Sign of the Cross Read online

  ‘I think you’ve missed your supper, Augustin. Maybe your friend looked for you. He’ll have to look harder.’

  Outside, the earlier rain had stopped. The air was warm and humid. The man’s gait was effortless, as if the wheezing monk on his shoulder was weightless.

  He had seen the wellhead on his way to the chapel, an old-fashioned rough-stone and wood structure with posts, a crossbeam and a rope bucket. He looked around and, seeing no one, he calmly put the monk onto the grass then lifted him again, this time by his ankles.

  ‘It’s time to say goodbye, Augustin,’ he said. ‘I apologize for the hurt. At least this will stop it.’

  He dangled the old man over the well for a moment, then released him to gravity and counted off the seconds in his head. At three there was a splash. Nodding to himself he lowered the bucket fast by pulling on the rope. The hand crank spun like a propeller shaft.

  ‘Maybe you can climb up, Augustin,’ he said quietly. ‘Or maybe not.’

  He had parked his car in a concealed spot behind the gardening shed. As he was about to get in, he saw someone in the shadows of the doorway.

  ‘Who are you?’ Gerhardt demanded.

  The fellow stumbled forward, his flat cap askew. He had a reddish beard and big gut and reeked of travarica, the local grass brandy. He labored over a response in English.

  ‘Me? I am gardener. I am handyman. What they need, I am. They pay shit but what I can do? This is church.’

  The man smiled at him and said. ‘Come closer, my friend. I’d like to talk to you.’

  TEN

  Berlin, present day

  The years had been kind.

  He was seventy-one but didn’t feel like a man in his eighth decade. Aside from some morning stiffness in his fingers and a lingering tennis elbow, he had little in the way of the physical or mental decline that most of his friends and business associates grumbled about. His contemporaries so irritated him with complaints about their prostates and insomnia, their thinning hair and colonoscopy preps, that he tried whenever possible, to associate himself with younger men. And younger women.

  That was one reason he had recently thrown himself so enthusiastically into recruitment. By the time a young man made it into his imposing office on Potsdamer Platz, with its killer park views through the mint-green windows over the Tiergarten, they had been vetted far more thoroughly than if they had been seeking a top intelligence job at the BND. Yet, to date, none of the interviews had progressed all the way to membership. Schneider was picky.

  ‘We need fresh blood,’ Schneider had railed at his colleagues when last they gathered at his Bavarian hunting lodge for their annual conclave. ‘Do you want us to become extinct?’

  ‘We have survived by being obsessed with security,’ a retired shipbuilder from Hamburg had said, slurping oysters flown in that morning from Ireland.

  ‘And what happens when the last of us dies?’ Schneider had said. ‘Don’t you think our responsibility to history is stronger than an obsession with protecting our own skins?’

  ‘None of us can afford a scandal,’ another had said, ‘least of all you.’

  That much had been true. No one had more to lose. By and large they were a successful bunch. Industrialists, politicians, high-ranking military men, even a celebrity plastic surgeon! But Lambret Schneider was the only empire builder. His merchant bank was like an octopus, with probing tentacles and clinging suckers reaching throughout German society. He and his wife, a devoted patient of that very plastic surgeon, were boldface names in glossy magazines, renowned for their good works and philanthropy. If he were ruined, his bank would surely collapse and with it, a meaningful chunk of the German economy.

  ‘We have the skill and the resources to do this correctly,’ Schneider had said. ‘A few fine young men from the right families, that’s all I ask for. We dinosaurs may never find our earthly Valhalla but maybe, just maybe, the next generation will.’

  The men in that taxidermy-studded, drafty old hall had been a little shocked by Schneider’s tilt toward fatalism. He had been the group’s most consistent cheerleader during his two decades as their leader. But who could blame him for a bout of lamentation? What had they accomplished since their glory days at the bottom of the world? What pleasure could they take in year after year of nothing new to report? None of them needed yet another exclusive social club, especially one impossible to brag about to a larger circle, and one that represented an existential danger to the lives they had built.

  His assistant knocked on his door. ‘Herr Schneider, your two o’clock appointment, Jürgen Besemer, is here.’

  From the dossier compiled on the young man, Schneider knew he was going to be on the small side, but seeing him side by side with Gerhardt Hufnagel almost made him laugh. Though diminutive, the fellow had a refined appearance with a perfect blue suit and a fresh, conservative haircut. He wished Gerhardt were more presentable. For starters, he wanted his ridiculous hairstyle gone, along with those muscle-man shirts of his that were so clingy they looked to be spray-painted to his torso. And while he was waving a magic wand, he would have given Gerhardt a fistful of additional IQ points. The man wasn’t a dimwit, but he didn’t hold a candle intellectually to the bankers, analysts and lawyers Schneider had always hired. But Schneider hadn’t chosen to have Gerhardt in his life. He had made a solemn promise and, to his wife’s perpetual disgust, he had cared for Oskar Hufnagel’s son as if he were his own.

  On his return from Antarctica, Schneider had found Oskar’s pretty girlfriend and given her money. Gerhardt had lived with his mother until he was eighteen but Schneider had never been far away. It had never been a matter for discussion with his wife. She had been unable to give him a child. He knew for a fact that he was potent given the number of abortions he’d arranged his mistresses to get over the years. The price he forced her to pay was allowing the too loud and often uncouth Gerhardt into their lives.

  ‘Ah, Jürgen, come in and sit,’ Schneider said. ‘Thank you for coming today.’

  ‘It is my honor, Herr Schneider,’ the young man said with a reverential tone.

  Gerhardt continued to stand by the door and would have probably continued to do so, if Schneider hadn’t wordlessly pointed to a chair.

  ‘So, Jürgen, you know why you’re here.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I almost could not sleep last night at the prospect of meeting you.’

  ‘Some tea?’

  ‘No thank you, sir.’

  Schneider poured himself a cup without offering any to Gerhardt. ‘And what is it you know of me?’ he asked.

  ‘I know of your business career, of course. And I know you are an important man in this organization I hope to join.’

  ‘What do you know of the organization?’

  ‘I was told very little. Only that its members are among the finest men of Germany, all of them committed to upholding the principles of German patriotism.’

  ‘Tell me, Jürgen, what do you know about National Socialism?’

  ‘I was a good student. I am knowledgeable.’

  ‘So, your knowledge was only from school?’

  ‘No, it was more than that. My father was a National Socialist and his father was in the SS.’

  ‘You don’t sound hesitant to mention this. These days most young people would be loath to speak of a family history that includes Nazi membership.’

  ‘I am proud of my family, sir.’

  Schneider nodded approvingly. ‘I know of their service. Do you share their beliefs, Jürgen?’

  ‘Actually, I do.’

  ‘And do you trumpet them?’

  ‘I do not, Herr Schneider. To do so would destroy my career at my company. Living in Germany these days is like living in a foreign country.’

  ‘I like that!’ Schneider exclaimed. ‘Gerhardt, isn’t that apt?’

  Gerhardt moodily nodded.

  ‘I feel comfortable speaking with you about my politics,’ Besemer said. ‘It is quite refreshing and liberat
ing.’

  ‘Good, that is good. Tell me the extent of your political activities,’ Schneider asked the earnest young man.

  ‘I am like a man alone in the desert. I have no affinity for the crude tactics and antics of the neo-Nazis. They are not my peers, they are not my equals. I keep my own counsel. I read, I study, I hope.’

  ‘And what are your thoughts of joining a group of like-minded and refined gentlemen?’

  ‘It would be thrilling, Herr Schneider. I only hope you would trust me to join with you.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have reached my inner sanctum if we weren’t sure we could trust you. So, Jürgen, would you like to hear something about us?’

  Besemer nodded eagerly.

  This was the first interviewee who had progressed to this point but Schneider felt confident. He said, ‘As you may know, Adolf Hitler believed in a form of Christianity, Positive Christianity.’

  ‘I recall that his first use of the term was in Article 24 of the 1920 Nazi Party Platform,’ the young man offered.

  Schneider seemed slightly annoyed at the interruption, but he told the fellow he was impressed with his fund of knowledge.

  ‘Hitler was not fond of traditional forms of Christianity,’ Schneider continued. ‘He found it too passive. All the nonsense about miraculous birth, suffering on the cross, redemption. The Führer found other aspects of Christ’s life and death far more important and inspirational. It was this positive alternative that the Reich embraced in its early days: Christ the fighter, Christ the organizer, Christ the opposer of organized Judaism. The Reich leadership understood the practical and political significance of Christianity in Germany. After all, Germany had been Christian for over a thousand years. Hitler didn’t want to alienate the German people with a blanket opposition to it – at least not at first. Himmler was not so subtle a politician.’

  ‘Yet Himmler was a master of propaganda and organization,’ Besemer said.

  Schneider wished the fellow would just let him speak. ‘Yes, quite,’ he said gruffly, glancing at Gerhardt to see if he too was getting irritated. But the big man was looking out the window, obviously bored. ‘Let me keep going or I’ll lose my train of thought.’

  ‘Of course,’ Besemer said, with no diminution of eagerness.

  ‘Hitler sought to exploit the deep-seated religious traditions of the country, for sure, but he also wished to tap the glorious Aryan traditions of the Germanic peoples as a driving force of our cultural destiny. He found the perfect metaphor for both concepts embodied in a single artifact, the Holy Lance of Longinus.’

  The young man’s eyes lit up. ‘I …’

  He shut the young man down with a hard stare. ‘Please let me speak. Longinus, as you appear to know, was the Roman centurion who used his lance to pierce the side of Christ on the cross. His poor eyesight was cured by the splash of blood and water from the wound. Longinus, it is claimed, was an Aryan descended from Germanic tribes. The lance quickly became one of the holiest of all of the Christ relics.

  In the third century, it was recorded as being in the hands of another legionnaire, a chap named Mauritius. Later that century it surfaced again and began its long line of royal ownership by Emperor Herculius. His daughter Fausta married Emperor Constantine, the first Christian Roman Emperor. Constantine’s mother, the Empress Helena, was a very devout woman who promoted the symbolic value of the Christ relics, to support the power of her son and the power of the Church. Constantine publicly displayed the lance during the entire First Ecumenical Council in Nicaea, where disputes raged over which texts would be included in the Christian canon.

  In the sixth century, the barbarians sacked Rome and seized the relic for a time, before it was reacquired by Emperor Justinian. He used the lance as a symbol of his intent to restore the glory of the Holy Roman Empire. That symbol became somewhat tainted, when Justinian proceeded to murder tens of thousands of nonbelievers. Because of his reputation for savagery, Christians in the next century considered the lance to be an unfit symbol for Christianity and attention shifted to the Holy Grail, which became the iconic representation of the Medieval Church.

  Three centuries later, Charlemagne came to possess the lance and personally carried it in all his military campaigns. By the eleventh century the wooden shaft had disappeared. Emperor Henry IV tried to insert what he thought to be a Holy Nail, one of Christ’s crucifixion spikes, in the middle of the spearhead, but the job was botched and the lance split in two. It was especially a pity since the nail was clearly a fake, nothing like a first-century Roman spike. The lance was mended with a golden sleeve and silver wire and, to this day, it bears these patches along with that preposterous skinny nail in its center.

  Then, in the twelfth century, the lance was known to be carried into battle by Frederick I, best known as Barbarossa for his red beard. The lance slips from his hands at the moment of his death in 1190 and is lost for two hundred years. The story commences again in the fourteenth century, when Charles IV launches a quest for the lance and the Holy Grail, but finds only the lance. He displays it in Nürnberg and there it remains for five centuries.’

  Schneider paused to sip at his tea but it was cold.

  ‘Gerhardt, ask my girl to get me some fresh tea. Ready to hear more, Jürgen?’

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  ‘During these five hundred years a cult of sort developed: the cult of the Holy Lance. The artifact, it was said, possessed supernatural powers. It was revered by the people.’

  ‘Did it?’ Besemer asked.

  ‘Did it what?’

  ‘Have supernatural powers.’

  Schneider tapped a long finger against his cheek. ‘Well, I don’t know about that, but I do know it possessed immense cultural and symbolic power. These qualities can be a powerful tool to rally the people, when they must be rallied. When Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Nürnberg in the late eighteenth century, he was anxious to attain for himself the trappings of power, including the Holy Lance, to legitimize his desire to become a latter-day Holy Roman Emperor. Because of the importance of the lance to the German people, prior to Napoleon’s arrival, the city councilors sent the lance to Vienna for safekeeping. But later, when peace came, confusion over the ownership of the lance led the imperial Habsburgs to refuse to return it to the Nürnberg. Eventually, it wound up on public display, along with other treasures of the Holy Roman Empire, at Vienna’s Imperial Treasury.’

  When the serving girl returned with a hot pot of tea, the young man seized the opportunity to interrupt again.

  ‘That was where Adolf Hitler first laid eyes on it, when he was a young art student in Vienna.’

  ‘Yes, very good, Jürgen,’ Schneider said wearily. ‘That was in 1909. Hitler next saw the lance in March of 1938, at the peak of his power. The night of the Anschluss, as Panzer divisions crossed into Austria, one of Hitler’s handpicked men entered the museum and seized the lance and the other treasures. It was returned to Nürnberg, where it became a powerful beacon for the Reich, as a rallying cry for the Christians and for the historical imperial greatness of the nation. Well, we all know how that ended.

  After the war, the Americans came looking for the treasure. Their so-called Monuments Men, led by a Germany-born American, the art historian, Major Walter Horn, found the lance and the crown jewels of the Holy Roman Empire in the basement of a primary school in Nürnberg. Eisenhower had the treasures returned to the Imperial Treasury at the Hofburg Palace where any tourist in Vienna may view them behind bulletproof glass.’

  Besemer leaned forward and said in a conspiratorial tone, ‘But some say the lance and the other artifacts found by the Americans were fakes, that the Reich hid the real ones for a future generation of German patriots to find.’

  Schneider pressed his lips into a forced smile. ‘I have also heard these things. I don’t pay attention to internet gossip. I concern myself with making our nation great again. That is why you’re here. I am the leader of a group of aging patriots. By necessity, we are a secretive
bunch of old farts. The symbol of our fidelity is the Holy Lance. We call ourselves, rather pompously, the Knights of Longinus, because we follow in the deep footsteps of that great centurion’s Aryan and Christian roots. We need new blood, Jürgen. What do you think about that?’

  The young man’s spine stiffened ramrod straight. If he’d been standing, Schneider imagined he’d come close to clicking his heels. ‘I would be honored to join your ranks, Herr Schneider.’

  ‘Good, good. I will present your candidacy to the other knights. Now go about your business and you’ll hear from us again before too long.’

  When he was gone, Schneider asked Gerhardt what he thought of the fellow.

  ‘Seemed like a right jerk to me,’ the he said.

  ‘Too eager for your liking?’

  ‘Way too eager. And he doesn’t know when he’s supposed to shut his mouth.’

  ‘Not one of your problems, my laconic friend.’

  ‘Laconic?’

  ‘Never mind. I imagine that your father and myself appeared to be too eager when we were presented to the knights at Jürgen’s age. I have some reservations about the fellow myself, but overall I think he’ll do nicely. I plan to recommend him to the group.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell him the spear the Americans found was a fake?’

  ‘He’s not one of us yet. He doesn’t need to know about Antarctica and all the rest. Even when he’s a member, we’ll be cautious until he’s proven himself. We’ll monitor his contacts, his internet postings and if he’s the slightest bit indiscreet, we’ll terminate him.’

  ‘You mean I’ll terminate him.’

  Schneider settled in behind his desk and reached for an unmarked folder. ‘Off you go, Gerhardt. You’ve got work to do.’

  Reaching for his fountain pen, his hand brushed the keyboard of his laptop computer, waking it from sleep mode. The last page he’d been reading, before Jürgen Besemer had arrived, lit up the screen.

  It was from the website of the Harvard University Divinity School, more specifically, the faculty biography of one, Professor Calvin A. Donovan.