Rahn told her it was not really a political position. Himmler had simply assumed the role of his patron.
'He wants nothing in return?' she asked. Curious? Surprised? Or skeptical? He could not read her expression but had no time to ask what she meant.
'Don't be silly, Elise!' Bachman exclaimed as he returned
without their drinks. He had been listening. 'Himmler expects Otto to find the Holy Grail!'
Elise lifted her eyebrows. 'Is that all?' And then they all three laughed.
Bachman went back to the bar to finish their drinks. 'I loved your book,' she said. 'It was like reading one of your letters. When I had finished I turned back to the beginning and read it all again.'
Bachman popped back into the room nervously. 'One thing I did wonder about, Otto,' he said. 'You put
Grail
in the title, but you never say what it is! That's a bit unfair, don't you think?'
Rahn had heard the complaint before and gave his standard response. 'I thought I ought to leave something for a future book.'
'So you do have a theory about it - what it is, I mean?'
'Several, actually. I am just not sure which one is correct.'
The Bachmans' nanny brought Sarah into the parlour. The girl had already eaten her evening meal and was dressed for bed. She was obviously mystified by Rahn's presence but not especially disturbed. Elise introduced him to her as her Uncle Otto. From her age Rahn thought the child must have been conceived in the late summer months of 1932, exactly the season he and Elise had been lovers. She was now a few months past two years in age. She might have been Bachman's child, Rahn thought, but she certainly looked nothing like him. In fact, she looked like Elise - a perfect dark haired beauty. Casting a quick glance in the direction of Elise, Rahn imagined she might give him some sort of signal,
she is yours
, but he was disappointed. She was telling the nanny something. He looked at Bachman, and saw only a father's proud gaze fixed on his young daughter. If Bachman were at all uncertain about the child's paternity, it did not seem to matter to him. This was
his
child, no matter the biology.
At dinner they talked incessantly about the Languedoc as if they had all just returned from holiday. It seemed to them a different world, certainly one still shrouded in mystery and romance. Had Rahn plans to go back? Rahn had not been back since slipping out of the country with the hotel bankruptcy hanging over his head, but he did not care to bring up
Des Marronniers
and risk spoiling a perfect evening. 'I might go if Himmler wants me to find the Grail.'
'You have only to propose it and he will send you!' Bachman said cheerfully.
After dinner, Bachman finally turned to matters of politics. Germany had suffered from a lack of leadership, he said. One need only look at Berlin now - not even three years after Hitler had become Chancellor - to understand what a determined and talented man could accomplish. The city's transformation was nothing short of miraculous. Gone were the riots and squalor. Factories were running again and promised soon to be working at capacity. People had jobs, 'Even the likes of our Otto!' Bachman joked. 'And here is the greatest wonder of all,' he added more seriously, like a priest finishing a brief but pointed homily, 'it is the same in all the cities in Germany. We are a nation again!'
Before Rahn left, Bachman said he must clear the air. Elise and Rahn looked at their knees. Bachman was talking about their adultery. 'We were the victims of a weak and corrupt government,' he said. Rahn looked up in surprise. 'With our world having plunged into economic and moral collapse is it any wonder we lost our way? We discarded our sense of right and wrong because no one in authority could set a proper example! That's all that happened, and those days are behind us. I think it is time, and Elise agrees with me, it is time we forgive ourselves. Time we are friends again!'
Rahn found himself nodding in response to this. He suddenly felt a genuine admiration for Bachman. He had not tried to offer his forgiveness. That would have left Bachman the aggrieved party and sole occupant of the moral high ground. No, he counted himself as one who had lost his way, too. Best of all, their failings sat squarely upon the shoulders
of others: the Communists, the Jews, and the bickering parliamentarians. Now, with a proper government, they could start fresh, their sense of right and wrong restored by the example of their Führer.
After that evening, the friendship resumed almost as if no time had passed. To Rahn's thinking, Bachman had saved him from teaching languages in a commercial school, which to him was comparable to saving a man's life. Not only that, he showed no jealousy. Rare was the week when the three of them did not sit down to a dinner together on Sundays. Often times they had drinks and supper on Thursday and Friday evenings as well. Bachman and Elise and Sarah became Rahn's family, Sarah even calling him Uncle Ot. Each time he appeared she was there to show him the details of her life: a toy acquired, a new piece of clothing, or a discovered knickknack from the park. She even began kissing him when he arrived and before she went to bed.
At work Bachman took the effort to introduce Rahn to people within the military branch of the SS who might prove valuable allies. What is more, they were all pleased to meet him and offered to have drinks or dinner with him as his schedule permitted. For her part Elise steered him into Berlin society, arranging for him to give lectures to prominent groups within the city. She found tickets to events that had been closed for weeks and even counselled him as to the kind of woman he should marry, because, she said, he must marry. Himmler was a great believer in family. He promoted married men, especially men with children, and left the bachelors to struggle. 'He is mad for aristocrats, Otto. Never mind if they have money, just make sure the woman you marry has blue blood in her veins and there is no limit to your future!'
'And if I am inclined not to marry for a while?' he asked her.
'You made a great many sacrifices for the sake of your art,' she answered, 'but those times are past. It is time to make a
family whilst you are still young enough to enjoy it!'
To make her point Elise arranged dates for him with a number of prominent young women, but try as he might to make a go of it, the affairs were all miserable failures.
Winter 1936.
Early the following year Rahn joined the SS as an officer, though he was officially assigned to the civil branch. He too took the distinctive SS ring officers wore and was forever joined by a blood oath to the Order of the Skull.
A few days after the ceremony, Bachman came to Rahn's office. He said he must kidnap Rahn for the day. 'I hope you won't require me to take you at gunpoint?'
Rahn laughed at the hyperbole. All the same, there was something in Bachman's manner that suggested he was not really joking. 'What are you talking about?'
'Himmler has asked me to show you something. That's all I can say.'
Rahn shrugged. What Himmler wanted he got. 'So show me something.'
'It's quite a long drive. In fact we had better get going if we intend to make it back to Berlin this evening.'
They ended up a couple of hours south of Hamburg close to Paderborn at the village of Wewelsburg. In the distance they could see a plateau of land rising up over the village and the outlines of an old Renaissance fortress cutting into the grey skyline. 'Is that what we have come to see?' Rahn asked. Bachman had been talking about Sarah, a story about her crashing into their bedroom and insisting, with the innocence of the young, that the beds be drawn together so the three of them could sleep in a single bed.
'Magnificent, isn't it?' he said.
'I'm sure it was at one time. . .' Like so many of the old fortresses in Germany, Wewelsburg had long ago lost its
strategic military value. It had in fact been abandoned without ever engaging in a battle and then languished in decay for more than two centuries.
Before they had crested the hill an SS sergeant came out of a small building close to the road and demanded their papers. Both men presented their credentials. In addition to these Bachman produced a letter signed by Himmler. The guard studied the letter and then went inside his hut. Rahn could see him on the telephone. When he came back out, he pointed at the gate in the wall. 'You may park inside, Major. If you need anything, just ask one of the guards. They are yours to command!'
Bachman folded the letter and started to put it away. 'Let me see that,' Rahn said. Bachman passed it to him, trying hard not to show his pride. The letter gave them permission to enter every part of the fortress without restriction. Himmler had signed the letter personally. With that name all doors opened.
Rahn looked up at the great walls, which were now towering over them. 'Without this letter we could not have got inside?'
'For the time being the Wewelsburg fortress is off limits to everyone but the SS squad assigned to guard it. Except for a handful of Himmler's generals and certain of his personal staff, no one else even knows it exists. One may enter it only if he carries a letter signed by Himmler himself. I suppose I should also tell you that if you mention to anyone where we have gone today, Himmler will have us both killed, as well as the individual you tell.'
Bachman announced this in such a relaxed manner that Rahn looked to see if he were joking. He was not. 'Why the secrecy?' he asked.
'The Reichsführer intends to see the SS continue to expand. I have heard him say he will not be happy until he can provide the Führer with a dozen divisions of elite armoured forces. Naturally, that kind of enormous growth can pose certain internal risks to the morale and confraternity of the Order. Certainly one man, even someone as energetic as Himmler,
cannot oversee every aspect of such an extensive organisation, and yet for the SS to be effective that is what he needs to do. His idea is to create a secret order of knights within the Order of the Skull, like the paladins who served Charlemagne's court, a cadre of individuals fanatically devoted to the ideals of the SS. Once they are established he intends to give them Wewelsburg as a kind of retreat where he can meet with them and they can direct the affairs of the Order of the Skull.'
They passed through an enormous gate and entered a narrow courtyard. From inside the walls Wewelsburg did not seem that large. This had been a military outpost, hardly more than a citadel. It was sufficient to supply and defend a couple of regiments, no more. Triangular in shape with each of the three walls supported by a massive, perfectly round tower, it would have allowed for the rapid deployment of the soldiers defending it. No point along the wall was isolated or especially distant from any others, but the compact shape also reduced usable interior space. There were no plazas or roads here. In fact the ground inside the high walls stayed almost constantly in shadow and left the air ripe with the odour of damp rot.
Rahn could see at once that Himmler was intent on turning its dark intimate spaces into something quite inspiring, something worthy of the leadership of the Order of the Skull. Nowhere was this more evident than in the largest of the three towers, which had already been renovated. To get to it they descended a stone staircase and came to a small hallway. Beyond this, they stepped into a perfectly round room. At the centre was an open fireplace. Along each wall several stone benches extended from the smooth masonry, each bench sufficient for a single individual. The round walls had windows at various levels overhead encircling the room asymmetrically. These produced numerous beams of light splashing across the stone walls high above. At the top of the tower, past the chaotic sunbeams and deep inside the cupola, was a Swastika like none Rahn had ever seen. Attached to the end of each of the four branches was a long runic S that virtually doubled the
size of the swastika. The change in such a familiar image was unsettling and vaguely traitorous, and Rahn could almost imagine that this inner core of SS officers, its paladins, would ultimately direct not only the Order of the Skull but Germany itself.
The real oddity of the room, and the effect was almost mystical, was the extraordinary echo when one spoke. In fact the crash of echoes made it impossible to understand anything that was said from the middle of the room. Curiously, if an individual sat against the walls on one of the benches even a whisper could be heard by someone seated anywhere in the circle. It was a round table of sorts - needing only knights and a Grail quest to complete it.
Before they left, they toured the officers' apartments, still unfinished but quite promising. In this area they found a crew of prison labourers hard at work. The men were rail thin and were watched closely by the squad guarding the castle. Rahn saw one of the men collapse as he hauled a heavy bucket of refuse out of the room. No one went to him. His fellow workers seemed not even to notice his exhaustion. Finally, a guard kicked him. Before the scene had played out, Bachman led Rahn back to his Mercedes.
'Where does he get these workers?' Rahn asked as he settled into his seat. They had been too thin to be healthy, sickly almost!
Bachman did not seem especially interested in the question but answered him easily enough. 'Himmler sweeps the streets for them.'
'Why show me this place?' Rahn asked on the long drive back to Berlin. 'I'm a historian, not one of his Generals.'