The Isis Covenant

XLV

Paul Dornberger watched in disbelief as the door to the killing chamber swung open. His mind rebelled at what he was seeing. No man could enter this room except himself or his father, or those who would soon be dead. The recitation that had been passed down the ages was almost complete, the Crown and the Eye had been reunited and through the opening in the ceiling, so cunningly concealed from outside, the thin sliver of a sickle moon was just coming into view. Only the final, irrevocable act was required to complete the ceremony.

Beside him, Max Dornberger lay on a rough trestle bed, clinging to life with every harsh breath. The doctors believed Paul had brought him here to die, but the opposite was the case. Tonight he would fulfil the quest of a lifetime. It did not matter how many had died to make it happen. All that mattered was that the Crown of Isis should live again through the one who had been chosen.

The Crown sat on the bed in front of his father. Dmitri Samsonov, his dark eyes wide with terror, was a tiny figure strapped into the chair that had shaped Paul Dornberger’s life, his head forced back, the taut white flesh of his throat ready for the sacrificial knife.

In one swift movement, Dornberger picked up the pistol at his side, aimed and fired. The first person through the door gave a sharp cry and dropped to the tiled floor. The second shot missed its intended target, but by good fortune it smashed the gun from the man in the doorway’s hand and with a cry of pain the figure stepped back out of the line of fire.

Dornberger recognized the woman writhing on the floor. He was tempted to finish her, but a glance at the opening above told him he had to hurry. Time was running out. He had minutes to complete the ceremony, no more. Keeping the gun on the doorway he resumed the litany of the ritual.

Jamie watched helplessly as Danny tried ineffectually to stem the bleeding from the gunshot wound high in her breast. His right hand vibrated like a tuning fork from the impact of the bullet that had knocked the pistol from his fingers. He had only got the briefest glimpse of what was happening inside the cellar, but it was enough. The chair with the boy held in its straps and tethers, sitting above the kind of enamel run-off you would see in an abattoir, told its own terrible story. His first instinct was to rush Dornberger, but he knew that was the tactic of despair. The man would shoot him down before he took three paces and afterwards he would kill Dmitri Samsonov and Danny Fisher. Time. He needed time to think.

‘It’s finished, Dornberger. Let the boy go. Whatever happens now your father is going to die. Nobody but you believes that mumbo-jumbo about the Crown, but even if it did work all it would mean is he’ll spend whatever is left of his life in prison. Did you know that your father’s name isn’t even Dornberger, Paul? Did he ever tell you that he’s actually a piece of Nazi scum called Bodo Ritter; a man who slaughtered more than twenty thousand innocent Jewish men, women and children? Bodo Ritter is something I’d wipe off my shoe, but there’s hope for you, Paul,’ he lied. ‘Being brought up in this madhouse there must be a chance that you can plead insanity.’

The litany ended and Jamie heard a muffled cry. He risked a frantic glance round the door. Dornberger had laid the gun down, but now the knife was in his right hand, the razor edge against Dmitri Samsonov’s cringing flesh. Jamie could see the veins pulsing in the exposed neck and he flinched at the thought of the slaughter that was about to occur unless he could find a way to stop it.

‘The only thing that is finished is you, Saintclair,’ Paul Dornberger’s voice was eerily calm. ‘What my father is or was means nothing. He created me in his own image to be capable of any act or make any sacrifice to restore the Crown and the Eye. Can you imagine how many have sat in this chair to make this day happen? How much pain this room has seen. Soon you will experience it, as I have done. Once the ceremony is complete, unless you surrender yourself I will shoot your mysterious companion to pieces. Naturally I will aim to cause her the maximum of suffering. Could you stand that Saintclair? Watching her squirm with a bullet in her guts. Hearing her scream for her life as the blood spurts from a severed artery. I do not think so. And when you are in the chair, we will discuss how you managed to discover the whereabouts of Berndt Hartmann and how you found your way here.’

‘Keep him talking,’ Danny hissed.

That was going to be easier said than done. Paul Dornberger kept glancing up at the opening in the roof. Jamie realized that the killer was operating to some timetable dictated by what he was seeing there and that might be measured in seconds. Even as he watched, Max Dornberger made a feeble movement towards the Crown, but the son nudged it away from his clutching fingers. Jamie closed his eyes. Think.

He stepped into the room. ‘You don’t have to do this, Paul. You have a mind of your own. I can imagine what happened to you here: what that man did to you and what he made you do. But it can stop, now. The Crown of Isis is stained in blood. But you have the power to make it clean again. End it here and you regain whatever honour your family ever had. End it here and you can be clean again.’ Was there some kind of reaction? A hint of hesitation? ‘We’re all brothers under the skin, Paul. End it now and you can join the brotherhood of mankind again.’ As pleas for mercy went, it was trite and hackneyed, but it was all he had. He gathered himself to commit suicide when it was rejected.

But trite or not, the words — a word — had triggered some kind of chain reaction in Paul Dornberger’s brain. For a few precious seconds he forgot the sickle moon as the many deaths he had carried out here swam through his brain. The faces appeared one after the other, dozens of them, united in their terror and their hopelessness. But one face in particular, a face that had eluded him for a quarter of a century, suddenly created a freeze-frame image that caught and stayed. A boy’s face, dull and trusting. An idiot, his father had said, as he handed Paul the knife, good for nothing but practice. His brother’s face.

With a growl, he knocked the old man’s hands away from the Crown and picked the golden treasure off the bed.

‘It is not for you, old man. It was never for you.’

With his free hand he lifted the Crown of Isis towards his own head, the diamond glittering in the artificial light. Dmitri screamed again as he felt the increasing pressure of the knife at his throat. Jamie knew he had only one chance. Somehow Danny Fisher managed to push the pistol that had been trapped beneath her towards him and he made a dive for it. He had no time to aim. As his right hand closed over the weapon’s butt he raised it and fired allowing instinct and experience to take over.

Dornberger had raised the Crown level with his face and there was a frozen millisecond before the bullet struck its target. The Eye of Isis shattered into a million pieces and the copper-jacketed slug continued on its course. The last thing Paul Dornberger saw was a blinding flash of light before the bullet took him directly between the eyes. Max Dornberger’s eyelids snapped open and he lurched upright on the bed with the cry of a man being dragged down into the seventh pit of hell. The shadow was already upon him, and as Jamie watched it grew ever darker. In a matter of seconds, the man who had begun life as Bodo Ritter aged fifty years and with a final shriek he fell back dead.

Jamie lay exhausted for a few moments beside Danny Fisher’s prone body before he remembered she might be bleeding to death. When he turned to help, her eyes were shining fever bright with agony and shock. A cursory examination showed she’d been hit in the fleshy part just below the angle of her right breast and shoulder. He realized with relief that it probably looked and felt worse than it was, not that she’d appreciate that for a while. He produced a handkerchief from his pocket and wadded it over the wound beneath her jacket.

A soft mewing wail reminded him that Danny wasn’t the only one who needed his help. Dmitri Samsonov sat rigid with shock in the chair where he had been a millimetre from death, a thin red line showing just how close he had come. Jamie helped Danny to her feet and their shoes crunched on a billion-dollar carpet of splintered fragments as he supported her across to free Dmitri. The body of Paul Dornberger lay close by, the small hole in his forehead oozing blood and his face pierced with thousands of shards of carbon crystal.

They stood over him for a few moments, lost in their own thoughts. It seemed inappropriate that Dornberger’s blood-flecked features should be relaxed and at peace; almost an insult to his victims. Jamie shuddered. Suddenly all he wanted to do was be out in the clean air. The very walls of the room oozed evil. How many people had died so this man and his father could pursue their demented fantasy? Danny sniffed and Jamie could tell that, despite her pain, she was equally moved.

She looked down at the glittering layer of shards beneath their feet and shook her head. ‘Jesus, Saintclair,’ she said wearily. ‘Didn’t anybody ever tell you diamonds are a girl’s best friend?’