by Iain King
Secrets of the Last Nazi
A mind blowing conspiracy thriller
Iain King
To the real Helen Bridle.
‘No matter how weak an individual may be, the minute that he acts in accordance with the hand of Fate, he becomes more powerful than you could possibly imagine.’
* * *
Adolf Hitler,
Nuremberg, 1936
Preface
All references in Secrets of the Last Nazi to latitude and longitude are matters of fact – you can verify them on the NASA website. Historical events in the book really did occur on the dates mentioned in the book.
* * *
The relationship between natural events and human affairs explained in this book is true.
Prologue
9th July, 1945
US Army Garrison Garmisch-Partenkirchen
Near Munich (US Zone of Occupation), Germany
* * *
SS Captain Werner Stolz watched as Corporal Bradley brought over the coffee. He eyed his interrogator, then thanked him for the drink and took a large swig.
Bradley sat down opposite, checked his watch, and began a countdown in his head. He waited almost a minute – allowing the Nazi to get comfortable – before he restarted the questioning. ‘So, Werner,’ he asked gently. ‘How does it work?’
Stolz just looked blank. He took more of the coffee, aware of the unusual taste but drinking it nonetheless.
‘Please, Werner,’ Bradley insisted. ‘Just tell me.’
‘What else can I say?’ shrugged the Nazi. His eyes glowered straight at the American, then glanced towards the young Russian scribbling in the corner, finally turning back to his interrogator. ‘I’m very sorry, Corporal,’ he offered. ‘Really. I can’t explain it, either.’
Corporal Bradley took off his glasses to sweep the hair back over his sweaty scalp, then flicked uselessly through the notes once more. He turned to his Soviet Liaison Officer. ‘Kirov – any ideas?’
Kirov put down his pencil, twisted around and faced the Nazi. ‘The Americans are treating you very well, Stolz,’ grinned the Russian. ‘They could treat you much less well.’
‘I know,’ agreed Stolz, trying to remove any trace of arrogance from his Austrian accent. ‘I also know neither of you will harm me.’
Bradley put his hand to his face, then glanced at his watch, calculating he had less than three minutes left. He needed a new tack.
‘OK then, Stolz,’ the American ventured. ‘You’ve got all the answers. What’s going to happen next?’
Stolz looked sympathetically at his interrogator, hugging his coffee with both hands as he spoke. ‘You’ll not get your investigation until we’re both dead, which is seventy years from now. It’ll be an international …’
‘Wait,’ interrupted Bradley, ‘I’m going to live another seventy years?’
‘I said we’d both be dead in seventy years,’ clarified Stolz, starting to sway on his chair.
Bradley tried to decode what he’d just heard, wishing he had more time. ‘You mean, one of us is going to live another seventy years?’
‘Yes,’ murmured Stolz, beginning to slump on the table. ‘My English is faulty. I mean, one of us dies today ...’
Stolz seemed to switch off. Bradley tried to support him, hoping there was time for just one more question, but the Nazi was starting to collapse. Stolz’s chair clattered beneath him, and he spilled his drugged coffee over himself as he fell.
Bradley bent down to check his prisoner’s pulse. Stolz had been too sensitive to the scopolamine. Bradley made sure the half-conscious SS man could breathe and checked his watch again: somehow his timings had been wrong.
He was just about to fetch some water for Stolz when the door opened. A single man entered, distinguished-looking and with a silver moustache. Bradley had never seen the officer before, or his regimental crest, but noticed he was wearing an immaculately pressed uniform – a sure sign he’d only just flown in to liberated Europe. Then he saw the single metal star on his shoulders: the insignia of an American Brigadier-General. Bradley jumped to attention.
‘At ease, Corporal.’
Corporal Bradley relaxed only enough for his eyes to check on Stolz, who was spluttering under the table.
The Brigadier-General pointedly ignored the Nazi prisoner. ‘So you’re Bradley; the letter-writer,’ sneered the Brigadier, as he walked around the upturned chair. ‘You’re new to the army, aren’t you ...’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘Tell me, Bradley …’ the Brigadier glanced down at Stolz, who was writhing on the floor, before he turned back to the Corporal, ‘What did you do before the war?’
‘Er, High school teacher, Sir,’ replied Bradley, frowning to try to look serious. ‘Math, Sir.’
The Brigadier paused for several seconds before he answered. ‘Good, Bradley.’ The Brigadier’s voice relaxed, as he finally made eye-contact with Bradley. ‘We’ll be needing mathematicians now the war’s over … the war against the Nazis …’ Then he lifted Bradley’s papers, talking as if his mind was elsewhere, ‘And these are the only notes you have on Stolz?’
‘There are also two filing cabinets full. Next door, Sir,’ replied the Corporal.
‘But that’s all – all in this building?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
The Brigadier accepted Bradley’s response and replaced the papers.
Bradley was about to tell the general why the Stolz interrogation was so peculiar when he became distracted by the Brigadier adjusting his uniform – the general seemed to be unbuttoning his jacket. Gently, the Brigadier moved him aside.
The Brigadier raised his eyebrows towards the Russian in the corner. ‘And you must be Lieutenant Kirov?’
The Soviet Liaison Officer started to nod. Then, like Bradley, he reacted to a double-clunk noise, and a supressed mechanical cough. For a short moment Kirov’s body contorted, then he collapsed to the floor.
Instinct told Bradley to rush towards his friend, but quickly he saw that the Russian was beyond help. Kirov had fallen face-down and was now completely still, except for the blood slowly pooling around his chest. Bradley stared in shock. Then he noticed the Brigadier held a side-arm with a long silencer attachment.
‘We don’t want to investigate mumbo-jumbo – do we, Bradley?’ The Brigadier made eye contact with Bradley as he returned the pistol into his concealed holster, then wafted away the smell of gun oil and cordite.
‘No, Sir.’
‘And we don’t want to burden our Allies with it either. Understood?’
‘Yes, Sir,’ answered Bradley obediently. He knelt to support Stolz’s feverish body as the Nazi prisoner began to recover on the floor.
The Brigadier strutted back towards the door, carefully stepping around Kirov. He took the Russian’s pencil-written notes, wiped off splatters of blood, and folded them into his pocket.
‘Oh, and Bradley?’
‘Sir?’
‘A little less scopolamine in the coffee next time,’ he cautioned, smoothing down his uniform. ‘We want these Nazis to spew up their secrets, not their guts.’
The Brigadier left, closing the door behind him. Bradley never saw him again.
DAY ONE
SEVENTY YEARS LATER
One
DAY ONE
Altersheim Sonnenuntergang (Sunset Nursing Home)
Potsdam, Near Berlin, Germany
2.12 a.m. Central European Time (1.12 a.m. GMT)
* * *
Werner Stolz’s eye squinted at the lens of the telescope. His failing vision blurred the image into two small crescents. But they were definitely planets, and they were exactly where they were meant to be: together, just above the western hor
izon.
It was confirmation. His eye retreated, but he knew there was no escaping what he had seen.
Sitting alone in the dark, he removed the bookmark from his ephemeris and let it close..
Slowly, he reached towards the table lamp. As the light came on, Stolz caught himself in the mirror. Shadows made the lines on his face seem even deeper. With only one side of his head illuminated, his image had split in two. One half revealed skin marked by a lifetime of wrinkles. The other half was still hidden.
For a hundred-and-three years he had known that face. He had watched it grow, mature and wither. Now his head had lost its hair and his skin had lost its colour.
Only his eyes remained fully alive. They glowered back at him, one last time. They had kept both his secrets well.
He looked up at the pictures framed on his wall. A photo from when Germany was winning the war: the young Stolz, with his new SS uniform and a cocky grin. Then another, taken several years later, soon after he had been released from the custody of the US army – Stolz looked much thinner.
Then the image of him retiring young, opening champagne in a Sixties shirt. He often wondered whether he should have given up so soon. He could have earned so much more. But every time he wondered, he always concluded the same thing: he had retired at exactly the right time. Retiring was the only way he could keep both his secrets. If he had tried to win too much, he would have lost it all.
Stolz cleared his throat. It became a cough. Gently, he thumped his chest to stop the spasm. Then he waited for his body to settle, and allowed himself several minutes to become calm.
He listened to check no one was outside.
No one – not yet.
Careful to control his breathing, Stolz twisted off the bottom of the table lamp. The pill case was still there. He plucked it out, and wiped the enamel cover with his thumb.
He remembered receiving it – within sight of the Reichstag, just as the centre of the capital had come under artillery fire for the first time. Others shuddered as the shells blasted around them, but he knew he’d be safe.
Now, just holding the small container gave him pleasure. He inspected it. No one would manufacture a lid like that anymore. The design was antique, and the crooked cross on it – a tiny Swastika – had been outlawed in the new Germany. The little tin belonged to an age gone by.
Just like SS Captain Werner Stolz himself.
Then he noticed some rust around the rim. He scratched it in disappointment. Just like the Reich, the tin would not last a thousand years. The war had forced his great nation to make steel which decayed.
Germany will be great again, and the time will come soon.
He knew exactly when it would become great again – the day, month and year – and how it would once again lead all of Europe.
He wished he would be alive to see that day. But he knew he wouldn’t.
Stolz gripped as tightly as he could and tried to prise off the lid. Applying all his strength, and his much greater determination, he succeeded.
He peered inside, perturbed to find the liquid in the sealed glass tube was no longer translucent. Now it was dark and opaque, a murky brown colour.
Would it still work?
He picked it up and wondered, rolling it on his palm.
Then he remembered his ephemeris, the computer, the telescope …
Yes, it would work.
Quivering, he lifted the glass vial towards his mouth. Carefully, he placed it between his teeth, and closed his lips around it.
Stolz turned out the light and waited for the footsteps he knew would come.
Two
Imperial War Museum,
London, United Kingdom
7.25am Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)
* * *
Myles didn’t turn his head to see the mock-up of the trenches - complete with duck-boards, theatrical mud and artificial smells. The vintage machine guns, both German and British, which had caused so much slaughter in the Great War, didn’t register with him at all. He even ignored the Spitfire hanging above him, the old German Jagdpanther tank, and the V1 and V2 ‘Wonderweapons’ used by Hitler in his desperate last months.
That was all history. An outdated vision of war. Misleading, even. War wasn’t like that, not any more, as he told his students in some of Oxford University’s best attended lectures.
Myles knew. He’d been there.
Even the Cold War had been distorted. The superpower confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union wasn’t what most people said it was. Myles walked right past the big photo-posters showing scenes from 1989, when the Berlin Wall disintegrated in the bright glare of TV lights. Frozen in time, some faces were celebrating, while East German police stood around, not believing the impossible had come true.
The only scene he couldn’t ignore was the most sinister: a faded photograph, blown-up into a large display, which showed a bureaucrat in front of a queue of Jewish refugees. The man was sitting at a table, registering details from the families as they offloaded from the cattle trucks. The bureaucrat and his paperwork were in control. The refugees clutched their suitcases and precious possessions, leaning forward to speak to the man at the desk, trying to help him with information. The poor men and women were oblivious that they had only minutes left to live.
Myles shook his head in disgust, cursing the bureaucrats …
He walked on. He had not come here to browse, but to help Frank, his old university friend of almost twenty years.
Myles held the glass door open with his foot as he heaved the last cardboard box inside. ‘When do the public arrive?’
‘Ten,’ replied Frank. ‘We’ve still got time.’
Myles nodded, as he continued through the main entrance area. ‘Downstairs with the rest?’
‘Yes – thanks. I’ll come with you.’
With Frank limping behind him, Myles led the way down the metallic stairs, careful to duck his head under the beam. The museum’s walkways had been designed for children, not tall university lecturers. Frank pointed to a pile of other possessions, and Myles placed the box beside them.
‘Cheers, Myles,’ said Frank, tapping the box with his walking stick. ‘That’s the last one.’
Together they stared at the cardboard dump. Half a lifetime: just three boxes.
‘Really, that’s all you’ve got?’
‘It’s all I could salvage before it sank - but on the bright side, if I’d been asleep when my houseboat started leaking, I might have drowned!’ Frank tried to laugh, but the chuckles came out flat.
‘You sure the museum won’t mind you using their space, Frank?’ Myles asked.
Frank held his stick while he pushed his glasses back into place. ‘I hope not – I am the curator. And if they do sack me, I’ll have to ask you for advice …’ Then the curator’s face reacted, as he had another thought. ‘In fact, I think …’ He started to limp along the underground corridor, looking up at the small cards which explained what each storage unit contained. He stopped opposite a tall cabinet labelled Terrorism - UK, then climbed on a small stool to retrieve a box file. He called back to Myles. ‘We’ve still got it somewhere …’
Myles’ fingers rubbed his forehead. He didn’t want it. ‘It’s OK, Frank. I’ve seen it before.’
But Frank had already pulled out the file. He hobbled back down the ladder, and unfolded the tabloid as he returned to Myles.
The headline still screamed at him, all those years later.
Myles Munro: Misfit Oxford Military Lecturer is Runaway Terrorist
Frank was grinning. ‘You see – we still have all sorts of war records!’ He paused with a half-smile, realising he’d just told an unfunny joke. Then he folded the newspaper back up and patted Myles on the back, realising he needed to change the subject. ‘You did well to recover. Very impressive.’
Myles didn’t respond. ‘Impressive’ didn’t matter to him.
Frank nudged him. ‘Come on – how’s it all going?’
Myles tipped his head to one side. ‘Predictable, sometimes.’
‘Predictable bad or predictable good?
Myles paused to frame his thoughts, tried to explain. ‘Most people have very set ideas. Military history just means Hitler to most of them. Even the open-minded ones aren’t open to anything too challenging.’
‘So you’re looking for something else, Myles?’
‘Maybe,’ accepted Myles. ‘Not looking very hard though …’ Myles was distracted by the large vaults looming above them both. ‘So what’s the Imperial War Museum planning next?’ He could see his old friend become enthused.
‘My new exhibition: War and the Natural World.’
Myles raised his eyebrows. ‘Interesting …’
‘It’s joint with the Science Museum – you know, for kids,’ explained Frank. ‘We’re trying to show how natural events have a big impact on war.’ Frank hobbled around, guiding Myles towards a half-finished display called World War Two and the Moon. Then he gave Myles a handout to read.
Myles was impressed. ‘Looks like fun.’
‘Yes - and the displays go right back to Alexander the Great. The eclipse just before his greatest battle was an omen that the Empire of Persia would be defeated – and it was!’
Myles smiled, only half buying it. He let Frank continue.
‘And it wasn’t just ancient times,’ lectured Frank. ‘The Crusades, the Korean War - even World War One began with an eclipse, too. Did you know that?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘That’s right – in August 1914, on the day that German and British troops first clashed. And the centre of the eclipse was exactly over where the first big battle took place. It was probably the most important battle of the whole war.’ Frank lifted his stick towards a map of Europe.