"I count… twenty people. About half are armed like that man we just saw. The others must be operating the machinery, judging from the way they're dressed."
"I'm coming up," Dominique replied.
A few moments later, Dominique pulled herself into position at Viktor's side. Viktor handed her the binoculars.
Some of the men were standing around in small groups, talking and smoking. Others, dressed in hard hats and thick blue jackets with reflective strips sewn onto them, seemed to be overseeing the excavation efforts, as Viktor had suggested. A large digger and a bulldozer were attacking the side of the mountain. Already they had exposed a wide tunnel, the spoil having been dumped on either side of the entrance in hulking ramparts of soil and rock. Two generators powered several lights that washed the whole scene in a yellowish sodium hue.
Suddenly a shout went up. A man raced toward the entrance and then signaled to the armed men. Though they couldn't make out what had been said, from the way the men began to check their weapons, Viktor and Dominique had no difficulty in interpreting the signal.
"They're nearly through," Viktor whispered. "Get on the radio to Tom. Let him know."
"Okay," said Dominique, reaching into her pocket. She depressed the call button and whispered softly, "Tom, are you there? Come in, Tom."
There was nothing but the muffled hiss of static.
"Come in, Tom," she called again.
Still nothing.
"He's not answering," she said. "They must be out of range."
"Not likely," Dominique said bitterly. "These things go for miles, and we're still all on the same side of the mountain. No, if I know Tom and Archie, they've probably found a way inside and used it."
"In that case, we've got to get down there and warn them."
"Agreed," said Dominique. "Hold up. Who's that?"
"Which one?"
"The man on the left. Fur hat. Next to the light. He seems to be in charge."
Viktor took the binoculars from her and adjusted the focus. "I don't know. I don't recognize him."
"What's he doing?" Dominique squinted.
"I'm not sure," said Viktor. The man had removed his coat and was now unfolding a white sheet that he had taken from a bag at his feet. "It looks like he's getting changed or something."
"Changed? Into what?"
The sheet, once unfolded, turned out to be a white coverall. The man pulled it on over his clothes, boots included, then fixed a mask and respirator over his face. Finally he pulled the hood over his head and tightened the drawstrings to form an airtight seal against his skull.
"They're all putting them on. Look." All the armed men were getting changed into similar outfits.
"It looks like some sort of NBC suit."
"NBC?" Viktor frowned.
"Nuclear, Biological, Chemical — standard military issue to avoid contamination in the field."
"Contamination!" Viktor dropped the binoculars from her face and locked eyes with Dominique. "Contamination from what? I thought we were here for the Amber Room."
CHAPTER NINETY-ONE
From the symmetrical tool marks that inscribed the walls, the mine looked as though it had been dug out the old-fashioned way, with picks and shovels. Large wooden frames had been positioned every fifteen feet or so to buttress the roof, age having buckled and colored them until they seemed almost to have petrified and become part of the mountain itself, gray and heavy.
Tom paused and aimed his flashlight at the ceiling where blast marks had scorched the stone. "Do you see that?"
Archie nodded. "Looks like some sort of explosive was sunk in there — dynamite, probably — to collapse the roof."
"Yeah," Tom agreed. "They certainly didn't want anyone wandering in here by mistake."
They carried on, the mine shaft rising at a slight angle, Tom and Archie leading, Piotr and Grigory bringing up the rear; Yuri had been posted at the tunnel entrance as a precaution. Their flashlights sliced the air jaggedly as they walked, the beams fading as they disappeared into the distance until eventually the darkness swallowed them whole. Occasionally the light would catch their breath as they exhaled, and the air would momentarily flare like car headlights burning through mist.
Their breathing, even the rustle of their clothes, was amplified and bounced back at them off the tunnel walls, as if they were walking down the nave of some huge, silent church. Every so often their feet would crunch on frozen animal droppings or the occasional rabbit or bird carcass, presumably brought in there by a fox or some other enterprising creature.
Then, unexpectedly, a thin strip of light appeared in front of them. A strip of light that grew taller and taller as the shaft leveled out, until they could see what looked like a large rectangular yellow window set against the blackness of the tunnel.
"That must be it," Tom whispered excitedly, flicking his light off.
They edged carefully toward the light, covering the remaining fifty or so feet silently until they could see that the tunnel emerged into a large, naturally formed chamber. Tom heard Archie gasp behind him as he stepped gingerly inside.
The chamber had been lit with four battery-powered spotlights. A massive Nazi flag hung down from the roof, perhaps thirty feet long and twenty feet across. A Nazi flag with one crucial difference: the usual swastika had been replaced with the now familiar symbol of the Black Sun, its twelve jagged rays extending into the room like skeletal fingers clawing their way out of a grave.
"Christ," Archie whispered as his eyes settled on the two objects positioned directly beneath the flag. "They're here. They're still bloody here."
Tom shook his head, hardly believing what he was seeing. It was an incredible sight. Two missing freight cars from a mysterious train, hauled up an Austrian mountain and hidden deep inside it. Two hulking shapes, squat and solid and functional, like silent extras from a wartime newsreel — except this time rendered in color, rather than black and white.
"They don't look like they've been opened yet," whispered Tom, pointing excitedly at the thick iron bars that had been rammed through the hasp of each door.
"Renwick must be down here somewhere," Archie warned. "Let's deal with him first."
They slowly made their way around the two cars, pausing on the other side where another, much bigger tunnel — the one the cars had presumably come down — disappeared off into the darkness.
"That must lead to the main entrance," Tom said. The muffled drone of an engine confirmed his suspicion.
"Look." Archie's gaze had settled on a tight bundle of slender tree trunks positioned against the wall by the tunnel entrance. He walked up to them and kicked the nearest one. It made a dull clang.
"Railway tracks," Tom said, kneeling for a closer look. "And sleepers. See, they're piled all the way down the tunnel."
"Presumably, when the mine was active, there was some sort of spur off the main line that ran beside that path we've just walked up," Archie said.
"They must have moved the cars up here, lifted the track behind them, and then collapsed the roof."
"We should check out that tunnel," Archie suggested. "See how long we've got before they break through. Make sure Renwick isn't hiding from us down there."
They set off down the tunnel, treading warily, guns leveled at the darkness ahead of them, the glow of the chamber receding behind them until it was a tiny window of light in the distance. But as the light receded, so the noise of the digging at the main entrance grew, until they could feel the earth shaking beneath their feet to the muffled beat of the machinery on the other side of the sheer wall of stone and earth that confronted them once they reached the end of the tunnel.
"They'll be through any time now," Tom called over the noise.