The Sixth Key (44 page)

I realised that we had come to be standing before the grave with
the Leoncetophaline, the figure of the lion-headed man holding a key and
entwined with two snakes. This was the grave that the old monk had been
cleaning . . . the grave without a name, the grave Eva had told Rahn to find. I
looked at the Writer of Letters.

‘So, Rahn did come here to Venice?’

‘This is your story, what do you think?

I considered it. ‘I say he never had the
chance . . .’

‘Why not?’

‘Because on the train back to Paris he sat
next to a man.’

‘Who?’

‘A man he recognised from the Schloss on Lake
Malchow, a Russian who belonged to the order of Black Swans . . .’

‘Grigol Robakidze?’

‘Yes, the one who handed him the card with a
phone number he was to ring if he was ever in need of a friend. Do you remember
Rahn’s old girlfriend Etienne? She was also a member of the Black Swans. It had
been her job to assess Rahn’s suitability for the order.’

‘Oh, yes! The Russian cigarettes, the sudden
departure.’

‘At any rate, Robakidze told Rahn that within
the Nazi organisation there was a kernel of men working against Hitler, the
foremost of which was, ironically, the head of military intelligence, that man
called Canaris. Robakidze also told Rahn that the only way forward now for
Germany was to eliminate Hitler, and various groups were uniting around this
cause. He then proposed to Rahn, that if he was inclined to join in this effort
the Black Swans would allow him entry into their circle and provide him with
protection. But before he could do so, he would have to prove himself by
returning to Germany in order to carry out a mission for them. He warned Rahn
that it would be risky, not only because he had failed in his mission to find
the key, but also because some SS members had come forward to denounce him as a
homosexual. If he agreed to return, the Russian advised him to immediately
confess his crime to Himmler and to ask for his forgiveness before they seized
him. Rahn laughed then, and told the Russian that he was mad; Himmler would
send him to Buchenwald and that would be the end of him. What good would he be
to the Black Swans then? The Russian reminded him of Canaris and his influence
on Himmler.’

‘And is that what happened?’ the Writer of
Letters asked. ‘Did he go back to Germany?’

‘Yes. In the end Rahn decided to take the risk
but when he arrived in Berlin, he found that Weisthor had disappeared and he
was now directly under the command of SS-Gruppenführer Wolff. After Rahn’s
confession, Wolff sent him directly to Buchenwald for reserve duty to wear away
his homosexuality – in other words, to toughen him up. In the meantime,
at Buchenwald he saw new heights of atrocities and this steeled his desire to
work for the Black Swans in any capacity.’

‘So what did he do?’

‘When he was allowed to return to Berlin,’ I
said, ‘Rahn continued his duties while managing to help fifteen young Jews
escape to Switzerland. He also gathered highly valuable information on Himmler
and others in his circle for Canaris. When things began to get too hot,
however, with more accusations from diverse quarters, this time about his
genealogy and a possible Jewish heritage, he was advised to ask Himmler to
approve his immediate dismissal from the SS.’

‘And?’ the Writer of Letters asked.

‘Himmler looked him in the eye and reminded
him of Wewelsburg. He told him that a member of the Inner Circle could never
resign. He had only two choices – an enforced death in a concentration
camp, or suicide.’

‘Which one did he choose?’

‘He chose the latter . . .’

‘He committed suicide?’

I nodded, having read it in a translator’s
note in that copy of Rahn’s book in the library. ‘It was March 1939,’ I
continued. ‘He took a bus to Söll, a village in the Austrian Alps, and checked
into a small hotel. Here he wrote two letters, one to La Dame
and
another to Deodat.’

‘La Dame?’ the Writer of
Letters looked surprised.

‘Yes, they had been corresponding for some
time . . . The next day he travelled deeper into the mountains by bus and
alighted at a stop known as Der Steinerne Steg, where he took a path that led
into the forest. After that, no one ever saw him alive again.’

‘So, the official line was that he was caught
in a snowstorm?’ the Writer of Letters asked.

‘That’s right.’

‘But was he?’

The night hung heavy and
it was cold; I could barely see the Writer of Letters smiling at me, anxious to
hear the rest. ‘On the twenty-fifth of May 1939, in an edition of the SS
Newspaper Das Schwarzes Korps, there appeared a notice which read:

During a blizzard in the
mountains SS Obersturmführer Otto Rahn died tragically. We regret his death and
we have lost a decent SS member and the creator of marvellous historic and
scientific works.

‘It was signed by the head of personnel,
SS-Gruppenführer Wolff,’ I said. ‘In the inner circles his suicide was viewed
as a declaration of his faithfulness, even in death, to the SS.’ I felt like I
needed a brandy.

‘Do you mean that Rahn became a member of the
undead?’ the Writer of Letters asked.

‘The body is, to this day, interred at Worgl
Söll. It was badly decomposed when it was found on the eleventh of May 1939.
Rahn was reported to have died on the anniversary of the fall of Montsegur
– the thirteenth of March. However, his parents were never allowed to
identify the body.’

‘So what do you think . . . did he commit
suicide or not?’ the Writer of Letters asked.

‘Personally, I don’t know.’

He nodded his head, pensive. ‘Do you know who
this grave belongs to?’

I blinked. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. ‘It
can’t be Rahn’s.’

‘I’m not asking you about Rahn.’ He paused for
a moment. ‘Cros is the one who is buried in this cemetery. If you recall, he
wanted to be buried in secret and no one was to know where his grave was; there
was to be no name, no date,’ the Writer of Letters said.

‘Because he was afraid they would snatch away
his soul?’ I asked.

The Writer of Letters shook his head slowly.
‘No.’

‘Why the elaborate arrangements then, and all
the secrecy?’

‘Cros had very good reasons for his concern
and I think it’s time we take a closer look at him,’ the Writer of Letters
said.

To my great relief he now took up the reigns
of the story and began to illuminate it for me. ‘Cros was only a young man just
out of the seminary when he was asked to investigate matters pertaining to the
priest Saunière. The Bishop of Carcassonne had chosen him precisely because he
was young and precisely because he belonged to no group and owed allegiance to
no order. In the beginning, Cros had no idea about Le Serpent Rouge and had
never heard of the Cathar treasure. He thought he was investigating corruption
among a number of priests who were allegedly selling masses for the dead. He
only realised what lay behind the investigation when Gélis approached him
secretly, offering to sell him a parchment he had found in his church. Gélis
told him he feared for his life and needed money to leave the country. At first
Cros had refused but when Gélis told him the whole story, about what Saunière
had found, he realised what the Bishop of Carcassonne was after, and that
things were far more complicated than he realised. He bought the parchment from
Gélis hoping to glean from it some information. But when Gélis was murdered
soon after, Cros, now afraid, lay low, realising the danger he was in.

‘Cros waited patiently as one by one, the
priests involved in the matter died, leaving only Grassaud, who Cros knew was a
member of AGLA. In the meantime Cros quietly set about solving the cipher in
the parchment and eventually his pertinacity won out. He managed to find one
parchment after another, in churches that were by now old and empty of priests.
The last parchment pointed to the church at Bugarach, where the royal seal of
AA was inscribed on its walls – the anchor and the snake. The treasure
had been hidden right under their noses! With a word in the right ear he was
made the priest of Bugarach, where he could look for the treasure unperturbed.
Bugarach was the sixth church and he had now become the sixth priest, just as
Deodat had figured out. When Cros finally found the treasure, he understood
what they were all after – the key, the sign of Sorat. But he also
discovered an unknown part to the treasure, a far more important part. He
understood that he had to safeguard this part from the brotherhoods, even if it
meant giving up the key.’

‘What do you mean “another part to the
treasure”?’

‘There were three parts to the treasure of the
Cathars: the first part was Isobel’s child, the reincarnation of Saint John,
the child that was whisked away to the Monastery of Saint Lazarus by Matteu;
the second part of the treasure was the original Apocalypse of Saint John and
its key; and the third part was what Bertrand Marty gave to Matteu, a roll of
parchments, which he asked him to take away with him at the last minute –
do you recall that?’

‘Yes.’

‘This roll of parchments that Bertrand Marty
gave Matteu centuries ago was of utmost significance because, although the
Apocalypse of Saint John and its “sign” was the Sixth Key, the third part of
the Cathar treasure was the last key, the Seventh Key. And as Eva told Rahn, a clue
to its whereabouts is secreted here on this island in Venice.’

‘So is the clue inscribed on this headstone?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I think it is. I think that if the Sixth Key
was found in the Apocalypse of John, the Seventh must have something to do with
the Holy Grail, and this inscription points to it, am I right?’

He smiled. He wasn’t going to give too much
away. ‘It was Rahn’s task to come here to find it.’

‘But Rahn never found it, did he? Because he
committed suicide.’ I thought that I had it all now . . . until the Writer of
Letters shook his head again.

‘Fortunately for Rahn, your account of his
last moments was not completely correct. You’re right in so far that he did
travel to Söll. It was late afternoon by the time he neared a farmstead on the
outskirts of the town. He saw some children playing and he spoke to them a
moment. It had been snowing earlier and he asked the children if they thought
it would snow again. They said that it looked like it would, and then he
continued walking.

You see, he wanted the children to be able to
say, when questioned, that they had seen an SS officer. Now, the snow was a
metre deep in places and it was cold but he kept up his walk. When he came to a
large fir tree he took off his uniform, folded it neatly and placed it on a
rock. From a bag he retrieved his pot-holing clothes and, after he had dressed
again, he backtracked to a brook, covering his footsteps as he went. He walked
part of the way through the water and then left again for Söll.’

‘Just like Sherlock Holmes in “The Empty
House!” He faked his own death, didn’t he? But they found a body, so whose body
was it?’

‘Rahn had to tell Himmler
exactly where he was going to commit suicide. You see, Himmler wasn’t just
going to let him walk away, he had him closely watched. But let us not forget
that Rahn was a good potholer and he knew the area he chose very well. He was
astute in ways of covering his tracks. When the search party looked for him and
found only his clothes, neatly folded, Himmler was incensed. He realised that
he’d been duped. Having to save face at all costs – Himmler had numerous
enemies who would have made much of this blunder to Hitler – he organised
two of his men to go to Dachau in search of a prisoner Rahn’s age and size and
colouring. It was then a simple matter to crush a cyanide capsule in the
prisoner’s mouth and to spirit him away. Stranger things happened all the time
in the camps. Anyway, it was relatively easy then for Himmler’s men to plant
the body back in the forest along with the clothes and to place a bottle of
pills beside it. By the time they found the body of the dead man that spring,
it was so decomposed it had to be buried in haste before the parents could
identify it. Those SS men who planted the body were later sent to the Russian
front and were never heard from again.’

‘So where did Rahn go?’ I asked.

‘He made his way to a predetermined location
near Söll where he was met by his friend Dietmar Lauermann, who had arranged a
Swiss passport for him. Lauermann drove Rahn over the border to Italy, to a
place where La Dame was waiting for him. Rahn’s death had been well publicised
and so he was now free, not only of the Nazis, but of the brotherhoods as
well.’

‘He and La Dame did break open that numbered
bottle that La Dame had offered as a peace offering in the car just before they
parted ways. That is how their friendship was revived. In truth, Rahn had never
meant to hold a grudge against him, and besides, La Dame had won his esteem by
helping to smuggle those Jewish youths over the border to Switzerland. He had
earned Rahn’s respect again and La Dame, as a gesture of penitence, offered him
something that touched his heart.’