Put in mind of an initiate making his way to the holy shrine, he stared at the gleaming white cube. An impressive sight in broad daylight, the Grande Arche was utterly stunning at night, the alabaster marble gleaming with an ethereal lustre. He’d once read that the Cathedral of Notre-Dame would fit perfectly inside the cube’s open space.
Was that merely a coincidence or was it a profound and purposeful design element?
Cædmon suspected the latter, the cathedral having been built over the top of an ancient temple dedicated to Isis, the Egyptian Queen of the Heavens – the reason why the city had originally been called ‘Parisis’. In point of fact, the Axe Historique was the Axis of Isis, the massive ley line perfectly aligned to the heliacal rising of her sacred star Sirius. A star that would appear in sixty minutes after an absence of seventy days. Seven plus zero equals seven.
As Cædmon glanced at the high-rises that flanked the esplanade, he wondered if any of the thousands of Parisians who worked in those office buildings knew that the centrepiece of La Defense, the Grande Arche, was a porte cosmique. A star gate built to harness astral energy.
Though spectacularly modern in execution, the Grande Arche was ancient wisdom articulated in marble and granite. That wisdom had been safeguarded through the centuries by a succession of secret societies: the Knights Templar, the Rosicrucians, the Nine Sisters Lodge, the Egyptian Rite, to name just a few. Deemed heretical, one and all, by the Church Fathers, those underground societies had been the Guardians of the Lost Science. Each group had gleaned a different piece of the puzzle. None of them possessed all of the knowledge. Or the requisite component, the Lapis Exillis, which would have enabled them to generate the Vril force.
Until the Seven Research Foundation retrieved all of the puzzle pieces and put them in order.
A dedicated group of educated zealots – a secret society in the guise of an academic think tank – the Seven Research Foundation intended to exploit the Lost Science. An unknown force of nature, the Vril was derived from fused energies. It had been the power behind the Egyptian civilization. For all he knew, it was the very power that ultimately destroyed that same empire. Since the Vril force was created through the manipulation of astral and telluric energies, if there was the slightest miscalculation, he feared catastrophe would ensue.
Given that it had been more than three thousand years since the Vril force had last been generated, the possibility of error was great.
Well aware that the clock ticked loudly, neither he nor McGuire said a word as they ascended the steps which led to the Grande Arche veranda. Each of them knew what had to be done. Earlier in the evening as they’d prepared the pipe bombs – a laborious endeavour that had taken hours to complete – they’d gone over the mission op in excruciating detail. Their plan was two-pronged: he would find and rescue Kate; McGuire would set and ignite the six pipe bombs.
Reaching the fifty-fourth, and final, step, they hurriedly slipped into the shadows. Moored on the far side of the veranda were the glass elevators used to whisk tourists to the rooftop observation deck. Canopied directly above them was the white canvas ‘cloud’ that spanned the open-ended courtyard. Le Nuage. Cædmon had always thought it more closely resembled a hovering white moth than a floating cirrus cloud. An eyesore from any angle, it had been installed to reduce the wind shear. He peered at the esplanade below. From his elevated position, it was akin to standing at a window that opened on to the world.
As outlined in the mission op, they veered away from the bank of revolving glass doors that led to the north and south lobbies, both of which were manned by a night-duty guard. Instead, they proceeded to a single glass door that was out of the guards’ line of sight. Head bowed so he couldn’t be easily identified on the security camera, McGuire quickly punched an eight-digit code into a keypad affixed to the door jamb. An instant later, the door buzzed open. Because the Grande Arche was a potential terrorist target, all of the building’s security codes were kept on file with the Ministry of Interior, the government office responsible for national security. Calling in an old favour with a computer engineer at Thames House, Cædmon had acquired the necessary codes.
Hopefully the guard stationed at the video monitors would pay them short shrift. Not only did they use an authorized security code, they’d come through a designated after-hours entryway. Just a pair of overworked office cogs getting an early start.
‘Well done,’ he whispered, relieved at the ease with which they’d entered the building.
‘Unlike you, I’m not gonna wrench my arm out its socket to pat myself on the back. Do that and somebody will shoot you in the back for sure,’ McGuire muttered. He glanced at his wristwatch. ‘We’ve only got fifty-two minutes until sunrise.’
‘Right.’
Properly chastened, Cædmon followed the commando down the dim corridor. A long-forgotten line popped into his head: ‘From battle and murder, and from sudden death.’
He hoped to God that it wasn’t a grisly premonition.
76
Seven Research Facility
0528 hours
Ivo Uhlemann carefully set the phonograph needle on to the vinyl disk.
His choice of music admittedly ironic, he walked over to the rosewood bureau as the opening strains of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung reverberated throughout his private study. He’d always considered the 1966 recording by the Berlin Philharmonic the classic rendition of the operatic cycle.
The irony, of course, was that the fall of the Third Reich had been Germany’s great Götterdämmerung. Not Brünnhilde’s immolation. What happened in April of 1945 was the true ‘ Twilight of the gods’.
Wracked with pain, Ivo gingerly opened the bureau’s top drawer and removed a wooden box with a carved sun wheel on the lid. An authentic Ahnenerbe-commissioned chest, he’d paid an exorbitant price for it at a private auction. It’d always angered him, as it did his father, that Himmler and his cronies misappropriated the Sonnenrad Hakenkreutz symbol, foolishly believing that the swirling energy that radiated from the Black Sun, Sirius, would somehow magically transform them into avatars. Fools! All of them! They could not comprehend that Sirius was simply a key to unlock the door of space and time.
Ivo lifted the lid and removed his drug paraphernalia. As he did so, he glanced dismissively at the Iron Cross in the bottom of the box. He’d been awarded the medal on 20 April 1945 by Adolf Hitler in the bomb-blasted Chancellery Garden. To this day, he could still envision in his mind’s eye the tottering Führer who, his brain addled, destroyed by the cancer of occultism, would lead the glorious Reich into fiery defeat.
It could have been different. Had men of greater intelligence been making the decisions. But the occult wing of the German high command had been trapped in a hall of mirrors which, ironically, they had created. For them, indeed, for the whole of Germany, there was no escape from the madness.
Soon that would all change. Soon the Reich would be created anew.
Stepping over to his upholstered chaise longue, Ivo carefully sat down, every movement inciting an agonized riot. At the end of the elongated chair, Wolfgang slept peacefully, curled in a furry ball.