and Eva.

  “Were the bodies identifiable?” enquired Yelagin.

  “I didn’t see the remains, but apparently not.”

  “We only have the word of witnesses then,” surmised Yelagin, “Hmm.”

  “You have doubts?”

  “Well, two aircraft left Tempelhof before we secured it. Earlier in the day a Condor took off. We nearly brought it down, but it managed to escape. Then, as I mentioned earlier, another of those contraptions took off, just in time.”

  “What is your point?” enquired Dementyev, intrigued.

  “My point is,” continued Yelagin, “who would be so important, to justify using such high technology?”

  “It would have to be a very high-ranking Nazi,” mused Dementyev.

  “Exactly, and the only Nazis truly unaccounted for are Bormann and … well, Hitler.”

  “Are you implying that Hitler might have taken off, in some kind of escape pod?”

  “I don’t think they would have put him on a plane. The risk would be too great,” reasoned Yelagin.

  “Then who married Eva? Who died down here?”

  “A lookalike perhaps. A doppelganger.”

  “But they would know him intimately,” stated Dementyev, “he would have to be good to pull it off.”

  “But what if he did pull it off and died for his country.”

  The very notion was unthinkable to the major. He stared at the blackened pit. It was true the charred remains could have been anyone. And what if his staff colluded to expedite this deception. It didn’t bear thinking about.

  “We had better keep this theory to ourselves,” advised Yelagin, “I fear that history will record that Hitler died in this bunker.”

  “Indeed,” concurred Dementyev, “I am not a religious man, but if that monster is still at large, then God help us all.”

  “Should we mention the escape pods?” enquired Yelagin.

  “What escape pods?” asked Dementyev rhetorically, “we saw nothing, do you hear, nothing! Talk like this could have us sent to the Gulag.”

  Yelagin nodded, he understood perfectly.

  Eventually the two men made their way back to the jeep in silence, their mood clouded by this heavy burden. The possibility that Hitler might have escaped, was a secret they could never reveal to anyone – the safety of them, and possibly their families, depended upon it.

  PART TWO

  …Out of Time

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Too Much of a Good Thing

  Mojave Desert, Nevada, California Border

  25th June 1985

  For the first time since his childhood, von Brandt felt anxious about his predicament. Here he was, an interloper in a strange land – at least strange to him. Not knowing for sure where he was on the planet, or indeed what day, month or even what year he had descended into, was disconcerting; he felt vulnerable and didn’t like it one bit.

  By mid-day the sun was directly above him, radiating intense heat from a clear blue sky. Von Brandt had been walking for what seemed like hours and had come across nothing except sand and brush vegetation. His water h
ad run out and he was overheating in his overalls. After considering unzipping them to the waist, he wisely thought better of it, fearing his fair skin would blister in this heat. Though he didn’t know it, the drug gave him a resilience to extreme heat and cold, which enabled him to keep up a decent pace, where lesser men would have started to flounder.

  As the afternoon passed into early evening, the sun began to sink low on the horizon, he could see it directly in front of him large, orange and shimmering; it seemed to be mocking him, taunting him to keep up. Von Brandt was struggling a little now and was surprised to see that even without a compass he had managed somehow to stay on his westerly course. In less than an hour it had become pitch black. He looked up into the clear night sky, a myriad of stars shone and a half moon in its first quarter helped to illuminate the way. Von Brandt knew that if he didn’t get help soon, he would be in serious difficulties, so it was with much relief that a short while later, he stumbled upon a road. He looked left and right, initially uncertain which direction to take, but his instincts kicked in and he turned left. Wearily, he picked his feet up and continued on his journey, his pace becoming ever more laboured.

  After walking for about fifteen minutes, the first signs of activity on the road came when von Brandt heard a vehicle approaching from behind him. He turned around to see a pair of headlights bearing down on him. Before he could respond, the car sped by, so close it made him whirl around unsteadily on his feet. Exasperated and frustrated, he watched the red tail lights disappear into the darkness. His situation was getting serious now, he was weaving as if in a drunken stupor, too weak to maintain a straight line. An interminable twenty-five minutes went by and he could hear another vehicle coming up behind him. This one sounded larger, like a truck, and before he could even think about moving to the side of the road, it screeched to halt with barely inches to spare.

  Von Brandt turned around to look at his would-be assailant, squinted past the bright headlights in an attempt to see the driver, but only managed to stumble against the grille and slide down to the ground. A door opened and von Brandt saw a figure move hastily round to help him, as he started to arduously pull himself back up again.