’You are as mad as I understood you to be, Messieurs.’ Lapointe drew a set of handcuffs from his overcoat pocket and advanced towards the glowering Hitler. ‘Now, if you will kindly-’
And then a shot rang out from the shadows and the revolver went spinning from Lapointe’s grasp. Another shot and Bardot clutched his right shoulder. Blood began to seep through his fingers.
‘Drop your weapons!’ came a cold commanding voice. ‘Drop them or you shall all die immediately.’
And strolling out into the circle of light came a tall, stiff-backed man wearing a black domino obscuring the upper half of his face. He was dressed in perfect evening clothes. In his right hand was a smoking 9mm Sabatini automatic.
Begg recognised him immediately. ‘So it was a true,’ he murmured. ‘I have been guilty of underestimating you, mein Herr. I knew that if Monsieur Zenith was not helping this gang, it had to be someone as knowledgeable in the ways of the multiverse.’
The newcomer’s thin lips formed a mocking smile of triumph. ‘You had thought me defeated, Sir Seaton, in the matter of the Corsican Collar. Then your life was saved by my old enemy, your cousin, who calls himself Zenith. But you knew I would return to continue with my quest.’
Lowering his revolver, Begg turned at once to Colonel Hitler. ‘Believe me, if you think to link your interests with this creature’s you are mistaken. He will betray you as he has betrayed every other man, woman or spirit whom he has persuaded to act in his interest. You might know him by another name, but I can tell you his real identity, for he is the master of lies. His name is Johannes Klosterheim. Some believe him a fallen angel expelled from Hell itself. I do know that he was once a member of the Society of Jesus, before he was expelled not only from that order, but excommunicated by the Pope himself.’
‘Klosterheim!’ Captain Goering’s plum features shook with amusement. ‘What nonsense! This is Herr Johan Cornelius. You would have us believe that we have linked our fortunes with a figure from folklore – the infamous Gaynor the Damned!’
‘As he is called in the opera,’ said Begg quietly, ‘but Wagner took certain liberties with the old legends, as before him did Milton.’
Even Lapointe, Sinclair and the pale, wounded Bardot looked at him as if he were mad. All knew the stories from the opera, if not from their school-books. The enemy of Parsifal, who had sought the Grail and found it, only to be cursed with eternal damnation, to wander the earth until the end of time for the crime of attempting to drink Christ’s very blood.
‘Drop your weapons, gentlemen, or this time I shoot your colleague in his heart and not his shoulder,’ was Klosterheim’s icy response.
And now the Nazi colonel himself was staring a little nervously at the masked man, as if wondering whether any bargain he might have made with him could possibly any longer be to his advantage.
Then Mrs Persson stepped out of the circle and went to join Klosterheim, standing close beside him, making it clear she was the fiend’s ally.
‘It’s said that promise of the Grail’s power will corrupt even the noblest of human creatures,’ declared Begg. ‘Had I realised exactly what we were up against, my friends, I promise I would never have led you here! This will be forever on my conscience.’
‘Fear not, Sir Seaton,’ came Klosterheim’s hollow, terrible voice. ‘You will not have to suffer for very much longer. Meanwhile, I shall be obliged if you will drop your weapons at your feet.’
And as their revolvers clattered down, he uttered a mirthless laugh which echoed on and on through the vaulted chambers and chilled the blood of all who heard it.
THE SIXTH CHAPTER: THE ULTIMATE POWER
Begg felt physically sick as he stood with his hands raised, watching the Nazi gangster gloat over his reversal. He had underestimated not only Hitler and Company but everyone he had opposed. He had been foolish to assume that he alone, save for Mrs Persson and Monsieur Zenith, knew the secret of the moonbeam roads. He had wanted too badly to trust that pair. Cursing himself for not considering his old enemy Klosterheim’s ambitions, he refused to believe he might have been forgiven for thinking him dead. Klosterheim was generally considered by almost everyone to have met his end in Mirenburg a decade or more earlier. Not that Begg himself had been there to witness the evil eternal’s demise, but it had been none other than Zenith who had given him the information.
From his earliest appearance as a Satanic angel expelled from Hell in the myths and legends of the seventeenth century, Klosterheim had been said to die more than once. But his antipathy to Begg’s family – or at least the German side of the family, the von Beks – was well known. He had survived one apparent death after another through the years, remaining alive for two things only – to kill all who carried the blood of his old enemy, Ulrich von Bek, and to lay his hands upon the Holy Grail and thus control, in his understanding, the very nature of reality. Yet here he was in alliance with Una Persson, Countess von Bek!
More than once Begg had narrowly escaped terrible death at the hands of this near-immortal and now, it seemed, there was no hope of escape at all.
Klosterheim’s sunken sockets hid eyes which burned within like the unquenched flames of Hell. He pocketed his revolver while the triumphant Nazis trained their own weapons on the detectives. Then the masked man bent and placed his thin lips upon those of Mrs Persson. Begg was astonished. Klosterheim had never shown warmth, let alone passion, for another, least of all a woman. And Mrs Persson smiled admiringly back at the deathless devil with whom she had cast her lot. Colonel Hitler meanwhile glowered jealously, clearly furious that the woman had collaborated with him because Klosterheim had instructed her to do so. Noting all these ramifications, Begg now believed himself thoroughly outwitted. Was it possible that Zenith also allied himself with his old rival?
‘I cannot believe this of you, Mrs Persson!’ exclaimed Taffy, still shocked and clearly unable to accept this turn of events. Like all his colleagues save the wounded Bardot, his hands were now firmly tied behind him by Herr Hess. It was just possible that a tear gleamed in his eye. ‘How can any decent Englishwoman possibly ally herself with such riff-raff?’
‘Oh, I think you’ll find it’s quite commonly done, Mr Sinclair.’ Mrs Persson seemed almost drunk as she leaned against the gaunt skeleton who was not only her ally but apparently also her paramour, even her master. ‘We women are silly creatures, eh, thoroughly addicted to powerful men! There’s a larger interest here, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate. Very few of us are privileged to know one of Satan’s own angels…’
But Sinclair, his mouth set in a hard, disapproving line, was unable to answer.
Now the Nazis began to push their captives back towards the moonbeam roads.
‘We await only Count Zenith,’ chuckled Captain Goering. ‘And our plan will be complete. On Saturday, the Hindenburg brings from America the Jewish Palestinian deputation to Munich. They intend to discuss an obscenity with Comrade von Hugenberg, chairman of the Munich Supreme Soviet – the establishment of a new Jewish state in the Bavarian lake district! Can you imagine a worse insult to the Christian community? But it will never take place. Our man Zenith will introduce a bomb on board while the Hindenburg refuels overnight at the Eiffel Tower in Paris. He will take the Star of Judea in exchange. That is the priceless emerald which the Jews intend to use as down payment on the land they buy from the treacherous Bavarian soviet. The Hindenburg will blow up. The French will be blamed for their sabotage and a wedge will be driven between the various allies. Jews, Frenchmen and Bavarian communists will all he implicated by the British and Americans. Chaos will ensue. Meanwhile, we will be ready, as soon as news of the Hindenburg’s destruction comes through, to announce a new National Socialist Bavarian state. But the Freikorps will already be through the Eagle Gate and crossing the moonbeam roads into the Arcades of the Opéra, a stone’s throw from the Arc deTriomphe. We shall announce our victory there. Our guns will by that time command the whole of Paris. Germans will rise to our victorious standard and this time the British and French will find it impossible to subdue us. For Paris will already be hostage to our cannon!’