Which begged the question: Where was the marble throne? Not surprisingly, Cam’s old friends the Sinclairs now entered the picture. The family, like the Druids, seemed to pop up in almost every chapter of this saga. Relying on a Scottish history book, Cam learned that in the year 1069 Scottish Queen Margaret appointed Sir William Sinclair as Keeper of the Holy Relics. This position, which the Sinclair family held for centuries thereafter, made the Sinclairs custodians of both the Stone of Destiny and the Bethel Stone, along with the Holy Rood, a piece of the Christ crucifixion cross. The implication was obvious: If anyone knew the location of Akhenaton’s throne, it would be the Sinclairs. And the obvious hiding place, of course, would be the family’s Rosslyn Chapel. All roads seemed to lead back there.
Cam shook his head. From somewhere across the Atlantic he could hear Zuberi chuckling.
Chapter 7
Amon stood at the gate at La Guardia Airport, straining his neck as a swarm of disembarking passengers rolled toward him after their late morning Tuesday arrival. He breathed into his hand, checking his breath. Stale. But what did he expect? His mouth was as dry as camel dung in the desert. He chugged some water and popped an Altoid.
He didn’t remember ever being so nervous. What if she no longer liked him? He had heard numerous stories of love affairs that flamed up in hours and then turned to ash just as quickly. They had spoken every day, usually multiple times, but two weeks had passed since they had seen other, held each other, caressed each other. Would it be the same?
Somehow Rachel spotted him before he saw her, a bright smile and a wave announcing her arrival. He felt his mouth contort itself into a wide grin, like one of those clowns at the circus. What a dork he was. But getting his mouth to close was like trying to put your hand into a flame, his brain powerless to override his body’s reflexive reaction.
And then she was in his arms, her face against his, her eyelashes fluttering against and moistening his cheek. He pulled back and smiled. “Are you crying, Rachel?”
She grinned, her hazel eyes watery. “Sorry. I’m just so happy to see you.”
He kissed her gently on the mouth, lingering, tasting her. He had never wanted to be one of those people who publicly displayed their affection. But he couldn’t help himself. “Come,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”
He took her overnight bag as she looped her arm through his and leaned into him, matching his stride. She sighed. “I’m sort of, like, nervous to see you.”
He stopped. “Really?” he asked, facing her. “Me too. I was worried that what we had was like … magic … or something.”
She flashed a wet, white smile. “It was. It is.”
Five minutes later they were in the back of a cab on their way to a Manhattan hotel. “So,” she said, turning to face him. “I figured we should talk now.” She smiled. “So we don’t have talk when we get to our room.”
He had arrived the night before, splurging for a room at the classic Carlyle Hotel on Madison Avenue near Central Park. “That is a good plan,” he grinned.
She handed him a green file folder. “This is what I found so far. We need to check out this obelisk behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”
“And you think this obelisk will help convince your parents to give approval to our … relationship.”
She kissed him on the mouth, apparently happy with his choice of words. “I don’t know. But we have to try. And we’ll need Professor Thorne’s help also.”
He thumbed through the file as she continued. “Just so you know, I told them I was going to my friend Shannon’s beach house. My mother has an app that lets her track my phone, but she doesn’t know that I know she has it. Shannon’s really going to her beach house, so I gave her my cell phone to take with her.” She held up a cheap disposable phone. “I forwarded all my calls to this. But if my mom tracks me—and I’m sure she will—she’ll think I’m on Lake Michigan.”
Amon chewed his lip. “I don’t like you lying to your parents.”
“I don’t either. But they’re the ones being assholes about this, not us.”
Amon nibbled at her ear, waking Rachel from a dream about him. He smelled fresh—toothpaste and hotel soap and aftershave. “How long have you been awake?” she mumbled.
“I never slept.” He grinned. “I watched you.”
“What time is it?”
“Four.”
They had spent the afternoon in bed. She sat up and stretched. “Give me ten minutes. Then we have work to do.” She smiled. “The sooner we get it done, the sooner we can come back to our room.”
A short walk later, hand in hand in the late afternoon sun, they approached the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Rachel turned left onto a path into Central Park. “We need to go around back behind the Met.”
“Tell me again why this obelisk is important.” He smiled that shy smile of his. “I was a little distracted earlier.”
She took a deep breath. The key was proving a historic connection between the ancient Jews and ancient Egyptians. A familial relationship. Even her parents would be hard-pressed to object to Amon if it turned out the Jews and Egyptians were of the same stock. Actually, that was not true. They still would probably object. But at least she had some ammunition against them. “I was researching the pharaoh, the one Sarah married after Abraham passed her off as his sister. Tuthmosis III. And I figured if Professor Siegel was right, if this pharaoh was Isaacs’ father—the true father of the Jewish people—then he must be important. It made no sense that history just forgot him.”
“Okay.”
The path angled right behind the museum. “So I came across this obelisk. Want to guess who built it?”
“The Freemasons?”
“Good guess, but no. It was built by this pharaoh, Tuthmosis III. The one who married Sarah.”
Amon stopped mid-stride. “But how could that be? You’re talking, like, thirty-five hundred years ago.”
She increased her pace. “That why I was so excited to find it. Somehow the Freemasons got hold of it and brought it to America.”
“When?”
“Around 1880.”
He shook his head. “All the Western countries were stealing our artifacts back then.”
She stopped and looked at him, suddenly realizing the obelisk had special meaning to Amon—it would be like an American seeing the Washington Monument sitting in Gorky Park. She squeezed his hand. “That sucks. And there were two others just like it,” she explained. “One went to Paris and the other to London.”
They walked in silence, rounding a clump of trees. She pointed. “There it is.”
Cleopatra’s Needle, Central Park, NY
They stared up at the seventy-foot-high stone obelisk. “It’s called Cleopatra’s Needle,” she said.
“But Cleopatra lived more than a thousand years after Tuthmosis III.” Amon shook his head. “If they’re going to steal our history, they could at least get the dates right.”
She studied the structure, trying to wrap her head around the fact that it dated back to the time of Abraham and Sarah and the pharaohs, back to the earliest days of the Old Testament. It was likely the oldest extant structure in the entire hemisphere—older than anything from the Incan, Mayan or Aztec civilizations. And here it stood in Central Park, largely ignored.
Amon angled his head. “I still don’t understand why the Freemasons brought it here.”
“I don’t either.” She pulled out her phone. “But they must have had a reason. And I know who might have some answers.”
After his all-night research marathon Saturday night, Cam had slept in on Sunday and spent the afternoon boating with Amanda, Astarte, and some friends, enjoying the lake before the government got around to seizing his 18-foot bowrider. On Monday, Memorial Day, again trying to keep things normal for Astarte, they had gone to see the Red Sox play at Fenway Park. In between family time Cam had fleshed out the outline for Out of Egypt. His lawyers were burning through his money and the government c
ontinued to play hardball. It seemed like the only path back to solvency was to plant a seed now—in the form of a new book—that might bear fruit a few months down the line once the Superfund litigation was behind him.
He had spent Tuesday with his lawyers. Late in the afternoon on his drive home he got a call from Rachel Levitad.
“Professor Thorne,” she said after exchanging pleasantries, “do you think the Freemasons know anything about this Isaac Question?”
“Good question. They seem to know a lot about the ancient Egyptians, so it wouldn’t surprise me. Why do you ask?”
She explained she was in Central Park looking at an obelisk built by Tuthmosis III 3500 years ago.
He pulled into the breakdown lane and put on his hazards. “Wait, what?” Another obelisk?
“It’s called Cleopatra’s Needle. It’s behind the Met. I’m texting you a picture now. In 1880, nine thousand Freemasons marched up Fifth Avenue for the cornerstone ceremony. I didn’t realize Masonry came from Egypt.”
Cam angled his head. “Most people don’t. How did you learn that?”
“I read the speech they gave when they laid the cornerstone. The head guy, the Grand Master, talked all about it.”
Cam shook his head. Randall Sid had made it sound like such a big secret. And Cam himself had to dig around for days to prove the Egyptian connection. But Rachel found it after surfing the Internet for a few minutes. He glanced quickly at the image she sent.
“Rachel, do you know why they picked that location?”
“Actually, nobody does. It was chosen in secret. The guy who was in charge of dragging it across Manhattan said it was the worst possible location.”
Cam smiled. “Not if you’re interested in alignments.”
“Alignments?”
He asked Rachel to pull up Google Earth while he waited. “See if you can find the Masonic Grand Lodge.”
“Got it. On West 23rd Street.”
“Now, if you draw a line from the Lodge to the obelisk, what do you see?” Obviously, any two points would connect, but Cam was looking for something more significant.
“Well, for one thing, the line runs parallel to all the north-south avenues of Manhattan.”
“Good, that makes sense.” He was beginning to learn how to think like the Masons. “They would want the alignment to be in balance with the layout of the city. One more question: When was the Grand Lodge built?”
“1873.”
Cam laughed. “So as soon as the Lodge was built, that’s when they started making plans to get the obelisk.”
“Yes. The planning for Cleopatra’s Needle began in 1877.”
“Please do me a favor and see if there are any other obelisks in Manhattan that are on this line.”
He waited while she navigated around the Google Earth site. “I can see one obelisk already,” she said, “the one in front of Saint Paul’s Chapel near the World Trade Center.” She chuckled. “You’re right, it’s on the same line.”
“I’ll bet you can find others also. That’s why they put the obelisk in the so-called ‘worst possible location’—they had to keep the alignment going.”
“This is cool stuff, Professor. I can’t wait to take your class this fall.” Her voice dropped. “Assuming my parents let me come back.”
“Well, hopefully this will help convince them. Tell me, in your research, did it say anything about why they picked this particular obelisk, from Tuthmosis III?”
“No. Do you think it’s because of the Isaac Question?”
“I wouldn’t doubt it. With the Freemasons, nothing is ever random. They have lots of secrets, and they love to hide them in plain sight. They talk about having ‘eyes that see’—in other words, being educated enough to understand what you’re looking at.”
Cam thanked Rachel and hung up, mulling over what he had just learned as he merged back into rush hour traffic. He had established that the Masons based much of their ritual on the ancient Egyptians, and he had assumed it was because of sun worship. But perhaps it was more complicated than that. Perhaps the Freemasons, like Rachel and her Brandeis professor, had stumbled upon the inconsistencies of the Old Testament and deduced that Isaac was not the son of Abraham but rather the son of Pharaoh Tuthmosis III. If that were the case, erecting an obelisk honoring Tuthmosis III would be perfectly appropriate for a group that, being largely Judeo-Christian, descended from this forgotten patriarch.
Rachel had said that nine thousand Masons marched to commemorate the laying of the obelisk’s cornerstone. Of that group, probably only a handful—the 33rd Degree Brothers—understood the true significance of the monument. The more Cam thought about it the more convinced he became that this was another case of the Freemasons taking their most cherished secrets and, as he explained to Rachel, hiding them in plain sight.
Amanda watched Astarte run into school, a bright smile on her face. Unfortunately the girl’s exuberance was not contagious.
Amanda had mixed feelings about spending the day in the car with Cam. On the one hand, the time they spent researching constituted pretty much the full extent of their quality time together. But it was also a sad reminder of how far they had fallen—a car ride was now as good as it got. No passion, no intimacy, no planning their future together…
Cam stepped away from the passenger side door after cleaning some debris off the floor. He did so almost apologetically, as if he sensed he might be invading her space. “Ready to hit the road?”
She nodded. “As long as we’re back by three.”
The highest concentration of stone chambers in America existed in the Hudson River Valley north of New York City. Dozens of chambers dotted the landscape, themselves only a small percentage of what once stood in the area. So it made sense for Amanda and Cam to make the drive. They had time to visit only a few chambers, but having examined their own Groton chamber, along with the Gungywamp chamber and a few others in Massachusetts Cam had visited, they had a good sense of the things that differentiated the Colonial root cellars from the earlier Druid structures.
Ten minutes later Cam turned onto the highway onramp heading southwest, Venus chewing on a rawhide bone in the backseat. Amanda had not seen Cam much the previous day, and they did not like to discuss Randall Sid’s murder in front of Astarte, so Amanda was a bit in the dark. “Did you hear anything from the Boston police?” she asked.
“Nothing. They probably think I’m a kook. First my dip in the harbor, then this.”
“You don’t think they agree it was a murder?”
Cam shrugged. “All they really have is me saying he was a dirty old man who liked looking up Samantha’s skirt.”
“And the curious fact she disappeared.”
He shrugged again. “You could see where they might assume she was upset and went home.”
“But they would have been remiss not to at least question her.”
“Maybe they did. I’ll follow up with Randall’s Masonic Brothers to see if they’ve heard anything.”
“Speaking of the Masons, can you explain to me this obsession of theirs with the Egyptians? Is it a historical connection, or a religious one?”
“I think it’s more historical, maybe even cultural. I don’t think the Masons really worship the sun. But I do think they admire and trace their history back to people who did. And don’t forget, if they know about this Isaac Question stuff—and based on Cleopatra’s Needle, I think they do—then Pharaoh Tuthmosis III would in their mind be the patriarch of the Judeo-Christian people. The Masons would think of him the same way most people think of the Biblical Abraham.”
She chewed her lip. The Isaac Question revelations could be toxic. “You say it’s not religious. But in some ways it’s very religious—the Isaac Question changes the entire dynamic in the Middle East.”
He nodded. “I agree. But the Masons are coming at it from a historical viewpoint, not a religious one. If anything, the Masons are anti-religious. I read once that Masons believe man is naturally good a
nd does not need religion. Obviously most religions feel the opposite.”
Somehow this ancient Egyptian history had led them thousands of miles west and thousands of years into the future to examine stone chambers in the Hudson Valley…
Amanda stared out the window, letting her mind drift, watching as an endless sea of trees whipped past. American forests, she knew, had been key to attracting European explorers across the Atlantic. Few Americans realized that the Vikings, who needed massive tree trunks to build their ships, had cleared the forests of Scandinavia. When they stumbled upon the soaring woodlands of the New World—an area they named Markland, meaning ‘Forest Land’—they must have been ecstatic at the possibility of an unlimited source of timber.
These kinds of things—the need for timber, land, resources—were what motivated exploration of the New World. These, of course, and religion. It always seemed to come back to religion. Cam’s comment about the Mason’s believing religion not to be necessary dovetailed with her own beliefs. “The thing about religion,” she said, breaking the silence, “is that it puts people on a one-way, dead end street.”
“How so?”
“Just think about it. Religions ask you to believe some truly outlandish things—immaculate conceptions, seas parting, virgins in paradise, reincarnations as a mosquito. Most people, being rational, would normally think it all rubbish. Who would believe such fairy tales?”
“Apparently, lots of people.”
“Exactly. And they believe this bunk because they’ve convinced themselves it must be true. Here’s the thought process: I know I’m not an idiot. I believe in virgin birth. Only an idiot would believe such a thing … unless it were true. Therefore it must be true.”
“Well, what about other people who believe in other religions?”
“Exactly, what about them? Let’s continue the exercise. Since I know my religious beliefs are true, any contrary religious beliefs must be false. And what kind of fools would believe such obvious rubbish?”
The Isaac Question: Templars and the Secret of the Old Testament (Templars in America Series Book 5) Page 21
