The Nostradamus Traitor: 1 (The Herbie Kruger Novels)

by John Gardner

  While he talked, George caught part of the conversation going on between Wald and Downay. Wald was asking for chapter and verse on the batch of quatrains they had provided.

  Michel was cool and lucid. There were things in the world of the occult not easily visible to those who did not fully understand the methods by which a seer, like Nostradamus, worked.

  Like a man patiently explaining the facts of life to a seven-year-old, Michel talked of the methods of divination, in particular the way in which the whole pattern of Nostradamus’ “Ten Centuries” was broken by the fact that more than half the quatrains were missing from the “Seventh Century.”

  As he was getting into his stride, George glanced out of the window. It wasn’t haphazard. There was a feeling of compulsion. Two familiar figures were passing the carriage window: one in the uniform of an SS major; the other, a woman, clinging on to his arm. The man was Maurice Roubert, George’s stepfather. The woman, his wife, George’s mother.

  He felt fury building in his head. Downay’s plan had enough danger in it as it was. True, Roubert was to board the train, but nobody had said anything about him coming on dolled up as an SS major. George wanted to shout at Downay, strike him, and scream. It was both stupid and dangerous. His mother’s presence increased the anxiety. Surely they would not be foolish enough to allow her to come along for the ride—or as some kind of cover for Roubert?

  “Herr Thomas?” Wald’s voice cut through the detached anxiety.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Someone just walked over your grave, yes?”

  George pretended not to understand.

  “It is an English saying.” Vulpine grin. “You appeared preoccupied. Concerned.” The grin did not seem to reach his eyes, and there were danger signs flicking from Downay.

  “Not at all.” Pull yourself together, Thomas, he thought. “I was merely thinking about the matters which the Sturmbannführer was discussing. Things are beginning to drop into shape.” He played it by ear, by instinct, hoping that he could manipulate the conversation.

  “With us also, Herr Thomas. Doktor Downay has been explaining to me that you are by way of being a prophet also—a man of divination, a dreamer of inexplicable dreams.”

  Oh Christ, George thought. Wald’s voice was becoming-unpleasant.

  “Am I right…?” Plunging slightly, George still tried to manoeuvre the conversation his way. “Am I right in saying that the prophecies we have given to you concerning the Standard-Bearer—the flag carrier—have something to do with your own commander? With the Reichsführer? The Sturmbannführer here says”—motioning towards Kuche.

  “Heine, call me Heine.” Kuche, most affable, said that they were all friends, were they not? Heine and Joseph. Georges and Michel. “A working team. We must present a united front to the Reichsführer, yes?”

  George persistently asked again if he was right.

  The Germans exchanged uncertain, covert glances followed by a studied indifference. Then Kuche coughed. When he spoke it was one of the salted quatrains that came out, which meant they had almost certainly swallowed the bait whole—hook, line, sinker, and rod.

  “From the Saxon dynasty, a German King

  Who conquered the peoples of Poland

  Shall rise again, a full ten decades later,

  To lead the New Nation into victory.”

  Michel stepped in. “Now that had us guessing. We think we’ve identified the king. There was a King Heinrich—Heinrich I—eight hundred and something to nine hundred and thirty-six. Are we right?”

  A horn sounded on the platform and there was the usual bump and lurch. Then the steady forward pull, rocking slightly as the train slid from the station.

  “We’re off.” Wald brought his hands together.

  George craned forward to see if he could catch sight of Madame Roubert, Maman; mentally breathing with relief as he saw her arm raised, waving farewell from the platform.

  “Heinrich I,” Kuche said. “A German king who conquered the peoples of Poland.”

  “I think a more correct reading would be ‘the Slav people.’” If there was to be any probing, George was determined to lead the way through the labyrinth.

  Kuche looked impressed.

  George knew all about Himmler’s hatred of the Poles.

  Kuche hesitated. Then: “Reichsführer Himmler has special affinity with King Heinrich I. To start with they both have the same name. You would have no knowledge of this affinity though.”

  George agreed: he had no knowledge of it. “How could we know of anything like that?” Ramilies knew, the Abbey knew. He knew all right.

  Kuche explained that in 1936, on the thousandth anniversary of King Heinrich’s death, the Reichsführer had made the king’s tomb a sacred place—a place of homage.

  Ramilies had spoken a great deal about the way in which Heinrich Himmler claimed to be able to speak with King Heinrich, as though he had a direct line to him. It was one of the few occult clues they had about the Reichsführer—the belief in himself as a second King Heinrich, and the strange mystical sense he had concerning his personal Camelot: the castle they were now almost certainly heading towards—Wewelsburg, where the Reichsführer held spiritual retreats with his senior officers; where he had his special court.

  “You see now what this prophecy might imply?” Kuche snapped open a gold lighter, igniting a cigarette.

  “That his destiny is to be the Führer? To take the place of…?”

  Wald hissed something, telling George to keep his voice down. Kuche merely nodded, the smile still on his mouth.

  “The Reichsführer can be identified as such in that quatrain. Just as he can be identified as the Standard-Bearer. Believe me. The castle fashioned after the Court of King Arthur is yet another indicator.”

  There was silence, but for the rattle of the train. A Waffen SS man stood in the corridor, a machine pistol in the crook of his arm—on guard.

  Kuche spoke lower. “The SS have always known their destiny. The Führer is the Führer. We are pledged to follow him to death. But if it is certain that he is to be replaced by the true man of destiny—Reichsführer Himmler—then there are those who feel, perhaps, the sooner this happens the better it will be for Germany. You will have to convince the Reichsführer that Nostradamus has so prophesied.”

  George stared blankly out of the window as the outskirts of Paris rolled past and the train shifted easily through the complex mesh of lines and points. He found it difficult to believe his ears or his mind. These people were taking the whole thing seriously. He had never really believed they would. When he had put it to Ramilies, the old boy merely replied that the same kind of doubts must have passed through the minds of those hearing about Christianity for the first time. How can men take this nonsense as truth? As positive? Ramilies was right. There were those within the SS who would be only too happy to see their leader as the head of the Third Reich.

  Himmler himself, the Rammer had counselled, will be the stumbling block. He regards his Führer as God, even though the SS is his great obsession. George remembered him musing, Now if it was that arch-bastard Heydrich, we’d have no problems. Heydrich would sell his tainted soul for the top job.

  Soon after, they all went through to the small dining car and had coffee, which was much better than the stuff Michel had supplied. Kuche said they should make the most of it, and Wald laughed. In Germany, even the bigwigs drank stuff that tasted like the floor of a forest. Pine cones; acorns. Kuche raised his eyebrows and said more like acorns that came from a cow’s backside.

  “Muckefuck”—using the rudest colloquialism. Gnat’s something or other.

  They all laughed.

  Now. Forward almost four decades, George Thomas hesitated in his narrative.

  “George? You okay?” Big Herbie Kroger switched on a table lamp. It was not yet time, but clouds had gathered, bringing dusk to the late afternoon, even on this spring day.

  “Yes.” George looked at him, biting a lip. �
��You’re not going to believe the next bit, and don’t ask me to explain. I don’t know the answers.”

  “This one of the strange mental things you talked about?”

  “Very strange. The first one. After we had drunk the coffee.”

  33

  LONDON 1978

  “I BEGAN TO FEEL drowsy. I’d finished the coffee.”

  “Not surprising; you were tired. After the night, I mean…” Herbie was suddenly embarrassed, confused at what he had said. “Forgive me, George. No disrespect to the lady, but…well…?”

  George smiled, passing his hand, palm flat, to and fro in front of his body. “No, Herbie. I know what you mean. Yes, anyone would be tired.”

  “Another piece of cake, perhaps?”

  George took his second piece, biting into it, letting it melt in his mouth. Herbie was excellent with sponges. “Good,” he pronounced.

  “Danke.”

  George said he knew all the tricks and realised Herbie wanted him to get on, using the German to rein him in. “Okay. Yes, normally I would be tired. This was a particular kind of drowsiness—or so it’s always seemed in retrospect. I was looking out of the window.” He went on to describe how he had recalled other journeys in France, and how the countryside did not seem to have changed much. The odd ruin, bombsite, here and there. Occasionally there were troops moving along the road. A lot of aircraft. Sometimes quite close. They passed near an airfield with ME 109s parked almost alongside the tracks, nestling under camouflage netting, tendrils of ammunition hanging in belts from under the wings as the armourers worked on them.

  “I remember being conscious of the rhythm of the train, and of Kuche, Wald, and Downay talking, but they seemed a long way off.”

  He could see his reflection in the window, and then, quite suddenly, he found himself looking at the reflection, not of his face, but that of Angelle, overlapping his own mirrored image.

  “I even smiled at her and she seemed to smile back; sad, wistful, as though she was a long way off and trying to make contact. I was quite awake then, but sleep came soon after. Sleep and the strange dreams. Weird and very real.”

  He was in a cave, or something like it. The walls were bare rock. Moisture dropping. Night. A fire, with flames casting huge shadows on the walls, glistening and dancing. The smoke from the fire burned his eyes, constricted his throat; but he had to bend over the fire to tend a brass pot that hung in the flames from a small metal tripod.

  “There was this big book I was holding as well. I read from it. Aloud. An odd language—half French and part Latin. The voice wasn’t mine and it echoed. Two voices maybe? Another over mine echoing in counterpoint. The mixture in the pot went milky and then cleared. Then the pictures came.”

  Herbie sighed, no hint of irritation, just a simple exhaling of his breath, loudly.

  “I know what you’re thinking.” George’s face became set and solemn, as though he had misinterpreted the sigh.

  “I’m sorry. Just that dreams are…”

  “Obvious?”

  “Perhaps too obvious?”

  “In this case”—George seemed to have softened a little—“in this case, yes, very obvious. Look, Herbie, apart from one psychiatrist, you’re the only person to whom I’ve told this story. Even I didn’t need the psychiatrist, or any analysis, for the first part of the dream. All that time cooped away in Ramilies’ flat, then the work on Nostradamus at the Abbey. The strain of the moment. Yes, I was dreaming about going through the ritual of divination. That’s easy—dreaming about being Nostradamus himself. The thing that’s interesting is the pictures in the brass pot—and what followed.”

  “Tell me”—Herbie quiet and concentrating. From far away a siren wailed—police or an ambulance.

  The pictures, said George, were most vivid. (“I can still see them in all their detail.”) A battle. Night. Flickering from weapons. A wall and a large room. The thunder of explosives (“or so I thought”). There was rain also. People, comrades of mine, being shot to pieces. Then silence. Laughter. The dead who lay around getting onto their feet, rising as though the last trump had just blasted off. They were laughing and brushing dirt from their clothes. One of them was limping—walking towards a small man who carried a huge flag. They shook hands.

  “That was it. I was aware of the train rocking and that I was awake again. For some reason instinct stopped me from moving.” Stay dormant, pretend to go on sleeping, he thought. Ramilies in the room at the Abbey. Hiram the Wizard.

  Kuche and Wald were talking, droning on. Kuche reflecting on life back home. Wald boasting about the girls he’d had in Paris.

  “Yes, the pictures are odd. Prophetic in a way.” Herbie was more interested now.

  “Wait. There’s more. When you’ve heard it all, you’ll see how I managed to carry things through later. Nobody has ever successfully explained those pictures, or what I said when I woke up.”

  “Which was?”

  George had finally stirred and turned. Ah, Wald said, so our sleeping beauty is awake. “He offered me a cigarette. Kuche smiled—like you do at children you’ve been watching sleeping on a journey. Downay remained inscrutable, behind his beard. Then I spoke, and to this day do not know where the words came from.

  ‘At the castle, death will come

  To those who shall rise again and mock.

  The Standard-Bearer shall link hands

  With one he trusts. The true one will not rise.’”

  Downay had immediately looked very puzzled and asked what George was quoting.

  “I told him I didn’t know. Yes, Herbie, I thought, quite consciously at the time, you’ve been reading too much Nostradamus, old lad.”

  Herbie’s chin rested on his chest and he remained immobile for some time. At last—“Interesting. I understand how you were able to motivate matters later, after having that kind of dream. Hard to understand, though.”

  “There were other things—later. We’ll come to them.”

  They had served lunch soon after he woke, George continued, even recalling the food—bean soup and fish with potatoes. A pleasant wine. “Downay was taking in everything—the way the guards were doubling up as waiters. How the sergeant treated them, giving them orders quietly—an efficient man, not a bullyboy drill sergeant. Tall, muscular, a fighting soldier.”

  “The next thing that happened was outside Aachen, yes?” Herbie appeared to be hurrying him on. After all, Herbie knew the outline. He also knew that was not the next thing that happened.

  “No.” George swallowed the last piece of cake. “The next thing that happened was Kuche.”

  “So.”

  At around two o’clock they had arrived at Liege. By the time the train pulled out again they were settled over coffee and brandy. Kuche, George remembered, said that they had about another five hours to go before Aachen, and the change onto a German train. “It was Downay who suggested we should rest. I don’t remember who decided on splitting up. I think Downay and Wald went off and took over two of the sleeping compartments. Kuche said we could share the third. I was feeling tired again. Company wouldn’t bother me. I didn’t know that I was in for another shock.”

  “Kuche?” Herbie asked knowingly as though George had not already led him there.

  “Yes. Heinrich Kuche.”

  34

  FRANCE 1941

  “WHAT WAS ALL THAT about the castle?” Kuche asked almost as soon as they got into the sleeping compartment.

  George said he did not know. “A dream. I was only half awake.”

  Kuche put on a look of disbelief. “Michel Downay has told us you are a seer—that you have looked into the works of Nostradamus and seen more than is written down. Is this another of your own prophecies? The castle and death?”

  George didn’t respond. He really wanted to talk with Michel Downay. Nothing seemed real anymore, what with the stupidity of Downay’s plans and the dream, the quatrains in his head. He felt very lost and lonely—in the centre of a vortex with
a voice calling to him not to panic. Great, suspended disorientation.

  “What castle?” Kuche pressed. “The castle to which we are going?”

  “Possibly.”

  “You’re saying there’s danger at the castle?”

  “I don’t know.” Nor did he—except that there was danger everywhere.

  “Danger because of Downay? You’ve noticed something? Heard him say something? Don’t forget, Georges, that you’re supposed to be keeping an eye on the Herr Doktor for us.”

  There was no cause for concern from that quarter, George lied, then followed through with the fiction about his own supposed powers of divination. He finished by asking the SS man, point-blank, what they meant when they talked about going to Arthur’s Court.

  For the first time, Kuche admitted their destination was Wewelsburg and went on to talk about the place.

  It was Himmler’s dream, he said. Officially a school for SS leaders, in reality it was more. There was a tradition that the castle at Wewelsburg was the bastion mentioned in an old legend which said that a Westphalian castle would be the sole survivor of the next assault from the east.

  “There’s going to be an assault from the east?” George had settled down full-length on one of the bunks. Kuche sat on the other, smoking all the time.

  One day, he replied, it was bound to happen. Two such strongly opposed ideologies could never go on existing side by side. “In the end, if we fail—if the Führer fails—Russia will dominate Europe. That’s what their brand of communism is about. They’re pledged to binding the whole of Europe. If we fail it must come. Maybe not for a hundred years. The weapon you hold—the weapon of prophecy—is very important if we are to win.”

  “So Wewelsburg is to be the last stronghold?”

  “Naturally, if things go wrong.”

  They’ve already gone wrong, George thought, knowing he was being parochial; going on to play at being ingenuous again by asking about the treaty that existed between Germany and Russia.

  Kuche made a schoolboy noise and laughed. He then continued to talk about Wewelsburg. Himmler spent a lot of time there. The castle was a meeting place for his leaders, the SS Obergruppenführer, each of whom had a coat of arms above his own personal chair—the chairs, like those of Arthur’s Court, set around a huge circular table. He asked again what the odd prophecy was all about. George, trying to keep his cover as a seer, explained that one had visions, pictures that were often inexplicable.