Echo of the Reich (45 page)

“And they also changed the way it worked from the original. Marcus Wolf’s Bell was only ever intended to produce radiation. Massive amounts of lethal radiation. If you hadn’t stopped it, I have been assured by the scientists who’ve looked at it, a circular area covering over one hundred square miles would have been so badly contaminated that nothing would be able to live there for a minimum of fifty years. The estimates of the immediate death toll don’t run into the thousands. They run into the tens
of thousands, possibly even higher, and an incalculable number of people would have suffered from cancers and other diseases caused by radiation sickness of various sorts.

“It was an outstanding piece of work, and I’m only sorry that Detective Inspector Davidson—I’m sorry, I mean the former Detective Inspector Davidson—was so dismissive of the information that you provided to him and his officers. He’s already been suspended and will probably be dismissed from the force, and there will be a commendation for you in the near future, I imagine. The other evidence that has emerged from this operation is that Marcus Wolf—which does actually appear to be his real name—was a very professional operator. As well as the technical expertise he and his men showed in the construction of this nasty weapon, he had even managed to arrange for Israel to take the blame. I fully accept your view that Wolf was a Nazi, in the proper sense of that word, and he genuinely believed that the Jews were responsible for most of the ills of the world. What we think he was hoping for was a backlash against the state of Israel once his plot had succeeded.

“What he’d done was prepare forged documentation that would apparently show that the device had been developed and positioned by a radical Egyptian terrorist group, but which would, on closer examination, prove to have been the work of rogue elements within the Israeli Mossad secret service. It was, if you like, a forgery within a forgery. But thanks to the information you’ve provided, identifying the real culprits has not proved difficult.”

The superintendent paused and smiled at Bronson.

“And the bad news, sir?”

“There have been a number of questions raised about the weapons you and your companion were seen to be carrying, and later using, in the Olympic Park. You’ve also failed to identify your companion. Your statement that he was a former army colleague presently seconded to the Special Air Service, and that he supplied the weapons you used, appears to be without foundation. Or at least, the army has so far failed to identify anyone who meets those criteria.”

For a few seconds, the superintendent simply stared at Bronson. Then he nodded and continued.

“We will be taking the pragmatic view here, Chris. Because you managed to foil this plot, no action will be taken over any perceived firearms offenses that you and your companion may seem to be guilty of. As I’m your superior officer, all inquiries into this matter will eventually arrive on my desk, and I am prepared to provide evidence that the weapons were issued to you by the Kent Police, and that your companion was an undercover officer employed by this force who can’t be identified for security reasons.”

Bronson breathed a sigh of relief. Because of what had happened, he hadn’t expected to encounter any problems over his somewhat unorthodox handling of the situation, but it was good to have this confirmed.

There was only one other matter that was gnawing at his conscience. Two days after the incidents in the Olympic Park, he and Weeks had traveled by car to Berlin, used the keys Bronson had removed from Marcus’s body in the truck, and thoroughly searched the German’s house.
One of the keys had opened a safe in a bedroom, hidden inside a wardrobe that contained only Nazi uniforms. Inside that safe they’d found several hundred thousand euros, which they’d split between them as unofficial payment for the job they’d done in London, a Walther pistol and a DVD.

Bronson had played the first few seconds of the DVD to make sure it was the correct one, then removed it and the pistol. On the way back across the Channel on the ferry, he’d cut the DVD into a dozen pieces and tossed them all over the side rail, and then dropped the component parts of the Walther into the sea, one at a time.

But that still left the killing of the undercover police officer to be addressed.

“And the other matter, sir?” Bronson asked.

“Ah, yes. That’s caused a bit of confusion, actually, but the Berlin police were very helpful. They still don’t know why we needed to know about an undercover police officer named Herman Polti, but they did check their records for us. And that’s a puzzle, really, because not only could they find no trace of an undercover officer by that name, but they also could find no serving police officer anywhere in the Berlin force called Herman Polti. So I don’t know where you got your information from, but it appears to be completely inaccurate.”

The superintendent paused again, and looked speculatively across the desk at Bronson.

“They did do a wider check, though, and the name cropped up on one of their databases. A week or so ago, shortly after you went undercover in London, actually, the body of a man named Herman Polti was found in
woodland on the eastern outskirts of Berlin. He’d been shot in the chest, and the corpse showed unmistakable signs of having been brutally tortured.”

Bronson sat forward in his chair, hanging on every word.

“But he wasn’t a policeman. Quite the reverse, in fact. Now that we’ve managed to identify Marcus Wolf as the ringleader of this plot, we’ve also been able to trace many of his associates. Herman Polti was one of those associates, and he was also wanted by the Berlin police in connection with at least two robberies and three murders. He was, in short, a career criminal who seemed to have thrown his lot in with Wolf. Who killed him, and who tortured him, are two mysteries that we may never solve. It’s possible that someone from his past life caught up with him to exact revenge, or perhaps Marcus Wolf discovered he was playing both sides against the middle and had him executed. We don’t know, and frankly we don’t care.”

Bronson didn’t even realize he had been holding his breath until he exhaled.

“Thank you, sir,” he said, getting to his feet, “for everything.”

The superintendent smiled.

“Actually, I think it’s the other way round,” he said. “I don’t care what you’re working on now, just clear your desk and take some leave. You’ve earned it. I don’t want to see you back here for at least two weeks. If Angela’s still speaking to you, take her somewhere hot. Just not the Berlin area. It’s possible some of Marcus Wolf’s friends might still be on the loose, and I’d hate you to meet up with them.”

Bronson nodded.

“I hadn’t planned to go back to Germany for some time,” he said. “Maybe never. There’s something about that country that I don’t like. Probably just too many echoes of the past.”

Olympic Myths

There are a lot of misconceptions about the Olympics in general, and about the 1936 Berlin Olympics in particular.

One myth that has endured to this day is that Adolf Hitler deliberately snubbed the hugely successful black American athlete Jesse Owens. In fact, no such thing occurred. All the evidence suggests that Hitler actually admired Owens, and that the feeling was mutual. In reality, Hitler was told by Count Henri de Baillet-Latour, the then president of the International Olympic Committee, that as the Führer was a guest at the Games, he would have to either congratulate all of the winners or none of them. Hitler’s schedule—he was, after all, running Germany at the time—did not permit him to attend every event, and so after the first day he congratulated none of the athletes, white or black.

This myth was perpetrated long after the Olympics were over by, among other people, Jesse Owens himself,
and it wasn’t until 1965, almost thirty years after the Berlin Olympics, that Owens finally admitted in an interview that there was no truth in the story whatsoever. Owens had become a popular public speaker in the interim, and had told and retold the story of the alleged snub simply because, as he put it in his own words: “Those stories are what people like to hear, so you tell them.”

Right from the start, the Berlin Games were mired in both controversy and myth. During the opening ceremony, the British team’s military-style “eyes right” as they strode past Adolf Hitler in the viewing stand was watched in stony silence by the German spectators, and the refusal by the American team to lower their flag as they passed the Führer was greeted with whistles and catcalls of disapproval by the German crowd.

In fact, it was touch and go whether the Americans would send a team at all: in 1935 the Amateur Athletic Union of America voted to participate in the event by the slimmest possible margin of 58 votes to 56.

When the German team, five hundred strong and wearing white military-style uniforms, marched into the stadium at the end of the parade, there was no doubting the feelings of the spectators. After greeting the German competitors with a roar that seemed almost to shake the very fabric of the stadium, the crowd burst into an impromptu rendition of the chorus of
Deutschland Über Alles
, the German national anthem.

When the parade was complete, Hitler made one of his briefest speeches ever—just a single sentence to officially open the Games—and then a recording of a special greeting from Baron Pierre De Coubertin, the founder of the
modern Olympics, was played over the public address system. When that was complete, twenty thousand homing pigeons were released, all except one returning to their owners. That single dissenting bird took up residence in the stadium and was seen on a daily basis throughout the Games.

Immediately after the opening ceremony, a single runner, a twenty-nine-year-old blond-haired and blue-eyed athlete named Fritz Schilgen, entered the arena. Schilgen was carrying a flaming torch in his right hand, holding it high above his head. He paused for a bare second as he entered the stadium, apparently shocked into immobility by the deafening noise of the spectators, then ran down a long flight of steps that led to the track itself. The sound died away almost to nothing as he ran the entire length of the arena, staying on the track, the torch still held high, then ran up a set of steps at the opposite end of the stadium, where a large steel cauldron stood waiting. He paused for a moment, then plunged the burning torch into the top of the vessel. The fuel in the cauldron caught fire immediately, the flames dancing high above his head.

Again the crowd roared approval. The XI Olympiad, the Berlin Games, as much a propaganda exercise for the ruling Nazi regime as a sporting event, had finally started, and at the same time at least two enduring myths had been created.

The orders given by Adolf Hitler had been most specific. The Berlin Games were to be the most impressive and memorable that the world had ever seen. Preparations had started years before, overseen by a remarkable,
imaginative and very talented individual named Carl Diem.

Diem hadn’t just organized the building of the stadia and tracks and swimming pools and accommodation and all the other facilities essential for the conduct of the games themselves. Acting on Hitler’s most specific orders, and letting his imagination run wild, he had gone further. Much, much further.

He had visited Greece, the home of the original Olympic Games, two years before, and had come up with the idea of creating a symbolic pageant that would imbue the Berlin Games with a sense of the history and traditions of the ancient Greek event. That might have been enough, but he was a lot more ambitious than that. Instead of just trying to replicate some of the historical details of the original Games, he decided to invent history. And he did it so well that two of Carl Diem’s fabricated “traditions” would be used in every subsequent Games.

The ancient Olympics were dedicated to the Greek god Zeus, whose statue, originally one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, had stood at Olympia, and the place had then given its name to the Games. Diem discovered that in the original Olympic Games a flame was burned to commemorate the legend of the theft of fire from the gods by Prometheus, and that gave him the idea for the torch relay from Olympia to the city hosting the Games, a ritual that had never taken place previously.

The carefully orchestrated procession began on the last day of June 1936, in the ruins of the Temple of Hera at Olympia in Greece, the site of the ancient Olympics. A troupe of fifteen young women, clad in white robes to
symbolize virginity, and working under the direction of an apparent “high priestess,” kindled this first modern Olympic flame by using a specially designed parabolic mirror to focus the rays of the sun onto twigs gathered from nearby trees.

To further reinforce the image Diem was trying to create, the flaming torch was then carried to the Acropolis in Athens for a special invocation, and handed to the first of the runners who would carry it to Berlin. Then it was taken to the ancient stadium at Delphi for a modern re-creation of Diem’s idea of what an ancient Greek ceremony might have been like.

Central to this event was what looked like a centuries-old three-foot-tall stone altar with the now-familiar design of five interlocking rings chiseled into its surface. But this wasn’t old. It had been especially prepared for this one event, another product of Diem’s fertile imagination, and yet another of his ideas that was to become a part of the ancient Olympic myth.

So firmly entrenched did the idea of the “Rings of Olympus” become that about two decades later, when a group of British researchers visited Delphi and found the carved altar stone there, they recognized the ring design and immediately proclaimed that they’d discovered an incontrovertible link between the ancient and modern Olympics. Some apparently authoritative history books still include a reference to this ancient stone and the Olympic tradition. Public humiliation and embarrassment for the researchers followed shortly afterward when it was revealed that the ancient stone, this “millennia-old altar,”
was just a clever piece of twentieth-century Nazi propaganda.