The Doomsday Testament (42 page)

‘Yes, but only because Brohm said it would lead him to the Raphael, which would have had some value to him.’ As he said the words, it was as if someone whispered in his ear, but he couldn’t catch the message. He looked at the trees, thinking it must have been the breeze, but there was no wind.

‘Are you all right?’

He blinked. ‘I think so. I thought . . . Anyway, I don’t think Matthew would have wanted to dirty his hands with what was in the briefcase. Whatever was in it – Brohm’s research papers, maybe even some clue to the location of the stone – will still be in there and it might have survived. Stranger things have happened. You only have to look at the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Vindolanda Tablets.’

‘Got you.’ She’d given up on the locks and used all her effort to slice through the thick leather at the back of the case. ‘You were right, it was made to last. I suppose you should do this.’ She handed it back to him and he pulled apart the leather, allowing them both to peer inside.

‘Bugger.’

All that was left of the contents was a sodden mass of brown sludge.

‘So what do you think happened to the bodies, if there were any bodies here at all?’ Sarah asked as they were
packing
up, the galling disappointment of failure still creating a barrier between them.

‘Oh, the bodies were here.’ Jamie looked around the clearing distractedly. ‘I think the briefcase proves that. You saw the SS flashes on the leather and it was exactly where it would have been if my grandfather had thrown it away. In a way it makes sense. This must be a popular hiking trail, and probably has been for decades. Matthew wouldn’t have been able to bury them properly, only cover them with rocks and a few branches. The corpses could have been exposed by animals or the first decent spate. With dozens of people a week passing on the trail it was only a matter of time before they were discovered. Three skeletons in the remains of British uniforms, but without any form of identification. Remember old Werner telling us about the cemetery where they buried the escaping Allied prisoners of war who didn’t make it to the Swiss border. I’m betting that’s where Walter Brohm, Gunther Klosse and Paul Strasser ended up. Three British soldiers “known unto God”. I don’t know whether Matthew will be laughing or crying.’

‘And now?’

He hesitated because he wasn’t quite sure how to explain. The sensation had been so strong that it had been like someone physically standing beside him. ‘You asked me earlier what was wrong. It was because I suddenly had a feeling that we were very close to something important, but I was missing it. It was as if someone was screaming at me in a vacuum; I could
see
their lips moving but I didn’t know what they were saying. Can you understand that?’

‘Yes, but I still think we should take this chance to walk away, go right back down that hill and leave all the dead bodies behind us. Old Werner was right when he said digging up the past would only bring us grief.’

Jamie shook his head. ‘I can’t, Sarah. I’ll take you back to the airport and you can go home, but I have to keep looking. Maybe I’ll never find it, but I have to try. If I gave up now I’d be letting too many people down. You as much as anybody.’

She smiled, but when she replied there was a catch in her voice. ‘Don’t be an idiot. If we do this, we do it together. Christ, what have I done to us, Jamie?’

It seemed an odd question and he decided not to answer, because there was no answer. Instead, he asked: ‘What was I saying when I suddenly came over all queer?’

Sarah laughed and it rid her of the melancholy that seemed to permeate this place. ‘The one thing you’ll never be is queer, Mr Saintclair. You were talking about the Raphael, how Brohm had told your grandfather that the map would lead him to the Raphael.’

‘Yes.’ She could almost feel his excitement as he scrambled for the journal. ‘But that wasn’t exactly what he said. In the journal Matthew is always very careful to be precise, even when he’s under pressure. Here, you read it, exactly as he records it.’

She accepted the book and opened it where he’d placed the final page. ‘
He took out a silk escape map
with
some sort of Nazi symbol on the reverse. This, he said, would lead me to the Raphael and everything else
. Is that enough, or do you want more?’

He frowned, his face lined with concentration as he spelled out the words that had seemed to whisper to him earlier. What was it? What had he missed? The first sentence couldn’t have any hidden message, it was just a general description of the map. So it must be in the second.
This, he said, would lead me to the Raphael and everything else
. Ten words, without the attribution. Ten little words. Christ, could it really be that simple?

‘
Everything else
.’

‘What?’

‘Brohm told Matthew that the silk escape map would lead him to the Raphael
and everything else
. We were so blinded by the Raphael that we missed it. It was right there under our noses.’

SHE STARED AT
him. ‘If the Sun Stone has been in the bunker all along surely the authorities would have found it by now? They will treat what’s left in the complex like an archaeological dig, cataloguing everything and removing anything of even the slightest value.’

‘Not necessarily. Remember what I said about the maps?’

‘About Brohm offering the Harz map to Matthew as a decoy?’

‘That’s right. Well, I was wrong. There was no other silk map. But Brohm was pleading for his life. He knew he was going to die, so he would have offered everything, even the Sun Stone to save himself.’

‘But you said the Sun Stone wasn’t there?’

‘No, but what if there
is
another map. Only it’s not a silk map. It’s the real thing. The original . . .’

‘. . . like the Black Sun at Wewelsburg.’

They arrived back at the car. Jamie used the electronic
switch
to open the boot and they put their rucksacks inside. He reached for the door handle.

‘Wait!’

His fingers froze a centimetre from the black plastic. ‘You can’t get in the car.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because your jeans are covered in mud.’ She pointed to his backside where he’d slid down the gully. ‘You’ll get the seat filthy. Here.’ She handed him his jacket. ‘Sit on that until we get back to the hotel.’

He glared at her. ‘You scared the bloody life out of me.’

‘Good. I think you have every reason to be scared. We both have. The closer we get to the Sun Stone the more dangerous this is going to get.’

The next day, he pushed the Volkswagen to its limit on the autobahn. A hundred miles into the journey the temperature gauge began to rise ominously and Jamie thought he felt a vibration in the engine that hadn’t been there earlier.

Sarah noticed the car slowing.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘I think we have a problem. There’s a rattle somewhere there shouldn’t be.’ He pointed to the temperature gauge, which still hadn’t fallen back towards normal since he’d eased off the accelerator.

‘Maybe it’s something to do with your driving?’

He bit his tongue and kept his eyes on the road.

‘Do you think you can fix it?’

‘I can take a look under the bonnet and give a few bits and pieces a good shake, but that won’t mean I have any idea what I’m doing. What about you?’

She waved her manicured fingers in front of his eyes. ‘Does this look like the hand of an auto mechanic?’

‘Do you think it would be able to press a few buttons and call Europcar?’

He felt her staring at him. ‘I wish . . .’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

Two hours later – after a short stop in town – they drew up next to the police station on the western outskirts of Braunlage. Jamie knew there was no point in going directly to the bunker. It would be sealed off to keep out the kind of treasure hunters and ghouls who were always drawn to such sites. He went into the building while Sarah called the car hire company and asked them to send a mechanic.

‘May I talk to Kommissar Muller?’ The officer at the desk gave him the look cops reserve for ordinary mortals who disturb them while they’re doing something much too important to be interrupted, like drinking coffee and reading the sports pages.

‘The guy who found the bunker, right?’

‘Right.’

‘You are fortunate, she’s just going off duty.’ He picked up the phone and spoke quietly into it. ‘She’ll see you now.’

‘Herr Saintclair, this is a surprise.’ Lotte Muller greeted him with a handshake. ‘Is Miss Grant with you?’

He explained about the car and she shook her head gravely. ‘Yes, hire cars. But what can you do? You are here for a pleasure visit to see our lovely town again?’

Jamie had considered his approach on the drive north. There was no way he was going to tell anyone about what he believed was hidden in the bunker. He also realized it was unlikely that even the people who had discovered it would be allowed back inside just because they asked. That left one option. To lie. ‘I’m afraid not. We’ve been touring. Now we’re on our way to the airport at Paderborn and decided that we would like to pay our respects to the people who died in the bunker.’

‘Respects?’

‘A tribute. It is a British tradition. Just some flowers and the opportunity to say a few words. I’m sure you’ll understand that we were unable to give them the respect they deserved at the time.’

‘You are aware that the bodies have been removed? There is nothing to see.’

Jamie allowed his face to harden. ‘I can assure you that we saw more than enough on our last visit, Kommissar.’

She nodded distractedly. ‘Of course, forgive me. So you would like to go inside the bunker?’

‘If that would be possible. It would take only a few moments.’

Lotte Muller hesitated. She had orders to keep the bunker secure, and she was a great believer in obeying orders. But Jamie Saintclair and Sarah Grant had found the bunker and the Raphael, and despite the extra
workload
it had brought, she was grateful to them for the opportunities it created. She made her decision.

‘Very well.’ She smiled tiredly. ‘I finish my shift in a few minutes. I will drive you there. No,’ she raised a hand as Jamie opened his mouth to protest. ‘I insist. Your car will stay here. There is a rental garage in town and I’m sure the mechanic will be here very quickly. They are extremely efficient.’

Ten minutes later she joined Jamie and Sarah in the car park. Sarah carried a large bunch of colourful flowers and Lotte nodded approvingly. ‘They are lovely,’ she said. ‘We have very similar blooms in the town square. They are just reaching their peak in time for the summer.’

As they got into the black BMW Sarah attempted to disguise the fact that the bouquet had no florist’s wrapping and some of the stems still had the roots attached.

Lotte Muller took the southern route from the town. She noticed Jamie’s puzzlement.

‘This is not the most direct route, but it will save another hike through the forest,’ she explained. ‘We discovered the main entrance to the bunker in the hills to the west of the river. It was a working quarry and a sub-camp of the Dora-Nordhausen
konzentrationslager
, but it closed towards the end of the war and never re-opened. The current owners of the site, a company registered in the Cayman Islands, have gone to great lengths to keep people away. Given the circumstances, the company is naturally part
of
our inquiry, but so far we have had little success discovering who is behind it.’

After crossing the river they turned north, and a little later left the main road on to a forest track.

‘Of course, the bunker is still a murder scene, but we have completed our initial investigations in the area where the bodies were discovered. The strangest thing is that they were all already dead.’

‘I don’t understand.’ Sarah leaned forward from the back seats.

‘You noticed that many of the bodies were in a remarkable state of preservation? It seems that conditions within the bunker were conducive to partial mummification. Our initial forensic investigations showed that several victims had similar tattoos on the inside of their left forearm. You understand the implications of this?’

Jamie shook his head, but Sarah said she did.

The police chief explained. ‘Whatever you think of the Nazis, Mr Saintclair, they were extremely thorough. Every concentration camp prisoner received a personal identification number. At first, the numbers were sewn on their prison clothes, but because of the nature of the camps the clothing must be reused: again and again and again. So instead of on the clothing, the number would be written on the prisoner. Much more economic and efficient, yes? When the prisoner was disposed of, his number was disposed of with him.

‘Fortunately, some records from the camps still survive and we have been able to identify those victims whose tattoos are still readable.’

‘Who were they?’

‘To the best of our knowledge, they are all either scientists or technicians.’ She pointed to a file in the compartment beneath the passenger window. ‘Please. The most well known was a man called Abraham Steinberg, a Berlin physicist who, before the war, worked closely with some of the scientists who were eventually involved in the
Uranverein
project. Many of his Jewish colleagues found ways to escape Germany, but poor Herr Steinberg elected to stay with his family.’ Jamie opened the file and found himself staring into the face of a stern, bearded man standing behind a workbench filled with scientific equipment. He turned to the next sheet and his heart lurched. ‘Another of the victims – the youngest we have identified – is his niece, Hannah Schulmann, a laboratory technician who worked closely with him.’ Lotte gave a sad smile. ‘She was nineteen years old.’ In the black-and-white photograph Hannah Schulmann had the ethereal, cinematic beauty that in other times would have won her a place on the screen. A softness and a sensitivity that surrounded her like a halo. Her dark eyes sparkled with humour and her smile showed tiny pearls of perfect white teeth. The eyes drew him in, and he choked, making the women stare. So much life. So much potential. Wasted. A terrible darkness descended on him and he felt a hatred for Walter Brohm and his like that made him wish it had been his finger on the trigger and not Matthew’s.