Aston raised his eyebrows. “Like Alvar Laine?”
“He was their grandchild, the son of the man sired by Lars Pera and Anna Laine.”
“He never mentioned he was the grandchild of Nazis,” Slater said, with a smile.
Old Mo nodded, laughing. “Why would he? There are quite a few descendants of that lost regiment here in town, and none of them are particularly keen to admit it. As well as Laine, there’s also Superintendent Rinne, and his siblings. Old Karl from the sheep farm in the next valley, the woman who runs the service station. Several more. The regiment was here quite a while, after all, and lots of people are from lines started on nights they were bored and in town. For many of the women here at the time, it seems they had little choice on whether they… interacted with the Nazis or not.”
Slater frowned. “That’s messed up.”
Aston laughed, tried to lighten the mood. “Why am I not surprised that policeman has got Nazi blood?”
Mo smiled, shook his head a little indulgently. Aston hoped the offhand comment had not caused offence. “The things you can learn from pillow talk,” Mo said.
Aston didn’t miss the way Slater’s eyes flitted toward him for a moment.
“Anyway,” Mo went on, “according to stories the Ahnenerbe uncovered in Sweden, somewhere in this region lay an entrance to the Hollow Earth.”
Aston cocked his head. “The what?”
“I know this one,” Slater said. “It’s the belief that there’s another world beneath the Earth’s surface. Theories vary wildly as to what’s actually down there, but the Nazis believed in it. Back when I was doing a story on the Yeti I stumbled across stories of one of their missions to the Himalayas searching for an entrance to the world below.”
“A nature documentary on the Yeti?” Mo asked, one bushy white eyebrow high.
“I work in many areas of television,” Slater said.
The old man inclined his head.
“That’s seriously a thing?” Aston asked. “I mean, outside of Journey to the Center of the Earth? What did they expect to find down there? Goblins and fairies?”
“Don’t be so quick to dismiss it,” Mo said. “Stories of the Hollow Earth, or human forerunners who emerged from or still live in the ground, can be found in cultures all around the world — in Europe, Asia, even America.”
Aston dismissed the old man’s comment with a curt wave of his hand. “It seems absurd. Why waste time with such a thing when they had a war to win?”
“Any more absurd than a spear that will lead your army to victory simply because it pierced the side of a man who was known as The Prince of Peace? Or a cup that grants eternal life because that same man bled into it? Even the idea that bread and wine are the flesh and blood of a god? People believe all sorts of absurdities.”
“I’ll grant you that, but what was the Nazi’s particular interest in this world? More ‘research’ into the origins of the Aryan race?”
“That was a factor, but in the case of the Lost Legion, they believed they would find something that would help them win the war.” Mo’s eyes twinkled. “Alien technology.”
“Alien.” Aston hoped his expressionless tone conveyed his utter disbelief.
“Think about it. Living under the earth without benefit of sunlight and fresh air would be virtually impossible for humankind as we know it. But if one had the benefit of highly-advanced technology, a race could survive, perhaps even thrive down there.”
“And the Nazis believed this?” Slater asked.
“Some did. There are basically two schools of thought. One holds that alien observers live beneath the earth, making a study of us, but keeping out of our affairs.”
Slater scratched her chin and frowned, deep in thought. “So, UFO sightings might be supply runs, or a changing of the guard.”
Mo grinned. “Precisely. The second theory holds that the aliens who reside beneath the earth were either our direct ancestors, or interbred with primitive hominids. That interbreeding resulted in the emergence of Homo Sapiens. The same race of aliens built Atlantis and provided the knowledge to build things like the pyramids. Eventually, these ancestral aliens died off, but their artifacts remain hidden in the Hollow Earth.”
“So the Ahnenerbe thought to win the war with alien technology?” Aston considered this. It was mad, but at least it made a perverse sense, if you accepted these people were true believers.
“Correct. Through their research, Pera and Gebhart concluded that somewhere in the system of underground and underwater caverns and passageways in our area, they would find an entrance to the Hollow Earth, guarded, the legends said, by a mighty leviathan. They brought soldiers, weapons, scientific equipment, and enough explosives to blast through even the greatest obstacles.”
“So what happened to them?” Slater was staring at Old Mo in rapt attention.
Mo shrugged. “They went down into the caverns and never came back.”
“Do you think they got lost? Trapped in a cave somewhere?” Aston asked.
“I don’t think they were trapped. They had a mountain of explosives at their disposal, remember?”
“So what do you think happened?” Aston grinned crookedly. “Maybe they found the Hollow Earth?”
Mo smiled. “The monster.”
They all laughed, but a little nervously. The story was one of the most bizarre yarns Aston had ever heard spun, and he’d spent long nights drinking with Queensland cattle farmers. But he couldn’t help being fascinated and slightly disturbed by it. However, it wasn’t much help with their current mission. He needed to bring the topic of conversation back to the present day.
“That’s all quite amazing,” he said. “I could listen to stories like that all day. But is there anything you can tell me that might be of particular use from a research perspective now? Anything I could study or measure?”
Mo stared up at the ceiling. “About the monster? Well, there’s the animal exodus.”
“What’s that?” Slater asked.
“Every year, around this time in fact, most of the local wildlife disappears. I’m sure you’ve noticed during your studies of the local fauna. It doesn’t literally vanish, of course, but drifts away. Centuries ago the natives noticed that around this time of year they were forced to go farther and farther away to hunt game. Also, the fishing wasn’t nearly as productive as other times of the year.”
“And it’s believed to be connected to the creature?” Aston asked.
Mo nodded. “No one’s proved it, of course, but it’s accepted. People tend to stay away from the lake this time of year. Many even keep their pets inside.” He chuckled. “It’s become such a common practice that I doubt many of them even know why they do it, save custom and superstition. And most people think I’m mad living out here, so close to the lake.”
“Are you?”
“Probably, but it keeps me away from the crowds and I prefer it that way.”
Aston chuckled. Even for someone as used to remote locations as he was, it was hard to conceive of a tiny town like Kaarme ever having crowds. But everything was a matter of perspective. Two people in a room made that room crowded if they didn’t get along. “That’s something we could follow up for certain,” he said. “Keep an eye on the animals, see if we observe any migration patterns.” They couldn’t, and wouldn’t, do anything of the sort, of course. They lacked the manpower or the inclination, but the scientist in him was fascinated and wished they could put some time and resources into the subject. Besides, a migration didn’t necessarily prove a monster was the cause, though there was no need to tell Mo that when the old man was being helpful. But it was a strange thing to consider.
“Why do you think the animals migrate?” Slater asked him.