‘What? I don’t understand.’
‘This is how it will look.’ She drew the sign on Gaston’s dusty kitchen tabletop.
‘The addition of the barb at the bottom of the Y will bring about a race of men who will be carriers of evil – vessels for the forces of six-six-six. You see, it isn’t God who is found in the details, it is Satan.’
Rahn sat back a little numbly. He remembered Himmler’s words in the crypt at Wewelsburg, about a program for children – Lebensborn, he had called it.
‘In the future,’ Eva continued, ‘it will be a gift of grace to be born a woman, because a woman does not carry that chromosome and cannot be manipulated in this way to become a vessel of evil. These are the truths of the future that will begin with the year 2012. By then you will return again.’
‘Return?’
Her deep eyes met his. At this point it may have been fatigue or that knock on the head, or those things she had said, but before his gaze her face seemed to change: one moment she was the evening star, the next she was Demeter, the mother of nature; she was the lady who stole into the heart of every troubadour; the ideal woman; the good, beautiful and true in the soul of every poet. She was Dante’s Beatrice, Petrarch’s Laura, Louise Brooks and Irene Adler. All women in one! When her face paused in its transformations, he realised with a sense of wonder and awe that he was gazing at a countenance he had seen only in his dreams. He may not be wise but something told him that he had been in the company of Wisdom all along.
Her gaze shifted to her coffee and the world returned to what it had been.
‘Who are you?’ he said to her.
Her eyes fell on his again, brown and liquid and tranquil. ‘Who do you think I am?’
‘Like everything else in this strange script, the writer has certainly created an enigma in your character, Mademoiselle Fleury.’
There was the slightest trace of a smile. ‘You can call me the guardian of the Cathar treasure, if you like. I think Poussin managed a very good classical likeness of me.’ She stood to go. ‘One day, when you have time, you must go to Venice and when you get there, don’t forget to look for the Leoncetophaline.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’ll find it in the cemetery Island of the Dead, the island of San Michele. You see, Deodat was right – a man can’t be in two places at once.’ She walked to the door.
‘Mademoiselle! Surely you’re not going to leave without an explanation?’
She turned around. ‘Since the beginning of time initiates have known about seven mysteries, seven keys.’
‘Seven keys?’
‘Yes, the key in the Apocalypse of Saint John, the sign of Sorat, was the Sixth Key. It was the key to the bottomless pit held in the hand of the angel in the Apocalypse.’
This struck Rahn. He recalled the poster of Dürer’s woodcut in Pierre Plantard’s apartment.
‘The Seventh Key,’ she continued, ‘is, in fact, the most important of all, Otto. Cros knew he had to guard it with his life. To find it you will have to go to Venice. Don’t worry, I will see you there.’
He had a last impression of that beautiful, haunted face, those fathomless eyes, and the calm mouth and then, she was gone.
THE ISLAND OF THE DEAD
51
Who is Who?
‘I fear there is some dark ending to our quest,’ said he, ‘it cannot be long before we know it!’
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter’
Venice, 2012
I realised that we had come to be standing before the grave with the Leoncetophaline, the figure of the lion-headed man holding a key and entwined with two snakes. This was the grave that the old monk had been cleaning . . . the grave without a name, the grave Eva had told Rahn to find. I looked at the Writer of Letters.
‘So, Rahn did come here to Venice?’
‘This is your story, what do you think?
I considered it. ‘I say he never had the chance . . .’
‘Why not?’
‘Because on the train back to Paris he sat next to a man.’
‘Who?’
‘A man he recognised from the Schloss on Lake Malchow, a Russian who belonged to the order of Black Swans . . .’
‘Grigol Robakidze?’
‘Yes, the one who handed him the card with a phone number he was to ring if he was ever in need of a friend. Do you remember Rahn’s old girlfriend Etienne? She was also a member of the Black Swans. It had been her job to assess Rahn’s suitability for the order.’
‘Oh, yes! The Russian cigarettes, the sudden departure.’
‘At any rate, Robakidze told Rahn that within the Nazi organisation there was a kernel of men working against Hitler, the foremost of which was, ironically, the head of military intelligence, that man called Canaris. Robakidze also told Rahn that the only way forward now for Germany was to eliminate Hitler, and various groups were uniting around this cause. He then proposed to Rahn, that if he was inclined to join in this effort the Black Swans would allow him entry into their circle and provide him with protection. But before he could do so, he would have to prove himself by returning to Germany in order to carry out a mission for them. He warned Rahn that it would be risky, not only because he had failed in his mission to find the key, but also because some SS members had come forward to denounce him as a homosexual. If he agreed to return, the Russian advised him to immediately confess his crime to Himmler and to ask for his forgiveness before they seized him. Rahn laughed then, and told the Russian that he was mad; Himmler would send him to Buchenwald and that would be the end of him. What good would he be to the Black Swans then? The Russian reminded him of Canaris and his influence on Himmler.’