The Doomsday Testament

LIX

The van with the Europcar logo drew into the police station car park and pulled up beside the Volkswagen. While the mechanic retrieved his toolbox, an officer emerged from the station to sign him in.

‘Is this the one I’m supposed to take a look at?’

‘That’s it. They didn’t leave the keys, though.’

The mechanic laughed. ‘Tourists. Not a problem. I have a spare set.’

‘Well, if you need to get in touch with them, just let me know. They’re with the boss.’

‘Thanks.’ Not a bad guy for a cop, he thought. He waited until the man was back in the building before he opened the bonnet.

They reached a rutted track where the roadside vegetation appeared to have been recently cut, and a few minutes later the car approached an iron gate. The gate was badly rusting, but the razor wire that topped it and which stretched into the trees on either side of the road couldn’t have been more than a few years old. Two bored-looking policemen hurriedly stubbed out their cigarettes at the sight of the approaching car. The men saluted Lotte Muller, but she still had to produce her identity card before the gate was opened. They drove into a wide, dusty bowl below a great scar in the hillside. At the base of the scar, a dark shadow showed where a tunnel had been cut into the rock.

‘I doubt this place would ever have been found,’ the police chief said as she led the way towards the passage. ‘Of course, some people believe it would have been better if it had not been. They wish to forget that things like this ever happened.’

Sarah gripped the flowers in both hands. She looked towards the impenetrable forest beyond the barbed wire and tried to imagine what it had been like for the three hundred men and women who had seen their last glimpse of sunlight here. She shivered and hesitated before the entrance, but a generator kicked into life somewhere behind them and a line of bulbs strung along the roof illuminated the tunnel with dim, unnatural light. They followed Lotte inside.

Fifty metres into the passage they reached a massive reinforced steel door with a smaller entrance set into it. Lotte reached inside her shoulder bag and brought out a set of keys.

‘The locksmith took two days to break in. My minister did not have his patience, he wanted to blow the doors with explosive. Fortunately, he was persuaded to wait.’

The key turned easily in the lock and the door swung open to reveal what looked like a small aircraft hangar. At the far end were sited a pair of a concrete bunkers with narrow horizontal slits that would each allow a belt-fed machine gun to cover the entire area. Between them a set of metal stairs led to the next level.

‘They didn’t encourage visitors.’

‘No, they did not, Mr Saintclair. This way please.’ She ushered them below the stairs to where a corridor led to a tunnel similar to those they had run through when they were being hunted.

‘Would it be possible for us to spend some time alone where we found the bodies?’ Jamie asked.

Their host frowned. ‘I do not know if that would be permitted. This is a place of many dangers, Mr Saintclair. We have not yet begun work on clearing the main production hall.’

‘I realize that, Kommissar, but it is very important to us. We — Miss Grant and I — discovered this bunker and what we saw inside that room will remain with us for ever. At the very least, we deserve the opportunity to come to terms with it.’ Sarah moved to his side and together they looked into Lotte Muller’s eyes. Her expression softened and she sighed.

‘Of course, you must. I understand. I saw what you saw and it haunts me also. I… This tunnel eventually leads to what we call the production hall, it is lit the entire way. You will recognize it by the door, which is badly damaged — I am sure you remember it — the room where you discovered the bodies is the third on the left. Please be careful. It would be very regrettable if anything were to happen to you.’ She nodded and turned away. ‘I will wait for you here. Shall we say ten minutes?’

Jamie thanked her and led the way inside.

‘That was smooth, lover boy,’ Sarah whispered. ‘You had the dragon eating out of your hand. I can see I’m going to have to watch you.’

‘It’s your corrupting influence,’ Jamie said airily. ‘Can you remember the way to the office where we found the Raphael?’

‘Nope. Not exactly.’

‘I think I have a vague idea. But we have to hurry.’ He broke into a jog and she kept pace by his side. They reached the twisted door to the production hall. ‘You take the flowers to where we found the bodies. I’ll go on to the office. We’ll meet back here.’ He saw she was about to protest. ‘It makes sense. Lotte Muller will expect to see some evidence we’ve been there.’

‘That’s not what I was going to say, idiot. Just because this section is lit up like a Christmas tree doesn’t mean to say everywhere else is. Do you have a torch?’

‘Aaah, no.’

She reached into her jacket and came out with her penlight. ‘This might help.’

He grinned. ‘I suppose it might.’

She reached up to kiss him on the lips.

‘Now git!’

Jamie set off down the passageway. He ran swiftly, never hesitating at an intersection or a corner, because he’d lied. He knew exactly where he was going. But he was glad of the torch.

The bunker should have been filled with ghosts, but even though he had seen the horrors that had been perpetrated down here, the corridors held no threat. The dead no longer called out for retribution, because Matthew Sinclair had avenged them sixty-three years earlier when he had put a bullet in Walter Brohm’s skull.

When he reached the stairs he took them two at a time and the rusting metal creaked beneath his feet. At the top was the office where they’d found the Raphael. The door hung open and he stepped inside. He swung the torch across the walls, spotlighting the dust-free oblong where the painting had hung behind Walter Brohm’s mahogany desk. Strange that it didn’t really matter any more.

Now he turned his attention to the rest of the office. It was just as he remembered from that single glance before the Raphael had bewitched him. Spacious, but functional. One wall filled with the empty filing cabinets that would have contained Brohm’s research and all the minutiae of running the bunker with its hundreds of irritating, petty human hindrances. Jamie suspected Walter Brohm had hated it here. Brohm the genius would have preferred to be in his laboratory dealing with problems he could understand. But Brohm was a cultured man who did himself well, with his Old Masters, his fine French wines… and all the other luxuries the new Nazi empire could provide.

He had puzzled over Brohm’s odd reference from the moment he read it. Astra was the Latin word for stars and he’d assumed it was a reference to the potential of the Sun Stone. Yet in the context of their conversation it had seemed out of place. Then it had struck him that Walter Brohm and Matthew Sinclair had been speaking in whispers to keep what they were saying from Klosse and Strasser. What if Matthew had misheard?

Not ‘Only Astra can find it’, but ‘Only Astra can hides it’. Astra can. Astrakhan.

The Oriental rug made of the distinctive black fibres lay in the centre of the floor, trampled and disfigured by dusty footprints, more or less where Brohm had left it. Like Jamie, anyone who entered this office would only have had eyes for the space where the painting had been, or the desk.

Taking a deep breath he kicked the musty heap of cloth to one side, exposing the marble floor beneath. And suddenly everything was clear.

‘You bastard. You cunning bastard.’

He was looking at a mosaic of a third Black Sun, the style identical to the first two, with a distinctive pattern in the centre that would represent some combination of rivers and roads. What was different was the inscription below the circle. The inscription that finally revealed what he had been looking for.

The crossroads where the women pray.

He pulled out his mobile phone and dialled the number on the card he held in his hand. For a moment he thought the signal in the bunker would be too weak, then the ring tone purred twice before it was answered.

‘May I speak to Mr Lim, please?’