The Doomsday Testament

LV

They parked in a semicircular clearing just off the main trail and Jamie felt the electricity in the air the moment he stepped from the car beneath the overhanging canopies of ancient lime and oak trees. The tyre tracks of a mountain bike and the distinctive indent of horseshoes showed that not only walkers travelled the route and he guessed that it was used much more than it had been when his grandfather had passed this way. For if he was certain of one thing, it was that Matthew Sinclair had been here.

‘But how do you know?’ Sarah demanded.

‘I don’t know. But I can feel him all around me. He was exhausted in body and mind by the time he reached here. He just wanted it to be over. When he stepped out of the jeep with those three men they were less than two miles from the Swiss frontier and safety.’

‘So what happened?’ Her voice was almost desperate.

‘Let’s find out.’

The air was cool when they started climbing the path, but they were quickly forced to remove their sweaters as the sun’s heat began to force its way beneath the canopy and the vegetation closed in where the trail narrowed. Jamie studied the ground around them for the few clues his grandfather had left in the diary.

Behind them, ten minutes after they left the car, a Mercedes four by four with darkened windows drew slowly, almost silently, into the car park clearing.

‘Make it quick, but make it certain,’ the driver snapped to his passenger.

The second man took a rucksack from the back seat and walked quickly to the little Volkswagen. It took him less than twenty seconds to break into the car using an electronic key. After a quick search revealed nothing of interest he took a tiny magnetized metal circle shaped like a rivet head from the rucksack and placed it beneath the driver’s seat in a position he knew no one but a mechanic or auto cleaner would ever find it.

Once the combined microphone and tracker was placed, he popped the bonnet of the car and opened the engine compartment. This time the package he took from the rucksack was larger, a heavily wrapped rectangular block, one side of which he sprayed with quick-drying cement and attached to the chassis at the driver’s side wheel arch. It was a little more haphazard than he would have liked, because he had only been told the make of car that morning and didn’t have time to make the kind of precise calculations of thickness of metal and blast potential he would normally do, but he consoled himself that he was using so much explosive that very little would survive of the car. Once he was certain it was firmly attached and the receiver was working properly, he nodded, closed the bonnet and locked the car.

‘Set?’ asked the driver.

The man nodded. ‘Just say the word.’

The driver smiled. ‘Patience. We can’t afford any mistakes this time.’

As Jamie and Sarah climbed, the path became steeper and less well defined, just a scuff of brown dirt winding between the trees, crossed by twisted tree roots and with occasional natural stairways of worn grey rock. Sarah stopped with her hands on her hips and breathed in deeply. ‘You can see why three unfit, middle-aged Nazi war criminals might find this difficult. I almost feel sorry for them.’

‘Don’t. They were bastards, and they probably ended up sunning themselves in Santa Barbara with skins like leather and mojitos in their fists while they watched their pneumatically enhanced mistresses frolic in the pool. I hope I’m that misfortunate.’

‘What?’ She stuck her chest out provocatively. ‘You mean I’m not pneumatic enough for you, Saintclair. You ever even think about a busty blonde mistress, mister, and I’ll replace the olives in my martini with your cojones.’

‘In that case,’ he bowed, ‘let me assure you that it never crossed my mind. Let’s go.’

‘What’s your hurry? We’ve got plenty of time.’

‘I’m not so sure. The clock is ticking and we know we’re not the only people who are looking for the Sun Stone. Just because we can’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t out there somewhere.’ He studied the trees crowding the edge of the path. ‘At least when Matthew Sinclair came this way he had a gun and he knew how to use it.’

They climbed on, through the sultry heat of midday, only once having a clear sight of the sun when they reached a broad clearing in the woods which had been planted with some kind of grain crop that was just beginning to ripen. They stopped to eat and through a gap in the trees they had a view of the hills to the north and west and the patchwork of cultivated fields in between.

‘Listen,’ Sarah hissed.

Jamie tensed, and wished, not for the first time, that he had some sort of weapon. Even a kitchen knife would be better than nothing. ‘What is it?’

She sat motionless for a few seconds until a faraway machine-gun rattle broke the silence.

‘A woodpecker.’

He felt like strangling her. Instead, he kissed her.

They lay side by side in the grass, staring up at a perfect cupola of pale eggshell blue. Sarah’s hand searched for his and her fingers held him tight. ‘Seriously, Jamie, do you ever wonder what happens after?’ There was a wistful regret in her voice that sent an icicle through his heart.

‘After?’

‘When it’s over. When you know Matthew’s story. When we’ve found the Sun Stone or we haven’t. When we don’t have the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow to chase.’

He shrugged, which was awkward lying on his back. ‘If I do think about it, I think about you and I together, having fun,’ he said, aware that his words lacked conviction. ‘There are still plenty of things we have to do and see. Together.’

She squeezed his hand.

‘Sure there are, Jamie, but don’t you sometimes worry that we’ll be different people then?’

‘Do you?’

She rolled over so she could look into his face. ‘Look, the first day we met, you’d just been pushed under a train, that’s hardly normal circumstances. Since then it’s been a roller-coaster of World War Two puzzles and crazy quests, rabid Nazis, lost masterpieces and long-dead Jews, and this mysterious discovery that might not even exist except in our heads. Hell, we’ve been living on adrenalin and coffee and sex for the last month. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t have missed it for anything, but while we’ve been chasing rainbows we’ve been completely different people from the ones that scrounge a living back in London. Do I know the real Jamie Saintclair? I’m still not sure. And you sure as hell don’t know the real Sarah Grant.’

He got to his feet and dusted himself down, trying not to let her see his disappointment. There were certainly things he didn’t know about Sarah Grant and things he suspected, but didn’t want to know quite yet, but he’d been prepared to discover them in his own time. ‘Maybe that’s true, and maybe it isn’t. But the one thing I’m certain of is that I’d like the chance to find out.’

He set off up the slope, expecting her to follow, but when he looked round a few minutes later, she wasn’t with him. He turned back along the path just as she appeared through the trees, head down and deep in thought. She looked up and he saw she’d been weeping.

‘Hey. Things aren’t that bad. We’ll work it out. I’ll take you for a swanky dinner in the West End when we get back home and we can talk it over. Unless you’d prefer to have a quiet night in.’

She grinned through the tears and nodded. ‘Look, it’s… it’s just that I’m confused, Jamie. Everything has happened so fast and there’s been so much going on. I don’t know what’s up and what’s down. Just give me time, huh.’

He bent and kissed her on the forehead. ‘Sure. Come on, it can’t be far now.’

They reached the clearing with the stream after another ten minutes of climbing. Sarah recognized it first. She stopped in her tracks. ‘A runnel through a clearing beside a steep ravine, that’s what Matthew described. I had to look up runnel in the dictionary.’

‘This is it.’ Jamie tried to keep the tension from his voice. He walked to the edge of the gully that slashed the woods. This was the moment he’d been waiting for since he first opened the journal. His imagination had painted a dark, gothic landscape of jagged rocks and brooding, dangerous forest, but it wasn’t like that at all. Around him, the sun’s rays turned the summer leaves into a hundred thousand sparkling emeralds and birdsong echoed among the trees. Still, he had no doubts. ‘This is it.’

He fumbled in his rucksack and his hands shook as he withdrew the yellow-white envelope containing the final diary entries.