‘I can only hear the jeep.’ They waited in silence until the vehicle passed and its engine note died away. ‘I think that was the local Guard commander going home rather than sit around in a damp forest. Leitz paid him to get Kroll and his men to where they want to go, but now that he’s fulfilled his part of the deal, he’s leaving.’
‘I can’t blame him,’ said Nina. ‘But I guess that means they’ve already started their search.’ She looked up the slope, but nothing was visible through the tree cover. ‘And we’ve still got four or five kilometres to go.’
‘We’d better keep moving, then,’ said Zane.
The team continued through the woods, eventually reaching the ridge. The trees thinned out as they climbed, enough of the sky visible to let Nina get a GPS fix. ‘Okay, this is where we are,’ she said, showing the others their position on the map. ‘So it’s about another three kilometres to the search area. I would have tried to use the fish to confirm we’re at the right latitude, but it’s kinda cloudy.’ Muted amusement from the others.
‘It’ll take a while to check the whole thing,’ said Eddie. The zone she had marked covered more than a square kilometre. ‘And that’s assuming it’s not already crawling with Nazis.’
‘We know roughly what we’re looking for, though.’ She produced the bronze fish from her rucksack, running a fingertip along one of the lines of Greek text. ‘The Gate of Alexander seems from the context to be a physical structure. It might still be standing.’
Zane examined the map. ‘Won’t it be lower down than that? Surely a spring can’t start too high up a mountain; where would the water come from?’
‘Actually, there are springs recorded practically on mountain summits. The reservoir can be miles underground — the weight of the rock forces the water up through fissures.’ She folded the map, returning it and the artefact to her pack. ‘But according to Andreas, the Gate of Alexander is in the shadow of the tallest peak, so I’m guessing — I’m hoping — that it’s not right at the top.’
‘She’s usually pretty good at this, don’t worry,’ Eddie told the Israeli. ‘Okay, crack on!’
They set off again, tromping back into the darkness of the forest. The ground became steeper, slowing their progress. It took well over an hour before they reached the edge of the target area, the sheer-sided peak looming over them to the south, and nearly another hour after that before their search found anything.
What they discovered was not a spring, or any kind of gateway.
‘Shit!’ Eddie hissed, waving the others to a halt. ‘Get into cover!’
‘What is it?’ Nina asked as she scurried behind a tree.
‘Footprints. They’re already here!’
The forest floor was covered in a thick layer of fallen foliage, absorbing the group’s individual tracks, but not even the carpet of mulch could hide the passage of dozens of men. A churned trail of boot prints angled up the shadowed hillside.
Zane glared up the slope. ‘They might have found the spring already.’
‘Maybe, but they haven’t come back down yet,’ Nina said. ‘We’ve still got a chance to stop them.’
‘We’re outnumbered at least three to one!’
‘Thought that was what Mossad were into,’ said Eddie with a half-smile. ‘Surrounded by your enemies, never backing down, all that?’
The Israeli was not amused. ‘This isn’t exactly our homeland. But no, I wasn’t planning to back down. Not when we’re this close.’
The team moved parallel to the Nazis’ trail, leaving a gap of about a hundred feet. They headed higher, alert to the slightest activity. But all they heard was glum birdsong. The climb continued, five minutes passing without incident, ten—
One of the Mossad agents raised a hand. Everyone immediately stopped and crouched. Nina saw nothing ahead. She tried to pick out any sounds over the sudden drum of her heart…
Faint voices reached her, along with a rhythmic thumping and scraping. Looking uphill, she saw that the slope eased not far above, a broad shelf running across the forested hillside. The noises were coming from higher and to the right. ‘Sounds like they’re digging.’
‘Back up,’ ordered Zane. ‘We’ll go around them and get a view from above.’
‘Keep well clear,’ Eddie warned. ‘They might have posted sentries.’
The group made a wide circle around the hub of activity, looping in towards it from higher up. The digging was taking place a few hundred feet above the shelf, not far from the base of the peak’s southern face. Eddie dropped to a crawl, stopping behind a fungus-covered log. The Mossad agents spread out nearby, Zane and Nina joining the Englishman to look through the trees at what lay below.
‘Oh God,’ Nina whispered. ‘We’re too late…’
33
Kroll surveyed his men’s work with satisfaction — and growing anticipation. ‘You should feel proud, Banna!’ he said to the cowed Egyptian. ‘You brought us here, and we’ve found exactly what Andreas described. The Gate of Alexander.’
The Nazi troops were excavating what they had discovered protruding from the slope. Whether it had been deliberately buried or the soil had simply built up over time, Kroll neither knew nor cared; what mattered was that the way to the spring was almost clear. The Gate of Alexander was a stone arch four metres high and three wide, at the end of a passage cut into the hillside. Behind it was a stone slab, clearly covering an entrance; another few minutes of work would see enough dirt cleared away for it to be pulled open.
‘If that’s really what this is.’ Rasche sat on a tree stump nearby, watching with impatience. The silver-lined water barrels were lined up behind him.
‘What else could it be?’ Kroll strode to the arch and pointed at the Greek text carved into it. ‘“This gate marks Alexander’s journey into the Land of the Blessed. Heed his words, and you will have nothing to fear.” This is the place — the spring is here.’
‘Where, though?’ The question came from a figure wearing white, his clothing incongruous amongst the soldiers’ pale brown fatigues. Frederic Leitz had joined them on their arrival in Iran, large sums of money smoothly changing hands to ensure that their presence in the country would go without official notice, and also to provide them with an escort to their destination. The Revolutionary Guard had now gone, but left trucks below to take the Nazis — and the thousands of litres of life-prolonging liquid they hoped to be carrying — back to their chartered plane. ‘If there is a spring here, then where’s the water?’
‘Inside there.’ Kroll jabbed a fat finger at the stone slab. ‘Andreas built a shrine to hide it, so only those equal to Alexander would ever be able to find it. We’ve proved ourselves worthy.’
The entrance was now clear. Ropes were hooked to the top of the slab, then under Schneider’s direction the soldiers formed into lines and heaved upon them. Loose soil dropped around the great block, the lines drawn taut as guitar strings… then its upper edge crunched away from the surrounding rock.
‘Keep pulling!’ Kroll bellowed. ‘Get it open! Pull, pull!’
Schneider took up the shout, turning it into a chant. The soldiers hauled in unison. The slab tilted outwards, little by little — then suddenly broke free and slammed to the ground.
Kroll pushed through his men. There was indeed a passage hidden behind the slab. ‘It’s here!’ he shouted. ‘Bring the lights — we’ve found it!’
The triumph in Kroll’s voice told Nina that he had reached his goal. ‘What do we do?’
‘Attack now, while they’re still off guard,’ said Zane, checking his Uzi sub-machine gun. ‘We’ll cut most of them down before they can react.’
‘And you’ll cut down Ubayy too.’ Rasche was pushing the young Egyptian after the Nazi leader.