Echo of the Reich

37

25 July 2012

The first thing Bronson noticed was that the road on the Polish side of the border was in a markedly worse condition than the same road in Germany. Whereas the German autobahn had been smooth and well-maintained, the Polish section resembled a construction site more than anything else. The surface was scarred by cracks, potholes and the uneven finish caused by numerous previous repairs, and in various places road gangs were working on sections of it.

The landscape had been generally flat, just grassy meadows interspersed by golden fields of corn and other crops, but as they approached Walbrzych the scenery began to change as hills, their flanks covered in trees, reared up in front of them.

“This whole area used to be part of Germany,” Angela said. “It was a section of the Reich before the Second World War, and most of the people who lived here then were German-speaking farmers. And it was important during the war as well, because there were lots of coal mines here, and the Wehrmacht used some of them as production facilities and storage bunkers. I believe they even built some of the Wunderwaffen here, or at least some of their components, like bits of the V2 rockets.”

“If there was so much military activity in this area,” Bronson said, “there should still be some signs of it, some buildings or whatever left standing, maybe.”

“Could be,” Angela replied. “We’ll soon find out. That must be Walbrzych right in front of us, so we’re getting close.”

The town was busy, the pavements thronged with pedestrians and the roads crowded with cars and vans, pickup trucks and buses. The BMW’s satnav took them through a part of the city named Stary Zdroj, avoiding the town center, which would presumably have been even busier.

Once clear of the built-up area, they continued southeast, through the villages of Jedlina-Zdroj and Gluszyca, leaving most signs of habitation behind and cutting deep into the Polish countryside. In this part of Poland, the road ran very close to the border with the Czech Republic, for some distance almost paralleling it less than a mile away, before turning due east as it approached Ludwikowice K?odzkie.

This road was narrower and much more serpentine than they’d experienced before, and even the satnav seemed to be having trouble because many of the tiny villages, most of them little more than hamlets containing a handful of houses, weren’t present in its database. But at least the compass incorporated in the unit told them which direction they were heading.

“We’re here,” Angela said, pointing to a sign on the right-hand side of the road that showed that they’d just entered Ludwikowice.

“Glad to hear it,” Bronson replied. “So now where do we go?”

“I’ve got no idea. The underground facility is somewhere near here, and that’s absolutely all I know. With a bit of luck, there might be a sign somewhere, or maybe we might even see the Henge.”

“The what?” Bronson asked.

“The Henge. It’s also known as the Flytrap, and it’s a kind of circular reinforced concrete cage. There’s a theory that it was used by the Nazis as a test facility for some sort of circular craft.”

Bronson smiled at her. “You mean they were building flying saucers?”

She shrugged. “Nobody knows. They were certainly pushing the boundaries toward the end of the war, but I doubt if they’d managed to push them that far. And there is another explanation-a rather more mundane and plausible one-for the Henge.”

“And that is?”

“I’ll tell you when we’ve found it,” Angela said.

Ludwikowice appeared to be a small but surprisingly long village, with buildings extending along both sides of a narrow road that didn’t really seem to go anywhere. It looked as if somebody had built a house there years earlier, and then others had simply followed suit, the village growing in a haphazard and linear fashion.

They followed the main street, both of them looking down the infrequent side roads that appeared to lead up into the tree-covered slopes surrounding Ludwikowice, hoping for a road sign or some other indication that might point them in the right direction. But nothing looked particularly hopeful, and after almost two kilometers Bronson drove the BMW past a second sign that marked the far end of the village. He pulled the car to a stop by the side of the road and glanced across at Angela.

“The satnav isn’t a lot of help to us now,” he said, changing the scale on the map that was displayed on the screen. “Most of the roads that we passed in the village don’t even seem to be marked, and there aren’t any junctions shown on this road either, or at least, not for a few kilometers. Do you think we should go back and try one of the side turnings in the village?”

“I think what we need to do first is find somewhere to stay tonight,” she said. “It’s starting to get dark, and even if we did locate the road to the underground complex, it’s too late to explore it today. But it’s probably a good idea to go back and check those side turnings once more, just in case we see something that helps when we approach the village from this direction.”

Bronson checked the road in both directions, then swung the car round and headed slowly back into Ludwikowice. But once again, neither Bronson nor Angela saw any signs that helped them, nothing that seemed to indicate where they might find the complex. At the end of the village, he turned the car round again and headed back through toward the east.

“You are sure it’s here?” Bronson asked. “I mean, it’s not somewhere miles up in the hills and it was just named after the village because that was the closest inhabited location?”

Angela nodded. “It’s here. The Nazis needed road access to deliver concentration camp workers to the site, plus all of the mechanical equipment and explosives they used to extend the passageways. And there was even a railway line from the complex to the nearest airfield.”

Bronson pulled the car to a stop and looked again at the screen of the satnav.

“There’s a railway line marked on this,” he said, pointing at an area to the north of the village, where a black-and-white dotted line was shown, running almost parallel with part of the road. “Even if the complex was served by a spur from an existing railway line, we can be pretty certain that the underground facility had to be somewhere near that line; otherwise they’d never have bothered providing rail access. So that at least narrows the search area.”

They set off again, driving slowly back through the village, this time looking out of the windows to their left. Yet again they reached the end of the village without spotting anything that seemed helpful.

“This is hopeless,” Angela said. “We’ll just have to come back in the morning.”

“Do you know much about road construction?” Bronson asked. “Have you ever noticed a difference between the two inside lanes and the outside overtaking lane of a motorway?”

Angela stared at him.

“I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Then let me tell you a story. Sometimes on motorways you can see two grooves on each of the inside carriageways. They mark the track followed by articulated lorries and heavy goods vehicles, which use only those lanes, where the weight of the vehicle has actually compressed the tarmac very slightly. Because HGVs don’t drive in the outside lane, you don’t see the same pattern of use there.”

Angela didn’t respond, just continued to stare at Bronson, but her growing irritation was only too apparent.

“Now, what you’ve told me about this underground complex the Nazis built suggests they probably had a fair amount of vehicular traffic, a lot of it no doubt heavy lorries. They obviously wouldn’t have built a multi-lane highway to get from the village to the complex, because that would have taken too long and might also have been spotted from the air by Allied reconnaissance aircraft. So they would have constructed a single-track road.”

“If you don’t get to the point pretty damned sharpish, Chris,” Angela snapped, “I’m not necessarily going to be responsible for my actions.”

“I have, sort of,” Bronson replied. “The point is that tarmac is a very good building material for roads. You can pour it continuously, which means no joins, and it gives a very smooth surface. But it has problems. It can be attacked by hydrocarbons-especially petrol, diesel and motor oil-and the surface is fairly soft. The last thing the Nazis would have been concerned about was the quality of the ride on the road up to the complex. So they wouldn’t have built the access road with a tarmac surface. They would have used concrete, because it’s a whole lot tougher, much easier to lay because they can do it in convenient-sized chunks, and it won’t soften in sunlight or be affected by chemical compounds. About the only thing that does damage concrete surfaces is freezing, if there are gaps that water can get inside and then expand when it freezes. That can crack off chunks of concrete, but if it’s laid properly in the first place it’s not a problem. And that’s why you normally find that runways and taxiways on airfields are constructed from reinforced concrete.”

“So?”

“So two of the access roads that we’ve just passed aren’t surfaced in asphalt like all the others. They’re built from concrete, and to me they look old.”

Angela snapped her head round and looked back toward the village they’d just driven through.

“You could have given me the short version,” she said. “Which side of the road were they on?”

“The north side, where the railway line is. As far as I could see they were the only two in the area, and I reckon they’re definitely worth a bit of investigation.”

“I agree. We’ll come back here in the morning, and see what we can find in daylight. But we also need to buy some torches and other stuff before we start trying to crowbar our way inside that mountain.”

Angela paused and looked at Bronson for a few seconds.

“Occasionally, Chris,” she said eventually, “you surprise me.”