THE SPIRAL STRAND - excerpt

 CHAPTER SEVENTY SEVEN

Wewelsburg Castle

Landkreis of Paderborn North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany

29th February 1938

Rahn 

SS-Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff beckoned Rahn to sit opposite him at his capacious oaken desk in the depths of Wewelsburg Castle, the 17th century Renaissance fortress under a 100 year old lease initiated by Heinrich Himmler, providing a base to the Black Order / the Allgemeine-SS, the non-combatant division of the force.

Wolff’s pale, penetrating grey-green eyes bored into Otto and the slightly built archaeo-philologist felt himself shivering inside, bunching his fingers into tight fists below the deskline to prevent Himmler’s Chief Of Personal Staff from noticing his discomfort. 

Instead, he nodded and adjusted his posture on the seat, immediately regretting this manoeuvre which he knew conveyed effeminate nuances to the disapproving Nazi Officer. The truth was, Wolff had never liked Rahn, took him for what he was – a superstitious Jewish homosexual who had no place in the majesty of the Third Reich. Wolff looked on Himmler’s favourite historian as an aberration, an abomination but he had held himself in check for the sake of the Reichsführer, not wishing to displease his master and mentor but in truth, he had no idea what Himmler saw in this pusillanimous pansy. He had written a book, Crusade Against The Grail around the mythology of the Parzival fable as a baseline for his research into the Holy Grail which Himmler had just loved, occasioning the SS military commander to employ Rahn, fund him and secure this fortress, while mobilising expeditions to be led by Rahn to Iceland and later Southern France in search of the religious relic. Himmler hoped one day, Wewelsburg would become a repository for this and more of these arcane treasures. Hitler, for example, was obsessed with the Spear Of Destiny, the fabled weapon with which Longinus had pierced Christ’s side as he hung on the cross. Its power was legendary and lore had it that these artefacts bestowed miraculous powers and blessings upon those who possessed them. Wolff saw nothing in this, it was all just superstitious claptrap thus by extension, he considered the queer Jew to be little more than a clever, conniving charlatan. One day, Himmler would tire of the excuses and when that day came, Wolff would be there to exact vengeful justice and that day, he mused, had come at last.

Rahn had completed another dissertation on the Grail lore prior to his second futile sojourn to the Languedoc, this offering bizarrely titled, Lucifer’s Court – A Journey To The Good Spirits of Europe, which to Wolff, sounded exactly like something a queer Satanist would write. Wolff hadn’t read the book, refused to, but he knew Himmler had been pleased with it yet he satisfyingly detected a hint of frustration in the commander’s demeanour when he admitted to him, under the influence of schnapps one evening, that although Rahn had been singularly successful at delivering a narrative on his grail lore theories, and thought provoking and stimulating as the books undoubtedly were, they failed to deliver anything concrete vis-à-vis providing the ultimate treasure awaited by Himmler and his Wewelsburg reliquary. This latest offering focused on the role of the heretical Cathars in the disappearance of the holy grail and their approach to Johnnite “Christianity” involving deification of Lucifer as Lord Of Earth.  Intriguing but no spear, no ark, no grail – just words. So many words.

These admissions had made Wolff smile at the time. He was smiling now. He had, he believed, painted the little queer Jew into a corner.

While Rahn’s favour with Himmler was at an all time low, he felt it was timely to be having this interview with the mediavelist. 

“Otto,” Wolff began, in an exaggeratedly syrupy tone, “we have had our differences you and I….” he smiled but it was anything but benign. 

Rahn smiled weakly back at him. 

“We have…” he admitted.

Wolff rose and walked to the multi-paned window looking down into the triangular courtyard of the castle from their lofty standpoint.

“We have our differences still, Otto, do we not.”

It wasn’t couched as a question. He continued, “And I admit to your engagement here within the SS to be nothing more than an amusing distraction for Reichsführer Himmler. Your books and boyish adventures into remote regions of Europe bring no material contribution to the war effort and, in fact, they merely deplete the coffers of the Reich while you engage in these frivolous pursuits….”

Rahn was bristling now.

“I believe Reichsführer Himmler may see this situation somewhat differently to you,  Obergruppenführer Wolff…” he said, unable to finish as Wolff cut him off, commandeering the conversation.

“That may have been so, once upon a time – as they say in these fairy tales you espouse, Herr Rahn. I use the civilian appellation purposely as you are no more a soldier than that iron poker over there.”

His face was drawn back in a vicious sneer.

Despite himself, Rahn glanced over at the poker in its bespoke iron receptacle alongside a brush and pan, an antique set of fireside accoutrements that he had personally given to Wolff on hearing of his appointment to Obersturmführer, aided by Wolff’s own hand. He had realised very shortly thereafter that Himmler’s assistant had been acting purely out of loyalty to his superior and that there had been no special influence brought to bear in Rahn’s ultimate appointment. Their relationship had maintained that low, simmering reciprocal antipathy ever since.  

His innards turned to icy jelly as he realised something must have happened during his absence from Wewelsburg and Wolff, he suspected, had become the champion of whatever fate this development had brought. 

“What is it you wish to tell me, Wolff,” he said at last, maintaining a firm tone while meeting the other’s eye.

“I wish you to read this letter, Otto,” he said evenly, no hint of emotion on his face.

He placed an official letter on the desk in front of Rahn, the black rampant eagle emblazoned across the header, the letter itself addressed to the SS Office of Racial Questions.

The jelly in Rahn’s guts turned even colder.

He spun the letter toward himself and read its startling contents informing the Office of Racial Questions that he, Rahn had been unable to produce a certificate of racial origin, a certificate the letter pointed out that was an absolute requirement for SS membership since 1 January 1935. The missive was signed by none other than the man standing opposite him, Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff himself. 

The letter, effectively an ultimatum rather than a request to the Office Of Racial Questions, granted Rahn one more month to comply with this requirement.

He stared open-mouthed at Wolff.

“You fucking bastard!” he said in a low growl.

The other man grinned. “So not only does the Wolf have teeth – the rat has some too!”

He was lighting a cigarette, jetting a thin plume of smoke into the air. “But without the grail or some other holy relic that you can place in Himmler’s hands, your time here is almost done, Du Arschfickjude!” He spat the insult – arse-fucking Jew, amid a second plume of smoke.

Rahn was stunned into silence. He reddened. His fists were so tightly clenched that he could feel blood seeping across his palms.

Rahn stood to face his tormentor.

“As it so happens,” he said in a very low but menacing tone, “I do have something that will ensure my survival here, Wolff. I had been holding it in abeyance such is the import of this great secret. It has the power to bring nations to their knees. 

“You may think you have beaten me – hah!” He sneered. “You cannot begin to imagine the horror I am about to unleash on you and your sycophantic associates as you seek to murder droves of innocents in this social engineering madness.”

Wolf bellowed a laugh across the desk at him.

“Do your worst, Otto, do your worst. I think, however, your time would be better served in pursuit of an unimpeachable certificate of your Aryan ethnicity, something we both know you can never obtain, Jew! Now get out of here before I shoot you myself!”

º

Rahn employed every modicum of his resolve to avoid staggering from Wolff’s office and once he had cleared the door, striding down the long corridor toward the stair and his own office one floor down, he found himself expelling air in short staccato gasps as his heart and mind raced. 

This was a disaster and he wasn’t sure he could surmount the challenge. Wolff knew this. There was no way possible that Rahn could provide such documentation and any attempt at forging something would be exposed immediately for what it was.

The only course of action would be – would be what, exactly?

Appealing to Himmler’s better nature? This dynamic was already in play – the Reichsführer was aware of Rahn’s background and his sexual preferences and had overlooked these obvious failings in lieu of what Rahn could potentially contribute to the Nazi cause – the pathway to the sacred relics so coveted by Hitler in his quest for absolute domination of Europe and the rest of the super-continent. But, as Wolff had infuriatingly pointed out, Rahn had signally failed to deliver even a single material trinket to his superiors and, regardless of his skill with pen and archive, time had to be running out for him.

Unless….

His threat to Wolff had been uttered in a moment of furious madness but it was no idle pronouncement. He did, in fact, harbour arcane knowledge, issued to him by that withered old crone at Rennes-Le-Chateâu and it was beyond explosive in its nature. 

When he had left the Villa Bethanie a year earlier, having been given sight of the parchment Marie Dénarnaud had inherited from Saunière, he had copied the manuscript and had had to reassess everything he had come to accept about life, his beliefs – reality itself. Nothing had been the same since that day – nothing. And it had admittedly refocused the view of his role in the Third Reich, during which he had been biding his time but he had experimented with the information she had revealed and miraculously it had turned out to be true. 

It all revolved around geometry, sacred geometry and Mary Magdalene, not Jesus, had been the key. The old woman had been right all along.

And the knowledge could help him escape this madness, make him disappear.

It was only a matter of time, after all, that Wolff initiated the same fate.

Otto Rahn wasn’t about to let that happen. 

Hitler and his minions worked with the darker aspects of the occult and with the power of arcane symbology but he had no idea of the power such symbols truly possessed – especially the symbol of the Magdalene – the pentagram. Well, Rahn, mused – he was about to find out…yes indeed.

Karl Wolff would regret those insults, Rahn would see to it.

º

Rahn predictably failed in his endeavours to have his racial certification ratified by the Office Of Racial Questions, infusing Wolff, his nemesis with unrestrained delight. However, Wolff’s satisfaction was short-lived. 

Himmler himself intervened in Rahn’s circumstances, chastising his Chief of Staff for interfering with the pursuit of Hitler’s occult artefacts, a program within the paradigm of the final solution requiring special focus. Despite Wolff highlighting the bizarre irony of a homosexual Jew pursuing elements of the war agenda which had at its core the ethnic cleansing of undesirables, including Jews, from the Aryan gene-pool, Himmler was steadfast in his defence of Rahn as he knew the belief Hitler had in the power of the holy relics, far eclipsed any personal circumstances associated with their appointed expert. It was a stretch, Himmler admitted quietly to Wolff, saying he disliked it as much as anyone, however, they had no other fallback position at this present time and war, he conjectured, was just months away. They were stuck with Rahn – for now.

The concession Himmler was prepared to make though, by way of punishment for Rahn failing to authenticate the purity of his racial origins, was to have the sensitive little Jew serve some time as an officer at the Buchenwald camp under the command of SS-Obersturmbannführer Karl-Otto Koch and his psychotic wife, Ilse who had, since the camp’s inception, gained notoriety for her cruelty and went by the nickname of Die Hexe von Buchenwald (the witch of Buchenwald). 

It wasn’t execution for Rahn but the horror and humiliation of being forced to assist in the persecution of his fellow Jews might give him pause and consider mending his ways. 

“He will get the message, I’m sure, Karl,” Himmler said coldly.

Wolff nodded, mildly satisfied by Himmler’s cunning ploy. He had heard of the Kochs’ exploits at the camp where experiments and fatal work details had been commissioned by the pair, Frau Koch deriving immense pleasure from this attritional treatment by all accounts.  

“He speaks of an aspect of the Grail that is within his grasp yet not requiring travel to secure it,” Himmler continued, his face drawn into a puzzled frown. “I have no idea what he is talking about, I confess but if he can sit in comfort in Wewelsburg while somehow securing this aspect of the Führer’s occult desires, he can equally languish in the horror of Buchenwald doing the same thing, not so.” 

Wolff guffawed loudly. 

“Indeed, mein Reichsführer, indeed!”

And thus Otto Rahn found himself sitting in a tatty train carriage in November of 1938 heading at speed toward the dreaded Buchenwald concentration camp in the Weimar region of the country, his immediate fate unknowable. 

In his carry-all reposed his copy of the Sauniére parchment, part of his unknowable future perhaps.