The Secret of Excalibur

by Andy McDermott

Chase set off, staying behind her so he could help if she got into trouble. But she was holding on well enough despite her staccato complaints. He looked back at the receding village. Some of the soldiers were recovering, the officer in charge limping out of the mosque and taking in the burning jeep with dismay before spotting his erstwhile prisoners disappearing into the desert.

  ‘Come on, shift your arses!’ Chase yelled to the others as thumping AK fire echoed off the buildings. Little geysers of sand burst up around them, shots smacking into the ground. But they were already beyond the AK-74’s effective range: the Russian weapon was valued more for its qualities as a near-indestructible bullet hose than its accuracy.

  They kept riding, the ungainly gallop of the camels belying their impressive pace through the soft sand. Kafashta dropped away into the heat haze, the soldiers swallowed with it.

  Nina was finally getting some degree of control over her charging camel, drawing alongside Mitchell. ‘Oh, my God, you’re hurt!’ she cried, seeing his bloodied arm.

  ‘It’s just a scratch,’ he said with a smile. ‘A flesh wound.’ Nina smiled back.

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ Chase groaned from behind them. ‘More bloody Python.’

  They kept up their pace until it became clear that there was no immediate sign of pursuit. Still keeping a watchful eye out for Syrian helicopters, they slowed the camels to a brisk trot as they continued south towards the border.

  Chase drew level with Mitchell. ‘Got to admit,’ he said, slightly grudgingly, ‘you did all right back there. For a sailor.’

  Mitchell gave him a thin smile. ‘I did more in my military career than just sit inside a steel tube.’

  ‘Oh? Like what?’ Nina asked.

  The smile broadened. ‘Can’t say. Classified.’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Great, another guy full of secrets. You’re as bad as Eddie!’

  An hour and a half later, they crossed the border, Mitchell taking a GPS handset from a saddlebag to confirm they were safely back in Jordan. They had made it.

  And they had the first piece of Caliburn. The first clue to the location of Excalibur.

  12

  Austria

  The contrast could hardly be any more stark: from the stifling, parched desolation of the Arabian desert to the cool, clean air of the Tyrolean Alps. The view from the picture windows of the coffee house in the village of Rasbrücke was spectacular, looking up the valley at the towering peaks to the south. The valley floor was carpeted in forests so vividly green that they almost seemed fake, while above them rose the pristine white slopes of the little ski resort. Even the chill edge in the high-altitude air was a relief after the inescapable heat of Syria.

  After returning the camels to Attayak, Karima drove Nina, Chase and Mitchell back to Amman and the State Department jet. Now, a day later, they were waiting to find out if Mitzi Fontana had discovered anything that might help them locate the second piece of the sword.

  ‘Here she is,’ said Chase as a bright red Porsche Cayenne pulled up outside. Mitzi, wrapped in a puffy skiing jacket that matched the colour of her SUV and carrying a satchel, climbed out and waved at him before entering the coffee house.

  ‘Hi!’ she said brightly, greeting Nina and Mitchell before sitting next to Chase and kissing his cheek. ‘How was Syria?’

  Chase shrugged. ‘Kind of boring, actually.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, disappointed. ‘Did you find what you were looking for?’

  ‘Yes,’ Mitchell told her in a clipped tone that made it clear he wanted that line of discussion to end as quickly as possible. ‘But what about you, Mitzi? Did you have any luck?’

  She smiled and opened her satchel, taking out several large sheets of paper. ‘I did, actually! It took a little while, but I persuaded someone in the local records office to help me.’

  ‘A man, by any chance?’ Chase asked casually, looking at a point several inches below Mitzi’s face. Her jacket was only half fastened, revealing her scoop-necked sweater - and her cleavage within it.

  ‘Actually, yes. How did you know?’

  He shrugged. ‘Oh, just a hunch.’

  ‘What did you find?’ Nina asked Mitzi, jabbing Chase with her elbow.

  She unfolded the papers, revealing them as photocopies of old architectural plans, all the text written in a heavy Gothic script. ‘These are plans of Staumberg Castle from their archives. I was hoping to find older ones, but these were all they had. They were made in 1946, when the castle was returned to the Staumberg family after the war.’

  ‘These are great,’ Nina assured her. From the plans, the castle appeared to be T-shaped, the foot extending into a courtyard surrounded by high walls. Three floors above ground, and what looked like two levels of cellars . . .

  ‘So what exactly are we looking for?’ Chase asked.

  ‘That’s something I did find out about,’ said Mitzi excitedly. ‘There’s a story that when the Germans shipped stolen treasure back through southern Europe, some of it ended up at the castle. The commandant was supposed to have secretly hidden it. But nobody ever found it after the war, and now the owner refuses to let anyone else look.’

  ‘Maybe he wants to look for it himself,’ mused Mitchell.

  ‘Or maybe he just doesn’t want treasure hunters smashing up his home,’ Chase countered. He put on a German accent. ‘“You vant to tear ze place apart looking for Nazi gold? Ja, go ahead!” I don’t think so.’

  ‘Did you manage to contact the owner, Mitzi?’ asked Nina.

  ‘I spoke to him, yes. Briefly. I talked mostly to his butler.’

  ‘He actually has a butler?’ Chase laughed. ‘I bet he’s got a monocle too.’

  ‘His name’s Roland Staumberg, and he’s one of the owners of this resort. The castle’s been his family’s home for generations. He seemed very nice - he just didn’t want any visitors.’

  Nina picked up another page of the plans. ‘Did you find out anything about him?’

  ‘A little. He’s well liked around here, but the man at the records office said he is very private. He’s apparently quite a sportsman, though. Skiing, of course, but he also goes snowmobiling, scuba-dives, races yachts—’

  ‘Diving?’ Nina asked.

  ‘Yes. Is that helpful?’

  ‘Maybe. He might at least talk to us, if we’re lucky. But that won’t get us anywhere unless we can convince him we know exactly what we’re looking for.’ She examined the plans again, turning the sheet in her hands so that it was aligned along the castle’s long axis. The layout of the rooms was a perfect mirror image . . .

  ‘Ay up,’ said Chase, noticing her thoughtful expression. ‘She’s got something.’

  Nina pushed everybody’s cups aside to clear more space on the table, laying out the pages so they were all oriented the same way. ‘Look how symmetrical it is. But if there really is a hidden room, it won’t be on these plans, because they were made after the war. We need to look for anything that’s not mirrored.’

  She carefully scanned the pages, the others shifting round the table to look for themselves. ‘This isn’t the same,’ said Chase after a short while, indicating a door that only appeared on one side of the castle’s second floor.

  ‘There’s a spiral staircase that isn’t mirrored here,’ Mitchell added, tapping a finger on another sheet.

  ‘But they’re not rooms, they’re just alterations,’ Nina said. ‘We need to see if there’s a difference in the actual physical layout of the building . . .’

  ‘Like this?’ Mitzi asked. ‘The lowest level of the cellars, there are two long rooms on each side of this passage.’

  ‘Probably wine cellars,’ said Nina, looking more closely.

  ‘Yes, but look!’ Mitzi used her phone as a makeshift ruler, lining it up across the end of one of the rooms. ‘The one on the right is shorter than the one on the left.’

  She was right, Nina saw. The difference was not much, no more than a few feet on the scale of the plans . . . but it was defini
tely there. ‘My God, it is!’

  Chase gave Mitzi an admiring look. ‘Bloody hell, love, I think you’ve got it! Nice work!’

  She beamed proudly back. ‘Thank you!’

  ‘I guess your mum was wrong - it’s a good job we asked you to help. Come here.’ He leaned over to hug her. She returned the gesture enthusiastically. ‘So now what?’

  ‘Now?’ said Nina, scrutinising the slight asymmetry of the plans, ‘I think it’s time I talked to this Roland Staumberg.’

  ‘Dr Wilde,’ said Roland Staumberg, bowing to Nina before taking her hand. ‘An honour. It is a thrill to meet the discoverer of Atlantis!’

  Leaving Mitzi - to her disappointment - waiting in the village, Nina, Chase and Mitchell had driven further up the valley to Staumberg Castle. As Nina hoped, her current celebrity status had piqued his interest. Though a little surprised that she was already in Rasbrücke, he nevertheless agreed to meet her.

  The castle was an imposing, starkly beautiful structure perched atop a ridge protruding from the mountainside. It overlooked the resort’s ski slopes and forests from the end of a steep zig-zagging road that despite having been ploughed was still coated with snow. Mitchell’s four-wheel-drive Chevrolet Suburban SUV, another vehicle laid on by the US government, was much appreciated.

  When the castle’s outer gates whirred open, they entered the courtyard and parked near a pair of snowmobiles, to be met by a tall, whip-thin man in dark clothes who introduced himself as Kurt, Staumberg’s butler. Staumberg himself, waiting at the castle’s door, was in his forties, sand-blond and barrel-chested, with an air of refined intellect. To Chase’s barely contained glee, he was indeed wearing a monocle.

  ‘It’s good to meet you too, Herr Staumberg,’ Nina replied. She introduced Chase and Mitchell, then took in the large hall they had entered. Just as the plans had suggested, it was symmetrical, stone stairways rising up on each side to a balcony that ran round the side and rear walls, stained glass windows lining it. Chandeliers hung from the high ceiling, and large and heavy tapestries reached almost to floor level, suits of armour standing stiffly between them. The whole room was panelled in dark wood, its varnish so thick and warm that it almost seemed like a coating of amber. ‘This is . . . wow, this is very impressive.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Staumberg, ‘but it costs so much to heat!’ Everyone laughed politely at the ice-breaking joke. ‘Please, follow me. There is a warmer room upstairs.’

  He led them up one of the flights of stairs and along the balcony, where more suits of polished armour were on display. At the end was a wrought-iron spiral staircase leading down, one of the asymmetrical elements they had seen on the plans. The butler opened a door beside it and ushered them into the room beyond.

  It was a study, a log fire snapping in a stone fireplace. A tall window looked down the valley towards the village, although the arrangement of the leather armchairs made it clear that Staumberg spent more time looking at the rather incongruous plasma TV than the stunning view outside.

  ‘For the football,’ he explained as he gestured for the others to sit before taking his own seat. ‘Would you like something to drink? Coffee, tea, schnapps?’

  Deciding it was a little early to start drinking, Nina politely accepted coffee, Mitchell and Chase doing the same. Kurt bowed and exited.

  ‘Thank you for seeing us, Herr Staumberg,’ Nina said.

  ‘Oh, it is my pleasure! I was reading about you just the other day.’ He riffled through a small stack of magazines, pulling out a diving title. ‘Here, you see?’ He opened the magazine; Nina’s IHA publicity portrait grinned from the page beside a larger photo of a minisub over one of the Atlantis excavation sites. ‘I enjoy wreck-diving - exploring sunken ships. But what you have done is much more exciting! So what can I do for you, Dr Wilde? Much as I would love to hear about your discovery of Atlantis, I do not think that is why you have come to see me, no?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. Although we are looking for something else, another ancient legend.’ She glanced at Mitchell. ‘I don’t know how much I can tell you about it . . .’

  ‘Let me guess,’ sighed Staumberg, skin folding around the rim of his monocle as he frowned. ‘You are looking for Excalibur.’

  Nina blinked in surprise. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I was pestered by a man about it some months ago. He had a mad theory that part of it was hidden here in a Nazi treasure-trove. But I have lived here all my life, and there is no such hidden treasure. I explored every centimetre of the castle as a child, so I would know! But this man, what was his name, Rust?’

  ‘Bernd Rust.’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘I knew him,’ said Nina. ‘He was murdered.’

  Staumberg was shocked. ‘Murdered? I am sorry. I did not like the man, he was annoying, but I did not wish him harm.’

  ‘The thing is,’ Nina continued, ‘he was murdered because of his search for Excalibur. I didn’t believe him at first either, but since then . . . well, we think he may have been right. That’s why the IHA is looking for the other pieces, so we can find them before his killers do.’

  The Austrian was now decidedly uncomfortable. ‘And you think one of these pieces is here.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Which means his killers may also think it is here.’

  ‘That’s a distinct possibility,’ said Mitchell. ‘Which is why we’d like your permission to search for it.’

  ‘But search where?’ Staumberg asked. ‘I cannot think of anywhere it could be hidden that would not already have been found.’

  ‘What about the cellars?’ Nina asked. She unfolded the plan of the castle’s lowest level. ‘Here, you see? The castle is perfectly symmetrical, except for this one room that’s slightly shorter than the other.’

  Staumberg took the plan and examined it with interest - then blanched. ‘Oh. The wine cellar.’

  Kurt entered at that moment bearing a tray of steaming coffee mugs. He caught Staumberg’s expression and asked him a question in German, getting a somewhat agitated response. Nina picked up enough to know they were discussing the cellar. ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘I would . . . ah, prefer not to show you that room,’ Staumberg answered.

  ‘Thought you said there wasn’t anything hidden here,’ said Chase.

  ‘There is not, that I know of, but . . .’ He rubbed the back of his neck. ‘It is just . . . I would rather not have visitors in that room. But Kurt and I, we can search it again and see if we find anything, ja?’

  ‘You could,’ said Mitchell, ‘but the thing is, the people who murdered Rust also stole his research. The same research that brought him here in the first place,’ he added pointedly. ‘If they’ve got it, they’ll probably pay you a visit, just like us. But they won’t ask to search the castle.’

  ‘We can keep them out,’ said Staumberg unconvincingly.

  ‘If they want to get in here, they will,’ Chase said. ‘They’ve already killed people looking for this thing - and tried to kill us, too.’

  ‘If this piece of the sword really is here, we have to keep it out of their hands,’ Nina pleaded. ‘It’s very important that the IHA get it first - it could lead to a discovery as important as Atlantis.’

  Staumberg stared out of the window for a long moment before responding, his shoulders visibly slumping. ‘Very well, I will let you see the cellar. But before I do . . . I must insist on your complete discretion.’

  ‘You have it,’ Nina assured him. ‘Everything will be absolutely confidential.’

  ‘Very well.’ Still reluctant, Staumberg spoke in German to Kurt, who nodded and opened the study door to show them out.

  They descended the spiral staircase and went through double doors at the back of the great hall, passing along a corridor before descending two flights of stairs to the lowest floor. Kurt switched on the lights, dim bulbs illuminating a low stone passage. ‘This way,’ said Staumberg, going to a heavy oak door on the right. He swung it open, r
evealing the room beyond. It was a wine cellar, as Nina had expected - but on a grand scale, wooden racks holding literally thousands of bottles lining both sides of the room.

  ‘So his big secret’s alcoholism?’ Chase whispered to Nina.

  Kurt led the way to the far end of the long room, Staumberg behind him. He looked back at Nina. ‘The reason I ask for secrecy is . . . well, my reputation, both as a member of the Staumberg family and as a businessman. Only a few of my most trusted friends have seen what is in here.’

  ‘As I said, this will be confidential,’ she said, now intrigued.

  ‘Good. Good.’ They reached the end of the room, where there was a door. For a moment Nina wondered if what lay beyond was the hidden room on the plans, but that made no sense. The back wall was made from wooden planks, not stone; no attempt had been made to disguise it, and it seemed relatively recently built.

  Kurt took a key ring from his pocket and flicked through it, finally selecting a particular key and unlocking the door. He opened it, revealing nothing beyond but darkness. Nina sniffed the air as an odd mix of scents emerged from the mysterious room. Wood, leather, some sort of polish, the faint tang of old candle smoke . . .

  Staumberg took a long breath as Kurt entered the room. ‘Well . . . come in.’ He stepped aside for the others to enter as the butler switched on the light.

  Nina, first in, stopped abruptly as she took in the contents of the room. ‘Oh . . . my,’ she muttered, struggling for words.

  Chase, on the other hand, could barely contain his laughter. ‘Bloody hell.’

  They had entered a dungeon.

  But not some medieval torture chamber; this was a thoroughly modern affair, blood-red walls and a floor of glossy black tile, full-length mirrors strategically placed so the occupants could always see themselves reflected. A wooden bench, padded with red leather and fitted with numerous thick restraining straps, dominated the centre of the room. A long rack by the door held dozens of whips and paddles, and on a table near the back wall was a row of what Nina at first took to be oversized black candles before realising they were in fact quite terrifyingly large dildos.