streamed via the airbase to Lanowski’s computer in the operations room on board Seaquest II.
‘Okay,’ Paul said. ‘Target in sight now. T minus two minutes.’
‘Roger that,’ Jack said. He made a diver’s okay sign at Costas, who was sitting beside him with his helmet visor already down, his e-suit covered by the tattered remains of the trusty old boilersuit he had somehow found time to patch and sew together after parts of it had melted during their volcano dive in the Black Sea four days previously. Costas patted his pockets, checking them, and Jack saw the grapple gun they had used in the volcano poking out of one side and attached by a metal carabiner to a hook under his arm. Jack snapped down his own helmet, made sure the rebreather system was operating and quickly scanned the digital computer readout inside his helmet. He listened to his breathing, keeping it cool, measured. He remembered what Paul had said. With their helmets now on and no intercom link to the pilot, the signal would be three sharp bangs on the metal bulkhead behind the pilot’s seat. Crude, but effective. He glanced at Costas again, visually checking his gear, and saw Costas doing the same for him. He reached up and grasped the sliding door handle, and then whispered the words he always said before a dive: Lucky Jack.
The helicopter pitched slightly to the rear and he felt it descend, seeing only a shroud of spray from the rotorwash out of the window. Then he heard three bangs. He looked at Costas, pointing his thumb down, and Costas did the same. They opened the sliding doors simultaneously, into a maelstrom of noise and water. Jack swung his legs out, contacted the skid with his fins, crouched down and rolled forward, holding his helmet with one hand and his backpack with the other as he somersaulted into the sea. He dropped a few feet underwater and then rose to the surface again, patting his head with one hand to show Paul that he was safe. He saw Costas do the same, his yellow helmet just visible in the sheets of spray against the looming blackness of the storm coming in from the east. Jack pressed his buoyancy compensator exhaust to expel air and then he was underwater, the tumult of the surface gone, feeling the instant sense of calm he always did at the beginning of a dive. Costas came alongside him, and they exchanged okay signals again and a thumbs-down. This was it.
Below them lay a massive jumble of rock and coral, fragments as large as houses that Jack knew must have been blown off the side walls of the blue hole by the explosions of the three depth charges dropped by the Liberator in 1945. In the centre was an opening, a gap between the rocks about ten metres in circumference, ten metres or so below the surface. They dropped through it, and were immediately confronted by an astonishing sight.
Wedged into the hole beneath the rocks was the rusted hulk of a submarine, clearly identifiable from its conning tower as a German Type XXI U-boat. It was angled down at about forty-five degrees, and they could see in the gloom below that the bow had been sheared off. As they swam slowly down the hull, they became aware of extensive evidence of damage from gunfire, with holes peppering the outer casing and the gun turrets; the forward deck gun was still loaded with a round in the breech and the barrel was angled high off to starboard. Costas stopped just before the bow section and put his hand on the casing, raising a puff of rust. ‘This confirms the airman’s story,’ he said into his intercom. ‘This U-boat was sprayed with machine-gun rounds, fifty-calibre, and then the bow was blown off by one of those depth charges that also collapsed the blue hole all around it.’
‘Remember Heidi telling us that Ernst had mentioned the torpedo tubes?’ Jack said. ‘If we’re going to find any evidence of whether or not he carried out his plan, it’s going to be there.’
They swam down into the twisted wreckage, immediately recognizing the forward tubes. Costas swam closer, and then backed out. ‘Bingo,’ he said. ‘The forward left tube’s been fired, and hasn’t been sealed shut. It must have happened just before the Liberator attack, even during it. Hoffman cut it fine.’
‘God only knows what was going on in those final moments in this boat. I only hope he had the satisfaction of knowing he’d succeeded before the end came. My guess is he would have been holed up in here, with no chance.’
‘Jack, take a look below you. You’re not going to believe it.’
Jack swam back about a metre and stared into the silt. He looked again, astonished. An object lay there, half inside a rotting leather satchel, something that seemed to have preoccupied them for as long as he could remember now, the object that had caused Rebecca’s kidnapping. It was a golden swastika, the reverse side up, the other side a slightly rusty iron colour. The palladion. He quickly reached down, pushed it into the satchel and picked it up, then strapped it to the front of his e-suit. It was incredibly heavy for its size. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Hoffman must have been given this by Himmler as the key to get into a chamber to store the virus phial. We can use it as a bargaining chip with Saumerre.’
‘Where are they?’ Costas said. ‘The two divers the drone spotted?’
‘In the habitat. Up above us, to the left of the U-boat’s bow.’ Costas followed his gaze. Perched against the only intact side of the blue-hole wall was a construction that looked like an early space-lab satellite, like two bathyspheres joined together, the whole structure secured on metal stilts on a rocky ledge.
‘This is what that German ship in 1938 must have been doing, placing this installation on the spot where the Ahnenerbe divers had made their discovery two years previously,’ Jack said. ‘The symbols Heidi said they found must have added to the mystique, allowing Himmler to sell this place as the new Atlantis, though what really mattered to him and his scheme was that they happened to have discovered a place perfectly suited to his needs: far outside territorial waters, on the edge of the reef drop-off accessible to U-boats, and suitable for putting in a secure storage facility like this.’
‘Hardly a centre of operations for Himmler after the war, though,’ Costas said. ‘Each of those spheres has barely enough room for a couple of people inside.’
‘It had one purpose only,’ Jack said. ‘It was to store the biological weapon. Himmler himself must have had other plans for his own base, in South America perhaps. What’s clear is that the story he told Hoffman and Heidi about their future was a lie, as it doubtless was to others of his followers he used to get his plan in motion. Nobody was ever going to live here, safe from the pandemic raging on land. This was no Wewelsburg reborn.’
‘Just as it was no Atlantis reborn, by the look of it,’ Costas said. ‘So what’s the plan?’
‘We play the game I’ve set up for as long as it takes Saumerre to relax and believe me. As soon as I have the bacterium phial from him, we make a move. If we can crack the valves on his diving tanks, we can empty them to prevent him from getting out, but fill the habitat with enough air for him to survive until the US Navy team we have on hold arrive to pick him up.’
‘I thought this was personal business for you, Jack.’
‘With the level of his terrorist connections, the US is the best bet for keeping him under lock and key permanently.’
‘I can think of a better place for him.’ Costas was staring at the silted floor of the bows, where space below the deck level of the U-boat was visible. ‘Jack, there’s something else here you should see. The palladion wasn’t the only gold on this boat. You were right.’
Jack followed Costas’ gaze. He dropped down and wafted some silt away. ‘Well I’ll be damned,’ he murmured. The sea floor was carpeted with gold bars, hundreds of them, spilling out of the U-boat where it had been blown open. Saumerre clearly had not seen the palladion when he dived down here just before them, but he must have seen this. Jack looked at Costas. ‘Okay. Let’s move.’
Five minutes later, they stood dripping inside the first sphere of the habitat. The tanks that Saumerre and the other diver had been wearing were on the floor beside the entry hatch, and had clearly been partly emptied into the spheres to create a breathable atmosphere. The interior was spartan, like the inside of a recompression chamber, with only a table in the centre of the room and a metal bed on either side of it, but nothing to suggest that people had ever spent time inside. Jack and Costas took off their fins but kept the rest of their gear on, only raising their visors. A voice spoke from the second sphere. ‘Dr Howard. We meet at last.’
Jack ducked through the hatch into the second sphere, followed by Costas. Saumerre was sitting at the bench in the centre, wearing a wetsuit, his black hair slicked back; the other man was standing beside him. Jack had seen images of Saumerre many times in the media, his face familiar from his public front as a European Union politician, but this was the first time he had seen him in the flesh. Beyond them he saw something that made his heart pound. It was a small metal container against the wall, like a safe, with the reverse swastika depression in the front. It was closed. So far, so good. He stared at Saumerre, saying nothing.
‘To business,’ Saumerre said. ‘Do you have the palladion?’
‘Give me the bacterium, and I will give you the palladion.’
‘I don’t believe you have it.’
Jack pointed at the leather satchel strapped to his waist.
Saumerre hesitated. ‘You don’t know any better than I do whether the virus phial is in there or not, do
