by Rachel Lee
“Knowing that the non would not change anything,” Renate said with a faint smile.
“Exactly,” Margarite agreed. “That draft constitution simply collected into a single document the agreements that already existed under separate treaties. Those treaties still exist. The Union still exists. The vote did no harm except to the prestige of our own leaders.”
“I wonder if the vote would be different now that Soult is President of the European Commission.”
“Oui,” Margarite said. “Of course it would. Many of my countrymen are still very parochial. They would gladly support a unified Europe if they were certain France would be always at its head.”
Renate stopped and turned. “Always.” She repeated the world slowly.
“What?” Margarite asked.
“I said the vote might be different because Soult is the European president. Is as in now. Present. But you said ‘If they were certain France would always be at its head.’”
“What are you thinking?”
Renate shook her head, hating the feeling that something was hovering just out of reach. “I’m not sure yet.”
She walked on, smoking absently, barely aware of Margarite or the traffic around her, allowing the swirl of vague thoughts in her mind to congeal into something she could wrap words around. When the thoughts finally began to settle, she and Margarite were at a Straßenbahn station.
“Where are we going?” she asked, realizing she’d been following alongside Margarite while lost in her reverie.
“We’re going to see Frau Doktor UllaViermann again,” Margarite said. “I know where your thoughts are turning.”
“Please tell me,” Renate said with a short laugh. “I need all the help I can get.”
“Should Germany provide the Leitkultur for Europe?” Margarite asked.
Renate shook her head as they boarded the tram. The Nazis had tried to establish a single guiding culture for Europe, an attempt both misguided and evil. “No, of course not. Europe does not need a Leitkultur. I think our many cultures make us stronger, more colorful, and give us more opportunities to learn from each other.”
“You attempted to impose a Leitkultur during the war,” Margarite said.
It sounded less like an accusation than a historical assessment, and a correct assessment at that. Much as part of her was tempted to bristle at the criticism, Renate saw the truth and simply nodded. “Yes, we did. It didn’t work well—for anyone.”
“Oui. And I suspect most Germans would agree with you, Renate. But in France…we are La Grande Nation. We have the finest food, the finest wine, the finest literature, the finest culture.”
Renate was unsure if Margarite was being sarcastic, so she simply nodded in agreement, letting the other woman continue.
“I am not saying that France should rule Europe,” Margarite said. “But I was taught to believe that all of Europe would benefit from being a bit more French in its outlook. I still believe that, in many ways.”
“The arrogant French,” Renate said, trying to soften the words with her tone.
Margarite shrugged. “It is a fair criticism in many ways. We are perhaps more arrogant. Our culture is more centralized than most others in Europe. We were a united country, with a king in Paris, when Germany and Italy and even Britain were still broken into regional city-states. We came to see Paris as the height of culture, the center of the world, the ideal to which all should aspire.”
“Yes, that’s true,” Renate said. The idea she couldn’t quite reach was at last beginning to take shape. “And now we have Soult talking about a unified Europe standing together against the Islamist menace. But he speaks more often in Paris than in Strasbourg, and always in French.”
“Keep going,” Margarite said, nodding, appearing to understand that Renate was reaching for an idea beyond their present conversation.
“Germany was standing in his way, under Herr Vögel. He refused to implement the Muslumschutzgesetze. Then Herr Vögel is killed and the laws are enacted.”
“Convenient for Monsieur Soult, non?” Margarite asked. Now her voice expressed an undercurrent of excitement. “And why is Soult, a retired general with no prior political experience, the President of Europe?”
“Strasbourg,” Renate said. “He was the hero who saved the institutiones européens. He put his own life at risk, carrying the pipe bomb out of the building.”
“Yet he was only barely injured when it exploded in his hands,” Margarite said.
“Ja, ein Wunder.” Yes, a miracle.
“Or so we were told by the press afterward,” Margarite said. “Remember the headlines? ‘Soult saves EU Parliament from bomb attack.’ But we know the truth. Kasmir al-Khalil was paid by the Frankfurt Brotherhood. The same people who paid for Black Christmas. The people with him—the people who were supposed to kill him after the attack—they were Europeans. You said that the early rioting against European Muslims was a Kristallnacht.” Margarite’s words now came so rapidly they nearly tripped over one another. “Renate, if that is true, then what happened in Strasbourg was the equivalent of the Reichstag fire.”
At that, Renate’s thoughts came into clear focus. “Soult knew the bombs were going to be there. He knew the cameras would be there. He knew which bomb to pick up. He knew he wasn’t going to be injured by the blast. He was swept into office on a tide of public adoration, with his Europa Prima Party at the helm. But the violence doesn’t stop. The Paris mosque is burned. Herr Vögel is killed. In case that was not enough to ensure the cooperation of Vögel’s replacement—a man whose election was guaranteed by the support of Soult’s party—two chemical storage tanks are blown up in Hamburg.”
“Which kill only a handful of people but terrify everyone,” Margarite said. “The television experts talk of how much worse it might have been. But it wasn’t.”
The two women stood face to face now, ideas jumping back and forth between them like lightning.
“And of course there are two dead Muslims right at the scene, to ensure the blame is placed correctly.”
Margarite nodded. “But no mention is made of why they were stranded there, with their getaway boat ruined.”
“It was Strasbourg all over again,” Renate said. “A Muslim face on which to pin the blame, but the strings were pulled elsewhere. From the beginning, this has all been…orchestrated.”
“All to justify the Muslim protection zones.”
Renate shook her head. “No. To what end? What do the Muslim protection zones accomplish?”
“Ethnic cleansing,” Margarite said. “Did Milosovic need another reason? It’s the dirty little secret of the post-colonial age. People use the opportunity to settle old scores. It happened in Rwanda. It’s happening still in parts of Africa.”
“Das stimmt,” Renate said. That makes sense. “But it doesn’t fit here. What old scores do we have to settle?”
“Munich. Air France. New York. Bali. Madrid. London. Black Christmas. Prague. Need I go on?”
“Black Christmas, Prague, Strasbourg and Hamburg were staged, though, if we are correct.” Renate paused for a moment, thinking. “Let us assume you are correct. Soult is not simply reminiscent of Hitler. He is consciously following Hitler’s script.”
“Oui.”
“Hitler needed the Jews as die Andersartge.” She searched for an easy translation. “The different ones. The others. Someone to blame for the problems in Germany. Then he could institute new laws to ‘protect’ Germany from that alleged threat. People accepted the new laws because they were applied against die Andersartge. But once the laws were in place, he could turn them against anyone he wanted. And anyone who might have considered resisting remembered what was being done to the Jews. Power through fear, and then through intimidation.”
Margarite nodded. “It makes sense. Soult is using European Muslims the way Hitler used European Jews. And it is even easier for Soult, because Islamic extremists have committed so many heinous acts. People are ready to blame Islam
ic terrorists whenever something awful happens. And all the while, the people grow accustomed to the yoke of a government that, it says, is only trying to protect them. It is like the frog in the pot of warming water.”
Renate bit her lip, angry that she had not seen this pattern before. Many critics had likened Soult to Hitler, and even she had seen some parallels, yet she had missed the purposeful planning within those parallels. They were not mere coincidence nor the inevitable byproduct of a man with ambitions of dictatorship. It was intentional. Soult had searched through history for a pattern to follow in taking over Europe and found one. Then he had begun to follow that pattern, step by step. And so far it was working.
“There’s a missing piece,” Renate said, gnawing her lip as she thought. She turned over the dusty vaults of history she had studied through her life. “Hitler could not have risen to power without Ernst Röhm.”
“He was the leader of the Brownshirts, yes?”
Renate nodded. “The Sturmabteilung. Storm troopers. It was a private militia. Hitler used the SA as a pawn to organize the early violence against the Jews, as well as to intimidate or kill political opponents, without directly involving himself and without having to cut deals with the army generals.”
“So who is Soult’s Ernst Röhm?” Margarite asked.
“Exactly. Who were the men in Strasbourg that day? The men we killed in the park? Who was this Lezeta, the man Lawton said threw the firebomb outside the Centrum Judiciaum? We need to dig into their pasts. If our theory is right, there will be a connection. And that connection will be Soult’s Röhm.”
Margarite hesitated. “You know how insane this sounds?”
Renate nodded grimly. “As insane as the fact that the man who threw the firebomb into that crowd turned out to be a member of the European security service.”
Margarite gasped. Renate could almost see the pieces click into place in her fellow agent’s eyes. Any lingering doubt vanished.
“We must find Soult’s Röhm,” Margarite said. “If we find him, then we will have Soult.”
Béziers, France
1209 C.E.
The old bonne femme worked alone, by the flickering light of candles. Her task was an important one, and she hadn’t much time to complete it. Soon, all too soon, the Catholic army would storm the city. Her days had been long on this earth, and she carried secrets that she had never whispered to another. But those secrets could not be allowed to die with her.
The city of Béziers ought to have been secure against attack, and it would have been, but for the small crystal pyramid carried by the enemy commander, Simon de Montfort. Tomorrow, if her dreams were true, Montfort would turn to Arnaud Amaury, his papal legate, and ask how he could tell the faithful from the heretics once he entered the city.
“Kill them all. God will know his own,” the legate would reply.
Montfort would lift the crystal pyramid, and the guards at the city gates would begin to suffocate even as they drew air into their lungs. Their deaths would horrify those who witnessed them. With that, the same faint trumpet sound that had shattered the walls at Jericho would shatter them here. Then the massacre would be underway.
The bonne femme had never seen the pyramid. Her ancestors had once possessed a similar pyramid, over a thousand years ago, but the legends told that it had been carried across the sea, far from the hands of those who would use it to destroy. Perhaps it might be found someday. Perhaps not. As she thought about what was to happen on the morrow, she wished that the four pyramids had never been handed down to man. For man was not ready for such power. Yes, that power could be used for great good. But it could also be used for great evil, and it was the nature of man to find evil long before he even thought to search for good.
She had to confess a certain excitement. For thirty years she had searched the sinuous fibers of time and space for the pyramid that was now less than a league beyond the city wall. Her search had been shaped and guided by the gardiens rêveurs. She called them “dream guardians,” for never had she met any of them face to face. Yet they had shaped her life far more than the other bons chrétiens—good Christians—with whom she lived. Her life had been committed to both causes—to creating a purer society in the model of the Magdalene, and to learning and preserving the ancient secrets of the gardiens. If she had given more to the latter than to the former, it was because they were fewer in number and had greater need of her efforts.
Yet on this night, the two causes stood in stark opposition. She could speak to the city commanders with authority, assemble a raiding force to sally out beyond the walls, and perhaps even seize the pyramid before Montfort could lift it to destroy her city. In so doing, she could save her own life and the lives of her fellow citizens. But she would reveal a secret she had sworn to keep unto death and perhaps loose on the world a greater horror than the one she prevented. For while her companions in the city were indeed bons chrétiens, she had no doubt that they could be as perverted by power as the men in Rome.
And so she chose fidelity to the gardiens. In time, a just and loving God might forgive her choice, for surely He could see the greater good in what she must do. She must preserve these secrets, weaving them subtly into a diary that perhaps no one would ever read, although she had been assured that, in the fullness of time, there would come one who would read her words and grasp their significance.
She filled the pages with riddles and allegory, knowing that to most they would be only the ravings and fears of an old woman who knew that her death was at hand. Only the one who knew what to look for would see through those riddles to the truth she was passing on. And he would need that truth, in his own time, to shatter an evil greater than the one that stood outside her city.
The candles were guttering by the time she finished. Already the sky lightened in the east. It would be her last sunrise, and she stepped out onto her roof to watch it. It was a cruel sunrise, painted in shades of blood and gold and flickers of bile. And yet it was what was given her, and she felt an obligation to find beauty in it.
She heard the sound of a horn, at once distant and as close as if it were echoing in her mind. She turned to look at the city gates, where already the guards were clutching their throats, sinking to their knees, shuddering as muscles clenched in a pain that would be imprinted onto her last thoughts. This was the power of the pyramid she had sought for so long.
She was happy that she had never possessed it.
Now the cries of men and the tramping of feet replaced the sound of the horn, the gates already quivering before the impact of the rams that shattered them as if they were glass. The men came through like a horde of locusts under the banner of the cross, swords held high and men hewn low, the streets slick with blood and bile, the men’s eyes set on the gold.
The gold that they would never see, for it lay in the riddles of her diary.
16
Toulouse, France
Present Day
S teve Lorenzo’s breath caught in his throat as he read the words. He must not have knocked enough of the rust off his Latin and French in these past days. Surely he must be mistaken. And yet, even after double-checking his grammar, there seemed to be no other way to read it.
The final pages of the diary described dreams, written in riddles, and on his first pass he had assumed they were nothing but the delusions of an old, dying woman. But the words were there: gardiens, pyramide en crystal. And the power displayed in the woman’s dreams was the same power that had felled Karl Vögel in Berlin. It could not be mere coincidence.
“Padre,” Miguel whispered, excitement and concern in his eyes. “You have found something.”
Steve nodded slowly.
“You are not happy.”
“It was true,” Steve said, his voice hollow.
“What was true?” Miguel asked.
“I can’t believe he said the words, and yet he must have,” Steve said. “‘Kill them all. God will know his own.’ The Church has always maintained that A
rnaud Amaury never uttered those words, although they were documented by contemporary witnesses. Yet here they are, in the dream of a woman who died on that day. I am…ashamed.”
Miguel put a hand on Steve’s arm. “Padre, you knew the history of the Church is not pure. The Church is made up of people, and people will do evil as well as good. We can only hope that the Church learns from her mistakes. And I think she has.”
“Has she?” Steve asked. “If this account is true, and I feel in my heart that it is, the Church once possessed a jeweled pyramid like the one we seek. And it was used for a terrible evil. Now the Church asks me to find another. Do you believe they would use it only for good now?”
Miguel seemed to ponder the question for a long time before answering, and Steve changed the question. “Have we become better, Miguel, in eight centuries? Is mankind more prone to do good and shun evil? Are we more enlightened than the people who came out of caves to slay the people in the next village? Or are we simply more efficient, more able to rationalize our evil as good?”
“You already know that answer, Padre,” Miguel said.
And he did know the answer. But that did not mean he had to like it. Steve Lorenzo had committed his life to his Church. His Church. For all its foibles, he firmly believed that his faith was not only a means to salvation and eternal life, but the best way of creating a heaven on this earth. Yes, people made mistakes. Sometimes, Steve was willing to concede, those people wore cardinatial red or even the white vestments of the Pope. But the central core of his faith—the miracle of the Eucharist and Christ’s message of love—was beyond question.
Yet it was obvious that the pyramid was a power not even his Church should possess. Nor was he at all certain that the Guardians—of whom he still knew far too little—were fit to control such a power. In the end, it came down to an issue of personal conscience.
Steve nodded. “Yes. Someone has already shown us that, in Berlin. We must find that codex, Miguel. And we must hide it somewhere so that no man will ever touch it again. For so long as man has the power to do evil…”