the meteorite was forged and hammered into the shape of the swastika. Ninsun tells Gilgamesh that in the dream the star was an analogue, that in fact he was dreaming of the coming of Enkidu, the wild man he will tame and make his brother: the story may represent the tension between the first civilization, represented by Gilgamesh himself, and the ancient wildness that still survived from prehistory. It puts the palladion in a whole new context. No wonder it had such power through history, revered and feared, hijacked by the first priests of Atlantis as their new sacred symbol, and then rediscovered and given a terrible new lease of life almost ten thousand years later by the Nazis.’
Jack sat back, remembering the start of their trail six months before, a trail that had hinted at the devastating truth about the palladion and its new symbolism in a currency of evil played out in the Second World War. He looked down, staring at his palms. Six months ago he had had other blood on his hands, the blood of those who had died violently in their quest for the palladion, lives Jack had taken in his attempt to protect those closest to him. He thought of Maurice Hiebemeyer and the Nazi bunker, and a cold shiver ran through him. The swastika on the blackboard suddenly seemed to be swirling, drawing him into a different kind of history, one of horror and immolation that those first priests could scarcely have imagined. He tore himself away, and looked at Lanowski. ‘You were going to tell us something?’
Lanowski peered back, his face flushed and his eyes burning with fervour. ‘You want to know where the last shaman of Atlantis went? Where Noah went with his Ark? You want to find the new Atlantis?’
Costas and Jeremy peered at Jack. He glanced at his watch, exhaled forcefully and then looked at Lanowski. ‘Okay, Jacob. Give us what you’ve got.’
8
Near Bergen-Belsen, Germany
M aurice Hiebermeyer tripped over the step into the bunker and stumbled forward, putting his arm out to catch himself on an upright metal pole that loomed in front of him. He fell into it heavily, wincing as his wrist took his weight, then lost his footing and twisted round on to his back, jarring his head and losing his grip as his hand slid down the viscous exterior of the pole. Major Penn caught him and heaved him back on to his feet, holding him upright while he regained his balance. Hiebermeyer panted hard, his heart pounding, his ears filled with the suck and pop of the diaphragm in his regulator as he drew hard on the oxygen in his backpack. He tried to calm himself, staring through the glass visor of his helmet at the mottled patch of concrete wall that was all he could see ahead. For a moment he felt disorientated, and then he realized that he had twisted around and was facing the entrance they had just come through into the bunker. The slight blurriness was a consequence of following Sergeant Jones’ advice to remove his glasses to avoid having them fog up as he perspired. It seemed to make little difference now, as the sweat on his face had already made the glass plate of his helmet seem opaque.
He breathed slowly, trying to catch his rising claustrophobia. He knew he could ask to leave and could be out of that door and back into some semblance of normality within minutes. He shut his eyes tight, then opened them again as his heart rate stabilized. A patch had cleared in the centre of his visor, allowing him to see the metal grid of the walkway in the beam of his headlamp.
‘Are you all right?’ The tinny voice through his earphones came from Major Penn, now visible beside him in his bulky white CBRN suit.
‘I’m fine,’ Hiebermeyer replied, his voice sounding oddly muffled inside the helmet. ‘A twisted wrist, but I can live with that.’
‘I’ve checked over your suit, and there’s no obvious damage,’ Penn said. ‘The worst-case scenario would be any kind of tear. Even the chance of contamination would be enough to put you in the quarantine chamber in the Portakabin for a month.’
‘No thanks,’ Hiebermeyer replied.
‘I forgot to mention that it can be a little slippery in here, like that pole. There’s not much dust because there have been no people in here for more than seventy years, so no dead human skin. But there’s a thin layer of old fungal growth over everything. The forensics guy thinks that something decayed in here and putrefied a long time ago. It’s on the floor too, so watch your step.’
Hiebermeyer stared at the yellow-brown smear on his glove from the pole. Something decayed in here. He felt a wave of nausea, swallowed hard and wiped his hand against his leg. He swung around, his headlamp beam traversing indeterminate shapes and shadows as he turned back towards their objective, the main chamber of the bunker, visible through an open door at the end of the entrance passageway. He walked forward, following Penn. The halo of condensation around the edge of his visor made it seem as if he were in a tunnel, almost moving in slow motion. Penn stopped, clicked off the intercom button on the side of his helmet and activated the external link that allowed him to communicate with the phone in the Portakabin. It was strict procedure to activate it only when absolutely vital, to keep workers inside the bunker from being distracted, and even the other two men in the chamber ahead of them would only be included in their intercom audio loop if necessary. Hiebermeyer could see that Penn was talking in an agitated manner. After about a minute he clicked the side of his helmet and his voice crackled again inside Hiebermeyer’s headset. ‘That was Sergeant Jones in the kitting-up room,’ he said, sounding annoyed. ‘The EU inspector Dr Auxelle has arrived ahead of schedule. He’s forced Jones to let him come into the bunker now. Auxelle knew I was in here already, and Jones doesn’t have the authority to stand up to him. Auxelle probably threatened him, though Jones is too professional to tell me that. It’s all completely unnecessary. Auxelle could have waited twenty minutes as the schedule dictated, so that he and Jones could have gone in as planned and the turnover worked smoothly, keeping the maximum number in the bunker to four. But he knows the pair ahead of us are making the first entry into the laboratory at the back of the main chamber, and he wants to be in on the act. It’s always like that with these people. We have to deal with EU Health and Safety nabobs all the time. They like you to think they’re in charge, and you have to go along with it or risk being blacklisted.’
‘It sounds as if I’m the one who’s arrived on your doorstep at the wrong time,’ Hiebermeyer said. ‘If you hadn’t been in here with me, you could have dealt with it and made him wait.’
‘Auxelle and Jones are in the double-lock chamber already, so there’s nothing I can do about it. And it was my call to slot us in the schedule now. I promised Jack Howard that I’d personally escort you and get you in and out as fast as possible. He said that he’d been against you coming here and that you had other priorities at the moment.’
‘I’m seeing this through.’
‘Okay. With Auxelle and Jones directly behind us, we’ve got to move more quickly. I’m going to take you directly to the storage crates, and then that’s it. I want to be in the scrubbing room waiting for Auxelle when he comes out. I think the time has arrived for a little showdown.’
‘Sounds like a little suspicion on your part that he might have picked up some contamination wouldn’t go amiss.’
‘I wish. That’s one area where he can’t override my authority. A month in the quarantine chamber would certainly get him out of my hair.’ He grinned at Hiebermeyer through his visor, than put a hand on his back. ‘You okay? Let’s try to do this within twenty minutes. We’ll be using our headlamps all through. The old electrics in here still work, powered by a huge U-boat battery that we think was here mainly to keep some kind of refrigeration unit going in the laboratory, something they wanted guaranteed long-term. But we’re not risking the old electrical system. We always work with our own power supply. We should know what the electrics were powering soon enough, as the two sappers ahead of us will be at the lab door by now. I’ve asked them to hold off reporting unless there’s urgent need so that we can focus on those crates, but to give me a situation report at 1420. That’s eighteen minutes from now. I’ve just warned them on the intercom about Auxelle and Jones coming in.’
Hiebermeyer cautiously followed Penn along the metal grid on the floor. On one side his headlamp caught the window of a small room, the glass covered with the yellow-brown layer and reflecting a strange unearthly glow. Further ahead a machine gun sat on its tripod on the floor, an old German MG-42, the receiver still closed over a cartridge belt that linked to an ammunition box below. Beyond that lay the opening to the main chamber of the bunker. He followed Penn through, their beams traversing the walls. Two headlamps bobbed at the far end of the chamber, evidently the sappers at the entrance to the laboratory. He saw a small jet of intense orange flame and a shower of sparks. ‘They’re using an oxyacetylene torch,’ Penn said. ‘Before now we’d only seen the laboratory door
