“I’m not afraid of him trying something. I’m worried about the roof falling in on us.”
Aston chuckled. “That’s a chance we’ll have to take.”
The interior of Mo’s shack wasn’t much better than the outside. The walls were lined with rickety shelves stuffed with old books, magazines, and loose papers. Most of the titles were in Finnish, but those Aston could read were of the unsolved mysteries ilk — the sort of stuff Slater covered on her show. Dirty dishes filled the tiny sink, drawing more than a few flies. A hot plate, an old university dorm-style refrigerator, and an even older microwave oven were the sole appliances. A few tattered sofas and armchairs were scattered around, and a scored and stained wooden table stood in the center of the room, one broken leg propped up on a stack of five or six hardback books.
“Coffee?” Mo asked.
“Please,” Slater said, courtesy winning out. Her polite smile twisted into a grimace as soon as their host turned his back.
They settled gingerly onto an old couch while Mo filled three hopefully clean mugs with water, microwaved them one by one, and added heaped spoonfuls of instant coffee. As he busied himself in the kitchen, he sketched out the history of the creature in a bored voice. It was all the kind of stuff they could have learned anywhere, and mostly already had.
As Mo rejoined them, Aston decided to toss the old man a softball question to break the ice before asking more directly about the monster’s modern activities.
“We heard an interesting tale about something else that happened here and were told you’d know more. Something about Nazis exploring this area.”
A wide smile split Old Mo’s wrinkled face. “Ah, The Tale of the Lost Legion. I’m surprised you’ve heard of it. Now there’s a story worth telling.”
“I have to confess, we weren’t aware of it before we arrived,” Slater said. “It came up in conversation.”
“The bartender?” Old Mo quirked an eyebrow at Slater, and chuckled when she nodded. “He loves to talk, that one. I think he fancies himself my heir-apparent as local storyteller. Of course, that’s many years away. I’m too mean and stubborn to die.”
“A sentiment I can appreciate,” Aston said.
Old Mo nodded sagely. “In any case, the story should properly be called The Lost Platoon. I suppose Lost Legion just rolls off the tongue in a more pleasing way. According to my research, Hitler didn’t even send anything close to a full regiment. As best I can tell, there were between fifty and one hundred men in all, including civilian scientists.”
“But Hitler did send men here looking for something?” Slater asked.
“Oh yes. That is not in dispute. Not only have I collected numerous stories from locals, but a few had photographs their parents or grandparents had handed down to them. It’s common knowledge the platoon was here.”
“Could we see some photographs?” Slater asked. Aston wondered if she was feigning interest in order to get on Mo’s good side, but she seemed genuinely curious. Probably considering it as a future topic for her show.
Mo rummaged around for a bit and produced a small box. Opening it, he took out a pack of some twenty or thirty black and white photos in a Glassite envelope. He carefully removed the contents and handed them to Slater.
“They’re in remarkably good condition,” Aston said, glancing at the first photo; a shot of a scowling young soldier in a German uniform standing on the lake shore.
“They’re reprints, not originals. I still try to take good care of them though.”
Aston looked over Slater’s shoulder as she shuffled through the pile. All of them showed soldiers in town or wandering the area around the lake. The buildings in the pictures were largely unchanged from the streets he had only recently walked through. Seemed like change was slow to come to Kaarme. Most pictures were blurry, but they got the point across.
The final one in the stack was different. It displayed an older man, an officer by the markings on his uniform, standing at the back of a truck. He was deep in conversation with two civilians, one a dark-haired man with prominent jowls and a thick unibrow, the other a severe-looking woman of late middle years. The vehicle they stood behind was piled high with wooden crates, all marked with the Hoheitszeichen, the stylized eagle perched atop the swastika.
“These people look important,” Slater remarked. “Any idea who they are?”
“The officer was Herman Frick. A prominent member of the Nazi party who disappeared from the historical record around the time the Lost Legion arrived here. The man is Lars Pera and the woman is Greta Gebhardt. Both were scientists associated with the Ahnenerbe.”
“The what?” Aston had more than a passing familiarity with world history, particularly World War II, but he’d never heard of that organization.
“Now that,” Mo said, easing back in his chair and folding his hands in his lap, “is quite a tale.” He gave Slater an appraising look. “Surely you have heard of them?”
“I know the name, that they had an interest in the occult, but I’m afraid I don’t know any more. They’d make a good subject for a show.”
“A nature documentary?” Mo asked, one side of his mouth hooked up in a smirk.
Slater inclined her head with a smile, but said nothing.
Mo nodded and then went on. “They had much more than an interest in the occult. They were true believers.” A faraway look filled the old man’s eyes and he seemed to focus on a point somewhere in the distance. “Ahnenerbe translates to ‘inherited from the forefathers’. It was an institute in Nazi Germany whose purpose was to investigate the history of the Aryan race. Heinrich Himmler was a co-founder along with Herman Wirth, and Richard Walther Darré.
“Originally the group was tasked with simply finding evidence to support the so-called racial heritage of the German people. Himmler, however, was obsessed with the occult, and he soon expanded the group’s directive to include pseudoscience and the investigation of ancient myths and legends. They began conducting research and experiments in the hope of proving that, in ancient times, Nordic people ruled the world.”
“Is this the group that sent an expedition to the Antarctic, hoping to find Atlantis or something like that?” Slater asked.
“Yes. New Swabia they called the Antarctic. But it was much more than a single expedition. The Nazis were obsessed with the region. Records show that many scientists were sent there and none returned. Some believe they settled somewhere beneath the ice, and that a German presence remains hidden in Antarctica to this day.”
Aston caught himself rolling his eyes and was grateful Old Mo didn’t notice. No need to offend the old man, particularly when they still hadn’t brought the conversation around to tales of the lake monster.
“What interest did the Ahnenerbe have here?” Aston asked.
“The Nazis had a particular interest in the Nordic region, believing this was possibly the place where their imagined pure white race originated. They visited Bohuslän, in Sweden, to study the petroglyph rock carvings, which were believed to be evidence of an ancient system of writing that predated all other known systems. As a result of that expedition, they claimed to have uncovered and translated an ancient alphabet which proved, among other things, that Rome was founded by ancient Nords.”
“And that relates to the expedition here?” Slater asked.
“The only evidence I have comes from tales handed down from locals who interacted with the Nazis, but the stories are consistent enough that I’m confident I’ve got the story right, at least in the broad strokes. One comes from the daughter of a woman who fell in love with Pera and bore his child. But she kept her maternal surname. Laine.”