The Doomsday Testament(113)

‘Let me see the journal.’ He handed it over and she turned the pages until she reached the passage she was looking for. ‘Matthew says here that after Stan got out of the jeep at the beginning of the track he drove a further two miles before ordering the Germans out. I don’t see how anyone could drive up that track.’

They searched the base of the escarpment, but it quickly became clear that she was right. The only drivable route south from the village was the main road. Epfenhofen was a dead end.

‘It must be the next one then,’ Jamie said with more confidence than he felt.

The village of Futzen was just over a mile to the west and as he scanned the countryside around him Jamie felt his heart beat faster.

‘This looks more promising,’ Sarah said, echoing his thoughts. From the road they saw that farmland sloped gently up from the village towards the hills and Switzerland, and even from a distance they could make out tracks linking the fields.

The landscape reminded Jamie of something from his past and he tried to remember the artwork it came from. An image popped into his head from nowhere. ‘The Great Escape!’

‘What?’ Sarah looked at him as if he was mad.

He laughed and pointed to the view. ‘I thought this reminded me of a painting, but it’s a film. They used to show it on TV every Christmas before we had a hundred satellite channels.’ Still, she looked mystified. ‘Surely you remember? Steve McQueen on a motorbike trying to jump the barbed wire between Germany and Switzerland. The scenery was just like this. Meadows and dirt roads and the Alps in the distance.’

She shrugged. ‘Maybe it wasn’t my kind of movie. Did he make it?’

He looked at her curiously. ‘No, but it was a good film.’

‘Did it have a happy ending?’

He shook his head. ‘Not really. The Gestapo shot fifty unarmed prisoners of war.’

When they reached the village they worked their way along a network of streets to the south, where they were able to look across the fields towards the wooded hills beyond. The same railway that strangled Epfenhofen formed the southern boundary of the village and as they sat in the car an ancient steam train huffed its way past trailing a stream of green carriages and emitting a cheerful whistle. They looked at each other.

‘You sure we woke up in the right century?’

‘I’m beginning to wonder.’ Jamie studied the track directly ahead of them. Bounded by trees on one side and a marshy ditch on the other, it cut, arrow straight, across the fields and rose into the trees. ‘This is it.’

Sarah shot a glance at him. ‘You can’t be sure.’

He reached behind him and picked up the mottled envelope from its place on the back seat.

‘This is it.’ He put the car into gear and bumped across the railroad on to the gravel track and they drove south, towards Matthew Sinclair’s destiny.

‘You are sad, Leutnant Matt?’ As usual, Walter Brohm sat apart from Klosse and Strasser and his words cut across my thoughts. Sadness was too inadequate a word for the mixture of emotions I felt at that moment. Up here among the trees with the breeze softly fluttering the oak leaves and with the warmth of the sun on my face it was easy to believe it really was all over. I should have been happy or at least relieved. I had fought a good war, a war that one day other men would tell me I should be proud of; the best of wars because it was a war that I had lived through. Not survived, you understand. Lived through. The Matthew Sinclair who had disembarked in 1939 at Cherbourg, pink-cheeked and bright eyed, with the walking ghosts of the Royal Berkshire Regiment, was long gone. Part of him died with Sergeant Anderson on the retreat from Dyle and in the madness of broken bodies, blood and iron that followed. What was left had walked willingly into the inferno of the Coventry hospital and added his flesh to the flames that consumed his family. True, an empty shell remained, an empty shell with no soul and a single purpose. The SAS had taken the shell and created a new Matthew Sinclair, a Matthew Sinclair who could endure and survive and who could kill in many different ways without conscience or remorse, hard as the steel of the double-edged, fighting knife he carried. But now the armour of the new Matthew Sinclair has been worn down by the proximity of peace in a way never achieved by the proximity of death. He can feel himself fading, the barrier he has created to protect him from the madness and horror being worn away with each passing second that brings him closer to the end.

I shook my head and picked up the journal from the grass at my side, hoping Brohm would leave me alone with my ghosts. But he noticed that the brass clasp which held the book closed had broken. He grinned and ambled across to me, reaching into the breast pocket of his khaki tunic which he could not help patting every time he talked of the great painting he owned. ‘Here, Leutnant Matt, you must protect your work.’ He handed me a piece of silver cord just long enough to tie the book together. ‘Better you have it. A memento. Part of Brigadeführer Walter Brohm’s uniform. One day you will look back with pride and say: “I knew Walter Brohm.” When I reach America I will not forget what you have done for me. Soon the world will be a different place, a better place, where we two can be true friends. My work will change life for everyone. You understand that I cannot give you the details,’ he smiled, ‘but you must believe me when I tell you this. For now, only Astra can find the answer. Of course, we must first deal with the Ivans. Where Hitler failed, America will succeed, because America knows that if it does not succeed it will be destroyed, just as Germany has been destroyed.’ His eyes narrowed and he glanced back to make certain Klosse and Strasser could not hear. I knew he was going to tell me then. ‘A bomb,’ he whispered. ‘I will give them a bomb greater than any bomb ever invented. A bomb with the power of the sun.’