One final check of his tank pressure on the computer. Enough breathing time at atmospheric pressure for another hour. Free of the cold water, the air temperature stood at a point where he was reasonably comfortable in his dry suit.
“Mind your step,” he said to Giordino. Then he pushed the door half open and stepped inside as lightly as though he was walking a tightrope. The atmosphere went abruptly dry, and the humidity dropped off to almost zero percent. He paused and swept the light beam on the concrete floor, carefully searching for trip-strings and cables leading to explosive detonators or poison gas containers. A thin broken fish line, gray in color and nearly invisible in the dim tight, lay snapped in two almost under his toes.
The light beam followed one end of the line to a canister marked PHOSGENE. Thank God, Pitt thought, deeply relieved. Phosgene is only fatal if inhaled. The Germans invented nerve gas during World War II, but for some reason lost in the dim past, they failed to rig it here. A fortunate stroke for Pitt and Giordino and the men who followed them. The nerve-type agent could kill on contact with flesh, and they all had skin exposed on their hands and around their face masks.
“You were right about the gas,” said Giordino.
“Too late to help those poor seamen.”
He found four more poison gas booby traps, two of them activated. The phosgene had done its deadly work. Bodies of the Navy divers lay in contorted positions only a few meters apart. All had removed their air tanks and breathing regulators, unsuspecting of the gas until it was too late. Pitt did not bother trying for a pulse. Their blue facial color and unseeing eyes gave evidence they were stone dead.
He played the light into a long gallery and froze.
Nearly eyeball to eyeball a woman stared back at him, her head tilted in a coquettish pose. She smiled at him from an adorable face with high cheekbones and smooth pink skin.
She was not alone. Several other female figures stood beside and behind her, their unblinking eyes seemingly locked on Pitt. They were naked, covered only by long tresses that fell almost to their knees.
“I’ve died and gone to Amazon heaven,” Giordino muttered in rapt awe.
“Don’t get excited,” Pitt warned him. “They’re painted sculptures.”
“I wish. I could mold them like that.”
Pitt stepped around the life-size sculptures and held the dive light over his head. Gold gleamed in an ocean of gilded picture frames. As far as the light could reach and beyond, way beyond, the long gallery was filled with tier upon tier of racks containing an immense cache of fine paintings, sculpture, religious relics, tapestries, rare books, ancient furniture, and archeological antiquities, all stored in orderly bins and open crates.
“I think,” Pitt murmured through his acoustic speaker, “we’ve just made a lot of people very happy.”
37
THE GERMANS WERE characteristically efficient. Within four hours, decontamination experts arrived and set up pumping equipment and laid hose into the treasure gallery. The poisoned atmosphere was quickly and safely drawn into a chemical tank truck parked on the surface. While the cleanup process was in operation, Reinhardt and his men deactivated the phosgene release mechanisms and turned the canisters over to the decontamination crew. Only then did the Navy divers carry their dead to waiting ambulances.
Next, a large aluminum pipe was fed through the opening in the ground like a giant straw and attached to a huge suction pump that soon began draining the water from the subterranean tunnel into a small nearby stream. An excavating crew appeared with their equipment and began digging into the original entry ramp leading down to the bunker that had been filled in at the end of the war.
Mancuso paced the bunker impatiently, stopping every few minutes and peering at the instruments that measured the decreasing levels of the poison gas. Then he’d move to the edge of the ramp and stare at the rapidly receding water. Back and forth, watching the progress, counting the minutes until he could safely enter the gallery containing the Nazis’ plundered loot.
Giordino, true to form, slept the whole time. He found a musty old cot in a former Luftwaffe mechanic’s quarters and promptly sacked out.
After Pitt made his report to Haider and Reinhardt, he killed time by accepting an invitation to a home-cooked meal prepared by Frau Clausen in her warm and comfortable farmhouse. Later he roamed the bunker examining the old aircraft. He stopped and circled one of the Messerschmitt 262s, admiring the slim cigar shape of the fuselage, the triangular vertical stabilizer, and the ungainly jet pods that hung from the razor knifelike wings. Except for the black crosses outlined in white on the wings and fuselage, and the swastika on the tail, the only other marking was a large numeral 9 painted just forward of the cockpit.
The world’s first operational jet fighter, it was produced too late to save Germany, though it scared hell out of the British and American air forces for a few short months.
“It flew as though the angels were pushing.”
Pitt turned at the voice and found Gert Haider standing behind him. The German’s blue eyes were wistfully gazing at the cockpit of the Messerschmitt.
“You look too young to have flown her,” said Pitt.
Haider shook his head. “The words of one of our leading aces during the war, Adolf Galland.”
“Shouldn’t take much work to get them airworthy.”
Haider gazed at the fleet of aircraft that sat in spectral silence in the vast bunker. “The government rarely provides funding for such a project. I’ll be lucky if I can keep five or six of them for museum display.”
“And the others?”
“They’ll be sold or auctioned off to museums and collectors around the world.”
“I wish I could afford to place a bid,” Pitt said yearningly.
Haider looked at him, the arrogance was gone. A canny smile curved his lips. “How many aircraft do you count?”
Pitt stood back and mentally totaled the number of jet craft in the bunker. “I make it forty even.”
“Wrong. It’s thirty-nine.”
Pitt re-counted and again came up with forty. “I hate to disagree, but—”
Haider waved him off. “If one can be removed when the entry ramp is cleared and transported across the border before I take the official inventory…”
Haider didn’t need to finish his sentence. Pitt heard, but he wasn’t sure he interpreted the meaning. A Me-262 had to be worth over a million dollars in good restorable condition.
“When do you expect to take inventory?” he asked, feeling his way.
“After I catalog the contents of the plundered art.”
“That could take weeks.”
“Possibly longer.”
“Why?” Pitt put to Haider.
“Call it penitence. I was most rude to you earlier. And I feel obligated to reward your courageous effort in reaching the treasure, saving perhaps five lives and preventing me from making a blue-ribbon ass of myself and quite probably losing my job.”
“And you’re offering to look the other way while I steal one.”
“There are so many, one won’t be missed.”
“I’m grateful,” Pitt said sincerely.
Haider looked at him. “I asked a friend in our intelligence service to run a file on you while you were busy in the tunnel. I think a Messerschmitt two-six-two will make a nice addition to your collection and complement your Ford trimotor.”
“Your friend was very thorough.”
“As a collector of fine mechanical relics, I think you will give it the proper respect.”
“It will be restored to original condition,” Pitt promised.
Haider lit a cigarette and leaned casually against a jet pod as he exhaled blue smoke. “I suggest you see about renting a flatbed truck. By tonight the bunker entrance will have been widened enough to tow a plane to the surface. I’m certain Lieutenant Reinhardt and his surviving team will be happy to assist you in removing your latest acquisition.”