The Doomsday Testament

LII

‘We lost him.’

Bob Sumner couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘What do you mean you lost him?’

‘You told us to keep him on a light rein, so that’s what we did. His secretary said he was due back in the office this morning, but he called her last night and said she should take a couple of weeks off once she’d cleared his diary.’

‘The girl?’

‘We think she’s with him.’

Sumner allowed himself a few moments of menacing silence, while the other man fidgeted at the end of the phone.

‘Get everybody on it. Two weeks means they’re going travelling. That means airports. I want to know where they’re going, what their seat numbers are and what they’ve taken along to read. Everything. You have until noon.’ He didn’t say or else, he didn’t have to. He put down the phone and immediately picked it up again for the call he wasn’t going to enjoy making.

‘Operation Paperclip.’ Sarah read from her notes and wriggled herself into a comfortable position in the cramped economy-class seat of the Gatwick — Munich flight. ‘As the war was ending the good old US of A belatedly realized that with the Red Army overrunning most of Germany they also had their hands on most of the Nazis’ military secrets, including their nuclear programme. This was about the time when what became the Cold War looked like it might be pretty hot, so it was suddenly very important to get any scientists and technicians in Allied hands back to America where they could be squeezed of what they knew. President Roosevelt had specifically ruled out offering these guys any guarantees, but Harry Truman overturned that decision — on condition they weren’t involved in war crimes.’

‘Truman was one of your more naive presidents?’

‘Yes, he was, or maybe he knew that the people he was letting loose on Operation Paperclip didn’t have the time or the morals to make such fine distinctions. In the end, the OSS smuggled out more than seven hundred scientists and their families. According to their documents they were whiter than white, but now we know better. Werner von Braun was the best known. He had designed the V2 rocket and went on to play a key role in the NASA space programme, but he was originally tagged a security risk to the United States. He was an angel compared to some of the others. Kurt Blome infected hundreds of concentration camp prisoners with plague vaccines. He got a job with the US Army Chemical Corps. Arthur Rudolph ran the Mittelwerk factory at Dora-Nordhausen in the Harz, where they made V2s and twenty thousand prisoners died from hanging, beating and starvation. He became a US citizen and designed the Saturn 5 rocket for the moon landings. A couple of guys called Hermann Becker-Reysing and Siegfried Ruff carried out medical experiments on inmates at Dachau, including placing them in an altitude chamber and decreasing the pressure until they died. They were paid to write their findings by the USAAF. And so it goes on. Klaus Barbie, for Christ’s sake. You’d think being labelled the Butcher of Lyon might have given them a clue?’

‘So Walter Brohm was part of Paperclip?’

Sara shook her head. ‘Not officially. Paperclip was spawned by a couple of earlier freelance operations involving the Special Operations Executive. It looks as if Brohm and the others were part of that experiment. What bothers me is that they just vanish from the record. Sure, a lot of these guys disappeared to Argentina and Brazil after they arrived in the States, but we know that they reached there. Maybe Brohm handed over his big secret and they gave him a one-way ticket to Buenos Aires, but if he did, what happened then?’

She turned, expecting an answer, or, if not an answer, at least a theory, but Jamie had his head back with his eyes closed and was snoring gently.

‘Bastard,’ she mouthed, and turned to stare at the clouds, failing to notice the Chinese man in the business suit who had been studying them from the aisle seat three rows behind.

Munich’s Franz Josef airport is a vast modernistic barn of a place fifteen miles north of the Bavarian capital. Only the language rapped out by the hard-faced security men differentiated it from a hundred other charmless landing places in a hundred other cities. When they’d cleared passport control, Jamie hired a Volkswagen at the airport’s Europcar desk. Before they set off they decided to have a coffee and a pastry at one of the cloned chain restaurants clustered in the glass-roofed shopping centre that connected the two main terminals.

Sarah finished her drink quickly. ‘I gotta go powder my nose and make a phone call.’

He smiled. ‘I won’t go anywhere without you.’

‘Just see what happens if you do.’

Jamie was sipping his coffee when the Oriental who had been on the plane sat down uninvited at the table. He rose to his feet, but a second man put a hand on his shoulder, and he felt a third, running professional hands under his arms and over his chest, before he was pushed back into his seat. He looked around, but no one appeared to have noticed what was happening.

‘Please excuse my companions, Mr Saintclair.’ The man spoke precise language school English and his tone oozed reason, but Jamie allowed himself to ease into what Matthew described as combat mode. Instinct told him that this striped bespoke suit represented a greater danger than any gun. ‘I see your Himalayan adventures have not put you off foreign travel? But, please, that is in the past. My name is Lim, and I am a rather lowly representative of the People’s Republic of China.’ Mr Lim had dark, soulful eyes and a cheerful smile that might have been painted on his broad face. Without moving his lips he passed a message to one of the two men accompanying him, and the bodyguard went off in the direction Sarah had disappeared. He continued: ‘I would have prevented it if I was able. There has been far too much miscommunication. Would it surprise you if I said that two of my colleagues exceeded their authority in London, leading to your unfortunate… accident? No? Of course, it does not make us friends, but perhaps the fact that I am prepared to give you this information will help us trust each other.’

‘After my experiences in Tibet, I wouldn’t trust you as far as I could throw your minders, Mr Lim. Perhaps you could get to the point, if there is one.’

Mr Lim’s smile grew appreciably wider. ‘Certainly. You have proven yourself very resourceful and very persistent. My superiors felt that you were an obstacle to us, but I have persuaded them otherwise. I believe you will find what you are looking for. This object rightly belongs to my government.’

‘I think the Dalai Lama might have something to say about that.’

‘But the Dalai Lama is no longer of consequence, Mr Saintclair, and what you call Tibet is, and always has been, part of China. What is of consequence is that my country is currently home to 1.3 billion people and that despite our best efforts this will rise to 1.5 billion in the next thirty years. In a few years we will overtake the United States as the world’s largest energy user. My people are hungry for power, Mr Saintclair, and will only grow hungrier. We are spending unthinkable amounts on alternative sources of energy, but in the long term there is only one solution: nuclear fusion. We are already many years ahead of our rivals — it is even possible that we have outstripped the progress made by your Walter Brohm.’

Jamie froze. ‘He’s not my Walter Brohm.’

‘Oh, but he is, Mr Saintclair. Why else would you have pursued him halfway around the world? But to return to my point, we are close to having the technology, but we need the return of the Sun Stone to ensure the project’s success. As I said, I believe you will find this object. When you do, my country is prepared to pay a large bounty to get it back.’

‘We don’t need your bounty, Mr Lim.’

‘No? Then the matter would go before the German courts.’ He shrugged. ‘I can assure you that we have an extremely strong case and those courts will rule in our favour. But even in that event, I believe we would be honour bound to recompense you for your efforts. As you see, Mr Saintclair, we wish to proceed in a civilized manner.’ He placed a card on the table. ‘I implore you to call this number when you find the Sun Stone. If you do not, I fear you will place both your lives at risk. Do you want to be responsible for putting Miss Grant in danger?’

Jamie fought the urge to take Mr Lim by the throat and shake the smile off his face. ‘Is that a threat?’

‘You misunderstand me, Mr Saintclair.’ Lim shook his head sadly at the wickedness of the world. ‘You must be aware by now that we are not the only party with an interest in the Sun Stone. Others may be less inclined to negotiate. If there is a threat, it is from those who do not have the same concern for your welfare as my humble self.’

He rose from the table. ‘When your companion returns, perhaps it would be wiser not to mention our conversation. She appears to have a great deal on her mind already.’ Jamie stared at the large envelope the Chinese had left on the table. ‘Call that a down payment. Please, open it.’

Jamie peeled back the flap. The envelope contained two 8x10 black-and-white photographs.

‘I could have had them done in colour, but I felt monochrome suited our particular situation so much better,’ Lim explained cheerfully. ‘I’m sure Mr Le Carré would be impressed.’

‘I don’t understand.’ Jamie stared at the top picture. It showed three men talking on a country path. One of them was a slight figure in an overcoat that was too large for him.

‘Oh, I think you understand most clearly, Mr Saintclair. You will note the dates.’ Lim lifted the photograph, so Jamie could see the second picture. A shot of the same two men sitting in a car outside a house that was instantly familiar. Jamie’s heart lurched as he recognized the closer of the two as the man he’d found in his grandfather’s lounge.

‘As I say, a down payment. To receive the second instalment all you have to do is call the number I have given you at the appropriate time.’

Sarah reappeared a few moments after the Chinese had left. ‘You look thoughtful?’

He tried a smile that didn’t quite make it. ‘I’ve got a lot on my mind.’

Their route took them from the airport past the north of the city. Jamie tried to keep his mind on the road, but as he drove it was difficult to keep Mr Lim’s reasonable voice out of his head. The claim that there was no threat was less significant than Lim’s presence, which, of course, was a threat in itself. It struck him that it might have been the Chinese, rather than Frederick and the Vril Society, who had been responsible for Simon’s murder, but he immediately dismissed the thought. He suspected that while Mr Lim was perfectly capable of the killing, he would have been much more subtle in its execution. What mattered was that every word the man spoke had been like a gentle touch on the rudder to steer him in a certain direction. He had felt like a horse on a light rein just waiting for the sting of the whip. And then it came, in the form of the photographs. The photographs that appeared to show old Stan with the men who had almost certainly murdered him and the same two men outside the house where his grandfather had died. The implications of that turned his vision red and his hands tightened on the wheel. He willed himself to stay calm. Hadn’t he always suspected? His grandfather’s missing walking stick. Two deaths linked by the past in such quick succession? An unfamiliar gloom settled over him. He could take the pictures to the police in Britain, but on their own they proved nothing. They were circumstantial evidence at best. He opened his mouth intending to tell Sarah what had happened, but something stopped him. She has a lot on her mind. Like everything else that had been said, the cryptic sentence held a warning and a message. He just hadn’t yet worked out its significance.

Sarah must have caught his mood, because she was uncharacteristically silent. The sun broke through the clouds and they had a view across the city to the mountains beyond. Neither of them mentioned the signpost they passed for the little town of Dachau. It seemed nowhere in Germany was free from the shadow of the war. Sarah kept her eyes on the stunning panorama to the south. ‘Nice place. But it gives me the creeps.’

He drove on until he came to the outer ring road and after a few miles he picked up the exit for Augsburg and turned north-west.

‘I still don’t understand why we aren’t heading directly for the Swiss border,’ Sarah said. ‘You know more or less where they crossed? It would save time.’

‘Because I want to see this unfold through Matthew’s eyes,’ he insisted. ‘Or as much as it’s possible after sixty years. Maybe these final pages of the journal hold the key to the Sun Stone and maybe they don’t, but the best way to understand them is to take the journey with my grandfather and Brohm. I want to get as close to him as I can.’

They by-passed Augsburg and the multi-laned highway carried them swiftly through a thickly wooded area that the map told them was the local nature reserve. ‘Hey, we just crossed the Danube,’ Sarah announced. ‘I thought the Danube was in Hungary or Romania?’

‘I suppose it has to start somewhere. We turn south around here.’

She consulted the map. ‘Looks like we should wait until we get past Ulm. What makes you so certain Matthew came this way?’

‘I’m not certain. But Bad Saulgau is our next reference point and we have to get there somehow. I suspect most of these roads didn’t even exist during the war.’

She looked again. ‘To get to Bad Saulgau we take the B30 after Ulm and turn left after about an hour, at Schweinhausen.’ She paused. ‘Look, Jamie, I’m sorry I’ve been such a bitch since we got back from Tibet. I think maybe it’s a delayed reaction to all those poor guys being killed. Tenzin would still be alive if he hadn’t run into us. Simon too.’

‘Simon didn’t deserve what happened to him,’ Jamie said bitterly. ‘At least Tenzin died for what he believed in. He thought the war he was fighting mattered and that his cause was worth dying for. When he found out what we were mixed up in he decided that was worth dying for too.’

‘Do you think it’s worth dying for?’

The question took him by surprise. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘For me, this is more about my grandfather than the Sun Stone. Can you understand that? All that stuff about the end of the world is just an abstract. Matthew Sinclair is real. If, by discovering who he is, we find a way to track down the Sun Stone then I’ll do everything in my power to fulfil my promise to Tenzin, but if I can’t I just hope we can walk away alive and unscarred. We’re just two people caught up in events that are too big for us, Sarah. We can’t be held responsible for everybody on the planet. Maybe once a year I’ll burn a juniper branch and raise a glass to Tenzin’s memory, but then I’ll get on with my life.’

‘What if Tenzin is wrong and Walter Brohm was right?’

At first he wasn’t sure if he’d heard her correctly. ‘Sorry?’ He shot her a glance, but her eyes never left the road ahead.

‘Tenzin believed the Sun Stone had the potential to destroy the world, but that belief was based on an ancient myth passed down through a hundred generations from a culture that thought the best way to defend themselves against it was to cut the throats of seven innocent people and sprinkle their blood over it. By that logic we should still be burning witches every time the milk goes sour.’

‘Mike said much the same thing and I don’t think he’s into human sacrifice.’ He tried to keep his voice even, but he was confused at the turn the conversation had taken.

‘I know that, but he also said the chances were about fifty million to one. We’re talking about something that could solve the world’s energy problems for ever. No more burning up the planet’s irreplaceable resources. No more global warming. No more famine. Isn’t that worth taking a chance on? And we could find it, Jamie. Us. Not some faceless corporation, corrupt government or bunch of crazies like Frederick and his storm troopers.’

He shook his head, remembering Mr Lim’s benign certainty. ‘You’re talking about Walter Brohm’s legacy, Sarah. A discovery that is tainted by blood and greed. You’ve read the journal. Do you really believe the world would benefit from something a man like that had a hand in? Yes, we could find it, but for how long could we control it? That was Tenzin’s warning. We can’t trust anyone. The moment we lay our hands on it we become a target for every big-time crook and international terrorist, every lunatic dictator and religious fanatic. It would only be a matter of time before we were begging someone to take it off our hands. Your government or mine? Which would you trust? No, if we do find it, we have to destroy it or put it somewhere it will never be found.’

She smiled sadly. ‘That might be more difficult than you make it sound.’

‘We owe it to Tenzin to give it our best shot.’