‘Cros waited patiently as one by one, the priests involved in the matter died, leaving only Grassaud, who Cros knew was a member of AGLA. In the meantime Cros quietly set about solving the cipher in the parchment and eventually his pertinacity won out. He managed to find one parchment after another, in churches that were by now old and empty of priests. The last parchment pointed to the church at Bugarach, where the royal seal of AA was inscribed on its walls – the anchor and the snake. The treasure had been hidden right under their noses! With a word in the right ear he was made the priest of Bugarach, where he could look for the treasure unperturbed. Bugarach was the sixth church and he had now become the sixth priest, just as Deodat had figured out. When Cros finally found the treasure, he understood what they were all after – the key, the sign of Sorat. But he also discovered an unknown part to the treasure, a far more important part. He understood that he had to safeguard this part from the brotherhoods, even if it meant giving up the key.’
‘What do you mean “another part to the treasure”?’
‘There were three parts to the treasure of the Cathars: the first part was Isobel’s child, the reincarnation of Saint John, the child that was whisked away to the Monastery of Saint Lazarus by Matteu; the second part of the treasure was the original Apocalypse of Saint John and its key; and the third part was what Bertrand Marty gave to Matteu, a roll of parchments, which he asked him to take away with him at the last minute – do you recall that?’
‘Yes.’
‘This roll of parchments that Bertrand Marty gave Matteu centuries ago was of utmost significance because, although the Apocalypse of Saint John and its “sign” was the Sixth Key, the third part of the Cathar treasure was the last key, the Seventh Key. And as Eva told Rahn, a clue to its whereabouts is secreted here on this island in Venice.’
‘So is the clue inscribed on this headstone?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I think it is. I think that if the Sixth Key was found in the Apocalypse of John, the Seventh must have something to do with the Holy Grail, and this inscription points to it, am I right?’
He smiled. He wasn’t going to give too much away. ‘It was Rahn’s task to come here to find it.’
‘But Rahn never found it, did he? Because he committed suicide.’ I thought that I had it all now . . . until the Writer of Letters shook his head again.
‘Fortunately for Rahn, your account of his last moments was not completely correct. You’re right in so far that he did travel to Söll. It was late afternoon by the time he neared a farmstead on the outskirts of the town. He saw some children playing and he spoke to them a moment. It had been snowing earlier and he asked the children if they thought it would snow again. They said that it looked like it would, and then he continued walking.
You see, he wanted the children to be able to say, when questioned, that they had seen an SS officer. Now, the snow was a metre deep in places and it was cold but he kept up his walk. When he came to a large fir tree he took off his uniform, folded it neatly and placed it on a rock. From a bag he retrieved his pot-holing clothes and, after he had dressed again, he backtracked to a brook, covering his footsteps as he went. He walked part of the way through the water and then left again for Söll.’
‘Just like Sherlock Holmes in “The Empty House!” He faked his own death, didn’t he? But they found a body, so whose body was it?’
‘Rahn had to tell Himmler exactly where he was going to commit suicide. You see, Himmler wasn’t just going to let him walk away, he had him closely watched. But let us not forget that Rahn was a good potholer and he knew the area he chose very well. He was astute in ways of covering his tracks. When the search party looked for him and found only his clothes, neatly folded, Himmler was incensed. He realised that he’d been duped. Having to save face at all costs – Himmler had numerous enemies who would have made much of this blunder to Hitler – he organised two of his men to go to Dachau in search of a prisoner Rahn’s age and size and colouring. It was then a simple matter to crush a cyanide capsule in the prisoner’s mouth and to spirit him away. Stranger things happened all the time in the camps. Anyway, it was relatively easy then for Himmler’s men to plant the body back in the forest along with the clothes and to place a bottle of pills beside it. By the time they found the body of the dead man that spring, it was so decomposed it had to be buried in haste before the parents could identify it. Those SS men who planted the body were later sent to the Russian front and were never heard from again.’