Vivisepulture (25 page)

None of this matters to SS-Sturmbannführer Günter Ehrlichmann.

Today, he has an appointment with the Führer.

Traudl Junge ushers Ehrlichmann into the Führer’s office in the Alpenfestung, Hitler’s secret redoubt beneath the Northern Limestone Alps. Ehrlichmann hears the quiet click of the door behind him, but his attention is focused on the man at the other end of the room. It is just as he has been told: the Führer’s presence fills the office, a charisma which seems to suck the colour from the surroundings and concentrate it in and about his person. Hitler’s field-grey uniform tunic is more implacably grey than the rock from which the Alpenfestung has been excavated. He appears elemental, as if hewn from the substance of the Fatherland itself. His hair is a rich and glossy black, his face glows with good health, his gaze pierces. Ehrlichmann, humbled in the man’s commanding presence, only just remembers to salute:

“Heil Hitler!”

The Führer stands behind his desk, one hand in a pocket of his tunic. Ehrlichmann works with great men, Werner Heisenberg and the other scientists of the Uranverein; he is the Ministry of Armaments and Munition’s liaison officer. The nuclear bomb on which they are working will create history; but Ehrlichmann is now in the presence of the man who has made that possible. Hitler is a locus for forces which will write the future, and the effect is rich and heady.

The Führer picks up a buff folder from the desk-top. “The Reichsführer-SS,” he says, “tells me victory is certain thanks to his spells.” He throws down the folder; it hits the leather desk-top with a loud slap. “Spells!” he sneers. “Sorcery! What use are they? Himmler is a stupid chicken-farmer.” He beckons Ehrlichmann forward. “Come here, come closer.”

Ehrlichmann marches forwards, given confidence by Hitler’s raw charisma, and stops before the desk.

“How does my atom bomb progress?” Hitler asks.

“We will be ready for a test detonation in one week, Mein Führer,” Ehrlichmann replies.

Hitler does not smile, but says, “Good, good. My wonder weapons are vital. We are winning this war, we will win it soon, but we must win
decisively
, yes?”

“Yes, Mein Führer.”

Hitler adds, “That fat Junker von Braun promises me the Amerika Rakete will fly as scheduled. Perhaps. But it will be many months before there are enough Flugschreiben to keep the skies over the Fatherland clear of enemy bombers.” He pulls his hand from his pocket, clenches a fist and bangs it on the desk. “Months? I need my flying saucers now!” He holds up his fist before him, and gestures aggressively at the air.

Calming, he continues in a more normal tone of voice, “You are an honest man, SS-Sturmbannführer; a loyal man, yes? I am told this by many people. And you have an excellent understanding of physics?”

Ehrlichmann nods. “I studied under Arnold Sommerfeld at the University of Munich,” he replies. And does not add: before the war, before Ultima Thule allowed itself to be discovered by Ernst Schäfer and their science helped us leapfrog years of research and progress, before they made us the most advanced nation in Europe.

“Good. I need you to perform a vital task for me. SS-Sturmbannführer Ehrlichmann, you will go from here to the airfield. A jet bomber waits for you. It will fly you to the Wencelas Mine in Sudetenland. I wish you to report—to me personally!—on a secret project in the tunnels there.”

Ehrlichmann salutes. “Yes, Mein Führer.”

“You must speak to the scientist in charge. I have heard nothing from him for four months. I must know what is happening.”

“I will not fail you, Mein Führer.”

Hitler nods as if failure were unthinkable.

Ehrlichmann is dismissed. He turns about to find the door open and Junge standing beside it. He marches across to her, and she ushers him from the office. Her face remains expressionless as she closes the door.

In the outer office, a pair of men in black uniforms wait silently. Both possess the white-blond hair, piercing blue eyes, and pale skin of Ultima Thulans. Ehrlichmann does not like these allies of the Fatherland: though they are clearly centuries ahead, they dole out only enough scientific knowledge to keep the Fatherland no more than a handful of years in advance of Britain and America. True, without their assistance the Uranverein would be years, not days, away from completing their first atomic bomb; but he resents their parsimony all the same.

Ehrlichmann ignores the Thulans, thanks Junge for her assistance, and joins the waiting Wehrmacht major who will escort him to the surface.

At the airfield, a lone aircraft sits on the runway. It resembles a giant ray, its body comprised of a huge delta-wing, patterned in grey and olive camouflage. Six jet-engines sit above the wing between the twin tails. There is a short bullet-shaped fuselage at the apex of the triangle formed by the wing. Ehrlichmann recognises the aircraft though it is uncommon: it is an Arado Ar 555. A KG.200 oberleutnant in flying gear waits by the bomber’s hatch.

“Get in,” says the oberleutnant. “Sir.”

The Luftwaffe officer does not bother to salute, leaving Ehrlichmann embarrassed at his half-raised arm. Ehrlichmann has met the man’s type before—they fight for the Fatherland, not for the Führer. Providing they do their job well, Ehrlichmann is willing to accept their disrespect; but he does not like it.

He clambers aboard the aircraft. Behind him, the oberleutnant enters, shuts the hatch and then leads the way forward to the cockpit. Ehrlichmann follows. The co-pilot is already seated and strapped in. The oberleutnant clambers into the pilot’s seat, and gestures for Ehrlichmann to take the gunner’s position.

After ten minutes of check-list, the co-pilot starts up the jets. They burble, and then roar throatily; the bomber’s fuselage vibrates. This is Ehrlichmann’s first time in a jet-powered aircraft, and he is surprised at the din the engines generate. He leans forward, peering over the co-pilot’s shoulder through the glazed bullet nose. As he watches, the ground begins to roll beneath the aircraft, and only then does he realise they have begun to move.

The take-off is frightening. The Arado hurtles down the runway. The grass rushes past so quickly it blurs into a featureless carpet. Abruptly, the aircraft’s nose lifts and the bomber staggers into the air. It pitches up into a steep angle and powers away from the ground.

Ehrlichmann wonders at his chances of survival should he have to parachute from an aircraft travelling at such speed. He consoles himself with the thought the journey is short, a mere hop across southern Germany and into Lower Silesia. And then he considers the task before him, and that too scares him. He does not want to fail the Führer, he does not want to experience the Führer’s disappointment.

He resolves to do all he can to prevent that.

Ehrlichmann’s ears are still ringing as he walks away from the Arado Ar 555. It will be several minutes, he guesses, before his hearing recovers from the constant battering noise of the bomber’s jet engines. He feels some resentment toward the oberleutnant, who pointedly ignored him once the aircraft had taxiied to a halt. Ehrlichmann was forced to make his own way to the hatch, and had to figure out how to open it by himself. They are arrogant, the KG.200 flyers, and disrespectful.

From the airfield, Ehrlichmann is driven in a camouflage-pattern Kübelwagen into the Eulenbirge, along narrow lanes canopied with leafy boughs, deep in steep-sided wooded valleys. After a forty-minute journey, the vehicle stops at a checkpoint, and Ehrlichmann presents his credentials to the stern-faced sentry. His papers are scrutinised carefully, before being handed back. The sentry salutes, then raises the striped barrier across the road. The Kübelwagen accelerates noisily.

Some minutes later, the road leaves the forest and enters a wide cutting filled with brick buildings. To Ehrlichmann’s left, smoke from the tall chimney of a powerhouse scrawls across the sky. A black locomotive, a dozen flatbed wagons hitched behind it, sleeps on a spur of track. Two Opel Blitz LkWs are parked against a brick storehouse. A soldier in field-grey, Schmeisser slung carelessly from one shoulder, stands by one truck, smoking a cigarette. Further along, beneath a tent of camouflage netting, a Doblhoff tip-jet helicopter crouches, rotor-blades drooping, inert but still menacing.

The Kübelwagen turns off the main road through the mine-head workings and approaches a concrete tunnel-entrance let into a low cliff-face. It stops beside a sentry hut. A SS-obersturmführer peers suspiciously through a window of the hut, but does not step outside. The unterscharführer driving the Kübelwagen clambers out of the vehicle, and asks Ehrlichmann to follow him.

A long tunnel, lit every five metres, leads deep into the mountain. Ehrlichmann follows his guide. They do not speak. There is something oppressive about this underground complex. Perhaps it is the lack of people, or the silence which lies as heavy as the mountain above them. More than a kilometre later, the unterscharführer ushers Ehrlichmann through an ordinary wooden door, painted a utilitarian olive-green, into an empty office. The driver exits, closing the door behind him. The room contains a single desk, on which sits a covered typewriter. There is a Heinrich Knirr portrait of the Führer on the wall above the desk, and a poster of the Periodic Table on another. Beneath the poster are three chairs. Ehrlichmann, wondering why he has not been met, crosses to the chairs and sits on one.

Ten minutes later, a large man in a long black coat sweeps into the room. He has wild white hair and wild staring eyes, and moves as though, through the foolishness of others, he has too much to do and too little time to do it. He halts on seeing Ehrlichmann but it is clear the SS-Sturmbannführer’s presence is not unexpected.

Ehrlichmann rises to his feet. “Professor Doctor,” he says. “I am—”

Rotwang gestures dismissively. “SS-Sturmbannführer Günter Ehrlichmann, from the Ministry for Armaments and Munitions: yes, yes, I know. I am Rotwang. You are here to see the Bell.”

The scientist yanks open the door and exits. “Follow me!” he calls out imperiously. Ehrlichmann hurries to join him. Rotwang heads deeper into the mountain, along corridors as bleak as mausoleums. Ehrlichmann remembers a visit to the Mittelwerk the year before. The contrast could not be greater: that underground factory was
alive
, full of the noise of industry, of people and machinery busy at work building rockets for the Reich.

After twenty minutes of walking, they reach a steel hatch set in the tunnel wall. Rotwang turns the wheel in its centre with vigour, and then pulls open the hatch. He beckons for Ehrlichmann to follow him. After carefully sealing the hatch behind them, Rotwang tackles the hatch on the opposite wall. It is an airlock, realises Ehrlichmann. Is Rotwang working on chemical weapons? biological weapons? Both are banned under Geneva Protocols. Besides, the Fatherland has the Vergeltungswaffe, the Flugschrieben, all the other marvels of German—and Thulan—science and industry. And Himmler’s magic too, of course. Germs and gases are not necessary.

Once through the airlock, Ehrlichmann finds himself in a passage with windows along one wall. These look into a large chamber containing a square pool of water. In the centre of the pool is a plinth, into which many thick cables are plugged. On the plinth sits a strange device: cylindrical with a domed top, some five metres high, and around three metres across at the base. The device is black and entirely featureless; it vaguely resembles a bell.

Rotwang approaches a door at the end of the passage. He gestures impatiently, and Ehrlichmann joins him. The room through the door is clearly the scientist’s office. There are two desks, the tops of both carpetted with folders and loose papers. An IBM tabulating machine sits in one corner. Another door is slightly ajar, and through it can be heard murmured conversation, and the clink and knock and fizzle of laboratory equipment. To Ehrlichmann’s right, another large window looks into the Bell’s chamber.

“What does it do?” Ehrlichmann asks.

“Do?” replies Rotwang. “I shall show you!” He crosses to the door into the laboratory, yanks it open, bellows “Grot!”, and then gestures bossily at the person he has just addressed. Returning to Ehrlichmann, he explains, “The Bell contains two cylinders of beryllium peroxide suspended in a bath of Xerum-525. They rotate at high speeds, tens of thousands of revolutions per second! As they spin, they generate a vortex, which is in turn compressed. Through the vortex we fire thorium ions under very high voltage. The effect…” Rotwang beams manically and throws his arms wide. “You will see the effect! It is astonishing! It will win the war!”

“The Bell is Thulan science?” asks Ehrlichmann. This is not the physics he learnt at the University of Munich, this is not the science the Uranverein has been using to build an atom bomb.

Rotwang’s brow lowers in anger. “It is
my
science,” he snaps. “Mine! I have discovered this effect, I have built the Bell.” He gestures dismissively. “Do not speak to me of the Thulans; I will not have them in my laboratory!”

“I am sorry.” Ehrlichmann bows his head. “So tell me,” he continues, “how your Bell will win the war. You have not said what it actually
does
.”

“Oh,” Rotwang says. He visibly shrugs off his anger. “Well. You must watch.” He gestures at the window. “See, it begins!”

The Bell glows with an eldritch violet light. Rotwang points to a table beside the pool of water in which the device sits. On the table Ehrlichmann can see a cage containing mice. “Watch them,” Rotwang says.

The light spreads sluggishly throughout the room. It slides over the water like an early morning sea-mist, creeps towards the table and up its legs, and seeps across the polished metal surface towards the cage. The mice within begin to run about frantically. As Ehrlichmann watches, the violet fog envelops one side of the cage and causes the metal bars to scintillate. The mice have backed up to the other side, as far from the purple mist as they can get; they are climbing over each other in terror. The purple touches one mouse…

Its flesh begins to dissolve. As each mouse takes on a violet hue, so it too begins to slough fur and red flesh.