‘The going is the same either way. Bad. Down is Braunlage. They’ll expect us to head there, won’t they?’
‘So upstream.’
‘Unless they second guess us.’
They froze at a series of shouted orders from above. Clearly it was only a matter of time before their hunters found a route to the valley bottom.
‘It looks like we’ll need to take our chances.’
Jamie remembered holding the dead German’s pistol as he jumped and he felt a momentary panic as he realized he’d lost it on the way down. Surreptitiously, he searched the area where they’d landed, but could find no sign of it. He decided not to mention it to Sarah. He doubted it would be much use against a machine gun in any case.
Staying tight to the valley wall, they made their way north, upstream towards the Oderteich dam. It was almost as tough going in the gorge bottom as it had been through the wild spruce at the top of the cliff. They clambered over boulders, between the roots of upturned trees, or amongst the skeletal branches of others carried into the gorge by generations of floods. Occasionally they were forced to take to the water’s edge. The terrain did have one compensation. The further north they went, the narrower the gorge became and the less likely they were to be spotted from above.
In his mind, Jamie saw the valley from the dam wall, fearsome and rugged, hemmed in by the trees and chopped deep into the surrounding landscape. From there it had looked as if you could hide an army in it, but up close it was different. Narrow and constricted, like a winding rabbit’s burrow, but with no handy escape passages. He remembered once seeing a ferret sent into a rabbit warren. The squeals of terror and the bloodied, dead-eyed bundle hanging from the hunter’s jaws had stayed with him for years.
Yet for all the feeling of being a hunted beast, he was now calm enough to think on a second level. This valley was where Walter Brohm had pointed him in Matthew Sinclair’s journal. His eyes searched for any clue that might tie in with the map or the sun symbol. The same thought had occurred to Sarah and she slowly realized that their original plan had a major flaw. She’d barely said a word since their tumble down the hillside and the sound of her voice startled him.
‘Even if the Black Sun wasn’t an abstract piece of symbolism, we’re talking about something based on the road grid around here sixty years ago. Hell, we don’t even know if there were any proper roads. How many of these tracks have been added or have become overgrown in the meantime? And did you see those fancy little trains in the tourist brochure? This would have been a logging and mining area during the war. You can bet your new boots that the rail network in the Harz Mountains was a lot different in nineteen forty-five.’
Jamie didn’t pause as he unslung the rucksack and retrieved the journal and the map. ‘All right, I’ll go with that. But let’s look at it from a slightly different angle. There is one constant in this landscape. Water.’
‘You mean the river.’
‘That’s right, so let’s assume legs one and five are the river, running directly through the target area. It means we’re only looking for two more landmarks to pinpoint the position.’
‘Sounds pretty thin to me.’
‘It is, but we also have the clue in the diary—’
They were interrupted by shouts from upstream. Simultaneously they dived into the shelter of a fallen tree. Jamie noticed with alarm that the gun Sarah had taken from the dead Nazi at Wewelsburg had appeared miraculously in her right hand. He tried to think rationally. The men in front of them were making no attempt to conceal themselves and by the sound of their voices they were still something like a hundred paces away. Behind them, the valley curved away to the south at an angle that would always keep them out of sight of their pursuers if they could only stay far enough in front. There was still a chance. He waved Sarah back. She looked at him as if he was crazy and shook her head.
‘There are only two or three of them,’ she whispered. ‘We can take them as they go past. Get your gun out.’
‘I haven’t got it.’
‘What?’
‘I lost it when we jumped.’
She closed her eyes and shook her head. ‘Jesus, Saintclair, how did I get stuck with you?’
‘We have to go.’
Her expression said no, but she squirmed backwards away from the tree and he followed. When he was certain they couldn’t be seen they got to their feet and ran north.
Gustav heard the shouts from the shelter of the trees lining the clifftop. He’d been disappointed when Saintclair and the woman had jumped, but not surprised. Frederick had warned him not to underestimate Saintclair’s abilities or resolve. The original position had given him a better view of the bank downstream than up and he’d soon realized that the fugitives must be heading north, which suited his purpose perfectly. From his new viewpoint he scanned the river through the MP5’s telescopic sight. His fist tightened on the pistol grip as the two running figures came into view and the stubby barrel of the suppressor ranged on the targets. He moved the rate of fire selector to a three-round burst and caressed the trigger. He was firing from above and at an acute angle, which gave the shot a degree of difficulty that might have made another man hesitate, and he was using a weapon that was far from ideal, but Gustav was supremely confident of his ability. He willed himself to relax, sucked in a breath and slowly released it. And fired.
XXXV
8 MAY 1945, noon. I pushed them hard and they hated me for it. The way began steeply, at first in the trees where we were all plagued with buzzing black flies and the sweat coursed from their faces in streams, then for a short while in the open. Brohm complained until he ran out of wind. Klosse cursed me under his breath. Strasser looked as if he was on the verge of a heart attack. I took pity on them when we reached a runnel that flowed through a clearing beside a steep ravine, and they gratefully sat down to drink from the water bottles and eat the last of the bread. The intelligence briefing I’d been given indicated that this was one of the quietest sectors of the German–Swiss border. The line wanders erratically and with no apparent reason from the point where it dissects the Untersee, the western part of Lake Constance, as far as Klettgau, where it turns back on itself and takes a huge bite out of Swiss territory, making it entirely arbitrary whether a farm or a hamlet is German or Swiss. From what we’d seen there was no doubt who had the best part of the bargain. Even though they were better off than the people in Germany’s bombed-out cities, the inhabitants of southern Bavaria had been on starvation rations for the best part of two years. This was smuggling country and I had no doubt that some food and drink got past the border guards in exchange for gold and valuables, but it must have been galling for a farmer on one side of the valley unable to feed his starving beasts to look across at the untouched land of milk and honey over the way. There would be mines, of course, but only on the Swiss side, and that wasn’t my problem. The guards who patrolled the German side of the ten-foot border fences had been low-grade foreign conscripts and in any case were long gone. The Americans would make sure there was no interference from the Swiss.
‘Another hour,’ Brohm said cheerfully, ‘and no more war. Warm sheets and clean American women. And you, Leutnant Matt, you will return to your home and your family?’ I didn’t answer. How could I tell him I no longer had a home or a family?
XXXVI
THE AIR SANG with shards of jagged rock and ricocheting fragments of 9mm ammunition as the first burst struck within yards of Jamie’s back. Something hit his rucksack a glancing blow and he staggered over the boulders.
‘Keep going.’ Sarah turned to look back at him, but she didn’t hesitate and he loved her for it. The only chance they had was if one of them drew the sniper’s fire. It had been a short burst, just three or four rounds out of a thirty-round magazine. His back tensed for the strike of the next volley. Now. He threw himself left, praying his timing was right, and was rewarded with a second symphony of sharp-edged metal and stone. This time the shots struck further away and h
e felt a tiny sliver of hope. Maybe the machine-gunner wasn’t as good as he thought he was. The first burst on the clifftop had been high. The latest two had been a little behind. The angle was against him and he seemed to be overcompensating for the height of his position.
A loud shout from behind confirmed that the sound of the ricocheting bullets had alerted their pursuers and Jamie charged on, bent low and praying that the curve of the gorge wall would be enough to protect him from the next volley. As his feet raced over the rocks, somewhere in his head a little worm wriggled; a niggling irritation that worked on a level beyond the fear and the adrenalin. He saw that Sarah had slowed and he waved her on. No more bullets now, but he could hear the sound of the followers shouting encouragement to each other, and he knew the man with the silenced automatic was moving through the trees above, reloading and looking for a better shot. Or was he?
He’d fired three bursts, short and controlled. Those bursts said he was a man who knew what he was doing. An amateur would have put the selector to automatic and blazed off a full clip. Yet he hadn’t made any attempt to adjust his aim. In his position Jamie would have put the second volley ahead of his target and the third would have shredded it. Throw that into the pot with the pursuers who were doing everything they could to advertise their presence and what did you get?
‘They’re herding us,’ he gasped.
Sarah turned to stare at him, her dark eyes full of questions.
‘We need to cross the river.’
He saw the disbelief on her face. The fearful glance towards the right where the Oder swirled and eddied.
‘Somewhere downstream there are more of them. Every step south takes us deeper into a trap.’
‘He’ll slaughter us.’
‘No. He’s . . . aiming to . . . miss.’
He could tell that every instinct was warning her that to trust him was to die. But he’d made his pitch. He couldn’t drag her across. And what if he was wrong. It didn’t matter. One way or another they were finished. A long moment of decision before she nodded. ‘OK, where?’
Jamie led the way back to the spot where they’d made their leap from the clifftop. A fallen tree lay in the water on the opposite bank close to the outlet of a small stream. The tallest branches reached out almost halfway across the river. A slim lifeline, but if they could reach the first of them they could use their support for the rest of the crossing. No time to think about it.
‘Give me your backpack.’
She pulled it off and retrieved something from inside before throwing it to him.
‘Let’s go.’
‘Just one more thing. They’re too close. We need to slow them down.’ She raised the little pistol she’d taken from the dead man at Wewelsburg and aimed it into the undergrowth upstream. The sharp crack of two shots echoed from the valley walls. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Now we can go.’
From the cliff above, Gustav frowned at the sound of the shots and the deeper bark of the Sig Sauer automatics replying. The firing didn’t trouble him as long as his men retrieved the Englishman’s rucksack and the journal. All Saintclair had done was shorten his life by an hour. He moved towards the cliff edge where he would get a clear view.
Jamie grabbed Sarah’s hand and drew her down to the river’s edge. He held the two rucksacks above his head and within two strides the water reached his thighs. Already he could feel the tug of the current against his legs and his boots fought for purchase on the slippery boulders of the river bottom.
‘Hold on to my waist and don’t let go.’
He felt her arms close around him and a fleeting moment of warmth. Every step took him deeper into the river’s power. A buzz of disturbed air, as if a bee had flown close to his right ear, and the dark surface in front of him exploded in a line of white waterspouts. He felt a moment of liquid weakness; the horrible vulnerability of a man waiting for the headsman’s axe. But there was no turning back now. He ploughed on through the current, dragging Sarah with him, into the space where the burst had landed. Another line of shots, closer this time, but still ahead. They were trying stop him, but they weren’t prepared to kill him. At least not deliberately. Now his only thought was to move forward. The water reached his lower ribs and with every step the current forced him a little further downstream, but the outermost branch of the fallen tree was almost in reach. They were going to make it.
‘No.’
Sarah’s sharp cry made him look back just as two running figures reached the bank behind them. The first of the two men knelt and using a two-handed grip aimed a big automatic pistol towards them. He was so close Jamie could make out the little dark eye of the muzzle. So close that the man couldn’t miss. More bluff. But if that was the case why hadn’t he ordered them to turn back? As the seconds lengthened Jamie realized he’d miscalculated. He saw the gun steady. Imagined the finger tightening in the trigger.
‘When he shoots me, let go and dive until you’re out of range.’
He felt her arms tighten.
From his vantage point high above, Gustav had cursed as he saw Saintclair and the woman enter the river. He’d tried to force them to turn back, but when they had continued to walk into his fire he knew he’d run out of options. He was still watching when his two men burst from the upstream brush and Jurgen knelt and aimed towards the two helpless figures. Without thought, Gustav raised the MP5 to his shoulder, aimed and fired in one movement.
Jamie knew he’d feel the strike of the bullet before he heard the bark of the gun. Instead, there was a repeat of the curious woodpecker sound they’d heard earlier and the man who had been about to shoot him rose and spun before plunging face first into the river. His companion gaped and ran back into the brush.
Jamie turned and forced his way towards the far bank.
‘What happened back there?’ Sarah’s voice shook, but it wasn’t clear whether the reaction was caused by fear or the bone-numbing cold as they lay in their soaked clothing among the undergrowth on the western side of the river. Safe, for the moment.
Jamie had been pondering the same question. ‘They want the journal. Whoever was on the cliff could have killed us at any time since they tracked us down. For some reason the man with the pistol didn’t get the message. Maybe you nicked him or hit one of his friends with those shots you fired. If he’d taken us out in the middle of the river the journal would have been lost. The man on the cliff couldn’t let that happen.’
‘He must be a cold-blooded bastard, to shoot one of his own like that?’
‘Yes, he is, and now he’ll be coming for us. They’ll put people across the river, maybe even bring in more men. Our only chance is to find a way out of the valley and back to Braunlage. We need to go up.’
They searched the sheer valley walls for a hundred yards above and below their crossing point, but the only place that showed any promise was a narrow gully that cut into the cliff and carried a gushing tributary stream to join the main river.
Sarah wasn’t convinced. She stared into the shadowy interior. ‘If we go in there and it doesn’t lead anywhere we’ll be trapped.’
Jamie shrugged. ‘Would we be any worse off than we are now?’
‘I still don’t like it.’
‘Look, we don’t have time to argue. I’ll go in for a recce, you stay here. I won’t be any more than ten minutes.’
It took her about two seconds to figure out the implications of his suggestion. ‘No way are you gonna leave me behind, Jamie Saintclair.’ She hoisted her rucksack and led the way inside.
As they picked their way over the boulder-strewn gully bottom the sides rose sheer and inaccessible alongside them. Here the direct light of the sun seldom penetrated and the deeper they went the more dank, dark and forbidding it became. They’d gone a hundred yards when they were alerted by a sound like muted thunder. Minutes later they found themselves staring at a waterfall that plunged in a dirty white torrent from the lip of the cliff two hundred feet above to form a rocky, foam-flecked pool among the roc
ks.
Sarah’s shoulders sagged in defeat. ‘That’s it then,’ she shouted above the roar of falling water. She turned to go back, but Jamie grabbed her shoulder.
‘Wait.’ His throat was so dry with excitement that the word crackled. He stared at the cascade for a full minute before clambering over moss-slick boulders to the shallow pool where the fall landed like an emptying bottle of stout.
‘Remember that strange phrase Walter Brohm used when he was talking to my grandfather about the painting? He said: You must look behind the veil. But what the hell did he mean? A woman’s face is hidden behind a veil, but we can’t be talking about a scrap of cloth. We’ve seen moss hanging on the cliff walls, maybe that would count, but it can hardly have been here sixty-odd years ago. So he was talking about something permanent. Something natural. Some kind of curtain. Look behind the veil.’
She stared at him. ‘There is only one constant in this landscape.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Water!’
‘It fits, more or less.’ He pulled out the original drawing of the sun symbol. ‘Look. The river forms the main horizontal leg of the Black Sun. That means the stream that feeds the waterfall must form one of the others. There could have been another on the eastern bank, or maybe a road that’s since become overgrown.’
She frowned. ‘So what now?’
‘There’s only one way to find out.’ Jamie peered into the dark void beyond, all thoughts of their pursuers forgotten. Nothing. But what had he expected – a crate with ‘loot’ stamped on it?
‘Keep going.’
He pushed on upwards, ignoring the water thundering from the cliff above. It was pitch black behind the fall. The cacophonous darkness battered his senses, but there came a moment when he knew something had changed. The stone beneath his feet wasn’t rounded any more, it was flat. He experienced a thrill of exhilaration as he ran his fingers over the edged surface. Concrete. He checked a few feet ahead. Concrete stairs. Slowly he felt his way forward until the natural rock of the walls gave way to a different material.
The Doomsday Testament Page 20
