PARADOX - Chapter 45

Chapter 45

May 9, 2012 – La Cascada Hotel San Carlos de Bariloche – Argentina



Dom banged on the door with one of the expensive bottles of wine held tightly in his shaking fist. It took a few seconds for the face of a grinning Chester to appear. “Close the door!” Dom demanded as he rushed into the room.

Chester shut the door and watched as Dom made a beeline for the small bar where Henri was sucking down a foamy beer. As soon as he arrived, he grabbed a wineglass and filled it to overflowing.

Monday could tell that something out of the ordinary was bothering his friend. Dom looked as if he had seen a ghost and he was nervous and sweating. This was not the cool, calm and collected Dom that he knew so well.

He walked over to the bar and put his hand on Dom’s shoulder. “Let it out!”

Dom looked at Monday then slowly glanced at the others. “I am a traitor,” he blurted. “A dirty, rotten, good for nothing, traitor.”

He watched their eyes as they waited for him to explain. “I’ve been working for someone else all along.” He let it out with a deep sigh.

For the next fifteen minutes Dom covered the details of his shadowy undercover mission for the Cardinal. He explained his reasoning and his devotion to the Cardinal and the Church. He paid particular attention to detail when explaining the role played by Cencio. On a penitent note, he offered to return to Italy and accept whatever fate came his way.

“I’ve known Doctor Prestano for many years.” Monday pled to the others. “I believe him when he says the Cardinal was using him. I also know that he could have returned to his villa in Italy without warning us of this new threat. But, now that he has warned us, I believe his life is in the hands of some evil organization.”

“You want us to accept his word and let him continue on with the Team?” Henri fervently shook his head.

“We allowed Dorbec to join us?” Chester stood firmly behind Monday.

“What’s this Alpha Cell?” Monday asked.

“I have no idea. Cencio mentioned it and that’s what made me suspicious of him. He did state earlier that there were to be no witnesses left when the jewels were recovered.”

Henri grunted. “So you were going to off all of us? Just you and this Cencio fellow?”

Dom did not respond to his question but continued on another note. “You can believe me or not, but I had already made up my mind to come clean and tell you the truth before my last discussion with Cencio. I thought the Jewel belonged to the Church and that my benefactor was only interested in returning it to its rightful place. However, when Cencio mentioned that he had orders to leave no witnesses, I could not allow that to happen.”

After a lengthy period of silence, Monday signaled for the attention of the other team members, Dorbec among them. “Do we have a go or a no go?” His military terminology meant keep Dom or get rid of him. A pregnant silence engulfed the group. “Looks like the Team wants to keep you around, Dom. How do you like cold weather?”

“Deo benedice,” Dom whispered with a relieved sigh. “God bless you! I have enough fat to keep me warm and enough happiness to keep the rest of you warm.”

Two hours later they were picked up at the International Airport by a C-130 to fly them to McMurdo Research Station in Antarctica. The Super Carrier Theodore Roosevelt sent an Osprey to pick up Chester’s detached Team. After they were supplied with a Zodiac F-470 CRRC, along with weapons and equipment, Chester’s Team would be dropped off at the end of highway Y-897 in the Tierra del Fuego, where members of the, Grupo de Fuerzas Especiales, Chilean Special Forces would rondezvous with them.

Monday’s team landed late in the day at McMurdo, but they couldn’t tell it from the sun since McMurdo had twenty-four hour darkness for four months. The last sunset in April marked the beginning of the long night, and Midwinters day in June was a major celebration. The sun did not peak above the horizon again until late August.

McMurdo Station is Antarctica's largest community and a functional, modern day science station, which includes a harbor, three airfields and over 100 buildings. The primary focus of the work done at McMurdo Station is science, but most of the residents (approximately 1,000 in the summer and fewer than 200 in the winter) are not scientists, but station personnel who are there to provide support for operations, logistics, information technology, construction, and maintenance.

As soon as they landed, the team was ushered to Building 155 by an Air Force sergeant where there was a large cafeteria, and best of all, warm restrooms. A member of the National Security Agency, who was to meet them there, had been tasked to arrange transportation, supplies, and equipment for them and run interference with the British.

Monday was enjoying a heaping bowl of hot chili and a large side order of French fries and dill pickles when the dapper man approached.

“Doctor Stiehl?” The man gazed at the mounds of food.

Monday shook his head up and down, his mouth full. The man was short, overweight, and had a weak unhealthy look about him that indicated easy living and an extreme lack of exercise.

“My name is Bisbie. The military has provided the equipment you called for and I have a team delivering it to your visiting quarters.” He waited with an annoyed look for Monday to swallow his food. When Monday took another large bite without answering, he continued in a snide tone of voice. “Unfortunately the British at Rothera Research Station have not been as cooperative. They insist that no such base as Maudheim ever existed, so your hop to Rothera has been called off.”

“Of course it never existed,” Monday grunted, shifting a bite of food in his mouth. “The base at Maudheim, near the Mühlig-Hoffmann Mountain Range in Queen Maud Land, what Germany called, Neuschwabenland, was so secret that it was never given a name or even a grid reference on official maps. Operation Taberlan never happened either.”

“Then how do you expect to find the location of the alleged tunnels that led to the secret Nazi military base?”

“I have the coordinates.” Monday did not say that connections in the British SAS had provided him with the coordinates and a thick dossier on Operation Taberlan.

“Obviously you do not need any additional help from me.” Bisbie looked down his nose at Monday and made it a statement of fact instead of a question.

“As soon as we’ve had a few hours of sleep and gone over our operations plan, a C-130 will fly us to our destination. Your contact with the British at Rothera was to give them a heads-up on our activities. We never expected them to reply. It wouldn’t be British of them to do so. We thank you for your cooperation Mr. Bisbie.” Monday stood and dismissed the man with a firm handshake. Bisbie’s sweating hand felt like a dead fish. He waddled from side to side like an emperor pinguin as he left the cafeteria.

The Team gathered in Monday’s room at the visiting officer quarters to inspect the equipment that had been delivered and order other items they may have forgotten to add.

“So, tell us about this Operation Taberlan?” Lofton asked. “I, for one, have never heard of it.’

Monday glanced at Henri then at Dom and finally decided to answer the question himself. “The year before Operation Highjump was conducted by the US Navy, Operation Taberlan was activated by the British as a measure of monitoring German activities on the Antarctic continent. The base at Maudheim was near the Mühlig-Hoffmann Mountain Range.The British sent an expedition into this area based on reports of Nazi activities.” He halted to take a sip of hot coffee.

“The expedition was told that an original team of scientists and commandos had found an “ancient tunnel". The force went through the tunnel but only two returned before the Antarctic winter set in. During the winter months, the two survivors made absurd claims over the radio about “ancient tunnels and Nazis". Radio contact was finally lost in July 1945.”

“A second expedition followed the tunnel for miles, and eventually they came to a vast underground cavern that was abnormally warm; some of the scientists believed that it was warmed geothermally. In the huge cavern were underground lakes; however, the mystery deepened, as the cavern was lit artificially. The cavern proved so extensive that they had to split up, and that was when the real discoveries were made.”

“What kind of discoveries?” Bones sounded intrigued, his face lighting up as if he was listening to an Indiana Jones audio tape.

Monday nodded to Dom who picked up the explanation. “The Nazis constructed a huge base into the caverns and even built docks for U-boats, one was identified supposedly. Still, the deeper they went, the more strange visions greeted them, including what they called Polar Men. These were mad savages who inhabited the tunnels. A survivor reported that, "there were hangars for strange planes and excavations galore", and the technology was far advanced to what any nation had in those days.”

“What explanation did the British government have for all of this,” Scout interjected.

Dom continued. “The tunnel was explained away as a freak of nature; "glacial erosion" was the scientist’s specific term. The "Polar Men" were nothing more than "unkempt soldiers that had gone crazy"; the fact that they were German was never put into the report, and any notion of the results going public was firmly rebutted. The mission was never made official, though certain elements of the mission leaked.”

“Our job is to find these tunnels, explore them and see if there are any Nazi bases left there?” Lofton inquired.

Monday corrected him. “Our primary job is to find Daria and if at all possible recover the jewels. This is one of several ‘potential’ locations that must be checked.”

“Man. This is way too freaky.” Weps threw his hands into the air. “Nazis, Polar Men, secret bases under the ice, what’s next, flying saucers.”

“Now that you mentioned it,” Henri snorted. “After the Antarctic ‘Operation Highjump’ in 1947, Admiral Byrd spoke of, flying objects that could fly from pole to pole at incredible speeds. These words were reported in the press but censored by the government.”

“The Admiral Byrd?” Lofton asked.

“None other.” Henri took a long drink of his beer.

“The British left the caves in tact and never returned?” Bones asked. “With that amount of high technology scattered about you’d think they would have sent a massive force to recover it.”

“The last expedition supposedly blew up the tunnels with explosives,” Dom answered. “It is alleged that was the reason for Admiral Byrd’s Operation Highjump. If the Nazis did have secret technology hidden somewhere in Antarctica, the American government wanted to know about it. They also wanted their share of the secrets, as did the Brits and Russians.”

“With our modern satellites and spywear, wouldn’t we be able to spot something like that from space?” Lofton stated. “If not visual signals, shouldn’t we be able to pick up radar emissions or communications of some nature?”

“Antarctica is almost one and a half times larger than the United States and fifty-eight times bigger than the United Kingdom,” Dom replied. “Unlike the Arctic, is has a large land mass. Although most of it is covered in ice, about 6,000 feet thick, many areas are ice free. Science speculates there may be warm regions caused by geothermal activity or caverns cut through the ice due to the same reason. Finding something in a place that size from space would be more than a miracle.”

Monday had not told them about the possibility of modern Nazi’s inhabiting bases in Antarctica or South America. He didn’t want to clutter their thoughts with fantastic ideas. He decided to lay it all on the table, even the suspicion that the inhabitants had tactical nuclear weapons.

“There have been many alleged sitings of UFO’s with a Nazi or German connection,” Monday began. “Flying saucers with swastikas or iron crosses on them and "aliens" speaking German, and so forth. One example is the American Reinhold Schmidt - whose father was born in Germany - tells in his book Incident At Kearney (Nebraska), that he was taken on a 'flying saucer' on several occasions.”

“He said the crew spoke German and acted like German soldiers. He said they took him to the Polar region. If someone were making up a story, why would they claim to be taken, of all places, to the pole? After returning he was subjected to persecution by the U.S. Government. His description of the aerial discs matched pictures captured from the Germans after WWII.”

“In 1959, three large newspapers in Chile reported front page articles about UFO encounters where the crew members appeared to be German soldiers. In the 1960s there were reports in New York and New Jersey of flying saucer "aliens" who spoke German, or English with a German accent. In the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg atomic espionage trials, they spoke of "warships of space." Since they had access to top secret information, they must have meant Nazi UFO’s?”

“They told me at Los Alamos about the Nazis and one particular UFO incident. Nazi General Reinhard Gehlen, who worked for US Intelligence after the war, stated that early in the German war effort, their atomic research facility was visited by two saucer-like craft in the early hours of the morning. Some of the occupants were short of stature, with large black eyes, and spindly bodies, others were human in appearance. Eight occupants emerged, and attempted to communicate through telepathy their peaceful intentions. They were gunned down, but one of the human like aliens, managed to survive. Hitler was summoned to the facility, and psychics were used to extract information from the alien through telepathic means, and in desperation, brutal force. The alien appeared to have the ability to influence a person's actions, their thoughts, and hypnotically produce amnesia.”

“President Truman was shown photos of a hidden underground research facility, and the alien crafts that were recovered. One craft had been completely disassembled for reverse-engineering. The location of the aliens was not known, since Hitler's top officials took them to a secret location. General Gehlen further noted that the rumored information obtained from the alien was never revealed to those outside Hitler's inner circle. General Galen was working for our government, the forerunner of the CIA, when he told this story. Why would he lie?”

“After all we have witnessed, we have to assume that the Nazis have managed to create their own UFO technology and this is what we will be looking for.”