by Paul Sussman
November 13, 1938 Thule Soc. Dinner, Wewelsburg. Spirits high after events of 9-10, with WvS making joke about the 'shattering of Jewish hopes'. DH said they'd be more than shattered if the Relincourt thing came off, after which long discussion on Cathars etc. Pheasant, champagne, cognac. Apologies from FK and WJ.
Some swift cross-referencing revealed that Wewelsburg was a castle in north-west Germany, the headquarters of Himmler's SS; the Thule Society a quasi-esoteric order devoted to the promotion of Aryan mythology; the 'events of 9-10' the mass destruction of Jewish property subsequently referred to as 'Kristallnacht'; and the Cathars, a name she had already come across in several other articles, some sort of heretical Christian sect that had flourished in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (interestingly, they had been especially active in the Languedoc region of France). The initials WvS, FK and WJ, so far as she could make out, belonged to Wolfram von Sievers, Friedrich Krohn and Walter Jankuhn, Nazi academics and regular Thule Society members.
All of which was perfectly interesting. Unfortunately, the one part of the extract she really needed to source, namely the owner of the initials DH and the meaning of 'if the Relincourt thing came off, was the one she could find nothing about. There was no contact number or address for Jean-Michel Dupont, and after a futile half-hour zig-zagging around the net trying to clarify the issue she eventually decided the whole thing was just another red herring and gave up on it.
'For fuck's sake!' she hissed angrily, slamming her foot against the leg of the desk. 'What the fuck am I supposed to be looking for? Fuck it!'
It was by now almost midnight. She gazed at the screen, eyes swimming with weariness, then, reaching out, made to switch off the laptop, accepting that she wasn't going to get any further that night. As she did so, more for the exhausted, bloody-minded hell of it than because she thought it was going to do any good, she banged a final random combination of words into the subject field, the first that came into her head, not even thinking about it, just tapping the keyboard automatically as if it was her fingertips rather than her mind that had taken the initiative: 'Relincourt France treasure Nazis secret Jews'. She paused a fraction of a moment, staring at what she'd written, then, again more as a reflex than from any obvious rationale, replaced 'Relincourt' with 'William' and clicked on the search icon.
It was the first match listed.
St John's College History Society . . . Professor Magnus Topping, with the show-stopping title 'Little William and the Secret of Castelombres: A tale of Nazis, treasure . . . www.joh.cam.ac.uk/historysoc/lent.html
The site, as its title suggested, belonged to the history society of St John's College, Cambridge, and consisted primarily of a long, rather flowery report of the previous term's events and activities, most of which, to judge by the accompanying j-pegs of inebriated undergraduates in togas and orange wigs, had little or nothing to do with the study of history. The report's penultimate paragraph read:
The final talk in this bumper term of talks – nay, cornucopia of talks! – was given by our very own Professor Magnus Topping, with the show-stopping title 'Little William and the Secret of Castelombres: A tale of Nazis, treasure, Cathars, and the Inquisition'. In this illuminating and typically colourful disquisition Professor Topping explained how his research into 13th Century inquisition records had revealed an unexpected link between the fabled treasure of the Cathars and the so-called 'Secret of Castelombres', the latter a castle in the Languedoc region of France where, according to medieval legend, some priceless if unspecified treasure was housed. From this starting point we were taken on a fascinating excursion into the world of Judaic mystery cults, Nazi archaeologists and the visceral horrors of the Catholic Inquisition (Little William was a particularly brutal interrogator), the overall effect being not of your usual history seminar but rather a full-on, edge-of-the-seat historical whodunnit. A truly memorable evening made doubly so by our honoured speaker's awesome demolition of an entire bottle of Lagavulin! Oh weep all ye who failed to attend!
Layla's immediate reaction, on reading through this, was one of mild amusement at the jejune pomposity of style, coupled with disappointment at the fact that, contrary to what she'd initially hoped, the William mentioned clearly had nothing to do with the one in whom she was interested. It was a sign of how exhausted and dull-headed she was, not to mention sceptical after an evening floundering around in a mire of historical hokum, that it was only on a second reading that the connections between the report and her own research started to hit home. And it was only as she went through it a third time that, like a bird springing noisily from a thicket, the word 'Castelombres' suddenly leapt out of the screen at her.
Castelombres. Languedoc. C.
For a moment she sat where she was, staring at the name, taking it in, then, with a giddy rush of adrenalin, started madly scrambling through the notes scattered across her desk, pulling out the translation of the coded letter and holding it under the lamp, eyes sprinting across the text. I send it to you now in the knowledge it will rest safe at C.
'Oh my God,' she whispered.
She went through the report one more time, carefully, scribbling notes to herself, then saved the website to her favourites folder and clicked back to Google, where she typed 'Castelombres' into the search box. Six matches came up. She clicked on the first, 'A Geneaology of the Comptes de Castelombres'. For a long moment the screen was blank, then, like a fog clearing before a strong gust of wind, a threadbare family tree slowly materialized, actually more of a family bush, for there were fewer than a dozen names suspended from its branches like tattered foliage. The one that caught her eye was right in the centre.
She stared at it for a moment, checking and re-checking, then, with a sharp yelp, as much of relief as pleasure, slammed her fist on the desk.
'Gotcha!' she cried.
QUEYERAM VILLAGE, BETWEEN LUXOR AND QUS
'The Palestinians are our brothers in Allah. Remember this always. Their suffering is not distant or abstract. It is our suffering. When their houses are bulldozed it is our houses that are bulldozed. When their women are violated it is our women who are violated. When their children are slaughtered it is our own dear children that die.'
The voice of Shaykh Omar Abd-el Karim, shrill and impassioned, echoed around the village mosque, a simple, one-room affair with whitewashed walls and a domed ceiling into which a circle of coloured glass bricks had been set, filtering and softening the harsh morning sun so that the room below was filled with a dim, sub-aquatic light, all blues and greens and misty greys. Several dozen men, young mostly, fellaheen, dressed in djellabas and immam, knelt on the mat-covered floor gazing up at the speaker in his pulpit, their hands clasped in their laps, their eyes bright with anger and indignation. Khalifa hovered in the doorway at the back of the room, neither inside nor out, fingers fiddling with a biro in his jacket pocket.
'It is our duty as Muslims to oppose the yehudi-een to the utmost of our strength,' the Shaykh continued, his voice teetering on the edge of a falsetto, his bony finger jabbing at the air. 'For they are an ignorant race; a greedy, lying, murdering race, the enemies of Islam. Was it not the Jews who rejected the Holy Prophet Mohammed when he came to Yathrib? Does the Holy Koran not curse them for their wickedness and infidelity? Do the Protocols of Zion not lay bare their desire to dominate the world, to turn us all into slaves?'
He was an elderly man, stooped and heavily bearded, dressed in a dark quftan and simple knitted skullcap, with cheap plastic spectacles pressed tight into the bridge of his nose. He had long been banned from preaching in Luxor itself – less for his anti-semitism, Khalifa suspected, than for his outspoken attacks on government corruption – and so confined his activities to the outlying hamlets, travelling from village to village peddling his own particular brand of fundamentalist Islam.
'There can be no accord with the Zionists,' he was crying, banging an arthritic fist on the edge of the lectern. 'Do you talk to the spitting cobra? Do you make friends with the ch
arging bull? Rather they must be cursed, driven out, wiped from the face of the earth like the pestilence that they are. This is our duty as Muslims. As it says in the Holy Koran, "We have prepared for the unbelievers an ignominious punishment"; "We have appointed hell to be the prison of the unbelievers." '
There were murmurs of assent from the listeners in front of him. One, a boy with a downy moss of hair smudged across his chin and upper lip – fourteen or fifteen, no older – punched a fist into the air and cried, 'Al-Maoot li yehudi-een! Death to the Jews!', his call taken up by the rest of the congregation until the entire room trembled with the chant: 'Death! Death! Death!' Khalifa stood gazing at them, mouth tight, then, shaking his head, he turned away into the mosque's covered porch and slipped his feet back into his shoes, which he had left there with those of the rest of the congregation, arranged in neat rows like cars in a dusty traffic queue. He lingered a moment longer, listening as behind him the Shaykh called for a Jihad, a Holy War against the Israelis and all those who supported them, then stepped outside into the fierce morning sun.
He was disgusted by what he had just heard. How could he not be? To use the teaching of the Holy Prophet to incite violence and hatred, to quote the Koran as a justification for bigotry and prejudice and intolerance – these were things he rejected with every cell and sinew in his body.
And yet . . . and yet . . .
Was there not a part of him that agreed with it? A part of him that, when he heard news of another Palestinian killed by the Israelis, another family made homeless, another orchard bulldozed, also wanted to punch the air, cry for revenge and destruction, chant 'Death, death, death!' with his Muslim brothers?
He sighed and lit a cigarette, squatting down in a thin sliver of shade beside the mosque entrance. Never before had he experienced such confusion, about where he belonged, what he believed in, what he ought to believe in. Even in his most desperate moments – the crushing poverty of his youth, the deaths of his parents and elder brother, the enforced abandonment of his studies at Cairo University – there had always been some core of inner certainty, a kernel of solidity and assurance. But now, every turn of this investigation, every path down which it led him – Jews, Israelis, fundamentalists – seemed to open up ever wider cracks in his sense of self. Go towards what you fear. That's what Zenab had told him. Seek out what you don't understand. Because that is how you grow and become a better person. But he didn't feel like he was growing. On the contrary, his overriding impression was that everything inside him was crumbling, fragmenting like a shattered mirror into a series of jagged and contradictory constituent parts that, even when the case was finally closed, he doubted he'd ever be able to put back together again into a recognizable whole.
He pulled on his cigarette and looked up and down the dusty street in front of the mosque. The village was only twenty kilometres north of Luxor, but might as well have been a different world, a ramshackle settlement of shabby mud-brick dwellings and brushwood animal pens, the building behind him the only structure with any sense of solidity or permanence. With his town clothes and lower Egyptian features – pale skin, straight hair – he stuck out like a sore thumb against the darker-skinned, traditionally dressed Saidee inhabitants, a fact that only added to his sense of alienation and unease.
'Dammit,' he muttered despondently. 'Bloody God dammit.'
Another twenty minutes passed before the sermon finally drew to a close. The congregation recited the shahada, chanted 'Al-salamu alekum wa rahmat Allah? and began filtering out onto the front porch, pushing and jostling as they struggled to retrieve their shoes. Khalifa stood and, removing his own shoes again, dropped them just inside the porch and started easing his way through the crowd into the interior of the mosque, ignoring the suspicious glances lancing into him from all around.
The Shaykh had now come down from his pulpit and was standing at the far end of the room, leaning on a walking stick, talking animatedly with a small group of followers. Khalifa knew full well the hazards of confronting him like this: a few years ago his supporters had badly beaten a pair of undercover policemen who'd tried to infiltrate one of his meetings up near Qift. The alternative was to pitch up with a truck full of uniforms and physically take the old man into custody, a provocative act that, given the Shaykh's popularity and the fiercely independent nature of these sort of out-of-the-way villages, could well have sparked a full-on riot. Khalifa preferred to take the less inflammatory option, even if it did carry an element of personal risk.
He lingered in the doorway for a moment, then started forward across the room, feet falling soundlessly onto the matted floor. He was almost beside the group before anyone noticed his presence. The men fell silent and turned towards him.
'Shaykh Omar?'
The old man looked up, squinting through his glasses.
'My name is Inspector Yusuf Khalifa. Of the Luxor Police.'
The group of followers shifted slightly, imperceptibly, tightening around their leader, suspicion radiating from them like heat from a burning coal. The Shaykh stared at him, his body tilted at a slight angle, like a weathered tree.
'You are here to arrest me?' he asked, sounding more amused than concerned.
'I'm here to talk to you,' said Khalifa. 'About a man named Piet Jansen.'
There was a sharp hiss from one of the group, a large, bullish figure with close-set eyes and freckles spattered across his upper cheeks.
'Ya kalb!' he spat. 'You dog! This is a holy man! How dare you insult him like this!'
The man came forward half a step, shoulders spread, squaring up. While Khalifa knew better than to rise to the challenge he was also aware that to back off would be an admission of weakness from which he'd struggle to reassert himself. He stood his ground, therefore, while simultaneously raising his hands, palms outwards, to show that he didn't want any trouble. There was a brief, tense silence; then, slowly, he reached into his pocket, produced the envelope with the flyer inside it and, as if offering a bone to a snarling dog, held it out towards the Shaykh.
'You sent Mr Jansen this,' he said.
There was another uneasy pause, then, with a faint nod, the Shaykh motioned the freckled man to take the envelope and pass it to him. He turned it over in his hand, squinting at the address on the front.
'This is not my writing,' he said, looking up.
He was playing cat-and-mouse, daring Khalifa to chase him.
'I'm not interested in who addressed the envelope,' said the detective. 'I'm interested in why it was sent.'
Another of the group, a small, plump man with a white schal draped over his head, took the envelope from the Shaykh and thrust it back at Khalifa.
'Are you not listening? It is not his writing! How can he know why it was sent?'
'Because a flyer for one of his meetings wouldn't be sent to a kufr like Jansen without his approval,' said Khalifa, taking the envelope and returning it to his pocket. 'As he well knows.'
His tone was sharper than he'd intended, more confrontational, and the followers didn't like it. Again they murmured disapprovingly, the murmur this time, like a flame catching on dry brushwood, swelling into a shout, the men closing in on Khalifa, yelling at him, jostling, their anger seeming to feed off and encourage itself. The Shaykh rapped his stick firmly against the side of the lectern, the crack of wood on wood echoing around the room like a gunshot.
'Halas!' he snapped. 'Enough!'
As suddenly as it had started, the commotion died away, the men shuffling backwards and to the side, leaving Khalifa and the Shaykh facing each other. There was a long silence, broken only by the sound of a donkey trumpeting outside, then the Shaykh waved at his followers.
'Leave us.'
The freckled man started to protest, but the Shaykh repeated his command and, grumbling, the men padded out of the mosque, muttering among themselves. Once they were gone, the old man removed his Koran from the pulpit and hobbled over to the far wall where he lowered himself onto a cushion on the floor.
He picked up the Koran again and started leafing through the pages. Khalifa came over and squatted down in front of him, flicking at a fly that had swung in over his head and was now weaving figure-of-eights in the air above. The donkey was still trumpeting outside.
'You disapproved of my sermon?' asked the old man, still turning the Koran's pages.
Khalifa shrugged noncommittally.
'Please, answer the question.'
