Endermann introduced a younger man, a balding Lebanese Arab, the explosives expert who was simply identified as Ahmed, a man holding a large glass of red wine. Then there was Stephan, a Russian in his early fifties who Endermann said had been a staunch KGB man before going solo. Spaxley nodded in approval.
The fourth member to greet Spaxley was a young Englishman in his late twenties, simply called Mr. Withington. He had a weak face and appeared nervous, sitting with his back to the door. No field agent ever kept his back to a door. He was doubtless local: a suspicion confirmed when Endermann explained that Withington was not staying the night.
"I'm not used to all this cloak and dagger stuff, Mr. Spaxley," said Withington quietly. "I hope you weren't followed."
Such an immature question. Spaxley guessed Withington was a desk man from GCHQ down the road, and from the look of him probably recruited for this job against his better judgment. People like Endermann had ways of doing that, and most of them involved the discovery of serious sexual misdemeanors.
Spaxley straightened his cutlery as he glanced around the circular table. The others at the table had already started on their main course. The journey from Heathrow had taken much longer than he'd anticipated. The hotel was only partly occupied, and their table was in a large, ornate room reserved for private functions. The five of them seated here looked lost under the Adam style plasterwork on the dark green walls. Endermann had their rooms booked for a fortnight, but thought they'd all be out within the week.
Spaxley put his spoon down. This was Regency decadence in its original form, almost unchanged since the Prince Regent sat on the English throne in the 1820s. Well preserved, and definitely original. A multi-national hotel chain striving for the authentic flavor of the past would never have been able to achieve this splendor without succumbing to the temptation to reinvent historical style using plastic in generous quantities. He had to admire the planning that had gone into finding this venue. This conservative hotel made a good safe house. There would be no computer-based booking system linked to outlets around the world.
Anyway, why would anyone in security be interested in a private business meeting in Cheltenham, England?
Spaxley turned to Withington. He needed to stamp his authority on the gathering. "You're the local boy, I imagine. GCHQ?"
A look of alarm came over Withington, and he turned to Endermann. "I thought..."
Endermann smiled. "We're all friends together at this table, Withington." He looked at Spaxley. "Mr. Withington is our expert on communications. He has an advanced set of electronics kit in my room."
The young man from GCHQ began to relax. Maybe he appreciated being a key figure.
"The Institute has to go public this week." Endermann wiped around the edge of his plate with the knife. "This gravy is pretty good. All natural, I'd bet. Beats the chemical brew they use back home. I'm off to Cairo." He waved his knife at Spaxley. "The thing you've got to do, Admiral, is ensure that the media take the Institute of Egyptologists seriously while I'm gone. The clock is already running, so there can be no possibility of failure."
"Then stop the clock," Spaxley suggested.
Endermann shook his bull head. "There's an eclipse of the moon due. We have to work to a tight schedule to launch the Eagle of Darkness during the eclipse. It's all in the prophecies."
Spaxley glanced up as the waiter entered the room. The soup had been good, warming, but it was time to move on to the next course. Endermann seemed to be talking garbage. "Just tell me what I have to do."
Endermann spoke quietly to Spaxley as soon as they were alone again, while the others in the group carried on eating. "Ahmed here has several surprises in store for Egypt." He nodded towards the Lebanese Arab whose bald head glistened under the light from the dusty chandelier directly overhead. The man was now into his second bottle of Bordeaux red. "If he manages to stay sober."
Chapter 17
Berlin
THE STABBING DRIZZLE continued to blast down the German street the next morning. Sam hoped the damp and cold would keep the people indoors, so their journey to the house of horrors would not attract attention. Heidi List put on a determined look as she led the way, keeping close to the high buildings.
"We will buy a spade at the hardware shop," she said, turning to Sam who had dropped behind slightly.
"And a pick axe," he added, feeling he was being drawn into an ill-advised plan. His head felt clearer now. The Schnapps seemed to have no long lasting effect.
"Ja, and a pick. I will do the talking. I am known in the shop, and they will ask no prying questions. I will let you choose what to buy."
The woman serving in the hardware shop allowed Sam to select the goods unhindered while she chatted with Heidi List.
"This is my odd job man. He is English, and lazy." Heidi List nodded towards Sam. "Over here for work, yet he wants to do nothing. For the past week he has been eating my food and drinking my coffee, and promising to do some repairs in my yard." She gestured with her arms and shoulders. "In the end I have been reduced to purchasing the tools myself, just to get him to do anything."
The elderly assistant tutted in sympathy. Heidi List was not finished yet. "An old woman like me, reduced to buying tools to get some essential work carried out on her house. Next thing I know, he will be asking me to do it myself."
Sam shook his head in despair at this totally unnecessary cover story. "These will do," he said swiftly. The tools were not the most expensive, but were adequate for a one-off job in a cellar.
"Come," said Heidi List loudly as soon as she had paid by cash. "No breaks for coffee. I will watch you while you work." And she took Sam by the arm.
There was little traffic outside. Fran list put her umbrella at an angle, protecting herself from the driving damp that met them head on. "I am sorry to have sounded so severe," she said without so much as a smile. "It was necessary to maintain a strictly working relationship, or they would have been suspicious in the shop. Why would a woman like me be buying digging tools?"
Yes, why -- apart from looking for bodies of dead Gestapo officers. But he merely nodded in agreement.
Heidi List seemed to be an avid reader of spy stories, or maybe she had suffered at the hands of the Stasi. She doubled back twice, ending up in a cobbled street a long way from the hardware shop. Her tactics even had Sam glancing apprehensively over his shoulder, but no one was taking the slightest notice of two damp citizens. He shouldered the pick axe, and started to sing quietly. "Hi ho, hi ho----" but Heidi List interrupted him.
"This is the house. We will go in." From her purse she produced a large key and opened the front door which had been painted over the years with various shades of blue that were now peeling in large flakes.
Sam glanced up at the building before he was pushed inside. The terraced house was tall, like Heidi List's, but the condition of this and the adjoining buildings made the street look almost derelict. Builders had erected scaffolding on some of the houses, although there was no sign of work being carried out anywhere.
In the large hallway he stepped past two broken packing crates, a filthy roll of carpet and an untidy pile of newspapers. He looked up the stairs, imagining Heidi List as a teenage girl in the war, trying to see down into the hall. The man in the black coat, the broken cylinder, the cushion, the muffled shot. Feathers on the brown floor tiles.
Dry leaves from the street littered the floor now.
"Here." Heidi List opened a door that led to the cellar. She flicked a light switch and a yellow light from a single bulb showed the way down a flight of stone steps. "We will start straight away."
No coffee breaks, Sam mimicked in his mind. Heidi List was probably every bit as tough as her act in the hardware shop.
Old oilcloth covered the cellar floor, a type on linoleum he'd seen in his grandparents' house as a child, stained and cracked here to reveal the outline of the uneven flagstones underneath.
"We will dig ... at this point."
"
We?" Sam stuck the sharp corner of the spade into the linoleum and ripped a long slit. As he peeled the floor covering back, a putrid smell of old drains rose from the flagstones underneath. White, spidery lines crissÂcrossed the smooth black stone.
Heidi List put a handkerchief to her face. "You must excuse me if I sound abrupt, Sam. This is a traumatic time for me."
"And for me, if there's a body down there." He pulled the last piece of rotting linoleum clear of the floor to expose a large area of flagstones.
Heidi List tapped her heel on one of the stones and unexpectedly spoke in English. "Here is digging, please." The poor English probably reflected her anxiety. She smiled at him, a quick smile that seemed like a desperate cry for support. "I will retire to the stairs."
He handed her his jacket and took the pick in both hands. Rather than smash through the flagstone he pressed the wide end of the blade into the join with the next stone, and levered back. A small chip of stone broke away, but nothing moved.
He tried again, and the same thing happened.
"Use some force, Herr Bolt. We must not be long." The old woman spoke in German again.
He swung the point of the pick down hard on the center of the flat stone. A thin crack appeared across it. Once more, and the stone was in two parts. The broad blade now went easily into the original join, a broken slab of stone rising as he pulled back on the wooden shaft. The soil underneath looked like brown clay, and the smell of old drains became even stronger.
With four flagstones removed he broke up the soil with the pick, then began to shovel it away with the spade. If there was a body here, it was deep. He was already down a good eighteen inches.
At three feet the soil became sticky, with a nauseating, yet distressingly sweet stench. It was then he saw the black leather.
Heidi List came forward to look into the hole, the handkerchief still to her mouth and nose. She dropped Sam's jacket on the door and put both hands to her face. "Oh mein Gott! This is terrible."
He bent down, getting closer to the smell. "Do you want me to go on?" He felt like getting his own handkerchief out. When people talked about the smell of death, they probably didn't imagine anything like this.
"Please continue, Sam. I must be sure there is a body as well as clothing."
"There's a body all right." Sam could see the scalp, surrounded by blond hair that had fallen away from the skin in large clumps. The soil immediately around the body looked a dark bluish green rather than brown. This was more grisly than anything he'd anticipated.
Hesitantly he reached into the hole and caught hold of a black leather sleeve to move the man's arm. The revolting musky smell changed to ammonia that made his eyes water. Underneath the arm he could something wrapped in oilskin, stained dark by the decomposing body. He retrieved it, stood up, and carefully unrolled the package. Yes, it was the Egyptian cylinder. It was just possible to make out miniature Egyptian hieroglyphics, but no real colors. Everything was brown. He ran his thumb over the surface. "The whole outside of the clay seemed to be covered in finely engraved rings, or maybe a tightly packed spiral.
Upstairs a door rattled and Heidi List gasped in alarm. But it was only the door at the top of the cellar stairs swinging shut.
"Leave the body where it is and fill the hole in, please," she said. "We will go from here as soon as you have finished. You have the clay pot, and I have been reviving terrible memories."
Sam moved forward to comfort the woman.
"No, Sam, you do not understand. The body does not upset me. I am remembering Josef. He was here in this house so many times in the war. We came to this cellar for secret meetings once we were engaged. There was ... an old sofa down here."
Sam kept his thoughts to himself. A love nest, with a blond Gestapo officer slowly decomposing under the flagstones below the amorous couple. Perhaps in war people accepted violent death.
"We will relay the floor and disguise our being here. Then we can take the tools and leave them with the builders' equipment outside a house in the next street."
Sam looked at the wooden handles on the tools. If he had any sense he'd wipe off his fingerprints before dumping the spade and pick. There was no way the next occupants of this house would overlook the ripped floor covering and uneven flagstones in the cellar.
Chapter 18
Cheltenham, England
"RIGHT, GENTLEMEN, it is agreed." Endermann looked at the assembled group. "We work as a team to kick-start this prophecy quickly."
"It seems so amateurish," added Spaxley, hoping to dominate the group.
"Admiral," said Endermann with a forced smile, "Operation Oracle stalled over a year ago. You're the new boy round here, so just listen and take notes. I have to be moving out soon, and for some unknown reason Kramer wants you to handle the press."
"You don't need to tell me my job," Spaxley snapped. "I just hope you've done your homework and made sure the hotel staff don't know why we're here. I prefer to be secure."
"Secure?" said Endermann. "They think we're planning to launch a new shaver onto the English market. All you need worry your old head about is Dr. Wynne."
"Does he know I'm coming?"
"I'll get Olsen to tell Dr. Wynne he's expecting a friend who's red hot with the press," said Endermann. "That will give you a foot in the door. When you get there, take an interest in the Institute's work. Then tell Dr. Wynne he has to call a press conference quickly. With a bit of luck he'll think you're another gift from Aten. Brief the man on what to say, but make sure you stay out of sight. Some of those press boys may know your face."
"So everything depends on my timing?" said Spaxley.
"Now, Admiral, let's understand that you're just a part of this team. If the Institute of Egyptologists announce details of the latest prophecy too early, the world powers will be able to take action. The prophecy must be fulfilled no more than twenty-four hours after the Institute goes public" Endermann turned to the others. The overweight CIA freelancer looked full of self-importance. "Gentlemen, Ahmed is arranging some prophesied fun and games in Cairo."
Spaxley forgot the fireplace and wondered if Kramer knew what was going on over here.
"Fun?" asked Spaxley, looking at Ahmed but getting no response. The man seemed to be suffering the effects of too much red wine.
Iran, Iraq. The involvement of the U.N. was only just proving sufficient to hold the brittle peace. "I take it there isn't actually going to be a nuclear bomb. Just the threat."
"Make no mistake, Admiral, a thermo-nuclear explosion is going to light up the Egyptian sky."
"You've got nukes?" Spaxley felt his breath being taken away.
"It's what we call a suitcase bomb," grinned Endermann. "Small enough to handle, but big enough to devastate a large piece of the Nile valley. How about we call it the Star of Bethlehem?"
Spaxley felt himself being drawn into Kramer's crazy plan. He nodded. "The press will love it. But what happens then?"
Endermann opened his hands. "Once the nuclear dust settles, the finger will be pointed fairly and squarely at the Jews."
"Is this Kramer's plan or yours?" asked Spaxley, starting to feel uneasy again. Surely Endermann and Ahmed weren't really going to explode a thermo-nuclear device in Egypt. "Kramer said Jew's gold ruined your family."
Endermann turned angrily. "They ruined everything. I got talking with Kramer when we both lost friends -- after the hijacked plane hit the Pentagon back in nine-eleven when the terror started. We both hated the Jews. Kramer had been driving himself crazy for a couple of years, trying to think of a way to destroy the Jews. Operation Oracle took off after those first terrorist attacks. It was like a light shining in the darkness."
"Sounds like you've got a problem with Israel," grunted Spaxley. "Are you blaming the Jews for everything that's wrong in the world?"
For a moment Endermann looked uncomfortable. Then he hit the table with his closed fist. "My family was German. They lived in Leipzig in the nineteen thirties, before the war. T
hey collected gold from the Jewish refugees when they tried to leave Germany once things got too hot for them."
"Do you mean they stole it?" Spaxley decided the time had come to bring Endermann down.
"Those refugees needed money, Admiral. My family acquired the Jews' gold and gave them the money they needed for travel."
"How fortunate for them that your family was around," commented Spaxley dryly.
"It brought us bad luck. My grandparents emigrated to the States after the war. They had money, big money, and my father inherited it all when they died. Then when I was nineteen my father ran back to Germany with another woman. Left my mother with nothing. I had to drop out of university, sell the family home. Can you imagine the humiliation it brought me?"
"And you blame the Jews for that?" asked Spaxley.
"The gold was cursed. The Jews cursed it before they sold it. Kramer was right: Jews' gold tore my family apart."
"What about you?" Spaxley asked Ahmed, who was still at the table where he had started another bottle of wine in defiance of Endermann.
"I am Lebanese," Ahmed said quietly. "The Israeli army invaded Lebanon in nineteen eighty-two. They killed my wife. They killed my baby son who was still playing with his first birthday presents. All I want now is revenge for my family."
Spaxley started to appreciate just how deeply the feelings were running. "And you, Stephan? You were with the KGB. I thought the Russians and Arabs don't get along too well."
"I have access to the military hardware for this operation," said Stephan. He paused. "I'm in it for the money," he added, without a trace of shame. "I'd help al-Qa'ida if they paid me enough."
"May God have mercy on us." Spaxley turned away. These men were terrorists, and he had been dragged into a plot dreamed up by a frustrated CIA operator who couldn't get the promotion he coveted. There was no way he could back out now. But terrorists or not, there was good work here, and a chance to outshine Endermann. "What happens after Ahmed blows the mosque?" he asked.
Endermann grinned. "The Star of Bethlehem shines over Egypt."
"And then?" asked Spaxley.
Endermann stood up. "The Eagle of Darkness arrives during the lunar eclipse. And that, Admiral, will seal Israel's fate forever."