by Iain King
Father Samuel fast-forwarded through the applause. The main speaker needed a walking stick to stand up. Samuel smiled: God had punished the man already.
‘Every major civilisation has studied it - from Babylon, to ancient China, the Arab World and the Mayans of Central America,’ lectured the speaker. ‘And though their discoveries were far apart, their astrology was very close. So why is astrology today regarded as so unusual? Because it’s consigned to entertainment magazines. In the mind of the public, it’s alongside fortune cookies and water divining…’
‘And a good thing too,’ chuckled Father Samuel to himself. He fast-forwarded some more, until the speaker was gesticulating with two fingers.
‘Two big institutions have deliberately tried to discredit astrology,’ said Frank.
‘First,’ he counted, ‘The Christian Church.’
Father Samuel slumped, while Frank explained how Christianity had tried to absorb astrology. ‘Christmas day on the solstice, even though Jesus wasn’t born that day. Jesus on the cross during a solar eclipse. It’s all astrology. When the Roman Emperor Constantine took on Christianity, he made these things part of his new religion. And the three wise men who followed a star – Constantine made them kings. He was trying to buy astrologers with a crown.’
‘But later, when the Church was firmly in power,’ continued Frank, ‘It saw astrology as a threat - an alternative source of ideas and prophecy which had to be crushed. They did this through a Papal Edict in 1586: all astrologers were to be excommunicated. Even reading about astrology was officially made a sin,’ he explained. ‘It was a decision taken by the same Pope who banned contraception…’ There were a few laughs.
Father Samuel silently shook his head. The secret work of his Church had been exposed. He watched as Frank moved on to the second big institution he was accusing of a cover-up.
‘…But the even greater force to discredit astrology has been science. Science used to be about proving things through experiments. It was about seeing what really happened, and then trying to explain it. But now, science is the religion of our times, and men in white coats are its priests. Nobody dares say when science is wrong.…’ The audience was listening eagerly. ‘…That’s why, in my exhibition, I showed things which scientists pretend can’t be true…’
At last, something Father Samuel could agree with. Just like him, Frank Wellesley understood that science had got too big for itself.
‘…like the relationship between wars and eclipses. Alexander the Great, the Crusades, the First World War, the Korean War, even Kosovo and Ukraine – the link with eclipses is stronger than one-in-a-trillion. The evidence is right there, on the NASA website. And I think some scientists must have realised astrology had some truth in it,’ speculated Frank. ‘They knew they’d have to rethink their theories, and they’d be discredited. So they discredited the facts about astrology first. They made it fashionable for people to assume – without checking the data – that astrology was nonsense. Applying the scientific method to the correlation between planets and people was labelled ‘unscientific’. Committees didn’t just refuse to fund research on it, but destroyed the academic reputations of everyone who exposed the evidence. A French statistician by the name of Gauquelin was even assassinated for going public with the facts...’
Father Samuel cursed. He spooled forward to the end.
‘… So the challenge for us is not to show the relationship between the planets and human events. That’s easy,’ concluded the museum curator. ‘Most people know astrology is true, just as they have for thousands of years. The challenge is to use this knowledge for good purposes, and to keep it from people who would use it for evil.’
Father Samuel thumped the desk with his fist. This had gone way too far.
He delved in his bag for his communicator, switched it on, and hastily typed a new message to Dieter.
All means now valid. Destroy all Stolz papers. Call me.
He pressed ‘send’ and waited, hoping for a reply within a minute, as before. But there was none. A full ten minutes passed. Still nothing. What had happened to Dieter?
And while he waited, his eyes wandered back to the CCTV footage, which he had allowed to run on. The speaker was dealing with questions, and one of the questioners looked familiar. A woman, poised and confident and with television hair. He recognised her now: that American TV journalist. He turned up the volume to hear her question.
‘Helen Bridle, CNN. If astrology’s true, how come nobody’s noticed it yet?’
Father Samuel froze. Was a major broadcaster about to bring this heresy to the general public?
It was too much: he’d need a way to silence them all.
And for some, there was only one way to be sure of their silence.
DAY FIVE
Forty-Eight
DAY FIVE
Outside Landsberg Prison, Southern Germany
3.19am CET (2.19am GMT)
* * *
Dieter had become invisible.
No-one could see him. No-one realised he was there. No-one knew who he was. His disguise was working.
But it also meant he had been forgotten. No-one had remembered what he’d done. No-one apart from Dieter himself, of course.
It was almost ten years ago, now. Throwing pink paint over the leader of the far right group in the European Parliament had been only part of it. It was hitting the politician with the tin which had landed him in jail.
If Dieter had been attacking the politician because he was too extreme, like everybody else, he might have got off. But Dieter had assaulted the man because he wasn’t extreme enough.
Perhaps Dieter should have lied in court. His lawyer told him to stay calm, and pretend he was making a political statement against the far-right leader because the man was racist. But Dieter detested the man - the politician offered no protection at all to Germans, like him, forced to live under French rule because their land had been surrendered as ‘war compensation’ decades earlier.
Like Hitler, Dieter’s single year in prison had been easy. He’d learned useful things: a thief had taught him how to beat a CCTV system. A murderer had taught him what it felt like to kill someone, including how to overcome the instinct to offer mercy in the closing seconds. Both useful when he’d broke into the Berlin Hotel to kill Jean-François…
Dieter was glad his most recent victim had been a Frenchman. He would make that other Frenchman, Pascal, disappear soon too…
The year in prison also made him focus. It wasn’t enough just to attack the metropolitan culture, the silly ‘live-and-let-live’ mentality of his childhood city, Strasbourg, and all the Euro-nonsense that went with it.
Stolz’s secret would enable him to reverse the humiliation. No longer would Germans, like him, be ashamed of their past. Dieter would soon be able to shame the French. And wasn’t it the purest poetry that he’d be able to do it at the Compiègne railway carriage. Just like Hitler.
Dieter looked up at the prison. He tried to pick out cell number seven. Hitler’s old cell. What would the brilliant dictator have made of the international team?
Dieter knew: Hitler himself had predicted the Cold War. It was in his writings. Dismissed now, of course, but the once-great man had seen it all. Hitler knew the alliance between the Americans and the Soviets was phoney. Just as the international team was phoney now. Perhaps Hitler had been informed by forecasts from Stolz. Perhaps he was just a genius, much like Dieter himself.
Now, he realised, his mission to uncover Stolz’s secret had given him the chance to be much more. What had started as paid work, hired by the fat Christian from Israel to gather some papers, had given Dieter a chance to win the stature of a world statesman. It was just as Hitler himself had promised:
‘No matter how weak an individual may be, the minute that he acts in accordance with the hand of Fate, he becomes more powerful than you could possibly imagine.’
Dieter wondered whether he could really pull it off. Surely he could.
After all, he had already lived the predictions that he was virtually indestructible, and they were due to hold true for another two days. Using Stolz’s secret, Dieter would scramble up the pile of excrement called society, to win the human race.
Now only plastic tape was preventing Dieter from going inside – tape set up by all the municipal officials and prison staff, all the useless people. Calmly, Dieter walked towards the blast hole. He stepped over the broken concrete where Pascal’s grenade had blown off the cover. He bent down, under the cordon. Then he took hold of the ladder, and climbed down. Invisible.
In the cavern below he went straight to the metal desk and the machine with the dials. He quickly found the switch, and waited while it hummed and buzzed into life.
Then he set the dials, one by one.
January…
29th…
Dusk…
It was his birthday, his birth year, his time of birth.
He lifted his head to watch the hanging globes sway, revolve and settle in their new positions. The coloured lights started to shine on the third sphere from the sun. Dieter stared up, trying to make out what would happen to him in northern France. Mars was active there – but did that mean action or violence? And he was going to be surprised there, too - an unexpected role reversal, a sudden loss of power. A twin threat of some sort.
He knew he had to prepare himself. If he was going to confront guns, then he wanted them to be his own.
But then he saw, in the eastern half of Germany, so, so many lines converging on Berlin.
There was Uranus, Mars, Neptune, and Saturn: all four were active in the German capital. All active for him.
Uranus: surprises
Mars: violence
Neptune: illusion
Saturn: authority
Perfect: the place where he could surprise the world with violence, and become an illusion of authority.
So it was to be Berlin. Berlin would be where he would transform himself. In Berlin he would cease to be Dieter-who-threw-paint-at-the-fascist. He would become Dieter, new leader of the world.
He knew the old phrase: he who controls Berlin controls Germany, he who controls Germany controls Europe. He who controls Europe controls the World. Very soon that person would be him.
Quietly, he turned off the machine, stepped back, and slowly climbed up and out of the cavern beneath Landsberg prison.
Back on the patch of grass, he turned his smartphone back on, and waited while it found a signal. There was a new message from Father Samuel:
All means now valid. Destroy all Stolz papers. Call me.
He smirked, relishing the feeble panic of his paymaster. Then he pressed ‘call’.
Father Samuel answered almost immediately. ‘My Friend,’ he said. ‘Did you understand my message?’
‘Yes,’ replied Dieter. ‘Would you like the whole team to be… concluded?’
Father Samuel paused, but only briefly, before he answered, ‘I would.’
‘Then you need to deliver something for me,’ said Dieter, coolly. ‘I need one device, fully operational and set exactly as we discussed, and it needs to be old.’
‘How old?’ asked Father Samuel.
‘A century would be perfect,’ replied Dieter. ‘German manufacture, please – they’re the best, usually. And by noon at the latest, it needs to be precisely five hundred metres south of this location: 49 degrees, 25 minutes, 38 seconds north; 2 degrees, 54 minutes 23 seconds east.’
Dieter could hear Samuel inhale, shocked by the demand as he scribbled down the longitude and latitude. After a few seconds, the query came back. ‘But my Friend, that over is northern France. And I do not yet have the device.’
‘Correct. But just as I have delivered for you, I know you will deliver for me.’ He ended the call without waiting for another excuse.
Then he walked away – back to the taxi rank.
No-one noticed him leave. No-one had noticed him at all.
Forty-Nine
US Army Garrison Garmisch, aka ‘Hotel Edelwiess’, Garmisch-Partikirchen, Southern Germany
6.30am CET (5.30am GMT)
* * *
Myles’ hotel telephone rang at 0630 - someone had set a wake-up call for him, although he didn’t know who. He slumped out of bed to pull back the curtains. The Alps looked stunning: brightly lit by the dawn sun. The almost-full moon was about to set behind them. For ancient peoples – with no televisions or street lights – these heavenly bodies would have been natural marvels. No wonder they struggled to understand the passage of the moon and planets above them. No wonder they searched for a mysterious connection between the state of the sky and their own lives. What had they found, exactly? Myles wondered whether he was close to discovering it again.
As he gazed at the view, Myles understood the real puzzle of the planets was not whether there was a connection. There definitely was a connection. The evidence was clear – to everybody except the scientists and religious fundamentalists who had a motive to deny it. Planets could be used for predictions, and those predictions could be good or bad, useful or harmful. The real puzzle of the planets was: how could the power to make accurate predictions be kept from people like the Nazis, and used only for good? And that puzzle was far harder to solve.
He remembered Glenn had called for a rendezvous in the restaurant at 0700. Not wanting to be late again, he dressed quickly and hurried down.
Glenn was the only team member to be there before Myles. The American was already halfway through a breakfast of pancakes and maple syrup.
‘Did you have a good rest?’ Myles asked.
Glenn huffed. ‘No, but then I didn’t really expect to.’ He passed his hand over his perfectly clean-shaven scalp, as if he had spent his whole break agonising about Stolz. There was almost a minute’s silence before Glenn spoke again. ‘So what do you think about all this horoscope shit?’
Myles knew a loaded question when he heard one. But he decided to be honest. ‘You know, I’m not sure.’ He tried to explain. ‘The thing is this, there is a correlation. Stolz has found clear patterns between the planets and human events.’
‘Oh, come on,’ scoffed Glenn, swigging coffee. ‘You’re meant to be an academic.’
‘Yes, and that means accepting evidence. If the evidence isn’t what you expected, you have to go with the evidence. You heard of quantum physics?’
Glenn raised his eyebrows, chewing: he had heard of quantum physics, but didn’t know anything about it.
‘You see Glenn, quantum physics doesn’t make sense either,’ explained Myles, leaning forward to avoid other people in the restaurant listening in. ‘It says electrons can influence each other without any sort of connection between them. It sounds like so much nonsense, but it’s been proven as true.’
‘So you’re saying Stolz proves astrology to be true?’ Glenn put the question like a dare. ‘Really?’
Myles looked down, shaking his head. But he wasn’t saying no. He was about to explain when he felt a pair of hands on his shoulders.
It was Zenyalena, wide-eyed as ever, wearing bright purple this time, and clearly re-energised. ‘Gentlemen. Myles – Glenn.’
Myles and Glenn returned the greeting.
Zenyalena sat down beside the American and lifted a pancake from his plate. ‘Any news on Pascal?’ she asked, putting the pancake into her mouth.
Myles and Glenn both shook their heads.
Zenyalena shrugged, then pulled a face. ‘So, have you two learned anything interesting overnight?’ she asked.
Myles was about to answer when he noticed Heike-Ann at the entrance to the restaurant. She hadn’t seen them yet, so Myles stood up and beaconed her over.
‘Well, I found out about this place,’ announced Zenyalena, unconcerned that nobody seemed to be listening. ‘It was a German army base before the Americans took it, and it held out for a whole month after the end of the war.’
‘And your point is?’ asked Glenn.
‘We know Stolz
took one of the last planes out of Berlin in April 1945. He came here, for some reason,’ Zenyalena explained. ‘Then the Americans insisted on interviewing him here – not one of the interrogation centres they had already set up. Very odd.’
‘Nothing odd about that,’ retorted Glenn. ‘He flew to southern Germany to escape the Red Army. He probably preferred surrendering to the Americans, which makes perfect sense, given how the communists were treating people.’
‘So how did you treat Lieutenant Kirov? There’s no memorial to him here. No record of him at all.’
Glenn clattered his knife and fork onto the table, exasperated. ‘Of course there’s no record of him, Zenyalena. It was seventy years ago, soldiers had been dying every day, and he wasn’t even American. What do you expect?’
‘Well, I say we find out more,’ insisted Zenyalena.
Furious, Glenn stood up. Myles wondered whether he was about to hit the Russian, but suddenly his face broadened into a smile. Heike-Ann’s did too, then Zenyalena’s. They had all seen Pascal.
Pascal joined them at the table, wearing fresh clothes and looking relaxed. Apart from a small scar on his jaw, which was covered by a surgical dressing, he seemed completely unharmed.
‘Looks like you got the medical treatment,’ said Glenn.
Pascal tipped his head to one side. ‘I was expecting something huge and American,’ he joked, gesticulating with his hands. ‘But it was just a First Aid station!’
‘What can you expect from a place called ‘Hotel Edelweiss’?’ mocked Glenn. ‘You OK?’
‘Yes – it was all minor. They released me after an hour.’
‘Enough,’ said Zenyalena. ‘We are all here. We need to keep ahead of whoever is following us.’
Myles saw the others eye each other. Another argument was looming – perhaps one which threatened to pull the team apart. ‘I know where Stolz’s next clue leads,’ he interjected. They all looked at him.
