Free The Excalibur Codex by James Douglas Page B

breath away and for a moment he was tempted to laugh off the offer as a joke. Did Adam Steele really believe finding Excalibur would rank alongside the discovery of the Valley of the Kings and the golden treasure of Tutankhamun? ‘You forgot to mention Schliemann,’ he said mischievously.
    But Steele was deadly serious. ‘Schliemann was a crook,’ he snorted. ‘A fantasist who discovered Troy by mistake and destroyed his reputation by stealing the treasure for himself. This will be different, Jamie. All above board. I’m in it for the glory, not the money. The most famous sword in history. A collector’s dream. But I won’t keep it for myself. It will go on display in the British Museum with my name beside it, but it will be for the people of Great Britain.’
    ‘Then why don’t you go looking for it yourself? Then the name Adam Steele will be mentioned in the same breath as Carter and Carnarvon.’
    Steele looked up sharply with a dangerous glint in his eye, but the threat quickly subsided. ‘Because you’re the man with the skills, Jamie. You know how to unlock the doors the Excalibur codex leads to. Besides, I have a bank to run.’
    Jamie stared at him. It was too soon. Abbie was barely cold in her grave. He couldn’t leave her now. But what would Abbie have said if she was here? He remembered the plans they’d made.The great adventures they were going to have. Machu Picchu. The Great Wall. Swimming with sharks and walking with lions. And always it had been Abbie who made the running. Abbie seeking out something new and exciting. Suddenly it all became clear.
    ‘When do you want me to start?’
    Adam Steele gave a loud roaring laugh as if he’d just won the final of a fencing competition and Jamie found himself clasped in a pair of incredibly powerful arms. Eventually the banker loosened his grip. He grinned. ‘Now is as good a time as any. Take as long as you like. I’ll pay you twenty thousand pounds a month, plus expenses. First class all the way. I’ll also provide you with a little insurance.’
    He pressed a button on the desk and Gault reappeared a moment later. ‘Don’t be deceived by the grey hairs – Mr Gault isn’t quite ready for his pipe and slippers yet. He speaks pretty good German and I think you’ll find him a very handy man to have around.’
    Gault held Jamie’s eyes and dared him to say no. ‘Where will we start?’
    Jamie looked from one man to the other, taking in the raw excitement in Steele’s eyes and something he couldn’t quite read in the former soldier’s. ‘Dortmund, I think. Let’s see what other secrets your Herr Ziegler has been keeping up his sleeve. In the meantime, if you’ll excuse me, I have some reading to catch up on.’
    The second part of my story opens on the Oder front, in mid April 1945, south of the village of Seelow. I had recently been promoted to the rank of SS-Unterscharführer and transferred from Third SS Totenkopf Division to command a company of Hitler Jugend holding a strategic crossroads near Dolgelin. My unit consisted of eighty-four boys aged between fourteen and sixteen and armed with Panzerfaust anti-tank rockets and First World War rifles they barely had the strength to carry. Facing us were veterans of Katukov’s First Guards Tank Army and Chuikov’s Eighth Guards Army who had fought their way to the Oder from Stalingrad, via Kursk and the Vistula. We were dug in with other units on the height overlooking the river, defending Reichstrasse One, which stretched away behind us like a dagger into the very heart of Berlin. By now I was worn thin by war and death and constant terror; when I looked in the mirror I saw the face of a decaying corpse, eyes sunk into dark pits and bones fighting to free themselves from the flesh. My heart was no longer my own. My soul, if it had ever existed, was buried somewhere out on the Russian steppe with the bodies of a thousand kameraden. I had seen things and done things that would haunt me for