The Doomsday Testament(36)

His problems had started when his staff car had been strafed by a rocket-firing American fighter. He’d only just escaped with his life by diving into a nearby ditch and had watched as the Mercedes was turned into a fireball along with his driver and his carefully hoarded supplies. All he had been left with was his pistol and his briefcase and he’d almost lost that to some cowardly scum of a deserter who thought it must contain food and got a bullet in his guts for his trouble.

After that scare he’d kept off the road, but he soon realized that the stamina that had taken him across the Himalayas in the thirties was long gone. After three days he was a stumbling wreck on the brink of starvation, forced to drink from stagnant pools in the forest. The water had saved him from dying of thirst, but within hours of consuming it he had come down with dysentery. He was finished.

He’d hidden his briefcase and pistol and, nearly shitting himself with sickness and terror, given himself up to an American combat patrol. They had first lived up to his earlier hopes by providing him with food and water and telling him to hand himself in to one of the supply units following them, but it wasn’t long before a staff officer appeared and demanded to know why they ‘hadn’t shot the Nazi bastard’. For a few minutes his fate had been in the balance, but he had cut such a forlorn figure that the officer had eventually relented and put him in a jeep to be taken to the nearest collection centre.

Now here he was with his arse in a puddle and the rain dripping from his nose. His comrades, who could sense he was no more a landser than a chimpanzee, watched him suspiciously. It was only a matter of time before someone gave him up to the guards.

And it was about to get worse.

He hadn’t realized the screening would be so thorough. This hunger for revenge and determination to ensure the Nazi hierarchy had no possibility of escape seemed very un-American. Every prisoner was being strip-searched and interrogated, regardless of rank. It wouldn’t take the Amis five minutes to find out that he didn’t know a machine gun from a panzerfaust, even if they didn’t find the SS tattoo that verified his blood group. They might very well shoot him on the spot.

Well, if he couldn’t trick his way out he’d buy his way out. The key was to convince them to let him recover the briefcase and, even in his current pitiful state, Walter Brohm was capable of that. It contained only a general summary of his research and findings, but it would be enough to save his neck if he could get it into the right hands. Of course, they would be able to do nothing without the stone and his detailed notes. He would only hand over their whereabouts when he was somewhere much safer than this. He had heard Rhode Island was pleasant at this time of the year.

He pushed himself to his feet and approached the nearest guard, who eyed him suspiciously and kept the muzzle of his carbine pointed exactly at Brohm’s midriff.

‘I would like to speak to your commanding officer. I have information that will be of considerable interest to his superiors.’





XVIII


‘SO YOU HUNT down pictures and stuff stolen by the Nazis?’ He knew she was trying to sound enthusiastic, but he heard the doubt and he could hardly blame her. It didn’t seem like a very grown-up occupation.

‘It’s not even as exciting as it sounds,’ he apologized. ‘I read catalogues, check out art sales and spend most of my time on the phone. I’m more likely to be looking for a pair of candlesticks than a painting.’

He was usually shy at first with women, but she was deceptively easy to chat to. Maybe it was because she was American; open, talkative, interesting and interested. They discovered they had shared likes: climbing and walking. And pet hates: anyone who wandered around listening to rock music on earphones when they could be listening to the birds singing. Their musical taste differed, but there were areas for negotiation. Sarah liked the new album by Robert Plant and Alison Kraus, although she thought Plant was talented but ancient. Jamie confessed to a secret hankering for old Johnny Cash standards and a love of Mahler inherited from his mother. He found himself relaxing and revealing things he hadn’t even told his best friends.

‘Do you think your work could have anything to do with why whoever it was tried to whack you?’

Her words produced a photoflash memory of the train thundering by an inch above his head. All it would have taken was a single hanging wire . . . She noticed his look, and placed a hand on his arm; the warmth injected new life into him and for the first time since leaving the Tube station he felt like facing the world.

‘What are you smiling about?’ He shook his head and she turned a quizzical eye on him. ‘OK.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t mind a man having secrets. Makes him more interesting. But you didn’t answer my question.’