London
Avery waited until she was seated with Greg and Kasey at a small table in the back of the café to explain her revelation. “There’s still a few missing pieces,” she began, “but I think I know how the Brazen Head ended up in Scotland and then eventually came into Roche’s possession.”
The object at the center of the discussion was concealed inside a cheap backpack, occupying the fourth seat at the table.
“I told you that the Nazis were obsessed with mysticism and the occult, and that’s true, but surprisingly, Hitler wasn’t. At least not to the same extent as some of his supporters like Himmler and his personal secretary, Rudolf Hess.
“Hess was right there beside Hitler from the start. They went to jail together after the Beer Hall Putsch. Hitler dictated Mein Kampf in his cell, and Hess wrote it all down. When Hitler rose to power, Hess was named Reichsfuhrer, the third most powerful man in Germany. Until May of 1941 that is, when he decided to fly across the English Channel in order to negotiate peace with the British government.”
“I’ve heard about this,” Greg said. “It’s like one of those world’s dumbest criminal videos where a guy walks right past a cop to rob a liquor store. Hess just took off on his own, without any diplomatic status. Got caught and spent the rest of his life in prison.”
“There’s no mystery about what he did,” Avery agreed. “But ‘why’ is a question that isn’t as easy to answer.”
“Why did he go to Scotland of all places?” Greg asked. “I’ve wondered about that.”
“He was trying to reach Dungavel House, the summer retreat of the Duke of Hamilton. Dungavel is less than twenty miles from Glasgow, and only about ten miles from where Hess actually parachuted out, so he was close. Both Hess and the Duke were aviators, and Hess might have thought he had a sympathetic friend in the Duke. It’s also been suggested that the Duke was working with British intelligence, trying to lure Hess out of Germany with the promise of a peace negotiation. That’s possible, but it doesn’t explain why Hess felt he had to do it. He was a true believer in the Nazi doctrine and fiercely loyal to Hitler.”
“Maybe he saw the writing on the wall?”
“In 1941, it wasn’t. The Blitz was winding down, and Hitler was more interested in launching Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union. If anything, the time was right for a real diplomatic mission to Britain.”
“So why did he do it?”
“Well, some think that he did it for personal glory. Despite his position, he had lost a lot of influence with Hitler. By 1941, Martin Bormann was the real power in the Reich. Maybe Hess thought if he could flip Britain—end the war, and maybe even forge an alliance with them against the Soviets—he would get back some of the prestige he had lost.”
“But you don’t think so,” Kasey said.
Avery shrugged. “Well, it’s an explanation, but there’s a lot about it that doesn’t quite fit. For one thing, Hitler was badly shaken by what Hess tried to do. He felt that it undermined his authority, made him look weak. In fact, he ordered Hess to be shot on sight if he ever returned to Germany. Hess would have known him well enough to expect a reaction like that, even if he had been successful in negotiating a separate peace.”
“Okay, so if not that, then what?”
“Like I said, Hess was obsessed with mysticism, and particularly interested in astrology and divination. He wasn’t after artifacts of power like the Spear of Destiny though; he wanted to know the future. The Brazen Head was supposed to be a machine for telling the future. Hess would have recognized it for what it was and tried to use it. And the fact that he secretly brought it with him on his flight to Scotland suggests that it might have played a part in his decision.”
Kasey raised a doubtful eyebrow. “So the metal head told him to do it?”
“In a sense. I don’t think he was getting instructions from it, but something must have happened to nudge him out the door, so to speak.” She paused for a moment, trying to think of a way to explain the next leap. “One of the places Hess looked for guidance was the prophecies of Nostradamus.”
Kasey gave a derisive snort. “Please. You can’t be serious. Nostradamus? That’s like fortune cookies or horoscopes. People read whatever they want into those prophecies.”
Greg raised his hands in a placating gesture. “Give her a chance. I’m curious. We’ve both seen a lot of crazy stuff.”
“Hey, I’m as skeptical as you are,” Avery admitted. “But Hess wasn’t. He was a believer. That’s a historical fact. He even wrote phony Nostradamus prophecies as part of a propaganda campaign against France, probably with some help from Josef Goebbels and his half-Jewish wife, Magda.”
“Goebbels’ wife was Jewish?”
“Yes. Probably. Her stepfather was Jewish, but it’s generally believed that he was her biological father as well.” Avery shook her head, trying to stay on course. “All I’m saying is that the senior Nazis believed that Nostradamus’ prophecies were accurate. More than that, they believed Nostradamus had directly predicted the rise of the Third Reich.”
“I’ve heard this before,” Kasey said dismissively. “Nostradamus wrote about someone named ‘Hister,’ which is kinda sorta like ‘Hitler.’ Except it isn’t. If he really had the power of prophecy, you’d think he’d have spelled it right.”
“You’re missing the point,” Avery said, growing exasperated. “Hess and the other Nazis read those things, and they believed. But a funny thing happened right after Hess was captured. Hitler outlawed astrology and divination, which he blamed for Hess’ decision. Some have speculated that the real reason Hess tried to make peace with Britain was that he read something in the prophecies of Nostradamus that made him believe that Hitler would bring about the end of the world if he wasn’t stopped. So whether or not those horoscopes and prophecies were accurate, they definitely played a major part in shaping world history.”
“Fair enough,” Kasey said, equivocally. “But you say Hess was taking orders from Mr. Shiny here.” She patted the backpack. “What’s that got to do with Nostradamus?”
“Well, this is where it gets a little crazy, so bear with me. I think Nostradamus got his prophecies from the Brazen Head.”
Kasey and Greg exchanged a glance and then nodded for her to continue.
Avery was silent for a moment, not because she didn’t know the answer, but because she didn’t know how to explain it in a way that would make sense to the others. She wondered if Stone had the same trouble explaining the patterns he saw.
She picked up a napkin and unfolded it. “Anyone got a pen I can use?”
Greg produced both a pen and a small notepad, passing both to her. She uncapped the pen and wrote:
Significant dates:
c. 1250—Magnus makes BH, Paris?
She left several blank lines on the page before adding:
1939—Loew family leaves BH behind in Prague
1941—Hess takes BH to Scotland
She pushed the notebook out to the center of the table. “Okay, we know that the Brazen Head was created sometime around the year 1250. That’s when Albert Magnus and Thomas Aquinas were together in Paris, where Albert was teaching theology at University, and Aquinas was his student. Assuming that what we have is the same Brazen Head, we’ve got a seven-hundred-year gap to fill and the question how did the Brazen Head get from Paris to Prague? The most likely explanation is that Prague was the capital of the Holy Roman Empire in the 16th Century under Emperor Rudolf II.”
“Rudolf?” Greg said. “Like Hess?”
“Yes, but that’s just a coincidence.” She hesitated, wondering if Stone would see it that way, then pushed ahead. “Rudolf—the Emperor, not Hess—was fascinated with technology. He had a whole room in his palace dedicated to housing his collection of mechanical gizmos—clocks, astrolabes, even wind-up toys. He would have definitely wanted Albert’s Brazen Head for his collection.”
She wrote in the empty space.
c. 1580 BH in Prague
“Okay, now we’ve cut the gap in half. It’s not too much of a stretch to imagine how the Brazen Head wound up with Loew’s family. If they were bankers, maybe it was used as collateral or payment for a loan to the royal house. Or maybe it was...” She trailed off as her brain took another left turn.
“Avery, you still with us?”
“Umm, this is probably another coincidence, but there’s a famous legend from Prague about the golem. In the late 16th Century, the Jews in the ghetto of Prague were being persecuted by their enemies, so a Rabbi named Judah Loew ben Bezalel used the power of Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism, to create a golem, an artificial man... basically, an android... made out of clay. According to some accounts, Magnus didn’t just create a Brazen Head, but a fully functional android.”
“Clay isn’t bronze,” Greg pointed out. “And Loew is a common name.”
Avery shrugged. “It’s probably just a story. What I’m more interested in is connecting the dots in the first three hundred years. How did the Brazen Head get from Paris to Prague?”
She put pen to paper again, writing a new line above the previous entry. The page now read:
Significant dates:
c. 1250—Magnus makes BH, Paris?
c. 1550—Nostradamus prophecies, Provence, Paris?
c. 1580—BH in Prague
1939—Loew family leaves BH behind in Prague
1941—Hess takes BH to Scotland
“Okay, we don’t have an explicit connection between Nostradamus and the Brazen Head, but the timeline works. Nostradamus was a favorite of the Queen, Catherine de Medici. She even brought him to Paris to protect him from accusations of heresy and gave him a court appointment as counselor and physician to her son, King Charles IX. That puts him in the same city as the Brazen Head. Following his death in 1566, Catherine might have retained possession of the Head and could have sent it to Emperor Rudolf as a goodwill gesture. That would explain how it ended up in Prague.
“If the Brazen Head was some kind of mechanical computer, then it could have been used to make accurate predictions, and that would have been invaluable to someone like Nostradamus. He was a lifelong scholar, and even though he was Catholic, he was born Jewish. He might have had extensive knowledge of Kabbalah, along with his study of natural science and astrology.”
“Nostradamus got his prophecies from a medieval supercomputer?” Kasey shook her head in disbelief. “That’s quite a stretch.”
“Is it though? It’s all about patterns. The prophecies are vague, sure, but the reason we’re still talking about them five hundred years later is that they fit with actual events. Maybe without even realizing it, Nostradamus was seeing mathematical patterns of repetition. Just like Stone does. Maybe those prophecies are actually a coded message containing the patterns, and maybe the way to decode them is with the Brazen Head. Hess probably figured out how to do that, and what he learned scared the hell out of him.”
The words tumbled out of her, leaving her feeling slightly manic. She knew she hadn’t explained it very well, but she also knew she was right. Or at least on the right track. The other two just stared back at her.
Finally, Greg broke the silence. “So...what does all of that mean?”
“The Immortal wants the Brazen Head for a reason. We can keep him from getting it, but if we want to really stop him, we need to know why he wants it.”
Greg nodded slowly. “And how do we figure that out?”
Avery gave a helpless shrug. “We ask Nostradamus.”