Shadow Ritual (24 page)

Sol’s lips curled into a smile. “Perhaps. But we’re not there yet. Let’s go.”

The bodyguard moved toward them.

“Who are you, really?” Jade’s voice echoed in the chapel.

“My real name? It’s François Le Guermand, once French, like you.”

“And now?”

“Nationality is of no importance. Only race counts.”

64

Jade and Marcas were in the back of an SUV, their hands and feet bound. After about an hour on the highway, the vehicle turned onto what felt like an unpaved road. Centuries-old oak trees cast ominous shadows under the moonlight.

“Where are we going?” Marcas asked.

Sol turned around and looked at him. “The Orden has a small property in the Perigord-Limousin Natural Park. I think you’ll find it quite comfortable.”

A two-story stone house stood at the end of the forest road, next to a tumbledown dovecote. The brown shutters of the house were open, and the lights on the first floor were on. A man in a hunting jacket drew back the curtains and waved. Jade stiffened when she saw him.

The bodyguard, who had been driving, parked the vehicle in front of the porch. He hopped out, made his way around the car to open the door for Sol, and then opened the back, untying the bindings around Marcas’s and Jade’s feet. The man emerged from the house and started down the grassy path. He was smoking a pipe.

“Look, our friend the gardener is coming to say hello,” Sol said.

Joana made a face. “How kind of him. I could have done without.”

“Now, now. Be nice. He’s prepared the house for us.”

“What devotion.”

The gardener reached them and greeted Sol. He ignored Joana.

“I’m happy to see you again. I’ve prepared a buffet, and rooms are ready for you and our honored guests.”

“Thank you. I’ll be sure to mention your efficiency to the board. We won’t be here long. Bring our guests in for dinner.”

The man rubbed his stubbly cheek. “Really? I thought I would spend a little pruning time with them.”

“Do as you’re told.”

“What about her?” the gardener said, pointing his chin at Joana.

“She’s seconding me in this operation. Consider her your superior.”

Joana snickered. “Did you hear that? Do your duty. Bring the prisoners.”

The man glared at her. “We’ll see once this mission is over. Believe me.”

He stepped aside and let Sol and Joana enter the house. Then he took Marcas and Zewinski in. The walls of the entry hall were filled with stag trophies, and under each mount was a copper plaque indicating the year the animal was bagged. Some were more than a century old.

The gardener freed their hands.

In the main room, a man was adding two place settings to the table. The walls were hung with paintings of local squires in eighteenth-century hunting gear. The landowners were staring into the room, looking suspicious of any visitors. Farming tools were laid out here and there, adding a finishing touch to the rustic look of the room. Sol sat down in one of the carved chairs and looked around. He pointed to two empty chairs.

“Come, my friends. Join us for something to eat.”

Marcas and Jade looked at each other, then sat down in silence. Large platters full of carrots, beets, lettuce, chicory, radishes, and tomatoes were lined up next to a soup tureen filled with an orange-colored liquid and a large bowl of boiled potatoes.

Marcas helped himself to some vegetables. “I’m surprised. You’re not much of a carnivore.”

Sol was serving himself generously. “True. Meat is forbidden. I haven’t eaten any in sixty years. It’s a secret to longevity.”

Jade wasn’t touching any of the food. She looked at Sol. “You do know what happens when law-enforcement officials are kidnapped in this country, don’t you? Every police officer and gendarme in France will be looking for us. You won’t get away.”

“Shut up,” Joana interrupted. “One more threat and I’ll kill you. Slowly.”

“With just one hand?”

Joana shot up and grabbed a knife with her left hand.

“Enough,” Sol bellowed.

Glaring at Jade, Joana held her position a few seconds. Then she slowly sat down again.

Sol turned to Marcas. “Yes, we were talking about meat. It contains toxins that cause disease. Fruits and vegetables, however, are extraordinarily nutritional. I recommend the pumpkin soup to your right. It’s excellent.”

“Is that what the Thule teaches?”

“Among other things.”

Marcas observed the old man and then said, “Since you honor us with such fine food, would you also be kind enough to shed light on some obscure points?”

“Why not? I rarely have the opportunity to talk with Freemasons. I usually kill them.”

“What is the Thule’s goal?”

“That is an exhaustive subject, but in short, our goal is preserving the superiority of our bloodline. I’m honored to be part of this organization, which is focused on stopping the invasion of blacks, Arabs, Jews, Chinks, Japs, and mixed breeds of all kinds.”

“Oh, so the Thule’s a kind of animal-rights organization,” Jade said. “Although I wouldn’t put you and the Fund for Animal Welfare in the same league.”

“How did you find out about the Freemason archives?” Marcas asked.

Sol waved his hand. “I prefer to tell you about our order. Perhaps you’ll understand better, but considering the group you belong to, I doubt it. Take a look at the bust behind you.”

Marcas and Jade turned around and saw the sculpted head of a man with a receding hairline, double chin, and long, straight nose. The stand it was on was decorated with a circular swastika atop a dagger.

Sol lit a cigar. “That was Rudolf Grauer. We owe him everything. You’ll find his bust in each of the order’s properties. He created the Thule society long before the birth of the Nazi Party. He was a genius, and he changed the face of the world. Compared with him, Hitler was a no-account. Grauer was born in 1875, the son of a locomotive engineer. As soon as he was old enough, he became a merchant sailor. In 1900, he settled in Turkey, where he made a considerable fortune before returning to Germany, certain of his path in life. He was quickly adopted by the aristocracy and became Count Rudolf von Sebottendorf. At the time, a nationalist movement was afoot in Kaiser Germany, embodied by various patriotic and anti-Semitic groups given the general name
völkisch
.”

Marcas was listening carefully. “Anti-Freemason too, I suppose?”

“What do you think? At the time, our founder was part of the Germanenorden, and he rose quickly in the ranks. He left for Munich in 1918 to found a lodge called the Thule-Gesellschaft. In less than four months, he managed to recruit the elite and start two newspapers, including the
Beobachter
, which the Nazis would later use. He was quite influential, and he used the same operational approach as the Freemasons, which, of course, he had studied carefully. But his was based on Norse paganism.”

“And that’s your symbol?” Marcas asked, pointing below the bust.

“The Thule’s emblem incorporates a circular swastika—the Thule was using that swastika when Hitler was begging people to buy his paintings on the streets of Vienna—and a dagger of revenge.”

“How interesting. The same kind of weapon is sometimes used in Freemason ceremonies.”

Sol went on. “Very quickly, Sebottendorf dictated the first and only commandment: the white race must rule the world. He was a visionary with one word as a credo:
Halgadom
.”

Jade was shifting in her seat.

Sol went on in a soft voice. “
Halgadom
means sacred temple. You Freemasons want to recreate the Jewish Temple of Solomon, and we want to build a temple for all the people descended from the Aryan Thule race—Nordic, Germanic, Saxon, Celtic, and, well, French. All those with blood in their veins from the migrating Germanic tribes, the Goths and the Francs.”

“Our temple is one of fraternity, equality, and all humanity.”

“Right. Your lodges are as elitist as they come,” Sol said, pouring himself a glass of water. “Sebottendorf knew that only the proletariat could renew the Aryan race, and he wanted to spread his ideas through the working class. One of his associates, Karl Harrer, founded a group for that. In January 1919, Anton Drexler rose to the top of the German workers party, which Adolf Hitler would later join and turn into the Nazi Party.”

“Hitler prospered on the ruins of the armistice, because of endemic unemployment and heightened nationalism,” Marcas countered.

“Yes, but the Thule was in the background. Although we had no direct control of Hitler, we did infiltrate the ranks of his dignitaries and others close to him. Hess, Rosenberg, Himmler, and others. Do you think Hitler would have risen to power without financing from German industrialists? Many were members of the Thule. But Hitler failed because of his megalomania. We overestimated him.”

“Millions of Jews were reduced to slavery and exterminated,” Jade, her cheeks flushed with anger, spit out. “That was a fine program you had.”

Sol nodded to his bodyguard. “Miss, do I need to have my bodyguard shoot you in the head?”

Marcas touched Jade’s thigh to calm her. He picked up the conversation.

“But you’re French. What are you doing mixed up in all that?”

The old man smiled. “It’s very simple. I joined the Waffen SS during the war, and members of the Thule chose me for initiation. I was sponsored, like a Freemason.”

Marcas’s face hardened.

Jade spoke up before he could say anything. “Perfect. Just like a game of Happy Families. In the Nazi family, I want the grandfather, the French SS officer. How many woman and children did you kill?”

Joana stood up and slapped Jade with her good hand. The bodyguard grabbed Jade’s arms to keep her from retaliating. Sol’s eyes filled with disdain.

“The Charlemagne Division fought at the front and defended Berlin. We had nothing to do with the concentration camps. It was because of my bravery that I earned the rank of
obersturmbannführer
.”

“And then?”

“My mission consisted of hiding Freemason documents pillaged from France. They were highly prized by the order. Do you understand now?”

“But why?”

“One of the Thule branches in the SS, the Ahnenerbe Institute, was doing research on Aryan India and discovered the existence of the sacred drink, the soma. Very soon thereafter, they conducted experiments with hallucinogenic plants at the Westphalia castle. They had recruited archeologists and biologists to figure out what was in the soma. It was tested on Russian prisoners. The mixtures had spectacular effects.”

Zewinski guffawed. “What a bunch of crazies. You just wanted to get high.”

Sol slowly put down his cigar and turned to her. “You do know that in the nineteen fifties and sixties, the CIA was doing the same experiments, don’t you?”

“The Americans?”

“The CIA financed advanced research on LSD. A certain Dr. Sidney Gottlieb headed up the experiments. Gottlieb and select associates laced fellow researchers’ coffee with LSD to test their reactions. Later on, he expanded his research to include prostitutes, prisoners, drug addicts, and mental patients—people who wouldn’t be believed if they told their story. Some of the subjects reported that they felt like their flesh was dropping off their bones.”

“The flesh falling off the bones,” Marcas said in a half whisper.

Sol looked at him. “What is that, Inspector?”

“Those experiments ended a long time ago,” Marcas said. “So you’re after some mind-control drug. Is that it?”

“Oh, Inspector Marcas, you so underestimate the power of the soma. With it, the Thule will be reborn, and the Aryan race will rule again.”

Jade rolled her eyes. Marcas kicked her under the table before she could speak.

“What does this have to do with the Freemason archives?” he asked

“We’d been looking for the Freemason secret for a long time. Then, in the archives from France, researchers at the Ahnenerbe found a document that referred to a ritual based on a divine drink.”

Marcas pursed his lips. “The shadow ritual.”

Sol lit another cigar. “That’s right. The Ahnenerbe had a French neurologist and Freemason, Henri Jouhanneau, transferred to Berlin to go through the archives lifted from Paris. He found scattered fragments of the ritual. There was a study on rye ergot and a manuscript by a man named Breuil.”

“Where do you come into this?”

“In 1945, my convoy ran into a Red Army roadblock, but I managed to escape with a handful of documents, including part of the Breuil manuscript that mentioned three ingredients, one being a plant from the East. In it, he described a trip to Egypt. I hid the papers under the altar of a church in a ruined village, and I headed for Allied lines. When Jouhanneau’s son got that call from the Jewish archeologist in Israel, we were ready.”

“The Tebah Stone?”

Sol nodded. “Yes. Then you did the work for us. I never will be able to thank you enough for the chapel.”

“And now? What are you going to do?”

Sol yawned and stood up. “Joana here is quite impatient to take care of your girlfriend, but I still need the two of you. I’m tired now, and I need my rest. We’ll see each other in the morning, and we’ll discuss the ritual then.”

A vestige from another era, Sol was looking very old. Marcas asked one more question.

“Why the name Sol?”

“It comes from the sun god revered during the Roman Empire: Sol Invictus—the unconquered sun. It relates to the winter solstice, December twenty-first, when the sun is reborn, and the days get longer. Christians turned the solstice into a celebration of the birth of Jesus. Like the sun—and unlike Jesus, who was crucified—I will go unvanquished.”

65

The bodyguard ushered Marcas and Zewinski into a bedroom, sat them down in chairs, and bound their hands and feet again. Then he left.

“What do we do now?” Zewinski asked.

“I don’t know yet,” Marcas said. “I suppose we should get some rest too.”

They sat in silence.

“What do you think about this secret mystical drink?” Jade finally asked.

“Freemasonry isn’t about magic for me or about power. What counts is the work that you do in the lodge. There’s no elixir, no secret potion, no single key that gives access to the divine. The light comes from understanding the beauty of symbols, knowing how to find traces of overall coherence in the human world.”