He reached a roped-off area. Plastic warning tape fluttered in the breeze. There were the usual signs, in German: ‘ACHTUNG! Excavation in progress. Do not enter.’ He ducked beneath the tape and made his way towards the rock escarpment that loomed before him.
Dense forest shielded what had to be the entrance to the caves. A path had been beaten through, kept clear by the passage of heavy boots: film people and excavators, moving in both directions.
If he ran into a team at work, he figured he’d play the stupid Englishman: he hadn’t understood the warning signs. He doubted they’d believe him, but in his experience, Austrians tended to be endlessly polite and correct.
Finding his way here had been easy enough: a sandy track snaked through the woodland. He’d been forced to leave his silver Range Rover Evoque several kilometres back, as a padlocked forest gate had barred the way, but the trek through the shade had proved a tonic to his soul. This was always where he was happiest. Alone, surrounded by the still quiet of spectacular wilderness. It brought back memories of his time in the Welsh mountains during SAS selection.
The good parts, that was…
He’d left Uncle Joe back in St Georgen, at the Tinschert Gasthof, a traditional establishment in the heart of town. It had turned out to be such a pleasant setting, they’d booked rooms for the night. They’d return to the Zum Turken tomorrow, and start the drive home the following morning.
Jaeger had booked a table for two in the Tinschert’s restaurant. He’d promised to share everything with Uncle Joe over dinner, as well as to take a bunch of photographs on his smartphone.
He pushed through the foliage and an entrance yawned before him. Correction: there were two entrances. One snaked left, the other right, and he could tell that there had been traffic through both of them.
Jaeger paused, studying the alternatives for a good few seconds. He felt his pulse quicken. Which one to choose?
The right-hand entrance had a heap of basic equipment piled up just inside it: shovels, pickaxes, wheelbarrows, wooden planking. The left-hand opening was clear, apart from a set of rails disappearing into the gloom. Jaeger figured the rails had to be for pushing handcarts laden with excavation debris.
It looked as if the left-hand tunnel was the one to take.
He removed a few items from his rucksack. He tore off hunks of Austrian sausage with his teeth, washing them down with glugs from his water bottle, and stuffing in some bread for good measure. Somehow he didn’t fancy lunching in the dark confines of the tunnel.
Then he climbed down the crumbling earth-and-rubble bank and stepped into the shadows. He flicked on his head torch, a fine bluish light stabbing out from the Petzl’s pair of xenon bulbs, and glanced ahead, the twin beams piercing the gloom.
What stretched before him was mind-blowing, and all the more so because he could make out a distant shaft of natural light penetrating the darkness. That slender pillar of sunlight was a good two hundred yards away, giving a sense of the awesome perspective.
The tunnel’s profile was roughly semicircular, with the base forming the flat side. He figured the roof had to be a good fifteen metres above him, the width of similar dimensions. Gazing along the tunnel’s length, he reckoned that SS General Kammler could have driven an entire Panzer division in here with room to spare.
What on earth had it been designed to safeguard and hide?
Andrea had mentioned that there had been a concentration camp nearby; Mauthausen-Gusen. Some 320,000 of its inmates were said to have perished excavating this dark labyrinth, amongst other Nazi forced labour projects.
That number had seemed inconceivable, but now Jaeger could understand why. Blasting out, digging, reinforcing, roofing and flooring this one tunnel alone would have been an utterly daunting undertaking. He could well understand how building a network of such tunnels beneath the mountain had caused so much death and suffering.
He pushed further into the darkness, his footfalls echoing eerily in the silence and kicking up scuffs of dust. This place was oppressive. Airless. And it resonated with a dark evil.
His sixth sense was crying out ‘danger’, but he put the feeling down to everything that had gone before; the dark legacy of this place. He had experienced this at various times in his life. Eviclass="underline" hanging thick in the air like a funeral shroud.
Here, it lingered in the dust at his feet.
It cried out from the dank concrete walls to either side.
It was impossible to rationalise, but it was here.
He recognised the sensation. But all of that was in the past, he told himself. There could be no danger now.
He stopped and listened for a moment. He was maybe fifty yards into the tunnel. He was struck by the deafening stillness of the place. Not a whisper of wind or a hint of birdsong disturbed the silence.
From somewhere up ahead he detected the faintest noise of dripping water. Otherwise, utter deathly quiet.
He pushed on. The floor of the tunnel was mostly clear of debris. The excavation team had done their work well. But the form of a tiny bundle drew Jaeger’s eye. It was lying at the very point where the curved side wall met the floor, lost in the shade.
He bent to inspect it: a small heap of rags, no larger than a child’s shoe. He brushed aside the rock and dust. Something gleamed white amidst the musty grey. He recognised it instantly. A bone. A human bone. One of the metacarpals – those that formed the front of the fist; that would strike an opponent in hand-to-hand combat.
What Jaeger was looking at here was the skeletal remains of a human hand.
He told himself he shouldn’t be overly surprised. If 320,000 souls had died here, whoever had opened this place up would be bound to stumble upon human remains. There was something else, though: his twin xenon beams glinted upon a form half hidden, glowing in the light.
He reached for it and brought it fully into his view. Unmistakable: a thick cloth badge displaying the distinctive silver SS runes against a plain background.
Jaeger studied it for a second. What was an SS badge doing here, amongst the skeletal remains of those who had perished? Maybe the hand that lay here had ripped it off in a final act of defiance, before the SS soldier had killed him. Or her.
He would never know. It was one of history’s lost moments. He got to his feet, stuffing the badge deep into his pocket.
He pushed on for what seemed like an age. Finally, and for no discernible reason, the tunnel came to an abrupt stop. Jaeger faced a wall of concrete, which ballooned out in bulbous steps. He could climb it, but there was little point.
As far as this tunnel went, he had reached the end of the road.
12
Narov had had no option but to fall back on her training.
In a city like Dubai – a tightly packed, ultra-high-rise, high-tech 24/7 metropolis – there was pretty much nowhere to hide.
But the Spetsnaz had a saying: Any mission, any time, any place: whatever it takes. She’d reminded herself of that as she’d steeled herself for what was coming. She had resolved to hide in plain sight, where everyone could see her.
She’d also reminded herself of one of Will Jaeger’s maxims, one of the few sensible things he had had to say when they had operated together; when he hadn’t been teasing her or playing the fooclass="underline" Fail to prepare; prepare to fail.
She’d been scrupulous in her preparations – or at least as much as she could, given the time available. Getting hold of the fluorescent workman’s jacket and trousers hadn’t been so difficult, not for a woman of her means. It had involved a little partying, a smidgen of seduction, a dose of Rohypnol – a heavy sedation drug – and the subsequent theft of one set of workmen’s clothing.