The Templar Prophecy

by Mario Reading

  Your Führer,

  Adolf Hitler.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  That evening Hart gazed at Effi Rache across the dining-room table with new eyes. The person he saw sitting opposite him was not a monster, but a desirable woman, in the prime of her life, blessed with large, startlingly intense periwinkle-blue eyes, framed by the longest natural lashes he had ever encountered. Her swept-back blonde hair cascaded over her shoulders like a waterfall, her heart-shaped face was set off by broad Slavic cheekbones, and a finely arched, slightly concave nose ended high above a heartwood bow of a mouth, whose pronounced underlip gave its owner the elusive air of forever needing to be kissed. Something deep inside Hart refused to associate the possessor of such treasures – of such a blameless face – with the bestial horrors contained in Adolf Hitler’s letter.

  Despite this inner conviction, he knew that he must still tread cautiously. The Effi he knew might be incapable of evil intent, but those around her might not prove so scrupulous. It was always possible that she was being used by others without her knowledge. The leaders and figureheads of political movements often were; Hart had covered enough foreign wars during his career as a photojournalist to be certain of this fact.

  He leant in towards her, an intent look on his face. ‘Look, I’ve no desire to alarm you, but when I looked out of this window last night, I saw the man who came running at us the other day in the car park. He was standing out there in the pitch darkness staring up at your bedroom window. It was only because the light was off that I was able to see him. I was deciding whether to run outside and confront him when it occurred to me that you might be employing him as a security guard. Are you? Or have I been a fool?’ He smiled. ‘I was stark naked at the time, so I felt at a marginal disadvantage.’

  Effi laid down her fork. Normally she would have returned Hart’s smile, for they both enjoyed flirtatious small talk. This time the face across the table was deadly serious. ‘You saw Udo Zirkeler? Standing outside my house at night? Why didn’t you tell me this before?’

  Hart also laid down his cutlery. Bringing the matter up had been a risk worth taking, he told himself, even though it was Wesker who had seen Zirkeler, not him. The white lie was, at the very least, a believable one.

  He had spoken to Amira on his new phone immediately after he had left the Alpenruh, and passed on to her the gist of the message Frau Erlichmann had translated for him. Her response had been immediate and unequivocal. It was Effi Rache who had received the letter, so it was Effi Rache they must go after. It was she who owned the chemical factory, and she whose grandfather was to be the original recipient.

  Hart had immediately understood that if he wished to exonerate Effi from whatever might be going on without her knowledge, he would need to become far more proactive. There was no proof as yet that the formula even existed. Or if it did, that it had survived nearly seventy years of storage. And wasn’t it reliant on buried stocks of the original Trilon 83 and Trilon 146? What were the chances of anyone knowing where they were buried now? The Americans had probably dug them up after the war and used them for their own purposes. Either that, or the chemicals were quietly leaching, unknown and unnoticed, back into the lithosphere. And beyond all that, who in their right minds would unleash such weapons on the modern world anyway, and risk their own destruction alongside that of their perceived enemies? It made no sense.

  Amira was riddled with jealousy, he decided, and so she wasn’t thinking straight. Hart suspected that it was only the prospect of a front-page news story that was stopping her from going straight to the authorities and blasting everything to kingdom come. Whatever Amira’s susceptibilities as a woman, she was a professional journalist first and foremost. Her training would cause her to wait and see rather than act prematurely. But her emotions would be telling her a different story. He would need to act quickly to defuse the situation.

  ‘I didn’t think it was important. But yes, it was definitely Zirkeler out there. He is unmistakeable. Even after only one previous viewing.’ Hart tried to make the tone of his voice as light as possible in order to conceal the lie.

  Effi responded in kind. ‘I use him as a guard occasionally. Him and a few of the others. Sometimes we get unwanted visitors. The party I lead tends to divide opinion. You saw that for yourself at the Gasthof zur Hirschberg.’ She glanced at Hart to gauge his reaction.

  ‘But your party is against all these outrages in the news, isn’t it? I’ve been reading about Germany’s problems with the Turks and so forth. The beatings. The clashes between rival gangs. Neo-Nazis and suchlike.’ Hart found it surprisingly easy to pretend an ignorance and callousness that in real life would have been anathema to him. It brought home to him how much he was already playing a part.

  ‘Of course we are against them. We are a mainstream political party, Johnny. We don’t employ thugs. If anyone is caught indulging in that sort of behaviour, they are immediately ejected. It would be impossible for us to function within the democratic framework otherwise. We are committed to non-violence. I thought you realized that?’

  ‘I knew that was the case. I just don’t like the look of Zirkeler, that’s all. Are you sure there’s no more to it than that? He’s just a security guard?’

  Effi hesitated. Hart – hyperalert now to every nuance in her behaviour – could see her weighing up how far she was prepared to take him into her confidence. ‘What else could there be?’

  Hart decided to let her off the hook. He was sailing way too close to the wind as it was. ‘I thought he might be in love with you. Jealous of me, perhaps?’

  Effi gave a relieved laugh. ‘Oh, Johnny, really. I could never be interested in such a thug. What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t think you’re interested in him. Of course not. But he might be interested in you.’

  ‘Do you really think so?’

  ‘I couldn’t blame him. A frog can look at a princess, can’t he? Look at me.’

  ‘Are you a frog?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think you’re more of a bear. A big, cuddly bear. With hidden claws.’

  Hart smiled. He knew the game well enough by now, and he enjoyed playing it. ‘I hide them very well. I can’t even find them myself sometimes.’

  The moment passed with a hug and a kiss. Hart was relieved to let it go. He wasn’t at his best saying one thing and meaning another. It was why both Amira and Effi could run rings round him whenever they chose to. It had been his mother – before she began her descent into dementia – who had said that women matured emotionally at puberty, and men in late middle-age. Well, Hart was a long way off late middle-age still.

  Effi pulled away from their hug. She ran her hand through his hair just as a mother would do to a child. ‘I have to go and meet some of our delegates tomorrow morning, early. They need a little encouragement from their leader in the quiet before the storm. Summer is always a bad time for us, politically. It’s like being caught in the doldrums without a breath of wind. Do you think you will be able to entertain yourself here without me, Johnny?’

  ‘I shall go on a long walk round the lake. I need some exercise.’

  ‘Don’t I exercise you enough?’

  Hart grinned. ‘That’s a different sort of exercise altogether.’ He gave her bottom a pat. ‘Do you know what? I might even go for a swim. Isn’t there a spa around here somewhere?’

  Effi made a moue. ‘There’s a Badepark, but you might be overrun. Unless you like waterslides and squealing brats. And here in Germany we sauna naked, even amongst strangers, so I don’t want you getting ideas about other women, do you hear me? I would go to the Strandbad if I were you. You get to bathe in the lake there, with a platform to swim out to. It’s old-fashioned but nice. And utterly safe from predatory females.’

  Hart pretended to look sad. ‘Okay. No spas. And no predatory females. But I thought you still had a chemical factory that made spa products? Where are your markets then, if they’re not over here?’

/>   Effi’s face turned serious again. ‘I do still have a factory. Just down the road in Gmund. But our main markets are no longer in Germany. We produce chemicals for spas and swimming pools internationally. Chlorine. Bromine. Potassium peroxysulphate. Calcium hypochlorite. Cyanuric acid. That sort of thing.’

  ‘I’d love to see the factory one day.’

  ‘You want to see the factory?’

  ‘Now that I’m living here with you, I’d like to involve myself a little more in your life. Get to know what you do with your days.’ Hart cocked his head to one side. He knew he was on shaky ground. He decided to strike out laterally. ‘What you say about your politics intrigues me too, Effi. You say you are using the Holy Lance to cement loyalty to your party? Well, I am supposed to be its hereditary guardian. And I have never even seen it. Would such a thing be possible, do you think?’

  Effi looked at Hart for a very long time. The expression on her face passed through several disparate stages, varying from quizzical, through pensive, to hopeful. Hart felt as if he were watching the complex play of light across moving water.

  ‘Would you really like to become more involved in my life? You’re not just saying this to please me? Because it would please me, you know. It would mean a great deal to me.’ For the first time since Hart had known her, Effi looked almost vulnerable. ‘Because my one fear is that you will hold back on the way you feel for me because of who I am and what I represent. That there will come a point when you will cease to see me as a woman any more, and merely as the figurehead of my party.’

  Hart laughed. ‘I could never cease to see you as a woman. You must know that by now. In fact, it must be obvious for all to see. Even that goon, Zirkeler.’

  Effi took Hart’s hand in hers and kissed it. ‘Then come. I will show you what you want to see. I will show you the Holy Lance.’

  FORTY-EIGHT

  ‘What were you doing outside my house last night? When did I give you permission to spy on me? What were you thinking of?’ Effi struck Udo Zirkeler on the arm. It was like punching a slab of chilled meat.

  Udo stared right through Effi. A part of him was still back in the field killing the cow with a single blow of his stone. The significance of the act had followed him throughout the day. If he could achieve such a thing with a cow, what more could he do to a man? What would his audience say, then? How would they respond?

  ‘I’m sorry, what did you say?’

  ‘You were standing outside my house last night. What were you doing there?’

  ‘You saw me?’

  Effi hesitated for a fatal fraction of a second. ‘Yes.’

  Udo grinned at her. ‘You’re lying. It was the Englishman who saw me. Admit it. He was probably cooling off by the window after fucking you.’

  Effi turned her back on him and walked towards the glazed screen that separated the empty warehouse area of her chemical factory from the inner research laboratory. It would be pointless hitting Udo again, she decided. The oaf seemed insensible to normal stimuli. She was glad that he was on her side and not against her, however. Woe betide Udo’s enemies. And heaven protect Udo’s friends, because they must be few and far between.

  She stood for a moment watching one of her technicians through the insulated glass of the laboratory window. He was wearing a Level A Hazmat fully encapsulating protective suit, with a full face-piece self-contained breathing apparatus. The suit was both gas-tight and vapour-tight, and boasted an internal two-way radio through which the wearer could communicate with those outside the laboratory. The whole outfit was set off by steel-toed boots, tunic shanks and chemical-resistant gloves. Its inhabitant looked like a spaceman, and moved nearly as slowly.

  ‘It’s irrelevant who saw you. But you admit you were out there?’

  ‘Yes. I was out there. I was guarding you.’

  ‘Guarding me? From what? And from whom? You were spying on me. And we both know why.’

  ‘I wonder how well the Englishman would respond to you if he knew you’d fucked me?’

  ‘Don’t play games with me, Udo. We both know how things stand with us. You need me more than I need you.’

  ‘Wrong. We both need each other. We both know way too much. This thing has gone too far for either one of us to bow out graciously.’

  ‘Nobody is bowing out, Udo. But you need to understand that I have plans for the baron. And they don’t involve you. You have your role to play and he has his.’

  ‘And what is his role? I would like you to explain this to me, please. You aren’t thinking of taking him into your confidence, are you? You can’t be as cock-struck as all that? Because I won’t stand for it. What we are doing is world-changing. It will start the fall of the dominoes that will ultimately lead to the restitution of our country. The saving of our people. The restoration of the Reich.’

  ‘Oh, shut up, Udo. Of course I am not taking him into my confidence. His role will be a different one from yours, that’s all. A personal one. And it’s none of your business.’

  Udo wasn’t satisfied. But he knew just how far he could push Effi. He was still reliant on her for the funding of his ‘apostles’ and for everything else concerning their venture, and he needed to be cautious. Theirs was a combative relationship that appeared to gratify them both, albeit on a surface level. It was based on family, and order, and innate natural hierarchies. At a deeper, more barbaric level, however, it remained inconceivable to Udo how Effi could favour an effete lightweight like the Englishman over a man like him. He hesitated a little before plunging back into the fray – but he couldn’t let the subject go.

  ‘What time last night did he see me?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I said what time last night did he see me. It is a simple question. Unlike you, I have no ulterior motives. I thought I had concealed myself well. I clearly had not. I need to rectify this so that, in the event of a crisis, I am at the top of my game.’

  Effi stared at Udo. Sometimes he astonished her with his obtuseness. The difference between him and her baron was the difference between darkness and light. Last night, when she had shown Johnny the Holy Lance for the first time, she had watched his face carefully for any sign of equivocation. Instead, she had seen his expression transform itself before her eyes. The Lance, when she had handed it to him, had appeared to become a part of him. Then Johnny had turned to her, his face alight with something close to passion.

  ‘This is extraordinary. Can you feel it, Effi? It’s pulsing in my hands. As if it had a heartbeat of its own. Here. Reach across. Touch it.’

  Effi had reached across. And yes, the Holy Lance had felt as if it were pulsing. But when she took it into her own hands, it had fallen dead again, like an expiring child. She had been almost afraid when she handed it back. As if the Lance had been attempting to communicate with her, but she had been unable to understand its message.

  ‘What time?’

  Effi looked up, surprised. ‘What are you talking about, Udo?’

  ‘What time did the Englishman see me?’

  Effi shook her head to clear it of the memories and emotions conjured up by the night before. ‘I don’t know. Maybe three o’clock in the morning.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Effi shrugged. Then she stuck her tongue out at Udo like a little girl. ‘Yes. It was three. Because when he came back to bed he fucked me twice more, and I reset the alarm at four-thirty to give us both some extra sleep. Some time to recuperate. Satisfied, Udo?’

  Udo pretended to retch on the ground in disgust. But he was satisfied. He had left the grounds of Haus Walküre a little after midnight. He had killed the cow at around quarter to one. He had been tucked up in bed and asleep by two o’clock. Which meant the Englishman was lying through his teeth.

  FORTY-NINE

  Until now, Udo Zirkeler had only gone through the holy ritual of being inhabited by his grandfather’s SS uniform on foreign soil. In Guatemala, to kill the three. Once in the outskirts of Izmir, Turkey, to put pressure o
n the wife and children of a gang leader. A single time in Paris, which he would rather forget.

  On that occasion he had been intending to kill a Jewish columnist who had held the Brotherhood of the Lance up to ridicule in a leftist newspaper. Instead, he had come perilously close to walking into a Mossad trap. It had only been the necessity of hiding in a corridor alcove to change into his uniform that had enabled him to overhear the squeal from an agent’s malfunctioning headset and save himself. Since then the uniform had become a talisman. A totem. Udo’s lucky charm.

  He had never risked wearing the uniform in mainland Germany. He had tried it on, many times. In front of mirrors. Or modelling it to please his mother. But he had never used it completely. To its full extent, so to speak.

  Udo’s paternal grandfather – the original wearer of the uniform prior to his suicide on the final day of the war – had, in his grandson’s view, been an unsung national hero. His father had often told Udo the story of how Hanke Zirkeler had saved Léon Degrelle’s life near Cherkassy in 1944. At that time, Degrelle had been a lowly SS-Hauptsturmführer – the SS equivalent of a captain in the Wehrmacht – and Udo’s grandfather an even lowlier sergeant. As a direct result of Hanke Zirkeler’s intervention, however, Degrelle had gone on to command the 28th SS Volunteer Grenadier Division Wallonian, win the Knight’s Cross, and become a propaganda hero, helping to recruit tens of thousands of foreign nationals into the SS when the Reich was most in need of them. Adolf Hitler had personally told Degrelle: ‘If I had a son, I wish he’d resemble you.’ The thought that such a man as Degrelle had been allowed to live and fulfil his destiny solely because of his grandfather’s actions made Udo very proud. And it further reinforced his view, passed down to him via his father, that actions beget other actions. That fate was not a matter of happenstance, but a question of will.