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"Didn't they tell you the train's location?"

"My uncle, in his wisdom, had decreed that only one man — the leader of the council — should be entrusted with the location of the Gold Train. Only if the train was in imminent danger of being uncovered was the secret to be disclosed."

"So you used me to make them think their precious secret was in danger," Renwick said through gritted teeth.

"Johann and I had been fueling rumors about the Gold Train, the missing Bellaks, and the need for an Enigma machine to decode a secret message for years in the hope that it might help bring the portrait to light. When we discovered that you had taken the bait, I suggested that we flush you out by putting a price on your head through ads in the Herald Tribune. The council agreed, of course."

"So the raid in Munich…"

"…Was not real. Those were my men in the lobby. You were never in any danger. We wanted to make you think you were getting close, and to show the council that their methods were failing. That they needed a change of leader."

"Is that why you involved me?" Tom asked. "To make them sweat?"

"I didn't involve you," Volz said. "Turnbull was working for Cassius." Tom shot Renwick a look, but it went unseen. Renwick's hate-filled eyes were locked on Volz. "I took my inspiration from Stalin's strategy of pitting Zhukov and Konev against each other, and kept you both in the hunt. The irony, of course, was that the key to all this had been lying in my vault all the time. Until you showed up, I had no idea who that safety-deposit box belonged to. Had I known, all this might have been avoided."

"But you knew that Weissman and Lammers had left a map."

"The council tracked Lammers down a few years ago and made him talk. Unfortunately, his heart gave out before he could disclose the location of the crypt or the final painting. But he did reveal the settings for the Enigma machine, and the fact that Weissman was living in the UK. And of course we found the number tattooed on his arm, though we didn't know its significance at the time."

"Why did you excavate the main entrance when you could have come in the back like us in half the time?" asked Archie.

"Apart from the fact I need to get trucks down here if I am to move everything out? Simple. Three days ago, when we first got here, I didn't know about the smaller entrance. My uncle had passed on only the location of the larger entrance, through which he'd helped bring the carriages. It was the painting that divulged the existence of the smaller entrance. Perhaps the Order felt that route would be easier to ac-cess — who knows? When Johann told me how you'd got here and what you'd found, I decided to leave you to it. It was a way of keeping you busy and out of our way."

"The council will never let you get away with this," said Tom. "When they find out what you're up to, they'll do everything in their power to stop you."

"Which council? This one?" Volz reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of identical gold rings with a single diamond set into an engraved twelve-box grid, which he threw disdainfully to the floor. "It's a shame, really. I would have liked to see their faces when they realized that, indirectly, they had provided us with the means to shatter everything they have fought against all these years."

CHAPTER NINETY-SEVEN

7:02 p.m.

Hecht marched them up the smaller tunnel at gunpoint, roughly cuffed them with plastic tags, and then pushed them to the ground. Renwick resisted and got a rifle butt jabbed in his stomach for his trouble.

"I will not forget your betrayal, Hecht," Renwick said through gritted teeth. "I will make you pay."

"I doubt it, Cassius." Hecht sneered. "The next time I press this button, the explosives will work." He held up the remote detonator and waved it tauntingly in front of Ren-wick's face, before aiming a punch at the side of his head, his ring leaving a deep gouge mark just above Renwick's ear.

"How does it feel, Renwick?" Archie grinned as Hecht tramped off down the tunnel, leaving two men to stand guard over them. "Outwitted. Betrayed. Imprisoned."

"Rather than gloat, Connolly, try to think of a way to get us out of here," Renwick snapped, blood running down his face and dripping onto his shoulder.

"Getting us out of here." Archie gave a laugh. "Believe me, if I can find a way out, you won't be taking it."

They fell silent and the two guards lit up. The sounds of men working echoed up the tunnel from the chamber.

Hammering, drilling, sawing. Tom guessed that Volz's men were even now dismantling the carriage and preparing to transport its lethal cargo to… where? Wherever they wanted — that was the terrifying thing. Once unleashed, Volz would be unstoppable. Archie seemed to be reading his thoughts.

"Can he really make an atomic bomb out of that lot?"

"I doubt it," said Tom. "At least not without buying a lot of extra equipment and expertise. But he doesn't have to. He could make enough money auctioning the uranium off to finance a small army. Besides, there's always the prospect of the dirty bomb he described. Can you imagine the chaos if one of those went off in Berlin or London or New York?"

"So much for the Amber Room," Archie noted gloomily.

"I can't believe that, for all these years, everyone's been looking for something that didn't even exist," Tom remarked.

"Your father thought it existed," Renwick said. "Do you think he was wrong too?"

"Don't even mention his name," Tom snapped.

"You are forgetting that it was to me he turned, not you, when he heard rumors linking the Amber Room to a Nazi Gold Train and an Enigma-encoded message." Renwick gave a faint smile. "I thought nothing more of it until a few years ago when I came across an original Bellak in an auction in Vienna. I knew then that, if one had survived Him-mler's cull, perhaps others had too, including the portrait — and with them the chance of finding this place."

"Except you couldn't find any other Bellaks, could you?"

"Unfortunately, your father was in the mistaken belief that the painting had ended up in a private collection, which is where I focused my efforts. Fruitlessly, as it transpired. I enlisted your help because I thought a fresh pair of eyes might be of use. I was right."

"Yeah, well, it didn't do you much good, did it?" Archie pointed out tartly. "In case you hadn't noticed, you're about to get buried under a mountain, same as us."

"There's one thing I want to know." Tom locked eyes with Renwick. "Back in St. Petersburg, you said my father had known all along who you were. That he had worked with you. Was that another one of your lies?"

Renwick returned Tom's stare, but just as he seemed about to speak, Hecht returned from the end of the tunnel. At the sight of him, the two guards threw their cigarettes aside and stood up straight, one of them giving Archie a kick in the ribs for good measure, as if to show Hecht what a good job they were doing. He gave them an approving grunt.

"One of you go and fetch me a drink. Oh, and if you see Dmitri, tell him the charges are armed."

The guard nodded and trotted obediently off toward the chamber, passing a man in hard hat and reflective jacket who was heading toward them.

"What are you doing up here?" Hecht growled as the man approached. "You're meant to be in the chamber with the others helping unload that train."