The Doomsday Testament

XXIV

‘The artefact is of very ancient construction.’ Six men in white protective suits stood over the golden casket inside the ‘clean’ area of the laboratory complex, but only one spoke into the microphone. Speakers relayed his emotionless voice to the glass booth where the man who had initiated the raid on the Menshikov Palace now stood. He cut an incongruous figure in his T-shirt and jeans, with the thick-lensed rimless spectacles that reminded people of a short-sighted cartoon character and his long grey hair tied in a ponytail. He knew he was a throwback to another era, but he had never cared what anyone else thought about him. Money allowed you to make your own decisions and he’d long ago made more than enough money to tell the world to go screw itself. He listened intently as the scientist continued.

‘Tests conducted on the base of the object confirm it is manufactured of mahogany wood, probably imported from India, overlaid with a thin sheet of beaten gold which chemical analysis suggests is of similar origin. The gold is embossed with extensive symbols and patterns. Several letters are visible, but these are in a very obscure and venerable form of Sanskrit, possibly even pre-Sanskrit, and are indecipherable to me.’

He paused and looked up at the watchers. ‘I understand more expert eyes are already studying this aspect of the investigation.’

He turned his attention back to the casket. ‘The lock has a fairly complex twin-barrel mechanism, but we have been able to manufacture a key that should allow me to open it. Radiation levels are normal for an object that has spent many years in the mountains of Tibet, however our X-rays indicate the box may be lined with lead or some other similar material, so before I begin, please seal off the room.’

Metal screens rose up in front of the booth window and the man inside concentrated on the voice. ‘Check suit integrity. Yes? I will commence to open the box.’

The words were an inane catchphrase from some long-forgotten TV game show. Did the scientist have a sense of humour? It seemed unlikely. The pony-tailed man had known him for fifteen years and he could barely remember seeing him smile. Nerves, perhaps. That was more likely. Whatever was inside the casket, even if it only held a tiny trace of what they hoped, could change their lives. The scientist would hold the key to the last great secret of nuclear physics and the man in the booth would take a decisive step towards his goal of becoming the most powerful person on the planet. He held his breath and it seemed that the silence that preceded the metallic click of the lock’s engagement was the eternal silence of the grave.

‘I will now lift the lid of the casket… which contains a… a…’

The scientist’s words tailed away and the man ground his teeth in frustration.

‘A what, goddamit, Jensen? Lift these goddam screens.’ He did not normally use profanity in public, but many years earlier when he had been a packer in the loading bay of a television factory in Mesa, Arizona, he had been an inveterate cusser, and his choice of words reflected the tension of the moment.

The metal screen withdrew to expose the brightly lit scene below. He saw that the six white-suited men had all taken a step back from the casket and were staring in astonishment at whatever was inside. He craned his neck to get a better view, but he could still see nothing because of the ring of hooded figures.

‘For Christ’s sake.’ He hammered the reinforced glass and six pairs of eyes turned to him.

The men moved apart, like a white flower opening in the sun, and at last he saw it.

For a moment he couldn’t speak. He felt a hammer blow in his chest that might have been the prelude to a heart attack. The hammer blow of failure. All that time and effort and investment and the sacrifice of other men’s lives had achieved nothing but to uncover some sort of macabre joke. It had never been likely that the casket would contain the material itself, but he had hoped for some sort of residue, some hint of its nature or potential. The Sanskrit symbols might still provide a clue, but surely he deserved more than this?

‘The casket contains…’ Jensen resumed his commentary, but now his voice crackled with nervous energy, ‘… what appears to be a representation of a human skull…’ He held up the object in gloved hands and the over-bright artificial light of the laboratory caught it, so that the man in the booth was almost dazzled by the reflected brilliance. ‘It appears to be made of…’

‘Silver,’ the man in the booth said decisively. ‘After sixty years old Heini is still playing with us. Who would have thought the chicken farmer had a sense of humour? Don’t you recognize it, Jensen? Christ, your old man probably had one just like it.’ He studied the empty eye sockets and the mocking seven-toothed smile. ‘It’s a replica of the skull on an SS Death’s Head honour ring. Get me the file on the nineteen thirty-seven expedition to Tibet.’

Five minutes later he was leafing through the thin folder. Most of the documents were original and in German, but German had been his first language in the clapboard house in East Brunswick where he had been brought up. The original family name hadn’t been Vanderbilt, of course, but there had come a point after December 1941 when the old man decided it was more sensible to be Dutch than Deutsche. His German had come in useful when he was drafted, because it allowed him to spend the dangerous Vietnam years at a NATO headquarters near Hanover instead of crawling around some swamp in the DMZ getting shot at by Stone Age sub-humans. That was where he had learned to love electronics and had spotted the potential of the newfangled tape cassette players. When he returned to the States he’d bought a licence and mortgaged himself ten times over to create a manufacturing facility. Within a year he’d made the first of his many millions. Another opportunity had come with the rise of video tape technology in the early seventies, but he’d remembered how the eight-track player had once looked as though it would cost him everything, and foresaw that this new race would develop into a battle of formats. Instead, he decided to focus on the components that would be needed in every machine, whoever made it. By the time the boom in home computers took off he’d been perfectly placed to take advantage. And that was just the start. He’d made and lost fortunes along the way, married and lost wives, but there had always been one constant in his life. Membership of the Vril Society had come via his father and grandfather, influence in it had come with his growing fortune. Influence had inevitably led to the leadership, the first time the position had been held by a member outwith the Fatherland. Half of his life had been devoted to the search for the Vril, the race of ancient supermen who had survived the Great Inundation and sought refuge deep in the earth, where their powers still lay untapped. He had sponsored years of research, expeditions to the Arctic and the Gobi Desert under the guise of scientific fieldwork, and he had pinpointed sunken Atlantis to the Bay of Naples, in Italy, on the edge of the Phlegraean Plain. His fortune funded Frederick’s private army, which ensured that the potential advances made under Adolf Hitler would remain within the control of those pure enough to merit the rewards they promised. He had believed. But the Brohm papers had changed everything. Now he understood that the Vril would never be found within his lifetime. The strange thing was that it didn’t matter because he had discovered that the power of the Vril already lay within him. All he needed to tap into it was the Sun Stone. He snapped his fingers and an aide placed a mobile phone in his hand, the preset number already ringing.