The Last Secret Of The Temple (34 page)

Jean-Michel Dupont's antique shop was located in a quiet, winding street right in the centre of Toulouse, just a couple of hundred metres from the spectacular red-brick eruption of the Basilique St Sernin, the tip of whose belltower was just visible above the tiled rooftops, like a lighthouse rising above a sea of choppy orange waves.

As agreed, Layla arrived at 1.30 p.m. After pausing for a moment to take in the front of the shop, with its object-filled windows and faded sign announcing LA PETITE MAISON DES CURIOSITÉS, she opened the glass door and stepped inside, a bell clanging loudly above her head.

The interior smelt of polish and cigar smoke, and was crammed with a confused jumble of bric-a-brac, everything from furniture to books, paintings to glassware, china to brass ornaments, although the bulk of the collection appeared to be of a military nature. There were tailors' mannequins dressed in brocade-covered uniforms; shelves lined with caps and helmets; and, against one wall, flanked on either side by a stuffed bear and a panel from a stained-glass window, a long cabinet filled with an array of bayonets and pistols.

'Vous désirez quelque chose?''

A bulky, overweight man had appeared at the back of the shop, dressed in corduroys and a traditional Breton peasant's smock, his shoulder-length hair and goatee beard shot through with peppery streaks of grey. A pair of half-moon spectacles dangled from his neck by a gold chain; a half-smoked cigarillo was clutched between the nicotine-stained fingers of his right hand. With his heavy jowls and lugubrious expression, he looked like a large bloodhound.

'Monsieur Dupont?'

'Out.'

Layla introduced herself, speaking in French. He nodded in recognition and, lodging the cigarillo in the corner of his mouth, came forward and shook her hand, beckoning her round the counter and up a narrow, creaking set of stairs to the first floor. He paused there for a moment, putting his head through a bead curtain and holding a brief muttered conversation with someone in the room beyond – 'My mother,' he explained, 'she'll watch the shop while we talk' – then continued upwards to the second floor, where he opened a heavy wooden door and led her through into a large office-cum-study that occupied the entire upper level of the building. Bookshelves lined two of the walls, a long work counter the third, the latter covered with a clutter of computer equipment – hard-drives, screens, keypads, piles of disks and CDs. Set against the fourth wall, the one furthest from her, was a large glass-fronted display cabinet similar to the one she had seen in the shop downstairs.

He asked if she would like coffee, and when she replied in the affirmative he crossed to one end of the work counter and began busying himself with an electric kettle. Layla hovered by the door; then, curious, she started wandering around the room, perusing first one of the bookshelves – a mixture of antique dealers' manuals and histories of the Third Reich – then the cabinet against the far wall. At first glance this seemed to contain a generalized collection of militaria such as had been displayed downstairs, and it was only after a moment that she realized, with a slight shudder, that it in fact housed a collection of specifically Nazi militaria – medals, bayonets, photographs, items of uniform. On one shelf was arrayed a row of iron crosses with red, white and black ribbons; on another a line of daggers, each with the twin lightning-bolt insignia of the SS inlaid into its handle and the legend MEIN EHRE HEISST TREUE inscribed on its blade.

'SS honour daggers,' explained Dupont, coming up behind her and handing her a steaming cup. 'My honour is loyalty.'

'You sell this stuff?' she asked, taking the cup.

'No, no. To do so in France is illegal. It's merely a private hobby. You disapprove?'

She shrugged. 'It's not the sort of thing I'd want in my house. Given the moral connotations.'

He smiled. 'My interest, I can assure you, is purely aesthetic. I no more sympathize with the activities of the Third Reich than a collector of, say, Roman artefacts sympathizes with that civilization's predilection for slavery and crucifixion. It is the craftsmanship that attracts me, not the ideology. That and the historical context. They are, after all, important artefacts. If you knew more of their background you too would be drawn.'

She gave another shrug, unconvinced.

'You do not believe me? Come, let me show you something.'

He led her to the far end of the cabinet where a safe was set into the wall. Spinning the dial, he opened it and removed a small square case bound in black leather, lifting its lid and holding it out towards her. Inside, lying on a bed of velvet, was a black metal cross surmounted by a magnificently worked silver clasp in the shape of oak leaves and crossed swords, the latter encrusted with what looked like tiny diamonds.

'The Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds,' he explained. 'Nazi Germany's highest military honour. One of only twenty-seven ever awarded, and the only one conferred for a non-combat role. It is worth more than the rest of my collection put together. More than everything in this building put together. Probably more than the building itself.' He paused a beat, then added, 'Its recipient, I believe, is the reason you have come here today.'

She looked up, eyes widening. 'Not . . . Dieter Hoth?'

He nodded.

'How the hell did you get it?' she asked, coming forward a step and staring at the medal.

'A long and boring story,' he replied, waving his cigarillo. 'And one that I won't waste your time by telling. I merely wanted to make the point that, now you know the context, you too are drawn, despite yourself. The fact that Hoth himself was an extremely unpleasant man, this is neither here nor there. You are interested in his story, and are thus inevitably attracted to the material remains of that story. Moral considerations do not enter the equation.'

He held out the box a moment longer, then returned it to the safe and ushered her into a creaking leather armchair, himself crossing to one of the bookshelves and running a finger along the spines of the volumes lined up along it.

'So, what exactly is it you wish to know about our friend Dr Hoth?' he asked, head tilted to one side, examining book titles.

'Anything you can tell me about what he was doing at Castelombres, basically,' replied Layla, putting down her coffee cup and rummaging in her bag. 'According to Magnus Topping you've done a lot of research into the subject.'

She pulled out her notebook and pen and sat back.

'I also wanted to ask about a footnote in an article you wrote for the web linking Hoth with a man named William de Relincourt.'

Dupont nodded, continuing to trace his finger along the book spines before eventually pulling out a volume and blowing dust off its cover. He flicked through its pages, then came over and handed it to Layla, open about midway through.

'Dieter Hoth,' he said, indicating a grainy black and white photograph. 'One of the very few pictures that exist of him.'

A tall, handsome man stared up at her, with sunken cheeks, coal-coloured eyes and a long, aquiline nose. He was dressed in a Nazi officer's uniform, with twin lightning-bolt flashes on the collars.

'Hoth was in the SS?' she asked, surprised.

'The Ahnenerbe,' replied Dupont. 'What you might call the cerebral branch of the SS. He was an archaeologist by profession. A very brilliant one, by all accounts. Headed the Ahnenerbe's Egyptian department.'

Layla's look of surprise intensified. 'He was an Egyptologist?'

'An Egyptian archaeologist is probably a more accurate description. But, yes, Egypt was his specialist field.'

'So what the hell was he doing excavating in the south of France?'

Dupont chuckled, a deep, throaty sound, like a car engine starting.

'An interesting question. And one to which, so far as I am aware, no-one has yet provided a satisfactory answer.'

He took a final puff on his cigarillo and, crossing to the workbench, tamped the butt out into an ashtray and heaved himself up onto a rickety swivel stool. From somewhere above them came the cooing of pigeons and the scratch of talons on tiles. There was a long pause.

'To understand Hoth's career you have to appreciate the extent to which the Nazis were obsessed with history,' said the Frenchman eventually. 'For Hitler et al it wasn't sufficient that the Third Reich should be militarily powerful. Like all despotic regimes they wished to justify and validate their power by wrapping it in an aura of historical legitimacy.'

He pulled a small flat tin from the pocket of his smock, removed another cigarillo and lit it.

'From the outset archaeology, and archaeologists, played a crucial role in that process. Himmler in particular realized their significance. In 1935 he set up Das Ahnenerbe, the Ancestral Heritage Society, a special department within the SS charged with finding material to bolster the ideal of German historical supremacy. Expeditions were sent all over the world – to Iran, Greece, Egypt, even Tibet.'

'To dig?'

'In part, yes. Himmler was determined to uncover evidence that Aryan Germanic culture wasn't just confined to northern Europe but was in fact the prime moving force behind the whole of modern civilization. The Ahnenerbe also stole, however. Looted on an unprecedented scale. Shipped thousands, tens of thousands of artefacts back to Berlin for the greater glory of the Third Reich. If they were obsessed with the past, the Nazis were doubly so when it came to the remains of the past. Because of course if you control its remains, then in a sense you control history itself.'

'And Hoth?' she asked. 'How does he fit into all of this?'

'Well, as I told you, he was a brilliant archaeologist. He was also a devoted and enthusiastic supporter of the Nazi Party; his father, the industrialist Ludwig Hoth, was a close friend of Goebbels. So it was only a matter of time before Hoth junior was asked – or volunteered, we're not sure which – to deploy his skills for the benefit of the Nazi machine. He was only twenty-three when the Ahnenerbe was formed, but Himmler personally appointed him head of its Egyptian unit, with a special brief to dig up and loot as many ancient Egyptian artefacts as he possibly could.'

Dupont dragged on his cigarillo, wafting a hand back and forth in front of his face to dispel the sheets of blue-grey tobacco smoke.

'For the next three years Hoth travelled all over Egypt, ostensibly carrying out legitimate excavations under the guise of the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft, but in fact stealing anything he could lay his hands on and smuggling it back to Germany. We're talking thousands of objects here. A letter exists from Himmler to Hans Reinerth, another Nazi archaeologist, in which he jokingly complains that thanks to Hoth the Castle of Wewelsburg – the headquarters of the SS – was starting to look like something out of a Boris Karloff mummy film.'

'But how does all this lead to Castelombres?' asked Layla, butting in. 'I don't see the connection.'

'That's the whole point,' said Dupont. 'There doesn't seem to be a connection. Which is what makes the story so intriguing. Until 1938, Hoth's career is focused exclusively on ancient Egyptian archaeology. He displays no interest whatsoever in any other branch of history, least of all the sort of credulous, quasi-mystical hokum that appealed to people like Himmler – the Holy Grail, Atlantis, that sort of rubbish. He might have been a thief and a looter, but unlike many Nazi archaeologists, Hoth was never a fantasist.

'Yet in November 1938 this man for whom the Land of the Pharaohs has been everything, who is widely regarded as the finest Egyptian excavator of his generation, who has shown no previous interest in any other subject, suddenly abandons Egypt altogether and instead devotes himself to investigating what can best be described as a series of half-baked medieval legends about buried treasure. It's extraordinary – not just a change of direction, but an apparently complete change of character. I'm surprised it hasn't attracted more attention.'

Layla frowned, tapping her pen on her pad.

'So what happened in 1938? What prompted this sudden change of interest?'

Dupont shrugged. 'No-one seems to know. One minute Hoth and his team are excavating in Egypt, at a site just outside Alexandria; the next he's rushing back to Berlin for some top-secret meeting with Himmler – a meeting, incidentally, that is deemed so important Himmler actually puts off a dinner date with the Führer in order to attend it. And then a couple of days after that Hoth turns up in Jerusalem taking measurements in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and asking questions about some eight-hundred-year-old legend of buried gold.'

'William de Relincourt,' Layla said.

The Frenchman nodded.

'That's just the start of it, however. For the next five years Hoth zig-zags back and forth across Europe and the Levant investigating what seems like every madcap treasure story known to man. He visits libraries, goes through private manuscript collections, digs holes everywhere from Turkey to the Canary Islands before eventually turning up at Castelombres in September 1943, which somehow seems to be the culmination of the whole bizarre episode.'

'And there's no indication of why he was doing any of this?' she pressed. 'What he was looking for?'

Dupont shook his head. 'Of course it's possible he was simply acting under orders. Fulfilling some quixotic fantasy of Himmler's. He was a devoted Nazi after all. Would have done whatever his superior told him. Or maybe he simply lost the plot. He wouldn't have been the first academic to be driven mad by his work.'

'But you don't think so.'

'No,' replied Dupont, 'I don't. I think he was genuinely on to something. Something so important, of such immense significance to the whole Nazi history machine, that he was prepared to turn his entire life upside down in order to pursue it.'

He contemplated the end of his cigarillo, then looked up at her.

'And whatever he was looking for, I think he found it at Castelombres.'

He held her eyes for a moment, then, with a wry smile, slipped off his stool and went over to the kettle, switching it on again.