The Sixth Key(125)

‘Rennes-les-Bains has a painting depicting a pope straight out of the tarot, which signifies the fifth card.’

‘Madame Dénarnaud also mentioned the tarot!’ Rahn said. A thought occurred to him. ‘What about Saint-Paul-de-Fenouillet?’

‘The hermitage, Rahn; it signifies the ninth card – the hermit.’

‘So, all the churches are on the list except for Saint-Just-et-le-Bézu, because Cros had never had the first parchment that led to it?’ La Dame said.

‘Yes, even you, La Dame, could figure that out!’

‘But you’ve said nothing about that other church – Espéraza,’ La Dame pointed out.

‘I don’t think that was one of the churches,’ Deodat said to him.

‘What do you mean?’ Rahn said.

‘I believe Cros may have thought it was one of them, but in the end, he realised it wasn’t.’

Rahn shook his head. ‘How on Earth do you know that?’

‘I’ll have to tell you how I came to my conclusion on our way.’

‘On our way to where?’ La Dame lamented.

‘Get in the Citroën, it’s over there – tempus fugit, tempus fugit!’





43


And the First Shall be the Last

‘There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.’

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘The Boscombe Valley Mystery’


En route, Deodat told Rahn and La Dame of his discovery. Rahn drove the Citroën through the falling sleet, listening to Deodat. The night was dark and the road ahead was wet and barely lit by the headlamps.

‘I have to start at the beginning. Yesterday morning, before Beliere came calling, and even before I had called the Paris judiciaire, I kept thinking there was something we had missed on the list . . . something obvious and yet elusive. I kept looking at it and eventually I figured out the same thing you did, Rahn: the initials were incorrect. When I put them together, I came to the same word . . . JCKAL. Now I can tell you what JCKAL has to do with it, but before I do so, I’ll begin by explaining how I came to my conclusion. It’s quite complicated and I can’t prove it, not until we get to the church at Bugarach.’

Rahn could hear La Dame sighing in the back and striking a match to light his Cuban. ‘My mind boggles,’ he said.

‘Well, La Dame, this should be right up your street, considering it’s all about numbers. In fact it has to do with gematria.’

‘Gematria! I know it: the study of numbers in connection with letters? Hebrew, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right, you are good for something besides womanising and chalking in cave markings.’

‘Are you never going to let me forget that?’ La Dame said, sounding dejected.

‘Never. Now, as I was saying, in the Hebrew mystical tradition, gematria is the secret of numbers. A text can be discovered through its connection to numbers because each letter has a numerical value, and the combination of letters has an esoteric significance. Now, in the wine cellar I had time to think about the word that Cros gave us – sator. In Hebrew, sator is made up of these letters: samech, which is sixty; vau, which is six; resh, which is two hundred; and tau, which is four hundred.’

Deodat looked at Rahn. ‘Now, my point is, it doesn’t really matter how it’s spelt, whether sator or sorat, or taros or rotas, or any combination of those letters – they will always add up to six-six-six.’

‘Burn my beard!’ La Dame said, sitting forward and thrusting his head between them.

‘The number of the Beast of the Apocalypse of Saint John?’ Rahn said, incredulous.

‘The number is all that is given in the Apocalypse,’ Deodat said, ‘and in a veiled way it indicates the name, Sorat.’

‘Sorat?’ Rahn said.

‘Six-six-six is both the name and the seal of the sun demon Sorat, but not the sign – this is important. Grimoires are all about using spirits, demons and the like, to do the bidding of the living, but to control these beings one needs three things: a name, a seal and a sign – all three. If one of these three components is missing, the magician doesn’t have full command over a demon or entity. Now, in the same way there is a Holy Trinity, there is also a Satanic one, a trinity of imperfect beings that is represented by six plus six plus six. It’s not six hundred and sixty-six as many believe. The Antichrist is not just one being – that is a misconception – it is a collective of beings that work under the demon of the sun, Sorat. I think Le Serpent Rouge is able to summon this trinity of evil but not the demon Sorat. Monti quite rightly guessed that all grimoires are missing the most powerful key – the sign that summons Sorat. From the moment I saw that Monti had connected Le Serpent Rouge to the treasure of the Cathars, I had a sense that the missing key he was talking about was given in the original Apocalypse of Saint John. We had always said that the Apocalypse was part of that treasure, and now I feel sure of it. Imagine what this sign of Sorat could do in the hands of certain men? Do you see now why Cros had inscribed the sign of the Lamb of Christ into his tabernacle? He put it there to protect the sacrament from unholy forces, because the sign of the lamb repels the sign of Sorat – the demon of the black sun.’