Randall and his daughter had moved into the reading room adjacent to the Abbey Room. They sat across from each other at a table in the corner, their heads bent forward. A daughter, named after me.
He exhaled. “Are you certain you have not been followed?” Randall asked, more concerned for Morgana than for what might happen to him.
She nodded. “I am certain. I am here as part of a cultural exchange program with a music group.” She smiled. “I am a singer.”
He met her smile with one of his own. “That is an honorable profession, bringing joy to peoples’ lives.”
Laughing, she replied. “Singing is only a hobby. I am a pediatrician.”
He sat up. “A doctor. Just like your mother.” He nodded. “You have done well. Your mother has done well.”
Morgana grinned. “And you have a grandson who will soon graduate from medical school as well.” Her English, like her mother’s, was near-perfect. She showed him a picture of a dark-haired young man with a kind smile. “His name is Ricardo.”
Randall fingered the photograph. A grandson. He was not sure if he wanted to laugh or to cry. “The worst form of loneliness is to have memories but nobody to share them with,” he whispered.
She took his hands again. “I am sorry, Papa. Mama is sorry. Many nights has she wept for your loneliness.”
A few seconds passed. “Did you know Mama was the Minister of Public Health for many years?” Morgana asked.
He shook his head. “We do not get much news out of Cuba.” Plus Consuela had stopped writing soon after his return from Havana. He guessed the position was akin to Surgeon General in the U.S. A good job for her. Randall recalled a debate they had one night over a pitcher of sangria. “In Cuba,” Consuela had argued, “our poor are guaranteed the right to medical care. In America, your poor are guaranteed the right to complain when they can not afford medical care. You tell me which is the better system.” Randall smiled. Often he let her win these types of arguments because he wanted to take her to bed; this time he had been truly defeated. It had been the first time he appreciated and understood what Castro—and Consuela—were trying to accomplish….
“She loves to tell the story how she first won Fidel’s confidence,” Morgana said. The Cubans had a strange custom of calling their leader by his first name. “It was just after the Bay of Pigs invasion, and Fidel held hundreds of American soldiers as prisoners. Mama convinced him to trade the prisoners for baby formula.”
Randall chuckled. “I remember that. It made a lot of Americans respect Castro, made him seem more humane. We invaded his country and instead of taking a pound of flesh he chose to feed his children.” Randall had been a young CIA operative at the time; the invasion’s failure, coupled with Castro’s public relations coup, had demoralized the Agency. “Of course I did not realize that had been your mother’s idea—how could I?” He smiled. “Though it does sound like her.”
She squeezed his hand, anticipating his unspoken question. “She never married, Papa. She told me all about you, showed me pictures. Your photograph still stands next to her bed.”
“I am glad—”
The words caught in his throat. He took a deep breath and tried again. “I am glad to know this.” He pulled out his wallet and flipped it open, revealing a faded photo of Consuela sitting on a beach, and angled it toward Morgana. “Please tell her I carry her picture with me always.”
He took another deep breath. He could not take his eyes off her. Off his daughter. In some ways it was like looking at Consuela all over again. “You have your mother’s eyes,” he finally said.
“And she says I have your sharp tongue.”
He smiled and checked his watch. “The library closes in half an hour. Will you join me for dinner?”
She frowned. “I am sorry, I cannot. My group expects me back—I do not want to raise any suspicions. We are leaving tomorrow already.” She brightened. “I was worried you would not find the flower. For three days I have been waiting. I would have been so disappointed … heartbroken … if I did not see you. And Mama also.”
“How is she?”
Her eyes clouded. “Not well. I think that is why she wanted me to see you—she wanted me to meet my father before she died.”
He swallowed. “She is sick?”
“Very.” Morgana shrugged. “The details do not matter. But she has had a good life. She has helped many, many people. The revolution has truly worked, Papa, even with America opposing us at every turn. Cuba is not perfect, but everyone is educated, everyone has medical care, people care for each other. Cuba is not Russia or China, with all their corruption and greed. In Cuba the great experiment has succeeded. Mama is very proud. And, now with us meeting, she will be at peace, I think.”
Randall sighed. He was sad to hear about Consuela. But he was also angry, bitter that fifty-odd years had passed and she had hidden his daughter and grandson from him. He pushed the anger from his mind—it was done, and there would be plenty of time to be melancholy later. “Please give her my love. Tell her I have missed her. All these years, I have never stopped loving her.”
Morgana’s eyes brimmed. As hard as it was for Randall to learn he had a daughter, it must have been infinitely more difficult for Morgana to grow up knowing she had a father who would never be part of her life. “I will tell her, Papa,” she whispered.
He swallowed. “Did she tell you why … she never informed me about you?”
“Yes, she did.” Morgana had the same forthright way of speaking as did her mother. “As you know, soon after you left Cuba, the U.S. government broke off relations. Mama feared things would be hard for Fidel, hard for Cuba. She loved you very much, but she loved the revolution more. She was worried if she told you about me you would want to join us in Cuba.” Morgana looked down. “And she thought you more valuable to the revolution here.” She took his hands. “She had no way to know the hostilities would last a lifetime.”
So his daughter knew. Knew the truth about him. Knew he was a sleeper agent, imbedded deep inside the American intelligence community. But never awakened. He slapped the table with his hand, causing a few heads to turn. He fought to keep his voice low. “Why was I never activated?” he hissed. When he left Cuba, the plan was for him to get a job at the CIA for a few years, wait for instructions, and eventually rejoin Consuela in Cuba. But a few years had turned into more than half a century, a half century of waiting for a single yellow rose that never appeared. “It is bad enough I have wasted away my life. But to miss watching my daughter and my grandson grow up for no reason?” His shoulders dropped. “How futile it has all been.”
Her wide brown eyes engulfed him. “That is why I am here, Papa. Cuba has not forgotten about you. The Cuban people, your people, need you now. You have been activated. You have a very important mission.”
He sat back. “I am eighty years old and retired. What can I possibly do?”
She lifted her jaw. “You can save Cuba.”
Now, after all these years? “How?”
“You must prevent Webster Lovecroft from being elected President, Papa. If he is elected, he will invade Cuba.” Her eyes moistened. “Our society is good and honest and just. It is humane. But this Lovecroft has promised to send modern-day Crusaders to destroy us. In the name of religion, he will crush everything we have built.”
He sighed as she held his eyes. “Please, it is up to you, Papa. You must stop him.”
“We should get ready,” Cam said, walking into the upstairs office. “The lecture starts at seven. You said you wanted to make a stop first? And I want to swing by and visit Herm for a few minutes—he’s doing okay but they want to keep him for another night.” He had just dropped Astarte off at a friend’s for a sleepover birthday party, after eliciting from her a promise to go to sleep no later than ten. They all needed a good night’s sleep.
Amanda looked up from her computer. “I do need to make a stop. And of course let’s go see Herm. How is he?”
Cam smiled. “O
rnery and pissed. He’s already contacted some of his drinking buddies. They’re going to make Maxwell pay, one way or another.”
She nodded, her jaw clenched. One of the few things they disagreed on was vigilante justice. Cam was fine with Herm exacting some revenge if for some reason the legal system let Maxwell walk—as a lawyer Cam knew the system was far from perfect. But he sensed even Amanda wouldn’t argue this one too much. The guy had tried to kill her entire family.
“I’m almost done here,” she said. “I’m trying to find a good translation of the Grave Creek Tablet.”
“A good one? You mean there is more than one choice?”
She dropped her hands into her lap. “This stuff can be infuriating. But here’s a rough translation: Burial mound in honor of King Tasach. His queen caused this Tablet to be inscribed. Apparently Tasach is the name of the giant skeleton.”
“And his wife, the queen, built a burial mound for him and put the carved stone in it.”
“Yes.”
“So who is this King Tasach? And why does he speak Phoenician?”
“Before I get to that, fancy this: There’s another burial mound in West Virginia called the Criel Mound. It was excavated by the Smithsonian in the 1880s. Care to guess what they found?”
“Another giant?”
“Seven-and-a-half feet tall. Another king, based on the decorations and ornaments he was buried with. Adena Culture, same as Grave Creek.”
“Would you consider seven-and-a-half to be a giant?”
“I’m guessing they shrunk over time as they inbred with the natives. And there are still plenty of skeletons well over eight feet. So, yes, I would still call them giants.”
“Fair enough. Especially when you consider the average height back then was just over five feet.”
Amanda continued. “And there’s more. A mound in Ohio called the Miamisburg Mound—a skeleton over eight feet tall unearthed nearby. Again, Adena time period.” She gestured to her computer. “I found dozens, all in Adena burial mounds. And here’s something nobody talks about; listen to this.” She read from her computer screen. “Burials of chiefs were accompanied by a great ceremony. Like the Egyptians, their bodies were buried with items such as pottery, projectile points, beads, and pipes.” She looked up.
“Like the Egyptians,” he repeated.
She nodded, chewing her lower lip. “And the Phoenicians were known to adopt Egyptian burial practices.” Cam looked at her expectantly; Amanda had a remarkable ability to play connect-the-dots with various data points and come up with a narrative that made sense. “So tie it all together.”
Amanda took a deep breath. “Okay, let’s start with the Book of Mormon.”
Cam smiled. “Do we have to?” Neither of them believed Joseph Smith’s claim that he found golden plates, written by prophets of God in a language called ‘reformed Egyptian,’ that contained the third part of the Bible, after the Old and New Testaments. But they did not dismiss the Book of Mormon entirely. Based on their research, they believed that Smith wrote the Mormon narrative himself after finding a copper scroll written in an ancient language—probably Phoenician—that told of Middle-Eastern explorers traveling to America in the millennium before Christ.
Amanda ignored him. “So why did Smith write about a war between Middle-Eastern explorers and Native Americans?”
Cam replied. “Probably because that’s what the scroll said. Always base your legends on a foundation of truth.”
“Right. A Phoenician scroll, in all probability. Now let’s turn to the Old Testament. The Bible talks about a race of giants who lived in ancient Phoenicia, Goliath being the most famous. I found a Phoenician funerary inscription from 500 BC that makes reference to Og, who the Bible tells us was king of the giants. The point of all this is that if the Phoenicians came to America to mine copper, who’s to say they didn’t bring giants with them?”
They had done extensive research over the past year at a site in New Hampshire called America’s Stonehenge showing that ancient Phoenicians, whose ships dwarfed those of Columbus, sailed to America. Many scholars believed the Phoenicians came to mine copper in New England and the Great Lakes region to meet the insatiable need for the metal during the latter part of the Bronze Age.
“The Phoenicians,” Cam said. “All roads always lead back to the Phoenicians.”
“How so?”
“It’s just that every site and every artifact we find can be traced back to them. They came here first, and others followed.”
The Phoenicians were accomplished navigators and boat-builders, and possessed advanced maps and charts. Centuries later, the Templars used old Phoenician maps they found in the Middle East to navigate the Atlantic.
“I read where some bloke is going to sail a replica of a Phoenician ship across the Atlantic.”
Cam nodded. “The Phoenicians sailed around the tip of Africa, so why not across the Atlantic?”
Amanda shifted. “To my point: With giants on board.”
“Okay. And if the giants came, they could have stayed. Gone native.”
“Yes. And your Native American tradition confirms this—a race of giants living in the Ohio River Valley that drove the Cherokees and other tribes south.”
“And you know what else confirms it? The Sacrificial Stone at America’s Stonehenge.” Researchers had long wondered what, exactly, was being sacrificed atop the stone slap. “Phoenicians back then worshipped Baal. To please Baal, they offered human sacrifice—usually children captured in battle, but sometimes their own babies.”
Amanda wrapped her arms around herself. “Giants and children being sacrificed. Sounds like a Grimm fairy tale. It’s a wonder children ever fall asleep.” She focused back on her computer screen, to the translation of the Grave Creek burial inscription. “So you think our boy King Tasach was a Phoenician giant?”
Cam nodded. “Or a descendant of one. In fact, the name ‘Tasach’ is a derivative of the Semitic name, ‘Isaac.’ And whoever Tasach was, he and his family brought with them their burial customs, which explains all the burial mounds and the Egyptian-like burial practices.”
“And all the giant skeletons.” She stood. “I don’t know if we have the story right, Cam, but the dates work and the idea of King Tasach and the other giants coming from Phoenicia holds together. It explains the mounds, the skeletons, the inscriptions, the funereal objects, the Native American legends, the Book of Mormon, the Sacrificial Stone, everything.”
“Not everything.” He smiled. “It doesn’t explain the coverup.”
Randall and his daughter walked hand-in-hand through the library, past the pair of giant marble lions standing guard on the grand stairwell, and out onto Boylston Street. “May I walk with you a bit longer?” he asked. He did not want to let her go.
“Is it safe?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Either we were followed or we were not. I doubt another ten minutes together will change anything.”
She smiled and slid her arm around his and leaned into him. “My group is meeting at Quincy Market for dinner.” She turned to him. “I must say, you Americans do eat well. So many choices!”
“Yes. And the Romans ate well also, just before their empire fell. I fear we spend too much time feeding our mouths and not enough feeding our brains.”
He guided her down Boylston Street, past Trinity Church and the Hancock Tower. She stopped to snap a picture. “I love the way the reflection of the old church is captured in the mirrored walls of the office tower. Boston is a beautiful city.” She turned to face him. “And I would like a picture of you, if that is okay.” She smiled. “The one Mama has is a bit old.”
He nodded, straightened his hair and lifted his chin. Then he in turn took her picture with his cell phone. They continued along, taking a right on Commonwealth and retracing his steps from this morning. Eight hours had passed; in that time he had gained a daughter, a grandson and a mission.
“This assignment of mine,” he said. “Are there any sp
ecifics?” His mind had already begun to focus on his task; his first step would be to plumb Cameron Thorne for information about the friend he mentioned who worked on Lovecroft’s campaign.
She exhaled. “No. We leave it up to you.”
He nodded. At his age it might be asking a lot for him to assassinate a Presidential candidate; on the other hand, it was not like he would be sacrificing a bright future if he got caught. What was that expression? You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice. In some ways old age could be liberating—he could take some risks, pursue this mission without a parachute.
Randall questioned his daughter. “Regarding Lovecroft, do you really feel he would invade Cuba?” He had made the comment a couple of decades ago, as a young Congressman—perhaps his position had changed or the man had tempered his passion as he aged.
Her hand tightened on his forearm. “Obviously this is not my area of expertise. But the Cuban government believes the threat is real. Lovecroft used the words, ‘modern-day Crusade.’” She made a face. “As if we poor Cubans need our souls to be saved by some … American politician.”
Randall smiled. He wasn’t sure what was worse in Morgana’s mind—the American part or the politician part. “Politicians often say things they do not mean.”
She stopped and looked up at him. “Yes, that is true. But I think this Senator Lovecroft said exactly what he meant to say. Since then, he has been more careful. But his words tell us what is in his heart. And his heart is black.”
Not black so much as misguided. Did Lovecroft really think forcing religion down Cuba’s throat was a wise strategy? Had he not studied history? How many people had died in the name of God? If Lovecroft did not understand this, perhaps he was not smart enough to be elected in the first place. Or perhaps, more likely, Lovecroft was playing the Cuban invasion card as a way to curry favor with certain groups of American voters. But there was no sense in getting into a philosophical discussion now with his daughter.
The Oath of Nimrod: Giants, MK-Ultra and the Smithsonian Coverup (Book #4 in Templars in America Series) Page 20
