Strindberg's Star (38 page)

T
he wind tore at the windows in the hall of the castle, making them clatter behind their pulled curtains. A few yards ahead of them in the shadowy light, the Toad waddled past the busts of Wewelsburg’s melancholy prince-bishops, with the tower key swinging from his hand. After him came an attorney from Afzelius in Borlänge who called herself Eva Strand.

Eberlein had taken Don’s arm and walked closely next to him. The only thing that was different about the German’s catlike appearance from their meeting in Villa Lindarne was the wired earpiece that hung down alongside his pale gray face. But the aged man’s lips still shone a shade too red, and under his glasses the inward smile didn’t seem to have deserted him yet.

There didn’t seem to be any hurry, and the small group moved slowly through the echoing stone hallway.

The Germans paused at a model of Himmler’s project
Mittelpunkt der Welt
, and they stood looking at it for a long time. There, inside the glass, was the monstrous SS fortress the Nazis dreamed of in 1941. A wave of giant concrete buildings that would have surrounded the
north tower and suppressed any sign of life in the surrounding Westphalian countryside.

“A remarkable person, Karl Maria Wiligut,” Don heard Eberlein mumble to himself.

Before he could protest, the German waved dismissively as though he had heard a message from his earpiece. Listened for a moment with his head cocked to one side before the conversation was concluded with a terse nod.

“Noch eine kleine Weile,”
Eberlein said to the Toad. It will be a little bit longer.

His only answer was a slight shrug from the wide, sloping shoulders. Then the Toad pointed toward a sign that said:

When they walked into the entry hall of the museum, they were met with a muted light. It came from several porcelain ovals that hung above an open fireplace, framed by a marble frieze in Roman style.

A few yards away from the hearth stood a pair of worn leather sofas. Eberlein suggested to Eva and Don that they take the opportunity to rest for a little while. Then he sat down across from them, while the Toad remained waiting in the dark, like a saggy statue.

“As you understand,” said Eberlein, “the preparations are not quite finished yet. We are still expecting some guests from far away at tonight’s ceremony.”

Don pressed his lips together, and Eva curled up in the corner of the sofa with her arms around herself. The bruises on the attorney’s face had disappeared, and all that was left of the yellowish brown scab under her left eye was a pale pink circle.

In the long silence that followed, Eberlein looked down at his watch now and again. It was as though he was unsure whether time had stopped or was really still ticking by.

F
inally, Don leaned forward and whispered to Eberlein, “You know that we’re sitting in the Nazis’ old wedding hall, right?”

“I can honestly say that I have no idea what kind of madness Himmler got up to here in Wewelsburg during the war,” said Eberlein.

The German’s yellow-gray eyes glimmered.

“In that case, I’ll tell you,” said Don. “In this hall, the Schutzstaffeln had their very own marriage ceremony that was called SS-Eheweihen. It was Heinrich Himmler himself who created the true Aryan marriage ceremony. Before the wedding, the bride had to provide a picture of her cranium from the front and in profile. To this she had to attach a medical certificate stating that her blood was sufficiently pure, and a pedigree had to be sent to RuSHA, the Office of Race and Settlement. If she was suitable, the documents were stamped in a local office here in the castle.”

The leather of the sofa creaked as Eberlein squirmed.

“A few doors away,” Don continued, “were the clinics for the breeding program Lebensborn. There they fertilized the purebred women who hadn’t been successful in finding husbands. Once the pregnancy was over, the newborns were placed in special orphanages where their racial quality was evaluated. Lebensborn … do you know what that word means?”

Eberlein sighed.

“It means ‘the source of life.’”

“As I said, I know nothing about what the Nazis did here during the war,” said Eberlein. “It was unfortunate that they were able to take over our castle at all, especially because we were interested only in renovating the north tower.”

The German straightened his glasses, and there was a certain delight in his eyes when he noticed that Don had stiffened.

“Karl Maria Wiligut’s task was to create a proper hall of ceremony for the ankh and the star down in the crypt, and a dignified place for the foundation’s meetings in the upper hall of the north tower. Nothing
more than that. Everything that happened afterward is the responsibility of Heinrich Himmler and the SS.”

Don could feel his head swimming, and he sank back against the sofa.

I
n the dim light, the color of Eberlein’s face seemed to have become a shade rosier. Now the German leaned forward a bit, until he sat tottering on the edge of the seat. He cracked his knuckles thoughtfully.

“This is the last time we’ll see each other, you and I, Titelman,” he said slowly. “You have truly been an invaluable help. It would be a shame if you thought the foundation and I were some sort of …
Nazis
in the end.”

Don sat silently while Eberlein inspected his nails.

“So what is this all about, then?” he asked at last.

“What this is all about,” said Eberlein, “is that you have made further leaps in man’s quest for knowledge possible by finding Strindberg’s star and then bringing it here. And tonight, when the star and the ankh have been reunited once again, the foundation’s interrupted work will be able to continue.”

“The foundation’s interrupted work …” Don repeated.

He sneaked his hand down into his shoulder bag to try to find a pick-me-up. Something that could lift him out of this gathering feeling that he was dreaming.

“The thing is,” said Eberlein, “that I may have doctored the story about Nils Strindberg a bit when we met in Stockholm.”

“So there were no spheres?” Don mumbled while he looked down in the bag for the right blister pack.

“Strindberg’s spheres?” Eberlein scoffed. “You’ve seen them yourself, photographed in the negatives from the balloon journey, seen sketches of them in Strindberg’s stenographic laboratory notes, and followed the expedition diary’s coordinates of the ray’s movements. What else do you need?

“No, everything I told you there in the library at Villa Lindarne was historically accurate, up until the discovery of the opening down in the underworld,” the German continued. “This is about what happened
afterward.
The truth is, you see, that we know who killed Nils Strindberg, Engineer Andrée, and Knut Frænkel out there on the Arctic ice. The foundation has known ever since the spring of 1901, actually.”

E
berlein moved back on the sofa and settled himself. Once again it was as though he were slowly being rejuvenated by his own words, and the furrowed lines on his face gradually began to melt away and disappear.

“I don’t know if you remember that I showed you Nils Strindberg’s last, muddled notes. The ones he wrote on the back of Knut Frænkel’s meteorological sheet when he was hiding from his pursuers down in the crevice of the glacier. What Strindberg wrote was that the ankh and the star had been stolen by strangers who attacked the expedition out in the middle of bare expanses of ice. According to Strindberg, Frænkel was already bleeding to death from his gunshot wounds at this point. Engineer Andrée had also been shot, and a slow death awaited Strindberg himself. The gateway to the underworld was open, and then Strindberg mentioned a name. He wrote that ‘the older one was called Jansen.’”

Don read the sprawling ink lines in his memory and nodded reluctantly.

“Therefore,” Eberlein continued, “it created a stir among the businessmen in the foundation when, in March 1901, a letter arrived that was signed with that very name, or more accurately, ‘shipowner J. Jansen.’” The return address was for a law firm in Hamburg. And when the foundation contacted the lawyers there, a rather unbelievable claim was put forth. It turned out that these ‘strangers,’ as Nils Strindberg called them, were actually a group of destitute Norwegian whalers. They had followed the Swedes’ balloon across the sea from
Svalbard, and at the Arctic pack ice they continued their pursuit on skis. How they then managed to navigate correctly across the ice and find their way to the Swedes at the opening of the hole, no one knows. One theory is that Knut Frænkel leaked the story about the Bunsen burner and the sphere’s coordinates to the Norwegians back in the camp on Danskøya. We know that their steamer was anchored beside the Andrée expedition’s ship
Svensksund
for several weeks, down in Virgohamna. In any case, the Norwegians managed to find their way to the opening only a day or so after Strindberg and Andrée had begun to explore the mouth of the tunnel. According to the Norwegians, the Swedes were needlessly aggressive, and it was entirely their fault that shots were fired. Somehow, Jansen and his men must have gotten Strindberg to tell them how the Bunsen burner and the spheres worked. Because by the time they contacted the foundation, the Norwegians knew all about the movements of the ray and how one could follow its changing position. During the four years that had passed since 1897, the whalers had also gone down into something they called ‘the halls of the underworld’ on several occasions. They couldn’t really explain what was there, but they understood that it was something of great value.”

Don let out a cough. “The halls of the underworld?”

“That’s what the Norwegians chose to call them,” said Eberlein. “They had discovered that even though the hole in the ice moved every third day, it permanently led down to this immense passage of … well, underground halls. But at this point they had also realized that they had neither the financial resources nor the knowledge to make use of what the halls contained. So the Norwegians suggested a kind of exchange. They would remain in control of Strindberg’s ankh and star and function as the guardians of the opening. The foundation would send scientific experts to the tunnel, and through their business contacts transform whatever they found down there into a modest economic profit.”

“So what was down there?” asked Don.

Eberlein smiled, as the wind was blowing harder outside the castle. Don could see, out of the corner of his eye, that Eva Strand also had begun to listen attentively now.

“At first, nothing that the researchers in the early 1900s could understand,” said Eberlein. “It took almost ten years of study before the foundation managed to come up with a method—quite honestly, a rather primitive one—for the extraction of … knowledge that had been left behind. Or maybe
knowledge
isn’t the right word, actually; more like enigmatic whispers about the ultimate construction of existence, a sort of mental blueprint for how this universe is constructed, in a purely physical sense.”

“That sounds like something I’ve never really had a clear idea of,” said Don.

“But to come up with any useful answers, you also have to ask the right questions, don’t you?” said Eberlein. “Above all, you yourself have to have at least a vague understanding of the way things are. So the foundation’s research began during the first year of the twentieth century, when a concept like a Higgs particle sounded like some kind of dirt that ought to be cleaned up, and it would still be another thirty years before James Joyce made up the word
quark.
Neutrinos, mesons, the astronomical secrets of quasars … we’re talking about a historical era when the academics of the world hadn’t even accepted Darwin’s theory of evolution. Steam locomotives were considered advanced. The Mauser rifle, with its smokeless gunpowder—the highest form in the art of war. People had heard of wire spirals, but hardly the DNA spiral. Nor could anyone understand the significance of a discovery like that, even if someone happened to sketch the structure of the double helix from a prophetic vision. And unhappily enough, all such visions ceased in the summer of 1917—that’s when the ankh and star disappeared unexpectedly.”

“In 1917,” said Don.

“When the star was hidden in Malraux’s grave,” Eva mumbled.

“The last long expedition was carried out in late autumn, 1916.
Weather conditions in the Arctic were difficult, of course, for the technology that the foundation had access to at the time. The recordings from that expedition are the last ones that we still have. In June 1917, the Norwegians sent word that the ankh and star had disappeared without a trace, and with that, the contract with them lost all further meaning for the foundation. All business contacts were severed, and from what I understand, that shipowner, Jansen, died only a few years later, destitute. And yet the Norwegians had managed to earn tremendous amounts of money, just by having control of Strindberg’s ankh and star. As I may have mentioned, the businessmen in the foundation worked primarily in the defense industry, and the unexpected scientific discoveries they had managed to extract from the underworld truly had given weapons development a boost. Strindberg’s instrument had given them a cutting edge against the competition, one could say.”

D
on had been seized by a sense of déjà vu, and he could distinctly smell the scent of the airless seminar rooms in Lund where the conspiracy theories never seemed to die out. Still, he couldn’t stop listening as Eberlein continued.

“But even if the opening was closed and gone, many of the recorded visions remained. During the twenties and thirties, the foundation’s researchers worked hard to investigate the messages they had received there in the darkness of the underworld. Because the primary interest lay in the area of weapons technology, they naturally placed their focus on the structure of the atom. It seemed to contain an almost inexhaustible power if they could just interpret the drawings correctly. But not even the foundation’s resources, which were considerable at that time, were enough to fund such a project on their own—they needed a state for that. The most obvious partner was Germany, of course, and the political parties in Berlin. Surprisingly enough, the National Socialists won the election in November 1933, and the foundation found that they suddenly lacked personal contact
with the country’s new power elite. Nazism was, of course, a right-wing populist movement that no one had taken seriously, and everyone in the defense industry was caught napping. Then Hitler’s speedy rearmament came as a consolation, and any progress in weapons technology was met with great respect, no matter how advanced and far-fetched it sounded.”