That was when I saw the Pendulum

“It’s the simplest possible system. Consider only the outer circle. To code something, you replace each letter of your original message with the letter that precedes it for A you write Z, for B you write A, and so on. Child’s play for a secret agent nowadays, but back then it was considered witchcraft. To decode, of course, you go in the opposite direction, replacing each letter of the coded message with the letter that follows it. I tried it, and I was lucky again; it worked the very first time. Here’s what it says.” He recited: “ ‘Les 36 inuisibles separez en six bandes.’ That is: the thirty-six invisibles divided into six groups.”

“Which means what?”

“Apparently nothing, at first glance. It’s a kind of headline announcing the establishment of a group. It was written in secret language for ritualistic reasons. Our Templars, satisfied that they were putting their message in an inviolable inner sanctum, were content to use their fourteenth-century French. But let’s look at the second text.”

a la...Saint Jean

36 p charrete de fein

6...entiers avec saiel

p...les blancs mantiax

r...s...chevaliers de Pruins pour /a...j.nc.

6 foil 6 en 6 places

chascune foil 20 a...720 a...

iceste est I’ordonation

al donjon It premiers

it li secunz joste iceus qui...pans

it al refuge

it a Nostre Dame de I ‘altre pan de I ‘iau

it a I ‘ostel des popelicans

it a la pierre

3 foiz 6 avant la feste...to Grant Pute.

“This is the decoded message?” Belbo asked, disappointed and amused.

“Obviously the dots in Ingolf’s transcription stand for words that were illegible. Perhaps the parchment was damaged in places. But I’ve made a final transcription and translation, based on surmises that are, if I do say so myself, unassailable. I’ve restored the text to its ancient splendor—as the saying goes.”

With a magician’s gesture, he flipped over the photocopy and showed us his notes, printed in capitals.

THE (NIGHT OF) SAINT JOHN

36 (YEARS) P(OST) HAY WAIN

6 (MESSAGES) INTACT WITH SEAL

F(OR THE KNIGHTS WITH) THE WHITE CLOAKS [TEMPLARS]

R(ELAP)S(I) OF PROVINS FOR (VAIN)JANCE [REVENGE]

6 TIMES 6 IN SIX PLACES

EACH TIME 20 Y(EARS MAKES) 120 Y(EARS)

THIS IS THE PLAN

THE FIRST GO TO THE CASTLE

IT(ERUM) [AGAIN AFTER 120 YEARS] THE SECOND JOIN THOSE

(OF THE) BREAD AGAIN TO THE REFUGE AGAIN TO OUR LADY BEYOND THE RIVER

AGAIN TO THE HOSTEL OF THE POPELICANS

AGAIN TO THE STONE

3 TIMES 6 [666] BEFORE THE FEAST (OF THE) GREAT WHORE.

“Clear as mud,” Belbo said.

“Of course, it still needs interpretation. But Ingolf surely must have done that, as I have. If you know the history of the order, it’s less obscure than it seems.”

A pause. He asked for a glass of water and went over the text with us again, word by word.

“Now then. The night of Saint John’s Eve, thirty-six years after the hay wain. The Templars charged with keeping the order alive escaped capture in September 1307 in a hay wain. At that time the year was calculated from Easter to Easter. So 1307 would end at what we would consider Easter of 1308. Count thirty-six years after Easter 1308 and you arrive at Easter 1344. The message was placed in the crypt inside a precious case, as a seal, a kind of deed attesting to some event that took place there on Saint John’s Eve after the establishment of the secret order. In other words, on June 23, 1344.”

“Why 1344?”

“I believe that between 1307 and 1344 the secret order was reorganized in preparation for the project proclaimed in the parchment. They had to wait till the dust had settled, till links could be forged again among Templars in five or six countries. Now if the Templars waited thirty-six years—not thirty-five or thirty-seven—clearly it was because the number 36 had mystical properties for them, as the coded message confirms. The sum of the digits of thirty-six is nine, and I don’t have to remind you of the profound significance of this number.”

“Am I disturbing you?” It was Diotallevi, who had slipped in behind us, on padded feet like a Templar of Provins.

“Right up your alley,” Belbo said. He introduced him to the colonel, who didn’t seem particularly disturbed. On the contrary, he was happy to have a larger, and keen, audience. He continued his exegesis, Diotallevi salivating at those numerolog-ical delicacies. Pure gematria.

“We come now to the seals: six things intact with seals. Ingolf had found a case closed with a seal. For whom was this case sealed? For the White Cloaks, for the Templars. Next comes an r, several missing letters, and an s. I read it as ‘relapsi.’ Why? Because, as we all know, relapsi were confessed defendants who later retracted, and relapsi played a crucial role in the trial of the Templars. The Templars of Provins bore their identity as relapsi proudly. They were the ones who disassociated themselves from that wicked farce of a trial. So the message refers to the knights of Provins, relapsi, who are preparing—what? The few letters we have suggest ‘vainjance,’ revenge.”

“Revenge for what?”

“Gentlemen! The whole Templar mystique, from the trial on, was focused on the plan to avenge Jacques de Molay. I don’t think much of the Masonic rite—a mere bourgeois caricature of Templar knighthood—but nevertheless it’s a reflection, however pale, of Templar practices. And one of the degrees of Scottish Masonry was kadosch knight, the knight of revenge.”

“All right, the Templars were preparing for revenge. What next?”

“How much time would it take to carry out the plan of revenge? In the coded message there is mention of six knights appearing six times in six places; thirty-six divided into six groups. Then it says ‘Each time twenty.’ What follows is unclear, but in Ingolf’s transcription it looks like an a, for ‘ans,’ or years. Every twenty years, I conclude; six times or one hundred and twenty years in all. Later on in the message we find a list of six places, or six tasks to be performed. There is mention of an ‘ordonation,’ a plan, project, or procedure to be followed. And it says the first group must go to a donjon or castle while the second goes somewhere else, and so on down to the sixth. Then the document tells us there should be another six documents, still sealed, scattered in different places. It is obvious to me that the seals are supposed to be opened in sequence, at intervals of a hundred and twenty years.”

“But what does twenty years each time mean?” Diotallevi asked.

“These knights of revenge are to carry out missions in particular places every hundred and twenty years. It’s a kind of relay race. Clearly, six Templars set out on that night in 1344, each one going to one of the six places included in the plan. But the keeper of the first seal surely can’t remain alive for a hundred and twenty years. Instead, each keeper of each seal is to hold his post for twenty years and then pass the command on to a successor. Twenty years seems a reasonable term. There would be six keepers per seal, each one serving twenty years. When the hundred and twenty years had gone by, the last keeper of the seal could read an instruction, for example, and then pass it on to the chief keeper of the second seal. That’s why the verbs in the message are in the plural: the first are to go here, the second there. Each location is, so to speak, under surveillance for a hundred and twenty years by six knights who serve terms of twenty years each. If you add it up, you’ll see that there are five spaces of one hundred and twenty years between the first location and the sixth. Five times one hundred and twenty is six hundred. Add six hundred to 1344 and you get 1944. Which, by the way, is confirmed in the last line. Perfectly clear.”

“Clear how?”

“The last line says, ‘Three times six before the feast (of the) Great Whore.’ This is another numerological game, because the digits of 1944 add up to eighteen. Eighteen is three times six. This further miraculous numerical coincidence suggested another, very subtle, enigma to the Templars. The year 1944 is the terminal date of the plan. But with a view to another target: the year 2000! The Templars believed that the second millennium would see the advent of their Jerusalem, an earthly Jerusalem, the Anti-Jerusalem. They were persecuted as heretics, and in their hatred of the Church they came to identify with the Antichrist. They knew that throughout the occult tradition 666 was the number of the Beast, and the six hundred and sixty-sixth year was the year of the Beast. Well, 666, the Year of the Beast, is the year 2000, when the Templars’ revenge will triumph. The Anti-Jerusalem is the New Babylon, and this is why 1944 is the year of the triumph of La Grande Pute, the great whore of Babylon mentioned in the Apocalypse. The reference to 666 was a provocation, a bit of bravado from those fighting men. A gesture of defiance from outsiders, as they would be called today. Great story, don’t you think?”

His eyes were moist as he looked at us, and so were his lips and mustache. He stroked his briefcase.

“All right,” Belbo said. “Let’s assume that the message outlines the timing of a plan. But what plan?”

“Now you’re asking too much. If I knew that, I wouldn’t need to cast this bait. But one thing I do know. Somewhere along the line something went wrong, and the plan was not carried out. Otherwise, if I may say so, we’d know it. And I can understand the reason: 1944 wasn’t an easy year. Back in 1344, the Templars had no way of predicting a disruptive world war.’’

“Excuse me for butting in,” Diotallevi said, “but if I understood correctly, when the first seal is opened, the succession of keepers of that seal doesn’t end; it lives on until the breaking of the last seal, when all the representatives of the order are to be present. In every century, then—or, strictly speaking, every hundred and twenty years—there would always be six keepers for each place, or thirty-six in all.”

“Right,” Ardenti said.

“Thirty-six knights for each of the six places makes two hundred and sixteen, the digits of which add up to nine. And since there are six centuries, we can multiply two hundred and sixteen by six, which gives us one thousand two hundred and ninety-six, whose digits add up to eighteen, or three times six, or 666.”

Diotallevi would perhaps have gone on to a numerological reconstruction of the history of the world if Belbo hadn’t stopped him with one of those looks mothers give children when they are acting up. But the colonel immediately recognized Diotallevi as an enlightened mind.

“Splendid, Professor. It’s a revelation! By the way, did you know that nine was the number of the knights who founded the Temple in Jerusalem?”

“And the Great Name of God, as expressed in the Tetragram-maton,” Diotallevi said, “has seventy-two letters—and seven plus two makes nine. But that’s not all, if you’ll allow me. The Pythagorean tradition, which cabala preserves—or perhaps inspired—notes that the sum of the odd numbers from one to seven is sixteen, and the sum of the even numbers from two to eight is twenty, and twenty plus sixteen makes thirty-six.”

“My God, Professor!” The colonel was beside himself. “I knew it, I knew it! You’ve given me the courage to go on. Now I know that I’m close to the truth.”

Had Diotallevi turned arithmetic into a religion, or religion into arithmetic? Perhaps both. Or maybe he was just an atheist flirting with the rapture of some superior heaven. He could have become a fanatic of roulette (and that would have been better); instead, he thought of himself as an unbelieving rabbi.

I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but Belbo intervened and broke the spell with his Piedmont-style good sense. More lines of the message remained for the colonel to interpret, and we were all eager to hear. It was now six o’clock. Six P.M., I thought: eighteen hours.

“All right,” Belbo said. “Thirty-six per century; step by step the knights prepare to converge on the Stone. But what is this Stone?”

“Really, gentlemen! The Stone is, of course, the Grail.”

The Middle Ages awaited the hero of the Graal and expected that the head of the Holy Roman Empire would become an image and a manifestation of that “King of the World.”...The invisible Emperor was to become also the visible one, and the Middle Ages would be “middle” in the sense of “central”...the invisible, inviolable center, the sovereign who must reawaken, the same hero, avenging and restoring. These are not fantasies of a dead, romantic past, but, rather, the simple truth for those who, today, alone can legitimately call themselves alive.

—Julius Evola, Il mistero del Graal, Rome, Edizioni Mediterranee, 1983, Chapter 23 and epilogue

“You mean the Grail also comes into this?” Belbo asked.

“Naturally. And I’m not the only one who says so. You are educated men; there is no need for me to go into the legend of the Grail. The Knights of the Round Table, the mystical quest for this miraculous object, which some believe was the chalice in which the blood of Jesus was collected. The Grail taken to France by Joseph of Arimathea. Others say it is a stone that possesses mysterious powers. The Grail is often depicted as a dazzling light. It’s a symbol representing power, a source of immense energy. It nourishes, heals wounds, blinds, strikes down...Some have thought of it as the philosopher’s stone of the alchemists, but even if that’s so, what was the philosopher’s stone if not a symbol of some cosmic energy? The literature on the subject is endless, but you can easily distinguish signs that are irrefutable. In Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival the Grail is said to be kept in a Templar castle! Was Eschenbach an initiate? A foolhardy writer who revealed too much? But there is more. This Grail kept by the Templars is described as a stone fallen from the heavens: lapis exillis. It’s not clear whether the expression means ‘stone from heaven’ (ex coelis) or ‘stone from exile.’ But in either case, it is something that comes from far away, and some suggest that it could have been a meteorite. As far as we’re concerned, however, it is definitely a stone. Whatever the Grail may have been, for the Templars it was the symbol of the objective, or end of the plan.”

“Excuse me,” I said, “but the document indicates that the knights’ sixth meeting would be held near or above a stone. It doesn’t tell them to find the stone.”

“Another subtle ambiguity, another luminous mystical analogy! Yes, indeed: the sixth meeting is to be held near a stone, and we shall soon see where; but at that stone, where the transmission of the plan is fulfilled and the six seals opened, the knights will learn where to find the Stone! It’s like the pun in the New Testament: Thou art Peter and upon this rock...On the stone you shall find the Stone.”

“It’s all quite obvious,” Belbo said. “Please go on. Casau-bon, stop interrupting. We’re all eager to hear the rest.”

“Well then,” the colonel said, “the reference to the Grail made me think for a long time that the treasure was a huge deposit of radioactive material, perhaps of extraterrestrial origin. Consider, for example, the mysterious wound in the legend of King Amfortas. The account makes him sound like a radiologist who has been dangerously exposed. He is not to be touched. Why not? Imagine how excited the Templars must have been when they reached the shores of the Dead Sea, whose waters, as you gentlemen surely know, are so dense that on them you float like a cork. It is a sea with curative powers. They could have discovered a deposit of radium or uranium in Palestine, a deposit they weren’t in a position to exploit then and there.

“The relationship between the Grail, the Templars, and the Cathars was investigated scientifically by a valiant German officer. I’m referring to Otto Rahn, an SS Obersturmbannruhrer who devoted his life to rigorous, scholarly study of the European and Aryan nature of the Grail. I won’t go into why and how he lost his life in 1939, but some insist that...Well, how can I forget what happened to Ingolf ? In any case, Rahn demonstrated a link between the Golden Fleece of the Argonauts and the Grail. It’s obvious that there’s a connection between the Grail, the philosopher’s stone, and the enormous power source that Hitler’s followers were seeking on the eve of the war and pursued to their last breath. In one version of the Argonauts’ story, remember, they see a cup—a cup, mind you—floating over the Mountain of the World with the Tree of Light. When the Argonauts find the Golden Fleece, their ship is magically borne into the Milky Way, in the austral sky, where the luminous nature of God eternal is made manifest by the Southern Cross, the Triangle, and the Altar. The triangle symbolizes the Holy Trinity, the cross the divine Sacrifice of love, and the altar is the Table of the Supper, on which stood the Cup of the Resurrection. The Celtic and Aryan origin of all these symbols is obvious.”

The colonel seemed caught in the same heroic ecstasy that had impelled his Obersturmunddrang, or whatever the hell that German was, to the supreme sacrifice. Someone had to bring him down to earth.

“Where is all this leading?” I asked.

“Signer Casaubon, can’t you see it for yourself? The Grail has been called the Luciferian Stone, which points to the figure of Baphomet. The Grail is a power source, the Templars were the guardians of an energy secret, and they drew up their plan accordingly. Where would the unknown commanderies be established? Where, gentleman?” And the colonel looked at us with a conspiratorial air, as if we were all in the plot together. “I had a trail to follow, erroneous but useful. In 1797, Charles Louis Cadet de Gassicourt, an author who must have overheard some secrets, wrote a book entitled Le tombeau de Jacques Malay ou le secret des conspirateurs a ceux qui veulent tout savoir. By an interesting coincidence, his work turned up in Ingolf’s little library. He claims that Molay, before his death, set up four secret lodges: in Paris, Scotland, Stockholm, and Naples. These four lodges were to exterminate all monarchs and destroy the power of die pope. Gassicourt was an eccentric, of course, but I used his idea as a starting point from which to determine where the Templars might have located their secret centers. I wouldn’t have been able to understand the enigmas of the message if I hadn’t had some guiding idea. But I did have such an idea. It was my conviction, based oh abundant evidence, that the Templar spirit was of Celtic, druidic origin; it was the spirit of Nordic Arian-ism, traditionally associated with the island of Avalon, seat of the legendary civilization of the far north. As you surely know, various authors have identified Avalon as the Garden of the Hes-perides or as Ultima Thule, or as the Colchis of the Golden Fleece. It’s hardly an accident that history’s greatest chivalric order was la Toison d’Or, the Order of the Golden Fleece. Which makes it clear what the word ‘castle’ in the message really means: it refers to the hyperboreal, the northernmost castle, where the Templars kept the Grail, probably the mythical Monsalvat.”

He paused, wanting us to hang on his every word. We hung.

“Now let’s go back to the second command in the message: The guardians of the seal are to go to a place associated with bread. This instruction is completely clear: the Grail is the chalice that contained Christ’s blood, the bread is Christ’s body, the place where the bread was eaten is the place of the Last Supper, Jerusalem. It seems impossible that the Templars wouldn’t have maintained a secret base there, even after the Saracen recon-quest. I must admit that at first I was troubled by this Jewish element in a plan so deeply imbued widi Aryan mythology. But then I realized: we are the ones who continue to regard Jesus as deriving from the Judaic religion, because that’s what the Church of Rome has always taught us. But the Templars knew that Jesus was actually a Celtic myth. The whole gospel story is a hermetic allegory: resurrection after dissolution in the bowels of the earth, and all that. Christ is simply the elixir of the alchemists. For that matter, everyone knows that the Trinity is an Aryan concept anyway, and that’s why the whole rule of the Templars, drawn up by the Druid Saint Bernard, is riddled with the numbers.”

The colonel took another sip of water. He was hoarse. “And now we come to the third stage: the refuge. It’s Tibet.”

“Why Tiber?”

“Because, in the first place, Eschenbach tells us the Templars left Europe and took the Grail to India. Cradle of the Aryan race. The refuge is Agarttha. You gentlemen must have heard talk of Agarttha, seat of the King of the World, the underground city from which the Masters of the World control and direct the developments of human history. The Templars established one of their secret centers there, at the very source of their spirituality. You must be aware of the connection between the realm of Agarttha and the Synarchy...”

“Frankly, no.”

“All the better. There are secrets that kill. But let’s not digress. In any case, you know that Agarttha was founded six thousand years ago, at the beginning of the Kali Yuga era, in which we are still living. The task of the knightly orders has always been to maintain contact with Agarttha, the active link between the wisdom of the East and the wisdom of the West. And now it’s clear where the fourth meeting is to take place, in another druidic sanctuary, in a city of the Virgin: the cathedral of Chartres. From Provins, Chartres lies across the chief river of the Ile-de-France, the Seine.”

We were completely lost. “Wait a minute,” I said. “What does Chartres have to do with your Celts and Druids?”

“Where do you think the idea of the Virgin came from? The first virgins mentioned in Europe were the black virgins of the Celts. Once, as a young man, Saint Bernard was in the church of Saint Voirles, kneeling before the black virgin there, and she squeezed from her breast three drops of milk, which fell on the lips of the future founder of the Templars. That was why the romances of the Grail arose: to create a cover for the Crusades, which were meant to find the Grail. The Benedictines are the heirs of the Druids. Everybody knows that.”

“And where are these black virgins now?”

“They were destroyed by forces who wanted to corrupt the Nordic and Celtic traditions and transform them into a Mediterranean religion by inventing the myth of Mary of Nazareth. Or else those virgins were disguised, distorted, like so many other black madonnas still displayed to the fanaticism of the masses.

But if you examine the images in the cathedrals as carefully as the great Fulcanelli did, you will find that this story is told quite clearly, and the ties between the Celtic virgins and the alchemist tradition, Templar in origin, are equally clear. The black virgin symbolizes the prime matter that seekers employ in their quest for the philosopher’s stone, which, as we have seen, is simply the Grail. Where do you mink Mahomet, another great Druid initiate, got the inspiration for the Black Stone of Mecca? Someone walled up the crypt in Chartres that leads to the underground site where the original pagan statue still stands, but if you look carefully, you can still make out a black virgin, Notre-Dame-du-Pilier, carved by an Odinian canon. In her right hand she holds the magic cylinder of the high priestesses of Odin, in her left the magic calendar that once depicted—I say, ‘once,’ because these sculptures unfortunately were vandalized by orthodox canons—the sacred animals of Odinism: the dog, the eagle, the lion, the white bear, and the werewolf. At the same time, none of the scholars of Gothic esoterica has overlooked in Chartres a statue of a woman holding the chalice, the Grail. Ah, gentlemen, if only it were possible not just to read Chartres cathedral according to the tourist guides—Roman, Catholic, and Apostolic—but to see it, really see it, with the eyes of Tradition! Then the true story told by that rock of Erik at Avalon would be known.”

“Which brings us to the Popelicans. Who were they?”

“The Cathars. ‘Popelican’—or ‘Popelicant’—was one of the names given to heretics. The Cathars of Provence had been destroyed, and I am not so naive as to imagine a meeting in the ruins of Montsegur, but the sect itself didn’t die. There’s a whole geography of hidden Catharism, which produced Dante as well as the dolce stil nuovo poets and the Fedeli d’Amore sect. The fifth meeting place is therefore somewhere in northern Italy or southern France.”

“And the last?”

“Ah, what is the most ancient, the most sacred, the most enduring of Celtic stones, the sanctuary of the sun-god, most favored observation point from which finally the reunited descendants of the Templars of Provins, having reached the end of their plan, can look upon the secrets hidden till then by the seven seals and at last discover how to exploit the immense power granted by their possession of the Holy Grail? Why, it’s in England! The magic circle of Stonehenge! Where else?”

“O basta la,” Belbo said. Only another child of Piedmont could have understood the spirit in which this expression of polite amazement was uttered. No equivalent in any other language or dialect (dis done, are you kidding?) can convey the apathy, the fatalism with which it expresses the firm conviction that the person to whom it is addressed is, irreparably, the product of a bumbling creator.

But the colonel wasn’t from Piedmont, and he seemed flattered by Belbo’s reaction.

“Yes indeed. Such is the plan, the ordonation, in its marvel-ous simplicity and coherence. And there’s something else. If you take a map of Europe and Asia and trace the development of the plan beginning with the castle in the north and moving from there to Jerusalem, from Jerusalem to Agarttha, from Agarttha to Chartres, from Chartres to the shores of the Mediterranean, and from there to Stonehenge, you will find that you have drawn a rune that looks more or less like this.”

“And?” Belbo asked.

“And the same rune, ideally, would connect the main centers of Templar esotericism: Amiens, Troyes—Saint Bernard’s domain at the edge of the Foret d’Orient—Reims, Chartres, Rennes-le-Chateau, and Mont-Saint-Michel, a place of ancient druidic worship. The rune also recalls the constellation of the Virgin.”

“I dabble in astronomy,” Diotallevi said shyly. “The Virgin has a different shape, and I believe it contains eleven stars...”

The colonel smiled indulgently. “Gentlemen, gentlemen, you know as well as I do that everything depends on how you draw the lines. You can make a wain or a bear, whatever you like, and it’s hard to decide whether a given star is part of a given constellation or not. Take another look at the Virgin, make Spica the lowermost point corresponding to the Provengal coast, use only five stars, and you’ll see a striking resemblance between the two outlines.”

“You just have to decide which stars to omit,” Belbo said.

“Precisely,” the colonel agreed.

“Listen,” Belbo said, “how can you rule out the possibility that the meetings did take place as scheduled and that the knights are now hard at work?”

“Because I perceive no symptoms, and allow me to add, ‘unfortunately.’ No, the plan was definitely interrupted. And perhaps those who were to carry it to its conclusion no longer exist.

The groups of the thirty-six may have been broken up by some worldwide catastrophe. But some other group of men with spirit, men with the right information, could perhaps pick up the thread of the plot. Whatever it is, that something is still there. I’m looking for the right men. That’s why I want to publish the book: to encourage reactions. And at the same time, I’m trying to make contact with people who can help me look for the answer in the labyrinth of traditional learning. Just today I managed to meet the greatest expert on the subject. But he, alas, luminary that he is, couldn’t tell me anything, though he expressed great interest in my story and promised to write a preface...”

“Excuse me,” Belbo asked, “but wasn’t it unwise to confide your secret to this gentleman? You told us yourself about Ingolf’s misstep...”

“Please,” the colonel replied. “Ingolf was a bungler. The person I’m in contact with is a scholar above suspicion, a man who doesn’t venture hasty conclusions. Today, for instance, he asked me to wait a little longer before showing my work to a publisher, until I had resolved all the controversial points. I didn’t want to antagonize him, so I didn’t tell him I was coming here. But I’m sure you can understand how impatient I am, having come this far in my task. The gentleman...oh, to hell with discretion! I don’t want you to think I’m bragging idly. He is Rakosky.”

He paused for our reaction.

Belbo disappointed him. “Who?”

“Rakosky. The Rakosky! The authority on traditional studies, the former editor of Les Cahiers du Mysterel”

“Oh, that Rakosky,” Belbo said. “Yes, yes, of course...”

“Before writing the final version of my book, I’ll wait to hear this gentleman’s advice. But I wanted to move as quickly as possible, and if I could come to an agreement with your firm in the meantime...As I said, I am eager to stir up reactions, to collect new information...There are people who surely know but won’t speak...Around 1944, gentlemen, though he knew the war was lost, Hitler began talking about a secret weapon that would allow him to turn the situation around. He was crazy, people said. But what if he wasn’t crazy? You follow me?” His forehead was bathed in sweat, and his moustache bristled like a feline’s whiskers. “In any event,” he said, “I’m casting the bait. We’ll see if anyone bites.”

From what I knew and thought of Belbo then, I expected him to show the colonel out with some polite words. But he didn’t. “Listen, Colonel,” he said, “this is enormously interesting, regardless of whether you sign a contract with us or with someone else. Do you think you could spare another ten minutes or so?” He turned to me. “It’s late, Casaubon, and I’ve kept you too long already. Can we meet tomorrow?”

I was being dismissed. Diotallevi took my arm and said he was leaving, too. We said good-bye. The colonel shook Diotallevi’s hand warmly and gave me a nod accompanied by a chilly smile.

As we were going down the stairs, Diotallevi said to me: “You’re probably wondering why Belbo asked you to leave. Don’t think he was being rude. He’s going to make the colonel an offer. It’s a delicate matter. Delicate, by order of Signer Gar-amond. Our presence would be an embarrassment.”

As I learned later, Belbo meant to cast the colonel into the maw of Manutius.

I dragged Diotallevi to Pilade’s, where I had a Campari and he a root beer. Root beer, he said, had a monkish, archaic taste, almost Templar.

I asked him what he thought of the colonel.

“All the world’s follies,”he replied, “turn up in publishing houses sooner or later. But the world’s follies may also contain flashes of the wisdom of the Most High, so the wise man observes folly with humility.” Then he excused himself; he had to go. “This evening, a feast awaits me,” he said.

“A party?”

He seemed dismayed by my frivolity. “The Zohar,” he explained. “Lekh Lekha. Passages still completely misunderstood.”

The Graal...is a weight so heavy that creatures in the bondage of sin are unable to move it from its place.

—Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, IX, 477

I hadn’t taken to the colonel, yet he had piqued my interest. You can be fascinated even by a tree frog if you watch it long enough. I was savoring the first drops of the poison that would carry us all to perdition.

I went back to see Belbo the following afternoon, and we talked a little about our visitor. Belbo said the man had seemed a mythomaniac to him. “Did you notice how he quoted that Rakosky, or Rostropovich, as if the man were Kant?”

“But these are typical old tales,” I said. “Ingolf was a lunatic who believed them, and the colonel is a lunatic who believes Ingolf.”

“Maybe he believed him yesterday and today he believes something else. Before he left, I arranged an appointment for him with—well, with another publisher, a firm that’s not choosy and brings out books financed by the authors themselves. He seemed enthusiastic. But I just learned that he didn’t show up. And—imagine—he even left the photocopy of that message here. Look. He leaves the secret of the Templars around as if it were of no importance. That’s how these characters are.”

At this moment the phone rang. Belbo answered: “Good morning, Garamond Press, Belbo speaking. What can I do for you?...Yes, he was here yesterday afternoon, offering me a book...Sorry, that’s rather confidential. If you could tell me...”

He listened for a few seconds, then, suddenly pale, looked at me and said: “The colonel’s been murdered, or something of the sort.” He spoke into the phone again: “Excuse me. I was talking to Signer Casaubon, a consultant of mine who was also present at yesterday’s conversation...Well, Colonel Ardenti came to talk to us about a project of his, a story I consider largely fabrication, about a supposed treasure of the Templars. They were medieval knights...”

Instinctively, he put his hand around the mouthpiece as if to talk privately, then took his hand away when he saw I was watching. He spoke with some hesitation: “No, Inspector De Angelis, the colonel discussed a book he wanted to write, but only in vague terms...What, both of us? Now? All right, give me the address.”

He hung up and was silent for a while, drumming his fingers on the desk. “Sorry, Casaubon,” he said. “I’m afraid I’ve dragged you into this. I didn’t have time to think. That was a police inspector named De Angelis. It seems the colonel was staying in an apartment hotel, and somebody claims to have found him there last night, dead...”

“Claims? The inspector doesn’t know if it’s true or not?”

“It sounds strange, but apparently he doesn’t. They found my name and yesterday’s appointment in a notebook. I believe we’re the only clue. What can I say? Let’s go.”

We called a taxi. During the ride Belbo gripped my arm. “Listen, Casaubon, this may be just a coincidence. Maybe my mind is warped. But where I come from there’s a saying: ‘Whatever you do, don’t name names.’ When I was a boy, I used to

go see this Nativity play performed in dialect. A pious farce, with shepherds who didn’t know whether they were in Bethlehem or on the banks of the Tanaro, farther up the Po valley. The Magi arrive and ask a shepherd’s boy what his master’s name is. The boy answers: Gelindo. When Gelindo finds out, he beats the daylights out of the boy. ‘Never give away a man’s name,’ he says. Anyway, if it’s all right with you, the colonel never mentioned Ingolf or the Provins message.”

“We don’t want to meet Ingolf’s mysterious end,” I said, trying to smile.

“As I said,- it’s all nonsense. But there are some things it’s better to keep out of.”

I promised I would go along with him on this, but I was nervous. After all, I was a student who participated in demonstrations. The police made me uneasy. We arrived at the hotel— not one of the best—in an outlying neighborhood. They sent us right up to what they called Colonel Ardenti’s apartment. Police on the stairs. They let us into number 27—two plus seven is nine, I thought. A bedroom, vestibule with a little table, closet-kitchen, bathroom with shower, no curtain. Through the half-open door I couldn’t see if there was a bidet, though in a place like this it was probably the only convenience the guests demanded. Drab furnishings, not many personal effects, but what there was, in great disorder. Someone had hastily gone through the closets and suitcases. Maybe the police; there were about a dozen of them, including plainclothesmen.

A fairly young man with fairly long hair came over to us. “I’m De Angelis. Dr. Belbo? Dr. Casaubon?”

“I’m not a doctor yet. Still working toward my degree.”

“Good for you. Keep at it. Without a degree you won’t be able to take the police exams, and you don’t know what you’re missing.” He seemed irritated. “Excuse me, but let’s get the preliminaries out of the way. This is the passport that belonged to the man who rented this room. He registered as Colonel Ar-denti. Recognize him?”

“That’s Ardenti,” Belbo said. “But can you tell us what’s going on here? From what you said on the phone, I didn’t quite understand if he’s dead or—”

“I’d be delighted if you could tell me that,” De Angelis said with a frown. “But all right, you gentlemen are probably entitled to know a bit more. Signor Ardenti—or Colonel Ardenti— checked in four days ago. As you may have noticed, this place isn’t the Grand. The one desk clerk goes to bed at eleven, because the guests have a key to the front door. There are a couple of maids who come in every morning to do the rooms, and an old alcoholic who acts as porter and takes liquor up to the rooms if the customers ring. Not only alcoholic, but arteriosclerotic, too. It was hell getting anything out of him. The desk clerk says the old man sees spooks and sometimes scares the guests. Last night the clerk saw Ardenti come in around ten and go up to his room with two men. In this place they don’t bat an eye if somebody takes a whole troop of transvestites upstairs. The men looked normal, though according to the clerk they had foreign accents. At ten-thirty Ardenti called the old alcoholic and asked him to bring up a bottle of whiskey, mineral water, and three glasses. At about one or one-thirty the old man heard someone ringing erratically from room 27. Judging by the way he looked this morning, though, he must have put away quite a few glasses by then, rotgut for sure. Anyway, the old man came up and knocked. No answer. He opened the door with his passkey. Found everything all messed up the way it is now. The colonel was lying on the bed with a length of wire wound tight around his neck, his eyes staring. The old man ran downstairs, woke the desk clerk, but neither of them felt like coming back up. They tried to use the phone, but the line seemed to be dead. It was working perfectly this morning, but we’ll take their word for it. The clerk ran out to call the police from the pay phone on the comer, while the old man hobbled across the square to a doctor’s house. To make a long story short, they were gone for twenty minutes. When they got back, they waited downstairs, still frightened. Meanwhile, the doctor got dressed and arrived almost at the same time as the squad car. They went up to twenty-seven, and there was no one on the bed.”

“What do you mean, no one?” Belbo asked.

“No corpse. The doctor went home, and the police found only what you see here. They questioned the old alcoholic and the clerk, and got the story I just told you. What of the two gentlemen who came in with Ardenti at ten o’clock? They could have left anytime between eleven and one, and nobody would have noticed. Were they still in the room when the old man came in? Who knows? He stayed only a second, didn’t look into the kitchen or the bathroom. Could they have left while the clerk and the alcoholic were out calling for help? Did they take the body with them? Not impossible. There’s an outside staircase to the courtyard, and from the courtyard they could just walk out the front door, which opens into a side street.

“More important, was there really a body? Or did the colonel go out with the two men—at midnight, say—and the old alcoholic dreamed the whole thing? The clerk says it wouldn’t be the first time the old man saw things that weren’t there. A few years ago he saw a naked female guest hanged in her room, but half an hour later the woman came in, fresh as a daisy, and on the old man’s cot they found one of those S-M magazines. Who knows? Maybe he was peeping through the keyhole and saw a curtain stirring in the shadows. All we know for sure is that this room has been searched and Ardenti is missing.

“But I’ve already talked too much. Now it’s your turn, Dr. Belbo. The only thing we found was a slip of paper on the floor by that little table, ‘2 P.M. Rakosky, Hotel Principe e Savoia; 4 P.M. Garamond, Dr. Belbo.’ You say he did come to see you. Tell me what happened.”

The knights of the Graal wanted to face no further questions.

—Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, XVI, 819

Belbo was brief. He repeated what he had already said on the phone: The colonel had told a hazy story about discovering evidence of a treasure in some documents he had found in France, but he hadn’t said much more about it. He seemed to think he was in possession of a dangerous secret, and he wanted to make it public so he wouldn’t be the only one who knew it. He mentioned the fact that others who had discovered the secret before him had disappeared mysteriously. He would show us the documents only if we guaranteed him a contract, but Belbo couldn’t guarantee a contract without seeing something first. They vaguely agreed to get together again. The colonel had spoken of a meeting with someone named Rakosky, describing him as the editor of Les Cahiers du Mystere. The colonel wanted this Rakosky to write a preface for him, and apparently Rakosky had advised him to delay publication. The colonel hadn’t told this man about the appointment at Garamond. That was all.

“I see,” De Angelis said. “What sort of impression did he make on you?”

“He seemed an eccentric to us, and he spoke about his past in, well, an unrepentant tone. It included a spell in the Foreign Legion.”

“He told you the truth, though not the whole truth. We were already keeping an eye on him, at least to some extent. We have so many such cases...First of all, Ardenti wasn’t his real name, but he had a legitimate French passport. He started reappearing in Italy from time to time a few years ago, and was tentatively identified as a Captain Arcoveggi, sentenced to death in absentia in 1945. Collaboration with the SS. He sent some people to Dachau. They were keeping an eye on him in France, too. He was tried for fraud there, and just managed to get off. We have an idea—but only an idea, mind you—that Ardenti at one point was calling himself Fassotti, that he’s the Fassotti that a small industrialist in Peschiera Borromeo filed a complaint against last year. This Fassotti—or Ardenti—had convinced the industrialist that the treasure of Dongo, the legendary Fascist gold reserve, was still lying at the bottom of Lake Como. Fassotti claimed to have identified the spot, and said all he needed was a few tens of millions of lire for a couple of divers and a power boat. Once he had the money, he vanished. Now you confirm that he had a kind of mania about treasures.”

“And this Rakosky?”

“We checked. A Vladimir Rakosky was registered at the Principe e Savoia. French passport. Distinguished-looking gentleman. It matches the description the clerk here gave us. Alitalia says his name appears on the passenger list for the first flight to Paris this morning. IVe alerted Interpol. Annunziata, anything come in from Paris?”

“Nothing so far, sir.”

“And that’s it. So Colonel Ardenti, or whatever his name is, arrived in Milan four days ago. We don’t know what he did the first three, but yesterday at two he presumably saw Rakosky at the hotel, didn’t tell him about going to see you—which is interesting—then last night he came here, probably with the same Rakosky and another man, and after that your guess is as good as mine. Even if they didn’t kill him, they certainly searched his room. What were they looking for? In his jacket...which reminds me, if he went out, it was in shirtsleeves, because the jacket with his passport in the pocket is still here. But that doesn’t make things any easier, because the old man says the colonel was stretched out on the bed in his jacket, unless k was a different jacket. God, I feel like I’m in a loony bin. Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes, in his jacket we found plenty of money, too much money. So it wasn’t money they were looking for. And you gentlemen have given me the only lead. You say the colonel had some documents. What did they look like?”

“He was carrying a brown briefcase,” Belbo said.

“It looked more red to me,” I said.

“Brown,” Belbo insisted. “But I could be wrong.”

“Red or brown,” De Angelis said, “it’s not here now. Last night’s visitors must have taken it. The briefcase is what we have to concentrate on. If you ask me, Ardenti wasn’t trying to publish a book at all. He had probably come up with something he could blackmail Rakosky with, and talking about a publishing contract was a way of applying pressure. That would have been more his style. From there, any number of hypotheses are possible. The two men may have threatened him and left, and Ardenti was so scared that he fled into the night, leaving everything behind except the briefcase, which he clutched under his arm. But first, for some reason, he tried to make the old man think he was dead. It all sounds too much like a novel, and it doesn’t account for the way the room was torn up. On the other hand, if the two men killed him and stole the briefcase, why would they also steal the corpse? Excuse me, but may I see your IDs?”

He looked at my student card, turning it over a few times. “Philosophy student, eh?”

“There are lots of us,” I said.

“Far too many. And you’re studying the Templars. Suppose I wanted to get some background on them—what should I read?”

I suggested two books, popular but fairly serious. I also told him he would find reliable information only up to the trial. After that it was all raving nonsense.

“I see,” he said. “Now it’s the Templars, too. One splinter group I haven’t run into yet.”

The policeman named Annunziata came in with a telegram: “The reply from Paris, sir.”

De Angelis read it. “Great,” he said. “No one in Paris has heard of Rakosky, and the passport number shows that it was stolen two years ago. Now we’re really stuck. Monsieur Rakosky doesn’t exist. You say he’s the editor of a magazine—what was it called?” He made a note. “Well, we’ll try, but I bet we find that the magazine doesn’t exist either, or else it folded ages ago. All right, gentlemen, thanks for your help. I may trouble you again at some point. Oh, yes, one last question: Did Argenti indicate that he had connections with any political organization?”

“No,” Belbo said. “He seemed to have given up politics for treasures.”

“And confidence games.” He turned to me. “You seem not to have liked him much.”

“Not my style,” I said. “But it wouldn’t have occurred to me to strangle him with a length of wire. Except in theory.”

“Naturally. Too much trouble. Relax, Signer Casaubon. I’m not one of those cops who think all students are criminals. Good luck, also, on your thesis.”

“Excuse me,” Belbo asked, “but just out of curiosity, are you homicide or political?’’

“Good question. My opposite number from homicide was here last night. After they found a bit more on Ardenti in the records, he turned the case over to me. Yes, I’m from political. But I’m really not sure I’m the right man. Life isn’t simple, the way it is in detective stories.”

“I guess not,” Belbo said, shaking his hand.

We left, but I was still troubled. Not because of De Angelis, who seemed nice enough, but because for the first time in my life I found myself involved in something shady. I had lied. And so had Belbo.

We parted at the door of the Garamond office, and we were both embarrassed.

“We didn’t do anything wrong,” Belbo said defensively. “It won’t make any difference if the police don’t learn about Ingolf and the Cathars. It was all raving anyway. Maybe Ardenti had to disappear for other reasons; there could be a thousand reasons. Maybe Rakosky was an Israeli secret-service agent settling old scores. Or maybe he was sent by some big shot the colonel had conned. Or maybe they were in the Foreign Legion together and there was some old grudge. Or maybe Rakosky was an Algerian assassin. And maybe this Templar-treasure story was only a minor episode in the life of our colonel. All right, the briefcase is missing, red or brown. By the way, it was good that you contradicted me: that made it clear we had only had a quick glimpse of it.”

I said nothing, and Belbo didn’t know how to conclude.

“You’ll say I’ve run away again. Like Via Larga.”

“Nonsense. We did the right thing. I’ll see you.”

I was sorry for him, because he felt like a coward. But I didn’t. I had learned in school that when you deal with the police, you lie. As a matter of principle. But a guilty conscience can poison a friendship.

I didn’t see Belbo for a long time after that. I was his remorse, and he was mine.

I worked for another year and produced two hundred and fifty typewritten pages on the trial of the Templars. It was then that I learned that a graduate student is less an object of suspicion than an undergraduate. Those were years when defending a thesis was considered evidence of respectful loyalty to the state, and you were treated with indulgence.

In the months that followed, some students started using guns. The days of mass demonstrations in the open air were drawing to a close.

I was short on ideals, but for that I had an alibi, because loving Amparo was like being in love with the Third World. Amparo was beautiful, Marxist, Brazilian, enthusiastic, disenchanted. She had a fellowship and splendidly mixed blood. All at the same time.

I met her at a party, and acted on impulse. “Excuse me,” I said, “but I would like to make love to you.”

“You’re a filthy male chauvinist pig.”

“Forget I said it.”

“Never. I’m a filthy feminist.”

She was going back to Brazil, and I didn’t want to lose her. She put me in touch with the University of Rio, where the Italian department was looking for a lecturer. They offered me a two-year contract with an option to renew. I didn’t feel at home in Italy anymore; I accepted.

Besides, I told myself, in the New World I wouldn’t run into any Templars.

Wrong, I thought Saturday evening as I huddled in the periscope. Climbing the steps to the Garamond oifice had been like entering the Palace. Binah, Diotallevi used to say, is the palace Hokhmah builds as He spreads out from the primordial point. If Hokhmah is the source, Binah is the river that flows from it, separating into its various branches until they all empty into the great sea of the last Sefirah. But in Binah all forms are already formed.