The Project

by Brian Falkner

  “Why don’t you come with us?” Luke asked. “Try and persuade your brother to change his mind.”

  Her eyes dropped to the floor. “Now you really are asking too much,” she said quietly, and Luke realized that in at least part of her heart, she still hoped that her brother would succeed.

  They descended again to the chamber, but before they could enter, she reached out and took Tommy’s and Luke’s hands in hers.

  “You are good boys,” she said. “Be very careful. My brother is dedicated to this mission and will do anything to see it through.”

  “You be careful,” Ms. Sheck agreed.

  “Ms. Sheck,” Luke said, “you have to stay right here. Make sure no one goes anywhere near the chamber. If someone adjusts any of these ropes, changes the settings, then we’ll have no way to get back.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “I’ll be waiting right here for you.”

  Without another word, Luke ducked under the low hatch, and with every fiber of his body now buzzing from the massive magnetic fields that surrounded him, he climbed in toward the center of the chamber.

  The buzzing intensified and every hair on his body stood on end. His skin began to crawl as though a million tiny ants were covering him. The muscles in his body began to twitch with a mild electrical shock. His heart seemed to pause its beating.

  Then the charcoal-black walls of the chamber were gone. And there was nothing beneath his feet.

  He was falling.

  31. FORTY-FOUR

  Luke’s legs buckled underneath him as he landed, more from the shock than the height, which was probably no more than half a yard.

  It was pitch-black. He sat still for a moment, stunned, then realized that he had better move before Tommy landed on top of him. He rolled out of the way just as there was a heavy thump and Tommy said, “Ow!”

  “You all right?” Luke asked.

  “Yeah, I’m good. Where are we?” Tommy asked.

  “I think we’re exactly where we were,” Luke said.

  “Then what happened to the chamber?” Tommy asked.

  “I don’t think they’ve built it yet,” Luke replied.

  There was a cracking sound from Tommy’s direction, and the cave suddenly filled with a vague green glow.

  Tommy had a glow stick in his hand.

  It was just enough for them to see that the cave was deserted, although tidy piles of timber and coils of rope were spread around the circumference.

  “It looks like they’re about to start building it,” Tommy said.

  Behind them, work had already started on the massive metal wall that would become the shield for the magnetic chamber, and a number of heavy metal plates were stacked near the wall, alongside a cranelike machine, a block and tackle suspended from a tall wooden frame.

  Wooden crates full of bolts and nuts sat next to welding equipment.

  There was no sign of the components of the chamber itself. That made sense, Luke thought. They couldn’t start building the chamber until the shield was completed.

  A large white cross had been chalked on the floor, slightly smudged from their landing on top of it.

  “X marks the spot,” Tommy said. “What’s that about?”

  “That’s to help them find their way home,” Luke said.

  “How’s that?” Tommy asked.

  “They’d need to return to exactly the same spot to go back through the chamber,” Luke said. “So would we. Make sure you don’t smudge it any more.”

  “You bet,” Tommy said, stepping quickly away from it.

  “I wonder what the date is,” Luke said.

  It was Monday, November 27, 1944, according to the calendar they found in one of the offices.

  “Look at this,” Tommy said, holding up his ID papers. In normal time, the words on the paper had been reversed, but now they looked normal.

  “How could that be?” Luke asked.

  “I think that when you go through the Vitruvian chamber and switch into a different time, everything somehow gets reversed. Like reversing the poles of a magnet.”

  “Even us?”

  “I guess.”

  Luke pulled up the leg of his jeans and looked at his right knee. He had gashed it pretty badly that night on the bridge. But there was no mark at all. He lifted the left side. There it was. A half-healed wound. It had switched sides!

  “Maybe that’s why Leonardo wrote lots of his notes backward,” Luke realized. “He was actually writing them normally.”

  “Yeah, but when he brought them back through the chamber, they got mirrored!” Tommy added. “That would also explain why the atomic bomb plans were mirrored when we saw them.”

  The early hour of the morning was a stroke of luck, as the corridors of the bunker system were deserted. Luke’s and Tommy’s footsteps echoed eerily. Soft breathing sounds came from the rooms on either side.

  They spoke little, for fear of waking someone, and found their way to the room that Gerda said had been Erich’s. A metal-framed bunk was in the far corner of the room, and slight stirrings came from the thin shape under the bedclothes.

  Tommy remained outside while Luke tiptoed to a small freestanding wooden closet by the bed and searched for the specific clothes that Gerda had suggested. The breathing sounds from the bed stopped abruptly as he shut the closet door, but resumed again after a moment, and he crept out of the room.

  A door at the end of the corridor was marked with a large red cross, and on impulse, Luke looked inside, finding a nursing station.

  He had an idea. He rummaged through some drawers until he found a long length of bandage, which he wound around his scalp and jaw and fastened with a pin.

  He was the victim of an air raid and couldn’t speak, he told Tommy. If they needed any more details, Tommy would have to make them up on the spot.

  It seemed creepy to Luke to be wearing young Erich Mueller’s clothes. But it was even creepier when they finished dressing, in an empty room, and looked at each other. Luke shuddered, looking at Tommy, and knew that Tommy must have felt the same way about him.

  They were both dressed in brown shirts, black shorts, and white knee-high socks. The uniform of the Hitlerjugend. The Hitler Youth.

  The shoes were black leather. They fit Luke okay but were too big for Tommy. He solved that with an extra pair of socks crammed into the toes.

  There was a leather satchel in the room, and Tommy took it, stuffing gadgets into it from his backpack, which he then stowed under one of the bunks.

  They found the safe and extracted a thick wad of money from it.

  The corridors of the bunker were heated by long metal pipes that ran along the wall just above the floor. As they ascended the stairs out of the bunker, the temperature seemed to drop a degree for every step they took. Luke returned to Mueller’s room and retrieved a couple of heavy woolen coats from the closet, along with mittens and hats. The hats were a strange woolen type with a peak, while the coats were brown, with black fur lining the collar.

  Dressed more warmly, they left the bunker system and found their way up to the Hotel zum Türken.

  The spacious and luxurious front drawing room was empty at that hour, and they settled down into a couple of overstuffed armchairs and waited for the first light.

  At dawn, acting as if they had every right to be there—Tommy’s first law of spying—they strolled down to the village to catch the alpine bus to Berchtesgaden town.

  It had snowed overnight, and their feet crunched through a few inches of crisp white flakes as they walked into the village.

  It was very different by daylight.

  A huge, snow-covered mountain dominated the village, and not much farther away, a range of majestic alps punctured the skyline. Jutting out from a cliff top in the distance was a building perched right on the edge of the cliff. This was the famous Eagle’s Nest, its concrete structures softened by thick snow.

  They passed a huge, regal-looking house with grand pillars and archways,
and he saw Tommy looking at it in wonder.

  “That’s the Berghof,” Luke said. “Hitler’s holiday house.”

  For some reason, that more than anything else brought home to Luke where they were, when they were, and what they were doing there. They were standing outside the house of the evil tyrant who was responsible for World War II. The man who had conquered most of Europe but was eventually defeated by the combined might of the Allied forces.

  If Mueller had his way and Hitler got the bomb, then his conquests would not stop at Europe. He would rule the world.

  There were armed SS soldiers in a guardhouse that straddled the road up to the Berghof and the Hotel zum Türken. They were there to prevent people from getting in and were not worried about two Hitler Youths leaving the area. The guards waved them through with a quick glance, and Luke and Tommy headed down to the village to find a bus stop.

  Smoke poured out through vents on the side of the bus, which was an old, unheated contraption that smelled of coal. It lurched precariously around corners that had only recently been plowed for snow, and Luke wondered if they would survive the trip to the railway station.

  Their only companions on the bus were an old lady with a woolen head scarf and a wicker basket, and two soldiers in dress uniform, who sat at the back of the bus and did not give the Hitler Youths a second glance.

  Luke dared not speak and just stared silently out of the grimy, smoke-stained windows at the houses they passed. He recognized some of them. The holiday homes of Martin Bormann, Hitler’s private secretary; Hermann Göring, field marshal of the Luftwaffe (and Hitler’s second in command); and Albert Speer, the Third Reich’s head architect.

  Tiny details from history books now took on a whole new significance.

  A horse-drawn cart passed them, going up the hill as they went down. The horse looked young and strong, with big hooves and a shaggy mane. The driver by contrast was a withered old man, who seemed to be disappearing into a thick wool coat. The rear of the cart was packed with wooden crates and tall metallic cylinders that might have held milk.

  Luke’s stomach rumbled at that thought, and he realized that they hadn’t eaten for hours.

  The Bahnhof was a huge building with massive arched windows on the ground level and tall rectangular windows of crisscrossed panels that stretched up at least two more stories.

  In front of the building, the long snout of an anti-aircraft gun pointed at the sky. Three soldiers were manning the gun, although they were currently resting against a wall of sandbags that surrounded it, drinking out of enamel mugs. Luke was aware of the soldiers’ eyes upon them as they approached the Bahnhof. Was there something wrong with their clothes or haircuts? Thankfully, he and Tommy both had short hair, which wasn’t too different from the short back and sides of other youths they saw.

  He tried not to look at them.

  The soldiers kept their eyes on them but did nothing as Luke and Tommy passed. Luke risked a quick glance back and saw that the gunners were still sitting, staring at other passersby.

  By the main entrance, they passed a large statue of a soldier riding a horse.

  Tommy saw Luke looking at it and whispered, “Where’re a roll of toilet paper and duct tape when you need them?”

  It was the first and last time Luke laughed that day.

  The station was crowded, and at least half of the people seemed to be in a military uniform of some kind. He sat on a railway bench and avoided anyone’s eyes, while Tommy went to book them into a private compartment on the train. They could afford it, and they both agreed it would be safer, as there would be fewer opportunities for Luke to reveal his lack of German.

  While he was waiting, a small girl in a thick red wool coat wandered up to him, peering curiously at his bandages. There was fur around her collar and on her mittens. She was clutching a battered rag doll.

  “Was ist los mit dir?” she asked, wide-eyed.

  Luke shook his head and pointed to the bandages, hoping that Tommy would be back quickly.

  “Was is los mit dir?” the girl asked again.

  Luke looked away, hoping she would lose interest. A young couple on a nearby bench were watching curiously. What was the girl asking him? Should he just nod his head? Or shake it? Would either of those give him away? Would doing nothing be a signal to those around him that he was an imposter, a spy, an outsider in this world?

  “Was ist los mit dir?” the girl asked for a third time, and a man in a leather trench coat standing by the railway track was also now starting to take interest.

  Luke shifted forward slightly on the seat, getting ready to make a run for it.

  The man in the trench coat took a step in his direction.

  Just at that moment, a woman approached, grabbed the girl’s hand with some furious words, and hauled her away with an apologetic glance at Luke.

  Luke risked a glance at the man in the leather trench coat to see him smile and wave at someone by the entrance just as Tommy arrived back with the tickets.

  A counter near the ticket office sold them thick cheese sandwiches and large red apples that gradually quieted the gurgling coming from Luke’s stomach. They bought extras, stored in a brown paper bag, in case they needed them for the journey.

  They had not yet seen Mueller and his thugs, but the train did not leave until midday, so Luke expected them to arrive closer to that time, and he was right.

  Luke and Tommy kept a discreet distance, always staying out of sight behind pillars or people as Mueller purchased tickets. Tommy had a coin in his hand and was passing the time with a simple game of flipping and catching it. They tried not to talk, in case someone should overhear them.

  At first Tommy and Luke heard just a rumble in the distance and saw what looked like a low, small fog rolling in from the west above the trees. As it got closer, the fog became a dense cloud, and as the train rounded a long looping bend behind a wall of snow-covered trees, it became clear that they were watching snow flying up from either side of the train.

  The train pulled up to the platform at exactly eleven-thirty, the massive brow of a snowplow leading the way. A huge wedge at the bottom of the plow lifted the snow, and a curved shield at the top hurled it out to either side of the train, creating the cloud they had seen.

  There was nowhere for the train to turn around, and the tracks ended not far past the station, so Luke figured that there must be another engine at the other end of the train.

  They waited for Mueller’s group to board but were not far behind him, wanting to get to their compartment before Mueller was seated.

  Mueller and his thugs boarded just one carriage in front of Luke and Tommy. Uncomfortably close, Luke felt, but maybe to their advantage, considering why they were on the train in the first place.

  At five minutes before twelve, there was a commotion from the Bahnhof and a heavy black car pulled up outside. A figure emerged from one of the cars and entered the station, followed by an army officer carrying a briefcase. He made his way to the train and glanced up at their carriage as he approached.

  The man smiled at Luke sympathetically, perhaps because of the bandages covering Luke’s head, then disappeared into a carriage near the front of the train.

  “Who do you think that was?” Tommy asked. “Himmler or Göring?”

  “That was … Helmut Fricke,” Luke said, mentally flicking through the pages of one of the books he had seen in the library. “He’s an architect. Works for Albert Speer.”

  At exactly twelve, with a roaring, hissing sound and a grinding noise from underneath the train, they began to move. There was an initial jolt, then a growing sensation of speed as the station disappeared past their window, followed by the snow-covered mounds of trees.

  In the distance, the beautiful white-capped mountains that watched over Berchtesgaden seemed to watch over Luke and Tommy as well.

  Watching over? Or just watching?

  In this strange land, full of strange people who spoke a strange language, Luke fel
t as alien as if he had come down in a spaceship from Mars. The slightest wrong move or overheard comment and they were lost. Captured by the police—or worse, the Gestapo.

  Luke had read about a British prisoner of war who escaped and was recaptured when a German police officer noticed him looking the wrong way when crossing the road.

  Such a simple thing, but it cost him his freedom.

  For Luke and Tommy, every action, every gesture, every word needed to be above suspicion, and in Luke’s case, that meant no words at all when German ears were listening.

  Fields, softly blanketed with white, flew past the windows of the carriage. Luke turned to Tommy, and in low voices, they began to make plans.

  32. POWERFUL MAGIC

  A man in a gray uniform pushed open the door of their compartment and spoke rapidly in German.

  Luke looked at him blankly, waiting for Tommy to give him a clue.

  Tommy spoke back to the man and pulled out his ticket. Luke held up his as well, and the conductor inspected them both before marking them with a thick pen. He handed each of their tickets back and asked Luke something.

  Luke began to panic, with no idea what the question was. Tommy remained calm, though, and pointed to the bandages swathed around Luke’s head.

  He seemed satisfied with Tommy’s explanation but held out his hand again. Tommy fished inside his coat for his ID papers. Luke handed his over also.

  The conductor’s eyes narrowed, and he looked from one to the other, then back again.

  Behind him, a man in Gestapo uniform moved up, blocking the doorway.

  The conductor seemed confused and was asking rapid-fire questions of Tommy. He answered calmly, although Luke saw he was beginning to sweat.

  The dark shape of a pistol in a leather holster made a bulge on the hip of the Gestapo officer.

  What was wrong? Something about the photo? Had Gerda made some kind of a mistake when filling in the information?

  The Gestapo officer pushed the conductor to one side and stepped forward, snatching the ID papers away from him. The officer’s eyes widened when he saw the shape of the wolf’s hook, and he glanced quickly at Tommy and Luke before letting out a blast of steam at the conductor.