The Doomsday Testament

XXXIV

What started as a slide quickly turned into a roll and eventually a flailing tumble. Somewhere on the way down Jamie lost Sarah’s hand. His world gyrated through impossible angles and planes. Rocks that would have bashed his brains out missed his head by fractions so fine he felt them touch his hair. He knew it couldn’t last so he closed his eyes to make them go away and prayed that Sarah was as fortunate during the helter-skelter plunge down the steep hillside. A final lurch and a mouthful of dirt announced an unlikely and relatively safe landing and he was just opening his eyes when something landed on top of him and drove all the breath from his body.

For a few ominous seconds Sarah lay unmoving, a dead weight across his ribs, but the rhythm of her breathing told him she hadn’t suffered any serious injuries. ‘You feel like you’re still in one piece?’

‘Give me five minutes and I’ll let you know,’ she groaned. ‘Also, remind me never to go out on a date with you again.’

He dragged her into the shadow of the cliff where they would be out of the line of fire of the shooter with the machine pistol. They’d landed a few feet from the river in a pile of dust and pebbles that had fallen from the cliff above. From here, the Oder looked much deeper and wider than it had from above. Rain-dampened dust caked them from head to foot and Sarah’s hair looked as if it had been styled by a 1970s punk. Jamie could see her mentally checking for any damage. She patted herself down and his heart sank when he saw a moment of panic cross her face. She reached into her jacket.

‘My mobile.’ She withdrew the phone from her inside pocket. It took only one look to know it was smashed beyond repair. A little cry of anguish escaped her lips.

‘Better the phone than you,’ he pointed out.

‘You don’t… OK,’ she said resignedly. ‘Let’s get to it.’

Jamie studied the dark swirls of the swift-flowing river. ‘If we try to cross, we’ll only make ourselves targets, and I don’t much fancy our chances of getting to the other side in any case. So upstream or down?’

‘The going is the same either way. Bad. Down is Braunlage. They’ll expect us to head there, won’t they?’

‘So upstream.’

‘Unless they second guess us.’

They froze at a series of shouted orders from above. Clearly it was only a matter of time before their hunters found a route to the valley bottom.

‘It looks like we’ll need to take our chances.’

Jamie remembered holding the dead German’s pistol as he jumped and he felt a momentary panic as he realized he’d lost it on the way down. Surreptitiously, he searched the area where they’d landed, but could find no sign of it. He decided not to mention it to Sarah. He doubted it would be much use against a machine gun in any case.

Staying tight to the valley wall, they made their way north, upstream towards the Oderteich dam. It was almost as tough going in the gorge bottom as it had been through the wild spruce at the top of the cliff. They clambered over boulders, between the roots of upturned trees, or amongst the skeletal branches of others carried into the gorge by generations of floods. Occasionally they were forced to take to the water’s edge. The terrain did have one compensation. The further north they went, the narrower the gorge became and the less likely they were to be spotted from above.

In his mind, Jamie saw the valley from the dam wall, fearsome and rugged, hemmed in by the trees and chopped deep into the surrounding landscape. From there it had looked as if you could hide an army in it, but up close it was different. Narrow and constricted, like a winding rabbit’s burrow, but with no handy escape passages. He remembered once seeing a ferret sent into a rabbit warren. The squeals of terror and the bloodied, dead-eyed bundle hanging from the hunter’s jaws had stayed with him for years.

Yet for all the feeling of being a hunted beast, he was now calm enough to think on a second level. This valley was where Walter Brohm had pointed him in Matthew Sinclair’s journal. His eyes searched for any clue that might tie in with the map or the sun symbol. The same thought had occurred to Sarah and she slowly realized that their original plan had a major flaw. She’d barely said a word since their tumble down the hillside and the sound of her voice startled him.

‘Even if the Black Sun wasn’t an abstract piece of symbolism, we’re talking about something based on the road grid around here sixty years ago. Hell, we don’t even know if there were any proper roads. How many of these tracks have been added or have become overgrown in the meantime? And did you see those fancy little trains in the tourist brochure? This would have been a logging and mining area during the war. You can bet your new boots that the rail network in the Harz Mountains was a lot different in nineteen forty-five.’

Jamie didn’t pause as he unslung the rucksack and retrieved the journal and the map. ‘All right, I’ll go with that. But let’s look at it from a slightly different angle. There is one constant in this landscape. Water.’

‘You mean the river.’

‘That’s right, so let’s assume legs one and five are the river, running directly through the target area. It means we’re only looking for two more landmarks to pinpoint the position.’

‘Sounds pretty thin to me.’

‘It is, but we also have the clue in the diary—’

They were interrupted by shouts from upstream. Simultaneously they dived into the shelter of a fallen tree. Jamie noticed with alarm that the gun Sarah had taken from the dead Nazi at Wewelsburg had appeared miraculously in her right hand. He tried to think rationally. The men in front of them were making no attempt to conceal themselves and by the sound of their voices they were still something like a hundred paces away. Behind them, the valley curved away to the south at an angle that would always keep them out of sight of their pursuers if they could only stay far enough in front. There was still a chance. He waved Sarah back. She looked at him as if he was crazy and shook her head.

‘There are only two or three of them,’ she whispered. ‘We can take them as they go past. Get your gun out.’

‘I haven’t got it.’

‘What?’

‘I lost it when we jumped.’

She closed her eyes and shook her head. ‘Jesus, Saintclair, how did I get stuck with you?’

‘We have to go.’

Her expression said no, but she squirmed backwards away from the tree and he followed. When he was certain they couldn’t be seen they got to their feet and ran north.

Gustav heard the shouts from the shelter of the trees lining the clifftop. He’d been disappointed when Saintclair and the woman had jumped, but not surprised. Frederick had warned him not to underestimate Saintclair’s abilities or resolve. The original position had given him a better view of the bank downstream than up and he’d soon realized that the fugitives must be heading north, which suited his purpose perfectly. From his new viewpoint he scanned the river through the MP5’s telescopic sight. His fist tightened on the pistol grip as the two running figures came into view and the stubby barrel of the suppressor ranged on the targets. He moved the rate of fire selector to a three-round burst and caressed the trigger. He was firing from above and at an acute angle, which gave the shot a degree of difficulty that might have made another man hesitate, and he was using a weapon that was far from ideal, but Gustav was supremely confident of his ability. He willed himself to relax, sucked in a breath and slowly released it. And fired.