Hellbound

Book 3: The Black Sun Series

by Giacometti, Ravenne, Luke Thompson, Hodder & Stoughton

Genres: World War II

Synopsis

The third volume in the million-copy bestselling Nazi spy series for fans of Dan Brown, Steve Berry and Wilbur Smith.

'I can't wait to read the next instalment!' -Kindle customer, Amazon
'The 3rd instalment in a fantastic series.' -Julien, Amazon
'Excellent.' -Dominique, Amazon
'Such a pleasure to read... can be read as a standalone.' -Tacha, Amazon

July 1942. Never has the outcome of the war been more uncertain. Britain might have ruled out any risk of invasion, but Stalin's Russia is bowing under the blows of Hitler's armies.

The Nazis unleash an occult war in an attempt to tip the scales: whoever reunites the four sacred Swastikas will win.

Double agent Tristan Marcas sets out in search of the Romanov treasure, which is said to harbour the final relic. He's got no time to lose: the battle is about to come to a head...

(P) 2021 Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

Release date: January 28, 2021

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 336

Sample

It was a warm July night. An enchanted hiatus as rare as a bumper year here, at the foot of the Ural Mountains, the border between Europe and Asia, where summer lasts but the blink of an eye before the land is petrified in solid ice again.

A perfect night for drinking and laughing far from the log cabins and for falling asleep under the stars without the risk of catching pneumonia. And yet, in this July night, not a single soul was enjoying the balmy air in the streets of Yekaterinburg. Since the Revolution, they had all been living in permanent winter—huddled away behind locked doors. Out of fear. Fear of the Communists who held the city, first and foremost. The region was nicknamed Krasnyi Ural—the red Urals—because of the local council’s zeal when it came to mass extermination of the enemies of the people: the bourgeois, kulaks, and reactionaries of all stripes. Fear of the Whites, too. Of the heterogeneous army made up of imperial regiments loyal to the deposed tsar and hordes of Cossacks under the thumb of cruel and intrepid warlords. The Whites were emerging from the plains of Siberia in droves, getting ever closer to their goal. In a matter of days, they would reach the city.

Two rabid bears were ripping Russia to pieces. Red against White. A blind and ferocious fight that only one of them would survive.

“Comrade Evgueni, do you think they’ll spare us if we fall into their hands?”

“The Cossacks will give no quarter. Pity is not one of the rare qualities displayed by Ataman Krasnov’s white dogs. They’ll cut you into such little pieces your own father won’t recognize you. And all while you still breathe, of course.”

Evgueni Berin, who had just spoken, wasn’t yet thirty but spoke slowly, like an older man. His eyes were dull, faded by the horrors he had seen. The young soldier by his side seemed to be barely more than a boy. He was drowning in his oversized coat, which had been mended in several places.

Sitting in the sentry box of the watchtower, the two men were sharing a half-spent cigarette with their feet up on the Maxim machine-gun’s ammunition reserve. The weapon was trained on the shutters of Ipatiev House. The Ural council had transformed the opulent two-storey house nestled into a hillside on Voznessenski Street into a makeshift fortress. A tall wooden fence with two watchtowers surrounded the property. The windows had even been painted white to keep anyone from seeing inside. A Red Army detachment was assigned to guard the house full time, and, as if that were not enough, a team of Cheka agents had arrived as reinforcements a week ago. The reason for this display of force was no secret. All of Yekaterinburg knew the identity of the family that had been sequestered at Ipatiev House since the end of April.

“To lull me to sleep, my mother used to tell me that whenever one of us dies, a new star is born,” whispered the young man. “According to her, the Milky Way is a pearly fabric in which each star represents a soul.”

“Tolia Kabanov, your mother is surely a good woman, but she’s also a fool!” exclaimed Evgueni Berin as he slapped the other soldier on the back. “The people mustn’t believe in such nonsense anymore. Souls, God, heaven … All invented to keep peasants and workers from rebelling. The only heaven there is, is the one we build here on earth.” If we manage to do so, he thought to himself.

The Revolution was less than a year old and had so many enemies that not a single Communist would have bet on its triumph any time soon. Broad swathes of territory were under the control of the White Army, quietly aided by the English and French, who were unhappy about the peace treaty signed between the Bolsheviks and the Germans.

Evgueni stubbed out the cigarette on the floor of the sentry box and checked his watch. It was time. He had been waiting for this moment for too long. An eternity. Thirteen years to be precise. Said to be one of the most feared Cheka officers, Evgueni Berin was proud to be an early convert to the Revolution—a soldier activist forged from the purest ideals of Bolshevism. Comrade Lenin had chosen him personally to relay what would happen here tonight within the walls of Ipatiev House. Evgueni had travelled nearly 2,000 kilometers east from Moscow, on the Trans-Siberian Railway. It had been a long and difficult journey dotted with a seemingly endless number of stops between Nizhny Novgorod and Yekaterinburg.

Light escaped through the front door to the house as it opened slightly. Comrade Pavel Damov appeared with a wave. Evgueni despised the man. Damov was an unscrupulous brute. Unfortunately for Evgueni, he was also remarkably intelligent. Having successfully climbed the ranks during the Revolution, he had joined its most feared branch—the Cheka. It was there that he had earned the nickname Lord of Lead, during a crackdown on a monastery in Kostroma, on the banks of the Volga. On a whim, Damov had forced the monks to swallow molten lead before finishing them off with an axe. The exploit had earned him a promotion within the Cheka: in less than six months he had become the official assassin of the regime’s most vocal enemies. People whispered that he was corrupt to the core, but no one had ever proved it.

Evgueni stuck his fingers in his mouth to whistle at the lorry driver parked in the street. The old ZIS’s engine coughed three times before roaring into life.

“I don’t understand, comrade,” said the young soldier, Kabanov. “This is the third night in a row you’ve asked Grigori to start up that heap and waste petrol idling there for fifteen minutes. You can hear it from the other end of the street. The neighbours complained yesterday.”

“I’m delighted to hear it,” replied Evgueni. “Stay at your post.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?” the boy asked hopefully.

Evgueni studied him. How old was he—sixteen, seventeen, maybe? He may not live to see his next birthday. The latest reports of Red Army casualties were gruesome. No, Kabanov didn’t need to see what was about to happen. “You better stay here and watch the stars,” Evgueni replied firmly.

He climbed down from the watchtower and strode up to the heavy front door, which had been left wide open. A waft of sweat and tepid wine welcomed him. A seven-cartridge Mauser in hand, Lord of Lead stood flanked by a dozen men with Nagant revolvers. Half of them were Latvians—non-Russian allies to the Bolsheviks. Yakov Yurovsky, the commander sent by the Ural council, was also present.

“You’re just in time, comrade,” said Yurovsky with a tap on Evgueni’s shoulder. “They’re all gathered upstairs.”

“We told them we were going to take their photograph in the cellar, to show the world they’re still alive,” chuckled Damov.

One of the Latvians raised his hand in annoyance. “It’s the boy. He can’t walk because of his illness.”

“Have his father carry him,” laughed Damov. “And don’t bother me with such details again, do you hear?”

Evgueni followed Lord of Lead and Yurovsky down to the cellar. Their boots clicked on the stone steps. Twenty-three. There were twenty-three steps. Evgueni knew the number by heart, having run through the scene several times. He was no amateur.

Damov reached the cellar first. He was pleased to see his instructions had been followed to the letter. Wooden boards covered the back wall of the room, which was large enough to house a neighbourhood party committee. An out-of-place chandelier with teardrop beads shed a frigid light on the room.

“Even in their cellars, the bourgeois have to boast,” he spat.

Evgueni had withdrawn into a dark corner for the best view of the room and its occupants. He watched as the council’s representative stood in the middle of the cellar and took a crumpled piece of paper from his jacket. In a solemn voice, he read out the terse text that authorized their presence in the house on this night. No one had dared sign the official document.

The clicking of heels and clogs echoed in the stairwell. Evgueni stepped even further back into the darkness.

The servants came first. A valet, a chambermaid, a cook, and the family doctor. Their eyes darted fearfully around the room. Evgueni thought one was missing, but wasn’t sure. Not that it mattered—the staff were not important.

The Chekists ushered them towards the far end of the cellar. “Stand against the wall. Slaves behind the masters, for the photograph,” one of them ordered.

Then came softer steps. And whispering. Five women appeared in the dim glare. With weary faces and wild hair, they advanced in their thick grey dresses as if they were sleepwalking. The eldest, the mother, moved slowly, followed by her four distraught daughters. The ghostly figures seemed to be tied to one another by an invisible chain. A man appeared at the rear gazing affectionately at the child he carried in his arms. A bushy moustache and full beard covered his hollow cheeks, and his oversized shirt only highlighted his thin frame.

“May we have chairs for my wife and son, please?” he asked hesitantly.

Lord of Lead grabbed him by the collar. “Do you really still think you’re the master, Kolya?” he barked.

Commander Yurovsky intervened. “Let him have his chairs, comrade. We’re not monsters …” He signalled to one of the Latvians, who pulled up two rickety chairs.

The mother sat down without a word as the father settled the boy. “Sit up straight, Aliocha,” he said. “They’re going to take our photograph. Look dignified.” Then he turned to his daughters: “You too, remember who you are.”

The group was finally ready. Masters and servants were perfectly lined up, awaiting the photographer.

An eerie silence filled the cellar.

From his spot near the stairs, Evgueni Berin studied every detail of the scene before his eyes. A long-forgotten feeling arose in him: pity. Just like him, these men and women were flesh and blood.

Steadied by her older sister, one of the girls was desperately trying to stifle her sobs. The mother didn’t seem to realize what was about to happen. Evgueni knew their names by heart. The four daughters were Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia, and the mother Alexandra. As for the youngest, weakling son, his name was Alexei.

Evgueni felt his determination falter but knew he could not lose track of his goal. He had waited for this moment for too long. His hand closed around his little sister’s silver necklace in his pocket. She had never taken it off in her lifetime.

At once, his courage returned. This was not a family like any other: the five women, the boy, and the man were the Romanovs. The imperial family that was part of a dynasty that had ruled the country with an iron fist for the past three centuries. The thin patriarch, who was trying to adopt a flattering pose in front of an imaginary camera, was Nicholas II, former Tsar of All Russia. But today, this man, who he hated more than anything else in the world, seemed about as fearsome as a famished old dog. Evgueni struggled to chase the image of the brave father from his mind. This was Nicholas the Bloody!

On a freezing night in 1905, at the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, this man’s frail hands had ordered his troops to fire into a crowd of hundreds of poor, defenceless people.

Evgueni tightened his grip on the necklace. Natalia had just turned thirteen. In the early morning, he had found her dead body on the frozen square, her face appallingly disfigured by a sword.

Comrade Lenin was right. There must be no pity for the oppressors.

Damov’s voice broke the silence. “Comrade Yurovsky, it’s time to end this.”

The commander walked over to the tsar and puffed up his chest. There were rules to be followed. “By ruling of the Court of Justice and the unanimous vote of the Ural council, you, Nikolai Romanov, your wife, and all your children, have been condemned to death. The sentence is to be carried out immediately.”

The sound of the Nagant revolvers being cocked echoed through the room. There were panicked cries.

The tsar stood his ground and kept his head high. “This is not justice—this is murder,” he said. “The murder of women and a child. You are evil incarnate. God and men will judge you for your crimes.”

Evgueni came out into the light and walked over to the deposed emperor. Their faces were nearly touching. “You know a thing or two about murder, don’t you, Nikolai?”

The former tsar shook his head. “I don’t understand,” he said.

“This is a waste of time,” interrupted Yurovsky, coming over to join them, gun in hand.

Evgueni raised his hand and shot him an imperious look. He was Lenin’s right hand and his authority was the law for everyone in the room. The commander retreated.

“Let me finish,” ordered Evgueni. “Then you can do your duty.” He turned back to Nicholas II. “My father and my sister were protesting beneath the windows of your palace on the 9th of January 1905.”

Nikolai went pale.

Evgueni continued, his voice tense. “Do you remember? All they wanted was a little bread and a few freedoms. My sister loved you. She said you were a good and generous ruler. There were many women and children among them. Hundreds. Children the age of your own. And what did you do that night? You sent out your dogs. Your soldiers charged them, swords drawn. People say they even laughed. When I reached the square in the early morning, I found my sister’s dead body. My father had been disembowelled, bled like a pig for an Easter feast.” Anger coursed through Evgueni’s veins. “They say that the very same night, in the same palace, your wife and daughters were trying on fine gowns embroidered with pearls and emeralds that had arrived straight from Paris. And that you sat smoking a cigar as the carnage raged below.”

“My God, no! I love my people far too much for that,” said the tsar as he shook his head. “I never ordered that massacre. The general made the decision on his own. I ask God for forgiveness every single day.”

“Well, that’s lucky. You’re about to be able to address him directly,” replied Evgueni with a sign to Yurovsky.

“No, wait!” begged Nikolai. “Spare my wife and children. In exchange, I’ll tell you an invaluable secret. A secret that will make you powerful men, more powerful even than Lenin and Trotsky.”

Evgueni studied the former emperor. He was used to being lied to; it came with his job. But this man seemed sincere. “I’m listening,” he said.

“Our dynasty has passed it on from generation to generation for centuries. It bestows wealth and power on us. At the beginning of the Revolution, I foolishly sent it away for safekeeping. I’ll tell you where it is if you free my family.”

Evgueni took out his pistol and glued it to Nicholas II’s temple. “You are in no position to give orders, Nikolai. Tell me your secret.”

“It’s a relic. A sacred relic from the depths of time. It’s—”

A gunshot rang out. The last tsar of Russia was unable to finish his sentence. He staggered as a red stain spread across his chest. Then he collapsed as his family and servants looked on in horror and began to scream again.

“A relic! What utter nonsense,” exclaimed Lord of Lead over the top of his smoking gun. “Lenin says superstition muzzles—”

“I give the orders here!” shouted Evgueni.

“You came to watch. I came to execute them. Would you like me to report your counter-revolutionary attitude?” scolded Damov. “Stand back before you get shot too.”

Evgueni glanced discreetly at the commander and other executioners, who were staring at him. He knew those looks. The slightest hesitation on his part would be relayed to the authorities. He stepped towards the firing squad.

“All right, but spare the girls and the boy. They don’t—”

“No room for bourgeois sentimentalism here!” shouted Lord of Lead as he brandished his Mauser. “Comrades, aim for the heart, like I taught you. Whatever you do, don’t shoot them in the head—it’s too messy.”

The rifles and revolvers fired one after the other amid screams from the imperial family and their servants. One of the executioners ran out of bullets and resorted to his bayonet, which he plunged into the throat of the tsarevich as he crawled across the floor. The crown prince died with his head on his father’s boots.

“You idiot!” shouted Yurovsky. “He’ll bleed all over the place!”

The empress and one of her daughters seemed to still be alive. Damov leaned over the tsarina, who was writhing like an exposed earthworm. Red and green shimmers of light escaped from the bloody bodice of her dress. “Look at this! The bullets bounced off these gemstones sewn into their dresses.” The Chekist grabbed two emeralds and a ruby from Alexandra’s chest, then nonchalantly shot the nearest daughter, who was grasping for her mother, in the eye.

Evgueni was beginning to feel nauseous. The execution had turned into a bloodbath.

“Finish them off!” shouted Yurovsky. “And take the bodies upstairs to the lorry.”

“And then what?” asked Evgueni.

“We’ll take them to Four Brothers Forest, about thirty kilometers from here. We’ll burn them and dump them in a well. Make sure to state in your report that everything went to plan. The comrades fulfilled their revolutionary duties without hesitation.”

The killers knelt over the bloody corpses to collect their jewels. Now all Evgueni wanted to do was murder them. They were just like the soldiers who had killed his father and sister.

“I will be sure to underscore your courage when faced with these women and the boy,” he replied disdainfully. “And, Damov, you’ll need to hand over all the jewels your men are so eagerly collecting. They are the property of the Revolution.”

With that, Evgueni turned to leave. He was about to be sick. The revenge he had waited so long to claim had turned into an indescribable horror. The floor and wall were covered in a viscous mixture of flesh, blood, and urine. A foul smell wafted through the cellar, tormenting his feverish mind. This would be his final memory of the Romanovs.

When he stepped outside Ipatiev House, he took a deep breath of clean air and contemplated the night sky, where he was certain he could see new stars twinkling.

The car glided slowly down a gravel road that looked like it hadn’t been travelled for years. A grey, impenetrable wood stretched as far as the eye could see on either side. Tristan Marcas wondered if the region was truly inhabited; there was an occasional path breaking away from the road and disappearing into the trees, but he hadn’t caught sight of any village rooftops or even a squat, isolated farm. When he looked carefully, Tristan could indeed see a few traces of human activity—bundles of branches tied together with brambles and a tree cut down with an axe and already covered in moss—but the place seemed abandoned.

Since they had left Königsberg, the road had wound deeper and deeper into this opaque forest that blanketed the land right up to the sea. Every now and again, Tristan had seen the uniformed chauffeur glance feverishly at the maps spread across the passenger seat as though he too had the dizzying and absurd impression that they were lost in an endless land.

“Are we far from the castle?” asked Tristan.

The driver took his time before answering. In the SS, it was always best to think long and hard before speaking. “I think it will take half an hour to reach the coast, then another solid hour before we arrive at the von Essling estate,” he responded.

Tristan rolled down the window and stuck his head outside. High up over the road, the heavy branches formed a vault of leaves so thick he couldn’t see the colour of the sky. But he could smell the salt in the sea breeze. The Baltic Sea was near. Given the dwindling distance to his destination, he decided to collect his thoughts.

He’d left on direct orders from Himmler himself. During the brief meeting the Reichsführer had granted Tristan, he’d made it clear that, with the United States now in the war and the intense fighting on the eastern front, the Ahnenerbe would need to take on new responsibilities. And Himmler wanted to know if Erika von Essling was fit to lead the institution, despite her injuries.

“Look,” said the chauffeur.

The once-dense forest was growing sparser. Through the trees, Tristan could see light reflected off an immense grey surface. Twisted pines groaned in the wind. They were almost free. Suddenly, as they rounded a bend, the sea appeared. The endless grey expanse seemed to touch the heavy white clouds on the horizon.

The car came to a halt, and Tristan stepped out into the wind.

In an hour, he would see Erika and meet his fate.

Erika von Essling had not been in her childhood room for years. When she had returned to the castle to recover, her family had chosen to place her in a different bedroom, to avoid confusing her. The doctors said she had amnesia, and that they mustn’t strain her memory. What idiots! She remembered everything, from the first tooth she had lost and slipped under her pillow to her last torrid night with Tristan. The one thing she couldn’t recall was what had really happened in Venice, the night of the meeting between Hitler and Mussolini. She had woken up at the hospital, her right temple mangled by a stray bullet. They told her she had been hit during a firefight between German soldiers and the English commando who had tried to assassinate the Führer, but she couldn’t remember any of it. She had been trying in vain to piece things together ever since.

Erika opened the door and stepped in. The shutters were closed, but she didn’t bother opening them. Ever since she had injured herself, bright light had been provoking dizzy spells, so she preferred to remain shrouded in darkness. And besides, she knew the view behind them by heart: a long hedge-lined drive that wound through the estate to the main gate. The gate Tristan would arrive at.

She lay down on the bed. It felt softer than it used to. Several blankets must have been layered on top to protect the mattress from damp. The walls were bare, except for one, which featured two photographs in glass frames. The first one, in sepia, depicted a woman wearing a sparkling gold diadem and countless necklaces. It was Sophia Schliemann, the wife of the archaeologist who had discovered the legendary ruins of Troy and Mycenae. Adorned like an idol, Sophia was wearing ancient jewellery her husband had unearthed. She had always fascinated Erika and had impacted her decision to become an archaeologist in a decisive way. The second picture was of a tanned, jovial man in his thirties. He stood in front of an ancient wall holding a pick. Hans had been her archaeology professor at university—and her first love. Full of nostalgia, she reached out to stroke the frame. What would he say if he knew she was running the Ahnenerbe? Erika still wondered how she had ended up leading it. She had gone from being a promising young archaeologist to a leading Reich scientist. How had she—a young woman from a good family—ended up scouring the globe for sacred swastikas, from Montségur in France, to Crete, and then Venice? The first time around she had been following the Reichsführer’s orders, but what prevented her from quitting after that?

The answer had a name: Tristan.

He was the reason she had continued with the quest. She got up from the bed and steadied herself against the wall. Once again, she felt dizzy. Where had he been when that bullet had nearly killed her in Venice? What had he been doing? Why hadn’t he protected her? The memory of that night kept escaping her grasp. A memory she knew involved the man she loved.

The road ran alongside a dune covered in wild grass. Tristan was leaning against the parked car. He closed his eyes to keep out the sand that was being blown about by the wind. Summer was an alien concept here. He pulled away from the car and ran towards the narrow path that led through the dune to the beach. The sand was littered with grey flotsam and empty shells. It was like crossing a crowded marine cemetery. He felt better once he reached the narrow strip of darker sand right by the water. As his feet sank into the wet ground, he finally felt like himself again. Deep down, he had always hated the ocean. The endless horizon was too much for mankind: its limitless space kindled the desire to go beyond what was possible. He was certain mad conquerors and insatiable dictators were once men who had spent too much time contemplating the sea. As for Tristan, he needed to feel his feet on the ground to think—now more than ever.

As the telephone didn’t work well, the Frenchman had been writing to Erika since she had retreated to her family estate, but the young woman’s replies had been terse and trivial and full of contradictions. Was her amnesia getting worse, or was she suspicious? Had she been more seriously injured than everyone had thought, or was she preparing her triumphant return, or even revenge? Tristan had grown wary. He was constantly looking over his shoulder, watching his back. He did his best to be discreet. He hadn’t sent a single message to London since Venice. He was playing dead.

He turned around and headed back through the dune. In just an hour, he would come face to face with Erika and know where they stood. Either she remembered nothing, or she knew exactly who had tried to sink a bullet between her eyes.

In which case, he would be left with no choice.

Broad steps led up to the castle, whose central building, framed by two smaller wings, looked out over the park. The forest reigned all around. The former hunting residence had belonged to the von Esslings for centuries. Erika’s parents had renovated and added to the estate to make it a more comfortable summer residence for the family. But even so, despite the French windows and the colourful roof tiles, the castle remained austere.

Tristan couldn’t help but frown as he got out of the car. The castle looked like a tomb waiting for winter to bury it in the snow.

Then Erika stepped out. Her hair, which she had neither cut nor plaited, hung down to her waist. She had lost a lot of weight. As he strode up the drive, Tristan wondered if he should kiss her. Over the course of their long separation, they had never mentioned their relationship. As she drew nearer, he noticed her face had grown nearly transparent. Only her eyes still seemed to belong to the world of the living. She was wearing a pair of old boots over riding trousers that were too big for her. Her bust was invisible beneath a woollen shawl.

“Are you cold?” asked Tristan, reaching for her shoulder.

“It’s always cold here, even in summer,” replied Erika, quickly taking a step back.

She led him through some French windows straight into a vast sitting room with views over the drive. Out of the windows, Tristan could see smooth grey ponds reflecting the crowns of the surrounding trees.

Without so much as glancing at the view, Erika settled in an armchair n. . .