The Gods of Atlantis

14

Oberstleutnant Ernst Hoffman stood inside the entrance to the concrete room that had served as his office, the two Waffen-SS guards behind him and the shadowy figures of the two SS generals in greatcoats standing against the wall to the left. For a frightening moment he felt unable to breathe, as if the closed-down ventilation shafts had finally excluded all air from the flak tower, and the remainder had been sucked out by the pulverizing Soviet bombardment overhead. When he did take a breath, his nostrils filled with the same cloying smell that had sickened him in the Fuhrerbunker under the Chancellery a few days before, the reek of wet wool, stale sweat, nicotine and alcohol, the hint of incipient decay that had made the bunker already seem like a tomb.

He stared at the man facing him in front of his desk. The man had been wearing an eye patch, now pulled off, and had shaved his moustache, but there was no doubting who he was. What was he doing here? Hoffman had been this close to Himmler many times over the last months of his posting in Berlin, and earlier when Himmler had taken an interest in his Luftwaffe career. The pasty complexion was there, the weak chin, the squirrelly jowls, the small, close-set eyes behind little round spectacles, looking at him with one eyebrow raised. Hoffman snapped to attention, clicked his heels and raised his right arm in the Nazi salute. ‘Herr Reichsfuhrer-SS. Heil Hitler.’

Himmler waved dismissively. ‘You can dispense with the Heil Hitler . Adolf is dead.’ His voice was ice-cold, precise. Under the civilian overcoat Hoffman could see that he was wearing the field grey of a Wehrmacht officer, not the usual SS black. Then Hoffman remembered that Hitler, in one of his final acts of madness, had appointed Himmler commander of Army Group Vistula. Himmler had seemed inordinately proud of his role, but had never held a field command before in his life. Everyone knew he had failed to be selected for front-line service in 1918, and it grated on him. Army Group Vistula had disintegrated weeks ago, but Hoffman knew there was a reason why Himmler was still wearing the uniform: three days earlier, Himmler had gone on his own volition over the Elbe to the advancing American army, to try to negotiate a ceasefire. An SS uniform would not have made him many friends there. His proposal that the Allies join with the remnant Wehrmacht to fight against the Russians had been rejected, but when Hitler found out about his attempt to parley he was incandescent and had him branded a traitor. Hoffman himself had been next to Hitler in the bunker and had seen the rage. Himmler had expected to be the next Fuhrer, but instead Hitler had appointed Grand Admiral Donitz. Himmler had disappeared, and was presumed dead. But now the man himself was standing here, very much alive. And it was Hitler who was dead.

Himmler waved again at Hoffman’s raised arm, then offered his gloved right hand. Hoffman watched his gaze, remembering how it roved disarmingly over a person’s countenance before fixing on one’s eyes, penetratingly. He remained ramrod straight, but lowered his arm, taking the proffered hand. He felt the pudgy fingers, soft and clammy, and the limp shake. Himmler was still looking at him questioningly, one eyebrow cocked. In that instant, Hoffman knew he was being tested. Of course. The Fuhrer is dead. Long live the Fuhrer. He snapped his right arm back up. ‘ Mein Fuhrer. Sieg Heil.’ Himmler gave him a lopsided, humourless smile, then took off his leather gloves and slapped them against his thigh. ‘I have always been impressed by your loyalty, Hoffman. You and your family. Dear little Hans. Have you heard from your wife? These are testing times.’

‘They are in Elsholz, mein Fuhrer. At my wife’s family home. The Russians are close.’

‘Then I have excellent news for you. Two days ago, my men took them to Plon, near the Baltic coast. They are safe from the Russians.’ He pulled a postcard with a seaside view out of his pocket and passed it to Hoffman, who glanced down at it. There were just a few lines, but it was enough. He recognized his wife’s writing. They were by the sea. Waiting for him. He felt weak with relief. Dr Unverzagt had been telling the truth about that, at least. He stared at Himmler, not betraying a flicker of emotion, and clicked his heels again. ‘I am most grateful.’

Himmler waved his hand, then pulled a dagger out of his belt, unsheathed it, and ran one finger over the flat of the blade, flinching as he touched the edge. It was an SS officer’s dagger, black-handled and mirror-bright, with runes etched into the steel. Hoffman remained stock still. So this was to be it. Not a bullet, but a knife. He was surprised that Himmler had the stomach for it. Himmler stopped toying with the knife and looked at Hoffman. ‘As I said, I have always been impressed by your loyalty. Not like those snivelling swine at Army Group Headquarters, always undermining me. Not like those sycophants in the Fuhrerbunker. The only ones I have ever trusted are my beloved SS, and you, Hoffman. But now it is time to regenerate, to purify. The Nazi party is dead. The SS lives on. Kneel down.’

Hoffman held his breath. Just get it over with. He sank to both knees, still ramrod straight, staring past Himmler. He closed his eyes, trying to imagine his son, holding him sleeping against his shoulder, standing on the lake shore at his father’s home in Bavaria, feeling the warmth of the infant’s breath on his neck. He felt a tap on his shoulder, then opened his eyes and saw Himmler resheathing the knife and looking down at him. ‘You know the SS oath?’

Hoffman swallowed hard. ‘ Meine Ehre Heisst Treue. My honour is loyalty.’

‘Arise, SS-Brigadefuhrer.’

Hoffman rose to his feet, stood to attention and clicked his heels. He felt physically sick. ‘ Mein Fuhrer. It is the greatest honour.’

Himmler put the dagger on the desk, slapped down his gloves beside it and then went round to Hoffman’s chair. He sat down heavily and raised his legs on the desk, rattling the half-bottle of schnapps that Hoffman had left there. He took off the shoulder satchel he had been carrying and pulled out a swaddled package, putting it on the table beside the dagger. Hoffman followed every movement, his heart pounding, keeping his eyes from straying to the top of the crate where he had left his diary. He must not see that. Himmler took off his spectacles, blew on them and wiped them clean with a handkerchief, then replaced them and stared at Hoffman. ‘I am a practical man, SS-Brigadefuhrer. I have absolutely no wish to go down with the rats in the sinking ship. The Americans have disappointed me. But they will do my bidding, when the time comes. Of that I can assure you.’

The light bulb above the desk trembled, and the dust in the air shimmered. There was a screeching groan, and then another. The electricity jolted off with each shuddering percussion, and the luminous paint on the ceiling flashed pastel blue as the bulb flickered on and off. Himmler dropped his feet back to the ground and leaned over, holding his ears and grimacing; the two SS generals in the shadows did the same, unused to the terrible noise. Hoffman clapped his hands to his ears. This would be it. The final barrage. The battery commander would be firing the south-facing flak guns simultaneously in salvos, for maximum noise effect inside the tower. There would be twenty, maybe twenty-five rounds. He and Hoffman had planned the barrage to give them cover, to allow them to get out unnoticed by the Feldgendarmen and surrender the tower to the Russians before the final onslaught, to save the thousands of civilians crammed inside. It had been a desperate scheme, but now it appeared a forlorn hope. There seemed no chance that Hoffman could escape from this room – and whatever scheme Himmler had for him – in time to reach the Russians and call for a ceasefire.

Hoffman’s mind raced. What was Himmler’s game? The man was as mercurial as the many hats he wore. Head of the Ahnenerbe, the Department of Cultural Heritage. Head of the SS and the Gestapo. All the Nazi arteries of hate seemed to lead to him. Even the Ahnenerbe was malign, a racist front. Before the war, Hoffman had thrilled as much as any schoolboy to the newsreel footage showing heroic German expeditions to Tibet and Iceland and the Andes, searching for lost Aryan civilizations. He had even applied to be a pilot on one of those expeditions, far too young but overcome by his passion to fly. Himmler had made a public spectacle of him, had called him to Berlin and paraded him as the perfect Nazi youth, willing to volunteer to serve the Fatherland even before he was of age. But then Himmler’s scientists had shown him photographs and skull measurements of Tibetans and native Greenlanders. Hoffman had said nothing, but he had realized that the treasure they were seeking was not so alluring after all. It was only later that he understood that those measurements were another instrument of hate, part of the collection of data that supposedly gave proof of the physical superiority of the German people.

He had seen what Himmler’s other hats meant too. A few months ago he had been invited to a party at Gestapo headquarters on Prinz-Albrechtstrasse, where he had been shown the manacles for hanging prisoners and the guillotine room. The victims were so-called political prisoners, anyone who displeased Himmler. Berliners who heard the screams at night called it the House of Horrors. And there was worse. As a university student in 1938, Hoffman had witnessed Kristallnacht, the smashing and burning of Jewish shops across Germany. Later, on a tour of factories as a Luftwaffe hero, he had seen Jewish slave labour at the V-1 and V-2 rocket sites. Everyone knew how the Jews were treated; you could see them in work gangs around Berlin, with their Star of David armbands. Then one afternoon six months ago, on one of his last missions as a Stuka pilot over the Eastern Front, Hoffman’s aircraft had been leaking fuel and he had been forced to land in Poland near the town of O wie cim, where they had flown over a vast camp with barracks and a railhead. The aircraft engine had nearly choked on a thick cloud of smoke that smelled like roasted meat. His gunner in the rear seat had glimpsed the scene below: crowds of people disembarking from a train, men, women, children, a ragged line leading to an underground entrance next to the source of the smoke. He had seen the Star of David armbands, and guards kicking and beating people. The Polish labourers in the field where they had landed called it Todesmuhle, the death mill. When he came to Berlin for his new posting, Hoffman discovered that it was Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler, the man in front of him now, who had been the architect of that horror, something he referred to with his humourless grin as die Endlosung, the Final Solution – in his mind a logistical challenge that continued to preoccupy him even after Hitler had got bored with the Jewish question and had shut out everything except his dream of an art museum at Linz.

The tremors stopped. The guns had ceased firing, as if a monster had expended itself in a final frenzy. Hoffman could smell the freshly pulverized paint from the walls, and the reek of vomit and shit seeping in through the door from the people crammed in the stairwell below. Himmler took his hands from his ears, dusted himself off and raised his feet back on to the planks of the desk. He reached over and picked up the bottle of schnapps, uncapped it and took a long swig. He exhaled hard, put the bottle down and looked at Hoffman. Then he smiled again, crookedly. ‘We are not a nation of partisans, are we, Herr SS-Brigadefuhrer?’

Hoffman did not know what to say. He clicked his heels. ‘ Mein Fuhrer.’

‘No, we are not.’ Himmler took another swig from the bottle, then slammed it down, smacking his lips. ‘This new partisan army that’s supposed to carry on the war in the forests. What did Adolf call it? Werewolf.’ He sniggered. ‘And this force you were posted here to command? The 9th Luftwaffe Parachute Division Lebelstar. A crack new division? The snotty little boys on the roof.’ He cocked an ear theatrically, then stared penetratingly at Hoffman. ‘And speaking of which, is that not the end of the shooting I hear? Was that not to be your cue, to remuster the crews from the flak guns and lead them into battle?’

Hoffman clicked his heels again. His heart was pounding. This might be his chance. ‘ Mein Fuhrer. I must go. My duty…’

‘Your duty, SS-Brigadefuhrer, is to me,’ Himmler snarled, slamming his hand on the plank. The bottle of schnapps tottered, then smashed on the floor.

Hoffman felt the blood drain from his face. ‘ Mein Fuhrer. Those were to be my words exactly. I have sworn the SS oath.’ He snapped his arm up in the Nazi salute. ‘ Sieg Heil! ’

Himmler suddenly relaxed, and waved again. ‘Take your arm down. We don’t need that nonsense in here, you and I.’ He looked wistfully at the broken glass, than back up at Hoffman, leaning forward. ‘Now, to business. What do you know about the Wunderwaffe?’

Hoffman stared past Himmler, unflinching. So that was it. Moments of apparent sense, moments when Himmler derided the last-ditch schemes of Hitler and his cronies, then back to the madness. The mythical Wunderwaffe was the biggest delusion of all, the wonder-weapon that was going to save the Reich. First, it was going to be unleashed on the day of President Roosevelt’s death, as some kind of a holy sign. Then on Hitler’s birthday, ten days ago. But of course nothing had happened. Hoffman cleared his throat. ‘Reichsleiter Goebbels promised it. A secret weapon to be used at the chosen moment.’

Himmler waved his hand again. ‘Goebbels. That little monster. I always loathed him.’ He gave his disarming grin. ‘His children are dead, you know, in the bunker. Goebbels’ fallen angels. An injection of morphine, then a cyanide tablet forced into their mouths while they were asleep. Only I’m told they weren’t all asleep. Not the oldest one, anyway.’ He pushed his spectacles up his nose, then peered inquisitively at Hoffman. ‘Well? What weapons?’

Hoffman remembered the older Goebbels girl. He swallowed hard. ‘In the Luftwaffe, we knew about the rocket programmes, the V-1 and the V-2. A few months ago I toured the test site at Peenemunde with Reichsmarschall Goring. There was talk of another rocket in secret production, a V-3.’

Himmler waved his hand and snorted contemptuously. ‘Goring. That fat pig. He stole art from this storeroom for his chateau, you know. And the rocket factory is history now, bombed to oblivion by the English. Anyway, rockets are just vehicles, not weapons.’

Hoffman carefully calculated what he thought Himmler would want to hear, something he had become skilled at judging over the past few months around the Nazi inner circle in Berlin. ‘The atomic programme. The research at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics.’

Himmler’s eyes glinted. ‘Now that’s a weapon. But the programme was never close to actuality. Not enough uranium.’

Hoffman watched the little eyes dart around his face, then fix squarely on him. He was playing Himmler’s guessing game. ‘Poison gas?’

Himmler gave a high-pitched laugh, and slapped the table. ‘Good. The Spandau gas research facility. Sarin and Tabin nerve gas. But no. Those were Verzweiflungswaffen, weapons of despair. Lance Corporal Hitler had too many bad memories of the last war, when the gas our side released wafted back into our own trenches and blinded him. Anyway, gas is inefficient. You need lots of it, and lots of bombs and shells to disperse it.’

Hoffman stared at Himmler, his mind racing. He had heard other rumours. A few months ago, a former professor of his had invited him for dinner in Heidelberg. After too much schnapps, he had told Hoffman of his secret work for the Ahnenerbe, the Department of Cultural Heritage. He had said that the search for Aryan roots, for precursor civilizations – for Atlantis – was not all that it seemed. And it was not just the sordid business of collecting craniological measurements to support racist theory. There had been another purpose, equally sinister and top secret. They had scoured the world for ancient medicines, for ancient cures: among primitive peoples, in mummies, under polar ice, deep underwater. But, the man had drunkenly whispered, it was not the cure they wanted. They wanted the disease. Hoffman had not been the only one the man had spoken to after too much drink, and the Gestapo had got wind of his indiscretions. He had disappeared soon after into Himmler’s House of Horrors. Hoffman pursed his lips and shook his head. It was time to allow Himmler his flourish. ‘Nothing, mein Fuhrer. I can’t think.’

Himmler slapped the table, then drew himself forward on his elbows, his face gleaming. ‘Well, I will let you in on a secret.’ He opened his arms expansively. ‘What went on in this room, here in the Zoo flak tower?’

Hoffman looked straight at him. ‘It was a storage vault for the treasures of the Berlin museums, placed here in 1942 when the English terror-bombing began.’ He glanced at the crate to Himmler’s left, then instantly regretted it. Himmler’s eye had followed his. The man saw everything. Himmler reached over and put his hand on the crate inches from the order book Hoffman had used as a diary. He rubbed a smear of dust, saw the dirt on his hand and then wiped his fingers on the cover of the order book. Hoffman could barely breathe. Himmler sat back, pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his hand again, then inspected his fingernails. He gave Hoffman an amused look.

‘You think these crates contain some kind of Wunderwaffe? They are what they say they are. They contain Schliemann’s treasure from Troy. I blackmailed that cretin Bormann into leaving these three here, on pain of telling Hitler that Bormann was actually stealing the rest for himself. Adolf dreamed that all of these treasures were going to his fantasy Fuhrermuseum in Linz, that absurd architect’s model he kept poring over in the bunker. Well, these three crates I kept for myself. I believe you have met Dr Unversagt, who was watching over them when you arrived? I had hoped to return for them once the Americans had joined us, but now they will be taken by the Russians. It is of no moment. My best treasures await me elsewhere, in another secret bunker, all of my greatest artefacts from Wewelsburg as well as the best of those from Troy, the ones the public never saw. I even have a small art collection of my own, including my favourite Raphael. You see, I am a far more discerning collector than Goring or Bormann. These men were merely gangsters.’ He jerked his head at the broken bust of Bismarck on the floor behind. ‘The Iron Chancellor was a friend of Schliemann’s, you know. Perhaps they talked of taking the world by storm, with the broken pieces of myth in these crates from Troy. You approve, Herr SS-Brigadefuhrer, of this talk of world domination?’

‘ Mein Fuhrer.’

Himmler patted his pocket, took out a silver hip flask, shook it, and then grunted. One of the SS generals in the shadows behind Hoffman reached over with a flask of his own. Himmler unscrewed the lid, sniffed it, then offered it back to the man. ‘You first, Herr Obergruppenfuhrer.’ The man clicked his heels and took the flask, and Hoffman heard the sound of trickling and swallowing. The man whipped out a handkerchief, wiped the flask and handed it back to Himmler, then stepped back into the shadows. Himmler swilled the flask around, then put it on the desk. ‘Perhaps not,’ he muttered, looking at the general and then eyeing Hoffman. ‘And certainly not for you, Herr SS-Brigadefuhrer. For what is to come, you need a clear head.’

Himmler reached over for the swaddled package he had taken from his satchel. As he did so, Hoffman realized that something was different outside. The background vibration of exploding shells against the concrete of the gun platform had ceased. The Russian infantry must have taken the Zoo grounds, and would be too close for their heavy artillery to carry on targeting the bunker. Hoffman tensed. The flak tower was now in the eye of the storm; it could only be a matter of time before the Russian tanks began firing armour-piercing rounds point-blank at the steel window shutters, punching holes for the flame-throwers to shoot through. Hoffman saw that Himmler sensed the change too, that he knew their time was running out. He leaned forward, the crooked smile gone. ‘Listen to me, Hoffman, and listen well. You said you knew about the Spandau gas research laboratories. Well, the Zoo tower was not just for the storage of treasures. There is another chamber, deep below the water reservoir. The reservoir walls act as a barrier to prevent what is inside from escaping, from being released into the atmosphere. You understand me?’

‘ Mein Fuhrer.’

‘My Ahnenerbe men searched the world for ancient diseases, for ones long thought dormant, diseases against which people today would have little resistance. They scoured the ancient literature. A particularly fastidious young researcher in Heidelberg eventually found an account of what we wanted: an extraordinarily toxic waterborne bacterium that may have killed Alexander the Great. Under the pretence of searching for a lost civilization under the ice, my explorers and scientists went to the most extreme fresh-water environments in the world, to Iceland and Greenland, seeking the deadliest strain of the bacterium they could find. Eventually they discovered it, at a place that only the most courageous of my divers could reach. We had already embarked on another quest, for a particular virus. This time we did not need to look so far back in history. It was the Spanish influenza virus that killed twenty million people at the end of the First World War. A virus that Hitler saw as divine vengeance against the world for inflicting such humiliation on the German people. A virus that I saw as the tool of ultimate power. For years my scientists thought it could never be recovered. They exhumed body after body across Germany. But the Blitzkrieg and the conquest of Europe greatly expanded the search area. Eventually, in the Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris, they found the well-preserved corpses of two influenza victims who had been buried in lead-lined coffins. They took them to a bunker laboratory deep in a forest in Upper Saxony, and they isolated the virus from the cadavers. I ordered a labour camp to be set up, disguised as a camp for forest workers. We brought in prisoners of all races, young men and women, strong, healthy, the backbone of any country. After many experiments with the virus, my scientists tested the most promising mutations on the prisoners. They added the bacterium to make it more potent. Gradually we improved it until all of the infected people died. Our work had produced a deadly weapon. A Wunderwaffe, yes?’

Hoffman felt physically sick. ‘A Wunderwaffe, mein Fuhrer.’

Himmler reached over and pulled the swaddled package on the table towards him, clunking it on the planks. It sounded heavy, metallic. He looked at Hoffman intently. ‘My detractors think I am obsessed with the occult, with mystical symbols and rituals. They think it clouds my reason, but that is what I wished them to think. In reality I use it to cloak my intentions. I needed an artifice to shroud my wonder-weapon in mystique, to convince those who would follow me that the plan to use the weapon was in the Nazi cause. What better than the ancient symbolism I myself had nurtured, and had placed at the heart of Nazi ideology?’ He waved his hand at the crates. ‘Schliemann’s greatest treasure was not found at Troy but at the Greek citadel of Mycenae, buried under the Mask of Agamemnon. It was a most astonishing discovery, and fell into my hands when we dug beneath Schliemann’s house in Athens after we had conquered Greece in 1941, to follow a rumour that he had concealed treasures there. We found it wrapped with a note by Schliemann’s wife Sophia about the discovery, placed there after his death. It was nothing less than the sacred palladion of the Trojans, brought back to Greece by the victorious Greek king Agamemnon. The Trojans thought the palladion had fallen from heaven, a divine gift to the founder of their city. In a sense they were right: it was a meteorite, probably brought to Troy millennia before from some distant place. Meteorites are found most easily on ice, and I convinced my followers that this was vindication of Welteislehre – the so-called world ice theory developed by my Ahnenerbe scholars, a mad fantasy – and that it was a sacred artefact from the supposed Ice Age precursor civilization that had led us to scour Iceland and Greenland for clues. At some time in prehistory the meteorite had been fashioned by human hands into the shape you will see, and then melded with gold: meteoritic iron on one side, gold on the other. I told my followers that it had been forged in Atlantis. It is the most ancient Aryan symbol, a swastika.’

Hoffman stared in amazement at the shape within the package, about fifteen centimetres across. Himmler held him in his gaze. ‘With the iron surface facing down, it is a reverse swastika, a symbol of ancient Troy. You can see it decorating ancient potsherds from Troy illustrated in Schliemann’s book. But there’s more. When my scientists analysed the meteoritic iron, they found it had a unique magnetic signature. One of them came up with an ingenious idea. By holding the palladion with the iron facing down, it could be used as a key, one that could never be replicated. A magnetic mechanism aligned to the unique signature of the meteoritic iron could allow doors to be opened, doors to the secret vault that contained the Wunderwaffe.’

‘The chamber beneath this tower?’ Hoffman murmured.

‘I embedded the palladion in the most secret core of SS ideology. It was concealed below the floor of my SS headquarters at Wewelsburg Castle, like a sacred reliquary. Every new SS general had to swear an oath on that spot. You yourself have been there, when I showed you the cover to the reliquary with the reverse swastika on top, the arms of the cross bending to the left instead of the right. But only a select few knew the significance of what lay concealed beneath – the palladion – and its use as a key. For those, I devised an activation signal called the Agamemnon Code. A simple message, an image of the reverse swastika inside a red roundel, would be sent to a few chosen followers when the time was right. It would signal the start of my plan. Not Adolf ’s plan, but my plan. A plan for a new Reich and a new Fuhrer, but a Reich of global dimensions, one based far away from the squalor and mess of Nazi Germany.’

Hoffman suddenly remembered Dr Unverzagt. He reached into his tunic pocket, and pulled out the crumpled piece of paper the man had given him. He smoothed it out and held it up, showing the reverse swastika. ‘You mean like this?’

Himmler nodded. ‘Dr Unverzagt was one of the select few. I knew that Wewelsburg would be stripped bare by the Allies when they captured the castle, so I had the palladion removed to a secret location deep inside a salt mine in Poland. Then, with the advance of the Russians, it was taken to the bunker in the forest in Upper Saxony where the disease weapon had been perfected. The bacterium was kept there, and the virus in the secret storeroom below us now in the Zoo tower. Both could only be accessed using the palladion as a key. Twelve days ago, I persuaded Hitler to issue the command to destroy the infrastructure of Germany. My followers were ready, and the Agamemnon Code was activated. The palladion was brought to me. Most of my followers are now dead, those who believed I was merely a devoted acolyte of Adolf, those who were deluded into thinking that releasing the Wunderwaffe was to be a final act of loyalty to Hitler. They served their purpose, as obediently and loyally as I had apparently served Adolf. Their elimination was also part of my plan. Only a select few survived, those who knew my true intentions and were loyal to me and my cause above all else. Unverzagt was the penultimate link in the chain. Now it passes to you.’

Hoffman stared at the package. Was his own elimination part of that plan, too? ‘If I am the last link, why am I only finding out about this now?’

Himmler leaned back. ‘It was essential that this plan appeared to most of my followers to be about loyalty to Hitler. That way I could attract the most fanatical Nazis, the most ruthless. It was a plan to enact once Hitler was dead. It would seem to Hitler’s followers like Gotterdammerung, the final act of loyalty to the Third Reich. With impending annihilation, their loyalty could easily be switched to self-destruction. They believed that my intention was to release the disease weapon and inflict as much horror as possible on the world that had betrayed Hitler, and then to join Adolf in some kind of Valhalla with all the Aryan heroes and gods of the past.’

Hoffman stared at Himmler, barely able to believe what he had been hearing, the full truth of it only now hitting him. Himmler had always seemed so obsequious to Hitler, idolizing him. If he was telling the truth now, if this was not just some insane pipe dream, then it had all been a sham, all those years when Himmler had seemed like the bulwark of the Third Reich, the man whose administrative efficiency made up for the incompetence of Hitler and the others of his inner circle. Hoffman cleared his throat. ‘But for you the wonder-weapon has another purpose?’

Himmler stared at him. ‘The victors in this war, the English, the Americans, the Russians, those who delude themselves that they are the world powers to come, have their own Wunderwaffe, the atomic bomb. We know the Americans already have it, and I ensured that the key developments of our own atomic research programme at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute were left there to be captured by the Russians. This means that the Americans and the Russians will be trapped in a stalemate. Neither side will be able to use the weapon against the other, knowing that to launch it would provoke a response that would destroy the aggressor as well. But my new weapon is different. When I reveal it to the Americans and the Russians, they will know that I am prepared to use it. They have discovered the death factories. They know that if I can do that to the Jews, then I am capable of anything. The Final Solution was not just about crackpot racial theory. That was a cover for me too. And the threat of destruction will be entirely one-sided. I will be safe, and they won’t know where to hit back. I can hold the world to ransom. We will be safe. In our new Atlantis.’

Hoffman’s throat was dry. How much of this was he to believe? Was it all a huge delusion, another Nazi fantasy of salvation? His mind raced back over the last few days, searching for anything that might corroborate Himmler’s story. He remembered the orders he had received to report to the Zoo flak tower, issued from Gestapo headquarters. That had been unusual, but nobody disobeyed orders from the Gestapo, with instant executions going on all round. Hoffman had been desperate to escape from the Chancellery and the Fuhrerbunker and had welcomed the orders without a second’s hesitation. It had never occurred to him that the order might have come from Himmler himself, since by then Himmler had been excommunicated and was on the run, possibly dead. But it made sense. If the Gestapo and the SS knew that Himmler was still alive after Hitler’s death, their first loyalty would be to him, and they would obey any instruction he gave them. Himmler had created a nexus of power that had bound the strongest and most fanatical Nazis to him, knowing that that was what would matter in these final days. He had seen the fall of Berlin coming, and had planned for it. Hoffman had a sudden flashback to the Wagner concert a few days before. Behind all of Himmler’s symbolism, all the mythology, the heroic illusion that Wagner so embodied for the Nazis, there was a malign purpose. Himmler had been playing them all along. He had been orchestrating this since before the war.

Hoffman thought hard. Himmler had set up the Ahnenerbe more than ten years before, when he had begun to create the fantasy SS order-castle at Wewelsburg. Hoffman was beginning to think the unthinkable. He remembered all the hats Himmler wore, his tentacles in every limb of the Nazi state, his fingerprint on all the worst crimes: a man who had the ear of Hitler, who could feed the delusions, who could stoke up Hitler’s insane interventions in all aspects of the war, dooming the Reich to collapse and orchestrating the slide into defeat. He recalled what he had seen that day from his aircraft over Poland, the death camp at Auschwitz. Was this what that had really been all about? Had the most vile crime against humanity been part of the scheme of one man to usurp Nazi power, to elevate himself to the status of a god? All the death and suffering. The mass of humanity extinguished by this monstrosity seemed incomprehensible in its scale. He could only think of the children in the Fuhrerbunker, of the boy in the outsized helmet on the rooftop, his ears bleeding, doomed forever to hear the guns of this place. Who had been the true Fuhrer? Had they really all been dancing to Himmler’s tune?

He looked into the cold eyes opposite. Were they the eyes of a madman? Or were they the eyes of a ruthlessly calculating gangster, a megalomaniac whose time had come?

‘Do you have a torch?’ Himmler demanded.

Hoffman snapped back to the present. He had to keep focused. He patted his tunic pocket, and nodded. ‘Essential in the tower when the generator fails.’

‘Listen well. From here you will go to the entrance of the ammunition elevator. My two Waffen-SS guards will accompany you. You will take the spiral staircase down to the magazine. From there, follow the tunnel to the underground water reservoir, then the walkway round to the far wall. You will see a swastika symbol impressed into the wall, every metre. A reverse swastika.’ He put his hand on the swaddled object in front of him. ‘Go to the fifteenth swastika to the left from the entrance. You will use the palladion to open the door behind it, keeping the iron side of the palladion inwards. The door lock is magnetic and will spring open. Go down the shaft, and follow the tunnel that leads under the reservoir. There you will see another door with the same symbol. Use the key again. Inside you will find a lead box, and inside that a metal cylinder like a cigar case that contains a phial. Do not unscrew the cylinder. Seal it in your tunic pocket. You are with me?’

‘ Mein Fuhrer.’

‘If you lose count and try any other than the fifteenth symbol, the chamber will self-destruct. The Zoo tower will collapse inwards. A hundred thousand tons of concrete will fall on you. Do you understand?’

‘Completely.’

‘Go back up the shaft to the walkway around the reservoir. The guards will have been waiting for you there, and they will leave you and return to tell me of your success. Count four doors to the right from the shaft, and you will find another door with the swastika, leading to your escape tunnel. On opening that door with the palladion, you will have thirty seconds to close it behind you. Explosive charges around the reservoir will detonate, flooding the chamber beneath it and sealing off all the entrances. You understand?’

Hoffman nodded, his face set grimly. It seemed another absurd farce, symbols and secret passageways like Wewelsburg Castle, but he had no choice. His family’s salvation was at the end of that escape tunnel. Himmler eyed him closely, his face set in the quizzical smile, then continued: ‘We planned for this contingency – for an enemy onslaught – when the complex beneath the Zoo tower was built, and it is essential now that we activate the self-destruct charges, because the Russians are using the city sewer system to come up behind our lines. But my engineers also secretly laid massive charges below the foundations that will destroy the Zoo tower entirely. That is the job of the two generals behind you. Their families are here in the tower. I arranged that, so they could be reunited. Now their task is to destroy the tower before the Russians move in, to erase all evidence of what went on beneath the reservoir. They too are now SS knights. Herren SS-Obergruppenfuhrer?’

‘ Mein Fuhrer.’ The two men spoke in ragged unison, gruffly, and Hoffman heard their heels click. He felt a cold trickle of sweat down his back. Destroy the tower. Thirty thousand civilians were cowering inside. It was not the Russians the people of Berlin should have feared the most, but their own leaders. He saw images of the circus again, the insane spectacle he had been forced to attend after the Wagner concert, flashing and swirling before his eyes, confusing him. He was dizzy, reeling. He must try to stay in control, for the sake of his family, if they were truly still alive. There was still a chance.

Himmler looked at him. ‘The tunnel from the reservoir exits beneath Gestapo headquarters on Prinz-Albrechtstrasse. Use the palladion again as a key to get out. Close the door, and thirty seconds after that the tunnel will self-destruct.’ Himmler glanced at his watch. ‘Waiting outside the tunnel precisely thirty-five minutes from now will be two Gestapo officers who will be your security guards. The Gestapo headquarters building is defended by remnants of the SS-Charlemagne and SS-Nordland divisions, who will fight to the death. You understand me?’

‘Completely.’

‘You will arrive there after dark. There is an improvised landing strip on the street, kept clear by the Waffen-SS. A Fieseler Storch aircraft is waiting under cover. You can still fly, Herr SS-Brigadefuhrer?’

‘Naturally.’

‘Of course you can.’ Himmler cracked the crooked smile again. ‘That is why I chose you for this mission. You are one of our best pilots. Do you remember coming to me when you were a boy, wanting to fly for the Ahnenerbe? I was most impressed. Most impressed. You were the perfect age, the perfect material. And who do you think arranged for you to be posted six months ago to Berlin, to be feted, to be part of the inner circle where I could deploy you to this tower when the time was right? You were a hero of the Reich, a man with the perfect credentials, the perfect wife and family. Do you remember that it was I who introduced you to Heidi? I have looked after you in every way. I needed you here once I knew the end was near.’

Hoffman swallowed hard. It was true. He had been played all along . And maybe Himmler had been right. Hoffman had been a fearless pilot, but maybe he had been too compliant. His passion for flying had clouded his ability to question the purpose of the war. Perhaps that was what Himmler saw in him, and nurtured. And his beautiful blonde wife, had that been arranged too? He banished the thought from his mind. He forced himself to smile, shaking his head as if in dawning realization, in wonder at Himmler’s scheme. ‘ Mein Fuhrer. It is a great honour.’

Himmler waved his hand dismissively. ‘The Storch has fuel and maps to get you to Plon by the Baltic Sea. You will fly low out of Berlin, down the streets. The Soviet gunners will be taken by surprise, as they believe the Luftwaffe is finished. You are an expert night navigator. Do you remember when you were ordered from your squadron to attend night navigation school? Odd for a Stuka pilot, didn’t you think? After landing at Plon, you will be taken to see your family for half an hour, and then to a secret U-boat base. When the enemy finds out that Heinrich Himmler and his most loyal officers have escaped, they will think we intend to carry on some pretence of Adolf ’s thousand-year Reich.’ He curled his lip contemptuously. ‘The thousand-year Reich? It was always going to be a mess with Adolf in charge. I knew him twenty-five years ago when he was an obscure agitator. I created him. Good at rabble-rousing, but not much else. Perfect for my purposes.’

Hoffman had a terrible realization. What was going on now, the fall of Berlin, the horror in the Zoo tower, all of this was part of the theatre, too. The Nazi machinery had not been brought to its knees through incompetence and madness. It had been part of a plan. He stared at Himmler. ‘Where shall I go?’

‘You will keep the cylinder with the phial and the palladion with you. When the U-boat arrives at its secret destination, you will be shown your quarters. There will be a reverse swastika in the wall. Use the palladion again. Put the cylinder inside, and close the door. Your task will be complete. Then your family will be sent for from Germany and will come to you themselves by submarine. There is too much risk to put them in a U-boat now, with you. The sea lanes are still under enemy attack, and your wife and child will be safer where they are until the time is right. I have little Hans’ best interests at heart.’

A cold shiver went through Hoffman. ‘And you?’

‘Once the two Waffen-SS guards have returned to me here from escorting you below, I will leave by the tunnel to the L-Tower and then make my way across the Elbe at night. I must visit Grand-Admiral Donitz. Hitler was persuaded in my absence to appoint Donitz his successor. That was not in my plan. It is intolerable. Intolerable. Donitz must be removed. Then I must go in disguise to the bunker near Bremen where something remains that I must retrieve, something my SS follower who was dispatched there two weeks ago has failed to deliver to me. After that I will return to Plon. Once there is a radio signal to show that you have arrived, I will leave to follow you out in the last U-boat. I will personally accompany Heidi and Hans. Personally. That is my assurance. Do you understand?’

Hoffman clicked his heels. ‘ Mein Fuhrer.’ It seemed a fantasy plan. If Himmler attempted to go in his absurd disguise to Upper Saxony, he would be behind enemy lines and would be captured. As for his family, Hoffman thought he understood all too well. This much he had learned over the last months in the Chancellery and the Fuhrerbunker, in the heart of the Nazi empire: the web of lies, of deceit and counter-deceit, a world where nobody was trusted. It was the price for extinguishing morality. How could you trust your minions to be loyal, when you had taken away their ability to judge right from wrong? Hoffman knew exactly how he was being played: the guards had taken away his Luger, and would now accompany him down to the water reservoir to the point of no return. He was to follow a one-way tunnel, with Gestapo waiting for him at the other end. Then his family . Protected, or held hostage? He remembered the two generals standing behind him, both wearing the field-grey uniforms of the Wehrmacht. They were as much SS as he was, newly created fantasy warriors. Their families had been brought to this dungeon not out of any act of charity, but to provide the same leverage. They had no choice but to follow Himmler’s instructions. Their only reward would be the chance to create their own end, but that would be enough to keep them compliant. Everyone knew what the Russians did to the families of senior officers.

There was a huge screech outside the door, the sound of a Russian rocket that must have impacted on the gun platform above. All Hoffman could do now was think of his family. Carrying out Himmler’s plan was the only chance he had to see them again. He took a deep breath of the putrid air, and turned to go. A sudden banging rattled the door, and it swung open. A boy’s voice rose above the noise, shrill and panic-stricken. ‘ Herr Oberstleutnant! Alarm! Alarm! Der Iwan kommt! Der Russ kommt! ’ The boy with the lederhosen stood between the two SS men, panting, his face smudged with cordite and his clothing dishevelled. For a moment everything seemed paralysed, as if time had stopped. The Russians were coming. The boy looked at Hoffman, then wrenched off his outsized helmet, tossed it down and ran back towards the mass of people on the stairway, disappearing from view.

‘Go!’ the voice behind him ordered. ‘I will leave by the other tunnel. Schnell! ’ Himmler thrust the swaddled package into the satchel, and Hoffman slung it over his shoulder. It was incredibly heavy. Gold and meteoritic iron. He tried to remember what he had been told, how he was to use it. As he passed the two generals, he caught the eye of the one nearest to him. They were locked into Himmler’s plan as much as he was. The general’s eyes were grey, devoid of hope, the eyes of a man who knew his last act would be to kill his own family to save them from the Soviets. But Hoffman hoped he saw something else, a humanity, something that Himmler would not even be able to recognise. When it came to it, when the two officers sat with pistols to their heads in front of the detonator switch, they might not do it. The people in the tower might be spared. The little boy might not die.

He reached the door. The rooftop entrance to the gun platform above the spiral staircase had been left open, and he felt the pressure waves of explosions pulsing down the stairwell. The Katyusha rockets were flying directly overhead now, shrieking like Valkyries. This was real-life Gotterdammerung, the battle at the end of the world. Only it was not a battle fought between gods, and no heavenly hall awaited the heroes. The new breed of gods who had created this horror were dead or cowering in underground places, or planning new schemes of apotheosis like the monster in this room with him now.

The two SS guards loomed out of the dust and fell in beside him. Then the voice spoke again. ‘ Halt.’ Hoffman felt his stomach lurch. The diary. Had Himmler found it? Perhaps he would die in this place after all. He braced himself and turned around. Himmler was walking towards him, the SS dagger in his hand, still sheathed. He fumbled with it, nearly dropping it, then offered Hoffman the hilt. Hoffman took it, feeling the clammy sweat on the grip, then stood to attention and clicked his heels. Himmler took something out of his pocket and pressed it into Hoffman’s other palm. Hoffman looked down and saw a silver ring with the Totenkopf design, the death’s-head insignia of the SS. Around the sides of the ring were three roundels with runic signs. Two of them he vaguely recognized from the symbols he had been shown at Wewelsburg Castle, but the third was unfamiliar, a curious construction of parallel and right-angle lines like two garden rakes set front to front. Himmler watched him staring at it, then closed Hoffman’s palm around the ring. ‘That symbol is an ancient rune my Ahnenerbe explorers discovered in the place that is now your final destination. I have made it the symbol of my new order. This ring is for you to give to Heidi. It is my token of assurance to her. Keep it safely.’ He reached up and adjusted Hoffman’s Knight’s Cross, patting him. Hoffman could smell his breath, just as he had smelled Hitler’s when the cross had been awarded. The crooked smile was on Himmler’s face again, his eyes roaming until they fixed on Hoffman’s. ‘That dagger is now your sacred symbol. Show it to others in the SS, and they will know you have my authority. And Heidi will have my greatest symbol of respect and honour. In your task ahead, think always of your family. We will be the new Ubermenschen, the new supermen, yes? The new gods of Atlantis.’

Hoffman clicked his heels and turned away. His world had closed in, as if the noose tightening around Berlin were tightening around him as well. All that flashed before his eyes was the panic-stricken boy in the dishevelled lederhosen, as if that were the last image of light he had seen, imprinted on his retina. The jarring of the explosions made him see repeated images of the boy’s face, lining the edge of his vision, and then ahead of him a swirling image of the reverse swastika, drawing him into the underworld. He opened his eyes and breathed hard, thinking of what he had written in his diary. That was history, a terrible history of crime and horror. But what he knew now, the future that lay ahead if Himmler’s plan were to be carried out, was incalculably worse. He remembered the sheets of paper he had torn off and put in his pocket, the pencil. Somehow he must find a way of writing a message for posterity, in case the truth died with him and the deadly weapon remained intact. If he was unable to thwart Himmler, someone else might.

He thrust the SS knife into his pocket, unsheathing it and grasping the exposed part of the blade as hard as he could, savagely, feeling the blood from his fingers ooze out. A rage coursed through him, the rage and adrenalin he had once felt as he held the stick in his Stuka dive-bomber, hurtling towards the target, the siren screaming. He knew why his family would not be joining him until he had completed Himmler’s task. His wife and boy were being held to ransom. But Himmler had forgotten what he did, what he was good at, how he had survived five years of war. He remembered Himmler’s pudgy hands fumbling with the knife. These people had created the worst killing machine in history. But for them the killing was remote, abstract. It was other people who did their dirty work for them, people like those boys on the roof, like the countless dead soldiers outside, like the thugs of the SS and Gestapo, people like Hoffman. That was Himmler’s biggest weakness. For him the SS knife was a symbol, not a weapon. He had lost sight of another aspect of humanity.

What it was that made men kill.