The Werewolf of Wottenham Wood Page 8

  He demonstrated by rearranging his cutlery and crockery. His movements were methodical, smooth and utterly captivating, and I startled when our waiter reappeared and spoke at my shoulder.

  “Would you care for dessert, Sirs?”

  Urban-Smith and I took a minute to peruse the menus.

  “What is an apple rollover?” I asked the waiter.

  “It is very similar to an apple turnover, Sir, but deep fried in batter and served with a scoop of pizza-flavoured ice cream.”

  “And the scorched Alaska?”

  “Scorched Alaska is sponge cake and ice cream, coated in meringue. The chef rolls the Alaska in a sweet glazing and seals it by immersing it briefly in hot oil.”

  “I see. It’s a baked Alaska, deep fried in batter.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  Urban-Smith and I each selected the rollover, and then finished the meal with coffee in order to negate the effects of our wine. We tipped generously and staggered out into the braw, bricht moonlicht Cambridge nicht to hail a taxicab back to Ulysses’ cottage, arriving a little after nine.

  The cottage was in semi-darkness, and as Urban-Smith headed through to the front room to check his emails, I went upstairs to change my shirt, having managed to spill red wine upon a cuff. I changed into my nattiest polo shirt (it being a little too early for night attire) and descended to the kitchen to boil the kettle.

  “Care for a cuppa, Fairfax?” I shouted, but received no response.

  “Fairfax?” I shouted again, this time somewhat louder.

  “In here, Rupert.”

  I wandered from the kitchen into the living room, where Fairfax was sat upon the sofa, a neutral expression upon his face, and his hands folded across his lap.

  As I entered the room, I was aware of a presence behind me, but before I could muster a reaction, a spindly forearm was thrown about my neck, and there was a firm pressure in the small of my back.

  “Struggle not, s’il vous plaît, Docteur Harker,” murmured a soft voice. “I should be loath to see you a guest in your own mortuary.”

  “What the blazes..?” I stuttered.

  “Shhhh!” He tightened his forearm across my throat and I fell silent.

  “Riddle me this, Docteur. What is armed, has an enormous penis, and speaks French?”

  I shrugged, and he leant forward to whisper into my ear.

  “C’est moi!”

  The pressure in my back increased, and I was able to attest to at least two of his three assertions.

  He pushed me into the room, and I spun about to face my adversary. Although several inches taller than I, he was wafer thin but wiry, with a figure rather like that of a ballerina (albeit a ballerina with an allegedly enormous penis).

  “You have the advantage of me, Sir,” said I. “You know my name, but I know not yours.”

  He smiled nastily, displaying small, crooked but beautifully polished teeth. Beneath his thin nose rested a pencil moustache, and his narrow blue eyes darted to and fro as if he were watching a bluebottle at a window.

  He looked for all the world like a rat in a man’s clothes.

  “I am Monsieur Laratte,” he announced, waving his gun theatrically.

  “Are you here to kill us, Mr Laratte?”

  “Sadly not, Docteur. My employer is most eager to make your acquaintance, and I have strict instructions only to shoot you if you should become…..how do you say? Une douleur dans le cul? A pain in the derrière, n'est-ce pas?”

  “Very well, Mr Laratte. It appears that you leave us no choice. Shall we make haste?”

  The Frenchman sidled to the window and glanced outside.

  “Pah!” he tutted. “Late again, comme d’habitude.”

  “Where is Ulysses?” I asked Fairfax.

  “Gone to the theatre, I believe.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  “Ah, voilà. C’est pas trop tôt!” Mr Laratte motioned avec son fusil (with his gun). “Your carriage awaits, Monsieurs.”

  ◆◆◆

  9. Auschwitz and the Fourth Atman

  We filed out of the cottage and down the garden path to where Bricker, the butler, sat behind the wheel of a large black Bentley with its lights on and the motor idling. He wound down the window.

  “Sorry to have kept you waiting, Antoine. One had to send an urgent parcel to Atlantis.”

  Antoine Laratte waved his gun. “Allez!”

  Urban-Smith climbed into the passenger seat and I climbed into the back, the Frenchman sidling in beside me. Bricker gunned the engine and pulled the car out onto the roadway.

  “It seems odd,” Urban-Smith observed, “that Professor de Wolfmann should be desirous of our presence, having so recently expressed the contrary opinion.”

  “The professor is speaking at a conference in London, and shall not be returning until late,” said Bricker. “It is his father who has instructed us to collect you.”

  It was but a brief drive to the de Wolfmann mansion. We were hustled from the car at gunpoint, then marched into the mansion and through to the sitting room, where a restless and excitable Anders de Wolfmann sat in his wheelchair, his spindly fingers drumming upon the arms. He threw up his arms and flapped happily upon our entrance.

  “Ah, Herren. Willkommen.”

  “What is the meaning of this?” I demanded. “Ouch.” Mr Laratte had tapped me firmly on the shoulder with the butt of his gun.

  “Ferme ta bouche et assieds-toi,” he demanded.

  Urban-Smith and I seated ourselves upon one of the plush leather sofas, and our elderly host wheeled himself towards us with a grunt. Laratte offered the gun, but Mr de Wolfmann waved him away, and the Frenchman withdrew from the room, with Bricker, the butler, in tow.

  “I am sorry, Herr Doctor, but I had to speak to you. It is a matter of the greatest importance.”

  “We are all ears, Mr de Wolfmann,” said Urban-Smith.

  “You are looking for Herr Schwarzkröte?”

  “You know him?”

  “Knew him. Herr Schwarzkröte ist gestorben. Futsch.”

  “Dead?”

  “Ja.”

  Urban-Smith stared at him, puzzled. “Saxon Schwarzkröte is dead?”

  “Wie bitte? I know not of any Saxon?”

  Now all three of us looked puzzled.

  “Perhaps you are referring to a different Schwarzkröte?” I suggested.

  “Sebastian Schwarzkröte. Is that not who you seek?”

  “Yes, yes.” Urban-Smith leaned forward, his eyes wide. “Who was he?”

  The elderly German looked this way and that to ensure that Laratte and Bricker were not within earshot. “After the var,” said he, “many of us had to flee from the Allied invaders. One of us who fled to this country voz Sebastian Schwarzkröte.” He chuckled. “It is ironic that the safest place to hide from the Allies voz in their homeland. Whilst they searched high and low for us in the farms und in the villages, ve vere amongst them, biding our time, strengthening our positions, und vaiting for our time to come again.” He sighed forlornly. “But our time did not come, und one by one, ve grew old und faded away. Now there are but a handful of us, und the resurrection of the Fourth Reich is but ein old man’s folly.”

  “Are the Fourth Reich and the Fourth Atman one and the same?” I asked.

  “Nein, Herr Doctor. The Fourth Reich was but a fantasy, but the Fourth Atman…… once I held it in the palm of my hand und vept vith joy.” At the memory, the old man’s voice cracked and he was wracked with a terrible wheezing and groaning, the paroxysm seizing him until he was almost crimson in the face. I knelt at his side.

  “Brandy,” he muttered, pointing to a decanter on a nearby side table. “Brandy.”

  I poured and distributed three large brandies, and after a short while, Mr de Wolfmann’s breathing returned to normal and he regained his previous cadaverous complexion.

  “Are you recovered?” asked Urban-Smith. “Can you continue?”

  “Ja. I am ausgezeichnet, danke.”


  And so, Anders de Wolfmann began his tale which, for the sake of clarity, I have reproduced here without the embellishment of his comedy Germanic accent.

  “The first thing I must tell you,” said he, “is that my name is not de Wolfmann. When we fled from Poland at the end of the war, mein Bruder und I took our mother’s maiden name. Before this, my name was Anders von Grünefrosch.”

  *

  “In 1880, my grandfather, Bram de Wolfmann, opened his first steel factory in Luxembourg, taking full advantage of the recent mass expansion of the trans-European railway networks. His timing could not have been better, and within a few years, he became a rich man. Like so many other rich men, he married a beautiful woman, Arabella Vos, and in 1886, they had a son, Rutger. Rutger fell victim to the Asiatic flu epidemic of 1889, but, mercifully, the de Wolfmanns were blessed in 1890 by the birth of their daughter, Mina.

  “My grandfather was a clever man, and he could see how quickly the German steel industry was expanding, so in 1901, he moved his family to the Ruhr Valley to expand his empire.

  “In 1912, my mother, Mina, met a young gentleman, Heinz von Grünefrosch, the youngest son of a Baron, and they married the following year. When war broke out, my father used his connections and family’s wealth to gain passage to Bavaria and bribe his way out of national service. Although my mother was ashamed, she was a loyal woman and moved with him. In 1914, my eldest brother, Luca was born, but soon died from the measles. In 1916, my brother Franz was born, and I followed in 1918. After the war, my father was happy to remain in Bavaria, growing fat from his family’s fortune and my mother’s allowance.

  “Franz and I attended school and worked hard, becoming fluent in English and French, and learning about mathematics and engineering, preparing ourselves to follow in our grandfather’s footsteps. When my brother turned fifteen, he left Bavaria and moved to Ruhr to begin an apprenticeship in our family’s steelworks, and I followed the next year. Although the industry was in decline, my grandfather believed that it would soon rally, and sold his original factory in Luxembourg in order to see the business through until the market improved.

  “When the Nazis came to power, he was proved correct, but, tragically, he died soon afterwards, and his business passed to my mother. My pig of a father forced her to sell the factory, and he spent the rest of his life gambling, drinking and fornicating until, finally, his liver gave out and he died in the arms of a local whore.

  “Once the factory was sold, my brother and I had nothing. We were bitter, without hope, and angry at what had happened to our beloved Deutschland. Around this time, the Nazis were recruiting with ardour, so my brother and I presented ourselves to the Gau München-Oberbayern and begged to join. Franz had barely turned eighteen, and I sixteen, but our knowledge of engineering and fluency in both French and English would prove too useful to ignore. We were given administration roles within the Gau, and eventually put to work in Berlin’s libraries, rooting out unacceptable texts and ensuring the suitability of each library’s contents.

  “On the seventh of April, 1937, my brother and I were privileged to meet der Führer for the first time. The Führer had a keen interest in the occult, and he wanted to assemble a group of academics, translators and archivists to amass and collate a personal library for him. With the recommendation of our Gauleiter, Franz and I were recruited to this group. The Project was named, Der Apfel von Eden; the Apple of Eden.

  “We were allocated a squad of Ordnungspolizei [uniformed police], and they raided museums, antique shops, Jewish temples (before they were destroyed in Kristallnacht) and homes, searching for religious texts and artefacts. The entire basement of der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin [Berlin State Library] was set aside for us, and there we sat and read and archived and indexed. The Führer would visit every few weeks and ask for a summary, or direct us towards a new area of interest.

  “Towards the end of winter, we were instructed to collect information regarding the Aztec practice of human sacrifice. Germany had a trade agreement with Mexico, and we sent agents to Mexico City to scour the libraries and museums. They trawled each text and cross-referenced for several months, finally distilling the information down to a mere two hundred pages.”

  *

  “The Aztecs vere extremely prolific in the area of human sacrifice.”

  “So I understand,” I replied. “They would sacrifice thousands at a single ceremony, I believe.”

  Anders de Wolfmann wagged his spindly finger at me. “But, Herr Doctor, do you know why?”

  “To appease their Gods, surely.”

  “Ha,” he cried, clapping his hands, “that is vot everybody believed, right until that point, but it is not so. You vill be aware that the Aztecs vorshipped Tonatiuh, the Sun God, as the leader of Heaven.” He sniggered. “Ve called him der Himmelführer. Our little joke.

  “Sowieso, the Aztecs believed that the Sun was the soul of Tonatiuh, and that vithin each person, there voz a tiny piece of him, breathing life und varmth as the Sun breathes life und varmth upon the Earth. You understand?”

  We understood.

  “The purpose of the sacrifice voz to release und capture this tiny piece of Tonatiuh. They believed that if they could carry it vith them into the fields, the crops would be forever blessed, und they vould never go hungry.”

  “And you learned this from your reading?” clarified Urban-Smith.

  “Ja.”

  “I don’t understand. Why was Hitler so interested in the Aztec rituals if, prior to your research, nobody understood their true significance?”

  “Ah,” murmured de Wolfmann. “He knew. Der Führer already knew.”

  “How is that possible?” said Urban-Smith. “If it took your team months of intensive work to uncover the facts, how could he possibly know or even suspect?”

  “Herr Urban-Smith, you are of course familiar vith the Great Temple in Mexico City, ja? The temple voz built and rebuilt many times. At the consecration of the Temple’s sixth incarnation, Ahuizotl ordered ze sacrifice of thousands of prisoners.”

  “I have heard of it. According to witnesses, the blood ran like a river down the sides of the pyramid and onto the crowds below.”

  “Ja, ja!” De Wolfmann nodded vigorously. “But zat is not all. There vere many Aztec codices produced in the sixteenth century, after the Spanish invaded Mexico, and most of the original Aztec scripts were lost….but not all. The Aztecs vere meticulous in their recordings and there vere extensive records of the inauguration of each new temple. These records found their vay into the hands of the der Führer, und later, into der Apfel von Eden. They tell of ein flock of tiny Suns that appeared over the Temple at the height of the sacrifice und then disappeared into the sky. The Aztec priests attempted to charm them vith prayers und rituals, but they could not succeed, und these lights vere lost forever.”

  “Is this what Hitler coveted?” I asked. “Did Hitler want to capture a human soul?”

  “Ja.”

  “But why?”

  “He vanted to remove the souls of the unworthy and use them to revive the dead.”

  “By unworthy, I presume that you mean the Jews.”

  “Jews, Bolsheviks, Romani, sexual deviants, the coloured races, the impaired und the insane. All vere deemed unworthy. Der Führer felt that their spirits could be put to better use.”

  “Did you agree?”

  He shrugged noncommittally. “Ve had our orders.”

  The tale continued.

  *

  “During the next year, the archive expanded quickly, due in part to the burgeoning efforts of Unit 731. Until then, we had been strongly supporting the Chinese in their war against Japan, but by the end of 1937, the Führer had tired of the Chinese and their constant infighting, and switched our alliance to Japan.

  “Unit 731 was the Japanese Army’s centre of biological and chemical weaponry research and development. Throughout the war, they performed human experimentation and vivisection, using Chinese and Russian prisone
rs as subjects. The prisoners were infected with diseases and parasites, subjected to extremes of heat, cold and pressure, dissected and operated upon without anaesthetic, and exposed to a whole range of other abysmal consequences, all documented and recorded and shared with us.

  “The Führer was fascinated by Unit 731’s activities, inspecting the incoming footage on a regular basis, but felt that the Japanese lacked the scale of imagination necessary to have any real impact. For this reason, he ordered a massive expansion of the concentration camp network and tasked Himmler with selecting a suitable commandant for a new cluster of camps at Auschwitz. The new camps opened in 1940 under the command of Rudolf Höss, with a clear mandate to harvest the souls of the unworthy. Once the camps became operational, the camp doctors began their experiments in earnest, trying to find the most efficient method of soul extraction.

  “As the months went by, the archive swelled to fill almost the whole basement of the Staatsbibliothek until, in April 1941, the library was almost destroyed in an Allied bombing raid. The archive was divided and moved to a number of locations in the surrounding countryside, mostly monasteries and mines. Over the next few years, the collection fell prey to petty thieves, and it became necessary to move the most critical documents, movie reels and specimens to a more secure location.

  “In the winter of 1943, the core of der Apfel von Eden was moved to Auschwitz, and my brother and I along with it. At this time, responsibility for isolating the human soul had been delegated to Josef Mengele, who undertook the research with relish.”

  *

  “Was he successful?” I asked, although part of me did not wish for an answer; the whole idea was so utterly repellent.

  “Ja, Herr Doctor. Through his readings und experiments, Mengele voz able to determine that suffocation voz the optimal method for releasing the soul undamaged. Thousands vere sent to the gas chambers und their souls liberated from them, but these souls remained elusive und impossible to capture. Everything voz tried, from magnetism to extracting the air through vater or alcohol, even via incantations und rituals, until finally, through sheer luck, in the autumn of 1944, the first human soul was isolated.”