by C. M. Palov
Suddenly, a knock sounded at the front door.
Every head in the drawing room had swiveled toward the entry hall. Osman de Léon, a Muslim Ma’min, glanced at the man sitting next to him, Moshe Benaroya, a Jewish Kabbalist. In years past, their friendship would have attracted no notice. That was when they’d both been subjects of Sultan Abdul Hamid, Thessaloniki part of the fabled Ottoman Empire. Before their respective religions had been hermetically sealed off, one from the other, in the aftermath of the first of the world wars.
Of course, as anyone familiar with history knows, those same fierce winds had blown across central Europe five hundred years earlier when Thessaloniki—named for Alexander the Great’s sister—had been conquered by the Turkish sultan, Murad II. In the aftermath of that war, the name of the city was changed to Salonica. When the winds died down, a new era of prosperity and religious tolerance were ushered in as evidenced shortly thereafter when the sultan welcomed to Salonica thousands of Jews who’d been banished from Spain by the radical Catholic monarchs Isabella and Ferdinand. Learned, skilled, and entrepreneurial, the transplanted Sephardi, as they were known, adjusted quickly to life in the Ottoman city.
While the Sephardi businessmen helped Salonica to prosper, it was the Sephardi holy men who made an indelible mark on the “new Jerusalem.” Mystical rabbis, known as Kabbalists, they studied the esoteric secrets embedded within the Hebrew alphabet, convinced that those twenty-two letters, bequeathed to Moses by God, were at the very heart of creation. The mystical Kabbalists of Salonica were renowned the world over and regarded with high esteem by the mystics of the Christian and Muslim faiths.
Until the year 1666, when a Jewish Kabbalist named Sabbatai Zevi proclaimed himself the Messiah.
In the religious frenzy that ensued, thousands of Jews sold their belongings and hitched themselves to the Zevi wagon, certain the end of the world, as prophesied in the book of Ezekiel, was near at hand. The sultan did not take kindly to any of this and had Zevi arrested and sentenced to death. However, being a fair and just ruler, the sultan exercised leniency at the last minute and gave Zevi the opportunity to recant his sins and convert to Islam, thereby saving himself from a sharp scimitar. Not only did Zevi recant, but he also urged his thousands of followers to follow his lead and convert to Islam. Which they willingly did. As only Kabbalists could, these new adherents to the Muslim faith saw their conversion as a redemptive act of gathering up the divine sparks of the universe so they could live a more holy life in the material world. They called themselves Ma’min, the Faithful.
At the turn of the twentieth century there were ten thousand Ma’min in Salonica. A strong, vibrant community that had fused together Sephardic culture and Kabbalistic beliefs, and had wedded those to the Muslim religion. They read the Koran and attended mosque but still contemplated the secret teachings of Moses. As Muslim followers of a Jewish messiah, the Ma’min were the perfect bridge between the two People of the Book. This fluidity of faith extended into their personal lives, the Ma’min intermingling with and intermarrying both Muslims and Jews.
Which is how, in those tumultuous last years of the fin de siècle, a wealthy Ma’min family named de Léon hired a Jewish wet nurse who hailed from the humble Benaroya family. Their respective sons, only three days apart in age, grew up side by side. Milk brothers. So inseparable that one would have been forgiven for thinking they were blood brothers.
No sooner did they reach manhood than the fierce winds blew yet again.
In 1922, in the aftermath of the first Balkan war, Salonica became a Greek domain. Overnight, five hundred years of Ottoman rule ended, the mosques shut down, and the distinctive minarets that pierced the skyline were destroyed. The physical destruction was paltry compared to the human toll—the Greek government heartlessly decreeing that all Muslims be deported to Turkey. Only those with extraordinary circumstances would be exempt. Osman de Léon was one of a handful of Ma’min granted permission to remain in the newly renamed Thessaloniki, having wisely wed a Christian woman from an influential Greek family. And so the two milk brothers, Osman and Moshe, were able to continue the friendship that began in infancy.
The bond strengthened over the next two decades. Although on that spring night in 1943, it was threatened yet again. This time by a fateful knock at the door.
“May it be good news,” Moshe Benaroya murmured, as Cybele scurried to answer the door.
It wasn’t. Not unless one considered it “good” to have an armed SS officer pay his respects.
Rudely refusing the offered cup of coffee, the SS officer at the front door ordered Moshe to leave the house. Since Osman and his family were non-Jews, the SS officer had no interest in them. If he wondered why a wealthy tobacco merchant was hosting an impoverished Jew, he made no mention of it.
“You cannot take him!” Osman had protested, clearly upset. “Moshe Benaroya is my brother!”
The SS officer mirthlessly smiled. “Then you will want to accompany him to the train station.”
A stunned silence ensued. The adults in the room were well aware that it wasn’t a suggestion; it was an order.
Although he was only five years of age, Mercurius intuited that something momentous had just occurred. Running across the drawing room, he threw himself at his father.
Bending at the waist, Osman scooped him up in his arms and held him close. “You must always remember, little one, that you were named for the Bringer of the Light.”
Moshe Benaroya, standing beside them, placed a comforting hand upon his tousled head. “Do not fear the Light, Merkür. For it will lead you to your life’s purpose.”
Osman de Léon never returned from the station. And neither man ever returned from Auschwitz.
As the throng of “passengers” bound for Poland were marched through Plateia Eleftherias—Freedom Square—the citizens of Thessaloniki stood silent. Yes, some cried. And a few helplessly shook their heads as the bedraggled stream of humanity passed before them. But no one raised a gun, a finger, or even a voice in protest.
Mercurius and his mother stood silent with the other bystanders. Terrified, the entire time he’d clutched her leg. Overhead, cotton clouds turned bloodred, saturated with the rays of the setting sun. Day was dying, and he feared a new day would never dawn.
It did. But not before three thousand Jews and one Ma’min Muslim had been tightly packed onto the waiting train, leaving behind their property, their history, and their cherished memories of the “new Jerusalem.”
Over the course of that heartbreaking spring, nearly forty-five thousand Jews from Thessaloniki were transported to Auschwitz. Most, when they first arrived, were handed a bar of soap and sent directly to the “showers.”
Lost in the horrific memory from that long-ago spring night, Mercurius raised the small cup of Turkish coffee to his lips and took a measured sip.
On that fateful day in 1943 when the unexpected knock sounded at the front door, he’d been taught an indelible lesson . . . that evil is birthed in silence.
CHAPTER 13
“I don’t care what the homicide detective told us,” Edie said as she walked into the living room of her Adams Morgan row house. “I’m not buying that it was a crime of passion. It was . . . I don’t know, too much like an execution. An aggrieved lover wouldn’t kill from a distance. A person consumed with jealous rage would have stabbed Jason Lovett thirty or forty times. At least that’s how it always plays out on those true-life crime shows.”
Carrying a brown paper bag, Caedmon followed in her wake. “I, too, am lukewarm to the scenario concocted by the police. However, there’s a possibility that it was an act of violence aimed at the Freemasons. The group has incurred many enemies over the centuries.”
“Again. Doesn’t ring true,” Edie countered, taking the paper bag from him. “The lecture was open to the general public. And if someone was PO’d at the Freemasons, wouldn’t they have gone on a rampage?”
As she spoke, Edie removed several food containers from
the bag and placed them on an oversized bronze platter. Supported underneath by a matched pair of Indian stone elephants, the gigantic platter did double duty as a coffee table. Her next-door neighbor Garrett never failed to mention that her living room looked like the inside of the bottle from I Dream of Jeannie. Caedmon was too much the gentleman to comment. Having spent several weeks at his Paris flat, she knew that he preferred the dark woods and fabrics one expected to find in an English library.
With her free hand, Edie gestured to the plastic containers of sushi and the small sake bottle. “I’ll serve up the fish while you pour the libations.” Garrett had just returned from a business trip to Tokyo and had smuggled a couple of bottles of sake in his luggage. Anxious to give the stuff a test drive, she placed two demitasse cups on the platter next to the cerulean blue bottle.
Caedmon seated himself on the velvet sofa. About to plop down on the sisal carpet, Edie, instead, cocked an ear toward the doorway. Hearing the whhrr and hum of the fax machine, she said, “Sounds like we’ve got an incoming. What do you wanna bet that’s the fax you were expecting?”
“Trent is, if anything, dependable.”
“Stay put. I’ll go check.” Motioning him to remain seated, Edie walked across the hall to her home office. Sure enough, there were several sheets of white paper in front of the fax machine. Earlier in the day, Caedmon had contacted his old group leader at MI5 to request a background dossier on Jason Lovett. Must be nice to have friends in high places.
In addition to the faxed sheets of paper, she snatched her laptop computer before heading back to the living room.
She set the laptop on the sofa, then, holding the fax aloft, said, “Do you want to read it or should I?”
Caedmon’s brow slightly furrowed. “Er, by all means,” he deferred, indicating that she should do the honors.
Seeing that creased forehead, Edie belatedly realized she’d overstepped her bounds. She handed him the faxed sheets of paper. “On second thought, it is addressed to you.”
A tad self-conscious, Edie seated herself on the floor and made a big to-do out of opening the food containers. Stilted interludes like that made her wonder how they were ever going to make a transatlantic relationship work. Because of the lengthy amounts of time spent apart, when they did hook up, it often seemed as if they reverted to square one—the awkward “getting to know you” stage. Off-kilter conversations. Mumbled apologies. Sharing the bathroom! The only time they were in sync was in bed. However, man cannot live by bed alone.
Amused, Edie giggled.
Caedmon glanced up. “Care to share the joke?”
“Nope. So, what’s the scoop on the dearly departed archaeologist? Any deep, dark secrets?”
Setting the fax aside, Caedmon shook his head. “No red flags if that’s what you’re asking. According to the dossier, Jason Lovett had a bachelor’s degree in cartography and two advanced degrees in archaeology. After graduation, he spent some time in Key West working with the Fisher team trying to locate shipwrecked Spanish galleys.”
“Politely put, he was a professional treasure hunter.” Ravenous, she used a chopstick to smear a healthy amount of wasabi on top of several sushi rolls. That done, she opened a packet of soy sauce with her teeth, slathering it over the green-coated rolls. “Which begs the question . . . Do you think the fabled Templar treasure is really as big as Lovett claimed?”
“I don’t know if it would be worth so staggering a sum as a hundred billion dollars. However, if it does exist, the Templar treasure would be sizable,” Caedmon replied, partially validating the dead archaeologist’s outrageous claim. “And if the Templars had the Ark of the Covenant in their possession, the sacred relic would have been smuggled out of France along with the monetary treasure. As you know, I’d give anything to get my hands on the Ark.”
“We are talking about events that occurred seven hundred years ago.”
Edie reached for a California roll. Sushi was one of her favorite take-out meals, probably because she got to eat it with her fingers. Caedmon, on the other hand, veered away from the wasabi, used chopsticks, and always kept a napkin at the ready. Just another reminder that they were polar opposites. The fact that he’d gone to Oxford, and she’d spent time in the foster care system after her junkie mother overdosed, meant they grew up in two different worlds.
No doubt, his highbrow education was the reason why Caedmon sometimes acted with a cerebral detachment. She tended to act on her intuition. Head and heart. She was still trying to figure out whether, together, they made a complete whole. As far as jobs went, though, she thoroughly enjoyed being Caedmon’s research assistant. Never a dull moment.
“I don’t mean to burst your Templar bubble, but the treasure may already have been discovered,” she said, pointing out the obvious.
“The evidence suggests that the treasure has not been found.”
“Really? And what evidence is that?”
Caedmon dabbed at his lip with his paper napkin before answering. “When the Spanish returned from the New World with their ships loaded with Indian gold, silver, and gemstones, the country suffered from massive inflation because of the sudden influx of capital on the Spanish markets. Had the Templar treasure been found, a similar thing would have happened. Since there’s no record of an unexplained capital influx in the European markets, we can safely assume the treasure has not been discovered.”
Edie stared at the digital voice recorder in plain view on top of the bronze platter. “Earlier today, Lovett presented a very fanciful theory. Unless he’s got a map with a big X marks the spot, listening to that thing is going to be a colossal waste of time.”
“Perhaps Dr. Lovett will flesh out his fanciful theory on the voice recorder,” Caedmon countered in a measured tone. “Besides, I have a morbid curiosity. Dead man talking from the grave and all that.”
“Speaking of which, Lovett was out-of-his-mind delirious right before he, um”—she searched for a tactful phrase—“passed over. I didn’t mention it earlier, but he kept repeating the words ‘aqua sanctus.’ ”
“Aqua sanctus . . . how curious. It’s Latin for ‘holy water.’ ” Caedmon reached for the digital voice recorder. “An overly anxious archaeologist babbling in a dead language. This should prove interesting.”
CHAPTER 14
The man behind the wheel of the leased Audi A6 braked to a full stop and cut the ignition. The burned-out streetlamp, suspended from an iron base adorned with paper flyers that gently flapped in the evening breeze, provided a dark pocket in the otherwise well-lit residential neighborhood.
Leaning across to the passenger seat, Saviour Panos opened a hard-sided case. From its depths, he removed a parabolic dish with microphone, a headset, and tape recorder. The same surveillance equipment he’d used to good effect with the archaeologist.
This night he had a different target, his beloved Mercurius anxious to ascertain how much Caedmon Aisquith knew about the massacre site and the Templar treasure.
Acting on a hunch that he’d find the Brit at the police precinct, Saviour had earlier followed the red-haired man from the police station to the row house situated on the other side of the street. To his surprise, the historian was still in the company of the curly-haired woman from the Masonic temple. Curious as to the nature of their relationship, he’d made inquiries of a middle-aged man walking a ridiculously shaved miniature poodle. The gossipy dog owner had been a fount, and Saviour learned that Edie Miller, a photographer by trade, was romantically involved with the British writer, the two having just returned from a trip to Ethiopia.
The information had been freely given. But of course. Beautiful people rarely came under suspicion. A defect in human nature that Saviour often exploited to his advantage.
Able to see two blurry shadows through the sheer fabric that hung at the window, Saviour aimed the parabolic dish in that direction.
“. . . he spent some time in Key West working with the Fisher team trying to locate shipwrecked Spanish galleys
.”
Smiling, he turned on the recording device, his two lovebirds coming in loud and clear.
Able to finally relax after a hectic day, he retrieved a box of Dunhill cigarettes and a silver lighter from his jacket pocket. The lighter, engraved with the Creator’s star, had been a birthday gift from Mercurius. A man of deep religious convictions, Mercurius had an almost fanatical attachment to the eight-pointed star. It was much the same way that his mother, Iphigenia, had been slavishly devoted to the Virgin Mary, their squalid flat inundated with her unsmiling image. Personally, Saviour preferred the image of Jesus on the cross, a writhing half-naked man in his death throes.
As he flipped open the lighter, Saviour cursed under his breath, his right hand, now swollen, throbbing from the earlier run-in with the Brit. Somewhat clumsily he lit the cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth with his left hand. Inhaling deeply, his lungs filling with smoke, he savored the calming effects of the tobacco. A gift from the gods.
However, the gods had not always smiled so favorably upon him. There was a time when he could barely afford to buy one or two cigarettes, let alone an entire pack. That was when he knew what living on the knife’s edge meant. The hunger. The fear. The utter exhaustion. The simple desire for a soft bed and a full belly had become an obsession. But not for himself. He could do without. Instead, he coveted the small luxuries for his beloved Ari.
