The Sixth Key (3 page)

It goes without saying that Rahn was agitated
after that meeting with Himmler. To refuse the man’s offer had not been an
option, so he decided to make the best of it, burying into the deep recesses of
his mind the nagging doubt that he was walking into a trap. After all, there
was something to be said for his move from the flea-ridden guesthouse to the
Grand Hotel on Wilhelmstrasse, and he was able to use part of that large sum,
left by Himmler with the desk clerk, to purchase a good black coat and a new
pair of boots – he could now walk without undue concern for rocks and
puddles. In fact, he didn’t know how much he had missed having doors opened for
him, beds made for him, and dinners cooked for him! And to not have to wash out
his shirt and socks one day, so that he could wear them the next day, was an
exquisite luxury.

In the following days he threw himself into
the multitude of tasks that began to crowd his new life. His boss was
Brigadeführer Karl Maria Willigut, or Weisthor, as he liked to be called.
Weisthor was a corpulent man who claimed to be descended from ancient German
sages, a peculiarity that apparently afforded him a powerful ancestral
clairvoyance. But right away Rahn could see that Weisthor was simply mad. Rahn
was not surprised, therefore, to hear later that his superior had only recently
come out of a mental asylum, something Himmler had not been told when he first
met Weisthor at the Nordic Society in Detmold. At the time, Himmler had been so
impressed by Weisthor’s outrageous claims, that he had immediately installed
him at the SS headquarters in Berlin with the task of running the archives of
the Principal Race and Population Bureau.

On his first day, Rahn was ushered into
Weisthor’s cramped office to find the man behind a desk buried under papers,
curios and statuettes. Every spare surface in his office was taken up with
files and strange artefacts, and every available wall was either covered in
shelves that sagged under the weight of so many dusty books, or wallpapered
with an assortment of exotic maps.

When Weisthor’s pale eyes looked up, his face
broke into a jovial smile. ‘Welcome! So this is Otto Rahn? Sit down, sit down,
Otto! Well, well, you are a handsome fellow!’ he said. ‘Look at you! A German
through and through!’

For his part, the man’s face was fat, his nose
bulbous, and his greying hair, despite the short haircut, was not of the mind
to be tamed, poking out of his head at odd angles like little radio antennas.
His eyes, strangely askew and weighed down by bags of skin, stared with great
intensity at Rahn who, on the other hand, tried not to stare at the crumbs that
littered his superior’s
uniform and short moustache.

‘Just having lunch, do you mind?’

‘Not at all.’

‘Good . . . good . . . I have a ravenous
animal inside me that I must feed at regular intervals, or it becomes quite
violent! So – you’re from Michelstadt?’ Those bushy brows were arched and
waiting.

Rahn removed a half-dozen books and a
thighbone that looked curiously human from a chair and sat down. ‘Yes,
Michelstadt is my home.’

‘Ahh, the forests of Odhinn-Alfadir, home of
the grand god of the North, the town of Michael the Dragon Slayer!’

‘My mother used to tell me stories about him,’
Rahn said, with a polite smile, feeling uncomfortable under that mismatched
stare.

Weisthor picked up his half-eaten sandwich.
‘Well, the woman certainly inspired you!’ He underlined his statement by taking
a bite. Between chews, he observed, ‘You know, a father may be the backbone of
a man’s life, but a mother is the voice that encourages him to walk tall!’ He
stared for a moment, perhaps remembering his own youth and came out of it with
a start. ‘So! You’re a philologist, a scholar of the German Romances, an expert
on the Cathars and caves, the Holy Grail, the occult, history and mythology!
Impressive for one so young – how old are you?’

‘Thirty-one.’

‘Oh! A fine age, a fine age! And your book on
the Grail, I must tell you, has created a sensation, a real sensation. As a
matter of fact you’re quite in vogue, and you’ll have to thank my surrogate
daughter, Gabriele, for that, because she was the first to tell me about you.’
He leant forwards. ‘You can thank her in person; she is quite a catch, you know.’
He allowed this to hang in the air between them before continuing, ‘At any
rate, I have to say, when I read your book tears came to my eyes – tears!
I agree with everything you wrote; the Cathars and their terrible struggle
against the evil power of the church is an image of our own Aryan struggle.
Needless to say, I passed your book on to Himmler, and here you are! The entire
book will soon be required reading for every man entering the SS. What do you
think of that?’

Rahn quickly came to realise that Weisthor’s
questions were purely rhetorical, and in this case, gave him pause to tease out
something caught between his two front teeth. ‘As to your task here, your
knowledge will be of great help to me. You see, timing is of the essence.’

‘Timing?’

He looked at Rahn with a fiery eye. ‘The
Führer has plans. We are to reinvigorate the old cults and resurrect them into
a new, all-embracing religion! We’ve been ordered to bring back the gods of the
Underworld, Rahn! That is what this department is about. What do you say to
that? Your books will help support, through your scholarly research, what we
already know – that the German race is superior to all others and that
the Grail lineage, the knightly bloodline of Saint Odilie, courses through our
veins. In fact, the blood of the German people is the Grail itself! We are the
beloved of God, just like the Bogomils and the Cathars! But we have other work
. . . yes . . . yes . . .’ He sifted through his papers. ‘As well as coming up
with new rituals and festivals, we have to find evidence for our conclusions!
We must find the links between our people and the Tibetans, the Romans and the
Persians – what do you think of that? And we haven’t much time. We’ll
have to create a map library and visit the old pagan shrines, because the
Reichsführer wishes us to conduct our research in the most scientific way.
Science is everything these days, Rahn! For this reason I will be sending you
to many places of interest, so that you can supervise our scientific
archaeological work.’

‘But what of the books I have to write for
Himmler?’ Rahn asked, tentatively.

‘Books? Yes, those too, you can do them in
between everything else. You will see, you will not be idle.’

And he wasn’t.

The weeks turned into months. Rahn travelled
to the Odenwald, the Westerwald and to the hilly Sauerland; he trod through the
Wildengerb ruin, near Amorbach, where there was a dig in progress. He went to
the Leichtweis cave near Wiesbaden and then onto Sporkenburg, where there was
an important historical ruin. In between journeys to this place and to that
place, he moved into an apartment in Tiergartenstrasse, he was given a small
office at SS headquarters in which to work, and a nervous young assistant,
Hans, to help him.

Whenever he was in Berlin, Rahn spent a great deal
of his time compiling that map library for Weisthor, who had started calling
him a ‘surrogate son’ and even invited him to visit the Villa Grunewald, to
meet his ‘surrogate daughter’, Gabriele.

Gabriele turned out to be a rather vivacious
young woman, highly intelligent and fun to be with but, unfortunately, not at
all his type. Thereafter, whenever Weisthor spent a weekend away at the
Schloss, the castle on Lake Malchow, he invited Rahn, and Gabriele always
seemed to turn up. Rahn began to wonder with some discomfort whether his
invitations had been at Gabriele’s insistence. She certainly seemed to be
growing quite attached to him, and although so far he’d managed to divert her
frivolous advances into intellectual channels, he knew the situation was likely
to grow increasingly awkward.

At the Schloss Rahn mingled with the elite of
Berlin, a strange mixture of Nazis, foreigners, businessmen, and members of the
flying squadron who were billeted nearby. He drank a great deal, danced until
his feet were sore and fascinated the guests by recounting his escapades in the
caves of the Lombrives. On the odd occasion, he even took over the bar to make
those cocktails he had learnt to mix from the Senegalese barman, Habdu, at the
old hotel he once owned at Ussat-les-Bains. To the delight of all, he told
stories of the guests he had served: Josephine Baker, Marlene Dietrich, even
Pabst himself. What he didn’t tell them was that he had bought the place on a
whim and had spent so much money on renovations it had sent him bankrupt.

At the Schloss he met an enigmatic man, a
Georgian named Grigol Robakidze, a poet and playwright. Robakidze was in his
mid-fifties and wore his short hair plastered to his head with pomade. When he
looked out from under his well-shaped brows he exuded a decadent urbanity and
an evil indolence that reminded Rahn of Bela Lugosi’s Count Dracula. Later,
Gabriele would tell Rahn that rumours were always circulating about Robakidze.
Some said he was a magician, others that he was a Russian Merlin or a genteel
Rasputin. Some even went so far as to call him a spy.

Whatever the case, in the coming months
Robakidze would prove a most congenial and interesting friend to Rahn, inviting
him to sumptuous lunches or splendid dinners, during which they would sit for
hours, locked in conversation. Whenever they met at the Schloss, the Russian
behaved as though a meal with Rahn was a sacrament. Robakidze even became
rather upset if Rahn was ever absent for the weekend.

The last time Rahn saw him at the Schloss, Robakidze
seemed unusually subdued and suggested they abscond from the castle to a little
restaurant in the township, where they could be alone. They ate their meal in a
strange monastic silence and it was plain to Rahn that Robakidze had something
on his mind. When they were finished and the plates were cleared away, the
Russian lit a thin, Burmese cheroot and sat back, observing Rahn and saying
nothing for a time.

‘You must be wondering,’ he began, finally,
‘why I have taken you away from excellent food and champagne bubbles to eat
soggy strudel and to drink ordinary house wine?’

Rahn calculated his words, sensing something
strange afoot. ‘Too much perfection can be tiresome.’

Robakidze raised one brow very high and his
eyes narrowed. He seemed to be assessing Rahn. ‘I simply wanted a different
milieu for what I am about to tell you.’

‘I see,’ was all Rahn could say.

‘You know from our conversations that long ago
I was a pupil of Nietzsche,’ he said. ‘What you may not know is that one day I
came across Goethe’s teachings and they have since become the basis of all my
thinking, my poetry, and my prose. Goethe led to an illumination. I woke up to
a strange species of knowledge: I knew, without a doubt, that Nietzsche was
driven by a demon to write his work on the Antichrist. Yes, I can understand
why you smile, but it is true!’ He leant forwards to whisper, ‘I believe that
the very same demon has entered into German hearts.’ He sat back again and took
a long drag of his cheroot, letting this sink in. ‘Why were the German people
not inspired by Goethe?’ He shrugged. ‘Who can say? But they have made their
choice and so Germany is headed for doom. One day, perhaps sooner than you
think, you will understand. When that day comes, if you are in need of a friend,
or if you find yourself in trouble, you can call this number. It is the number
of the Black Swans.’ He took a card out of the inside pocket of his flawless
suit and gave it to Rahn. Black Swans?

At the time Rahn couldn’t imagine what
Robakidze meant by ‘trouble’. Later, on reflection, he understood that to
continue to have any association with the Russian and these Black Swans,
whomever they were, might prove dangerous to his health, so he stopped going to
the Schloss altogether. In any event, his workload had increased so much that
he had no time for pleasant weekends away.

It all began when he asked Weisthor for more
time in the office, so he could concentrate on reworking an old travel diary
he’d kept for some years into a book entitled Lucifer’s Court. But soon he was
overseeing a number of additional projects, including reviewing an article
written by the alchemist Gaston De Mengel.

De Mengel’s research into pre-Christian,
Indian, Persian and Chinese religious documents was of a sudden interest to
Himmler, and Rahn’s job was to check and to translate the article with the
assistance of the flamboyant mathematician, SS Sturmbannführer Schmid.

Despite his growing workload, other items kept
landing on his desk for consideration: treatises on Tibetan Buddhism and
tantrism; books by the alchemist Arturo Reghini; articles on the lost Atlantean
civilisation; pamphlets on the goddesses of Earth and Moon; works on Sacred
Geometry – the science of grids, harmonic mathematics and Earth energies;
as well as various texts on alchemy, witchcraft, ancient mythology, numerology
and the science of symbols.

The list was seemingly endless, and he
wondered how he would ever find time to finish his book. When he asked Weisthor
why Himmler wanted so many reports, his superior had answered him with a
puzzled expression.