God's Formula

by James Lepore

  Chapter 14

  Foix, June 17, 1940, 9:00 a.m.

  “What happened to these people?” John Ronald Tolkien asked.

  “We don’t know,” Philippa Esclarmonde replied.

  “Who are they?”

  “Cathars.”

  They were standing, pitch torches in hand, at the threshold of a large, roughly circular cavern. The light from their torches licked at a sight that the Englishman would never forget: human bones in mounds reaching almost to the ceiling set at intervals around the cave’s perimeter. Suppressing his revulsion, and his fear, as he played his torch light around the room, Tolkien saw that many, if not all, of these thousands of bones were paper thin, many more splintered like shards of glass. They all seemed to be covered with amoeba-like rust-colored patches. Here and there a full skull stared at him from among this rubble. Pock-marked vertebrae and mottled pieces of fingers and toes were strewn among the larger bones like dice randomly thrown by Hades himself.

  “Did they live here?” Tolkien asked.

  “No, they lived openly, but in defiance of Rome. When they would not recant their beliefs they were hunted and killed. We believe that toward the end they used these caves as a base, from which they fought the pope and his armies.”

  “What were their beliefs?”

  “That good and evil are separate, equal Gods.”

  “Dualism.”

  “Yes, that all visible things are the works of Satan.”

  “Not human beings, surely.”

  “Yes, most of all human beings.”

  “Heresy.”

  “According to Rome.”

  Tolkien and Philippa had taken a few steps into the chamber and were slowly casting their torchlight from mound to terrible mound.

  “Were they starved to death?” Tolkien asked.

  “There are miles of caves under Foix mountain. They would have known many secret entrances. They would have had access to plenty of food and water.”

  “Your curse, then.”

  “Not my curse.”

  “Of course not, but nevertheless, it’s what you believe.”

  “It’s what Father Raymond believed.”

  “Is this how you found them?” Tolkien asked.

  “The bones were everywhere,” Philippa answered. “Some in the center chamber, near the alter, some in the tunnels. Most were in the small side caves. We moved them all in here.”

  “Who is we?”

  “Father Raymond, my brother, my sisters, and me.”

  “The Germans will search the caves surely.”

  “The only entrance to this area is in the church. They will never find it.”

  “How did you find it?”

  “The Cathars were chosen by God to safeguard a sacred treasure.”

  “A treasure? What kind of treasure?”

  “We don’t know. Father thought it was a folio: a spell cast by reading from a sacred text.”

  “We?”

  “There are still Cathars here in Foix. Father Raymond was their leader. Our leader. My sisters and my brother and I are Cathars. About a month ago, Father Raymond found the entrance to these particular caves. He searched every day for the treasure, and then the Germans came.”

  “And us.”

  “You and your colleagues arrived first. We were watching you.”

  “Are you still looking for the treasure?”

  “No. We are going to use these caves as a base to fight the Germans.”

  They stood now in the heart of the ossuary, surrounded by chest-high piles of bones. Tolkien raised his torch to take a last look around. When he did, he saw that the cave’s domed ceiling was quite low and that block script similar to that on the columns he had seen earlier in the main cave were etched along its lower perimeter. Most of it had been obliterated, not by oxidation but by the hand of man. Someone had taken something sharp and heavy and hacked away at the band of lettering that circled the room. The word ferum survived whole in one or two places, and the word virid in others. The Englishman had studied the classics when he first entered Exeter College at Oxford, and though they bored him, he certainly remembered his vocabulary. Green iron, he asked himself, what in the world could that be?

  Chapter 15

  Foix, June 17, 1940, 6:00 p.m.

  “I had the mayor pick the first one,” said Kurt Diebner.

  “Excellent thinking,” Josef Kieffer replied. “Who did he pick?”

  Captain Kurt Diebner and Major Josef Kieffer had just walked the perimeter of Foix castle’s middle tower. They stood gazing down at the medieval village that had clearly not grown much beyond that status in the thousand years since the castle was built. Many of the town’s higher windows were ablaze as they caught the late day sun. Over the honeycomb of tiled and slate rooftops, the two black-uniformed SS officers could see the Arriege River glistening as it made its way north.

  “A lawyer named Pichet,” said Diebner.

  “Did he talk?”

  “Immediately. He said there was a secret cave beneath the mountain, where a treasure was buried. Father Raymond was a mad mystic of some kind. He’d been searching for this treasure all of his life. The whole town is aware of this nonsense.”

  “The nieces and the nephew?”

  “In the cave presumably.”

  “A secret cave…Of course he doesn’t know how to access it.”

  “He thinks the entrance is in the castle. The priest was always on the ramparts, pacing, saying his prayers.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “He is a lawyer. Lawyers lie.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Behind bars in the cellar here.”

  “Tell him he is reprieved,” said Kieffer. “Have him pick twenty men to search for this cave. They will have five days. After that, we will execute all twenty and replace them with twenty others.”

  “It will be done.”

  “Tell them to start with the castle. Every wall, every floor is to be torn open.”

  “It will be done.”

  “I think the boys are with the nieces and the nephew, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “If we find them, we find the boys.”

  “Yes.”

  “Go.”

  “There is one other thing.”

  “Yes, Captain Deibner.”

  “I cabled a colleague in Liepzig, at the university there, about a treasure buried under Foix mountain.”

  “Yes, and?”

  “A group of religious fanatics calling themselves Cathars sprung up in Foix in the thirteenth century. There is a legend that they accumulated a vast treasure, some kind of exotic ore mined beneath the mountain. They were extinguished—killed to a man apparently—by the Papists. The church wanted this treasure, but it was never found.”

  “A treasure with legendary status,” said Kieffer. “Intriguing.”

  “Yes.”

  “I want our twenty Frenchman guarded by our best troops,” said Kieffer. “Ten to one.”

  “Yes. It will be done.”

  “Perhaps,” said Kieffer, “we will not only bring Himmler his formula, but we will enrich the Reich into the bargain.”

  Diebner nodded.

  “We would be rewarded well,” Kieffer continued, “and we would be at the center of the greatest power that ever existed on the planet, or ever will exist. You would be the most famous scientist that ever lived, and I would be the most honored soldier. On the other hand, if the formula—and this treasure, if it exists—should either or both fall into enemy hands…You see the stakes?”

  “I do. They couldn’t be higher.”

  Chapter 16

  Foix, June 17, 1940, 7:00 p.m.

  “Who was that?” Karl Brauer asked.

  “An English spy, an impostor,” Conrad Friedeman replied.

  Karl studied Conrad’s face as his friend lay on his cot in the cave they had called home for the past forty-eight hours, a face that was drawn and pale, its once childlik
e blue eyes by turns vacant and burning with anger.

  “Do you mean to say he’s not a spy?” Karl asked.

  “He says he is Professor Tolkien.”

  “Who is Professor Tolkien?”

  “He wrote The Hobbit.”

  “The Hobbit? Conrad…”

  “You are a fool, Karl, an illiterate fool.”

  “I can read and write, Conrad.”

  “He asked about a formula. They are obsessed with this formula. Someone has played a cruel trick on them, or on me.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “That I want to go home.”

  “You can never go home. This you must accept.”

  “I will enlist. I will become a soldier.”

  “There is a pot of tea leftover from the professor’s visit. Shall I pour you a cup?”

  “No, get me out of here.”

  “I can’t.”

  “We can overpower the two girls.”

  “We are under a mountain. How will we find our way out?”

  “It can be done.”

  “It can’t. We must trust these people.”

  “Trust French pigs who have locked us in a dungeon?”

  Despite Conrad’s refusal, Karl, who was sitting on his own cot facing Conrad, had gotten up to pour two cups of tea, which he now placed on a small footstool that stood between their two folding beds. Conrad sat up and stared at his tea, while Karl sat and took a sip of his. “Drink,” Karl said, nodding to his friend.

  “I will pour hot tea in her face,” said Conrad.

  “In who’s face?”

  “The girl outside.”

  “Conrad…”

  “I will find the nearest German troops. They will protect me.”

  “They will torture and kill you.”

  “You are a traitor.”

  “I will tell you something I should have told you sooner,” said Karl. “I am a Jew. If I am caught, I will be sent to a labor camp and likely die there.”

  “A Jew? I would never have guessed.”

  “Why? Because I look Aryan, like you?”

  “Yes. And there are no labor camps. That is a myth. Zionist propaganda.”

  “Why would this man say he was Professor Tolkien if he wasn’t?”

  “I don’t know. He must think I’m a fool.”

  “What did he say, exactly?”

  “That I was carrying a formula created by my father, that my father had asked Professor Einstein for help, that Einstein had contacted the British government, who sent him—the impostor.”

  “The Professor Einstein? Albert Einstein?”

  “Yes.”

  “Incredible.”

  “Yes.”

  “But why Tolkien?”

  “Only he can authenticate the formula.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t either. And neither does this Tolkien impostor for that matter.”

  “Conrad, did your father give you anything? A book, a letter, a postcard…?”

  “No, nothing. The Tolkien impostor asked me the same thing.”

  Both boys looked up as one of their guards swept aside the curtain that covered the cave’s opening and stepped inside, rifle in hand.

  “Get your things,” she said. “We are moving.”

  Chapter 17

  Foix, June 17, 1940, 11:00 p.m.

  Ian Fleming, sitting on a rough wooden stool, looked up, wondering if his mind was playing tricks or if he actually did feel lighter, as if fresh air and blue skies were within reaching distance, just above the smooth stone ceiling of the subterranean room he was in. Real or imagined, he was delighted to be out of the steep and claustrophobically narrow shaft he had spent the last three hours ascending. At thirty-two and rigorously trained, he felt he could handle any physical test, but the airless, sharp-edged tube he, Tolkien, and Adrienne Archambeau had grunted up, single file, much of it on their bellies, had nearly drained him of his will to live. He gazed at his two companions now, both deep in exhausted sleep, Tolkien on his back on a cot against a wall and Adrienne slumped on the floor nearby, her head in the crook of her folded arms. Across from them, on another cot, were the portly old man who had guided them here and a girl of no more than fourteen. Their backs against the rocky wall, they were also asleep, leaning into each other, the girl’s head resting on the old man’s shoulder. All five of them were dirty and streaked with blood, all with sundry cuts and bruises on their faces and hands. The old man, hastily introduced at the foot of the shaft as Monsieur Jean Foret, had fallen asleep while wiping blood from his head with a peasant’s bandana, which now hung limp in his hand.

  Fleming’s own head still ached from the cracking blow it had absorbed when he tried to escape on the mountainside last night. Knocked unconscious, the only thing he could see when he woke up were the glowing hands of the Rolex Oyster his father had given him when he went off to Eton in 1921. They had read two p.m.. He had sat in the dark, trying not to panic, until the young girl now fast asleep across the room came to collect him. Remembering those long dark hours with revulsion, feeling anger now, he was about to reach over to shake Tolkien awake, when a young woman of no more than twenty, her long dark hair tied in a red and yellow kerchief, entered the room. Her face was also streaked with dirt and blood, her sturdy boots caked with mud, her rough wool skirt torn open on one side and tied back together in a thick knot. Despite all this, she was astonishingly beautiful, her nose straight and proud, her lips full and strong, her dark eyes glowing as if lit from behind.

  “I am Philippa Esclarmonde,” she said. “I have met Professor Tolkien and Madame Archambeau. You must be Mr. Fleming.”

  “I am,” said Fleming. “What…?” He had intended to vent his anger, but hesitated as their eyes met. Who was this creature gazing so serenely into his soul, this woman-child?

  “I am sorry for all this trouble,” said Philippa. “Let me explain. The Germans, with the help of townspeople, have been combing the church and the castle, looking for the route to the caves we just left. They were getting close, so close we could hear their footsteps. We could not risk staying there.”

  “Who are you?” the Englishman asked.

  “I told you, I am—”

  “Yes, I know,” Fleming interrupted. “You told me your name, but who are you? Why am I your prisoner?”

  “You are not my prisoner. We saved you from the Germans.”

  “We? Who is we?”

  “My sisters and me, our brother, and some friends. We are going to fight the Nazis.”

  “Resistance.”

  “Not just resistance, warfare.”

  “So it was one of your friends I stabbed.”

  “It was my brother.”

  “Your brother? How is he?”

  “Lucky. Flesh wounds.”

  “Have you spoken to my colleagues?”

  “Yes, while you were unconscious.”

  “So you know why we’re here.”

  “Yes, we have the boys you have been looking for. Monsieur Foret brought them to us from Paris. You can take them back to England, but that will not be such an easy thing to do. The Germans are everywhere.”

  “I would like to speak to them,” Fleming said.

  “You can,” Philippa replied, “but Professor Tolkien already has. There is no formula.”

  Fleming looked carefully at Philippa. Some women don’t lose their baby fat until they’re thirty, but this one, despite her tender years, filled out her bones the way God meant them to be filled out, with a blend of sensuality and dignity that both brought out and tamed the beast that lurked in every man. Her rough clothes could not hide the fact that Venus herself could not have a better figure. In that body, he felt, was an abyss of pleasure that a man could fall into and stay forever. And the mind? The heart? What were they like?

  “Where are we?” he asked.

  “In catacombs in the hillside just east of the castle.”

  “Where are the boys?”


  “In another room.”

  “Why was I kept locked in a black cave?”

  “You stabbed Etienne in the neck. We had to get him to a doctor. We could not let you roam free.”

  “And you say he is fine?”

  “Yes. You missed his spine and his jugular.”

  Not for lack of trying, Fleming thought, looking over at Tolkien and Archambeau. Retaliation, he knew, came quite naturally to French hill people.

  “They have not been ill-treated,” Philippa said.

  The Englishman now recalled a voice in the dark last night: I have the woman. She was in the woods. Had Adrienne Archambeau also tried to escape? He would ask her later, but for now, there was more important business. “I have to get outside to look around,” he said.

  “I will take you in the morning,” Philippa replied. “But I need to sleep now, and so do you. I will have someone bring you some food and water. Please do not misjudge us. Goodnight, Monsieur Fleming.”

  Philippa Esclarmonde stepped forward and extended her hand. Ian Fleming rose and extended his. Her touch stopped his heart beating for a moment. Who was this creature? This woman-child?

  Chapter 18

  Foix, June 18, 1940, 7:00 a.m.

  “Here, look at this,” said John Tolkien. “Perhaps it will convince you that I am who I say I am.”

  “What is it?” Conrad Friedeman asked.

  “It’s my elvish dictionary.”

  Conrad took the ragged notebook, studied the scribbling on the front cover, then flipped through the first few pages. When he stopped to concentrate, Tolkien saw the youth’s face transform. The ever-scowling Hitlerjugend became an innocent boy of fourteen, his spiteful anger and wounded Germanic pride forgotten for a brief moment as he traced the writing on the page with his index finger.

  “These words aren’t in The Hobbit,” Conrad said, looking up.