by C. M. Palov
‘Speaking of which –’ Craning his neck, Finn glanced at several of the hand-printed tags affixed to the front of the shelves. ‘Let’s see, we got The Illuminati, The Knights Templar and something called The Merovingian Bloodline.’ He turned towards a second bookcase. ‘Ooh, here’s a good section: Extraterrestrials, Alien Abductions and, not to be excluded, The Faery People.’ Smirking, he glanced at his companion. ‘We’re talking conspiracy theorist of the first magnitude. What do you wanna bet Aisquith wears an aluminium foil shower cap?’
Kate shot him a chiding frown.
Point made, Finn walked over to the front door and pulled back the curtain that hung at the glass. Standing stock still, he perused the street in front of the bookstore. Little more than a single lane, the jumble of old-fashioned shops looked like something out of another time period.
While he had no proof, he had a gut feeling that Dixie and Johnny K’s murderer was here in Paris. Somewhere. And I aim to find him.
‘So long as the authorities don’t get a hold of my ass,’ Finn muttered under his breath, able to hear a police siren bleating in the near distance. Between the flight crew at Dover and the airmen at Mildenhall, too many people knew that he’d left the US in a very unusual manner. Some people would do anything for a buck. And that included ratting out ‘a buddy’.
We can’t blow this joint fast enough.
Finn let the curtain fall back into place. Turning on his heel, he walked back to the niche.
‘A cup of tea. A little chitchat. Then we’re getting the hell out of here,’ he said to Kate in a lowered voice. ‘And don’t volunteer anything. Just follow my lead, okay?’
‘Whatever,’ she retorted testily, beginning to look and sound like a cranky kid on a long trip.
She wasn’t the only cranky one. From the get-go, Finn had been opposed to bringing Kate Bauer to Paris. She was a distraction, plain and simple. But he knew that if he’d left her in DC, she’d likely wind up dead.
For better or worse, sickness and in health, she’d become a 115-pound anchor around his neck.
21
Musée de la Vie Romantique, Paris
Ivo Uhlemann slowly ascended the stone steps, his circumspect gait that of a white-haired septuagenarian. Physical debility a character flaw in a man of any age, he refused to use a cane. And he would rather put a bullet through his own skull than be pushed about in a wheelchair, his infirmities on public display.
Pausing at the top of the stone steps, he savoured the delicate scent of the pink roses that clung to the wrought-iron railing. The Museum of the Romantic Life boasted a magnificent garden and charming courtyard. Housed in the former residence of Ary Scheffer, a nineteenth-century artist, the mansion in its heyday had hosted the likes of Chopin, Dickens and Delacroix. He was there on that warm August morning to view the museum’s new exhibition of drawings and watercolours from ‘The Golden Age of the German Romantic Artists’.
No sooner did Ivo step through the museum’s entryway than a pixie of a man rushed forward.
‘Bonjour, Monsieur le Docteur!’ Grasping Ivo by the shoulder, the museum curator warmly greeted him with the salutary cheek kiss. ‘Such a pleasure! As always!’
Ivo suffered the faire le bise with a tight-lipped smile. It’d taken years of practice to train himself not to flinch at the overly familiar French greeting.
Taking a backward step, politely distancing himself from the other man, he said, ‘I am greatly looking forward to viewing the new exhibition.’
‘The French poet Nerval rightly claimed that Germany’s Romantic artists were “a mother to us all”,’ the curator effused. With an ingratiating smile, he proffered a slim pamphlet. ‘For your edification, I have prepared a pamphlet that contains the pertinent details for each work. It is my sincere hope that you enjoy the exhibition, Monsieur le Docteur.’
Ivo took the flyer. A generous donor, he’d earned the privilege of privately viewing the exhibition before the museum opened later that morning to the general public. Eager to see the show, he entered the adjacent hall.
Approaching the first framed piece of artwork, enthusiasm fizzled into disappointment at seeing a pen-and-ink drawing of a Gothic cathedral.
Bah! Religion. The great destroyer of all that is good and heroic.
Indeed, he’d often contended that one of the Führer’s mistakes was not outlawing the Christian churches in Germany. A global pestilence, Christianity appealed only to those who were too craven to forge their own destiny. Although, to be fair, Christianity was no less abhorrent than the occultism that infected the Reich’s high command, the two being the flipside of the same tarnished coin.
His father, in his letters, had bitterly complained about the farcical ‘rituals’ that took place at Wewelsburg Castle, the official headquarters of the SS. According to his father’s firsthand accounts, incense was burned, Tarot cards were read, Sufi Muslim rites were enacted and astrological charts were carefully scrutinized. A travesty, all of it. One that deeply disturbed the original members of the Seven. Scholars and scientists, they secretly eschewed the patently absurd beliefs of the German high command.
To a man, the original Seven contended that occultism and Christianity were the twin cancers that destroyed the Reich from within.
Searching for a specific piece of art, Ivo impatiently made his way into the next room.
Ah, there it was. The Schneegruben Massif Seen From the Hainbergshöh.
A watercolour by Caspar David Friedrich, the most famous of the German Romantic artists, it was a stunning landscape that depicted a flat plain rimmed with plush clumps of shrub and bordered by towering mountains in the distance. Rendered with a poetic sensitivity, the work didn’t rely on the false promise of Christian iconography.
‘Such a sublime pleasure,’ he whispered, the watercolour an unabashed celebration of the Fatherland.
Not surprisingly, it put Ivo in mind of the countryside in the Weserbergland where he spent the autumn of 1944 with boys from the Hitler-Jugend harvesting sugar beets. As part of the Blood and Soil programme, each year millions of children were sent to Germany’s rural hinterlands to toil on large farms. Since the vast majority of the country’s able-bodied adult males were away fighting, the Hitler Youth’s labour was essential to the war effort.
The Blood and Soil programme not only cultivated the virtues of rural living, but sought to preserve Germany’s farming communities from the deadening onslaught of industrialization. Unlike factory work, there was meaning and purpose to working the land. It engendered a sense of self-sufficiency that enabled one to resist the empty lure of materialism. More importantly, the programme recognized that the Germanic spirit was created by the pure blood that they collectively shared as a nation. And as a People. Blood is what nurtured love of the Fatherland. What better way to express that love than tending to the land?
Lost in the memories of that long-ago autumn, Ivo recalled how, in the evenings, after the boys had eaten their thick peasant sandwiches smeared with zuckerrüben sirup, they practised their military drills while they recited proverbs from the Hávámal, the famous poem in the Old Norse Edda. To this day, he could still recite the stanzas that recounted how Wotan, the great Proto-Germanic god, sacrificed himself by thrusting a spear into his own side as he ‘hung on a windy tree nine long nights’. Unlike the effeminate Christian saviour, Wotan was a heroic god who refused to wait passively for his enemies to nail him to a cross. Instead, Wotan decided for himself the hour of his death.
Suddenly hearing a heavy footfall, Ivo peered over his shoulder, annoyed that his driver, Dolf Reinhardt, had entered the salon. The tailored black suit with its matching chauffeur’s cap did little to disguise the man’s massive build and brutish features. In the crook of his right arm, Dolf awkwardly clutched a miniature Schnauzer.
‘Herr Doktor, forgive me for interrupting,’ he said with a diffident nod. ‘But there’s been a new development.’
Ivo listened intently to the update.
Little did the commando know that this Philistine warrior was insuperable.
Two days ago, to the Seven’s astonished relief, they had learned that Finnegan McGuire had stolen Fabius Jutier’s laptop computer from the French Embassy. An ill-considered stratagem as the embedded GPS microchip had enabled them to track the American’s every move.
If they could get their hands on the Montségur Medallion in the next few hours, they would still have three days to decipher the map and find the Lapis Exillis. It could be done.
It had to be done.
‘I require the services of the Dark Angel.’ Still smiling, Ivo smoothed a withered hand over the Schnauzer’s salt-and-pepper beard. ‘Wolfgang seems anxious. A walk in the Tuileries will do us both good.’
22
Shirt buttoned, shoes donned and red hair pulled into a ponytail, Aisquith entered the book nook carrying a silver tray.
Finn assumed the make-over was for Kate’s benefit, not his.
‘The alchemist Paracelsus claimed that lemon balm tea was the elixir of life. Although given that he only lived to the age of forty-eight, I wouldn’t put much stock in the great alchemist’s lofty claim,’ the Brit said as he deposited the tray on an ornately carved Chinese tea table. Like everything else in the joint, it was covered in a dusty veneer.
Making herself at home, Kate tucked a leg under her hip. ‘I once read that Paracelsus was the first to discover that goiters were caused by toxic levels of lead in the drinking water. A remarkable discovery for the early sixteenth century,’ she added, clearly enthralled by the obscure topic.
Their host handed each of them a dainty cup and saucer.
Having no friggin’ idea who Paracelsus was, Finn raised the cup to his nose and took a wary sniff. Unable to detect anything other than a faint lemony scent, he took a tentative sip.
‘I hope the scones aren’t too stale,’ the other man said as he extended a chipped plate in Kate’s direction.
‘Yummy. Cherry scones are my favourite. And I don’t care if they are stale.’
Smiling, Aisquith peered over his shoulder at Finn. ‘I vividly recall the first time that I set eyes on our fair Kate at Oxford. She was sitting in a medieval oriel reading Spinoza, backlit by the morning sun streaming through three-hundred-year-old glass.’
Stunned by the jaw-dropper, Finn shot Kate a questioning glance. ‘You went to Oxford?’
‘I was a, um, Rhodes Scholar,’ she demurred. As though embarrassed by the admission, she smiled nervously.
A Rhodes Scholar? Hell, he knew she was smart. He just didn’t know she was that smart. For some crazy-ass reason, it upped her appeal another notch. That he was even remotely attracted to Kate Bauer bothered the hell out of him. He was on a mission. He did not need a distraction. But there it was, all curled up in a wingback chair, nibbling on a cherry scone. The fact that he was attracted to Kate made him dislike Aisquith even more. Once upon a time, the two of them had had an intimate relationship. Something he only got to dream about.
Cup, saucer and scone in hand, Aisquith planted his ass in the vacant wingback. ‘So, how may I be of assistance?’
‘Actually, Kate and I are, um –’ In need of a quick lie, Finn glanced around the dusty shop. Inspired, he said ‘– collaborating on a book.’
One red brow noticeably lifted.
‘Yes! That’s right!’ Kate exclaimed, exuberantly latching on to the lie. ‘And during the course of our research we discovered some interesting symbols that we hoped you might be able to decipher.’
‘Indeed?’ The brow lowered as blood-shot eyes narrowed suspiciously. While he looked like a skewered shit kebob, the Brit didn’t miss a beat.
Stepping over to the tea table, Finn snagged a cherry scone off the plate. ‘According to my writing partner, you’re the go-to guy when it comes to symbols and myths. A real Oxford don.’
‘Ghosts of genius past,’ Aisquith mumbled as he took a sip of his tea. ‘And what, may I ask, is the topic of this joint literary effort?’
‘Like Kate said, we’re still in the research phase,’ Finn hedged. As he spoke, he shoved a hand into his left trouser pocket, retrieving his phone. Out of habit he always kept his cash and cell phone on the left side, freeing his right hand to reach for a weapon. Or to be used as a weapon if need be. ‘This is a digital photo of a tattoo. Don’t ask the name of the tattoo model; we never did get a positive ID.’ He passed his cell phone to Aisquith.
‘Mmmm … interesting. This tattoo is a Nazi design rooted in the esoteric,’ Aisquith intoned, setting the cell phone on top of the Chinese table. ‘While I get the odd request for books on esoteric Nazism, I refuse to stock them. Matter of principle. My grandfather was one of the prosecuting attorneys at Nuremberg.’
Finn spared a quick glance at his ‘writing partner’. Back in DC, Kate had made the same claim about the tattoo, thinking it might have something to do with the esoteric. He thought now what he did then – big crock of shit.
‘The horrific particulars of Nazi history are familiar enough,’ Aisquith continued. ‘In the aftermath of the First World War, the National Socialist Party rose to power, an embittered firebrand by the name of Adolf Hitler at the helm. The mustachioed Führer envisioned a new world order ruled by the Aryan master race. His egomaniacal ambitions led to the invasion of Europe; his demonization of the Jews led to the terrors of the Holocaust.’ As he spoke, Aisquith reached for the teapot and freshened Kate’s cup. ‘When all was said and done, the death toll stood at sixty million. But there is another chapter to the story, one frequently absent from the history books. And that pertains to the little-known fact that a good many of the Nazi top command were adherents of the occult.’
Hearing the word ‘occult’, Finn barely repressed a snicker. Time to roll out the aluminium foil.
‘Several years ago, I saw a documentary that claimed Hitler used a Foucault pendulum suspended over large maps to assist with military planning.’ Kate raised the delicate teacup to her lips and took a ladylike sip.
‘No surprise there. Hitler, Göring, Goebbels, Hess, they all had an obsession with the occult. Although none in the top echelon was as deeply devoted to the arcane mysteries as Heinrich Himmler.’ Holding the teapot aloft, Aisquith inclined his head in Finn’s direction.
Unimpressed with Paracelsus’s secret elixir, Finn shook his head, declining the refill. ‘You’re talking about the bespectacled dude who headed up the SS, right?’
One side of Aisquith’s mouth quirked upward in a blatant sneer. ‘Yes, that dude.’ Put-down issued, he turned his attention back to Kate, the sneer instantly reworking itself into a congenial smile. ‘The SS, as you undoubtedly know, was an elite organization within the Nazi hierarchy responsible for the internal security of the entire regime.’
‘And what the hell does any of this have to do with the tattoo?’ Finn snarled, wishing the Brit would stay on point.
‘As these symbols so vividly illustrate, Nazism is far more than a political doctrine.’ Aisquith picked up the cell phone from the table. ‘This symbol that dominates the centre of the design is unique to German occult beliefs. Known as the Schwarze Sonne, or Black Sun, it’s a sun wheel comprised of zigzag sig-runes. While it harkens to the star Sirius, it’s a mysterious orb often described in the esoteric literature as a prima materia mass.’
‘How utterly fascinating.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Glad we got that settled,’ Finn muttered under his breath. ‘What about the skull? Nothing mystical about that bad boy.’
‘On the contrary,’ Aisquith retorted. ‘The German totenkoph, or Death Head as it’s more familiarly called in English, connotes the willingness to lay down one’s life to defend one’s comrade. The totenkoph insignia always adorned the uniforms of the Schutzstaffel.’
‘Just so I don’t feel like I wa
ndered into a German language class, can we stick with the mother tongue?’
‘As you like,’ the other man replied, oblivious to the fact that he was annoying as hell.
‘So this tattoo has something to do with the SS. Is that right?’ Kate enquired.
‘The Ahnenerbe, to be precise; both the Death Head and the Black Sun emblem are significant to that organization. I suspect that this tattoo may have originally designated membership. That said, the individual in the digital photograph is obviously a twenty-first-century Nazi devotee.’ Aisquith turned his head, pointedly looking in Finn direction. ‘A personal acquaintance of yours?’
Finn’s back straightened, his hands involuntarily clenching into fists. About to ask the Brit if he wanted to take it outside, Kate beat him to the punch.
‘What’s the Ahnenerbe?’ she asked. Brows drawn together, her gaze dropped to Finn’s balled fists.
Recognizing that grey-blue gaze as a silent entreaty, Finn uncurled his hands.
‘All in all, the Ahnenerbe is a rather fascinating group,’ Aisquith replied. ‘After the Nazis seized power in 1933, Himmler subdivided the SS into numerous sections. The Ahnenerbe was the academic and scientific branch of the SS. What we today would refer to as a think tank. Unfortunately, the Ahnenerbe’s vast archive disappeared in the waning days of the war. Whether destroyed or hidden is anyone’s guess.’
‘And how does the Black Sun relate to the Ahnenerbe?’ Kate next asked, on the fast track to becoming the teacher’s pet.
‘Bearing in mind that the Ahnenerbe was the scientific corps of the SS, its members believed that an invisible universal force known as Vril could be created using the astral energy from the Black Sun.’ Leaning towards Kate, making like a man about to impart a big secret, Aisquith continued in a lowered voice, ‘During the last years of the war, Nazi scientists in the Ahnenerbe were desperately trying to generate the Vril force in order to weaponize it.’