The Sixth Key (18 page)

Rahn woke with a gasp but when he tried to sit
up he hit his head on a solid surface. He almost sank into a double blackness
but he bit his lip and concentrated on coming out of it. There was a cramp in
his right calf but he couldn’t extend his legs. He was on his back in a foetal
position. He opened his eyes.Darkness.

He was in an undersized coffin or a tomb!

He panicked.

What
has happened
?

He tried to calm his nerves and piece together
those events prior to this nightmare but they were trapped behind a mist at the
back of his head. Where was he? Was this a dream? Would he wake up at any
moment? He remembered the church, the altar, the tabernacle . . . the
blackness. Was he still in the church? Something occurred to him and he felt in
his pocket. The box of matches from behind the altar was still there. That much
of it at least was real. He took the matches out and struck one in front of his
face. He was in a strangely shaped box made from some sort of metal. He was
lying on a number of cold, hard objects that were digging into his back. He
realised he could smell gasoline and blew the match out. He listened for
sounds. The darkness filled him with panic but the smell of gasoline made him
nervous about lighting another match. He then remembered his pocket watch. It
took him a moment to retrieve it but he had to chance lighting another match to
see it.

Nine o’clock.

But was it morning or night, today or
tomorrow? He didn’t know.

He blew out the match again.

It was hot.

He needed air.

He loosened his collar and tried not to let
the panic take hold. He pushed up on the lid and it moved slightly allowing a
blinding light to enter the box for a moment. He was filled with hope. The lid
seemed to be caught on something, a latch perhaps? Maybe he could use those
metal shapes that were digging into his back to break the latch, or at least to
make enough noise to bring notice to himself – wherever he was. As he
contrived to reach behind his back, however, a scream tore into his dark
captivity. Startled, he involuntarily jerked his knees against the lid and it
flew open.

His eyes were assaulted by the light then but
he was breathing fresh air. He sat up carefully and waited for his head to stop
taking turns at thumping and spinning and for his eyes to adjust to the glare.
He realised where he was. He was sitting in the trunk of the Tourster. The car
was in the barn and the door was slightly ajar allowing the sun to slant into
his eyes. He took out one leg after the other and flung them over the edge of
the trunk where they touched something soft. He looked down and saw a man
sprawled out on the ground. The shock of it nearly made him pass out again and
he sat still for a time until he was ready to look again. Yes, a man. He got
out of the trunk and forced himself to roll the body over. It was lying in a
pool of blood mixed with gasoline. An empty fuel can lay nearby. Rahn shivered.
It looked like this man had been about to set the car on fire with him in it
when someone cut his throat from ear to ear, nearly severing his head. The
killer had pulled the man’s tongue through the gash in his throat. Rahn put a
hand to his own mouth and fought down a rising revulsion while he searched the
man’s pockets. He found an old train ticket and nothing more, no wallet,
nothing to identify him.

Who
goes about with nothing in their pockets
?

He inspected the hands looking for an SS ring,
or any evidence that he belonged to the Gestapo, but all he found was a small
tattoo on the right wrist – an upside down anchor with a snake coiling
around it in the shape of an S. He stood up straight, looking about. He didn’t
know what any of it meant. The whole place smelt of congealed blood combined
with urine and gasoline, and the smell caused a sudden rush and he barely made
it outside before emptying the contents of his stomach onto the grass. He sat in
the garden then, feeling dismal and confused, trying to get his bearings. He
realised he was shaking from head to toe and got up to steady himself. He
remembered now lying on the bed upstairs. He and Deodat had resolved to do
something.

What was it?

Deodat! Where was Deodat?

He made his way back to the house, treading
carefully, fearful that the murderer might be lurking somewhere inside. He took
a furtive peek through the front door and saw that the place was a shambles:
books, papers and cushions had been strewn over the Persian rugs; furniture lay
overturned; and every drawer had been emptied of its contents by the look of
it. Nothing was untouched. Rahn’s heart pounded, his head pounded, his ears
pounded and his mouth was as dry as kindling and the bee was back, trying to
find a way out of his head. A strange urge came over him then – he wanted
to lie down. So what if there was a dead man in the barn, a murderer lying in
wait in a ransacked house and he didn’t know where Deodat was? This was a dream
and nothing more! Surely to sleep in a dream was to wake up in real life! He
almost had himself believing it when he heard a noise.

At this point he remembered the scream –
how could he have forgotten it? It sobered him, lifting the fog long enough for
him to realise that someone was in the house. Perhaps Madame Sabine had come
home? He edged his way to the kitchen. It was topsy-turvy but there seemed to
be no one in it. He entered cautiously, looking this way and that. Something
caught his leg then and tripped him, causing him to fall flat on his face.

He heard something drop and a gasp.

‘Monsieur Rahn!’

The world spun around itself, making the bee
in his head
angry. He felt someone turning him onto his back.
‘What are you . . . ?’ he began but forgot what he was going to say. ‘I’m so
relieved to see you, I thought you were—’ It was Eva and she was helping
him to sit up.

‘You thought I was . . . ?’ He looked at her,
trying to focus. Her eyes expressed their concern in browns and golds.

‘Dead,’ she said, ‘or gone.’

‘Gone where?’

She helped him to a chair then found a glass
that wasn’t broken and brought him water. He sipped at it but it made him
nauseous. He paused a moment; that bee was in his ear now and the Eiffel Tower
was still snowed under. He looked at the girl; she was in the same clothes from
the night before. Her face was pale. She was obviously in shock for the second
time in as many days and he knew he had to come to grips with himself –
no good both of them being hors de combat. This thought seemed suddenly
ludicrous and he nearly let go a nervous laugh – something completely
inappropriate, he realised, given that there was a man in the barn wearing his
tongue for a necktie.

‘My uncle’s house is like this too,’ she said,
looking around.

‘When I got there this morning the whole thing
had been turned inside out. I’m glad that I sent Giselle to stay with her
family yesterday. I didn’t know what to do, so—’ she looked at him with
those rounded eyes, ‘—I just drove around. At first I thought I might go
to the gendarmerie at Carcassonne but last night the magistrate said to keep
this between us for the time being. I remembered I had the magistrate’s phone
number and address in my handbag so I tried to call but there was no answer. I
resolved to come here. When I arrived I thought you were taken too.’

‘Taken where?’

‘I don’t know. I looked through the house
before I looked in the barn. He’s not here. I found this – a note –
in the kitchen.’

Rahn tried to read it but couldn’t bring his
eyes together. Eva read it for him: ‘They are coming. Find it – don’t
trust anyone.’

‘They’re coming!’ he said to Eva. ‘Who are
they? Where have they taken him?’

‘I have no idea.’

Rahn paused to let this sink in. ‘I was passed
out.’ He probed his head appreciatively. ‘I must have slept through the whole
thing!’

‘You were concussed.’

‘You don’t say?’

‘No need to be sarcastic,’ she said.

He sensed an inappropriate hint of humour in
her tone. He looked at the double image of her face and choosing one, he said
to it, ‘I’ve been hit on the head with a candlestick and locked in the trunk of
a car in which I was very nearly cremated. Then, having escaped what was to be
my funeral pyre, I happen upon the body of a man whose head is hanging by a
thread, and now I find out that my good friend is missing, that his house is
ransacked and that his life may be in peril . . . I beg your pardon if I sound
a little indisposé.’

‘You were in the trunk of the Tourster?’ she
said, ignoring his various misfortunes and concentrating on what interested
her.

‘Yes, and rather an undignified end it would
have been too if someone hadn’t done-in the man who was about to cremate me!’
he said with passion, seeing an image of it before his eyes.

‘I saw the dead man,’ she said.

‘And you screamed, I know.’

‘The dead man was going to kill you?’

‘I don’t know but there was a can of gasoline
on the floor not far from the body. Lucky for me someone came along and stopped
him with a knife to the throat. I dare say I might have ended up the same way,
had I not been in the trunk.’

Rahn felt for his jacket and realised he
wasn’t wearing it. He had taken it off before lying down. He got up and the
world was a plaything of his vertigo. He had to wait for it to stop before he
could pick his slow way through the mess and up the stairs with Eva following
him.

The bed had been overturned and Eva helped him
to move it. Underneath, he found his jacket but the pockets were empty. Monti’s
notebook was gone and so was the list. He looked about and found his wallet. It
was untouched and his papers were still in it, together with something else,
the card the Russian Grigol Robakidze had given him at the Schloss on Lake
Malchow. There had been something about Black Swans and if he was ever in any
trouble he was to call the number on that card. But he remembered Deodat’s
note: Don’t trust anyone!

He found his lucky fedora – it was badly
out of shape but he put it on his head, glad to have it back. He took a change
of clothes, stuffed them into a small leather bag and went to Deodat’s room. It
had been similarly treated. He told Eva they should go but through the miasma
in his head he remembered something and took himself to the library. Some of
the books had been tossed out of their comfortable beds, quite a few looked to
be missing, but not Éliphas Lévi’s book. He found the original list, still
tucked away inside it.

He put the list in his pocket and went looking
for the pendulum clock. There it was, the ugly thing. For some reason he was
glad to see it.

‘So, are you going to tell me what this is all
about?’ Eva asked.

‘It’s rather complicated and you’ll have to
hear it along the way, I’m afraid.’

‘Along the way to where?’ she said.

He put the clock under his arm and his mind
fell into a palsy. What was he to do? Eva was watching him warily. He must look
and sound quite mad. He drew himself together and said, ‘My dear Mademoiselle
Cros, might I ask you to drive me to Saint-Paul-de-Fenouillet, if you will be
so kind? I’m really not up to it as you can see.’

‘Of course, are we going to see Abbé Grassaud?’

‘Yes, I believe he may
know quite a lot about this entire loathsome affair.’

Once they were well on the way, he told Eva
what she didn’t know. She listened to all of it heavily, driving a long time in
silence; thinking things through, he supposed.

‘So, you are a Nazi, Monsieur Rahn!’

The look in her eye made him sigh. He hated
unpleasantness, but he was sick of being judged by all and sundry. ‘I’m an
author and a historian but I’m not a Nazi!’ he snapped. ‘I admit I was seduced
by the possibility of having the means to continue my work, but that’s all. I
despise everything they stand for!’

‘You said you came here to look for
something?’

‘It’s a long story, but in short the SS want
me to find a grimoire, a book of black magic written by Pope Honorius called Le
Serpent Rouge. I saw a man in Paris who knew something about it and he gave me
a notebook that belonged to another man, a man who visited a priest here in
Languedoc some months ago. The notebook contained information that has led me
to surmise that he wasn’t only looking for the grimoire, but also for a key
missing from it. It’s all rather sketchy and complex.’

‘A key? You mean like the
key to the tabernacle?’ ‘No, in grimoires a key is something that unlocks a
secret – that enables one to conjure a spirit. It can be a
verbum dimissum
, that is, a magic word,
or it can be a sign.’

‘What sort of pope writes a grimoire of black
magic?’

Rahn nodded. ‘A diabolical one! Can you see
now why I don’t like churches?’ He put a hand over one eye and then over the other
to see if his vision had improved. ‘You don’t happen to know the symptoms of a
brain haemorrhage, do you?’