reason to agree.'
I shrugged. 'If you will, Prince Lobkowitz. But that history has little to do with our current problems. We must find the Grail and the Sword but need your suggestions as to how we might get them back.'
'Where else?' he said. 'I have told you. Where the Grail has been for so many centuries. At Bek. That is why the place is so heavily fortified and guarded, why Klosterheim keeps permanent guard over the Grail chamber, as he calls it. You know it as your old armory.'
That place had always possessed an atmosphere. I cursed myself. 'We saw Klosterheim go to Bek. Are we too late? Has he removed the Grail?'
'I doubt he would wish to do that. I have it on the best authority that Hitler himself, together with Hess, Goring, Goebbels, Himmler and company, are all making plans to meet at Bek. They can hardly believe their luck, I'd guess. But they wish to ensure it! France has fallen and only Britain, already half-defeated, stands in their way. German planes have attacked British shipping, lured fighters into combat and weakened an already weak RAF. Before they invade by sea and land, they intend to destroy all main cities, especially London. They are preparing a vast aerial armada at this very moment. For all I know it is on its way. There is very little time. This meeting at Bek involves some ritual they believe will strengthen their hand even more and ensure that their invasion of Britain is completely successful.'
I was disbelieving. 'They are insane.'
He nodded his head. 'Oh, indeed. And something within them must understand that. But they have had total success so far. Perhaps they believe these spells are the reason for it. Clearly whatever supernatural aid they have called upon is not disappointing them. Yet it is unstable magic-in unstable hands. And it could result in the death of everything. Like Gaynor and the rest of their kind, their ignorance and disdain for reality will eventually destroy them. They relish the notion of Gotterdammerung. These people seek oblivion by any means. They are the worst kind of self-deceiving cowards and everything they build is a ramshackle sham. They have the taste of the worst Hollywood producers and the egos of the worst Hollywood actors. We have come to an ironic moment in history, I think, when actors and entertainers determine the fate of the real world. You can see how quickly the gap between action and affect widens . . . Of course they are expert illusionists, like Mussolini for instance, but illusion is all they offer-that and a vast amount of unearned power. The power to fake reality, the power to deceive the world and destroy it under the weight of so much
falsification. The less the world responds to their lies and fancies, the more rigorously do they enforce them.'
I began to realize that Prince Lobkowitz, for all his practicality, was a discursive conversationalist. At length I interrupted him. 'What must I do when I have the Grail?'
'Very little,' he said. 'It is yours to defend, after all. And circumstances will change. Perhaps you'll take it back to its home in what the East Franconians called the Grail Fields. You know them . by their corrupted name of the Grey Fees. Oh, yes, we've heard of them in Germany! There's a reference to them in Wolfram von Eschenbach, who cites Kyot de Provenzal. But your chances of getting to those Graalfelden again are also very slim.'
I had the advantage, he said, of knowing Bek. The old armory,
where the Grail was held, where I had received my first lessons from von Asch.
'Guarded presumably by these SS men,' I said. 'So there isn't much chance of my strolling in calling 'I'm home,' saying I've just dropped in to pop up to the armory, then tuck the Holy Grail under my jacket and walk out whistling.'
I was surprised by my host's response.
'Well,' he said with evident embarrassment, 'I did have something like that in mind, yes.'
Chapter Twenty
Traditional Values
Which was how I came to be wearing the full uniform of a Standartenfuhrer, a colonel in the SS, including near-regulation smoked glasses, sitting in the back of an open Mercedes staff car driven by a chauffeuse in the natty uniform of the NSDAP Women's Auxiliary (First Class) who, with her bow and arrows in the trunk, took the car out of its hidden garage into the dawn streets of Hensau and into some of the loveliest scenery in the whole of Germany-rolling, wooded hills and distant mountains, the pale gold of the sky, the sun a flash of scarlet on the horizon. I was filled with longing for those lost times, the years of my childhood when I had ridden alone across such scenery. The love of my land ran deep in my blood.
Somehow we had gone from that pre-1914 idyll to the present horror in a few short bloody years. And now here I was riding in a car far too large for the winding roads and wearing the uniform which stood for everything I had learned to loathe. Ravenbrand was now carried in a modified guncase and lay at my feet on the car's floor. I could not help reflecting on this irony. I found myself in a future which few could have predicted in 1917. Now, in 1940, I remembered all the warnings that had been given since 1920.
Years of antiwar films, songs, novels and plays-years of analysis and oracular pronouncements. Too many, perhaps? Had the predictions actually created the situation they hoped most to avert?
Was anarchy so terrible, compared to the deadly discipline of fascism? As much democracy and social justice had emerged from chaos as from tyranny. Who had been able to predict the total madness that would come upon our world in the name of 'order'?
For a while we followed the main auto route to Hamburg. We saw how busy the roads, raillines and waterways had become. We traveled for a short while on an excellent new Autobahn with several lanes of traffic moving in both directions, but Oona soon found the back roads to Bek again. We were only fifty kilometers from my home when we turned a sharp bend in a wooded lane and Oona stamped quickly on the brake to stop us crashing into another car, quite as ostentatious as our own, swathed in Nazi flags and insignia. A thoroughly vulgar vehicle, I thought. I guessed it to belong to some swaggering local dignitary.
We began to move again but then a high-ranking officer in a brown SA uniform emerged from the other side of the car and flagged us down.
We had no option. We slowed to a stop this time. We exchanged the ritual salute, borrowed, I believe, from the film Quo Vadis?, supposedly how Romans greeted a friend. Once again, Hollywood had added a vulgar gloss to politics.
Noting my uniform and its rank, the SA man was subservient, apologetic. 'Forgive me, Hen Standartenfuhrer, this is, I regret, an emergency.'
From out of the closed car now emerged an awkward, rather gangling figure in a typical comic-opera Nazi uniform favored by the higher ranks. To his credit, he seemed uncomfortable in it, pushing unfamiliar frogging about as he walked over to us, offering a jerky salute, which we returned. He was genuinely grateful. 'Oh, God be thanked! You see, Captain Kirch! My instincts never let me down. You suggested no suitable car could come along this . road and get us to Bek on time-and voila! This angel suddenly materializes.' His eyebrows appeared to be alive. His eyes, too,
were very busy and he had an intense, crooked smile on his puffy, square face. If it had not been for his uniform, I might have taken him for a typical customer of the Bar Jenny in Berlin. He beamed at me. Raving mad but relatively benign.
'I am Deputy Fuhrer Hess,' he told me. 'You will be well-remembered for this, Colonel.'
I recalled that Rudolf Hess was one of Hitler's oldest henchmen. In accordance with the papers I carried, I let him know that I was Colonel Ulric von Minct and that I was at his service. It would be a privilege to offer him my car.
'An angel, an angel,' he repeated as he climbed into the car and sat beside me. 'It is the von Mincts, Colonel, who will save Germany.' He hardly noticed the case containing the sword. He was too concerned with shouting urgent orders to his driver. 'The flasks! The flasks! It would be a disaster if I did not have them!'
The SA man reached into the trunk of the car and carefully took out a large wicker basket which he transferred to our car. Hess was greatly relieved. 'I am a vegan,' he explained. 'I have to travel everywhere with
