by Nick Mariano
Finally after searching Frankfurt for over a week and using the services of the Red Cross Barbi was able to track down his family. His wife Anna and their son, now twelve years old, were staying with some relatives as their home had been partially destroyed during the Allied bombing raids. It was a joyful reunion although Barbi was bitter that his childhood home had been destroyed. In his mind he vowed to get even with the Americans for what they had done to his family and his country. He had plans to rebuild his home and then would find some work wherever he could. He would also decode his diary and keep it safe so that he would have the valuable information about the special cargo, which he hoped to use someday to get his revenge.
THE VIRUS-EPILOGUE
Mengele and his scientists and doctors knew they had to engineer a virus that could live outside a host for several weeks or longer so that it could be transported to the United States for delivery. Mengele had come across an article about a mass grave from the 1700s that was discovered in France and bore the bones of victims who had died from the plague. Examination of the bone fragments had yielded molecular evidence of the orientalis strain of Yersinia pestis, which was the organism responsible for the bubonic plague outbreak.
Mengele and his doctors had theorized that if they created an artificial host to implant the virus into, it would remain in a dormant stage until it came back in contact with air. They engineered a host from bone fragments and human tissue that would not decompose and could contain the virus until it was ready to be released. The canisters they had designed were airtight and, therefore, the virus could remain in a dormant stage for an indefinite period of time, as long as it had no contact with the environment. They estimated that it could remain a potent infectant for as long as a century, as long as the canisters didn’t leak. Once exposed to the elements the virus would rejuvenate in a matter of hours. If dispersed into the air or a water supply, it would be fully potent and capable of spreading the super virus to the general population. Results would be as devastating as ever. The combination of the flu, plague and rabies viruses would cause mass casualties and a pandemic would ensue. Zombie like people would roam the streets killing both the infected and those who had managed not to be infected. Once started, nothing could stop it. The Americans could take months or years to come up with an antivirus vaccine.
The stainless steel containers they used were Type 304 and had a normal lifespan of 20 years, however, if they were kept in a protective environment scientists believed that the stainless steel could last for hundreds of years. The fact that the canisters had been placed in stainless steel outer containers, with special seals, meant that their virus could survive almost all environmental circumstances for many, many, years.
Although Mengele never found out what had happened to the subs and their cargoes, the facts remained that as long as the outer container was never breached, the cargo could last forever because of the way his team had managed to engineer both the virus and its temporary host.
THE LIFE OF HEINRICH BARBI
Heinrich Barbi was only eighteen when he entered the German military and twenty when he became a member of the Elite Waffen-SS. He loved his homeland and during the war he had supported what Hitler was trying to do for Germany. Even after being captured and serving three years in an American POW Camp he still had strong feelings for Germany and a stronger dislike for the Americans.
When he finally returned to Frankfurt after the war and was reunited with his family, he decided to find work and put the war behind him. He got a job as a construction worker since there was more than enough work in trying to rebuild the destroyed nation and its cities that lie in ruins following the war. He would continue this work for many years and eventually start a business of his own, which he ran into the early 90’s. He and his wife Anna would have three more children after the war and they would eventually live comfortably and stay in Frankfurt, where they were both born. His children would grow up and go off on their own. Anna and Heinrich would stay together until 2000 when Anna would suddenly die following a brief illness. Although his children begged him to move in with them, Heinrich decided that he would rather remain in his Frankfurt home to live out his remaining years. Throughout the years Heinrich would take out his war diary and make a note or two and, on more than one occasion, he would reread what he had written following his release from the POW Camp. He would check and recheck the notes he had made concerning the hiding place of that special cargo aboard the U-751 and wonder if that package still remained buried where they had placed it so many years ago. He would also think about what would have happened if they had been successful and the German agent had met up with him and Zierte and gotten the secret cargo. Would he have released the virus as planned? Would the virus have crippled the American war effort? Would Germany have won the war if the Americans were occupied back home with the mysterious illness? He wished that he could travel to North Carolina and look for the mysterious cargo and unleash it on the Americans before he died, but he was too old for such a venture. He finished his notes and replaced his diary back on the book case along with the small library of books he liked to read and reread. The dairy would remain in its place for many more years. On June 15, 2014, Heinrich Barbi, businessman, construction worker, husband, father and former Waffen-SS passed away in his sleep at the age of 89. His children would divide up his estate and many of his belongings, including his favorite library of books, would be given to a second hand store for resale. The once secret diary would remain on a bookshelf for many months before someone would finally discover it.
IBRAHIM NAZARI
Ibrahim Nazari was currently a senior at Goethe University in Frankfurt. He was born in Lebanon and raised in Germany by his grand parents after his parents had been killed in a bombing in Beirut. He had chosen Goethe University as it was ranked as one of the Top 100 best universities in the world. It was famous for its physics, medical and pharmacy departments. It had one of the best Biochemistry Departments in the world and Nazari was one of the top students in his class. The campus was located just north of Frankfurt and Nazari was currently studying at its Max-Planck Institute for biophysics and brain research. The department also had a Macromolecular Complex where Nazari spent many hours working with its biotechnology incubator.
He was a devout Muslim and prayed daily at the Moor Mosque. He had met several other university students at the mosque and they regularly discussed the situation in the Middle East and how much they hated the Americans as a people. They blamed all the evils and ills of the Iraq and Afghani wars on the American Imperialists. Many had recently traveled to Syria and then on to Yemen or Iraq to become fighters and members of the rapidly growing Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham or more commonly known as ISIS. Nazari had still not committed to making the journey and becoming a follower of ISIS, however, with each passing day and news broadcast about how the Americans were trying to mold this part of the world into their sphere of influence Nazari became more sure that he would become a follower. He thought that with his background in biotechnology he could help ISIS strike a blow at the American war machine. He became good friends with Aisha Samaha and Hassan Boulos at Goethe University and the three of them made a pact that they would do the Jihad against the Americans and travel to Syria to become ISIS’s fighters when they graduated from college that year. They frequently studied their English together and talked about how they would then travel to the United States and strike a blow like other ISIS followers had recently done. They had read about and admired the Tsarnaev Brothers who had attacked the 2013 Boston Marathon and they thought they could carry out something even bigger than that attack. They had only 5 months left before they graduated and they all looked forward to killing Americans in the months to come.
THE DIARY
One day while walking through a part of Frankfurt where he had never been before, Nazari stumbled upon an out of the way used bookstore that caught his interest. He was an avid reader and liked to read old books that he found at
flea markets or used bookstores. He decided to give this store a look and upon entering saw that there was section upon section of books, some in English and many in German, which he enjoyed reading since he had become a fluent German speaker while living in Frankfurt. He cruised the aisles and a small group of old books caught his eye. A closer look revealed several old German classics that he had never read and a strange leather covered book with no markings. He withdrew the book and thumbed through it and finally realized that it was the diary of a man who was former Waffen-SS. Much of the diary dealt with his military service and observations by him. A section talked about his experience on the Russian Front during the war and how they had been driven back by the Russians as the German Army had tried to advance into Russia. One section in particular, however, caught his eye. Although a bit cryptic, it talked about a mission he had taken part in toward the end of the war. It talked about a German U-boat, the U-751, and how it had set out on a secret mission to the shores of North Carolina in America. The cargo appeared to be some sort of secret biological weapon the Nazis had developed. They planned to unleash it upon the Americans in key cities in the US He told how he and a man named Zierte had rowed to shore from the U-boat and tried to meet up with a German operative. He said that it appeared that an Allied aircraft had spotted their operative and that he may have been captured or killed. He and Zierte made a last ditch attempt to save the mission and buried the secret cargo with hopes that another operative could eventually retrieve the cargo and carry out the mission. He listed a series of land coordinates and landmarks so that it could be located later. He described the cargo as a medium sized stainless steel container with four hasps and the Nazi SS emblem on it lid. He said that during a briefing, he and five other commandos had attended with the Reichsfuhrer himself, Henrich Himmler. Himmler said that this super virus had been developed by Josef Mengele at the infamous Auschwitz labor camp. Although Himmler did not go into the particulars of the virus he did say that it would cripple the Americans and that there currently was no cure for it.
The diary went on to say that after they had buried the container a squad of American infantry men had discover him and Zierte as they attempted to flee inland. Zierte had decided to fight his way out of the situation and was believed to be dead. Barbi, whose name was finally revealed in the diary, had decided that he would surrender since he believed Germany was nearing defeat in Europe and other theaters. He believed that his stay would be a short one in an American POW camp. He then went on to detail his internment at a POW camp in Portsmouth, Massachusetts.
Nazari couldn’t believe what he was reading. Secret missions, super viruses, killing Americans, land coordinates and other details about this mission. He thought to himself, couldn’t this cargo still be buried somewhere in North Carolina? Could the virus have survived over these many years? He knew from his studies that stainless steel could weather the elements over many years. He also knew a little about the experiments that Josef Mengele had conducted at Auschwitz and he thought this diary might prove useful to him and his future as an ISIS follower. Nazari withdrew the cluster of books, including the diary, and headed to the cashier where he bought the find and quickly left the bookstore.
ANALYZING THE DIARY
Nazari hurried home so that he could study the mysterious diary and try to figure out just what he had found. He had read about some of Mengele’s experiments during the war but what the diary told was far beyond anything he had ever heard of or could imagine. The diary laid out the entire Nazi operation from the time that the landing party was briefed by Himmler right up to Barbi being captured by Allied troops and put into a POW Camp in Massachusetts. It talked about what the virus was capable of doing and Nazari couldn’t believe that such a virus could be engineered as the diary described, let alone be made back in the 1940s. He decided that he had to do some more research on Mengele and his experiments at the infamous Auschwitz labor camp.
A quick check of the internet revealed that American intelligence documents captured when Auschwitz was finally liberated by the Allies had been released in 1992 under the Freedom of Information Act, when a Los Angeles based organization dealing with Nazi war crimes had filed a request for such information. Over 600 pages of documents concerning Mengele’s activities at Auschwitz and the FBI’s hunt for him after the war was included in the FOI files. Nazari knew that Mengele had managed to escape from Germany following the war and the consensus was that he had fled to South America where he assumed a new identity. Further scanning of the Internet showed that the documents had been archived on a CD-ROM that could be bought from an Internet site. Nazari decided to order the CD and research this matter further.
He spent the better part of the day studying the diary that was written in German and although he understood most of its content he still wasn’t sure what he had found. He again wondered if such a virus was a reality and if it could have survived all these years buried on some remote beach of North Carolina. If it had, could ISIS use this weapon to attack the Americans? Such an attack could have casualties far greater than even the World Trade Center attack. He decided that he would share his find with Aisha and Hassan the next time they got together to discuss their Jihad.
A week later the CD-ROM arrived and Nazari dug into it trying to find some mention of what the diary had already laid out for him. After several days of going through the archive of documents he finally found mention of the mysterious virus. The notes indicated that Mengele and a group of doctors and scientists had managed to bound together three virus strains forming a super virus. The doctors bonded the flu, plague and rabies viruses and managed to maintain the characteristics of each while forming something entirely new and previously unknown to man. The documents went on to explain the progression of the new virus and the symptoms that some test subjects had exhibited. For the first two days after exposure there was no noted change in the test subjects. On Day 3 the subjects began to display basic signs of the flu; sore throat, stiffness in the joints and a slight degree of sweating at night when they slept. By Day 4 the characteristics of the “Black Death” or plague began to show itself. Tumors began to develop on the subject’s body along with a black and blue discoloration of the skin. By Day 5 the tumor like growths began to ooze puss and a bloody substance and the victims began to show aggressive behavior, one of the signs of the rabies virus. Infected subjects began to attack other infected subjects and when uninfected subjects were introduced to those infected, they were immediately attacked and killed. Many of the subjects had already died. The last of the notes stated that some of the infected subjects had even became cannibalistic and began to eat both dead and still alive subjects. Nazari couldn’t believe what he had just read. This information plus what he had found in the diary led him to believe that he may have stumbled upon a super weapon to use against the Americans. That was, of course, if he could locate the buried container and if it was still in tact.
He continued to study the CD and later in the documents it talked about the scientists developing containers to hold virus strains for extended periods of time. It talked about how a virus could be infused into a host and then stored in stainless steel containers for very long periods of time without the virus losing any of its potency. This coincided with what the dairy had mentioned, that the virus containers were contained in a stainless steel box and that the virus itself was stored in special laboratory type canisters with a stainless steel outer shell. If this was true, then there was a very good chance that Mengele’s super virus had survived all these years and could still be used as a weapon.
Nazari decided he would continue studying the CD and surf the web to see if he could discover anything else about viruses and their containment. He might also casually run a hypothetical question or two by some of his professors to see what they thought. This discovery was becoming too good to be true.
GRADUATION AND THE START OF THE JIHAD
Finally graduation day arrived and the three students received their
degrees and began preparations for traveling to Syria in order to begin their training as ISIS soldiers. For the last six months they had talked about this day and the journey that lay ahead. Nazari had told Aisha and Hassan about his find at the bookstore and his subsequent research about the experiments that Mengele had conducted. The group agreed that what Nazari had discovered could end up being very valuable to ISIS and that if they could eventually locate the cargo in North Carolina they would be well on their way to being able to attack the Americans and dealing a large blow for the ISIS cause. The three decided that they would travel to Istanbul together as tourists and then split up. They would then travel to Syria as their handlers in Germany had instructed them and meet up again when they arrived at the ISIS training camp there. They planned to leave within the next week and estimated that they should arrive at their final destination in about 7-10 days. The handlers had told them that training would last about two months and then they would be assigned to carry out an attack at some location. After Nazari had briefed his handler it was agreed that the three of them would eventually travel to North Carolina and try to locate the mysterious cargo that the Nazis had buried over half a century ago. The handler gave them the name of their contact in North Carolina and instructions on how to contact him when they arrived in the US.
The next week they flew out of Frankfurt Airport into Istanbul where they assumed the role of tourists for a few days and visited all the local sights the city had to offer. Then gradually, one by one, they broke from the group and using instructions given to them by their ISIS handlers, they traveled into Syria and eventually arrived at the training camp located near Aleppo.
The training was intense for the young student graduates and they were up before sunrise and trained through the day and into well into the night. In addition to learning military skills like building explosives, firing various types of weapons and learning self defense and hand to hand combat, the recruits were indoctrinated into the ISIS way of thinking and principles of the Islam religion and, in particular, following a strict adherence to fundamental Islamic tenets. Classes were conducted by one of five instructors who taught a mix of military, political and sharia orientation. After graduation, they were told that they would remain under the supervision of a senior ISIS officer and that they would be punished if they did not comply with his instructions.