The Doomsday Testament

XXXVII

The passage smelled of mould and old rust and the iron banister beneath his hand felt as if it was about to crumble away. Whatever he had expected — a damp cellar, some sort of vault? — it wasn’t this. ‘Careful,’ Sarah warned. ‘If this really dates back to nineteen forty-five there’s got to be a possibility of booby traps.’ He wondered why he hadn’t thought of that.

They took it one step at a time, sweeping each stair with the torch as they went. After a dozen steps Jamie spotted a darker patch on the grey concrete and stooped to pick it up. It was filthy and covered in dust, but when he rubbed it between his fingers it proved to be made of metal. He spat on it and used his handkerchief to clean away the dirt.

‘What is it?’ Sarah whispered.

He shone the torch on the object, illuminating a small oval stamped with the distinctive coal-scuttle helmet of a German soldier, overlaid with a swastika. The design jogged something in his memory.

‘I think it’s what they call a Wound Badge. Anyone who was injured in battle was entitled to one. The Germans probably produced them by the ton at the end. Someone must have mislaid theirs on the way out. That’s a relief.’

‘Why?’

‘I was worried this might be the back entrance to the local knocking shop.’

By the time they reached the top, Jamie counted 144 stairs. Another metal door barred their way, but this one proved to be unlocked. He held his breath as he pushed it open.

‘Bloody hell!’

The twin beams of their torches shone on the walls of an enormous arch-roofed corridor perhaps twelve feet wide and the same high. The walls and floor were bare concrete and when they stepped out into it they realized that it stretched further than the torches’ reach in each direction.

‘We must be in the very centre of the mountain,’ said Jamie incredulously. ‘They would have removed tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of tons of rock to build this place. I feel like Lord Carnarvon at the opening of Tutankhamun’s tomb.’

‘Let’s hope we have more luck than he did. Left or right?’

‘Left.’

‘Why?’

‘Because, if in doubt, I always go left.’

‘We’ll go right, then.’

He bit his tongue and followed her. As she walked, she left a single set of footprints in the dust of decades which had settled on the floor and that she now kicked up to sparkle like a million tiny fireflies in the torch beams. Above their heads a cable ran in shallow loops along the roof, linking a string of covered lights that vanished into the distance. Sarah strode on with the confidence of someone who belonged, though she carried her rucksack in front of her like a shield, but for Jamie the tunnel held an all-pervading atmosphere of doom. He tried to think of the Raphael, but all he imagined was a pair of vengeful eyes on his back. He had never felt more of an intruder. The air tasted foul and damp, like chewing mud, and he tried not to think about some kind of spore he’d read about that proliferated in ancient tombs and multiplied to fill the lungs like concrete. No, he didn’t want to think about that at all.

‘Look!’

Her torch had identified something glittering on the floor ahead. As they approached, Jamie could see it was window glass from the doors and windows of the wood-partitioned cubicles that now appeared on either side of the passageway. Sarah hesitated.

‘Shouldn’t we search them as we go?’

Jamie noticed a shape in the dust at his feet. He kicked it clean.

‘Probably not.’

Her face paled as she recognized the red skull and crossbones of a chemical warning sign.

‘But what about the painting?’

He studied the nearest cubicle, which contained a couple of cheap desks and rusting, open-mouthed metal filing cabinets. ‘These must have been laboratories or offices. If the Raphael is here it will be locked in a safe somewhere. That’s what we should look for.’

Now they walked with the constant crackle of broken glass beneath their feet.

‘Why would they go to so much trouble to cause this amount of damage?’ Sarah puzzled. ‘It must have taken a huge amount of effort.’

‘I don’t think they did. The spread is too even for these windows to have been smashed by individuals. The last time I saw something like this was in a documentary about the Troubles in Northern Ireland. You know about that?’

‘Of course.’

‘Someone had just set off a bomb in a shopping centre.’

For once she didn’t have anything to say.

They reached the end of the corridor. To the left a metal stairway led down to the next level, to the right was a compartment whose windows had miraculously survived whatever catastrophe had befallen the others. Halfway down the stairs Jamie stopped, not quite sure why, but suddenly drawn back to the intact office.

‘Sarah,’ he called.

She halted and glared back at him, keen to continue the search.

‘You said—’

‘I know, but I have a feeling.’

A minute later they stood in front of the last cubicle. A thick layer of dust coated the windows and made it impossible to see beyond their opaque stare. Jamie’s fingers twitched towards the door handle, but again some instinct drew him back. Why was this room still whole when all the others were not? A dark shadow of fear descended on him and he told himself it was only his imagination.

Sarah caught his mood. ‘You think it could be wired?’

‘I don’t know.’ He gently tapped the window. ‘This is some kind of toughened glass; that’s why the blast didn’t smash it like the rest. That makes this place special.’

He noticed that his knuckle had made a tiny circular peephole in the dust. He raised the torch and looked through it.

‘Oh, Christ almighty.’ He stepped sharply away from the window.

Sarah ran to his side. ‘What is it?’

He tried to speak, but no words would describe it. Instead, he took her hand and, slowly, almost reverentially, led her back to the window. He began in the middle of the small space he’d created and in circular sweeps cleared the dust from the glass. Not quite believing what they were seeing, they stared at the image before them. Jamie had never seen anything quite so beautiful and Sarah shared his wonder.

Slightly taller than it was wide, it hung in pride of place in the centre of the wall on the far side of the office behind a large desk. The face was almost feminine, but Jamie knew the subject was a young man, possibly even Raphael himself. He wore a soft cloth cap and white, loose-fitting shirt, and the dark eyes radiated intelligence from confident, aristocratic features. Beneath a thin coating of dust the minutely textured fur of his cape still retained a vibrancy that time had not diminished. Through the open window beyond the youth’s left shoulder was an Italian landscape. The arrangement was typical of the artist’s later portraits and Jamie knew that the scene in the window might have been painted three or even four different times before Raphael was satisfied. It was a masterpiece in the truest sense of the word.

He closed his eyes and backed off to slide down the far wall before his legs turned to rubber.

‘Jamie, are you all right?’

He shook his head. ‘Not once did I ever believe we’d find it. Not even when we walked up that stairway and along this corridor.’

‘But you have.’ Her eyes glittered in the torchlight. ‘This is yours. All yours. I have my story, but the lost Raphael will make Jamie Saintclair famous.’

‘It’s too much. Now that I have it I wish… Can you understand? It was the hunt and the following the clues in my grandfather’s journal. It was being with you and having this great adventure after my routine, boring, London life. And now — it’s over, and I wish it could start all over again, but I know that it can’t.’ As he came to terms with the enormity of their discovery the excitement began to bubble inside him. He could already imagine the press conference where they would announce the recovery of one of the world’s greatest lost masterpieces. He would never have to beg for another commission. There would be a reward that would set them both free to do whatever they wanted with their lives. Television appearances, lectures. And she was right, he would have fame of a kind he could only previously have imagined. They…

‘Jamie?’

Christ, what was he thinking? They didn’t have time for daydreams.

Sarah reached for the door of the cubicle.

‘Don’t!’ The word came out as a sergeant major’s bark and he instantly regretted it. She stared at him, her eyes a mix of anger and hurt. He sighed. ‘The office has been sealed,’ he explained. ‘If we open the door and change the conditions we could destroy the painting.’

She shook her head, her expression a combination of disbelief and exasperation. ‘We can’t just leave it after all we’ve gone through to get it back.’

He knew she was right. Not after what had happened to them. Think.

A noise. A sort of dull, echoing clank. They’d jammed the metal door shut with the fallen branch. It wasn’t much, but it was all they had. Someone had just forced it.

‘Jamie.’ Her eyes were wide, pleading.

Fuck it.

He gripped the handle and turned. Unlocked. Thank Christ for that. In one movement he opened the door and slipped through the gap into the office, making as little disturbance as possible. A dark heap in the centre of the floor might have been a dead body, but was actually some kind of exotic rug. Clearly Walter Brohm liked his little luxuries. No time for finesse. He unzipped the rucksack and removed a plastic bubblewrap bag from one of the compartments. It had been folded flat, so there’d be very little air inside. He waved it to fill it with the fetid atmosphere of the room. It was crude and probably pointless, but under the circumstances it was all he could think of. He could feel Sarah staring at him through the glass, urging him on, but when he looked into the enigmatic eyes of the young man in the picture a sort of paralysis overcame him. It was as if he was back in the river, but this time his feet were trapped in quicksand. Fortunately, the window rattled like an alarm bell to break the spell. Hurriedly he lifted the painting from its mount and gently slipped it into the bag, which had been selected in a fit of unlikely optimism specifically because it would hold something of the Raphael’s dimensions. It had a ziplock fastener which he closed and secured as he retraced his steps to the door.

Sarah was already running for the stairs and when he glanced to his left he understood why. A pale orange glow painted the far end of the corridor where the stairs emerged.

They were coming.