Echo of the Reich

39

26 July 2012

It had sounded easy enough when Bronson said it, but finding their way into the cave complex of the Wenceslas Mine proved to be far more difficult than either of them had expected.

One of the first and biggest problems was simply finding any trace of the mine entrance because of the considerable growth of trees, bushes and undergrowth that had occurred over the decades. The shape of the ground had been softened and altered by weathering and the passage of time, and although they were able to use the railway line as a guide-because Angela had discovered that during the war a spur had linked the mine entrance to the main line-it still took them over half an hour to find anything that even resembled a mine entrance.

And when they did find it, it wasn’t much help.

“There’s an entrance over here,” Angela called out. “At least, I think it’s an entrance.”

Bronson trotted over to where she was standing.

At first sight, what she was looking at didn’t appear much different to the rest of the rock face. They had been searching in the area between the remains of the railway track and the plateau upon which the Henge stood, studying a fairly steep slope about thirty feet high. It was mainly rock, except where rough grass and the occasional stunted bush grew in the cracks where there was just enough soil for the roots to gain purchase. At the foot of the slope, large boulders and smaller rocks lay scattered on the ground, where they’d fallen over the centuries.

“Where?” he asked.

Angela pointed.

“This section looks a lot more tumbledown than the rest of the slope,” she said, “with more vegetation growing all over the rocks. And there’s a concave area just above it, see?”

Once she’d pointed out the visual clues, Bronson could absolutely see what she was driving at. He nodded slowly.

“You could be right,” he said. “If this was once a tunnel, a natural or man-made entrance, and it was blown up, this is pretty much what you’d expect it to look like, over half a century after the event.”

For a few moments they just stood there, staring at the rock face.

“You told me that the Nazis had destroyed the entrance,” Bronson said.

Angela nodded. “That’s in all the contemporary reports that I’ve managed to track down. When the special SS Evacuation Kommando arrived here, they removed Die Glocke and the documentation, killed everybody who wasn’t vital to the project, then blew down the entrance tunnel. And that,” she added, “is what I think we’re looking at.”

“I presume they were in a hurry,” Bronson said. “They must have known that the Russian advance was only a matter of days, maybe even hours, away.”

“Probably, yes. What’s your point?”

“I don’t know too much about mining or underground facilities, but I do know that a supply of fresh air would have been essential. And I think that it would be normal practice to have more than just one source.”

“You mean they might have destroyed the entrance used by people and vehicles, but they wouldn’t have had time to blow up all the ventilation ducts?”

“Exactly.” Bronson nodded. “This was a huge complex-you said it covered over thirty-five square kilometers-and to keep that kind of area livable in, they would have needed plenty of sources of fresh air.”

“So all we have to do is find one, I suppose. But at least we now know we’re looking in more or less the right place.”

They separated again, and this time they started looking higher up the rock face, because logically the air vents would have been placed high enough to avoid animals taking refuge in them, and where undergrowth would not interfere with the flow of air. And the Nazis had repeatedly demonstrated to the world that they were logical. Implacably evil in their intentions, but supremely logical and efficient in the implementation of their intentions.

Once again, it was Angela who spotted what they were looking for. About fifty yards from the dynamited entrance to the cave, under a natural overhang about ten feet off the ground and almost invisible in the shadow cast by that overhang, she saw a dark shape, not a perfect circle but too regular to be a natural opening in the rock.

Bronson pulled on a pair of overalls, handed a second pair to Angela, and checked that his flashlight was working.

“Do you really think you’ll need that in the cave?” she asked, pointing at the butt of the Walther that he’d tucked into the waistband of his trousers.

“Not really,” Bronson replied, “but you never know. I think they have wolves in this part of the world, and maybe bears as well. I’d hate to get inside the tunnels and find that I’d arrived in a wolf den just in time for lunch.”

“Good point. What about me? I have shot the odd pistol in my time, you know.”

Bronson fished the Llama. 22 out of his trouser pocket and handed it to her.

“It’s loaded, with one round in the chamber, and the safety catch is on, so just click it off, point and then shoot. But only if you have to. I doubt if one of those bullets would stop a wolf, and all it would do to a bear is just piss it off, really badly, so let me do the shooting if we meet anything like that.”

“Fine with me.”

Bronson again checked the flashlight he was carrying, confirmed he had spare batteries for it and for the second, smaller flashlight in his pocket, then scrambled up the rock face to the opening. The hole itself was about three feet wide, and appeared to have been chiseled out of the rock, because he could see the unmistakable marks of picks or chisels on the stone.

He crawled a few feet into the narrow tunnel, then turned round and waited for Angela to follow him, extending his hand to help her as she neared the entrance.

“This is definitely man-made,” Bronson said, pointing at the tool marks.

Angela shivered slightly. “It gives me a funny feeling, seeing something like this, knowing how it was constructed, and knowing that the men who were forced to dig this out of the rock were probably dead just days later.”

There wasn’t anything Bronson thought he could say in reply to that, so he just shook his head, switched on his flashlight and shone the beam down the tunnel.

Then the two of them began making their way, slowly and cautiously, along the horizontal shaft that had been cut through the rock and into the side of the mountain.