And now a much darker fear came over Wolf. What if he was ordered to kill the priest? During his six-week training at Wewelsburg Castle, Wolf had been schooled in hand-to-hand combat, basic security, and to a lesser extent, marksmanship. He had come to the realization that he might be asked to kill an enemy spy or soldier, but he had never considered that the enemy would be a priest. That would be an unforgivable sin.
Seiler leaned forward. His small eyes seemed to dart around the relic for several moments. “If I may,” he began, taking the precious circular glass into his gloved hands. Seiler’s face displayed a look of mild satisfaction that worried the priest. “This could be authentic. Christian art traditionally portrays the crown as a thorned branch that has been twisted into a circle. But the Catholic Encyclopedia itself tells us that the crown was created from jujube reeds and the Roman soldiers plaited the thorns together into a sort of cap. It further says that the thorns themselves were distributed centuries ago, as Byzantine and French kings began the seemingly ill-advised practice of giving the thorns away as gifts. This crown would seem to be consistent with those findings.”
“Even so,” the priest protested, “Your scientists can learn nothing about Mary’s ancestry from this.”
Even as LeFevre continued to lodge protests, Seiler restored the glass containing the reeds to its home within the larger reliquary. Behind them, Himmler had located the reliquaries containing pieces of the True Cross and a nail used in the crucifixion. “Just look at the craftsmanship,” he said admiringly.
LeFevre flung himself at the reichsführer, knocking Himmler off balance while wrestling the reliquary of the True Cross from his grasp. He hugged it to his chest and backed into a corner of the sacristy. The relic was pushed against his robe, revealing a set of bulging ribs, his torso having been wasted by malnourishment. His eyes darted between the five Nazis, daring them to act.
Himmler sighed. “Don’t be a fool, priest. Yes, we will take the Holy Crown since it interests the professor. But these are not even the relics of the passion that we came for. They pale in comparison.”
The priest gritted his teeth. “What are you talking about?”
“The Holy Ossuary, of course. The bones.”
Confusion reigned in the priest’s face. “Ossuary?” he repeated slowly, as if uttering the words for the first time.
Wolf had come across the term only once or twice in his ancient civilization studies. If memory served, he believed an ossuary was some sort of secondary burial crypt containing the bones of a person that had already decomposed.
Himmler’s eyebrows arched. “Well well. It seems that our informant was correct. The relic is indeed a well-guarded secret. Not even the resident priest knows what riches lie within his own church.”
A great crash was heard, followed by the unmistakable sound of something hard – marble, perhaps, or plaster – breaking into pieces.
Lang suddenly appeared at the doorway. “There’s something going on downstairs!”
“The others must have arrived,” Himmler said. “Let’s go.”
Dr. Seiler took the reliquary of the Holy Crown into his arms, seemingly surprised by its heft. LeFevre remained in the corner, muttering in Latin as he hugged the reliquary of the True Cross for dear life.
Wolf and Lang led the descent, followed closely by Himmler and Dr. Seiler. Wolf heard voices. German, French and – as unlikely as it seemed – Italian. As they neared the ground floor, he heard shouting, followed by the crackle of gunfire.
The foursome froze. With the others falling in line behind him, Wolf pressed his back against the stone wall, fumbling with the bolt handle of his MP-40 for a moment before managing to push it forward. The shooting went on uninterrupted for several seconds. It sounded as if at least three guns were at work, if not more. He imagined Hoffman fending off a group of French resistance fighters.
The young SS soldier was filled with insecurity. He was 15 years old. He was a child of the city. He had never so much as hunted a rabbit in his life. His rifle practice had been limited to a handful of sessions picking off stationary targets in the fields below Wewelsburg castle. More sessions had been scheduled, but a shortage of live ammunition had forced their cancellation.
“Back upstairs,” Dr. Seiler urged.
“No,” Himmler said. He pulled his Luger from its holster, switched it off safety, and chambered a round. “We aren’t leaving without the ossuary.”
“With all due respect, you are the second most powerful man in the Reich!” the professor hissed. “I am sure that the führer would agree that the bones are not worth your life.”
Himmler considered this for several tense seconds. Downstairs, the gun battle continued, although it sounded as if there were now only two shooters.
“I saw a south exit at the bottom of the stairs,” Wolf suggested.
Himmler nodded. “Then the professor and I will try to escape. You must go back into the cathedral and secure the ossuary.”
The professor noted the blank looks on the soldiers’ faces. “You are looking for a rectangular box made of chalk,” he said, speaking at a rapid clip. “About 51 centimeters long and perhaps half as high. There may be inscriptions on the exterior. Hoffman was to look within or beneath the High Altar.”
Seiler said more, but Wolf did not hear him. His senses heightened as the group descended the stairs. His nostrils were filled with the scent of extinguished prayer candles. The rattle of shell casings clanging against the floor tiles was so tangible that he could taste the brass in his mouth.
They reached the ground floor. Just as Wolf had remembered, the south exit to Rue Cloître Notre Dame was to their right. To their left was the entrance to the main cathedral.
“Good luck,” Himmler muttered as he exited the south door with his Luger drawn. Seiler followed, his gait burdened by the heft of the reliquary of the Holy Crown.
Wolf and Lang shared a look. It was instantly understood that although they were both scared, they were going to fight. They crossed themselves. Then they crept through the doorway, the barrels of their submachine guns poking out like antennae.
They scampered into a row of pews near the Portal of the Last Judgment. The cathedral was smoky. The gunfire was sporadic now, but excruciatingly loud as it echoed in the vast acoustics of the cathedral.
It seemed to be coming from the sanctuary area. Confident that they had not yet been seen, the boys filed out into the aisle and, putting some distance between each other, crept toward the center of the church. Wolf was the first to spot the dead. Two figures dressed in thick hooded brown robes identical to those worn by the bicyclist.
Lang pointed toward the painted screen surrounding the choir. A third assailant who looked very much alive. He crouched, and then crawled, to the body of one of his fallen brethren. The assailant grabbed for the dead man’s weapon. Either his own gun had jammed, Wolf figured, or he was out of ammunition.
A single shot was fired from somewhere in the church. Wolf heard it cut through the air near his head. He dropped to a knee as a second burst rang out. This time, Wolf felt a burning sensation rip through his left shoulder.
He dropped to the ground, rolled left in hopes of getting out of the line of fire, and looked at Lang. Good, Catholic Lang. Devout Lang. He was hiding behind a pew, staring at Wolf’s right shoulder, which was bleeding.
“Help me,” Wolf said. But Lang did not move. For a moment, Wolf thought that he too had been hit. But then he saw the fear in his friend’s eyes. He was not hurt. He was frozen in fear.
Now the assailant had moved back to the screen. He was firing again, but in the opposite direction. Wolf’s shoulder was burning hot now. Letting his arm dangle to his side provided the only relief. He got to his feet and made his way down the row to the south side of the nave. The echo of gunfire in the massive structure covered the sound of his jackboots against the marble floor.
He moved into position behind the hooded figure. Forcing the pain from his mind, he knelt beh
ind a pew, trying various firing positions without the assistance of his left arm. As he had found during training, the MP-40 was built for fighting in close proximity to one’s enemy. It was practically made for rushing defensive positions. But its long vertical clip and practically nonexistent stock made it an awkward rifle to fire from a stationary position.
Wolf finally caught the assailant in his iron sights. Mother Mary of God, he thought. Forgive me for what I am about to do. And he pulled the trigger, ripping off a burst of 9mm rounds. The gun’s blowback caught the inexperienced rifleman off guard. The weapon slipped, sending the bolt smashing against his forehead.
The swelling on his lower forehead was immediate and painful. But as he looked up, he saw that his shooting had been true. The robed man was slumped sideways, motionless.
All was silent. Wolf got to his feet and crept closer. Now he saw that a piece of the man’s robe was caught on the woven screen surrounding the choir.
From his neck, a simple wooden cross hung from a strip of unrefined leather. Wolf crouched close to the body. The face framed within the hood was olive-toned and sun-weathered and, judging by the length of beard, had not been shaved for a very long time. The brown eyes were open, but they saw nothing. At his side was a Beretta Model 38 machine gun. Italian made.
A faint groan came from the sanctuary. It sounded like Hoffman.
Wolf got to his feet and entered the choir area. As he neared the high altar, which was smashed into pieces, he counted three bodies in gray SS uniforms. He recognized all as former upperclassman at the Reich School. They had all received their initiation tattoos with him at Wewelsburg Castle.
He found Hoffman in a prone firing position behind a broken section of statue that had been atop the altar. A pool of blood had bloomed beneath his chest, where he had been shot.
Wolf rolled him onto his back.
“They took it,” Hoffman said. The words were accompanied by a good deal of blood that seemed to have pooled in his mouth.
“Took what?” Wolf asked.
“The ossuary. The inscription…” He seemed at a loss for words.
Hoffman turned on his side, coughing up even more blood. He would be dead soon.
“Try harder,” Wolf urged, keenly aware that he, too, was losing blood from his gunshot shoulder. “What did the inscription say? Tell me now!”
The obersturmführer’s throat seemed to tighten. He clasped it with his right hand, as if being choked by some unseen force. He gurgled as he struggled for breath. He brought the fingers of his left hand to his lips and wetted them with blood. Then, with great difficulty, he began drawing on the white piece of broken statuary. A series of jagged, angular strokes. Wolf strained to make out the blood-streaked shapes.
Suddenly Hoffman’s face turned purple, his expression one of shocked wonder. His eyes widened as he struggled for breath. Wolf grabbed the obersturmführer by his chalk-speckled tunic. “What was it?”
Wolf focused all his attention on the drawings. So many seemingly disconnected lines. He could not make out any letters at all. Could they be pictographs? His gaze intensified, as if looking through it. For one split second, his eyes crossed. And then he saw.
Hôtel-Dieu de Paris
Wolf woke in a clean hospital room with yellow walls. It was still dark outside, and he could hear rain beating against the window. His left arm rested in a sling at his side. The gunshot had passed through the muscle, narrowly missing the bone.
He rose up briefly before the pounding in his head forced him back into the pillow. His stomach gurgled, and then twitched. He turned on his side and promptly vomited over the edge of the bed. The foul-smelling goop stank of alcohol.
He wiped his mouth with his forearm, turned onto his back and tried to piece together how he had gotten here. He remembered being pulled away from Hoffman’s body. He sat up despite the pain in his shoulder, trying to remove the cobwebs from his mind.
He recalled meeting an elderly French surgeon whose breath smelled of strong liquor. He had only looked at Wolf’s shoulder for a moment before declaring that he would have to remove the bullet immediately.
“We’re out of penicillin,” he had warned. “And anesthetic. The Wehrmacht sent it to the eastern front.”
The surgeon cleaned the wound from the same bottle of homemade grain alcohol from which he had been drinking moments before. He then passed the bottle to Wolf and encouraged him to take several long drinks. “For the pain,” he said. That was the last thing Wolf remembered.
He had dreamt of Hoffman’s bloody scrawl. Unlike his other memories, the formations were crisp and clear in his mind.
A nurse entered the room and opened the window opposite the bed. Pretty, and thin, but with a hateful look in her eyes. Wolf felt vulnerable here under the medical care of the occupied French. Where were his clothes? He remembered what Dr. Seiler had said the night before. “The resistance is always looking for opportunities to kill Germans. That goes double for those that threaten its cultural heritage.” Where was Lang? Why had he left him all alone here?
The nurse went to him and felt his forehead. “Too hot.” Then she removed the sling and the bandage to look at the wound. “Not infected.”
Wolf somehow doubted she would tell him if it was.
He fell back into a fitful sleep. He relived the cathedral firefight over and over in his dreams. In one dream, Himmler had been gunned down in the streets outside the cathedral. Or had that really happened? He could not know for sure.
He woke himself as he cried out for his mother. Judging by the light coming in through the shades, it was afternoon. Nobody seemed to be around. Was he the only patient in this hospital? Although still unwashed, his clothes were folded and placed near the bed. He wanted to look around, but still felt too weak.
The old surgeon returned sometime after dark. He was anxious and spoke of unrest in the streets. Notre Dame had been desecrated by occupation forces, he said. Three monks had been murdered inside.
Those so-called monks had been carrying machine guns, Wolf thought. He was pretty sure that had really happened.
The surgeon rambled on. It seemed that there had already been reprisals. A nightclub frequented by German officers had been blown up in the nearby 6 arrondissement. At least ten Wehrmacht soldiers had been killed in separate street attacks across the city.
Wolf sat up and reached for his clothes. “No,” the surgeon objected. “The wound has not been cleaned in hours! You could get an infection!”
Of course he would say that. The resistance is always looking for opportunities to kill Germans. Wolf pushed the doctor aside. He put on his pants. Then he put on his brown shirt, which was crisp with dried blood, and his tunic and overcoat. All three top layers had a hole in the left shoulder.
Waiving off the surgeon’s protests, he went downstairs to the hospital’s administration office. The dreary office was full of unhappy patients. When they saw Wolf’s black SS uniform, they slowly slipped out of the room, carefully avoiding eye contact.
Wolf sat at an empty desk. He picked up the telephone, connected with the local operator, and asked to be connected with Ahnenerbe headquarters in Berlin.
“Who is speaking?” the operator asked.
Wolf declined to say. “I just want to know whether Reichsführer Himmler has returned safely from Paris,” he replied.
The question was self-serving. If Himmler had made it home safely, Wolf might be credited with ensuring his safety. On the other hand, if Himmler had been gunned down in the streets of Paris, Wolf imagined he would be held responsible. It would be his death warrant.
His question was met by a moment of silence. Suddenly the voice on the other end turned hostile, demanding to know his name and rank. Wolf hung up immediately.
German Barracks
11th Arrondissement
After leaving the hospital, Wolf recuperated in a former French military barracks that had been taken over by the German army. His pain had gradually subsided, but th
e low-grade fever had remained. The French surgeon’s claims had been true – all penicillin, and even the unit’s medic, had been shipped to the eastern front.
When he had arrived, he had shared the room with two other patients, both of whom were the victims of attacks by the French resistance. While under the care of a big-boned farm girl from the Loire Valley who had been sent by the foreign ministry, the other two had died in their sleep. She went about her business of tending to wounded Nazis dutifully, if not joyfully. Wolf welcomed the cold compresses she placed on his head, but refused her pots of herbal tea. He decided to eat only from the hand of another German, even if it meant starving to death.
Now the radio alternated between cheerful chanson and anti-Semitic propaganda. The girl sat in a wooden chair while mending the bullet hole in Wolf’s tunic. Suddenly the radio station broke for a message from Heinrich Himmler. At this, Wolf sat straight up in bed. Until now, he had not been certain whether Himmler was dead or alive.
The reichsführer began his radio address by describing glorious victories in North Africa. He did not mention Paris, nor did he mention Stalingrad. He ended the holiday message by encouraging all troops to celebrate the Winter Solstice.
At this, the nurse’s face twisted in puzzlement. She had said little to Wolf until now. “Solstice?” she questioned. “Don’t you Nazis celebrate Christmas?”
A simple question. The answer, colored by what he had seen in the past several weeks, was more complicated than Wolf cared to admit. He could no more share what he had learned with the farm girl than he could with his own mother.
“Well?”
The door at the far end of the room opened. To Wolf’s astonishment, the soldier standing in the doorway was none other than his childhood friend.
Lang looked considerably thinner, as if he had been wandering the streets of Paris for days without food. He sprang more than walked to Wolf’s bed. The farm girl stood and backed away.
“Where have you been?” Wolf demanded.
The Fellowship Page 25
