The Doomsday Testament(2)
The men were of a similar age and had one other aspect in common. They were all officers of the SS Ahnenerbe – the Nazi Ancestral Research and Teaching Society – personally appointed by Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler. During the five day trek through the mountains they had conscientiously recorded and photographed the wildlife and fauna, studied the ethnic make-up of the local tribes and taken geological samples like the naturalists they appeared to be. The true reason for their mission was Himmler’s obsession with the occult and his personal quest to discover the origins of the lost city of Atlantis and the ancient civilization of superhumans who had given birth to the Aryan race. According to ancient legend, these earliest Aryans, the Vril, practised a sophisticated form of mind control and had been led from the city before Atlantis drowned in the flood. After travelling through Asia they had created the legendary underground kingdom of Thule. If the expedition could find the entrance to Thule, Himmler believed he would gain access to all the secrets of the Vril.
As he distributed the rations, Gruber revealed for the first time that they were close to their destination. Walter Brohm noticed the eyes of his companions light up with anticipation and allowed himself a smile. They were the true believers, he was a realist – only here out of necessity, in the pursuit of advancement. A physicist with a fascination for geology, Brohm had no interest in lost cities, which was just as well because he very much doubted they were going to find one. He would loyally accompany the others into some dark cave where they would discover a few animal bones, or perhaps a Yeti, which Gruber would hail as the first Atlantean, and then he could go home to the comfort of his office and his laboratory. He knew Gruber didn’t like him, but that was of no consequence. The cloth-headed adventurer was one of those National Socialist enthusiasts who would run through a brick wall for his Führer – and was probably capable of doing just that. Walter Brohm was only interested in Walter Brohm. He had joined the Nazi party when it became clear nothing could stop Adolf Hitler from taking and holding power, and the Schutzstaffel, the SS, because he looked better in black than brown and it was the quickest way for an ambitious man to get on. He would never admit it, but he looked upon the secret rituals of the SS as a joke, although no worse than the Masons. With Germany expanding economically and militarily, the future had never looked brighter for a pastor’s son from stuffy old Dresden.
Two hours after they resumed their march, the expedition reached the edge of a gigantic depression several hundred feet deep and perhaps two miles wide. Brohm couldn’t suppress a flutter of excitement when he recognized what it was, but he guessed even now that Gruber was destined to be disappointed.
‘Where is the cave?’ the expedition leader demanded.
Jigme’s deep-set eyes, the product of a hundred generations of staring into Himalayan blizzards, twinkled and his grin grew wider. His cousin’s instructions had been very clear. ‘Secret place. You follow. I show.’ He skipped off down a barely visible track, with the rest of the group treading warily in his footsteps on the perilous slope.
The cave – more of a tunnel – lay hidden at the bottom of the eastern wall of the crater, partially screened by a rock fall and only visible to those standing directly opposite it. In any other part of the world it would long since have filled with rotting vegetation or silt washed down by the rains, but little vegetation grew on the Changthang and the plateau’s annual rainfall measured around ten centimetres and was absorbed instantly, as if the land were a giant sheet of blotting paper.
In front of the entrance, Brohm was amused to see Gruber and the others lose some of their former spark. They were big sky men, mountains and deserts were their natural habitat, not this wormhole. Yet he could hardly blame them. There was something menacing about that brooding black portal that would make even an expert caver hesitate. The curious thing for Brohm was that the entrance appeared to be almost exactly circular, so perfect that it might have been man-made. Beyond it, as far as his torch would reach, the tunnel floor descended at a fairly steep angle of about thirty degrees. From a geological viewpoint he found it fascinating.
Gruber studied the entrance somberly. ‘We’ll make camp for the night and go in tomorrow. I want everyone up at first light.’
After a meagre breakfast of barley dumplings and yak butter tea, Gruber made his dispositions.
‘Rasch, Brohm, Junger and I will make the initial descent, along with the guide, who will lead.’ Von Hassell, the cameraman, protested that he should be involved but Gruber waved him away. ‘You will have your opportunity. We’ll rope together as if we were on a climb and take it slowly, a foot at a time – we don’t know what the ground will be like. I don’t want to lose anyone. Berger will command on the surface.’ He raised a hand holding a whistle. ‘If there’s an emergency I’ll blow on this, but your first duty will be to ensure the porters don’t desert us.’