The Excalibur Codex

XXXI

‘So we’re talking fences, cameras, motion sensors and microphones.’ Gault rattled out the dangers like a haiku poem. ‘Any or all of the above, in whatever combination. And we won’t know we missed them until the bastards are on top of us. So we take it slow and you do everything — and I mean ev-er-y-thing — that Gault does. I drop, you drop. I run, you run. If I stop for a piss, you get your John Thomas out, understand?’

It had taken them another hour to reach the east side of the lake where they lay among the trees about a mile from the Webster property. Jamie’s gut churned with nerves, but he smiled. ‘You didn’t tell me you wanted to scare them away.’

Gault grabbed his wrist and looked into his eyes. ‘Just do as you’re fucking told, okay?’

‘All right,’ Jamie snapped, already regretting his attempt to be friendly. ‘What happens in the unlikely event I get hold of the sword?’

‘I told you. When you have it, press one on the sat-phone. That will alert me and I’ll call down the float plane from Reno that will be patrolling overhead just waiting for the word. When I set this up I thought he’d be picking us up from Lake Tahoe, but this is even better. He’ll take us on at the jetty. The guards might be a problem, but there don’t seem to be too many of them and we’ll deal with that as it comes. We fly straight back to Reno, then on to New York, where Charlotte will be waiting for us and will hopefully have arranged the export of the sword—’

‘How …? ’

‘Probably better you don’t know that. I think they call it accessory after the fact over here. We’ll hole up for a few days and enjoy the sights and then head home.’

‘It sounds simple.’

‘It is simple, your lordship. The only difficult part is finding the sword and getting out of here. Let’s go.’

They moved slowly through the trees, keeping low to make best use of the cover of tall ferns that sprouted in flares of emerald green from the mossy ground. Gault’s eyes moved continually between the earth in front of him and the trees around. Jamie’s never left the man in front. Twice they froze at the sound of animals, the first probably a raccoon or a squirrel, but the second most definitely a deer of some kind that sniffed the air before trotting across their front, a fleeting, dusty shadow among the pines. The ground undulated and sudden outcrops appeared in front of them, but Gault insisted on climbing the obstacles rather than being diverted from their path. From time to time he consulted a compass, but Jamie was certain he didn’t need it. The access road lay somewhere about a hundred yards to their left, and to the right the mountains formed a more or less insurmountable barrier. It meant they always knew where they were, but also that they had only one line of escape. For a time Jamie relaxed and the spectre of Gault’s security guards faded as the forest became less threatening. But that was before they came to the fence. It loomed in front of them like a razor-wire wall, ten feet high and running to right and left as far as they could see. Jamie reached out to touch it, prompted by some foolish instinct to see if it was real or the product of his fevered imagination, but drew his hand back when Gault hissed, ‘Idiot.’

He signalled right and they soon came to a metal sign with an unmistakable zigzag symbol and the words, in bright red, DANGER — 10,000 VOLTS. KEEP OUT. PRIVATE PROPERTY.

Gault bent his mouth to Jamie’s ear. ‘Told you you’re a fucking amateur,’ he whispered, fumbling at the younger man’s rucksack.

Jamie sat back, staring at the sign. Well, that was that. They’d have to try the gate. But Gault had other ideas.

‘The chances are it’s just something to keep nosy hikers out. Too many animals in this forest. They’d be resetting the command box every five minutes. Still,’ he stared at the wire, ‘no point in taking any risks.’ He withdrew three lengths of cable from the rucksack, each four feet long and tipped with a large crocodile clip at either end, with the lugs of the clip covered in thick rubber. Very carefully he placed the first clips three feet apart on the bottom wire, before repeating the process on the second and third. Once he was satisfied, he reached back into the sack and drew out a pair of heavy-duty wire cutters. ‘I told you to trust your Uncle Gault, eh?’

When the wires were cut he’d created an opening three feet wide and the same high. He replaced the wire cutters in Jamie’s rucksack and pushed it under the wire. ‘You first.’

Jamie squirmed through, making sure he kept to the centre of the hole, and watched as Gault followed. ‘Now,’ the former SBS man said, ‘I want you to remember every tree we pass, so that you’ll know how to get back here.’

‘I thought you said we’d be going out by the jetty?’

‘We had an old saying in the army son. SNAFU. Situation normal: all fucked up. You hope for the best and plan for the worst. Let’s go.’

They continued through the trees for another hundred yards and Jamie became conscious they were being forced closer to the lake shore by the terrain. Everything ahead was cloaked by the shoulder of the mountain overlooking the jetty and Gault wriggled upwards through the sparse bushes and well-spaced trees on the outcrop.

‘Jesus Christ.’

Jamie joined him, his astonishment at the incredible sight before them marginally reduced by the fact his suspicions had been growing ever since he’d spoken to Marmaduke Porter. ‘Nortstein Castle.’

‘It’s quite a place.’

‘It’s not a patch on Wewelsburg.’

‘But nobody shipped that from Germany and rebuilt it in cowboy country,’ Gault said.

‘Point taken, old chum.’ Jamie whistled softly. ‘Every bolt and every nail. Every brick and every tile. You’ll note how the orientation with the lake and the north— south axis are exactly as they were at Nortstein. Our man looked long and hard before he found Marlette Lake.’

‘Why in the name of God would he do that?’

‘It’s possible he’s just fascinated by the Teutonic Knights.’ Jamie studied the massive building on the far side of the meadow. ‘I’d say it’s not because he enjoys the aesthetic beauty of their creations.’ As castles go, it was one of the least handsome he’d ever set eyes upon: more medieval Hitler’s bunker than Louis XIVth chateau and in a jigsaw puzzle of styles. The squat main block reminded him of a Norman keep, but in red brick, with added wing extensions and a roof clad in tiles of bright orange. A large doorway dominated the façade and at some point an octagonal tower had been added to the west wing. It drew his eye and he borrowed Gault’s binoculars to study the flagstaff.

‘The holy Knight’s Cross.’ Jamie confirmed the black Maltese cross against a white background. ‘If we were playing blind man’s buff I’d say we were getting warm.’

Gault ignored him and rummaged in the bottom of the rucksack. ‘You go first and I’ll cover you.’

‘Cover me with what?’

A big black Ruger automatic appeared in the former SBS man’s fist. He saw Jamie’s startled look and grinned sourly. ‘This is the States, son; they give them out with the groceries. Go.’

Reluctantly, Jamie left the cover of the trees and made a diagonal run for the angle of the east wing. It came to him that he and Gault were unconsciously following the tactics Wulf Ziegler and his Hitler Jugend had used when they’d stolen Excalibur from the mansion in the north of England. He wondered if there was some kind of karmic circle that had brought him here. But Wulf Ziegler had had darkness for cover, while Jamie felt completely naked as he crossed a meadow as wide as two cricket pitches in broad daylight. No sign of the guards, thank God, but given the size of the fence they must be around somewhere. He could hear the sound of the grass rustling in his footsteps and prayed it was Gault and not some hulking great ex Navy Seal. He reached the wall and stopped to get his bearings. To his right, the castle’s frontage stretched away with the main door in the centre. No point in breaking in to the ranch then knocking on the front door to ask for directions. It was a castle. It would once have been surrounded by a wall, or even by a series of walls. They were long gone, but the entrances to the kitchens and the servants’ quarters might still exist. He made his decision and weaved his way through a labyrinth of outhouses until he reached the rear of the building and looked round the corner.

‘Don’t move.’ The order was superfluous because the cold touch of steel on his forehead froze him to the spot. The owner of the steel, which by the lettering on the barrel an inch from his nose was part of a Glock 9mm, was a tall, rangy man with close-cropped hair, dressed in the kind of outlandish camouflage gear Americans used for deer hunting. A communications set hung from a hook beside one of the outhouses and Jamie realized he must have just returned from a patrol before some buffalo-hoofed English idiot alerted him. ‘Do you have a weapon?’

‘No.’

‘If I find you have a weapon I’m going to make you swallow it and then rip it out your asshole.’

‘I don’t have a weapon.’ Jamie let the anger flow into his voice. ‘I got lost in the woods.’

‘Yeah? And I’m George Washington. Now, very, very slowly, turn round and face the wall. You got that?’ Jamie did as he was told and rotated his body, keeping his head as steady as possible, with the barrel of the Glock scoring his skull as he moved until it was resting in the indent above his neck. ‘Now tell me again why you’re here?’

‘I told you—’ The barrel of the Glock rattled against his skull.

‘Every time I think you’re not telling the truth I’m going to hit you with my personal weapon, which you’d be advised to understand has a hair trigger. Now, why are you here?’

‘I came to talk to Harold Webster.’

‘Well, crawling through the woods seems a mite un-neighbourly, which leads me to suspect that you already know Mr Webster don’t welcome no visitors. Which brings me to my next question: did you come alone?’

‘I—’

‘Don’t answer that.’ The voice lost its edge and the fierce pressure on the back of his skull eased. Jamie heard the unmistakable crack of metal against bone and the sound of a falling body as the presence behind him vanished.

Gault ran his hands swiftly through the fallen guard’s camo jacket and trousers, coming up with a set of keys and what looked like a plastic bank card. When he completed the search he handed what he’d found to Jamie and dragged the unconscious man to the outhouse and, from somewhere, produced a set of plastic ties to bind his wrists.

‘What are you waiting for? Take his gun and get going. If my guess is right the card will get you through that door.’ He pointed to a doorway with a swipe machine attached to the jamb. ‘Old technology, but by the looks of thing they’ve been here long enough to feel pretty secure.’

Jamie picked up the Glock and weighed it in his hand before laying it down again. ‘I don’t think I will, Gault. I’m not sure I’m ready to shoot somebody just at this very moment.’

The former SBS man glared at him, his mouth working. ‘You really are a fucking amateur. If you screw this up I might shoot you myself.’

Jamie ignored the threat. ‘What will you be doing while I’m risking my neck inside?’

‘What I do best,’ Gault produced a fierce grin. ‘Causing bloody mayhem. As soon as you hear them charging from the front door make your move.’

For the moment Jamie had no inkling what that move would be, but he licked his lips and nodded. Gault rechecked the bound man’s ties, dragged him into the outhouse and closed the door from the outside. With a wink at Jamie, he was gone.

Jamie hesitated by the doorway to the house, but there was no option really. He hadn’t come all this way to turn back just when things got a little tough. Of course, he was going to look silly, if not worse, if he was found wandering the hallways of the old man’s house and there was nothing to find. But he remembered the effort that had gone into bringing this ugly piece of East Prussia here and he knew in his heart Hal Webster was hiding something. Whether it was Excalibur or not, the only way to find out was to get inside. He slipped the card into the swipe slot and pulled sharply down, triggering a soft buzz and a click. With the other hand he pushed the heavy door open and stepped into the last refuge of the Teutonic Knights.

A short corridor with what seemed to be staff quarters and kitchens to left and right led to a door at the far end. He pushed the door an inch and his heart quickened as he recognized the banners of a dozen SS divisions hanging from the high ceiling of a large entrance hall. They were all there. The silver key on a black shield that was Sepp Dietrich’s lucky charm and the symbol of his 1st Liebstandarte. The Death’s Head skull of the 3rd Totenkopf hung alongside it. The inverted Z of Das Reich and four or five more divisions he could name. Many of them had lost their entire strength four or five times before finally being annihilated on the vast Russian steppes, the narrow lanes of Normandy or the ruins of Berlin in April and May 1945. The banners appeared dusty and frayed; in fact, the whole atmosphere was one of progressive decay, cold and dank with a raw chill that seemed to flow from the floor of grey flagstone. Yet these black strips of fading silk cloth were very likely the ones that had hung there in 1941 when Reinhard Heydrich had marched into the hall of Nortstein Castle. Jamie shivered. Somehow, they still carried the same malignant power they had when the young men of the Schutzstaffel had marched behind them more than sixty years earlier. To his right and left a great double stairway curved up on either side of the room, linking it to the upper floors of the east and west wings. As he retreated back to the empty kitchen he caught sight of himself in a mirror and almost laughed at the piratical bearded figure staring back. A shave and a haircut were definitely on the cards at the end of all this. But first he had a job to do.

Twenty seconds passed before the sound of an alarm bell filled the building. He heard doors open a few feet away and prayed no one wanted to grab a quick snack before dealing with whatever emergency Gault had cooked up. The sound was followed by the swift tramp of running feet heading away from him and he waited until it had cleared before returning to the door into the hall. When he reached it, he hesitated and waited again, and was rewarded by the sound of at least two men racing down the stairs to the west wing. When the door slammed behind them he ventured warily into the hall, every sense seeking out the man who had been delayed, or deliberately left to deal with just this scenario, but there was nothing. The men had come from the west wing, which meant presumably that was where Hal Webster had his quarters. Logic said search the east wing first, but logic and instinct fought a short sharp battle and instinct won. The octagonal tower on the west wing was where the owner of this monstrosity had chosen to flaunt the symbol of the Teutonic Knights as if it was his personal banner.

Images from Wulf Ziegler’s journal transposed themselves on the scene in front of him.

For a heartbeat Jamie felt as if the surrounding chill had pierced his heart. The Third Reich’s merchants of death had all stood together in this room, the architects of the Holocaust and the einsatzgruppen, and their taint still marked it now like the scent of blood. All logic was forgotten as some force beyond nature drew him to the right where a darkened doorway loomed like the entrance to a tomb. He did not want to go there, but his feet moved of their own volition until the shadow engulfed him. Gradually the details of the room emerged as his eyes adjusted to the gloom.

This was what he had come here for, but he found himself gripped by a sort of mental paralysis. Only now, with every detail laid out in front of him, did the full horror of that night truly register. Around him twelve dark figures stood deathly still, cloaked in black robes lined with white silk. Below the robes they wore the black and silver uniform of the SS and the oak leaf collar patches of their rank. Only the dead eyes were wrong. Suddenly it was difficult to breathe, as if some unseen hand gripped his throat. Hot bile crept up from his stomach into his chest and he retched, his face grimacing in pain as more visions forced their way into his brain.

‘No, please no.’ The cry came from somewhere inside his head, but still he couldn’t move.

‘Bring forward the gifts.’

‘No.’

In his mind it was a shout of defiance as he stepped forward to lay his hands on Excalibur, the sword of Arthur and remove it from the pentagram of blades. The reality was a strangled squeak from the doorway behind him. He turned very carefully and found himself staring into what appeared to be the barrel of a nine-inch howitzer, but maybe that was just a matter of perspective. On further appraisal it was probably only a .45 pistol — one of those old-fashioned revolvers Clint Eastwood used so successfully to make holes in the bad guys — which wasn’t a great deal of comfort. At this range the effect would be much the same. Jamie tried to remember if these guns fired on first pressure, or if they needed a bit more effort. He sincerely hoped it was the second. The shock was compounded by the heavy-set man who confronted him from the wheelchair. Two different people stared from the face of the silver-haired patrician with the .45 waving shakily in his right hand. Something had happened to his left side that seemed to have melted his features and twisted his hand and arm into a hooked claw. The flesh of his forehead drooped over his eyelid, which gravity in turn drew down to meet his lip, which seemed to be trying to slip from the bottom of his jaw. If anything, the effect was made all the more bizarre, almost schizophrenic, by the fine-boned features and cold-eyed certainty studying him from the right half of the face.

That single cold eye told him he needed to talk his way out of this, and fast.

‘Mr Webster, I—’

The shaking arm extended and the gun barrel homed on to Jamie’s chest and held steady. All of a sudden the chances of negotiating a ceasefire seemed a lot slimmer. The options flashed through his mind. Ten feet. Rush him to put off his aim and he might miss. No, he couldn’t miss at that range and a .45 round would take off his arm or blow a hole in him the size of a man’s fist. The knuckle of the trigger finger went a little whiter and he tensed to throw himself at Harold Webster’s feet, praying the American couldn’t bring the gun to bear before he upended the chair.

He was so focused on the old man he didn’t notice the third person enter the room.

‘I’ve told you often enough you’re not allowed to shoot trespassers, Gramps.’ A flash of silver flicked out to knock the barrel to one side.

Jamie risked a glance at his saviour — at least he hoped she was his saviour. Slim and blonde, she must have been close to his own age, and the tight-fitting black bodysuit she wore emphasized the curves of a body that combined the strength of an athlete with the poise of a supermodel. Surprisingly, given that Gramps had just been about to commit murder, she was smiling: the sort of cold-eyed, knowing smile that made Jamie suspect his presence here wasn’t all that unexpected and she’d quite enjoyed watching him squirm in the sights of a one-man firing squad. Even more surprisingly, she was holding a fencing foil.