Blood of the Reich Read Online Free Page B

lance that pierced Christ. The village will have to be relocated, of course.”
    “I’d not heard of this.”
    “The Reichsführer is not a show-off like Göring.” Halder made the disparagement casually, secure in his own SS rank, and aimed for a nearby airfield as they dropped steeply. “Himmler’s mission is veiled. No air shows, no medals. But he’s far more visionary. A romantic, actually. Below you, Raeder, is the place that will someday be known as the birthplace of modern man.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “Its Aryan future. And a crypt for its leaders. Camelot, as I said.”
    “Beautiful,” Raeder said politely, confused but still flattered to be flying—a first—and enjoying the vista over the greening countryside. “Almost too beautiful for the Schutzstaffel .”
    “It has its own austerity, as you’ll see. The castle even has a Hexenkeller , a witches’ cellar. They burned more than fifty witches down there in the seventeenth century. Not so long ago, really.” He cut the power and the plane bounced as it landed.
    It was dusk when a staff car delivered them to the castle gate. The village of Wewelsburg was subdued, its streets empty, house lights veiled behind lace curtains. Raeder sensed people peeking at them as they drove past. When they got out of the auto at the ramp across a dry moat, the only sound was of jackdaws crowing. Then German shepherd guard dogs on chains sent up cacophonous barking, their teeth phosphorescent in the gloom.
    The gate wood was blond, varnished, and obviously new, carved with swastikas and the twin lightning-bolt runes of the SS. Sentries stood like statues and torches burned like a medieval dream. It was a Renaissance castle, meaning broad glass windows instead of narrow arrow slits, but most were dark. There were towers at the three corners, the southern ones domed with roofs like a homburg hat. After scrutiny by the guards, Raeder and Halder were ushered inside.
    The courtyard was curiously claustrophobic, a narrow triangle with walls as sheer inside as out. At the northern apex, a fat round tower with flat roof was surrounded by scaffolding. There were lumber, planks, piles of stones, and bags of mortar.
    “Modernized?” Raeder asked.
    “Reimagined. The Reichsführer has selected it as a spiritual home for our order. A labor camp is being constructed to implement his visionary plan. Slaves have been screened to find the best craftsmen. Wewelsburg will be a capital, a Vatican, for the SS. This will be a center of scholarship for inquiries into the origins of the Germanic people and the Aryan race. There will be a planetarium at the crown of the North Tower and a crypt for Reich leadership in its cellar. Reichsführer Himmler sees across centuries, Raeder. He’s a prophet.”
    “It is our Führer , Adolf Hitler, who is the prophet.”
    The correction was mild, professorial, but spoken with authority. They snapped to attention and wheeled. There was Himmler studying his own creation, dressed in military greatcoat, jodhpurs, and boots. He stood very straight. Since the interview in Berlin, Raeder had read about his superior. At Hitler’s failed 1923 putsch, Himmler had carried the staff of the Imperial Eagle as proudly as a schoolboy.
    “And I am the mystic scholar, the Merlin, of my brotherhood of knights,” Himmler went on. “Our Führer does not share all my intellectual interests; he is a politician, a man who must wrestle with the practical and immediate. But he allows me the indulgence, the luxury, of exploring the distant past and possible future. I’m fortunate to have such a patron, am I not, Professor Raeder?”
    “As are we all, Reichsführer .”
    Himmler nodded. “We live in the presence of a great man. A very great man.” The spectacles caught the dim light so that Raeder once again couldn’t see the Reichsführer ’s eyes, but only hear his tone of worship. The fervor, of one powerful man for another, surprised him. He’d expect more