“Right. Your lodges are as elitist as they come,” Sol said, pouring himself a glass of water. “Sebottendorf knew that only the proletariat could renew the Aryan race, and he wanted to spread his ideas through the working class. One of his associates, Karl Harrer, founded a group for that. In January 1919, Anton Drexler rose to the top of the German workers party, which Adolf Hitler would later join and turn into the Nazi Party.”
“Hitler prospered on the ruins of the armistice, because of endemic unemployment and heightened nationalism,” Marcas countered.
“Yes, but the Thule was in the background. Although we had no direct control of Hitler, we did infiltrate the ranks of his dignitaries and others close to him. Hess, Rosenberg, Himmler, and others. Do you think Hitler would have risen to power without financing from German industrialists? Many were members of the Thule. But Hitler failed because of his megalomania. We overestimated him.”
“Millions of Jews were reduced to slavery and exterminated,” Jade, her cheeks flushed with anger, spit out. “That was a fine program you had.”
Sol nodded to his bodyguard. “Miss, do I need to have my bodyguard shoot you in the head?”
Marcas touched Jade’s thigh to calm her. He picked up the conversation.
“But you’re French. What are you doing mixed up in all that?”
The old man smiled. “It’s very simple. I joined the Waffen SS during the war, and members of the Thule chose me for initiation. I was sponsored, like a Freemason.”
Marcas’s face hardened.
Jade spoke up before he could say anything. “Perfect. Just like a game of Happy Families. In the Nazi family, I want the grandfather, the French SS officer. How many woman and children did you kill?”
Joana stood up and slapped Jade with her good hand. The bodyguard grabbed Jade’s arms to keep her from retaliating. Sol’s eyes filled with disdain.
“The Charlemagne Division fought at the front and defended Berlin. We had nothing to do with the concentration camps. It was because of my bravery that I earned the rank of obersturmbannführer.”
“And then?”
“My mission consisted of hiding Freemason documents pillaged from France. They were highly prized by the order. Do you understand now?”
“But why?”
“One of the Thule branches in the SS, the Ahnenerbe Institute, was doing research on Aryan India and discovered the existence of the sacred drink, the soma. Very soon thereafter, they conducted experiments with hallucinogenic plants at the Westphalia castle. They had recruited archeologists and biologists to figure out what was in the soma. It was tested on Russian prisoners. The mixtures had spectacular effects.”
Zewinski guffawed. “What a bunch of crazies. You just wanted to get high.”
Sol slowly put down his cigar and turned to her. “You do know that in the nineteen fifties and sixties, the CIA was doing the same experiments, don’t you?”
“The Americans?”
“The CIA financed advanced research on LSD. A certain Dr. Sidney Gottlieb headed up the experiments. Gottlieb and select associates laced fellow researchers’ coffee with LSD to test their reactions. Later on, he expanded his research to include prostitutes, prisoners, drug addicts, and mental patients — people who wouldn’t be believed if they told their story. Some of the subjects reported that they felt like their flesh was dropping off their bones.”
“The flesh falling off the bones,” Marcas said in a half whisper.
Sol looked at him. “What is that, Inspector?”
“Those experiments ended a long time ago,” Marcas said. “So you’re after some mind-control drug. Is that it?”
“Oh, Inspector Marcas, you so underestimate the power of the soma. With it, the Thule will be reborn, and the Aryan race will rule again.”
Jade rolled her eyes. Marcas kicked her under the table before she could speak.
“What does this have to do with the Freemason archives?” he asked
“We’d been looking for the Freemason secret for a long time. Then, in the archives from France, researchers at the Ahnenerbe found a document that referred to a ritual based on a divine drink.”
Marcas pursed his lips. “The shadow ritual.”
Sol lit another cigar. “That’s right. The Ahnenerbe had a French neurologist and Freemason, Henri Jouhanneau, transferred to Berlin to go through the archives lifted from Paris. He found scattered fragments of the ritual. There was a study on rye ergot and a manuscript by a man named Breuil.”
“Where do you come into this?”
“In 1945, my convoy ran into a Red Army roadblock, but I managed to escape with a handful of documents, including part of the Breuil manuscript that mentioned three ingredients, one being a plant from the East. In it, he described a trip to Egypt. I hid the papers under the altar of a church in a ruined village, and I headed for Allied lines. When Jouhanneau’s son got that call from the Jewish archeologist in Israel, we were ready.”
“The Tebah Stone?”
Sol nodded. “Yes. Then you did the work for us. I never will be able to thank you enough for the chapel.”
“And now? What are you going to do?”
Sol yawned and stood up. “Joana here is quite impatient to take care of your girlfriend, but I still need the two of you. I’m tired now, and I need my rest. We’ll see each other in the morning, and we’ll discuss the ritual then.”
A vestige from another era, Sol was looking very old. Marcas asked one more question.
“Why the name Sol?”
“It comes from the sun god revered during the Roman Empire: Sol Invictus — the unconquered sun. It relates to the winter solstice, December twenty-first, when the sun is reborn, and the days get longer. Christians turned the solstice into a celebration of the birth of Jesus. Like the sun — and unlike Jesus, who was crucified — I will go unvanquished.”
65
The bodyguard ushered Marcas and Zewinski into a bedroom, sat them down in chairs, and bound their hands and feet again. Then he left.
“What do we do now?” Zewinski asked.
“I don’t know yet,” Marcas said. “I suppose we should get some rest too.”
They sat in silence.
“What do you think about this secret mystical drink?” Jade finally asked.
“Freemasonry isn’t about magic for me or about power. What counts is the work that you do in the lodge. There’s no elixir, no secret potion, no single key that gives access to the divine. The light comes from understanding the beauty of symbols, knowing how to find traces of overall coherence in the human world.”
“The rest is just fantasy then?”
“As with a lot of things, people think the Freemasons have much more influence than we really have. Take the seal on the dollar bill. You’ve seen the pyramid with the eye at the top. It’s recognized as a Masonic symbol, and, indeed, many of the founding fathers were Masons. It’s not likely, though, that they had any big scheme in mind. At the bottom of the seal, there’s a Latin expression, novus ordo seculorum, which means ‘new order of the ages.’ Some people think there’s some mysterious message in this. But the phrase probably refers to the establishment of a democracy in the new world — that’s all.”
“But what’s all the secret mumbo jumbo then?”
“It’s about ritual, ritual that hasn’t changed since the eighteenth century. The initiation ritual, for example, has the candidate being purified — symbolically — by the four elements: earth, water, air, and fire. Since ancient times these elements have represented both man and the universe, and they symbolize stages in a person’s journey toward truth. As you go through the ceremony, you move from chaos to the road of creation. Earth is the place of preparation for the trials ahead, a place of passage; water, the origin of life; air, the quest for knowledge; and fire—”