The passenger frowned. He didn’t like it, but they didn’t have much choice, he didn’t want to get in front of his quarry. ‘We’ll stop there too, but we’ll stay in the car until they move again. Then you can have your piss.’
They passed Leipzig and began to see the first signs for Prague. ‘What will you do if you find it?’ Sarah’s voice was devoid of emotion, as if the question had drawn all the strength from her.
Jamie shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I thought we could destroy it, but the closer we get the less likely that seems. Maybe hire a boat somewhere and drop it into the ocean. Chuck it into a volcano.’
‘Christ, Jamie, you’re not in Lord of the fucking Rings,’ she said. ‘This is real life. This is dangerous. Please, for my sake, turn back now.’
He didn’t look at her. He didn’t want to see the tears. Instead, he glanced out of the window to check if the helicopter that had been flying parallel with the road for the last ten miles was still with them. The next sign said eight kilometres to Dresden.
‘I told you. It’s too late.’
After five minutes he turned on to a slip road towards the city. Sarah stared at him and he nodded.
‘Walter Brohm hid the Sun Stone in the safest place in Germany, which also happened to be the place where he was born. When he closed down the bunker early in nineteen forty-five, Dresden was the only major city in Nazi Germany that had never been properly bombed by the Allies. They called it Florence on the Elbe. It was a centre of huge cultural significance with some of the most beautiful architecture in Europe, a place of grand palaces and theatres, opera houses and museums. More importantly, there was no heavy industry, no tank production lines or ball bearing factories. And it wasn’t on any of the Wehrmacht’s main supply routes. The kind of stuff that attracts target allocation officers. Dresden was a military backwater.’
She looked out over the city unfolding below them. ‘Where, Jamie? Where did he hide it?’
‘I found the last Black Sun on the floor of Brohm’s office in the bunker. No one had noticed it in all the madness surrounding the Raphael. The road and river network matches what I know about the city. But even if I hadn’t known how to decode the Black Sun, the inscription beneath it would have told me. Die kreuzung wo die frau betet.’
She looked puzzled. ‘The intersection where the women worship?’
‘The crossroads where the women pray. When I found out Walter Brohm was born in Dresden, I did a little reading on the city. Remember the journal entry where Brohm was talking about the centre of the earth? The one I missed that pointed us towards Wewelsburg? In the next line, my grandfather said that everyone has a different centre of the earth and Brohm’s would always be his mother’s spiritual home. That was Dresden, but not just Dresden. The most famous building in the city isn’t a palace or a museum. It’s a church. The Frauenkirche. The church at the crossroads where his father was pastor and his mother would have worshipped. He knew every stone and every potential hiding place. It must have seemed perfect. Walter Brohm hid the Sun Stone and all his research papers in the crypt of the Frauenkirche.’
Sarah leaned forward against the dashboard and put her head in her hands.
‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’
The driver of the Mercedes turned to his partner. ‘Did you get that?’
‘I got it. Paydirt.’
‘You know what to do. I’ll call the old man.’
The passenger didn’t hesitate. Twenty years in special forces and a month that had seemed like a lifetime in a dusty shithole called Fallujah had long since eroded his belief in the sanctity of human life. He reached for the mobile phone on the dashboard, chose speed dial and pressed one. His face wore a look of intense concentration as he listened to the phone dialling up the number.
The bomb was a simple enough device, smaller and less crude than the one he’d set in the Menshikov Palace, but more than big enough to do the job. He’d copied the signature – the specific design features used by a known bomb maker – from a bomb discovered during a raid on an al-Qaida safe house in Hamburg three years earlier. A kilogram of shaped C-4 high-energy explosive detonated by a mobile phone that was one of a batch of Nokia 2300s bought by the now-deceased terrorist in 2004. Normally, he prided himself on being capable of manufacturing a bomb precise enough to take out an individual target within the car. But using the Hamburg bomber’s signature also meant using his methods. A kilogram of HE would tear the car apart and destroy everything within about a thirty-metre radius. As a professional, the overkill offended him, but he also recognized the need for certainty.
Several factors dictated how the next millisecond would affect the occupants of the target car. The shaped charge and the quality of build of the engine bay combined to direct 80 per cent of the explosive force towards the passenger compartment. They started dying when they were hit by a blast wave which expanded within the enclosed space at a speed of 9,000 feet per second, causing a catastrophic pressure change that ruptured lungs, ear drums and bowels and resulted in what trauma experts call ‘full body disruption’ – multiple amputations. The nervous system is not built to withstand the kind of stress created by proximity to such an event and immediately shuts down. This was fortunate for the victims who by now had been enveloped by the 3,000 C flash which instantly followed the initial wave and inflicted first-degree burns over any exposed flesh, burned away hair and clothing and caused further internal damage as the super-heated air was drawn into already damaged lungs. In the third wave of the explosion, precisely one third of a millisecond after detonation, the combined materials which had divided the occupants from the engine compartment, now consisting of chemical dust from various vapourized plastics, white-hot molten metal and many thousands of shards of jagged steel shrapnel, caused devastating penetrative injuries from abdomen to skull. By this point the two victims were already clinically dead, their brain function fading and the memory of the previous half a millisecond merely a single white flash. In a quirk of physics which the bomb maker could hardly have calculated, the combined forces of the blast catapulted what remained of the car’s driver through the gaping hole where the roof had been, at the same time as the fireball from the exploding petrol tank. The body of the passenger – or at least the charred trunk from the knees upwards – remained in its seat to be consumed by the flames as the mangled wreckage of the German automobile spun to a stop next to the centre barrier of the autobahn. The resulting investigation and the clean-up operation would close the highway for the next twenty-four hours.
‘What was that?’ Sarah reacted to the muffled ‘crump’ of the explosion and looked round in time to see an expanding fireball a few miles back on the autobahn. ‘Must have been some kind of crash. Looks like a bad one, maybe a petrol tanker or something.’
Jamie considered stopping, then shook his head. ‘There’s nothing we can do about it.’
She sank back in her seat with her chin on her chest. ‘No, there isn’t.’ They would never know that David had spent most of the previous night debating with his superiors whether tampering with the bomb Mossad’s tame mechanic had found would compromise the operation. Or that he had eventually lost the argument and in the end had ordered the switch at the final fuel stop on his own authority.
Jamie drove into the city centre and turned off just before the broad ribbon of the River Elbe on to a road that led them past railway tracks and run-down factories. Halfway along it he stopped. For a few moments there was silence as they stared ahead at the broken skyline of Dresden’s Old Town.
‘I made a mistake. I should have trusted you.’
‘Damn right you should.’
‘If this doesn’t work out will you forgive me?’
She turned quickly and kissed him on his lips and in the soft glow of the setting sun he realized she had never looked more beautiful. ‘There’s nothing to forgive.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Sure. Let’s get this thing done.’
He nodded
.
‘Let’s.’
He put the car in gear and they drove on. To find Walter Brohm’s Sun Stone and the discovery that would change the world.
LXI
DRESDEN’S OLD TOWN was a curious mix of the old the new and the unlikely. Sprawling Renaissance palaces and layer-cake opera houses evoked the glory days of Saxon culture while rubbing shoulders with the thronging modern shopping malls, hotels and cinema complexes that are the ever-present advertisements for consumer capitalism in any twenty-first-century city worth the name. Yet the building that caught Jamie’s eye, as he drove through the centre hunting down a place to park, was an enormous Stalinist sports hall covered with multi-coloured mosaics of Dresden’s Soviet-era heroes; a reminder that this city had spent forty-five years in the very heart of Communist East Germany. All around them on the banks of the River Elbe, giant cranes dwarfed the buildings they helped construct and the constant machine-gun rattle of jackhammers shattered the early-evening silence. Despite all the building work, Jamie noted an unlikely number of empty, weed-infested sites and the kind of structural ruins that would have looked more at home in the forum in Rome. If Sarah noticed, she didn’t comment. In fact, since they’d entered the city proper she hadn’t said a word.
They reached the Altmarkt, the Old Market, which, in true Dresden style, seemed to be surrounded mainly by modern buildings. On the far side of the street Jamie spotted the sign for an underground car park. He pulled in at the roadside outside a shop that sold fine china. For a moment he felt like an Olympic ski jumper waiting at the top of the slope and when he laid a hand on Sarah’s shoulder he could feel the tension in her body. ‘I’ll drop you here, so you can make your call to your boss. Just be natural and tell him exactly what I told you. I shouldn’t be more than five minutes.’ She turned and gave him a long, searching look. He wondered what she was seeing. He hoped it wasn’t the truth. A moment of decision and, finally, the hazel eyes softened. She leaned across and brushed her lips against his.
‘I’ll be right here, waiting.’
The first floor of the car park was full, so he took the narrow, curving ramp down to the lower level. Here, the cars were all parked in the spaces closest to the lifts and he drove to a vacant spot at the far end of the low-roofed cavern. As he sat in the car with the engine running he felt the weight of everything he’d set in motion threatening to crush him into his seat. What gave him the right to gamble with other people’s lives? What if it all went wrong? Then his mind filled with old Matthew’s face and he heard Tenzin’s words and he realized he’d never had any other choice. The next thirty minutes were mapped out before him like the acts of a play. All he needed was the courage to play his part. He opened the car door just as the squeal of synthetic rubber on dust-coated concrete announced a second vehicle entering the building. The car park smelled of motor oil and petrol fumes, but it wasn’t the smell that made Jamie’s stomach lurch. As he walked towards the lift he was conscious of another presence keeping pace with him on the upper floor, which was just visible through a narrow gap close to the ceiling. He stopped for a second. From above, three soft footfalls and then silence. The lift was ten paces away and he felt the panic rising inside him as he made for the metal doors. What now? Breathe and think. There’s no rush. Think! With fumbling fingers he attacked the knots of his shoes and removed them, then, standing in his socks, he pressed the ‘up’ button. An arrow showed that the car was ascending from the floor below. He sent up a silent prayer that it would be occupied by someone who’d just parked their car. A family, including a couple of schoolchildren who’d giggle at the idiot in his socks holding his shoes in his hand. The ‘ting’ as the lift arrived startled him even though he’d been expecting it. The doors parted and he felt a physical pain as he stared into the empty compartment. He hesitated. Was he being paranoid? Sarah would be waiting. It didn’t matter. A little paranoia was good for the blood pressure. He stepped inside and pressed the button for street level, immediately leaving the lift and jogging silently towards the far end where a ramp led up towards the exit. He hit the slope at a run, and when he reached the top he could see the barriers and ticket machines. The upper floor was empty and away to his right the lift doors were just closing. A draught of fresh air made him smile at his own foolishness.
He was still smiling when the arm locked around his neck like a steel clamp.
Shock and fear slowed his reactions, but he knew the first few seconds of a situation like this were crucial. He managed to stab his elbow into the ribs of the man behind him with enough force to make him grunt and his right leg twisted round the other’s in an attempt to unbalance him. At the same time, he reached both hands over his left shoulder to get a grip of his unseen opponent’s collar and threw his weight forward, bending his left knee and trying for a hip throw that would use the attacker’s bulk against him. He might as well have tried to shift a block of concrete. In desperation he smashed his head backward, anything to loosen the grip that was choking him, but he only managed a glancing blow that made the other man laugh. His stockinged heels scraped on the concrete as he was dragged helplessly towards a darkened alcove off the main car park.
‘Twice you have missed our appointment. There will not be a third time.’
The voice sounded familiar, but before he could place it Jamie’s legs were kicked from under him and massive hands slammed him to the ground so the back of his skull bounced off the floor. While his head still spun, some kind of filthy rag was stuffed into his mouth. He was positioned head first towards the garage with his feet into the alcove. An enormous weight settled on his chest, pinning his arms at his side and he found himself looking up into a grinning face that was too small for the head it inhabited. He searched for a name and his heart stopped as he found it. Gustav.
‘I took this from a Taliban who was trying to cut my balls off outside Farkar, up in Kunduz,’ the squat German said conversationally, producing a long curved knife from inside his zipped jacket. ‘Guess who still has their balls?’
He brought the knife down close to Jamie’s face, so he could see every shade of blue on the shimmering blade, and drew the razor edge across the Englishman’s cheek. Very slowly. First the left side, then the right; the blade rasping effortlessly through two days of stubble.
‘You didn’t have time to shave? No need now, eh? Frederick, he thinks you’re planning to auction the Sun Stone, but that will not happen, OK?’ He slapped Jamie’s cheek for emphasis. Now the wicked twinkle of the knife point hovered directly over Jamie’s right eyeball. ‘It won’t happen because you are going to tell Gustav exactly where it is or you end up like your friend. The stone belongs to us, the keepers of the truth; the successors of the ancients. Only we have the knowledge to use it for the purpose it was intended.’ The words came out stilted and mechanical, as if they’d been learned by constant repetition in a school room. Jamie shook his head to try to dislodge the gag, but the German interpreted the movement as rebellion or defiance. ‘No? That’s good, because now we’re going to have some fun, you and me.’ Gustav studied him impassively, like a butcher contemplating a cut of meat. ‘The eyes, the ears or the nose? Not the tongue. You will need the tongue later.’ His free hand reached down to caress the side of Jamie’s head. ‘The ears then.’
Desperately, Jamie used all his strength in an attempt to shift the German.
‘Shhh,’ Gustav said gently. ‘The more you struggle, the worse it is for you.’
Rough fingers closed on the lobe of Jamie’s right ear and pulled it taut. He tried to scream behind the gag that filled his mouth, but he knew no one would ever hear him. He thought he was losing his mind when a red spot appeared like a cancerous mole beside Gustav’s left lip. The spot wavered and Jamie’s eyes followed it. The German must have read something in his captive’s face, because he hesitated before making the cut. Another bright spot appeared over his left breast, and a third almost exactly in the centre of his forehead. Gustav frowned and his eye drifted down
to the spot on his chest. It took him a split second to recognize it for what it was.
‘No!’
The knife rose high before the blade descended in a deadly two-handed arc towards Jamie’s exposed throat. Three sharp cracks split the silence.
Sarah saw Jamie emerge from the car park lift and went to meet him. The Englishman’s face was pale, almost grey, and at first he seemed to look right through her. When she took his arm, he blinked and forced a smile.
‘Hey, you’re shaking,’ she said.
‘I had a bit of a run-in with the car park attendant. I’ll be fine in a minute.’
They walked in the general direction of the river. It was busy now, the offices and banks were emptying and the streets filled with shoppers. At the intersection of two streets they found a tourist sign that pointed them towards the Frauenkirche and, when they crossed, there it was, on the far side of a small park in the centre of the square.
Sarah gave an involuntary gasp when she saw the soaring, octagonal confection in honeyed stone that dominated everything around it, the enormous dome topped by a twenty-foot bell tower. As they walked across the square, Jamie hesitated, torn between what he knew was right and what he knew was best. He could turn away now and they could get on with their lives as if this had never happened. But could they? Frederick and his thugs would never stop looking for them as long as he thought they would lead him to the Sun Stone. Every time they opened the door it could be to some human meat grinder like Gustav. No. It had to be this way. In any case, there were things he had to know and things Sarah had to understand.
She felt his steps falter and thought he was delaying to get a better view of the church. ‘I wonder what your grandfather would have thought of it?’
Jamie squeezed her hand, the last doubt gone, and led her into the hallowed silence of the interior, where the gilt Baroque ceiling soared above just as it had done three hundred years earlier, supported by lavishly painted marble columns and layers of galleries, the windows allowing in an almost ethereal light that made the whole church glow. In the cupola of the dome, they could see the faces staring out from the glass front of the ramp that led in a long spiral up to the viewing platform. Several dozen tourists wandered the aisles taking in the wonder around them. Sarah followed him to a place in the front pew in front of the astonishing golden masterpiece of the High Altar and waited as he bowed his head as if in prayer.
The Doomsday Testament Page 35
