The Excalibur Codex

XIX

‘You’re late,’ Gault growled as they walked into the hotel room. ‘The boss is expecting your call in ten minutes.’

‘I thought you wanted to talk over where we are?’

‘We don’t have time and there’s no point in going over it twice. I faxed him a description of the sword. He’s very excited.’

Jamie suppressed a rush of annoyance. He’d wanted to gauge Adam Steele’s reaction to the breakthrough himself. Then again, there was no reason why Gault shouldn’t tell Steele about the details in the coded book. He pulled out the sat-phone.

‘No! He was very specific about the time. One thirty on the dot.’

A knock on the door heralded Charlotte’s return. ‘I’ve booked the tickets,’ she said brightly.

Gault glared at her, managing to look simultaneously mystified and furious at not being consulted about whatever scheme they’d concocted on their trip to the galleries. Jamie ignored him, glanced at his watch and pressed 2 as the minute hand hit the half-hour mark. Again there was the frustrating delay as the first call rang out and he had to repeat the process.

The urbane Adam Steele sounded like a schoolboy who’d opened his birthday card to find the last Cup Final ticket. ‘So you’ve confirmed it? Bloody fine job, Jamie. I confess that even with the Ziegler testimony I was still doubtful. Christ, Excalibur, the sword of Arthur, and it exists. It really exists.’ Jamie tried to interrupt, but Adam Steele in full flow was like a burst dam: unstoppable. ‘What a fool. I’d always visualized the sword as one of those gilded monstrosities you find in the Royal collections, a sort of deadly ornament. But it wouldn’t be like that at all. A sword of the most ancient lineage, a broad-bladed, battle-notched iron man-killer.’ He chuckled as he quoted the words. ‘A proper fighting weapon from the Dark Ages. A warrior’s sword that held back the Saxon hordes. And it was there, in that castle in nineteen forty-one. Yes, I know, you bloody pessimist, you’ll tell me that just because it existed then doesn’t mean it’s still in one piece now. But I know, Jamie, I feel it in these old bones of mine. Find it for me, and offer whoever has it however much they want for it, within reason. And if that doesn’t work, Gault will come up with a solution. Remember that. When it comes to any negotiations Gault is your ace in the hole. Just find it for me.’ He waited for a response, but Jamie let him stew, exchanging a grin with Charlotte as the seconds passed. ‘Jamie? Are you still there? What have you got? You’re holding out on me, you bastard. You know something.’

‘I’ve been taking another look at the codex and the Lauterbacher journal,’ Jamie admitted. ‘Lauterbacher gives us much more detail about the location and how he reached there, but I think the main clue is in the codex. A place not far from where the Führer charted the course of the Thousand Year Reich. Hitler was forever planning his legacy, and on the face of it, that could mean any of the places associated with him, like Berchtesgaden or the Reichskanzlei in Berlin. But when you take it with the information in the Lauterbacher journal, we’re able to narrow it down significantly. Lauterbacher talks about the long journey east into what was then East Prussia and is now eastern Poland.’ Gault moved a little closer so he wouldn’t miss any of the conversation and Jamie could almost feel the anticipation at the other end of the line. ‘The most famous site in East Prussia associated with Adolf Hitler is the one where he plotted Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of Russia, and from where he directed the war in the East. The place where, on July the twentieth, Claus von Stauffenberg and the plotters of the Wehrmacht high command attempted to blow the Führer to high heaven …’

‘The Wolf’s Lair,’ Steele whispered. ‘Of course the castle would be at the Wolf’s Lair.’

‘There’s only one problem, Adam. The Wolf’s Lair sounds terribly romantic, but it wasn’t a castle, it was a bunker complex in the Masurian woods, and the Germans blew up most of the place when they retreated in late nineteen forty-four or early ’forty-five. But the Wolf’s Lair gives us our target. Somewhere within a few miles of the Wolf’s Lair is the castle where the ritual took place and with a little luck I think we’ll be able to locate it.’

‘How?’

Jamie hesitated while he ran through his mind the theory that had come to him as he stood in front of the Picasso. Just as there were layers of symbolism in the painting, he felt certain they also existed in Rolf Lauterbacher’s journal. The missing page was one mystery, but for the moment, and for reasons he’d have found it hard to explain, he had decided not to share that.

‘Lauterbacher has always been very careful not to reveal the exact location of the castle, not even to Wulf Ziegler. Yet he’s given us a description and a general location. That means he wanted someone to find it. I’m certain the secret is somewhere in the journal. It’s just a matter of working it out. Charlotte’s booked us on a flight to Warsaw and from there we can hire a car to take us east.’

They talked for a few minutes more. Steele mused on the possibility of chartering a helicopter to take them from Warsaw to the bunker complex, but Jamie had an aversion to sitting in something that was basically a million pieces of metal trying to tear themselves apart. When he dialled off, he noticed the battery on the phone was low and instead of replacing it in his rucksack he hooked it up to its charger.

‘So we’re going to the Wolf’s Lair.’ Charlotte’s voice held a shiver of anticipation. ‘It sounds a bit like going into the lion’s den.’

Jamie and Gault exchanged glances. ‘Don’t tempt fate, love,’ the SBS man said.

They flew into Warsaw on a Swiss Air flight via Zurich, and spent the night in an airport hotel. While Gault worked out the next day’s route, Jamie and Charlotte went through the journal again, studying maps of the area around the Wolfsschanze. ‘The description Lauterbacher gives is of a walled castle beside a lake,’ Charlotte pointed out. ‘That should at least provide us with a starting point.’

‘True,’ Jamie agreed. ‘But it would be helpful if the Wolf’s Lair wasn’t situated quite so close to an area called the Masurian Lakes, which, according to my online guidebook, is home to approximately two thousand rather scenic stretches of water. It also says here there are at least a hundred castles worth visiting in what was formerly East Prussia. Still, he hints that they reached the castle fairly soon after passing the bunker complex, so we can narrow it down to within, say, twelve and twenty miles?’

She nodded and nibbled her lip, a habit that reminded Jamie of his old friend and one-time partner Sarah Grant. ‘Yes, that give us about seventy of the two thousand.’

‘Progress,’ Jamie smiled. ‘At least we’re looking for a needle in a haystack instead of a needle in a field of haystacks.’

‘Do we know if Heydrich or any of the others had estates in East Prussia?’

Jamie leafed through the biographies she’d put together. ‘Silesia, Bavaria, Westphalia. Only one East Prussian and that’s Bach-Zelewski, but his family had long since lost their ancestral lands and he was the son of an insurance clerk.’

‘There’s one reference I don’t understand.’ Charlotte frowned. ‘The Knight’s Cross appears in both the Excalibur codex and the Lauterbacher journal. Could that be significant?’

Jamie studied the documents — Beneath the Knight’s Cross — Interspersed with the holy Knight’s Cross — In the centre hung the symbol of the Knight’s Cross. ‘The Knight’s Cross was one of the highest military decorations in Nazi Germany, created by Hitler himself for extreme bravery on the battlefield. It was a sort of classier version of the Iron Cross, but it turned out German warriors were so brave the Knight’s Cross wasn’t reward enough, so they added golden oak leaves, then oak leaves and swords, and oak leaves, swords and diamonds, which made it more or less the equivalent of our Victoria Cross.’

Gault looked up from his map, the first time he’d deigned to become involved in the conversation. ‘She might have a point, though. I’ve been around enough war heroes, but I’ve never heard of a medal referred to as holy.’ He shrugged — they could take it or leave it. ‘If I’ve got this right we should be at the Wolf’s Lair by around one if we leave by ten tomorrow.’

Jamal al Hamza bowed his head low over the table in the coffee house in a back street of Peshawar, near the Afghan border. He might have been praying, but in fact he was listening to the whispered words of the young man seated opposite. The establishment was owned by one of the many subsidiaries run by his family and he might have held this meeting in one of the upstairs rooms, yet he always felt safer doing business in plain sight. ‘You are certain of this?’

‘Our friend in Washington was most confident. The phone is the same one used in the London attack. He has passed on the current location and arranged for our team to have the use of a scanning device, which will allow them to track it.’

Al Hamza frowned. The source in Washington was a white Muslim convert who had been inserted into the lower ranks of the CIA as a sleeper agent. Naturally, given his background, he had been treated with some suspicion, but his intelligence from within the enemy’s computer section had been tested many times and had never failed. Yet … ‘Perhaps our friend is becoming overconfident?’

The young man pondered the question. ‘We are not dead or wearing orange jumpsuits at Guantanamo Bay,’ he said eventually, though they both knew that situation could change at any moment if Allah willed it. ‘Do you wish me to abort the operation?’

‘No. Tell them to continue. The orders are the same. They are to be taken quietly. Whoever is using the phone is to be held and persuaded to provide a confession and an apology on video. Once the apology is complete they will be subject to Islamic justice. Make sure the security team understands.’

‘Of course.’ The young man certainly understood. A ritual beheading would send a very forceful message to those who were tempted to usurp the Leader’s authority. He bowed. ‘I will personally bring you a copy.’