The Alchemist’s Code (7 page)

From the testimony of Richard Douglas Morrison,

CIA agent under the command of Allen Dulles

Zurich, March 8, 1945 – Austin, Texas, 1976

The German was on the ropes. He couldn't give Dulles what he was asking for. He stood still for a few moments wringing his hands, then raised his clear eyes and stared at his interlocutor. The thin line of his mouth slowly opened.

“More than a year ago now, on 15 February 1944, the abbey of Montecassino was bombed. A grave loss to the history, culture and artistic heritage of Italy and the world, but a great opportunity for the
Abwehr
– the secret services of the Reich – and the survivors of the Thule Society.”

Dulles snorted.

“The Thule Society… Not even Hitler was able to knock them out, it seems.”

Wolff smiled back, mockingly. “Hitler and Nazism, Mr Dulles, are a
creation
of the Thule. How could it be dismantled by what it had helped to create?”

“Go on.”

“In short, the German secret service, backed by the Thule, had a very different interest in the abbey, something that the bombing would not compromise: the archives hidden in the cellars.”

“Yes, we know of that theft. What did you call the operation? Archimedes?”

“Diomedes,” corrected Wolff, “Diomedes, after the Homeric hero turned into a bird by Venus.”

“Very poetic. Please, continue.”

“The secret services and the undercover Thule agents managed to gain access to the archive through the mediation of a Benedictine monk – a descendant of southern German gentry – and to find what they were looking for.”

“The
Abwehr
knew where to look, because one of the nine – the German – had betrayed his vows, and had sold the information to the regime.” Wolff shook his head. “Or better, to the Thule itself, Mr Dulles. In any case, the thing was found and the secret services managed to persuade the monks to move the contents of the archive to the safety of the Vatican.”

“But, of course, not all of the boxes containing the precious documents arrived at their destination.” Wolff held his interlocutor's gaze, even though he knew his hand was weak. “The monks had done an excellent job of safeguarding the idol for centuries. When we recovered it, it was in perfect condition.”

“Just as well. And what did the
Abwehr
and the Thule do?”

“Admiral Canaris had strict instructions: the idol was to be preserved at all costs. He had no interest in that sort of thing himself, but since the request came personally from Himmler and the officials who were obsessive enthusiasts of esoteric archeology, Canaris carried out his orders with great care.”

“Very well, I thank you for the details about your endeavour,” said Dulles before, after a short, tense pause, asking again and for the last time the crucial question.

“Now, General, tell me, when you left Montecassino, where was the idol taken? I will not ask you again.”

Wolff hesitated once more, then, with a bitter smile, said, “To the city that until recently was the safest in Germany”.

The German revealed the hiding place, and Dulles's face stiffened: this was extremely bad news. He had no idea how long he had to organize and execute a mission in the heart of the Reich. Maybe a few weeks. Maybe only a few days.

Events reconstructed by Lorenzo Aragon

Naples, January, 2013

The sleep of my personal reason had been generating a reassuring, albeit fictitious, everyday life. A routine, made up of unvarying gestures and acts, always and inevitably the same, but which carried with it no worry, no pain, no problems to deal with. The perfect life.

That life, however, was a fiction. And the discovery of the fact was extremely painful.

That morning, like, from what I could remember, every morning, my wife – or the woman claiming to be her – got up before me. It had been late before I had fallen asleep, and was late when, bewildered, I awoke. I spent a few seconds in a semi-conscious state, unable to understand what was happening, and then comprehension started to dawn on me in all its horror.

I looked around me and a spasm gripped my stomach like a vice: the room I was in was completely alien to me. There were a few pieces of cheap furniture, peeling paint, the roof was falling in and on the walls were absurd posters of mountain landscapes. I got up and had to work hard not to fall down, as my head began throbbing so violently that it left me almost breathless. I leaned against the wall, clenched my teeth and waited for the pain subside. The first thing I noticed was that the cup that I had placed on the bedside table was gone. The second and most shocking thing was the thought that until a few hours before, that room had seemed in perfect condition and, above all, that to my eyes it had looked like
my
bedroom. Up until that moment, something had possessed the power to distort my vision of reality.

I took a deep breath and prepared myself to go out and face whatever unknown now lay before me. Peeping out from under the bedcovers was a little red and blue leg. I bent down to look and found the Spider-Man toy. It felt like the only real thing in that hellish world of lies.

Before leaving the room, I slipped it into the pocket of my pyjamas and checked that there were no tea stains visible, then went out and began to roam the house of horrors. As I walked down the hall, I had complete confidence that this was not my house. And not only that. That it was not even a house, but a hovel – an apartment in ruins. Outside the room in which I had awoken there was a dark corridor, where the paint was peeling off the walls and the floor tiles were loose. I noticed a light coming from somewhere at the end of the hallway and another room, from which there came the noise of crockery. A kitchen probably. I walked slowly, hesitantly and preparing for the fatal moment when I would meet that woman again. I had to keep a cool head and try to feign naturalness.

I entered the kitchen and saw that it looked just as seedy as everything else: an old, rickety table in the centre, two battered chairs and a sink, which had once been fine marble, were the only furniture. Her back to me, a female figure in a dressing gown and with hair similar to that of Àrtemis was stirring a cup of coffee with a teaspoon.

“Good morning, darling—” I said as I approached the table.

“Good morning,” she replied, in a hoarse voice that I did not recognize, before slowly turning around. I managed to stay calm, even though in the exact moment my eyes lit upon her face, a chill ran up my back to the nape of my neck. At that moment, I had the proof that everything Anna had told me was true. This woman was not Àrtemis. She wasn't ugly, but her face certainly didn't possess any of the sweetness of my Àrt. Her features were more pronounced – more vulgar, you might say: her skin was a beautiful olive colour, her eyes large and dark, her full lips, held sensually parted, revealing white teeth. Her figure too – from what I could see through her robe – was shapely and sensual, and seemed to have nothing in common with Àrt's lithe body.

I somehow managed not to lose control, but for a moment I must have let some of my tension show, because the woman's face took on a worried look.

“Is something wrong? Do you feel ok?”

I had spent half the night developing a strategy as to how I would behave. If the drug wiped the short-term memory and recreated a fake reality day by day, then it was impossible that I should remember not having been well the day before. But my body would still be affected by the illness, so I pretended that I was still not feeling well, making sure to mention nothing about the day before.

“I don't know, I feel a bit nauseous. Only a bit, but it's a pain.”

“How strange,” said she in a hoarse, sing-song voice and in a tone that seemed to imply she was making fun of me.

“Yeah, it must be indigestion—” I said, shaking my head and giving my best performance. “That thing we ate last night… What did we eat? I don't remember.”

“Nothing special: vegetable soup and a little cheese.”

“Of course. Very strange, then – we didn't eat anything heavy.”

“No, we didn't. Do you want a little tea, perhaps, instead of coffee? Or a camomile?”

What was I supposed to do? I tried to follow Anna's advice and stay cool.

“I don't know, to be honest. Let me go to the bathroom first and get ready.”

“Do you think you can face going to work?” she asked, sounding more caring than she had a few moments before.

“Yes, I don't think it's anything serious.”

“All right, do what you like,” she said at last, embracing and kissing me. I felt her large breasts pressing against my chest, and stood there frozen. Because it was not Àrtemis. That was not her body. But the anguish of that embrace was linked to an even greater concern: where
was
Àrtemis? What had they done to her?

I wanted to hurl the woman to the ground and beat her, yes, beat her, just to make her tell me what had become of my wife and where I was. I wanted to with all my soul.

But Anna had begged me to remain calm and to keep pretending. So I returned the embrace, trying to overcome the revulsion she inspired in me and communicate the affection I felt for Àrt. The
real
Àrt.

*

In the bathroom I had another unpleasant surprise, and it was not just the grime which surrounded me. Looking into the mirror which hung from the wall on a wire, I was horrified to see how awful I looked – I was gaunt and unshaven, and my hair was dishevelled. I hardly recognised myself.

“What has happened to me?”

Could it be that they weren't feeding me? Apart from having skipped dinner the night before, I couldn't remember what my habits were. The thought even flashed through my mind that this might actually be my real life, and it was everything that I remembered, or thought I remembered, that was some kind of dream, or hallucination. Perhaps that woman really was Àrtemis, and this really was my home. I stared at my face in the mirror, then shook my head.

That wasn't possible – it was an absurd idea.

I splashed some water on my face and looked for a razor, but in that dilapidated bathroom there was nothing but a bit of soap and some towels. And in any case, I thought, it would have seemed strange to suddenly shave that day, given the state I was in. So I went into the bedroom to get dressed. I opened the only wardrobe and found three suits wrapped in cellophane. Without thinking, I took one, noting that it was rather threadbare.

Questions echoed incessantly in my head. Why did they keep me like that? Why?

I dressed, slipped Spider-Man into my pocket and walked towards the front door where a lone, tatty black coat hung. I put it on, and the pseudo Àrtemis joined me at the door with a glass and a pill.

“Here we go”, I thought.

“I don't think it'll matter if you take your pill on an empty stomach,” she said, with a frosty smile which showed her perfect white teeth.

“Oh, of course – my pill. Yes, in fact I am feeling a bit better.”

She literally stuck it into my mouth, perhaps out of fear that I might hide it in my hand and only pretend to swallow it, then pressed the glass of water to my lips. I took a long sip and gave her a kiss before leaving.

As I descended the stairs, I put two fingers into my mouth, pulled out the pill and gave it a quick look. The only odd thing about it was the silver capsule. In every other respect it was an ordinary pill. I slipped it into my pocket. Maybe I could have it analysed.

Once in the street, I realised that I was in my own neighbourhood. To be exact, I was in a dark, narrow alley which runs from the street upon which Palazzo Aragona is located up to Corso Vittorio Emanuele. I turned around to look at the building from which I had emerged and saw that it was an old one which I knew and which was only a few hundred metres from my house. A building which had once belonged to a noble family, and was now dilapidated and uninhabited: the remains of its beautiful decorations and its garden now overgrown with weeds spoke of happier times.

I walked towards the top of the alley the building overlooked and saw from afar the disused news kiosk at the corner of my street. I had been trying to convince the council to have it removed for years, but always without success.

As I looked at it, I suddenly remembered that the day before I had met Anna right there, although my distorted perception had made the kiosk seem to be in much better condition. I turned towards it and saw a man sitting inside, wrapped in a heavy coat and with a hat pulled down over his eyes. A name surfaced on my lips. Fausto—

I don't even know a Fausto who runs a news stand. That name and that character must have been implanted in my mind for some reason.

As soon as the man saw me, he stiffened. He had an intent look on his face, almost like a policeman. What the hell was he doing sitting in a ruined newspaper kiosk? And why did I have the strange feeling that I was supposed to ask him something? I approached him with these concerns in mind, trying to guess which question I should come out with.

As it turned out, he didn't even give me time to come up with anything and immediately handed me some sheets of paper folded up like a newspaper. I realised immediately that he was neither a homeless man who had found shelter there nor a policeman, but had instead something to do with the nightmare that I was trapped in. We stood for a fraction of a second looking at each other, then he said, “Good day, Mr Aragona.”

I nodded to him and went on my way, casting an eye at the papers he had given me. They were covered with incomprehensible markings, symbols and strange optical illusions. They disturbed me and made me feel dizzy, as though they were doing something to my mind.

Without realizing it, my head still seized with incredible confusion, I found myself in front of my garage.