The Excalibur Codex

by James Douglas

  The urbane Adam Steele sounded like a schoolboy who’d opened his birthday card to find the last Cup Final ticket. ‘So you’ve confirmed it? Bloody fine job, Jamie. I confess that even with the Ziegler testimony I was still doubtful. Christ, Excalibur, the sword of Arthur, and it exists. It really exists.’ Jamie tried to interrupt, but Adam Steele in full flow was like a burst dam: unstoppable. ‘What a fool. I’d always visualized the sword as one of those gilded monstrosities you find in the Royal collections, a sort of deadly ornament. But it wouldn’t be like that at all. A sword of the most ancient lineage, a broad-bladed, battle-notched iron man-killer.’ He chuckled as he quoted the words. ‘A proper fighting weapon from the Dark Ages. A warrior’s sword that held back the Saxon hordes. And it was there, in that castle in nineteen forty-one. Yes, I know, you bloody pessimist, you’ll tell me that just because it existed then doesn’t mean it’s still in one piece now. But I know, Jamie, I feel it in these old bones of mine. Find it for me, and offer whoever has it however much they want for it, within reason. And if that doesn’t work, Gault will come up with a solution. Remember that. When it comes to any negotiations Gault is your ace in the hole. Just find it for me.’ He waited for a response, but Jamie let him stew, exchanging a grin with Charlotte as the seconds passed. ‘Jamie? Are you still there? What have you got? You’re holding out on me, you bastard. You know something.’

  ‘I’ve been taking another look at the codex and the Lauterbacher journal,’ Jamie admitted. ‘Lauterbacher gives us much more detail about the location and how he reached there, but I think the main clue is in the codex. A place not far from where the Führer charted the course of the Thousand Year Reich. Hitler was forever planning his legacy, and on the face of it, that could mean any of the places associated with him, like Berchtesgaden or the Reichskanzlei in Berlin. But when you take it with the information in the Lauterbacher journal, we’re able to narrow it down significantly. Lauterbacher talks about the long journey east into what was then East Prussia and is now eastern Poland.’ Gault moved a little closer so he wouldn’t miss any of the conversation and Jamie could almost feel the anticipation at the other end of the line. ‘The most famous site in East Prussia associated with Adolf Hitler is the one where he plotted Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of Russia, and from where he directed the war in the East. The place where, on July the twentieth, Claus von Stauffenberg and the plotters of the Wehrmacht high command attempted to blow the Führer to high heaven …’

  ‘The Wolf’s Lair,’ Steele whispered. ‘Of course the castle would be at the Wolf’s Lair.’

  ‘There’s only one problem, Adam. The Wolf’s Lair sounds terribly romantic, but it wasn’t a castle, it was a bunker complex in the Masurian woods, and the Germans blew up most of the place when they retreated in late nineteen forty-four or early ’forty-five. But the Wolf’s Lair gives us our target. Somewhere within a few miles of the Wolf’s Lair is the castle where the ritual took place and with a little luck I think we’ll be able to locate it.’

  ‘How?’

  Jamie hesitated while he ran through his mind the theory that had come to him as he stood in front of the Picasso. Just as there were layers of symbolism in the painting, he felt certain they also existed in Rolf Lauterbacher’s journal. The missing page was one mystery, but for the moment, and for reasons he’d have found it hard to explain, he had decided not to share that.

  ‘Lauterbacher has always been very careful not to reveal the exact location of the castle, not even to Wulf Ziegler. Yet he’s given us a description and a general location. That means he wanted someone to find it. I’m certain the secret is somewhere in the journal. It’s just a matter of working it out. Charlotte’s booked us on a flight to Warsaw and from there we can hire a car to take us east.’

  They talked for a few minutes more. Steele mused on the possibility of chartering a helicopter to take them from Warsaw to the bunker complex, but Jamie had an aversion to sitting in something that was basically a million pieces of metal trying to tear themselves apart. When he dialled off, he noticed the battery on the phone was low and instead of replacing it in his rucksack he hooked it up to its charger.

  ‘So we’re going to the Wolf’s Lair.’ Charlotte’s voice held a shiver of anticipation. ‘It sounds a bit like going into the lion’s den.’

  Jamie and Gault exchanged glances. ‘Don’t tempt fate, love,’ the SBS man said.

  They flew into Warsaw on a Swiss Air flight via Zurich, and spent the night in an airport hotel. While Gault worked out the next day’s route, Jamie and Charlotte went through the journal again, studying maps of the area around the Wolfsschanze. ‘The description Lauterbacher gives is of a walled castle beside a lake,’ Charlotte pointed out. ‘That should at least provide us with a starting point.’

  ‘True,’ Jamie agreed. ‘But it would be helpful if the Wolf’s Lair wasn’t situated quite so close to an area called the Masurian Lakes, which, according to my online guidebook, is home to approximately two thousand rather scenic stretches of water. It also says here there are at least a hundred castles worth visiting in what was formerly East Prussia. Still, he hints that they reached the castle fairly soon after passing the bunker complex, so we can narrow it down to within, say, twelve and twenty miles?’

  She nodded and nibbled her lip, a habit that reminded Jamie of his old friend and one-time partner Sarah Grant. ‘Yes, that give us about seventy of the two thousand.’

  ‘Progress,’ Jamie smiled. ‘At least we’re looking for a needle in a haystack instead of a needle in a field of haystacks.’

  ‘Do we know if Heydrich or any of the others had estates in East Prussia?’

  Jamie leafed through the biographies she’d put together. ‘Silesia, Bavaria, Westphalia. Only one East Prussian and that’s Bach-Zelewski, but his family had long since lost their ancestral lands and he was the son of an insurance clerk.’

  ‘There’s one reference I don’t understand.’ Charlotte frowned. ‘The Knight’s Cross appears in both the Excalibur codex and the Lauterbacher journal. Could that be significant?’

  Jamie studied the documents – Beneath the Knight’s Cross – Interspersed with the holy Knight’s Cross – In the centre hung the symbol of the Knight’s Cross. ‘The Knight’s Cross was one of the highest military decorations in Nazi Germany, created by Hitler himself for extreme bravery on the battlefield. It was a sort of classier version of the Iron Cross, but it turned out German warriors were so brave the Knight’s Cross wasn’t reward enough, so they added golden oak leaves, then oak leaves and swords, and oak leaves, swords and diamonds, which made it more or less the equivalent of our Victoria Cross.’

  Gault looked up from his map, the first time he’d deigned to become involved in the conversation. ‘She might have a point, though. I’ve been around enough war heroes, but I’ve never heard of a medal referred to as holy.’ He shrugged – they could take it or leave it. ‘If I’ve got this right we should be at the Wolf’s Lair by around one if we leave by ten tomorrow.’

  Jamal al Hamza bowed his head low over the table in the coffee house in a back street of Peshawar, near the Afghan border. He might have been praying, but in fact he was listening to the whispered words of the young man seated opposite. The establishment was owned by one of the many subsidiaries run by his family and he might have held this meeting in one of the upstairs rooms, yet he always felt safer doing business in plain sight. ‘You are certain of this?’

  ‘Our friend in Washington was most confident. The phone is the same one used in the London attack. He has passed on the current location and arranged for our team to have the use of a scanning device, which will allow them to track it.’

  Al Hamza frowned. The source in Washington was a white Muslim convert who had been inserted into the lower ranks of the CIA as a sleeper agent. Naturally, given his background, he had been treated with some suspicion, but his intelligence from within the enemy’s computer section had been tested many times and had never failed. Yet �
�� ‘Perhaps our friend is becoming overconfident?’

  The young man pondered the question. ‘We are not dead or wearing orange jumpsuits at Guantanamo Bay,’ he said eventually, though they both knew that situation could change at any moment if Allah willed it. ‘Do you wish me to abort the operation?’

  ‘No. Tell them to continue. The orders are the same. They are to be taken quietly. Whoever is using the phone is to be held and persuaded to provide a confession and an apology on video. Once the apology is complete they will be subject to Islamic justice. Make sure the security team understands.’

  ‘Of course.’ The young man certainly understood. A ritual beheading would send a very forceful message to those who were tempted to usurp the Leader’s authority. He bowed. ‘I will personally bring you a copy.’

  XX

  ‘If you aren’t capable of finding these people then perhaps I should find a Head of the Security Service who is?’

  The DG’s nose wrinkled with distaste and his aides kept their eyes on the table. She wasn’t the first politician to threaten him – no, not by a long way – but at least the others had made a pretence of subtlety. She had a point, of course. More than six weeks after the M25 attack they were no closer to discovering the identity of the perpetrators than on the day it happened. It wasn’t as if they weren’t trying. His operatives were working round the clock. He’d hoped for some sort of breakthrough, on either the communications or the guns, or even on the transport they’d used, but despite using every resource at his disposal – nothing. And then there was the other problem, which was becoming increasingly complex. He sighed. Perhaps she was right. But no, he would not be forced out by these upstarts. He would go in his own bloody time, and not before.

  ‘I can assure you, Minister,’ diplomacy came naturally to him, it had to in his position, ‘that everything that can be done is being done. We are focusing our efforts on the weaponry. Those guns and rockets must have come into the country somewhere. They were stored and they were distributed. My people continue the search for the warehouse where the lorry was kept—’

  ‘Not bloody good enough.’ Her fist slammed the table with each word. ‘Don’t you understand the pressure the Prime Minister is under? That I am under? His own backbenchers are turning against him, threatening a coalition with the opposition unless strong action is taken. That odious little shit Franklin is talking about sweeping the threat from the streets, as if all you had to do was run around with a broom and the problem would go away. They’re calling for the immediate detention without trial of all known Islamic extremists and anyone who supports them. Identity cards to be carried at all times and that would affect the bearer’s right to state employment and benefits, even a driving licence. Screening centres and immediate expulsion of those who prove suspect, regardless of place of origin. We’ve already increased police stop-and-search powers, and you’ve seen the backlash we’ve had from the Asian community. I’ve had to introduce a quota system of one white face for every four black or brown to prove we’re not racist.’ She took a deep breath. ‘The Prime Minister is actively considering a free vote on the return of the death penalty for murders involving terrorism or paedophilia in the hope that it will unite the party. It would certainly be popular in the country.’

  The DG frowned. What she meant was that it would be popular with the voters who had put her where she was and who she hoped would put her there again. He had his own views on the death penalty, but he was damned if he was going to get into a debate with this bloody woman. Still, he couldn’t just sit back.

  ‘Of course, such a move would require the utmost analysis and consideration.’

  ‘Of course it bloody would. I’m not a fool and, believe me, I do not wish to be remembered as the Home Secretary who returned the United Kingdom to the Dark Ages.’

  Perhaps he’d misunderstood her. ‘I’m sure you will come to the correct conclusion, Minister. And you have our every support.’

  ‘I don’t need your support,’ she snapped peevishly. ‘I need progress. What I said earlier is not an idle threat. I would not take the decision lightly, but I may be left with no choice.’ The DG smiled. The cards were on the table now. If heads must roll she would sacrifice him to save hers. Ah, well. He felt her eyes on him. ‘We cannot let the terrorists win, Director General, because if we do we unleash the forces of the worst kind of extremism. We have already seen the results in the capital, the Midlands and the north, but I fear that is just the spark. One more atrocity may trigger a bloodbath and nothing you or I can do will stop it.’

  ‘Minister, you should see this.’ An aide switched on the television set at the far end of the room. ‘A large explosion on the Madrid underground.’

  She walked up and peered at the screen. ‘Atocha again,’ she groaned. ‘Don’t they ever learn?’

  The Director General said nothing. His organization had stopped four attacks just like this the public knew about and another six they never would. All the terrorists had to do was succeed once more and this powder-keg of a country would go up in flames.

  And the bombs in Cologne and Madrid proved it wasn’t only Britain that was at war, it was the whole of Europe.

  They set off after breakfast the next day in a sleek black BMW 5-series Gault had hired for the trip. Jamie offered to drive part of the way, but he was glad the ex soldier turned him down when he realized that Polish drivers were worse than the Italians, never happier than when they were playing ‘chicken’ with an eight-wheeler truck. Instead, he studied the journal and glanced through the notes Charlotte had put together about the area they were approaching. Hitler’s Wolfsschanze, his theatrically named Wolf’s Lair, lay to the east of Ketrzyn, formerly Rastenburg, in the centre of what, prior to 1945, had been the German province of East Prussia. It now lay just a few miles south of the border of the Kaliningrad Oblast, which was effectively part of Russia, but hemmed in by Poland to the south and Lithuania to the north and east. He knew that this had been the scene of some of the most vicious fighting of the Second World War, with the SS and the Wehrmacht battling to keep the vengeful Red Army from German soil. Kaliningrad, then called Konigsberg, endured a three-month siege before it surrendered in April 1945, leaving twenty thousand dead and at least five times as many captives of the Red Army. When the war ended, East Prussia had been carved up between Russia and Poland. What worried him was that, even if they did manage to find the castle in a land full of castles, there was no telling what might be left of it after the devastation of 1945.

  ‘Then why are we here?’ Charlotte asked.

  He blinked as he realized he’d voiced the thought aloud, a lifelong habit that was going to get him in trouble one day.

  ‘We’re here because the boss wants us here,’ Gault interrupted like an attack dog defending its master. ‘This is where the sword was in nineteen forty-five and this is where we’ll get the next clue to where it is now, isn’t that right, your lordship?’

  Jamie ignored reference to the manufactured upmarket drawl his mother had insisted he cultivate for Cambridge and which he’d never quite been able to lose. ‘All we know for certain is that this is where the Excalibur codex says the sword was last seen,’ he said. ‘It’s not only the obvious place to come, it’s the only place. Logically, there are two options. If it was here, either it’s still here or it was taken somewhere else during the war. In the first case, there’s a possibility some local, or someone involved with the castle, will have information, even if it’s only an old folk tale about a buried hoard. We check it out, report back to Adam and walk away to give the treasure hunters a chance.’

  ‘And if it was taken away?’ Charlotte persisted.

  ‘That would depend on who took it. If it was front-line troops of the Red Army, we have a problem. Excalibur could have ended up chopping kindling for some Siberian peasant. But it would be dangerous for a private to try to hold onto something of real value like that. Stalin was surprisingly discerning in his approach to loot. The fro
ntovik could have his fancy carpet or an electric stove to impress his wife in their non-electric cabin, but the good stuff went to the Boss. He set up special Trophy Brigades that did to Germany exactly what Goring’s Rosenberg Foundation did to France. At least two and a half million artworks and ten million books ended up in Soviet museums, or, more often, their basements, and most of them are still there.’ He smiled at the thought. ‘If Adam has the financial clout, I’d be happy to spend six months trawling through the cellars of the Hermitage in St Petersburg and the Pushkin in Moscow.

  ‘The more likely possibility, though, is that the Nazis evacuated it either during the war or at the end, when the Russians were closing in. Most of the Third Reich’s treasures, including its gold reserves and the loot they collected in the Occupied Territories, ended up in places like the Kaiseroda salt mine at Merkers in Austria. It’s possible there are other Kaiserodas still waiting to be found.’

  He hesitated as he noticed that Gault appeared to be spending as much time looking in the mirrors at what was behind them on the two-lane highway as at what was in front.

  ‘Do we have a problem, Mr Gault?’

  Gault shrugged and twitched the wheel as an oncoming lorry threatened to ram them. ‘All the cars behind us have their lights on, but they’re identifiable by the beams. It looks to me as if a couple of them are in no hurry to get past us, which is unusual judging by some of the driving we’ve seen this morning. I slowed down a while ago and they kept their distance.’

  ‘The only two law-abiding drivers in Poland.’ Jamie laughed, but there was no humour in it. This was a forbidding landscape. Big-sky country where the overhang of leaden cloud threatened to squash you into the ground. The terrain alternated between moderate-sized patches of cultivated land, each attended by a small farm, dark-green, impenetrable forest and, the further north they travelled, lakes large and small. Not the kind of place you wanted to stop and pass the time of day with someone.