The Templar's Code (17 page)

And the truth was astounding.

Soon after his arrival in Amman, he uncovered a secret code embedded in the Greek letters that punctuated the Hebrew script. But more surprising than that, the cleverly devised code spelled the name
Akhenaton
. He knew from his studies of ancient Egypt that the pharaoh Akhenaton had instituted a monotheistic religion that worshipped a sun god called Aten. The plot thickened when he discovered that Akhenaton and the Hebrew patriarch Moses had been contemporaries.

Suddenly, the biblical assertion that “Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians” took on new meaning for Mercurius.
Could there have been a connection between the ancient Israelites and the monotheistic pharaoh?
If he could prove that a link existed, it would certainly shed new light on the origins of Judaism.

Excited by the discovery, he shared his findings with several of his colleagues. Who among those esteemed academics was responsible for the catastrophe that followed, he couldn’t say. At the time, he didn’t much care who was to blame. He was too devastated by the fact that
all
of his research—twelve months’ worth—was stolen from his small windowless office at the Archaeology Museum and that a single word, punctuated with a bold exclamation point, had been scrawled on the wall next to his overturned desk—
Heretic!
Uncannily similar to the scare tactic used by the Nazis, who would scrawl the word
Juden!
on a house or storefront before shipping someone off to Auschwitz.

Afraid that he might be dealing with the same kind of blind hatred, Mercurius heeded the warning and never again mentioned the secret code embedded in the Copper Scroll. The ransacked office bespoke an incontrovertible truth—that human institutions are fundamentally corrupt; education, religion, and government were a sham hoisted upon mankind to deceive us into believing that we have some measure of control over our lives. We earn a degree, we bend a knee, we cast a vote. It was mere stagecraft to camouflage the evil that lurked in our midst. The perpetuation of a three-thousand-year-old deception. One that led all the way back to Akhenaton and Moses.

That long-ago day, as he stood in the small windowless office, it simply sufficed that he’d discovered the heretofore unknown connection between those two disparate figures. Later, many years later, in fact, he would comprehend the significance of that connection. For it was the root of all evil.

As providence would have it, the incident in Armana was significant for another reason—it was the Second Sign that he had been consecrated at birth for a great and glorious purpose. The First Sign had been revealed twenty-three years earlier—on that fateful night when his father, Osman de Léon, and the Kabbalist Moshe Benaroya had been forcibly marched to the train station.

Another thirty-seven years would pass before the next sign was revealed to him. Thirty-seven years before he learned that his ordained purpose was to extinguish the dark fire that had brightly burned for countless centuries. By summoning a firestorm to douse the flames.

But to do so, he had to find the sacred relic.

Stepping into his study, Mercurius walked over to the window to draw the drapes, the glass reflecting the setting orb in the western sky. He pulled the heavy fabric panels, catching a glimpse of the dormant rose garden just beyond the window, beautifully splashed with bloody streaks.

Again, he considered the metal box that Saviour had seen Caedmon Aisquith carry into the hotel room.
The more hidden a thing, the more holy.
He smiled, well aware of what the Knights Templar had hidden in their New World colony. He knew because Moshe Benaroya, his father’s milk brother, had exposed the relic’s provenance in explicit detail.

And Mercurius would let the Englishman find it for him.

Still holding the cordless phone, he accessed the speed-dial function. Saviour picked up on the first ring.

“I’ve reached a decision,
amoretto.
”

“I give you Arcadia. Heaven on earth.” As they entered a sun-dappled glade, Caedmon expansively gestured to the hardwood and evergreen backdrop. “Indeed, if it didn’t exist, we’d have to invent it.”

For the last hour, guided by Jason Lovett’s GPS receiver, Edie and Caedmon had been traipsing through the Arcadia Management Area, a surprisingly remote and rugged woodland dotted with limpid kettle ponds, vivacious brooks, and lush foliage. Beautiful to behold, it was an unspoiled landscape far different from the wind-swept coastline they’d explored the day before. Although the eastern coast and the western woodland did share something in common: a whole lot of rocks. Big ones. Small ones. They came in every shape and size, and Edie worried they might have trouble finding the so-called Templar stone, the first of two landmarks on Lovett’s map that they hoped to locate. The second landmark was a stone bridge supposedly constructed by a mythic Narragansett man-god known as Yawgoog, whom Jason Lovett was convinced had been a Knights Templar.

“Arcadia was an oasis for those brave knights mercilessly hunted by the Inquisition,” Caedmon continued. “And one that abundantly provided the fugitive Templars with food, water, and the raw materials to build their New Jerusalem.”

As he spoke, Edie envisioned Caedmon as a medieval knight decked out in chain and mail. Last night she’d watched him as he slept, his curled fists stacked on his chest as though cradled around an imaginary broadsword.

“Sounds great,” she replied, adjusting the strap on her knapsack. “But I’m still trying to wrap my mind around a hidden treasure trove, the monetary value of which has as many digits as a long-distance telephone number.” Counting on her fingers, she began to recite her own telephone number, only to stop in mid-recitation. “Unbelievable. Not enough digits.”

Caedmon glanced at the GPS device. “We’re within six hundred yards of the Templar stone.”

Edie peered over her shoulder, verifying that they were still alone in the forest. Although Caedmon had repeatedly assured her that Rico Suave had lost their scent, she wasn’t entirely convinced. A psychiatrist would probably diagnose her as having deep-seated trust issues. But then that same shrink hadn’t witnessed a man being murdered with a very sharp stiletto.

“What I want to know is how in God’s name the explorer Verrazano even knew to look for the Templars here in Arcadia? Clearly, the knights went to great lengths to keep their secret refuge just that, a secret.”

Caedmon held back a leafy fir bough, motioning her to pass in front of him. “I seem to recall that the Indians sold Manhattan Island to Dutch explorers for about sixty guilders worth of beads and trinkets. Roughly the equivalent of twenty-five dollars.”

“So, in other words, the Templars may have been sold out on the cheap.”

“Not necessarily by the Narragansett but perhaps by a rival tribe who knew of their existence. We shall probably never know the specifics of how their demise came about.”

As they navigated their way through dense, overgrown brush, Edie irritably thought they should have brought a machete instead of the small handheld pickax that Caedmon had tied onto his knapsack. A city girl at heart, tromping through the woods had never been her idea of a fun time.

“According to the GPS map, the Templar stone is close at hand,” Caedmon informed her, blue eyes excitedly gleaming.

“Close at hand but well hidden,” Edie said under her breath when they exited the piney wood and entered a clearing inundated with scores of hefty boulders. In the midst of the boulders were the remains of a demolished rock pile. A steep granite slope some fifty feet in height ominously hovered at the periphery of the clearing.

“We know from Dr. Lovett’s recording that a Templar symbol was carved into a large freestanding stone.” Poised in the classic buccaneer stance—feet wide apart, hands on hips—Caedmon surveyed the tumble of large boulders.

“But there’s at least thirty boulders and a couple of hundred rocks out here.”

“Right. Time to divide and conquer. We can rule out the rock pile, the individual stones of which are too small to be carved upon. That said, I’ll take these boulders on the western side of the clearing.”

“Okay, rock on.” She gave Caedmon the heavy-metal hand salute. At seeing his bewildered expression, she chuckled. “Or not.”

It took only a few minutes for hope to mutate into disappointment. Edie found nothing that even remotely resembled a man-made carving. She shuffled back to the rock pile in the center of the clearing. “No carvings on my side of the street. You’re certain that we’re at the right map coordinates?”

Caedmon glanced at the GPS receiver. “Quite. Unfortunately, Lovett made no written notation in his field journal regarding the Templar stone, fearful, no doubt, that his notes might be confiscated.”

“In his digital voice recording he said that he was brought here by an Indian named Tonto Sinclair. Maybe we should give him a call.”

Her suggestion went unanswered.

Lost in thought, Caedmon circled the rock pile. “This cairn was deliberately constructed. And, more than likely, these loose stones littering the base were part of the original stack.” He pointed to the hundreds of rocks haphazardly scattered on the ground.

“Perhaps this was a holy place for the Indians. You know, like a ceremonial burial ground.”

“Admittedly, my knowledge of the local native tribes is paltry, but that doesn’t ring true. If you’ll recall, many of the Yawgoog tales involved our mythic man-god industriously working with stones. A labor that the Narragansett deemed peculiar.”

“So, what are you saying? That Yawgoog stacked these rocks? And, if so, to what end?”

“To answer that, we must envision this pile of rocks as it
once
appeared long centuries ago.”

Edie tilted her head as she stared at the nearly destroyed cairn. She then blurted the first thing that popped into her head. “It was shaped like a pyramid.”

Arms crossed over his chest, Caedmon, again, circled the pile. Smiling, he said, “Yes, a pyramid. Brilliant.”

“And that’s brilliant because . . . ?”

“Because a pyramid symbolizes the ascent of the sun into the heavenly sphere.” Raising his arm, he pointed to the top of the four-story granite slope. The parent who gave birth to all of the strewn rocks. He next gestured to the pile of stones in front of them. “This cairn would have served as a signpost to the initiated, instructing them to look skyward. Specifically to the top of the granite tower in whose shadow we now stand.”

Edie looked upward, not liking what she saw. “But we don’t have any climbing gear,” she argued, pointing out the obvious.

Undeterred, Caedmon strode toward the tower. “And neither did the fourteenth-century Templars,” he said over his shoulder, “leading me to conclude that there’s a way to ascend this granite tower without breaking our bloody arses.”

Rooted in place, she watched as he disappeared behind the massive granite outcropping. She’d seen enough documentaries on the Discovery channel to know that it probably came into being a gazillion years ago when colliding land masses caused a giant geologic burp.

“Just as I thought, there’s a back staircase,” Caedmon announced upon his return. “If we take care, we should be able to make the ascent.”

“Great,” she deadpanned, not completely sold. And not completely certain that if one of them slipped, they’d survive the fall.

“As you can plainly see, there are enough fissures, cracks, and protruding ledges to enable us to safely scale to the top,” Caedmon pointed out, the man a real sword in the stone when it came to the Templars.

“Don’t worry. I’ve got this climb covered,” she assured him with a big, fake chipper smile. “Last year I did the rock wall at a sporting goods store.”

What she failed to mention was that she had an instructor guide her through every step, she wore a safety harness, and there was an inflatable mattress in case of a harness malfunction.
Bouldering in a vacuum.

“To lighten the load, I suggest we leave behind the knapsacks and digging equipment.”

Refusing to go anywhere without her digital camera, Edie removed it from the knapsack. She then slid the strap over her head, carrying the camera bandolier-style across her chest.

Despite the fact that they had only their hands and feet to use for purchase on the granite slope, the climb proved easier than she had imagined. Reaching the top, she was relieved to find herself standing on a relatively flat ledge some thirty feet in length and twenty feet in width. A gusty blast of air lifted the hair off her shoulders.