‘And then someone took it from here, from this crate, in those final days.’
‘Perhaps on Himmler’s orders. Perhaps when the Agamemnon Code was activated.’
Penn was silent for a moment, then took a ruler from his tool belt, leaned over and quickly measured the impression. ‘There is one place where I’ve seen a swastika shape like this, the same wide arms and distinctive cross. The more I look at it, the more I think it might be an exact fit. It’s on the door to the laboratory. It’s an indent just like this but within a roundel. We’re fairly sure it’s some kind of locking mechanism. Sergeant Jones thought it might be magnetic, but we won’t know until we inspect it. The door’s very slightly ajar. Maybe the palladion was a key to unlock what was in there. Maybe it unlocked other places like this, part of some scheme of Himmler’s that never came to fruition.’
Hiebermeyer could barely breathe. Of course. It was a key.
‘Major Penn.’ A voice sounded through both of their intercoms. ‘You need to come to the laboratory door, now.’
‘Okay.’ Penn straightened up. ‘That’s my two sappers. And I just saw Sergeant Jones and Auxelle come through the chamber. Let’s move now.’
Hiebermeyer followed Penn from the crates on to the main walkway. He glanced back, seeing where the Raphael was propped up, the mottled colours lost in the haze of green. Listening to the rasp of his own breathing, he was reminded of film he had seen of Jack and Costas rising from an underwater site, features of the archaeology clearly visible and then suddenly lost in a green-blue haze, as if they had passed through some kind of lens in the water. He thought about the painting again. Whatever Himmler had devised, whatever ghastly wonder-weapon he had been developing, he had not been above collecting the choicest Old Masters for his own private enjoyment: not for some Nazi Valhalla, but for a real future that he envisaged for himself, perhaps a new Wewelsburg arising in his imagination like Atlantis reborn. Hiebermeyer now knew something with cold certainty. Himmler may have been a fantasist, but there was a ruthless calculating streak to him. All of this had been carefully planned, and had been thwarted only by a misplaced gamble at the end. And if Himmler had planned to hold the world to ransom with his wonder-weapon, that threat remained for others like Saumerre to find and use. For the first time Hiebermeyer forced himself to face the reality of what might be in that laboratory ahead. He hoped that the nightmare would come to an end here and now.
‘Major Penn.’ The voice of one of the sappers came through their intercom. ‘The inspector and Sergeant Jones have already gone into the laboratory. I couldn’t stop them.’
Penn snorted angrily and made his way over. The door was now half open, and there were lights moving inside. Hiebermeyer saw the swastika in the roundel that Penn had described. As they came closer, one of the sappers stepped up and stopped Penn. ‘Sir, you’ll see there’s a body in front of the door, mostly skeleton. We found it when we first arrived here twenty minutes ago, but he’s long dead and we didn’t see the need to disturb you. There was a smear of old blood on the door when we were cutting through. He was shot at close range in the back of the head, massive skull damage. You’ll see more of the same when you go in through that door. Been a little life-and-death struggle here with no winner as far as we can see. This one’s American, by the way.’
Penn went straight to the form on the floor and leaned over it. ‘A lieutenant colonel’s silver oak leaf on the lapel,’ he murmured. ‘No division or corps insignia on the shoulders. He’s got a holstered Colt automatic, but he’s wearing a dress uniform, not a field uniform. Not a combat soldier.’ He peered at Hiebermeyer. ‘Sounds like our Monuments and Fine Arts man, Colonel Stein, wouldn’t you say?’
Hiebermeyer nodded, staring at the body, his head swimming. There was a sudden commotion from within the laboratory, and the sound of something falling heavily. A voice came over the intercom. ‘Quick!’ They heard the French accent of the inspector. ‘Come and help! Sergeant Jones has collapsed!’
Penn pushed into the chamber, the other two sappers following and Hiebermeyer bringing up the rear. He saw two more decomposed bodies lying entangled together just inside the door, and Sergeant Jones in his white suit stretched out beside them. The nearest body was wearing tattered striped prisoner clothes, but the one beneath it, lying face-down, wore British battledress, a major’s crown clearly visible on one shoulder. Hiebermeyer stared. It could only be Major Mayne. His revolver was still holstered, but his skeletal hand was behind his back, clutching a commando knife that poked up through the other man’s ribcage. The man in the prisoner’s uniform held a rusted pistol, a Walther, and there was a spent casing on the floor. Hiebermeyer saw a tattoo on a piece of skin that clung to the bones of the forearm. It was the SS mark. He barely had time to register it when Penn pulled his arm.
‘We’ve got to get Jones out of here,’ he said urgently. He looked angrily at Auxelle. ‘How long has he been like this?’
‘Only moments. But he had been breathing heavily. Maybe it was seeing the bodies.’
‘That’s not like Jones. More likely a malfunction with his oxygen. If that’s the case, we’ve only got minutes.’ He looked at the other two sappers. ‘You each take a leg, Auxelle and Hiebermeyer take the arms. I’ll support his waist. Let’s move.’
Hiebermeyer lifted Jones’ arm but had forgotten his own twisted wrist and slipped with the weight, twisting round and falling back against the wall, his other hand clutching a rail and slipping into something glutinous. He pushed himself up with his back against the wall, and as he did so he tripped the electric light switch. The bare overhead bulbs flickered and then came on with a sudden dazzling glare, blinding him for a moment. Then he saw walls of a sickly pale blue, like the colour of a hospital operating room. The layer of yellow-green was still there, but the light rendered it opaque, a bilious colour. He saw a small refrigerator in front of Jones’ legs, its door ajar and the interior gleaming, empty. He stared at it, transfixed, his mind blank, and then he turned to look where he had put his hand.
What he saw was an image of unspeakable horror. Along the side wall of the room were five gurneys, metal trolleys with their upper surfaces formed like shallow basins. Four contained human bodies, naked but grotesquely adiposed, as if they had been covered with a layer of white plaster. The two furthest bodies were strapped down but horribly twisted, like the plaster casts of bodies from Pompeii preserved in their death throes. His mind reeled. He forced himself to look. These people must have been strapped down alive in this laboratory, and were still alive when they were abandoned here. The third and fourth bodies were older cadavers that had been decapitated and disembowelled, with autopsy tools half rusted on a tray in front. The fifth gurney, the one he was holding, contained two severed heads, wax-like and hairless, staring at him blindly through sockets closed up with fatty secretion, the skulls held in the clutches of a three-armed forceps like the severed talons of some bird. They seemed to be embedded in a congealed layer, the glutinous substance he had put his hand into. He lifted it out, tendrils of congealed white and yellow dripping from his fingers. His stomach lurched as he realized what it was. He had seen this once inside a two-hundred-year-old lead coffin he had watched being excavated from a church crypt. The archaeologists had called it body liquor. He had put his hand into decomposed human fat.
He doubled over and threw up inside his helmet, coughing and retching as the oxygen from his regulator bubbled through the vomit. He clutched Jones’ hand tight, but he felt other hands heaving him up, pushing him forward as he staggered over the two corpses on the floor. He kept his eyes shut and his mouth wide open, breathing in oxygen and vomit, coughing it out again, retching. As they staggered out of the laboratory and back towards the entrance, he fixed his mind on the refrigerator he had seen, its interior gleaming and empty. Something had been stored there, something the Nazi scientists must have extracted from those bodies, and something they had experimented with on the living. Something unimaginable. But it was gone.