David Gibbins - The Gods of Atlantis

‘Sergeant Jones died ten minutes ago. He never regained consciousness.’

Hiebermeyer looked stunned. ‘ Mein Gott,’ he whispered. ‘Dead? How?’

Penn gazed down for a moment, then looked up and cleared his throat. ‘The team medics inspected his suit and his body. They found a tiny puncture in the upper right arm of his suit and a matching puncture in his skin. The puncture was from a syringe. Sergeant Jones didn’t die of natural causes. He was murdered.’

Hiebermeyer lurched backwards and sat down heavily. Jack had a sudden cold feeling in the pit of his stomach. Where was Auxelle? The soldier with the rifle walked quickly over and whispered into Penn’s ear, and after a few questions Penn turned back to them, undoing the flap of his holster and looking around. ‘I know what you’re going to ask. Auxelle left as soon as we exited the bunker. Urgent EU business back in Brussels. As soon as we spotted the puncture marks on Jones’ arm, I sent a Humvee from our outer roadblock racing after him. My soldier has just given me an update. They found the EU limousine by the side of the road five kilometres away, about the spot where my soldiers at the checkpoint had heard the sound of a helicopter landing and taking off. Auxelle was nowhere to be seen, but the driver of the limousine was still there. He’d been shot at close range in the back of the neck.’

Jack shut his eyes for a moment. So it begins. ‘In that laboratory in the bunker,’ he said. ‘You’re sure that refrigerator safe was open when you first saw it after going in to help Jones?’

‘Wide open and empty,’ Penn replied grimly. ‘I assumed that whatever had been inside was removed in those final days in 1945. But now I think those two Allied officers, Mayne and the American, actually stopped that happening. For more than seventy years, their actions prevented the world from being exposed to a weapon too awful to contemplate. But it looks as if I failed them today.’

‘Nobody has failed them,’ Jack said. ‘There’s an evil mastermind behind this. We had a run-in with him last year, and his existence has been plaguing me for six months. You could never have predicted what has happened.’

‘We’re finished here now,’ Penn said, putting a hand on his holster and pursing his lips. ‘From the forensic data on those exhumed bodies, we know there was a lethal biological agent contained in that laboratory, and that the corpses we saw on those gurneys had been the victims of experimentation. That means the agent might be present elsewhere in the bunker. Just before Jones died, I activated Protocol 15, which means that this place up to the perimeter of the airfield is out of bounds permanently. An SAS team and a full squadron of German military police are on the way to bolster perimeter security. The machinery we used to excavate the bunker will return this evening and begin widening the trench around the walls so it can be filled with thousands of tons of concrete, and after that’s been built up, there will be at least eight metres’ depth of concrete poured on the roof. This place will be buried like the Chernobyl reactor. I’m afraid that means those works of art and antiquities will never see the light of day after all. They probably wouldn’t have escaped the taint of this place anyway. And we’re going to have to leave Sergeant Jones’ body in there. That pinprick through his suit meant that his body was exposed to the atmosphere inside, and we can’t risk it.’

‘He had three small children,’ Hiebermeyer murmured, shaking his head. ‘He was only telling me about them a couple of hours ago.’

‘I’m their godfather. I’m going to have to break this to them.’ Penn bunched his fists, his voice tight with emotion. ‘I’d do anything to get my hands on Auxelle.’

Jack clicked open his phone. ‘We have a dedicated MI6 contact. It’s the same as the one overseeing you.’

‘Done,’ Penn said. ‘I made the call the instant we worked out what had happened to Jones. I used our secure line, and gave a full situation report.’

‘Good,’ Jack said, clicking shut his phone. ‘I’ll use the same secure line before we leave, if you don’t mind. Doubtless Saumerre will have disappeared from Brussels by now too. We have to let MI6 find him and Auxelle. They still won’t want to put out a warrant for them, but if anyone’s going to catch up with them, they will. We have to bide our time but stay on maximum alert. Meanwhile Maurice and I have an invitation to Berlin to visit a bunker site that may have a connection with this place and what was stored inside. We’d benefit from your expertise.’

‘Maurice told me about it. I have to go to Wales to visit Jones’ wife and children. But I don’t want to let go of this. I’ll call you.’ Penn turned and began to walk back to the Portakabin, followed by the soldier. Jack thought for a moment, and then ran after him, catching up with him just before the entrance. ‘David,’ he exclaimed.

Penn stopped and turned around. ‘What is it?’

Jack unzipped the pocket of his khaki trousers, carefully pulled out a presentation case and opened it. Inside was a Military Cross, the silver of the cross tarnished and the mauve and white ribbon faded, but pinned carefully into the case. ‘I told you on the phone last week about Hugh Frazer, the army officer who’d been in the camp and was a friend of Major Mayne’s. Before Hugh died, I promised him that if we found Mayne’s body, I’d leave this with him. Mayne won it in North Africa when the two of them were together in the same unit, and Hugh kept hold of it when he dealt with Mayne’s effects after he’d gone missing. He said Mayne was a bloody good soldier, the best. I was wondering whether you could leave this with Sergeant Jones. Hugh would have liked to know that a fellow soldier like you was putting this where it belonged.’

He handed the medal to Penn, who stared at it for a moment and then gently closed the case. Jack could see that his face was taut with emotion. Penn nodded, and then clicked his heels. ‘I’ll see to it.’ He turned and walked up the steps and through the Portakabin door. Jack walked back quickly to Hiebermeyer, who was leaning forward on the bench with his head in his hands. Jack sat down beside him, put a hand on his shoulder and then stared forward himself, looking pensively at the bleak wasteland surrounding the runway. His dive to Atlantis seemed light years away, yet he remembered the extraordinary, harrowing image on the ROV monitor of that chamber in the volcano, and then Lanowski’s remarkable ideas about the Atlantis papyrus, something he would show Maurice when they had got away from this place. He peered with concern at his friend. He would also tell him about the exciting discovery of the Egyptian statue at Troy, but not now; that could be kept in reserve. He knew they had to do everything to keep from being overwhelmed by a sense of foreboding, a worst-case scenario with Saumerre and the Nazi weapon that could be playing out at this very moment. They needed to keep lifelines to the archaeological prizes beyond the darkness Jack knew lay ahead. He opened his phone, and looked in his inbox. Still no word from Katya about the ancient symbols.

Hiebermeyer straightened up, took off his glasses and wiped them on his shirt, then looked at Jack. ‘I’ve had an invitation from my Tante Heidi to visit her. She wants us to go to Wewelsburg Castle.’

‘Himmler’s SS headquarters?’

‘I don’t know why. But it was after I told her I was coming to the bunker. She insisted that she had something to tell me, and I called her from the decontamination room and told her you’d come along too. Okay?’

Jack gave him a tired smile. ‘I need to make that phone call to our MI6 contact in London, and then there’s a jeep waiting to take us off the airfield to a rental car I’d already got arranged in Bremen. We can drive from there to Wewelsburg. Are you all right?’