‘I don’t understand.’ Sarah leaned forward from the back seats.
‘You noticed that many of the bodies were in a remarkable state of preservation? It seems that conditions within the bunker were conducive to partial mummification. Our initial forensic investigations showed that several victims had similar tattoos on the inside of their left forearm. You understand the implications of this?’
Jamie shook his head, but Sarah said she did.
The police chief explained. ‘Whatever you think of the Nazis, Mr Saintclair, they were extremely thorough. Every concentration camp prisoner received a personal identification number. At first, the numbers were sewn on their prison clothes, but because of the nature of the camps the clothing must be reused: again and again and again. So instead of on the clothing, the number would be written on the prisoner. Much more economic and efficient, yes? When the prisoner was disposed of, his number was disposed of with him.
‘Fortunately, some records from the camps still survive and we have been able to identify those victims whose tattoos are still readable.’
‘Who were they?’
‘To the best of our knowledge, they are all either scientists or technicians.’ She pointed to a file in the compartment beneath the passenger window. ‘Please. The most well known was a man called Abraham Steinberg, a Berlin physicist who, before the war, worked closely with some of the scientists who were eventually involved in the Uranverein project. Many of his Jewish colleagues found ways to escape Germany, but poor Herr Steinberg elected to stay with his family.’ Jamie opened the file and found himself staring into the face of a stern, bearded man standing behind a workbench filled with scientific equipment. He turned to the next sheet and his heart lurched. ‘Another of the victims – the youngest we have identified – is his niece, Hannah Schulmann, a laboratory technician who worked closely with him.’ Lotte gave a sad smile. ‘She was nineteen years old.’ In the black-and-white photograph Hannah Schulmann had the ethereal, cinematic beauty that in other times would have won her a place on the screen. A softness and a sensitivity that surrounded her like a halo. Her dark eyes sparkled with humour and her smile showed tiny pearls of perfect white teeth. The eyes drew him in, and he choked, making the women stare. So much life. So much potential. Wasted. A terrible darkness descended on him and he felt a hatred for Walter Brohm and his like that made him wish it had been his finger on the trigger and not Matthew’s.
‘All of the dead have one thing in common,’ Lotte Muller continued gently. ‘They were part of a transport of three hundred prisoners from Mauthausen which arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau on the twenty-fourth of February nineteen forty-three. On arrival they were taken directly from the train to the gas chambers. Odd, don’t you think, that for two years this facility appears to have been staffed by ghosts?’
LIX
THE VAN WITH the Europcar logo drew into the police station car park and pulled up beside the Volkswagen. While the mechanic retrieved his toolbox, an officer emerged from the station to sign him in.
‘Is this the one I’m supposed to take a look at?’
‘That’s it. They didn’t leave the keys, though.’
The mechanic laughed. ‘Tourists. Not a problem. I have a spare set.’
‘Well, if you need to get in touch with them, just let me know. They’re with the boss.’
‘Thanks.’ Not a bad guy for a cop, he thought. He waited until the man was back in the building before he opened the bonnet.
They reached a rutted track where the roadside vegetation appeared to have been recently cut, and a few minutes later the car approached an iron gate. The gate was badly rusting, but the razor wire that topped it and which stretched into the trees on either side of the road couldn’t have been more than a few years old. Two bored-looking policemen hurriedly stubbed out their cigarettes at the sight of the approaching car. The men saluted Lotte Muller, but she still had to produce her identity card before the gate was opened. They drove into a wide, dusty bowl below a great scar in the hillside. At the base of the scar, a dark shadow showed where a tunnel had been cut into the rock.
‘I doubt this place would ever have been found,’ the police chief said as she led the way towards the passage. ‘Of course, some people believe it would have been better if it had not been. They wish to forget that things like this ever happened.’
Sarah gripped the flowers in both hands. She looked towards the impenetrable forest beyond the barbed wire and tried to imagine what it had been like for the three hundred men and women who had seen their last glimpse of sunlight here. She shivered and hesitated before the entrance, but a generator kicked into life somewhere behind them and a line of bulbs strung along the roof illuminated the tunnel with dim, unnatural light. They followed Lotte inside.
Fifty metres into the passage they reached a massive reinforced steel door with a smaller entrance set into it. Lotte reached inside her shoulder bag and brought out a set of keys.
‘The locksmith took two days to break in. My minister did not have his patience, he wanted to blow the doors with explosive. Fortunately, he was persuaded to wait.’
The key turned easily in the lock and the door swung open to reveal what looked like a small aircraft hangar. At the far end were sited a pair of a concrete bunkers with narrow horizontal slits that would each allow a belt-fed machine gun to cover the entire area. Between them a set of metal stairs led to the next level.
‘They didn’t encourage visitors.’
‘No, they did not, Mr Saintclair. This way please.’ She ushered them below the stairs to where a corridor led to a tunnel similar to those they had run through when they were being hunted.
‘Would it be possible for us to spend some time alone where we found the bodies?’ Jamie asked.
Their host frowned. ‘I do not know if that would be permitted. This is a place of many dangers, Mr Saintclair. We have not yet begun work on clearing the main production hall.’
‘I realize that, Kommissar, but it is very important to us. We – Miss Grant and I – discovered this bunker and what we saw inside that room will remain with us for ever. At the very least, we deserve the opportunity to come to terms with it.’ Sarah moved to his side and together they looked into Lotte Muller’s eyes. Her expression softened and she sighed.
‘Of course, you must. I understand. I saw what you saw and it haunts me also. I . . . This tunnel eventually leads to what we call the production hall, it is lit the entire way. You will recognize it by the door, which is badly damaged – I am sure you remember it – the room where you discovered the bodies is the third on the left. Please be careful. It would be very regrettable if anything were to happen to you.’ She nodded and turned away. ‘I will wait for you here. Shall we say ten minutes?’
Jamie thanked her and led the way inside.
‘That was smooth, lover boy,’ Sarah whispered. ‘You had the dragon eating out of your hand. I can see I’m going to have to watch you.’
‘It’s your corrupting influence,’ Jamie said airily. ‘Can you remember the way to the office where we found the Raphael?’
‘Nope. Not exactly.’
‘I think I have a vague idea. But we have to hurry.’ He broke into a jog and she kept pace by his side. They reached the twisted door to the production hall. ‘You take the flowers to where we found the bodies. I’ll go on to the office. We’ll meet back here.’ He saw she was about to protest. ‘It makes sense. Lotte Muller will expect to see some evidence we’ve been there.’
‘That’s not what I was going to say, idiot. Just because this section is lit up like a Christmas tree doesn’t mean to say everywhere else is. Do you have a torch?’
‘Aaah, no.’
She reached into her jacket and came out with her penlight. ‘This might help.’
He grinned. ‘I suppose it might.’
She reached up to kiss him on the lips.
‘Now git!’
Jamie set off down the passageway. He ran swiftly, never h
esitating at an intersection or a corner, because he’d lied. He knew exactly where he was going. But he was glad of the torch.
The bunker should have been filled with ghosts, but even though he had seen the horrors that had been perpetrated down here, the corridors held no threat. The dead no longer called out for retribution, because Matthew Sinclair had avenged them sixty-three years earlier when he had put a bullet in Walter Brohm’s skull.
When he reached the stairs he took them two at a time and the rusting metal creaked beneath his feet. At the top was the office where they’d found the Raphael. The door hung open and he stepped inside. He swung the torch across the walls, spotlighting the dust-free oblong where the painting had hung behind Walter Brohm’s mahogany desk. Strange that it didn’t really matter any more.
Now he turned his attention to the rest of the office. It was just as he remembered from that single glance before the Raphael had bewitched him. Spacious, but functional. One wall filled with the empty filing cabinets that would have contained Brohm’s research and all the minutiae of running the bunker with its hundreds of irritating, petty human hindrances. Jamie suspected Walter Brohm had hated it here. Brohm the genius would have preferred to be in his laboratory dealing with problems he could understand. But Brohm was a cultured man who did himself well, with his Old Masters, his fine French wines . . . and all the other luxuries the new Nazi empire could provide.
Only Astra can find the answer.
He had puzzled over Brohm’s odd reference from the moment he read it. Astra was the Latin word for stars and he’d assumed it was a reference to the potential of the Sun Stone. Yet in the context of their conversation it had seemed out of place. Then it had struck him that Walter Brohm and Matthew Sinclair had been speaking in whispers to keep what they were saying from Klosse and Strasser. What if Matthew had misheard?
Not ‘Only Astra can find it’, but ‘Only Astra can hides it’. Astra can. Astrakhan.
The Oriental rug made of the distinctive black fibres lay in the centre of the floor, trampled and disfigured by dusty footprints, more or less where Brohm had left it. Like Jamie, anyone who entered this office would only have had eyes for the space where the painting had been, or the desk.
Taking a deep breath he kicked the musty heap of cloth to one side, exposing the marble floor beneath. And suddenly everything was clear.
‘You bastard. You cunning bastard.’
He was looking at a mosaic of a third Black Sun, the style identical to the first two, with a distinctive pattern in the centre that would represent some combination of rivers and roads. What was different was the inscription below the circle. The inscription that finally revealed what he had been looking for.
Die kreuzung wo die frau betet.
The crossroads where the women pray.
He pulled out his mobile phone and dialled the number on the card he held in his hand. For a moment he thought the signal in the bunker would be too weak, then the ring tone purred twice before it was answered.
‘May I speak to Mr Lim, please?’
LX
LOTTE MULLER PARKED outside the police offices and Jamie retrieved what looked like the decaying carcass of a long-dead animal from the boot of the BMW. ‘I think you should hold on to this,’ he suggested.
‘This is a police station, Mr Saintclair, not a recycling depot.’ Her long nose wrinkled with distaste at the scent of decay, ‘Although I believe whatever it is may already be beyond recycling.’
Jamie grinned. ‘I hope not. Because I think it could be a very valuable Oriental rug. The man who hung a Raphael on his wall wouldn’t have any old carpet on the floor. At least have an expert look at it.’
Reluctantly, the police chief stretched out her hands for the mouldering heap of cloth. But Jamie was already on his way into the police office. ‘No need for both of us to get our hands dirty.’
Lotte Muller followed him inside while Sarah stayed by the car. ‘Put it there.’ She pointed to a corner, close to a rubbish bin, which is where she would have preferred him to deposit it.
He dropped the carpet where he was told, raising a cloud of dust.
‘I have a favour to beg.’
She stared at him, her patience beginning to wear thin. ‘The Herren is through there on the left.’
‘Not that kind of favour.’
They drove south until they picked up the autobahn close to Nordhausen and Jamie turned east, following the signs for Halle and Leipzig. The atmosphere in the car was like a physical barrier between them. He deliberately kept his eyes on the road, but he could feel her anger building as if it was the heat from an open fire. It couldn’t go on. There were things that had to be said and there might not be another chance to say them. He pulled off the motorway at the next turn-off and drew in to a car park overlooking a series of man-made lakes. He got out of the car and waited until she followed. They stared out over the nearest lake, avoiding each other’s eyes. When Sarah eventually spoke her words were an explosive mix of pain and suppressed fury. ‘What the fuck is going on, Jamie? When are you going to tell me what the hell you found in that bunker?’
‘I’m not certain yet.’
‘Then where the fuck are we going?’
‘South.’
‘I have eyes. I can see that.’
‘I need you to trust me.’
‘You what?’
‘I need you to trust me . . . and I need to know exactly what’s going on.’
She turned to stare at him and now the anger had been replaced by something else, but he couldn’t read what it was. ‘Who do you think you are, Jamie Saintclair? Haven’t I trusted you every day since we goddam met? I thought we were partners? I thought we were more than partners.’
‘We are.’
‘Partners don’t hide things from each other. People who love each other don’t hide things from each other.’
There it was. The first time either had dared to mention love, even though its presence had grown so powerful it had sometimes threatened to suffocate them. It took all his resolve not to surrender. ‘No, they don’t, Sarah, and that’s why I need you to tell me the truth. The time for games is past. If I’m going to save our lives I have to know everything.’ He knew he’d won when the first tear rolled down the velvet of her cheek.
When she spoke it was as if each word was being torn from her. ‘First I was to follow you. Then they wanted me to get close to you. When you fell under that train I thought it was over before it had begun, but it gave me my chance.’
‘Who is they?’
She hesitated, reluctant to take the next irrevocable step. ‘Israeli intelligence. My controller. I don’t know how, but they somehow learned about the Sun Stone and the link to Walter Brohm. My family is Jewish and I spent a year in Tel Aviv doing my Masters degree. They were on the lookout for people with backgrounds like mine. That’s where I was recruited.’
He’d known, or at least he’d suspected. All those handy little criminal skills. The way she handled a gun so expertly. He remembered the meeting in the Kensington pub. Simon’s ever so cooperative friend. ‘Is David your controller?’
She sniffed. ‘That’s one of the names he uses.’
‘So it was all just part of the job, getting close to me and the rest of it? You played me for a sucker and I fell for those big brown eyes of yours. Dumb old Jamie Saintclair rolled over to have his tummy tickled whenever Sarah Grant smiled. Jesus, you must have had some laughs.’
‘No.’ She shook head so hard he felt her tears on his face. ‘Not the rest of it. That was my choice. You have to believe me, Jamie. What happened between us mattered. Don’t taint it by thinking it had anything to do with them. I tried to stop this. I tried to get you to turn back, but you were too damn stubborn.’ He wanted to reach out to her, but it wasn’t yet time.
‘And then?’
‘We had a team close by all the time. They were to provide protection and as soon as we’d located the Sun Stone I was to call them in.’
His laugh was short and sour. ‘Protection? Your Mossad geniuses didn’t make much of a job of it. Where the hell were they while we were dodging bullets in the Harz?’
‘My phone, I was supposed to contact them . . .’ She swallowed and took a deep breath. ‘So now you know . . . everything.’
The unspoken question hung between them. He answered it by taking her in his arms and kissing her eyes, tasting the tart salt of her tears.
‘Listen,’ he said gently, ‘there are a lot of things we need to talk about, but this isn’t the time. I should kick your spying backside out here and now, but I won’t because I’ve fallen a little bit in love with whoever the real Sarah Grant is.’
‘We could still turn back, walk away from all this. I’ll tell them I won’t work for them any more and we can fly back to London and see if we can make it as two ordinary people.’
‘No. We’ve come too far now. We owe it to Matthew and Tenzin and Simon and Magda, all the people who have died, to see it through.’ He looked out over the rippling waters of the lake. ‘Can I assume David, or whatever he’s calling himself today, is nearby?’
She nodded. ‘There’s a satellite tracking device in my new phone.’
‘Good. When we get closer to where we’re going, we’ll let him know exactly where to find us.’
She held back as he got into the car. ‘So you still won’t tell me what you found back there?’
‘Trust me.’
* * *
Two miles behind them the driver and passenger in the grey Mercedes listened to the final exchange.
‘Lovers’ tiff?’
‘I’ll give you odds of three to one he tells her in the next hour.’
‘And then?’
The other man said nothing. They both knew the answer.
After another thirty minutes the driver studied the locator device on the screen in front of him. ‘Looks like they’re pulling in for fuel. Not a bad idea. I could do with a piss.’
The Doomsday Testament Page 34
