Ghost Flight (41 page)

‘During winter 1944 and spring 1945, twenty thousand forced labourers from the nearby Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp died building Mittelwerk – from exhaustion, starvation and disease. They were worked to death, or were executed when they were too weak to serve any further useful purpose.’

Narov gestured at the crate. ‘As you can see, not all of the evil from Mittelwerk perished with the end of the war.’

Jaeger traced the last line of lettering. ‘What’s the A9?’

‘Sequel to the V-2. The Amerika Rakete – the America Skyrocket; designed to fly at over three thousand mph and to hit the American mainland. By war’s end they had working wind-tunnel versions and they had even had successful test flights. Obviously they did not want the A9 to die with the Reich.’

Jaeger could tell that Narov knew so much more than she was letting on. It had been like this from the very start of the expedition. And now they’d made a series of mind-blowing discoveries – a secret German warplane decked out in American colours, lost for decades in the Amazon and stuffed full of what, by anyone’s reckoning, was a cargo of Nazi horrors.

Yet nothing seemed to come as the least shock or surprise to Irina Narov.

73

They probed further into the darkness.

The heat inside the fuselage was stifling, the discomfort tripled by the cumbersome suit and mask, but Jaeger didn’t doubt that the NBC kit was proving an absolute lifesaver. Whatever toxic fumes filled the aircraft, should either he, Narov or Dale have tried to enter without such protection, they would be in a whole world of hurt right now, of that he felt certain.

For an instant, he turned to check on Dale.

He found the cameraman attaching a portable battery-operated lamp to the top of his camera. He flicked it on – light by which to film – and the interior of the warplane was cast into stark, knife-cut light and shadow.

From every corner stared horrible, glowing twin pinpricks of light:
Phoneutria
eyes.

Jaeger was half expecting the ghosts of whoever had crewed this warplane to be woken by the glaring light and to step from the shadows, Luger pistols raised to defend their darkest mysteries to the last.

It seemed almost inconceivable that the aircraft could have been so utterly abandoned, complete with all its hidden secrets.

Narov crouched before a third crate, and almost instantly Jaeger sensed the change in her demeanour. As she traced the lettering, she let out a strangled gasp, and Jaeger figured that here at least was an element even she hadn’t quite been expecting.

He bent to read the words stamped on the crate’s side.

Kriegsentscheidend: Aktion Adlerflug

SS
Standortwechsel Kommando

Plasmaphysik – Dresden

Röntgen Kanone

‘This we did not expect,’ Narov muttered. She glanced at Jaeger. ‘Every line is obvious, but the last? You understand line three?’

Jaeger nodded. ‘Plasma Physics – Dresden.’

‘Exactly,’ Narov confirmed. ‘As to the
Röntgen Kanone
, there is no direct translation into English. You might call it a death-ray or direct energy weapon. It fires a particle beam, or electromagnetic radiation, or even sound waves. It sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but the Nazis were long rumoured to have had such a weapon, and to have used it to down Allied aircraft.’

Narov’s gaze met Jaeger’s through the eyepiece of her mask. ‘It seems as if it is true, and that they held on to their
Röntgen Kanone
until the very last.’

Jaeger could feel the sweat pouring down his face. The heat was building to intolerable levels, and the perspiration was starting to condense inside his mask, blurring his vision. He figured they should head for the rear and try to open one of the side doors, which lay just aft of the tailplane.

As they fought their way through, Narov pointed out further crates packed with an array of staggeringly advanced weaponry. ‘The BV 246 gliding bomb. It had a two-hundred-kilometre range, and it would home on to the target’s radar signal . . . The Fritz-X guided bomb, with a heat-seeking or radar/radio homing warhead. Basically, these are the forerunners of our modern-day smart bombs.’

She bent beside a row of long, low crates. ‘The Rheintochter R1 – a surface-to-air guided missile for shooting down Allied bombers . . . The X4 – an air-to-air missile, guided to the target by the pilot. The Feuerlilie – the Fire Lily – a guided anti-aircraft rocket . . .’

She paused before a group of smaller packing cases. ‘A Seehund active night-vision unit – used in conjunction with an infrared searchlight, it had unlimited range . . . And here, stealth materials made by IG Farben, for their Schwarzes Flugzeug – Black Aircraft – programme. It was the precursor to our modern-day stealth warplanes.

‘Plus, here – materials for coating their XXI submarine. The coating absorbed radar and sonar, making the XXI all but immune to detection.’ She glanced at Jaeger. ‘It was so revolutionary that the Chinese navy’s copy – the Ming class submarine – is still in operation
today
. Plus the Russians’ Project 633 – their Romeo class submarine – was a direct copy of the XXI, which lasted through the entirety of the Cold War.’

She rubbed the dust off another crate, revealing the words stamped thereon. ‘Sarin, tabun and soman. The Nazis’ cutting-edge nerve agents – ones still stockpiled by the world’s major powers. We had no effective defences against them in 1945. None – and largely because we didn’t even know they existed.’

Narov gave a sharp intake of breath. ‘And next to it – a crate of bio-agents. Hitler code-named their biological weapon programme Blitzableiter: Lightning Rod. It was Nazi scientist Kurt Blome’s brainchild. They always denied its existence, disguising it as a cancer research programme, yet here we have the absolute proof that
Blitzableiter existed: plague, typhoid, cholera, anthrax and nephritis-based agents. Clearly, they wished to continue after war’s end
.’

By the time they’d reached the tail section of the warplane, Jaeger’s head was spinning – both from the suffocating heat, and from all that they had discovered. Hitler’s absolute belief in technology – that against all odds it would win the war for the Reich – had borne fruit, and in ways that Jaeger had barely imagined.

Both at school and at the Combat Training Centre Royal Marines, where he’d completed his officer training, Jaeger had been taught that the Allies had outfought the Nazi enemy both militarily and technologically. But if the contents of this warplane were anything to go by, that lesson seemed to be anything but true.

Guided rocketry and missiles; smart bombs; stealth aircraft; stealth submarines; night-vision kit; chemical and biological weapons;
death rays
even – the Nazis’ stunning advancement was evidenced by the crates packed into this warplane’s cavernous hold.

74

The Ju 390’s rear cargo hatches turned out to be typical pieces of solid German engineering. On either side were double doors around six feet in height, which opened outwards. They were fastened by twin metal bars that ran the length of their centre, slotting into holes in the floor and ceiling.

The hinges and locking mechanism looked well greased, and Jaeger figured they should move easily. He applied force to one of the levers, and it barely creaked as he pulled it upwards, freeing the doors. He put his weight against them, and the next moment they swung wide. The instant they did so, the thick sludge of mist that clung to the aircraft’s interior began to leak into the open.

Jaeger was surprised to see that it appeared to be heavier than air. It poured out of the aircraft, snaking to the ground and pooling like a dense toxic soup. When a shaft of sunlight hit the gas cloud, it appeared to glow from the inside with a strange metallic shimmer.

It reminded Jaeger that he had been also tasked to carry out some tests, to establish the source of the toxicity emanating from the warplane. He had been so caught up in the search it had almost slipped his mind.

But time enough for that later.

Right now he was burning up, and he needed a few minutes’ breather and some air. He took a seat on one side of the open doorway, Narov taking up a position opposite him. From the corner of his eye he could see Dale filming away, as he tried to suck every last frame of this awesome discovery into his camera lens.

By the light streaming in through the open hatch Jaeger noticed what looked like a picture of a MANPAD stencilled along one side of a nearby crate. He bent to inspect it. Sure enough, it showed what appeared to be a shoulder-launched surface-to-air missile.

Narov traced the lettering running along the crate’s side. ‘Fliegerfaust. It means literally “pilot fist”. The world’s first shoulder-launched surface-to-air missile, to shoot down Allied warplanes. Again, thankfully, it came too late to make much of a difference to the outcome of the war.’

‘Surreal . . .’ Jaeger muttered. ‘So many firsts . . . It’ll take an age to catalogue all the secrets lying around in here.’

‘What exactly is so surprising?’ Narov asked, as she stared out into the white bones of the dead jungle. ‘That the Nazis had such technology? They had this and so much more. Search that warplane fully, and who knows what else it may reveal.’

She paused. ‘Or is your surprise that this aircraft is in American markings? The Allies supported the Nazis’ efforts to relocate their weaponry – their
Wunderwaffe
– to the far-flung corners of the earth. By war’s end we were facing a new enemy: Soviet Russia. It was a case of the enemy of my enemy is my friend. The Allies gave their blessing at the highest level to those Nazi relocations – hence why this aircraft is in USAF colours. The Allies – the Americans – owned the skies by then, and none would have made it through otherwise.

‘By war’s end it was a race against the Russians,’ Narov continued. ‘By seizing for ourselves the Nazis’ secrets – their technology and their foremost scientists – we were able to win the Cold War, not to mention the space race. Back then, that was how we justified it all.’

‘
We
?’ Jaeger interjected. ‘But you’re Russian. You said it yourself – by the end of the war you were the enemy.’

‘Of me you know nothing,’ Narov muttered. She was silent for a long moment. ‘I may sound Russian, but my blood is British. I was born in your country. Before that, my distant heritage is German. And now I live in New York. I am a citizen of the free world. Does that make me the enemy?’

Jaeger shrugged, half apologetically. ‘How was I to know? You’ve told me zero about yourself or—’

‘Now is hardly the time,’ Narov interjected, gesturing at the Ju 390’s cargo hold.

‘Fair enough. Anyway, keep talking – about the warplane.’

‘Take for example the Mittelwerk underground facility,’ Narov began again, picking up her thread. ‘In early May 1945, American forces overran it, and the first V-2 rocket systems were shipped out to the US. Just days later, Soviet army officers arrived to take over the complex: it lay within the Soviet zone of occupation. The American Apollo moon landings were built upon those V-2 technologies.

‘Or take Kurt Blome, the director of the Blitzableiter
.
One reason the Nazis’ biological weapons programme was so advanced was that they had thousands of concentration camp victims to test them on. At war’s end, Blome was captured and put on trial in Nuremberg. Somehow he was acquitted, after which the Americans hired him to work for their Army Chemical Corps, on a top-secret weapons programme.

‘We cut deals,’ Narov announced, unable to keep the bitterness out of her voice. ‘And yes, we cut deals with those who were unspeakable – the very worst of the Nazis.’ She eyed Jaeger. ‘You have never heard of Operation Paperclip?’

Jaeger shook his head.

‘It was the Americans’ code name for a project to relocate thousands of Nazi scientists to the US. There they were given new names, new identities, plus positions of power and influence – as long as they would work for their new masters. You had a similar programme, only with typical British irony you named it Operation Darwin: survival of the fittest.

‘Both projects were completely deniable,’ Narov continued. ‘Operation Paperclip was denied even to the level of the US president.’ She paused. ‘But there were layers of deniability that went even deeper.
Aktion Adlerflug –
Operation Eagle Flight – it is stamped on every one of the packing crates in this aircraft’s hold.
Aktion Adlerflug
was the codename for Hitler’s plan to relocate Nazi technology to places where it could be used to rebuild the Reich. It was a project that we – the Allies – endorsed, as long as they worked with us against the Soviets.

‘In short, you are sitting aboard a warplane that lies at the heart of the world’s darkest ever conspiracy. Such was –
is
– the secrecy involved that most of the British and American files related to this activity – not to mention the Russian files – remain closed. And I doubt they will ever be opened.’

Narov shrugged. ‘If all of this surprises you, it really should not. The supposed good guys cut a deal with the devil. They did so out of what they believed was necessity – for the greater good of the free world.’

75

Jaeger waved a hand at the crates lining the Ju 390’s hold. ‘It only makes this all the more incredible. This warplane – it’s got to be the greatest collection of Nazi war secrets ever assembled. All the more vital that we get it lifted out of here, back to somewhere where we can—’

‘Where we can what?’ Narov cut in, turning her cold eyes upon him. ‘Tell the world? Much of this technology we have now perfected. Take the
Röntgen Kanone;
the death ray
.
Recently, the Americans perfected just such a thing. It is codenamed MARAUDER. It stands for Magnetically Accelerated Ring to Achieve Ultra-high Directed Energy and Radiation. Basically, it fires doughnut-shaped spheres of magnetically cemented plasma. Think balls of lightning.