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?’
‘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.’
