Sometimes he turned off his torch and thought about Elise. He wondered what she would be like with him if Bachman were not constantly hovering close by. She had her child, yes, and she was a different woman in some ways, more comfortable with her fate at least, but she was not happy. She was never going to be happy married to Bachman! In the darkness he would recall her face and think back to the time before she had again become the good wife.
She had been right to stay with Bachman of course. What life could he have offered her back then? Of course now things were different. Rahn was a celebrity by declaration, one of the new intellectuals! When he returned with the Lance of Antioch, Himmler's Blood Lance, it was anyone's guess how the Reichsführer would reward him. Certainly he would have enough income to support her if she wanted to file for divorce.
He liked to imagine Elise and Sarah living with him. He spent a great deal of his time each day trying to decide the kind
of house they should purchase. Maybe something in Potsdam, where the air was fresh. He would not need to go into Berlin more than once or twice a week, unless he simply wanted to be in the city. In Potsdam they would have beautiful countryside for Sarah to enjoy, and he could work in solitude on the novel he had always dreamed he could write.
But then he would pull himself up short and recognise the sheer madness of his fantasy. Elise was never going to leave Bachman. It was not the money, not even the affection. It was her oath! In the face of it, she would not undo her destiny no matter her desire for Rahn. She would stand with Bachman until death because she had said she would. Rahn could love her, and he was sure she loved him, but it was never going to change their fate - the troubadour knight and his titled lady!
Six weeks into their search Rahn staggered out of the bowels of the mountain at dusk one evening and was met by Bachman. 'It was hidden in the Bouan, Otto!' he cried excitedly, 'so deep in a fissure that we nearly missed it. Covered with snakes!'
'What was hidden? What are you talking about?'
'We have it, Otto! We have found the Lance of Antioch!'
The fortified cave of Bouan was part of a complex of caves bordering the Toulouse-Barcelona highway not far from the Puymorens Pass. Halfway up an embankment that was reinforced with walls topped with parapets was an impressive, manmade entry that led into a number of chambers. Rahn knew it well and was careful of the snakes as he walked back to where the treasure waited. The men had cleared the box of snakes without anyone suffering snakebite - a miracle in its own right - but they had waited for him to open the treasure. The box was small, as he had said it would be, gilded and decorated with tiny rubies and small, ill-shaped pearls.
Opening the lid, Rahn saw that one of the hinges had rusted through. He was careful to avoid cracking the other. Inside he saw a piece of iron no larger than his fist. It lay upon a faded linen cloth. Rahn showed it to Bachman and his men. He then
carried it to each of the six miners who had been on the detail when they had found it. The miners stared uncertainly at the thing, unsure of what they were looking at. Not one of them spoke.
Outside the cave, standing in the dark with Bachman, Rahn heard his friend tell him, 'Himmler will crown you with laurels for this, Otto!'
'This was your doing as much as mine, Dieter.'
'I thought you would be happier, my friend.'
'I am delighted, only a bit tired, I suppose.'
'I have the cure for that! Let's break the rules on our last night here and go have a drink in the village. What do you say?'
Late the next morning, their celebration finished, Bachman's support squad arranged to drive the twelve miners back to Germany in three vehicles. Rahn rode back with Bachman.
It took three long days of driving to get to Berlin. They got in late and Rahn stayed at the Bachmans' townhouse in their guest room. The following morning, they took the relic to Himmler. Himmler was pleased, of course, but at the sight of the thing his face registered a moment of inevitable disappointment. The Lance of Antioch may have convinced an army of medieval Crusaders, but it hardly seemed worthy of its legend in a less credulous age.
'I am not sure it is even the head of a lance!' Himmler complained.
'It may not have been,' Rahn admitted. 'There is a school of thought which holds that the head of a Roman standard was actually used to pierce the side of Christ.'
'I did not know that.'
'That is not really the issue, Reichsführer. The issue is what this object inspired. What you touch today is the object that by force of the imagination the Cathars transformed into a divine vision of blood and ivory and gold.'
Himmler nodded, and tried to imagine it. After a moment,
he looked up at Bachman with an air of one attending to the details. 'I assume you have taken care of the miners?'
'As soon as they were back on German soil.'
Himmler reached in his desk and brought out four passes to the upcoming Olympic Games. Handing them to the two men he told them they had done an extraordinary job. He meant to see that both were amply rewarded for their efforts. For the time being, however, until he could arrange the proper honours for such an accomplishment, he wanted them to be his guests at the Games. Himmler spent a few minutes talking to them about the festivities and the importance of the Games to Germany's new standing in the world. As he finished he seemed distracted, certainly disappointed that his Grail quest had not ended with a beautiful cup and spear. He seemed nearly to push the two men out of his office.
Bachman seemed not to have noticed. He was no doubt savouring his likely promotion to the exalted rank of Colonel. 'That went well, I think.'
Rahn nodded.
'What is it now, Otto?'
'What did he mean by his remark about taking care of the miners?' Rahn asked.
'The ones who saw the relic in the cave may have said something to the others, so we arranged for them all to be executed once they had crossed back into Germany,' Bachman told him. 'For security reasons.'
'You did
what?'
Rahn stared at the man in horror.
'We needed to make sure our discovery remained a secret, Otto! How would you have dealt with it?'
'You
killed
those men? My God, Dieter! You killed
twelve
men for the sake of that. . . that piece of
rubbish!'
'Of course I didn't kill them! I ordered it done! Come on. Let's have a drink and a decent lunch. It's time we made a proper celebration!'
'They are
all
dead?' Rahn was trembling, close to vomiting.
He collapsed into his office chair because he was no longer able to stand.
When tears filled his eyes, Bachman said to him, Tor God's sake, Otto! Get hold of yourself! Didn't you happen to notice or are you perfectly blind? They were only Jews!'
Zürich, Switzerland
Kate rarely thought about the Eiger. She recalled virtually nothing of her various interviews with the police after coming off the mountain or even the memorial service for Robert at the family chapel in Devon, shortly before the property was sold at auction. She had a vivid memory of sitting in London with the Kenyon family solicitor and her father, however. The solicitor had told her that Lord Kenyon's investments shortly before his death had been
unfortunate
. He had, in fact, been so careful not to mention the word bankruptcy that Kate had not really understood the situation until her father had explained it to her rather bluntly afterwards.
The financial loss so soon after Robert's death had seemed only a very sick joke to complete the utter ruin that inhabited her soul. She had not even the ability to care. For weeks, then months, nothing stirred inside her. She forgot even her promise to find Robert's killer. That oath had faded from her memory like much of what had happened in the immediate aftermath of events on the Eiger. Giancarlo came to Zürich after the bankruptcy, their second meeting since the Eiger. He had found a great deal of information about the Austrians but admitted it led nowhere. Kate listened numbly to everything he told her, certain now she would never learn the identity of Robert's killer.
As they had parted, Giancarlo offered to let Kate stay at his house in Santa Margherita, a resort town south of Genoa. 'Sometimes,' he told her, 'only the sea can answer.'
She did not want to go. She had met Robert at Santa
Margherita! How could she stand to see the place again? Roland told her that was perhaps the best reason to go. She could not really face life in Zürich. She had no plans to go back to university, no plans really to do anything at all, and so she called Giancarlo to accept the invitation. For the first week at the house she had the glorious Ligurian Coast and Bartoli's great villa entirely to herself. Eleven years later, she could not remember how she had passed her days, but she knew she had stayed close to the house - like an invalid. She had a vivid memory of staring at the place where she had first seen Robert. She could not remember anything they had said to each other that evening. She remembered instead the feeling that she was falling helplessly in love with this man. Eleven years later that feeling was still as bright as on the night she first experienced it. What were words compared to that? For that matter, what was touch or taste? It was a moment one carried into eternity, she thought, the last memory she would have before death itself took her. Next to that evening everything else in her life faded. She knew it then, and she knew it still. Robert Kenyon was the only man she had ever really loved with all of her heart and soul.
Santa Margherita, Italy
September 1997.
Luca arrived a week or so into Kate's stay at the Bartoli villa. He claimed not to have known Kate was staying there, but he came alone and settled into the house without the usual plans to throw parties or have friends drop by. He did not invite her to swim or take a walk with him. He seemed to want to give Kate space. They pitched in together to make their dinner, drinking wine as they worked, but their days were their own.
Luca had been Robert's age, a good deal older than Kate. Growing up, Kate had worshipped him without really knowing much about him. In the last stages of her adolescence she had finally managed to seduce him - without any great
trouble. Luca was married with a family, of course, but Kate was young enough not to consider the consequences of her choices. Besides, it was hardly Luca's first affair. A few torrid weeks under the hot Italian sun had made life seem perfect, but the romance began to fade once Kate had finally understood they hadn't very much in common. It was not exactly heartbreak she endured; more like waking up to reality. But Luca was charming and full of energy, so she had stayed in his circle and played the wild girl for a summer or two. All that had ended the night she saw Robert Kenyon. Not even a year had passed since that first meeting, but to Kate it seemed a lifetime ago.
Luca was well past the shock of Robert's death - life had gone on for him - but his attention and kindness to Kate was remarkable. When they finally had a long talk about Robert and how she was dealing with it, he seemed to understand what she was feeling. Maybe everyone understood, one had only to lose the world to know the feeling, but for Kate Luca's empathy let her open up and say the things she could not speak to others. Luca had never been one for soul searching conversations, but he knew Kate's most extravagant follies, so there were no secrets between them.
'I don't think I can ever climb again,' she told him when he had asked her if she had even thought about climbing since the Eiger. 'Leaving the house, coming down to Italy, that was almost more than I could manage.'
He pressed to know why, and she told him bluntly that she was afraid. Luca was curious at this. Kate Wheeler afraid of something? He could not imagine it. Afraid of what? That was the thing. She was afraid of everything. She could only feel safe in very familiar places. Even then she had terrible fantasies of gunmen breaking through doors or crashing through windows. Sometimes they were waiting silently round the next corner. On bad days, as she walked, the floor would seem to fall away. The effect was to leave her on the brink of a hallucinatory abyss.
And the worst of it was this. Having lost her nerve to climb, she realised she had nothing at all in life. For years climbing was all she knew, all she really wanted to do, and now she found she had lost it along with everything else. 'Not a day passes,' she whispered, 'when I don't consider killing myself.'
Hearing this grave confession Luca asked, 'How would you do it?'
'What do you mean?' she asked.
'I mean you
think
about it. How exactly do you see it happening?'
'I don't know. . .'
'Knife, gun, gas, pills. . . you have to have thought about how you intend to do it!'
'Luca, you're not supposed to help me think about something like that!'
'Why not? I am curious!'
'You're supposed to tell me that with thoughts like these I had best get to hospital! Seek professional help!'