The Excalibur Codex

XVIII

‘Are you winding me up?’ Gault’s voice was heavy with derision as he laid down the decoded text. Lack of sleep made Jamie feel slightly detached from proceedings and it seemed almost unreal that, in the street outside the hotel window, the bubbling song of a lone blackbird soared and dipped in celebration of the new day.

‘You think it’s unlikely?’

‘Pagan rituals? Human sacrifice? I think either it’s a fairytale or the person who wrote it was deranged. Even for the Nazis it’s unbelievable.’

‘Almost as unbelievable as building death factories to exterminate an entire race of people? Six million is the last count, as I recall. What are the lives of five children compared to the Final Solution?’

‘But there’s evidence for that—’

‘Wolfram Sievers existed,’ Jamie interrupted. ‘He was the general secretary of the Ahnenerbe, the SS research and ancestral heritage society that was a front for Himmler’s obsession with the occult. Walter Darré was another of its leaders. The twelve men who took part in the ritual described here are all real and were key members of Himmler’s inner circle. Charlemagne’s sword Joyeuse is real. I could take you to see it in the Louvre, only it wouldn’t be the real thing. Because the real thing went missing during the German occupation of Paris.’

Charlotte looked up from her computer. Her reaction to the revelations in the coded journal had been one of such shocked outrage that in anyone else Jamie might have thought it almost theatrical, which surprised him, because she gave the impression of always being in control. ‘I’ve checked the reference to Aktion T4. It existed too. At the start of the war Hitler decided that anyone with a severe birth defect like Down’s syndrome or with serious mental problems was a burden on the state and didn’t deserve to live. They began the euthanasia programme in nineteen thirty-nine and the last killings took place a week after the war ended. It says here that at least two hundred thousand physically and mentally handicapped men, women and children were killed. Some of Germany’s most eminent doctors were involved. One of its most enthusiastic supporters was SS-Obergruppenführer Richard Hildebrandt, who was later convicted of kidnapping or forcibly removing the children of Eastern workers. If anyone could fulfil Reinhard Heydrich’s requirements it was Hildebrandt. God, I feel sick. They used five babies like sacrificial lambs to carry out some deranged Nazi’s sick fucking fantasy?’

‘They’re dead,’ Gault said brutally. ‘And every man in that room is dead with them. Some of them were shot and some of them finished up at the end of a rope. Maybe you think the others should have suffered more. I doubt Heydrich would have agreed as he was lying there with a handful of grenade fragments covered in the contents of a Prague sewer in his belly. All that matters to us is finding that sword.’

‘So now you believe?’ Jamie demanded.

‘You said it yourself. The elements existed and they were all in place. Only it didn’t work, because in the long term the Red Army kicked their Nazi arses, Hitler put a bullet in his own brain and Heinrich Himmler ate a cyanide pill for breakfast. The question is, where does it take us?’

Jamie looked at his watch. It was almost eight o’clock and he experienced a curious mix of exhaustion and elation. His damaged rib throbbed and his brain whirled with new theories and possibilities, but for the moment he’d had enough of codes and Nazi atrocities. He needed something to clear his mind. ‘It takes me to breakfast, then the Prado. Too late to sleep and I need a bit of time to think about all this. I usually find the best place for thinking is in an art gallery. There’s a certain peace that soothes the mind, don’t you think?’ He ignored Gault’s look of disbelief. ‘Anyone fancy coming along?’

Charlotte smiled and headed for the door. ‘I’ll get my coat.’

‘Mr Steele isn’t going to like you swanning around Madrid like a tourist,’ the former soldier grumbled at Jamie.

‘Think of it as taking back a bit of overtime, old chum. And don’t worry, there are a few things stirring in the old noggin. If I come up with anything concrete I’ll give Adam a call and let him know.’

‘I wouldn’t do that,’ the other man said hastily. ‘I know for a fact he’s in meetings all morning. He asked for an update in the early afternoon. Be back by one and we can have a chance to talk it over, yes?’

Jamie stifled a yawn. ‘Why not?’

The young man hitched the rucksack on his back and studied himself in the mirror. Short hair, mirror sunglasses partially disguising his identity, Levi’s jeans and a T-shirt advertising some heavy metal rock band. Just another student backpacker of indeterminate origin, looking for somewhere to stay in one of the many rooming houses and hostels that made Madrid a magnet for such people. The bomb was quite a small one, but he had been assured the type of explosives would do the greatest amount of damage in the confined space where it would detonate. One would have thought security would be much tighter given the events of four years earlier, but he had made three practice runs — assuming a different identity each time — and it appeared to have made no difference. The many signs urged people to report any baggage left unattended, but in such places human nature seemed to dictate that everyone must pay no mind to each other’s business. He’d been able to leave the rucksack alone for fifteen minutes at a time without anyone even giving it a glance. Well, they would pay for their complacency. Perhaps he was doing them a favour.

The hotel on the Calle Velàzquez was only a short walk from the Metro station at Principe. The train took a few minutes to arrive, but when it did Jamie and Charlotte found a pair of seats together in one of the centre carriages. He could tell something was bothering her and he thought he knew what it was.

‘Look.’ He did his best to keep his voice neutral. ‘Last night was a bit awkward, but we shouldn’t let it get in the way of what we’re doing. Just give me a bit of time.’

It was all of ten seconds before the light of understanding flickered in the blue eyes. ‘It’s not that at all,’ she snorted. ‘I was a little bored and a little attracted and I flirted with you, so what? If it makes you feel better, it didn’t mean anything.’

Belatedly, he realized he’d completely misread her and prayed silently for the world to swallow him up. ‘You seemed, er … preoccupied.’

‘Oh, I was just thinking about Gault.’ Her face twisted into a grimace. ‘Sometimes he really creeps me out. Have you noticed the way he looks at me, as if I’m just a piece of meat? And you never know how he’s going to react. One minute he doesn’t think the sword exists, the next he’s more eager to find it than any of us.’

Jamie thought Gault could be boorish and introverted, but apart from a few mildly close-to-the-bone jokes that were hardly surprising from a former soldier, he’d never noticed anything wrong in his attitude to Charlotte. But then maybe you have to see it from a woman’s point of view. ‘I can have a word with him if you like,’ he suggested.

‘That’s all right,’ she laughed. ‘I can look after myself, but you did ask …’ She frowned. ‘It’s just that he’s so bloody calculating, and cold. He didn’t turn a hair when he read about the murdered babies. I wanted to be sick. It’s difficult to believe that any human being could be part of such a thing.’

Jamie kept his voice down. They were talking in English, but that didn’t mean the people around them on the packed carriage couldn’t understand what they were saying. ‘You’re wrong, Charlotte. When I started researching these things I rather naively believed only a few people were involved in the very worst of it, concentration camp guards and that sort of thing. But the deeper I dug, the more it became clear that every time you turned over a stone in World War Two you’d find another atrocity, maybe involving only a few people, but still sickening in its own right. You don’t kill millions upon millions of people, Jews, Slavs, Poles and Russians, without getting your hands dirty, and Germany got its hands dirty.’

Charlotte chewed her lip with perfect white teeth. ‘Yes, I can see that. What I don’t understand is how those men — Himmler’s Black Knights — could be taken in by all the mumbo-jumbo of the ritual. It was the twentieth century, for God’s sake. One or two, yes, but not twelve. They were monsters, but they must have been intelligent monsters to reach the positions they held. Any fool can see that you won’t change the world by sticking five pieces of metal together, no matter what those pieces of metal are, who held them or what they represent.’

‘The answer is simple enough.’ Jamie pushed his rucksack between his feet to allow an elderly woman to reach the exit. ‘Heinrich Himmler believed, and every man who sat at the round table that day owed his status and his power to Himmler. Think of the SS as a kind of Freemasonry. There are thousands of Masonic meetings in Britain every week, attended by hundreds of thousands of ordinary men. All of them have undergone certain initiation rituals to gain membership or to advance in the organization. How many of them truly believe in those rituals? Probably very few. They are there for the influence and the power the membership of a select, secretive organization gives them. Of the men who attended the Excalibur ritual, Sievers and probably Darré were believers, Heydrich was doing his master’s bidding, two or three were there because they feared the consequences of non-attendance, and the rest, like Josef Dietrich, were pragmatists who knew their place at the Nazi top table depended on Himmler. They did what had to be done, just as they did what they were ordered to do later in the war, no matter how sickening it was. I doubt if more than three or four would have known about the children in advance.’

‘That doesn’t absolve them.’ Charlotte rose from her seat as they reached their stop.

‘No, it doesn’t,’ Jamie joined her at the door. ‘And I’m not suggesting we do. By the end of the war every man in that room had the blood of hundreds, if not thousands, of children on his hands.’

They left the train at Retiro and emerged into what felt like the cleansing sunshine on the Calle de Alcala, with the constant rush of traffic in their ears. ‘This is why I love this city,’ Jamie said as he led Charlotte up a tree-lined avenue into a park that seemed to go on for ever. ‘I thought we could walk through Retiro to the gallery. It’s not too far.’

Fifty paces behind, a man in a short-sleeved shirt and jeans waited until they were out of sight before following in their footsteps. Oblivious to his presence, they walked for a while, enjoying the mid-morning sunshine, overtaken by lycra-clad joggers and weaving through crowds of families with children. Charlotte broke the silence.

‘You must miss her so much.’

Jamie faltered at the unexpected question, uncertain how much Abbie’s memory should allow him to reveal. ‘We … we were at that stage where we couldn’t get enough of each other.’ He managed a tight, bitter-sweet smile. ‘Both trying to play it cool but resenting every minute we had to spend apart. She’d been away for the weekend, but I persuaded her to come back a day early, and, well, that’s why she was where she was.’

Charlotte’s eyes filled with compassion. ‘You can’t blame yourself, Jamie. Nothing you could have done would have saved Abeba.’

‘She was carrying our child.’

‘Oh … I didn’t know.’

‘Neither did I.’

There seemed nothing else to say and they walked on in silence, both suddenly feeling the effects of twenty-four hours without sleep. Eventually, they reached a large boating lake, with sun-dappled green waters and dominated by an enormous monument on the far side. A food stall was selling snacks and Jamie fumbled in his pocket. ‘How would you like to taste the best churros con chocolate in Madrid?’

She smiled her thanks, glad the melancholy she’d created had disappeared. He came back with two cups and a white paper bag. Their mood quickly altered, tired minds somehow invigorated by sips of the rich, dark brew as they nibbled the deep-fried dough sticks from the bag after dipping them into the liquid chocolate. ‘I’m honoured you brought me here specially to eat the best churros con chocolate in Madrid.’

He grinned. ‘Every cafe, chocolateria and stall in the city sells the best churros con chocolate in Madrid. I hope you’re not disappointed?’

‘No,’ she laughed. ‘Just a little worried about the effect on my waistline.’

They reached a fountain with a winged figure in bronze on a plinth in the centre and Jamie turned right. ‘This should bring us down to the rear of the Prado.’

The Prado was as close to heaven on earth as Jamie thought he could ever come. Paintings were his life, and he was intimately acquainted with several thousand of them, but room after room filled with artistic wonders still took his breath away. Velazquez and Goya, Titian, Rubens and Raphael, vast biblical scenes, miniature portraits, the colour, the depth, the majesty and the beauty captured by the geniuses of their age. What primal urges had first made man lay down images on a cave wall to be admired and remembered? Where had the combination of coordination, commitment, vision and patience come from to create this level of perfection? He discovered to his delight that Charlotte had a passion for the works almost as great as his own. She devoured every piece of information he dredged from his memory about the masterpieces that passed all too quickly as they flitted from chamber to chamber like butterflies in a garden full of nectar-filled flowers. At last they reached a room dominated by a huge painting more than six metres long and three high.

‘I hadn’t realized this was here,’ Jamie laughed. An ornate temple of golden stone dominated the painting, but the focus was on the reclining figure of a medieval knight in the centre, surrounded by women in attitudes of either shock or grieving. Not a great painting, Jamie would have said: too fussy with its prissy little flower-filled garden and the not-too-well-imagined friezes, and too busy with people hanging around looking sad, but not really contributing very much to the overall vision. He turned to Charlotte. ‘You are looking at King Arthur, as imagined by the English painter Edward Burne-Jones. The Last Sleep of Arthur in Avalon is as good an example of obsession as you’ll find on a gallery wall. He started painting this monstrosity in eighteen eighty-one and didn’t finish it until seventeen years later, at which point he cheerfully dropped down dead believing his life’s work done.’ He shook his head, smiling. ‘Poor old Edward. They say he started to think he was Arthur and slept every night in that very same pose.’

‘That must have been a bit of a bind for Mrs Jones. The lady whose lap his head is in doesn’t look too comfortable.’ They exchanged grins. ‘No sword,’ she pointed out.

‘No, by the time Arthur reached Avalon, Excalibur had been safely returned to the Lady in the Lake.’

‘So how did it come to be hidden away in an English mansion house in nineteen thirty-seven?’

‘That, my dear, is what we are going to find out.’ With a last look at the painting he turned away. ‘But first I’m going to show you a real masterpiece.’

They were delayed in the steel-and-glass entrance hall of the Reina Sophia by an altercation between the blue-shirted security guards and a young tourist who didn’t want to give up his rucksack. Jamie stood patiently in line behind the man, waiting to hand over his own bag. His unease grew as the confrontation became louder. Almost in slow motion he watched the visitor’s hand creep towards the toggle holding the neck of the rucksack. Jamie opened his mouth to shout a warning, but one of the guards was already making a grab for his holster. Too late. The young man tugged at a cord connected to something inside the bag. Jamie stepped back out of the line of fire as the cord came clear and pushed himself between Charlotte and the threat, horribly aware this might be his last moment. In the same second the guard pulled his pistol and aimed it at the suspect’s chest, prompting screams of terror from those around who hadn’t noticed the movement, but could see the gun. The young man froze, the rucksack in his left hand and the cord, with some kind of diplomatic pass, in the right. ‘Ruso. Padre. Embajada,’ he protested weakly. Still shaking, Jamie led the way up the metal stairway as he was being escorted away.

‘Just for a minute there, I thought …’ Charlotte breathed.

‘Yes, me too. My legs are weak.’

‘Still, that was very brave.’ She reached across to kiss his cheek.

He could still feel the warmth of it as they climbed to the second floor and through a stone walkway to the main gallery. A doorway to the left led to a series of open rooms where obscure artworks stood out stark against the bare white walls. As they entered a large central chamber Charlotte was drawn to a series of small drawings that were unmistakably familiar, but infuriatingly mysterious. Jamie drew her through another opening to the left.

‘Wow.’

‘Wow, indeed.’

The painting on the far wall was even larger and more complex than The Last Sleep of Arthur, and a hundred times more powerful. At over eleven feet tall and almost twenty-six feet wide, it dominated the room, dwarfing the crowd of tourists, mainly Japanese, it seemed to Jamie, who stood back enthralled to study its message. He led Charlotte forward through the couples and family groups until they stood directly in front of the picture. For anyone who had only seen it in a magazine or a book, the effect of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica was astonishing. The painting had a magnetic quality that drew the viewer in to be part of the terrible drama unfolding on the enormous canvas. In the wake of the bombing of Guernica by planes of the Condor Legion, piloted by Germans sent by Adolf Hitler to trial a new, merciless brand of conflict, Picasso had been driven to embody the awfulness of war in a single painting. To do so he had eschewed the crimson of gushing blood, the sunburst at the centre of the explosion, or the obscene pink of torn flesh, for a monochrome blandness that depended on the stark agony of his images to carry its message. Here was death and dismemberment, a mother weeping over her child’s limp body, a gaping mouth that would never speak again, a severed arm, the fingers still holding the stump of a broken sword, a horse pierced through by a spear of wood and at the mercy of a rampaging bull. In the centre, a chaos of stylized symbolism. To the right a man, or a woman, writhing in agony at the heart of an inferno.

‘It’s breathtaking.’ Charlotte broke the hushed silence with an almost reverential whisper. ‘A work of true genius.’

‘Yes.’ Jamie smiled at her reaction. ‘But old Pablo worked hard to be a genius. For every one of his paintings there are a hundred examples of ideas he tried and discarded. Those pictures you saw out there are details of the painting, reworked until they were perfect. Only then did he start on the canvas. He completed it in the summer of nineteen thirty-seven.’

‘When Wulf Ziegler stole Excalibur from an English country house.’

‘Exactly.’ Jamie moved aside to allow a party of Spanish schoolchildren through to the front of the crowd, pondering how well-behaved they were compared to their English counterparts he’d seen in museums and galleries. When they were past he moved to Charlotte’s side and dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘The raid on Guernica was a trial run for the planes and pilots who would pave the way for the Blitzkrieg and Hitler’s early victories in Poland and France. It didn’t matter to the Nazis that fifteen hundred innocents died to prove the experiment worked. Why should we be surprised that Himmler and his acolytes were prepared to kill five children in an attempt to ally themselves with the forces of darkness? The more we discover, the more convinced I am that the ceremony happened and the sword existed.’

‘You said we needed a description of Excalibur before you would know whether it was worth pursuing?’

‘Exactly and Rolf Lauterbacher has given us one. He recited a line from the coded journal. His was a sword of the most ancient lineage, a broad-bladed, battle-notched iron man-killer.’

‘What does that tell you?’

‘It tells me it’s worth continuing. Excalibur, if this is Excalibur, would be a much older sword than the others used in the ceremony, which were all medieval. In design it would have been cruder, simple, heavy and double-edged, and if the Arthur tales have a foundation in truth, it would have been tested in war. The reference to iron is also significant, because it would have been forged in an age before the production of steel became more than an accident of the smith’s choice of ore. A broad-bladed, battle-notched iron man-killer would describe it very well.’

‘So we’re ready to take the next step?’

He nodded, his eyes still on the picture. ‘Sometimes you have to look beyond what you can see, because the message is in what you sense. The message that painting sends is more than that war is terrible. It’s about mortality and the inherent inhumanity in men, and it’s conveyed in the images you can’t see, unless you know what to look for; the skulls formed by parts of different figures, the second bull goring the horse, lost in the carnage. I have a feeling Rolf Lauterbacher’s journal is like that, and if we can look beyond the horror of the ceremony we’ll discover the missing fact that will guide us to the next clue.’

‘Then why are we standing here?’

‘Because I have another mystery to solve first. And I’m not sure I want Mr Gault to know about it.’

They took a cab back to the hotel, but Jamie surprised Charlotte by asking the driver to turn off the Calle de Alcala and back into the area they’d visited the previous day.

‘This won’t take long,’ Jamie assured her as they stopped outside the Lauterbacher apartment.

He rang the doorbell and Inge Lauterbacher appeared a moment later, a frown of puzzlement on her face that was instantly displaced by resentment. ‘I told—’

‘I apologize for the intrusion, Fräulein, but there is one more question I must ask you.’ He pulled the journal from inside his jacket. ‘I wondered if there was any reason why your father would have gone to a great deal of trouble to remove a single sheet from his journal?’