‘But Walter Brohm, for all his faults, was a man with several admirable qualities, not the least of which were persistence and self-belief. Somehow, he found the time and the resources to carry out his experiments. We don’t know the mechanics of it, but it appears that some time before early nineteen forty-one he came to the conclusion that the Sun Stone consisted of what we now call Dark Matter. That led in turn to the possibility, even the probability, of creating controlled nuclear fusion.’
A stir ran through the men in the church at the mention of the goal which had brought each of them here.
‘Now, he was able to turn directly to Hitler for support, but his beloved Führer failed him. Why? Because Hitler feared the power the Sun Stone was capable of unleashing. But one man had no such reservations. Walter Brohm sold his soul to the devil and the devil’s name was Heinrich Himmler.’
He waited for some reaction to his words, but none came.
‘Brohm needed to operate in total secrecy. That meant the labour to build the bunker in the Harz Mountains had to be expendable. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Russian prisoners, Polish slave workers and, of course, Jews were rushed off to the gas chambers the moment the bunker was complete. But the killing didn’t stop there. Scientists and technicians. Even the SS guards. When the time came to close the bunker down . . . when he was on the very brink of another breakthrough . . . Walter Brohm sacrificed them all to save himself and his precious secret.
‘And, just as Brohm never questioned the ethics or the danger or the morality of what he was doing, he knew his value to the last dollar. Germany could burn, her soldiers could be slaughtered in their hundreds of thousands, German boys could throw themselves at tanks, but Walter Brohm and his work must survive. As the war ended, he dangled the Sun Stone under the noses of people with even fewer morals than himself, and they took it: hook, line and sinker.
‘Within a month, he would have been welcomed to America and given more resources than he could ever have dreamed of to complete his project. But for one man.
‘One man recognized the true danger of the Sun Stone and Walter Brohm. That man was my grandfather. He shot Brohm through the head and hoped that when he died, the Sun Stone would die with him. But, of course, it didn’t, which is why we are here.’
‘Enough of the history lesson, Saintclair. We came for the stone. Where is it?’
Jamie shook his head. ‘You had my grandfather killed, Mr Vanderbilt, and a Polish war hero called Stanislaus Kozlowski who was his friend. Who knows how many more have been sacrificed on the altar of your greed? You were even prepared to betray your own kind.’ Vanderbilt flinched as if someone had slapped his face. ‘Oh, yes, Mr Vanderbilt. You’re not the only one who can bug a telephone. I suspect you and your friend Frederick will have lots to talk about when this is over. But the more I discovered about Matthew Sinclair, the more certain I was that he would have died to keep the Sun Stone away from men like you.’
‘The old man was an accident and the Pole was in the way.’ Vanderbilt’s voice was almost a plea. ‘Don’t you understand that this is more important than life or death? The Sun Stone can assure the future of the planet and the survival of our civilization.’
Jamie ignored him and looked around the cathedral, meeting the eyes of Mr Lim and Frederick in turn, before focusing his attention on Sarah Grant. ‘I came to the Frauenkirche prepared to sacrifice everything to make sure Walter Brohm’s legacy remained unfulfilled. To do so I would have blown up this place and everyone in it.’ They looked at the building around them, wondering if they’d been lured into a trap, all except Sarah who had forgotten Howard Vanderbilt and whose eyes never left Jamie. ‘But fortunately, I don’t have to do that.’
‘What do you mean?’
Jamie stared at the industrialist, wondering what was going through his head. ‘When he left the bunker in February nineteen forty-five Walter Brohm believed he had chosen the safest place in Germany to hide the Sun Stone. Little old Dresden, famous for nothing more than its crockery and its culture. Untouched by six years of war and likely to stay that way. He knew every stone of this great church, because his father had been pastor here. In particular, he knew the stone vaults below it as no one else did. Where better to keep the Sun Stone and his research papers until they were needed? Brohm probably calculated it would be lunacy to waste resources on bombing Dresden at that late stage of the war.’ The church had gone very still. He could probably have whispered and they would still have heard him. ‘But Brohm forgot that lunacy and war go hand in hand. There’s some suggestion the decision was taken because the Wehrmacht was likely to retreat this way from Czechoslovakia, as it was then. The more likely reason is that somebody at Bomber Command was looking for another box to tick on his long list of targets.’