The Doomsday Testament - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора James Douglas (XIX) #19

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 the 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?’