Secrets of the Last Nazi (9 page)

E
ven though his
new line manager was away, Ludochovic didn’t conceive of altering the disciplined routine which guided his every working day. Perhaps because he was approaching retirement from the Russian Foreign Service, he now respected his responsibilities earnestly, taking them much more seriously than he had in middle age. What were once chores had since become the rituals which gave purpose to his life.

And so, just before the sun rose on a foggy Moscow dawn, Ludochovic completed the complicated processes which readied the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Department of European Affairs for the day ahead. He scanned the overnight security sheet for incidents – there were none – checked the seals on the main cabinets, wafted the electronic surveillance monitor around a few of the desks to detect any eavesdropping devices – none of those, either – and cranked up the mainframe computer to which all the personal terminals were connected. Then he completed the checklist of tasks near the door, finishing it off with a very precise signature, and checked his watch while he started the coffee percolator.

Finally, still alone in the office, Ludochovic prepared to gather the information he would need for the day ahead. As ever, his in-tray contained envelopes from the Foreign Ministry night team and the intelligence analysts: the usual reports. He opened his desktop terminal and set it to download emails, and walked over to check the fax machine. His last check was little more than a habit; hardly anyone in the Russian Foreign Ministry used faxes anymore as the technology was slow, cumbersome, and much less secure than properly encrypted email, so Ludochovic was perturbed when the machine suddenly switched itself on. Even more surprising was the covernote: a page scrawled in large handwriting, directing him to keep safe the 230 sheets which were to follow.

Instead of a signature, there were just two letters at the bottom of the sheet: ZA, the initials of his line manager, Zenyalena Androvsky.

S
unlight began streaming
in through the bedroom window. Blearily, Myles woke, realising he had gone to sleep without closing the curtains. He was still wearing yesterday’s clothes, and papers were sprawled across the bed – some floated onto the floor as he stirred and sat up. He tried to gather them together, checking what they said as he put them back in the file.

Myles scratched his head. Could Rudolf Hess – Hitler’s deputy at the time –
really
have believed this stuff?

Myles knew that Hess flew to Scotland in a Messerschmitt Bf110 in May 1941, on a one-man peace mission. But Winston Churchill refused to negotiate, so Hess was interrogated by British intelligence. They concluded Hess believed all sorts of ‘mumbo-jumbo’, and that he had been deluded by Nazi fortune tellers. The whole episode was bizarre, and was never properly explained – other than that Hess was mad, which was Hitler’s official line too.

Myles looked at the other files. Most of them were self-explanatory, but a single page they had received from Stolz’s lawyer was peculiar. Simply called ‘Locations’, it contained just four lines:

He checked the back of the sheet. Nothing – that was it. It was as if Stolz was presenting a riddle of some sort, but with clues no one could solve. Perhaps they had just been reminders to himself, in case his memory failed with his extreme old age.

Frowning, Myles put the ‘Locations’ page to one side, and turned to the three files marked ‘Nuclear’. Myles guessed they would be about Nazi plans for a wonder-weapon – after all, if Hitler had developed an atomic bomb, he could have dropped it on London and Moscow and won the war. The files might contain something secret, maybe stolen from the Russians – or Americans. But instead, he found what seemed to be notes from an enthusiast.

The first page of ‘Nuclear’ was about the Manhattan Project. There was a picture of the site in Los Alamos, then the time, latitude and longitude of the first nuclear reaction:

Nothing secret here: anyone with an internet browser and a search engine could find it with just a few clicks. The Nazis probably even knew about it before the end of the war, through their US spy network. So why had Stolz kept it?

Then Myles noticed some numbers at the bottom. Numbers which didn’t seem to relate to anything. He furrowed his brow, confused.

Below it was a series of dates, each with a short description. It was a set of predictions, some for events which had already happened. Myles started at the top:

Myles found himself nodding – it was the month when bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to force the Japanese surrender.

He read further.

Another accurate forecast: Myles recognised the date of the world’s first fatal nuclear accident, when three power station workers had been killed at Idaho Falls in the USA.

Myles’ eyes rushed further down the list, skimming over predictions for the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear disasters. Every date was correct.

Myles squinted at the page, still bleary, wondering if he could be reading it correctly. Again: Stolz’s predictions seemed to have come true.

Myles looked at the rest of the list:

Did it mean those events were sure to happen? Or had Stolz just got lucky in the past – very lucky?

Myles checked the date again. In the corner, in small writing:

So – Stolz
had
carried on making predictions, even once the war was over.

Myles closed the file, bewildered by all the information he had read.

His thoughts were disturbed by a loud knock behind him. Myles called out, ‘Yes, who is it?’

The door opened. It was Glenn. ‘You should keep your room locked,’ he said.

Myles nodded, accepting the point. He’d gone straight to bed, and been too absorbed in Stolz’s mysterious papers to think about locking it since he woke up. ‘Sorry.’

‘Not a problem. You coming down to join us?’

Myles looked up at the clock.
7.15 a.m. Fifteen minutes late for the meeting.

Glenn tipped his head forward with his eyebrows raised, his face confirming,
yes, you are late
.

Myles scooped up his papers, then limped out of the room. He locked the door in front of Glenn before he followed the bald American downstairs.

Myles was expecting the whole team to be waiting for him in their executive meeting room. But just Heike-Anne was there. ‘Zenyalena and Jean-François late too?’ he asked.

‘Just Jean-François,’ explained the German, as if she was apologising on the Frenchman’s behalf. ‘Zenyalena went to look for him.’

Glenn left to order coffees for the team, then Zenyalena appeared. ‘Still no Jean-François,’ she said, looking flustered. ‘His door’s locked, and he’s not inside.’

Myles and Heike-Ann looked at each other. Myles asked the obvious question. ‘If his door’s locked, how do you know he’s not inside?’

‘I banged his door, and called out,’ said Zenyalena. ‘If he’s still inside, he must have become deaf overnight.’

Myles could imagine just how loudly Zenyalena would have thumped on the door. ‘He’s probably out. For a jog, or at breakfast or something.’

Glenn returned and sat down at the table. ‘So Jean-François isn’t here. Let’s make a start without him.’ Glenn’s posture made clear he was taking charge again. ‘Pigou can join us when he’s ready.’

Myles and Heike-Ann shrugged their agreement. Even Zenyalena – for once – accepted the American’s lead.

‘Good.’ Glenn opened up his file, and placed it on the table. ‘I read through the files I was given. They were interesting. There was stuff about the V1 and V2 rockets, but most of it was public information from the internet or textbooks. All stuff we could find out ourselves if we had an hour in a good library. Except …’ Glenn pulled out one of the papers and spun it on the table for the others to see. It was some sort of map of north-eastern France, with lots of dots, lines and dates laid over the top. ‘… I found this.’

Heike-Ann was stumped. ‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘I thought it showed launch sites for the V1 and V2 rockets,’ said Glenn. ‘Hitler fired them from France into England in 1944 and early ‘45 …’

Myles, Zenyalena and Heike-Ann began to nod, prompting Glenn to carry on.

Then Glenn used a pen to highlight a line on the page. ‘… Except these lines here.’ The line ran almost vertically, north-south down the page, and seemed slightly curved. ‘These lines look like satellite tracks,’ explained Glenn. ‘But the Nazis didn’t have satellites. The first satellite went up in 1957. So why did Stolz plot them? This paper claims to have been written in 1943. It doesn’t make sense.’

Myles could see the team look puzzled - it
didn’t
make sense.

The American turned to the next file. ‘Then I found this.’ It was from the file labelled, ‘Sarin’. Glenn had circled the date: December 1944. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this paper seems to confirm what before was only suspected – that the Nazis had developed Sarin, and they were planning to use it.’

‘Excuse me,’ asked Heike-Ann, unafraid to admit her ignorance. ‘What is “Sarin”?’

‘It’s a toxic liquid. Super-toxic, a nerve agent – the chemical weapon used on civilians in Damascus in 2013 which turned Syria into a real international crisis ...’ Glenn pointed at the paper. ‘… This paper shows that the Nazis had discovered it, tested it successfully – probably on Jews or prisoners – and were planning to use it if Germany was invaded. Nobody knows how far their plans got. There were searches after the war, but nobody found any stockpiles. To use Sarin effectively you need to disperse it …’

Myles watched – Glenn was talking about something he knew quite a lot about. It confirmed his suspicions: the clean-shaven American had a military background. Either that, or he was something with the intelligence services.

‘… The best way,’ continued Glenn, ‘is to spray it from a plane, or strap it to a bomb which explodes high-up …’ Glenn used hand gestures to show something exploding. ‘Explode a half-litre bottle of Sarin, from the top of Big Ben, say, and you’ll kill tens of thousands of Londoners. Except, during the war, all the people in London were carrying gas masks, as a precaution against exactly this sort of attack. Now, from these papers, it looks like the Nazis really did have this stuff.’

Myles took Glenn’s point further. ‘… But when the Allies came in 1945, they found neither the papers nor the Sarin. Which means Stolz must have hidden them somehow.’

Zenyalena suddenly looked concerned. ‘And maybe hidden the Sarin, too. Do the maps show where it is?’

Myles and Glenn shrugged.

Zenyalena decided it was time for her to present. ‘Well, I read my papers too. Some were about the British Empire - mostly just facts from an encyclopedia. But this was the most interesting page.’ She pulled out a paper and put it on the table. It was entitled simply ‘End of British Empire’.

Glenn pulled a face, not sure what to make of it. ‘Looks like it’s just some dates, right?’

‘Yes, three of them,’ confirmed the Russian. ‘But they seem important. The first, October–November 1956, it says “Hubris then humiliation – Empire loses its confidence”.’

She looked at Myles, who understood the date. ‘The Suez crisis, right?’

‘Yes, Myles - when the United Kingdom made a secret deal with France and Israel,’ said Zenylena, clearly enjoying the chance to shame Britain. ‘They attacked the Suez Canal, but President Eisenhower refused to support it. Britain was forced to withdraw, and the Prime Minister resigned in disgrace.’

Zenyalena and Myles both looked to Glenn for a reaction. The American looked sheepish. ‘Hey – don’t blame me. I just follow the President’s orders.’

Myles shook his head. ‘That’s not the point, Glenn. In 1956, your President made Stolz’s prediction come true.’

‘He was trying to get re-elected at the time. I don’t think Stolz would have mattered all that much to him.’

‘Agreed, Glenn. But it means, somehow, Stolz made yet another accurate prediction.’ Myles turned back to Zenyalena. ‘What else does it say about the British Empire?’

‘Well, there’s something about 2024 and 2025, saying a “challenge will rip out national confidence” …’ She pulled a face, as if to say she couldn’t possibly know what that meant. ‘… Then this one: October 1984. He writes “UK power is suddenly undermined by a military shock.”’

Glenn looked confused, raking his memory. Then he began to smile. ‘Ah – he got one wrong. If he means the surprise attack on the Falklands, that was 1982. The UK wasn’t attacked in October 1984, right?’ Finally, Glenn thought he had one over on the dead Nazi.

But Myles shook his head. ‘Correct, the UK
wasn’t
attacked in 1984. The prediction still came true, though. In October 1984, a terrorist bomb destroyed the hotel being used by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. “Suddenly undermined” is a good description: the building was literally blasted away from under her.’

No one answered. Instead, the whole team just stopped and fell silent, as they realised what they had in front of them. Unless he had been using some sort of trick, Stolz really had been predicting the future.

And whether it was a clever hoax, or Stolz had actually made accurate predictions and was genuine, they had to work out how he had done it.