David Gibbins - The Mask of Troy

They reached the far end of the corridor. The booth contained an MG-42 machine gun on a tripod, its receiver still glistening with oil and a bullet belt slinking down to a cartridge box on the floor, like a coiled serpent. There was a clang and Mayne turned back in alarm, his revolver raised. The metal door had swung shut. The man spoke quickly to Stein, who put a hand on Mayne’s arm. ‘Don’t worry. He says the door’s on an angled pivot, and closed itself. The Nazis didn’t want anyone stumbling in here.’

Mayne felt uneasy, confined. It was as if they had entered the underworld, and passed beyond a portal where return might be impossible. ‘All right. Let’s get this over and done with.’

A locked door barred their way. The man produced another key and opened the padlock, and the door swung open. The interior was already lit, with bare bulbs hanging from wires strung high above. It was a cavernous chamber, with curved walls like a Nissen hut. The lattice of steel reinforcement rods in the concrete was clearly visible, evidently designed to withstand bomb blast. The shape reminded Mayne of the London underground station where he had sheltered during a German bombing raid early in the war. He looked around. It was packed with wooden shipping crates, pushed together like old coffins in a crypt, leaving a narrow passage ahead to another door at the far end. The man was already halfway down the passage, gesturing for them to follow. Mayne and Stein stood transfixed, staring at the crates.

‘Is this what I think it is?’ Mayne murmured.

‘Only one way to find out.’

Mayne holstered his revolver and unsheathed the commando knife he kept at the back of his webbing belt. He approached the nearest crate, then quickly prised up the lid and toppled it off. He sheathed the knife, and they both peered in at a mass of crumpled paper and straw packing material. He reached in and pulled out handfuls of the material, and they both gasped. ‘These are canvases, old paintings,’ he exclaimed.

‘ I knew it. Let me have a look at one,’ Stein said, reaching in and pulling out more of the packing material. ‘I just need to identify one painting. Just one old master. Then we can keep going.’

Mayne carefully pulled out a framed painting, propped it on the crate and ripped open the protective paper that had been wrapped crudely around it, revealing the canvas beneath. Stein caught his breath again. ‘This is wonderful.’ He whipped on a pair of spectacles and took out a torch, shining it at the painting, the deep colours and imagery of the canvas reflected at them. ‘ Portrait of a Young Man, by Raphael,’ he murmured. ‘Stolen in 1941 from the Czawarky Museum in Krakow, Poland, on the personal orders of Goring.’ He took off his glasses and looked around. ‘That makes this place very important indeed. It could be an absolute treasure trove.’

Mayne looked at the canvas, and shook his head in disbelief. He knew this painting well. He had given a print of it to Hugh before the war, had hung it over the fireplace of his college sitting room in Oxford. They had shared a bottle of wine in front of it, then gone for a walk along the river Isis. It had been one of those perfect days. He looked down for a moment. He wondered how Hugh was now. He hadn’t looked at all well. He hoped he wasn’t with his SAS unit somewhere on the edge of this forest, looking for the Germans, waiting. He hoped they had taken him out of the line. The end of the war was so close now. Hugh must survive. Mayne found himself suddenly crying, weeping, here of all places, in this awful bunker. He wiped his eyes, and shuddered. Please God, let Hugh survive.

The man shouted to them in Yiddish, his voice harsher now, agitated. Stein listened, then turned to Mayne. ‘He says this is only the beginning. He says there’s more, much more. He says we need to follow him to the end, to the door at the other side.’

Stein stared hard for a moment into the eyes of the young man in the painting, shook his head, smiled broadly and then turned away. Mayne pulled the protective paper back over the painting, then followed him. A few steps on he saw another open crate, close to the wall. He squeezed quickly between the boxes to have a look. This crate had also been packed with straw. It was lit by a bare light bulb directly overhead. He leaned awkwardly over and put his fingers on the edge of the crate, pulling himself forward by the strength of his arms, careful not to twist his bad shoulder. He peered inside.

He had found it.

It was there, nestled in straw at the bottom of the crate, partially wrapped in a piece of old burlap, as if it had been brought here recently and hastily unpackaged, not part of the carefully packed collection around him. It was resting the way the old foreman of Schliemann’s had described it, in reverse. A swastika, symbol of unimaginable horror, but somehow different, speaking of a different world, one Mayne had stepped out of six long years ago. He heard the ringing again in his ears, but this time it was like a distant clash of arms, like the mighty contest that had once transported him to the age of heroes. For a moment he was back on the hillside overlooking Mycenae, wondering what had driven the king of kings to set it all in motion, to lead his army to Troy. Now he saw what Schliemann had seen. The most fantastic treasure ever found. And he remembered what the girl had drawn, the girl with the harp, sitting out there in that wasteland. So this was what she had seen too. They must have taken it out, paraded it around when they brought her here.

‘Mayne.’ Stein’s voice broke in, a dull, resounding echo. ‘He’s going to open the door for us.’

Mayne pushed back from the crate, twisted round and searched for the voice. His mind was in a tumult. He saw Stein and the man standing by the door at the far end of the room. He felt the dread lurch in the pit of his stomach again. Another door, another room. Something else had been going on here. Perhaps the art, the treasure, had all been a front. Perhaps Stein had been right.

He made his way through the crates quickly and reached Stein. ‘You’ve got your Raphael. Now listen to what I’ve found.’

Stein jerked his head to the door. ‘It can wait. This is more important.’

The door was metal. Halfway down was a swastika, saucer-sized, impressed into the metal within a roundel. It was tilted sideways in an X shape. Mayne realized that it was some kind of keyhole, and had been opened. It was magnetic, pulling his wrist with his watch towards it. It was exactly the same shape and size as the swastika he had just seen in the crate. Mayne looked higher. There was a small clouded window, like a porthole. It was dark inside, but he could see green growth around the inside edges of the window, like algae. Maybe the dehumidifiers in this room had failed. Stein stood to his right, the man to his left. The man raised his right arm to pull out the upper latch of the door. As he did so, the sleeve of his tunic fell back, revealing the raw red tattoo on his wrist and then another tattoo, an older one, further up under his bicep. Mayne stared. He remembered the soldiers they had captured in Italy, with their blood group tattooed in that way.

He froze. Only the SS did that.

In that split second the man realized what Mayne had seen. He pulled Mayne’s right arm back and twisted it up, shoving him violently against the door, pressing his cheek hard against the window. Mayne heard a click under his right ear and felt cold steel against the nape of his neck. He cursed himself for letting his guard down. The man had come at him on his right side, where he was deaf. He should never have holstered his pistol. It was what he always told his soldiers. It only takes one mistake. The cold steel was removed and there was a deafening crack. He felt a warm wetness splatter the side of his head, and Stein’s body slumped to the floor. The man let go of his arm, and Mayne’s hand dropped, instinctively searching for the hilt of the knife in his belt. Then the barrel was pressed into his neck again, burning hot now. ‘Your Juden friend is dead,’ the man hissed, close to his ear, speaking in English, barely audible through the ringing in Mayne’s ears. ‘You see? They will never escape us. And now I will unleash hell. This war has only just begun. Heil Hitler.’ Mayne felt the muzzle thrust into his neck, and saw the man’s other hand push up the second latch on the door. He unsheathed the knife, then flipped it so the blade faced upwards, holding it flat against his back. The man kicked the door and Mayne could feel it give, edging inwards. ‘ Raus ,’ the man snarled, pushing his body hard against Mayne. ‘ Schnell. You wanted to find out what was going on in here. Now you will have your wish.’