by C. M. Palov
Anticipation mounting, Cædmon hurriedly removed a pair of binoculars from his rucksack.
‘Reddis lapis exillis cellis.’
‘The Stone of Exile has been returned to the niche.’
While no location had been given in the inscription, he assumed that the ‘niche’ in question was located on Mont de la Lune. More than likely on the northern façade of Moon Mountain, since that was the side of the mountain visible from Montségur.
Beginning his search through the binoculars at the base, he slowly, methodically, worked his way up the rocky face. Examining each nook, each cranny. To his surprise, the northern façade was riddled with small cave openings. At least a dozen of them. Three-quarters of the way up, he discovered a small fissure shaped like a crescent moon, brilliantly illuminated by the noonday sun.
‘In the glare of the twelfth hour, the moon shines true.’
‘Bloody hell … I think I’ve found it,’ he gasped in wonderment.
Lowering the binoculars, he studied the granite cliff. There appeared to be enough protruding rock ledges that he could ascend in a zigzag fashion, making for an arduous but not impossible climb. Since he’d done a bit of rock climbing in his younger days, he was fairly confident that he could reach the crescent-shaped niche.
As he shoved the binoculars into his rucksack, it occurred to him that in many of the medieval Grail poems, it wasn’t the treasure discovered in the mist that mattered, but the spiritual journey that led there.
‘Sod that.’
Let some other bloke be saved. He was determined to find the Grail.
51
The Seven Research Foundation Headquarters, Paris
1130 hours
‘Eine bloeder Affe! ’ Dolf Reinhardt muttered under his breath as he watched the sports video on his laptop computer, outraged that the Hertha Berliner football team had so many Africans in the squad. Disgraceful! They were stupid apes who couldn’t even speak proper German!
Disgusted, he slammed the computer closed.
Sitting outside the conference room in a high-backed chair, he sullenly glanced at his watch, wondering how much longer he would have to wait for Herr Doktor’s meeting to adjourn. He was hungry and wanted to take his lunch break. He also needed to return to the Oberkampf flat and check on his mother. While tempted to take his leave, he was a good soldier and would wait to be officially dismissed. After yesterday’s fuck-up, he wasn’t going to do anything that might jeopardize his position.
Well aware that he had failed miserably in his assignment, he feared that he might have lost Herr Doktor’s trust; a trust that he’d striven mightily to cultivate over the last eight years.
The fact that he’d not been promoted during those eight years rankled, his duties rarely extending beyond the washing and waxing of Herr Doktor’s sedan, running errands and walking that little furry scheisse Wolfgang. On those days when he felt overworked and underappreciated, he would remind himself that his maternal grandfather had also been a chauffeur.
To the greatest man who ever lived, Adolf Hitler.
A member of the Führer’s personal staff, his grandfather Josef Krueger not only drove the Führer to rallies, top-level meetings with his generals and front-line inspections, he was responsible for maintaining the Führer’s entire automotive fleet. A responsibility that his grandfather undertook with the utmost devotion. Indeed, he considered it a sacred honour to serve the Führer in this capacity.
When Dolf was a young boy, his mother had regaled him with stories about the Führer and how he’d treated her father with the greatest kindness, often bringing snacks for the two of them to share on long car trips. A man of the people, the Führer always insisted on sitting in the front passenger seat. While he refrained from discussing politics on those extended journeys, the Führer would speak at length about their shared interest in automotive mechanics as he plotted their course on a road map.
A trusted aide-de-camp, his grandfather had been in the Berlin bunker in late April 1945, when Adolf Hitler had taken his own life. It had been his grandfather’s grim task to secure the hundred and twenty gallons of petrol that was used to cremate the Führer and his new bride, Eva Braun. A dark and dreadful day for the Reich.
In idle moments, Dolf would sometimes fantasize about driving the Führer’s magnificent 770-K Mercedes Benz with the twelve chassis, armour plate and bullet-proof glass. Attired in a black SS jacket, jodhpurs, polished knee boots and peaked visor with silver braid and totenkampf emblem, he would cut a dashing figure. As would the Führer and the other dignitaries in the vehicle.
Smiling, Dolf closed his eyes, able to hear the roar of the crowds as they exuberantly chanted Sieg Heil! and the repetitive pound of soldiers marching in picture-perfect stechshritt, legs swinging in unison, right arms raised in a stiff salute.
‘Sleeping on the job, are you?’
Hearing that seductive purr of a voice, Dolf opened his eyes. A vision in a skintight white suit and stiletto high-heels stood over him, a mocking sneer on her painted red lips.
‘No doubt you’re exhausted from performing your important duties,’ Angelika Schwärz continued. Placing her hands on her hips, she glanced at his laptop computer. ‘Looking at a little Internet porn, were you?’
Dolf smoothed his sweaty palms against his trouser legs, uncertain what to say. If he denied the charge, it would make him appear unmanly.
‘I am waiting for Herr Doktor to issue my orders for the day,’ he muttered, purposefully changing the subject.
Angelika made a big to-do of peering around the deserted antechamber located just outside of the conference room. ‘Poor Dolfie. The great man seems to have forgotten all about you. Does anyone even know that you’re here, sitting all alone in a dark hallway on the most uncomfortable chair in the entire office suite?’ Licking her shiny red lips, she chortled nastily. ‘Or are you being punished?’
‘I’ve done nothing wrong.’
‘What do you call yesterday’s fiasco? A circus clown with a water pistol would have had greater success.’
He bit back a crude oath. For eight long years he’d made numerous sacrifices and put in long hours to prove his worth to the Herr Doktor, often forced to leave his mother unattended for extended lengths of time. He did this without complaint in the hope that he would move up the ranks and become a trusted aide. With the greatest fervency, he desired to have the same type of relationship with Herr Doktor Uhlemann that his grandfather had had with the Führer.
And though he had no proof, Dolf suspected that the blonde woman standing before him was the reason why he’d not been promoted.
Frowning, Angelika slowly tilted her head from side to side. ‘It doesn’t matter from which angle I gaze at you, with that unsightly nose you have a face that only a mother could love.’
‘Leave my mother out of this,’ he cautioned. Ire mounting, his right hand balled into a fist. Turning his head, he stared at the empty receptionist’s desk at the end of the hallway, grateful that no one was witnessing the humiliating exchange.
‘And does she love you, little Dolfie?’ Angelika jabbed him in the shin with the pointy toe of her high-heeled shoe. ‘Look at me when I speak to you, driver.’
Dolf swung his head in her direction. That he had to obey the bitch infuriated him.
‘Does your old mutti lavish you with attention, smother you with kisses and let you suckle at her breast?’ she taunted perversely. ‘I think that’s your problem, Dolfie. You’ve sucked at that withered tit for too many years.’ Red lips curved in a come-hither smile, Angelika undid the top button of her tailored jacket, exposing her bare breast. ‘If you’re a good boy, I might let you lick me. Would you like that, Dolfie? Hmm?’
Rabid with lust, he stared at the perfectly shaped white breast, torn between strangling Angelika with his bare hands and falling to his knees. Licking her from one end to the other. Submitting himself to the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
Dolf adjusted the computer on hi
s lap, hiding the fact that he had a boner the size of a bratwurst.
Angelika shot him a pitying glance. ‘Poor Dolfie. You remind me of the eunuch standing guard at the pasha’s –’
Just then, Dolf’s stomach growled noisily.
Throwing back her head, Angelika laughed, her disdain causing his erection to instantly deflate.
‘You’re quite the ladies’ man, aren’t you? What will you do for an encore? Seduce me with a deafening fart?’
Bitch! Slut! Whore!
Mortified, Dolf glared impotently at the blonde seductress. If he put the arrogant cunt in her place, he’d lose his job. If he touched her breast, he’d lose his job. If he so much as uttered a rude word to the bitch, Herr Doktor Uhlemann would send him packing.
Herr Doktor thought the world of Angelika Schwärz. That’s because he didn’t know about his Dark Angel’s lurid predilections. But Dolf knew. He’d followed her one night when she went to one of the city’s Black Metal clubs. Standing in the shadows, he’d watched her have sex with two leather-clad, metal-studded men while bar patrons cheered her on. Herr Doktor had no idea; like every other man, he was under her spell, unable to see that she wasn’t a real woman dedicated to hearth and home. Instead, she was a promiscuous she-devil who revelled in emasculating every man she came into contact with. She possessed none of the virtues of her sex but all of the vices.
Angelika’s cell phone rang. With an exaggerated sigh, she re-buttoned her jacket before checking the caller ID.
‘I have to take this call.’ She blew Dolf a kiss. ‘Ciao, darling.’
Panting with suppressed rage, Dolf watched Angelika’s hips provocatively sway from side to side as she walked down the hallway.
That beautiful blonde bitch will be my undoing.
52
Mont de la Lune, The Languedoc
1242 hours
Mad dogs and Englishmen …
Although the dog, to his credit, knew better than to attempt a perilous mountain climb without a safety harness. Cædmon, to his regret, did not, the ascent proving a savage undertaking. Far more dangerous than he’d originally envisioned.
Or perhaps his vision had been clouded by the same obsessive desire that had led more than a few Grail knights to an untimely death.
Shoving that unpleasant thought aside, he hoisted himself upward. The trick was not to think about the fact that he was ‘balanced’ on a narrow protuberance of granite no more than fifteen inches wide, while his hands clung to a second, equally narrow, protuberance located a metre above his head. Unable to see the crescent-shaped niche from his current position, he reckoned that he had another twenty metres to traverse.
‘Shite,’ he muttered, unintentionally jabbing his index finger against a sharp-edged stone. Skin punctured, blood oozed down his hand.
He cautiously tiptoed across the granite shelf. Then, very slowly, he removed his rucksack and turned around. Leaning against the rough-hewn wall, he took a moment’s ease. In the far distance, he heard the merry tinkle of sheep bells. In the near distance, an eagle soared in graceful arabesques.
Rumour had it that Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the eighteenth-century philosopher and part-time daredevil, would spend hours perched on this very sort of sheer precipice, from which he’d gleefully toss stones as he imagined them being smashed to smithereens on the rocky gulch below.
Another mad man, Cædmon mused as he rubbed his bloody finger against his trouser leg. It was a warm day and his shirt was soaked through with perspiration. He was half tempted to disrobe and fling the drenched garment over the edge like one of Rousseau’s rocks.
Rested, he hefted the rucksack on to his shoulders. Turning towards the granite crag, he continued to climb. Extending. Then pulling. Occasionally clinging. A slow but steady ascent. The sun beat down mercilessly on his head. He ignored it as best he could. A small rock shifted beneath his feet. He scrambled. Found another foothold just as the rock broke free. A deadly projectile hurtling through space.
Cædmon chanced a downward glance.
A mistake.
Seized with an unexpected attack of vertigo, he leaned into the coarse rock, afraid to breathe, move or even blink for that matter. A bird on a wire, wings clipped.
Panic-stricken, he tightened his grip on the rocky knob. A drop of blood plopped on to his face from the punctured finger, rolling down his cheek to his chin. An instant later, it joined the rock at the bottom of the cliff. Ghoulish images flashed across his mind’s eye. Broken bones. Crushed spine. Smashed skull.
‘Any moment now I’m going to plunge to my –’
Stiffen your backbone, man. To quote the American commando, you seek ‘the Holy fucking Grail’.
Cædmon gulped a deep breath. Then another. A soft breeze wafted across his cheek. A gentle caress. The irrational fear subsided. Courage shored, he extended his arm. Securing a handhold, he navigated to the next ledge.
Upsy-daisy.
Long minutes later, he reached the crescent-shaped opening. Peering inside, he saw a shallow grotto about seven feet in height, strewn with rocks and boulders. An inauspicious vault for the most sacred relic in all of Christendom.
Undeterred, he heaved his torso into the breach, wiggling his lower body as he scrambled into the narrow cavity. Crouched on his haunches, he opened his rucksack and removed a torch. Flipping it on, he aimed the beam around the cave. Which is when he saw a set of skeletal remains.
I don’t believe it … it’s the bloody Grail Guardian!
Thrilled by the discovery, he rushed forward, stumbling on a loose stone in his haste.
Kneeling beside the bones, he shoved the torch under his arm as he examined several bits of metal that looked to be a crudely fashioned belt buckle. A dried, translucent snake skin was draped over the bloke’s clavicle bone; a fragile strip of boot leather clung to his bony foot; and several horn buttons were scattered about. Everything else had long since disintegrated.
Above the skeleton, a Latin phrase had been clumsily scrawled in what appeared to be a manganese pigment. Ad Augusta Per Angusta. ‘To holy places through narrow spaces.’ Beneath the text was a crudely rendered Cathar cross.
An evocative message scribed for the ages. And while it wasn’t proof positive, it strongly suggested that these were the mortal remains of one of the four Cathars who escaped the Montségur citadel.
Cædmon perused the area, wondering if a skeletal companion lurked in the near vicinity. As he peered through the crescent opening, the Pyrenees unfolded in the airy distance like a granite accordion. The last image imprinted on the Cathar’s dying brain. Although a lonely place to spend eternity, the view was splendid. To die for, an irreverent wag might say.
‘All right, old boy, where’s the blasted Grail?’ he demanded cheekily. He shone the torch into the far reaches of the stone sepulchre, surprised to see that the cave extended deeper into the mountain.
Hope springing, Cædmon ambled through a craggy chasm which, in turn, led to another grotto. The womb of the Mother.
At a glance, he could see that there were no bones, no inscriptions and no Grail.
Angered to think that the Knights Templar may have beaten him to the prize, he turned in a slow circle, searching for a stone depository where the relic could have been stashed. His attention was drawn to a massive slab that jutted out from the grotto wall. He walked towards it, the unusual rock formation meriting further investigation.
A Cathar cross adorned the thick block of stone. Intrigued, he peered behind the slab.
‘I’ll be damned,’ he murmured upon discovering that the slab hid a passageway approximately five and a half feet high and twenty inches wide. ‘To holy places through narrow spaces.’
Bending his head, Cædmon stepped into the passage.
53
Grande Arche Parking Garage, Paris
1247 hours
‘Aren’t you the least bit tempted?’ Kate asked, still stunned by the staggering amount of money that had been offered to Finn in exc
hange for the Montségur Medallion.
‘Oh, yeah. Like I want to work for the devil. Which, in case you don’t know, is called selling your soul.’ Leaning against the railing inside the garage stairwell, Finn unabashedly stared. ‘You know, the blonde hair is starting to grow on me.’
‘You’re absolutely certain that I won’t be recognized?’
Plucking one of the corkscrew curls, Finn pulled it straight before releasing it. The blonde curl bounced into place like a well-oiled spring. ‘Don’t worry. I’ve been living with you 24/7 and even I wouldn’t recognize you.’
As with all of the other equipment, the wig had been part of yesterday’s spending spree. Although she’d complained about donning it on a hot day, the disguise was absolutely necessary for Phase Two of the mission op. There were video surveillance cameras in the underground parking garage at Grande Arche and the blonde wig would ensure that she wasn’t identified. They’d both agreed that it was easier to alter her appearance than disguise a six-foot-four-inch male.
‘Time to get the mission underway.’ Unzipping his Go Bag, Finn removed a black metal object that resembled a hockey puck. ‘Let’s go over the instructions one more time. Once you locate Uhlemann’s Mercedes Benz, crouch beside the rear tyre well and, reaching underneath, place the tracking device so it can’t be seen.’ He pointed to the small flat disk. ‘This is the magnetized side of the device. In order for it to adhere, metal has to touch metal. Any questions?’
‘Just one … What happens if I get caught?’ Suffering from an acute case of the jitters, Kate gnawed on her bottom lip.
‘You’re not going to get caught,’ Finn assured her. ‘This operation is a two-second “stow and go”. I’m talking stupid simple.’
While the hyperbole was meant to buoy her confidence, Kate worried that she might not be up to the task. She hadn’t even left the stairwell and already her heart was pounding and her knees were shaking. A terrified blonde Mata Hari.
