A thousand suns

The waitress returned with the order and placed the drinks on the table between the two men.

‘Can I get either of you folks somethin’ to eat? A Surf Grill? Steak and Fries? BBQ Ribs?’ Both of them shook their heads silently. ‘How about maybe a snack? We do Fish Burgers, Hotdogs, Filled Bagels.’

‘No. Thanks, honestly we’re not hungry,’ Chris answered abruptly, eager to send her away.

The waitress handed him an insincere smile. ‘Fine. Well just you shout if either of you gents change your minds.’ She turned and headed towards a couple of swing doors that led into the kitchen.

Chris watched her go, then looked back at Wallace. ‘Let me show you something.’

He produced a cardboard folder from his bag and placed it on the table. ‘Well, you see, I’ve made two dives on the plane, the second time was inside… I took a load of pictures.’

Wallace’s eyes immediately widened. ‘You have pictures of the inside of her?’

‘Yeah, sure… in here,’ he said, tapping the folder.

Wallace reached out a hand. Chris could see that it trembled slightly. He wondered whether that was attributable to old age, an illness… or maybe he was just as wired as Chris.

Chris quickly pulled the folder back from him.

‘May I see those pictures?’ Wallace asked eagerly.

‘Sure, but let’s slow down. I’ve got one or two hundred bloody questions I want to ask you first.’

‘Let me look at the pictures first, please?’ said Wallace. ‘It’ll almost certainly help me to answer those questions of yours.’

Wallace looked Chris firmly in the eye. In a face so pale and drawn, his eyes seemed to shine with a keen, intense, energy. ‘Trust me. You show me what you have in that folder, and I can tell you how that plane ended up down there.’

He was right of course. It all boiled down to trust. Quid pro quo, Wallace had said on the phone.

Chris opened the folder and pulled out a pack of black and white photographs. After a moment’s hesitation, he handed them over to Wallace.

The old man studied them intently, one after the other, his eyes widening with each new image.

‘My God,’ he whispered after a few minutes.

‘What is it?’

Wallace looked up at him. His jaw quivered with excitement or fear, Chris couldn’t tell which.

‘It was for real,’ the old man whispered.

‘What? What was for real?’ Chris asked.

Chapter 20

The Bunker

8.43 p.m., 13 April 1945, Berlin

The night sky pulsated like an erratic strobe light from the artillery bombardment; the flashes on the horizon threw the silhouetted remains of the buildings nearby into stark relief. Dr Hauser stood outside the staff car and took in his surroundings. A fresh breeze blew down Wilhelmstrasse, what was once a grand thoroughfare that linked the various buildings of government, the Air Ministry, the Gestapo Headquarters and the Reich Chancellery. It was accompanied by a moaning sound as the wind whipped in and around the empty shell of the Chancellery. One storey up, a window frame, blown out and dangling from a cable, clattered noisily against the massive front facade of the building.

The rubble from the previous night’s devastation had been swept aside to allow at least one lane of traffic to pass down. But there were no other vehicles on the road tonight, just his staff car, with a driver anxious to tuck the vehicle away in the concrete vehicle bunker two streets away.

Hauser was horrified by the ruins around him. His last visit to Berlin had been six months ago. This place had been a city back then, these buildings intact, the road awash with streetlights and bustling with activity. That had been the occasion Albert Speer, the Armaments Minister, had green-lighted the project, appalled at the lack of progress and the wasted resources thrown at Heisenberg’s failed attempt. The proposal Hauser had submitted, quoted at a fraction of the cost, had promised so much more. It had been an easy decision for Speer to make.

Just six months ago.

Berlin is a dead city.

Hauser wondered why, when a place becomes nothing more than a few stacked bricks in a sea of dust, people continue to think of it as a city. Stalingrad had looked like this once, and yet those bastard, in-bred peasants had died in their thousands to keep hold of it. Perhaps the Russians were asking that question of the Germans now.

A Feldwebel of the Leibstandarte, Hitler’s personal SS bodyguard, approached him from the dark archway of the Chancellery.

‘Doctor Hauser?’

Hauser nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘Come this way please.’

Hauser looked at the gloomy entrance to the Chancellery building. In the moonlight it looked like a yawning mouth framed with decaying teeth.

‘Doctor… please, it’s dangerous to stand out here in the open.’ The soldier beckoned with a gloved hand. ‘Follow me, we can enter via the basement of the Reich Chancellery.’

‘He is really here?’ Hauser gestured at the ruined buildings around them.

‘Of course, but below ground, sir. Now please…’

A rogue shell from the Soviet bombardment landed only half a mile away with a thud that was more felt than heard.

‘All right… all right,’ said Dr Hauser anxiously.