‘It couldn’t be helped,’ he lied. ‘We know where he lives. We’ll go back tonight and do the job properly.’
‘Ninety per cent of accidents happen at home. Perhaps he’ll drown in the bath?’
Charles Lee didn’t smile. ‘As long as we take care of it this time, no one needs to know.’
The younger man nodded, visibly relieved.
‘What about the girl? Who is she?’
‘She wasn’t with him when he went into the station. Maybe someone he knows who witnessed the . . . accident?’
Lee reached behind him and picked up a black SLR camera from the back seat. The lens appeared normal, the kind any tourist would use for photographing London’s sights, but it had been specifically designed to provide the same results as a much larger telephoto. He homed in on the couple and took a series of shots.
‘Well, we’ll know by tomorrow morning.’ If the girl had a passport or any form of picture identification anywhere in the world, the Bureau’s sophisticated photo identification software would find her.
‘What if she’s there tonight?’
Lee put the car into gear and moved carefully out into the traffic.
‘That would be too bad.’
Ten minutes later the Ford pulled up at a set of lights by a row of derelict shops. Beyond the shops stretched a broad empty space where a factory had stood, but which now contained a few burned-out wrecks that had once been automobiles. They had made the journey in silence, Lee allowing his colleague to contemplate his failure and formulating in his mind how to ensure the man from Beijing saw his own part in the best possible light.
‘I thank you for your forbearance and support, comrade,’ his partner said.
‘I’ve told you before, don’t call me comrade. You are in London now.’
The younger man nodded. He looked up as a motorcycle and pillion passenger drew up beside them, noting faded jeans and a fringed leather jacket. ‘If the commander heard how we’d failed . . .’
The helmeted rider turned his head towards the car and an alarm rang in the younger man’s head. He reached for the pistol below his seat. ‘Drive!’ he screamed.
Lee reacted as quickly as any driver could have done. Even the man from Beijing would have been impressed. He was still too slow. His hand had barely touched the gearstick when the pillion passenger calmly raised a silenced Mach 10 machine pistol and kept his finger on the trigger until the bolt clicked on empty. The Mach 10 is an old design, developed by Gordon B. Ingram as far back as 1963, but it is remarkably efficient and remarkably quiet. If someone had been close enough to hear, the only sound they would have registered was that of the thirty-two 9mm hollow-point rounds thumping against the interior of the Ford after passing through their victims, and even that was drowned as the motorcyclist revved his engine. For these particular assassins, the hollow point had two advantages over normal jacketed ammunition. When the bullet hit soft tissue it was designed to mushroom, thereby creating extensive damage along a wider path through the body and a significantly larger exit wound. Trapped by their seatbelts the two Chinese agents jerked and shuddered as almost half a pound of metal travelling at a thousand feet per second punched into them and the interior exploded into a charnel house of blood, bone and ragged flesh. The same mushroom phenomenon slowed the velocity of the bullets so that, although they tore up the plastic trim, none pierced the metalwork to leave outward evidence of the hit or inconvenience passers-by. When the bodies stopped twitching the pillion passenger leaned over to place a package inside the Ford. He gave the driver the OK to move off. From the moment they had pulled up beside the car it had taken less than ten seconds.
‘So what’s wrong with being a freelance journalist? Somebody has to do it, right?’ Sarah went quiet for a few seconds as she chewed her burger. Jamie was fairly certain he’d never eaten a Big Mac before, but there was a first time for everything. It was worth enduring the soggy cardboard-textured bun to be in the company of this mercurial girl-woman with a point of view so different from his own. He sat back as she drew breath and continued the broadside that had been provoked by nothing more than a look of mild disquiet. ‘If you’re thinking scavenger, think again. I did a Masters in English Literature at Harvard. I’m a writer, and what I really want to do is write novels. But even writers have to eat, and a hundred thousand words is just so much computer crap until somebody wants to publish it, right, so I do features; homes and gardens, fashion, that kind of stuff.’ She reeled off an impressive list of publications. ‘OK?’ The final word was a challenge and he could almost feel the heat from the fire in her eyes. He wondered what would happen if that level of passion was channelled in a different direction.
‘So what brings an aspiring novelist from Boston to London? I’d have thought there was as much, if not more, inspiration in the States. Isn’t Greenwich Village the place to be?’
‘Jeez, Jamie, you must be older than you look. You’ll be telling me next you were at Woodstock.’
He ran a hand though his hair and slouched in his plastic chair in a vain attempt to appear what people called cool and she laughed, a deep-seated, unashamed proper laugh. ‘Hey, you almost made it to the eighties there. A new haircut and full wardrobe change and I might let you take me out.’
Ouch.
She noticed his look. ‘Hey, I’m only kidding, right?’ She threw a handful of fries into her mouth and managed to make it look elegant. Swallowing, she took a drink from what looked like a gallon cup of diet Coke and produced a gentle belch. ‘To get back to your original question, I’m not here for inspiration, I’m here for the atmosphere. My book is a time-shift thriller.’ His mystification must have shown. ‘Happens now and way back in history? Simultaneously. Barbara Erskine?’ He nodded, the name was familiar. ‘Same theory, different execution. Mine will be tougher, grittier. Elizabethan London. You’ll be able to smell the sweat and the cat pee.’
‘Sounds great.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘You’re kidding, right?’
‘Not at all,’ he said, and meant it. ‘I’m fairly sure that anything you write will be worth reading.’
‘Anyway, I’ve just finished the first draft and now I’m looking for another feature assignment to help keep my foul-breathed landlord out of my face for a while.’
Jamie hesitated for a full five seconds. The decision he was about to make was like stepping off a cliff just to experience what it was like to fly, and he suspected he was going to regret it when he hit the bottom, which was bound to happen sooner or later. He took a deep breath.
‘Er, there’s this rather wonderful stolen painting and . . .’
He told her about the Raphael. But not about the journal or Matthew. Not yet. When he’d finished, her eyes shone and the words bubbled from her like water from a mountain stream. ‘Now that’s a story. You think you might be able to track it down? Maybe I can help you. I’m good with research and I’ll pay my way. Anyway, you need somebody to watch your back.’
Which was true. He’d also convinced himself he was attracted to her in a way that went beyond the purely physical. That would take time to confirm and he had a feeling he’d need to approach things slowly. On the other hand, working together, even if it was on a wild-goose chase, would at least give him a chance to find out. He grinned. ‘OK, you’re hired as my acting, unpaid researcher, but if there’s a story in it, I get copy approval.’
Now it was her turn to grimace, but she nodded.
‘What do you know about Heinrich Himmler?’
XIX
4 May 1945, somewhere south of Nürnberg. Walter Brohm was probably the most self-centred human being I ever met. Anyone else would have been cowed by the situation in which he found himself – a prisoner travelling under guard and with an uncertain future – but all Brohm could see was opportunity. We travelled together in the second jeep and he talked and talked, about his work, about his genius and about the conflicting ideologies that had brought about the war. For Brohm, our war was t
he inevitable continuation of that ‘War to end all Wars’ both our fathers had endured; a necessary reconfiguration of national boundaries, power and influence to redress what had been taken – he said stolen – from Germany two and a half decades earlier. ‘You may take a nation’s resources, but its pride is inviolable, Leutnant Matt. You would have done the same.’ Calling me Leutnant, though he knew I was a captain, was his idea of poking fun. That was Brohm’s way. ‘But we could never have produced Hitler,’ I countered. ‘Pfaw! You created Hitler with your merciless peace, you and the French and the Americans. Hitler was just a politician taking advantage of his people’s prejudices and fears. Every country has its own Hitlers. Wait until your middle classes are without jobs and forced to watch their children go hungry,’ he said. ‘Then you will see your Hitlers.’ He told me that Hitler’s only mistake had been to declare war on America. Not Russia? ‘Of course not. Communism was the ideological counterweight to Nazi-ism, for one to prevail the other must fall. It was a question of natural selection. With France neutered and powerless, Hitler had to attack Stalin before Stalin attacked Hitler.’
He trusted me because he had cast me in the role of his saviour. ‘The Nazis,’ he said, ‘had just been a means to an end – Ein mittel zu einem ende, Leutnant Matt.’ All that mattered was his work. He could have gone to the Russians, but for all their power and resources they were a stupid people who wouldn’t have treated him correctly. He would work with the west and the world would be a better place for it. We talked about art. ‘I have a great painting,’ he said, ‘very famous.’ From his loving description I worked out that it must be Italian, perhaps by one of the big three. ‘Where?’ I asked, joking. ‘In a safe place.’ He winked and his hand strayed to his breast pocket.
When he was bored, he would pass the time with riddles. ‘My journey begins at Heini’s centre of the earth. You must look upon the faded map for the sign of the Ox.’ He laughed, because that was the name he had already conferred upon his fellow prisoner, Strasser. I was never sure whether he was making fun of me, and he was insulted that I did not play his little games. Of course, every man has his own centre. Walter Brohm claimed the centre of his world would always be his mother’s spiritual home. Sometimes, I thought the war had driven him mad.
‘WHERE DID YOU get this?’
Back in Jamie’s flat Sarah studied the symbol on the reverse of the silk escape map. Jamie noted approvingly that she was now all business. He pondered just how much to tell her about the map’s provenance.
‘I suppose I inherited it. My grandfather was in the war.’ He turned the cloth over to the escape map. ‘Every Allied airman carried one of these. He must have drawn the symbol on the reverse of it. I think it’s a copy of something he was shown by a German prisoner.’
‘And you think it might lead you to the painting?’
A catch in her voice said she didn’t quite believe it. ‘According to family legend, the prisoner he was guarding mentioned the Raphael.’ He felt a sharp pain like a knitting needle in the chest as he lied. ‘Now we have this.’
She frowned. ‘So it’s a clue. Kind of X marks the spot?’
‘Right. Only by my count, X has nine arms and the spot looks like a spider’s web. And what about the words and the date?’
‘In Faust’s footsteps. D’you know anything about Faust?’
‘Only what I remember from school. Didn’t he sell his soul to the devil?’
‘That’s right. Old, old story, but a guy called Christopher Marlowe made it famous round about the time of Good Queen Bess, called him Faustus, though. The date thirteen fifty-seven doesn’t mean a lot.’
‘Edward the Third was on the throne of England, but most of what is now Germany was ruled by the Holy Roman Empire. What relevance can it have to the Second World War?’
‘Or Raphael?’
‘He lived between fourteen eighty and fifteen twenty; about a hundred and fifty years too late.’
‘So not much of a clue, huh?’
‘Maybe. But the original of this symbol is out there somewhere.’
She looked up. ‘You mentioned Heinrich Himmler.’
‘That’s right.’ He showed her the pictures of marching SS men on the computer, the lightning-flash runes and a picture of a Swastika flag. ‘Notice any resemblance?’
‘Uhuh.’
‘So I dug a little deeper into Himmler and the SS. It turns out that Himmler was obsessed with the occult.’
He smoothed the silk so the full effect of the symbol was visible and she gave a little grunt of recognition. ‘Like a pentagram maybe, but different?’ A pentagram was a five-pointed star associated with freemasonry and paganism that had sometimes been hijacked by Satanists. ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and all that. It might tie in with the Faust angle, too?’
Jamie nodded, impressed. ‘Could be. I hadn’t thought of that. But one of the things I discovered was that Himmler was so taken with the Arthur story that he had his own round table built. And that took me here.’
She squinted at the blurred picture on the screen, trying to make something of it.
‘Some kind of great hall?’
‘That’s right, but look at the floor, just off-centre.’
Her hand reached out and squeezed his and he knew she had seen what he had. Slightly indistinct, but still recognizable as the twin of the one on Matthew’s map, the marble sun symbol with its spray of articulated arms and its sinister presence dominated the room. That was when he made his decision. The sun symbol led them to Wewelsburg. Wewelsburg could lead them to the Raphael. He would accept Matthew Sinclair’s challenge.
‘How would you like to do some European sightseeing?’
XX
‘THE VICTIMS ARE two men of Chinese origin who we believe earlier attempted to eliminate our target. The police are investigating a Triad link, apparently they found a large quantity of heroin in the car.’
Frederick waited for the inevitable explosion and was rewarded by a single word. ‘Clowns.’ He wasn’t sure whether his superior was referring to the dead men or to the police.
A long silence followed while the other man considered the question Frederick had already asked himself. ‘Do we think Saintclair was involved?’
‘It does not seem likely. They were each struck by approximately twenty rounds of soft-point ammunition. Whoever made the hit knew what they were doing. Our people tell us Saintclair has weapons experience, but only at cadet level,’ he said dismissively. ‘He was a toy soldier at Cambridge. I doubt he would know one end of an automatic weapon from the other.’
‘So, the opposition, but which part of the opposition?’
‘Is it significant that they were Chinese?’ The man at the other end of the phone frowned. It was very significant, but Frederick would never know that. Frederick was commander of the society’s military wing, like his father before him. But the ideals that drove him were old-fashioned and, in his leader’s view, no longer relevant in the twenty-first century. He had a very different agenda. Frederick, and the men like him, were a means to an end. Nothing more. The Tibetan casket wasn’t Frederick’s problem. It appeared that the men in Beijing who believed they were the rightful owners of the casket were much better placed than he had realized. Someone had done him a favour, but that same someone might very well have the opposite effect in the future.
‘I’ll instigate some investigations at this end. In the meantime, are we still on Saintclair?’
‘He should be boarding the Air Berlin flight to Paderborn with his girlfriend in exactly five minutes.’
‘Girlfriend? The file said no significant others.’
‘It appears she is new on the scene. We are checking her out.’
‘Do that, and get back to me. I don’t like loose ends.’
‘Hey, could that be it?’
Jamie leaned across so that he had a view from Sarah’s window as they made their final approach to Paderborn-Lippstadt airport. Through the shimmering translucent d
isc of the propeller he made out the regular street patterns of a small German town scattered around a wooded height. On the summit of the hill stood an enormous, oddly shaped castle constructed of grey stone. It had been built in the shape of an elongated triangle, with a large twin-towered building across the apex and two wings that converged on what looked like a huge drum. At first glance it reminded Jamie of the Starship Enterprise. He stayed a little longer than he needed to, enjoying the proximity of the slim body and the fragrance of the perfume she wore.
‘That’s it. Wewelsburg Castle. The centre of Himmler’s empire.’
He gave her a reassuring smile and leaned back in his seat ready for landing. The knuckles on her left hand showed white where she gripped the rest between them. Most Americans he’d met treated flying the same way Londoners did the Tube, as a necessary inconvenience that brought them closer than they liked to people they’d never met and probably didn’t want to. Sarah Grant was different. She’d taken one look at the twin turbo-prop plane and almost refused to board.
‘I came across on a 747 and I didn’t like that much. You’re not getting me on a boxkite the Wright brothers flew in. I’ll wait until something bigger comes along, huh?’
Eventually, Jamie persuaded her it was all part of the big adventure and once they were in the air she’d opened her eyes and almost relaxed. Now they were approaching the runway she closed them again. ‘Wake me when we’ve landed,’ she ordered.
Wewelsburg lay less than two miles from the airport, but Jamie resisted her suggestion that they take an immediate look at the castle and, instead, drove the hire car to Paderborn, where they were staying at a cheap hotel on the outskirts.
‘I’ve booked us in for three nights, so we’ll have plenty of time. No need to rush things,’ he said airily, ignoring the look of suspicion she directed at him. The look told him everything he needed to know about the coming seventy-two hours. This was going to be a strictly professional trip. He forced his libido back into cold storage and concentrated on getting them the nine miles to the town.
The Doomsday Testament Page 11