The Chair (12 page)

If this was indeed Thierschstrasse 41, it wasn’t inside the building and therefore too risky for us to go any further. I climbed back down to give Ara the bad news and upon reaching the main tunnel she was gone.

“Richard! Over here,” came her voice from a large bisecting pipe in the wall of the tunnel further up from the ladder, the beam of her flashlight was flashing at the entrance.

 I answered. “Stay there I’ll be right back.”

Replacing the cover plate to the outside, I returned to the large pipe entrance in the wall, peered in and could see her waving the flashlight back and forth signaling me.

“Another entrance, down here!” she said excitedly.

I climbed up into the cement pipe and crawled down about twenty feet or so to where she was crouching down. “This looks like another old service entrance of some sort, hopefully it is still 41.”

“It’s a heavy metal grate, probably a drain of some sort on the floor in the basement.”

The metal grate was about two feet square with a thick metal grid that looked like a long time floor drain; I pushed up on it and slid it back; the opening was directly under a piece of machinery. Raising my arm up through the opening, I pushed whatever it was slowly out of the way. That same familiar odor of soap wafted through my nostrils again. No. It couldn’t be, I thought. I poked my head up through the opening and to my amazement we were back in the laundry room of Thierschstrasse 41!

“This floor drain must have been used when the apartment complex was first built using the original sewer lines.” I grabbed Ara’s hand. “Come on we’ve got to squeeze through.”

“Ok, we know where the chair is. Now one of us has to get it and go back; the other will have to follow with a tracker.”

We made our way up through the old floor drain and replaced the heavy grate. No one seemed to be down on that floor and we immediately went out in the hallway and down to the small storage room to check on the trackers which, thank god, were still there.

We now had to check on the room where Anders was being questioned. If we calculated correctly the chair should be in there.

Ara grabbed my arm. “Richard, I’ll take the chair back.  Hopefully things should still be alright at the conduit. Eric and I will keep things in order till you arrive with father.”

“Alright but be careful, things are getting pretty crazy at this point and we don’t want any more trouble. I’m going to stick around for the meantime and see what’s become of Anders and the jewels.”

We opened the door to the room and glanced around. No chair. Both of us walked in and searched the room dumbfounded, but it was gone.

“I know that chair was here when he was being questioned and now it’s gone! He was either able to somehow escape, or they now know about it and moved it somewhere else.”

We both looked at each other in disbelief.

“Ara, we have to find out what happened to it. Stay here and I’ll take a tracker to the conduit −”

Just then we heard the sound of voices and footsteps coming our way. Quickly ducking into the laundry room, we heard a voice we both recognized; it was Anders, now conversing casually with one of the Germans!

“You can tell the Führer he will not regret his decision.”

“I tell you Anders, if this plan plays out as planned for the Führer, you will be one of his key contacts and there is no telling where it could lead for you.”

They walked into another of the rooms on the basement level and we quickly and carefully moved up to the door to listen.  Ara placed her head on my chest with one ear against the door and held my hand. We both listened intently.

“… as we discussed earlier, the Führer needs to know if your island fits as a suitable location for his strategic pacific submarine base, and you will need to communicate to us the exact location of your island. When the right time approaches you personally will be the contact in charge of seeing that all operations are going smoothly there and report to us anything critical to those operations.

“You will commence as a First Liutenant SS Obersturrnfuhrer, which is a greatly bestowed honor from the Führer. Following that, it will be up to you as to where it will lead.”

We looked at each other in astonishment. Ara turned around in disgust, clenched her fists with a shrill whisper. “Richard, he’s selling out our little island for a position and influence with this, this crazy man who’s obviously power hungry!”

We listened carefully as the conversation continued. “If this chair can indeed do what you say it can do, it is truly more than remarkable! Its value to us is more than all the jewels you could bargain with and I am more than anxious in observing this phenomenon first hand as you leave here. Are you sure you can take these things along with you?

“Yes, all will arrive there safely with me don’t worry.”

“Then go now and when you arrive, set it up as you’ve been shown. Take control of the island, we don’t care how; destroy what you will, kill who you must, but gain control over it and set it up for the Führer to inspect when the time is ripe.”

I could have stormed in right then but it was taking too much of a chance. Besides, I didn’t want any more harm to come to Ara than was absolutely necessary. We had to stop this madness but it had to be timed right or it could blow up in our faces.

I grabbed Ara’s arm. “Let’s get to the trackers; we need to follow him back.”

She turned putting both her hands on my chest. “
You
must save my father, Richard; get him out of this nightmare place while I return to the Conduit. Maybe with Eric’s help I can stop Anders from going any further with this. No one must find our island and above all, we can never allow it to be used as a base for this crazy man’s exploits!”

She put her arms around me, kissed me and opened the supply room door to access the trackers. “I better go quickly; now you know the way back to the warehouse. You’ve got to get father, put him in this other tracker and send him home.”

Ara quickly stood on her toes kissing me once again, sat down in one of the trackers and quickly vanished. I had no way of knowing if she would make it back before Anders, but I couldn’t worry about that now. I had to go back through the tunnel to the warehouse and get back to her father.

Returning through the tunnels was not as difficult as at first and I had no trouble finding my way back into the warehouse. As I was carefully returning to her father’s room the dawn was beginning to break and I knew I had to move faster if I was to avoid getting caught. The workday would begin soon and I had to know more of this terrible machine the Germans were so protective over.

The professor was glad to see me returning and asked about Ara. I told him she was safe for now but that Anders was now a major threat and planning to make the island a base for Hitler’s submarines.

“We will make sure there is never a German submarine base on your island professor be assured of that! Can you describe this German killing machine you were beginning to tell us about earlier?”

“You truthfully need to see it for yourself. There is another underground system that leads directly to the prototype of this thing. The Nazi’s have been using it in a full blown effort to shuttle alternating work crews back and forth; this week it is my rotation.

It is my responsibility to complete work and testing on the vortex engine components.  If we can manage to get you down close enough to the transport vehicle, you can sneak onboard before we leave.”

“So who exactly
are
these Nazi’s anyway?”

“An ever growing number of Germans that have elected to follow Hitler as their Führer; he has promised them immortality and quite insane you know. They all wear the armband with the Swastika symbol.”

“So that’s what the symbol stands for―Nazi’s.”

“Strangely enough it is actually the symbol of good luck, but they’ve taken it and turned it into a symbol of evil!”

“The tunnel will take us directly out of Munich and out in the countryside to an old abandon cement works. There, down in the lower layers this monstrous thing is sitting.”

Great! Another tunnel, just what I wanted to hear. I was fed up with bloody tunnels at this point. Whoever this Hitler was, it was obvious that he wasn’t going to be satisfied being the king of Germany; his plans sounded much loftier. With the way the Germans were deceptively going about it, shrouded in secrecy, it would certainly alarm all the nations of the world knowing what they’re really up to. Their motives seemed demonic in nature and others must be made aware of it soon. I remained hidden in his room till he was called to work and then went with him down to the level of the transport tunnel leading to the project.

It was apparent the Germans spared no expense on this tunnel alone. They must have put hundreds of man hours in the building of it in order to reach all the way out of Munich and into the countryside.

At the moment though, something was up. Officers were moving around in a fervor, conferring together then splitting up as if searching for something or someone – It suddenly dawned on me just what it was all about. The German I had left gagged in the closet had been missing and there was now an all out alert in the warehouse. Making our way to the transport tunnel, I walked quickly by his side as far as I could without being noticed and then I had to duck out of sight. The Germans were passing by in squads of three and each one armed.  I carefully made my way down the tunnel as far as I could until I saw the professor already sitting in the shuttle truck.

 It had a large canvas cover over the back end, probably holding tools and supplies. The motor was running and getting ready to leave. As it began to move, I ran as fast as I could, my arms extending as far as possible and diving for the tailgate barely grabbing hold of it. As the truck began speeding away, I was being dragged behind and the cement began eating into my shoes. I managed to pull myself up into the opening of the canvas; then, crawling over the tailgate and into the back. I quickly ducked down out of sight just as we were passing a final set of guards; we were on our way.

CHAPTER

SEVENTEEN

T
hat tunnel was unbelievable in length. We must have driven two or three miles underground, all the while passing various patrol stations. I was beginning to become bloody paranoid with the thought of what were to happen if I was caught.

Suddenly we drove out of the tunnel and into what looked like a very large cement arena shaded from direct sunlight. I peered out through the canvas in the back of the truck and saw an enormous camouflaged netting overhead spread out and covering the entire area we had entered. Surprisingly there were very few guards milling around and the driver abruptly stopped. He immediately got out of the truck and walked over to one of them he must have known.

The window in the back of the cab slid open and the professor’s face appeared. “Richard you need to hurry and get into one of their mechanics overalls and boots. They are in one of the metal lockers at the end of the truck!”

I fumbled around and finally found some green khaki overalls with a pair of black ankle boots and changed into them. The professor looked back again approving. “Good Richard. Lower the back tailgate and I’ll come around,” he directed.

“This had bloody well better work professor or I won’t be around much longer!”

“Just stay quiet and let me do any talking; you are my assistant for today.”

As I climbed out of the back of the truck I was aghast! There, just yards away from us, was truly a most dreadful and terrible sight. If there was ever a doomsday machine, this was it. My description would never do it justice, being a most bizarre conception. It must have stood twenty feet tall and bell shaped, that is, a round and flattened out bell, made of solid grey steel, almost identical to a concept coming from H.G. Wells or Jules Verne’s vision of flying saucers. The diameter of it had to be a good forty to fifty feet as it sat up on three telescoping legs each with a set of double wheels at the bottom. A band of metal similar to a hat band circled around the upper portion of the craft with portholes all round and it carried that Nazi swastika.

I whispered to the professor. “What are they calling this dreadful thing?”

“They call it the Feuerball! Stay close and don’t answer any questions, let me do the talking.”

We walked under the massive bell shaped flying machine and up to the two guards standing at the foot of a ten foot boarding ladder; then one of them began speaking to the professor in German.

“Ah, Professor Gratten, you have company today and who is this?”

“This is Franz. He has been ordered here to assist me today with the final engine tests.”

I added a reinforcing nod of the head.

“Very well, you may pass with him. Franz you are very privileged to be working on this project, but be aware, anything you see here remains here.”

I nodded again with a smile and the only acknowledgment I knew would probably work.

“Ja.”

I think the only two words I really knew in German were Ja and nein, yes and no.

We continued up the ladder and through one of the small entry hatches at the bottom. Climbing up into the machine, I could now see the inside and directly over another hatch to the outside was a small bomb bay holding several undoubtedly powerful bombs.

The inside of the machine wasn’t the roomiest place I’ve ever been in; similar to what I would have guessed a submarine was like. There was a cockpit above for one pilot only and just enough room for one more to operate everything else. Several heavy duty machine guns were locked in and placed strategically around in back of the pilot pointing in a circular fashion. I climbed up into the cockpit area and could see clearly out every one of the portholes, which were situated all the way around the hefty machine at the top. Another weapon was pointing outside the machine at the bottom which was attached to two tanks on the inside which, I thought, had to be a flamethrower. The cockpit and guns were inside at the top of the aircraft surrounding a rather large compartment in the very center. The professor told me this was the main engine compartment which held their extremely secretive– magnetic vortex engine.