CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Schlosskirche [Palace Church], Ellingen, Bavaria, August 19, 1954

Three of the six trucks of the ODESSA convoy parked in separate groves of trees in parks near the Schlosskirche while it was still dark, but only after a three-pass reconnoitering operation per Michaele’s orders. Michaele and Jacob Bunnemann turned off the headlights of their truck and inched through the opaque darkness of the starless night past the front of the Schlosskirche and drove to the abandoned parking lot in the back. The church had been condemned as unsafe by the Nazis and later by the Americans and was declared off-limits to all personnel. In 1943, Antoine Duvalier and Michaele Dupont had been instrumental in that declaration and for providing security to keep citizens and military members away. The Allies inherited the partially demolished old building and let it go to ruin, never questioning the veracity or necessity of the prohibition.

Michaele strained his eyes and reaffirmed that the fine old church was still looking seedy and had not been repaired from its war damage. The barriers he and Antoine had placed there in the early forties were still in place and had not been disturbed. The German signs were still posted around the building, “Zutritt verboten!” [Entry forbidden—Keep out!] He tried not to get his hopes up too high, but this was the Holy Grail. It had to be; he and his men had suffered too much for it not to be. In a matter of days, he and his ODESSA companions would either be fabulously wealthy; or they would be in prison or dead.

To the uninformed—including Jacob and his ODESSA assistants—there were no safe or even possible entrances. Rubble-jammed doorways and the windows were boarded shut. The rear wall of the church near the entrance had crumbled, with the ceiling of the first floor collapsed over it so that tons of bomb-destroyed construction materials put up an impassable barrier. Michaele led Jacob to an old well on the northwest side of the churchyard, and the two of them pried off a wood plank cover hidden beneath undergrowth and trash. Michaele shined his flashlight briefly down into the well and was pleased to find it empty and to have the ladders he and Antoine had placed there in 1943 still in place.

“Let’s have a quick look, Jacob. I’ll go first and you shine the light, then you come down; and I’ll shine the light for you. Make it quick.”

The ladders were sturdy, and descent was easy. Both men stood in utter darkness at the bottom for a few moments. Then Michaele flashed his light around in a circle and revealed a tunnel intersecting at right angles to the vertical shaft of the well.

“This way,” he said.

The air was dank and dusty, but the going was easy because down there they could use their flashlights without fear of detection from above. About fifty yards from the vertical shaft, they came to a heavy set of wooden doors which were bolted and secured with two large locks holding a heavy iron bar in place across the two doors.

“Uh-oh,” Jacob said with discouragement in his voice.

“Watch,” Michaele said.

He walked to one side of the tunnel where a wooden box covered with dust sat. They pried open the lid. The box was full of dusty spikes, bolts, nuts, and assorted other metal pieces. Anyone looking into the box would have presumed that nothing there would be of help in opening the door. Certainly there was no key. Jacob looked into the box soberly.

“Help me move it,” Michaele ordered.

The two men struggled to move the heavy box a couple of feet away. The floor of the tunnel was extremely dusty, and only drag marks from the moving of the box showed any alteration in the dust cover. Jacob was becoming more dubious by the minute. Michaele was becoming increasingly enthusiastic.

Michaele ran his hand around in the dust where the box had been sitting. He found a minor depression in the floor and wiped the dust away from around it. Jacob’s flashlight revealed a circular cut in the floor and a metal plate the same color as the dust and the nearby concrete floor. He pushed his finger into the depression and pulled up a metal ring about the size of a Deutschemark coin. He pulled on it. For a few minutes nothing happened, and Michaele strained harder.

Finally, the round metal plate pulled out of its depression in the floor to reveal a shallow pocket. Jacob’s flashlight caught the glint of two large brass keys. Michaele took them out and walked to the locks on the door. Despite the years that had passed since the last time the locks had been opened, they gave easily. He lifted the heavy iron bar that had been holding the double doors fixed in place and pulled the doors open. Both men shined their lights into the cavernous basement storage room of the Schlosskirche, and then were transfixed by what they saw.