The Sixth Key

by Adriana Koulias

  ‘Let me see if I understand you,’ La Dame said. ‘You, my friend, are going to attempt to solve a puzzle in the discomfort of a car with daylight dwindling and temperatures dropping; a puzzle that no one has solved in fifty years, even though they may have sat in comfortable rooms, in front of fires with entire libraries at their disposal? By the time you work out the frequency of the distribution of the letters in the cipher, we’ll all be dead.’

  ‘I know, so we have to work out the master word and fast.’

  ‘If only Arthur Conan Doyle were here, now there’s a genius,’ La Dame said. ‘Remember “The Adventure of the Dancing Men”, Rahn? A cipher of stickmen, each representing a letter of the alphabet – quite brilliant!’

  Rahn looked up from his calculations, feeling querulous. ‘I still think Poe’s “The Gold-Bug” is by far the finest piece of fictional literature written on the subject.’

  ‘Totally improbable, dear Rahn.’ La Dame shook his head. ‘A gold bug that when suspended through a skull, points the way to treasure – ha ha!’

  Rahn narrowed his eyes. ‘It was quite scientific and you obviously missed the point.’

  Eva cut in, with a degree of impatience: ‘Are you going to argue all afternoon, or are you going to solve the cipher?’

  ‘All right,’ Rahn said. ‘Look . . . Fire may not be the word but I think it’s a clue. Let me think, there is a fire trial in all Mithraic initiations, a candidate dies to the earth and is born to the spirit, which is fire. This was illustrated in the mysteries by jumping over fire, or running through a fire-lit forest, or over hot coals . . . fire . . . fire . . . fire . . . death . . .’

  ‘But as I’ve already pointed out to you, the word fire was used by Saunière, and it didn’t work,’ La Dame repeated.

  ‘What about the Pentecostal fire?’ Eva offered.

  ‘Or the fire of Hell and eternal damnation?’ La Dame threw in.

  ‘Wait a minute – death, Hell or Purgatory! That makes sense. Purgatory,’ Rahn said, excited. He took the piece of paper with the list and a pencil he had in his pocket and began to write purgatoire, over and over without a break between words.

  ‘The one good part of that story about the bug, mademoiselle,’ La Dame said, ‘was the bit about the chemical preparations . . .’

  Meanwhile, Rahn drew a Vigenère Square.

  ‘There are preparations,’ La Dame went on, ‘that are visible only when subjected to the action of fire. Remember, Rahn?’

  ‘What?’ Rahn said, annoyed at his interruption.

  ‘The gold bug, dear fellow – the man draws the shape of a gold bug that he finds on an old parchment and later, when the parchment is placed near a fire, it reveals an invisible writing. You see, mademoiselle, the writing only appeared when the parchment was heated—’

  ‘What did you say?’ Rahn paused to look at La Dame, utterly taken aback. ‘The gold bug!’

  ‘The invisible ink – remember?’ La Dame said.

  Rahn blinked this in. ‘It couldn’t be that simple, surely? Give me your matches, La Dame!’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I’m going to try it,’ Rahn said, taking the packet from his hands.

  ‘You’re not serious!’ La Dame laughed. ‘That was just a tale.’

  ‘It’s worth a shot.’

  ‘If you burn the parchment, that will be the end of it,’ Eva warned.

  Rahn lit the match, held it a long way from the parchment and passed it back and forth, allowing the flame to warm it only slightly. Something miraculously appeared before their eyes – an alchemical transformation.

  XOTDQTKWZIGSDGZPQUCAESJ

  XSJWOFVLPSGGGGJAZ

  MQTGYDCAXSXSDRZWZRLVQAFFPSDAPW

  MITMZSKWZHRLUCEHAIIMZPVJSSI

  POEKXSXDUGVVQXLKFSVLXSSWLI

  PSIJUSIWXSMGUZVVQZRVQSJKQQYWDQYWL

  Four letters turned red. ‘SROM–’ Rahn said. ‘I give up! What does that mean?’

  La Dame shrugged, still puffing on his cigar, making the inside of the car feel like a chimney.

  ‘You can’t see the tree for the leaves, Rahn!’ Eva said. ‘Look at it!’

  Rahn sat up. ‘You have to read it backwards – like the rebus, like in Journey to the Centre of the Earth . . . it’s MORS – in Latin, that means death! The master word is death and fire reveals it!’

  La Dame nodded and slapped both hands together. ‘You see, I told you! It may be, dear Rahn, that you are not luminous, as Sherlock Holmes once said to Watson, but a conductor of light. Some people, without possessing genius, have a remarkable power of stimulating it.’

  Rahn noted Eva’s smile and it did not amuse him. ‘Let’s not have a party, La Dame, until we know it works.’

  He set about writing the master word over and over in a table.

  He then marked the horizontal lines on the Vigenère Square corresponding to the master word. Taking the first letter of the ciphertext, E, he picked out the letter E along the horizontal ‘M’ line in the Vigenère Square. From this point he read the corresponding letter at the top line of the square and found the letter S.

  He worked through the ciphertext until he had deciphered the whole line.

  ‘Six churches hold the key . . .’

  He continued with the second line:

  XSJWOFVLPSGGGGJAZ

  ‘The secret of Poussin . . .’

  And the third line:

  MQTGYDCAXSXSDRZWZRLVQAFFPSDAPW

  ‘Completes the demon guardian of midday . . .’

  He soon had the entire six lines deciphered in French:

  La clef tenu pars six eglises

  Le secret de Poussin

  Accompli le gardien du démon de midi

  Aucune tentation pour un berger

  Dans l’église de juste et le bezu –

  Derrière le voile de la Déesse cherchez

  Six churches hold the key

  The secret of Poussin

  Completes the demon guardian of midday

  No temptation for one shepherd

  In the church of Just et le Bézu

  Search beneath the veil of the Goddess

  Rahn’s face broke out in a wide smile of disbelief. ‘We’ve done it!’ he said. ‘Look, the secret is hidden in six churches, so that no one priest would be tempted. Now I know why Cros and Saunière both had reproductions of Poussin’s painting Les Bergers d’Arcardie. From memory there’s a tomb and some shepherds and the goddess Venus. And there’s a famous inscription, but I can’t remember what it is.’

  ‘Do you think Poussin belonged to one of the brotherhoods?’ La Dame asked, blowing smoke rings in the already choked air of the Peugeot.

  Rahn considered it. ‘I don’t know. Let’s see what we know now: it looks like there are six churches and each one must have one part of the secret, whatever it is, and when one brings all the parts together one can complete the demon of midday, that is, one can find the treasure of the Cathars that completes Le Serpent Rouge. At least, this is my guess! So, the first church is Just-et-le-Bézu, where’s that?’

  ‘Saint-Just-et-le-Bézu . . . I know where that is,’ said Eva.

  ‘Well let us go then, we’re losing light!’ Rahn was single-minded and absorbed.

  But La Dame must have seen something, because he said, ‘Hold on!’

  What happened next was so sudden that Rahn didn’t so much think as act by instinct. He slipped the parchment and the note with his calculations into his left shoe a moment before La Dame’s door was flung open and he was pulled savagely out of the car. In a blink Rahn himself was being dragged out and thrown onto the icy ground next to his friend.

  41

  Three’s Company and Five’s a Crowd

  ‘You look frightened out of your wits what’s the matter?’

  ‘A great misfortune I fear.’

  Emile Gaboriau, The Clique of Gold

  Rahn was sitting beside La Dame, who was nursing a broken lip. He looked up and saw a man standing over them, pointing a gun in their di
rection. Meanwhile, a second man was holding Eva, a gun to her temple.

  She struggled. ‘Let go of me, you brute!’

  But the man’s oily face was a mask. Obviously he wasn’t the principal of the two because the other man was the first to speak. He was impeccably dressed in a double-breasted suit, and from this angle Rahn could see the sky reflected in his shoes.

  ‘You’re a difficult man to catch, Monsieur Rahn,’ he said, a wry smile wrinkling his smooth face.

  ‘You’re Russians,’ Rahn said, recognising the accent.

  The grin widened. ‘Serbians, actually.’

  ‘Who are you?’ Rahn was indignant.

  The man leaning over Rahn drew his face into a concerned frown and shook his head. ‘We are friends . . . and we are concerned for Deodat, just as you are.’

  Trust no one!

  ‘What do you know about Deodat?’ Rahn said.

  The man raised a hand to stop him. ‘We were there at the house, but we didn’t see you. Perhaps you were hiding?’

  ‘Hiding! I don’t like what you’re suggesting! I was bashed unconscious and left in the trunk of the Tourster – I’m lucky to be alive.’

  There was a momentary illumination and the man whistled. ‘So, that’s what that man was doing in the barn? He was going to set fire to it with you in it! You would have suffered the fate of your heroes, a purifying death in the flames . . .’ He smiled a crooked smile. ‘Had it not been for your friend Dragomir.’

  Dragomir nodded his head in appreciation of his superior’s acknowledgement.

  Rahn said, ‘Do you know who took Deodat?’

  ‘I believe he is being held by some very ruthless people.’ The man squatted, light on his toes, and pushed the hat back from his sizeable forehead with his gun, in a poor imitation of Humphrey Bogart in Bullets or Ballots.

  Rahn felt a welling up of anger and impatience and disdain and he made to get up but the man aimed the gun at a place between his eyes and calmly said, ‘I would like you to remain seated, if you please. Think of it this way, if you die . . . what will become of your friend? This will only take a moment.’ He considered his next words as if he were choosing from a menu in which every item sounded as good as the next. Finally he settled on: ‘The people who have your friend may be encouraging you to find—’ he smiled again, ‘—let us call it, a dangerous and very powerful article. Perhaps Deodat is their insurance that you will do so with haste, am I right?’

  Rahn was shaking from anger and from cold and exasperation because the following words were indeed the truth, ‘I don’t know!’

  The man’s smile turned sympathetic, an old friend commiserating with another. Rahn didn’t know if a compassionate villain made things better or worse. ‘Now as far as who has your friend,’ the man continued, ‘if it is the penitents, those Satan-worshipping Jesuits, then his soul is already lost; if it is Association Angelica . . . well, one cannot even imagine what those war-mongering royalists are doing to him.’ He sighed, and scratched his cheek with the barrel of the gun pensively. It was the natural gesture of an artisan’s familiarity with his tool of trade and it made Rahn nervous. ‘If either of those brotherhoods have him – trust me, if he is not already dead, he will be praying for it. People like that can make death seem like a holiday.’ He laughed, and turned around to his fellow, who made a smirk and a huff.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘if the penitents have him, they are saving him for midnight tonight, the beginning of The Day of the Dead. They’ll use him in their ritual, that is, the one they hope they can enact when you find them the article. They will gut him while still alive, on a black onyx table with a knife shaped like an angled snake. That’s the usual fare, isn’t it, Dragomir?’

  The man grunted, acknowledging the fair estimation.

  ‘Dragomir should know – they cut out his tongue! That is what they usually do for minor infringements.’

  Rahn’s eyes widened.

  The other man nodded sadly.

  ‘On the other hand, if it is Association Angelica that has him, then there is no problem.’

  Rahn raised a brow. Was there a hope?

  ‘No problem,’ the man continued, ‘because he would be dead by now. So you see, handing over your findings to either of these groups, in the hopes of saving your friend’s life, would not be profitable.’

  Rahn felt a grey cloud overtake him and he was terrified he was going to faint. He bit his lip. ‘Who are you from – AGLA?’

  The man looked surprised and there was more than a little admiration on his face. ‘You’ve worked out something about AGLA? That is good! That priest at Rennes-le-Château was trying to steer you away from himself because he belonged to the penitents. He is the one who desecrated that church with the ancient symbol.’

  ‘I knew it!’ Rahn said, and then a thought occurred to him, ‘Belonged?’

  The man looked down a moment, as if trying to broach what must be delicate matters. ‘Poor Abbé Lucien is at this moment hanging by one leg upside down from a tree near Couiza. His hands dangle downwards and he has one leg bent backwards and tied behind him. After all, he is a betrayer of secrets.’

  ‘You killed him?’ Rahn screeched.

  The other raised his brows, and the look was of mild incredulity. ‘Me . . . personally?’ He shook his head. No.’

  Rahn remembered how Abbé Gélis’s carcass had also been left in the shape of the hanged man tarot card – along with a calling card from Association Angelica. ‘Was it AA?’

  The man nodded, expelling his breath in a whistle again and in a conspiratorial tone whispered, ‘But they are the least of your problems. You should be worried about AGLA. They are not far behind you.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because we are watching them, watching you. It is only a matter of time before they catch you and then . . . well . . .’ He smiled, as if this itself said all there was to say.

  Rahn could hear the sound of a bird cawing, otherwise all was still. The fog was moving over the ground with stealth. He wondered if he was about to die here in this godforsaken place.

  ‘Now . . . all you need do to rid yourself of this problem is to hand me the parchment.’

  ‘What parchment?’

  ‘The one in your shoe, the one Madame Dénarnaud gave you.’

  La Dame said, ‘Why should he trust you?’

  The man’s face was full of surprise, as if he had forgotten La Dame and would now put this terrible rudeness to rights. ‘Professor! I’m so glad you have brought up the matter of trust because I—’

  A shot rang out. It sounded more like a cannon in the stillness. Dragomir fell and began to cough, gasping to find any small puff of air as if he were choking. Blood was oozing from his mouth and from a hole in his neck. The sympathetic man with the gun had turned around and was crouching, looking in the direction from which the shot had been fired. Meanwhile Rahn took hold of a sizeable rock and was about to hit him over the head when another shot rang out, hitting the crouching Serbian in the belly. The man fell and pointed to La Dame but could say nothing. Rahn had no idea who had shot them and he didn’t care.

  There was a mad scramble to get into the Peugeot.

  Rahn took the wheel and such was his agitation that he put his foot down on the accelerator with a force that sent the car skidding over the road.

  Eva said calmly, ‘I hear a siren!’

  Rahn didn’t know what to do, so he just kept driving. ‘Does anyone know how to get to Saint-Just-et-le-Bézu?’ he cried, at the end of his tether.

  ‘Just continue on this road north and turn right at the turn-off to Granes!’ Eva pointed.

  He looked in the rear-view mirror: La Dame was touching at his lip to see if it was still bleeding. He was paler than his beard – not even while potholing had he looked more worse-for-wear.

  ‘What happened back there, Rahn?’ La Dame said, with a touch of melodrama.

  ‘I don’t know! Someone was either helping us or trying to kill u
s, take your pick.’

  ‘Do you think the Serbian was right about Deodat?’ Eva said.

  ‘I can’t think about that right now. We have the clue, let’s use it and see where it leads us.’

  ‘Didn’t you hear what that man said?’ La Dame pointed out, testily. ‘They’re probably watching us right now!’

  ‘So what do you want to do, La Dame, sit here and wait till they kill us? So far no one else has any idea about what’s on the parchment. That’s our only insurance.’

  ‘I don’t agree,’ La Dame protested. ‘Once we find what we’re, or rather, they’re after, what’s to stop them from killing us anyway?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Rahn said laconically.

  ‘My God, I need a brandy!’ La Dame mourned, and all conversation ended for a time.

  They arrived at the dismal little village of Saint-Just-etle-Bézu in the dark. It was deathly cold and the medieval township at the foot of the mountain was turning in on itself. The fog obscured the way to the cheerless church; its entrance was in the street. A painted cross over the arched doorway told them they were in the right place. Luckily, they found the oak door ajar and stepped inside, where it was no warmer. Rahn felt the old familiar panic rise to his throat. His mouth was a dry, barren wasteland, his knees were broken hinges and his breathing was an engine running out of steam. He sneezed then, occasioning a cry from the sacristan who was sweeping the church. The old man’s emaciated form, standing beneath the blue-vaulted ceiling, was lit by the dancing luminance of the altar candles.

  ‘Who are you?’ he cried. ‘The church is closed!’

  ‘We’re terribly sorry, old friend,’ La Dame stepped forward with a casual manner. ‘We didn’t mean to frighten you. We were just passing and stopped for a moment to take a look in your beautiful church. We’re looking for . . . a veil – the veil of a goddess to be exact. Do you happen to know where we might find it? There was something about it in a magazine and we just had to see it.’

  ‘A veil? A goddess, you say?’ The squinting man considered this and said, with a modicum of suspicion in his voice, ‘At this ungodly hour? City people! Why not come back tomorrow? It will be All Soul’s Day, and the priest is coming again.’ He made a sweep of the hand. ‘I’m busy getting the church ready, as you can see.’