Thief on the Cross: Templar Secrets in America (Templars in America Series Book 2)

by David S. Brody

  Another cab ride from Trudeau Airport deposited her at the main bus terminal in downtown Montreal just before three o’clock. She had perhaps a three hour head start on Trey Buckner and his team. She scanned the monitor of arriving buses. Hopefully her hunch was correct.

  CHAPTER 18

  The size of the St. Lawrence River amazed Cam. As an American he never heard much about the waterway. But it was immense. Just crossing it on the bus took almost five minutes.

  Once across the St. Lawrence the bus exited the highway and snaked its way through the streets of Montreal. “It’s just a regular Friday afternoon rush hour here, no holiday,” Amanda observed.

  “When we arrive, I think we should split up. If the authorities are looking for us, they’re expecting a man, woman and little girl. Let’s not make it easy for them.”

  “All right then. Astarte and I will wait for a bit on the bus. You push on ahead and we’ll meet in the lobby.”

  Cam shouldered his pack, careful not to jar the artifacts and scroll, and moved toward the front of the bus. He pulled his baseball hat down over his eyes and left his sunglasses on. He hadn’t shaved since the morning at the museum, but that was only two days ago so his beard wouldn’t help disguise him. He pushed through the terminal door and into the station lobby, where he milled around and waited for Amanda and Astarte. He didn’t see Buckner or his men. But that didn’t mean they—or their friends—weren’t here.

  A few minutes later Amanda and Astarte approached slowly from across the lobby. He scanned the area one more time and moved to meet them. As they converged a big-boned woman in her sixties carrying a 2-liter bottle of soda marched over. “Welcome to Montreal,” she said. “I’m Georgia Johnston.” She held up the soda bottle as a form of identification.

  Amanda stammered a reply. “How ever did you find us?”

  “That doesn’t matter. But if I found you, you can be sure the posse is not far behind.” She shifted her glance between Cam and Amanda, her brown eyes intelligent and kind. “I know you didn’t trust me completely before, and I can’t say I blame you. But now you have no choice.”

  Georgia surprised Cam by taking charge of the situation. She issued orders immediately. “Cameron, you walk with Amanda. I’ll take Astarte. Let us get a half block ahead before you follow. We’ll be taking a left out the front door.”

  The girl looked up at Amanda, her eyes wide. “I don’t fancy letting the girl out of my sight,” Amanda said. She hugged the little princess to her.

  Georgia responded before Cam could. “I’m sorry, but we don’t have time to argue. Astarte walking with only one of you is not going to fool anyone. But nobody expects her to be with an old woman like me.” She took the girl’s hand, bending low to look her in the eye. “I knew your Uncle Jefferson. He was a very smart man. Now please come with me. And please don’t look back.” She glanced at Cam and Amanda. “Comfort Inn, room four-two-six,” she said. “But wait a few minutes before entering the building.”

  Amanda gripped Cam’s arm as the little girl walked away with Georgia. “Either she’s telling the truth,” Cam said, “or she is just trying to get Astarte out of the way and this is where Buckner and his team take us out.” If so, it was best that Astarte not be in the line of fire.

  “Which is it?”

  Cam scanned the crowd. “We’ll know soon enough.”

  They waited ten seconds, Amanda digging her nails into Cam’s arm. Finally he could not hold her back any longer and she pulled him outside into the dimming late afternoon light. Georgia and Astarte marched along less than half a block ahead. Amanda took a deep breath and they followed. At any moment Cam expected a car to screech to a halt next to them, or a pair of strong arms to grab him from behind, or a ring of police to emerge from some doorway and surround them. But nothing.

  Georgia took a left at the corner and walked another half block before ducking into a door under a Comfort Inn sign. Cam and Amanda circled the block to kill a few minutes before entering; two minutes later they stood in front of room 426 and knocked twice.

  “Who’s there?” Astarte responded cheerfully. Clearly Georgia had succeeded in calming the girl.

  “Know any knock-knock jokes?” Amanda whispered to Cam.

  No reason to stress her out further—she’d had a tough few days as it was. “Ice cream,” he responded.

  “Ice cream who?”

  “Ice cream if you don’t let me in.”

  Astarte giggled as Georgia pulled the door open and peered up and down the hall. “This room looks down over the street. I was watching; I don’t think you’ve been followed. That’s why I told you not to come in right away.” She moved aside; the suite contained a work area along with two queen beds. “But we only have a three-hour head start. I need to see the scroll and those artifacts, and I need you to tell me everything you can as quickly as you can.”

  “Okay,” Cam said, “but first tell us why you are helping is.”

  “Simple. I don’t like seeing innocent people killed.”

  “Especially by their own government,” Cam added.

  “Actually, I don’t think the feds are necessarily trying to kill you. I think they just want to keep this all quiet.”

  “Um,” Amanda said, “a bullet whizzing by my ear is more than is needed to keep me quiet.”

  “Yes. I think the agent on this case has gone rogue. I’m just not sure why.”

  “So why doesn’t your boss call this rogue agent in?” Cam asked.

  “Again, killing you is not the purpose of the mission. But if there is so-called collateral damage, so be it. As long as the secrets remain secret.”

  “Bloody great,” Amanda said. “Well, who is this agent, and why would he want us dead?”

  Georgia looked straight at Amanda. “I don’t know. Obviously it has something to do with the Clairvaux Codex and whatever you found in the Catskills. But I can’t figure it out until you fill in all the blanks for me.”

  Amanda and Cam exchanged a nod. Amanda and Astarte crossed the room and leaned against the heat register while Cam sat in a desk chair to rest his knee. Cam and Amanda took turns recounting their past couple of days. When they got to the part involving the IN CAMERA stone and the scroll, Cam pulled the objects from his pack and laid them on the bed.

  Georgia bent low over the scroll, asking Cam to repeat his translation from the Latin. She whistled. “So the Templars found the bones of Jesus. I knew whatever they found had to be monumental.”

  “We think they had rejected Jesus and were secretly worshiping John the Baptist,” Amanda said.

  Georgia nodded. “That makes sense. I’ve been studying this stuff for years. Perhaps I can fill in some of the gaps in your research.” She folded her hands behind her back like a college professor and paced between the beds. “The first thing you need to know is that the Templars inherited and followed the teachings of the Essenes, a Jewish monastic order living outside of Jerusalem in the first century A.D. You’ve probably heard of them because they wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls.”

  Cam nodded.

  Georgia continued. “According to these Scrolls, the Essenes believed that the arriving messianic era would be ushered in by two messiahs rather than one. A kingly messiah, descended from the line of King David, would rule the people. Meanwhile a priestly messiah, descended from Moses’ brother Aaron, would lead the people in spiritual matters.” She explained that when Jesus, a descendant of King David, and John the Baptist, a descendant of Aaron, rose to leadership positions in the first century, the Essenes along with other Jewish sects welcomed the two young men, who happened to be first cousins, as a fulfillment of these prophecies. “In fact, both Jesus and John the Baptist lived and studied with the Essenes in their youth. The two messiahs were meant to rule jointly, together ushering in the Kingdom of God. Upon their deaths, the priestly messiah would ascend and sit by the side of God.”

  “Wait,” Cam said. “John the Baptist was supposed to ascend, not Jesus?”

&
nbsp; Georgia smiled. “Precisely. The place of dominion of the high priestly messiah was to be in heaven, while the royal messiah resided on earth.”

  Amanda chuckled. “How the story has changed.”

  “So that’s probably where the Thief on the Cross name comes from,” Cam said. “Jesus stole the seat in heaven next to God. The Templars knew Jesus was not really divine. Based on this Essene prophecy, John the Baptist is the one in heaven. Not Jesus.”

  Georgia stared out the window, apparently weighing and processing the revelations. A few seconds passed. “Suddenly everything makes sense. As I said, historians knew whatever the Templars found had to be monumental, had to be something so earth-shattering that they could blackmail the Church into doing pretty much anything they wanted. The pieces fit together perfectly.”

  “How so?” Cam asked.

  “Well, picture this: The Templars take Jesus’ bones back to Europe and threaten to expose the great big lie that is Christianity. Jesus wasn’t resurrected, we have his bones, he had a wife, he had children, blah blah blah.”

  “But would people have believed them?” Cam asked.

  “Perhaps, perhaps not,” Georgia said. “But the Church couldn’t risk it. Remember, these Knights were French Noblemen, well-educated from respected families--”

  “Actually, bloodline families,” Amanda interrupted. “They probably went to Jerusalem with the express purpose of proving that Jesus had children and they were his descendants. Descendants of a king, if perhaps not a god.”

  “Exactly. As I said, the pieces fit together. So the Church couldn’t risk it. The Templars had the bones and the tomb, plus all the local legends about Mary Magdalene bringing Jesus’ baby to southern France. The entire foundation of the Church would have been undermined.”

  Cam jumped in. “So the Church cut a deal: Keep your mouths shut and we’ll leave you alone.”

  Amanda nodded. “Not just leave them alone, but cut them in. The Templars became equal partners, sharing in the power and wealth of the Church.”

  “But the Templars didn’t trust the Church,” Cam said. “Which is why they made multiple copies of the scroll, in case the Church ever turned on them--”

  “Which it did,” Georgia interjected. “In fact, the Church murdered tens of thousands of Christians in the Albigensian Crusades in southern France in the early 1200s. Many who died were of the bloodline families. And then finally the Church turned on the Templars in 1307, imprisoning and torturing and executing thousands.”

  Amanda swallowed. “And we stand to meet a similar fate.”

  Georgia seemed lost in thought. “Nobody could ever figure out how the Templars got so powerful so quickly,” she whispered. She looked out the window, the traffic and bustle of Montreal a stark contrast to the ancient history revealing itself in their sterile hotel room. “Now we know.” She turned back to Cam and Amanda. “As I said, the pieces fit together so perfectly now that we know the secret. Once you know the answer to the mystery—that the Templars found Jesus’ bones—it’s easy to find all the clues.”

  Cam raised an eyebrow, inviting her to continue.

  “For example, this explains the Templar use of the skull and crossbones as their banner. Once the Templars found Jesus’ bones, they would have brought them—probably his skull and thigh bones, as was the custom in medieval times—back to Europe. So they put their great secret out in the open on their banner, hidden in plain sight. Every time the Church leaders saw the Templar battle flag they were reminded of the threat the Templars posed.”

  Amanda nodded. “Same with their veneration of Mary Magdalene. They had proven the existence of the bloodline, and in fact were part of it, so they worshiped the matriarch as well as the patriarch of their family.”

  Georgia continued. “Even the Templars’ worship of John the Baptist makes sense in this light. The Templars worshiped John the Baptist as a reminder to the Church that they did not recognize the Pope as the voice of the priestly class—the true priests descended from Aaron, as John the Baptist did. Worshipping John was like a shot across the Church’s bow.”

  Cam paused, pensive. “The irony of all this is that the scroll—which January was obsessed with finding—totally undermines his quest. The entire Mormon religion, like all of Christianity, is based on Jesus being a deity.”

  Amanda gently patted the parchment. “You’re right. The joke’s on him. In trying to prove the authenticity of the Book of Mormon, he uncovered a scroll that proves the whole religion is based on a falsehood.”

  “This is all fascinating,” Cam said. “But back to the big picture: We have a medieval scroll which undermines Christianity. So what do we do with it now that we’ve found it?”

  Georgia lifted the IN CAMERA stone. “In order to answer that, I think we need to find out what’s buried at the Notre Dame Basilica.”

  The Notre Dame Basilica was less than a mile from their hotel, but Amanda wanted to make a quick detour. They hailed a cab.

  “I keep wondering why the bones would have been brought to Montreal,” Amanda said from the front seat as the taxi navigated the narrow streets of Old Montreal. They had left the stone artifacts in the hotel room, but Cam was unwilling to leave the scroll and carried it in his pack. “Well, I did some research on the bus, and it turns out the earliest settlers of the city had Templar roots. The city was founded by the Sulpicians, a French Catholic order. And many historians believe the Sulpicians were closely connected to the outlawed Knights Templar.”

  “So where are we going?” Georgia asked.

  “Right there.” Amanda pointed ahead. “The Bon-Secours Chapel.” A narrow, cobblestone structure with a soaring center spire rose up in front of them along the shores of the St. Lawrence River.

  “We don’t really have time for this,” Georgia said.

  “Ten minutes,” Amanda responded. “What we see here may save us hours once we get to the Basilica.”

  Using a side door they entered a modern gift shop. Amanda bought tickets and led them down a staircase into a round stone crypt with an arched ceiling. “The original chapel burned down and was rebuilt in 1771. Down here is the original foundation. It’s a museum.” A number of exhibits displayed the history of the chapel and the city through the centuries. “I think behind that door is an ongoing archeological dig site.” She scanned the room. “But what I want to see is over here.”

  She strode across the room and stopped in front of a tombstone-sized slab of gray stone. “That’s an ancient cornerstone for the chapel. It was the first church in Montreal, built back in the 1670s.”

  BON-SECOURS CHAPEL CORNERSTONE

  “Look at the crosses on the front and sides,” Cam said.

  “Exactly. That’s what I wanted to see,” Amanda said. “Those are Templar crosses—they look like plus signs rather than a lowercase letter ‘t.’ They tell us a lot about early Templar influence, and power, in Old Montreal. And that’s the kind of stuff we need to look for at Notre Dame.”

  She led the group back up to the street. They walked a few blocks along the cobblestoned Rue Saint Paul, the main passage in Old Montreal; brick and stone buildings, many dating back to the 1700s, lined the way. Amanda stopped and pointed through a gap in the skyline at a massive gray Gothic Revival-style structure looming in the distance. “That’s Notre Dame Basilica.”

  Astarte had never seen anything so fabulous. She stood in the back of the soaring basilica, a small butterfly alighting within the most amazing flower garden in the world. The Mormon Temples Uncle Jefferson often brought her to were soaring structures themselves, with marble and fine woods and thick carpets and snow-white spires that reached to the heavens. But the Basilica of Notre Dame was different. The sanctuary blazed with vibrant blues and glowing golds—with oranges and reds and greens mixed in as well. It was as if God was a princess designing a palace for himself. Or herself—this church was not a place a man would chose to live; it was more like something out of a fairy tale. Perhaps Mr. Cameron was righ
t, perhaps God was married to Mother Earth and she helped him build this….

  Astarte began to walk the perimeter. She recognized many Bible scenes portrayed on the stained glass. But the churches Uncle Jefferson took her to didn’t have nearly so many windows devoted to the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene and other women. In fact, many of the women displayed were Native American—she had never seen that before. For every man with a beard there was a woman wearing a dress or Native American clothes, as if the builders of the church wanted to make things even. Like picking teams for kickball—one for you and then one for me. One for the boys and then one for the girls. One for the Europeans and then one for the Native Americans. She sighed. She liked this church. It made her proud to be a girl. And proud to be Mandan.

  Miss Amanda interrupted her musings. “Everyone, come here,” she called out in a stage whisper. She was in the left-hand pews, looking up at a raised pulpit. The pulpit rose midway between the rear of the church and the front altar, approximately 25 feet in the air, upon which a priest could stand over his flock and preach.

  NOTRE DAME BASILICA PULPIT

  “Look at the very top, that triangle inside a starburst on the ceiling of the pulpit,” Miss Amanda said. “That looks to me like the Delta of Enoch.”

  Mr. Cameron joined her. “You’re right. But it looks like there’s a letter missing.” He took out his camera and zoomed in closer. “Yes, the Yod is missing from the far right.”

  Astarte had no idea what they were talking about. Apparently neither did Miss Georgia. “Who is Enoch, and what in the world is a Yod?”

  Cam studied the triangle of gold embedded on the ceiling of the pulpit. It was clearly the Delta of Enoch, or at least most of one. He pointed out to Georgia the triangle surrounded by golden rays of light that symbolized the divine presence. “Usually the Hebrew letters Yod, Hey, Vav and Hey are inscribed within the triangle. Together the letters comprise the Tetragrammaton, the secret, unspeakable name of God as used in the Hebrew Bible—what we now pronounce as Yahweh or Jehovah. According to the Book of Enoch the name of God was revealed to the prophet Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah, who then inscribed it into a triangle of pure gold.” He explained that though the Delta of Enoch was an important part of Masonic ritual, the Book of Enoch was not considered an authoritative text within either Judaism or mainstream Christianity. So why was the Delta of Enoch prominently displayed in a Catholic church? And why was the letter Yod missing?