Secrets of the Last Nazi

THIRTY-TWO

All five of the team managed to get some sleep on the train. It meant that when they arrived at Vienna’s Central Station, they had all been oddly refreshed by the overnight train journey.

They climbed out, and took in the modern design — clean glass and iron. Like Berlin, it must have changed enormously over the century of Stolz’s life. Myles caught sight of a large digital clock: it was fifty-three minutes past seven in the morning. If there was a rush hour in Vienna, then this was it. But the commuters seemed too poised to be rushing. This was, after all, a city famous for its waltzes — everything moved at a pace which was measured and sedate.

From Vienna’s central station, it was a short taxi ride to the central square — the ‘Heldenplatz’. The three men and two women just squeezed into a single vehicle, Myles the most cramped of all, with his head bent over to fit inside. But he could still see the great sights of the city as they drove by — the Opera House, museum and grand shopping arcades — mixed with the normal scenes of modern Europe: small cars, mothers with children, and a rubbish collection truck.

Myles watched Glenn survey the architecture — one facet about Europe that the American seemed to respect. Heike-Ann and Pascal were awestruck. Only Zenyalena seemed slightly resentful. Myles shot her a queried expression, to which she just raised her eyebrows in response.

The taxi pulled up near an ornate building.

Heike-Ann helped Myles with his crutches, making it easier for him to swing his injured leg out of the vehicle. Like an impromptu tour-guide, she pointed to the space behind them. ‘Here we are: Heldenplatz. It means “Place of Heroes”.’

Glenn looked around them, disappointed. ‘So this is it? This is the square?’

Heike-Ann nodded.

Glenn seemed unconvinced. ‘It’s not the best place to hide a bunch of papers, is it?’

He was right. The piazza was almost barren, the surface made of hard concrete and paving stones. The only obvious landmarks were two statues of men on horses: Prince Eugene of Savoy and Archduke Charles of Austria.

Myles read out Stolz’s description again:

‘“Schoolmate’s Tract. ONB (where the empire began, 15.III.38).”’

Zenyalena looked up at the statues. ‘Could Stolz have gone to school with Prince Eugene or Archduke Charles?’

Pascal’s face lightened up for perhaps the first time since he had been told of Jean-François’ death. ‘I doubt it,’ he said. ‘Not unless he was much older than we think.’ The Frenchman gestured towards the cast iron plates on the bottom of each statue. Their dates were 1663–1736 and 1771–1847. Zenyalena accepted the point.

Glenn started looking at the paved surface. ‘Where exactly did Hitler speak from in 1938?’

Zenyalena and Pascal started searching for plaques or marks in the ground — anything which might show where the dictator stood to make his famous ‘Anschluss’ speech.

But Heike-Ann was quick to stop them looking. ‘There won’t be any signs. De-Nazification: any marking would count as a “monument” to Hitler, and the laws forbid that.’

Glenn started shaking his head. ‘So, we can’t even know where he stood? And even if we did know, it would just be a spot on the pavement.’ He was looking despondent. ‘Ridiculous. This whole thing is ridiculous. We ain’t finding anything to do with Stolz here. Come on, Myles — you’ve got to admit. It’s not looking good, is it?’

But Myles wasn’t giving up. ‘If these papers are not hidden in the square, could they still have a “Heldenplatz” address?’

Heike-Ann weighed up her answer. ‘I suppose so, yes. Some of these buildings around the edge could count.’

‘And what are the buildings?’

Heike-Ann glanced around. She shrugged — not because she didn’t know, but because there were so many. Standing in the centre of the square, she began to turn a full 360 degrees, labelling off the sights as she saw them. ‘There’s the Hofburg Palace, the Conference Centre, the city’s ring road, the outer castle gate, the national library, the Parliament, the town hall… Austria’s unknown soldier…’

As she spoke, Myles realised: Heldenplatz didn’t offer too few places for Stolz to hide his papers. It offered too many.

Glenn picked up the theme. ‘Austria’s unknown soldier. Did Stolz see himself as an unknown soldier?’

Zenyalena answered with sarcasm. ‘You mean a secret behind-the-scenes bureaucrat type of soldier?’

Then Myles made the connection. ‘But Hitler did. That was how he promoted himself. He made himself out to be an “everyman” — the voice of the trenches. The unknown soldier betrayed by the politicians in Berlin.’

Pascal was puzzled. ‘So we look at the tomb of the unknown soldier?’ he asked.

‘No,’ explained Myles. ‘Stolz’s clue was “Schoolmate’s Tract”. It means we look for schoolmates of Hitler.’

Something Myles said seemed to resonate with Heike-Ann. She took out her smart phone and found a webpage. The search term, ‘Hitler Schoolmate’ yielded several thousand results, but one name was clearly at the top. ‘“Wittgenstein”, she read out. ‘Anyone heard of someone called “Wittgenstein”?’ She said it oddly, like she was tasting strange food.

Myles could see none of the others knew the name, apart from perhaps Pascal who was trying to recall. ‘Ludwig Wittgenstein was either mad or a genius, probably both,’ he told them. ‘He was an Austrian who fought on the same side as Hitler in the First World War. But unlike Hitler, instead of using his spare moments to refine fascism, Wittgenstein developed a philosophy — a completely different way of thinking about the world. You’ve heard of “I think therefore I am”?’

Glenn spoke tentatively. ‘The foundation of Western philosophy? Is that right, Myles?’

‘Yes — it used to be. Until Wittgenstein proved it was wrong. Some say the mad Austrian — Wittgenstein, not Hitler that is — destroyed Western thinking. Philosophy has never been the same since. While Hitler was threatening Western civilisation, Wittgenstein was destroying its ideas. And if they were at school together, we may have broken into Stolz’s clue.’

Heike-Ann had found a webpage showing the two of them in the same photo — an annual school photograph from Linz Realschule, 1901. In neat rows, a class of eleven- and twelve-year old schoolboys was posing for the camera. Wittgenstein was near the middle, with the junior Hitler just one row above. Heike-Ann held the phone where the others could see. Hitler’s unmistakable eyes seemed to drill out towards the camera. Just from the image, they could tell the future dictator was a strange boy.

Heike-Ann scrolled down. ‘It says here they were born in the same week, both in April 1889. Wittgenstein on the 26th, Hitler on the 20th.’

Pascal tried to think it through again. ‘So, how is Wittgenstein connected with Heldenplatz? Was he here when Hitler spoke in 1938?’

Myles knew he couldn’t have been. Wittgenstein was probably teaching at Cambridge University at the time, and the philosopher was never a fan of Hitler. Then it hit him. ‘But Wittgenstein did write some famous papers,’ he said. ‘And his first book was called the “Tractatus”. “Schoolmate’s Tract” — it must mean “Wittgenstein’s Tractatus”.’

Then, like a light illuminating her face, Heike-Ann suddenly understood another part of the clue. ‘“ONB” — I thought it was something translated into English,’ she said. ‘But the automatic translator didn’t change the letters, because it’s an abbreviation. It’s ONB in German. ONB means Österreichische Nationalbibliothek — the National Library of Austria…’ She pointed. ‘… And it’s just over there.’

THIRTY-THREE

As Myles saw the words, in English under the German, ‘National Library of Austria — Heldenplatz Entrance’, he knew they’d come to the right place. He hobbled towards the door of the building as quickly as he could, his ruptured knee slowing him down when he wanted to rush. The rest of the team followed behind, then Glenn, Zenyalena and Pascal overtook him as they realised, like Myles, that this must be where Stolz had hidden his papers. Only Heike-Ann walked more slowly, careful not to strain herself while she was pregnant.

Glenn started quizzing a receptionist. ‘Do you have all the books written by Ludwig Wittgenstein?’

An intelligent-looking woman in her mid-thirties, the receptionist nodded. She quickly saw her reaction was good news to the bald American and his friends and obviously felt the need to bring him down a little. ‘But you know he really only wrote one book, the ‘Tractatus’. All the other things he wrote were just papers, articles for academic journals — that sort of thing…’ The woman seemed familiar with Wittgenstein’s work.

Zenyalena decided she couldn’t let the American lead the questioning. She elbowed Glenn out of the way and spoke to the receptionist herself. ‘So are all his books— er, sorry, his one book. Is it on display?’

The receptionist shook her head. ‘Only copies — the original manuscript is in an American University. But since Wittgenstein wrote it in the trenches, there’s not much left, just a few soggy notes.’ She checked on her computer. ‘Er, we have twelve copies — in the Upper Reading Room.’

Zenyalena looked around at the others. Twelve copies of a very public library book. It wasn’t a promising way to hide secret papers.

But Myles knew they had to check. ‘And which way is the Upper Reading Room?’

The woman stood up to point around a corner to some stairs. Myles thanked her as he took her directions. The others followed, then Zenyalena began half-running in an attempt to get to the books before anyone else in the team. Myles heard Glenn mutter curses as he ran after her, with Pascal closely behind. Only Heike-Ann stayed with Myles, both of them moving at walking pace.

After two steep flights of stairs, Myles and Heike-Ann followed a corridor into the Upper Reading Room, which was vaguely eerie. No one was inside, except Glenn, Pascal and Zenyalena, who had just found the right shelf.

‘But they’re paperbacks,’ Zenyalena complained. Disappointed, the Russian pulled down the first of the identical books. ‘Where inside do we look?’ She started flicking through the pages, realising there was too much to read.

Finally Myles caught up, calling across to Zenyalena as he arrived. ‘Find the contents page. Then find where Wittgenstein explains how we deceive ourselves when we think we’re making free choices.’

The five of them huddled around the Russian. It was Heike-Ann who saw the contents page first. ‘Section Five. Turn to Section Five,’ she said.

Zenyalena quickly rifled through the pages until she was on Section Five.

Nothing — just a normal chapter.

‘Try the other books,’ instructed Myles.

Zenyalena picked up the next copy. Glenn took one too. Pascal and Heike-Ann did the same.

It was Heike-Ann who found some thin pen marks scribbled in the margin. Someone had notated the book, as if a student was making notes to themselves. But something about the handwriting — it was jagged and deliberate — suggested it had been written by an old person with an infirm grip. Heike-Ann held out the notes for the others to see:

Myles pointed at the last two letters. ‘WS — Werner Stolz, right? What does the rest of it say — can you translate?’

‘It says, “See the file of official records from the Vienna police from 1913.”’

Myles acknowledged the clue, then gave an instruction to the team. ‘OK, let’s split up. Everybody look for old Austrian files.’

Glenn and Zenyalena immediately started looking in opposite parts of the Upper Reading Room. Pascal went back towards the door, obviously looking for someone to help.

Heike-Ann turned to Myles, who had started searching around the room, wondering where the files might be. His eyes soon gazed upwards: the Upper Reading Room had a small raised level which seemed more promising. The only way up seemed to be via an old cast-iron staircase. Together, Myles and Heike-Ann started to climb.

At the top, they split in opposite directions, and took several minutes to check the tall ranks of shelves for anything which might look like old Vienna police records. Myles sensed this part of the library was rarely visited. It was also quite enclosed, almost hidden, making it the ideal place to store sensitive papers, or — if Stolz had more sinister intentions — to set a trap.

‘Hey,’ Heike-Ann beckoned Myles over.

Myles limped towards her, and the German woman pointed to something beyond her reach. Myles stretched up and took the little-used box file from the shelf. Heike-Ann checked the label on the side and confirmed it was the one Stolz had meant, then, with a sense of ceremony, slowly opened the lid.

On top was an inventory: the list of papers the file contained. She lifted it up and passed it to Myles.

Underneath was a formal certificate of some sort. ‘It looks like an official document,’ whispered Heike-Ann, as she touched it with her fingers, unsure whether to handle it. The paper was faded and the ink pale. The old Germanic typeface confirmed it was from another age — from before the First World War.

Myles stared at the rubber stamp in the corner. ‘Police?’

Heike-Ann began reading the German and nodded. It was a copy of a police report from 1913. Underneath were near-identical reports from 1912, 1911 and 1910. She began to go through them. ‘Er, these are from the Vienna police…’ She scanned through them. Apart from being very old, they seemed unremarkable — detritus of a long-gone imperial bureaucracy. ‘… Something about conscription — “all Austrian men are required to register for military service”. These is a report about someone who didn’t turn up as they were required.’

Myles made sure he understood. ‘You mean it’s about a draft dodger?’

‘Yes…’ Then something she read struck her. She pulled back. In an instant of revulsion, she put the papers back down.

Myles tried to console her. ‘What is it? Are you alright?’

She was, but she seemed shaken. ‘This isn’t a normal record. Look at the name…’ Heike-Ann pointed back towards the sheet, drawing Myles’ attention to two words near the bottom but refusing to touch them. ‘… Adolf… Hitler. This is a summons for him…’

Heike-Ann’s eyes up gazed up at Myles for a reaction. ‘That’s why this is so important,’ he said. ‘This is evidence that the dictator — a man who often boasted about his military record as a young man, a man who forced millions of others to fight — tried to avoid serving in the army himself. It’s proof that Hitler was a draft dodger. The Gestapo tried to get hold of these documents in 1938, when Hitler took control of Austria. Looks like they managed it. They must have been given to Stolz for safe keeping.’ Then Myles saw another document underneath. ‘What does this one say?’

Composing herself, Heike-Ann took a short pause to translate, then started pointing at the page. ‘It’s another police report, again from 1913. It logs a “Mr Adolf Hitler” as guilty of the minor crime of vagrancy — sleeping rough. In Vienna, 1913.’ She frowned, not sure what to make of the report.

She was about to reach for the next page when they heard metallic clangs: someone was climbing the iron staircase. She glanced at Myles, wondering whether to hide the papers.

Myles said nothing, but just raised his hand: they would wait silently to see who it was.

More sounds; and then they saw a bald scalp come up to their level, and relaxed as they greeted Glenn. ‘Have you found it?’ he called out.

‘Depends what “it” might be,’ replied Myles. ‘Can you fetch the others?’

Glenn accepted, and went back down to find Zenyalena and Pascal. A few minutes later all five of them were back together, in the most enclosed and isolated part of the building. They all stared down at the box file.

The next paper in the box was a page torn from a book — page number 113 on one side and 114 on the other, with printing in a gothic font. Someone — presumably Stolz — had underlined a few sentences.

Heike-Ann lifted it out, hesitantly. ‘So, er, I’ll translate…’ She started reading. ‘It reads, “The longer I lived in that city, the stronger became my hatred for the promiscuous scum of foreign peoples, and the bacillus of human society, the Jews. I hoped I could devote my talents to the service of my country, so I left Vienna in Spring 1912.”’

Heike-Ann put the page down, glad to be rid of it. She turned to her team leader. ‘Myles, you know what this is from, don’t you?’

Myles checked his assumption was right. ‘Bestselling book of the 1930s?’

Heike-Ann nodded, but Zenyalena, Glenn and Pascal still needed her to explain. ‘It’s from Mein Kampf,’ she revealed. ‘Hitler’s manifesto and autobiography.’

Pascal still looked confused. ‘I thought that book had been banned.’

‘You’re right,’ said Myles. ‘But, there are still lots of copies of Mein Kampf around. The Nazis printed millions of them. Newlyweds got them as a “wedding present” from the state, which allowed Hitler to skim off millions in royalty payments. But the question is: what’s so special about this page?’

Glenn picked up the single sheet, and checked both sides. A normal page from a book, it looked completely ordinary. He tried to see a pattern in the sentences which had been underlined. ‘Myles? Can you make sense of it?’

Myles wasn’t sure. He turned to Heike-Ann. ‘So in Mein Kampf, Hitler writes, “I left Vienna in Spring 1912” — but it contradicts the police report.’ Then he worked it out. ‘It means Hitler lied in Mein Kampf, and Stolz had the evidence.’

Glenn was still puzzled. ‘But Stolz was a Nazi, right? He loved Hitler. Adored him. So why offer proof that Hitler lied?’

Myles acknowledged the point — something didn’t make sense. ‘Is there anything else in the box?’

Heike-Ann turned over another sheet of old text. Underneath she saw some much fresher paper. ‘This isn’t from 1913.’

It wasn’t. Printed on bright white paper, probably using a modern computer, was a single line of text. The words were simple:

Heike-Ann scowled as she translated. ‘It says, “Location Two: Where it was written — and he grew fat — minus thirty-two metres”. Does that make any sense?’

Myles peered over. ‘It must mean “Location Two”. It’s directions to Stolz’s next hiding place…’ Then he became confused. ‘… But Wittgenstein wrote his book all over — in trenches all over the Eastern Front, in a military hospital after an injury, then in a prisoner of war camp in Italy. The Tractatus wasn’t written in a single place.’

Zenyalena smirked. ‘And was Wittgenstein fat?’

‘No. In all the photos I’ve seen, he looks very thin. He was always thin.’

Glenn turned the paper towards him. ‘Is that really all it says? Is that it — exactly?’

Heike-Ann was sure. She pointed at the letters. ‘ Minus 32 Metre’ — you see, minus thirty-two metres, or thirty-two metres below. That’s what it says. Those are the exact words.’

Pascal tried to be logical. ‘So if Wittgenstein wrote only one book, and he wrote it in lots of places…?’

Glenn rattled through some ideas. ‘Where he started writing it? Where he finished writing it? Did he always write it in bed, or at a desk — so we look for the desk? But “minus thirty-two metres”… What could it mean?’ The American was running dry.

Myles tried a new tack. ‘Are we sure Stolz means the Tractatus? Could he mean another book?’

Zenyalena was starting to get frustrated. ‘Well, what other book could it be? Come on — we’ll try to crack that one later. What else is in the folder?’

She leaned over and removed the page about ‘Location Two’ to reveal an older sheet. It looked like one of Stolz’s papers from the lawyer’s office — some predictions made during the Second World War. The date confirmed it: 1942. And the title of this one needed no translation.

Glenn grabbed it quickly. ‘Let me see that.’ Glenn scanned it, half-hoping he could stop himself if he found something he wanted kept secret. But it was no use. He soon realised he could only understand the dates and numbers. The words were still in German.

Glenn held the paper where Heike-Ann could see, and invited her to translate.

Heike-Ann’s eyes took in the words and tried to summarise. ‘It’s more predictions. It says, “War undermines US Power in the following months”. Then it lists August 1814; April 1968; May 2004; and then also April 2059, September 2059, February 2060 and December 2060…’

Myles recognised some of the dates. August 1814 was when the British burned down the White House. In April 1968, America was tied down in Vietnam, and in Iraq in 2004.

Heike-Ann was translating to herself, coming towards the end of the page. ‘… The conclusion is “The next anniversary in this 83-year cycle comes in the first week of June, 1944. Within this week, the moon cycle suggests the most likely date for a large-scale, seaborne assault on Reich-territory is on the 5^th or 6^th of June 1944.’’’

Myles and Glenn shared a glance. They both understood what they had before them. One of the greatest secrets of the war — the timing of D-Day — had been predicted by Stolz.

Pascal, Zenyalena and Heike-Ann looked at each other. Like the perfect magician, Stolz had left them amazed.

Glenn held the paper, stunned. ‘How did he do it? How did he predict these things?’

Nobody had an answer.

Pascal pointed at the file box. ‘Is there anything else in there?’

Glenn pulled back the USA paper. Underneath was a thin set of papers in a cardboard cover. He looked at the title, unable to read the German, then passed it to Heike-Ann for a translation.

Heike-Ann took hold of the file and immediately began nodding. ‘This is it. It explains it — how he made his predictions. The title reads “Ein Ratgeber über den Mechanismus für das Voraussagen der Zukunft” — which means “A practical guide to the mechanism for predicting the future.”’

All eyes watched as she began to open the pages.

But it was Myles who sensed something beyond the paper itself. ‘Does anybody else smell that?’

Zenyalena and Pascal both sniffed the air. ‘Smoke?’

Myles turned around: flames had burst from one of the book racks. The library records were burning fast. He tried frantically to locate a fire hose or spray canister, but there was nothing in sight.

Pascal advanced towards the fire. Covering his fingers in his sleeve, he pulled out one of the burning racks and let it fall onto the floor. Then he tried to stamp out the flames. It worked, but the rest of the bookshelf continued to burn. ‘This fire’s spreading,’ he shouted.

Glenn and Heike-Ann checked the exits. There only seemed to be one escape, which was back down the stairs. Glenn called to the others. ‘Come on — it’s not safe to stay here.’

Pascal ignored him, still battling the fire, while Zenyalena was trying to protect the documents. She’d gathered all the papers and squashed them back into the box file.

Finally Myles found a fire alarm: a square of glass surrounded by red plastic. He took a book from a nearby shelf and jabbed it in. The glass shattered.

An alarm started ringing, and water started falling down from sprinklers in the roof. But the instant it showered onto the flames Myles realised it wasn’t water at all — the liquid caught fire.

Almost instantly, the whole room exploded into a fireball.

THIRTY-FOUR

Father Samuel allowed his fingers to trace the mosaic embedded in the oldest wall of the monastery. He marvelled at the bright yellow and orange tesserae, crafted by some long-dead artisan, and arranged in the shape of a comet. Heathens on the edge of the artwork all gazed at the heavenly body, their mouths open in fear and foreboding. Only the saintly figure in the middle remained unperturbed by the display above. Father Samuel tracked the saint’s halo, which was aligned with the comet’s tail… It was a message from the past which he needed to remember now.

Then he let his fingers move down to his belt and gripped his secure receiver hard, making his fingers turning pale. Slowly, he lifted it to type out the next message.

But as he pressed ‘send’ he realised it wasn’t enough. Not even close.

He typed again.

Again, he pressed ‘send’.

There was no reply from his handheld machine. He couldn’t even be sure it was working. Even if it was, he had lost all faith in his accomplice. The man he had hired was adept at technology, and his ruthlessness was useful — sometimes. But he was far too unstable to be trusted, and Samuel now accepted it was a mistake to think he could control the man through money.

Furious, he hurled the device at the mosaic. Metal and plastic parts exploded off the communicator, showering around the chamber and onto the floor. But the mosaic was undamaged, and the hallowed saint remained as beatific as ever, still gazing up at the comet. Then he saw the communicator was intact, too — damaged, but still serviceable.

Father Samuel understood fate was against him, now. He needed something else to preserve the secret. This matter wouldn’t be determined by men with guns, secure receivers or spy equipment. It was about something much, much bigger. Huge forces might be unleashed, which meant huge pressures would be needed to contain them.

He fixed his eyes on the mosaic: this was not the first time the heresy had challenged his creed. Christianity had survived before. The same methods might even work now, in these godless times…

Father Samuel realised he needed some very powerful allies. It was time for him to fly back to Europe and establish an unlikely friendship, all for the greater good.

THIRTY-FIVE

Myles called out over the blaze and the piercing sound of the alarm. ‘Someone’s put gasoline in the sprinklers.’

The team tried to protect themselves as heat exploded all around them. Glenn shouted to them over the noise. ‘All of you: get out — now!’

He directed Heike-Ann to the stairs, then called back to the Russian. ‘Zenyalena — come on!’ Glenn tugged her by the arm, trying to haul her to safety. But this made her drop the box of papers, which splattered open on the floor. ‘We’ve got to go.’

Zenyalena was drawn back to the documents, but Glenn heaved her down the stairs.

Pascal tried to see Myles through the smoke which was rapidly filling the room. ‘Myles?’

No answer.

The Frenchman called again. ‘Myles — where are you?’

Myles emerged, and noticed Pascal’s clothes were wet with liquid from the sprinklers. Petrol — if he got too near the flames he could catch light. ‘Pascal, you need to get down.’

Pascal understood. He moved towards the stairs, with Myles close behind. Quickly they descended back to the lower floor of the Reading Room — Myles hobbling with his limp as fast as he could — where they met up with Glenn, Zenyalena and Heike-Ann.

Glenn immediately started asking questions, shouting above the noise of the fire. ‘What happened?’

Heike-Ann shook her head, concerned that everybody was safe and trying to remain calm for the sake of her unborn baby.

But it was Zenyalena who was most shocked. ‘The papers. Where are they?’ She looked at Pascal, expecting the Frenchman to have brought them down, but he hadn’t. Stolz’s documents were still upstairs, about to burn.

The team members looked at each other, realising the confusion.

Pascal immediately started taking off his wet jacket. ‘We’ve got to get them.’

Glenn squinted in disbelief. ‘You’re going back?’

‘Someone’s got to.’

Glenn, Zenyalena and Heike-Ann stood aghast while the Frenchman started climbing back up the stairs. He bent his forearm to cover his face, coughed, then took in a deep breath.

Only Myles — ignoring his injured knee — was brave enough to follow. ‘I’m coming with you,’ he shouted.

Pascal turned back with a grateful smile as he reached the top.

The smoke was now much thicker, making it hard to see in which direction they needed to go. As Myles reached the upper level, he tried to point over to the Frenchman. ‘Over there — the papers. They’re over there…’

Pascal was already edging towards them.

Then Myles felt a sudden rush of air. A tall shelf was falling towards him. Instinctively, he tried to dodge it and the shelf crashed down just behind him, but books, files and papers had scattered everywhere, making it even harder to get around. Some started to smoke and burn. Myles realised that the fallen shelf had landed over the stairs, blocking their way down. Their exit was gone.

He tried to see through the smoke, wafting it from his face. ‘Pascal — have you got the papers?’

The Frenchman came back with the box file under his arm. ‘They’re here. But how do we get out?’

Myles and Pascal crouched down, trying to shield themselves from the heat. Pascal kicked at the fallen shelf, but the flames seemed to strike back. Every kick sent a new flare bursting out. ‘It’s no good,’ he yelled.

Myles started looking elsewhere. The combustible liquid was still raining from the sprinkler system, making the flames roar, and the blaze was getting stronger. They didn’t have long.

Myles shouted over the noise. ‘Pascal — we can’t go down. We need another way out.’ He retreated back into the room — away from the stairs.

Pascal followed, trying to protect the precious box file. ‘Myles, can you see a window?’

Neither of them could.

Then, as they reached one of the book-covered walls, Myles looked up to see in the ceiling, a skylight. ‘Come on — we can climb out.’

He barged into one of the few shelves which wasn’t alight. It tilted, then crashed sideways, until it hit another and stopped. It was left leaning at an angle. Myles began to use the fallen shelves as rungs on a ladder and scrambled up, dragging his weakened leg as he climbed. At the top, he could reach the skylight. It wasn’t locked. He bashed it hard with the side of his fist and forced it open.

Pascal was coming up behind and lifted the boxfile to Myles, who passed it through the hole above them. Then the two men climbed up, and out. They felt the wind, and smoke-free air: they had made it onto the roof.

Standing on Austria’s National Library, they could see smoke coming out from below. Already parts of the rooftop were beginning to smoulder from the fire underneath. One section had fallen through. They both knew the rest was probably unstable.

Pascal wiped soot from his face. ‘We can’t stay up here for long,’ he shouted.

‘Agreed.’

He and Myles looked around for a way off.

Pascal gazed down. ‘We could jump,’ he suggested. But as he said it, he already knew they couldn’t. It was too far down.

Myles tapped his knee. ‘There must be another way.’ Desperately he looked around. Then he saw a cable — probably a phone line. ‘Do you think it’ll take our weight?’

‘Don’t know. We can try.’ Pascal suggested, urging Myles to go first.

Myles approached the wire. He grabbed it with both hands, then leaned forward. Gently, he allowed the cable to take his weight. The cable tensed, but held.

He slid his front hand along, then his trailing hand. Quickly, he was able to progress several metres — high above the hard surface of Heldenplatz.

But as he pulled himself away from the building, the cable started to sag. He felt himself pulling on the metal — the telephone line was stretching.

He called over to Pascal. ‘Stay back — don’t come on yet.’

Pascal understood, hunkering down as flames started to burn through the roof below him.

Myles kept going — sliding his front hand forward, and following up with his rear.

Then he heard a shout from below. A familiar American voice — it was Glenn. ‘Munro: jump…’

He looked down. Firemen were pumping air into a giant yellow cushion below him.

Myles stayed hanging for a little while longer, waiting for the emergency landing pad to inflate fully.

‘It’s safe, Myles. Jump!’

Myles let go. He felt himself drop, then land gradually as the inflatable swallowed him up and took his weight. Not a scratch.

He looked back up. Still carrying the box file, Pascal took a long run up then launched himself from the building. His legs kept running as he travelled through the air. The Frenchman arced forward, then down, landing just next to Myles. And just like Myles, he landed smoothly in the giant inflatable.

Both men tried to find their bearings again. They were confused, disorientated and covered in black marks from the fire. But they were both safe. And so were the papers.

THIRTY-SIX

Myles and Pascal were helped to their feet by Austrian firemen. A paramedic covered them in a reflective blanket and huddled them into an ambulance, where they were checked over for injuries. One of the crew took off the flexi-brace to examine Myles’ knee. Pascal’s shirt was stripped off, the flammable liquid was wiped from his skin, and a stethoscope placed on his chest. Both of them made sure the boxfile from the library was always in their sight.

A cordon had been set up around the building and police were holding back a growing mass of people. Journalists and tourists were crowding round. With flashing lights everywhere, and emergency vehicles now dousing the flames with hoses from several directions, Myles guessed the historic building would survive. But the fire engines had arrived too late for most of the books and records in the Upper Reading Room.

Pascal wiped sweat and dirt from his face. Still exhausted from his efforts, he tried to speak calmly to Myles. ‘How did they do it? It can’t be a coincidence. I mean — gasoline in the sprinkler system?’

Both of them were almost too shocked for words. Myles put his hand on Pascal’s shoulder. ‘Thank you for what you did up there.’

‘We saved Stolz’s papers. I hope they’re worth it.’ The Frenchman tapped the box. Myles could see he was tempted to open it.

The paramedics pronounced both of them healthy. The authorities asked for contact details, in case there was any follow up, but Myles simply ignored the request. Instead, he limped slowly back to the cordon, with Pascal closely behind him. There they met up with Glenn and Zenyalena, who had watched the whole of their escape from the library’s fire evacuation point — a spot in the middle of Heldenplatz. Heike-Ann reunited Myles with his aluminium crutches.

Zenyalena grinned with glee when she saw Pascal still carried the box file. She was about to take it when Glenn stopped her. ‘Wait,’ he said, firmly. ‘First we need to know what happened.’

Pascal was still recovering from the fire. ‘Someone set fire to the place. Deliberately. That’s what happened…’ The Frenchman’s voice was controlled but tense. ‘Whoever killed Jean-François — they’re following us.’

Myles accepted Pascal’s words, then realised the arsonist might still be there. Perhaps in the crowd, or pretending to be one of the journalists on the scene. He had read that some serial killers loved to watch as their crimes were discovered — joining the audience gave them a sense of power. But as he tried to spot anything unusual amongst the people standing around the ONB, nothing seemed to stand out. Apart from a small boy who had pointed to Pascal’s sooty face, no one seemed to be watching them. Also, no one had tried to take the boxfile.

Soon, all five of them were scanning the faces of the people in Heldenplatz — studying the firemen, police and library staff just evacuated from the building for anyone suspicious.

Myles wondered about a strange-looking tourist, a large Scandinavian-looking man who didn’t seem as interested in the fire as the others. But then the Scandinavian was joined by a woman, probably his wife, and a young girl — he was probably innocent.

It was Zenyalena who offered an alternative explanation. ‘We don’t know for sure that someone’s following us. The fire could have been set off by a device. Either a timer, or something remote controlled.’

Myles accepted she had a point. ‘True. But we know someone killed Jean-François. It wasn’t suicide.’

The Russian pointed to the boxfile. ‘Come on. We need to read through the papers. Now.’

Heike-Ann and Glenn seemed unsure.

Zenyalena’s voice became stern. ‘Look, we have to be fast. It’s the only way to keep ahead of whoever is doing all this.’

Myles and Pascal relented and with little enthusiasm, Heike-Ann and Glenn did too. Pascal handed the boxfile to the Russian, and the five of them retreated to a café where they could read through it.

Finally, away from the smoke of the building, the noise and crowds, the team of five sat down. Pascal hailed a waiter from his seat and ordered water. Myles rested his healing leg. Glenn and Heike-Ann kept their eyes fixed on the boxfile, noticing it was slightly charred from the flames and smoke, but otherwise intact.

With a sense of ceremony, Zenyalena slowly reopened the lid. Seeing the text in German, she passed it over to Heike-Ann for translation.

Heike-Ann understood her responsibility. ‘It reads, “Mechanism for predicting the future”’, she announced. ‘It’s a report of some sort.’

Glenn frowned. ‘Who’s it written for?’

Heike-Ann scanned the paper, her face open. ‘Er, it doesn’t say…’ Then she looked at the core of the text and began translating. ‘… It says: “The methods we have found most effective come from Ancient Babylon, Egypt and Greece — pioneers who suspected the universe was more connected than people realised. They tested their assumptions, keeping those which held true and discarding the rest. It took many hundreds of years for the true connections to be distilled in this way…’’’

Glenn shook his head, distracting everyone. ‘So Stolz was doing mumbo-jumbo shit!’

Zenyalena slapped the air, telling him to shut up and allow Heike-Ann to continue.

The German policewoman duly carried on, pointing her finger beneath the words as she read them. ‘The Christian Church tried to co-opt this growing body of belief — the three wise men who followed a star were accepted into the Gospels, and festivals like Christmas and Easter were set according to the calendars of the sun and moon. By medieval times, this “science”…’ she paused, as if the word science was inappropriate, ‘… was becoming more accurate and so was outlawed, in 1542, to remove its threat. The ban forced the knowledge underground for more than three centuries. However, the legislation became difficult to enforce when, in 1903 and again in 1914, two different courts in New York State accepted predictions based on the planets were both scientific and very accurate…’

Glenn looked at Myles, who didn’t know what to make of it all.

Heike-Ann carried on, absorbed by what she was reading. ‘… In 1936, a US court decided to allow newspapers to make predictions as long as they divided people into just twelve groups. That is how the USA and other western countries came to adopt the least accurate form of astrology and scientific astrology was lost.’

Zenyalena interrupted. ‘So an American court allowed horoscopes just because they couldn’t be true, while accurate predictions stayed illegal?’

Heike-Ann nodded, continuing with the translation. ‘This gives the Third Reich a golden chance to perfect the ancient science, unrivalled by the West.’ She turned the page. ‘We collected details about the planets and information about human affairs, then looked for a link. One of the first patterns we found concerned Pluto: whenever Pluto progressed into a new sign of the zodiac, it brought a new system for administering sovereign states and their money. Each new system was linked to the symbolism of the zodiac sign it entered. By knowing what had happened for the times Pluto changed zodiac sign up until 1939, we have predicted what will happen in the future:’

She took a table from the file, probably typed during the war. The team stared at it. Myles recognised it from somewhere: he’d seen this before… It listed the dates when borders were set throughout Africa, when the US Federal Reserve was established, and for the 1939 Pact of Steel. Then it predicted the start of the European Union, the World Trade Organisation and the Credit Crunch, all with the exact month, perfectly precise.

Then he remembered — this was the page he’d been reading in Stolz’s flat before being knocked out by the carbon monoxide.

Heike-Ann could see the team were silenced by her information. She carried on reading from Stolz. ‘We then looked for patterns between the planets. The orbits of Saturn and Neptune mean they align every thirty-six years. These times coincide with subversive revolutionary activity: the Boston Tea Party in 1773; South American revolutions in 1809; European Communist Committees set up in 1846; Marxist political parties in 1882; and the communist revolution in Russia in 1917. They will come together again in 1953 when we expect major “rebalancing” in the Soviet world, and three times in 1989 (March, June and November) — the last of these dates, in the second week of November 1989, coincides with other planetary events, making it particularly notable.’

Myles remembered Helen reading these dates on the museum’s stolen papers. And he could see Heike-Ann knew all about the Berlin Wall. After the first hammer cracks on the evening of 9^th November, the wall was taken apart with vigour on the 10^th, 11^th and 12^th, and by the middle of that month it was history: destroyed in the second week of November 1989, just as Stolz predicted. The collapse of the Berlin Wall was probably the most important political event in her life, and in the life of most Europeans alive. And yet it had been foreseen with such accuracy, all those years ago by Stolz.

Heike-Ann looked sullen. ‘I studied science at university. This should not be possible.’

‘Too damn right,’ scoffed Glenn. ‘“Hogwash” is the word you’re looking for.’

But Zenyalena encouraged their translator to keep working. ‘Well, I studied literature. Old classics — Shakespeare, Chaucer — they’re full of this stuff.’

Heike-Ann raised her eyebrows — Zenyalena seemed to be an expert in a bizarre field. The translator’s eyes turned back down to the page and she continued to read out loud.

‘“We soon found other planetary cycles were linked to different human affairs. The forty-two-year cycle between Uranus and Saturn correlated with scientific discoveries and inventions. The much longer cycle between Uranus and Neptune was linked to mass communication — and we expect humans to exchange information differently after these two planets come together in the early 1990s.”’

Zenyalena interrupted. ‘The internet?’

‘That’s just a coincidence,’ scoffed Glenn.

Heike-Ann ignored them both and carried on with the text. ‘‘‘We found that since all the cycles between the planets seemed to affect people, when they were added together, it gave us a measure for stability in human affairs. Instability led to war and death. We checked three centuries of warfare, and found there were sixty-one times more war deaths when the planets, Jupiter-to-Pluto, were closing in than then they were separating. This correlation was so unlikely to have occurred by pure chance — about one in a million-trillion — that even sceptics accepted we had found the link. By charting the planets, we could forecast how many people would die in future conflicts.”’

Myles remembered Stolz’s graph with the two lines. So that’s how he did it: the angle between each pair of planets, all added together, allowed him to predict the number of war deaths. And all with astonishing accuracy.

Heike-Ann lifted the police reports on Hitler out of the boxfile and put them to one side. Somehow the official documents proving the dictator was a draft dodger had become unimportant. The pages from Stolz which predicted the future so accurately were what mattered now.

‘Come on, Heike-Ann,’ said Pascal, trying to steady her. ‘We don’t know how much to believe it, not yet. There must be more.’

Heike-Ann looked in the file. There were just two pages left, paper-clipped together. She lifted them out. ‘There’s this,’ she said. ‘It’s called “Nuclear”.’

Pascal urged her to read it.

Heike-Ann took a deep breath, then began translating again. ‘“We learned the date of the first nuclear reaction in December 1942, and saw the date was marked by planets opposing each other in the sky on an axis of nine degrees Gemini to ten degrees Sagittarius. We found this position in the sky was linked to nuclear events in the past, such as the discovery of uranium in 1789, of radioactivity in 1896, and the cluster of advances made in 1932, including the discovery of the neutron. Then we calculated when planets would strike this axis again, adding the traditional meaning of each planet to make our predictions.”’

Heike-Ann had reached the second page, which was a table. It contained a list of twelve dates, the earliest being 1945 and the last 2052.

Myles found himself recognising the dates; even though he couldn’t read the German, he knew what had happened on each occasion which had already occurred. ‘That’s how he did it,’ he said Myles. ‘The dates all match up.’

Zenyalena was nodding. ‘Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukishima — even the Cuban missile crisis,’ she added. ‘It all ties in.’

Pascal checked the box for any secret compartments. There were none. ‘So there are no more papers? That’s all?’

Heike-Ann looked again, confirming Pascal was right.

Zenyalena seemed to concentrate, then kicked her head back, staring at Heike-Ann. ‘Location Two. What was the clue, again?’

Heike-Ann was still too stunned to speak. Myles answered for her. ‘‘‘Location Two: Where it was written, and he grew fat, minus thirty-two metres”.’

No one seemed to have an answer. Myles tried to solve it for them. ‘‘‘It” — if we can work out what “it” is, we’ll get the answer.’

Glenn flicked through the rest of the papers again — the police reports on Hitler, the page from Mein Kampf, and Stolz’s history of the science of prediction. ‘Could it be something here?’ he wondered. ‘Where ‘“it” was written — could Stolz mean where he wrote this stuff?’

Then Myles got it. He smiled, scratching his head to wonder why he hadn’t got it sooner. He took the papers from Glenn, then spread them out in front of them. ‘This is the order we found the papers in the boxfile, yes?’

The others agreed. Then Myles began pointing to the documents in turn:

‘So the page immediately before this paper about “Location Two” was the one torn from Mein Kampf. Right?’

Glenn started to show he understood. ‘So the clue, “Where it was written” means where Mein Kampf was written? So, Myles, where did Hitler write Mein Kampf?’

‘Near Munich, southern Germany, when he was in prison in 1924,’ said Myles. ‘Location Two must be thirty-two metres from Hitler’s jail cell.’

Zenyalena stood up. ‘So, we go to Munich.’

‘OK,’ said Pascal, ‘but we need to be much more professional. Whoever is doing this — starting the fire, killing Jean-François — we’ve made it easy for them. If just a single one of us is reporting back to our national capitals, it’s easy to see how someone could be on our trail.’

He stopped, realising from the reactions around the table that he had said something significant. ‘What did I say? Is someone reporting back to their capital?’

Silence. After a few moments Glenn held up his hand, as if pleading in court, and said, ‘Fifth Amendment.’

Pascal’s face relaxed. ‘OK — no phone calls, and all phones turned off.’

Glenn nodded. ‘… And we better take the SIM chips from our phones too — just to make sure they’re not tracked.’

The whole table understood: some mobile phones could be tracked even when they were switched off.

As the four team members started to take out their mobiles and extract the chips, it was Heike-Ann who was left to order a taxi.

Within minutes a Viennese cab adorned in the latest advertisements had appeared. The team knocked back their drinks and climbed aboard for the four-and-a-half hour drive to Landsberg prison.

THIRTY-SEVEN

The taxi soon found its way to the autobahn — the high-speed motorway link between the historic cities of Vienna and Munich, laid down during Hitler’s heyday. Famously, there were no speed limits on these roads — it was one of the few areas of public life the dictator had not tried to control. Contemporary newsreels about them portrayed Hitler as the master of new technology, which the Autobahnen were at the time. Myles and the team were travelling along an avenue of Nazi propaganda.

But just as the Nazis had tried to lead the new ‘science’ of fast roads, they had also been busy trying to forecast the future. To control the future. Myles realised: Stolz’s work gave the Nazis authority over people’s lives. Like shamen and witchdoctors, if the Nazis had been able to predict what was to happen, it would make them enormously powerful.

Myles imagined how Hitler’s regime would have used their knowledge. They would have built a bureaucracy around it — perhaps a ‘Ministry of the Future’. He pictured a little man with an artificial expression on his face, welcoming him into an office. Myles would sit down to be told what he was going to do. He might complain, but he would have no choice, because Stolz’s science of prediction had squeezed choice out of people’s lives. Myles would be interviewed, interrogated, forced to sign…

The image jolted Myles awake. He looked up. The taxi was slowing down, as it came to their destination. They had arrived.

Myles recognised the building immediately. It wasn’t like a normal prison. Instead of the usual grey concrete, the facade was Art Nouveau, from 1910. Inside, the four main cell blocks formed a cross, allowing a single guard in the centre to keep track of all comings-and-goings. And the most celebrated ‘going’ of all was that of the prison’s most famous resident: Adolf Hitler.

Myles remembered how the judge in Hitler’s trial had been sympathetic to the Nazi firebrand. The prisoner was let out after just 264 days, despite a charge of treason for trying to overthrow Germany’s democratic government. The future dictator would go on to sentence many Germans to much worse punishments for much smaller offences.

Myles recognised the building from one of the most haunting photographs of the Hitler story. It showed Hitler standing outside the prison the day he left, at the end of 1924. Even though the man had put on weight — just as in Stolz’s clue — Hitler’s eyes were still determined, and somehow dead looking.

Glenn was also staring up at the green copper turrets and latticed windows as if it was familiar, a wry expression on his face. ‘So this is where we put ’em, huh?’ said the American, half admiring, half gloating.

Myles realised the American had heard of the building from a slightly later time in history. ‘Yes, Glenn. In 1945 it became known as “War Criminal Prison Number One”. All the top Nazis who’d been caught were locked up here until the Nuremberg trials.’

Zenyalena and Heike-Ann also gazed at the building. Like Myles and Glenn, they reacted with a mixture of awe and disdain. This was where Mein Kampf was written: a place so historic, and yet so evil, too.

Pascal was last out of the taxi. He looked up like the others, then asked a more practical question. ‘So, do you think they’ll let us in?’

He turned to Heike-Ann, who understood the cue. She stepped forward, and walked towards the reception area. Her eyes met an official — an older man with heavy glasses sitting behind a transparent partition. The official seemed intrigued by the pregnant lady and the foreigners accompanying her as Heike-Ann politely introduced herself. ‘Heike-Ann Hassenbacker.’

The official silently raised his eyebrows, as if to ask, ‘and what do you want?’

Heike-Ann pulled out a folding license holder and showed the man her police identification card. The man asked for it to be handed to him under the glass. Heike-Ann passed it through. Only after he had inspected it for several seconds did the official concede it was genuine. ‘Wie kann ich Ihnen helfen?’ he asked in a gruff voice.

Heike-Ann paused before she responded. ‘Do you speak English? I would like to talk to you in English please — so these four people can understand me.’

The official scowled at Zenyalena, Pascal, Glenn and Myles. ‘Alright, then. We can speak English.’

‘Thank you,’ said Heike-Ann. ‘This is the prison where Mein Kampf was written?’

The official’s face reacted immediately. He’d seen Hitler tourists before. Several of them came by the prison every month. Some to mock, some to wonder, a disturbing few to worship. Widespread fascination with Hitler, and the huge efforts to wipe away everything which could be a shrine to Nazism, meant this was one of the small number of places which still had a clear link to the dead mass murderer. ‘It is,’ conceded the official.

‘Do you have a record of visitors to the prison?’ Heike-Ann eyed the man’s computer. ‘Can you tell me when a man called Werner Stolz visited?’

The official turned to his keyboard and typed in the surname. A list appeared on the screen.

He scrolled down the list, starting to shake his head before he reached the end. ‘No. No “Werner Stolz” came here.’

Heike-Ann halted, puzzled.

Zenyalena pushed her way to the window. ‘How far back do your records go?’

‘On the computer, back to 1989.’

Myles could tell Zenyalena was thinking of asking the man to go back before then, through the paper records. But the official was anticipating the request, and his face already told them the answer: if they asked, he would say no.

Myles started to think aloud, knowing there must be another way around the problem. ‘We don’t need to go back before 1989. We know Stolz hid the papers recently, in the last few weeks — since the break-ins at his flat.’

Heike-Ann started to look confused. ‘So he didn’t come here?’

Myles shook his head. ‘He didn’t enter the prison as a visitor, no. But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t here…’ Myles turned to the official. ‘Do you have a… a basement, or underground section or a cellar?’

‘Just a store room.’

‘How far down is it?’

The official shrugged. ‘One floor. A few meters down, maybe.’

‘Could someone have tunnelled down from there?’

The official shook his head. ‘No way. This is a prison. When it was built they made sure no one could tunnel out.’ The uniformed man checked the faces of the people in front of him, confirming to himself that Myles and Heike-Ann were genuine. Then he opened a drawer, pulled out a sheet of paper, and unfolded it to his visitors. ‘This is a map of the prison.’

Myles and the team stared at the simplified blueprint. It was obvious that several details had been missed off so the illustration couldn’t be used to help prisoners escape.

The official pointed to a large rectangle around the main buildings. ‘This line here shows the borders of a plinth,’ he said. ‘Before they started building the prison, they laid down foundations. The prison stands on a layer of concrete twelve meters thick. No one could tunnel under here.’

Disappointment washed over the whole team. They must have misunderstood Stolz’s clue.

Where it was written — and he grew fat — minus 32 metres

Stolz couldn’t have buried something thirty meters below where Mein Kampf was written.

Glenn started shaking his head. ‘Looks like Stolz has been yanking our tails.’ The American didn’t need to say they should give up. His tone made that obvious.

Zenyalena was frustrated. She tried to peer at the map in more detail, as though if she looked hard enough she might find something.

Pascal leaned back. ‘Don’t forget, Stolz was more than a hundred years of age, and frail,’ he suggested. ‘Even if the old man could slip into the prison unnoticed somehow, there was no way he could dig through twelve meters of concrete. He’d need help, and they’d make a huge amount of noise.’ Pascal was shrugging. Like Glenn, he seemed ready to stop the search.

Heike-Ann was waiting for orders from the team. Only Zenyalena seemed intent on breaking the code. But, like the others, she could see no way it could be true.

Then Myles realised. He clutched the paper, and turned it over, checking it was blank on the other side. He pointed to the rectangle of concrete. ‘What’s outside here?’

The official looked confused by the question and simply pointed around. ‘Streets. It’s the outside of the prison.’

‘Yes, but what’s below it?’

The man shrugged again.

It was the answer Myles had expected. He turned to the team. ‘Looks to me like Stolz found the perfect hiding place. Nobody’s going to start digging thirty-two meters below a prison — because the prison authorities won’t let them.’

Glenn’s face still looked bemused. ‘So how did he dig?’

‘He didn’t,’ answered Myles. ‘Remember — as Pascal said, he was an old man. He just climbed down. Down, then across. There must be some other entrance to a place thirty-two meters below the prison. And that entrance must lie outside the prison perimeter.’

Pascal started to come alive at the idea. ‘You mean, a secret trap door?’

‘Something like that. It would cover steps leading down to under the prison. And that’s what we have to find.’

The team started to spread out, moving away from the prison and the bemused official.

Pascal was the first to see something promising. ‘This could be it…’ he declared, peering down at a plate on the ground.

The team came over, with Myles vaulting on his crutches behind them, and Heike-Ann walking at a more deliberate pace than the others.

Pascal had found a folding metal cover surrounded by weeds and long-grass. It was half-hidden, and sited in a triangle of turf behind a bus-stop. The plate looked old — slightly rusted, and covered in a pattern of small squares which Myles had seen before on the floor of German tanks from World War II. It was fixed in place with a modern padlock. Pascal gripped the shiny lock, sizing it up. ‘It’s heavy, but we can probably break it open.’

Zenyalena found a nearby drain cover. She lifted out the thick grill with both hands — it was obviously a strain — then hauled it over to Pascal. ‘Will this do?’

Pascal raised his eyebrows — he didn’t know, but he’d try. Swinging the drain cover, he tried to knock the padlock off.

Clunk.

Nothing.

He tried again. This time the lock sprang open. He tossed the drain cover away, allowing it to clatter on the ground, then peeled off the broken padlock and heaved up the rusted cover to the manhole.

The whole team peered down, staring into a deep, black hole.

Myles pulled a small coin from his pocket and tossed it down. It took more than two seconds of silence before a few faint ‘tings’ echoed back up, as though the coin was bouncing around the inside of a giant slot machine. ‘Well, it’s deep. And there’s probably a solid floor down there.’

Pascal knelt on the ground and poked his head into the darkness. The team waited while his eyes adjusted to the light. Then the Frenchman re-appeared, a new expression on his face. ‘There’s a ladder, leading down,’ he said, excitedly.

Zenyalena pushed herself towards the hole. ‘Can I go first?’

No one answered. They all knew the Russian would go forward anyway.

Pascal helped Zenyalena swing her legs into the space where the metal cover had been and pointed towards the ladder. She looked pleased as her feet found the rungs, then began climbing down, into the darkness.

After several seconds, the team heard her voice call back. It sounded as though she was inside a cavern. ‘It’s definitely very deep…’

Glenn prepared to climb down after her, but Myles stopped him. ‘Wait, Glenn. Wait until she’s at the bottom.’

Glenn accepted the Englishman’s advice. The four waiting above ground lingered, looking at each other as they waited.

Finally Zenyalena emerged again, breathing heavily from the climb, but exhilarated. ‘It’s a vertical tunnel — probably about thirty meters deep,’ she said, exhilarated, ‘although I didn’t go all the way down.’

‘Can you see down there?’

Zenyalena nodded, still catching her breath. ‘Yes — as long as you let your eyes adjust. It takes a few seconds.’

Glenn fished out his key chain, and the small flashlight attached to it. He pressed a button, and the light turned on. ‘And what’s down there?’

The Russian smiled. ‘You’ll have to see for yourselves.’ And she disappeared again.

Glenn took the cue, and approached the edge of the hole. He peered into the darkness, waiting until Zenyalena had stepped off the ladder at the bottom, then followed her down. Heike-Ann did the same, followed by Myles — whose ruptured knee ligament made him the slowest to descend. Pascal was the last of the five to step onto the ladder, and begin the long climb down.

THIRTY-EIGHT

Dieter watched, calm and still. Hidden from view, he watched as one by one, the international team stepped into the hole. Down they go…

He waited, enjoying the moment. Just being so close to them gave him an adolescent thrill. He even felt the urge to giggle, but managed to supress it. They were all so dumb…

Instead, he just kept watching, listening as the last footsteps clanged down the metal rungs.

He didn’t know what the motley international team would find down there, but he knew it would make things much easier for him. After all, they’d got him the stuff from Vienna. Useful stuff. Papers he wouldn’t have found on his own.

He lifted out his smartphone. With a smirk, he replied to Father Samuel.

Then he switched to his own webpage, and began to type.

He checked the message — was 2059 too far away to be scary? Maybe, but the date was accurate. Stolz’s predictions were always precise.

Briefly, he wondered whether Father Samuel might stumble across the page, and realise what he was doing. But it was unlikely. And so what if he did? Samuel’s money mattered less now. Dieter had seen a much greater prize.

He pressed ‘send’, knowing the obstacle course of fake IP addresses, proxy sites and multiple web chains made his submission completely untraceable. Not even the CIA would be able to track him down.

It meant he could attack without being attacked himself. Just like Hitler in the early days…

Dieter also knew he had developed the perfect form of warfare — his strikes were invisible because they were never really made. He was just claiming credit for the inevitable, and letting people assume he commanded a great force.

He leaned his head over the manhole. Near the bottom of the ladder was the last of the international team, just going down the final rungs.

No time to do anything as clever as put gasoline in the sprinkler system now. That had been a masterpiece.

He needed something quicker — much quicker.

Casually, he bent down, and inspected the old Nazi ladder. A few metres below the surface, there was a join where two parts of the metal were held together by just four rusted steel bolts. Weak bolts. And with just a single kick, he was able to knock two of the bolts away.

He checked down below. None of the team had noticed the loose bolts clanging onto the concrete floor.

Then Dieter grinned: the team may have been able to descend into the cavern. But they would never climb out…

THIRTY-NINE

The descent was through what seemed to be a wide chimney, lined on all four sides with brick, until it opened out into a much wider space near the bottom. Myles sensed a musty smell in the air — the space had probably been sealed for many years.

About halfway down he saw a flashlight switch on below him. ‘Watch out for the junk,’ Glenn called out, shining a small light at the bottom of the ladder. Directly below Myles was a decayed mattress, and part of an old vehicle chassis. Both must have been thrown down — or fallen into the space — several decades ago. ‘Stay to the left, Myles, and you can get round them,’ directed the American.

Myles took the cue from Glenn and lifted his immobile leg around the obstacles. He was soon standing on a firm concrete surface.

Glenn swung the light around, gradually tracing the edge of the floor. The wall was mostly intact, with only some water damage where it met the flat base they were standing on. Then something shone back — two small circles, glowing in the dark. Glenn fixed the beam at them, pointing it straight in their direction, and the reflections seemed to dart away. Myles wondered what they were. Then a squeak, and a rodent scampered into the darkness.

‘Rats!’ exclaimed Zenyalena. She shivered. ‘I’m cold. Glenn — give me the torch…’Glenn didn’t respond immediately, but kept pointing the beam around. It was several seconds before he offered to hand it over.

Zenyalena tugged it out of his hands. ‘… Thank you.’ She stepped out, away from the ladder, and pointed the light upwards. Although the beam wasn’t really powerful enough, it was clear that they were in a huge cavern. She shone the light at joints in the concrete slabs which formed the ceiling several metres above them. ‘Man-made. Probably by the Nazis.’

Glenn disagreed. ‘We know the prison was built before the Nazis came to power.’

‘Yes, Glenn, but the Nazis converted this place into… into…’ Zenyalena didn’t know what they had converted it into.

Myles called over to her. ‘There’s probably a lighting system. See if you can find a bulb somewhere.’

Zenyalena swung the beam above them until she found a 1940s-style lightbulb dangling from a cable, happy to prove Myles right. Then she traced the cable back with the flashlight. It ran down the wall, into a metal box near the floor.

Pascal walked over to the metal switching box, with Zenyalena — and her torch — close behind. For a few moments Pascal peered inside, and swapped some fuses around, muttering in frustration. ‘The fuses have blown — maybe all of them,’ he complained.

‘Do you think the Nazis vandalised it before they left?’

‘No, just abandoned…’ Pascal pressed something and looked up, optimistic. For a moment the lights blinked on, then they went out again. ‘… And this thing’s rusted. Stolz couldn’t have used it recently.’ Angry, Pascal kicked the metal. There was crackle and some sparks, and finally the lights hummed on again — permanently this time.

The whole, huge cavern was illuminated around them. The team stared at it, eyes wide with awe and bewilderment.

There was desk in the middle of the room, next to a table covered in papers. Boxes were piled in a far corner. Maps lined the walls, many with Nazi markings.

Myles peered back up. He could see the ceiling clearly now. It was the underside of the concrete plinth beneath the prison. Oddly, bolted onto it were several small upside-down railway tracks — nine concentric circles — and from each one hung a wire with a globe attached.

He remembered the clue: ‘Where it was written — and he grew fat — minus 32 metres.’

Myles got his bearings and tried to work out exactly where in the vast underground space would be exactly below Hitler’s cell. ‘It’s somewhere in the middle of this space.’ He limped towards the table in the centre of the cavern. On top of it, half buried in papers, was a book. Myles picked it up and read the cover.

Strange. ‘Anyone know what an “ephemeris” is?’ he called out, the words echoing from the concrete walls.

He was greeted by blank faces, as Glenn, Heike-Ann, Zenyalena and Pascal drew near.

Myles began flicking through — it was a book of timetables, just like the one he’d found in Stolz’s East Berlin apartment. With a different month on each page, there were several columns with a different symbol at the top of each.

Zenyalena pointed at the page. ‘Look — the crescent symbol. That must mean the moon…’

Then Glenn noticed the last column was topped with the letters ‘PL’. ‘And this must be Pluto…’

Myles understood: it was a timetable for the planets. He checked the first page and the last.

Someone had calculated the position of the planets on every day for the whole of two centuries.

Then an idea came to him. He turned to the middle of the book, then back a few pages to 1989 — November. He ran his finger down the column next to Pluto, and the column three away from it. ‘We can test Stolz: Saturn and Neptune…’ As Myles looked down the columns, he realised it confirmed what Stolz had written: Saturn and Neptune appeared together in the sky exactly when the Berlin Wall came down, both at ten-and-a-third degrees of longitude. The ephemeris was precise to the day.

Quickly Myles turned to 1917, to see where Saturn and Neptune were during the Russian Revolution. The planets crossed — both at four degrees this time — in exactly the month that Czar Nicholas and his royal family were kicked out by the masses. He was about to check on Stalin’s death thirty-six years later, but he was distracted.

It was Zenyalena, calling out from a corner of the cavern. ‘I think it’s a control panel.’ She had found a corroded metal desk, and was pointing to the dials and lettering. ‘I’m freezing — does this control the heat, do you think?’

Myles directed Heike-Ann towards the device. ‘Can you make sense of it?’

Heike-Ann went to join Zenyalena and nervously reached out at the dial. ‘I think it’s… it’s some sort of calculating machine…’ Heike-Ann slowly turned the knob, experimenting as numbers rotated behind a glass display. ‘… Not a number calculating machine. This is a calendar.’ She pointed to the dials. Each was inscribed with a single word. ‘Look — this means “Uranus, Jupiter, Neptune…” It’s a calendar for calculating the position of the planets.’

Zenyalena tried turning one of the dials. There was a clunk from the ceiling as something lurched along the rail. The globe beneath it followed, swinging slightly as it juddered into a new position. Zenyalena’s jaw dropped. ‘Amazing. The Nazis must have used it to work out where the planets were.’ She turned the dial again, causing another clunk on the rail above. A different hanging ball shifted this time.

Myles shook his head, still not understanding. ‘But why? The ephemeris told them where the planets were. So, how did this help them? It just shows them what they already knew.’ He pointed again at the control panel. ‘There must be something we’re missing. Some other button or… something.’

Heike-Ann started checking out the desk for any other buttons or switches; something they hadn’t found yet. She looked all around the sides, then at the bottom of the desk. Suddenly she reacted to something. She bent down and flicked a switch. The globes lit up, projecting light onto one of the spheres near the centre.

Zenyalena ran over to it, marvelling upwards at a spectacle of 1940s engineering. ‘Look — this one’s the Earth,’ she shouted, excited. ‘It’s got the continents painted on it. And there are dots for major cities.’

Glenn squinted up. ‘It’s kind of an odd way to light up the Earth, wouldn’t you say?’

But it was Pascal who realised more. ‘The lights from the planets: they cast a shadow. It allowed the Nazis to calculate where each planet would rise in the sky, and where it would set. See this: the red light…’ Pascal was pointing to the red sphere next to the ‘Earth’ globe. ‘… It must be Mars. The light from it hits half of the Earth — the other half is in shadow.’

Realising Zenyalena was still baffled, the Frenchman tried to explain. ‘There’s a line all around Earth where the light becomes shadow,’ he said, turning his finger in a circle. ‘The line joins all the places where Mars would appear on the horizon — either rising or setting. This model allowed them to calculate the places where the planet would be on the horizon, as viewed from Earth.’

Myles, Zenyalena, and Heike-Ann gazed up, wondering at the bizarre, antiquated invention slowly revolving above them. Then Glenn called out from the back of the cavern. While the others had been distracted by the metal control desk and the hanging spheres, the American had been rummaging through the papers on the tables behind them. ‘Hey, you guys,’ he called. He was holding up some large maps of the world. Heavy curved lines had been drawn on them. ‘Could these be Nazi satellite tracks?’

‘Not for man-made satellites,’ Myles called back, ‘Because the Nazis didn’t have them…’ Then he got it. ‘… But if you put these lines on a globe they’d divide it into two halves. Each line must show all the places on Earth where a planet was on the horizon.’

The team understood. But they were no wiser — why had the Nazis done it? And why build such a huge facility to make the calculations?

Glenn noticed one of the maps had been copied several times. First he saw the birth date and time.

Then, underneath, in gothic script, two words which provoked both disgust and fascination.

Zenyalena lifted it out, and held it flat with Glenn’s help. Heike-Ann, Pascal and Myles crowded around.

It showed several lines flowing like satellite tracks over a map of the world, each labelled with the name of a planet, written in German: Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus…

Heike-Ann pointed to places which had been circled. ‘Look: important places in Hitler’s life: Stalingrad in Russia, the Western Front in France, Warsaw…’

But Zenyalena saw them differently. ‘They’re also places with lines going through them. That line shows almost exactly how Hitler divided Poland with Stalin, and look at Hawaii — when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour it undermined his authority.’ The she noticed another line, which cut through the Ardennes and ran up into Norway. ‘And look: this is where Hitler did his Blitzkrieg — his “lightning war” which surprised the Western Allies — twice, when he attacked there in 1940 and again, in 1944.’

Glenn was cynical. ‘You mean where he lost the Battle of the Bulge?’

But Zenyalena refused to concede. ‘Don’t you see?’ She thrust her face towards Glenn to make her point. ‘His 1944 offensive was almost brilliant. If he hadn’t squandered his army in the East, it would have broken through. It was a real shock.’

Myles acknowledged the point. ‘She’s right, Glenn. Those places in France and Belgium were important to Hitler. It’s also where Hitler won his reputation in the First World War.’

Zenyalena was already pointing at another line. ‘And again: look, Mercury. The mythical “winged messenger” of the Gods. When Hitler was born, Mercury was on the horizon in a line running up through Munich, Nuremberg and Berlin — the places where he made his greatest speeches, and where propaganda gave him power.’ Her finger darted to yet another line. ‘And another — Mars, planet of war: it was just setting, just going below the horizon, over both Stalingrad and El Alamein — the two most important places where the “God of War” abandoned him.’

‘Oh come on,’ huffed Glenn, letting go of the paper. ‘This is getting ridiculous. You can’t say Hitler lost at Stalingrad because at the moment he was born in 1889, fifty years before the battle, the planet Mars happened to be setting over the city.’

‘Look at the facts, Glenn: this Mars tracks the limits of Nazi military forces…’ Zenyalena’s voice was quiet as she spoke in awe. ‘… And it’s amazingly accurate.’

‘So you’re saying if Hitler had been born an hour later,’ — Glenn could barely bring himself to say it, it sounded so ludicrous — ‘his armies would have been stopped hundreds of miles further west?’

Zenyalena didn’t answer. Instead, she began sifting through the rest of the papers on the desk. She pulled out three more maps and read the titles. ‘We have, er… 7^. October 1900; 15.30 Uhr, 48.08 Nord, 11.34 Ost (München). Who’s that?’

Heike-Ann looked at the gothic script in the bottom corner of the sheet. ‘Himmler. The man who set up Hitler’s killing factories.’ She pointed to a place which had been circled in South-East Poland. ‘Look, they’ve circled Auschwitz.’ Auschwitz was on the intersection of two lines labelled ‘Uranus’ and ‘Jupiter’.

Zenyalena answered without looking up. ‘According to legends and old literature, Uranus is associated with surprises, Jupiter just exaggerates everything — which sums up Auschwitz.’

Myles noticed another line, running through western Germany. ‘And that’s Mars, setting on the horizon where Himmler surrendered to the Allies in 1945,’ he said, looking up at the others. ‘There was an old prophecy that he’d betray Hitler, and he did. With this map the Führer knew exactly where.’

Zenyalena had already picked up the next chart. ‘This one is 30^th November 1874, 01.30 (51:52 North, 01:21 West Oxfordshire, England). Winston Churchill…’ She was taking in the map and the places which had been circled. ‘… So Churchill had Mars rising in Italy — where he tried to get the Allies to launch the second front. Uranus directly over Moscow — he sent shock troops to attack the Soviet Union in 1919, and Mars setting over Washington DC.’

Glenn chuckled slightly. ‘Churchill surrendered to the Yanks, huh?’

‘Yes, Glenn, in a way he did,’ admitted Myles. ‘When he was in charge, the British Empire gave way to American leadership in the world.’

Heike-Ann had the last chart. ‘Here’s Emperor Hirohito, of Japan. 29^th April 1901, 22.00, Tokyo, 35 degrees 2 minutes North; 139 degrees 46 East. He has Uranus directly over Hawaii, and on the horizon where they did their Far East attacks, along with Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.’ Then she looked slightly confused. ‘And, Neptune is directly over Moscow. What does that mean?’

‘Confusion and illusion,’ explained Zenyalena. ‘Neptune is the God of the Sea — you can never see what’s underneath. It means Hirohito was successfully deceived by Moscow.’ She said it with patriotic pride. ‘If Japan had attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, we would have been forced to fight on two fronts and lost. But Stalin fooled the Japanese. Germany was forced to fight on two fronts, instead.’

Pascal eagerly started looking around. ‘There must be more than just Hitler, Himmler, Churchill, and Hirohito. Let’s look: they can’t have built all this for just four people.’

They all searched for more maps. Lifting up papers, Heike-Ann asked if there could be a chart on the Soviet leader. But Zenyalena, double-checking all the Hitler maps, explained that Stalin was born a peasant, and nobody was ever sure of his real birthday. Pascal checked under the desk, Glenn went to the other tables and Myles began looking along the edges of the room.

Myles came across a wooden crate. There was some old German writing on it, and an industrial serial number of some sort, with a large letter ‘K’ — clearly from the war. Myles wiped off a layer of dust. He lifted up one side, surprised by how heavy it was, and as he tilted it, a gentle rolling sound came from inside. Myles peered through a crack in the wood to see metallic lumps inside. Then he realised it didn’t contain maps, but grenades. Very gently, he replaced the crate on the ground, aware just how close he had been to setting them off.

‘Guys, be careful when you’re looking. If there are any more old explosives here, they could be volatile,’ he warned. ‘One touch and… the five second fuses will probably have gone already.’

Glenn answered with a call from the other side of the cavern. ‘Hey. When did the Nazis invent highlighter pens?’ The American was holding another of the Hitler maps, printed with lines just like the others. But this one had been scribbled on — in fluorescent orange. He summoned Heike-Ann over to translate.

Heike-Ann looked at the bright ink. ‘It says, “Location Three: 500 metres south of the railway carriage, close to where he…’’’ Heike-Ann hesitated, as though the translation had become difficult. Her face turned up, half in apology. ‘The words — in German it means literally “swapped his vision”. I don’t know the English. “Where he swapped his vision, but didn’t serve”.’

Myles and Glenn looked at each other, unsure of the meaning. Then Heike-Ann turned the map over. A single word was scrawled on the back in the same deliberate handwriting they’d seen in the Vienna library.

She showed it to the international team, who all understood. It was Stolz’s third clue. But where was the dead Nazi sending them?

Glenn started shaking his head. ‘Typical Nazi. He writes something strange on a map, when he could have just put an X. What the hell does “swapping vision” mean?’

Myles tried to decode it for a moment, then realised he wasn’t meant to. ‘Stolz didn’t want us to know. Not us. These clues were meant for someone else. Someone who would understand them easily.’ Myles had a suspicion who the clues were for, but he didn’t say. ‘Come on. We need to get out of here.’

The team agreed: it was time to leave. Zenyalena made sure they collected the maps, while Heike-Ann checked they had switched off the metal control panel. Myles took a last look at the planets hanging from the ceiling, then turned to join Glenn and Pascal, who were preparing to go back up the ladder.

Pascal began to climb, but the ladder started to spin under his weight. The metal creaked, then a joint near the surface snapped apart. Pascal tumbled back onto the floor, the rusty ladder clattering down onto him.

Myles rushed over to help as fast as he could with his bad knee. ‘You hurt?’

The Frenchman blinked, half-dazed from the fall. ‘No, I’m… OK.’ Myles and Glenn lifted off the broken metal. Slowly Pascal sat up, dusting off his hands.

Myles inspected the ladder, wondering how it could have broken. There were fresh marks on the rust, as if a bolt had just been kicked out.

Pascal had recovered, and was standing back on his feet. ‘I am lucky to fall from only a low height, but not lucky enough to be up there when the ladder broke…’ He was pointing upwards.

Myles stared up, too — at the faraway daylight some thirty metres above them, and wondered how the hell they were going to get out.

FORTY

Zenyalena was first to react. ‘Come on — we have to hold the ladder while someone climbs up.’

Heike-Ann and Glenn lifted the broken metal frame, and tried to put it back in place. But the break made it useless: no matter how high they lifted it, it wouldn’t reach the top of the shaft. Anyone who climbed up would still be well below the entrance. The brick-lined vertical tunnel was too smooth to finish the climb without help.

Glenn allowed the ladder to fall back down again. ‘Anyone got any other ideas?’ he asked.

Heike-Ann and Zenyalena looked blank.

Even Pascal seemed uncertain, offering a suggestion he wasn’t sure of himself. ‘Er, could we wait?’

Myles shook his head. ‘No. Nobody knows we’re here. We only found the manhole because we were searching for it.’

Zenyalena shouted upwards, trying to call through the hole, ‘Anybody up there?’ But her words just echoed around the chamber. Above ground, no one would hear a thing. She called again, trying to disguise the fear in her voice. ‘HELLO…?’

Still no answer. They were trapped, and they all knew it.

Zenyalena crossed her arms and rubbed her shoulders. ‘So what do we do now?’ She looked at the three men, expecting one of them to have an answer. ‘Myles? Glenn? Come on.’

Glenn turned his face down to the ground, and scratched his exposed scalp. ‘Maybe, Zenyalena, the trouble is that we came down here too quickly. If we’d taken the time to do it right — like tying a rope up there — we would be in the clear. So let’s not rush next time. Agreed?’

She shook her head in disagreement, then flung her hands in the air and stamped on the concrete floor. ‘Don’t you get it, Glenn? If we don’t get out of here, there won’t be a “next time”. We’re trapped. See?’ Zenyalena rapped her knuckles on the concrete wall, which broke the skin on her fist. She turned her fingers towards the American to show him the damage.

Pascal saw Glenn was about to say something sarcastic, but raised his hand to stop him. ‘Wait. Both of you. We have plenty of time. We’re not short of air. We can survive three days without water, easily…’ He pointed at a small pool of water at the base of one of the walls. ‘… And there’s even water to drink if we have to.’

Zenyalena exploded in fury. ‘You want us to drink rat piss? I’d rather die of thirst.’ Then she remembered something. ‘Hey. What was it the lawyer said? The “Stuff Ball” in Berlin. He said the papers were for “A Foreign Man about to die…” That was Jean-François, right? He said, “A Foreign Man about to die — before the trial by Air, Fire and Water”. The trial by air was the carbon monoxide gas attack on Myles. We had the fire in Vienna. So this is the test by water. The final test.’ She looked accusingly at Pascal. ‘So you’re right, Pascal. We are going to die of thirst.’

Glenn was shaking his head. ‘Wrong again, Zenyalena. You missed out Earth. The lawyer said, “Air, Fire, Earth — then water”. This has got to be the test by Earth.’

‘OK, Glenn,’ Zenyalena was barely covering her anger. ‘So you mean this place is going to cave in on us instead? Buried alive, huh? Oh, that makes me much happier.’

Pascal stretched out his arms, trying to keep Glenn and Zenyalena away from each other. ‘Stop. It’s not helping.’ Not sure how to solve it, the Frenchman turned to Myles. ‘Myles — what do you think?’

But Myles had already left.

‘Myles?’

He had limped into the main chamber, then around the edges, checking the walls for anything which might help.

Glenn realised what he was doing. ‘Come on — our team leader’s right,’ he called to the others. ‘There must be another way out.’

Zenyalena and Heike-Ann rushed over while Pascal hobbled. The fall from the ladder had hurt the Frenchman more than it first seemed.

With his fingers spread wide open, Myles silently waved his hands over the walls.

Glenn watched him for a moment, curiously, then called out from behind. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Trying to find air currents,’ explained Myles. ‘The Nazis must have put in a ventilation system. It could be our way out.’

The American understood, and started doing the same. He directed the others to copy. Soon they were all feeling around the wall, desperately trying to find any sort of breeze.

Heike-Ann hesitated, then called out. ‘I think I’ve found it.’ She had found a metal grill — hard to see because it had been painted the same grey as the concrete inside the cavern. The edges had been sealed with strips of paper.

Glenn immediately took out a pen and started to poke through the seal. Soon the whole of the plate had been revealed. It was about one metre square.

Then Glenn stepped back, asked, ‘Can we get this off?’

Heike-Ann, Pascal and Zenyalena simply stared at it. Zenyalena tried to kick it, but it didn’t make an impression.

Then Myles called out from behind. ‘Can someone help me with this?’ He was holding part of the broken ladder and Pascal lifted the other end. Together, they wedged part of the metal into the edge of the grill and, like a giant crowbar, managed to lever the plate from the wall. It tumbled to the ground with a clang.

Zenyalena rushed into the hole, ducking her head inside. She looked up, then called out. ‘It leads upwards, and there are rungs on the wall.’

Heike-Ann and Glenn shared a look of relief as the Russian started to climb up the ventilation shaft. ‘Can we get out at the top?’ called Pascal.

Zenyalena answered with the noise of footsteps ascending the ladder, each clank on metal echoing further away each time.

Myles counted: fifty-five steps in total. But after the footsteps there was silence. Myles tried hard to listen — hearing only perhaps a faint rattling noise. But there was nothing more. Then there came the much faster sound of descending footsteps.

Zenyalena emerged, frustrated and sweating. ‘It’s blocked,’ she said. ‘It’s an air vent, and it’s at ground level. But we can’t get out that way.’

Heike-Ann queried the Russian’s statement, confused. ‘Could we get up there and call for help?’

‘It wouldn’t work,’ replied Zenyalena, shaking her head. Nobody would hear.’

Glenn tried to supress his frustration, while Heike-Ann sat down by the wall, dejected. Pascal stepped into the vent and looked upwards, then came out again. Like Zenyalena, he had no idea how they might ever get out.

Myles scratched his head, thinking about what else there might be in the room — something to help them escape. Then he remembered: the grenades. ‘Could we blow our way out?’

The others looked at each other, uncertain.

‘The explosives.’ Myles gestured at the crate he had lifted earlier. ‘If we can get them up there, we could blast away whatever’s blocking the air vent.’

Pascal picked up the theme, nodding as he thought through Myles’ idea. ‘Even if it doesn’t clear the way out, the explosion will raise the alarm, and we’ll get help.’

‘Fine, gentlemen,’ it was Zenyalena, still with a hostile tone in her voice. ‘Except whoever sets off explosives up there will probably die. Come on, Myles — you said it yourself. Those old grenades will be volatile.’ Her eyes wide, she starred accusingly at the men. ‘Not ready for a suicide mission? Thought not. Neither am I.’ With that, Zenyalena sat down on the ground, leaning her back against the wall with her arms folded.

Nobody said anything for more than a minute. Myles took a measure of the people around him. Pascal and Glenn were weighing up odds while Heike-Ann still looked shaken. Even Zenyalena seemed quiet for once. Myles knew what had to be said. ‘Well, even though it’s dangerous, it looks like one of us has to try. Anyone got any better ideas?’

Glenn cast a sideways look at Myles to confirm he was serious. Then, after a few more moments to think it over, Glenn turned to the others. ‘Myles is right. We could sit here and wait for Christmas. But I don’t think Santa Claus is going to come down that chimney and save us.’

Still the others said nothing. Glenn took it as acceptance. ‘Shall we draw lots to decide who goes up?’

Nervously, the three others in the chamber began looking at each other. Their expressions confirmed they were prepared to take the chance, as long as the others would too.

Glenn turned to Heike-Ann. ‘Do you have some business cards?’

The German nodded, looking perplexed. When Glenn stretched out his palm, she passed him some small cardboard rectangles.

Glenn checked them on both sides. Satisfied they were identical, he marked a large cross on the front of one of them, then counted out three more. ‘Heike-Ann, you’re not in this because you’re pregnant,’ he said, looking at the cards, which he turned over, shuffled, and fanned out under his thumb. Then he wafted the four-card spread towards the middle of the group. ‘Who wants to go first?’ For once Glenn was speaking solemnly, aware that this card game could mean both survival and death.

Pascal looked at Myles, his eyes asking permission to step forward. Myles nodded his consent. Cautiously, the Frenchman advanced, checked Glenn’s face, then picked the bottom of the four cards. He pulled it free, then turned it over.

No cross.

He allowed it to drop to the floor, exhaling in relief.

Myles and Zenyalena looked at each other, not sure which of them sure who should choose next. ‘Just you and me, Zenyalena.’

‘You, me and the American,’ she corrected.

‘Yes, and Glenn. Do you want to pick?’

Zenyalena tried to make a joke of it. ‘Usually I’d insist on ladies first, but I think this time a man should take the lead.’

Myles understood. Like Pascal before him, he faced up to Glenn, examined the three remaining cards, then picked the top one.

Carefully, he slid it out then turned it over, showing it to the others before looking at it himself. From their reactions, he knew. In the middle of the front: a cross. Myles had picked the marked card.

Glenn’s eyes widened as he realised the card he marked may have condemned the Englishman to death. Heike-Ann and Pascal immediately looked sympathetic. Only Zenyalena seemed vaguely satisfied by the outcome, relaxing her shoulders in relief it wasn’t her.

Myles tried to gauge what he had to do. He lifted his head upwards, wondering how he would manage it. Then he glanced back down at his knee brace, and bent to loosen it slightly.

Heike-Ann put her hand on his shoulder. ‘Is there any way we can assist you?’

Myles didn’t know — he wasn’t sure whether he could manage it at all.

Then Pascal slapped his palm on Myles’ back. ‘Your bad knee means you need help, Myles.’ He paused. ‘I’ll help you carry the explosives,’ he offered.

Myles nodded in gratitude. With the Frenchman, he hobbled over to the box of grenades and together the two men carried it to the bottom of the air shaft. Heike-Ann, Glenn and Zenyalena all stepped back — half fearful, half out of respect.

Myles ripped open the box, explaining as he looked inside. ‘These are old German grenades — they used to be called potato mashers. The “K” on the box means “kalt”, that’s the German word for “cold”. Right, Heike-Ann?’

Heike-Ann confirmed Myles was correct, keeping well away.

Myles gently picked one up, and unscrewed a cap at the bottom of the handle. A small porcelain ball dropped out, attached to a thin string. ‘In case I don’t make it and you need to set off more, pull this string. There’s a friction mechanism inside, which sets off the fuse — five seconds, usually.’

Glenn was frowning. ‘But why is the box labelled “cold”?’

‘Because these were for the Russian front,’ said Myles. ‘The Nazis found their normal grenades often failed in the freezing temperatures, so they made ones which were especially sensitive, like these…’ After all these years, Myles accepted the chemicals inside would have changed. ‘… But now, who knows. They could have become even more unpredictable, or this whole box might be duds.’

He pulled out two, delicately placing them in his pocket. Then he ducked his head into the air vent where the metal plate had been. From the bottom of the shaft he looked up at his target.

Myles placed his hands on the rungs, then his good foot, then carefully bent his damaged knee to drag his other foot up, too. Hand-foot-hand-foot… Slowly he hauled himself up the vertical tunnel. His injury made it hard — he had only three limbs, not four, to pull himself up. But he kept going, dragging himself upwards, careful to make sure the old grenades stayed safely in his pocket. Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three… He examined the rungs as he went, wondering whether there would be any quick way down, apart from falling.

He kept climbing. Forty-five, forty-six, forty-seven…

The top was coming into sight. He understood now what Zenyalena had described. The Germans had built a steel and concrete hood at the top of the vent. It was bomb-proof, designed to protect the ventilation shaft from an Allied air raid. But the steel was now rusted, and the whole structure fixed in place. Myles could just see daylight and the outside world, and his ears detected the faint whoosh of cars driving nearby.

He tried calling through the gap. ‘Help…’ But his words just echoed back to him. There was no way anyone would hear.

Myles’ feet reached the nearest thing there was to a platform and he crouched down to keep his head from clanging against the roof.

Carefully, he drew the two grenades from his pocket and started searching for places to put them. The first he poked towards the daylight, pushing it as far in as it would go. The second he placed on the floor, wedging it tightly in a fissure in the concrete.

He called down the air vent to the team. ‘Grenades in place. Take cover.’

Myles heard a faint scrambling below him as the team found safety within the chamber. Then, silently thinking of Helen for one last time, he twisted the bottom caps of both grenades at the same time, and gently fished out the cords inside from the small porcelain beads attached to each one. Holding both beads in one hand, he tugged them sharply, half expecting them to explode instantly. Then he began climbing back down the shaft as quickly as he could.

Five…

The relief that the grenades hadn’t exploded immediately was lost in the rush. Furiously he hobbled down the air vent as fast as he could.

Four…

Foot-hand-foot-hand… His injury made it hard to place his right foot on the rung each time he tried.

Three…

Myles kept climbing down, knowing these could be his last seconds alive. He was now almost five metres down from the grenades…

Two…

He pulled himself into the wall, clutching hard and ducking his head down into his shoulders.

One…

FORTY-ONE

Father Samuel handed his passport to the receptionist, and placed his travel bag beside him on the floor. Although he was only moderately overweight, it was enough for long trips to be an exertion — the overnight flight from Israel and the convoluted rail journey to Oxford from London’s Heathrow airport had both been harder than expected.

‘You are just here for two nights, today and tomorrow?’ asked the receptionist. When Father Samuel confirmed her information was correct, she pressed a button on her computer and passed him a short printed card. ‘Please just fill out some contact details here and sign here,’ she directed, pointing to different boxes on the form.

Father Samuel feigned gratitude, then shuffled to one side of the main reception desk, where a pen was chained to a leaflet dispenser. But instead of taking the pen to sign the form, he was drawn to one of the tourist leaflets. It was promoting a university event which was open to the public, and it was happening tonight.

He lifted out the flyer, disgusted that such material was openly available in the city, while he desperately tried to learn more about the event. What did it mean if discussions like this were already happening — publicly and seriously — and in Oxford of all places, a city overflowing with academic respectability? It meant his mission was even more vital than he had imagined. Even without Stolz’s papers, it seemed as though, in Oxford at least, the secret was barely a secret any more.

He would have to find out what was said — to discover what information was already out there, and who knew about it.

Samuel filled out the form, handed it in, then took his key card and accepted the directions up to his room.

Before he left reception, he folded one of the promotional leaflets and placed it in his pocket. Then he lifted out all the others, scrunched them up, and stuffed them in his travel bag for disposal in the seclusion of his room.

It was just a small gesture, but one Father Samuel hoped would help prevent Oxford Astrology Association’s speaker meeting on ‘War and the Natural World’ from having too large an audience.

FORTY-TWO

Myles waited.

Silence.

He didn’t know whether to be relieved he hadn’t been killed, or depressed that the grenades hadn’t exploded. He kept clutching the wall, his head tightly tucked in and his grip firm, still expecting the blast at any moment. But it didn’t come.

Slowly, he poked his head out, instinctively looking up. Was there any clue which might indicate whether the grenades were duds? Old explosives — they were like fireworks: not be returned to once they’d been set off, whatever happened. But he needed them to go off.

He would need more grenades. He had to repeat the whole thing: more grenades, another attempt.

His thoughts were disturbed by a sound below him. Footsteps on the rungs.

He looked down: Pascal was climbing up towards him. ‘Stay there, team leader,’ called the Frenchman. Pascal was approaching with speed, coming fast up the shaft.

Myles called down. ‘They didn’t go off,’ explained Myles, apologetically, but also trying to warn the Frenchman that they were still dangerous.

The Frenchman didn’t respond. He obviously knew. Then Myles saw he was carrying two more grenades, one in each hand, as he pulled himself up the rungs. Myles winced as Pascal allowed the grenades to brush against the ladder.

Myles shifted to the side, allowing Pascal to squeeze through. The Frenchman called as he climbed up past Myles. ‘It’s my turn now,’ he said. ‘You should get down.’

Myles briefly wondered why the Frenchman was volunteering, but Pascal made clear Myles had no time to think. ‘Myles, climb down. Now!’ he instructed.

Quickly, Myles hobbled down the rungs as fast as he could, leaving Pascal to climb up above him. Hand-foot-hand-foot…

When Myles had almost reached the floor, he heard the Frenchman reach the top.

Pascal called down. ‘Now get clear…’

As Myles reached the last step, he let go of the rungs and clambered back into the underground cavern.

Pascal’s voice called down again, much fainter now, echoing through the vertical tunnel. ‘I’m setting them off…’

Myles listened: silence, then the quick clang of steps and hands on metal rungs, rushing down the air vent. He pictured Pascal coming down as fast as he could go. Myles covered his ears, and positioned himself flat against the wall. Heike-Ann, Glenn and Zenyalena did the same.

They were looking at each other when the blast came. Myles felt his whole body judder. The cavern shook as a rush of air shot into the underground space. Dust filled the room, and the hanging spheres swayed on the ceiling.

Then the inevitable clatter of an object. It was a body, tumbling from halfway down the vertical shaft. Myles, Heike-Ann, Glenn and Zenyalena rushed back towards the bottom of the air tunnel. There they saw the Frenchman’s body, lying in blood on the floor.

FORTY-THREE

Pascal’s face was bloodied, and his torso covered in dust from the explosion and fall. Myles grabbed his shoulder and tried to turn him.

Glenn shouted into his ear. ‘Pascal — Pascal — you alive?’

Myles put his fingers on the French colonel’s neck and found his pulse. It was racing.

Slowly, the Frenchman started to rouse. He opened his eyes. Myles noticed the man’s pupils were dilated in shock.

Pascal put his hand out, looking for something to grab hold of. ‘I’m alive?’

Zenyalena and Heike-Ann took hold and pulled him up. ‘Yes, you’re alive,’ answered the Russian. ‘But you shouldn’t be.’

Myles was particularly grateful — Pascal’s heroism had probably saved his life. ‘Do you feel OK?’ he asked.

Pascal clutched his head. He tried to explain himself, but the combination of the fall and his poor English made it hard. ‘I think I have “visions”,’ he muttered.

‘You see two of everything? Double vision?’

The Frenchman nodded.

Zenyalena turned her head upwards. Sunlight was coming down from the top of the shaft — the concrete cover had been blasted away. ‘You’ve done it. You cleared the exit,’ she said. Her face began to smile for the first time since they had gone below ground. ‘We can escape!’

Heike-Ann looked at Pascal’s leg. Although there was no obvious wound, the Frenchman would clearly need some help getting up the ladder. Myles started to lift him, and Glenn came to assist.

But Pascal brushed them off. ‘It’s fine. I can climb…’ The French colonel staggered to his feet and, almost drunk with concussion, grabbed hold of the rungs. He started to haul himself up, taking each rung slowly. Glenn and Myles watched closely, following him up the ladder, aware he could fall again, but he eventually made it up all fifty-five rungs. Finally, at the top of the vent, Pascal stepped onto the concrete top of the air shaft, stumbled over the debris from the explosion, and collapsed onto the grass outside the prison. Myles followed, careful to lift his leg over the rusted metal that was now twisted into odd shapes.

There were already three prison staff standing around them, alerted by the explosion. One of them was holding handcuffs, ready to lock up any prisoners who had just tried to escape. But when they saw Myles’ knee brace, they bent down to help. Very politely, they asked to see his ID. Myles obliged.

Glenn, Heike-Ann and Zenyalena came up, one after the other. Zenyalena inhaled the fresh air deeply and turned her face to the bright sunshine, clutching Stolz’s papers from the cavern. Soon, all five of the team were sitting on the grass, glad to be out of the underground complex.

It was Glenn who spoke first, still catching his breath from the climb. ‘Pascal — you need to see a doctor.’

Pascal’s expression seemed to agree — he was still recovering.

But Zenyalena was less sure. ‘If we lose Pascal, our mission could fail.’

Glenn shook his head. ‘This man’s just been a hero. Our mission must pause so he can have medical treatment.’

Myles could tell what Glenn was thinking — they had only just survived, and they should quit while they still could.

Zenyalena was resolute. ‘I think we can all agree on two things. First, that we need to carry on finding out Stolz’s secret. Second, we need Pascal. That means we go on. Tonight. Pascal, I’m sorry, but you’ll have to get treatment later.’

Glenn dismissed her with a huff. ‘Sorry Little Miss Russia, but we don’t even know where the trail leads next. We can’t go on tonight, because we don’t know where to go. We have to treat Pascal first,’ he said. Still shaking his head, he started turning the dial on his watch and conspicuously pulled a long wire from inside it which he held up, still attached.

Heike-Ann looked at him, bemused. ‘What’s that?’ she asked.

Glenn kept concentrating on his watch as he answered. ‘I’m calling in a medical chopper,’ he explained.

Pascal and Myles looked at each other, unsure how to react. But Zenyalena’s reaction was certain. ‘You what?’ she demanded.

‘I’m calling in air support,’ replied the American. ‘To take Pascal to the nearest US military hospital.’

‘No, you will not,’ Zenyalena insisted.

Glenn ignored her, still adjusting his watch. Finally, when he was satisfied, he looked up at her. ‘Too late,’ he gloated. ‘The helicopter will be here in about eight minutes.’

For a moment Zenyalena seemed outmanoeuvred. She stared at the other members of the team, aghast. Then she became confident again. ‘Then we all go with him,’ she stated, as if it were an unquestionable fact. ‘The team will stay united.’

Glenn raised his eyebrows, feigning indifference.

Myles decided that he ought to step in. ‘Is that OK, Glenn, if we all go in the helicopter?’

‘If there’s space, then yes,’ acknowledged Glenn. ‘They’ll probably send a Chinook CH-47, so we should be fine.’

‘And at the other end — this US military hospital,’ probed Myles. ‘Will we all be allowed in?’

Glenn didn’t reply immediately. Then he shrugged, and simply offered, ‘That’s up to them. If not, I’m sure you can stay nearby.’

Zenyalena was still furious. ‘If we do go into this secret US military base, or whatever it is, this is the maximum number of nights we will stay there.’ She thrust a single finger, her middle finger, towards the American.

Glenn shook his head dismissively. ‘You can stay just one night if you want to. I’ll be staying until Pascal’s had his emergency care.’

‘Don’t think the Americans can stop this,’ Zenyalena shot back. ‘And if your watch can transmit signals, why didn’t you disable it when we all disabled our phones in Vienna? And why didn’t you get help when we were trapped underground a few minutes ago?’

‘I couldn’t get a signal underground,’ explained Glenn. He was about to say more when they were all distracted by a low-pitch fluttering noise above them. The whole team craned upwards to see a huge twin-engined helicopter manoeuvring through the sky. The Chinook buzzed close towards them, blasting a strong downdraft onto them which made them shield their faces, then began circling for a place to land. After a few moments when it seemed to dangle in the air, the helicopter started to move directly towards the sports stadium beside the prison.

‘Come on,’ said Myles, lifting up Pascal. Glenn and Heike-Ann accepted his lead while Zenyalena made sure she had the papers.

One of the prison officials guided them towards the sports stadium, and onto the grass football pitch. The Chinook had landed on the centre circle, its rotor blades still spinning fast and blasting air throughout the arena. Aircrew beckoned them towards the rear-ramp, urging them to run.

Briefly, the prison official stopped them, making a point of checking all of their IDs. But he was swiftly satisfied and seemed particularly impressed by Heike-Ann’s police card.

Heads down, Glenn, Zenyalena and Heike-Ann ran between the jets at the back of the aircraft to climb aboard — Heike-Ann cradling her abdomen as she sent, instinctively protecting her unborn baby from the noise and shuddering. Once inside, they quickly found seats and began buckling themselves in. Helping Pascal, Myles moved more slowly, but soon they were both aboard. The Frenchman was taken by a team of three paramedics in military fatigues who strapped him onto a treatment tray for take-off. Myles was handed ear protectors and instructed to sit down.

There was a hand gesture from the aircrew, and within seconds the rotors had cranked back to full speed. The whole machine began to shudder. Then the helicopter jolted upwards, nose first before lifting completely into the air. The Chinook rose quickly, and banked, giving Myles a last glimpse of Hitler’s prison before it roared away.

FORTY-FOUR

It took less than a minute for the Chinook to reach its chosen altitude and begin a steady course for wherever it was heading. The rear ramp was only partially closed, allowing Myles to survey roads, rivers, farmhouses and Bavarian woodland as it flew. The sun had set in the western sky and, from the twilight shadows, Myles reckoned they were flying south.

His attention turned to the paramedics. They had already cut off Pascal’s shredded clothes to reveal cuts and scars, mainly on one side of the Frenchman’s legs and torso. One of the men was concentrating on Pascal’s head and neck, while another was checking for internal injuries. A drip had been fitted into the Frenchman’s arm.

Although he couldn’t hear what they were saying, Myles thought their body language was encouraging: Pascal’s injuries were not life-threatening.

The head paramedic moved towards Glenn and shouted something in his ear. Glenn shouted a short reply, confirming something and pointing back at Pascal.

The twin-engined helicopter flew on for less than ten minutes before it banked again, and then started to descend steeply. Zenyalena and Heike-Ann both grabbed their seat straps tightly as it swooped down. Within moments, the Chinnok had levelled off just a few metres above an enclosed landing site. Then it lowered itself vertically for a smooth and surprisingly gentle landing.

Ground crew scampered onto the machine and rushed out with Pascal, the three paramedics following closely behind. Then two other men came aboard, both wearing smart US army uniforms and calm in their demeanour. One, an African-American who was clearly in charge, gestured for the international team to stay in their seats. They all waited for the rotor blades to slow and the noise to die, which took almost a minute. Finally, the leading officer mimed for people to lift off their ear defenders, which the team did, almost in unison.

‘Welcome to the US Army Garrison Garmisch-Partenkirchen,’ announced the soldier, ‘otherwise known as the Edelweiss Hotel.’ He said it with a twang, then started handing out folded glossy leaflets to Heike-Ann, Zenyalena, Glenn and, finally, Myles. ‘During your stay in the resort…’

Suddenly the man became alert. He spun round, ready to strike, then caught something thrown at him by Zenyalena. It was one of the glossy leaflets, screwed up into a ball.

‘Thank you, Ma’am,’ he volunteered, sarcastically.

‘Edelweiss, like the movies?’ she shouted. ‘Is this a medical centre or a holiday camp?’

‘It’s both, ma’am. When there’s an emergency medivac, the choppers just fly to the nearest facility — which for you was here. And I think that makes you lucky, ma’am. Believe me, there are worse places. You’re welcome to stay here as VIPs while your colleague is treated, and even more welcome to walk out of the front entrance, if you prefer. Just take some ID with you, or you won’t be allowed back in.’

Zenyalena shook her head in disbelief. ‘Decadence,’ she said.

‘Just trying to keep our soldiers happy,’ retorted the American officer.

‘Army Garrison Garmisch-Partenkirchen — I thought that was familiar. This is where Stolz was questioned, and Kirov was killed, seventy years ago, isn’t it?’ she asked. ‘Hmm? And who killed him?’ Then, without waiting for a reply or asking permission, she unbuckled herself and marched off the helicopter.

The official welcoming party raised his eyebrows, deciding to ignore her. He turned to address his comments to his remaining guests. ‘For those of you who want to stay, there’s food, a bar, telephone and video-conferencing facilities, and family entertainment. Each of you will have a suite. Ma’am, if you’re pregnant, skiing may not be for you, but gentlemen…’

‘Is the telephone secure?’ interrupted Myles.

‘Yes, sir, it is,’ confirmed the officer.

‘Good,’ said Myles. ‘I need to call my partner, back in the UK.’

Glenn nodded his approval. ‘Let’s all meet up later,’ he said. ‘Breakfast at seven a.m. ’

Heike-Ann and Myles agreed as Myles was guided out of the Chinook and away from the helicopter landing site.

Passing buildings mostly made of brick and concrete, Myles was led towards the main part of the complex. An athletic-looking woman with a very American smile noticed his leg and held the door open for him. Inside, there were families enjoying precious R+R together, off-duty soldiers checking out a gift shop, and children seated around a flat-screen TV which was showing cartoons. The hotel rooms were clearly upstairs, and his guide pointed out the restaurant as they walked by — it looked more functional than fancy. Then, through a wooden door, Myles was led down concrete steps, past two underground car-park levels, and into a smaller basement area.

‘I’ll need your mobile and any other communication equipment you have, Sir’, Myles was told. He obliged, emptying his pockets into a tray. Then, a soundproof cubicle was unlocked for him, he was guided in, and the door politely closed behind him. Myles was alone.

A speakerphone, handset and computer keypad were on the desk in front of him, with a computer screen integrated into the wall. Hesitantly, he pressed what he thought was the ‘on’ button, to see the screen come to life with a live video-feed of himself. Then, experimenting with the unfamiliar system, Myles clicked on an icon at the bottom of the screen. A list of options appeared. He typed in Helen’s Skype name, and waited for the video-call to go through. After about a second the image switched to the familiar inside of their shared flat in Oxford’s Pembroke Street. Helen was pulling her chin away from her laptop in mock surprise.

‘Hey Helen,’ said Myles, relieved to see her. He had interrupted her eating toast, her evening snack.

Helen finished her mouthful, still off guard. ‘Myles — where are you? It’s coming up “Undisclosed Location” on the screen.’

‘I can’t say, but I’m glad you’re safe.’

‘You’ve been worried about me?’ she joked. ‘I tried getting hold of you, but the Government refused to say where you were. Simon Charfield at the Foreign Office said they couldn’t tell me because I wasn’t a relative… anyway, how’s your knee?’

‘Getting better. I’m managing without crutches.’ He didn’t want to admit he’d forgotten them outside Landsberg prison in the rush to climb aboard the helicopter. ‘How are you?’

She brushed her hair behind her ear. ‘Well, I’ve missed you,’ she said, blowing him a kiss. ‘Enjoying the sights of Berlin?’

Myles paused, wondering how much to divulge. He knew he could trust Helen. But he worried that confiding in her — telling her about Stolz and the Nazi secrets — would put her in danger.

She sensed what he was thinking. ‘Go on. Tell me.’

‘What if… you know…’ his voice trailed off.

‘I thought it might, but I’m a big girl now.’ She said boldly.

Myles exhaled. ‘So… I went to Berlin. It turns out Werner Stolz must have been really loyal to Hitler, because they gave him very important documents. Stolz probably stayed a Nazi all his life. The team of us — the Russian woman Zenyalena, an American who uses the name “Glenn”, and a French Colonel called Pascal, all helped by a German woman from their diplomatic police service, Heike-Ann — we all looked through his papers, including some we got from his lawyers office. And we think we discovered his secret.’ Myles stopped abruptly.

‘So what is it?’

Myles looked at her image on the screen, wondering how to phrase it. Would she think he was mad or just mistaken?

‘Come on,’ she pressed. ‘You gotta tell me. What was Stolz’s secret?’

‘The planets,’ confessed Myles. ‘They seem to be connected with human events.’

Helen looked confused. ‘Huh?’

‘Astrology,’ Myles explained. ‘It works.’

She frowned. ‘Really?’ Her face was contorted, as if Myles was telling a silly joke. ‘Come on. You mean, I’m an Aquarius, you’re a Gemini, that sort of stuff?’

Myles found himself nodding. ‘That’s the way it looks. From Stolz’s papers, the ones we’ve seen.’

‘And you believe it? Come on, Myles — how can you believe this crap?’ She emphasised the word ‘crap’ with her hands, as if something was exploding between them. ‘You’re an academic at Oxford, believing in — I don’t know what? How can the position of, say, Jupiter make me choose sausages rather than bacon in the morning?’

Myles tried to calm her down. ‘I know. It sounds crazy. But the evidence points that way.’

Helen took another bite of toast while she chewed over Myles’ bizarre news.

Myles felt the need to explain more. ‘I don’t know how it works either. But that wasn’t what Stolz had found. He didn’t know how astrology worked. All he knew was that it did work. Somehow.’

She kept at him. ‘OK, so what’s the evidence?’

Myles leaned back in his chair, trying to remember the papers. ‘Well, first of all, the patterns between the planets. Take Saturn and Neptune. Since ancient times, Saturn has symbolised order and structures, while Neptune is linked with dissolving things away, and the ideals of the masses. The two planets orbit at different speeds, which means they come together in the sky every thirty-six years.’

‘As we view them from Earth?’

‘Yes. And the last time they came together was the second week of November 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down. The timing’s exact. Every thirty-six years, when the two planets come together, something big happens to do with revolutions. The next one is February 2026 — perhaps China will give up on Communism then, or the Communists will be returned to power in Russia, or something. Stolz thought there would be conflict on that date somehow.’

Helen sipped from a mug which was out of view of the laptop camera. She seemed to be remembering the paper from Stolz she had read in the hospital. ‘Did Stolz have anything else?’ she asked.

‘Yes. Lots.’ Myles could tell she was intrigued, but still far from persuaded. ‘The old Nazi had a chart predicting the number of people who would be killed in wars each year, and it was extremely precise. One-in-a-million-trillion precise,’ he said. ‘Hey, Helen — you know what the word “plutocracy” means?’

The question made Helen feel like a schoolgirl. ‘Well, democracy is government by the people. So “plutocracy” is government by big money — is that right?’

‘That’s right. Pluto: it’s the slowest planet, and when it goes into a different sign of the zodiac, there seems to be a big deal to do with governments and money.’ Myles listed the dates he remembered. ‘Er… 1884, 1913, 1939… the dates when the EU and the World Trade Organisations were set up… even the credit crunch. The next one’s in 2023. Stolz reckoned something about technology and world organisations on that date.’

Helen’s face became sceptical again. Myles knew that, as a journalist, she’d come across lots of people who were convinced of nonsense. Cures for cancer, mind-reading machines, even voodoo. Usually it was hokum. When there really was something to it, it was only because people expected there to be. It was the belief, not the cure itself, which did the curing. The ‘placebo’ effect. Helen paused before she spoke. Myles guessed she was trying to find a tone of voice which didn’t condemn him. ‘You know, scientists can explain why people believe in ghosts,’ she said, ‘even though they don’t exist. Could there be another explanation for all this?’

Myles didn’t answer immediately. It was a difficult question. ‘I’m not sure. It really looks like there’s something in it. But if there is, I don’t know how it works. And I’m not about to look at the planets before I make decisions, if that’s what you mean.’

Helen relaxed. ‘So how do the Nazis fit in?’

‘Well, it looks like the Nazis worked this out, and more. Stolz had papers predicting events in the USA and UK, and he had maps predicting Hitler would be vulnerable around Stalingrad. Then there’s stuff about when nuclear accidents are likely. And statistical work, too — data connecting future careers with the position of Mars when people are born. We think he’s got more — much more. We’ve only found half of it so far.’

‘You know where the rest is?’

‘No, not yet. We’ve only got clues,’ he admitted. ‘And the trouble is, we’re not the only ones looking for it.’

As he said the words, he thought he heard a noise behind him. He checked, but the door to the soundproof cubicle was firmly closed.

FORTY-FIVE

Ludochovic pulled the receiver away from his head — it was the only way to save his ears from his line manager’s ranting. He had heard enough about the Zenyalena’s travails underground, the rats and the brutish Glenn, whom the woman was convinced was a CIA spy. He just waited until she stopped screaming down the phone at him, which he hoped would be soon.

It was several more minutes before he was able to say, ‘Thank you, Ms Androvsky,’ and ask, ‘So what exactly do you want me to do from here?’

After another few minutes of high-volume hysteria, Zenyalena’s voice began to become more reasonable. Although it was peculiar, what she was saying made sense, and Ludochovic found his pale head nodding silently in understanding.

‘So,’ he concluded. ‘I will check the data. This means I will check the birthtimes and places of Hitler, Himmler and Churchill…’

‘…and Hirohito,’ demanded Zenyalena’s voice through the phone.

‘…and Hirohito. And I will use the NASA website to calculate where the planets were when these people were born. And then?’

Ludochovic listened to Zenyalena’s detailed instructions, making notes with his pencil, and trying not to reveal any surprise in his ever-calm voice.

‘I will do that, Ms Androvky. But I request that you send through to me all that I should look for,’ he asked.

Zenyalena’s single word response — ‘Da’ — was enough for him to start work. He accepted he was there to follow orders, however bizarre those orders may sound.

FORTY-SIX

Myles’ eyes were drawn to a public information notice on the back of the cubicle door. Under the title ‘Far From Home?’ was the silhouette of an American soldier with a rifle on his shoulder and a phone to his ear. The phone line led to a woman and two children standing beneath the stars and stripes. A sinister figure in a balaclava loomed nearby, planning some sort of ambush. ‘If you tell them,’ ran the strapline, ‘you could put them in danger.’

‘Myles!’ Helen was shouting at him from the computer screen. ‘Are you still there?’

‘Sure, I’m here,’ said Myles pulling himself back into view of the video feed.

‘Come on,’ she complained. ‘Tell me who else is looking for Stolz’s secret.’

Myles scratched his head. ‘We don’t know exactly. In Berlin, the Frenchman in our team was murdered and had to be replaced. Then in Vienna there was a suspicious fire, and in Munich we were trapped in an underground cavern. It wasn’t an accident.’

Helen was momentarily silenced, shaking her head while she absorbed the facts. After a long pause, she asked, ‘You sure you want to continue with this?’

Myles was sure. ‘Yes,’ he said, firmly. ‘I have to — it’s too important.’

‘Don’t tell me you’re still trying to clear your name.’

Myles shook his head. ‘I don’t care about that. It’s that Stolz’s papers could explain why Hitler took some really dumb decisions, like invade Russia,’ Myles explained. ‘The dictator could have been following bad advice from an astrologer, who told him he could win…’

Myles could see Helen was beginning to understand why it was so important to him.

‘…And then there’s the other possibility,’ he added. ‘Even more important — that somehow planets really do influence people. If that’s true, Stolz’s work could change everything we know — more, even, than the discoveries of the greatest scientists.’

Helen looked sceptical again. ‘Really? Even more than, say, Isaac Newton?’

‘Isaac Newton also did lots of work on astrology himself — he was convinced there was something in it,’ remembered Myles. ‘When Halley — the man who discovered the comet — mocked Newton for it, Newton famously replied ‘Sir, I have studied the matter’.’

Myles pondered for a few more moments as a thought struck him. ‘I wonder what happened to his research?’ he mused. Then he lightened up. ‘Hey — remember Corporal Bradley? From the papers we read in the hospital? Well, Helen, he was right. If all this stuff — all these unexplained facts — get buried, or just given to a bureaucrat, they’ll be wasted. Like Bradley, I think there’s something here, and it could change science for ever.’

‘I tracked the Corporal down,’ announced Helen.

Myles laughed. ‘Ha — I knew you would.’

‘He went to live in Alaska after the war, where he worked in a government job. He got married, and settled near Mount St Helens — quite close to where the volcano was in 1980. It destroyed his house, and he would have died, but he sold up several months before.’

‘So he’s still alive?’

Helen shook her head. ‘I’m afraid not. He died, back in 1980, aged 62.’

‘Old age?’

‘No — a road traffic accident. In the same week his house was buried by volcano lava, his car was crushed by a truck.’

Myles raised his eyebrows. Bradley’s death was several decades ago, but it was still sad to hear of the man’s demise. ‘I guess, when it’s your time to go, it’s time to go.’

Then Myles thought some more. ‘Hey — did you find out why Bradley left his house? Did he know the volcano was going to erupt before anybody else? It’s like he knew something huge was going to crush him, so he tried to escape, but fate still got him anyway. It just happened to be a truck rather than a volcano.’

Helen shrugged. ‘That was all I could find out. But I could keep looking. I might be able to persuade my editor there’s a news item here. A human interest story, at least… We could link it with Stolz, if that’s not too secret. Where are you going next? I could meet you there.’

Myles slumped. ‘We don’t know where we’re going next,’ he admitted. ‘Stolz’s next clue is ‘500 metres south of the railway carriage, close to where he swapped his vision but didn’t serve.’’

Helen frowned. ‘Who’s ‘He’?’

‘Probably Hitler — it’s been Hitler in the other clues so far,’ explained Myles.

‘Who do you think Stolz left these clues for?’ asked Helen.

Myles paused before he answered. ‘For Nazis, I think,’ he suggested. ‘Clue One referred to Hitler’s friend at school, the second to where the dictator wrote Mein Kampf. It’s as if the old man Stolz tried to code his secret so only a true Nazi would be able to follow.’

‘Except, you’ve followed him so far,’ said Helen. ‘So Stolz did a bad job.’

Myles nodded — either Stolz had done his job badly, or there was something else the team hadn’t worked out yet.

‘Or,’ added Helen, ‘you’re on the wrong track…’

Track…. The word triggered Myles’ memory. He recalled a newsreel of the dictator in 1940, cocky and triumphant — in a railway carriage in France. Hitler’s railway carriage… ‘It’s the special train — in eastern France,’ he announced.

Helen asked him to explain, so Myles told her about Hitler’s theatrical show of vengeance after his first proper Blitzkrieg. ‘In June 1940, Hitler made the French sign their surrender in a railway carriage. It was the same carriage used by the German for their surrender in 1918, which ended World War One.’

Helen was impressed. ‘That has to be the railway carriage in the clue. Where is it now?’

‘Nobody knows — it was destroyed in 1945,’ conceded Myles. ‘It could have been lost in an air raid, or the Nazis might have blown it up, afraid they might be forced to sign another German surrender inside,’ explained Myles. ‘But there’s a replica. In a museum, in France. I suppose the next clue must be 500 metres south of it.’

Helen was nodding, impressed by Myles’ puzzle-solving skills. ‘That all makes sense. But what about the ‘vision swapping’ thing?’

Myles put on his guessing face. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘But I know Hitler was blinded in a gas attack on the Western Front. It could have been nearby. He lost his sight for several weeks. According to Mein Kampf, it was also when he was in the trenches that he discovered his vision for a ‘New Germany’.’

‘You mean, when Stolz said Hitler ‘swapped his vision’, he was trying to be funny?’

‘It’s the best I can think of,’ admitted Myles.

Helen smiled. ‘Well, you’ve convinced me,’ she said. ‘The most important thing is that you stay safe, OK?’ Her eyebrows were furrowed in concern.

‘You too, Helen. Seriously — don’t get involved in this. It could put you in danger.’

Helen seemed to dismiss the threat. ‘I love you, Myles,’ she said, blowing him another kiss.

‘I mean it, Helen,’ he insisted. ‘Whoever’s been sabotaging our team, if they find out you’re researching this too…’

‘Tell me you love me.’ she interrupted.

‘You know I do,’ he said. He winked at her through the video-feed. ‘And let’s make sure we’re together again soon.’

She nodded, smiled, then leaned forward to turn off her laptop.

‘Stay safe,’ repeated Myles, but Helen’s image had already disappeared.

‘Er, you finished in there?’ called an American accent. Myles spun round to see an acne-faced serviceman poking his head into the cubicle. ‘It’s just, I’ve got this one booked,’ explained the young soldier.

‘Sorry, yes,’ Myles apologised. He checked he hadn’t left anything behind, and vacated the small room. The soldier thanked him.

Back in the underground corridor, Myles hobbled back up to the main part of the garrison complex, looking for the rest of the team. It was almost deserted. The gift shop had closed, the big children’s TV was switched off, and the only people in the large reception area were a burly soldier and an infant asleep in a pram.

Myles tried to find the medical area, hoping to check up on Pascal. But instead, he only found part of the base which was off-limits. He was politely but firmly told he couldn’t enter.

He retreated to the restaurant, where, although they were closing up, the female manager took pity on him. She made sure he had all-American T-bone steak with fries and milkshake. Myles ate gratefully — alone, but with the restaurant manager popping by several times to ask if he needed anything.

Back at reception he found he had been allocated a room — one of the largest, and with a mountain view, the receptionist explained. She also pointed him towards the ‘elevator’, noting that English people usually called it a lift. He limped into it, found his room, and swiftly went to bed.

But he found it hard to sleep. He was unnerved, and couldn’t expel the last image of Helen from his mind. She was now as intrigued as he was. She’d take risks to find out more. That meant she might be targeted, too.

His call to check she was safe had, in fact, made her less safe. Just like Corporal Bradley, it seemed Helen’s fate was to be in danger. And what Myles had done to try to avoid that fate had only made it more certain.

FORTY-SEVEN

Father Samuel double-locked his hotel door, and pulled the laptop from his bag. It took a few moments to turn on — time for Father Samuel to calm himself in silence. He pulled out the flyer from the ‘War and the Natural World’ event, and laid it next to the keyboard, hoping the technology would work.

Exactly as Dieter had shown him, he double-clicked on his ‘CCTV’ icon, then, when the prompt came up, filled in the time, date and location of the event. The computer programme began to search, then came back with:

Samuel clicked ‘Yes’, and the machine began to search some more.

A few moments later, four images came up, each showing a different CCTV image related to the event. Screenshots One, Three and Four were all from outside — either of people entering the venue, or the street outside. But Screenshot Two was perfect: a recording from inside the room. The camera was even centred on the main stage. And, just as he had hoped, there was a green tick in the corner beside the words ‘Audio Available.’ Father Samuel clicked on the image, and prepared to watch the show. He would have to thank Dieter for this.

To his dismay, the audience was not made up of the hippies and mystics he had expected. Instead, all the people looked respectable, intelligent and engaged. At the designated start time, the room was almost full.

‘…Our speaker has already made news by explaining how celestial bodies impact on human affairs,’ explained a blond woman, who seemed to be introducing the event. ‘Indeed, his recent exhibition is in danger of making astrology respectable….’ More laughter. ‘…So, Ladies and Gentlemen, let’s welcome the curator of the Imperial War Museum, Frank Wellesley.’

Father Samuel fast-forwarded through the applause. The main speaker needed a walking stick to stand up. Samuel smiled: God had punished the man already.

‘Every major civilisation has studied it — from Babylon, to ancient China, the Arab World and the Mayans of Central America,’ lectured the speaker. ‘And though their discoveries were far apart, their astrology was very close. So why is astrology today regarded as so unusual? Because it’s consigned to entertainment magazines. In the mind of the public, it’s alongside fortune cookies and water divining…’

‘And a good thing too,’ chuckled Father Samuel to himself. He fast-forwarded some more, until the speaker was gesticulating with two fingers.

‘Two big institutions have deliberately tried to discredit astrology,’ said Frank.

‘First,’ he counted, ‘The Christian Church.’

Father Samuel slumped, while Frank explained how Christianity had tried to absorb astrology. ‘Christmas day on the solstice, even though Jesus wasn’t born that day. Jesus on the cross during a solar eclipse. It’s all astrology. When the Roman Emperor Constantine took on Christianity, he made these things part of his new religion. And the three wise men who followed a star — Constantine made them kings. He was trying to buy astrologers with a crown.’

‘But later, when the Church was firmly in power,’ continued Frank, ‘It saw astrology as a threat — an alternative source of ideas and prophecy which had to be crushed. They did this though a Papal Edict in 1586: all astrologers were to be excommunicated. Even reading about astrology was officially made a sin,’ he explained. ‘It was a decision taken by the same Pope who banned contraception…’ There were a few laughs.

Father Samuel silently shook his head. The secret work of his Church had been exposed. He watched as Frank moved on to the second big institution he was accusing of a cover-up.

‘…But the even greater force to discredit astrology has been science. Science used to be about proving things through experiments. It was about seeing what really happened, and then trying to explain it. But now, science is the religion of our times, and men in white coats are its priests. Nobody dares say when science is wrong.…’ The audience was listening eagerly. ‘…That’s why, in my exhibition, I showed things which scientists pretend can’t be true…’

At last, something Father Samuel could agree with. Just like him, Frank Wellesley understood that science had got too big for itself.

‘…like the relationship between wars and eclipses. Alexander the Great, the Crusades, the First World War, the Korean War, even Kosovo and Ukraine — the link with eclipses is stronger than one-in-a-trillion. The evidence is right there, on the NASA website. And I think some scientists must have realised astrology had some truth in it,’ speculated Frank. ‘They knew they’d have to rethink their theories, and they’d be discredited. So they discredited the facts about astrology first. They made it fashionable for people to assume — without checking the data — that astrology was nonsense. Applying the scientific method to the correlation between planets and people was labelled ‘unscientific’. Committees didn’t just refuse to fund research on it, but destroyed the academic reputations of everyone who exposed the evidence. A French statistician by the name of Gauquelin was even assassinated for going public with the facts…’

Father Samuel cursed. He spooled forward to the end.

‘… So the challenge for us is not to show the relationship between the planets and human events. That’s easy,’ concluded the museum curator. ‘Most people know astrology is true, just as they have for thousands of years. The challenge is to use this knowledge for good purposes, and to keep it from people who would use it for evil.’

Father Samuel thumped the desk with his fist. This had gone way too far.

He delved in his bag for his communicator, switched it on, and hastily typed a new message to Dieter.

All means now valid. Destroy all Stolz papers. Call me.

He pressed ‘send’ and waited, hoping for a reply within a minute, as before. But there was none. A full ten minutes passed. Still nothing. What had happened to Dieter?

And while he waited, his eyes wandered back to the CCTV footage, which he had allowed to run on. The speaker was dealing with questions, and one of the questioners looked familiar. A woman, poised and confident and with television hair. He recognised her now: that American TV journalist. He turned up the volume to hear her question.

‘Helen Bridle, CNN. If astrology’s true, how come nobody’s noticed it yet?’

Father Samuel froze. Was a major broadcaster about to bring this heresy to the general public?

It was too much: he’d need a way to silence them all.

And for some, there was only one way to be sure of their silence.