"I thought you said Himmler had had it destroyed?" Tom asked.
"He did," Dominique replied. "Or at least, he tried to. Following his orders, it was blown up in March 1945, but the ceremonial hall and the crypt in the north tower survived pretty much intact. The rest of the castle was rebuilt after the war."
Tom turned to face Archie and Dom's expectant faces. "You're sure it's empty?"
"It's a youth hostel and a museum these days, but it's pretty quiet this time of year. There won't be anyone around until morning."
They got out of the car. It was drizzling, a thick, icy rain. Tom opened the trunk and took out two large packs; he handed one to Archie and strapped the other to his back. Then he turned to survey the castle walls.
The wide moat, no doubt once a formidable obstacle, had long since been drained, its formerly treacherous banks now sheltering a manicured garden. A narrow stone bridge supported by two arches led across the void to the castle's main entrance, an arched doorway surmounted by an ornately carved bay window. This was presumably a later addition, given its frivolous variance from the building's stern aspect.
They crossed the bridge to the imposing main gate, a solid wall of oak inset with six large roundels. Unsurprisingly, it was bolted shut, so Tom set to work on the narrow door set into it. Within a few seconds the rudimentary lock sprang open.
They stepped into a short vaulted passageway that in turn gave onto the castle's triangular courtyard, the yellow glow from a few lanterns vanishing into the shadows. Apart from the muted drumming of the rain, it was eerily quiet and still, the wind seemingly unable or unwilling to penetrate this cobbled sanctuary.
Dominique gestured toward a doorway in the base of the North Tower, a wide, squat circle of stone that loomed portentously above them, blocking out the night sky. By comparison, the two other, more delicate, towers that they could just about make out above the roof's steep slope seemed as if they might flex in a strong wind.
They approached the door, the walls closing in on them as the sides of the triangle met, an ancient inscription indicating that this had once been the entrance to a chapel. The door was unlocked and they stepped inside, only to find an iron grille blocking their way.
Tom reached for his flashlight and pointed it through the bars, revealing a large chamber. Twelve stone pillars encircled the room and supported a succession of low arches that gracefully framed the slender windows set into the tower walls. But his eyes settled almost immediately on the floor. At the center of the floor, black marble had been laid in the now familiar shape of a disc surrounded by two further circles, with twelve runic lightning bolts radiating from its center. The Black Sun.
"This was the Hall of the Supreme Leaders," Dominique whispered. "A place where the SS staged ritual ceremonies."
"You make them sound almost religious," observed Archie.
"In many ways, they were," Dominique agreed. "Him-mler's doctrine of unquestioning obedience was inspired by the Jesuits. The SS was more like a fanatical religious sect than a military organization, with Himmler as Pope and Hitler as God."
"Is all this original?" Tom asked, surprised at the room's condition.
"It's been restored."
"Well, in that case, whatever we're looking for won't be here, or they'd have found it," Tom said. "Where's the crypt you mentioned?"
"As far as I recall, directly underneath us. But we need to go back outside to get to it."
She led them back through the main gate, which they shut behind them, and across the bridge, the wind whistling through the two arches below. To their left, a flight of steps led down to the floor of the moat, where two doors had been set into the base of the east wall.
"That one," she whispered, pointing at the right-hand door.
It was locked, although again it was only a matter of seconds before Tom had it creaking open. They stepped into a vaulted passage, and Dominique indicated with a wave of her flashlight the narrow staircase that led off to their right. The staircase ended at another iron grille, which Tom had to pick open. Dominique located the light switch on the wall outside before following Tom and Archie inside.
The circular crypt was about twenty or thirty feet across and looked to be of solid construction, the walls built from carved stone blocks, the floor of polished limestone. A vaulted ceiling climbed perhaps fifteen feet above their heads. In the middle of the room was a round stone pit with two steps leading down to a shallow depression at its center.
It was to this smaller circle that Tom went, stopping in the middle, directly beneath the apex of the ceiling.
"Look." Archie pointed his flashlight up above Tom's head. The outline of a swastika, made from a different-colored stone, was clearly visible above.
"What was this place?" Tom asked.
"A sort of SS burial ground, apparently," said Dominique. "Presumably a final resting place at the center of the universe for the spirits of the Order when they passed away." Her voice had a strange deadened timbre, no echoes despite the confined space, as if every sound was being absorbed into the walls.
Tom looked curiously around him. Four light wells were set high into the thick walls, narrow shafts that angled steeply toward the night.
"According to Himmler, the center of the world lay not in Jerusalem or Rome or Mecca but here, in the hills of Westphalia," she explained. "He planned to build a massive SS complex composed of a series of concentric fortifications, barracks, and houses that radiated out for miles from where you're standing."
Tom looked down at his feet and shifted uncomfortably.
"At that precise spot an eternal flame was to be lit," she continued. "And although the guidebooks don't mention the Order by name, the theory is that the ashes of senior SS leaders were to be placed on one of these…" She crossed to the wall and indicated a low stone pedestal that Tom had not noticed before. He looked around him and saw that there was a total of twelve identical pedestals spaced around the chamber's walls. "Clearly, the Order were to remain united in death as they had been in life."
"Then this is where we'll start," said Tom, stamping on the stone floor. "Where the flame was to have burned. Right under the swastika. At the center of their world."
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Crouching in the pit, Tom and Archie set to work chiseling away at the mortar surrounding the large stone set into the center of the floor. It was slow, painful work, the hammer handles slippery in their grasp, the vibrations through the steel chisel stinging their fingers despite the strips of rubber used to muffle the blows. After five or ten minutes, however, the sound of metal striking stone gave way to another, unexpected sound.
"There's something under here," said Archie excitedly.
They levered the first stone out, then set to work on the ones surrounding it, eventually clearing a wide area and revealing the outline of a three-foot-square metal plate, about half an inch thick.
"Use this." Dominique handed Tom a long metal spike from one of the packs. Tom banged it under one side of the plate, then used it to pry the heavy metal slab away from the ground until there was a big enough gap for Archie to slip his fingers into. Archie hauled the plate upright until it was standing on edge, then pushed it away, sending it toppling to the floor with a crash. As the cloud of dust cleared, a thick, fetid stench rose slowly from the dark hole.
Dropping to their hands and knees, they crawled to the hole's edge and peered into it, their hands covering their mouths in an unsuccessful attempt to filter out the smell. A dark, impenetrable nothingness stared back at them, and for a few moments they were all silent.
"I'll go down first," Tom volunteered. He grabbed a rope and secured one end to the gate, then threw the other end down the hole. Gripping his flashlight between his teeth, he lowered himself into the inky void, allowing the rope to slide slowly through his hands, controlling the speed of his descent with his legs.