The Sixth Key (45 page)

‘The Mexican edition of Don Quixote?’

‘How did you guess? Yes, the one in that
bookshop in Berlin, the very reason for their first meeting.’

‘And?’

‘We do know that Rahn went to France again to
meet with Deodat. It was near a small village called Oradour-sur-Glane where he
figured no one would recognise him. Incidentally, in 1944 a Nazi unit arrived
at Oradour-sur-Glane supposedly looking for forbidden merchandise, or members
of the resistance. The villagers were summarily rounded up and murdered, all in
all, six hundred and forty-two men, women and children. These days the whole
town is a memorial to those who died.’

‘Were they looking for Rahn?’

‘Who knows? The Nazis also sent a team to
Montsegur and another, led by a man called Skorzeny, went to the Corbieres to
search about in the mountains and caves. Perhaps they thought Rahn was hiding
in them. In fact, legends told of him wandering about the mountains. But Rahn
was long gone. He became an expert in disguise and he did live long enough to
laugh out loud at all the conjectures about his death . . . Long enough to go
to the cinema and to see himself portrayed as an American with a gun at his
belt and a wry smile on his face. How he laughed! The scriptwriters even had
their hero wearing a fedora and a leather jacket – just like that jacket
Rahn had taken from the Pabst film set, but they didn’t know that it was La
Dame who was afraid of snakes, not Rahn.

‘He also lived to learn from Deodat that
Madame Dénarnaud had returned from her experience at the hermitage in a similar
condition to that priest Albert Fonçay – the man who ventured into those
tunnels under the hermitage years earlier. She had no recall of the events that
had transpired that night in the gallery. Some say that the Cénacle placed her
in an occult prison – as the American brotherhoods had done to Madame
Blavatsky. Sometime later she willed the Villa Bethany and its grounds to a
businessman from Paris, who agreed in return to look after her in her old age.
Was he a member of one order or another, sent to keep an eye on her? Who knows?
Whatever the case, she died at Rennes-les-Château after suffering a stroke.
After that the businessman transformed the Villa Bethany into a hotel and the
old cistern under the covered way of the Tour Magdala, into a restaurant, and
began to attract tourists to the village.

‘Do you remember that sour-faced youth, Pierre
Plantard? Well, he became a grand master of his own order, an order he
concocted from thin air, which he called the Priory of Sion. Together with a
certain Monsieur De Cherissy, Plantard encrypted parchments carrying some
aspects of the truth hidden behind an entire smoke screen of lies. He then
placed these parchments strategically within genuine documents at the
Bibliothèque National and waited to see who would take the bait. There were a
few who did, and as a result, a number of books were written which called much
attention to Rennes-le-Château.

‘Monsieur Plantard now began calling himself a
Saint Clair, and therefore from the lineage of Merovingians – the
supposed true kings of France. These, he then postulated, were related to
Jesus, making him a descendant of Jesus. What a load of nonsense!

‘At about this time another parchment was
found at the Bibliothèque National, called Le Serpent Rouge. Yes, don’t look
amazed. It is a poem containing thirteen stanzas, each devoted to one sign of
the zodiac. If one reads it carefully one can discern Rahn’s entire adventure
in the South of France locked between its lines. Moreover it was officially
published on the seventeenth of January. At any rate its discovery caused a
great stir. Unfortunately for the three men who co-authored the parchment
– Louis St Maxent, Gaston de Koker and Pierre Feugere – they all
died within twenty-four hours of each other, in different locations; all three
supposedly committing suicide by hanging. An associate of theirs, a certain
Janjua Fakharul-Islam, a Pakistani, was found a month before, lying at the side
of the railway line near Melun. Apparently, he had fallen from the train
travelling between Paris and Geneva, though no luggage belonging to him was
ever found. Unnoticed by the gendarmes was a strange tattoo on the man’s right
wrist, a serpent and an anchor – the sign of AA, as we know.’

I was shaking my head with amazement. ‘Who
killed them, the Cénacle?’

‘It is obvious that there are some who will
stop at nothing to keep Rahn’s time in the South of France out of the
limelight. In any event, the intoxication of the world with the enigma of that
small circle of churches, remains even to this day. The brotherhoods will
continue to proliferate and to squabble like children, to taunt one another,
and to assassinate one another. These brotherhoods are completely oblivious to
the fact that they are living in an endless performance of metatheatre where
they, as both actors and audience, allude to a redundant secret, and in their
collusion they perpetuate a reality that is really nothing more than an
illusion.’

‘But it’s an illusion based on the truth,’ I
said.

‘Most illusions are.’

‘So, did Rahn eventually make it to Venice?
Did he find this tomb?’

‘He will.’

‘What do you mean, he will?’

‘First, he has to wake up.’

I must have looked at him blankly.

‘Are you surprised?’ he said.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Don’t you know that you are in a dream?’

‘What?’

‘Yes.’

‘You can’t be serious?’

‘The first time you dreamed this dream you
were waiting for a vaporetto to bring you to the island. I have been asking
you, over and over, why you are here, and this is because you have been here
before, in those days . . . long ago. That is what I meant, when I said you
invited yourself. You see, you wanted to remember Wewelsburg, and
Rennes-le-Château, and the hunt for the Sixth Key.’

‘
Remember it? I still don’t
understand.’

‘That was the promise Rahn made to the
Countess P – that he would remember his destiny as the guardian of the
treasure. You see, in a previous life, Rahn had been Nostradamus’s secretary,
Chavigny, and before that he was the troubadour Matteu.’

For some reason this made sense to me. ‘What
about Deodat
– who had he been?’ I asked.

‘Do you not see Nostradamus in Deodat?’

‘And La Dame?’

‘He was the Templar knight who saved the young
Matteu
from Béziers. That is the bond between La Dame and Rahn
– La
Dame had once saved Rahn’s life.’

‘And you? Who are you in all of this?’

‘Don’t you know yet?’ He shot me a glance.

I was filled with a sudden realisation.
‘You’re Cros!’

‘Matteu and I once sat together on the pog at
Montsegur, aeons ago.’

‘You were Cros and Cros was Bertrand Marty,
the Cathar perfect!’

‘Yes. You see, the Seventh Key is my bond with
Rahn.’

I was numbed, shocked, amazed.

‘Now, if you will permit me, I will tell you
the rest.’

‘Please.’

‘Well, by the time I found the treasure in the
church of
Bugarach I was already ill. I felt I didn’t have
much time and I was unsure of what to do. I went to Paris to see my lawyers and
while there I heard the fake rumour that Monti had circulated about Le Serpent
Rouge. At first, I was surprised to hear about it after so many years, and then
a plan began to formulate itself in my mind. I gave my lawyers those strict
instructions regarding my funeral arrangements, which you know about. I then
told them to expect something from me in the coming weeks and gave them
instructions on what they should do with it.

‘After that, I asked around about Monti. It
wasn’t difficult to contact him. In a note I informed him about a missing key
to Le Serpent Rouge. A key to unlocking the powers of the grimoire. I told him
that clues to this missing key’s whereabouts could be found on a list somewhere
in the south of France; clues that only one person could decipher – a German
writer and Grail historian called Otto Rahn. I also included the name of Otto’s
book and the page number where the skeleton key was mentioned. I signed it,
Eugene Grassaud.’

‘So Monti went to Saint-Paul-de-Fenouillet to
see Grassaud?’

‘Yes, and that’s how the rumour was spread
about the list.’

‘But how did you know about Rahn?’

‘Deodat had often talked about him and had
given me a copy of Rahn’s book.’

‘And after that you placed the Apocalypse of
Saint John containing the key in plain view, under the ROTAS window – the
wheel of fortune – in the church.’

‘That is actually where it always was, I
merely replaced it and planted clues to its whereabouts on the list of priests
– JCKAL – and hid the list in the tabernacle.’

‘And the sacrament?’

‘I knew I was being watched by the Lodges and
that it was only a matter of time before they used their Black Magic on me, so
I gave my sacristan express instructions that I should have no other sacrament
than the one I kept in the tabernacle, safeguarded by the Sign of the Lamb. But
before I succumbed to the stroke I had a change of heart. You see, the arrival
of Eva meant that the penitents couldn’t get near me to give me their
desecrated sacrament, so I removed the key to the tabernacle from the
sacristan’s ring of keys and hid it in the pond. Later, when AGLA tortured the
poor man, knowing nothing on the list, he gave them the keys to the church, but
the key to the tabernacle was long gone.

‘The morning Rahn came to see me with Deodat,
I had Eva wheel me as close as possible to the pond. You can’t imagine my
excitement when I saw Rahn. At this stage I didn’t yet know of our past karma
together, but I was happy that my plans had come to fruition and that I would
soon be released. I gave Deodat the word sator, knowing the combination of
Rahn’s erudition and my dear friend’s wisdom would literally lead them around
in circles. When Rahn and Deodat left to go to the church with Eva, I saw my
chance. I overbalanced my wheelchair – it was an old chair and only
needed a little tilt of my weight on uneven ground – and fell into the
pond.’

‘So you committed suicide?’

‘I was already dead, incapacitated, a
vegetable, and I didn’t want to end up like those others who had lost their
souls.’

‘I see.’

‘Rahn and Deodat’s hunt for the key diverted
the attention of the Lodges away from my death and burial, as I had hoped it
would.’

‘You wanted to distract them from your burial
because you had left instructions for the clue to the third part of the
treasure’s whereabouts to be inscribed on this headstone.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Very clever. But if you are dead and this is
your grave, how did you send me letters – how did you help me with my
books?’

‘I told you that when you fall asleep you also
enter that same realm in which the dead live. Were they letters you received?
Or were they messages, impulses, inspirations, intuitions?’

I had to pause to think this through. ‘So
then, what is this moment . . . past, present, or future?’

‘It is the future, in Rahn’s time, and the
present in yours. It is the Day of the Dead in 2012 and the Day of the Dead in
1938. You should know by now that galleries stand side by side.’

‘But who is the fearful monk who guards this
grave? Is he just imaginary?’

‘That monk tends this grave lovingly because
it is his. He is me, as I was long ago when you first came here. He is a
remnant, a memory of what I was.’

‘And are you undead? Locked in limbo?’

He shook his head. ‘No, I’m here of my own
free will. I remained behind to guard the knowledge of the whereabouts of the
third part of the treasure, the Seventh Key, until Rahn returned to solve the
inscription. In those days I feared not only that the living would find a way
to the grave, but also that the living dead would find it. You see, intrigues
don’t only occur in the world of the living, there are those who have crossed
the threshold precisely in order to discover what I took to my grave.’

‘So who was Eva?’

‘On the physical level, she was the
reincarnation of Isobel, the mother of the young boy who was taken to
Montsegur, and Isobel, in turn, was the reincarnation of Mary Magdalene. On a
spiritual level, she was the embodiment of wisdom.’

‘I see . . . and the
woman who reads to the dead?’

‘You will meet her when we return to 1940.’

‘She said she had given me the solution to the
inscription. She said they knew, and that they were after me. Who are they?’

‘Himmler, of course, and others . . .’

‘Himmler?’

‘Yes, don’t forget Himmler knew Rahn wasn’t
dead and sent his men to hunt him down.’

‘So you said we will return to 1940 –
another gallery?’

‘Aptly named “The First Return”. It begins
when Rahn takes up the hunt for the rest of the treasure. He will shortly wake
up on a bench, waiting for the vaporetto that will bring him to this island.
Rahn has to find this gravestone and to solve the cipher. At that time he had
the freedom to turn around and take a different path – the same freedom
you will have when you wake up. In fact, he nearly did take another path, as
you will see, because he felt he was about to walk into Hell. The trouble with
inspirations and intuitions is that we soon forget them when we wake up.’