London Stormbird

by Martin J Cobb

  “I’m here, all OK, be there in a moment!” Tom gathered the document case and the dagger and hip flask, left the office and walked back towards the torch beam being shone directly at him.

  “Herr Stroud, you must not wander off to areas we haven’t checked. Please stay either with the two aircraft or with us.” The lieutenant was obviously slightly vexed at Tom’s disobedience and Tom noticed that one of his team was now keeping a very close eye on him from a distance. He’d obviously been tasked with making sure Tom went nowhere he shouldn’t. Tom walked back to the aircraft and gathered up the logbook which he placed in his backpack along with the document wallet and other items and, followed by the soldier, walked back to the hangar doors. The team of engineers were now working away at the recessed tracks along the bottom of the concertina double doors to see if they could free them sufficiently to open the doors rather than embarking on the huge task of completely dismantling them.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Men from the Ministry

  The four men from the Bundesministerium für Landesverteidigung (Austrian Ministry of Defence) parked their car up outside the visitor centre and strolled purposefully over to the command truck where they presented themselves to the captain who was bent over the large table in the centre poring over a diagram of the factory.

  “Good Day Captain, we are representatives of The Ministry of Defence and have been sent to ensure you adhere to the proper protocols when you open up the factory.”

  “they informed me that you would be arriving, and the purpose of your presence. I can assure you that we are doing everything in strict accordance with regulations.”

  “Then why are non-military personnel being allowed into the factory, one in particular British?”

  The captain stood up straight and took a step towards the four Ministry men.

  “Tom Stroud is here at the specific invitation of Dr Ing. Heinrich Schröder who has overall responsibility for this project. His input has been critical to our progress so far.”

  “I understand that he has persuaded the good Doctor to donate one of the Messerschmitt aircraft to him as payment for his work and expertise, is that correct?”

  “As I understand it, that is so.”

  “We will honour this arrangement but his involvement must now be minimised. Once both of the aircraft have been removed from the complex, we must not allow him further access.”

  The captain turned back to the table and went back to studying the diagram making an obvious show of ignoring the four men standing behind him. The hint taken, the Ministry men turned and left the command truck closing the door behind them.

  “Bloody politicians!” the captain muttered under his breath just loud enough for the two other officers in the room to hear.

  Outside the four men briefly talked amongst themselves and then split up. One joined with the team excavating the hangar doors from outside, one marched off towards the team at the top of the ventilation pipe, one went into the visitor centre where a team was dis-assembling the displays and boxing up the contents. The last man moved away from the truck into the car park where nobody could overhear him, pulled a phone from his pocket and dialled a number.

  “Herr Urosov, we are at the site now. At the moment they have only found two old aircraft and some military rubbish left over from the war but nothing of particular interest to yourself.”

  “Contact me if anything interesting turns up immediately, but send me a status report daily, regardless.”

  The man from the Ministry, Lukas Bieler, put his phone back in his pocket and walked back to the command truck unconsciously thinking about the small seaside villa he would buy with the money he was getting from the Russian. Upon entering again the captain briefly looked up, Bieler sat down at the table without waiting for an invitation “So, what is the planned schedule for opening the factory?”

  At that precise moment Pietr Voloshin, Vassili Urosov’s recently promoted `enforcer’, was in the city of Linz at an estate agents collecting the keys to the small house that Vassili Urosov had rented for him in Enns, just the other side of the river from Mauthausen. This was to be their temporary base of operations. His associate, Gennady, was still at the airport awaiting the arrival of some crates at the freight facility a Urosov company had shipped to them from Murmansk. Their brief was to keep a watchful eye on proceedings at the factory complex and to prepare to act swiftly at the first sign of any nuclear material being discovered within the complex. Privately Pietr had also been told that he would do his employer a great personal favour if he could engineer an accident of some description to Tom Stroud, who was apparently employed on site. The proviso though was that it would have to be accomplished without any risk of discovery or retribution. Vassili Urosov had a score to settle with Mr Stroud and he wasn’t a man to forget a grudge or forgive a past defeat.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Release!

  Tom watched with amusement the lieutenant in charge of the door-freeing party waving his arms frantically whilst conducting a heated exchange by radio with his colleague on the other side of the hangar doors. It would appear that things were not going as smoothly as anticipated. With a loud sigh he concluded the conversation and walked over to Tom.

  “The tracks in the floor and at the top are far too corroded to free the door mechanism, we shall have to remove the doors completely. The team on the outside had halted using the mechanical diggers and were continuing by hand as they were concerned about damaging the doors. We have decided that they may as well remove the last of the soil using the diggers and then try to push the doors inwards off their tracks. If they cannot do this we shall have to use cutting gear to get through the doors which will be very time consuming. We were discussing whether we should call a halt today and start fresh tomorrow, what do you think?”

  Tom considered the options for a moment or two “If I was to decide I think I’d carry on now, we still have several hours of daylight left and every day we take is just increasing the cost and the disturbance.”

  “I agree. We shall need to rapidly clear the area this side if the doors do fall as we hope. We must hurry as we shall need to be out of here when the breakthrough happens.”

  They set about moving all the odd pieces of equipment well away from the doors and using copious quantities of polythene sheet and gaffer tape they sealed up the doors to the offices, stores and corridors against the inevitable dust storm that they would creat if the doors fell into the hangar intact as planned. Once completed the lieutenant called everybody together, and they returned the way they had come back towards the two parked aircraft where, using yet more of the polythene sheeting, they hastily sheeted up the tunnel entrance to protect the aircraft. The lieutenant’s radio bleeped and after a brief conversation he announced, “Ten minutes!” Some men put on dust masks they had been carrying, others took out hankies or tissues and placed them over their mouths. The lieutenant handed Tom a disposable mask which he put on and they all knelt or squatted down as if this somehow would help. There was a loud grinding noise and the sound of tortured metal. Tom could clearly hear the diesel engines of the diggers being revved over the screeching of the metal. The screeching suddenly stopped, there was a very brief moment of silence and then a dull thump followed by an absolute cacophony as the remains of the two huge doors fell inwards partially collapsing in the process. Pieces of metal both large and small clattered onto the concrete floor bouncing around the confined area. A mere second later the hastily erected polythene dust screen in front of them blew off the walls and flew backwards covering the men nearest the front and the nose of Tom’s aircraft. Tom felt the surge of air from the falling doors as the accumulated dust and dirt from 70 odd years flew around the tunnels. Within a few seconds the air had cleared sufficiently for them all to make their way back into the now brightly lit hangar area. The doors were now just a jumbled heap of twisted and broken metal spread all over the floor in a multitude of pieces and the entrance they had covered was
now completely open to the elements and the grinning face of the lieutenant in charge of the external team. Tom’s mobile phone suddenly rang, he looked at the number displayed on the screen, Claire.

  “Hi Hon, we’re through.” He said excitedly.

  “I know, I’ve been watching them knock down the doors. I don’t want to alarm you but your radiation sensor showed a huge spike when the doors came down although it’s now dropped almost back to normal.”

  “Any idea why that should happen?”

  “No idea, wait a sec I’ve just had a text in.” There was a brief pause. “Apparently, according to the MI6 team who are monitoring you the spike occurred just before the doors came down which is really odd. Where were you standing?”

  Tom briefly thought “I was kneeling alongside my Messerschmitt under the starboard wing alongside the tunnel wall.”

  “Can you go back there so that we can see if it’s something to do with the aircraft?”

  “On my way. If there’s a spike isn’t that dangerous? Will my hair all drop out and will I father children with two heads?”

  “Apparently the spike was not dangerously high, and it was of very short duration. What makes you think I want children, anyway?”

  Tom ignored the question “I’m there now kneeling under the wing. Is it showing anything?”

  “Move around a bit, there hasn’t been a spike yet although the background level of gamma radiation is possibly a little higher. Stop!”

  “What happened?” Tom said with more than a touch of anxiety in his voice.

  “Very slowly move back and forth, I just got another big spike.”

  Tom did as he was told and shuffled backwards and forwards around an area of a couple of metres radius from his current position.

  “Stop! It’s done it again. Exactly where are you as it’s showing a much higher continuous level where you are now?”

  Tom looked around. “I’m against the wall directly behind the starboard aileron of the aircraft where it goes into the slot in the wall. Can’t see anything unusual, maybe it’s in the plane.”

  “I think you should get way from there, we need to investigate further before moving the aircraft.”

  Tom relayed the information to the lieutenant in charge who then had a brief conversation on his radio and announced that they were all to leave the factory and move outside immediately. Reluctantly Tom obeyed, and Heinrich and the captain met them outside both in a state of some agitation. “I was instructed to report any instance of abnormal radiation detection and, if it happens, to close down the operation and secure the area immediately.”

  Thinking rapidly Tom responded “This is probably just a malfunctioning cheap bit of equipment which I’ve damaged somehow. If you think we need to make certain how about I get kitted up in a full suit again and take another radiation monitor down for a proper investigation?”

  The captain considered for a few seconds “We would need to set up the wash down shower near the hangar entrance just in case. You must promise to exit immediately if the equipment shows anything abnormal.”

  “You have a deal. I’ll get kitted up.”

  Now dressed in a full hazmat suit and carrying the Radionuclide monitor along with a case containing torch, cameras, spray paint and a spare radio, Tom waddled off back into the hangar through the now open doorway. Walking towards the tunnel he called in.

  “Radio check, what’s the monitor reading?”

  The captain’s voice responded, “Read you 5 by 5, background levels only showing. Carry on to the tunnel.”

  Tom walked slowly down the tunnel towards ‘his’ aeroplane listening to the regular updates from the captain telling him that radiation was normal. Reaching the Messerschmitt Tom walked over to the starboard wing as before and held the monitor’s remote sensor up to the wing and moved it slowly all around the outer areas.

  “Anything showing up?”

  “Nothing, still background radiation.”

  Tom clamped the remote sensor back onto the top of the monitor unit and put the whole thing down on the floor while he opened the other case. Reaching in he took out the torch and was rummaging around to find the endoscope when the captain suddenly yelled, “Stop, the readings have suddenly gone very high in both the beta and gamma ranges. Move away from wherever you are.”

  “I’ve put the monitor down by the wall, I’m nowhere near it.”

  “You must leave now, I have to shut the site down.”

  Tom would not risk losing his prize without an argument.

  “I’ll just take a quick look at the wall.”

  “You must not, leave now!” commanded the captain who was obviously becoming quite agitated. Tom ignored him and shone the torch at the wall around the wingtip and into the slot.

  “There’s a crack in the wall lining, probably about an inch across, running vertically up inside the wall slot, seems to be very deep. I will feed the endoscope in to see how far it goes back.”

  “You will leave now, that is an order!”

  Tom turned off his radio and fed the camera end of the endoscope into the crack. To his amazement he managed to feed in the whole metre of stiffened cable encountering no obstructions. He plugged the camera feed into the small LCD monitor and turned it on. What greeted him totally took his breath away. The little LED light on the end of the camera could not illuminate more than a few inches in front however he could see the indisputable shape of a human skull contained within a military peaked cap with Nazi eagle and swastika emblems. Moving the endoscope camera around he discerned some tools lying scattered on the floor and a Walther PP automatic. He turned his radio back on.

  “Did you see that?”

  “I did Herr Stroud but will you please evacuate immediately, I have my orders.”

  Tom decided not to antagonise the good captain any further and collected the monitor and tool case and walked out of the tunnel, through the hangar and back out into the late afternoon sun where he was ushered into the wash-down.

  Re-emerging some ten minutes later minus the hazmat suit, Tom walked over to the command truck. One of the junior officers took the endoscope from him as he entered and removed the tiny memory card which he plugged into a computer terminal on the conference table. Tom, Heinrich, Claire and the captain all huddled around the large monitor as they played the camera video. When the fisheye lens finally escaped the crack in the wall and emerged into the open space behind they all jumped back as the camera came face to face with the human skull. The camera lens then moved rather erratically around at the end of its long arm and peered unsuccessfully into the gloom of the space in front. One operator paused the video, pulled up another program on the computer and opened a series of menus and operations which ran for a couple of minutes. Suddenly the paused frame of the video refreshed and was now significantly lighter and sharper. The operator ran the video back to the point where the camera emerged from the wall and ran it forward at a slow speed. This time, when the skull appeared, they were all prepared for it.

  “Look at that!” Tom exclaimed pointing at the screen and hitting the pause button. They all followed his finger to the black collar badge with the four pips on the skull’s uniform jacket. “He was a Major in the SS, quite a senior rank. I wonder what or who did him in.”

  “We will find out soon enough Herr Stroud” the captain proclaimed “My commanding officer has assigned a specialist team to our project here to evaluate the risk of hazardous materials being present and to handle the containment if necessary.”

  Tom looked more than slightly concerned. “By containment I hope you don’t mean ‘seal it all up’.”

  “I’m afraid it’s out of my hands, and yours. The team that’s coming will decide as to what is best.”

  Tom turned to the soldier who had enhanced the image. “Can you make this any better, it would be great to see further into the void or whatever it is?”

  “I’m sorry Herr Stroud, that’s the best I can do. The camera was not designed to
view items from any great distance.”

  Tom unfolded the diagram of the complex which they had pushed to the side.

  “Look, if we were there in the hangar,” Tom pointed at an area towards the edge of the diagram of the complex, “and the Messerschmitt is there.” He then pencilled the rough outline of an aircraft in at the appropriate place, “then the crack in the wall is right here.” He marked the spot with a pencil cross on the diagram.