Giordino had Megan by the hand. 'Adrenaline still pumping.'
'Then come on,' said Pitt. 'Our private plane awaits.'
To Sandecker and Agent Little, the wait for the next contact from Pitt and Giordino seemed interminable. The fire had died to a few smoldering embers, and the admiral seemed to have no interest in rekindling it. He puffed on one of his big cigars, covering the ceiling with a haze of blue smoke. Both he and Little passed the time sitting spellbound, listening to the tales told by Admiral Hozafel, tales he had never told anyone in more than fifty- six years.
'You were saying, Admiral,' said Sandecker, 'that the Nazis sent expeditions to explore Antarctica several years before the war.'
'Yes, Adolf Hitler was far more creative than people thought. I can't say what inspired him, but he acquired a fascination for Antarctica, primarily to populate and to use as a giant military establishment. He believed that if such a dream came true, his naval and air forces could control all the seas south of the Tropic of Capricorn. Captain Alfred Ritscher was put in command of a large expedition to explore the subcontinent. The Schwabenland, an early German aircraft carrier used to refuel seaplanes flying the Atlantic in the early 1930s, was converted for Antarctic exploration, and left Hamburg in December of 1938 under the pretense of studying the feasibility of setting up a whaling colony. After reaching their destination in the middle of the southern summer, Ritscher sent out aircraft with the newest and best German cameras. His flyers covered over two hundred and fifty thousand square miles and took more than eleven thousand aerial photographs.'
'I've heard rumors of such an expedition,' said Sandecker, 'but until now I never learned the true facts.'
'Ritscher returned with a larger expedition a year later, this time with improved aircraft with skis, so they could land on the ice. They also brought along a small zeppelin. This time they covered three hundred and fifty thousand square miles, landing at the South Pole and dropping flags with the swastika emblem every thirty miles as markers for their claim of Nazi territory.'
'Did they discover anything of unusual interest?' asked Little.
'Indeed they did,' replied Hozafel. 'The aerial surveys recorded a number of ice-free areas, frozen lakes whose ice surface was less than four feet thick, and steam vents with signs of vegetation growing nearby. Their photographs also detected what looked like bits and pieces of roads under the ice.'
Sandecker sat up straight and gazed at the old German U-boat commander. 'The Germans found evidence of a civilization on Antarctica?'
Hozafel nodded. 'Teams using motorized snow vehicles found natural ice caves. While exploring them, they stumbled onto the remains of an ancient civilization. This discovery inspired the Nazis to use their engineering and technical ingenuity to build a vast underground base in Antarctica. It was the best-kept secret of the war.'
'To my knowledge,' said Little, 'Allied intelligence sources ignored rumors of a Nazi base in Antarctica. They considered them far-fetched propaganda.'
Hozafel gave a crooked smile. 'They were meant to. But once, Admiral Donitz nearly gave it away. During a speech to his U-boat commanders, he announced, `The German submarine fleet is proud of having built for the Fuhrer, in another part of the world, a Shangri-la on land, an impregnable fortress.' Fortunately for us, nobody paid attention. The U-boats I commanded earlier in the war were never sent to the Antarctic, so it wasn't until near the end, when I became commander of the U-699, that I learned of the secret base, whose code name was New Berlin.'
'How was it built?' inquired Sandecker.
'After the war began, the first step the Nazis took was to send a pair of raiders into the southern waters to sink all hostile shipping and keep the Allies from obtaining any information concerning the project. Until they were eventually sunk by ships of the British navy, the raiders captured or destroyed entire fleets of Allied shipping and all fishing and whaling ships that strayed into the area. Next, an armada of cargo ships, disguised as Allied merchant vessels, and a fleet of huge U-boats, built not for warfare but to transport large cargoes, began moving men, equipment, and supplies to the area of the ancient civilization they thought might be Atlantis.'
'Why build a base on ancient ruins?' said Little. 'What military purpose did it serve?'
'The dead and lost city itself was not important. It was the vast ice cave they found under a field of ice that led from the city. The cave traveled twenty-five miles, before ending at a geothermal lake that covered a hundred and ten square miles. Scientists, engineers, construction teams, and every arm of the military- army, air force, navy- and, of course, a large contingent of SS to maintain security and oversee the operation, landed and began an immense excavation project. They also imported a large army of slave labor, mostly captured Russians from Siberia, who had built up a resistance to cold climates.'
'What happened to the Russian prisoners after the base was completed?' asked Little, suspecting the answer.
Hozafel's face turned grim. 'The Nazis could never allow them to be released and reveal Germany's best- kept secret. They were either worked to death or executed.'
Sandecker studied the smoke spiraling from his cigar soberly. 'So thousands of Russians lie under the ice, unknown and forgotten.'
'Life was cheap to the Nazis,' said Hozafel. 'The sacrifice to build a fortress to launch the Fourth Reich was well worth the price to them.'
'The Fourth Empire,' Sandecker said darkly. 'The last Nazi bastion and their final attempt at world domination.'
'The Germans area very obstinate race.'
'Did you see this base?' asked Little.
Again, Hozafel nodded. 'After leaving Bergen, Captain Harger and the U-2015, followed by my crew in the U-699, sailed across the Atlantic without surfacing, to a deserted port in Patagonia.'
'Where you off-loaded your passengers and treasures,' added Sandecker.
'You're familiar with the operation?'
'Only the basics, not the details.'
'Then you couldn't know that only the passengers and medical specimens went ashore. The art treasures, hoards of gold and other valuables, as well as the sacred Nazi relics, remained on board the U-2015 and U-699. Captain Harger and I then cast off for the base in Antarctica. After rendezvousing with a supply ship and refueling, we continued the voyage, arriving at our destination in early June of 1945. The product of German engineering was a marvel to behold. A pilot came out and took the helm of the U-2015. We followed in her wake and were led into a large cavern that was invisible from a quarter of a mile at sea. A large dock facility carved out of ice, capable of handling several submarines and large cargo vessels, greeted our amazed eyes. Captain Harger and I were ordered to moor behind a military transport that was unloading disassembled aircraft-'
'They flew aircraft from the base?' Little interrupted.
'The very latest in German aviation technology. Junkers 287 jet bombers converted to transports, fitted with skis, and specially modified for subarctic conditions. The slave labor had cut a large hangar in the ice, while heavy construction equipment had smoothed a mile-long runway. Over five years, an entire mountain of ice was hollowed out to form a small city supporting five thousand construction workers and slaves.'
'Wouldn't the ice inside the caverns and tunnels begin to melt from the heat generated by that many men and their equipment?' asked Little.
'German scientists had developed a chemical coating that could be sprayed on the ice walls that insulated and prevented them from melting. The heat inside the complex was maintained at a constant sixty degrees Fahrenheit.'
'If the war was over,' Sandecker put to Hozafel, 'what useful purpose could the base serve?'
'The plan, as I understood it, was for the remaining elite Nazis of the old regime to operate secretly from the base, infiltrate into South America, and buy great tracts of land and many technical and manufacturing corporations. They also invested heavily in the new Germany and in the Asian countries, using the gold from their old national treasury, some of the looted treasures that were sold in America, and counterfeit American currency printed with genuine U.S. Treasury printing plates that were obtained by the Russians and captured by the Germans. Finances were not a problem to launch the Fourth Reich.'
'How long did you remain at the base?' asked Little.
'Two months. Then I took my U-boat and crew and sailed to the Rio de Plata River and surrendered to the
