25th July
I knocked on the door of 25 Rue de Colbert.
Helen had paused, before climbing the three stone steps that led to that entrance, in order to take in the magnificent view across the Seine towards Notre Dame.
The door opened.
‘We’ve come to see Herr Rouse,’ I said to the old man who answered the door.
‘I’m Wolfgang Rouse,’ he said in a distinct German accent. ‘You must be Swan Morrison, and the lady must be Helen Hargreaves. Welcome.’
We followed Wolfgang into a narrow corridor and then into a large room.
The room contained several armchairs, a large table and a television. Its resemblance to a reception room ended with those items, however. The remainder of the contents gave the impression that we had just walked into an antique shop: there was hardly a space on any surface that did not contain some artefact, and hardly a space on any wall on which a drawing or painting was not hung.
‘You are a collector,’ Helen ventured, glancing around the room.
‘I have been interested in art since I was a boy,’ Wolfgang replied. ‘Can I offer you some refreshments?’
As we sat in the armchairs, drinking tea, Wolfgang volunteered further information about his passion for art: ‘My father was an art dealer in Munich before the Second World War,’ he explained. ‘He was an acknowledged art expert. He was recruited as an SS officer to arrange the cataloguing and relocation of art taken by the Germans from occupied Europe. He, my mother and I lived for much of the war at Neuschwanstein Castle, near Füssen in southwest Bavaria.’
‘A huge amount of art that had been stolen by the Nazis was taken there, wasn’t it?’ said Helen.
‘Yes,’ Wolfgang replied, ‘and photographs were sent to my father of nearly all the pieces that were stored elsewhere so he and his team could catalogue them. You have to understand,’ continued Wolfgang apologetically, ‘that I was a teenager at that time. I didn’t understand what was happening. I didn’t realise that it was wrong. I believed that the Führer had a right to it all and that I was just very fortunate in being able to see the greatest art of Europe – with my father describing it all to me.’
‘I gather you worked with the allies after the war as a translator while they were locating the stolen art and trying to return it.’
‘Yes,’ said Wolfgang. ‘When I understood what my father and the Nazis had done in the name of Germany, I wanted to try to repair at least some of the damage.’
‘Which led you to work for the British, with MI6,’ I noted.
‘That role has been as an advisor on art, when needed,’ Wolfgang replied, modestly raising his hand. ‘I have not been involved in very much of what you call “cloak and dagger” activities.’
‘That’s why they sent to you a photograph of the artifact that we’ve been calling “the Key”,’ said Helen.
‘That was very interesting,’ replied Wolfgang, ‘and it was very fortunate that it came to me.’
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Because that item is not recorded in any catalogue that I know of,’ answered Wolfgang. ‘I have, however, seen it before. I’m eighty-seven years old, so I may be the only one left alive who knows about it.’
‘When did you first see the Key?’ I asked.
‘The Germans did not just seek art and artifacts in Europe,’ Wolfgang explained. ‘Also, they did not solely obtain such items for cultural reasons. There was a significant interest in the occult, and all related matters, within the higher echelons of the Third Reich.
‘There were reports from Ethiopia that the legendary Ark of the Covenant had been found in the Chapel of the Tablet, adjacent to St. Mary of Zion Church in Aksum. Hitler sent a team to retrieve it for the Reich.’
‘Do you know what happened?’ asked Helen.
‘Only one of that team returned alive,’ replied Wolfgang. ‘I remember listening outside the door of my father’s office in Neuschwanstein Castle as that sole survivor told his story to my father.’
‘What did he say?’ I asked.
‘He said that the Germans had taken local Ethiopians as prisoners and had forced them to provide access to the Ark. The Ark had been opened, and inside it was just one artifact.’
‘The Key,’ Helen surmised.
‘The original Key,’ Wolfgang corrected. He picked up his mobile and retrieved the image of the Key that had recently been sent to him. ‘When they opened the Ark in Ethiopia, they took pictures. This upper stone element with the ahteen carving,’ he pointed to the lizard on the photograph, ‘looks very much like the top of the artifact photographed in Egypt in 1942.’ He retrieved a folder from the table beside him and withdrew a black and white photograph. He held the two images side by side so that Helen and I could compare them. ‘As far as I can judge,’ Wolfgang concluded, ‘they’re the same piece.’
‘What’s an ahteen?’ asked Helen.
‘Literally, it’s the Arabic for “dragon”,’ Wolfgang explained. ‘It was a popular motif in the Middle East until around the time of Christ. There were probably a lot of those little lizards scuttling about in the desert in those days, although they seem to be extinct now.’
‘That might explain the symbol for ARK,’ said Helen. She turned to Wolfgang to explain her words. ‘That’s the name of a secret Christian group that we’re working with. I guess any symbol that was popular in the Middle East could have got to England with the Romans.’
‘Or with later Christians,’ said Wolfgang. ‘We don’t know the provenance of the Ethiopian Ark, but it’s presumably a Christian artifact. The Christians created many secret sects due to persecution by one group or another. It’s easily possible that the symbol on the Key would have represented one of those groups. It could then have appeared in Britain and been adopted by a local sect. There are many examples of that.’
‘The last surviving member of the Nazi team managed to bring the photographs back then,’ I said to Wolfgang, looking again at the picture.
‘They probably saved his life,’ Wolfgang concluded. ‘He was the expedition photographer. He had left the cave to get more film – just before the Key was broken open.’
‘Broken open,’ I said. ‘The top section is made of stone and it has a tungsten alloy base.’
‘The base was made of wood in the artefact that was taken from the Ethiopian Ark,’ revealed Wolfgang. ‘They broke it open – probably with the butt of a rifle.’
‘What happened then?’ I asked.
‘When the photographer returned, everyone was dead. It appeared that the Nazi team had shot the locals and then shot themselves. The content of the artefact took control of their minds.
‘The stone carved part of the artefact, and what remained of the wooden base and contents, had been tossed towards the cave entrance. He took them without venturing further into the cave. Then he made his escape.’
‘He got away unaided from a hostile, foreign country, when several locals had been killed by his team,’ stated Helen in surprise.
‘I guess that he knew in advance where the danger would lie and avoided it,’ I said. ‘He probably knew how to find food and other supplies,’ I continued. ‘I imagine that he then made an escape that would appear to anyone like a one in a thousand chance.’
‘You obviously know about musstaqbal,’ Wolfgang assumed.
‘We’ve taken to calling it Magic Dust,’ I said. ‘What’s musstaqbal made of?’
‘It’s a mixture of Withania somnifera and Pausinystalia yohimba,’ Wolfgang replied. ‘Those are two plants that grew in ancient Egypt and had narcotic properties. When combined together, however, they have been reputed for millennia to open the mind to its latent abilities. He looked at me. ‘You must know something about it or you wouldn’t have guessed the prophetic abilities that got Colonel Kruger safely back from Aksum to Neuschwanstein Castle.’
‘I’ve had some personal experience of musstaqbal,’ I replied. ‘How did the repaired Key, containing twenty grams of musstaqbal, end up back inside the Ark – within the Chapel of the Tablet, in Ethiopia?’
‘Together with Hitler’s interest in the occult,’ Wolfgang replied, ‘came an associated, almost psychotic, superstition.
‘Colonel Kruger had not only dreamed his way back to Germany but had also dreamed of a curse. The curse was said to fall upon anyone who was responsible for removing the artifact from the Ark for other than its true purpose. Such people were prophesied to perish. Hitler heard of this on the same day that General Montgomery was victorious at El Alamein.’
‘What was the true purpose of the Key supposed to be?’ I asked.
‘That is not totally clear,’ Wolfgang replied. ‘There is a legend that it has a role to play in the salvation of mankind, but ancient texts are not specific on the subject of how.’
‘What did Hitler do with the Key? Helen asked.
The artifact was repaired with a tungsten alloy base that contained a hidden compartment,’ Wolfgang continued. ‘The German scientists had deduced by then that the few grains of powder that still clung to the artefact were causing the predictive abilities. They could not analyse what it was, however, so Kruger returned to Ethiopia to discover that fact – using the remaining grains of Musstaqbal to guide his way.
‘He took the artifact with him with orders from Hitler to replenish it with the drug and replace it in the Ark.
‘He was never seen again, although a letter arrived for my father, from Ethiopia, just after the war ended. My father had been killed by the advancing allied troops in 1945, so I opened the letter. It simply contained the words: Ahteen; Musstaqbal; Withania somnifera and Pausinystalia yohimba.’
‘Was that all?’ asked Helen.
‘There were a couple of grains of white powder taped to the bottom of the paper,’ said Wolfgang. ‘Seeds of those plants were also taped to the paper.’
Helen and I sat in silence for a moment, looking at Wolfgang and taking in the implication of what he had just said.
‘Predicting some aspects of the future has been helpful to me, but not as much as you might think,’ he replied, answering our thoughts. ‘A dose sometimes leads to a prophetic dream and sometimes it does not. The events predicted are always within a few days of the dream, but the predictions are not always accurate.’ He looked at me. ‘I never told anyone about it. I always knew that wider public knowledge of the effects of musstaqbal would have led to unpredictable consequences. After all, most people build their worldview on the idea that the future is yet to happen.’
‘So, you can’t see far enough ahead to predict an event in, say, September.’ said Helen, suddenly grasping the full implications of Wolfgang’s words.
‘That’s correct,’ Wolfgang replied. ‘The maximum period that I ever saw into the future was about a week. Strangely, I’ve dreamed of your visit several times in this past week. These have been unusual dreams, both in the sense that they repeat, but also in those dreams, everything goes black as the clocks strike two.’
He looked at a clock that now registered just a few seconds before two o’clock in the afternoon. ‘I can’t be one hundred percent sure why my future vision stopped at that point, but I think I can guess.’
As he spoke his final word, several clocks that were positioned around the room chimed the hour. I could hear the sound of Notre Dame across the Seine. The noise distracted both Helen and me from the conversation.
When I looked back towards Wolfgang, he was motionless in his chair.
His eyes were closed.
I reached over to check his pulse.
He was dead.