Discovery

by Maurice Barkley

  Alice looked at M1 and motioned him to talk.

  “We can never tell you enough,” he began. “You, Jim, have had combat experience and experience is a great teacher, but Jean's lack of experience presents a danger to her. The best resolution to that problem is to attach yourself to people with that experience. If you are sure you are in mortal danger, you must do anything you can, even use deadly force to solve the problem. Many times the enemy is a person devoid of morals or conscience who thinks nothing of killing.”

  “I might add,” M2 said, “always remember that things are not often fair and justice is elusive. We can't fix the world's problems, only our little piece of the pie. Toss out your rose-colored glasses. Any non-vegetable life form big enough to see with the naked eye exists by eating some other life form. If we don't constantly defend what we have by force, we will be nothing more than an item on the bad guy's menu.”

  We were silent for a while. “Why don't we get some sleep?” Alice said. “That is if it's okay with the captain.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” M1 said, while rising from his seat. “See you all when we get there.”

  With that, he headed toward the tiny cabins in the tail of the plane. Jean and I were the last to retire. We talked for a while in a futile attempt to sort things out. We finally agreed to ride the wave and do our best.

  CHAPTER 15

  The time difference made it about 6:30 in the morning when we landed at Leipzig/Halle. This would give us a full day to poke around the Harz Mountains. There was no limit set on the time we would spend there. The hope was that this team of miracle workers would stumble over a loose rock and slide into the Hollow Mountain.

  I looked out of my seat window and saw a truly awesome aircraft on the other side of the runway. Whoever chose the color scheme loved white because the entire craft was solid, pure white with no markings that I could see. It stood perhaps four stories high with vast drooping wings rooted at the top of a huge, fat fuselage built for cargo.

  I wondered how such a gargantuan object could leave the ground. I turned to the boys and pointed to where it sat. “What the hell is that?”

  M2 looked unconcerned. “It's a Russian Antonov 225 transport.”

  “That thing could move my whole town all at once,” I said. “I didn't know such a monster existed.”

  “We don't see it much,” M1 said. “They say it's one of a kind, but who knows? They don't give tours.”

  “Why is it here, do you suppose?” I asked.

  “Coincidence. As long as it has nothing to do with us I don't care, but we’ll keep in mind that it's here. The last thing we need is a curious Russian.”

  Our hangar was a small private facility set some distance from the main terminal. Harry parked our aircraft just outside. We stepped down onto the tarmac, walked straight through and out the front where we met Fritz. He was the spitting image of Sergeant Schultz from Hogan’s Heroes.

  Jean grabbed my arm. “This is a movie, right? We're making a movie. Where's the camera?”

  After a quick introduction, we all climbed aboard an older Ford van. I expect it was a common tourist vehicle in this area, but I was a bit disappointed that it wasn't a Daimler or a BMW. This too, like Colón, was my first trip to Germany in many years and I would have liked the experience to be entirely German.

  As we motored through the countryside, I remarked that it looked a lot like Upstate New York. “You know, the rolling hills, the well paved roads and modern houses.”

  “Ah,” Fritz said over his shoulder, “you were expecting thatch roofed cottages, dirt roads and buxom milk maids bringing the cattle in from the pasture to the tinkle of cow bells.”

  “Well,” I said, “sure, it would have been nice. Germany should look like Germany, not New York.”

  “Ay, caramba!” Fritz said, with a roll of his tongue. “We had paved roads when you had Indian trails. We had houses and castles when you had tents and sod huts. You are looking at it exactly backwards in that New York looks too much like Germany.”

  Alice turned around in her seat to give me the bug eye and said, “Well, Mr. Goodwill Ambassador, what do you say to that?”

  I shrugged. “Since I'm German, I can get away with it.”

  “Relax,” Fritz said, with a chuckle, “No offence taken at all, but Mr. Cagney must join me at dinner for a sausage and a big plate of sauerkraut. I'll find out how German he is.”

  “Are you kidding?” Jean chimed in. “He used to eat the stuff cold, right out of the can before I could put it on the stove.”

  “Your lovely lady just validated your ancestry,” Fritz said.

  While our happy crew motored on through the countryside, I saw that the land was becoming hillier as we drove into the foothills of the Harz Mountains. I also began to get glimpses between the trees of gliders flying here and there. Fritz told us that glider flying was an extremely popular sport in this area. Many of the smaller towns had their own restricted airfields, primarily for gliders. The higher we climbed in the foothills, the thicker the forests became. The small villages took on such a quaint look that Fritz asked me if I now felt better.

  I smiled and said, “Ja.”

  Another twenty minutes brought us to our objective although there were few landmarks we could use to orient our maps. The road paralleled the railroad in this part of the landscape. Fritz pulled into a clump of trees near where the map told us the missing railroad would have joined the existing tracks. The tracks that were missing would have curved off uphill and to the north, but the ground showed no traces of anything manmade. After many years, the roadbed, even engulfed by grasses and small trees, should be easy to recognize. If this was the right spot, someone long ago had taken great pains to haul away all traces of the long siding. The one sign that we were in the right place was the lack of old trees where the map indicated the run of the tracks.

  “Time to go for a walk in the woods,” M1 said. “Grab your kits and canteens. Fritz will stay with the van.”

  “Come back about 6:00 p.m.,” Fritz said. “I have a grill in the back and an ice chest with sausages, sauerkraut and beer for all.”

  The old photograph showed that the missing road was about a mile and quarter long. We moved off, carefully looking for any signs. The way was not steep, but it was uphill. Occasionally one of our group would snap a picture or kick a loose rock to see if maybe it was a lump of coal. The landscape became more heavily wooded with large pine trees and at the same time more attractive. It began to take on an ancient look. I thought of cuckoo clocks and lederhosen and king-sized pipes with metal lids. The day was cool and a light mist drifted down the hillside, close to the ground. We were utterly alone in this semi-mystical place. The only movement was the slow march of clouds across the sky and the occasional glider swooping silently in search of a thermal updraft.

  It took us less than half an hour to cover the distance to the indicated end of the line where we ran into the base of a much steeper hill.

  Alice was the first to comment. “I suppose they could have dug a tunnel on into the hill, but if they did, they did a swell job of covering up the entrance.”

  M2 was off to one side. “Look here,” he called, “someone has done some shovel work, but not recently. It looks as though he dug into the hill a few feet, then gave up and tried to erase his work.”

  I saw nothing of interest at the base of the hill. What I was curious about was the old factory ruin we had passed about one hundred yards back.

  “Mind if I go look at the ruins?” I asked M1.

  “Sure thing, we'll poke around here a bit longer.”

  Jean was digging at the hillside, but I couldn't tell to what purpose. I left her to her shovel and walked back. Not much of the old place remained. There were bare areas partly overgrown with aggressive grasses and parts of some walls made of a combination of cut stone and odd shaped bricks. The biggest feature was the mostly collapsed stub of what must have been a tall chimney. The diameter at the base was at lea
st fifteen feet.

  Something was wrong about what I was seeing. I felt the same as when I first saw the Silver Diner, something new, built expressly to look old. There was almost no rubble. If these buildings had collapsed along with the chimney, there should have been mounds of loose stuff that would engulf the remaining structures.

  This warranted a much closer look. I circled the entire ruin from just outside to determine its size and to see what I could see. The next circuit took me just inside the walls and eventually to the stump of the chimney. As I drew near, I saw an oversized cast iron cleanout door, big enough to walk through without ducking. I approached for a closer look and saw something that made me smile. I started back to my group, but ran into M2, headed my way.

  “Great news, old buddy. Your archeologist wife has determined that the soil in the center is different from the soil on either side. The new dirt covers a space plenty wide enough for a big tunnel.”

  This was a problem. Jean had made a significant discovery and here I come to steal her thunder. I thought fast and hard on the way back to the group. Once there, I took Jean aside for a private talk.

  “Look, babe,” I said, “you've found something very relevant and so have I. The last thing I want is to compete against you, or any of these guys for that matter.”

  Jean looked at me. I tried to read her mind, but as usual with no success.

  She laid one hand on my arm. “James, go ahead and tell them. You've always been thoughtful and considerate and we are a team, are we not?”

  I turned to our companions. “Excuse us. We have something to show you back at the ruin.”

  Alice walked over and took both of us by our collars. “Forward, march. I know I'm not in command, but get moving.”

  I took them directly to the base of the crumbling chimney and pointed at the large rusty door. Scratched with a stone or a brick in the heavy coating of rust was a simple cartoon of a little, long nosed man, peeking over a fence.

  “Thank the stars for Carl's sense of humor,” I said, “and his arrogance to think it was safe to leave this message.”

  “So, what does it mean?” Alice asked.

  I looked at Jean. “It means Kilroy was here,” she said. “Cartoons similar to this appeared worldwide during World War II. With or without the words, the meaning was the same.”

  “My God, this is fun.” Alice said, as she dug out her flashlight.

  “You all stand clear behind that wall back there,” M1 said, in his best captain's voice. “The door may be booby trapped.”

  “Oops! Not fun anymore,” Alice said, as we took our positions behind the barrier.

  It was low enough so that we could peek over the bricks on top. M1 stood to one side and with one foot, gave the handle a solid push. It moved with a raspy squeak. He inserted the tip of his Bowie knife into the edge of the door and pried it open about one inch. He then hooked the door edge with the toe of his boot and shoved it open. It gave forth with a hinge squeal that made me itch for an oilcan.

  What we saw behind the door was a solid wall of rubble consisting of loose bricks and pieces of broken rock jammed onto a crazy quilt plug of trash. It looked as though many of the chimney bricks had, long ago, fallen inside the chimney as it crumbled. We all gathered around to share our disappointment.

  M2 gave the blockage several solid kicks. “Crap and crap. Things have been going so good I half expected to see a working elevator behind the door.”

  “Finished we are not,” M1 said, “just delayed. We'll start looking for other entrances in this area. Maybe there's a trap door nearby.”

  “Listen,” I said. “Take a look around. Notice how clean this place is. The inside of the chimney has a solid plug of rubble, but there's nothing on the outside where we stand. A ruin like this should have hundreds of bricks and stones lying all over the place. When I first got here I thought that this place looked like a movie set. I think the Nazis built exactly what we see in about 1943. This must be one entrance to the Hollow Mountain. Its importance is self-evident. Why else would they go to these extremes?”

  “Maybe that would explain why we didn’t see any factory in the 1923 picture,” Alice said, “but we still have to find it.”

  “That old picture was very fuzzy,” M2 said.

  “You know,” I said, “the Nazis, being German, were very good at certain things like engineering and clever devices. I don't imagine a simple iron door with no lock would be the guardian of the entrance. If it is the entrance, I don't think they would have put a lock on this door because too many people would wonder why.”

  “I agree again,” Alice said, “but whatever it looks like, we still have to find it.”

  “I think maybe we have,” I pointed at the iron door.

  Eight eyeballs were staring at me for several long moments.

  Alice broke the trance by shaking both fists in front of my face. “Keep in mind that I'm carrying a gun, buster. I like suspense as much as the next gal, but you had better enlighten us real fast.”

  “The builders used only bricks on this chimney,” I said, “Notice that the stuff plugging the door also has stones. Perhaps the later construction crew made a mistake.”

  I wasn't sure, but I took a chance. There was a darker brick embedded in the wall of rubble at about the right height for a handle and the small end was sticking out a little. I took hold of it and pushed. Nothing happened. I pulled on it with the same result. I then tried to turn it to the left and it did rotate a quarter turn. I pushed on the wall of rubble and the whole thing swung in to the accompanying shrieks of rusty hinges. Those clever Nazis had built a second iron door about a foot behind the first door and faced it with rubble. One did not need a key to open this door. One simply had to know.

  There were steps going down into absolute blackness. Two or three shivers ran up my spine as I gazed down into this place of mystery and perhaps nightmares. I'm sure my companions were experiencing the same sensations as we stood there, not moving or talking. Until now we had been chasing vague shadows and examining probabilities, but here in front of our eyes was something real.

  M1 clapped his hands together. “Bingo, gang, we're off to see the wizard.”

  We got busy digging out our flashlights while M1 gave us our marching orders. “I'll go first, M2 will bring up the rear and you three stay in the middle.” He went down three steps, then examined the backs of both doors. “We can open both from the inside. We'll close both doors behind us.”

  “Ah, we close the doors?” Jean asked, with a squeaky voice.

  “We can't take any chances,” M1 said. “A hiker might notice the open door. Best we be extra cautious.”

  The ever-aware Alice patted her on the back. “It's okay, Jean. We're all anxious, but we'll be together.”

  “Don't worry,” Jean said, “I'm nervous and excited, but I wouldn't miss this for anything.”

  “We all feel exactly the same,” M1 said, “so go slow and look, look, look, okay? Scan the neighborhood to make sure no one is watching us.”

  We all took a look and then the journey began.

  CHAPTER 16

  Our five flashlights reflected little light. Everything was dark and silent.

  “The air smells ancient,” M2 said.

  I counted forty-seven steps as we descended. At the bottom we found the beginning of a good-sized tunnel that ran slightly up and north, under the hill. I heard a spritzing noise from behind and saw M2 spraying something on the wall. He said it was a fluorescent paint that would mark our trail to ease our return.

  “That's a fantastic idea,” Alice said. “Right about now I'm starting to regret one of my college assignments. I had to read The Minotaur and the Labyrinth. It creeped me out then and it still does. At least now we have our string.”

  While we walked, the gray of the walls and ceiling melted into the blackness ahead. I started counting paces and was well past the one hundred mark before there was any change in the solid stone of the tunnel. As the beams
from our flashlights bounced around ahead, I saw something shiny glinting in the void. I had the impression I was seeing the reflector of a large spotlight.

  Without warning, the walls vanished and we found ourselves in one corner of a vast chamber, as big as or bigger than Bill's Garage. The size was impossible to determine because the beams of our little lights could not penetrate that far. The most stunning feature was the hulking behemoth that stood directly in our path. High in front, it held the source of the reflection I had seen. It was a big headlight, now quite dark and cold.

  The headlight sat on the snout of a brute of a steam engine. This was not a small yard engine made for switching duties in a factory or marshalling yard. It was a full-sized passenger engine with giant driving wheels. Everything about it was bigger than life. The dark served only to make it appear more monstrous. There were two full sized railroad tracks leading on into the darkness. One held the engine and the other, to the right of the engine, was completely empty. There was enough room for a one-lane highway on both sides. The surface seemed to be plain, unmarked concrete. Everything above the floor was solid rock except the wall behind us. It was concrete, still bearing the impressions of the wooden forms. This then was the plug for the main entrance, but why they left the engine inside was another mystery.

  “Zowie! This is incredible,” Alice said.

  “This has to be the train to Hogwarts, but I forgot my ticket,” Jean said, in a loud whisper.

  “Damned if it will leave without me,” Alice added.

  “Alice, you're with M2 on the left side of the train,” M1 said. “Jean and James are with me on the right. We'll go on and see the extent of this. Make special note of anything on the side walls and stay opposite us as we proceed. I'll leave a glow tube here on the floor as a guide.”

  Somehow, the little tube left behind on the floor was comforting to me as we began to walk toward the back of the engine. I could see reflections of Alice and M2's flashlights through the space under the big machine. If necessary, we could just duck down and cross to the other side. This knowledge also gave me a degree of comfort, but now it was strictly business, a time to concentrate on the job at hand.