The Closet

Chapter 21

            Jason and Allie had been left alone at the entrance to the storage rooms. In the tension of the emergency situation, they had only been spectators. When their father and John had hurried off down the passageway, they had started to follow when Allie said, “Jason, let’s go look in the room.  I didn’t get to see inside any of the locked chambers because I was sick.  Let’s just look at this one.”

            They both knew that they would have no role in the rescue and that what happened was out of their hands. They were concerned for their brother, but not being able to help, they rationalized that an extra 3 or 4 minutes wouldn’t make any difference. They probably would reach the round room at about when the others did anyway because they could move faster. 

            With mutual consent, they turned down the side tunnel and saw the open door. They stepped inside only to see a sight they would forever wish that they had not. Their lights shone around the room and stopped on objects that they only recognized as human after walking closer. They saw the eyeless heads with patches of dried skin sticking to them, horrifying wide and toothy grins through missing or shrunken lips, and wispy hair hanging from the scalp.  Striped clothing partially covered the bodies which were lying about the room in haphazard positions as if they had collapsed by themselves or on each other. 

            It didn’t take them long to realize that they had made a mistake and they ran for the doorway, hurrying out of the side tunnel and into the main passageway. They began walking quickly back toward their home.

            Jason exclaimed, “What happened to those people?  Were they just left in there to die?”

            That hard truth had occurred to Allie as well, and she replied, “We studied about the gas chambers in the extermination camps that the Nazis used to kill the Jews with during World War II.  Those people in the chamber looked like they were exterminated too.

            They walked on without talking, and when they got to the round room, everyone was gone.  Alone, they weren’t sure what to do when they saw someone watching them from the opening of the northwest tunnel. Spooked as they were, they backed in the opposite direction screaming.

            There was no one there to hear their screams and Frank and John were so preoccupied with moving Jarom to safety that they hadn’t heard their shouts.  They watched as a very old man stepped out into the round room, a flashlight in one hand and a gun in the other. They screamed again and began running down the tunnel to the east.  Allie had climbed the ladder at the end of that tunnel the week prior and knew she had heard footsteps in the room above.  She thought that there might be someone there that could help them. They ran down the tunnel a ways before they turned around and saw a light through the darkness following them.

            “A voice called to them in a German accent, “Vait”.

            They did not wait, and they were much faster than Marius. His intention was not to do them any harm, but in their state of mind, they were not in the mood to find out what his aims were. They ran on down the tunnel and soon found themselves beneath Sullivan Barracks. The stones that they had used when they had been here with John and Jarom were still stacked there, but they could not reach the ladder and they could see that the light was still approaching. Jason hoped that there really was a short ladder hidden near the entrance of each ladder-shaft and he ran to the tunnel to search for one.  In only a moment, he found the camouflaged wall that hid a ladder behind it. He grabbed the ladder and reaching up, hooked it over the bottom rung of the steel ladder above.  Then he and Allie scrambled up the ladder. At the top, Jason shone his light on the hinge and unlocked it. Standing on the second rung and putting his back against the trap door, he lifted for all he was worth and the door opened. 

            A glass cabinet had been on the edge of the trap door and in a noisy crash, it tipped over spilling broken glass and stereo equipment all over the floor.  Jason’s head popped out of the ground like a prairie dog’s into a room that was deathly silent. The music that had been playing in the background was suddenly stilled with the crash of the cabinet and the stereo. The room was full of off-duty soldiers that were relaxing after a busy workday and the violent interruption reverberating through the room turned everyone’s attention to its source. Then, the calm before the storm faded into total confusion as a second head popped up in the hole, and a burley sergeant turned to face them.

            “What in the heck are you two doing down there?” he demanded, and after a moment’s thought, he continued, “And where is down there?”

            “Jarom answered back with the urgency of someone running for his life, “We’re being chased by an old German man with a gun!”

            The silence was again deafening.

            “What is this, some kind of a joke?” came a voice from the crowded room.

            “It’s no joke,” screamed Jason frantically. “There is an old man with a gun coming through a tunnel down there,” he said pointing down the shaft.

            It was serendipitous that they had emerged into the dayroom of an MP company, and not only were these soldiers trained for confrontations, but they were equipped for them too.  Two soldiers who had entered only a few minutes before and had not yet surrendered their weapons to the armorer approached the ladder-shaft. 

            “Okay, little man,” said one of the military policemen. “Just where does this shaft go?”

            Jason answered hurriedly saying, “It goes down to a network of tunnels that are left over from World War II.  Our two brothers and my sister and I discovered them and we have been exploring them. My brother got hurt today and is on his way to the hospital, but right now……”

            “A German with a gun is chasing you through the tunnel,” finished the MP for him.  “OK, climb out of there so we can go down.”

            “Do you have a light?” asked Allie.  “It’s really dark down there.”

            The MP pulled out his standard issue tactical flashlight, switched it on, and pointed it down into the black space below. He picked out the ladder and he started climbing down followed by his partner. By the time they got to the bottom of the steel ladder, their eyes were becoming accustomed to the darkness. They climbed down the aluminum extension and stood on the floor of the chamber, looking down the tunnel. They listened intently and could hear someone shuffling along just ahead of them. The flashlight the old man was carrying lit him up so that his silhouette showed clearly in its beam as it bobbed along the walls.

The first MP, Sgt. Pfeiffer, said, “I’ll be darned. There really is someone down here. Do you suppose he really has a gun?”

The second MP, Corporal Smith, replied, “I don’t know, but we’d look pretty stupid if he had a weapon and we followed him down that tunnel.”

Sgt. Pfeiffer turned to the tunnel and standing aside, yelled, “Halt!  Waffe weg!”

Marius stopped and raised his hands in the air. He was an old man and knew he would die before too many more years went by, but he did not want to be shot by the police. He dropped the gun which made a loud clatter on the stone floor of the tunnel.

Sgt. Pfeiffer yelled again, “Herkommen!” and Marius began walking ahead toward the officers.

The Corporal said to his partner, “I didn’t know you spoke German.”

Sgt. Pfeiffer replied, “Ja, My mother’s German”.

In a moment, Marius walked out into the chamber beneath the ladder with his arms raised. An 86 year old unarmed German citizen didn’t appear to be too much of a threat despite where he had come from. Though he had not spoken much English for many years, he had learned to communicate in that language when he worked for the Americans on a construction crew years before.

 He asked the MPs, “The boy. Is he OK?  The gas?”. 

The MPs weren’t sure what he was talking about. Thinking he meant the boy that was now in their dayroom at the top of the ladder, Sgt. Pfeiffer said, “Yes, He’s OK.” 

            Marius smiled and said, “Good.  I was worried.”

            Pfeiffer asked, “Can you climb?”

            Marius grinned ruefully, “Ja.  Since long before you were born, I have been climbing this ladder.”

            The MPs didn’t know what to make of that, but the Corporal started up the ladder and Marius followed with Sgt. Pfeiffer bringing up the rear.  When they reached the top and entered the dayroom, Marius was startled by all the activity.  Glass and debris covered the floor next to the trap door, and Jason and Allie backed away from him. 

            Marius asked, “Your brother. Is he OK? I was so worried.  I brought the gun to break the lock and release him.”

            Jason, speaking with courage he didn’t completely feel, said, “My father carried him up, but I don’t know if he’s alright.” And it occurred to Jason that he had no idea where he and Allie were. 

            Jason said to one of the MPs, we have to get back home. Our parents don’t know where we are and will be worried.”

            Sgt. Pfeiffer said, “I have to take care of your friend here right now, but I’ll get someone to take you home.  Where do you live?”

            “42B Grant Circle,” said Allie. 

            In a few minutes, another MP car pulled up and Jason and Allie got in and were taken home. John was there, but their father had gone to the hospital in Heidelberg to see Jarom, and in the confusion, they had barely been missed.

            Sgt. Pfeiffer called his liaison in the German police and a German car arrived a few minutes later. The Sergeant also called his First Sergeant who called the Commander, and soon both were standing in the day room peering down the shaft and wondering what the story was. 

Marius explained in halting English that he had been the caretaker of these tunnels for over 50 years. The Commander could see the security implications of a tunnel that came into their barracks from who knew where, and he called the Provost Marshal, Colonel Carter.  As it turned out, Col. Carter had heard of the tunnel system that very morning and knew that there was to be a meeting with the USAREUR commander the next day at 11 in the office of the Garrison Commander. 

The MPs made one more trip down the ladder that night to retrieve the gun that Marius had been carrying. They found the loaded gun in the tunnel, and then humbled and grateful that their bravado had not been rewarded with a bullet, they cleared the weapon, climbed out of the shaft, closed the trap door, and turned the gun into the arms room.

Marius was a German civilian, and they had no jurisdiction over him. It was not even clear if he had been on Army property, so they requested his contact information, and turned him over to the German police. The German officers, hearing about the high level meeting the next day over this secret tunnel system called their Chief who called the Mayor. The Mayor had been invited to the meeting in the morning as the representative for the Chancellor, and after conferring with the police chief on the reliability of his officers, asked him to have Marius at the Garrison Commander’s office at 11 the next morning.

The police chief instructed the officers to take the old man home, to keep watch over his house that night, and to make sure that he was at the meeting the next morning.

If Marius had wanted to leave, it would have been simple for him to have done so.  After all, he had unrestricted access to a tunnel with multiple exits, but he had made up his mind that it was time to bring the truth into the light. He looked through his papers and found the memoirs that his father-in-law had written so long ago.  Alexandra was there and he gave them to her to read.  After she had done so, she looked at him in amazement. 

“And all these years, you have been guarding these terrible secrets?” she asked.

“Yes, my love.  And after all these years, it seems silly to have done so, but I loved your father and I love my country.  He asked me to be the guardian and I agreed.” He laid the papers on the desk to take with him to the meeting in the morning.