The Sixth Key(15)

Before he sat down, he gave the signal for the meal to begin.

It was a solemn affair. Rahn could barely touch his venison. He watched Hitler, askance. The man ate a plate of steamed vegetables and drank nothing but water and seemed to take no pleasure in it. Rahn sat half listening to the occasional footfall of the servants, the clinking of cutlery, the muted music, feeling the slow-burning terror of intuition rising up to his temples.

How was he going to get out of this?

He looked furtively around him. He didn’t belong to this circle of SS officers and, more to the point, he didn’t want to belong to it. Once again, he told himself to calm down. Soon he would be far from Himmler’s reach and a free man. He would be his own master. All he had to do was to get through this night, give Himmler his damned genealogy and get out.

When all were finished, Hitler looked about his table for a long time, staring at each man in turn.

‘A moment ago,’ he said, ‘you were speaking of Jesus, but I say you must forget Jesus – for the final saviour of the world has come; the one who will replace Jesus and lead you to the Apocalypse and the renewal of the world! Satan, the creative, fertilising spirit principle of the world, will reign through me in the same way Christ reigned through Jesus. And those who wish to follow me into the glorious light of a new Reich must be willing to sacrifice everything: brother, sister, mother, father – the very death of God and even Jesus Christ himself! They must be willing to supplant Christ with Satan. For a man cannot follow two masters!’

He tamed his ecstasy by replacing some strands of hair that had fallen over his eyes. When he stood, all followed again by reflex, but he was finished with them.

‘We are awake, gentlemen. Let others sleep!’

Rahn remembered this line. Philip le Bel, that demonic king who had tortured and sent so many Templars to the stake, had been in the habit of saying these very same words.

With a gesture of disgust Hitler walked out of the hall as if to say, I have tasted your souls and found you bitter!

Himmler woke them from their reverie. It was time, he said. Rahn had no idea what he meant.

Only later would he learn that what had gone before was the customary ritual before a man could be initiated into the circle of Ritters, or knights. They called it The Last Supper, because the ordeal that followed was death, and it marked the beginning of a new life.





5


The Crypt

‘There are moments when, even to the sober eye of reason, the world of our sad humanity may assume the semblance of a Hell . . .’ Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Premature Burial’


Rahn moved with the others out of the castle entrance and into the darkness, not knowing what would come next. He descended a long staircase to a lower courtyard and followed the group over a path lit by torches to a door. Beyond it another set of narrow steps took them to what looked like an underground chamber or crypt of sorts. Years of orienting himself in caves led him to the calculation that they were in the north tower and directly beneath the circular hall where they had just eaten. The space was fashioned into a round crypt of about the same size as the hall above, lit only by torches placed beneath arched windows set high and recessed deeply into the thick stone walls. In this strange otherworldly penumbral light, Rahn shivered from cold and fear. He could sense something sinister afoot, but he didn’t know what it could possibly be.

Ahead of him the officers took their places around a large circular depression cut into the crypt’s floor. Rahn was filled with dismay when he realised, as he approached it, that in this central depression there lay a man, battered, bruised and bleeding.

‘What do you think of this, Rahn?’ Himmler said cheerily at his side.

Rahn didn’t know if he meant the poor wretch in the centre of the room, or the room itself. He decided on the latter; if he could keep things scholarly he might not lose his nerve.

‘It looks like an initiation chamber,’ he said, ‘a cross between a Mycenaean tomb of ancient Greece and a Mithraeum used by the Romans. It has the same vaulted, domed ceiling.’ He followed its arc with a trembling hand. ‘It is also rounded with a central depression for—’ He paused then, unable to say the word. He felt the undigested venison and the good Bavarian wine do a somersault in his stomach.

Himmler looked at him with paternal concern. ‘You did not finish your eloquent conclusion? Is something the matter?’

‘No . . .’

‘Well, as the Führer said, this castle has an interesting history of human sacrifice. Perhaps it is a little like Montsegur, where so many good souls were burnt to death by the agents of the Catholic Church.’