The Knight´s Legacy

Neuschwabenland- 1944

NEUSCHWABENLAND

1944-END OF THE AUSTRAL SUMMER

Three weeks had passed since the arrival of the contingent that included Horstmann to Antarctica. This was his third visit to the iced continent since those faraway days in 1938. In the meantime he had been in Europe and Africa. Changes since his last trip seemed remarkable upon arrival, especially in relation to the system of constructions and tunnels, although not so much in what concerned staff comfort. War development had taken a frankly unfavorable bias, resources were scarce and were going to battle fronts. Actually Horstmann wondered why Germany kept spending men and materials desperately scarce in that remote location and could not understand that delusions of racial or esoteric type could explain that decision.

The previous day a newly ship loading had arrived, and since the beginning it became apparent that it wasn't just one more load. In addition to the security measures to protect its physical integrity a very strict military control had been set. All activity had been closely monitored by members of the SS with their visible uniforms under the heavy Antarctic coats and they were armed with machine guns. These measures exceeded greatly the standard security on the base, which was itself an ultra secret military installation. This fact excited the curiosity of many of the men on the base, and even the discreet Horstmann wondered about the reasons for those measures, bordering on paranoia; but in reality, he mused, paranoia was not uncommon in the Nazi regime.

The load consisted of a few heavy absolutely sealed chests with thick padlocks and seals, Horstmann finally realized that in those trunks was the reason for the entire expensive German project in this remote region of the world.

Two days had passed since the arrival of the ultra secret cargo and both it and its custodians had disappeared from the scenery. Horstmann was having lunch with several colleagues when three SS officers burst into the makeshift shed that served as a dining room; as undoubtedly the officers were related to the disappeared chests in the group of people stretched a nervous silence. A captain approached Horstmann and formally respectful but not without a hint of imperative tone asked him to accompany them. Horstmann  felt a light stinging sensation and the hair near the nape of the neck prickled since, although he had nothing to reproach himself the company of the SS was never welcome.

“Colonel Said the man who introduced himself as Captain Glock. “We had a mishap and we you’re your experience to try to fix it. I ask you to dress and get your gear to enter a deep cavern.” Horstmann nodded and turned thoughtful to the barracks to proceed as requested.

After an hour of march in a tracked vehicle, they arrived at a shed located at the entrance of one of the caves. Horstmann wondered why he had never been on that site, despite he had widely traveled through tunnel systems in the long months spent in Antarctica. Perking his view, he could spot on the side of the entrance two white plates, which he assumed would serve to mask the input when works were not being done on the site. This reinforced his idea that the place had especially covert features.

They led him by long passages partly natural and partly produced by blasting with dynamite. The few people they met on their way were completely unknown to Horstmann, although forced cohabitation in the base had made him familiar with practically all the faces of the endowment and some names. These people had undoubtedly been staying somewhere else, what increased the sense of mystery.

They finally reached a wide gallery on whose walls were stacked many of the chests whose landing he had witnessed. On one side of the catwalk was a great dark well, on whose walls someone had placed strings and lamps, scales also string earrings.

“The mouth of the well collapsed suddenly while we were transporting one of the chests, which fell to the bottom dragging one of our men whom we fear dead.”  Glock informed Horstmann.“ The well is very tortuous and we have not been able to descend. We request you to make an attempt to retrieve the chest and our comrade or his body.”

Despite it was formally an order Horstmann noticed a hint of desperation in the voice of the military, by which became it clear that much was at stake in the issue. He decided to accept the request making clear that there are situations in which advancing is impossible and  could not be ruled out that the place resulted inaccessible. The SS got the point and nodded.

The colonel began his descent with infinite care. The well was highly irregular, and already near the entrance had twists and a sudden narrowing. Despite his bulk, Horstmann was trained to negotiate these obstacles by his past experience as speleologist. The secret of progress in the narrows was to dislocate shoulders, torso and hips trying to adapt to the surrounding rock, and above all, to overcome panic, never very far into those depths.

As he descended Horstmann saw pieces of metal and wood and some loose documents, which he placed in a bag subject to his waist, showing that the chest had been shattered in the fall despite its alleged tightness. In one of the corners he saw blood stains on the rock.

After progressing with great care, the noise made by falling stones thrown into the void every so often told him that the bottom  was not far away. He paused for breath, expelling thoughts of the difficulties that he would have to overcome to emerge back to the wellhead. Looking down, the light from the lamp dangling from his belt was reflected against what he saw as a sandy bottom.

When we finally touched the ground he first spent a few minutes examining the premises. It actually was the bottom of the tunnel and it lay the torn remains of the chest, a large number of scattered documents, and the contorted body of an SS. Horstmann checked that the man was effectively dead, his skull shattered in the fall. He then tied the body to a rope provided with a kind of harness that had been unfolding from the well's mouth, and took a few pulls agreed to proceed to hoist the men at that mouth, which they actually started doing.

Then he began to collect the scattered papers and to accommodate them in cloth bags brought to that end for their rescue. As did his eyes they could not help settling on the documents in the pale light of the lantern. The rope that had been uploaded to the body of the SS fell again, this time equipped with a network, in which Horstmann began to load the bags with the documents. In total the action of filling and lifting was repeated fourteen times, until they were not more documents at the bottom of the well. After considering the options, he decided to leave the chest metal remains at the bottom. He finally sent a message written in the network asking to put the harness to hoist him back. For a moment fear crossed his mind that SS would leave him in that eternal tomb as a way to remove an unwanted witness. However the harness arrived.

While he was towed towards the cavern mouth in spite  of the scratches and painful cuts that produced the rock to who had dared to penetrate it  his mind quickly reviewed the documents seen on the bottom. The vast majority were encrypted in unknown codes and thus incomprehensible, but others were original letters or official documents and were written in German or other languages Horstmann could somehow understand: there were names of members of various European and American Governments, contracts of constitution of companies in United States, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland and various South American countries, lists of contacts and presumably safe sites in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Chile, there were routes that began in monasteries in the North of Italy, continued in the Vatican City, Genoa or other Italian or Spanish ports and concluded in Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago de Chile or Asuncion del Paraguay. Horstmann interpreted that in all likelihood those were Nazi leaders escape routes. Finally there were banking documents with accounts summaries in different banks of the same countries. The photographic memory of Horstmann had recorded lots of names and places.

Arriving at the mouth of the well, the Glock Captain inquired him about his status, and Horstmann shrugged off numerous scratches on all exposed parts of the body.

That night in the narrow cubicle that served as his personal bedroom -a luxury in the  barracks where most of the men slept in bunk three beds high- the Colonel spent a sleepless night writing in his notebooks the accumulation of data that his mind had absorbed before time gradually eroded them from his  memory.

Suddenly t came to his memory the fact of having kept in different pockets of his speleologist costume several sheets that he had found on the ledge while he  descended the tunnel. Horstmann  had forgotten to hand them over with the rest of the material, and out of respect they  had not been requisitioned by the SS as he left. He extracted them from the pockets and deployed them on the table; in the pale light of the torch he found that they were encrypted leaves, whose key he proposed to unravel with time testing various codes of encryption he knew. Among the papers had in addition a visit card I with the following name.

Dr. Helmut Scheu

Director

Wuppertal S. A.

AV. Julio A. Rock 512 - 4th floor (Diagonal Sur)

33-5294

Buenos Aires

Argentina

He wondered what was the meaning of that card in the context of no doubt highly confidential papers. He decided finally to copy in his books the texts of the documents found and their translation, in the event that it could decode them, and then destroy the documents themselves, but some unconscious reason led him to keep the card.

Horstmann was aware of the fact that saving and recording that information increased exponentially the danger if the books were found by members of the SS, but decided to accept the risk. He  had no precise mobile to perform these actions, since his military training prevented him from thinking about profiting from this knowledge. He sensed that the end of the Nazi Germany approached, and had no idea that it would be of him the next day. Perhaps saving those books would provide him a way out to desperate situations. He didn't know that his fate after the war would be in great measure marked by this action.