The Book of 21 (16 page)

John stood and took the items off the counter, then held out his hand. “Thank you, Sam.”

“Don’t mention it, sir,” said Sam, seeming to blush. “Enjoy your stay.”

John made his way to room 314 and gently pushed the door open to reveal a posh setting. The hotel room was more than half the size of his entire apartment. Moreover, it boasted much more tasteful decoration. A warm tan coated the walls and coordinated perfectly with the dark wood of the furniture.

He entered and tossed his bag on the bed, then looked a little more closely at the room. Opposite the king-sized bed was an armoire, which he opened to reveal a television. He lifted the remote from the top shelf, clicked the power button, and expected to hear the nauseating music of the menu system that most hotels used to bait their visitors into purchasing pay-per-view movies. Instead, he was pleasantly surprised to find a late-night talk show fade onto the screen.

As the laugh track of the supposedly live show filled the room, he continued his examination. A desk sat next to the TV armoire. A full-sized couch and a cushioned chair sat on the end of the room opposite the door. Above the couch, a large window afforded a view of the city hall clock tower glowing in the night air.

There was a knock on the door.

John opened it cautiously to find the bellhop with a cart that held a laptop computer and small printer. When John fully opened the door, the bellhop proceeded to wheel the cart over to the desk and then connected it to several outlets on the wall for power and Internet access. Once the bellhop finished setting up the computer, he stood up and turned to John.

“Will there be anything else, sir?”

“No, that’s perfect. Thanks.” John smiled and slipped the bellhop a ten-dollar bill. He figured it did not pay to be cheap when you were on the lamb.

“Very well, sir. Have a good night.” The bellhop bowed slightly and exited, closing the door behind him.

John fired up the laptop computer and opened the doors on the bottom of the armoire to reveal the mini-bar. There, he found exactly what the doctor ordered—bourbon. After retrieving a glass from the bathroom, he cracked open a bottle of the sweet Kentucky elixir. The drink would probably cost him ten bucks, but it was worth it.

John pulled out Hallman’s papers and leafed through the stack. On top were the letters from Penn and Trumbull, followed by the quotation from the Book of Revelation. If the Ritz-Stefan held to the old tradition of keeping a Bible in every room, this was his chance to verify whether the passage in question was actually in a printed version of the Bible. Turning to nightstand next to the bed, he slid the drawer open, and found a copy of the King James Version waiting for him.

John fanned through the pages until he reached the end of the tome, where “REVELATION” appeared. Paging ahead to chapter three, he found the passage on the Church of Philadelphia. The passage was real, and Hallman quoted it perfectly; it all lined up.

John had not heard of this biblical connection to his hometown before, and despite his earlier check on the Internet, he was still holding out hope that it was fictitious. He moved to the computer, opened up the Internet browser, and then entered, “Philadelphia AND Revelation.” The search engine returned a page labeled “1-10 of 152,000.” He saw the number on his earlier search, but was still amazed that there were so many pages on the topic. With all the Catholics he knew, he figured he would have heard about Philadelphia being in the Bible at least once.

He clicked the top link; the webpage described seven churches of Asia Minor, or Turkey, including the Church of Philadelphia in the south-central region. Christ supposedly revealed things about the true character of each of these churches to St. John. The page went on to explain how Philadelphia was the one church that remained loyal to Christ’s word.

He returned to the search list to get another source and see if it agreed with that assessment, but found a different take on the topic. This page claimed that Christ was not really talking about physical churches in the Book of Revelation, but eras of
the
church. This “phase theory” page detailed how different passages in Revelation lined up with corruptions in the church and how, in the age of Philadelphia, the church would be weak in power but loyal to God’s word. The page claimed that the era of Philadelphia lasted from the early 18th century to the early or middle 20th century.

John furrowed his brow and flipped back to Trumbull’s letter. Trumbull wrote it while living in a city named Philadelphia, but the date of 1706 also lined up with the beginning of what the “phase theory” website called the
age
of Philadelphia.

He glanced again at the sticky note Hallman had left on the printout, which said, “Did they come to Philadelphia to use the words of ‘the Rock’ against him?” John thought about it, trying to discern what Hallman could have meant by the note. People did many idiotic things, and John supposed that someone could have moved their entire community to a city called Philadelphia just because it had a certain name. It was possible, but it seemed like a lot of bluster for nothing.

“A lot of work for very little real meaning,” he muttered.

He looked at the seven churches described on the webpages, and thought about it again. Here were seven groups of Christians, that all professed to remain loyal to the word of God. Supposedly, only one did. What was it worth to be known as the one sect that remained loyal?

For anyone to care that much about the words of the Bible, John figured, the Philadelphia sect would need to be a group of Christians, splintered off from the church. That would mean both the church and the splinter sect spoke the same words, and both seemed to hold true to the word of God—just as the seven churches of Asia Minor.

With that scenario, the church and the group in Philadelphia perhaps only argued over the
little
things, like what those words actually meant. The sect lucky enough to be in the city named Philadelphia would argue that Christ meant their location; the poor buggers left out of Philadelphia would be stuck claiming that Christ actually meant those seven churches were something else, like phases in time. Coming to a city named Philadelphia at the start of the 18th century, however, would allow the splinter sect to claim they were the righteous group according to both explanations.

John realized this was nothing but conjecture. Whatever the truth was, the details of why a certain group came to Philadelphia were irrelevant to him right now.

“What a bunch of crap,” he sighed.

He turned to the next paper in Hallman’s stack; it was an exhumation request from Hallman to dig up the body of Evan Fields for “historical purposes of confirming documentation.” A large red stamp marked the page, “denied.”

“No shit, moron. They weren’t going to let you dig up a corpse just because you had his name in an old letter,” John mumbled to himself.

When he lifted the glass of bourbon to take another sip, however, a furrow spread across his brow; he tried to figure out why it was so important to dig up an old corpse. Hallman left no note on this page or on any of the remaining four pages in the bundle. He figured that the kid must have run out of time while prepping the stack of papers, and could not leave specific helpful hints as to why the remaining pages were there.

The next page after the exhumation request was a letter from a Professor Ulrich vanNest at the University of Enschede. It was written on university letterhead and carried the date of October 10, of the previous year. The letter read:

Dear Richard and Ted,

Attached is a photocopy of the page about which I spoke to you last summer. I am deeply indebted to you for pointing out its possible relationship to the Book of Revelation. As I mentioned, my manuscript is due out this spring. It discusses the Templar Knight that reportedly left this page in a church in Miens. I ask only that you hold any article about it until after mine is in press.

Unfortunately, this is the item in its entirety. It seems to be a title page to a text, with a somewhat simple decoration, but the text itself is unfortunately missing. I base this idea—that it is a cover page to a book—upon another letter from your Jan Hanstitch, which I have also found in my search. I have included a modern English translation of this letter for your research purposes only. I will forward a copy of the original after publication of my manuscript. I believe this letter speaks of the lost Templar treasure, which returned with the knights from the Middle East after the crusades. I would not have known enough to make the connection to Philadelphia, had I not spoken to you. If there was more to the document, it is either gone now, or the church will not share it.

You have my deep gratitude for the information you have shared with me. Perhaps this will prove of some use to you as well. I look forward to the opportunity of working with you on this puzzle in the future.

Sincerely,

Ulrich vanNest, PhD

John looked at vanNest’s letter and saw that the letter showed the fear of academic theft, which Amy mentioned earlier, in a couple of ways. First, in the request to hold any publication until he first published his own work. Second, in the fact that vanNest withheld the
actual
letter until his publication could be released.

“Ah,” he sighed, “ensuring proper academic credit is such a bitch.”

He flipped the page over to view the translated letter from Jan Hanstitch. While the typed and translated version made things easier for John, vanNest’s paranoia made John wonder how faithful the professor had been in the translation, and whether all of the key points had been included.

The letter read:

Father Lamb,

We have made arrangements for
Le Coeur Codex
. It will only be unlocked by understanding our key. My oath to you to keep this key intact will hold, so that if we too are corrupted by the power, you and yours may find us, and save our souls.

The location that is chosen will be outside the power of the corrupted party, but no location is outside those that seek to return to the old ways. I pray that you destroy any text, such as the Key of David, that will lead them to us. Only under the cover, will the items needed to find the prize be revealed.

Keep yourself safe, for we will bear the burden here as best we can. I wish only that Sir Charles had not found the book so many years ago, and we had no need to risk ourselves for such ancient sins.

--

Yours faithfully,

Jan Hanstitch

John then turned to the next page in Hallman’s stack, which held a drawing beneath the title,
La Clef de David
. The drawing beneath the title was a rectangle with notched corners that held two lines. Two lines started on the top-left, and bottom-left of the rectangle, and converged on the rectangle’s right side.

John returned to the computer and opened up a language translation site. The thing was tremendously useful in determining what the Hispanic population was trying to tell him on the phone, but it failed to work for some words he encountered; he still had no idea what
huebos
meant.

He typed in “La Clef de David” and set the translator to work from French to English. The result came back: “The Key of David.” Amy’s earlier translation was correct.

He looked at the paper again, and then flipped to the passage from Revelation, which said, “These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth, and no man shutteth, and shutteth and no man openeth.”

He returned to the search engine and entered the two new terms from vanNest’s letter—“Templar” followed by the phrase “Key of David.” Seventeen webpages came back.

“Narrow list,” John murmured to himself.

The first webpage came back on a dull teal background—the color of old bathroom tile. The page listed a bunch of old poetry. From an 18th century French missal, it listed something called
Kodály: Veni, veni Emmanuel
. This contained the stanza:

Come, key of David;

Unlock the heavenly kingdom;

Make safe the path of this world;

And close the routes to the lower world.

“Nice, but no help.” John clicked another link.

The next webpage detailed the Templars, explaining that they were an order of knights. They used the symbol of a large red cross on a white field—a symbol John had always associated with the knights of the crusades. Reading further, he confirmed that the Templars were an order of knights that
did
take part in the crusades, and received the name from their protection of a certain temple.

The webpage went on, explaining that the church caught the Templars worshiping in a manner not considered Christian. Supposedly, they would pray to an idol, which the church claimed to be Baphomet, a goat-headed devil with both male and female sexual characteristics. According to the page, the church used this discovery as an opportunity to burn most of the Templars at the stake. The knights that escaped church persecution joined other groups, such as the Masons.