The Oath of Nimrod: Giants, MK-Ultra and the Smithsonian Coverup (Book #4 in Templars in America Series)

by David S. Brody

  “Yes. As I said, something came up. My apologies. See you this evening.”

  They hung up and Cam returned to his real estate work. But his mind was on last night’s events. He and Amanda had discussed it on the car ride home last night: Was Maxwell was just a paranoid, unstable collector, as Herm had warned, or was he put up to it by the CIA or someone else who wanted to stop their research? Cam sighed. As if they didn’t have enough enemies already. At least this one was facing attempted murder charges.

  He finally put aside his work and decided instead to focus on tonight’s lecture. He had met Professor Antonopoulos a couple of times before, once at a conference and once when they both appeared as experts on a television documentary. He liked the man and, more importantly, liked his work—the best way to prove ancient explorers had come to America was with hard science. And he knew it took guts for Antonopoulos to challenge academia; for many researchers, questioning the Columbus-first dogma had been akin to committing professional suicide.

  Cam was also anxious to ask the professor what he knew about the Bat Creek Stone. Cam had read that geological testing confirmed the stone had been in the ground for decades if not centuries when Emmert unearthed it. If that was indeed the case, those who accused Emmert of planting it would somehow have to reconcile the fact that Emmert had only recently arrived in Tennessee when he dug up the artifact.

  Not that people like Vito Augustine cared about things like science or logic. He didn’t seem like the type to let the facts get in the way of an otherwise perfectly good story.

  Evgenia had arrived at the office at her usual eight o’clock time. She made sure to stick her head into Dr. J’s door and give him a quick summary of last night’s encounter with Professor Antonopoulos.

  He had pondered her account. “And you think his concerns have been assuaged?”

  Not the word she would have chosen, but yes. “Honestly, I think he feels like a fool.”

  “Good. Fools are easier to manipulate than professors. Make sure you file a report. And good work.”

  She started to turn away. “I’m not feeling great,” she lied. “I think a bunch of that pepper spray got into my lungs. I have a few calls I need to make, but after that do you mind if I take the afternoon off and try to get some sleep?”

  He waved her away. “Of course. See you on Monday. Feel better.”

  One of the most difficult things for an agent was remembering which lies were lies, which lies were truths, and which lies you told to whom. She exhaled and focused on clearing her head of any doubts about Dr. J and Rachel and their back story about the artifact. She needed to behave as if she trusted them completely. Even as she lied to them.

  She phoned Rachel. After a bit of small talk, Evgenia said, “So, I ran into Professor Antonopoulos last night. He has some concerns about the artifact.” She left it out there, dangling, to see how Rachel would respond. This is how an agent who trusted Rachel would play it—she would tell her of the encounter, but not the alarming details. Some lies were half-truths.

  “Yes, he called me yesterday. He said the grooved areas were too clean.” She laughed. “Turns out my mom put the rock in the dishwasher.”

  “Well, anyway, he mentioned he was going to be in Hartford on Saturday and wanted to ask your mother some questions.” The file said Rachel’s mother lived in Vernon, a suburb of Hartford. “I hope it’s okay that I gave him her contact information—it was in the file and, as an old friend, I couldn’t really claim not to know what town you grew up in. I think he plans to visit.” Again, this is how an agent typically would have responded to the professor’s request.

  “Oh.” A slight hesitation, but a quick recovery. “That should be fine. I’ll call my mom and warn her. She’s pretty busy, running around all the time.”

  Evgenia laughed, keeping it light. “I guess our professor wants to make sure anything he steals from your mother isn’t a fake.”

  “Yes, a thief with standards. Thanks for the call; I’ll warn my mom.”

  Evgenia stared at the phone. If her suspicions were correct, Rachel would be calling Dr. J now. He, in turn, would make a few calls, probably to a retired Agency operative or maybe a trusted military family. Within hours a house in Vernon, Connecticut would begin a makeover and its residents given a back story so that when the professor visited ‘Mrs. Gold’ on Saturday all would be in order….

  Evgenia cleaned off her desk top and reached for her coat. By ten o’clock she would driving north on Route 95 in a friend’s Toyota Corolla with a few hundred dollars in cash and another five hundred on a Visa gift card she kept on hand for emergencies. She wouldn’t fly or rent a car or even use a credit card—she wanted to be off the grid for the weekend. She sensed there was more to this Antonopoulos assignment than she was being told. And since he was heading up to Boston, that’s where she was headed also.

  But not before making a stop in Vernon, Connecticut.

  As had been agreed to so many decades ago, Randall’s response to finding the yellow rose was to replace it with a stick of Juicy Fruit gum. He had been knocked so off-balance by the discovery of the flower that he had trouble regaining his feet. He staggered to the burial ground gate and hailed a taxi; three convenience stores later he finally found a pack of Juicy Fruit.

  With a shaking hand, in the back of the taxi, he removed a stick of gum from the yellow five-piece pack and wrote on the inside of the wrapper: “Friday, 4:00 PM, Abbey Room, Boston Public Library.” He refolded the wrapper around the gum as best he could, removed the other four sticks from the pack and slid the piece with the note on it back in.

  He did the math in his head. Consuela would be eighty-two. Had she somehow made her way from Cuba to Boston? Hand still shaking, he opened a second piece of gum and popped it into his mouth. It tasted different than he remembered—sweeter and more tropical punch-like than the peach flavor he remembered from his youth. Then again, everything tasted different than it did in his youth.

  He checked his watch. Just past eleven. Barely an hour had passed, an hour that in some ways seemed like a lifetime. He was tempted to wait at the cemetery for Consuela or whomever had left the rose, but he was too much of a professional to be careless after all these years. At four o’clock he would have some answers. And no doubt many more questions as well.

  Amanda walked into to the living room to find Cam, Astarte and Venus watching an old Scooby Doo cartoon on TV. “Now this is some fine parenting,” she said, her arms crossed.

  “Don’t blame me,” Cam responded. “Venus insisted on it. I think she has a crush on Scooby.”

  Friday afternoon was the one time Astarte was allowed to watch junk TV. After a long week, it was her chance to sit with Cam and laugh and giggle. And after last night it seemed like a fine idea.

  Amanda turned to Cam. “Any chance I can pull you away for a few minutes? I just found something extraordinary.”

  “But Shaggy is lost in the haunted house.”

  “Venus can tell you how it ends.”

  Astarte grinned. “Maybe it’s not haunted. Maybe there’s just a blocked furnace.”

  Cam ruffled her hair. “Very funny, smart girl.”

  Cam followed Amanda upstairs to their office. Sensing he was about to pinch her ass, she spun in time to slap his hand away. “Wow, impressive,” he said.

  “Perhaps you’re just too predictable.”

  “Perhaps your ass is just too predictably pinch-able.”

  She nodded. “Well-argued.” It was good to see him energized; they both were feeling better as the day went along, aided no doubt by an hour-long, post-lunch nap. Again, much like a bad hangover.

  “So what is this extraordinary discovery?” he asked.

  “You know how sometimes after you solve a puzzle you look back and all the clues were just lying there, waiting to be discovered?”

  “Happens all the time.”

  “So for me, this giants research is the key to understanding everything.” She clicked on an im
age on her computer. “Recognize this?”

  Grave Creek Tablet, West Virginia

  “Isn’t that the Grave Creek Tablet?”

  “Actually, a mold. The original has been lost. What do you know about it?”

  “Let’s see. Found in West Virginia in the 1830s. Some people thought the writing was Phoenician. But then the experts said it was just a mish-mash and decided it was a fake.” Cam smiled. “Oh, I get where you’re going with this. The stone was discovered in a burial mound.”

  “Yes, this one.” She clicked on an image.

  Grave Creek Burial Mound, West Virginia

  Cam nodded. “And inside burial mounds are buried … skeletons. Let me guess, the skeletons were a bit oversized?”

  “Almost seven-and-a-half feet. Not as gigantic as some, but still quite an aberration. A small giant, if you will.”

  “I’ve never heard about a giant skeleton being found with the Grave Creek tablet.”

  She handed him a page from an old book. “That’s because you’ve never read this. It’s from an 1879 book. It’s amazing what you can find now that these old books are on the internet.” She pointed. “There, at the bottom.”

  Cam read aloud. “The engraved stone was found in the inside of a stone arch that was found in the middle of the mound, and in that stone arch was found a skeleton that measured seven feet and four inches.” He looked up at her. “You know, you may be onto something. Does it seem likely to you that a fake ancient artifact would be found buried with a fake giant skeleton?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Hardly.”

  “So let’s go back to the script. Is it really a mish-mash?”

  She shook her head. “No. That’s another of those mistaken conclusions that took on a life of its own. At the time it was found many linguists believed it to be a Phoenician-style script. Only later, with experts working from inaccurate copies of the inscription, did questions arise about the script’s validity.” In fact, one set of critics claimed the inscription was random markings while another set claimed the inscription was copied verbatim from a book containing ancient Phoenician writings. Apparently the experts couldn’t even agree on why exactly the inscription was fake—it was either too authentic or not authentic enough.

  “And does the age of the burial mound sync up with the Phoenicians?”

  She nodded. “Perfectly. The mound dates back to the Adena Culture.” Amanda and Cam both knew that the Adena Culture described a group of Native Americans who lived in the Ohio River Valley around 1000 BC to 200 BC; by comparison, Phoenician culture and exploration peaked around 800 BC and their language survived for centuries thereafter.

  “So we have more ancient explorers from the Middle East. This wouldn’t be too much earlier than the Bat Creek Stone.”

  “Fancy that. Ancient explorers who actually explored.”

  He smiled. “So the stone is not a fake?”

  “I know this will come as a shock to you, but no, I think not.”

  “Amazing.”

  “What is amazing is how you Americans managed to build a nation, what with all of your early Colonists spending so much time carving and burying fake inscriptions. It seems to have been quite a national obsession.” She sighed. “If we Brits had known how preoccupied you all were, we might have chanced another invasion.”

  “So what’s the bottom line?”

  She bit her bottom lip. “I don’t know. On the one hand we have over a thousand accounts of giant skeletons unearthed in burial mounds, all of which have now disappeared. On the other hand we have a couple of dozen ancient inscriptions that have all been called fakes by the experts.”

  “And now both hands have come together, in the same mound.” Cam clapped, illustrating the imagery.

  “Yes.” She took a deep breath. “An ancient inscribed stone was buried alongside a giant skeleton two thousand years ago. Are the stone and the giant related?” She shrugged. “The giant can no longer speak. But perhaps the stone can.”

  Randall arrived at the library a full hour before the appointed four o’clock time. The minutes had been dragging by all afternoon so finally he washed his face, combed his hair, brushed his teeth, put on a clean sweater-vest—yellow and green in honor of the flower—and walked the four blocks from his brother’s apartment to Copley Square.

  He had chosen the Boston Public Library as a meeting place because it was a locale that a visitor to Boston might innocently choose to visit. Within that vast edifice, the Abbey Room might afford a bit of privacy. The space was called a ‘room’ like the gilded mansions of Newport, Rhode Island were called ‘cottages’—at over two thousand square feet, the ornate room was larger than many homes and was often used for large weddings. In any event, at four o’clock on a Friday afternoon the spacious hall would likely be empty. And if not empty, then he would have a good idea of who might be tailing them.

  Some of his favorite art work adorned the Abbey Room’s walls. A series of richly-colored murals, painted by American artist Edwin Austin Abbey, depicted the legend and history of the Holy Grail. Many scholars believed the medieval Knights Templar, closely associated with the Freemasons, were the guardians of the treasured cup which had held the blood of Jesus and there was much in Abbey’s murals that hinted at this guardianship. Randall loved to examine the paintings for clues.

  But even the Holy Grail could not distract him today. He was about to meet with Consuela, or at least someone extraordinarily close to her. His last direct contact with her had been in the summer of 1959, just after Castro took power and a couple of years before President Kennedy’s ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion poisoned U.S.-Cuban relations for the next fifty years. But in 1959 he had been a young man in love, visiting a beautiful woman in an exotic city, caught up in the heady euphoria of building a utopian society.

  Somehow over fifty years had passed. How had it happened? And more importantly, how had he allowed it to happen? He read once that God gave us memories so we might have roses in our winter years. Well, he had his memories, at least, of a heavenly summer in Havana. And, on this day in the winter of his life, he had his rose as well. Randall carefully pulled the flower, which he had wrapped in wet paper towel and sealed in a plastic bag, from his jacket pocket. He closed his eyes, breathed in the flower’s fragrance, sighed, and dried the corner of his eyes with his sleeve.

  When he looked up she stood in front of him. Somehow he had not seen her enter.

  He reached out with a shaky hand. It was Consuela, but not Consuela. Consuela made older and somehow also made younger again. Reddish-brown hair streaked with gray. Age spots atop the freckles on her nose and cheeks. A bit of sadness within her deep brown eyes.

  “Hello, Papa,” she whispered. “My name is Morgana. Mama sent me.”

  His eyes filled with tears as he took her in his arms. “I did not know,” he sobbed. “God forgive me, I did not know.”

  She pulled away gently, her hands still clasping his. She looked deep into his eyes, disengaged her right hand and tapped the side of his forehead with her fingertips. “You did not know here,” she said. She moved her hand down and rested her fingers on his chest. “But I think you have always known here.”

  Evgenia skirted Hartford just after four o’clock, missing the worst of the afternoon rush hour. She had made good time, pushing eighty and stopping only once to gas up and grab an energy bar and ice tea for lunch. She squirmed in her seat, trying to loosen her back. Even though it sometimes made it hard to find eligible men, she considered her height an asset. But while traveling—and of course planes were worse than cars—there never seemed to be enough leg room. Ten miles to Vernon, followed by another hour-and-a-half to Boston. Then park the Toyota in some garage and be done with it for the weekend.

  She exited Route 84 north of Hartford, where she grabbed a poppy bagel with lox from the famous Rein’s Deli for a late lunch. As she ate, her GPS guided her to a gridded neighborhood south of the highway. She easily found Scott Drive and drove by Rachel’s
mother’s house. Or what supposedly was Rachel’s mother’s house—a beige raised ranch with a one-car garage attached to the side and a fake wishing well in the center of the front yard, shaded by a single oak tree. Anyplace, America. A pair of vehicles sat in the driveway, an unmarked white van and a red pickup truck. Odd choice of vehicles for a middle-aged woman. But faded gold-colored lettering that spelled ‘Gold’ adorned the mailbox, which was a point in favor of authenticity. Rachel drove by, circling the block.

  On her second pass a clean-cut young man carried a cardboard box from the van into the home. She didn’t dare make a third pass so she parked a couple blocks away, rubbed the poppy seeds from her teeth, buttoned her coat and walked back toward the house. Wishing she had a dog, she walked slowly as she approached, her face angled toward the winter sun. The dull thud of hammering cascaded from the home. As she reached the driveway the same clean-cut guy bounded out the side door toward the van. She waved and smiled. “Howdy. You moving in?”

  He smiled and shifted his weight. “No. Just bringing in some boxes.”

  She considered asking about Rachel, but that might tip them off. “I remember when I was a kid they always had the best Halloween decorations here.” The guy was about her age, probably a young agent just cutting his teeth on a grunt assignment. She would need to be careful not to make him suspicious. She offered her best smile. “Used to scare me half to death.”

  He shrugged. “No Halloween decorations in the boxes. Just pictures and stuff.” He slid another box from the back of the van.

  She smiled again, her eyes locked on his. She leaned forward playfully, counting on his testosterone to trump his training. “I bet there’s a spider or ghost or something in there ready to jump out at me.”

  “No,” he grinned. He tilted the box toward her. “See, just pictures. Nothing to scare you.”

  She feigned relief. “Well, all right then. Thanks.” One final smile. “Have a great day.” She turned to continue her walk and suppressed a shiver. In many ways the framed photo of Rachel in that box was more frightening than any spider or ghost.