"Guten Tag," Archie said haltingly.
Unlike Tom and Dominique, Archie had a vocabulary extending little beyond hello and good-bye in any language other than French, and the latter only because he had mastered the principal phrases used in Baccarat.
"I'm looking for Mr. Lammers — Herr Manfred Lam-mers," he said, reading from the back of the envelope he had found at Weissman's house. Fearing that his pronunciation might be more hindrance than help, he held out the envelope so she could read the name for herself. She studied the handwritten name and address, then looked up at him with a sad expression on her face.
"I'm sorry," she replied with a thick accent, "but Herr Lammers is dead. Three years ago."
"Oh." His face fell. Back to square one.
"Can I help? I am his niece, Maria Lammers."
"I don't think so," Archie said with a resigned shrug. "Not unless you recognize these." He handed her the three photographs. "Your uncle sent them to someone in England. I was hoping to find out where the original paintings were."
She took the photographs and leafed through them, shaking her head. "Nein …no, sorry. I have never…" As she came to the last picture, she paused midsentence.
"What?"
"This one" — she held up the photograph showing a painting of a castle—"this I have seen before."
"Where?" Archie stepped forward eagerly. "Do you have it here?"
"No."
"Can you show it to me?"
A pause as she weighed her answer. "You have come from England to see this?"
"Yes, yes, from England."
She slowly peeled off her rubber gloves and then pulled the scarf off her head. Her hair, dyed a vivid henna, fell around her face in a scruffy bob.
"Come."
She grabbed a coat off the back of the door, tugged it on, and led him down the drive and back out onto the street. Turning left, she cut through a small park where children were hurling snowballs at each other. Quickly leaving their laughter and screams behind, they passed under a large arch and down a hill, Archie treading carefully to avoid patches of ice that remained unsanded. Along the way, Maria passed several people she knew, greeting them with a wave as they looked Archie up and down, obviously curious as to who he was.
Eventually they came to a steep staircase cut into a buttressed wall that led up to the main parish church, its snow-covered gothic steeple towering above the surrounding roofs.
Despite the church's rather drab external appearance, its interior had clearly benefited from a Baroque renovation at some stage in the eighteen hundreds and was, as a consequence, surprisingly ornate and bright. Everything of value appeared to have been gilded, from the picture frames that lined both walls, to the icons benevolently peering down from their elevated vantage points on each of the four central pillars, and the intricately decorated altarpieces that flanked each side of the chancel. The apse, meanwhile, was dominated by an enormous black and gold-leaf reredos, that reached almost to the top of the high, ribbed ceiling.
"Kommen Sie."
She led him down the nave to the marble-floored chancel and then turned right into the side chapel. "You see?"
The light outside was fading fast, and Archie peered into the gloom in confusion. Although the ceiling had been decorated attractively enough with painted plaster moldings, there was nothing else there apart from a rather gaudy icon of the Virgin and Child mounted high up on the left wall, and a massive marble font.
But then, instinctively almost, he looked up to the stained-glass window overhead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
So there were twelve members of the Order?" Tom asked. "Yes. Like the Knights of the Round Table. Himmler himself selected them, not only for their Aryan looks and racially pure bloodlines, but also for their total loyalty to him. They were his own Praetorian Guard."
"But you said that the twelve knights were all Obergrup-penfuhrer rank and above. Yet that uniform belonged to a corporal. How can that be?"
"I'm not sure." Lasche shook his head. "As far as I know, no one outside the Order has ever seen one of these uniforms before. It's possible that in some act of ritual humility they all assumed lowly rank to emphasize their brotherhood and unity."
"Or maybe, if they were knights, they had retainers? Someone to assist them in the performance of their duties," Tom speculated.
"Yes. Yes, that is also a possibility."
"It would certainly explain why someone so young got to wear such a coveted uniform."
"Who?"
"The man this uniform belonged to. He died ten days ago.
He was in his eighties. There was a photo, taken in 1944, of him wearing the uniform. That would have made him about twenty at the time."
"What was his name?"
"Weissman. Andreas Weissman." Tom saw the surprised look on Lasche's face. "It's a Jewish name, I know. He adopted an alias in order to escape after the war. Passed himself off as a concentration camp survivor — even tattooed a fake camp number on his arm. We don't know his real name."
"You know, many members of the SS had their blood type tattooed on their left underarm, twenty centimeters up from the elbow. It was done so that field medics might quickly determine a wounded man's blood type. After the war, Allied investigators used the blood group tattoo to identify potential war criminals. Many SS members burned or disfigured their underarm to avoid capture."
"Or perhaps tattooed another number over the top to disguise it…?" Tom mused, recalling the difficulty Turn-bull's forensic people had had in deciphering some of the numbers recovered from Weissman's arm.
"Possibly."
"Did the Order have any specific symbols or images that they used, apart from the regular SS ones?"
"Just one. A black disc surrounded by two concentric circles with twelve spokes radiating from its center in the form of SS lightning bolts. One for each member of the Order. They called it the Schwarze Sonne — the Black Sun."
"Like this?" Tom asked, handing Lasche the cap recovered from Weissman's house and pointing at its badge. Las-che grasped it unsteadily, a glimmer of recognition flickering across his face.
"Yes, yes. It is as I thought!" He looked up at Tom excitedly, straining to get the words out between breaths. "This is the symbol of the Order, a corruption of an Alamannian sun-wheel from the third century AD. It was intended as a reference to a time when the SS would shine down on the world as their racial masters."
There was a pause as Tom let this new piece of information sink in.
"What happened to the Order in the end?"
"Ah," said Lasche, "the, how you say, six-million-dollar question. The answer is simple: nobody knows."
"Nobody?"
Lasche gave a smile, more gums than teeth. "Not for certain. Although… Well, let's just say I have my own ideas."
"Go on," Tom urged him with a nod.
"Himmler, for all his failings, had a clearer view of the way the war was going than Hitler did. He even tried to negotiate a separate peace with the Allies in the final days of the war. And with the specter of defeat looming, he would never have been able to contemplate his precious knights being captured or imprisoned or otherwise humiliated by their enemies."
"So what do you think he did?"
Lasche paused, as if to collect his strength. "Are you aware what happened to King Arthur when he lay dying?" he wheezed.
"He asked one of his knights to throw Excalibur into the lake."