The Doomsday Testament

I

Ernst Gruber squinted into the ice-flecked wind, gritted his teeth and kept his eyes firmly on the retreating figure ahead. The muscles in the backs of the German’s legs felt as if they were on fire and his chest like he was breathing hydrochloric acid, but the pain gave him a certain sense of masochistic satisfaction. If he was suffering, how much more so were the lesser men following the near vertical scar in the sterile, corpse-grey rocks that provided them with a path up the mountain?

Not the Drupka guide, Jigme. Like all his people, the nomads who scratched a living in one of the most inhospitable environments on earth, he was a wiry urchin of a man capable of incredible feats of endurance. His metronomic step didn’t falter — no matter how steep the incline or difficult the footing. It had been five days since the expedition set out from their base camp by the freshwater lake. Today they had already marched for four ankle-crushing hours across country devoid of either water or vegetation, but still he showed no sign of tiring. Gruber, a vastly experienced explorer who had climbed some of the highest mountains in the Himalayas and ten years earlier had led the first German expedition across the Gobi Desert, delighted in testing himself against such men, but he knew his companions would be destroyed if they maintained this pace.

‘Bkag pa! Gcig chu tshod.’ He shouted the order to halt for an hour, but it must have been lost in the wind for the guide maintained his pace, or perhaps he just didn’t want to stop. These people were like that. Stubborn. Like a donkey he would plod on until his stomach told him it was time to eat one of the barley dumplings that were the only sustenance he appeared to need. Gruber increased his pace until he was close enough to grasp the Drupka tribesman by the arm. ‘Bkag pa!’ he repeated.

The guide grinned and nodded, although he was puzzled why the loud European with the frightening eyes and unhealthy red face persisted in addressing him in his unintelligible Tibetan. ‘We stop soon. Very close,’ he assured Gruber in bastard English.

‘No. Stop now,’ the German ordered.

The grin didn’t falter, but Jigme wondered again what had made him agree to take these demanding, ill-mannered foreigners to the special hole in the ground. His cousin, now a Buddhist monk in far-off Lhasa, had told him of it when Jigme had made his solitary visit to the Tibetan capital on a pilgrimage to the Jokhang Temple. The Germans had sought him out at his village because of the English he had learned from a Yakshir holy man who had been trapped for a season on the plateau and died of hut fever wishing he was back in a country called Leds. Normally the parties he led were only interested in finding special rocks to hit with their little hammers, or to shoot the gentle Kiang, the wild ass which didn’t have the sense to run away from a man with a rifle. The Germans were different. They had asked him about the old people, which amused him because, in the village, they had been surrounded by old people. It took time before he realized they meant the enlightened ones, who had passed beyond life, which was even more amusing because the enlightened were spirit creatures now, their earthly bodies exposed and consumed by the vultures, the buzzards and the foxes. How could one find a ghost, especially if the ghost didn’t want to be found? But the large foreigner insisted that these old people had lived in holes far below the ground. Did he know of any such holes? Now they were a few hours from their goal and he wanted to stop. Truly they were beyond comprehension.

‘Stop now,’ he agreed at last, pointing to a piece of stony but relatively flat ground just ahead on the left. ‘You rest, eat, look at rocks.’

Jigme carried on a few paces before settling comfortably on the steep path with his pack beside him. He sat, cheerfully considering the twenty goats he had been promised, and the handsome wife they would bring him. The wind had dropped now and a watery sun blinked myopically through the thin cloud, showing the surrounding hills in all their arid magnificence. Far to the south-east was just visible the vast, snow-crusted bulk of Quomolonga, which the Europeans spoke of as Everest. One by one, the five members of Gruber’s research team staggered to the rest area, leaving the porters, carrying their sixty-pound loads of supplies and equipment, to crouch where they halted.

Gruber assessed his companions as they passed, searching for signs of weakness or injury that would slow them down later in the day. The group had been put together to provide a broad range of expertise. As well as being the expedition leader, Ernst Gruber doubled as the team’s zoology and mapping specialist. Berger, the ethnologist; Rasch, the anthropologist, and Von Hassell, the cinematic cameraman, were all reliable mountaineers and experienced explorers, wiry, tanned and bearded. After them came Junger, the security man who always had something to smile about, even if the smile never quite reached his pale eyes. A few yards behind, and looking like a city accountant who’d taken a wrong turn, struggled Gruber’s deputy, Walter Brohm.

The men were of a similar age and had one other aspect in common. They were all officers of the SS Ahnenerbe — the Nazi Ancestral Research and Teaching Society — personally appointed by Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler. During the five day trek through the mountains they had conscientiously recorded and photographed the wildlife and fauna, studied the ethnic make-up of the local tribes and taken geological samples like the naturalists they appeared to be. The true reason for their mission was Himmler’s obsession with the occult and his personal quest to discover the origins of the lost city of Atlantis and the ancient civilization of superhumans who had given birth to the Aryan race. According to ancient legend, these earliest Aryans, the Vril, practised a sophisticated form of mind control and had been led from the city before Atlantis drowned in the flood. After travelling through Asia they had created the legendary underground kingdom of Thule. If the expedition could find the entrance to Thule, Himmler believed he would gain access to all the secrets of the Vril.

As he distributed the rations, Gruber revealed for the first time that they were close to their destination. Walter Brohm noticed the eyes of his companions light up with anticipation and allowed himself a smile. They were the true believers, he was a realist — only here out of necessity, in the pursuit of advancement. A physicist with a fascination for geology, Brohm had no interest in lost cities, which was just as well because he very much doubted they were going to find one. He would loyally accompany the others into some dark cave where they would discover a few animal bones, or perhaps a Yeti, which Gruber would hail as the first Atlantean, and then he could go home to the comfort of his office and his laboratory. He knew Gruber didn’t like him, but that was of no consequence. The cloth-headed adventurer was one of those National Socialist enthusiasts who would run through a brick wall for his Führer — and was probably capable of doing just that. Walter Brohm was only interested in Walter Brohm. He had joined the Nazi party when it became clear nothing could stop Adolf Hitler from taking and holding power, and the Schutzstaffel, the SS, because he looked better in black than brown and it was the quickest way for an ambitious man to get on. He would never admit it, but he looked upon the secret rituals of the SS as a joke, although no worse than the Masons. With Germany expanding economically and militarily, the future had never looked brighter for a pastor’s son from stuffy old Dresden.

Two hours after they resumed their march, the expedition reached the edge of a gigantic depression several hundred feet deep and perhaps two miles wide. Brohm couldn’t suppress a flutter of excitement when he recognized what it was, but he guessed even now that Gruber was destined to be disappointed.

‘Where is the cave?’ the expedition leader demanded.

Jigme’s deep-set eyes, the product of a hundred generations of staring into Himalayan blizzards, twinkled and his grin grew wider. His cousin’s instructions had been very clear. ‘Secret place. You follow. I show.’ He skipped off down a barely visible track, with the rest of the group treading warily in his footsteps on the perilous slope.

The cave — more of a tunnel — lay hidden at the bottom of the eastern wall of the crater, partially screened by a rock fall and only visible to those standing directly opposite it. In any other part of the world it would long since have filled with rotting vegetation or silt washed down by the rains, but little vegetation grew on the Changthang and the plateau’s annual rainfall measured around ten centimetres and was absorbed instantly, as if the land were a giant sheet of blotting paper.

In front of the entrance, Brohm was amused to see Gruber and the others lose some of their former spark. They were big sky men, mountains and deserts were their natural habitat, not this wormhole. Yet he could hardly blame them. There was something menacing about that brooding black portal that would make even an expert caver hesitate. The curious thing for Brohm was that the entrance appeared to be almost exactly circular, so perfect that it might have been man-made. Beyond it, as far as his torch would reach, the tunnel floor descended at a fairly steep angle of about thirty degrees. From a geological viewpoint he found it fascinating.

Gruber studied the entrance somberly. ‘We’ll make camp for the night and go in tomorrow. I want everyone up at first light.’

After a meagre breakfast of barley dumplings and yak butter tea, Gruber made his dispositions.

‘Rasch, Brohm, Junger and I will make the initial descent, along with the guide, who will lead.’ Von Hassell, the cameraman, protested that he should be involved but Gruber waved him away. ‘You will have your opportunity. We’ll rope together as if we were on a climb and take it slowly, a foot at a time — we don’t know what the ground will be like. I don’t want to lose anyone. Berger will command on the surface.’ He raised a hand holding a whistle. ‘If there’s an emergency I’ll blow on this, but your first duty will be to ensure the porters don’t desert us.’

Berger nodded, his face a frowning mask of concentration, the expression he thought conveyed ideological commitment, but which only made him look as if he suffered from chronic constipation. Brohm was surprised at his own feelings. He should be anxious at being volunteered for such a hazardous enterprise. Instead, it was as if this cave had been waiting for him all his life. It held no terrors, quite the opposite. He felt as if he were being welcomed.

Gruber checked their bindings and roped himself into line behind Jigme. Twelve-foot lengths of hand-tested climbing rope linked the five men and each had been issued with a torch and spare batteries. Like the others, Brohm’s pack contained food and water for three days. The Germans carried side arms, although for the life of him he couldn’t think what they were going to shoot. With a nod to Berger, Gruber jerked the rope linking him to the Tibetan. ‘Go,’ he ordered.

They walked in reverential silence, like pilgrims entering a cathedral. Jigme’s steps were tentative, as if every footfall had the capacity to plunge him down a shaft to the centre of the earth. He swept the ground in front of him with the torch and then swept it again. The beam lit up the tunnel for ten or twelve paces ahead, but beyond it lay the darkness of the tomb, unforgiving and eternal. Superstition was as central to Jigme’s life as it is to every Tibetan, but nothing had prepared him for the inner terror he felt as he inched his way forward. Familiarity brought no lessening of the fear, because each step took him further from safety and closer to the demons that inhabited this place. He knew nothing of Atlantis, but his finely tuned senses told him they were not alone in the darkness. If he could, he would have broken free and fled back to the surface, but Gruber had tied his knots with a climber’s efficiency. There was no escape.

Roped behind Gruber, Walter Brohm could feel his leader’s impatience at their slow progress, but it was clear no amount of threats would make the Tibetan guide move any faster. A barely discernible draught tickled the back of Brohm’s neck and made him think there must be another opening somewhere ahead. Given the angle of their descent it seemed unlikely, but at least the draught meant the air down here was relatively fresh. Most of Brohm’s senses, though, were concentrated on his immediate surroundings. He allowed Gruber to pull him along and used the torch to study the tunnel walls. What could have created a shaft as uniform as this? He would have expected some signs of erosion, most probably from an ancient water source, but there were none. Instead the walls, which surprisingly dripped with moisture, appeared as smooth as glass. And the perfect circle was an illusion. Beneath his feet the floor of the tunnel was horizontal, though uneven. In the torchlight it looked like the petrified surface of a lake.

As he marched, his mind discarded the possibilities one by one until he was able to see the tunnel in an entirely different way. The walls didn’t just look like glass, they were glass, or at least vitrified stone. Whatever had made this passage had created a heat so intense that it had actually melted the rock. He had recognized the great saucer in the plateau above as the impact crater of a meteorite, a celestial object, in this case a very large one, which had struck the earth several thousand years earlier. It appeared that some element within the meteor had survived the impact, retaining enough mass, heat and power to allow it to cut through the solid rock in much the same way as the new armour-piercing shells from the experimental weapons facility at Stuttgart cut through layers of metal. The possibilities were fascinating.

He couldn’t be certain how far they had travelled when he heard the sound, but his disbelieving brain told him it must be more than a mile. At first it was just a whisper in the still air that brought Jigme to a faltering stop. Gruber snarled at him to go on, but it took a sharp push in the back with a pistol barrel to encourage the Tibetan’s feet to move. Brohm felt the tension grow with every step and the sound increased in volume until it became hauntingly familiar. It was impossible. What they could hear was the solemn rhythmic chant of the Buddhist monk. A few steps later they saw the flickering yellow shadow light of an oil lamp ahead, accompanied by the faint, rancid scent of yak butter oil.

Gruber pulled Jigme to a halt and untied him so that they could move forward side by side, signalling with the pistol for the others to follow. By now the musical chanting echoed from the walls and it was clear it came from more than one voice. Astonished, they approached the small chamber that marked the end of the tunnel. It was wider than the shaft and Brohm noticed evidence of tool marks that told him this, at least, was man-made. Gruber muttered what might have been a curse or a prayer and Brohm heard gasps from behind as the others reached the chamber. What he found there made him wonder if he had gone mad.

Against the far wall, at the end of a passage more than a mile below ground, three ancient, milk-eyed Buddhist monks sat cross-legged in saffron robes. Their lips moved in an unceasing incantation that made no allowance for the entry of the strangers.

‘They’re blind,’ Gruber said incredulously. Then after a second’s thought, ‘Why do they need lamps?’

‘For the air.’ Brohm found himself whispering. ‘The flames burn off oxygen and draw air from the surface. Without the lamps the air down here would soon become unbreathable.’ He saw now that the side of the chamber was stacked high with stocks of food, water and dampened sacks of yak butter, which meant these ghostly cave dwellers were resupplied from the outside world at least every few months. But his eyes, like all the others, were drawn to the centre where an ornate golden casket sat upon what could only be a ceremonial altar.

‘Why don’t they acknowledge us?’ Junger hissed. Like a man in a dream, Brohm moved towards the altar. Second by second a realization had been growing in the geologist that made him want to shout out loud. Sweat ran down his back and his hands were clammy as he reached for the casket.

‘For them you do not exist,’ Jigme answered Junger’s question, his voice shaking like an old man’s, ‘except as demons. They are chanting a spell to make you vanish.’

‘What is it?’ Brohm found Gruber at his shoulder, his eyes fever bright. Atlantis was forgotten. All that mattered was the casket.

Obviously of great antiquity, it was about two feet long by eighteen inches wide and eighteen deep. At first Brohm thought it was made of solid gold, but the moment he laid hands on it he realized it was actually wood covered in gold leaf. Representations of the Buddha and various Indian deities had been carved along its length. What puzzled and then excited him was the fact that when he picked it up it weighed as much as gold. He didn’t dare answer Gruber’s question truthfully. For one thing he still wasn’t certain yet, for another Gruber was too stupid to understand.

‘We can’t afford to open it to find out, but I believe what this box contains could be of vital importance to the Reich. It must be returned to the homeland immediately. And in absolute secrecy.’

Gruber stared at him, then nodded. ‘What about the monks?’

Brohm had already decided. ‘Kill them.’ Junger drew his pistol.

Together, they turned to Jigme. ‘And him?’

The tears running down the Tibetan’s cheeks turned the habitual grin into a tragic mask. He was still wearing his smile when Walter Brohm shot him between the eyes.