'Well, I need to go back around twenty years to answer that question. In early 1903 we had made contact with an asset by the name of Adam Alfred Rudolf Glauer, a German who was living in Turkey at the time. Now, in late 1902 a major crisis had erupted in the Balkans when a revolt had started in the district of Djoumaia Bala. This event had convinced the major powers to intervene in Macedonia on behalf of the Orthodox Christians since the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid had sent in a number of Turkish battalions to crush the insurgents.'
Jackson turned away and started pacing.
'To cut a long story short, Glauer became a kind of gentleman spy, probably working for the Germans, maybe even the Austro-Hungarians and the Italians, but certainly, we used him as a source of intelligence since we were not actually signatories to the 1878 Treaty of Berlin and so were not directly involved in the major decisions being taken.'
Jackson glanced at Dale but could see that his eyes had glazed over and even Jolene had a sneer of incomprehension on her face.
'The point is, we had used Glauer to gather intelligence on events surrounding the so-called Vienna Plan in Turkey and after he had returned to Germany in 1905 we continued to use him. Unfortunately, a botched operation in 1908 saw him accused as a forger and he returned to Turkey and became an Ottoman citizen. After that, the State Department lost touch with him until he returned to Germany again in 1913 where a year later he was exempted from military service in the build up to World War I due to his recently acquired foreign citizenship and because of an old war wound sustained whilst fighting for the Turks in the Balkans.
'He provided a small amount of intelligence during World War I and as such he was in a prime position to start supplying us with information on the state of affairs in Germany itself after the armistices, especially since he was already a member of an organisation that had access to the upper echelons of that post-war society.'
Jolene tilted her head.
'What organisation?'
Jackson felt the need to pause for just a moment before responding, aware that his answer would open up a can of worms.
'The Freemasons.'
'First the Holy Grail and now the Masons, I should have guessed.'
Dale rolled his eyes somewhat incredulously to add emphasis to his point.
'It was the The Germanic Order Wavalter of The Holy Grail actually and don't be so quick to dismiss the Freemasons,' Jackson said as he flashed an open palm at Dale to stop him saying anything further.
'They have a long history of attracting membership from the higher echelons of society, from Kings and Princes, through titled nobles, down to government ministers and powerful industrialists, especially so in a nation undergoing the political turmoil to be expected after the end of the First World War. If you wanted the right access quickly and quietly then they provided the perfect conduit.
'Not only that, as a direct result of their own heritage they also had an interest in esoteric mysticism and of course, individual Freemasons also belonged to independent occult groups. It was just one big morass of interconnection that provided a ready made network providing access to some of the most important and powerful players of the time.'
'Okay,' Jolene interrupted, 'so the State Department has this guy Glauer as an asset in Germany, he is a Freemason and presumably he manages to join this Thule Society?'
Jackson paused again, curling the tip of his tongue back on itself and squeezing it between his bottom lip and top teeth.
'Actually, it didn't quite happen that way. You see, Adam Glauer often used an alias and was also known as Rudolf von Sebottendorff.'
Jolene managed to contain her exasperation and simply intoned a disdainful
what?
Understanding that he may have been obfuscating his story, Jackson started nodding.
'I know, it seems a little convoluted, but please hear me out. You see, Adam Glauer, as Sebottendorff, was already a member of the Wavalter group that I mentioned previously. For whatever reason, Hermann Pohl tasked him with radicalising the Thule Society and so he did just that, little knowing that he would be so successful.
'As things progressed, he wasn't entirely happy with the monster that he had helped to create and was actually ousted from the Thule Society in disgrace, accused of negligence as a result of communist retribution against counter-revolutionaries in the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic. In late April of 1919 and prior to the Freikorps retaking the state, some prominent supporters had been arrested and murdered as right-wing spies by the communists, including the Thule Society Secretary, Countess Hella von Westarp. Not long after, Sebottendorff was accused of having betrayed the Thule Society and basically went to ground.'
'So he was a double-agent?' frowned Dale.
Jackson grimaced and shook his head.
'No, not as such. Glauer, or Sebottendorff as it is probably best to call him, had been on our payroll for quite a while; we had even provided him with funds to make the Thule Society more effective, after all, they were natural enemies of the communist party which at the time was causing havoc throughout all of Germany.'
'The Red Menace?' piped up Dale.
'Oh yes!' Jackson agreed vehemently.
'Even though we had been keen to see the overthrow of the Romanovs, even funding some key dissidents, ever since the Russian Revolution in February of 1917 the US had been interested in containing the spread of socialism and Bolshevism. For a society built on the promises of capitalism, the idea of a socialist revolution was scary, even if we ourselves had been founded on the basis of such radical action in our fight for independence.'
Jolene looked slightly incredulous.
'I'm not even going to ask about the whole funding of the Russian Revolution thing, but you're saying that the US underwrote the Thule Society against the communists? The same group that - how did you put it - provided the soil in which the Nazi Party could grow?'
Jackson looked at her blankly.
'What did you expect? As you once said to me, it is no different to what we do today. The US has funded and provided weapons to any number of dictators and revolutionary groups, many of whom we subsequently regarded as enemies and terrorists. I would have thought that you of all people would know that there are no such things as good or bad foreign powers, friends or enemies, just other countries and groups that we either support or denounce depending on the benefit to ourselves at the time. Morality doesn't come into it, it is all about opportunism.'
Dale thought of Gertrude's situation and wanted to diffuse the obvious tension between Jolene and Jackson and was determined to steer the discussion back to the original point; they obviously enjoyed baiting each other but their antagonism was getting them nowhere.
'So had Sebottendorff betrayed us or not?'
Jackson looked directly at Dale, still slightly irked from the aside with Jolene. He relaxed and finally shook his head.
'Not as such, although as it turned out, those suspicions were partially correct. We had used intermediaries to funnel communications back and forth and we later discovered that it was the man in the middle who had sold Sebottendorff out. He'd passed some of the intelligence to the communists who then used it to retaliate in the face of rising counter-revolutionary activity.'
Jackson let the information sink in but Jolene suddenly started shaking her head.
'Something doesn't tally, I mean, I thought you had said that our agent was in place when the Nazi Party itself had been formed in early 1920, but from what you've just explained, Sebottendorff was ousted near the beginning of the previous year?'
'Yes, you're right,' Jackson agreed, impressed that she had picked up the discrepancy.
'Sebottendorff was our asset within the Thule Society, he had put us onto the group in the first place and he was the only person we dealt with. However, it looks like he himself had seen the writing on the wall and he had taken the necessary steps to ensure his safety by recruiting his own spy within the society.'
'Don't tell me that Hitler was working for us,' groaned Dale.
Jackson smirked at the remark but continued.
'Hanna Paulus. Roughly twenty-five years of age, long blonde hair and grey-green eyes, a very attractive young woman by all accounts although there is no suggestion that there was any impropriety between the middle-aged Sebottendorff and Hanna.'
'So who was she?' Jolene asked, aware that Jackson was enjoying his storytelling a little too much.
'Hanna Paulus was an occultist with an alleged proficiency in so-called magik. It was purported that she could divine the future and even cast spells against enemies, although that may have been a smoke screen simply for Sebottendorff to get her into the Thule Society.
'Ultimately, notwithstanding her occult powers, she often worked as an unpaid administrative assistant to the governing members of the Thule Society and it is by this route that Sebottendorff maintained a watchful eye on events, subsidising her living expenses from his own funds, or rather, from the funds that we had been giving to him. In the course of her administrative work she would see all sorts of communiques and she was able to keep Sebottendorff informed of anything that may have been of interest to him.'
Jackson took a swig from his now tepid coffee and cleared his throat.
'It appears that when the finger of suspicion was pointed in his direction, a warning word from Hanna ensured that he was able to dodge the worst of the planned retribution and he managed to flee to Switzerland and from there back to Turkey. However, Hanna remained behind, still working for the Thule Society but regularly updating Sebottendorff with interesting developments. After a while, he effectively introduced us to Hanna and it was very clear that she was all too willing to immerse herself in the murky waters of espionage. It wasn't long before we lost interest in Sebottendorff and concentrated our efforts on Hanna instead.'
Dale shook his head a couple of times.
'So did she realise that she was basically spying against her country?'
Jackson pouted his lips before answering, considering the pragmatic reality of matters.
'Well, to be fair, from her perspective she wasn't really spying against her country for a foreign power. The State Department had been careful to ensure that it presented itself as a powerful lobby of wealthy expatriate Germans, resident in the US. It was suggested that there were concerns that the communists would take over but also that the racist policies starting to foment would reflect negatively on the German emigrant population and the reputation of Germany itself. You must understand that there was still plenty of international tension lingering from World War I and the Versailles Treaty signed in the June of 1919 did little to alleviate the vilification of the German people.
'Hanna believed that the rest of the world didn't really need another excuse to castigate her country. She was trying to protect her homeland from being dragged down further into the mire by groups that had started to vociferously espouse common thuggery. In the beginning, I have no doubt that she aided Sebottendorff purely out of friendship, but later, she really believed that she was helping her country.'
'Alright,' Jolene sighed, 'so by one way or another we had managed to source an asset within the society, how does the book come into it? What is the connection there?'
'Glad you asked,' Jackson grinned, 'from around the middle of 1919, Hanna Paulus had expanded her contacts to other occult groups that were operating at the time and it was clear to her that the Thulists in particular were shifting away from the esoteric side of things into wholesale incitement of radical action based on a discriminatory ideology.
'In contrast to this, it was around this time that she became aware of a young woman named Maria Orsitsch who seemed to represent the true ideals of occultism. Like Hanna, Maria was about twenty-five years of age at the time and was already quite well known in occult circles as a gifted medium; she had been intermittently involved with the Thule Society for over a year but it was only at this point that Hanna became fully aware of the extent of her activities.'
'Is she the one that flew to Venus in a UFO?' asked Dale, smirking as Jackson glared at him over the top of his spectacles.
Jackson tapped his keyboard and a black and white picture of a very attractive young woman appeared; she had full pouting lips and a slightly upturned nose. Her eyes appeared to be icy green with a translucent depth to them, surmounted on prominent cheek bones and with a fair complexion that assured her icy beauty. With long blonde hair parted in the centre and tresses that hung in a swathe about her neck, her cool Nordic features would not have looked out of place on the cover of any modern fashion magazine although her expression had something of an aloof quality about it. Certainly, it was not the archetypal image of an occultist.
'Maria Orsitsch!' proclaimed Jackson as he turned and gazed at the picture for a moment.
'Not quite what you were expecting?' he asked as he glanced back to Dale and Jolene.
Jolene looked at the image intently.
'She's beautiful.'
Dale simply jutted out his bottom lip and nodded.
'I think that I've stated before,' Jackson announced, 'Maria was affiliated with The
Alldeutsche Gesellschaft für Metaphysik
or Pan-German Society for Metaphysics, commonly known as the 'Vril Society' and in fact, she had her own all-female troupe of psychic specialists known as the 'Vrilerinnen'. Interestingly, in addition to the common trait of alleged telepathic ability, each Vrilerin also had very long hair, maintaining their tumbling locks in the belief that it helped them to conduct signals from alternate dimensions, allowing them to not only communicate with entities beyond the physical plane, but also enabling them to exchange messages with intelligent beings inhabiting the farthest reaches of space.'