Sean was gone.
Epilogue
Isabel opened her eyes. There was white everywhere. She closed them. Buzzing filled her ears, low, insistent. She opened her eyes again. The buzzing was an alarm on a piece of glittering electrical equipment on a high white stand beside her.
There was a face looming over her. It was Henry Mowlam’s.
“You gave us quite a scare,” he said.
“How long have I been here?”
“A few hours. You banged your head after you blacked out. I lost my bloody temper with those Germans too. They should have been holding you a bit tighter.” He put a hand on her arm, squeezed it.
A gnawing emptiness filled her up as she remembered what had happened to Sean. Tears threatened, then fell. She wiped at them fats, brushing them away.
“You didn’t find him, did you? Did you?”
Henry’s mouth opened, closed. He shook his head. “They should find his body today. They’re searching an underground cave the river flows into.”
“What kind of a stupid place was that?” She bent her head, out her fists in her eyes.
“Apparently that lower room has been hidden for decades. It’s a lot older than the one above it.” He stopped.
She put her hands down, gripped the sheet. “There was something important down there. Sean was trying to reach it. He was forced to go over that hole. Did you find Xena?”
He looked at her for a long moment, as if deciding what to tell her. Then he shrugged. “We didn’t find anyone else. Just three bodies in the room above.”
She looked away. Had there been time for Xena to escape? Had she fallen in after Sean? A long window with thin white blinds filled the wall to her right. They were closed tight.
“How did you end up down there?” said Henry.
She shook her head, closed her eyes. Nothing mattered anymore. Sean was gone. Everything was gone. She didn’t want to live. But she had to, for Alek’s sake.
“I found a steel canister in that room you were in,” said Henry. He spoke slowly. “It had a Nazi symbol embossed on it.”
“What was in it?” Isabel put her head up. Was this what Zena had been looking for? Had Sean thrown it aside as he fell?
“I’m not at liberty to tell you.”
Her hand shook as she pointed at him. “My husband might have died for that. You have to tell me what he gave his life for.” Her voice was shrill. She bit her lip.
The hum of the fluorescent light above their heads filled the room as she waited for his answer.
“Tell me, Henry. I need to know he didn’t die in vain.”
Henry glanced towards the door.
“There were letters in it.”
“What letters?”
He sighed. “I suppose it will all come out, eventually. The letters are from Pope Pius XII to Adolf Hitler. I took pictures of them before the head of the operation on the German side took them away. I was lucky he didn’t stop me.” He looked surprised.
“He’s one of the good guys. I’ve had them translated from German. The letters express Pius X11’s support for Hitler’s policies towards the Jews, and encourage him to wage war on Soviet Russia immediately. They are dated from well before Hitler’s invasion of Russia. It’s all in diplomatic language, of course, but it’s clear that the pope at that time supported what Hitler was doing.” He paused. “I’m sure they’ll be disputed though.”
She spoke slowly now. “That’s so sick. How could he have supported Hitler?”
Henry shrugged. “If Hitler followed what the pope suggested, that probably led to him losing the war, Mrs Ryan. If he’d kept to his treaty with Stalin, the Normandy landings would have failed or they’d never have happened.”
She stared at him. “My grandfather committed suicide after working at the Nuremberg trials. He claimed that many on the German side, who should have been tried, weren’t. I don’t care what might have happened. All I know is what did happen. Hitler murdered millions of men, women and children.” Anger rose inside her.
She put her palms to her eyes. Tears were flowing again. She couldn’t stop them now. How stupid she’d been to let Sean come here.
“Sean won’t have given his life in vain,” said Henry, softly.
“We suspected someone was behind the deaths of refugees here in Germany, by infecting them deliberately. The woman whose body was down in that first room, has been linked to a doctor who was also murdered. He worked at a facility she was involved with. It appears they were both part of a plot to mass murder refugees. Sean helped to stop that. He brought you and the German authorities down on them. I expect there will be more arrests too.”
She didn’t care. Sean was gone. Gone for ever. How could that be? A sharp pain of emptiness made her bend forward.
She tried to get some words out, but they faltered, turned to dust in her mouth. A minute later, after the quiet sobs had passed, the words came. “What were they looking for down there, just those letters?”
Henry nodded. “Probably. I expect they had a plan for how to use them.” His voice was strong, but he spoke the words slowly. At the end he pressed his lips together.
“I want to be alone,” said Isabel. She turned away, closed her eyes. A few seconds later she heard the click of the door closing. She put her head to the hard, starched, pillow.
Then the nightmares came. Sean’s face. His voice, calling her. He was floating in the water, looking up at her. There was something rippling at the surface. Xena’s face broke through the water.
Isabel screamed.
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