David Gibbins - The Gods of Atlantis

Jack turned to Hiebermeyer in alarm. ‘The highest authority in Brussels? Who was his line manager?’

‘That’s what I’ve just been wondering. I have a horrible feeling that one of Saumerre’s departments might be Health and Safety.’

‘ Shit,’ Jack exclaimed. ‘But there’s no chance of this man having removed anything from the bunker?’

‘Everyone is body-searched before leaving the double-lock chamber at the entrance, to make sure that they haven’t inadvertently got material on them from inside that might be contaminated. Each one of a pair is responsible for checking the other. But Sergeant Jones was down, and he was Dr Auxelle’s partner. In the concern to get Jones out of the laboratory chamber and attended to by the medic, there might have been a slip-up. What worries me is that we’re probably only talking about a test tube or a phial, very easily concealed in one of those suits. And Major Penn was completely preoccupied with Jones. They’ve worked together in a lot of bad places.’

Jack looked at Hiebermeyer intently. ‘Do you remember anything else about that laboratory? Anything odd?’

Hiebermeyer looked down and then nodded, putting his hand up to his forehead. ‘Something was lurking in the back of my mind, and I’ve just realized what it was. You remember I said the safe was open? All I could think about at the time – all I could think about until just now – was that whatever had been inside was gone. But there was something else. It should have rung a huge alarm bell at the time, but I wasn’t thinking straight. I’d just been stumbling over dead bodies. I should have held the reins tighter. Poor show, as your dad would have said.’

‘I’d probably have been worse,’ Jack said. ‘I’m not used to being in tombs full of corpses, like you.’

‘It was the interior of that refrigerator safe, visible because the door was open. Everything else in the bunker was covered in that yellow-green layer, the decomposition product. But the interior of the safe was gleaming. Gleaming. I should have realized that meant it had only just been opened.’

‘Were Jones and Auxelle in there by themselves?’

‘For a few minutes before Jones collapsed and Auxelle called us in to help.’

‘Okay. We need to have Auxelle detained. We need to get our contact in MI6 on to it and have him interrogated. And I don’t care how high-up he is in Brussels. We need to take him down now.’

‘Brussels won’t be happy with that. A secretive NATO team, mainly British, arresting a top EU inspector? And there’s another problem. The story would be impossible to contain, and it would blow this place wide open to police and journalists, exactly what Major Penn and his team are under the strictest instructions to avoid. Everything about this bunker needs to be kept top secret.’

‘Then I’ll find Auxelle and do it myself.’

Hiebermeyer eyed Jack shrewdly. ‘I think we should bring Major Penn in and tell him everything we know, the stuff MI6 may have kept from him about Saumerre and the whole backstory. I mean everything. He has a full special-forces security team surrounding this place, and exerts more authority than his rank suggests. Top secret operations like this to find and contain Nazi scientific sites have been going on since the end of the Second World War and are given all necessary resources by the former Allies, one area where the EU does not hold sway. It’s why MI6 are overseeing the operation. Just a hint of bacteriological contamination and Penn can lock down a site for miles around. He’s a pretty useful man for us to have on board.’

Jack stood up and paced across the grass, took a few deep breaths and looked around. Maurice was right. He needed to keep his cool, not to let his blood rise, to play the game carefully. He turned back. ‘One question’s nagging me. If Auxelle did take what was in that refrigerator, then what happened to the palladion? You said the door to the laboratory was already ajar when Penn’s men arrived there, and that the impression of the palladion in the straw in that crate was covered with the decomposition layer. Everything points to it being removed from the bunker in 1945. It must have been used to open the laboratory door some time before Mayne and Stein arrived, maybe somehow during the fight with the SS man. If it was the SS man who opened the door, then the palladion should have been found near his body. Yet there was nothing. Everything points to an accomplice, one who survived, though that still doesn’t explain why the accomplice would have left without removing the contents of the refrigerator.’

Hiebermeyer nodded. ‘Penn has a theory about that. We had two hours together in the decontamination room and mulled it over. He’d been headhunted by MI6 at university and had actually done several courses at GCHQ Cheltenham before opting out and joining the army instead. One of the courses was on “need to know”, how to keep a network going while minimizing the number of people who are in on the whole picture. Like you he thought we might be looking at two operatives, but he took it further. Let’s imagine that one of them knew about the palladion and was also tasked to retrieve the phial in the refrigerator, the most secret and important part of the whole conspiracy. The person entrusted with that task, to take the deadly weapon to its next destination, had to be a particularly fanatical follower of the conspiracy originator, perhaps unique. If he was somehow unable to perform the task, then the fallback might be for the originator himself to try to retrieve it. But for that to happen, the originator had to have the palladion to open the chamber door. So the second man in the bunker knew nothing of the refrigerator but had been tasked to retrieve the palladion if something happened to the first man before he was able to get inside.’

‘So the first man is about to perform his task as Mayne and Stein arrive,’ Jack said slowly. ‘He dies in the ensuing struggle, killing Mayne and Stein in the process. But perhaps just as he is about to kill Mayne, pressing him against that door, he uses the palladion to open it, intending to leave Mayne and Stein’s bodies inside and lock the door behind him, concealing what had happened and keeping any other Allied troops who might enter the bunker away from the truth of that inner chamber for as long as possible. But Mayne kills the SS man with his knife as he himself is shot, and they both fall into the room together. The accomplice comes upon the scene and his only thought is his own specific task, to retrieve the palladion and take it to his master.’

‘And my friend’s discovery under the site of the flak tower in Berlin suggests that the palladion may have had more uses than opening this one door,’ Hiebermeyer said. ‘The forensics lady was in the decontamination room with us after she’d returned from sampling those corpses. She suggested that you could combine the flu virus with a bacteriological agent to make it particularly deadly, adding something that would weaken the immune system to ensure that the virus was always fatal. Maybe this bunker wasn’t the only laboratory. Maybe there was another one, perhaps in Berlin.’

Jack pursed his lips. As he turned, he saw an army officer in a camouflage smock and beret approaching them rapidly from the Portakabin, followed close behind by a soldier. The officer wore a sidearm, and the soldier was carrying a rifle and swivelling round every few steps to survey their surroundings, talking into a headset. The soldier stood off to one side while the officer came up to them, his face grim. ‘Major David Penn, Royal Engineers. You’re Jack Howard. I recognize you from TV.’ He shook hands quickly and turned to Hiebermeyer. ‘I have some very bad news.’

Hiebermeyer stood up. ‘Yes?’