Foretold by Thunder: A Thriller

by Edward M. Davey

  He then began to unfold a delusion quite unlike any I have yet encountered in paranoiacs, in both scope of ambition and richness of its tapestry. Indeed I began to wonder whether this man might not after all possess the capacity of intelligence in some distorted form. Hess described how senior members of Hitler’s inner circle had become secret adherents of a pagan religion first practised in ancient Italy, by the Etruscan civilization. Of course, rumours that Hitler and Himmler practise Satanism and the occult are nothing new (I take the evidence for this claim to be patchy). Nonetheless, I pressed him to continue and asked him to explain how this religion had come to their attention. Hess claimed Himmler had inducted many of Germany’s top scholars and archaeologists into a division of his organization named the ‘SS Ahnenerbe’. Its goal was to find archaeological evidence for the shadowy mixture of Teutonic myth and folklore on which the Nazi world outlook is founded (and in which Himmler is a fervent believer). Hess said that Himmler hoped to prove the Germans are in some way a ‘chosen people’ with a ‘divine destiny’. To this end, though it might seem fantastical, Hess says he has launched hunts for Atlantis and the Holy Grail. Himmler, Hess claims, believes he is living through the end of Christianity and ordered these archaeologists to prove the pagan origins of the German ‘Volk’. It must be said that in this at least, Hess’s account chimes with our own analysis of this exceedingly odd character and his foibles. The patient said that Himmler commandeered Wewelsburg Castle as his headquarters – his ‘Camelot’, Hess described it. This is the seat of the order of Teutonic Knights which Himmler is striving to found in the SS. There, if the patient can be believed, he hopes to collect under one roof the Grail, the artefacts of Atlantis, et cetera. I pressed Hess again: why was it the Etruscan religion that so enraptured the senior Nazis? Here the most astonishing element of his schizophrenic imaginings unfolded. At this point he became very highly agitated, and I became once again concerned at the possibility of further attempts to do himself harm.

  The patient claimed that in 1933 the ‘SS Ahnenerbe’ were excavating a site in Italy when they came upon a most remarkable tomb. It belonged, Hess said, to a small child, and the archaeologists became extremely excited, convincing themselves they had found the resting place of the prophet of the Etruscan faith. Hess said that contained within the tomb, alongside evidence of human sacrifice and other ritual offerings, they uncovered the holy text of the Etruscan people inscribed on scrolls and sealed with beeswax into alabaster jugs. It had been believed lost, and after a few brief investigations of my own I can confirm the text is not currently known to historiography. Hess became quite wild by this point – like an animal, foaming at the mouth. I was worried for myself and my patient. However the revelations pouring forth were so extraordinary I let him continue in the hope they might allow me such an insight into the man’s mind that I may be better placed to help him recover his sanity. He went on to claim this text detailed the various means by which Etruscan soothsayers interpreted the will of their gods and thus predicted the future – namely: examining the flight of birds; studying the livers of sacrificial animals; interpreting celestial phenomena such as comets; and studying the shape and form of bolts of lightning. Hess went on to claim that each of these disciplines was studied with utmost scientific rigour by the ‘SS Ahnenerbe’. The first three methods were found to be quite useless. However Hess asserts that the final method proved effective and with it the SS were able to prophesise future events with astonishing accuracy. Hess insists Hitler, Himmler and the few senior figures privy to the discovery have since become reliant on the technique for decision making.

  By the patient’s account, the tomb of this ‘wunderkind’ was respectfully sealed and the scrolls borne to Wewelsburg Castle. There they have purportedly been guarded these last seven years. Heinrich Himmler, so Hess says, had by this point convinced himself that the ‘mysterious Etruscans’ described by DH Lawrence in his recent work were none other than the long-lost ancestors of the German people, a claim he backs with the observation that their script bears a resemblance to Germanic runes. It should be said at this point that there is not the slightest evidence that the Etruscans are Germanic in origin or visa versa; reputable scholars agree they originated either from northern Turkey, which is the classical tradition, or northern Italy itself, an area preferred by modern anthropology.

  It does indeed seem remarkable that the leaders of a highly-developed Western society might place their faith in superstition. Yet so detailed were Hess’s descriptions that I did not dismiss it out of hand, and indeed began to wonder whether there might not be an element of truth in some of what he was saying. Perchance, some of these senior figures think they have stumbled upon something of genuine efficacy. It is agreed that there is a tendency towards mysticism amongst some of its leading figures. Hitler himself is convinced he was been chosen by providence to lead the German people to greatness. I shall alert MI6 to these conclusions through the appropriate channels in case they can take advantage of this curious state of affairs.

  Convinced the discussion may be instructive on the issue of how to ‘de-Nazify’ the German people in the event of British victory, I urged the patient to continue, even though many of his proclamations were the ravings of a lunatic. Hess went on to claim each of the German successes in foreign policy over the last seven years, and indeed they have been numerous, was enabled by the prior consultation of this Etruscan text. Hitler’s foreign policy has been characterized by brinkmanship. Yet in the reality constructed by the patient, it was not brinkmanship at all but foreknowledge. Hitler, he claims, knew he could remilitarize the Rhineland unopposed. He knew the western powers would not stand in the way of Germany’s unification with Austria, and he knew that Britain would not go to war to save Czechoslovakia. Each of Germany’s successes on the battlefield – the invasion of Poland, Norway, the Low Countries, France and the Balkans – was in Hess’s fantasy achieved not by Hitler’s brilliance but his reliance on augurs. It was even possible, Hess said, to summon down lightning bolts at will, and he claims personally to know how this could be done. He offered there and then to conjure up such a display so I would know him to be speaking the truth. Mindful of the potential psychological damage of his failure to achieve this feat and of my Hippocratic duty as a doctor, I declined this offer. What more proof then, Hess went on, than to compare the creation of the German Empire in Europe, conquered against such huge odds, with that of ancient Rome, the only people in history to have accumulated such a mass of European territory with comparable speed. For Hess believes Rome also manipulated this power to build its thousand-year Reich.

  I asked the patient to return to the purpose of his flight. What then, in light of this new background, had he hoped to achieve by coming to Britain? This Hess was happy to relate, and he did so in great detail. It reminded me of the pride of small boys who have prepared something carefully and then done it. He told me he had determined to teach Hitler a lesson for rejecting him and ‘get one over’ on his rivals in the SS whom he saw as plotting ‘uncivilized’ and ‘un-German’ acts. He claimed that Hitler had forbidden a single copy of the scrolls to be made, because he was very paranoid about others laying their hands on it. Only the original scrolls could be inspected and these were stored at Wewelsburg Castle with access permitted only to very highest echelons of the Nazi regime, a group he listed as himself, Hitler, Goring, Goebbels, Himmler and his deputy Heydrich. So it was, at the height of what I take to be one of Hess’s periodic psychotic and nervous episodes, that he claims to have taken it upon himself to steal these scrolls and fly with them to Britain in the hope of bringing about a reverse in the war, a measure of revenge on his former comrades, and perhaps of securing for himself a leading position in British society. Where then, I asked him, were these scrolls? Again he had the answer: upon landing in Scotland he was seized by the conviction that they would be better off destroyed and that ‘no good may come of them’. Therefore upon landing he claims to have burned the text,
hoping its mischief be ended once and for all. It is another example of the depth and intricacy of the delusion. Each query is met with an answer and without hesitation and I am certain the patient believes every word he says. Hess claims to have resolved never to breathe another word of this matter, hoping to forestall a British attempt to locate other copies of the text. But now he has reached, so he says, so desperate a strait – shunned and condemned to death in absentia by his former comrades, held prisoner by the country he fancied would welcome him – that he no longer cares what happens to the world and the people within it, nor indeed whether he lives or dies, and this explains last night’s suicide attempt. Having finished his tale the patient suddenly began to weep and he did so most grievously. He has since become catatonic and resists all subsequent attempts to be engaged on the ancient Etruscan matter once more.

  84

  Jake stared at the four pages. “This is it then. This is how the Secret Service knew, all those decades ago. This is how the paths converge – Rome, Nazism, MI6. Churchill and the ‘ancient Etruscan matter’. God only knows what Winnie made of it all.”

  Jenny produced her smart phone and Googled: ‘Hitler + lightning’.

  At once the search engine summoned up thousands of pages. Her eyes flitted from left to right as she read. Occasionally it seemed she would say something, but words never formed themselves. Her complexion had turned the colour of bad mackerel.

  Finally she voiced a single word. “Blitzkrieg.”

  “Lightning war,” Jake translated. “It was the name they gave to their battle tactics. Rapid motorized advances, encircling entire armies at a time.”

  “And there’s this,” said Jenny, swivelling the tablet.

  On the screen was the symbol of Himmler’s SS; the crooked letters formed two bolts of lightning.

  “The badge was designed in 1933,” said Jenny. “About six months after Hess claimed they found Tages’s tomb.”

  “My God,” said Jake, who was also on Google. “Look at this entry from the war diary kept by Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda guru. It’s dated 26th September 1938, at the height of appeasement – when Hitler bluffed Chamberlain into throwing Czechoslovakia to the wolves.”

  Things have turned out just as the Fuhrer predicted. He is a divinatory genius. But first, our mobilization. This will proceed so lightning-fast that the world will experience a miracle.

  “So the Nazis did buy into it too,” she said, her breathing shallow.

  “And here’s a speech Hitler gave threatening the Jews in June 1941,” said Jake. “Jesus, just read this one.”

  They can laugh about it, just as they used to laugh at my prophecies. The coming months will prove that here too I’ve seen things correctly.

  Jake recalled the dream he’d had in Rome: how the beat of the drum had transmogrified into the sound of jackboots.

  “There’s more,” said Jenny. “Much more, in fact. Lightning and storm imagery is shot through almost every pronouncement Hitler makes in the build-up to war. Early in 1938 he says the attack on the Czechs must be carried out ‘blitzartig-schnell’ – ‘lightning fast’. And this quote’s from the same year – when Hitler is threatening to invade Austria.”

  I have a historic mission and I will fulfil this because providence has destined me to do so. I’ll appear in Vienna like a spring storm. Then you’ll see something.

  “Feat after coup after bluff.” Jake’s voice was husky. “And lightning was never far from Hitler’s mind.”

  “How did Hess’s flight go down with him?”

  “Hold on.” Jake pulled up a page from the historian Ian Kershaw’s biography of the dictator.

  The first Hitler knew of Hess’s disappearance was in the morning of 11 May. One of the Deputy Fuhrer’s adjutants turned up at the Berghof. He was carrying a letter which Hess had given him before taking off, entrusting him to give it personally to the Fuhrer. When Hitler read Hess’s letter the colour drained from his face. Albert Speer heard an ‘almost animal-like scream’. ‘Goring, get here immediately!’ he barked into the telephone. ‘Something dreadful has happened’.

  ‘The Fuhrer is completely crushed,’ the Propaganda Minister noted in his diary. The letters, he claimed, were full of ‘half baked occultism’.

  According to one account, Hitler was ‘in tears and looked ten years older’. He told General Udent, ‘I hope Hess falls into the sea’.

  ‘I have never seen the Fuhrer so deeply shocked,’ Hans Frank told subordinates a few days later.

  “Then the job of discrediting Hess began,” said Jake, pointing to another paragraph. “Straight away the Nazi propaganda machine began trying to paint him as a lunatic.”

  The German communiqué of 13 May acknowledged Hess’s flight to Scotland and capture. It emphasized his physical illness stretching back years, which had put him in the hands of mesmerists, astrologists, and the like, bringing about a ‘mental confusion’ that had led to the action. It also held open the possibility that he had been entrapped by the British Secret Service.

  “And read this,” said Jenny. “It’s an excerpt from a Nazi Party newspaper dated 13th May, 1941.”

  As is well known in party circles, Hess had undergone severe physical suffering for some years. Recently he had sought relief in methods practised by astrologers. An attempt is being made to determine to what extent these persons are responsible for bringing about the condition of mental distraction which led him to take this step.

  “It’s as if the German leadership were trying to get in a pre-emptive publicity strike,” she said. “In case he started singing like a canary.”

  “And yet the British didn’t try to turn Hess’s flight into a propaganda coup,” mused Jake. “It’s always been seen as one of the odd things about the affair. You’d expect them to make hay having captured the Deputy Führer. But they were strangely quiet.”

  Suddenly a bit of Churchill came to Jake. His Finest Hour speech, 1940; the penultimate line.

  But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.

  That word again: science. ‘The lights of perverted science.’

  The journalist’s frown deepened.

  But that’s what it is, Jake. Don’t you see?

  “After the news broke the Nazis arrested dozens of people connected to Hess,” said Jenny. “Hitler ordered Hess shot on sight if he ever returned.”

  “Yet as it happened Hess was the most high-ranking Nazi to escape the death penalty at the Nuremberg Trials,” he muttered. “He lived out the rest of his days in solitary isolation and died of old age in 1987. Why?”

  Jenny had turned even whiter. “The Cold War was on,” she whispered. “He was kept alive.”

  She pushed the report across the table, as if it was unclean. And then came something totally unexpected.

  “I believe him,” she said. “I believe every word of it.”

  *

  “Believe who?” said Jake.

  “Rudolf Hess.” Jenny faltered – she looked reduced somehow. “I … I think he was telling the truth.”

  “Telling the truth?” De Clerk scoffed. “About what?”

  “The Disciplina Etrusca,” Jenny said, shrinking further into herself. “When he said that it … that it helped them.”

  “You can’t be serious. You’re not saying …”

  Jenny’s shoulders juddered, and Jake saw how he must have looked at his own awakening in the Monastery of Debre Damo.

  “I don’t understand how,” she said. “But it works.”

  “You’re mad,” said de Clerk. He stalked out of the room.

  “You’re not mad,” said Jake. “I believe it too.”

  He told Jenny about his own epiphany. How he had seen a bolt of lightning guide Florence to the monastery; how she’d sensed danger, foretold by thunder every time; how li
ghtning from the north-west always augured ill, just as Tages said it would. Most of all, how Roman history ebbed and flowed with the appearance of lightning.

  “Then we met Dr Nesta and I saw how this phenomenon could have a scientific basis after all,” Jake continued. “And now this. Half the Nazi state was modelled on Rome. The salutes, the architecture. The eagles and banners.”

  “And that run of victories,” said Jenny. “From 1933 to 1941 it was triumph after triumph – Hitler conquered Europe in eighteen months flat.”

  “But immediately after Hess’s flight the victories end,” Jake replied. “The miscalculations set in. A month later Germany invades Russia – the Fuhrer’s most catastrophic mistake. By the end of the year they’re at war with the USA too. Hitler bit off more than he could chew. Germany lost the war.”

  “Every major decision the Nazis took after Hess’s flight they got wrong,” said Jenny. “All of them. And Roger Britton’s death – it wasn’t coincidence, was it? Dr Dicks tells us here that Hess boasted he could conjure up a lightning bolt. He offered to prove it. I think after Dicks finished his interviews Hess taught what he knew to MI6. Why else would Churchill be called to study the ravings of a madman?” She drew a long breath. “MI6 put Hess to the test and Hess delivered.”

  “Which means …”

  “Which means Roger Britton was killed by Charlie Waits with a bolt of lightning.”

  “And ever since then MI6 has been hunting for the rest of the text,” Jake finished.

  “But it still makes no sense,” said Jenny. “Surely conjuring up a lightning bolt takes more power than reading the future? How could Charlie do one and not the other?”

  “Quite the opposite,” said Jake. “What would use up more energy – making electricity jump a few hundred feet through the air, or calculating the movement of quadrillions of atoms? Without the Disciplina Etrusca to hand that was beyond Hess. It remained beyond Charlie – and his predecessors too.” He shook his head, half-laughed, breathing out through his nose. “Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties …”