Burning Angels

25

‘Massive stockpiles of weaponised agents were found by the Allies,’ Miles continued speaking, ‘including at this place, Falkenhagen. There was even talk of a long-range V weapon – the V-4, a sequel to the V-2 rocket – that could drop nerve agents on Washington and New York.

‘The general feeling was that we had won the war by the skin of our teeth. To some it made sense to harness the Nazi scientists’ expertise in preparation for the coming war with the Russians – the Cold War. Most of the Nazi V-weapon scientists were shipped off to the USA to design missiles to combat the Soviet threat.

‘But then the Russians dropped their bombshell. In the midst of the Nuremberg war crimes trials, they called a surprise witness: Brigadier General Walter Schreiber, of the Wehrmacht’s medical service. Schreiber stated that a little-known SS doctor named Kurt Blome had run a beyond-top-secret Nazi project whose focus had been biological – germ – warfare.’

Miles’s eyes narrowed. ‘Now, as you all know, germ weapons are the ultimate mass killers. A nuclear bomb dropped on New York might kill everyone in the city. A sarin warhead might do likewise. But a single missile carrying bubonic plague could kill everyone in America, for the simple reason that a germ agent is self-replicating. Once delivered, it breeds in the human host and spreads, so killing all.’

‘Hitler’s germ warfare project was codenamed Blitzableiter – lightning rod. It was disguised as a cancer-research programme, to hide it from the Allies. The agents so developed were to be used under the Führer’s direct orders to achieve the final victory. But perhaps the most shocking of Schreiber’s revelations was that at war’s end, Kurt Blome was recruited by the Americans to re-create his germ warfare programme – only this time for the West.

‘Certainly, during the war Blome had developed a fearsome array of agents: plague, typhoid, cholera, anthrax and more. He had worked closely with the Japanese Unit 731, which had unleashed germ agents that killed half a million Chinese.’

‘Unit 731 is a dark stain upon our history,’ a quiet voice cut in. It was Hiro Kamishi, the Japanese member of Jaeger’s team. ‘Our government has never truly said sorry. It has been left to individuals to try to make their peace with the victims.’

From what Jaeger knew of Kamishi, it would be entirely in keeping with his nature to have reached out to the victims of Unit 731, to seek peace.

‘Blome was the undisputed grandmaster of germ warfare.’ Miles eyed his audience, his eyes gleaming. ‘But there were certain things he would never reveal, not even to the Americans. The Blitzableiter weapons weren’t used against the Allies for one simple reason: the Nazis were perfecting a super-agent, one to truly conquer the world. Hitler had ordered it to be made ready, but the sheer speed of the Allied advance had taken everyone by surprise. Blome and his team were defeated, but only by time.’

Miles glanced across at a seated figure clutching a slender walking cane. ‘Now I’d like to hand over to someone who was actually there. In 1945, I was but an eighteen-year-old youth. Joe Jaeger can better relate this darkest episode of history.’

As Miles went to help Uncle Joe to his feet, Jaeger felt his heart start to pound. Deep in his being he knew that fate had led him to this moment. He had a wife and child to save, but by the sound of what he was hearing, there was far more at stake than simply their lives alone.

Uncle Joe stepped forward, leaning heavily on his walking stick. ‘I will need to ask you all to bear with me, for I’d wager I am thrice the age of some of you in this room.’ He glanced around the bunker thoughtfully. ‘Now, where should I begin? I think perhaps with Operation Loyton.’

His eyes came to rest upon Jaeger. ‘For most of the war I served with this young man’s grandfather in the SAS. Perhaps it goes without saying, but that man, Ted Jaeger, was my brother. In late 1944 we were sent into north-eastern France on a mission codenamed Loyton. Its aim was simple. Hitler had ordered his forces to make a last stand, to halt the Allied advance. We were to frustrate them.

‘We parachuted in and caused a good deal of havoc and chaos behind enemy lines, blowing up railway tracks and killing the top Nazi commanders. But in return, the enemy hunted us relentlessly. At mission’s end, thirty-one of our force had been captured. We were determined to find out what had happened to them. Trouble was, the SAS was disbanded shortly after the war. No one thought we were needed any more. Well, we felt differently. Not for the first time, we disobeyed our orders.

‘We set up a totally off-the-books unit, charged to search for our missing men. It didn’t take us long to discover that they had been tortured and murdered horrifically by their Nazi captors. And so we set about hunting down the killers. We gave ourselves a grand-sounding title – the SAS War Crimes Investigation Team. Informally, we were known as the Secret Hunters.’

Joe Jaeger smiled wistfully. ‘It’s amazing what you can achieve with a little bluff. Because we were hiding in plain sight, everyone presumed we were a bona fide outfit. We were not. In truth, we were an unsanctioned, illegal unit doing what we believed was right, and sod the bloody consequences. Such were the times. And they were good times.’

The old man seemed choked with emotion, yet he steeled himself to go on. ‘Over the next few years we tracked down every single one of the Nazi killers. In the process of doing so, we discovered that several of our men had ended up in a place of utter horror – a Nazi concentration camp called Natzweiler.’

For a moment Uncle Joe’s eyes sought out Irina Narov. Jaeger knew already that they shared a special bond. It was one of the many things that he been meaning to get Narov to fully explain to him.

‘Natzweiler possessed a gas chamber,’ Uncle Joe continued. ‘Its foremost role was to test Nazi weapons on live humans – the inmates of the camp. A senior SS doctor oversaw such tests. His name was August Hirt. We decided we needed to talk to him.

‘Hirt had disappeared, but few could hide from the Secret Hunters. We discovered that he too was working secretly for the Americans. During the war he had tested nerve gas on innocent women and children. Torture, brutality and death were his hallmarks. But the Americans were more than happy to shield him, and we knew they would never let him stand trial. In the circumstances we took an executive decision: Hirt had to die. But when he realised what we intended, he offered an extraordinary trade: the Nazi’s greatest secret in exchange for his life.’

The old man braced his shoulders. ‘Hirt revealed to us the Nazis’ plan for Weltplagverwustung – world plague devastation. He claimed it was to be achieved using a wholly new breed of germ agent. No one seemed to know where that agent had come from, but its lethality was off the scale. When Hirt tested it in Natzweiler, it proved to have a 99.999 per cent kill rate. No human seemed to have any natural resistance. It was almost as if the agent was not of this earth; or at least not of our time.

‘Before we killed him – because believe me, we would never have let him live – Hirt told us the name of the agent, a name given to it by Hitler himself.’

Uncle Joe’s haunted gaze came to rest upon Jaeger. ‘It was called the Gottvirus – the God virus.’