The Sixth Key

by Adriana Koulias

  On his first day, Rahn was ushered into Weisthor’s cramped office to find the man behind a desk buried under papers, curios and statuettes. Every spare surface in his office was taken up with files and strange artefacts, and every available wall was either covered in shelves that sagged under the weight of so many dusty books, or wallpapered with an assortment of exotic maps.

  When Weisthor’s pale eyes looked up, his face broke into a jovial smile. ‘Welcome! So this is Otto Rahn? Sit down, sit down, Otto! Well, well, you are a handsome fellow!’ he said. ‘Look at you! A German through and through!’

  For his part, the man’s face was fat, his nose bulbous, and his greying hair, despite the short haircut, was not of the mind to be tamed, poking out of his head at odd angles like little radio antennas. His eyes, strangely askew and weighed down by bags of skin, stared with great intensity at Rahn who, on the other hand, tried not to stare at the crumbs that littered his superior’s uniform and short moustache.

  ‘Just having lunch, do you mind?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Good . . . good . . . I have a ravenous animal inside me that I must feed at regular intervals, or it becomes quite violent! So – you’re from Michelstadt?’ Those bushy brows were arched and waiting.

  Rahn removed a half-dozen books and a thighbone that looked curiously human from a chair and sat down. ‘Yes, Michelstadt is my home.’

  ‘Ahh, the forests of Odhinn-Alfadir, home of the grand god of the North, the town of Michael the Dragon Slayer!’

  ‘My mother used to tell me stories about him,’ Rahn said, with a polite smile, feeling uncomfortable under that mismatched stare.

  Weisthor picked up his half-eaten sandwich. ‘Well, the woman certainly inspired you!’ He underlined his statement by taking a bite. Between chews, he observed, ‘You know, a father may be the backbone of a man’s life, but a mother is the voice that encourages him to walk tall!’ He stared for a moment, perhaps remembering his own youth and came out of it with a start. ‘So! You’re a philologist, a scholar of the German Romances, an expert on the Cathars and caves, the Holy Grail, the occult, history and mythology! Impressive for one so young – how old are you?’

  ‘Thirty-one.’

  ‘Oh! A fine age, a fine age! And your book on the Grail, I must tell you, has created a sensation, a real sensation. As a matter of fact you’re quite in vogue, and you’ll have to thank my surrogate daughter, Gabriele, for that, because she was the first to tell me about you.’ He leant forwards. ‘You can thank her in person; she is quite a catch, you know.’ He allowed this to hang in the air between them before continuing, ‘At any rate, I have to say, when I read your book tears came to my eyes – tears! I agree with everything you wrote; the Cathars and their terrible struggle against the evil power of the church is an image of our own Aryan struggle. Needless to say, I passed your book on to Himmler, and here you are! The entire book will soon be required reading for every man entering the SS. What do you think of that?’

  Rahn quickly came to realise that Weisthor’s questions were purely rhetorical, and in this case, gave him pause to tease out something caught between his two front teeth. ‘As to your task here, your knowledge will be of great help to me. You see, timing is of the essence.’

  ‘Timing?’

  He looked at Rahn with a fiery eye. ‘The Führer has plans. We are to reinvigorate the old cults and resurrect them into a new, all-embracing religion! We’ve been ordered to bring back the gods of the Underworld, Rahn! That is what this department is about. What do you say to that? Your books will help support, through your scholarly research, what we already know – that the German race is superior to all others and that the Grail lineage, the knightly bloodline of Saint Odilie, courses through our veins. In fact, the blood of the German people is the Grail itself! We are the beloved of God, just like the Bogomils and the Cathars! But we have other work . . . yes . . . yes . . .’ He sifted through his papers. ‘As well as coming up with new rituals and festivals, we have to find evidence for our conclusions! We must find the links between our people and the Tibetans, the Romans and the Persians – what do you think of that? And we haven’t much time. We’ll have to create a map library and visit the old pagan shrines, because the Reichsführer wishes us to conduct our research in the most scientific way. Science is everything these days, Rahn! For this reason I will be sending you to many places of interest, so that you can supervise our scientific archaeological work.’

  ‘But what of the books I have to write for Himmler?’ Rahn asked, tentatively.

  ‘Books? Yes, those too, you can do them in between everything else. You will see, you will not be idle.’

  And he wasn’t.

  The weeks turned into months. Rahn travelled to the Odenwald, the Westerwald and to the hilly Sauerland; he trod through the Wildengerb ruin, near Amorbach, where there was a dig in progress. He went to the Leichtweis cave near Wiesbaden and then onto Sporkenburg, where there was an important historical ruin. In between journeys to this place and to that place, he moved into an apartment in Tiergartenstrasse, he was given a small office at SS headquarters in which to work, and a nervous young assistant, Hans, to help him.

  Whenever he was in Berlin, Rahn spent a great deal of his time compiling that map library for Weisthor, who had started calling him a ‘surrogate son’ and even invited him to visit the Villa Grunewald, to meet his ‘surrogate daughter’, Gabriele.

  Gabriele turned out to be a rather vivacious young woman, highly intelligent and fun to be with but, unfortunately, not at all his type. Thereafter, whenever Weisthor spent a weekend away at the Schloss, the castle on Lake Malchow, he invited Rahn, and Gabriele always seemed to turn up. Rahn began to wonder with some discomfort whether his invitations had been at Gabriele’s insistence. She certainly seemed to be growing quite attached to him, and although so far he’d managed to divert her frivolous advances into intellectual channels, he knew the situation was likely to grow increasingly awkward.

  At the Schloss Rahn mingled with the elite of Berlin, a strange mixture of Nazis, foreigners, businessmen, and members of the flying squadron who were billeted nearby. He drank a great deal, danced until his feet were sore and fascinated the guests by recounting his escapades in the caves of the Lombrives. On the odd occasion, he even took over the bar to make those cocktails he had learnt to mix from the Senegalese barman, Habdu, at the old hotel he once owned at Ussat-les-Bains. To the delight of all, he told stories of the guests he had served: Josephine Baker, Marlene Dietrich, even Pabst himself. What he didn’t tell them was that he had bought the place on a whim and had spent so much money on renovations it had sent him bankrupt.

  At the Schloss he met an enigmatic man, a Georgian named Grigol Robakidze, a poet and playwright. Robakidze was in his mid-fifties and wore his short hair plastered to his head with pomade. When he looked out from under his well-shaped brows he exuded a decadent urbanity and an evil indolence that reminded Rahn of Bela Lugosi’s Count Dracula. Later, Gabriele would tell Rahn that rumours were always circulating about Robakidze. Some said he was a magician, others that he was a Russian Merlin or a genteel Rasputin. Some even went so far as to call him a spy.

  Whatever the case, in the coming months Robakidze would prove a most congenial and interesting friend to Rahn, inviting him to sumptuous lunches or splendid dinners, during which they would sit for hours, locked in conversation. Whenever they met at the Schloss, the Russian behaved as though a meal with Rahn was a sacrament. Robakidze even became rather upset if Rahn was ever absent for the weekend.

  The last time Rahn saw him at the Schloss, Robakidze seemed unusually subdued and suggested they abscond from the castle to a little restaurant in the township, where they could be alone. They ate their meal in a strange monastic silence and it was plain to Rahn that Robakidze had something on his mind. When they were finished and the plates were cleared away, the Russian lit a thin, Burmese cheroot and sat back, observing Rahn and saying nothing for a time.

>   ‘You must be wondering,’ he began, finally, ‘why I have taken you away from excellent food and champagne bubbles to eat soggy strudel and to drink ordinary house wine?’

  Rahn calculated his words, sensing something strange afoot. ‘Too much perfection can be tiresome.’

  Robakidze raised one brow very high and his eyes narrowed. He seemed to be assessing Rahn. ‘I simply wanted a different milieu for what I am about to tell you.’

  ‘I see,’ was all Rahn could say.

  ‘You know from our conversations that long ago I was a pupil of Nietzsche,’ he said. ‘What you may not know is that one day I came across Goethe’s teachings and they have since become the basis of all my thinking, my poetry, and my prose. Goethe led to an illumination. I woke up to a strange species of knowledge: I knew, without a doubt, that Nietzsche was driven by a demon to write his work on the Antichrist. Yes, I can understand why you smile, but it is true!’ He leant forwards to whisper, ‘I believe that the very same demon has entered into German hearts.’ He sat back again and took a long drag of his cheroot, letting this sink in. ‘Why were the German people not inspired by Goethe?’ He shrugged. ‘Who can say? But they have made their choice and so Germany is headed for doom. One day, perhaps sooner than you think, you will understand. When that day comes, if you are in need of a friend, or if you find yourself in trouble, you can call this number. It is the number of the Black Swans.’ He took a card out of the inside pocket of his flawless suit and gave it to Rahn. Black Swans?

  At the time Rahn couldn’t imagine what Robakidze meant by ‘trouble’. Later, on reflection, he understood that to continue to have any association with the Russian and these Black Swans, whomever they were, might prove dangerous to his health, so he stopped going to the Schloss altogether. In any event, his workload had increased so much that he had no time for pleasant weekends away.

  It all began when he asked Weisthor for more time in the office, so he could concentrate on reworking an old travel diary he’d kept for some years into a book entitled Lucifer’s Court. But soon he was overseeing a number of additional projects, including reviewing an article written by the alchemist Gaston De Mengel.

  De Mengel’s research into pre-Christian, Indian, Persian and Chinese religious documents was of a sudden interest to Himmler, and Rahn’s job was to check and to translate the article with the assistance of the flamboyant mathematician, SS Sturmbannführer Schmid.

  Despite his growing workload, other items kept landing on his desk for consideration: treatises on Tibetan Buddhism and tantrism; books by the alchemist Arturo Reghini; articles on the lost Atlantean civilisation; pamphlets on the goddesses of Earth and Moon; works on Sacred Geometry – the science of grids, harmonic mathematics and Earth energies; as well as various texts on alchemy, witchcraft, ancient mythology, numerology and the science of symbols.

  The list was seemingly endless, and he wondered how he would ever find time to finish his book. When he asked Weisthor why Himmler wanted so many reports, his superior had answered him with a puzzled expression.

  ‘Don’t you know, dear boy? Why, it is for our Führer. He has had many visions of his past lives. In truth, he remembers one particular life, which was foremost among them: his time in Atlantis when he was a great magician and a man unsurpassed in his abilities! What do you think of that? Now, as you no doubt know, in each life one must relearn the knowledge of the past before one can begin to work on future abilities. So to this end, the Führer has been amassing a great number of books on magic and sorcery. He has a voracious appetite for knowledge but, you see, with all he has to do, he has no time. Your reports will save him having to read through everything. Do you understand the great honour he has bestowed upon you? I believe, if you please him, he might even show you his libraries one day.’

  ‘How many libraries does he have?’

  ‘There are three separate libraries. But it is at the Berghof that he keeps all his magical works – some five or six hundred of the rarest volumes on the occult. Everything is managed by his librarian, a man called Herbert Döhring, whose fervent hope it is to increase the size of the collection to sixty thousand volumes! In that library, our Führer has nearly everything written about magic and witchcraft, torture and ways to summon devils. You will never see anything more beautiful.’

  Ways to summon devils?

  Rahn walked back to his office feeling that Weisthor was living up to his reputation for lunacy.

  In the coming months, Rahn worked through the Olympic Games to publish Lucifer’s Court, and had a run-in with his assistant Hans. The stupid man had interpolated anti-Semitic remarks into the narrative without his permission! When Rahn complained to Weisthor, he was warned against going to Himmler – after all, Hans was the Reichsführer’s brother-in-law.

  Disheartened, Rahn observed the remilitarisation of the Rhineland and the Anschluss of Austria from his windowless and therefore airless office, rarely noticing whether it was day or night. He also did his obligatory dismal time as a guard at Dachau, where he saw happenings that disquieted him and where he heard of even worse things: the murder of Jewish prisoners and the torture of Marxists and anyone suspected of speaking out against the Government. He only cheered when he saw the snow begin to melt, because it meant that he would soon be leaving the camp. But when he returned to Berlin he not only found it cold, damp and smelling of boiled cabbage, he also witnessed the same cruelty and inhumanity he had seen at Dachau, placidly tolerated and even encouraged by ordinary German men and women alike. Sometimes even children would go out of their way to kick an old Jew who had been struck to the ground by a Gestapo officer.

  From that time, Rahn began to consider ways of ending his involvement with Himmler and the SS. What could he have been thinking? How could a tolerant man continue to live under such a government? He was pleased, therefore, when he was given the task of fine-tuning the Reichsführer’s genealogy because this meant he had to travel to Switzerland. Once there, he was seized by a sudden overwhelming sense of liberty. He wanted desperately to see mountains again, hawks flying overhead and caves below. He had sorely missed the villages, the lakes and the cool freedom of being awake beneath a pure, early morning sky.

  On impulse he looked up an old Swiss friend, Alexis La Dame, but learnt from La Dame’s mother that he was working at the university in Paris. Rahn hadn’t seen him for almost two years but La Dame was the sort of friend who remained close despite distances and the vagaries of fate. They shared a love of the mountains, caves, detective novels, mysteries, music and, during their potholing days in the south of France, had both developed a taste for brandy.

  Full of excitement, he secured a certificate from a Swiss doctor to lengthen his stay, citing exhaustion. He then set about petitioning the French Embassy for a new passport, all the while writing to Himmler lies of the wonderful book he was writing, a great tome some two thousand pages long.

  The day he was denied entry to France he was feeling particularly low and his spirits became decidedly lower when a German officer arrived at his door wearing plain clothes. He was carrying orders from Weisthor, signed by Himmler. A new assignment was waiting for him, something of great importance, and he was to leave with the man immediately. At this point Rahn realised his situation – he was not a free man.

  When he returned to Berlin he waited cheerlessly for Weisthor to call him to his office and to give him the particulars of his mission, but the days passed with no word. To make things worse, while working on his own genealogy, to fulfil the requirement for racial acceptability, he discovered something alarming. His mother’s maiden name was Hamburger, apparently a name frequently used by European Jews, and to top it off, his grandfather’s real name was Simeon! Rahn’s ignorance of these particulars did not surprise him. What parent discussed such things with their children? But now he was in a mess and the situation grew even more acute when Gabriele called him one night to warn him that the Gestapo was secretly investigating Schmid – the mathematician wh
o had worked with him on the De Mengel article. Rahn took himself to Schmid’s apartment and found the door unlocked and Schmid gone. Everything was still in its place and even the table was set expectantly, waiting for a dinner that now lay cold and rotting on the stove. Rahn made discreet enquiries about Schmid but to no avail – the man had disappeared without a trace.

  The day Rahn confronted Weisthor on the matter, he was feeling rather unwell from a bout of the flu and this made him incautious. Weisthor heard his words in a blank silence and afterwards remained quiet, as if undergoing some internal debate.

  When he spoke his voice was serious and conspiratorial. ‘Tell me, Rahn, are you the sort of chap whose ears are disposed to hearing extraordinary things?’ He blinked and blinked at Rahn, quite full to the brim with a fierce form of enthusiasm.

  ‘I would like to think so,’ Rahn said, blowing his nose.

  ‘Well then, close the door, dear boy. Sit down and listen.’ He regarded Rahn heavily. ‘I like you, I think you know that,’ he said. ‘I feel that when I talk to you I am speaking to an intellectual equal. You’re different from the empty-headed puppets that walk about this place and so I want to tell you something that might save your life. Can I trust you to be discreet?’

  Rahn nodded, trying to appear the very model of prudence.

  ‘In the coming months, Rahn, you must get used to the idea that Germany is going to have to kill an inordinate number of Jews. But not just Jews,’ he said. ‘You must get used to the idea that the master race has no time for the sick and the ailing and the degenerate. Do you know what Eugenics is? Darwin’s half-cousin came up with it. It is the science of racial hygiene, the science of culling out riffraff; a kind of enforced natural selection. You see, the weaker races can only survive by breeding with the stronger ones, and this weakens the stronger race. Simple really. We become less than animals because even animals do not mix together. Have you ever seen a monkey mating with a zebra? Of course not! If this were allowed to go on in the human race it would be headed for doom!’