‘How can I help?’ he said eagerly.
‘I require to see the man’s file. His name is Otto Rahn.’
The corporal asked me to wait, and then went into the next room where he searched for the appropriate filing-cabinet.
‘Here you are,’ he said, returning after a few minutes with the file. ‘I’m afraid that I’ll have to ask you to examine it here. A file may be removed from this office only with the written approval of the Reichsführer himself.’
‘Naturally I knew that,’ I said coldly. ‘But I’m sure I’ll just need to take a quick look at it. This is only a formal security check.’ I stepped away and stood at a lectern on the far side of the office, where I opened the file to examine its contents. It made interesting reading.
SS Unterscharfiihrer Otto Rahn; born 18 February 1904 at Michelstadt in Odenwald; studied philology at the University of Heidelberg, graduating in 1928; joined SS, March 1936; promoted SS, Unterscharführer, April 1936; posted SS-Deaths Head Division ‘Oberbayern’ Dachau Concentration Camp, September 1937; seconded to Race and Resettlement Office, December 1938; public speaker and author of Crusade Against the Grail (1933) amd Lucifer’s Servants (1937).
There followed several pages of medical notes and character assessments, and these included an evaluation from one SS-Gruppenfuhrer Theodor Eicke which described Rahn as ‘diligent, although given to some eccentricities’. By my reckoning that could have covered just about anything, from murder to the length of his hair.
I returned Rahn’s file to the desk corporal and made my way out of the building. Otto Rahn.
The more I discovered about him, the less inclined I was to believe that he was merely working some elaborate confidence trick. Here was a man interested in something else besides money. A man for whom the word ‘fanatic’ did not seem to be inappropriate. Driving back to Steglitz, I passed Rahn’s house on Tiergartenstrasse, and I don’t thnk I would have been surprised to see the Scarlet Woman and the Great Beast of the Apocalypse come flying out the front door.
It was dark by the time we drove to Caspar-Theyss Strasse, which runs just south of Kurfurstendamm, on the edge of Grunewald. It was a quiet street of villas which stop only a little way short of being something more grand, and which are occupied largely by doctors and dentists. Number thirty-three, next to a small cottage-hospital, occupied the corner of Pauls-bornerstrasse, and was opposite a large florist where visitors to the hospital could buy their flowers.
There was a touch of the Gingerbread Man about the queer-looking house to which Rahn had invited us. The basement and ground-floor brickwork was painted brown, and on the first and second floors it was cream-coloured. A sep-tagonally shaped tower occupied the east side of the house, a timbered loggia surmounted by a balcony the centre portion, and on the west side, a moss-covered wooden gable overhung a couple of porthole windows.
‘I hope you brought a clove of garlic with you,’ I told Hildegard as I parked the car. I could see she didn’t much care for the look of the place, but she remained obstinately silent, still convinced that everything was on the level.
We walked up to a wrought-iron gate that had been fashioned with a variety of zodiacal symbols, and I wondered what the two S S men standing underneath one of the garden’s many spruce trees and smoking cigarettes made of it. This thought occupied me for only a second before I moved on to the more challenging question of what they and the several Party staff cars parked on the pavement were doing there.
Otto Rahn answered the door, greeting us with sympathetic warmth, and directed us into a cloakroom where he relieved us of our coats.
‘Before we go in,’ he said, ‘I should explain that there are a number of other people here for this seance. Herr Weisthor’s prowess as a clairvoyant has made him Germany’s most important sage. I think I mentioned that a number of leading Party members are sympathetic to Herr Weisthor’s work – inc-dentally, this is his home – and so apart from Herr Vogelmann and myself, one of the other guests here tonight will probably be familiar to you.’
Hildegard’s jaw dropped. ‘Not the Fuhrer,’ she said.
Rahn smiled. ‘No, not he. But someone very close to him. He has requested that he be treated just like anyone else in order to facilitate a favourable atmosphere for the evening’s contact. So I’m telling you now, in order that you won’t be too surprised, that it is the Reichsfuhrer-SS, Heinrich Himmler, to whom I am referring. No doubt you saw the security men outside and were wondering what was going on. The Reichsfuhrer is a great patron of our work and has attended many seances.’
Emerging from the cloakroom, we went through a door soundproofed in button-backed padded green leather, and into a large and simply furnished L-shaped room. Across the thick green carpet was a round table at one end, and a group of about ten people standing over a sofa and a couple of armchairs at the other. The walls, where they were visible between the light oak panelling, were painted white, and the green curtains were all drawn. There was something classically German about this room, which was the same thing as saying that it was about as warm and friendly as a Swiss Army knife.
Rahn found us some drinks and introduced Hildegard and me to the room. I spotted Vogelmann’s red head first of all, nodded to him and then searched for Himmler. Since there were no uniforms to be seen, he was rather difficult to spot in his dark, double-breasted suit. Taller than I had expected, and younger too – perhaps no more than thirty-seven or thirty-eight. When he spoke, he seemed a mild-mannered sort of man, and, apart from the enormous gold Rolex, my overall impression was of a man you would have taken for a headmaster rather than the head of the German secret police. And what was it about Swiss wristwatches that made them so attractive to men of power? But a wristwatch was not as attractive to this particular man of power as was Hildegard Steininger, it seemed, and the two of them were soon deep in conversation.
‘Herr Weisthor will come out presently,’ Rahn explained. ‘He usually needs a period of quiet meditation before approaching the spirit world. Let me introduce you to Reinhard Lange. He’s the proprietor of that magazine I left for your wife.’
‘Ah yes, Urania.’
So there he was, short and plump, with a dimple in one of his chins and a pugnaciously pendant lower lip, as if daring you to smack him or kiss him. His fair hair was well-receded, although somewhat babyish about the ears. He had hardly any eyebrows to speak of, and the eyes themselves were half-closed, slitty even. Both of these features made him seem weak and inconstant, in a Nero-like sort of way. Possibly he was neither of these two things, although the strong smell of cologne that surrounded him, his self-satisfied air, and his slightly theatrical way of speaking, did nothing to correct my first impression of him. My line of work has made me a rapid and fairly accurate judge of character, and five minutes’ conversation with Lange were enough to convince me that I had not been wrong about him. The man was a worthless little queer.
I excused myself and went to the lavatory I had seen beyond the cloakroom. I had already decided to return to Weisthor’s house after the seance and see if the other rooms were any more interesting than the one we were in. There didn’t appear to be a dog about the place, so it seemed that all I had to do was prepare my entry. I bolted the door behind me and set about releasing the window-catch. It was stiff and I had just managed to get it open when there was a knock at the door. It was Rahn.
‘Herr Steininger? Are you in there?’
‘I won’t be a moment.’