'And remembered all the things we'd done together?'

'Yes, d.a.m.n you! Yes!'

She chuckled, let him feel her heavy b.r.e.a.s.t.s, licked the side of his neck. 'And did pretty boy bring his expensive gift?'

'Yes,' he said, almost bursting.

'You're so kind,' Brigette whispered, breathing into his ear, then she chuckled throatily, jerked his hands off her, and stepped away from him. The dressing gown had been tugged off one shoulder, exposing her breast. Ernst could feel his heart racing. Brigette held out her hand.

'I'm just a child at heart,' she explained. 'I can't wait to see it.'

She was smiling, but meant it, so he gave her the brooch, thinking of the many men who gave her presents, financial and otherwise. While she unwrapped his particular gift, he gazed into the bedroom behind her and noted that the bed was badly rumpled, as if used for more than sleep. Nothing had changed, which was fine by him. No more emotional entanglements: just gratification. Sensual pleasure and duty.

'Has my precious lieutenant been home yet?' Brigette asked as she unwrapped his gift.

'Yes,' he said.

'And how were your lovely wife and children?'

'Fine,' he said. 'In good health.'

'And you've come straight from there?' she asked with sly, exciting mockery as she tugged the wrapping paper off the box and let it fall carelessly to the carpet.

'Yes,' he said, unable to take his eyes off her bare skin, his senses in disarray.

She removed the lid from the gift box, studied the brooch with widening eyes, removed it and pinned it to her silk nightgown where it fell in shining folds and shadows over a perfect breast. She glanced down at it, her lips pouting greedily, then again looked at him.

'Ravishing,' she said. 'Welcome back. Now what would you like to do?'

'Everything,' Ernst said, then stepped up to her, slid the dressing gown off her shoulders and lowered his head.

'Nice,' Brigette said. 'Nice.' When she was ready, she led him into the bedroom and let him share her unmade bed, where he finally felt at home.

Three days later, satiated by his loveless s.e.xual exertions with the diabolically sensual Brigette, Ernst was walking with his beloved Reischsfhrer, Himmler, through a long dark tunnel that had been carved out of the Kohnstein Mountain, near the town of Nordhausen in the southern Harz mountain range in Thuringia.

'I have a dream,' Himmler was saying quietly, academically, 'of an Atlantis reborn from the ashes of the forthcoming war: a society of masters and slaves, ruled by the elite of my SS. The new temples will be the factories, the laboratories and universities; the new religion will be knowledge and conquest: the return of the Superman. And where will this new order be created? In the Antarctic, Lieutenant!'

The tunnel had only recently been hacked out of the interior of the mountain and was gloomily illuminated by the electric lights strung along its whole length. There were many people still working in it, mostly prisoners from the camps, few looking healthy, most covered in mud. All took great pains to keep their eyes lowered as Himmler and his entourage of a.s.sistants and bodyguards walked past them, watching them laying steel tracks and fortifying the walls that formed the great tunnel, as wide as a highway, at the end of which, as Ernst noticed with relief, there was a circle of light.

'You understand now, do you not,' Himmler continued rhetorically as they tramped through the long tunnel, his normally soft voice even more difficult to hear because of the constant banging and clanging of the heavy work going on all around them, 'just how important your mission to the Antarctic was? The elite of my SS, the best of the best, will find a new home under the ice of the Antarctic, and there, uninterrupted and isolated from the imperfect world of normal men, will be forged into the first of the Supermen. You have found the location for us, Lieutenant Stoll, and should be proud of yourself.'

As they advanced deeper into the cold, dimly lit darkness of the tunnel, Ernst noticed that the slaving prisoners, most of whom looked underfed, were being guarded by immaculately uniformed SS officers, most armed with pistols or submachine guns, some carrying bullwhips. The clothes of many of the prisoners were in ribbons; some had skin that was freshly scarred.

A society of masters and slaves, he thought, and it all begins right here...

'I'm not so sure, Reichsfhrer,' he said, emboldened by the favour he had recently found with Himmler, 'that such an ambitious project, no matter how admirable, would actually be feasible.'

'I respect you for expressing your doubts,' Himmler said, feeling kindly disposed toward Ernst for his achievement in the Anatarctic, 'but what are they based on?'

'To create hidden colonies under the ice,' Ernst began, 'may not be that easy. The undertaking would have to be immense, and I don't think '

'Look around you!' Himmler interjected with a rare display of excitement, waving his gloved hand to indicate those slaving along the length of the great tunnel. 'This is but one of two tunnels, eighteen thousand meters long. Leading off these tunnels will be fifty side chambers, a work area of one hundred and twenty-five thousand square meters, and twelve ventilation shafts, which already have been bored down to here from the peak of the mountain. As for these workers,' he continued, indicating with a careless wave of his hand the hundreds of unfortunates already labouring in the dimly lit gloom under the threat of bullwhip and bullet, 'they are merely the tip of the iceberg. Where they come from, there are thousands more, and thousands more after them and we can obtain them whenever we need them and do what we will with them. Our supply of labour is endless.'

He stopped to study some prisoners who were laying down the steel rails for the trains that would soon run through the tunnels, bringing in more workers, equipment, and, possibly, food. Ernst noticed, once more, that these particular workers were half starved, and understood that they would be worked to death and then casually replaced. A society of masters and slaves hidden under the earth... He was moved by the grandeur of the concept and suddenly saw its potential.

When a bullwhip cracked behind them and someone screamed, Himmler twitched and walked on.

'The slaves destined to work here,' he explained as they continued advancing on that expanding circle of light from the outside world, 'will come from a separate camp located in a hidden mountain valley, less than a kilometre from the entrance to this tunnel. And a new underground complex, to be linked to this one by another network of tunnels, is already being constructed sixteen kilometres under the ground around the town of Bleicherode, only twenty kilometres from Nordhausen. Between them, Nordhausen and Bleicherode will const.i.tute the first of my SS underground factories virtually living towns. And what we are doing here, Lieutenant, under the earth, we can also do under the ice of the Antarctic.'

At that moment, they stepped into the sunlight that was pouring into the end of the vast tunnel. Glancing down, Ernst saw a strip of ragged, blood-soaked cloth in the mud, but he put it out of his mind as, still walking beside Himmler, whose respect he had gained, he raised his face to let the sunlight warm it, then left the tunnel behind him.

The peaks and valleys of the densely forested mountains of Thuringia were spread out all around and below him in the sunlight of spring.

He breathed deeply of fresh air.

Himmler, also breathing the fresh air, again waved his hand, this time to take in the peaks and valleys spread out below and around them, under a radiant blue sky streaked with fat, snow-white clouds.

'This whole area,' he said in his quietly grandiose manner, 'from the Harz Mountains to Thuringia, south of Prague and across to Mahren, is already littered with other tunnels and underground factories similar to this one. And soon they will be totally insular colonies, worked by masters and slaves, and unrestricted by commonplace, so-called moral thinking. And since the masters are the elite of my most trusted SS troops, the existence of these places is unknown to those who are not my most valued initiates. Unknown,' he added, lowering his voice even more and staring steadily at Ernst through his glittering pince-nez, 'even to those closest to our beloved Fhrer. Do you understand what Im saying?'

'Yes, Reichsfhrer,' Ernst said.