The Four Symbols
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Synopsis
From multi-million copy bestselling authors Giacometti & Ravenne comes a Nazi spy thriller for fans of Dan Brown, Steve Berry and Wilbur Smith
"I couldn''t put it down ... the authors write like Dan Brown!" -Anthony, 5-Star NetGalley reviewer
*** RATED 5 STARS BY REAL READERS ***
*** GET BOOK 2, GOOD & EVIL, NOW: https://amz.run/3tyl ***
*** PREORDER BOOK 3, HELLBOUND, NEXT: https://amz.run/3tyk ***
A secret Nazi organisation.
Four swastikas with occult powers.
A spy.
What readers think:
"I can''t wait to read the next book in the series!" -Sens Critique
"A spellbinding read from start to finish." -5-Star Amazon Review
"There are twists aplenty" -5-Star Netgalley Review
"A real page turner." -Art Six Mic
"If you like books with lots of action and cliff hangers, this is for you." -5-Star Netgalley Review
"The authors'' best book so far." -5-Star Amazon Review
"A book full of action and mystery." -Au Detour d''un Livre
In a Europe on the verge of collapse, the Nazi organisation Ahnenerbe is pillaging sacred landmarks across the world. Their aim is to collect treasures with occult powers, which will help them establish the Third Reich.
The organisation''s head, Himmler, has sent SS officers to search a forgotten sanctuary in the Himalayas, while he tries to track down a mysterious painting. Which ancient power do the Nazis believe they hold the key to?
Meanwhile, in London, Churchill has discovered that the war against Germany will also be a spiritual one: their light must fight the occult if they are to win . . .
Release date: May 14, 2020
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Print pages: 384
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The Four Symbols
Berlin
November 9, 1938
The coal-burning stove swathed the mostly dark room in a thick blanket of warmth. Standing in front of the tall windows with polished wood frames, Professor Otto Neumann contemplated the city lights. His city. He loved it passionately, and yet this was the last night he would spend here.
His last night in Germany.
The bookseller, who had never left Berlin, still hadn’t fully realized that by this time the next day he would be in Paris, and after another twenty-four hours, he’d be in London. He had never taken a plane, but his wife had been enthusiastic on the phone. “It’s incredible. You feel like a bird up in the sky.”
Hearing the mischievous voice of his beloved Anna had restored his hope. She had left the week before, with a tourist visa, to avoid raising suspicions. And now it was his turn to head for Tempelhof Airport. He glanced annoyedly at the clock on the wall. It was almost ten thirty and his friend still hadn’t arrived, though the English Embassy was only fifteen minutes away by car. Maybe he’d been held up at an overzealous SA checkpoint. Over the past few months, the ruthless Brownshirts had begun playing traffic police in town—an ideal pretext to beat up Jews and steal their cars.
“Mr. Neumann, can I go? The boxes are all put away. I have a date with my Greta.”
The weak voice of his apprentice made its way up the spiral staircase.
“Yes, Albert. Leave the door open when you go. I’m expecting someone,” answered the bookseller. “See you next week.”
The bell on the front door jingled as it shut. Neumann didn’t have the courage to say goodbye to the young man. He sat down and bowed his head for a minute, lost in his thoughts. He would never see the boy again. Officially, he was closing the shop for a week’s holiday in France, but he knew that when the authorities discovered he had fled, the bookstore would be confiscated by the Aryanization of Business office.
Since the Nazis had come to power, he had become a Mischling, a half-Jewish, half-Aryan mutt, an ex-professor run out of the university turned bookseller. For the learned men behind the racial laws in force, he was part superhuman, part subhuman. The product of race pollution.
Five years earlier, in Heidelberg, the president of the university, a mathematician and Nazi enthusiast who also served as vice-president of the Reich’s science association, had used the law to motivate Otto’s dismissal from his position as chairman of the comparative history department. Neumann had tried to appeal against the decision, arguing that the “super-” and “sub-” prefixes cancelled each other out, meaning he was just a simple human. He was perfectly fine with that. Unfortunately, the university president was immune to his humour and failed to change his mind. Three months later, the eminent Professor Neumann became a bookseller specializing in antique editions—his passion.
He stood up from his chair and closed a small box full of invaluable volumes.
My precious books …
He couldn’t take them all with him. Only three boxes full of his most cherished texts, his treasures, would be quietly sent to a fellow bookseller in Switzerland. The rest of them—over a thousand titles—would be left behind. The very thought that they would fall into the hands of backward, overzealous fanatics was revolting, but there was nothing more he could do.
He would bring just a single jewel with him. For the moment, it was hidden away in the safe. He couldn’t let the Nazis get their hands on that. He couldn’t even dream of the consequences of such a sacrilege.
Through the window, the city seemed peaceful. But evil was coursing through its veins, infiltrating stones and minds alike, poisoning even the air. He couldn’t bear to turn his head to the right anymore because, just beyond the first row of buildings, was the massive silhouette of the neoclassical headquarters of the Gestapo on Prinz-Albrecht-Straβe. The giant banner bearing the malevolent swastika was lit every night by vertical projectors. The symbol was black like an overfed venomous spider, its four legs grown stout. A spider turned flag. “Swastika: ancient symbol of peace and harmony in Asia, and particularly India.”
Those were his words, written over twenty years ago in his book on pagan symbols.
Peace and harmony! What sinister irony. He should have added, “for an Indian swastika, which turns to the left.” Hitler wasn’t one for eastern wisdom. He set his swastika spinning in the other direction. A full reversal of Asian traditions.
He had sucked all the good out of the swastika to turn it into the symbol of infamy—at least for the Reich’s so-called inferior races, Jews first in line. Germany was delirious in its veneration of the evil gammadion.
He looked at the clock on the wall again. Time was running out and his visitor still hadn’t appeared. He walked across the room and knelt down in front of the wall safe. The dial turned quickly under his fingers, freeing the armoured door from its slumber.
Just as he slipped an object into his fawn leather bag, the bell on the door to the bookshop rang again. Neumann sighed with relief. His friend had made it. The bookseller put the bag down on his desk and headed joyfully down the stairs.
“At last! I’ve been waiting for you for nearly an hour,” he said as he landed on the last step. “You clearly—”
His heart jumped.
Three men were standing on the other side of the counter. Three men wearing the same uniform. Brimmed cap adorned with a skull symbol, perfectly tailored black jackets and trousers, a red armband showcasing a swastika on their right arms, and shiny leather boots. And each of them had a pistol in his belt. The face of the oldest one in the group brightened. A thin scar ran the length of his cheek, up to his temple.
“Hello, Professor,” said the SS officer, bowing his head. “It’s an honour to meet you.”
He was tall and thin, around forty years old, with short grey hair, and a narrow, intelligent-looking face. His light eyes wielded a penetrating gaze.
“My name is Colonel Weistort. Karl Weistort,” he added.
The bookseller remained still, unable to respond. The two other officers had moved away from the counter and were browsing the shelves.
“I … Delighted to make your acquaintance … I was just about to close up for the night,” he finally stammered.
The colonel looked disappointed.
“Could you make a little exception? I’ve come all the way from Munich to meet you. Look what I’ve brought you,” he said, placing a yellowed book on the counter. The worn cover featured a statue of a bearded man sitting on a throne.
Neumann adjusted his glasses and instantly recognized his biography of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa.
“A magnificent work,” continued the SS officer. “I happened upon it when I was young, at the university in Cologne, and it’s been the star of my library ever since, sitting alongside your other book on sacred symbols, of course. Such a fount of knowledge!”
“Thank you,” the bookseller replied awkwardly.
“No, you deserve it. You must know that the Führer has an unbound passion for this extraordinary emperor.”
“I didn’t.”
“However, I disagree with you as to the importance of the legend of Barbarossa. You know, the one that claims the emperor isn’t dead, but lies sleeping in the bosom of a magic mountain. And when he wakes, the Reich will reign for eternity.”
Neumann frowned in confusion. The SS officer tapped his index finger on the cover of the book.
“You say it’s just a story for children, but it’s a powerful myth, capable of galvanizing the hearts of all Germans. The imagination, professor! That’s the real source of power over men. Whoever captivates their imaginations is stronger than ten armies combined. But I suppose you have too much Jewish blood in your veins to understand … It’s not your fault.”
The bookseller’s pulse was racing. The colonel placed his palms flat on the counter.
“Because, if you think about it, isn’t Adolf Hitler the reincarnation of the old sleeping emperor? He’s awoken the people and will establish a new Reich to last a thousand years. He’s been sent by providence. You should understand that. Haven’t the Jews been waiting for their messiah for millennia? We Germans have found ours first.”
“Yes … Probably.”
The SS colonel’s eyes sparkled with excitement.
“And as such, we are now the chosen people. What an immense responsibility!”
“I’m delighted for you … What is it you’re looking for exactly, Colonel?” asked Neumann in a forced neutral tone.
“I’m sorry, I got carried away. I’m sometimes such an incorrigible romantic. First, an autograph would make me very happy,” he replied, suddenly strangely jovial.
The bookseller noticed the other two officers opening one of the boxes destined for Geneva.
“Those books aren’t for sale,” said Neumann.
The colonel tapped the counter with the book.
“Let it go, Professor. My deputies are naturally curious. It’s a sign of intelligence. Grab a pen and get to work!”
Neumann did his best to contain his annoyance. He had to get rid of these visitors before his friend turned up. If he walked into the shop at this time of night, he’d be taken into custody immediately, and the bookseller with him.
“I’ll get something to write with.”
“No need,” replied Weistort as he handed Neumann a big black-and-silver fountain pen bearing the SS insignia. “A gift from Reichsführer Himmler himself.”
The bookseller took the pen as if it were a venomous snake.
“‘For Karl’, plus something nice,” the colonel continued affably. “That will be perfect.” Then he turned towards his deputies. “The Reichsführer would faint if he found out a half-Jew was using his pen.”
The other two burst into laughter.
Neumann remained impassive and did as he’d been told.
“There you go. Can I do anything else for you?”
One of the two Nazis walked over, his arms full of books with ornate bindings, and placed them on the counter.
“Look at these hidden treasures,” exclaimed the tall blond as he went over the covers spread out before him. “It’s incredible! I found a Stéganographie by Abbé Trithème, the original edition, and the Mutus Liber prefaced by Paracelsus.”
“I found two gems as well,” chimed in the second deputy, his hands deep in the box. “An editio princeps of the Malleus Maleficarum! I thought they had all been burned in the 1635 Hamburg book burning. And a copy of the Codex Demonicus by the Grand Inquisitor of Bavaria.”
Neumann couldn’t believe it. These men had perfectly identified the books. Where did these learned brutes, interested in and knowledgeable about symbolism, come from? Members of the ranks usually stuck to lowly police jobs or protecting dignitaries.
The colonel intercepted the bookseller’s surprised look and took back his signed volume.
“How silly of me. I forgot to tell you about our positions. We work at the Ahnenerbe, the Ancestral Heritage Research and Teaching Society, of which I’m the head. Don’t mind our SS uniforms—we’re scholars like you, intellectuals, but of pure blood.”
Neumann frowned. Nazi intellectuals. What a sinister oxymoron, he thought.
“Really … From which universities?” he inquired prudently.
The colonel bowed.
“I graduated from Cologne with a doctorate in ethnology. My two deputies both attended the University of Dresden. The captain is chairman of anthropology at the University of Munich and the lieutenant left his job as a professor of medieval literature to take up his new position at the Ahnenerbe. We are drowning in work at the moment. We’re always hiring. If you can believe it, Himmler has asked me to create more than fifty research groups! I’m a little overwhelmed.”
One of the SS officers was carefully piling books up on the counter.
“These works would have a select place in our Society’s library. Unfortunately, our budget is quite tight. Maybe our friend the professor could give us a good deal?”
Neumann watched them without a word. Despite their degrees, these three weren’t worth any more than any other Nazis. They too were taking advantage of the reign of terror to steal from Jews. His mind started racing: refusing would get him in trouble but accepting would mean losing his treasures. He made up his mind. This was no time to hesitate.
“Since you like these books so much, I’d be more than happy to donate them to your Society.”
The colonel nodded in satisfaction.
“How kind of you. If I may take advantage of your generosity, I’m also looking for one work in particular: the Thule Borealis Kulten, from the Middle Ages.”
The bookseller’s eyes narrowed and his heart raced.
“I don’t believe I’ve heard of it. I’ll check my register to be sure. What was it again?”
“Thule Borealis,” answered Weistort, carefully articulating each syllable.
Neumann flipped nervously through his catalogue.
“No, I don’t see it. You’d have more luck with my specialist colleagues.”
The colonel put on a sad expression.
“Come now, Neumann. Are you sure? It’s about purely Aryan esoteric teachings. Extraordinary teachings …”
“Is it? That must be very interesting,” the bookseller lied carefully.
The colonel turned to his deputies. “What was the name of the Jew we interrogated yesterday?”
“Rabbi Ransonovitch, a charming man, though a bit gruff,” answered the lieutenant. “It’s a shame he didn’t survive the interrogation.”
Neumann’s blood froze in his veins.
“That’s it, Ransonovitch. He told me you had a copy.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know this rabbi,” murmured the bookseller. “If you wouldn’t mind, I should close up shop now.”
The colonel shrugged and took two bills out of his wallet. “What a shame. I was eager to get my hands on that book,” he said as he placed two hundred Reichsmarks on the counter.
Neumann’s eyes opened wide. “That’s too much. I told you I was happy to donate the books.”
The scarred man raised his hand. “You’ve misunderstood. This is what I’m offering to buy your whole bookstore. I’m feeling rather generous.”
“It … it’s not for sale. This is ridiculous.”
“Oh, Professor. It would have been so much easier if you had just handed over the Thule Borealis on your own. Given my admiration for you—I don’t normally have many kind words for Jews—we could have stayed friends. And you would have escaped the purge.”
“The purge?”
The colonel glanced at his acolytes and grabbed the bookseller by the shoulder. “You’ll understand soon enough. In the meantime, let’s go up to your office. Your friend the rabbi whispered in my ear, just before he died, that the book was hidden in your safe.”
“The key to the safe is in the cash register,” he mumbled. He bent down behind the counter, felt around a basket and found what he was looking for.
“Hurry up, time’s running out,” urged the colonel. “For you especially—”
He was cut off mid-sentence. Neumann stood up with a Mauser pistol aimed right at Weistort.
“Get out of here! I don’t want you defiling my bookstore!”
The colonel didn’t blink, though the two deputies backed away.
“Come now, Professor. Threatening an SS officer with a gun is punishable by death. Do you even know how to use it?”
Neumann smiled for the first time since they had walked into his shop uninvited. “I fought in the Great War. Iron Cross at the Battle of the Somme,” he said. “I’m willing to bet I’ve killed more men than you, to my great regret. But for you I’ll make an exception.”
The Nazi backed away, fear appearing on his face for the first time. Neumann felt a wave of happiness wash over him. Scaring an SS officer was a rare pleasure—he would remember this for the rest of his life. But he knew that by executing the intellectuals bearing the skull insignia, he would only gain a short respite, because the rest of the pack would come for him. At least he would have time to flee and hide the book.
Suddenly the youngest SS officer unholstered his pistol. The bookseller had just enough time to react and pull the trigger. With a bullet in his skull, the Nazi fell backwards with a scream. Neumann didn’t have time to return his aim to the colonel. The man with the scar was faster. His Luger already free of his belt, the colonel fired. The bullet went straight through the bookseller’s upper chest and exited through his back, shattering his collar bone. Neumann crumpled to the ground, his shirt drenched in blood.
“You idiot!” sighed Weistort. “Let’s take him upstairs.”
“What about Viktor?” asked the captain, gesturing towards his fallen colleague.
“He’s in Valhalla now. Tonight, he dines with Odin.”
The two remaining Nazis dragged Neumann up the stairs. As they climbed, blood stained the steps. When they reached his office, they put him down in the armchair across from the window.
Weistort noticed a spool of packing string on the ground. “Use the string to tie him to the chair.”
While the captain executed the order, Weistort rifled through the open safe.
“Where did you put the book?” shouted the colonel as he hurled stacks of bills to the floor.
“Go to hell!” answered the wounded Neumann, whose mind was becoming less and less clear.
Suddenly Weistort spotted the bag on the table. He opened it and brandished the thin, red, leather-bound volume. “The Thule Borealis!” He sat down on the couch and opened it carefully. As he turned the pages, his eyes filled with wonder.
“Magnificent. Absolutely magnificent.”
“You have no right.”
The colonel pointed towards the windows. “Tonight, Aryans have all the rights and Jews have none. Look!”
A red-and-yellow glow rose over the entire city.
“What’s happening?” stuttered Neumann. It looked like a fire was ravaging the neighbourhood.
Weistort set the book down, opened his arms and raised them to the sky like a priest in church. “It’s the purge, my friend. You should have listened to the radio, to the good Dr. Goebbels. He called the German people to take to the streets and express their justified anger with the Jews following the cowardly assassination of Ernst vom Rath in Paris.”
He opened the windows wide. Screams shot up from below along with the sounds of breaking glass. Weistort crossed his arms behind his back, watching the flames dance across the synagogue to the south.
“But … the police …”
“They’re not allowed out of the stations. Same for the firemen. Germans can enter homes and businesses, throw out their occupants, beat them, humiliate them, steal from them, and even kill them. The purge. This devastating force is barrelling across the land like an unstoppable wave. Berlin, Munich, Cologne, Hamburg, blood will fill the streets all over the country. Impure blood, the blood of Jews. And anyone who tries to help them will be considered an enemy of the people. There’s only one law tonight: the law of pure blood.”
“You are evil, pure evil.”
Weistort smacked the wounded Neumann on his broken shoulder. “It’s a question of perspective. For us National Socialists, you Jews are a foreign virus that has infected the German body. You have poisoned our country and our blood like a disease. You are evil. Since we are eliminating you, we are on the side of Good, of the people.”
“You’re crazy.”
“But it’s so simple. The majority is Good and the minority is Evil.”
“The majority is Good! That’s absurd. People will revolt.”
“I doubt it. Do you think any of the brave Germans who are taking part in this night of purification will feel guilty tomorrow? Hardly. They’ll feel a bit ashamed, like after a night of heavy drinking at Oktoberfest. But in the end, they’ll see it as a salutary intoxication.”
Weistort put the book back in the bag and opened the rest of the windows. The screams had made way for shouting, coarse laughter and patriotic songs, which now filled the air. He leaned out to see the street below. Outside a ransacked clothing store, three Brownshirts in caps chuckled as they dragged an old woman in her nightgown by her feet. A blood-stained old man lay motionless in front of the door.
“Those SA idiots,” sighed Weistort as he turned around to face the bookseller. “If it makes you feel any better, I strongly disapprove of sadism.”
“Your damn swastika has poisoned your soul.”
“No, it’s revealed us to ourselves. That’s its power. Its magic. Oh, Professor, I do regret your Mischling heritage. I could have offered you a job at the Ahnenerbe. We could even have been friends …”
Neumann tried to look up, but pain burned in the back of his neck.
“Go to hell!”
The colonel laughed. “Sorry, but I only believe in the magic of our pagan powers, not that of the Devil. Satan is just a Judeo-Christian invention for simple minds.”
The bookseller’s strength was leaving him. The SS officer’s voice sounded like an echo in his brain. He cried. Not from pain, no. From anger. With himself. He should have put that goddamn book somewhere safe.
Weistort prepared to leave.
“What do we do with him?” asked the captain with a glance at Neumann, who was losing the last of his blood.
“Let him die alone as he watches the events of this marvellous night.”
“And the shop? Should we burn it?”
“No. Send a lorry for the books tomorrow. They’ll make a lovely addition to the Reichsführer’s library at Wewelsburg Castle. Tell them to pick up the body of our comrade, who lost his life in the pursuit of his perilous mission, murdered by a cowardly Jew. Make sure he’s awarded the Iron Cross posthumously.”
The scarred colonel leaned towards Neumann.
“Goodbye, Professor. Thanks to you and this book, Good will finally triumph.”
The two SS officers left, leaving the bookseller to his fate. On the other side of the windows, heavy clouds reflected the red glow from the streets, as if drops of blood were about to start falling from the sky.
Hunched over on his chair, Otto Neumann was slipping into darkness. The synagogue had become a torch before his eyes. Now he knew that the fires outside were only the beginning.
Tonight, Germany was aflame. Tomorrow the world.
All because of a book.
A damn book.
Tibet, Yarlung Valley
January 1939
The storm was losing strength. The bellowing thunder echoed over the peaks in the distance as flashes of lightning continued their silver ballet to the north, near Yarlung Pass.
Standing at the entrance to the cavern, protected from the freezing wind that had been gusting through the valley for three straight days, a man in a white snowsuit stared intently at the last rays of light shining on the Himalayan peaks. Manfred wasn’t afraid of lightning. On the contrary, he had learned to tame it with his mountaineering father as they climbed the sheer cliffs of the Bavarian Alps. His father’s words came to mind every time he was in a storm.
Learn to love lightning. It purifies the air and forges the hearts of strong men.
But here, in this forgotten corner of Tibet, at the heart of the deep valley, there was something stale in the air that even lightning couldn’t purify. The weather was like a faulty compass. It hadn’t snowed a single flake, though the surrounding mountains were covered in a thick layer of fresh snow. It was as if an invisible, insidious force had imposed its laws on nature’s most powerful elements.
Hauptmannführer SS Manfred Dalberg turned a hostile gaze to the foothills which formed the valley below. He was very far from the beauty of the Bavarian mountains of his childhood. The ground was grey and sterile and there was a total lack of vegetation. The rocky cliffs dotted with ridges sharp as knives were of an astounding size. The landscape seemed to have been crafted with a single goal: to annihilate all human and animal presence. He could feel it in his bones.
The Land of Screaming Skulls.
That was the name the Tibetan people gave this strange place forgotten by men. He hadn’t seen or heard any screaming skulls, but the howling wind was grating on his nerves. All he wanted was to return to Germany and rejoin his combat division.
Manfred turned up the collar on his standard-issue SS Alpine snowsuit, then heard a familiar noise to his right. He grabbed the binoculars for a better view of the mountainside below. A lorry covered with a dirty canvas tarpaulin was speeding up the battered path that served as the only road. The tyres spewed dirt in their wake, leaving behind a trail of dust.
Schäfer is here.
A wave of relief washed over the SS officer. His boss had kept his word—he was here to take the situation in hand.
Manfred put on his hood and hurried down the stone steps that wound along the hillside from the cave to the edge of the road, taking them four at a time.
I have to get out of this Godforsaken dump.
He’d left Lhasa and the bulk of the Schäfer expedition almost two weeks ago with a small scientific unit made up of two archaeologists, a linguist who also served as a translator, half a dozen Tibetan porters, and three Buddhist monks. In the beginning, things had gone well. He had followed his instructions to the letter and set up camp. At the exact place described in the sacred scrolls, there was a cave entrance set into a hill on the edge of the Sanshai slope, framed by two scarlet Tulpas—small, traditional Tibetan towers shaped like cones for housing prayer mills. But these didn’t contain prayer mills, just sculptures of threatening horned demons.
It all fitted perfectly with the drawings reproduced in the scrolls of the Kangyur, the sacred book of the Tibetan people.
The door to the skull kingdom.
But as soon as they finished setting up base camp, two porters came down with an unknown illness that resulted in massive haemorrhaging, emptying their bodies of all their blood. Not long after, relations between the Germans and the “smelly monks”, as his deputy called them, became tense. The Buddhist priests had ordered the porters to block the entrance to the crypt. They could go no further inside the cave. If it had been up to him, Manfred would have nonchalantly executed them, but he didn’t want to jeopardize his country’s diplomatic relations with the locals. Tibet had become a great friend to the Third Reich and had asked for Germany’s help to fight the Chinese.
He had sent a messenger to ask for help from his superior, Hauptsturmführer Ernst Schäfer. The commander of the “Aryan Tibet mission” had become the confidant of Lhasa’s leader, the fifth Rinpoche, after all. He’d even managed to convince the latter to give the Germans the eight hundred scrolls of the sacred Kangyur.
Manfred reached the road just as the lorry covered in moon-coloured dust came to a stop. A porter was cleaning a mule harness in front of the Tulpas. Manfred shot a dirty look at the short little man whose face was as wrinkled as a baked apple. He still didn’t understand why Schäfer was always arguing that these subhumans were of the Aryan race.
When the two men in white coats got out of the vehicle, Manfred stood at attention, his right arm raised in their direction in the customary fashion.
“Heil Hitler!”
The men replied in kind. The tallest of the two, who was built like a boxer with a blond beard and a cheerful face, shook his hand exuberantly.
“Manfred, it’s so nice to see you,” exclaimed Schäfer in an exalted tone. Then he gestured towards his companion, standing a few steps behind him.
“Let me introduce Colonel Karl Weistort, Director of the Ahnenerbe and member of the Reichsführer’s personal staff. He comes to us from Berlin.”
The SS officer walked over to Manfred. A thin scar ran from his temple to his cheek. Manfred had seen this type of scar before on fencers he had met in Prussian student societies. Despite the scar, the man exuded a kind of benevolence he’d rarely seen in superior officers of the SS.
The colonel shook his hand and smiled warmly. “Congratulations, Obersturmführer Dalberg. If the information I’ve received is correct, we’re on the verge of making an incredible discovery. Your future at the SS will be bright, my young friend.”
The lieutenant frowned—it was as if no one had read his letter.
“I’m flattered, Herr Colonel, but I mentioned several issues we’ve encountered.”
The officer placed his palm on his shoulder. “Tell me more,” he said.
The lieutenant glanced disdainfully towards the inside of the cave. “Inside the cavern, there’s a giant door with no lock that leads to the sanctuary, where we’ll find … the object. But the monks are furious. They say they only ever intended for us to visit the cave, not to enter the crypt. They don’t want foreigners to profane their sanctuary.”
Weistort burst into frank, joyful laughter.
“Foreigners? Hardly. Though it’s hard to see at first glance, we share the same blood,” he said, watching the porter smoking a long pipe. “Let’s go solve this problem with our cousins.”
The three men climbed the stairs that led to the cave.
“How has your stay in Lhasa been?” asked Manfred.
“Excellent. I finished filming my future documentary and we’ve collected a wealth of top-quality scientific data. I’m only sorry we must return to Berlin so soon. This country is marvellous, and the Tibetans are remarkable people.”
“I’m af
November 9, 1938
The coal-burning stove swathed the mostly dark room in a thick blanket of warmth. Standing in front of the tall windows with polished wood frames, Professor Otto Neumann contemplated the city lights. His city. He loved it passionately, and yet this was the last night he would spend here.
His last night in Germany.
The bookseller, who had never left Berlin, still hadn’t fully realized that by this time the next day he would be in Paris, and after another twenty-four hours, he’d be in London. He had never taken a plane, but his wife had been enthusiastic on the phone. “It’s incredible. You feel like a bird up in the sky.”
Hearing the mischievous voice of his beloved Anna had restored his hope. She had left the week before, with a tourist visa, to avoid raising suspicions. And now it was his turn to head for Tempelhof Airport. He glanced annoyedly at the clock on the wall. It was almost ten thirty and his friend still hadn’t arrived, though the English Embassy was only fifteen minutes away by car. Maybe he’d been held up at an overzealous SA checkpoint. Over the past few months, the ruthless Brownshirts had begun playing traffic police in town—an ideal pretext to beat up Jews and steal their cars.
“Mr. Neumann, can I go? The boxes are all put away. I have a date with my Greta.”
The weak voice of his apprentice made its way up the spiral staircase.
“Yes, Albert. Leave the door open when you go. I’m expecting someone,” answered the bookseller. “See you next week.”
The bell on the front door jingled as it shut. Neumann didn’t have the courage to say goodbye to the young man. He sat down and bowed his head for a minute, lost in his thoughts. He would never see the boy again. Officially, he was closing the shop for a week’s holiday in France, but he knew that when the authorities discovered he had fled, the bookstore would be confiscated by the Aryanization of Business office.
Since the Nazis had come to power, he had become a Mischling, a half-Jewish, half-Aryan mutt, an ex-professor run out of the university turned bookseller. For the learned men behind the racial laws in force, he was part superhuman, part subhuman. The product of race pollution.
Five years earlier, in Heidelberg, the president of the university, a mathematician and Nazi enthusiast who also served as vice-president of the Reich’s science association, had used the law to motivate Otto’s dismissal from his position as chairman of the comparative history department. Neumann had tried to appeal against the decision, arguing that the “super-” and “sub-” prefixes cancelled each other out, meaning he was just a simple human. He was perfectly fine with that. Unfortunately, the university president was immune to his humour and failed to change his mind. Three months later, the eminent Professor Neumann became a bookseller specializing in antique editions—his passion.
He stood up from his chair and closed a small box full of invaluable volumes.
My precious books …
He couldn’t take them all with him. Only three boxes full of his most cherished texts, his treasures, would be quietly sent to a fellow bookseller in Switzerland. The rest of them—over a thousand titles—would be left behind. The very thought that they would fall into the hands of backward, overzealous fanatics was revolting, but there was nothing more he could do.
He would bring just a single jewel with him. For the moment, it was hidden away in the safe. He couldn’t let the Nazis get their hands on that. He couldn’t even dream of the consequences of such a sacrilege.
Through the window, the city seemed peaceful. But evil was coursing through its veins, infiltrating stones and minds alike, poisoning even the air. He couldn’t bear to turn his head to the right anymore because, just beyond the first row of buildings, was the massive silhouette of the neoclassical headquarters of the Gestapo on Prinz-Albrecht-Straβe. The giant banner bearing the malevolent swastika was lit every night by vertical projectors. The symbol was black like an overfed venomous spider, its four legs grown stout. A spider turned flag. “Swastika: ancient symbol of peace and harmony in Asia, and particularly India.”
Those were his words, written over twenty years ago in his book on pagan symbols.
Peace and harmony! What sinister irony. He should have added, “for an Indian swastika, which turns to the left.” Hitler wasn’t one for eastern wisdom. He set his swastika spinning in the other direction. A full reversal of Asian traditions.
He had sucked all the good out of the swastika to turn it into the symbol of infamy—at least for the Reich’s so-called inferior races, Jews first in line. Germany was delirious in its veneration of the evil gammadion.
He looked at the clock on the wall again. Time was running out and his visitor still hadn’t appeared. He walked across the room and knelt down in front of the wall safe. The dial turned quickly under his fingers, freeing the armoured door from its slumber.
Just as he slipped an object into his fawn leather bag, the bell on the door to the bookshop rang again. Neumann sighed with relief. His friend had made it. The bookseller put the bag down on his desk and headed joyfully down the stairs.
“At last! I’ve been waiting for you for nearly an hour,” he said as he landed on the last step. “You clearly—”
His heart jumped.
Three men were standing on the other side of the counter. Three men wearing the same uniform. Brimmed cap adorned with a skull symbol, perfectly tailored black jackets and trousers, a red armband showcasing a swastika on their right arms, and shiny leather boots. And each of them had a pistol in his belt. The face of the oldest one in the group brightened. A thin scar ran the length of his cheek, up to his temple.
“Hello, Professor,” said the SS officer, bowing his head. “It’s an honour to meet you.”
He was tall and thin, around forty years old, with short grey hair, and a narrow, intelligent-looking face. His light eyes wielded a penetrating gaze.
“My name is Colonel Weistort. Karl Weistort,” he added.
The bookseller remained still, unable to respond. The two other officers had moved away from the counter and were browsing the shelves.
“I … Delighted to make your acquaintance … I was just about to close up for the night,” he finally stammered.
The colonel looked disappointed.
“Could you make a little exception? I’ve come all the way from Munich to meet you. Look what I’ve brought you,” he said, placing a yellowed book on the counter. The worn cover featured a statue of a bearded man sitting on a throne.
Neumann adjusted his glasses and instantly recognized his biography of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa.
“A magnificent work,” continued the SS officer. “I happened upon it when I was young, at the university in Cologne, and it’s been the star of my library ever since, sitting alongside your other book on sacred symbols, of course. Such a fount of knowledge!”
“Thank you,” the bookseller replied awkwardly.
“No, you deserve it. You must know that the Führer has an unbound passion for this extraordinary emperor.”
“I didn’t.”
“However, I disagree with you as to the importance of the legend of Barbarossa. You know, the one that claims the emperor isn’t dead, but lies sleeping in the bosom of a magic mountain. And when he wakes, the Reich will reign for eternity.”
Neumann frowned in confusion. The SS officer tapped his index finger on the cover of the book.
“You say it’s just a story for children, but it’s a powerful myth, capable of galvanizing the hearts of all Germans. The imagination, professor! That’s the real source of power over men. Whoever captivates their imaginations is stronger than ten armies combined. But I suppose you have too much Jewish blood in your veins to understand … It’s not your fault.”
The bookseller’s pulse was racing. The colonel placed his palms flat on the counter.
“Because, if you think about it, isn’t Adolf Hitler the reincarnation of the old sleeping emperor? He’s awoken the people and will establish a new Reich to last a thousand years. He’s been sent by providence. You should understand that. Haven’t the Jews been waiting for their messiah for millennia? We Germans have found ours first.”
“Yes … Probably.”
The SS colonel’s eyes sparkled with excitement.
“And as such, we are now the chosen people. What an immense responsibility!”
“I’m delighted for you … What is it you’re looking for exactly, Colonel?” asked Neumann in a forced neutral tone.
“I’m sorry, I got carried away. I’m sometimes such an incorrigible romantic. First, an autograph would make me very happy,” he replied, suddenly strangely jovial.
The bookseller noticed the other two officers opening one of the boxes destined for Geneva.
“Those books aren’t for sale,” said Neumann.
The colonel tapped the counter with the book.
“Let it go, Professor. My deputies are naturally curious. It’s a sign of intelligence. Grab a pen and get to work!”
Neumann did his best to contain his annoyance. He had to get rid of these visitors before his friend turned up. If he walked into the shop at this time of night, he’d be taken into custody immediately, and the bookseller with him.
“I’ll get something to write with.”
“No need,” replied Weistort as he handed Neumann a big black-and-silver fountain pen bearing the SS insignia. “A gift from Reichsführer Himmler himself.”
The bookseller took the pen as if it were a venomous snake.
“‘For Karl’, plus something nice,” the colonel continued affably. “That will be perfect.” Then he turned towards his deputies. “The Reichsführer would faint if he found out a half-Jew was using his pen.”
The other two burst into laughter.
Neumann remained impassive and did as he’d been told.
“There you go. Can I do anything else for you?”
One of the two Nazis walked over, his arms full of books with ornate bindings, and placed them on the counter.
“Look at these hidden treasures,” exclaimed the tall blond as he went over the covers spread out before him. “It’s incredible! I found a Stéganographie by Abbé Trithème, the original edition, and the Mutus Liber prefaced by Paracelsus.”
“I found two gems as well,” chimed in the second deputy, his hands deep in the box. “An editio princeps of the Malleus Maleficarum! I thought they had all been burned in the 1635 Hamburg book burning. And a copy of the Codex Demonicus by the Grand Inquisitor of Bavaria.”
Neumann couldn’t believe it. These men had perfectly identified the books. Where did these learned brutes, interested in and knowledgeable about symbolism, come from? Members of the ranks usually stuck to lowly police jobs or protecting dignitaries.
The colonel intercepted the bookseller’s surprised look and took back his signed volume.
“How silly of me. I forgot to tell you about our positions. We work at the Ahnenerbe, the Ancestral Heritage Research and Teaching Society, of which I’m the head. Don’t mind our SS uniforms—we’re scholars like you, intellectuals, but of pure blood.”
Neumann frowned. Nazi intellectuals. What a sinister oxymoron, he thought.
“Really … From which universities?” he inquired prudently.
The colonel bowed.
“I graduated from Cologne with a doctorate in ethnology. My two deputies both attended the University of Dresden. The captain is chairman of anthropology at the University of Munich and the lieutenant left his job as a professor of medieval literature to take up his new position at the Ahnenerbe. We are drowning in work at the moment. We’re always hiring. If you can believe it, Himmler has asked me to create more than fifty research groups! I’m a little overwhelmed.”
One of the SS officers was carefully piling books up on the counter.
“These works would have a select place in our Society’s library. Unfortunately, our budget is quite tight. Maybe our friend the professor could give us a good deal?”
Neumann watched them without a word. Despite their degrees, these three weren’t worth any more than any other Nazis. They too were taking advantage of the reign of terror to steal from Jews. His mind started racing: refusing would get him in trouble but accepting would mean losing his treasures. He made up his mind. This was no time to hesitate.
“Since you like these books so much, I’d be more than happy to donate them to your Society.”
The colonel nodded in satisfaction.
“How kind of you. If I may take advantage of your generosity, I’m also looking for one work in particular: the Thule Borealis Kulten, from the Middle Ages.”
The bookseller’s eyes narrowed and his heart raced.
“I don’t believe I’ve heard of it. I’ll check my register to be sure. What was it again?”
“Thule Borealis,” answered Weistort, carefully articulating each syllable.
Neumann flipped nervously through his catalogue.
“No, I don’t see it. You’d have more luck with my specialist colleagues.”
The colonel put on a sad expression.
“Come now, Neumann. Are you sure? It’s about purely Aryan esoteric teachings. Extraordinary teachings …”
“Is it? That must be very interesting,” the bookseller lied carefully.
The colonel turned to his deputies. “What was the name of the Jew we interrogated yesterday?”
“Rabbi Ransonovitch, a charming man, though a bit gruff,” answered the lieutenant. “It’s a shame he didn’t survive the interrogation.”
Neumann’s blood froze in his veins.
“That’s it, Ransonovitch. He told me you had a copy.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know this rabbi,” murmured the bookseller. “If you wouldn’t mind, I should close up shop now.”
The colonel shrugged and took two bills out of his wallet. “What a shame. I was eager to get my hands on that book,” he said as he placed two hundred Reichsmarks on the counter.
Neumann’s eyes opened wide. “That’s too much. I told you I was happy to donate the books.”
The scarred man raised his hand. “You’ve misunderstood. This is what I’m offering to buy your whole bookstore. I’m feeling rather generous.”
“It … it’s not for sale. This is ridiculous.”
“Oh, Professor. It would have been so much easier if you had just handed over the Thule Borealis on your own. Given my admiration for you—I don’t normally have many kind words for Jews—we could have stayed friends. And you would have escaped the purge.”
“The purge?”
The colonel glanced at his acolytes and grabbed the bookseller by the shoulder. “You’ll understand soon enough. In the meantime, let’s go up to your office. Your friend the rabbi whispered in my ear, just before he died, that the book was hidden in your safe.”
“The key to the safe is in the cash register,” he mumbled. He bent down behind the counter, felt around a basket and found what he was looking for.
“Hurry up, time’s running out,” urged the colonel. “For you especially—”
He was cut off mid-sentence. Neumann stood up with a Mauser pistol aimed right at Weistort.
“Get out of here! I don’t want you defiling my bookstore!”
The colonel didn’t blink, though the two deputies backed away.
“Come now, Professor. Threatening an SS officer with a gun is punishable by death. Do you even know how to use it?”
Neumann smiled for the first time since they had walked into his shop uninvited. “I fought in the Great War. Iron Cross at the Battle of the Somme,” he said. “I’m willing to bet I’ve killed more men than you, to my great regret. But for you I’ll make an exception.”
The Nazi backed away, fear appearing on his face for the first time. Neumann felt a wave of happiness wash over him. Scaring an SS officer was a rare pleasure—he would remember this for the rest of his life. But he knew that by executing the intellectuals bearing the skull insignia, he would only gain a short respite, because the rest of the pack would come for him. At least he would have time to flee and hide the book.
Suddenly the youngest SS officer unholstered his pistol. The bookseller had just enough time to react and pull the trigger. With a bullet in his skull, the Nazi fell backwards with a scream. Neumann didn’t have time to return his aim to the colonel. The man with the scar was faster. His Luger already free of his belt, the colonel fired. The bullet went straight through the bookseller’s upper chest and exited through his back, shattering his collar bone. Neumann crumpled to the ground, his shirt drenched in blood.
“You idiot!” sighed Weistort. “Let’s take him upstairs.”
“What about Viktor?” asked the captain, gesturing towards his fallen colleague.
“He’s in Valhalla now. Tonight, he dines with Odin.”
The two remaining Nazis dragged Neumann up the stairs. As they climbed, blood stained the steps. When they reached his office, they put him down in the armchair across from the window.
Weistort noticed a spool of packing string on the ground. “Use the string to tie him to the chair.”
While the captain executed the order, Weistort rifled through the open safe.
“Where did you put the book?” shouted the colonel as he hurled stacks of bills to the floor.
“Go to hell!” answered the wounded Neumann, whose mind was becoming less and less clear.
Suddenly Weistort spotted the bag on the table. He opened it and brandished the thin, red, leather-bound volume. “The Thule Borealis!” He sat down on the couch and opened it carefully. As he turned the pages, his eyes filled with wonder.
“Magnificent. Absolutely magnificent.”
“You have no right.”
The colonel pointed towards the windows. “Tonight, Aryans have all the rights and Jews have none. Look!”
A red-and-yellow glow rose over the entire city.
“What’s happening?” stuttered Neumann. It looked like a fire was ravaging the neighbourhood.
Weistort set the book down, opened his arms and raised them to the sky like a priest in church. “It’s the purge, my friend. You should have listened to the radio, to the good Dr. Goebbels. He called the German people to take to the streets and express their justified anger with the Jews following the cowardly assassination of Ernst vom Rath in Paris.”
He opened the windows wide. Screams shot up from below along with the sounds of breaking glass. Weistort crossed his arms behind his back, watching the flames dance across the synagogue to the south.
“But … the police …”
“They’re not allowed out of the stations. Same for the firemen. Germans can enter homes and businesses, throw out their occupants, beat them, humiliate them, steal from them, and even kill them. The purge. This devastating force is barrelling across the land like an unstoppable wave. Berlin, Munich, Cologne, Hamburg, blood will fill the streets all over the country. Impure blood, the blood of Jews. And anyone who tries to help them will be considered an enemy of the people. There’s only one law tonight: the law of pure blood.”
“You are evil, pure evil.”
Weistort smacked the wounded Neumann on his broken shoulder. “It’s a question of perspective. For us National Socialists, you Jews are a foreign virus that has infected the German body. You have poisoned our country and our blood like a disease. You are evil. Since we are eliminating you, we are on the side of Good, of the people.”
“You’re crazy.”
“But it’s so simple. The majority is Good and the minority is Evil.”
“The majority is Good! That’s absurd. People will revolt.”
“I doubt it. Do you think any of the brave Germans who are taking part in this night of purification will feel guilty tomorrow? Hardly. They’ll feel a bit ashamed, like after a night of heavy drinking at Oktoberfest. But in the end, they’ll see it as a salutary intoxication.”
Weistort put the book back in the bag and opened the rest of the windows. The screams had made way for shouting, coarse laughter and patriotic songs, which now filled the air. He leaned out to see the street below. Outside a ransacked clothing store, three Brownshirts in caps chuckled as they dragged an old woman in her nightgown by her feet. A blood-stained old man lay motionless in front of the door.
“Those SA idiots,” sighed Weistort as he turned around to face the bookseller. “If it makes you feel any better, I strongly disapprove of sadism.”
“Your damn swastika has poisoned your soul.”
“No, it’s revealed us to ourselves. That’s its power. Its magic. Oh, Professor, I do regret your Mischling heritage. I could have offered you a job at the Ahnenerbe. We could even have been friends …”
Neumann tried to look up, but pain burned in the back of his neck.
“Go to hell!”
The colonel laughed. “Sorry, but I only believe in the magic of our pagan powers, not that of the Devil. Satan is just a Judeo-Christian invention for simple minds.”
The bookseller’s strength was leaving him. The SS officer’s voice sounded like an echo in his brain. He cried. Not from pain, no. From anger. With himself. He should have put that goddamn book somewhere safe.
Weistort prepared to leave.
“What do we do with him?” asked the captain with a glance at Neumann, who was losing the last of his blood.
“Let him die alone as he watches the events of this marvellous night.”
“And the shop? Should we burn it?”
“No. Send a lorry for the books tomorrow. They’ll make a lovely addition to the Reichsführer’s library at Wewelsburg Castle. Tell them to pick up the body of our comrade, who lost his life in the pursuit of his perilous mission, murdered by a cowardly Jew. Make sure he’s awarded the Iron Cross posthumously.”
The scarred colonel leaned towards Neumann.
“Goodbye, Professor. Thanks to you and this book, Good will finally triumph.”
The two SS officers left, leaving the bookseller to his fate. On the other side of the windows, heavy clouds reflected the red glow from the streets, as if drops of blood were about to start falling from the sky.
Hunched over on his chair, Otto Neumann was slipping into darkness. The synagogue had become a torch before his eyes. Now he knew that the fires outside were only the beginning.
Tonight, Germany was aflame. Tomorrow the world.
All because of a book.
A damn book.
Tibet, Yarlung Valley
January 1939
The storm was losing strength. The bellowing thunder echoed over the peaks in the distance as flashes of lightning continued their silver ballet to the north, near Yarlung Pass.
Standing at the entrance to the cavern, protected from the freezing wind that had been gusting through the valley for three straight days, a man in a white snowsuit stared intently at the last rays of light shining on the Himalayan peaks. Manfred wasn’t afraid of lightning. On the contrary, he had learned to tame it with his mountaineering father as they climbed the sheer cliffs of the Bavarian Alps. His father’s words came to mind every time he was in a storm.
Learn to love lightning. It purifies the air and forges the hearts of strong men.
But here, in this forgotten corner of Tibet, at the heart of the deep valley, there was something stale in the air that even lightning couldn’t purify. The weather was like a faulty compass. It hadn’t snowed a single flake, though the surrounding mountains were covered in a thick layer of fresh snow. It was as if an invisible, insidious force had imposed its laws on nature’s most powerful elements.
Hauptmannführer SS Manfred Dalberg turned a hostile gaze to the foothills which formed the valley below. He was very far from the beauty of the Bavarian mountains of his childhood. The ground was grey and sterile and there was a total lack of vegetation. The rocky cliffs dotted with ridges sharp as knives were of an astounding size. The landscape seemed to have been crafted with a single goal: to annihilate all human and animal presence. He could feel it in his bones.
The Land of Screaming Skulls.
That was the name the Tibetan people gave this strange place forgotten by men. He hadn’t seen or heard any screaming skulls, but the howling wind was grating on his nerves. All he wanted was to return to Germany and rejoin his combat division.
Manfred turned up the collar on his standard-issue SS Alpine snowsuit, then heard a familiar noise to his right. He grabbed the binoculars for a better view of the mountainside below. A lorry covered with a dirty canvas tarpaulin was speeding up the battered path that served as the only road. The tyres spewed dirt in their wake, leaving behind a trail of dust.
Schäfer is here.
A wave of relief washed over the SS officer. His boss had kept his word—he was here to take the situation in hand.
Manfred put on his hood and hurried down the stone steps that wound along the hillside from the cave to the edge of the road, taking them four at a time.
I have to get out of this Godforsaken dump.
He’d left Lhasa and the bulk of the Schäfer expedition almost two weeks ago with a small scientific unit made up of two archaeologists, a linguist who also served as a translator, half a dozen Tibetan porters, and three Buddhist monks. In the beginning, things had gone well. He had followed his instructions to the letter and set up camp. At the exact place described in the sacred scrolls, there was a cave entrance set into a hill on the edge of the Sanshai slope, framed by two scarlet Tulpas—small, traditional Tibetan towers shaped like cones for housing prayer mills. But these didn’t contain prayer mills, just sculptures of threatening horned demons.
It all fitted perfectly with the drawings reproduced in the scrolls of the Kangyur, the sacred book of the Tibetan people.
The door to the skull kingdom.
But as soon as they finished setting up base camp, two porters came down with an unknown illness that resulted in massive haemorrhaging, emptying their bodies of all their blood. Not long after, relations between the Germans and the “smelly monks”, as his deputy called them, became tense. The Buddhist priests had ordered the porters to block the entrance to the crypt. They could go no further inside the cave. If it had been up to him, Manfred would have nonchalantly executed them, but he didn’t want to jeopardize his country’s diplomatic relations with the locals. Tibet had become a great friend to the Third Reich and had asked for Germany’s help to fight the Chinese.
He had sent a messenger to ask for help from his superior, Hauptsturmführer Ernst Schäfer. The commander of the “Aryan Tibet mission” had become the confidant of Lhasa’s leader, the fifth Rinpoche, after all. He’d even managed to convince the latter to give the Germans the eight hundred scrolls of the sacred Kangyur.
Manfred reached the road just as the lorry covered in moon-coloured dust came to a stop. A porter was cleaning a mule harness in front of the Tulpas. Manfred shot a dirty look at the short little man whose face was as wrinkled as a baked apple. He still didn’t understand why Schäfer was always arguing that these subhumans were of the Aryan race.
When the two men in white coats got out of the vehicle, Manfred stood at attention, his right arm raised in their direction in the customary fashion.
“Heil Hitler!”
The men replied in kind. The tallest of the two, who was built like a boxer with a blond beard and a cheerful face, shook his hand exuberantly.
“Manfred, it’s so nice to see you,” exclaimed Schäfer in an exalted tone. Then he gestured towards his companion, standing a few steps behind him.
“Let me introduce Colonel Karl Weistort, Director of the Ahnenerbe and member of the Reichsführer’s personal staff. He comes to us from Berlin.”
The SS officer walked over to Manfred. A thin scar ran from his temple to his cheek. Manfred had seen this type of scar before on fencers he had met in Prussian student societies. Despite the scar, the man exuded a kind of benevolence he’d rarely seen in superior officers of the SS.
The colonel shook his hand and smiled warmly. “Congratulations, Obersturmführer Dalberg. If the information I’ve received is correct, we’re on the verge of making an incredible discovery. Your future at the SS will be bright, my young friend.”
The lieutenant frowned—it was as if no one had read his letter.
“I’m flattered, Herr Colonel, but I mentioned several issues we’ve encountered.”
The officer placed his palm on his shoulder. “Tell me more,” he said.
The lieutenant glanced disdainfully towards the inside of the cave. “Inside the cavern, there’s a giant door with no lock that leads to the sanctuary, where we’ll find … the object. But the monks are furious. They say they only ever intended for us to visit the cave, not to enter the crypt. They don’t want foreigners to profane their sanctuary.”
Weistort burst into frank, joyful laughter.
“Foreigners? Hardly. Though it’s hard to see at first glance, we share the same blood,” he said, watching the porter smoking a long pipe. “Let’s go solve this problem with our cousins.”
The three men climbed the stairs that led to the cave.
“How has your stay in Lhasa been?” asked Manfred.
“Excellent. I finished filming my future documentary and we’ve collected a wealth of top-quality scientific data. I’m only sorry we must return to Berlin so soon. This country is marvellous, and the Tibetans are remarkable people.”
“I’m af
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