Lammas night Page 7

  "Well, he claimed to be able to predict the future—and apparently did rather well at it. He set his predictions in four-line stanzas called quatrains—all in sixteenth-century French, of course, and filled with double meanings and obscure references. The interesting bit is that many of them do seem to have come true over the years, even in this century. Several even predict the rise of Hitler, by name, and the general progress of the war so far. The Germans love that, of course."

  "He could really predict the future?" William asked, amazed.

  Graham shrugged noncommittally. "I couldn't say. A lot of people think he could, though. And we recently learned that some of Hitler's minions are working on reinterpretations of later quatrains to make it look like Germany will be the undisputed victor. They plan to print up leaflets and airdrop them over the occupied countries of Western Europe. You can imagine the effect that might have on France in particular, since Nostradamus was one of their own. Why continue to resist, if defeat is a foregone conclusion?"

  William nodded, intrigued despite his obvious skepticism about the very notion of predicting the future.

  "I see. Then you're trying to stop them from rewriting these predictions?"

  "Not at all. Even if we eliminated the man who's doing most of the work—a Swiss astrologer, name of Krafft—they'd just find someone else. At least we know Krafft's work. No, we're trying to find out what he's doing so that our Nostradamus expert can write counterinterpretations. Then we can drop leaflets of our own."

  "Wait just a moment. Our Nostradamus expert?"

  Graham shrugged apologetically. "Sorry to blast you out of the theoretical, but we have a chap in London working on the same thing as Krafft. He's doing a marvelous job. All a part of psychological warfare, my friend."

  "I—see."

  William was silent for several seconds, studying Graham through a veil of cigarette smoke. After a moment, his eyes narrowed, and he leaned forward, stabbing toward Graham with his cigarette in an old, familiar gesture.

  "You said that this Swiss who's working for the Germans is an astrologer. Do I infer correctly that our man is, too?"

  Graham cocked his head, wondering what William was getting at.

  "He is."

  "Then does astrology figure in all of this?"

  "Well, yes—"

  "Yes, but. Why do you always have to qualify your answers? Tell me this, then. Apart from the psychological-warfare aspect, how real a tool is astrology?"

  "Well, the Germans think—"

  "That isn't what I asked," William interjected. "I know what the Germans think—or at least what our chaps at Whitehall believe the Germans think. Everyone knows that Hitler is fascinated with the occult, that he's rumored to have a stable of pet astrologers—and obviously we have some, too, yourself among them. From this I can surmise that both sides are probably trying to figure out what the other side will do next by what the stars tell them—I know all that. I also know that you pass off your own knowledge of astrology and all the rest as part of parlor magic, in the same league as rabbits out of hats and such. The Germans don't, though. They take it very seriously. And somehow, especially after your little hypnosis demonstration, I suddenly have the feeling that you do, too. Am I right. Gray? Do you actually believe in that stuff?"

  Too well trained to show any outward sign of his uneasiness, Graham inwardly squirmed. He had been throwing William off this particular scent for years, but he had never known him to be so persistent. Where was the prince getting his questions today? It was about time for the cavalry to come to the rescue— though Graham would gladly settle for Wells or the doctor. At least astrology was one of the more innocuous of the occult sciences. Graham could be fairly direct about that.

  "I don't know that 'believe' is exactly the right term," he replied carefully. "Part of astrology is a science, with its own laws and procedures. Interpretation is the tricky bit. Some people do seem to have a knack for making meaningful connections."

  "Do you?"

  "Well, I don't know that I'm the best judge of that," he hedged. "I can cast a chart, but so can anyone who knows how to read an ephemeris and perform a few simple mathematical calculations. It's part of my job."

  "I know that. Have you ever cast my chart, though?" William persisted.

  "What makes you think I have?"

  He had tried to keep his tone neutral, but he knew William had seen right through that one. He could see speculation turning to certainty as William stubbed out his cigarette and sat forward eageriy.

  "You have, haven't you? And I'll bet you can do more than cast a chart, too! Come on. Gray, what did it say?"

  Graham had not seen the prince so enthusiastic about anything in so long that he was a little taken aback. He had never intended to broach this subject with William, but now that he was all but conmiitted, he found himself reacting with a strange mixture of caution and pleased anticipation—as if the thought of sharing at least a small part of his other work with William were suddenly not so alien,' after all.

  Perhaps it came of Graham's new responsibilities—having to take over for Selwyn—and the more intricate and chilling dimensions that had come with Michael's mention of Dieter and black magical connections in Germany. The unexpected glimpse of evil Graham had caught while searching for Michael still haunted him. He dared not tell William about that, but perhaps there were some things they could talk about. Like the prince, who was never addressed by first name outside the bosom of his family except by Graham, Graham had never been able to discuss any aspect of his other life with anyone outside the "family" of Oakwood. The idea of taking William inside that circle of confidence, even in a very small way, felt oddly right. He would have to give that further thought.

  "Very well, I can do more than cast a chart," he conceded, "and yes, I have cast yours."

  "I knew it!"

  "Unfortunately, I don't think this is either the time or the place to go into very much detail. Your Mr. Wells or the admirars good doctor will be arriving any minute."

  "Well, tell me in general, then," William begged. "This is fascinating. I'll bet none of my brothers ever had their horoscopes read."

  Smiling wanly, Graham sat back in his chair and rested his elbows on the arms, making a steeple of his fingers. If only William knew. The charts of all the Royal Family were nearly as well known to Graham as his own, and he was certain they were known to others as well, on both sides of the Channel.

  But no need to alarm the prince about that, since he only half believed in "this stuff," anyway. If William took it in his head to think beyond their immediate conversation and was meant to know, he would draw that conclusion on his own, soon enough.

  "Let's see," he said, trying to stall while he decided how much he wanted to tell the prince. "You and John were born on July 12, 1905, at around three in the morning, as I recall— Sandringham, wasn't it?"

  "You know it was." William paused a beat. "Did you do John's chart, too?"

  Graham nodded. "I remember being intrigued the first time I compared them. I'd never had a chance to look at twins' charts before. It's fascinating how less than an hour's difference in birth times can change the aspects even for twins. Granted, you and John were not identical, but—well, it was fascinating nonetheless."

  "That's amazing. When did you first look at them?"

  "When you were assigned to me," Graham replied with a smile. "I wanted to see what I was getting. Nor was I disappointed. Both your sun and your ascendant are in the same degree of Cancer, and your moon is in Scorpio. In fact, both our moons are in Scorpio—within eight degrees of one another. More unusual than that, our ascendants are less than a minute apart."

  "Is that good?"

  "I think so. Actually, I don't know that I'd go so far as to characterize it as good or bad, but it certainly tends to explain why we're alike in so many ways. A Scorpio moon is particularly appropriate to any kind of secret or undercover work— and you have your Mars in Scorpio as well. Such a placement
usually indicates a keen desire for knowledge, information, finding out what makes things tick, ferreting out secrets—that sort of thing. I think it certainly applies in your case, but you need to—"

  A knock at the door broke into his recitation, and he grinned wickedly and murmured, "Saved!" as William started. The prince scowled as he glanced at the door.

  "We'll continue this conversation at a later time," he said under his breath in a tone that left no doubt that they would do just that. "You don't get off that easily. Come in," he called.

  Graham rose as the door opened, shifting into the more formal demeanor that he and William had long ago agreed must be their public relationship—former military superior and prince. Wells, carrying a covered tray, ushered in an elderly navy surgeon wearing the triple cuff rings of a full commander.

  "Sir, this is Commander Reynolds," Wells said.

  The surgeon's orderlies waited downstairs with a gumey, and within a quarter hour, Reynolds had whisked Michael off to surgery for treatment, assuring both Graham and the prince that their patient would be back on limited duty within a week. With Michael safe, Graham and the prince began eating the soup and sandwiches Wells had brought back. All further thought of food vanished, however, when Denton entered with a bulging manila envelope under his arm.

  "Anything interesting, Denny?" Graham asked. Pulling out the first fat roll, he lifted a few frames to the light.

  "Very interesting, sir. You did know that the third roll had already been processed, didn't you?"

  Primed by Michael's warning about the Dieter film, Graham only nodded as he pulled a magnifying glass from his pocket and peered more closely at a few selected frames. Only the general forms of the astrological charts were visible to the naked eye, and a few larger words with the glass, but what he could read was sufficient to bring a smile to his lips.

  "Yes, Michael mentioned that," he said casually, putting the glass away. "These are excellent. Are the rest more or less like this?"

  "There's a bit of variety, sir. I think you'll want oversize prints of everything before we head back."

  "I think you're probably right." He let the film roll back on itself and tucked it into the envelope again as he glanced at William with a pleased expression. "He did a good job."

  "So I gathered," William said. "What happens now?"

  "Back to work, for me and Denny," Graham replied, returning the envelope to Denton. "Once we've run the prints, I can do a preliminary workup on the way back to London. Then it's probably an all-nighter."

  William smiled ruefully. "Would you believe me if I told you I even miss the all-nighters?" he said, extending his hand in reluctant farewell. "We do have some unfmished business the next time we see one another, however. I shan't keep you now, but once this immediate crisis is over, why don't you pop up to Windsor for a day or two, at least for an afternoon? We'll ride if it's fine."

  Bowing over their joined hands in a slightly more formal gesture, Graham allowed himself a final smile. He had no doubt that the invitation bordered on a royal command, but he was used to that after his years of friendship with the prince. He would have plenty of time to think about his earlier impulse to confide in William and to plan any necessary strategy.

  The prince was far from his thoughts half an hour later, however, as he and Denton pulled the first oversized prints out of their bath. The Dieter film was first. As Graham clipped the first print up to dry, eerie in the red light of the darkroom, he had an odd prickle of dejd vu.

  He hardly looked at the dark, banner-hung room in the background of the first photograph, though that was unsettling enough. Instead, he found himself bending apprehensively over the developing bath where the next print was beginning to appear—almost being drawn into the image as Denton swished the paper back and forth in the solution.

  He had seen the face before—on the Second Road. Its memory sent chills of dread along his spine, and the terror he had felt before returned in full force.

  Chapter 5

  THE SCAR, THE GLITTERING EYES—THE FACE GRAHAM had glimpsed on the Second Road. That alone was enough to convince him that these particular photographs should never fall under official scrutiny. He was also willing to bet it was the face of Michael's nightmare.

  Grimly, he inspected the remainder of the prints as they came out of the final bath, each one more horrifying than the last. The final shot on the roll was a single page of close-typed text with Dieter's code name at the bottom. As soon as it was dry enough to handle, he left Denton to finish printing and took all the Dieter material into an adjoining office. He leafed through the prints again, feeling a little sick to his stomach as he noticed additional details, then stuffed all but the final page into a manila envelope and sat back to read Dieter's report.

  Graham had never really cared for Dieter, though he had worked with the man from time to time because Selwyn asked him to. Dieter was a brilliant occult scholar and ceremonial magician—more than a match for either Selwyn or Graham— but he was also quite amoral. Despite the coolly dispassionate reassurances of the accompanying report, the content of the photographs left some doubt that Dieter's defection was wholly feigned. That he was German also made him suspect in Graham's eyes.

  Dieter's connection with the Jordan family had com-e through a brief marriage to one of Selwyn's older sisters, who had died tragically in the birth of a stillborn child. It was after her death, early in the twenties, that Dieter made his decision to infiltrate and sabotage high-level Nazi occult operations. In the decade that followed, he broke publicly and apparently bitterly with his dead wife's British relations in order to increase his credibility, adopting an increasingly fanatical pro-Nazi stance.

  More recently, Dieter had become an instructor at Vogelsang, one of the three great Ordensburgen, or castles, of the orders of Naziism, where SS officers and other future leaders of the Third Reich were indoctrinated into the mystical aspects of racist doctrine. The Oakwood group had had little inkling of his occuh progress up until now.

  But the photographs made it all too clear just how well Dieter's extracurricular affiliations had succeeded—though Graham would have preferred less disturbing confirmation. The banner-hung ritual chamber of Graham's vision existed exactly as he had seen it: a focus of dark, unspeakable power secreted in one of Vogelsang's subterranean vaults. More chilling was the face of the group's leader—always masked across the eyes, but quite definitely the presence Graham had sensed on the Second Road. Dieter identified the man only as Sturm.

  Even Dieter knew little about Sturm other than his name and his alignment. He came and went mysteriously, obviously holding a high rank in one or several black-magical traditions. He was not formally associated with Vogelsang, even though he had hand-picked the members of the lodge Dieter had penetrated from among its faculty and used its physical facilities. His patron was believed to be Himmler, the SS Reichsführer, bjit it was also whispered that Sturm was in the confidence of the Führer himself.

  The implications were staggering, but Graham realized that for the present they must take second place to more official concerns. Dieter's material would have to go to the Oakwood group; Michael's was fodder for MI.6. As Denton emerged from the darkroom with the rest of the finished prints, Graham tucked Dieter's report in with its photos and tried to put it out of his mind as well.

  Graham skimmed the rest of Michael's material on the way back to London, bouncing observations and speculations off Denton. By the time they reached the office, he had roughed out a preliminary evaluation that created several days' roundthe-clock activity on the part of his staff. They finished at about the same time that Dynamo was coming to a close. Some of the information had been available in skeletal form before, but much of it was new and startling. Even without the Dieter complication, a disturbing picture emerged.

  At least the Nostradamus material could be largely discounted so far as Graham was concerned. Ernst Krafft's attempt at reinterpretation was more laughable than alarming to anyone
who knew Nostradamus well at all, though it still must be refuted, since some people might otherwise believe it. Ash-croft, Graham's Nostradamus expert, agreed. Drafting a memo to that effect, Graham sent the entire Nostradamus package on to MI.6 liaison. Captain de Wohl, who was writing the British counterleaflet, should get a chuckle out of it when he integrated the new information into what he was doing.

  But the rest of Michael's material was no laughing matter. Several months before, the agent who gave Michael the second roll of film had penetrated Himmler's Section VII, which was a rough counterpart to Graham's. His first few reports had outlined the expected array of occult and psychic phenomena being investigated by the Third Reich for possible wartime application: the astrological warfare connected with the Nostradamus operation, mental telepathy to influence the enemy, pendulum dowsing over maps to locate enemy shipping. The new material treated even more serious matters.

  Himmler's agents had begun a crackdown on occult practitioners who did not put their talents at the disposal of the Third Reich. Any group with a potentially mystical or esoteric orientation was suspect. Former Freemasons, odd religious sects, astrologers not sanctioned by the Nazi party, occult lodges and study groups, gypsies—all fell under the scrutiny of Himmler's black brotherhood. Some of those who agreed to turn their talents to the support of the fatherland were courted and brought into the Nazi fold; but those who would not or who belonged to groups singled out for elimination were ruthlessly rounded up and never seen again. Graham recognized the names of several once-powerful occultists on the list of the missing that Michael's contact provided. It was grim confirmation that the Third Reich took the entire matter of the occult very seriously.

  Most dismrbing of all were the copies of astrological charts and interpretations that Michael himself had managed to secure.

  Many of the highest echelons of the Nazi high command were represented, including the Führer himself, and even a few Allied personalities such as Churchill and the King. These charts showed subtle differences from a similar set smuggled out six months before—an entirely new hand now involved in the interpretations, far more competent and frighteningly more subtle than previously. Two of Graham's analysts independently concurred: if Himmler or even one of the otfier lesser lights of the Nazi court had engaged an astrologer of this caliber to advise the Führer, it could make a great deal of difference. The man went by the professional name of der Rote Adler — the Red Eagle.