Lanowski came bounding up to them, rubbing his hands. ‘Okay. I’m ready.’
Costas stared back at the wall. ‘But the ROV monitor’s still blank.’
‘I don’t mean that. I mean what I’ve been working on at the computer.’ Lanowski peered at the image on the screen. ‘Oh. I nearly forgot.’ He reached into his pocket and handed Jack a crumpled slip of paper. ‘The lab technician gave this to me as I was coming in. The test results on that red stuff on your glove.’
Jack smoothed open the paper and read the report. It was exactly as he had thought. It was human blood. It had been on his glove, in the cracks and crevices, clouding the water as he rubbed it off, the seven-thousand-year-old blood of that child, perhaps, of its family, blood that had fed the pool in that basin that someone was using desperately in an effort to get into the spirit world, to escape the horror of drowning as the flood waters began to lap the chamber. For a moment Jack wished he had pulled himself further inside, up over the basin, so that he could peer into it, to glimpse what the one with the bloodied mace and the dripping knife had tried to see. But then he knew he would only have witnessed a reflection of that circle of pillars looming over the basin, radiating in the circular shape of the bowl like the spokes of the Sonnenrad in Lanowski’s drawing, flickering in whatever firelight they had left in the chamber, a fiery image of the new gods leering through the spent blood of the old order.
He glanced again at the three circular shapes Lanowski had chalked on the blackboard, from spiral to Sonnenrad to swastika. He suddenly remembered the palladion, the symbol of ancient Troy they knew had taken the swastika shape: a sacred meteorite forged and hammered into the crooked cross and melded with gold, stolen by the Greek king Agamemnon from Troy and then found by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae and secretly taken by the Nazis to Germany. He stared at the image of the swastika. ‘The star of heaven,’ he murmured. ‘Of course.’
‘Come again?’ Lanoswki said.
‘The star of heaven,’ Jack repeated, his heart pounding with excitement. ‘It’s been staring us in the face all along. It’s in the Epic of Gilgamesh.’ He picked up his tablet computer and called up the text of the Babylonian epic. ‘It’s on the first tablet, “The Coming of Enkidu”. Gilgamesh has a dream, and tells his mother, the goddess Ninsun. Listen to this: “I walked through the night under the stars of the firmament, and one, a meteor of the stuff of Anu, fell down from heaven. I tried to lift it but it proved too heavy. All the people of Uruk came round to see it, the common people jostling and the nobles thronging to kiss its feet; and to me its attraction was like the love of a woman. They helped me, I braced my forehead and I raised it with thongs and brought it to you.”’
Jack put the tablet down. ‘It’s incredible. I’m convinced that’s the same story as the Trojan foundation myth, which recounts the origin of the palladion as a meteorite. I think both stories hark back to Atlantis: the Epic of Gilgamesh from the perspective of northern Mesopotamia, the Trojan myth from the viewpoint of those who fled Atlantis to the Dardanelles and actually took the palladion with them. The “star of heaven” was the palladion after the meteorite was forged and hammered into the shape of the swastika. Ninsun tells Gilgamesh that in the dream the star was an analogue, that in fact he was dreaming of the coming of Enkidu, the wild man he will tame and make his brother: the story may represent the tension between the first civilization, represented by Gilgamesh himself, and the ancient wildness that still survived from prehistory. It puts the palladion in a whole new context. No wonder it had such power through history, revered and feared, hijacked by the first priests of Atlantis as their new sacred symbol, and then rediscovered and given a terrible new lease of life almost ten thousand years later by the Nazis.’
Jack sat back, remembering the start of their trail six months before, a trail that had hinted at the devastating truth about the palladion and its new symbolism in a currency of evil played out in the Second World War. He looked down, staring at his palms. Six months ago he had had other blood on his hands, the blood of those who had died violently in their quest for the palladion, lives Jack had taken in his attempt to protect those closest to him. He thought of Maurice Hiebemeyer and the Nazi bunker, and a cold shiver ran through him. The swastika on the blackboard suddenly seemed to be swirling, drawing him into a different kind of history, one of horror and immolation that those first priests could scarcely have imagined. He tore himself away, and looked at Lanowski. ‘You were going to tell us something?’
Lanowski peered back, his face flushed and his eyes burning with fervour. ‘You want to know where the last shaman of Atlantis went? Where Noah went with his Ark? You want to find the new Atlantis?’
Costas and Jeremy peered at Jack. He glanced at his watch, exhaled forcefully and then looked at Lanowski. ‘Okay, Jacob. Give us what you’ve got.’
8
Near Bergen-Belsen, Germany
Maurice Hiebermeyer tripped over the step into the bunker and stumbled forward, putting his arm out to catch himself on an upright metal pole that loomed in front of him. He fell into it heavily, wincing as his wrist took his weight, then lost his footing and twisted round on to his back, jarring his head and losing his grip as his hand slid down the viscous exterior of the pole. Major Penn caught him and heaved him back on to his feet, holding him upright while he regained his balance. Hiebermeyer panted hard, his heart pounding, his ears filled with the suck and pop of the diaphragm in his regulator as he drew hard on the oxygen in his backpack. He tried to calm himself, staring through the glass visor of his helmet at the mottled patch of concrete wall that was all he could see ahead. For a moment he felt disorientated, and then he realized that he had twisted around and was facing the entrance they had just come through into the bunker. The slight blurriness was a consequence of following Sergeant Jones’ advice to remove his glasses to avoid having them fog up as he perspired. It seemed to make little difference now, as the sweat on his face had already made the glass plate of his helmet seem opaque.
He breathed slowly, trying to catch his rising claustrophobia. He knew he could ask to leave and could be out of that door and back into some semblance of normality within minutes. He shut his eyes tight, then opened them again as his heart rate stabilized. A patch had cleared in the centre of his visor, allowing him to see the metal grid of the walkway in the beam of his headlamp.
‘Are you all right?’ The tinny voice through his earphones came from Major Penn, now visible beside him in his bulky white CBRN suit.
‘I’m fine,’ Hiebermeyer replied, his voice sounding oddly muffled inside the helmet. ‘A twisted wrist, but I can live with that.’
‘I’ve checked over your suit, and there’s no obvious damage,’ Penn said. ‘The worst-case scenario would be any kind of tear. Even the chance of contamination would be enough to put you in the quarantine chamber in the Portakabin for a month.’
‘No thanks,’ Hiebermeyer replied.
‘I forgot to mention that it can be a little slippery in here, like that pole. There’s not much dust because there have been no people in here for more than seventy years, so no dead human skin. But there’s a thin layer of old fungal growth over everything. The forensics guy thinks that something decayed in here and putrefied a long time ago. It’s on the floor too, so watch your step.’
Hiebermeyer stared at the yellow-brown smear on his glove from the pole. Something decayed in here. He felt a wave of nausea, swallowed hard and wiped his hand against his leg. He swung around, his headlamp beam traversing indeterminate shapes and shadows as he turned back towards their objective, the main chamber of the bunker, visible through an open door at the end of the entrance passageway. He walked forward, following Penn. The halo of condensation around the edge of his visor made it seem as if he were in a tunnel, almost moving in slow motion. Penn stopped, clicked off the intercom button on the side of his helmet and activated the external link that allowed him to communicate with the phone in the Portakabin. It was strict proc
edure to activate it only when absolutely vital, to keep workers inside the bunker from being distracted, and even the other two men in the chamber ahead of them would only be included in their intercom audio loop if necessary. Hiebermeyer could see that Penn was talking in an agitated manner. After about a minute he clicked the side of his helmet and his voice crackled again inside Hiebermeyer’s headset. ‘That was Sergeant Jones in the kitting-up room,’ he said, sounding annoyed. ‘The EU inspector Dr Auxelle has arrived ahead of schedule. He’s forced Jones to let him come into the bunker now. Auxelle knew I was in here already, and Jones doesn’t have the authority to stand up to him. Auxelle probably threatened him, though Jones is too professional to tell me that. It’s all completely unnecessary. Auxelle could have waited twenty minutes as the schedule dictated, so that he and Jones could have gone in as planned and the turnover worked smoothly, keeping the maximum number in the bunker to four. But he knows the pair ahead of us are making the first entry into the laboratory at the back of the main chamber, and he wants to be in on the act. It’s always like that with these people. We have to deal with EU Health and Safety nabobs all the time. They like you to think they’re in charge, and you have to go along with it or risk being blacklisted.’
‘It sounds as if I’m the one who’s arrived on your doorstep at the wrong time,’ Hiebermeyer said. ‘If you hadn’t been in here with me, you could have dealt with it and made him wait.’
‘Auxelle and Jones are in the double-lock chamber already, so there’s nothing I can do about it. And it was my call to slot us in the schedule now. I promised Jack Howard that I’d personally escort you and get you in and out as fast as possible. He said that he’d been against you coming here and that you had other priorities at the moment.’
‘I’m seeing this through.’
‘Okay. With Auxelle and Jones directly behind us, we’ve got to move more quickly. I’m going to take you directly to the storage crates, and then that’s it. I want to be in the scrubbing room waiting for Auxelle when he comes out. I think the time has arrived for a little showdown.’
‘Sounds like a little suspicion on your part that he might have picked up some contamination wouldn’t go amiss.’
‘I wish. That’s one area where he can’t override my authority. A month in the quarantine chamber would certainly get him out of my hair.’ He grinned at Hiebermeyer through his visor, than put a hand on his back. ‘You okay? Let’s try to do this within twenty minutes. We’ll be using our headlamps all through. The old electrics in here still work, powered by a huge U-boat battery that we think was here mainly to keep some kind of refrigeration unit going in the laboratory, something they wanted guaranteed long-term. But we’re not risking the old electrical system. We always work with our own power supply. We should know what the electrics were powering soon enough, as the two sappers ahead of us will be at the lab door by now. I’ve asked them to hold off reporting unless there’s urgent need so that we can focus on those crates, but to give me a situation report at 1420. That’s eighteen minutes from now. I’ve just warned them on the intercom about Auxelle and Jones coming in.’
Hiebermeyer cautiously followed Penn along the metal grid on the floor. On one side his headlamp caught the window of a small room, the glass covered with the yellow-brown layer and reflecting a strange unearthly glow. Further ahead a machine gun sat on its tripod on the floor, an old German MG-42, the receiver still closed over a cartridge belt that linked to an ammunition box below. Beyond that lay the opening to the main chamber of the bunker. He followed Penn through, their beams traversing the walls. Two headlamps bobbed at the far end of the chamber, evidently the sappers at the entrance to the laboratory. He saw a small jet of intense orange flame and a shower of sparks. ‘They’re using an oxyacetylene torch,’ Penn said. ‘Before now we’d only seen the laboratory door over the crates. We work methodically, inch by inch, and that’s as far as we’d got. We knew the door was slightly ajar, and we suspected it might be rusted on its hinges. Let’s hope they get through within fifteen minutes.’
They walked further on. With only his single beam stabbing into the gloom, Hiebermeyer found it difficult to get a good sense of the dimensions, but he began to see how they fitted with the plan that Penn had shown him of a structure about the size of an underground railway station, as if a huge section of corrugated culvert pipe had been half buried in the ground. The interior seemed to be glowing yellow-green, and he realized that everything was covered with the same viscous layer he had encountered in the entranceway. He stumbled slightly, and the shadows of the crates loomed large on the wall, elongated on its concave surface. He saw Penn’s form in exaggerated silhouette as if it were advancing towards him, an unnerving image from a distant childhood nightmare, a story an older boy had told him of the trolls that lurked underground in these parts, waiting for boys like him. It had seemed frighteningly real, in the land where trolls and goblins had been invented and had then come hideously to life in the dark days of the Third Reich.
His breathing quickened, rasping and sucking through the regulator, and he stopped to calm himself. Penn veered left between two rows of wooden crates of identical dimensions, each about a metre and a half high. They looked unopened and sealed up except for one at the back, its lid slightly ajar. Hiebermeyer followed, his heart pounding. It could be an absolute treasure trove. Penn had told him about a crate he had seen containing what looked like paintings, and now they both stood in front of one isolated from the rest and narrower, with no cover. Propped up on the back was a panel that looked as if it might have been the lid, but made up of a single board rather than joined planks. Penn pointed inside. ‘I saw this on the way out this morning. Looking at it now, they’re definitely paintings, their frames removed and the canvases encased in plywood.’ He jerked his thumb at the propped-up panel. ‘That one’s a portrait. Someone must have taken it out to have a look in 1945. You can just make out the image, though I think there’s been some kind of reaction between that mould and the oil from the paint, which has oozed out. It looks irrecoverable, I’m afraid.’
Hiebermeyer could see what Penn meant. The colour definition had gone, as if someone had squeezed all the paints into one bowl and then applied the resulting mess without mixing it together properly, leaving streaks of individual colours through the layer of yellow-green. As he stood back and angled his beam, he could just make out a portrait, like a shallow relief carving, as if the form within were pressing through the panel. He looked hard, mentally checking the image against dozens of lost masterpieces that he had worked through in a catalogue before coming here, in preparation for a moment like this. He shook his head and turned away, then turned back. Still nothing. He tried again, closing his eyes this time.
‘Let’s move on,’ Penn said, pointing at the crate with the lid that was slightly ajar. ‘Whatever that painting was, it’s history now. And my guess is these bigger crates are what you’re going to want to see, more likely to contain antiquities.’
Hiebermeyer stayed rooted to the spot. Suddenly it clicked. He recognized it. ‘Mein Gott.’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s the Portrait of a Young Man, 1516, stolen from the Czartoryski Museum, Krakow, Poland. It’s so famous that I hadn’t even bothered to look at it again when I was researching lost art before coming here. It’s ritratto di Raffaello, meaning either by Raphael or of Raphael, or both. Nobody knows for sure, because it’s been impossible to study the original using modern analytical techniques. It was one of the most exquisite portraits of the Renaissance and until now the most important painting still lost from the war.’
‘Well you can tick that off the list, in more ways than one. I don’t think there’s any chance of restoration. Another legacy of the Nazis. Come on.’
Hiebermeyer stared at the panel, trying to see what he had remembered from those pre-war photographs of the painting: the sensitive face, the long hair and rakish beret, the languid, confident pose of the young man, the luxurious fur
shawl draped over one shoulder. If those two Allied officers really had got inside the bunker – Major Mayne and Colonel Stein – he wondered whether they had stood where he was now, and had seen the painting in its original glory: whether it had given the American, Stein, an art historian at the Courtauld before the war, a thrill of recognition and a shaft of hope before they went on to whatever darkness lay ahead, or whether they too had seen an image forever tainted by the Nazi horror they must have witnessed in the death camp in the forest. Hiebermeyer suddenly lost the image of the young man in his mind’s eye and saw only a mess of colour streaked with red, rivulets of paint at the base of the panel where oil had oozed like blood. He remembered years before when he’d realized that resurrecting the artefacts collected by the Nazi Ahnenerbe would never be possible, that they were best left as part of the ghastly history that Himmler had created for them. The image he saw now seemed to vindicate that, but he had not expected it to be so visceral, as if what this painting had become was more than just a lesson from history; rather an excrescence that could never heal.
Penn went forward to the unopened crates and knelt down, wiping a painted label on the side with the back of his glove and then doing the same to the next two crates. Hiebermeyer knelt down beside the first. One word stood out: Ahnenerbe. For a moment all he heard was his own breathing, as if it were disembodied. All those years he had dreamed of searching for these treasures, they had been here under his very nose, only a few kilometres from where he had grown up. He felt light-headed, as if the regulator were no longer giving him enough oxygen. He reached out to one of the crates to steady himself and then withdrew his hand at the last moment, remembering the awful smear of decomposition that had stained his glove when he had slipped at the entrance.
The Gods of Atlantis Page 16
