The Doomsday Testament

by James Douglas

  Jamie turned away from the ravine. He remembered the hatred he had felt for Walter Brohm in the depths of the bunker, and the silent vow he had made to the girl with the pianist’s fingers. Sarah was right. Justice was done. It was over. ‘What about the Sun Stone?’

  He saw the moment of indecision before her eyes hardened. ‘Forget about the Sun Stone. Burn the diary. If we can’t find the Sun Stone with the information we have, what chance is there of anyone else finding it without the book. Give me it. Right now.’ She unhitched her rucksack from her back and opened one of the zipped compartments to pull out a box of matches. ‘Give me it.’

  He looked at her outstretched hand, the palm raised, and it reminded him of the hand in the bunker. He was tempted. Sorely tempted. It would be so easy to give it to her and watch the flames eating it, then go home and forget everything. No one else would ever know about the Sun Stone. No one would ever know about Matthew Sinclair and the murder of three Nazis he’d been ordered to protect. ‘It’s not that simple.’

  She shook her head and now her eyes were filled with a mixture of anger and pity. ‘You’re wrong, Jamie, it is that simple. Give me the book.’

  ‘We owe it to Tenzin not to give up. Have you forgotten that he sacrificed himself to save us? Just because it happened six thousand miles away doesn’t make it any less real.’

  ‘Tenzin was a dead man walking and you know it. He’s not here now, but maybe if he was he’d be giving you the same advice. Let’s walk away from this now, Jamie. For us. Let’s go back to London and get on with our life and forget we ever heard of the Sun Stone.’

  He noticed the way she said life singular, not lives, and a little bolt of hope shot through his heart. She was saying she would be his and that made it all the more sensible to hand over the journal. There was only one problem.

  ‘If I give up now, I wouldn’t be the man you met at the Tube station, or the man who was going to fight a helicopter gunship for you. I’d just be the same old loser I was before I found you. Matthew would have wanted us to see this through.’

  He walked back to the gully edge and studied the long drop. ‘I need to go down there.’

  She came to his side. ‘Are you crazy? You’ll break your neck.’

  He laughed. ‘You’re talking to someone who’s climbed the Himalayas. This is a piece of cake.’

  She shook her head. ‘All you’ll find down there are a few mouldy old bones picked bare by rats.’

  He ignored her and dropped to his belly, slithering backwards until the bottom half of his body was over the edge and his feet scrambled for a toehold. Before he started climbing down, he looked up at her. ‘What if Walter Brohm didn’t have one map, but two? What if he waved the Harz map at my grandfather as a decoy while the map that points the way to the final location of the Sun Stone was hidden somewhere else? It could be down there, still in his pocket. I can’t take the chance.’

  With a rush of falling soil he was gone, half sliding, half scrambling down the sheer dirt face. He grabbed a tree root to slow his progress, but it only unbalanced him and he ended up rolling the last few feet and landing in an undignified dusty heap among the rocks beside the trickling water of the stream.

  ‘I’ll give you a two for style, but you get top marks for comic interpretation.’ Sarah’s voice came to him from above. ‘What can you see?’

  He looked around. Matthew said he had covered the bodies in a decent fashion. That meant there should be some kind of cairn.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘There’s nothing down here. No burial. Nothing that would mark a grave. The rocks are scattered about. Wait.’ Something a little further downstream caught his eye and he worked his way towards it. He picked up a fallen branch and dug at a ragged piece of material sticking out of a patch of sand between two large boulders.

  ‘What is it?’

  His heart quickened and he excavated deeper. Cloth? No, something more substantial than cloth. Leather.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Jamie!’

  ‘I think I may have found Walter Brohm’s briefcase.’

  Getting back up took longer than coming down, but eventually he made it caked in dirt, sweat running down his face and some shapeless, weather-stained remains under his left arm. Sarah accepted it with distaste, brushing off sand and wriggling aquatic insects.

  ‘You sure this is Walter Brohm’s case? It looks like crap to me.’

  ‘You’d look like crap if you’d been buried in mud for sixty years. If you look closely you can see the SS insignia stamped in the leather. I’m surprised it’s survived at all. It must have been made for Brohm from some kind of specially reinforced hide, crocodile or buffalo, maybe. Look, the brass catches are still intact.’

  He took the case from her and studied the furred green locks.

  ‘Let me,’ she demanded. ‘What makes you think there’ll be anything in there? Surely Matthew would have searched it before he threw it away.’ She rummaged in her rucksack, came up with a substantial Swiss army knife and opened the largest blade.

  ‘I’m not so sure. You heard what he said about Brohm. He wanted nothing to do with his research or the Sun Stone.’

  Sarah worked at the brass with the knife point. ‘He took the map of the Black Sun,’ she pointed out.

  ‘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 under
stand 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.’

  LVIII

  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.’