‘Listen,’ he said gently, ‘there are a lot of things we need to talk about, but this isn’t the time. I should kick your spying backside out here and now, but I won’t because I’ve fallen a little bit in love with whoever the real Sarah Grant is.’
‘We could still turn back, walk away from all this. I’ll tell them I won’t work for them any more and we can fly back to London and see if we can make it as two ordinary people.’
‘No. We’ve come too far now. We owe it to Matthew and Tenzin and Simon and Magda, all the people who have died, to see it through.’ He looked out over the rippling waters of the lake. ‘Can I assume David, or whatever he’s calling himself today, is nearby?’
She nodded. ‘There’s a satellite tracking device in my new phone.’
‘Good. When we get closer to where we’re going, we’ll let him know exactly where to find us.’
She held back as he got into the car. ‘So you still won’t tell me what you found back there?’
‘Trust me.’
* * *
Two miles behind them the driver and passenger in the grey Mercedes listened to the final exchange.
‘Lovers’ tiff?’
‘I’ll give you odds of three to one he tells her in the next hour.’
‘And then?’
The other man said nothing. They both knew the answer.
After another thirty minutes the driver studied the locator device on the screen in front of him. ‘Looks like they’re pulling in for fuel. Not a bad idea. I could do with a piss.’
The passenger frowned. He didn’t like it, but they didn’t have much choice, he didn’t want to get in front of his quarry. ‘We’ll stop there too, but we’ll stay in the car until they move again. Then you can have your piss.’
They passed Leipzig and began to see the first signs for Prague. ‘What will you do if you find it?’ Sarah’s voice was devoid of emotion, as if the question had drawn all the strength from her.
Jamie shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I thought we could destroy it, but the closer we get the less likely that seems. Maybe hire a boat somewhere and drop it into the ocean. Chuck it into a volcano.’
‘Christ, Jamie, you’re not in Lord of the fucking Rings,’ she said. ‘This is real life. This is dangerous. Please, for my sake, turn back now.’
He didn’t look at her. He didn’t want to see the tears. Instead, he glanced out of the window to check if the helicopter that had been flying parallel with the road for the last ten miles was still with them. The next sign said eight kilometres to Dresden.
‘I told you. It’s too late.’
After five minutes he turned on to a slip road towards the city. Sarah stared at him and he nodded.
‘Walter Brohm hid the Sun Stone in the safest place in Germany, which also happened to be the place where he was born. When he closed down the bunker early in nineteen forty-five, Dresden was the only major city in Nazi Germany that had never been properly bombed by the Allies. They called it Florence on the Elbe. It was a centre of huge cultural significance with some of the most beautiful architecture in Europe, a place of grand palaces and theatres, opera houses and museums. More importantly, there was no heavy industry, no tank production lines or ball bearing factories. And it wasn’t on any of the Wehrmacht’s main supply routes. The kind of stuff that attracts target allocation officers. Dresden was a military backwater.’
She looked out over the city unfolding below them. ‘Where, Jamie? Where did he hide it?’
‘I found the last Black Sun on the floor of Brohm’s office in the bunker. No one had noticed it in all the madness surrounding the Raphael. The road and river network matches what I know about the city. But even if I hadn’t known how to decode the Black Sun, the inscription beneath it would have told me. Die kreuzung wo die frau betet.’
She looked puzzled. ‘The intersection where the women worship?’
‘The crossroads where the women pray. When I found out Walter Brohm was born in Dresden, I did a little reading on the city. Remember the journal entry where Brohm was talking about the centre of the earth? The one I missed that pointed us towards Wewelsburg? In the next line, my grandfather said that everyone has a different centre of the earth and Brohm’s would always be his mother’s spiritual home. That was Dresden, but not just Dresden. The most famous building in the city isn’t a palace or a museum. It’s a church. The Frauenkirche. The church at the crossroads where his father was pastor and his mother would have worshipped. He knew every stone and every potential hiding place. It must have seemed perfect. Walter Brohm hid the Sun Stone and all his research papers in the crypt of the Frauenkirche.’