The list was seemingly endless, and he wondered how he would ever find time to finish his book. When he asked Weisthor why Himmler wanted so many reports, his superior had answered him with a puzzled expression.
‘Don’t you know, dear boy? Why, it is for our Führer. He has had many visions of his past lives. In truth, he remembers one particular life, which was foremost among them: his time in Atlantis when he was a great magician and a man unsurpassed in his abilities! What do you think of that? Now, as you no doubt know, in each life one must relearn the knowledge of the past before one can begin to work on future abilities. So to this end, the Führer has been amassing a great number of books on magic and sorcery. He has a voracious appetite for knowledge but, you see, with all he has to do, he has no time. Your reports will save him having to read through everything. Do you understand the great honour he has bestowed upon you? I believe, if you please him, he might even show you his libraries one day.’
‘How many libraries does he have?’
‘There are three separate libraries. But it is at the Berghof that he keeps all his magical works – some five or six hundred of the rarest volumes on the occult. Everything is managed by his librarian, a man called Herbert Döhring, whose fervent hope it is to increase the size of the collection to sixty thousand volumes! In that library, our Führer has nearly everything written about magic and witchcraft, torture and ways to summon devils. You will never see anything more beautiful.’
Ways to summon devils?
Rahn walked back to his office feeling that Weisthor was living up to his reputation for lunacy.
In the coming months, Rahn worked through the Olympic Games to publish Lucifer’s Court, and had a run-in with his assistant Hans. The stupid man had interpolated anti-Semitic remarks into the narrative without his permission! When Rahn complained to Weisthor, he was warned against going to Himmler – after all, Hans was the Reichsführer’s brother-in-law.
Disheartened, Rahn observed the remilitarisation of the Rhineland and the Anschluss of Austria from his windowless and therefore airless office, rarely noticing whether it was day or night. He also did his obligatory dismal time as a guard at Dachau, where he saw happenings that disquieted him and where he heard of even worse things: the murder of Jewish prisoners and the torture of Marxists and anyone suspected of speaking out against the Government. He only cheered when he saw the snow begin to melt, because it meant that he would soon be leaving the camp. But when he returned to Berlin he not only found it cold, damp and smelling of boiled cabbage, he also witnessed the same cruelty and inhumanity he had seen at Dachau, placidly tolerated and even encouraged by ordinary German men and women alike. Sometimes even children would go out of their way to kick an old Jew who had been struck to the ground by a Gestapo officer.
From that time, Rahn began to consider ways of ending his involvement with Himmler and the SS. What could he have been thinking? How could a tolerant man continue to live under such a government? He was pleased, therefore, when he was given the task of fine-tuning the Reichsführer’s genealogy because this meant he had to travel to Switzerland. Once there, he was seized by a sudden overwhelming sense of liberty. He wanted desperately to see mountains again, hawks flying overhead and caves below. He had sorely missed the villages, the lakes and the cool freedom of being awake beneath a pure, early morning sky.
On impulse he looked up an old Swiss friend, Alexis La Dame, but learnt from La Dame’s mother that he was working at the university in Paris. Rahn hadn’t seen him for almost two years but La Dame was the sort of friend who remained close despite distances and the vagaries of fate. They shared a love of the mountains, caves, detective novels, mysteries, music and, during their potholing days in the south of France, had both developed a taste for brandy.
Full of excitement, he secured a certificate from a Swiss doctor to lengthen his stay, citing exhaustion. He then set about petitioning the French Embassy for a new passport, all the while writing to Himmler lies of the wonderful book he was writing, a great tome some two thousand pages long.
The day he was denied entry to France he was feeling particularly low and his spirits became decidedly lower when a German officer arrived at his door wearing plain clothes. He was carrying orders from Weisthor, signed by Himmler. A new assignment was waiting for him, something of great importance, and he was to leave with the man immediately. At this point Rahn realised his situation – he was not a free man.
When he returned to Berlin he waited cheerlessly for Weisthor to call him to his office and to give him the particulars of his mission, but the days passed with no word. To make things worse, while working on his own genealogy, to fulfil the requirement for racial acceptability, he discovered something alarming. His mother’s maiden name was Hamburger, apparently a name frequently used by European Jews, and to top it off, his grandfather’s real name was Simeon! Rahn’s ignorance of these particulars did not surprise him. What parent discussed such things with their children? But now he was in a mess and the situation grew even more acute when Gabriele called him one night to warn him that the Gestapo was secretly investigating Schmid – the mathematician who had worked with him on the De Mengel article. Rahn took himself to Schmid’s apartment and found the door unlocked and Schmid gone. Everything was still in its place and even the table was set expectantly, waiting for a dinner that now lay cold and rotting on the stove. Rahn made discreet enquiries about Schmid but to no avail – the man had disappeared without a trace.