The Isaac Question: Templars and the Secret of the Old Testament (Templars in America Series Book 5)

by David S. Brody

  Cam handed the file back to the clerk. “Can you tell me if the taxes are current?” One possibility was that the owner was so far in arrears on the taxes that the property was essentially worthless. The clerk, an elderly man wearing a blue blazer with a Freemason’s pin, nodded and stabbed at his computer keyboard. Often the elderly were allowed to offset their tax bills by doing volunteer work. “They are paid up through last quarter. The next payment is due June 1, just over a thousand dollars.”

  Over the next few weeks Cam would need to decide whether to pay them or not. “Can you print out a copy of the bill?”

  “Sorry, the printer is on the fritz. If you give me your name I can mail you a copy Monday.”

  “Great. I’m the new owner.” Cam showed him the deed and gave him his name and address. “Thanks.”

  Cam descended the stairs and found the Town Clerk’s office. “I was wondering about the old Middlesex Semiconductor property. I noticed it’s fenced off and the building is torn down.”

  A tall, straight-backed woman wearing a light blue cardigan nodded. Pushing sixty, she had a no-nonsense way about her that reminded Cam of a high school vice-principal. Behind her the three desks in the office were free of clutter and the room otherwise immaculate. “Presumably it is fenced off to keep people out,” she sniffed.

  He tried a different tact. Sometimes immaculate people liked lawyers, perhaps because of the presumed orderly nature of their work. He wished he was not wearing jeans and a tennis shirt. “I am an attorney and I have a client, a developer, who asked me to check into this property for him.”

  She softened a bit. “The man who owned the company died a few years ago. His widow sold out to a British company last fall, but they fired all the workers, shut the place down and demolished the building after only a couple of weeks.”

  “Any idea why?”

  “The explanation I heard was that they only bought it to get rid of their competition; apparently Middlesex had developed some expertise in a certain kind of semiconductor. By shutting them down, they removed their main competitor.”

  Cam nodded. That made some sense, at least. But it did nothing to explain how the property ended up in his lap. “Has the new owner tried to sell the property?”

  She shrugged. A wall clock ticked loudly high on the wall behind her. “I have not seen a For Sale sign posted.”

  “But why knock down the buildings?” he asked, more to himself than to the clerk.

  “I heard they stripped the buildings before they demolished them, took all the high-tech machinery out. I do know they did not bother to apply for a demolition permit. The town fined them five thousand dollars.”

  “Okay, thanks for your time.” Maybe once stripped the buildings had little value. Or maybe the owner planned to redevelop the property. But then why give it away? He began to walk away but turned back with a final question. “Is there anything else at all you can tell me about the property? Anything you might have heard, rumors or such?” His years practicing law had taught him that sometimes the ‘catch-all’ question actually caught something.

  The clerk crossed her arms in front of her chest and blinked three times in rapid succession as her cheeks reddened. “I beg your pardon, but I am not one to spread rumors.” She spun away. “Good day to you.”

  Cam watched her back; his own back tingled, a familiar sensation that often portended danger. She may not be one to spread rumors, but as the town clerk she was in an ideal position to hear them.

  After dropping off his son Zuberi drove to the Brandeis campus and found a quiet, shaded spot at the edge of the parking lot to unroll his prayer rug. He had an hour before his meeting. Turning the prayer rug so it faced just south of east, toward Mecca, he supplicated himself.

  The wooly, dusty smell of the rug comforted him. Every rug’s design uniquely reflected its owner’s village—Zuberi’s rug featured a royal blue image of his local mosque set on a silver background. The rug carried the aromas of home with it as well. When Bennu was small, she used to climb on the rug to pray with him—she told him the rug smelled like a wet camel. He smiled at the memory and wondered how his little bird (Bennu being the Arabic word for heron) had turned into such a spoiled brat of a teenager. Actually, he knew the answer: Her mother had died in a car accident when she was seven and her father had dragged the family from Cairo to Scotland, and then remarried. He sighed. He did not miss his first wife. Theirs had been a loveless marriage, arranged by their parents; she was a hairy, malodorous bear of a woman who knew nothing about business and cared even less. But the children, especially Bennu, missed their mother. He sighed again. Perhaps his bird might still soar someday.

  He rubbed his smooth head, trying to clear his mind and focus on his prayers. He was not a religious man—the idea of some omnipotent god sitting in heaven micromanaging life on earth seemed ludicrous to him. Yet the spark of life must have come from somewhere, and the scientific theory that life began in some primordial soup when a couple of molecules bounced into each other seemed equally ludicrous. In the end, he prayed not because he believed anyone was listening but because it settled him, focused him. His prayer was a simple one: Give me strength to be the best I can be.

  Five minutes later he opened his eyes, brushed the dust from the knees of his gray suit, rolled up the rug with his one good arm and retrieved his briefcase from the Cadillac. He was fortunate to have a son who would inherit his business—in today’s world, he knew, it was not always so. Nasser, in fact, wanted only to race fast cars and chase fast women. And there had been a time he was not so certain about Amon—the boy did not necessarily have the ruthlessness or cunning needed to be a successful businessman.

  “Must I work in the family business, Father?” the young Amon had asked, his large brown eyes wide with innocence.

  Zuberi had smiled even as his heart clenched. “No, my son. If a man’s future was governed by his origins, no bird that came from an egg would ever fly.”

  “But can I work with you if I choose to?”

  “Yes, of course.” He had smiled. “But if you choose to fly with me,”—and, looking back, he now realized he had been mixing his metaphors—“you must promise to fly as high and far as possible.”

  Now, in one of life’s strange twists, they had flown together to suburban Boston, to the largest Jewish university in the Western world. In a few minutes Zuberi would be meeting with the chair of the History Department and some dean with a fancy title. He had a proposal for them, and he was prepared to put some dollar signs behind it.

  In truth, it was his wife’s proposal. He had remarried a few years ago, three years after moving to Edinburgh, the marriage more of a business arrangement than a love affair. Many generations had passed since Carrington McLeod Sinclair’s family could count themselves among the landed gentry of eastern Scotland. She was, in fact, the daughter of a chemist and a taxi driver—the family’s modern-day claim to fame was that Carrington’s mother had been part of the team that cloned Dolly the sheep at the Roslin Institute in 1996. But the Sinclair name still carried cache in Scotland, and Zuberi understood that certain doors were open to a Sinclair that would not open for an Egyptian named Zuberi Youssef. She, in turn, longed to take her place atop Scottish society, which was why she had kept her mother’s Sinclair surname while dropping McLeod after the marriage, becoming Carrington Sinclair-Youssef. Their union was not one of physical affection, but a certain level of fondness between the two had developed—a pleasant surprise to Zuberi after his first marriage. And a bonus. It was never a bad thing to get more than one bargained for.

  There were some in the Sinclair family, Zuberi knew, who compared his marriage to Carrington to that of Mohamed al-Fayed’s efforts to marry his son Dodi to Princess Diana back in the 1990s. There were some similarities, of course, but al-Fayed had made the mistake of allowing his pride and his emotions to blind his judgment—marrying his son to the princess had become an obsession with Mohamed, one that eventually took Dodi from him. Z
uberi had not aimed as high. Nor had he paid such a high price. As a business associate and countryman of al-Fayed, Zuberi had attended Dodi’s funeral, hugged the grieving father, even shed tears with him. Dodi’s death was a loss not just to his family but to all Egyptians, a missed opportunity to enter the inner circle of European society and power. Zuberi’s marriage to Carrington did not allow him access to that inner circle, but it brought him a few steps closer. And he and Carrington had plans to shoulder their way even nearer.

  He phoned her in Edinburgh as he walked. “Hello husband,” she answered. “Have you settled Amon?”

  “Yes. My son is agreeable, as always. How is Bennu today?” He knew better than to ask about Nasser—the boy was on some yacht in the Greek Isles.

  Carrington exhaled a short laugh. “Another crisis. A boy invited her to the school dance, but then his parents forbade it.”

  Zuberi gritted his teeth, the back of his neck burning. “Why?”

  “You know why, Zuberi. And Bennu knows why also. She has locked herself in her bedroom.”

  He chortled. When he was a child, his entire family lived in a two-room, mud-brick home. There was no bedroom to lock oneself in. The house Carrington had insisted on purchasing—a renovated castle overlooking the city, once owned by the family that produced Drambuie liqueur—had more rooms than he could count, plus another entire building for the servants.

  His wife continued. “She claims she won’t come out unless you agree to move back to Cairo. She has already missed her dinner.”

  He stopped and leaned against a tree, the sun on his face. Scotland was a liberal, open-minded country, but remnants of the old-time landed gentry still continued to socialize only with each other. “These noble families forget Scotland was settled first by Egyptians.” Scota, after whom Scotland was named, was in fact the daughter of a Pharaoh. “It is Bennu who should be … what is your expression … looking down her nose to them.”

  “Yes, well, someday that might be the case. But for now her nose is buried in a pillow.”

  He kicked the tree. Zuberi spent almost as much time worrying about his daughter as he did his business. Carrington knew better than to try to play the mother role with the girl—reaching out to her would only push the girl further away, like a child swimming after a beach ball in the ocean. She allowed Zuberi, and the governess he had hired, to raise the girl. She played the role of a concerned, but properly distant, aunt. “I am at Brandeis now, heading into the meeting,” he said.

  In this matter, unlike in the parenting of Bennu, Carrington took an active role. “Any word yet from Cameron Thorne?”

  “No. I call him when I hang up with you.”

  “We need him, I believe. I watched a video of him giving a lecture at a conference—he is very compelling. And he is becoming well-known based on his book. Be persistent, Zuberi.”

  He chuckled softly; his wife had no idea how persuasive he could be. “I plan honey and vinegar both to catch this bee.”

  “But Mr. Thorne is of no use to us if Brandeis turns us down.”

  He laughed again. “Before I phone you I go to Brandeis website to look at course catalog for next fall. They have class called ‘European History of America Prior to Columbus’ listed.”

  Her laugh met his. “Already? Before we’ve even come to an agreement?”

  “They need to put in catalog in April when students choose classes.” But it gave Zuberi a free look at Brandeis’ hand.

  “Have you settled on a figure?” Carrington asked.

  “I will begin with million dollars. From what I read, Brandeis has financial problems. A few years ago they try to sell their art collection—the students and faculty object, but the money problems continue.”

  “Is a million enough?”

  “Perhaps no. But we know now they are already committed. I will hint at more money in future. And I can negotiate always higher.”

  “The benefits to our family, and to your business, could be many times that.”

  He smiled. “This I know. And to you I give thanks, my wife. I will phone you after meeting.”

  The certified mail notice had arrived at their house on Tuesday. Cam had been carrying it around in his wallet for three days—as a lawyer, he understood that certified mail was often used for mundane matters as well as important ones. Only today, after leaving Groton Town Hall, did he have time to swing by the post office to sign for the letter.

  As he pulled into the parking lot his phone chimed. While driving through a dead zone he had missed a call from Zuberi Youssef. Cam smiled at the memory of the strong-willed Egyptian. He and Amanda had met Zuberi and his wife Carrington last October; they were visiting from Scotland and arranged through friends for Cam to show them the Westford Knight carving. Cam had shown the carving to hundreds of visitors over the years. But he would never forget that blustery, Columbus Day weekend.

  Nor the ironic significance attached to the timing of their discovery.

  He smiled as he replayed the scene in his mind:

  Cam squatted and splashed a few ounces of water on the battle sword carved into the bedrock. A cold fall wind blew across the hill as the sun dropped to the horizon in the western sky, numbing Cam’s moistened fingers. The visitors from Scotland—a husband and wife—bent low over him.

  “How old do you think the carving is?” the man asked. In his mid-forties, Zuberi Youssef spoke with a Middle-Eastern accent. He had only a stump for one arm; he dragged on a cigarette using the other, his dark eyes locked onto Cam.

  Cam waited for a truck to pass; the carving was located atop a hill along an ancient Native American trail which in modern times had grown into a main thoroughfare in town. “The legend is that Prince Henry Sinclair came to North America in 1398.” Cam smiled. “I know that’s not very old in European terms, but for us it sets the clock back a hundred years.”

  Using an old rag, Cam spread the water over the entire face of the carving and dabbed the excess away. Stone carvings were best viewed at night, using low angle light after moistening the rock. He held his flashlight low to the bedrock and maneuvered his body to block the streetlight. The outline of a battle sword jumped off the rock.

  “Now I see it clearly,” the woman exclaimed. She looked to be a decade younger than her husband, though she was one of those people who seemed to have morphed from teenager directly to middle-age; at one point she pulled a tissue out of the sleeve of her cardigan sweater, the way Cam’s grandmother used to do. A Sinclair herself, Carrington outlined the sword with her finger as Cam snapped a picture with his new camera, focusing on the pommel, hilt and cross guard of the weapon.

  Sword from Westford Knight Carving

  “It’s a two-handed battle sword,” Cam explained. “Like a claymore.”

  The woman smiled. She was not pretty, but her face—pink-cheeked from the cold—was friendly and her eyes intelligent. “Like in that horrible movie, Braveheart,” she said. “The film was a load of bollocks, but at least the history was spot on: The Sinclairs fought alongside William Wallace and later with Robert the Bruce at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314.”

  Cam nodded. Legend held that the outlawed Knights Templar also fought on the side of the Scots against the English that day, ensuring victory and eventually leading to Scottish independence.

  Carrington added, “Prince Henry possessed a fleet of ships in the Orkney Islands, where he ruled. And his mum was a Norsewoman, so he certainly knew the tales of the old Viking journeys across the North Atlantic. He probably even had some old maps.”

  Zuberi rubbed his bald head. “I see sword, but I do not see knight.”

  Cam nodded again. “Much of the carving has faded over time.” He pulled a photo from his pack. “This is a rubbing that was done about twenty years ago. It shows the knight as he once looked.” The knight was purportedly one of Sinclair’s men, Sir James Gunn, who died during the exploration.

  Rubbing of Westford Knight Carving

  Zuberi grunted. Cam wonder
ed how much he was just indulging his wife by visiting the site, though he didn’t seem the type to defer to her much. “How can you be certain carving is old?”

  “It was written about in the 1870s in a town history,” Cam replied. “Even then it was considered a historical mystery of unknown origin, attributed to the Indians. But the Native Americans did not have iron tools needed to peck into the hard bedrock.”

  Cam splashed more water on a scratched area above and to the right of the sword’s pommel and held his flashlight low, his free hand in his pocket to keep warm. “This gives us a good comparison. It was carved in the 1870s by some local boys—they thought it would be fun to give our dead knight a pipe to smoke.” He smiled. “So they scratched one into the rock with a knife.”

  “Peace Pipe” on Westford Knight Carving

  “It looks more like toothbrush than pipe,” Zuberi said, pointing at the series of parallel vertical scratch marks.

  Cam nodded. “It does, yes. But it also helps with the dating question. Since we know the pipe was added about 140 years ago, we can analyze the weathering patterns within the carved surfaces of the pipe and compare them to the sword. The weathering on the sword is significantly older, again pointing to a much earlier date.”

  Zuberi again grunted noncommittally while Cam and Carrington studied the head area. After a few seconds, the Middle-Easterner said, “What is this?”

  Cam looked up. Zuberi was pointing to an area near the tip of the sword where Cam had inadvertently spilled some water. “What?” Cam had never seen anything carved in that area.

  Zuberi’s face was inches above the stone. “I see five-pointed star.”

  Cam crab-walked over, flashlight in hand. He peered in and gasped. His first reaction was that his guest was playing some kind of trick on him.