Cam sat in traffic on the Zakim Bridge after finally leaving his lawyer’s office. It was close to seven on Thursday evening—he had missed Astarte’s soccer game so was in no rush to get home. Amanda and he had tried to keep the family routine unchanged for Astarte’s sake, but their home—once ringing with laughter—had turned cold and austere. Even Venus seemed to notice.
“When rush hour traffic is preferable to dinner with the family, things really suck,” he murmured. He eyed the harbor in the distance—bad as things were, at least he wasn’t still in that dumpster.
Five minutes later his cell rang. The detective agency he had hired to analyze the photos. “This is Cam.”
“Mr. Thorne, we have the results back on those images.”
“And?”
“Inconclusive. They might have been doctored, but we can’t say for sure. If they were altered, the work was done by someone fairly sophisticated.”
“Can you email us your report?”
“Email to both addresses?”
In an effort to be fully transparent, he had given the agency Amanda’s email as well. “Yes, both addresses.” Not that it would help much. But the way things had been going for him lately, ‘inconclusive’ qualified as good news.
Amanda nibbled on her salad while Astarte worked on her third slice of pizza. Cam was stuck in traffic and told them to eat without him. “Hungry tonight, huh?”
The girl nodded. “It was a long game.”
Amanda studied her across the kitchen table. She was growing again. And like all thoughts and feelings and realizations over the past week, this observation boomeranged right back to Cameron. Would Amanda be around to watch Astarte grow? Would the court allow the adoption if Amanda and Cam split up? And would Amanda have to fight Cam for custody of the girl if so? Amanda stabbed at a tomato, cursing as it squirted away and bounced to the floor where Venus sucked it up.
“It’s just a tomato, Mum,” Astarte said.
Amanda exhaled. “I’m sorry. I have a headache.”
“Is that why Campadre is sleeping in the basement?”
Amanda took a bite to buy a few seconds. “Yes, honey. I’ve not been sleeping well because of Cameron’s snoring, which is making the headaches worse.”
An email chimed on her tablet, saving her from a follow-up question. The report from the detective agency. Amanda’s eyes raced across it, hoping it contained the lifeline she so desperately wanted. “Blah, blah, blah,” she murmured, sinking back in her chair.
“What?” Astarte asked.
“Nothing. Have your dessert and then run up to shower.”
In retrospect, Amanda should have chosen the experts to examine the photos. This report was inconclusive, as useless as a chocolate teapot. If the photos were real, as she had to assume, Cam had a vested interest in using an unsophisticated agency that would reach an inconclusive verdict rather than a proficient one that might decree the photos authentic.
So they were no closer to a resolution. She had agreed to help him find his—or their—unseen enemies. She owed him that much. She owed them that much. If perchance he was telling the truth, however remote that possibility might be, the stakes were such that she needed to give him the opportunity to prove it.
Amanda was fairly certain he had never cheated before. But she would not be one of those women who stubbornly believed it was not happening to her. First his desire to postpone the wedding. Then his sudden decision to stay overnight in Washington. Then the incriminating pictures. She sighed. She really did have a headache.
Cam awoke Friday looking forward to his day for the first time all week. He was done with the lawyers for now, which meant he could turn back to his research and, more importantly, the question of who had decided to make him their personal pin cushion. The theory that someone would deed him the property and then send the photos as a way to stop or somehow influence his research made little sense. It was convoluted and potentially inefficient. But it was the only theory he had.
After having breakfast with Astarte and walking her to the bus stop, he headed to his Westford office. On the way he phoned Zuberi’s office to ask if the Egyptian might be available for a video conference. His secretary returned to him after a slight pause. “Mr. Youssef will be available in forty-five minutes. Is that acceptable to you?”
In his office, he initiated the conference at the scheduled time.
“Hello, Cameron,” the Egyptian bellowed in his familiar manner, the accent again hard on the first syllable of Cam’s name.
After pleasantries Cam cleared his throat and waited until Zuberi looked straight into the camera. “I know it was you that sent the photos to Amanda.”
Cam had suggested a video call because he wanted to judge Zuberi’s reaction. But the man’s face was inscrutable. “I am sorry, did you say photos? Like pictures?”
“Yes. But it was a sloppy job. The envelope they came in is from Great Britain. That size envelope is not sold in the U.S.”
Zuberi smiled and nodded, his eyes alive. “I am not little boy selling fruit at bus stop, Cameron. I know a bluff when I see one. We have saying in Egypt; let me find English translation.” He tapped at his computer with his good hand. “Here it is: Lie to a liar, for lies are his coin; steal from a thief, for that is easy; lay a trap for a trickster and catch him at first attempt; but beware of an honest man. I am honest man, Cameron. That is why people fear me. Not because I am liar or thief or trickster.”
Cam nodded. It was not exactly a denial, but nor did Cam have a shred of evidence that Zuberi had sent the photos. In fact, Cam thought it unlikely, and the lack of even a flicker or guilt in Zuberi’s eyes seemed to confirm it.
“Thank you, Zuberi. And I believe you. I hope you are not offended.”
The man shrugged. “I do business all over world. Every day is new insult. But what is this about photos?”
Cam briefly explained the situation.
“I understand why you accuse me, to try to get my reaction. This is dirty business, when enemy attacks your home. I hope you find dog who did this.”
“I do have another reason for this conversation. You said half of my salary would be for writing another book. My research is coming along nicely; I’ve already started outlining.” And I’m low on cash. “Do you mind if I publish it early, or does it have to be at the end of the academic year?”
“Excellent! Earlier is better,” he said, rubbing his bald head. “What is about this book?”
Cam summarized his research on the beehive chambers in and around New England, his belief they were built by Irish monks and Druids from the 6th century, and the ties between the Druids, the Egyptians, and the Freemasons.
“So you think Egyptians involved?”
“I actually think the Druids descended from the Egyptian priests.”
“Maybe Egyptians discover America in addition to Scotland,” he laughed, his dark eyes boring into Cam’s from across the ocean. “Can you send outline to me?”
Cam wasn’t surprised this excited Zuberi. “Sure thing. I’ll send you what I have, then next week I should have the entire outline finished.” He wanted to time things so royalties began to flow as soon as the Superfund litigation was resolved, but not before.
He disconnected and exhaled. Slowly he was beginning to put his financial affairs in order. He wished he could say the same for his family life.
By mid-morning he had put out a few brush fires and, still at his office, was organizing the notes for his manuscript. He had established a clear connection between the Freemasons and the Druids, and between both groups and the ancient Egyptians. The common thread seemed to be sun worship. That’s where he turned.
His research quickly led him to the Pharaoh Akhenaton. Prior to Akhenaton’s reign in the 14th century BC, the sun god was one of many gods worshipped by the Egyptians. Akhenaton tried to change that, elevating Aton, the god of the sun, to prime and exclusive status. This attempt by Akhenaton (meaning “Worshipper of Aton,” a name he ad
opted after taking the throne) was opposed by the many priests loyal to other gods and also by much of the populace. Eventually this attempt at monotheism, one of the first in recorded history, failed and Akhenaton was forced from power.
When Cam dove down the monotheism rabbit hole, he was surprised to find the psychologist Sigmund Freud waiting for him at the bottom. Freud, in the 1930s, theorized that the story of Moses as told in the Old Testament had been glorified. The real story, Freud believed, was that Moses—having been raised by the Egyptian royal family—had grown to become a priest in Akhenaton’s temple to Aton and had been forced to flee Egypt along with Akhenaton’s other followers when Akhenaton was deposed. It is this experience with monotheism, Freud argued, that made him a natural leader of the monotheistic Israelis as they fled Egypt during the Exodus.
Freud’s theory, upon closer examination, had some holes in it—chiefly, why would Moses, a Jew, be an Egyptian priest? The holes closed up nicely when modern scholars began to propose that the monotheistic religion Akhenaton had been promoting—the worship of Aton—was itself actually an early form of Judaism. The Jews used the name Adonai for God, a name linguists concluded was identical in its roots to the name Aton. Somehow, the historians claimed, Akhenaton had combined sun worship with Judaism and its monotheism, most likely with the help and guidance of the priest Moses.
Cam had been at his computer for a few hours. He sat back and reflected on this revelation. Normally he would call Amanda and discuss things with her. Instead he decided to go for a quick lunchtime jog.
Changing into the running clothes he left in the office, he stretched quickly and exited his office near the Town Common. Angling to a path opposite Town Hall, he found himself on the Tom Paul trail, a path lined with stone walls snaking through wooded areas in the center of town. His thoughts turned back to Moses.
A couple of things about the Exodus story as told in the Old Testament had always bothered him. First, the story of a royal princess taking in the baby Moses, the son of a slave, made no sense. It was more likely, Cam believed, that Moses was an Egyptian baby of noble birth—in fact, the name Moses was an Egyptian one, not Hebrew. Second, if the Israelites had all been slaves, how did they possess such a large stash of gold that the Pharaoh risked the renewed wrath of God to chase them across the desert for it? The Old Testament claimed the people of Egypt proffered the gold to the Israelites as back wages—but since when did slaves receive wages? Furthermore, the Israelites were the Pharaoh’s slaves, so why would the people of Egypt be paying their back wages in any event? Cam was hardly a Biblical scholar, but he had easily been able to poke two gaping holes in the Exodus story. It stood to reason there were others.
Following the trail, Cam leapt across a small stream, his shoes splashing in the swampy ground on the far bank. He continued on, about a mile in total, before turning to retrace his steps. As he spun, he caught a glimpse of a figure ducking behind an oak tree from the direction he had just come. Someone had been following him, he guessed, and hadn’t expected him to reverse course so quickly. Fingers tingling as adrenaline pumped through his body, he considered his options. He possessed the element of surprise, so why not keep it?
Averting his eyes from the oak tree, Cam ran past, hoping to lull his tail into a false sense of security. Picking up the pace a bit, he passed a pond and came to a sharp jog in the trail. Accelerating further, he cut right at the jog. But rather than follow the trail with a sharp left, he pushed through the brush into the woods. And waited.
He estimated he had probably a hundred-yard head start on his pursuit. Twenty-five seconds at a fast jog. Fighting to control his breathing, Cam counted to fifteen and peered out. Nothing. He waited another dozen seconds, scanning the trail, wondering who was following and, after another ten seconds, whether they had given up the chase…
A pair of strong hands shoved Cam’s head against the tree, pinning him. “Don’t move,” the voice snarled. A bit of a foreign accent. French, maybe. “Wrap both arms around the tree, and don’t scream.” One arm slid around Cam’s throat. “I could snap your neck with a single twist of my arm.”
Cam fought to breathe. “Okay,” he gasped. In a perverse way, he was almost relieved. Finally, his enemy had revealed himself. And if they wanted Cam dead, he’d be dead already. Or so Cam hoped. “What do you want?”
“Answers. What happened to Raptor?”
Cam blinked. The man’s breath smelled of tuna fish, which Cam realized was a strange thing to notice given the circumstances. “Who?”
“The man who was following you down in Connecticut.” There was anger in the man’s voice; this was personal.
Cam tried to turn his head to look at his captor, but the man’s grip tightened. “I didn’t know anyone was following us.”
“Don’t lie to me.” He twisted Cam’s head, bending his neck awkwardly. It suddenly occurred to Cam that he might only be kept alive long enough to answer these questions. He looked around, hoping to find some kind of weapon. As if sensing his thoughts, his captor’s grip tightened even further. Cam grew lightheaded and his knees began to buckle.
“I … can’t … br—”
Through a fog, Cam heard a thud and felt the choke hold slacken. Cam staggered forward and, as if in slow motion, dropped to his knees. As he did so, his captor collapsed atop him, both of them tumbling into the underbrush. Cam heard footsteps scurrying deeper into the woods, but his primary focus was to get away from his captor. Rolling, he extricated himself and, using the tree for support, stood. A grapefruit-sized rock lay on the ground nearby, apparently where it had ricocheted after making contact with his enemy’s head.
Cam reached down and put his hand near the man’s nose. Still breathing. Which was almost more than Cam could say about himself. Cam rolled him onto his back and checked his pockets for identification. Not finding any, Cam scanned the woods and the trail. Nothing. Yet. Time to get out of here before yet a third surprise visitor appeared.
Finally able to fill his lungs with air, he sprinted the mile back to the office.
Back in his office, Cam phoned Amanda and described his encounter. He was pleasantly surprised to hear the concern in her voice.
“Are you sure you’re not hurt?”
“No. I mean yes. I’m fine. But I’m not sure about the guy in the woods. I stopped at the police station and told them about it. They’re checking for him now. And they’re also sending a car over to watch our house.” He paused. “And I called an alarm company. They’re coming tomorrow morning to install an alarm system, assuming you’re okay with it.”
“Roger that. But Cam, who was the bloke?”
“The guy who grabbed me, or the guy who rescued me?”
“Both. Either.”
“I don’t know. The guy who grabbed me had an accent, heavy-set, forties. I didn’t see the other guy. I’m guessing it was the guy I first saw when I did my U-turn. The guy I was hiding from.”
“Someone with some training, it sounds like.”
“Yeah. Whoever it was snuck up on us without being heard.”
“What about that guy who sent the email? Your guardian angel?”
Cam had forgotten about him. “Could be. But that doesn’t tell us who attacked me.”
“Cam, I’m sorry but I need to run. Astarte will be getting off the bus soon, and this makes me even more nervous. When are you coming home?”
“Yes, go get Astarte. I have a conference call at four, so I’ll be home around five.” He paused. “Thanks for asking.”
She exhaled. “Yes, well, I’m glad you’re not hurt. Goodbye.”
Cam showered, rotating his sore neck in the hot water, then took a call from the police telling him they didn’t find anyone in the woods. He paced around his office, unable to focus on his law work. Who the hell is Raptor? It sounded like a name from a video game or something. Cam didn’t know if his attacker intended to kill him or not, but there was no doubt about one thing: He could have done the job if he wanted to
. He rotated his neck again. What a shitty week.
But it all came back to the same reality: Someone, for some reason, was trying to keep him from his research. And, for now, the only way to oppose them was to forge on. With an hour-and-a-half to kill before his conference call, he turned back to his stack of books.
Burrowing even deeper into the Egyptian rabbit hole, searching for more information about Moses and Akhenaton, Cam’s eyes flew from the pages of his reference books to websites and back again while his writing hand scribbled notes. One source led to another, then to a third. Deeper he dug, making connections that never could have been made before the days of the Internet.
Patterns began to appear, and with them answers. Answers that would be controversial and disturbing. The back of his neck burned: Ideas that were controversial and disturbing were the types of things that sparked anger and aggression.
He scratched the explosive words onto his legal pad, finally able to see at least part way around the corner:
Moses and Pharaoh Akhenaton were the same person?!?
Perhaps he was getting closer to finding a motive for the attacks on him.
Working from his notes, he outlined the reasons for such a divisive and far-fetched conclusion.
First and foremost, the concept of monotheism inextricably tied Moses to Akhenaton. At no time in history prior to the mid-14th century BC had mankind conceptualized the idea of a single deity. Rather, every ancient culture subscribed to a belief set involving a pantheon of gods, each god having jurisdiction over a particular aspect of life—fertility, rain, war, crops, disease, etc. Then, almost as if by magic, after thousands of years, the radical idea of a single omnipotent God appeared out of the sands of Egypt in the mid-14th century BC. Twice. Cam shook his head. That was not the way the world worked. Radical ideas occurred rarely because they were, well, radical. It was far more likely that one man (Abraham) had a eureka moment which a second man (Akhenaton) later adopted. And the obvious link between Abraham and Akhenaton was Moses.
Second, the history of Akhenaton’s childhood largely mirrored that of Moses. Akhenaton’s older brother had been murdered by rivals to the throne, so his mother Queen Tiyee sent the baby Akhenaton—whose life as the oldest living son had now become also at risk—by boat to live with Jewish relatives (Queen Tiyee herself being of Jewish heritage). These relatives raised Akhenaton as their own in the queen’s summer palace in Goshen. The similarities between this history and the Biblical story of Moses were striking: Also born in Goshen, Moses was floated down the river to the royal palace by a mother who feared that, as the oldest son, his life was in danger.
The Isaac Question: Templars and the Secret of the Old Testament (Templars in America Series Book 5) Page 16
