The woman stood for a moment before rubbing her forehead with her forefinger and thumb cocked into an 'O' shape. Suddenly, the people scattered about the market started to look in one direction, away from the stalls to the road that ran alongside it, some of the stall holders moved to rush out of the frame, Gertrude Verker could be seen holding her hands to her face before she too ran out of view. The tram accident!
Jolene looked at Dale.
'Is it her?'
He nodded slowly.
'Yeah, I'm damn sure it is, but it doesn't tell us much, I suppose that we can at least get a screen capture and get an enhanced picture from it for facial recognition.'
'A little more than that I think!'
Jolene smirked. She tapped the screen at the bottom left of the image with a blunt but polished fingernail.
'Don't you think that it is odd that these two guys are looking in the direction of our street fighter when everyone else is looking towards the tram accident?'
Dale focussed closely on the bottom of the image where two men were standing side by side, their heads and shoulders just peeping into the frame; a man with short silver grey hair was talking to a larger man with closely cropped hair next to him.
They conversed for a while before the black woman walked out of frame and after a minute or so the small man patted the big man on the shoulder and wandered off into the market. After a short hesitation the big man turned around to head out of the bottom of the image; Dale paused the footage and the brutal looking face was now recognisably clear.
'That is definitely the guy who choked me!'
Jolene nodded, 'Yeah, and we also have a third mystery man. Review the video and select the best images, we'll get screen dumps and submit them for image processing and enhancement.'
She smiled at Dale.
'Looks like we just caught a break!'
'Much better to have the crossed arrows stamped on the inside of a
Sigil Ring
,' Akosua mused as they bumped around in the van speeding along a road heading out of The Hague.
'The Arrows of Neit! They actually mean something; we get off our arses and get out there, we get our hands dirty! What do the Cherubim and Seraphim really do? It was Cherubim that lost the book and the ring in the first place!'
Frans closed his eyes as he shook his head.
'The Star of Seshaat and the Horns of Hwathor are just as glorious in a
Sigil Ring
, believe me.'
He looked at Akosua pointedly.
'It is only by the three Holy Orders working together that we achieve anything, strength, wisdom and beauty, that is why we have survived for so long, right from the First Age through to where we are now.'
Akosua grimaced slightly.
'I've had so much difficulty remembering the Ages and the names of the Orders.'
Frans grinned like an imp.
'Ahh, would you like a quick history lesson?' he asked, starting to count off his fingers.
'Everything up to 2083BCE was the First Age, ending with the demise of Akkadian influence in Sumer. The Second Age was from 2083BCE to 1400BCE and we slowly moved down to Egypt and established ourselves there during the Eighteenth Dynasty.
'From 1400BCE to 400BCE we moved around a lot, some of us in Europe, some of us in the area around Jerusalem, the Third Age was not particularly good for us, a millennium spent in the wilderness apart from a few local successes. However, from 400BCE to 900CE, the Fourth Age saw a change of fortunes, a golden time with the Roman Republic and then the Roman Empire. It allowed us to really consolidate our Order, but, the Fifth Age saw another low point and from 900CE to 1225CE we had to seek sanctuary in Turkey and Persia under the Ghaznavids Muslim dynasty, although that period was a time of great learning for us.
'The Sixth Age saw the start of our influence in Europe which in many respects led directly to our current situation, from 1225CE to 1809CE we were associated with the Teutonic Order of Knights but that went a little sour after Bonaparte stuck his nose in,.
'The Seventh Age started slowly for us, but it culminated in possibly the most spectacular plan we have ever come up with, even better than the events of Fourth Age. From 1809CE to 1945CE we came so close to realising our Great Work, but ever since that terrible end the Eighth Age has been spent rebuilding, knowing that we can accomplish what we set out to do over four thousand years ago. Compare what we have achieved in the last sixty-five years with the tribulations of the previous Ages!'
Rey grinned widely, 'Very good Frans, and here was I thinking that you had gone senile!'
Frans jerked his head up and rolled his eyes as a little humming sound emanated from between his lips, 'I have forgotten more that you'll remember old friend,' he turned and nodded pointedly at Akosua, 'and you, young Sister, Mistress Akosua, you will have to show that you know and understand all of this and lots more besides if you wish to be inducted into the Dominions, it is a big leap from the Principalities. You know that you've been nominated but you should not take your promotion for granted, the final decision is yet to be made.'
Akosua was silent for a moment, a small pout appearing on her lips.
'I do know, honestly, I've waited for this for so long and I won't let you down, I know you've both put a lot of faith in me. Some of the other Sisters are quite jealous that I get to do what I do but I have worked hard for this, I've aimed for this ever since I was a little girl.'
Frans pursed his lips and briefly closed his eyes as he shrugged.
'You must be prepared and opportunities like this do not come around very often.'
'She'll be alright,' Rey defended, 'she just needs to remember that it isn't all about standing on snowy street corners and following US Embassy employees.'
He turned and winked at Akosua.
'Yeah,' she smiled, 'although I've had enough of that over the last couple of days.'
Akosua paused as she started to remember her youth; she leaned back against the side of the van and stared dreamily at the metal roof of the van.
'I remember when I was just nine years old, going for my first initiation as an Apprentice. I was so nervous; I'd always known that my family was part of something bigger, knowing that I had been adopted and chosen to be part of something that could change the world really made an impact on me.
'It was explained to me that I was a Supplicant when I was just six years old and - I don't know - it just clicked with me. During the next three years I tried to be the best at whatever I did and my hard work paid off when I was made one of the youngest Postulants out of all Candidates.
'When I turned eight I put in to be raised to an Applicant and passed all my admission rites, knowing that I could soon be picked out of so many other children. It was the happiest day of my life when I was informed that I was ready to be raised from a Candidate to an Apprentice and just the thought of being an Initiate and entering the first of the degrees,' she shrugged, 'I don't know, I'll just never forget how I felt that day, it was an amazing time for me, it meant everything.'
Both Rey and Frans grinned sympathetically, having had much the same experience when they were roughly the same age; adopted as children into the Order and raised from their earliest memories to render their devotion to a single cause.
'Where did you go?' Rey asked quietly.
'Well,' grinned Akosua widely, 'I don't know exactly but it was near a small town out in the country in England, I still don't know where but I do remember that it was called 'The Oaks' and was a lovely Georgian manor house. The girls all shared a dormitory and we had a great time together, during the day we played sports and games with the boys and in between we had special lessons where we rehearsed what we had to do.
'Then the big day came and in the afternoon we had to dress in our robes and get ready. We were running around like mad things, screaming and shouting and laughing as the mentors tried to brush our hair and get us organised.
'When night finally fell we were led down a big stone staircase to what seemed like a cavernous cellar with vaulted ceilings and it was all a bit daunting, all candle light and shadows. I remember the ceremony like it was yesterday, I was almost sick with excitement. I just kept going through the instructions I had been given, again and again, I was desperate not to make a mistake.
'I stood in front of the Knight Elector along with eight other boys and girls and he seemed like a giant at the top of a mountain but I guess that was because we were so small. He sat up on a huge throne that had carved dragons and oak leaves and so many symbols that I didn't understand back then. I remember that there were nine stone steps leading up to him, I must have counted them a dozen times because I didn't want to trip up as I walked up to him.
'He looked so scary, wearing his black robes and the hood that didn't show any of his face and that huge wooden staff that he banged against the stone slabs that echoed around the vault. Everything was so dramatic, the red velvet curtains, the flaming torches and the chants. It was just amazing.'
There was a further silence before Rey spoke.
'The ceremony for Apprentice Initiate is deliberately theatrical to make it a particularly memorable and intimate experience; it is engineered to convey dramatic participation, the recollection of which gives a warm fuzzy feeling of belonging to something special, beyond the mundane and forever shrouded behind the veil of the innocence of our youth.
'We can spend our whole lives trying to recapture that moment of total participation and when we do, we are brought right back to that memory of so long ago. You know that the incense that they use is unique and something of a secret recipe, passed down the ages? They make is especially for the ceremonies and it is a highly guarded and prized concoction. One whiff of it and you're instantly transported back to the emotionally charged atmosphere of your first initiation.
'Of course, the Catholic Church does it on a much grander scale, they have a larger marketing budget than us but we really know how to target our customers.'
Frans snorted.
'You're too cynical my friend.'
He frowned slightly as he thought for a moment.
'That must have been around 1990, eh? That was probably Knight Elector Khoury of the Seraphim who lead the ceremony; he was an Imperator then and a very well respected figure. He was very knowledgeable about eastern religions and mysticism and did a lot of important work in refining our understanding of earlier research.'
'He died in a crash didn't he?' asked Rey, squinting.
Frans rasped in air between his lips.
'Yes, Himalayas of all places. He was on a trip to Tibet and his car went off the dirt road.'
He raised his eyes up as he recollected the date.
'1992 I think. He was tipped to become a Cardinal and maybe even a Senator. It was quite a loss.'
Rey stifled a shrug in mute acceptance of the cycle of life and looked at Akosua with an earnest expression.
'You see, the Thrones are not the only ones who give their lives for our cause. Never doubt that our oaths are sacred. What we do now is the culmination of the work of all men and women in our Order throughout the ages stretching back to the dawn of civilisation. We've always been here, watching and waiting. This is now our moment and the part that you play will go down in our history. We can realise the dream of true freedom for mankind and for those that oppose us, we can now visit the nightmare of the wrath of God upon them'
'Amen,' smirked Frans as he nodded.
Akosua paused for a moment and became solemn.
'I'm ready, I've been preparing my whole life for this.'
'That show'st the darkness thou canst not dispel!'
- Sun of the Sleepless - George Gordon Noel Byron
After relaying their CCTV footage findings to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, Jolene had requested that Jackson provide a summary of his current research. He had insisted on a proper presentation, indicating that he had created a slide-show to illustrate the theme and track of his investigation and that it would be much better conveyed in a more formal setting.
Allowing him some time to finalise the content of his address, Jolene had gone off ostensibly to check on a few things and had returned wearing a complete change of clothing. The court shoes and formal business suit had been replaced in favour of chunkily heeled black leather 'biker' boots, black stretch jeans and a fitted white shirt with the hem worn loose over her hips. In one hand she carried a battered brown sheepskin flying jacket and in the other was a polypropylene pistol case with room enough for a couple of handguns.
'I know Nazis are involved,' Dale commented as she entered the room, 'but you could have told us that we have to dress like World War II fighter pilots.'
Jolene paused as she was about to place the gun case on the desk.
'I'd like to be ready for any eventuality Officer Mallory,' she stated dourly as she lumped the case down, 'and a business suit is not necessarily practical for what may transpire next in our operations.'
She took a moment before smiling at him curtly, 'I wouldn't want to end up getting punched in the nose because my movements are restricted by what I'm wearing!'
Jackson had snickered as Dale acknowledged the retort but continued tapping away at his laptop computer.
Jolene folded her arms and directed her gaze at Dale.
'I suggest that you and I retire to the conference suite and allow Jackson to finish his presentation, he doesn't need any further distraction.'
Dale looked at Jackson who in turn deliberately avoided his gaze. After a silence he shunted his chair back and fell in behind Jolene as she turned and started walking out of the small office.
Jackson Revere slowly ambled into the Ambassador's conference suite where Jolene and Dale were already sitting on opposite sides of the table, the glass door easing shut behind him and sighing as the pressure seal tightened. His laptop was tucked beneath one arm and in his free hand he had a steaming cup of coffee.
'Sorry I took so long, I just wanted to make sure that I had all the facts available.'
Walking around behind Jolene, he deposited his laptop at the head of the table and bobbed down to retrieve a cable lying coiled next to a socket in the floor. Leaning over to the back of his machine, he plugged it in and glanced over his shoulder to see the large screen that they had watched Kappel's video conference on flicker to life and display the workspace of his computer.
Double-clicking on an icon in the centre of the screen, a picture of an oil portrait of a rakish looking young man appeared; the face framed by an extravagant headpiece and his torso flamboyantly dressed in exotic garb.
Jackson took a swig of his coffee and coughed before picking up some paper notes and starting to read from them:
Sun of the sleepless! Melancholy star!
Whose tearful beam glows tremulously far!
That show'st the darkness thou canst not dispel,
How like art thou to joy remember'd well!
So gleams the past, the light of other days,
Which shines, but warms not with its powerless rays;
A nightbeam Sorrow watcheth to behold,
Distinct, but distant - clear - but, oh how cold!
Jackson flopped the papers back on the desk as Dale and Jolene gazed at him.
'Sun of the Sleepless, a poem written by Lord Byron and published in 1815.' He turned to look at the portrait of the famed English poet and adventurer, 'the 'Sun' in the first line in fact refers to the planet Venus, the Morning and Evening Star and a favourite object of veneration for occultists since the dawn of time.'
He tapped the space bar on his computer keyboard and an image of the planet appeared.
'Venus is the second planet from the Sun and is named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty. It is the brightest natural object in the night sky after the moon.'
He tapped it again and an image of the statue of Aphrodite of Milos appeared; more commonly know as Venus de Milo and believed to have been sculptured by Alexandros of Antioch somewhere between 130BCE to 100BCE.
'In mythological terms the Roman goddess Venus is synonymous with the Greek Aphrodite and going back further we see connections with the Phoenician Astarte and Etruscan Turan, before that the Babylonian Ishtar and Sumerian Inanna.'
He paused.
'Whether Venus or Aphrodite, by whatever name she goes by, her domain is concerned with fertility, love, war and sex -'
Jolene blinked and Dale raised his eyebrows slightly, causing Jackson to note their movements but he simply sighed and avoided responding directly with a comment. Picking up his notes again, Jackson adjusted his spectacles to read.
'If we take Ishtar as an example, she was called the courtesan of the gods and had many lovers, however, her love was often fatal. To quote Felix Guirand from the New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology, "Woe to him whom Ishtar had honoured! The fickle goddess treated her passing lovers cruelly, and the unhappy wretches usually paid dearly for the favours heaped on them!"'
'But what does that mean?' Jolene asked with a quizzical expression on her face. 'What is the relevance?'
Jackson shrugged.
'I don't know exactly, but here we have Ishtar, Aphrodite, Venus, characterisations of the Sun of the Sleepless if you will,' he pointed at the screen, 'all essentially the same female personification, taking lovers but treating them with disdain, using them for her own purposes and discarding them when they are no longer favoured.'
He pursed his lips as if in deep thought and paced slowly, the archetypal image of a university professor engaging in rhetoric to lead his students to a conclusion.
'What if the attributes of Ishtar, of Aphrodite, of Venus, what if they are embodied as attributes of this group, the Brothers and Sisters of the Sun of the Sleepless? How might those properties of infidelity and disdain manifest?'
Dale looked between Jackson and Jolene.
'Sleeping with the enemy?' offered Dale.
'Almost!' Jackson exclaimed excitedly, pointing a finger at him. 'However, I think with a little more finesse. I believe that we have a hint that this group works like a
femme fatale
, the seductive woman, luring smitten lovers into compromising situations using her irresistible charms to harness their knowledge and access to power for her own ends. Think of the romanticised Mata Hari embodied within an organisation. They use their wiles to gain access to the corridors of power and engineer events to their own ends. As Byron put it, “Distinct, but distant - clear - but, oh how cold!”'
Jolene blinked and shook her head.
'Alright, a nicely poetic conjecture, but can we get down to facts? What about the book?'
Jackson smiled at her and nodded.
'Of course, I was just getting to that!'
He tapped the keyboard and a large red flag with a black Swastika within a white circle appeared on the screen.
'The Nazi Party; its roots were essentially founded in the year 1919 and it initially concentrated on political rabble-rousing, rising in power and status from 1925 until in 1933 it effectively took control of the government of Germany with the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Reich Chancellor. Now, along that winding road of ascension, different groups tried to jump on the bandwagon, they also wanted a slice of the pie and included among these groups were occult and esoteric organisations.'
Jackson lightly rubbed his teeth over his bottom lip, clearly considering how next to proceed.
'Now, understand that what we may consider as occult or esoteric is different from the interpretation in the context of the 1920's and 1930's. These were not just groups of people wearing too much eye liner and flitting about in black clothing, chanting mumbo-jumbo and brewing potions, although there was some of that going on. No, some of these groups also had an ideological interest that manifested as political expression.'
Dale nodded knowingly.
'Like the Republicans.'
Jolene glared at him and then glanced at Jackson to urge him to continue.
Jackson acknowledged her and started to speak again.
'As I mentioned in my previous exposition here in this very conference room, one such faction was the Thule Society. This started off as a fairly innocuous study group for Germanic heritage, but, during 1918 it was rapidly appropriated to be used as a front for a more politically motivated clique of protagonists.
'You see, a wealthy adventurer and occultist with an interest in the shared roots of Germanic and Islamic mysticism named Rudolf von Sebottendorff became active within the Thule Society. He was already a member of another organisation called The Germanic Order Wavalter of The Holy Grail, a group dedicated to Wavalter which was one of a triad of gods associated with Wotan who you may know as Odin, the leader of souls.
'This group was under the control of one Hermann Pohl and he was specifically interested in using Sebottendorff to further the Wavalter agenda of nationalism and anti-Semitism through the Thule Society. Are you with me so far?'
Jolene nodded.
'You mentioned that the Nazi Party developed from the Thule Society before.'
'No, not quite developed,' Jackson mused, 'rather, the Thule Society provided the soil in which the seed of the DAP, the German Worker's Party, could grow. You see, under the initial direction of Pohl and through Sebottendorff, the Thule Society now promoted ideas of Nordic and Germanic superiority as a political ideology and they had sponsored discussion groups to debate the matter with a clear emphasis on promoting a racist and nationalistic point of view.
'Now, like attracts like and after the fledging DAP was established in 1919 as a product of those discussion groups, it inevitably developed with a clear nationalistic ideology - the rest is fairly common knowledge, the DAP was reconstituted as the NSDAP just over a year later - the Nazi Party.
'The influence on the roots of the Nazi Party can be illustrated simply by virtue of the original emblems of the Thule Society; the oak leaves, the dagger and the swastika.'
Jackson looked between the faces of his audience to see if they understood what he was saying and as his gaze met Jolene's she breathed in deeply to prepare for speaking.
'So you're saying that the fledgling Nazi Party still had an occult influence in it, absorbed or inherited via the Thule Society?'
'Yes!' Jackson nodded excitedly.
She thought for a moment, correlating what she had just heard with Jackson's previous summary of events.
'You're saying that even in 1918, the State Department had an idea that a political movement could emerge from an occult source?'
'Exactly so!' Jackson exclaimed enthusiastically, beaming a smile at her.
'Nationalism is always bathed in the kind of rhetoric that extols the virtues of a glorious but undefined past where the true life blood of a country is unified with the very soil of the land. Occult and esoteric groups have always expounded just such a paradigm, swathing it in the mysticism inherently associated with the perceived union of the spiritual and physical planes. It was natural for some political agitators to appropriate these concepts to give an aura of the arcane to their commonplace political expressions.'
Jolene had started to fully comprehend Jackson's line of thought considering the turn of events.
'So, right from the very beginning we had placed an agent within the Thule Society and it just so happens that they were in the right place at the right time to witness the first shoots of the Nazi Party growing?'
'Yes,' Jackson confirmed, 'effectively giving them intimate access to the emerging personalities of the soon to be party elite which gave the State Department a head start in nurturing that familiarity into a useful intelligence conduit.'
Jolene shook her head.
'I still don't see why though. I can understand why the State Department might guess that a nationalistic movement could spring from an occult meeting group; however, it is quite another thing to expend resources in placing an asset within that group. They must have had something else to go on!'
Jackson paused for a moment and simply nodded his head.
'Very perceptive of you Jolene and you are quite correct in your analysis. In this particular case, the State Department did have something else to go on; they based their decision on the intelligence supplied by an existing agent operating in the centre of the occult scene.'
'Who?'
Jackson approached the table and very deliberately rested his fingertips against the surface, creating an image of two fleshy five legged spiders about to pounce.