The Sixth Key (6 page)

Rahn moved with the others out of the castle
entrance and into the darkness, not knowing what would come next. He descended
a long staircase to a lower courtyard and followed the group over a path lit by
torches to a door. Beyond it another set of narrow steps took them to what
looked like an underground chamber or crypt of sorts. Years of orienting
himself in caves led him to the calculation that they were in the north tower
and directly beneath the circular hall where they had just eaten. The space was
fashioned into a round crypt of about the same size as the hall above, lit only
by torches placed beneath arched windows set high and recessed deeply into the
thick stone walls. In this strange otherworldly penumbral light, Rahn shivered
from cold and fear. He could sense something sinister afoot, but he didn’t know
what it could possibly be.

Ahead of him the officers took their places
around a large circular depression cut into the crypt’s floor. Rahn was filled
with dismay when he realised, as he approached it, that in this central
depression there lay a man, battered, bruised and bleeding.

‘What do you think of this, Rahn?’ Himmler
said cheerily at his side.

Rahn didn’t know if he meant the poor wretch
in the centre of the room, or the room itself. He decided on the latter; if he
could keep things scholarly he might not lose his nerve.

‘It looks like an initiation chamber,’ he
said, ‘a cross between a Mycenaean tomb of ancient Greece and a Mithraeum used
by the Romans. It has the same vaulted, domed ceiling.’ He followed its arc
with a trembling hand. ‘It is also rounded with a central depression
for—’ He paused then, unable to say the word. He felt the undigested venison
and the good Bavarian wine do a somersault in his stomach.

Himmler looked at him with paternal concern.
‘You did not finish your eloquent conclusion? Is something the matter?’

‘No . . .’

‘Well, as the Führer said, this castle has an
interesting history of human sacrifice. Perhaps it is a little like Montsegur,
where so many good souls were burnt to death by the agents of the Catholic
Church.’

Indignation replaced revulsion. Rahn bristled
at this comparison.

‘Not far from here in the Teutoberg forest
there is a mystery centre, a temple eighty feet above the ground. Weisthor says
this makes Wewelsburg a most propitious geographical location for the centre of
our new Reich. He says that it is at the head of a long ley line that connects
Germany to France – a line of powerful energies called serpent currents,
which channel the forces of death. For this reason I will soon have twelve
basalt pedestals located around the perimter of this vault. Onto these
pedestals I will place urns containing the ashes of those esteemed dead knights
who have sworn an oath that binds them to our order for eternity.’ He stared
pointedly at Rahn. ‘But before one gives this oath one must sacrifice even
one’s goodness. Do you understand, Rahn?’

A little patch of meaning floated out to Rahn
and caused the hairs on the back of his neck to stand on end and a bead of
sweat to form on his brow. That same moment the man in the central depression
began moaning.

Rahn’s heart burned with alarm. He stared at
Himmler. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘It is not what I am going to do, Herr Rahn,
but rather what you are going to do. This is a test of your loyalty. This man
you see here is a malcontent. He has been inciting the people of the township
against us and we were forced to arrest him and his family. I give you my word
that I will spare this man’s children if . . .’

Rahn frowned. ‘If?’

Himmler sighed, like an impatient parent who
must instruct a slow child. ‘If you will show your willingness to sacrifice
your goodness, Rahn! The time has come for you to stain your hands with blood!’

Rahn turned the request over in his mind. He
had obviously misunderstood it. ‘Stain my hands with blood?’

‘Of course!’ Himmler replied, happily. ‘I know
you are an intellectual, for whom the word is mightier than the sword, but you
may find consolation in saving the lives of three children who, beyond the
error of their father, are of good German stock. It would be a shame to waste
them, wouldn’t you agree? One life in exchange for three – a fair price
by any estimation.’

Rahn, confronted by this monstrous proposal,
fell into a panic. He looked about. He was surrounded and there were guards at
the door. Even if he could get past them there was nowhere to go.

‘This man is an enemy,’ Himmler continued,
‘his children will be adopted by one or two of our own members. Soon you will
hear of a program I am creating for such children. I’ve named it Lebensborn.’

The moans of the man in the pit turned to
howls and tears made tracks through the blood on his face. Rahn could make out
the words ‘Spare my babies!’

Himmler rocked backwards and forwards on
polished heels. He looked to Rahn as if at any moment he might do a little
dance. He was enjoying the macabre ritual, and Rahn despised him.

‘You see?’ his superior continued. ‘Even this
man understands what you have to do! Sacrifice must come before illumination
can begin.’

Rahn felt a distortion of his focus. Perhaps
he had been drugged? The wine? The food? Was this a hallucination? Some strange
mock initiation, using suggestion and lighting, smoke and mirrors. He summoned
his defiance. This was surely a test of his moral fibre.

‘I will not do what goes against my
conscience!’ he said.

‘Conscience? Well, I have underestimated the
strength of your conditioning, Herr Rahn. I think you need a little
encouragement. Once you see the children’s cherubic faces you might change your
mind. I had wished to spare them the sight of their father’s execution, but you
leave me no choice.’ He made a signal and one of his ritters came forwards, a man
with a scar on his cheek. The man caught Rahn’s eye as he handed him a large
dagger adorned with the Death’s Head.

The dagger felt impossibly heavy in Rahn’s
hands. The skull’s grin mocked him.

‘Why don’t you kill me, you coward!’ the man
in the pit cried.

A tremulous indecision overtook Rahn now. The
man staring at him in the pit; Himmler with his fatherly grin; the dagger in
his hand; the circle of ritters: all of it seemed to drop away like a rock
thrown into a chasm in the caves of Lombrives and he felt himself rising. He
would surely have fainted, he realised, had he not been startled to awareness
by the appearance of three children ranging in age from twelve to two. They
were brought down the stairs and into the chamber. The youngest was screaming,
wrestling with her captor, while the older ones wore vacant faces until they
saw their father. There was a struggle and they were reined in. The father
cried and the children responded. The father turned away in shame and the
children called out to him.

Rahn was gripped by a species of terror and
indecision.

Himmler glanced at his pocket watch. ‘You have
thirty seconds to spare their lives.’

Rahn decided to try reason. ‘Listen to me
– I don’t know anything about killing a man! Let the children go –
they are good German stock, as you said.’

Himmler regarded him, and in that passage from
eye to eye Rahn saw a man who was beyond history, beyond civilisation, beyond
humanity; he was nothing but a shadow without substance. In a matter of seconds
Rahn understood that he alone in that chamber had the freedom to choose, even
though he would not escape guilt, no matter what his choice. That was Himmler’s
little joke, the illumination he had promised.

Himmler said, ‘You are an expert on mythology,
and mythology is steeped in violence. Just pretend you are Achilles and this
man is Hector – kill him. You have twenty seconds.’

A strange calm descended
over Rahn.

‘Fifteen seconds . . .’

He glanced at those terrified little faces;
three lives about to be shattered or finished, one way or the other. He went
down into the pit. He looked into the man’s encouraging eyes. Perhaps he had
worked all day and had gone to a tavern and voiced his opinions about the Nazis
over a beer? Now he was facing the unthinkable – not only his death, but
also the death of his children.

‘What are you waiting for?’ The man pushed out
his chest like a cock in a fight. ‘Do it!’

‘Ten seconds . . .’

Rahn brought the dagger to the man’s unguarded
abdomen, but his arm was paralysed.

‘Do it, Nazi bag of horse-shit!’ the man
growled, slapping his stomach, working up a hateful panic.

‘Five seconds . . .’
Himmler said, consulting his watch.

What would the Cathars have done? To kill even
to save a life was to commit moral suicide. He could not do it! Moreover, he
would not do it! He brought his arm down and dropped the knife.

The man shouted and made a grab for the blade
but the guard was in the pit before Rahn could think and in a moment the
captive was lying on the ground sobbing.

‘For pity’s sake! My children!’

The moment had passed and Rahn closed his
eyes, certain he would be executed along with the man. He held his breath and
when the shots came they were deafening. Images now danced before Rahn’s
eyelids: he saw himself as a child, running after lightning in the forests near
his home; he saw his father reading the paper and heard his mother in the
kitchen, humming to the faint sound of Wagner coming from the gramophone. He
saw the snow on the pines outside and inside, on the Christmas tree, flickering
candles throwing their light on the fresh pfeffernusse cookies and marzipan
covered in schokolade that were hanging from the branches. He saw himself
inside the village church, a boy of five, urinating into his shoes because
churches were spaces with no end, where there was no light, and where he could
hear the creaking of evil stepping over the stones with the patience of a
pendulum.

He waited for the reproving, interminable darkness
to digest him then but it did not and when he opened his eyes he found he was
standing as before and the captive was dead at his feet, lying in a pool of his
own blood. Beyond the circle he glimpsed those three small bodies slumped on
the ground, one over the other, lifeless, still.

‘So how does it feel?’ Himmler asked in his
high-pitched voice.

Rahn couldn’t speak for a moment and then gall
rose up with suddenness and he leant over and discharged the venison and good
Bavarian wine all over the dead man. There was the fire of bile in his nostrils
and in his throat. He looked up at Himmler.

‘Why?’ he managed to say.

‘So that you could come face to face with the
beast, the power of pure egotism inside you.’

The meaning now came and with it a piercing shame:
faced with making a choice between moral annihilation and the lives of those
children, he had decided to let the children die.

‘You chose what was right for you, you see?
That is pure egotism, don’t you think?’

Anger welled up in Rahn. ‘No!’ he spat. ‘You
were wrong to give me that choice! Wrong in the eyes of God!’

‘I don’t believe you were thinking of God for
one moment! When you made that decision you were thinking of yourself, of the
picture of yourself that you hold so dear. At that moment, you were your own
god and so God, as you have imagined Him, is now dead for you!’

Rahn swallowed acid and wiped his mouth. ‘I am
a free man!’

‘When you believe you possess freedom, that is
when you understand it the least. Freedom comes from knowing the evil within
and embracing it. I told you it would be illuminating! Only now do you truly
know yourself, and your life will never be the same. You see, now that you know
your egotism, you are free to act as you will – unlike most people, who
go about thinking they are so good and proper and god-like. The truth is, Herr
Rahn, given the choice, a man will always choose himself – this is
natural. Those who wish to join our circle must be willing to sacrifice the
false image of this God that is inside them for an ideal that is higher, no
matter what the cost to their soul. This is the first step to a new life. Until
now, to the outside world, you have been SS-Unterscharführer Rahn, unofficially
a member of the Allgemeine-SS. Now, you are made SS-Oberscharführer. To those
of this circle, you are a member of the Blood of the Schutzstaffel-SS. One day
your name will grace a plaque fixed to the back of one of those chairs in the
hall above.’ He gave Rahn something. ‘What you hold in your hand is the
Totenkopf, the Death’s Head ring. It is only given to those few whom I feel
deserve it.’

Rahn wanted to throw it into that pompous
little face but that would not have been wise. His hand was shaking. He looked
at the ring. It was a silver band with several runes and oak leaves cast into
the exterior, topped off with a skull.

‘Look inside it, go on!’ Himmler said,
excited.

Rahn wiped his eyes. ‘I can’t see.’