The Closet

Chapter 14

            Tuesday morning came.  The routine of daily life supplanted the excitement and distress of the night before.  Lacy and Frank were civil and it was all the boys could do to get out the door on time. Allie’s temperature remained above normal, and she stayed home from school. She didn’t want to stay home from school, but her desires were overridden by the parental wisdom of her mother. 

When all but Allie had left for the day, Lacy had time to contemplate her anger from the night before. The anger was a natural byproduct of the fear she had felt for her family, and the uncertainty of what she should do in that situation. After the heat of her anger had subsided and only the burn of thoughtlessness remained, she forgave easily. She loved her husband and her children; she was only worried for their safety.

Frank’s boss was still away and he was immersed his current assignment. He had a deadline he had to meet and could not afford to be distracted, but he did take a few minutes to ask about the restoration to the Germans of the several kasernes around Mannheim. One of his co-workers who had worked on the logistics and planning for the return of the bases that had already been repatriated told him that Turley Barracks and Taylor Barracks had been the first second of the kasernes in the Mannheim area to be given back. Of course Frank knew that the rest of the kasernes including Ben Franklin Village, where their home was, would be returned in the next few years, but he was not aware of those that had been repatriated before he had arrived in Germany.

The day passed quickly enough and he was driving home to his quarters in Ben Franklin Village.  His drive took him through open farmland, past industrial areas, and through densely settled residential neighborhoods and apartment buildings. It seemed odd to him that people would live in such crowded conditions with virtually wide open spaces in close proximity. The same thing could be found in America’s cities, of course, but it was still a conundrum he couldn’t fathom. 

He reached Grant Circle and turned down his street.  Arriving at the house, he was surprised to see a face in every window, waiting for him to get home. He stepped out of the car as the door opened and the boys poured out. Allie was on the mend, but her mother was keeping her close. He greeted the boys and then walked into the kitchen. His wife was standing at the stove and he walked over and gave her a hug, and she turned and hugged him back. He gratefully kissed her thinking that there is no feeling worse than feeling unloved by the person you love the most.

A few minutes later, the family gathered around the dinner table to eat and discuss the night’s agenda. Jarom’s success with the lock picks had energized everyone except his mother who had not yet heard the story. Her questioning looks prompted him to explain.

“Last night I worked on one of the padlocks for over an hour before all the pieces fell into place and the lock opened. Together, we all pulled on the door and when it opened, we saw that it was clear full of all kinds of ammunition! The crazy thing about the ammunition, though, is that it was from World War I, not World War II. Dad thinks it’s still there because they had newer guns in World War II that it wouldn’t fit into, and so they just left it there, forgotten in that storage room.”

Jason continued the story of their night’s activities saying, “Then we thought we had enough time before we had to be home, so we hurried down the southeast tunnel because dad wanted to see the high opening in the middle of the tunnel. We could still hear the sounds of the traffic, and Dad thinks that it opens into the traffic circle at BFV and was for ventilation in the tunnels. We were close to the end of the tunnel so we went clear to the end. I found a ladder hidden by the end of the tunnel so we climbed up into the room at the top and it was empty.”

Frank continued, “We could see that we were in Taylor Barracks, and I checked today at work. Taylor Barracks was turned back over to the Germans over a year ago, and that is why the trap door just opened into an empty room.”

John finished the story, “And then we just came back as fast as we could because we didn’t want you to be worried! We’re real sorry we scared you, Mom. We won’t do that again.”

Lacy looked at all her men. Then she said, “I worry about you because I love you, not because I don’t trust you.” Then, facing what she knew was inevitable, she asked, “What time will you be back tonight?”

Frank looked at her gratefully, thinking of what love she had for them to swallow her fears and trust them again. “If we aren’t back by 9:30, then assume there is a problem,” he said.  “But there won’t be. We’ll be back. I promise.”

The boys echoed together, “Me too!”

They cleared the table and got everything ready for another trip into the darkness.  Water bottles filled and backpacks on, headlamps with fresh batteries, and dressed like spelunkers, Jarom opened the trap door and they started down again.  When they had grouped together at the bottom of the ladder-shaft in the round room, they turned to the west and began walking toward the locked doors.

The night before, Jarom had been successful with the door on the left side of the tunnel.  Tonight, he turned into the side tunnel on the right, and prepared to work on the lock.  As he had the night before, he sprayed the powdered graphite into the lock and then after a few blasts of WD-40, began depressing the pins in each of their chambers to work the lubricant in.  After he was satisfied that the mechanics of the padlock were moving smoothly, he inserted the tension tool and placed a slight amount of tension on the lock cylinder. He selected the pick that he had been successful with the night before and began the tedious process again. Vision was actually a distraction because he couldn’t see inside the lock, so once everything was in place, he turned off his headlamp, closed his eyes, and concentrated on just the feel of depressing each pin. 

The others had developed faith in Jarom, but understood that they may be in for a long wait, so they wandered back across the main passageway to the ammunition storage room. Jason wondered out loud, “Do you think we’ll find more old ammunition in the other room?”

John answered, “Makes sense, I guess.”

Frank, who had been walking down one of the aisles, turned to look back at his sons in time to see Jason climb up on top of a stack of wooden crates to read the lettering more clearly.  Crawling off of them onto the next stack which happened to be cardboard boxes of hand grenades, the front of the bottom boxes broke out under the additional weight and the stack came crashing down with Jason riding it to the ground. Everyone held their breath waiting for the explosion that would collapse the entire room. Jason eased himself off the spilled grenades which had rolled away both up and down the aisle, and tip-toed through the minefield. 

Heaving a sigh of relief, Frank met him at the end of the aisle and hugged him. He said, “The powder used in American hand grenades today is smokeless powder and bumping them wouldn’t make them explode. These are probably the first of the German ‘potato masher’ style, and who knows what powder they used. The German grenades had a cap on the bottom of the handle that had to be unscrewed and then a string was pulled that started a timed fuse, so it’s pretty unlikely they would explode without being activated,  but with ordnance this old, we’re better off safe than sorry. Let’s just leave them alone and we’ll go and see how Jarom’s doing.”  In one more quiet aside, he said to Jarom, “We don’t have to tell your mother about the hand grenades.”

Jarom nodded his assent and they walked out of the side tunnel that led from the ammunition storage, across the main passageway, and into the side tunnel on the opposite side to find it completely dark. Jarom sat with his eyes closed, all his concentration on the small movements within the lock. They did not want to disturb his intense focus, and began to turn away when he let out a bellow, “I got it!”

Turning back toward him, they ran over to the door just as he finished turning the cylinder and watched the shackle on the lock slide open. Jarom took a moment to get his picks put away and his light back on, and then he squirted the WD-40 on all of the contact points of the bolt. 

Grabbing hold of the bolt handle, he pulled with all his might and felt it begin to give way. He pushed it back and then pulled it again and the lubricant began to loosen up the slide.  A few repetitions and when the bolt was rotating up and down smoothly, he began to put pressure on it to slide sideways out of its seat. For this he needed some help and Frank stepped in to pull beside his son. Together, rotating the bolt up and down, they pulled sideways and it squeaked its way out of the seat. Then, with the effort of all of them together, they began opening the massive door outward. 

When enough of an opening had been made to squeeze through, they each, in turn, entered the chamber.  It was immediately obvious that this was no ammunition storage room.  Here there were crates, but the crates were tall, wide, and not apparently heavy. Other than a numbering system that must have been used to identify the crates and their contents, there was no identification in any language. 

The crates were extremely well made but they had no tools to open them.  After several minutes of trying, they had to admit defeat.  The tool chest in the basement of the house was no more than 15 or 20 minutes away, and in normal circumstances Frank might have sent John to retrieve a crowbar, a hammer, and a screwdriver, but he was not willing to risk his wife’s displeasure.

“Guys,” he said, “I think we have to go home and get some tools.  Short of smashing a crate against the wall, I can’t see how we can open them, and we don’t know what we’d be smashing. It’s 7:15.  If we get a move on, we should be able to be back in half-an-hour.”

Running in the tunnel with a headlamp’s beam bobbing and weaving was difficult, and after a few minutes time, they slowed to a brisk, steady pace. In a quarter of an hour, they had reached their ladder and were scrambling up it a moment later. They piled into the hallway upstairs and the boys ran down to see their mother in the living room on the way to the basement.  Frank stopped in to kiss his wife and update her on their find.

“Jarom got the second lock opened in less time than it took last night, and then together we got the door open. Everything inside the room looks immaculate and untouched as if it had been carefully preserved. There are hundreds of crates that are so well-built we couldn’t tear them apart with our bare hands, so we had to come back for some tools. The boys are rounding them up now, and then we’ll go back and see what is in them.”

“OK, Frank, but be careful.  And remember: You promised.”

“I know, Lace. We’ll be back before 9:30. Look!  Here come the boys…”

John was carrying a crowbar and a hammer and Jarom had his trusty screwdriver as well as a Phillips head screwdriver. Jason was struggling under the load of a 10 pound sledge hammer. They headed up the stairs and Frank followed murmuring words of affection as he separated from his wife’s embrace.

They put most of the tools in their backpacks, but the sledge hammer wouldn’t fit. 

Frank asked, “Do you really think we’re going to have to bash our way into the crates, Jason”

Jason replied, “You never know, Dad, and we don’t have time to come back for it again.”

Frank admitted that he had a point, and Jason led the pack down the ladder. The sledge hammer was cumbersome because he needed both hands on the ladder, and after only a few steps, he lost his grip and it went tumbling down the shaft, sounding like a hailstorm on a tin roof.

Frank said a prayer of silent thanks that Jason was first down the ladder and that the hammer hadn’t hit anyone on its way down. He was also grateful that it had a fiberglass handle because he expected that a wooden handle would have broken in the fall. 

In only moments, they had reassembled in the round room. Jason sheepishly picked up the sledge hammer that had only suffered some dents in the handle as it had bounced off the ladder and the sides of the shaft. They began walking and in 15 minutes were entering the storage room again.  

Frank took the crowbar from John and handed it to Jarom. This was Jarom’s party and Frank thought that Jarom should have the first crack at opening a crate. They selected one perhaps 4 feet wide by 5 feet tall and 12” deep. Jarom and John laid it on its back and then, under Frank’s guidance, Jarom put the end of the crowbar under the edge of the cover and began to pry it up.  He worked around slowly, not knowing what he would find.  As the wooden cover came loose, a brown paper cover was revealed and as that was turned aside, they saw a magnificent painting of a scene from a countryside with a horse and rider atop. Even in the light of the headlamp, the colors were vibrant and it was clear that the artist was no amateur. The boys were puzzled as to why a painting would be so carefully packed and laid away in a forgotten storage chamber deep beneath the earth, but Frank began to suspect that the whole room might contain art works and objects stolen by the 3^rd. Reich and hidden away until they could be safely recovered. He pointed to another crate that was  a 4’ x4’ x 4’ cube. He received the crowbar from Jarom and began prying the cover off the crate only to find inside a series of regular open-ended 4”x4” square tubes as long as the box was wide. Reaching his fingers inside one of the cubbyholes, he could feel canvas. He carefully slid it out and painstakingly unrolled it to find another masterwork. Apparently these paintings had been removed from their stretching frames and rolled for shipment and storage. 

Not wanting to be left out, John and Jason began working on another crate measuring 2’x2’x4’.  This crate had been fastened shut with screws rather than nails, and the crate itself was a good deal heavier than the ones opened so far. They unscrewed the top of the crate and found within it a marble statue of a majestic stag on a peak surveying his kingdom. The workmanship in stone was magnificent.

On one wall of the room were regularly shaped boxes about 2’x2’x1’.  There were hundreds of them stacked, one atop the next. The boxes were heavy; too heavy for a painting and too heavy even for a statue. Driving the screwdriver in between the top and the side with the hammer, Frank pried off the top of the crate only to have to sit down when he saw the contents. Weak in the knees, he began to realize the magnitude of what they had stumbled across. The larger crates held paintings and statuary, but the small ones were filled with gold bullion. 

It was clear that these things had been hidden since at least the end of World War II, and that someone intended to retrieve them. Frank had heard of artwork looted from the Jews and others the Nazis found undesirable, as well as from museums in conquered counties, but he had assumed that those artworks had been recovered. The Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunals tried the senior war criminals after the Allies had conquered Germany. It was possible and maybe even likely, he guessed, that whoever had hidden this away had been convicted and had never been able to retrieve the treasure. “The secrecy that must have been necessary to have hidden this trove from the world had to have been absolute,” he pondered.

These thoughts had flashed through Frank’s mind in only seconds, but the boys were still looking puzzled, wondering why paintings and sculptures and gold had been preserved in this chamber all these years. Frank began to explain, “You’ve heard that during the 2^nd World War, the Nazis shipped the Jews and others they thought inferior, to Concentration Camps, Work Camps and Extermination Camps? The camps were built in Germany and countries to the east like Poland and the Czech Republic. As they imprisoned the people, they confiscated their valuables. In the Extermination Camps, as they killed their prisoners, they removed gold fillings from their teeth and melted them down. It isn’t difficult to imagine that this plunder was saved for those with enough power to have ordered it to be saved. It is likely that they were Hitler’s leaders at the top of the Nazi government.

Frank keenly felt the responsibility to inform the proper authorities of what they had found.  At that moment, he could be held responsible for opening the locked door and inviting thieves in. He said, “This casts a whole new light on the importance of this tunnel system.  Finding old ammunition is interesting, but not earth-shaking. Finding this forgotten artwork and gold bullion worth many millions, if not billions of dollars is earth-shaking.” 

“Boys, it’s time we headed for home.  We don’t want to be late, and we have lots to tell Mom and Allie.”

“Do you think we should lock the door up again, Dad? For safekeeping?” asked Jason.

“I suppose if it’s been safe down here for all these years. Another night or two shouldn’t matter, but I am a little nervous about it. Let’s close the door and throw the bolt and we’ll put the padlock in place as if it’s locked. We just won’t lock it.”

They all stepped out of the room and then together pushed the door closed. The lubricated bolt slid home much more easily, and when the padlock was in place, it looked to the casual observer in the dark as if it was locked.

Not sure of what the next day might bring, they left the tools beside the treasure chamber and began walking back toward their home. In another 15 minutes they were climbing up the ladder and were shortly seated in the living room with Lacy and Allie.

Frank began: “We want to tell you what we found tonight. It’s important and we didn’t want to wait until tomorrow. Everything we’ve done, we’ve done under a cloak of secrecy, but what we’re about to tell you is even more confidential.”

Frank had been happy to let the boys tell of their adventures in days past, but he felt compelled to continue. “Jarom picked the lock and we got the steel door open, but the room was full of crates of several sizes. We had nothing to open the crates, so that is why we came back for the tools; so we could open the crates.  When we got back, Jarom opened the first crate and we found a painting that I believe is a masterwork that was probably looted by the Nazis from one of the peoples they enslaved or from a museum in a conquered country. We opened another crate and found a beautiful marble sculpture. We opened a third crate, one of hundreds just alike, and found it full of gold bullion.”

Lacy took a moment to let this digest. Then she said, “Are you saying that there are hundreds of crates full of paintings, sculpture, gold, and maybe other valuables that were stolen by the Nazis during the war and stored here?”

Frank replied, “That is exactly what I’m saying, and I think it makes it even more important to turn what we’ve found over to the authorities.”

“I think that was our last trip down there alone. When we go down there again, it needs to be with the Provost Marshal and his MP’s. As an Army officer, I can’t justify withholding information like that. They will be asking hard questions as it is, and I don’t want to be accused of attempted theft of stolen priceless art. With those treasures at stake, I don’t think we have a choice.”

“But Dad!” cried Jarom and seconded by John and Jason. “We only have one more door to open.  We don’t even know what’s in it. Just one more night….”

“No, boys,” stated Frank with authority. “What is there is too important, and not just for us, but for our country and for the world.  It is an amazing discovery that needs to be in the right hands.”

“But please, Dad….”said John.

“No. I don’t want you boys down there again until I get approval from the proper authorities. I will talk to them tomorrow. You are forbidden to go down that ladder again.  That is the end of the discussion! Now, off to bed.”

Allie and the boys climbed the stairs to their rooms. Still running a slight fever, Allie went off to bed, but the boys continued to grumble whisperingly in their room. 

“We have to get into that third room,” said Jarom urgently. “If we don’t get into it, we’ll never see it.  And we found it!”

John said, “I know how you feel, Jarom, but like Dad says, there is more here at stake than just seeing that room.  I wish we could open it and see what’s in there too, but we can’t, so we’ll just have to wait and see what the Army does with it.”

Jason looked dejected, but silently put his pajamas on and climbed into bed. John and Jarom did too, but only Jason and John went to sleep right away. Jarom lay awake in turmoil for a long time.