Austin and the Secret of Karnak House

By Stuart Taylor

This book is the sequel to the first of The Austin Chronicles, "Austin". Intended for readers over nine to adult, this is a classic adventure story set both in the present day and the Second World War. The lavish plot deals with spies, secret-codes, and Austin's career in the British Secret Service as part of a mysterious expedition to be the first nation to find the lost continent of Atlantis and an awesome mystic force known only to the ancient Atlanteans that can both heal and destroy. Though set largely in the present day, the story also glimpses a time where computer development was in its infancy, where mechanical computers look set to prevail, and where the horrific consequences of racial persecution are made real to young readers. Like the first book in the Austin Chronicles, "Austin and the Secret of Karnak House" is an anthropomorphic tale with animal characters whose humorous antics and conversation provide light-hearted contrast to some of the darker human activities in this book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stuart Taylor
• Release date: Dec 10, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466122246

Stuart Taylor

Hi, My name is Stuart Taylor and I write 'The Austin Chronicles' adventure stories. My books are like the stories I loved as a boy. The Austin Chronicles are full of computers and mechanical things like cars, motorbikes, and submarines and flying machines and simple fantasy-scientific themes. My books are fast-paced and although intended for children, I'm always amazed at how many adults tell me they enjoy them too.Happy reading and very best wishes,Stuart Taylor

Book preview

The Nazis believed they were descended from survivors of the lost continent of Atlantis.

Nazi Mystics believed the ancients of Atlantis possessed a magical force called Vril that could both heal and destroy.

Having discovered the whereabouts of Atlantis, the Nazis are about to despatch a submarine expedition to find and harness Vril to power new and terrifying secret weapons in an attempt to win the Second World War.

Unbeknown to the Germans, a British spy has already uncovered the ‘Top Secret’ plans for their expedition and the British have formed their own counter mission to find Vril before the Nazis.

Our story begins in the terrifying days of wartime Germany.

The Nazis have just discovered the existence of the British spy…

Chapter 1.

Terror in the Night

Rudi Schroder’s bedroom was in the attic of a tall medieval house in the sleepy German town of Göttingen. The small room had steep sloping ceilings and a high dormer window that overlooked the old Göttingen University. If Rudi stood on a chair at the window, he could just see the laboratory where Papa worked as a Professor making machines that would do mathematical calculations for you automatically – an idea Rudi thought especially useful for doing maths homework.

It was ten o’clock on Friday evening when Rudi stood on tiptoe to kiss Mama and Papa goodnight. Professor Schroder waited with Mama at his study door watching Rudi pad in bare feet up the narrow staircase to his room. Turning at the head of the stairs Rudi smiled down at his parents before closing the bedroom door behind him. The Professor smiled and kissed his wife goodnight, and despite Shabbat, he wiped his spectacles with a freshly laundered handkerchief and walked wearily back to his desk to continue working late into the night.

As soon as Rudi’s head touched his pillow he fell into a deep, dream filled sleep. In his dream he was looking down from the cockpit of an aeroplane automatically piloted by one of Papa’s mathematical machines. He was suddenly awakened by a loud crash from downstairs. Of course there were often noises in the house late at night, but they were always hushed, friendly sounds: the whispers of people visiting Papa to talk to him about his work, or rain falling on the roof in a shower, or the scratchy pitter-patter of pigeons walking about on the dormer window roof.

This noise was quite different. This noise was loud and hostile. It was the noise that splintering wood and smashing glass make. Rudi sat upright in bed. He held his breath hoping nobody would hear his heart pounding.

Heraus! ‘Raus! Schnell! ‘Raus! shrieked a strange man’s voice from downstairs. Then came the sound of running feet – a woman’s feet – Mama’s feet running up the stairs to Rudi’s room. Rudi jumped at the deafening rat-tat-tat of a machine gun. He heard the thuds of a person falling down stairs and smelled fireworks through gaps in the door.

His blood ran cold. Heavy booted feet were clumping upstairs. His father was wailing somewhere, and even though the door, Rudi could make out the words: You’ve killed her! You killed my darling Elsa.

The heavy boots stopped outside. The doorknob squeaked as it turned.

The wardrobe! He must escape through the back of the wardrobe like Mama and Papa had taught him! Shivering with blind terror, Rudi fumbled under his bed to grab the small, brown attaché case Mama had packed for him to take in such an emergency. The case was wedged. Rudi tugged at it madly. It took several goes. With the case free and in his hand he could breathe again. Running across his room he stood for just a moment at the wardrobe door panting. A final glance, as if saying goodbye to his room, he held his breath and opened the wardrobe door.

Chapter 2.

Escape?

The back of the wardrobe was fitted with a false plywood door. The door opened into the eaves of the roof with the press of a hidden button.

Brushing aside hanging shirts, jackets, trousers and coat hangers, Rudi pressed the secret button and stepped into the wardrobe and out through the false door. The eaves were dark and freezing, and the joists rough. He turned and leaned out to close the wardrobe doors behind him.

His bedroom door suddenly burst open. A soldier’s bear-like silhouette filled the doorway. The dark shape breathed heavily and rushed into the room. All at once Rudi’s bedroom was a melee of crashing furniture and books and toys being thrown in all directions. Rudi slammed the wardrobe door behind him. The booted footfalls ran across the bedroom to the wardrobe. Rudi held his breath. The soldier opened the squeaky wardrobe door. Clattering wooden coat hangers and ripping fabric came from beyond the false door. Rudi squatted white-knuckled and shivering, waiting for the soldier to discover the secret door. Suddenly the bear began thumping around the back of the wardrobe with his fist. Two thumps left - one thump right, two at the top and one at the bottom. Surely the flimsy latch holding the plywood door would give-way at such force? Then the SS soldier would find Rudi crouching, balancing in bare feet, on the joists of the eaves; pale and shivering in the bitter darkness.

The pounding stopped.

Please! thought Rudi, his breath ragged with fear, Please let the soldier go away.

The silence was broken by scraping and creaking. Noises of cracking and splintering wood filled the eaves hidey-hole. The soldier was trying to prise the wardrobe away from the wall with his bayonet.

Rudi backed away from the false door. The SS man would be into the roof at any moment! Grabbing his attaché case, Rudi turned to fumble his way in the darkness over the rough joists and through a kind of triangular tunnel formed by the slope of the roof, the wall of his bedroom and the ceilings of the rooms below. He remembered Papa’s advice when they’d practised escaping - not to stand on the plaster between the joists in case his feet went straight through and into the room below.

Something brushed lightly against Rudi’s cheek. Then it brushed his hair. He shivered. Goosebumps were coming up all over his arms.

OW! Blast! he cursed. A splinter from one of the rough joists punctured his right foot. The foot felt wet to the touch and the wet stuff tasted coppery – his foot was bleeding.

What a noise! It’s enough to waken the dead! squeaked a tiny voice from somewhere in the darkness. Rudi hurriedly opened his attaché case and groped inside for a torch. The yellow torchlight threw long shadows along the tunnel, and in the beam, Rudi could see the rafters were festooned with dozens of small furry bodies hanging upside-down and shrouded in black leathery wings like some kind of weird fruit. The first of the furry bodies stretched its wings and blinked.

What a noise! it repeated, Everybody will be wide awake in a moment at this rate!

Who are you? asked Rudi, astonished to be having a conversation with a talking bat at a time like this.

Botulus! And these are my relatives, replied the bat with a sweep of its wing in the direction of the other hanging bodies.

A cloud of black dust dropped from the rafters as with a loud crack, the wardrobe finally came away from the bedroom wall.

Rudi coughed. A giant head with deep set eyes, peering from under a steel helmet, poked into the eaves. The eyes were blinking and squinting in the light from Rudi’s torch.

Halt! yelled the head, as machine gun first; its clumsy greatcoated body began wriggling through the child-sized secret door.

After moments of struggling and gasping and panting, the soldier was through - bent double and breathing heavily, he began advancing on Rudi like a great spider.

I’ve got to go, Botulus! cried Rudi, turning to stumble over the joists away from the man - trying his best to ignore splinters piercing his feet as he went.

Despite the awkwardness of his cumbersome greatcoat catching on nails, and his steel helmet clonking roof tiles and rafters, the SS soldier began gaining on Rudi.

Come here you Jewish brat! he growled, lunging forward to grab at Rudi’s pyjama jacket.

The man’s first attempt to catch Rudi failed, but then, to Rudi’s horror, he felt a huge hand encircle his arm and clamp on it like a vice.

Gerroff! screamed Rudi, yanking his arm back and forth to get away from the man.

Gotcha! growled the SS Trooper and leering triumphantly at Rudi, he snatched to get a firmer grip on Rudi’s arm.

The SS man glanced over his shoulder and began dragging Rudi back down the tunnel towards the light from the secret door. Shouts were coming from Rudi’s room. Suddenly a second head poked into the eaves through the back of the wardrobe.

Max! Vot iss happening? called the second head.

Look! I’ve caught me a baby Jew! crowed the man dragging Rudi, his mouth twisted in hate. Don’t just stand there, Fritz. Help me! The little brute’s struggling. He’ll get away in a minute!

Fritz groaned and puffed and wheezed trying to wriggle in through the secret door.

Come on, blast you! I can’t hold him much longer, snarled the first SS Trooper.

HELP! called Rudi, violently pulling and pushing, trying to yank his arm away from the big Nazi.

Don’t worry, we’ll help you! squeaked Botulus. Wake up everybody, Rudi needs our help!

In an instant the tunnel was filled with squeaks, loud clicks and the flapping of hundreds of leathery wings. Rudi felt bats whizzing this way and that, but none ever touching him.

The Storm Trooper cried out angrily, and losing his grip on Rudi’s arm, started thrashing his arms wildly in the dark air.

Eeeeah! I hate bats! he yelled, and stepping back, he slipped off the joist he’d been balancing on. With a loud CRACK his jackboot disappeared up to the knee through the plaster and into the room below. Aaagh! he screamed again, as with a second CRACK his second boot disappeared through a new hole. The soldier landed with a padded thud, one leg each side of the joist. After a moment of white faced heaving, as if he was about to be sick, the SS man, looking pale and wide eyed, began struggling to haul himself up. The more he tried to pull his boots out from the holes in the ceiling however, the more the jagged plaster around the holes bit into his legs like teeth.

I hope that really hurts! shouted Rudi into the SS man’s face, remembering the machine gun outside his bedroom door and the terrible things that might have happened to Mama and Papa. Pulling away from the Nazi, Rudi took his chance to escape.

Fritz was by now shining his torch into the tunnel through the cloud of swooping and circling bats. Rudi turned to run away. In his torchlight, the low tunnel disappeared into the gloomy distance.

Come back here you Jewish brat! shouted the trapped SS man, getting more and more stuck with every tug he tugged, kick he kicked and wriggle he wriggled to get free.

Run Rudi! squeaked Botulus, brushing over Rudi’s head to fly further down the tunnel in front of him. There’s a low door the men use to work inside the roof at the end of this tunnel – you can escape through that!

Thanks Botulus, said Rudi, and thanks to all of your relatives for saving me!

Good luck! squeaked Botulus, we’ll hold them up as long as we can! and with that, he swooped and turned to fly back to help his relatives harass the two Germans.

The tunnel seemed to go on for ages – it certainly ran far beyond Rudi’s house and probably even beyond the house next-door. Stepping quickly from joist to joist down the tunnel, Rudi could hear the rustlings, scrapings, grunts, and foul language of the two Germans trying to fight their way through the skirmish of bats.

The tunnel suddenly turned right and then left before continuing straight on again for about ten metres.

Soon Rudi was standing in front of the low door Botulus had described. The door was bolted and the bolt rusty. Rudi tugged and tugged at it with all his might. After what seemed an age, the bolt squeaked and shifted, and after one final mighty tug it was free. Rudi pushed against the door’s rusty hinges. It creaked open grudgingly and an icy blast of freezing air blew in Rudi’s face.

Crawling on all fours, he stuck his head out into the night. Two metres below him, and covered with glistening frost, was the red tiled roof of one of the other houses in the terrace. Leaving his case inside the little doorway, Rudi lowered himself onto the slippery roof. He turned, and standing on tiptoes, reached in for his attaché case. In an instant he began slipping on the icy roof tiles and losing his balance began slithering towards the roof’s edge. Grabbing frantically at thin air, Rudi let go of his case before grabbing a handhold where a missing tile had left a hole in the roof. Breathing heavily, he stared over the edge in horror. His case had burst open in the street below.

Trousers, shirts, socks, shoes, a pair of slippers, a flannel, soap, toothpaste, a small bottle of shampoo, and a spare pair of pyjamas were scattered in all directions over the cobbles.

CRACK! The tile at the edge of Rudi’s handhold broke. Rudi was sliding even nearer the edge of the roof. His feet were over. He was bound to follow his case to his death. He grabbed a rusty guttering. He was hanging. His feet were flailing in thin air. He peered down.

Fourteen metres below, two german staff cars were parked outside his house. An SS officer got in the back of one of the cars followed by his father, shoved at gunpoint by a trilby hat and leather coat. Instinctively Rudi searched for Mama. No. Mama would not be there. She had surely been shot. Rudi felt a hollow emptiness in his stomach.

The car drove away and screeched right at the corner by Meyer’s old bookshop. The bookshop’s windows were still boarded up and covered in graffiti from Kristallnacht. Tears welled up in Rudi’s eyes. He watched the car take Papa away down the narrow street that led to Göttingen railway station.

Would he ever see his Papa again? People often disappeared these days. One day you might be passing the time of day with them - the next they were gone. People were saying the Germans were sending Jews to concentration camps and murdering them. Rudi watched as the car slowed and mounted the pavement to get past a smaller car parked outside Gasthaus Bauer.

The guttering began