Jaeger turned to show Narov, but she had her back to him, and there was something furtive about her posture. She was bent over a leather flight satchel, her hands feverishly leafing through a sheaf of documents. From her body language alone, Jaeger figured she’d got whatever she’d come here for, and that no one was about to part her from whatever was in that satchel.
She must have sensed his eyes upon her. Without a word, she shrugged off her backpack, stuffed the satchel deep inside it, and turned towards the aircraft’s hold. She glanced Jaeger’s way. From what he could see of her face behind the mask, it appeared flushed with excitement. But there was also an evasiveness – a defensive, self-protective look – in her eyes.
‘Found what you’re looking for?’ he queried pointedly.
Narov ignored the question. Instead, she gestured towards the warplane’s rear. ‘That way – if you really want to see what secrets this aircraft holds.’
Jaeger made a mental note to tackle her over that satchel-load of documents once they were done getting the warplane lifted out of there. Time was too pressing for any such confrontation now.
72
Narov indicated the bulkhead. There was an oblong hatchway set into it, which had been sealed shut by a handle locked into the vertical position. An arrow pointed downwards, with the German words stamped beside it: ZU OFFNEN.
It needed no translating.
Jaeger reached for the handle. For a brief moment he hesitated, before slipping his hand inside his chest pouch and pulling out a Petzl head torch. He loosened its straps and pulled it on over his hood and mask. Then he reached for the lever again and wrenched it down into the horizontal position, before swinging the heavy door wide.
All was darkness inside the Ju 390’s cavernous rear.
Jaeger felt about with his gloved hand and twisted the glass of his head torch, switching it on. A burning blue light stabbed out from the Petzl’s pair of xenon bulbs. The twin rays pierced the gloom, playing like a laser show across the interior, catching in layers of what resembled mist lying thick across the hold.
The mist reached out towards Jaeger, trailing ghostly tendrils all around him.
He peered deeper inside. This far forward, the Ju 390’s hold was at least the height of two fully grown men, and even wider at its base. And as far as Jaeger could tell, the entire length of the fuselage was stacked high with cargo crates. Each was lashed to steel lugs set into the aircraft’s floor, to prevent the load from shifting about during flight.
Jaeger took a first cautious step inside. He had every confidence in their Avon NBC kit, but stepping into an unknown hazard like this was still daunting. There was no known toxic agent that could defeat such protective suits and masks, but what if the warplane’s hold had somehow been booby-trapped?
The fuselage sloped away from him, the aircraft sitting lower to the ground at its rear. As he gazed about, he noticed the beam of his torch catching on long filaments of silver, strung from one side of the hold to the other. At first he thought he’d discovered the hidden trip wires left behind by those who had abandoned this warplane – perhaps tethered to explosive charges.
But then he noticed that each of the threads formed part of a larger complex of geometric patterns, spiralling in towards a dark mass crouched at the very centre.
Spiders.
Why were there always spiders?
‘The Phoneutria is also called “the wandering spider”,’ Narov’s voice cut in via the radio intercom. ‘They get everywhere. Be watchful.’
She moved ahead of him with her knife drawn.
Bitten once by a Phoneutria, she seemed to show no fear, slashing expertly at the webs, collapsing them before her to clear a path through. As she pirouetted from side to side, slicing at the silken threads and flicking the bodies of the spiders away, she moved with the slender grace of a ballet dancer.
It was captivating. Jaeger traced her progress, noting her raw courage. She really was as unique – as dangerous? – as the Phoneutria she was so expertly outmanoeuvring.
He followed the path she cut, feeling for any trip wires set at just above floor level. His eye was drawn to a massive crate lying to his immediate front. It was so large, he’d have to squeeze past so as to continue down the warplane. For a moment he wondered how they’d manhandled it onto the aircraft. He could only imagine they had used heavy vehicles to do so, driving the crate up the warplane’s rear ramp.
As he studied it, Jaeger’s torch caught the lettering stamped on its side.
Kriegsentscheidend: Aktion Adlerflug
SS Standortwechsel Kommando
Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft
Uranprojekt – Uranmaschine
Below that was the unmistakably dark form of… a Reichsadler.
Some of the words – plus the symbol – were instantly recognisable to Jaeger, but it was Narov who would add the missing links. She knelt before the crate, tracing the words in the light thrown by her own head torch.
‘So, this is hardly surprising…’ she began.
Jaeger crouched beside her. ‘Some of the words I know,’ he remarked. ‘Kriegsentscheidend: beyond top secret. SS Standortwechsel Kommando: the Relocation Commando of the SS. What about the others?’
Narov read and interpreted the words, Jaeger’s head torch glinting off the glass lens of her mask. ‘Aktion Adlerflug – Operation Eagle Flight. Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft – the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, the Nazis’ top nuclear research facility. Uranprojekt – the nuclear weapons project of the Reich. Uranmaschine – nuclear reactor.’
She turned to Jaeger. ‘Components of their nuclear programme. The Nazis had experimented with nuclear power and how it could be harnessed for weaponry in ways that we had never even imagined.’
Narov moved across to a second crate, tracing similar lines of lettering, plus a second Reichsadler.
Kriegsentscheidend: Aktion Adlerflug
SS Standortwechsel Kommando
Mittelwerk Kohnstein
A9 Amerika Rakete
‘So the top two lines are the same. Below that: Mittelwerk was an underground complex tunnelled into the Kohnstein mountains, right in the very heart of Germany. It was where Hitler tasked Hans Kammler to relocate the Nazi’s top rocketry and missiles, after their Peenemunde research centre was bombed by the Allies.
‘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.