The Parsifal Pursuit

by Michael McMenamin

  Mattie was looking forward to dinner with Campbell. She never tired of hearing about her father. She and her brothers had basked in the love he felt for them even if his Scottish reserve kept him from telling others how proud he was of his children. For their part, his children never tired of telling others what a great man their father was. Not because he was a Member of Parliament, which the children had never found that impressive because their father told them it wasn‘t. What they admired most about their father was his ability to spin a great story. The Knights of the Round Table. King Arthur. The Holy Grail. After her two brothers went away to school they learned––and told Mattie––that all the stories their father told them were based on his own articles and books on Celtic and Christian legends about the Holy Grail.

  Mattie looked up and smiled as Geoffrey Campbell arrived wearing the same worn tweed jacket she had seen him in the night before. She signaled their waiter to serve the soup course. During dinner, she discovered Campbell had been one of her father‘s principal assistants on his last book and had edited the final manuscript.

  “Did Father really believe the Holy Grail was more than a legend?”

  “Aye, that he did. Your father was a Christian gentleman as well as a scholar. He believed that Joseph of Arimathea secured both the Grail and the Lance of Longinus after Christ died. The Grail, he believed, was hidden in the Pyrenees. The Merovingians were its guardians after the Templars were disbanded. He didn‘t believe their secrets would ever be given up.”

  “Why did he devote so much research to the Celtic legends of the Cup and the Spear?”

  “Your father was a scientist as well as a believer. He could not ignore the reality of Celtic legends so close to Christian ones. But he found no convincing evidence that one legend depended on another. Since your father believed, as do I, that there is only one true God who died for our sins, his conclusion was that the Celtic legends had been divinely inspired so as to better prepare the pagans for their eventual conversion to Christianity, where the Cup and the Spear were much more than legends. They were historic facts.”

  The waiter cleared away their soup tureens and brought the fish course, Dover sole caught the day before in the English Channel and accompanied by a crisp white Bordeaux.

  “When did you first suspect that the Hofburg Lance was a replica?”

  “Ten years ago in a graduate seminar taught by your father. Unlike the Shroud of Turin and the pieces of wood purporting to be from the Cross, he believed that the Hofburg Spear was the one ancient relic whose provenance could not be disputed and could actually be traced from one leader to another, starting with the Emperor Constantine. But the photograph he showed us of the Hofburg Spear, which he personally took before the war, did not square with my memory of the Spear when I saw it for myself after the war. It wasn‘t a big difference and now I know it was not the only difference, but one specific nail was different from the one I saw in Vienna. A nail which had been added during Constantine‘s reign, a nail from the true Cross. Your father was certain I was mistaken, that my memory was playing tricks on me. But he was a scholar above all so he gave me one of his own photographs to compare the next time I was in Vienna.”

  Campbell paused and took a sip of Bordeaux. “Even though he disagreed with me, your father sent a letter to a Hofburg curator he knew well, positing my theory and asking him to forward a current photograph of the Lance so that he could compare it with his own photographs. Unfortunately, your father died shortly thereafter and I spent the next two years editing his book. After that, I took a position as a lecturer in archeology at the University of Glasgow, where I still teach today. I was under much pressure from the Master of our College to abandon my Grail studies. I really had no choice. So I put aside my concerns about the Spear. But once the Master retired in the winter of 1930, I caught the first train to Vienna.”

  Campbell smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “The rest of it you know.”

  Back in Mattie‘s compartment after dinner, the porter had made up her bed for the night. Mattie stripped and slid between the sheets. Moments later, lulled by the familiar clacking of steel wheels on rails, Mattie was fast asleep.

  MATTIE woke up and sensed that something was wrong. The train had stopped. She looked at the travel alarm clock ticking away beside her head. 3:48 a.m. She rang for the porter and then quickly rummaged through her suitcase to find her green silk gown, shivering slightly at the cool night air upon her bare skin. There was a knock on the door and Mattie opened it slightly then all the way as she saw the porter‘s familiar face.

  “Edouard, is there a problem?” she asked in French.

  “No, Mademoiselle,” he replied. “We have stopped to take on water and fuel. Our last opportunity before the mountains.” Edouard pulled out a large gold-plated stop watch from his pocket of his vest. “We shall be here for another nineteen minutes.”

  “How long have we been waiting here?”

  “For eleven minutes. We always stop at the last station before the Swiss border for thirty minutes precisely.”

  Mattie thanked him and then padded down the carpeted passageway in her slippers to the W.C. When she returned, the door to her compartment was slightly ajar. She thought she had closed it but she shrugged it off. She pushed the compartment door open and stepped inside. Immediately a large hand clamped strongly over her mouth while an equally strong arm encircled her waist, lifting her bodily off the floor. A closet door opened and a tall man stepped out, a scar on his left cheek the most prominent feature on a hard face with dark brown eyes beneath closely cropped dark hair highlighted with flecks of silver.

  “You have nothing to fear, Fraulein, so long as you cooperate,” the man said in Austrian-accented German. “But if you cry out, I will kill you.”

  Mattie nodded and her mouth was released. “I don‘t speak German,” Mattie replied.

  “I believe you do, Fraulein McGary,” he said, switching to English. “But as I said, if you cooperate, you have nothing to fear.”

  “How do you know my name?”

  “Your family‘s name is well-known to any who safeguard our Savior‘s sacred relics.”

  “What do you want?”

  The man smiled. “I want the journal,” he said, pulling a small leather notebook from his pocket and showing it to her. “It looks like this and I believe you have it.”

  Mattie looked at it. It was a near duplicate of the journal they had received from Churchill, a Celtic cross embossed on its cover.

  “I don‘t have it,” Mattie lied. “We left it in England. I only brought the translation.”

  The man smiled. “Our Order and our holy vows prohibit us from harming innocent women and children. When you accept a man‘s responsibility, however, as you have chosen to do, you must accept a man‘s consequences. Hold her, while I search the compartment.”

  Mattie watched as the man with the scar began to search the compartment, strewing her clothes carelessly around the compartment, ripping open the lining of her suitcase with a stiletto he had pulled from inside his coat.

  The man looked at the watch on his wrist and then spoke to Mattie‘s captor. “Only ten more minutes and the train will leave. We have no more time.” He reached into his pocket and pulled the Luger out from the holster where he had placed it during the search. He reached into his jacket‘s lower left-hand pocket and pulled out a threeinch long sound suppresser and began calmly screwing it into the barrel of the pistol.

  “I regret this, Fraulein but, as I said, accepting a man‘s responsibilities leads to a man‘s consequences.”

  Mattie froze, her eyes wide. A nod from the man with the scar and the hand over her mouth was pulled back. Mattie‘s mind was racing. She could tell him the truth, that the journal was in the train conductor‘s safe, but he might not believe her. The sound suppresser showed he meant business. She quickly weighed her options. There wasn‘t time for the truth.

  “It‘s in my suitcase. There‘s a false bottom. I can open
it more quickly than you.”

  The man with the scar finished screwing in the sound suppresser and motioned with his hand once more. Mattie felt the arm around her waist release her.

  “We don‘t have much time. We have no further need for the Britisher. His knowledge of the Spear is too great to let him live. Here is the pass key to the compartment where we left him.” he said, handing it to Mattie‘s captor with his left hand while keeping his silenced automatic trained on Mattie. “If she is telling the truth, she lives. Our Savior would not approve if I failed to keep my word. Her family has endured enough. But if she has lied, she will suffer a man‘s consequences.”

  He motioned with the pistol toward Mattie‘s suitcase and she bent over it, her back to him while her fingers searched for the concealed latch, finding it quickly, her fingers clasping the cold surface of the Walther PPK automatic below. For all her resentment of Cockran‘s lectures on her safety punctuated by recitations of Michael Collins‘ rules, there was one of the Big Fella‘s rules Mattie had always followed: Never draw a weapon unless you intend to use it. Don’t threaten people with guns, shoot them. Mattie lived by that rule to the letter, and it had saved her life on more than one occasion.

  “Here it is,” she said as she turned around and fired her weapon, the sharp report of the pistol echoing within the small compartment. Her shot went wide to the left, splintering the mahogany panel behind the man.

  The man with the scar had been startled by the noise of the gunshot and his return fire missed the mark also, both his shots muffled by the sound suppresser as they went over Mattie‘s head, shattering the train compartment‘s window behind her. Before Mattie could fire again, the man swept past her, clubbing her on the side of the head with his arm and knocking her to the floor of the compartment. The man then deftly opened the exterior door of the carriage compartment by reaching through the now shattered window and darted from the train onto the platform. Mattie regained her feet, looked through the window, the Walther in her hand, but the platform was deserted.

  Loud knocks hammered on the compartment‘s interior door. Mattie stood beside the door, opening it carefully with her left hand and thrust her right hand out, preparing to shoot if it were those men returning. But it was Edouard with a concerned look on his face.

  “Mon dieu! What has happened, Mademoiselle?”

  “My companion!” Mattie said breathlessly. “Please check out the second-class carriage. Professor Campbell‘s berth. I fear the men who attacked me may have attempted to harm him as well.

  “Very well.”

  Edouard returned a few minutes later. “Your friend is unharmed, Mademoiselle,” he said. “If you will be so kind as to follow me, I have arranged adjoining first-class compartments for both of you in the next carriage. On behalf of the Orient Express, please accept our apologies for this disruption in your travel. I will have someone gather your things and bring them to your new compartment.”

  Mattie smiled. “Thank you. You are most kind. Would you also arrange for a bottle of scotch whisky and two tumblers? Two large tumblers?”

  Edouard nodded. “It will be my pleasure, Mademoiselle,” he said, tipping his cap.

  One scotch down and beginning on her second, Mattie finally stopped shaking. “It‘s been a while since I‘ve been shot at, but it sure looked like he had a journal just like the one we have.”

  Campbell finished the last of his scotch and poured another as well.

  “I miscalculated. It never occurred to me that any of the men who had hidden the Spear were still alive. How could they have known our plans?” he said, shaking his head. “Perhaps you ought to reconsider, Miss McGary. This is far too dangerous for a woman. If I am fortunate enough to meet your father in eternity, I won‘t be able to face him if I have been responsible for any harm befalling his only daughter.”

  Mattie bristled. Now was no time to play it safe. If she had been more cautious tonight, she might be dead. “You have absolutely no idea how my father raised his only daughter,” Mattie said, draining the last of her scotch and staring directly into Campbell‘s eyes. “Those bastards can‘t stop me. And if you want to be able to face my father in eternity, you‘d better not try either.”

  Part IV

  Germany, Switzerland, Egypt and Austria

  1 June–7 June 1931

  [T]he [National Socialists’] road to power was blocked. Only crass errors by the country’s rulers could open up a path. And only a blatant disregard by Germany’s power elites for safeguarding democracy—in fact, the hope that economic crisis could be used as a vehicle to bring about democracy’s demise and replace it by a form of authoritarianism—could induce such errors.

  Ian Kershaw

  Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris

  22.

  The Captains and the Kings

  Berlin

  Monday, 1 June 1931

  A SERIES of long closed motor cars, Mercedes and Daimlers mostly, began to arrive at a large estate in Potsdam on the outskirts of Berlin, near Wansee. It was a clear, crisp evening and the sound of the tires crunching the carefully combed stone in the driveway was louder than the silent purr of the engines. Each motor car contained one passenger. A total of nine vehicles each arriving precisely two minutes apart. The initial arrival was Anton Dressler––Zurich. He was greeted warmly by his host, Fritz von Thyssen, known to the others as Berlin. Zurich watched as each new man was greeted in turn by those who arrived before him. The servants were there to take their outer garments and serve champagne in tall, crystal flutes.

  After gathering in the large, octagonal foyer, Berlin directed them into the Great Hall where they continued to converse in small groups. A massive, barrel-vaulted ceiling loomed two stories above them, an interior balcony on all four sides of the room. Paintings and tapestries covered the wood-paneled walls on the first floor while the balcony‘s walls were lined with floor to ceiling bookcases. Lighting from brass chandeliers cast a warm glow on the figures talking softly below. A fire was blazing in a huge fire place at the end of the room. Lights from sconces on the oak-paneled walls provided the only other illumination in the room. The servants still circulated, carrying more substantial drinks than the champagne offered earlier.

  Zurich drained the last of his single malt, placed it on a silver tray held by a hovering servant, and started to move to the large table which dominated the center of the room. He rapped his heavy fountain pen on its mahogany surface to gain the group‘s attention. The servants withdrew. Social amenities were over. The meeting of the Board of Directors of the Geneva Institute for Scientific and Industrial Progress had begun. There were only three items on the agenda: the restoration of the Kaiser‘s son to the German throne; the forthcoming war between Bolivia and Paraguay where Geneva was arming both sides; and freedom for the many peoples of India—Muslim and Hindu alike—freedom, that is, to kill each other with the most modern weapons the men of Geneva were all too willing to sell them. That was Geneva‘s formula and had been for over 30 years. Small conflicts. Little wars. Controllable. Profitable. The ancient hatreds were still intact. Money was still there to be made. The business of the Geneva Group was blood and steel and business was good.

  KURT von Sturm rose from his chair at the side of the room after being called upon by Zurich. His voice was neutral as he reported on his recent interview with the Kaiser and the Crown Prince. His voice did not betray his own low opinion of both men. Even the mention of the £20,000 it would cost for an expedition to search for the Spear in largely unpopulated areas of the Austrian Alps did not, by his voice or his body language, betray his skepticism.

  Sturm was surprised, therefore, by the discussion which followed his brief recital of the preparation necessary to clear the path for the Kaiser‘s return—the training of the three-man sniper team to assassinate President Hindenburg. The recital even included the identity of the third man on the team, the “patsy” as the Americans would say, a Communist factory worker at one of Fritz von Thyssen‘s ste
el mills who would soon be unemployed and would subsequently serve as a convenient scapegoat when the Reds were blamed for Hindenburg‘s assassination.

  Sturm watched as the newest member, Manhattan, raised his hand and was recognized by Zurich. He unfolded his large frame and rose slowly to his feet. “Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I realize that the group has already decided that there must be someone new to serve as Chancellor of a new Germany, rearmed and free of the arms restrictions of Versailles. A worthy goal and one I support. But is General Kurt von Schleicher the best man to accomplish this? Does he have what it takes to rally the people to his side?”

  Sturm could see the impatience in Zurich‘s eyes which fluttered slightly as he cut Manhattan off in mid-sentence. “That subject is not on tonight‘s agenda. Von Schleicher was the head of Sondergruppe R. He supervised Germany‘s clandestine military alliance with the Soviet Union for the past twelve years. It is because of von Schleicher that Germany was able to develop in Russia the most modern weapons in Europe. Tanks. Artillery. Planes. More advanced forms of poison gas.”

  “I understand, Zurich,” Manhattan replied in a patient voice. “What I question is whether von Schleicher is anything more than a gray-faced career army bureaucrat who inspires no one, especially when compared to a spellbinding speaker like Hitler. There is a real leader.”

  Sturm watched Zurich‘s face slowly turn red while the vein on his left temple became more prominent. Sturm had little respect for Manhattan in more ways than one but the American had a point. Von Schleicher‘s career depended upon the favor of others more highly placed. Hitler was unique and depended only on intuition and his iron will.