V4 Vengeance

by Nigel Seed

  Geordie drew himself up as Jim approached, “Morning sir. Nice to see you again.”

  Jim shook his head, “Not sir anymore, Geordie. The Army has dispensed with my services just like you.”

  “OK, boss. Where to first?”

  Geordie and Ivan shook hands and the three men set off for the car park. Jim had called the night before on his new phone, to the programed number, and asked for a long wheel base Land Rover fitted with a winch to be waiting for them. The gray man might be a bit over excited about his secrets, he thought, but he was as good as his word. The three well built, purposeful men walked together down the platform toward the car park. They exuded an air of determination as they moved and the scurrying crowd of commuters cleared before them.

  The brand new vehicle was waiting in the parking area behind the station with an apprehensive salesman beside it. The thin London sunshine reflected off the glossy blue paint as the three men opened the rear door and threw their bags into the back. They inspected the vehicle while the salesman hovered nervously. Once they were satisfied he signed over the vehicle with all the paperwork they would need for driving all over Europe and then gave them a large sealed envelope. Whoever was paying for this jaunt certainly hired efficient people.

  In the pack of information provided was a booking on the Channel Tunnel train for that evening. There was no point hanging about, so they set off toward Folkestone to meet up with the vehicle train to France. Driving the big heavy Land Rover through London traffic was a challenge. Ivan drove and kept up a steady stream of colorful invective about the people of London who seemed to be possessed of a mass death wish. He reserved his most pointed comments for the drivers of the black taxi cabs that dodged around them. Once clear of the city Geordie took over for the more relaxing drive to the Channel Tunnel.

  Jim sat in the front passenger seat slowly reading through the information that had been in the pack with the vehicle paperwork. As he finished each sheet he passed it over his shoulder to Ivan, in the second row of seats. They were to drive to Folkestone, load the Land Rover on the train and disembark in Calais. Once out of France they were to drive through Holland and Germany toward Kiel. Hotel accommodation had been booked for them about three hours out of Calais. Satnav coordinates for the hotel were given. Next morning they were to drive to Kiel and again accommodation had been booked for them for one night in a hotel. From then on they would be staying in a small secluded villa for which a door key and more Satnav coordinates were included. Equipment would be waiting for them in the villa. Once they checked it they were to call for anything else they needed.

  Within the pack was a heavyweight white envelope sealed with wax. How very dramatic, Jim thought. He opened the envelope and found that it was a translated overview of the documents that the mysterious client had acquired. There were four close typed pages of witness statements that concerned the base and claimed that it existed. None of the documents would have proved anything if taken in isolation. It was all legend and speculation, but interestingly a few pointed to an area by the river just a little way north of Kiel.

  More substantial were the documents concerning the supply of food from warehouses in the city. The food was collected in Kriegsmarine trucks, always at night and no destinations were given. The document showed that the orders were signed personally by Admiral Karl Doenitz. Now that was interesting. Why would the head of the German Navy U-Boat fleet bother to sign off on ration requests? Jim looked through the sheets; this was a lot of food at a time when Germany was struggling to feed the population. OK, so that explained the Admiral. His signature would give these ration demands a high priority.

  The next document was an exclusion and evacuation order with another English translation clipped to the back. It was a type-written instruction with space left for including the name of the recipient. It instructed whoever was given it to pack up and move out of his or her house immediately. They were instructed to wait at their gate at a certain time and they would be collected by Kriegsmarine vehicles and taken to a “place of safety.” Why would the Kriegsmarine be interested in transporting people to safety, they must have had other priorities during that part of the war, surely?

  There was a small map on the next page with a number of houses marked. These appeared to be the ones that were known to have received the instruction to vacate. Not all the houses on the map were marked, but those that were made a large semicircle next to the river. He grabbed the witness statements from the back seat and went through them again. About a third referred to the same general area, the rest described places up and down the river with no consistency.

  He looked over at Ivan who was still running through the papers with a small smile on his face. It was all circumstantial, but it was tantalizing. He watched Ivan put down the last paper and break into a wide grin. He felt it too. This might not be quite the wild goose chase they had expected.

  Chapter 5

  The drive to Kiel on the fast, efficient German Autobahns was uneventful and they found both of their hotels without difficulty. After the second night and a solid German breakfast, they found their way to the villa. As expected, it was secluded with thick hedges around it. Even a nosey neighbor would have to walk quite a way up the track to see them. Between their villa and the initial search area they noticed a Schnell Imbiss food stall by the side of the road, providing good German sausages and coffee. That would serve nicely for breakfast each morning.

  They checked through the equipment they had been provided with. There wasn’t much. Presumably they would work out what they needed if and when they found anything. With time on their hands they drove around the area to orientate themselves. At the end of their wanderings they came to the area indicated on the paperwork they had been given.

  Not shown on the simple map was the large hill that took up most of the primary search area. They parked the Land Rover and climbed out. They walked up to the top of the hill through an open field that seemed to be mostly used for grazing sheep. As they crested the top they were faced with a fine view of the wide natural harbor and across it to the sprawling city of Kiel. Away to the north a short way they could see a tall white tower. Geordie asked what it was. Jim remembered visiting it years ago when he had been here on a sail training course.

  “It’s the memorial and museum to the U-Boat service of the Kriegsmarine. Really quite impressive. They even have a U-Boat on the beach that you can walk through. I think it might be worth a call in there on the way back to the villa.”

  They spread out and wandered the hill. There was nothing there. No concrete, no doorways, no roads. Nothing. After an hour of wandering and looking they climbed back into the vehicle and drove out to find the U-Boat museum. As Jim had remembered, the museum was impressive and a reminder of the remarkable courage of the U-Boat crews of the Second World War, so many of whom had not come home again.

  They sat, that evening, watching a German football game on the TV and sipping a cold beer. Ivan was the first to bring up the subject when he said, “OK boss. There’s nothing where we were thinking the base might be, so where do we look next?”

  They couldn’t admit defeat that easily so they went back to the papers they had been given. The stories that had been collected indicated that the Germans had selected a hill by the waterside to hollow out to build the base. So they sat at the kitchen table poring over detailed maps of the area and identifying hills that might be big enough.

  Geordie managed to cut some hills off the list when he tapped the map. “So how tall is a U-Boat from keel to periscope?” he asked.

  Ivan looked at him. “Why the hell would you care?”

  “Well, bonny lad, if the sub has to be submerged when it enters the base the water has to be deep enough for it to do that.”

  It was so obvious and they had missed it. Next morning a rapidly acquired nautical chart of the river showed depths and eliminated hills where the water offshore was too shallow. Jim was quite impressed. That logic had escaped him. G
eordie was starting to earn his pay. The next few days were spent wandering the hills that looked promising. There was nothing. They hiked up and down and around getting nothing but muddy boots for their trouble. Ivan was getting irritated by the lack of progress.

  They took a break, sitting on a bench overlooking the water.

  Ivan turned to Jim. “Boss,” he said, “if the U-Boats had to sail through the front door of this base that door had to be pretty big, but even so they must have had navigation markers to guide them in. I wonder if we have more chance of seeing something from out on the water?”

  It was worth a try. They hired a small motor boat and spent the next few days cruising slowly up and down the shore looking for any sign of the massive doorway that would be needed, or any marks built on the bank to guide the skippers in. Again nothing. They had found not a single sign that there was any truth in the rumors and legends of the lost base. The strongest indication that this was just a fantasy was that nobody knew about it after years of legend. None of the many hundreds of builders and laborers, who would have been needed, had ever come forward to tell his tale.

  Starting to get despondent they decided a night out in a bar with real people might clear their heads. They found a Gasthaus on the edge of town and ordered beers. The menu was not large, but looking at the plates in front of the diners around them, the food seemed substantial and inviting. The beer was cold and the waitress attractive and friendly. Geordie’s eyes followed the waitress around the room as she delivered the food and beer to the various customers.

  “You’ll have to stop doing that soon, Geordie, with your wedding getting closer.”

  “Ivan, I may be on a strict diet, but I am still allowed to look at the menu. Sam knows fine well that I would never let her down.”

  “You’d be a fool if you did. Sam’s way too good for you in the first place.”

  Geordie smiled contentedly. “Can’t argue with that.”

  The meal went quietly with all three of them lost in their own thoughts. Halfway through a very well prepared Jaeger Schnitzel, Geordie put down his knife and fork and said, “I’ve just remembered something.”

  The others looked at him and waited.

  “Do you remember the guy who played Baldrick in the Blackadder series on TV?”

  Jim could not see where this was going, hopefully not to some rehashed Blackadder joke about cunning plans.

  Geordie went on, “I’ve forgotten his name but …”

  “Tony Robinson” Ivan volunteered.

  “Why aye, that’s him. Anyway, once Sam had gone off to the States and I was stuck in the house watching daytime TV, I saw him fronting some archeological program, digging up Roman ruins in somebody’s back garden. They had some electronic kit for detecting anomalies underground. Even if there was not much there, they could see where the ground had been disturbed. It was like one of those ground penetrating radar units, but a hell of a lot lighter and easier to use.”

  “Like a mine sweeper?”

  “Similar, but it didn’t need to be metal. Stone or even disturbed earth showed up and when they overlaid it on a map you could see how it fitted into the landscape.”

  Ivan pushed his plate away. “OK, so what are we looking for?”

  The light went on for Jim. “Vents!”

  “What?”

  “Vents. Any kind of industrial facility where they are running big diesel engines, like those you find on a sub, has got to be able to get rid of the exhaust fumes. The best place to do that would be at the top of the roof because warm air rises.”

  Ivan had it now, “So if we get one of these detectors we just check the tops of the hills and see if there is anything buried?”

  “Seems like a good place to start. OK, Geordie,” Jim said, “we have someone who will get it for us, but we need to tell him what to get. What’s it called?”

  “Away boss, you know us simple Geordies don’t do big words.”

  An enthusiastic Internet search that night revealed that what they were looking for was used in a technique called Archeological Geophysical Survey and the item they needed used Electrical Resistivity Tomography. Even if they had no idea what that meant they could now describe the equipment they needed. A call to the gray man caused a slight sucking of teeth from the other end of the line.

  “Give me a couple of hours,” he said.

  It took a little longer than that, but the next afternoon they were on their way to the Archeological Department of the University of Kiel, on the far side of the city. The professor who met them was almost a caricature of an Archeologist with untidy white hair, dirt under his chipped finger nails and a sunburned face. He did not seem over pleased to be lending his delicate equipment to these three large men, especially as they declined to tell him where it was to be used, but the generous hire fee had convinced him. He was helpful though and offered to loan one of his graduate students to operate the equipment for them. They declined and accepted a two-hour course of instruction instead. With the equipment loaded they headed back to their villa. The next morning they would be back on their target hills to start all over again.

  As they drove, Jim was thoughtful. “We are becoming too noticeable,” he said, “our employer clearly wants this search to be secret. If we are seen wandering these hills again with this equipment people will start to ask questions.”

  They could not make themselves invisible so decided that misdirection was their best course of action. A call to the gray man had the right material on the way to them in short order, with no questions asked.

  The slow methodical search of the first two hill tops revealed nothing significant on the equipment. The third hill was going the same way until Ivan’s turn on the monitor.

  “Stop there and mark it!” he yelled from the square, white tent where they had set up the computer monitors on folding tables.

  The others inserted a small red flag in the ground to mark the spot and then returned to the tent. Ivan was waiting for them. As they came through the tent flaps he pointed to the rectangular shapes that the monitor screen was showing they had detected. For the first time they had something other than legend.

  They returned to the small flag they had used to mark the spot where the shapes were seen. The continuing electronic search was concentrated around it in close, logical sweeps pacing slowly forward and inserting the probes of the detector into the ground at each step. Within the hour they had marked out the extent of the anomaly under the soil on top of the hill. Large rectangular shapes bounded an even larger rectangular dark patch on the scan. They did not have the experience to work out what the various shapes might be from what the computer screen showed them, but they were certainly too regular to be natural.

  They stared around them. There was nothing to indicate there might be anything below them. The hill top looked like the rest of the sheep pasture. The only way forward was to dig.

  Three feet down, having worked up a good sweat, they hit dressed stone, then the cement between the stones and then the heavy duty metal plate that must be the largest dark rectangle of their scan picture. Two hours later as the evening started to close in, they were sitting together on the stones with their feet dangling over the large metal plate that was now clear of the earth that had hidden it since the end of the war. All three men were running with sweat and out of breath from the digging. But all three were highly elated. Jim heaved himself up and went over to his pack. Pulling out a small blue plastic cool box he walked back over to the structure. The cool box held three cans of cold local beer.

  “There you go gents. I have been carrying these around for days just waiting for this.”

  They sat on the edge of the structure and drank the beer while they contemplated their prize.

  “OK boss,” said Geordie, “any idea how we lift that bloody great sheet of steel?”

  “Oh Geordie, don’t tell me all that engineering training Her Majesty paid for was a waste? That’s why we have a Land Rover with a winch and an
angle iron frame.”

  “Oh right! An angle frame tripod over the hole with a pulley wheel to direct the cable and we are home free. Sorry, boss, wasn’t thinking.”

  “Well gents, do we open her up tonight or wait for morning?”

  Ivan put down his empty beer can and crushed it, then said, “My vote is for now. If there is nothing under there we can move on to the next hill tomorrow.”

  Geordie nodded his agreement and they set to work. The advantage of working with ex-Royal Engineers is that no long planning sessions are needed when a practical problem has to be dealt with. The angle iron tripod was out of the Land Rover and assembled in short order with the heavy pulley wheel slung beneath it. The Land Rover was moved into position by Jim and the wheels chocked while Ivan and Geordie finished tightening the heavy bolts of the tripod. Geordie checked that the winch was free to rotate and then helped Ivan heave the winch cable out and loop it over the pulley so that the hook at the end was just touching the heavy steel plate. They dug around at the edge of the plate with a shovel and a crowbar until they found the recess the engineers had used all those years ago to hold it as they dropped it into place. They forced the hook into it and started very slowly to winch in.

  The steel plate had been down there a long time and had no intention of moving. The winch cable was vibrating and humming with the strain. They were just about to give up and try something else when the dirt and corrosion holding the plate closed surrendered and it flicked up a few inches. Jim stopped the winch quickly so the hook would not slip out and allow the plate to fall back. They secured the hook more carefully and continued with a slow steady pull from the Land Rover winch. Geordie and Ivan slipped angle iron bars in to hold the plate as it rose progressively. Eventually the plate was braced fully open with the spare angle iron beams and they looked down into the hole they had opened. The sky was almost completely dark now so no light shone down into the cavity below them. Ivan fetched the yellow, right angled flashlight from the vehicle’s tool kit and they lay on their bellies with their heads over the hole while he shone it down.