Moon Mask (60 page)

“I know all this,” Langley felt ire rising. He considered himself a patriot; he knew the history of his country and didn’t need to be taught it like a school child by a Brit.

“Washington was considered, and still is by most Americans today, to have been visionary. He laid down the building blocks of the government of the United States, most notably the presidency, and presided over the writing of the constitution.”

“Doctor, you’re preaching to the converted here.”

King ignored him.
“This ‘visionary greatness’ has led to many urban legends, and the fact that he was a Freemason- everyone knows the story of how he laid the cornerstone of the Capitol Building dressed in his Freemasonry regalia- only fuels these stories. His military success during the war, his uncanny ability to ‘predict’ British movements, his unnerving knack of always being one step ahead, has given rise to legends of what can only be described as ‘witchcraft’ and ‘magic’ going on behind the closed doors of the Grand Lodge. Some Evangelic Christian groups even suggest that he’d sold his soul to the devil to be given the power to overthrow the British.”

“This is preposterous, Doctor!” Langley was getting angry now.

“I agree, Mister Ambassador. I don’t think he sold his soul to the devil, but we’ve got to remember that we’re talking about
myths
here. And if there is any element of truth in it then we need to follow that thread and hope it leads us to the mask.”

“Do you know where the mask is Doctor King?” Langley crunched straight to the point.

King hesitated a second.
“We found references to Washington’s ability to see future events. One of those references suggested he did this by using a magical mask that gave him the ability to see through time.”

“Yes or no, Doctor?”

King swallowed.
“Not yet, but-”

“Doctor King, I respect the work the three of you have been doing, but I don’t appreciate you throwing about wild speculation about the ‘Father of the United States.’ George Washington may have been a member of a secret society, but that society, in your own words, is not in any way evil nor magical. We are not searching for a magical mask which gives its wearer the ability to see the future, much less travel to it. We are searching for a lump of metal from outer-space which in the wrong hands could bring about not just the destruction of nations, but the annihilation of humanity!” He paused, catching his breath. “George Washington was a great man, a man who won independence for this country not through the use of black magic and mumbo-jumbo, but by the sheer will of his character. Now, I appreciate the ‘thread’ you’re following, but I think you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

“With respect Ambassador,”
King argued firmly. “
I think you had more of an open mind when I was telling you how the Moon Mask influenced the ‘forefathers’ of the Mayans and the Incas. This is no different.”

Langley forced himself to relax and take a deep breath. As a military man he had always seen Washington as the hero of America, the great general who became a president. Having someone suggest that he had been assisted by a magical mask had been insulting, yet King’s comment was fair.

“You’re right, Ben. But it still seems loose to me. Other than Emily Hamilton’s reports about Kha’um using one piece of the mask to find the next, there is no evidence to support this theory of ESP. Now, you’re trying to link George Washington into the equation using only that link. It just doesn’t sit true.”

“At the moment, it’s all we’ve got.”

Langley studied the young man in the monitor. “But where does it get us? Is there any actual evidence of Washington having the Moon Mask?”

“That’s where we were hoping you could help, Ambassador.”

“How so?”

“Whether or not you and I believe the Moon Mask has time travelling properties,”
Nadia took up unexpectedly,
“the truth is that that is the myth which has surrounded it. The Xibalbans venerated it, Imhotep used it, and the Bouda learned to control it. It seems only the Easter Island culture knew nothing of its importance. So that is the investigative route we went down.”

“From the link to George Washington, we looked further into the references between Freemasonry and time travel,”
Sid spoke up again.

“We stumbled upon a name that I recognised from my own research into the effects of tachyons,”
Nadia explained.
“Nikola Tesla.”

“Tesla?” Langley repeated, recognising the name.

“Tesla’s theoretical work formed the basis for the alternating current, the AC electrical power distribution systems which we still use today. In many ways, one could argue that Nikola Tesla is the father of modern civilisation. Without him there would have been no Second Industrial Revolution. No computers, no televisions, no microwave ovens. Without him we would still be shovelling coal into steam engines, yet few ordinary people know his name. We remember Edison and Einstein, but few know of Tesla’s contributions.”

“I recognise the name,” Langley admitted. “Didn’t he invent spark plugs for cars?”

A brief, and unexpected smile, crossed Nadia’s face.
“Yes.”

“In 1891,”
King continued,
“one hundred and twelve years after Washington was sworn in by the Grand Master of the New York Lodge, the Serbian born Tesla was granted U.S. citizenship and moved to New York City. Things get a bit sketchy then but it looks like Tesla tried to join the Freemasons, the Grand Lodge of New York to be precise.”

“Tried?”

“Some accounts say that he was blocked from joining because his experiments were considered by the masons to be dangerous,”
Sid replied.
“The Masons felt that if they fell into evil hands, the forces of darkness would have the power to control the world.”

“Yet other accounts,”
King picked up,
“suggest that he did become a Freemason, and escalated high into the ranks, perhaps even to the 33
^rd
Degree, but was later expelled, for want of a better term, because of his eccentric personality and his belief in increasingly bizarre, and terrifying, science and technology.”

“Let me guess,” Langley said. “Time travel.”

“Supposedly, Tesla believed he was capable of building a number of futuristic things,”
Nadia said,
“including enhanced energy-beam weapons, radio-controlled bombs and torpedoes, a zero-point-energy generator- not dissimilar to a tachyon emitter- and most importantly to us, yes, a time machine.”

“And the core of this time machine, something which conspiracy theorists have called ‘Phoenix’,”
King concluded,
“was the secret of the 33
^rd
Degree.”

“And if you are correct about the Moon Mask being the 33
^rd
Degree of Freemasonry . . .”

“Then the Moon Mask, somehow, was incorporated into Tesla’s time machine.”

Langley studied the three faces staring back at him from the screen. He was serious for a moment but then laughed, throwing his head back and rubbing his tired eyes. “You’re not seriously wanting me to believe that Tesla built a time machine, are you?”

“Built, yes,”
Nadia confirmed.
“Used, no. Most likely, he hit the same wall that all scientists that have ever toyed with the possibility of time travel have come across- the inability to produce enough energy to distort space-time.”

A terrible thought occurred to Langley. “The tachyons in the Moon Mask-”

“Even the completed mask will not have anywhere near enough tachyon energy to do what you are suggesting,”
the Russian consoled him before he’d even voiced his concern

“So where does this leave us?” he asked.

“It leaves us theorising that Nikola Tesla,”
King concluded,
“is the last man to have seen the Bouda piece of the Moon Mask that we know of.”

Langley ran it all through in his head. The Bouda piece of the mask was taken by Edward Pryce to Jamaica; from there into the hands of Hawk and an early sect of the Freemasons in the New World where it became a physical element of the sacred 33
^rd
Degree, the ultimate secret of Freemasonry. From there it fell into the hands of a ‘mad scientist’ name Nikola Tesla who incorporated it into a failed time machine experiment.

It was still a weak train of thought, he couldn’t help but think. Clutching at a lot of straws, making a lot of suppositions and guesses- what if the mask had nothing to do with the 33
^rd
Degree? For all any of them knew, the Freemasons knew nothing about it. And if that was the case, then all that Tesla took was nothing but arcane secrets linking back to the esoteric past of the brotherhood.

“You said you needed my help,” he remembered suddenly.

“Tesla died in 1943, alone and broke in a New York hotel room,”
King explained.
“Because of the dangerous nature of his work, after his death all of his work and property was impounded by the FBI and the O.S.S.”
The Office of Strategic Services was the predecessor of the CIA, Langley knew.
“Supposedly there were two truckloads of papers taken away and branded ‘Top Secret’ by J. Edgar Hoover himself. Eventually Tesla’s nephew won possession of the materiel but conspiracy theorists, and anyone with a dash of reality, believe that all of the most sensitive and valuable stuff was kept by the O.S.S.”

“We believe that somewhere in that materiel is the location of the mask,”
Nadia concluded,
“if not the mask itself.”

Langley heard a warning bell ring in his head. His earlier concerns about the true nature of the U.S.’s involvement in this crisis came rushing back to him. Had one piece of the mask been right under their nose the whole time? And if so, did anyone else know about it?

“I’ll speak to my contact in the CIA,” he replied half-heartedly, “see if I can get us access to at least some of the files. But it won’t be easy, and it will take time. If the only evidence we’ve got that they kept hold of some of Tesla’s research back in the forties is nothing more than conspiracy theories then it’s going to be tough just getting them to admit it. In the meantime, I think we should be pursuing other avenues. Where are we on the other missing piece of the mask?”

The downcast looks of all three scientists confirmed his fears. King answered.
“We’ve got nothing.”

Langley offered them an encouraging smile, despite feeling anything but encouraged. “Come on. You’ve got this far, you’ve found the other missing pieces and a possible trail for the Bouda mask. Surely you’ve got something.”

“That’s just the thing. We have no trails to follow, no leads, no clues. I don’t even know where to start looking. I thought that once we’d found the Egyptian and Easter Island mask, then it would just be a case of tracking down the Bouda mask which Pryce stole. But there’s nothing mentioned in the Kernewek diary. As far as I can tell, Kha’um assumed that other than the piece Pryce stole, the Xibalba mask was the final piece of the puzzle.”

“We’ve been going through books and searching the web for any reference to magical masks,”
Sid added, placing a hand on King’s shoulder. Langley could see how exhausted he was. More than anyone, King felt a responsibility to find the mask, though it went beyond his desire to keep it out of unfriendly hands. It was an obsession, Langley knew. One which had driven his father to his death.
“The truth is that there are so many legends and myths that there’s no starting place-”

“I’ll find it,”
King cut in with sudden determination.
“It’s out there somewhere, and I’ll find it.”

Langley studied the screen for several long moments. “Okay, keep on it Ben. If what you say about Tesla’s research is true then at least the Bouda piece is safe for the time being. The final piece is the wild card. It’s out there, somewhere, and you’re not the only one looking for it now.”

King nodded and after brisk, to-the-point farewells, Langley cut the video feed and leaned back in his chair, mulling over in his mind everything he had just learned.

He closed his eyes and felt the tantalising fingers of sleep clawing at his consciousness. For a moment he considered letting it embrace him but then the intercom on his desk beeped. He pressed the speaker button and his assistant, Kelly’s, voice came through it.

“Ambassador?”
She sounded more tentative than normal.
“I found the contact details for Doctor Emmett Braun, the doctor who diagnosed Karen Weingarten.”

“Thank you Kelly. Send it to my screen.”

There was a pause.
“Um, sir . . . Doctor Braun was killed in a road accident nine days ago.”

Langley threw himself upright and stared at the speaker phone as though it had just sprouted legs and done a little dance. His words to King echoed in his mind.
‘At least the Bouda piece is safe for the time being.’

He was beginning to think that his statement couldn’t have been further from the truth.

44:

Out of the Ashes

Ocean Avenue,

60 Miles South of New York City, USA

Alexander
Langley drove the black SUV down the coastal road. To the left waves broke against the rocky shoreline while to the right the sun sank lower in the sky, casting long shadows from the trees which hemmed him in. The built in sat-nav glowed dully from the centre console, its muted screen taking up the position ordinarily occupied by a stereo system. Open on the passenger seat, wirelessly connected to the internet, his laptop continued its search through classified government files but he fancied that he already had what he needed.

Sitting dauntingly on his desktop was an encrypted folder. The data-tag read ‘Phoenix’ and, whatever it contained, was large, and very highly protected. Despite being a member of the president’s cabinet, a representative of the U.N. Security Council and a retired SOG field commander, none of his security clearance allowed him access to it. In fact, after trying for the third time, a stark warning had told him that his failed attempt to access the classified file had been logged and that any further attempts would be a breach of federal law.