The Suicide Exhibition: The Never War (Never War 1) (35 page)

But Guy wasn’t. ‘No! The bracelet – you said that was what connected them.’

He didn’t wait for an answer, but grabbed the man’s wrist. He prised the bracelet open. It resisted. Tiny filaments attached the inside of the bracelet to the man’s skin like
spikes. Guy could see them stretching and breaking as he pulled harder. The filaments had dug deep into the man’s flesh, into his very being. But finally, the bracelet came away, ripping the skin with it, leaving a raw, red shadow of itself around the wrist.

Number Nine’s remaining eye widened in sudden fear and surprise. He screamed, and fell forward, slumped across the stone table.

‘He’s still breathing,’ Davenport observed. ‘But we’ve lost any way of knowing what’s happening to Sarah.’

‘She’ll be all right,’ Guy said.

‘You can’t know that for sure,’ Hoffman told him.

Guy glared at him, fist slamming down on the hard stone table. ‘She’ll be all right!’

They had circled round so that they could get into the ruined building, and through it to the road.

‘There’s got to be some way to stop it,’ Alban gasped as they clambered over fallen beams and a collapsed wall.

‘Fire,’ Sarah told him. ‘Don’t know what else.’

He jumped down the other side of a pile of rubble, turned and reached up to help her. ‘You’ve done this before,’ he realised.

‘Not quite like this.’ She grabbed his hand, allowing him to steady her as she jumped down. She grimaced with pain as her damaged ankle took her weight. She was limping badly now.

Behind them, the Ubermensch leaped easily up on to the rubble.

‘We won’t make it to the road,’ Alban said.

‘You could. Leave me.’

He didn’t answer, looking round desperately for any way of escape, anything to use as a weapon. ‘This way,’ he decided.

He half dragged her across the shattered remains of a room, ignoring her gasps of pain. A picture lay on the ground, a painting of a boat pulled up on a beach. The canvas was ripped through, the frame split. Even so, Sarah felt bad about stepping on it as she staggered on.

They were right under the overhanging wall. Sarah heard it creaking and protesting. She was glad to stagger out from under it. Alban pushed her to one side.

‘Wait here.’

He darted across what had been a small courtyard. A long splintered beam lay on the ground, one end snapped off, the other blunt and rotted. He struggled to lift it, swinging it upwards.

The Ubermensch paused, watching from just beyond the broken wall. The dying rays of the afternoon sun enhanced the orange-red of the growth spilling from its eye socket, the blood across its chest and down its arm. Tendrils clawed like impatient fingers out of the wounds.

‘Come on, then!’ Alban yelled at it. ‘Get it over with. Kill us if you’re going to.’

The Ubermensch took a step forward.

Alban grunted with the effort of lifting the wooden beam. He held it out in front of him, like a lance, and charged at the Ubermensch. The creature didn’t move, didn’t flinch.

Sarah hardly dared to watch, waiting for the end of the beam to smash into the thing’s chest. It wouldn’t stop it – she knew it wouldn’t stop it.

But at the last moment, Alban angled the beam upwards – driving it hard into the underside of the wall jutting out above.

A scattering of mortar, then a trickle. A brick fell, dislodged by the impact of the beam. Then another. They crashed down beside the Ubermensch, rattling across the rubble. It looked up.

And the whole overhanging wall creaked, groaned, tore away from the rest of the building. The brick, stone, plaster and wood collapsed, cascading down in an avalanche of broken masonry. The Ubermensch was enveloped in a cloud of dust. Through it, Sarah saw the creature driven to its knees by the falling debris. Collapsing, buried under the rubble. Still more fell.

The next wall of the building was shifting, pulled out of kilter
by the collapse. The whole edifice was crumbling, crashing down. Despite the pain in her ankle, Sarah ran forward. Alban was rooted to the spot, watching the wreckage piling on top of the Ubermensch. She grabbed him, dragging him back as the next wall fell, bricks and concrete scattering like shrapnel across the area where Alban had just been standing.

‘Were you following me?’ Sarah demanded as the noise and the dust died down.

Alban still stared at the rubble that buried the Ubermensch. ‘Yes.’

She slapped him across the face. It was an impulsive reaction, and she regretted it at once. But he didn’t comment. He barely seemed to notice. Somehow, that made her feel worse.

‘One of my men reported you’d gone into the embassy. I decided it was time for a few words about national security and careless talk.’

‘You were going to arrest me?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘And now?’

‘What?’ He turned to look at her for the first time.

‘Are you still going to arrest me?’

‘I don’t think so. But you’ve got some explaining to do. And you should get that ankle looked at.’

At three different Y Stations, operators monitoring radio transmissions in the London area pulled off their headsets as a burst of loud static drowned out the signals.

In the candle-lit basement of a house in Jermyn Street, Jane Roylston cried out. She lay on a red velvet sheet on top of a stone altar. Her legs were splayed apart, arms outstretched, tied at ankles and wrists to iron rings set into the stone. Her body was filmed with sweat despite the chill of the cellar.

‘Pain!’ she gasped. ‘Darkness. Crushing weight…’

‘What else?’ Crowley asked. He leaned over her, licking his bloodless lips hungrily. ‘Death?’

She didn’t answer. Her head lolled to one side on the velvet and her eyes slowly closed.

She had lost track of time, had no idea how long she had been sitting there. The room was lit only by the black candles. Perhaps it was her imagination or perhaps a trick of the light, but the upturned glass in the centre of the table seemed to tremble.

Penelope Manners leaned forwards, concentrating on the glass, focusing all her attention and mental energy on to it. Was it moving? Was it trying to tell her something? Was she receiving a psychic signal, even without a full séance?

She could hear it rattling on the wood as it shuddered. Then the glass shot across the table, off the edge – slamming into the wall on the other side of the room and exploding into fragments, ice-like splinters that glimmered in the flickering light.

HOFFMAN SENT THE
woman who had been watching Number Nine to get Kruger.

‘He can sort things out and report to Himmler,’ Hoffman decided.

He led them through the chamber, away from where Number Nine lay slumped across the stone table. ‘Kruger is in charge of the project,’ he explained. ‘Or this aspect of it at least.’

‘There are others?’ Guy asked.

‘Oh yes. There is much more. That’s what I need to show you,’ Hoffman said. ‘Then you both have to get as far away from here as possible.’

‘That sounds like an excellent suggestion. But what do you expect us to do about what you show us?’ Davenport asked.

‘I don’t know. Perhaps knowledge will be enough. The more people who know…’ He shook his head. ‘I honestly don’t know if anyone can do anything, it’s gone so far. But apart from the technology that they are deriving from the Vril Project, the whole thing is…’ He struggled to find the right word in English. ‘Unnatural,’ he decided. ‘Evil, even. These things should not exist. Yet here they are examined and perpetuated. What is learned is passed on to other parts of the Reich.’

‘Such as?’ Davenport asked.

‘Hitler wants to develop what he calls Vergeltungswaffen.’ He looked at Guy for help.

‘Weapons of vengeance,’ Guy translated.

‘What we have learned from the Vril Project is fed into that. There are other developments too, things that even I do not know about. But I hear Himmler talking with Speer and Heydrich and others. I know they are planning the most terrible things.’

‘Then we have to stop them,’ Davenport said. ‘Simple, eh?’ He smiled. ‘But as you say, forewarned is forearmed, knowledge is power, information is strength. And other clichés too, probably. Whatever you can tell us will help, but you’re right – we’re probably in this for the long haul.’

The corridor sloped slightly downwards as they approached the Vault. Hoffman was taking a risk bringing them here. It had been dangerous enough already, but if Kruger or Himmler or one of the most senior officers or scientists found them actually
in
the Vault…

They were almost there when they ran into trouble. Hoffman heard them before he saw them – the click of jackboots from round the next corner of the passageway. The shadows of two officers cast on the side wall, jagged and distorted in the harsh light of the unshaded bulbs strung from the corridor ceiling. It was too late to go back, and there was nowhere to hide. Their only chance was to brazen it out.

‘Say nothing!’ Hoffman whispered. ‘Leave this to me.’

The two officers strode towards them. A major and a captain, he saw as they approached. At least the major didn’t outrank him, but equally Hoffman couldn’t ignore someone of the same rank as himself. He recognised them as they got closer. He didn’t know their names but he had seen both of them around the castle.

He thought for a moment that they were going to be all right. The two officers strode past with barely a nod. Hoffman allowed himself a silent sigh of relief.

Then the major called after them: ‘You are going to the Vault?’

Hoffman stopped. Switched on a thin smile and turned. He could demand what business it was of theirs, but that would just antagonise. Instead, he nodded. ‘We are.’

‘You know that Standartenfuhrer Streicher has ordered that no one enter the Vault without specific orders until further notice.’

Hoffman didn’t. He wondered why such an order had come from Streicher rather than Kruger, or Himmler himself.

‘Sturmbannfuhrer Schmidt and the hauptsturmfuhrer have come from Berlin at the express orders of the Fuhrer,’ Hoffman said. If he was going to bluff, he might as well do it properly. ‘Sturmbannfuhrer Schmidt is one of the Fuhrer’s personal guard.’

The major regarded Davenport and Pentecross with interest. ‘It is good that our work is being taken so seriously. So, what is the news from Berlin?’

‘I hardly think—’ Hoffman started.

But the major cut him off. ‘I was addressing the sturmbannfuhrer.’

Davenport was facing away from the major, watching Hoffman’s reaction. His eyes widened as he realised that he was being addressed. He raised his eyebrows briefly, then turned.

Hoffman’s heart was thumping in his chest. If Davenport spoke, they were finished. But if he didn’t answer…

Davenport regarded the major for a few seconds, then turned to Guy. He said nothing, but gave a curt nod.

Guy coughed. ‘The sturmbannfuhrer would like you to know that although you outrank him technically, we are here on the express orders of the Fuhrer. Our visit is classified, and you are to tell no one that you have seen us.’

The major frowned, glancing at the captain beside him, who gave no reaction. ‘Can the sturmbannfuhrer not speak for himself?’ he asked. There was an edge to the question, a hint of a challenge. Distrust.

Guy made to reply, but Davenport raised his hand to stop him. He walked slowly towards the major until he was standing
right beside him. The nearest light was shining directly on to his face as Davenport looked up at the slightly taller man.

Hoffman was surprised at the transformation. Davenport’s soft, avuncular features seemed to have hardened to granite. His eyes were dark as he glared at the major. He held the other man’s gaze for a long time, unblinking. Then his mouth curled slightly into a thin, cruel smile. The major looked away.

Davenport stepped back, still staring at the major. With an abrupt click of his heels he raised his hand. ‘Heil Hitler!’ he barked.

The major and the captain immediately responded. A second later, so did Hoffman and Guy.

Davenport turned and marched back towards them. His face cracked open into a self-satisfied grin. Behind him, the two officers turned and walked away.

‘You think they’ll tell anyone?’ Pentecross asked.

‘Would you?’ Davenport replied.

‘We can’t be sure,’ Hoffman said. ‘So we had better hurry.’

The corridor ended in a metal door. It was thick and solid – gunmetal grey with a locking wheel in the middle. It reminded Guy of the airtight hatch of a submarine. A sentry stood on guard outside the door. He snapped to attention as Hoffman and the others approached.

Hoffman gestured for the soldier to open the door. He turned the locking wheel, and had to lean back using his whole weight to pull the door open. Guy was surprised how thick the door was – a foot or more of solid metal. Whatever was behind it was valuable.

Inside was dark. Hoffman reached for a switch, and lights flickered into life overhead, casting a harsh luminance over the chamber. The heavy door swung shut behind them, closing with a metallic clang that echoed off the stone walls and floor. The ceiling was like the roof of a cathedral, high above. Shadowed alcoves stretched into the distance, ending in another identical hatch-like metal doorway.

The end of the long chamber where they were standing
was like an operations room. Wooden tables were covered with papers and plans. Diagrams and blueprints that meant nothing to Guy. Maps were hung on the walls, marked with coloured pins and pencilled annotations.

‘These are interesting,’ Davenport said quietly, nodding at the maps.

‘We should have brought a camera,’ Guy said.

‘I can memorise them,’ Davenport assured him. ‘It’ll only take a minute. This is the burial site in France, look.’ He moved on to the next map. ‘Shingle Bay – rather an old map. Italy, North Africa… And several Greek islands. That’s Crete.’

‘What’s the significance?’ Guy asked.

Hoffman shrugged. ‘Streicher is always on the hunt for more artefacts. Sometimes he is right when he predicts where they might be found. Usually he isn’t. He claims he is on the track of a huge cache of Vril material but…’ He waved the notion away. ‘I’ll believe it when I see it. And I hope that’s never. But this isn’t why I brought you here.’