The Gods of Atlantis

by David Gibbons

  ‘So these were different from the other corpses?’ Jack persisted.

  Hiebermeyer nodded, and swallowed hard. ‘Different vintage. The forensics lady thinks they must have come originally from sealed lead coffins. She could even work out the year of death, because she returned to the chamber after we’d left to take a sample and analyse it using her portable lab within the bunker. She found enough to pin down what she’d already suspected was the cause of death, and everything fell into place. She was convinced that those two bodies were there because of what they contained. Still living within them when they’d been disinterred had been one of the deadliest viruses known to man, a virus everyone in the 1940s thought had been extinguished a generation before.’

  Jack froze. The nightmare had become real. ‘You mean the Spanish influenza virus from the 1918 outbreak.’

  Hiebermeyer gave Jack a grim look. ‘We can only speculate on what was going on here, but the forensics lady and her team are convinced. They think it was refinement, a process of trial and error, mutating and selecting the virus according to its effect on the victims, finding the most lethal form. The other corpses on the gurneys were young men born since 1918 who would not have had the immunity of survivors of the 1918 outbreak. Whoever was doing this was planning something even worse than the Holocaust, Jack: mass murder on a global scale, totally indiscriminate.’

  ‘Or planning to threaten the world with it,’ Jack murmured.

  ‘This was a true doomsday weapon,’ Hiebermeyer said. ‘A weapon of the apocalypse. The ultimate creation of Hitler’s madness.’

  ‘If it truly was Hitler who ordered it,’ Jack said, pursing his lips. ‘There were other architects of evil floating around him, others with egos that might have pushed them to create an insurance policy of their own if the whole Nazi scheme went belly-up.’

  Hiebermeyer paused. ‘And now for the really bad news.’

  ‘It gets worse?’

  ‘There’s no evidence yet that the virus survives anywhere in the bunker. As you can see, every precaution is being taken. But there’s a downside to that. A horrible downside.’

  Jack felt a lurch in his stomach. ‘You mean we actually wanted to find the virus. The refined virus. The weapon.’

  Hiebermeyer nodded. ‘There was a refrigerator safe in the laboratory, about the size of a microwave oven. The forensics team are certain that’s where the result of all this horror was stored. The safe was open, Jack. There was a stand for some sort of small container like a test tube inside, and it was gone.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Someone must have taken it back in 1945. The SS man tangled up with Mayne was dressed in camp inmate clothing, as if he were in disguise, like the SS who tried to flee from Belsen and other camps that way. He may have been lurking near the bunker to keep prying eyes out, waiting for instructions. There may have been another with him, someone who got into that refrigerator and removed it.’

  ‘If they were planning to take it anywhere more secure in those final weeks of the war, it would have to be towards the shrinking Nazi perimeter around Berlin.’

  Hiebermeyer peered at him. ‘That’s the real reason I wanted you in Germany.’

  Jack raised his eyebrows. ‘Berlin?’

  ‘I have an old friend who spends his free time with the Berlin Second World War archaeology group, exploring underground bunkers and tunnels of the Second World War in Berlin. When I knew I was coming to Germany, I called him on the off-chance. He told me about something they’d found just south of the Tiergarten at the site of one of the biggest bunkers of them all, the Zoo flak tower. I said I’d try to get there after this. And now because of something else we found in the bunker this morning, it’s become imperative.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘My friend in Berlin discovered a buried corridor that had once been under the tower. He found a door with a symbol deeply impressed in it, a reverse swastika within a roundel. And there’s something about the bunker I haven’t told you yet. Major Penn’s men also found a reverse swastika impressed within a roundel, concealed under a sliding panel on the door into the laboratory. Penn measured the impression of the swastika in the straw in the crate full of Schliemann’s treasures. It was the same dimensions and shape as the swastika in the door. And there’s more. The lock was embedded with a strong magnetic device, producing a very unusual signature. We think the palladion was magnetic; the ancient Trojan story that it had fallen from heaven, a meteorite? Whoever opened up that chamber of horrors used the sacred symbol of ancient Troy as a magnetic key.’

  ‘Good God,’ Jack whispered. ‘And you think it’s the same at the Berlin site?’

  ‘I phoned my friend in Berlin while you were on the way here. He said he hadn’t thought to mention it before, but the magnetic pull around the swastika symbol on the door in the tunnel was enough to lock his torch against the metal.’

  Jack’s mind raced. ‘If that’s the only lead we’ve got to go on, we need to jump on it. Remember there are still eyes watching this place. If Saumerre knew about this bunker, then he might know about Berlin too. Do we need an IMU excavation team? I can have people in Berlin by tomorrow morning.’

  Hiebermeyer peered at him. ‘It turns out that beneath the Zoo tower there was a huge reservoir, designed to keep the tower self-sufficient. That’s why you need to be with me, Jack, you and Costas and your diving gear. The tunnel leads underwater.’

  Jack held his breath, and then exhaled hard. He looked at the forest edge, squinting against the sun that was breaking through the mist. He knew that his only course of action now was to deploy all of his energy and resources to see this through. Somewhere out there was a weapon of unimaginable horror, and they might have the only clues to discovering it. He gave Hiebermeyer a steely look. ‘You should get back to Aysha. I can take over from now on.’

  Hiebermeyer put a hand on his shoulder again. ‘I promised Costas I’d stay with you, and I’ll do so until he arrives. The buddy system, he calls it.’

  Jack hesitated for a moment, then relented. ‘I guess we’ll make a diver of you yet.’

  ‘After that place?’ Hiebermeyer looked towards the bunker. ‘Not a chance. That’s the last time I put on any kind of suit.’ He took his hand down. ‘Seriously, Jack. Costas told me everything that happened in the salt mine in Poland last year, when you were searching for the palladion. About your killing spree. We just want to make sure you’re in control.’

  ‘Those were Saumerre’s thugs, and they’d kidnapped my daughter. I’d do it again without a moment’s hesitation. Saumerre’s still out there, and it’s unfinished business. I want to bring him down.’

  ‘We need to tread carefully. We need to maintain the balancing act you set up with Saumerre six months ago after your showdown with his men at Troy. He knows that his position in the European Union bureaucracy in Brussels depends on you keeping quiet about his underworld background. One word from you and he’d lose everything that allows him to operate freely across Europe. He wants whatever was inside that bunker, what’s gone missing. Remember our briefing by the security people after you’d got your MI6 contact on the case? They think he’s dangled the possibility of a Nazi wonder-weapon in front of his terrorist customers. Imagine it: the biggest underworld deal of all time, far bigger than the old Soviet fissile materials that MI6 suspects he’s been feeding them for dirty bombs. It’s been quiet recently on the international terrorist front. The big boys are biding their time, because they’re expecting a delivery. But Saumerre knows that if we rumble him and he loses his credibility, he becomes a liability to them. If that happens, you may not even need to take him down. But we have to keep playing the game of bluff and counter-bluff as long as possible, to let him think we’ve found what he wanted in the bunker.’

  ‘If we had found it, the game would be over for him. He’d know he could never get his hands on it. And that’s when he’d become a liability for us. He’d assume we’d be about to blow his cover, and he’d have nothin
g to lose. He’d do everything he could to take us down with him.’

  ‘Or he could play a game of bluff with us.’

  ‘You mean take a risk that we were bluffing about having the weapon, and try to convince us that in fact he had somehow got hold of it? He could threaten to use it himself, but the bluff would last only as long as it took for his terrorist customers to realize he was stringing them along as well.’

  Hiebermeyer took a deep breath. ‘There is something else. Jack. Just a slight concern I’ve had, and it’s been growing as I’ve been sitting out here thinking about the last few hours. Being in that bunker was a nightmare, and I’m only getting my thoughts straight now. It was a niggle, but now it’s become a worry. If Saumerre did claim he had the weapon, there’s just a chance he might not be bluffing.’

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’

  Hiebermeyer paused. ‘Major Penn’s operation is impressively tight, but there was one chink in the armour. They work in two-person teams. This morning things went slightly awry because one of Penn’s men, a Sergeant Jones, collapsed in that inner chamber and we had to take him out. It’s a big concern, because he’s still not regained consciousness, but the doctor is with him now inside the bunker. Apart from me, the only one inside that chamber this morning who wasn’t one of Penn’s team was the man paired with Sergeant Jones – a European Union Health and Safety inspector named Auxelle. He’d foisted himself on Penn yesterday, arriving at the perimeter roadblock in an EU limousine with a police motorcycle escort. By all accounts he was arrogant and pompous, but Penn had him checked out by MI6 before letting him in and there seemed to be no question over his credibility. He came with the highest EU authority.’

  Jack turned to Hiebermeyer in alarm. ‘The highest authority in Brussels? Who was his line manager?’

  ‘That’s what I’ve just been wondering. I have a horrible feeling that one of Saumerre’s departments might be Health and Safety.’

  ‘Shit,’ Jack exclaimed. ‘But there’s no chance of this man having removed anything from the bunker?’

  ‘Everyone is body-searched before leaving the double-lock chamber at the entrance, to make sure that they haven’t inadvertently got material on them from inside that might be contaminated. Each one of a pair is responsible for checking the other. But Sergeant Jones was down, and he was Dr Auxelle’s partner. In the concern to get Jones out of the laboratory chamber and attended to by the medic, there might have been a slip-up. What worries me is that we’re probably only talking about a test tube or a phial, very easily concealed in one of those suits. And Major Penn was completely preoccupied with Jones. They’ve worked together in a lot of bad places.’

  Jack looked at Hiebermeyer intently. ‘Do you remember anything else about that laboratory? Anything odd?’

  Hiebermeyer looked down and then nodded, putting his hand up to his forehead. ‘Something was lurking in the back of my mind, and I’ve just realized what it was. You remember I said the safe was open? All I could think about at the time – all I could think about until just now – was that whatever had been inside was gone. But there was something else. It should have rung a huge alarm bell at the time, but I wasn’t thinking straight. I’d just been stumbling over dead bodies. I should have held the reins tighter. Poor show, as your dad would have said.’

  ‘I’d probably have been worse,’ Jack said. ‘I’m not used to being in tombs full of corpses, like you.’

  ‘It was the interior of that refrigerator safe, visible because the door was open. Everything else in the bunker was covered in that yellow-green layer, the decomposition product. But the interior of the safe was gleaming. Gleaming. I should have realized that meant it had only just been opened.’

  ‘Were Jones and Auxelle in there by themselves?’

  ‘For a few minutes before Jones collapsed and Auxelle called us in to help.’

  ‘Okay. We need to have Auxelle detained. We need to get our contact in MI6 on to it and have him interrogated. And I don’t care how high-up he is in Brussels. We need to take him down now.’

  ‘Brussels won’t be happy with that. A secretive NATO team, mainly British, arresting a top EU inspector? And there’s another problem. The story would be impossible to contain, and it would blow this place wide open to police and journalists, exactly what Major Penn and his team are under the strictest instructions to avoid. Everything about this bunker needs to be kept top secret.’

  ‘Then I’ll find Auxelle and do it myself.’

  Hiebermeyer eyed Jack shrewdly. ‘I think we should bring Major Penn in and tell him everything we know, the stuff MI6 may have kept from him about Saumerre and the whole backstory. I mean everything. He has a full special-forces security team surrounding this place, and exerts more authority than his rank suggests. Top secret operations like this to find and contain Nazi scientific sites have been going on since the end of the Second World War and are given all necessary resources by the former Allies, one area where the EU does not hold sway. It’s why MI6 are overseeing the operation. Just a hint of bacteriological contamination and Penn can lock down a site for miles around. He’s a pretty useful man for us to have on board.’

  Jack stood up and paced across the grass, took a few deep breaths and looked around. Maurice was right. He needed to keep his cool, not to let his blood rise, to play the game carefully. He turned back. ‘One question’s nagging me. If Auxelle did take what was in that refrigerator, then what happened to the palladion? You said the door to the laboratory was already ajar when Penn’s men arrived there, and that the impression of the palladion in the straw in that crate was covered with the decomposition layer. Everything points to it being removed from the bunker in 1945. It must have been used to open the laboratory door some time before Mayne and Stein arrived, maybe somehow during the fight with the SS man. If it was the SS man who opened the door, then the palladion should have been found near his body. Yet there was nothing. Everything points to an accomplice, one who survived, though that still doesn’t explain why the accomplice would have left without removing the contents of the refrigerator.’

  Hiebermeyer nodded. ‘Penn has a theory about that. We had two hours together in the decontamination room and mulled it over. He’d been headhunted by MI6 at university and had actually done several courses at GCHQ Cheltenham before opting out and joining the army instead. One of the courses was on “need to know”, how to keep a network going while minimizing the number of people who are in on the whole picture. Like you he thought we might be looking at two operatives, but he took it further. Let’s imagine that one of them knew about the palladion and was also tasked to retrieve the phial in the refrigerator, the most secret and important part of the whole conspiracy. The person entrusted with that task, to take the deadly weapon to its next destination, had to be a particularly fanatical follower of the conspiracy originator, perhaps unique. If he was somehow unable to perform the task, then the fallback might be for the originator himself to try to retrieve it. But for that to happen, the originator had to have the palladion to open the chamber door. So the second man in the bunker knew nothing of the refrigerator but had been tasked to retrieve the palladion if something happened to the first man before he was able to get inside.’

  ‘So the first man is about to perform his task as Mayne and Stein arrive,’ Jack said slowly. ‘He dies in the ensuing struggle, killing Mayne and Stein in the process. But perhaps just as he is about to kill Mayne, pressing him against that door, he uses the palladion to open it, intending to leave Mayne and Stein’s bodies inside and lock the door behind him, concealing what had happened and keeping any other Allied troops who might enter the bunker away from the truth of that inner chamber for as long as possible. But Mayne kills the SS man with his knife as he himself is shot, and they both fall into the room together. The accomplice comes upon the scene and his only thought is his own specific task, to retrieve the palladion and take it to his master.’

  ‘And my friend’s discovery under the site o
f the flak tower in Berlin suggests that the palladion may have had more uses than opening this one door,’ Hiebermeyer said. ‘The forensics lady was in the decontamination room with us after she’d returned from sampling those corpses. She suggested that you could combine the flu virus with a bacteriological agent to make it particularly deadly, adding something that would weaken the immune system to ensure that the virus was always fatal. Maybe this bunker wasn’t the only laboratory. Maybe there was another one, perhaps in Berlin.’

  Jack pursed his lips. As he turned, he saw an army officer in a camouflage smock and beret approaching them rapidly from the Portakabin, followed close behind by a soldier. The officer wore a sidearm, and the soldier was carrying a rifle and swivelling round every few steps to survey their surroundings, talking into a headset. The soldier stood off to one side while the officer came up to them, his face grim. ‘Major David Penn, Royal Engineers. You’re Jack Howard. I recognize you from TV.’ He shook hands quickly and turned to Hiebermeyer. ‘I have some very bad news.’

  Hiebermeyer stood up. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Sergeant Jones died ten minutes ago. He never regained consciousness.’

  Hiebermeyer looked stunned. ‘Mein Gott,’ he whispered. ‘Dead? How?’

  Penn gazed down for a moment, then looked up and cleared his throat. ‘The team medics inspected his suit and his body. They found a tiny puncture in the upper right arm of his suit and a matching puncture in his skin. The puncture was from a syringe. Sergeant Jones didn’t die of natural causes. He was murdered.’