When the collapse came, Willum would swoop into Phoenix with his copter, take the boy and never look back—he had secretly imbedded a GPS microchip in a medical bracelet Gregory wore so he could track him when the time came. That’s what all this was really for.
Willum landed the copter on what once served as the plant’s parking lot. Clarisse, a straight-haired, hard-bodied brunette in her early forties, jogged out to meet him. An ex-ballet instructor from Phoenix, she had been one of the first to join him at the compound and had become his chief lieutenant. At one point their relationship had been a romantic one, but it was hard for either of them to commit to anything serious when they both believed some kind of apocalypse was imminent—so their bond had evolved into one based on mutual respect and affection, with an occasional sexual liaison mixed in.
“They came back,” Clarisse announced.
“Sheriff?”
“Yup. Said we needed an occupancy permit to live here. Said we would have to clear out until we comply with the building code. Same old shit.”
“What did you say?”
“I told him to be fruitful and multiply … but not in those exact words.”
Willum smiled. Clarisse had an edge to her. “Nice.”
When he had first hunkered down in the compound, he never expected people like Clarisse would seek him out and want to join him. Perhaps they came because he did not recruit. Or perhaps because they just understood at a fundamental level the same things he understood—that the federal government was corrupt, and that all corrupt entities eventually collapse from within. It was simply a law of nature. The termites and maggots that controlled Washington, DC had gnawed away the foundation of American society; the next strong wind would blow it away.
Whatever the reason, there were now eighty-five people camped out in the domed pods, while Willum lived in the front saucer building. Two domes housed men, one housed women, another served as a dormitory for married couples and families and a fourth was a communal area containing kitchen facilities, some tables for dining, a small library and a couple of television sets. Most residents lived in tents scattered within the domes and cooked their meals on hot plates or charcoal grills or sun ovens surrounding the pods. The domes had been coated with three inches of concrete when they were built, which was one of the things that attracted Willum to the compound in the first place. Recently he had added armored snipers’ nests to the peaks of a few of the domes, from which compound residents could survey the surrounding desert lands for miles in every direction. Combined with the electrified perimeter security fence, it would take an army to breach their defenses.
Willum didn’t think the sheriff or local authorities cared one way or another who lived at the compound or what they did. But the feds still had it in for him, so they were pressuring the locals to harass him. Once a week the sheriff drove out and, rather unenthusiastically, informed them they had to vacate. But the sheriff didn’t push it. He knew how heavily armed they were, and he had come to believe—no doubt because the feds had told him so—that Willum was a trigger-happy anarchist just looking for a gun battle. Willum had in fact hung a couple of anarchist banners and flags, figuring it wasn’t such a bad reputation to have. He had also converted a desert area in the rear of the complex into a shooting range, so all the residents were proficient in handling an AK-47 and other weaponry, including the rocket-propelled grenade launchers he had recently added to their arsenal. When the sheriff arrived someone always went out to practice at the shooting range, just so whatever conversation the sheriff might be having would be accompanied by a background ballistic orchestra.
“Find anything?” Clarisse asked as they walked side-by-side back to the saucer dome.
“Afraid not. On a map it doesn’t look like too big an area, but it’s like looking for a needle inside a farm full of haystacks. Every range has a bunch of peaks, and every peak has a bunch of caves and nooks.” Talking about the problem, especially to Clarisse, seemed to help him work through it. “I think the problem I’m having is that I don’t know how these people think. Whoever it was that hid the chest—let’s just say it was the Knights Templar—I don’t know enough about them to get inside their heads, to think like they thought.” From what he had read, the Templars were the most likely group to have been dragging treasure chests across the Atlantic eight hundred years ago.
“Speaking of which, you might want to check this out.” She handed him a notice of an upcoming lecture. “This guy is an expert on the Templars. You should go hear him speak. It’s tonight.”
He glanced at the title of the lecture and smiled: Templars in America. “I’m one step ahead of you; I’m driving down later today.”
“Good. In the meantime, I have something interesting to show you.”
She detoured him away from the saucer, toward some of the vacant acreage in the rear of the property. Clarisse and a couple of other residents had been experimenting with growing crops—it would obviously help to have fresh produce after a collapse. They had also begun raising chickens; they used the chicken waste to fertilize the crops. In fact, they had more shit than they knew what to do with. The compound’s growing population convinced Willum to install a private sewage treatment plant along with a bath house on one corner of the property. It wasn’t ideal to have the latrines, shower and washing facilities separate from the living areas, but he didn’t doubt that the feds had slipped a couple of undercover agents in among the construction workers and he wanted to keep them far from the nerve center of the compound. Willum didn’t have to take the same risk with the compound’s residents: He subjected each new prospective resident to questioning under sodium pentothal, or truth serum.
“So remember how we told you the high sodium content in the soil made it hard to grow stuff back here?” Clarisse asked.
“Yeah. The sodium makes the soil crunchy and impenetrable to water.”
“You told us to try adding sulfuric acid.”
“Right,” he said. “That would convert the sodium to sodium sulfate, which would be more water soluble.”
“Okay. So we’ve been doing that. And some weird shit is happening.”
He knew Clarisse well enough to know she wanted to show him, not tell him. So he followed dutifully, their shoulders and elbows sometimes brushing against each other. She always seemed to smell good. A combination of clean and flowery and the yeasty smell of private parts. A chemist friend who worked in the perfume industry told him he was describing the smell of musk. Whatever it was, Willum was happy to follow along in its wake.
Following an irrigation pipe running from the main compound, they skirted the shooting range and descended into one of the few areas of the property where a handful of low trees had managed to take root. Startled, a flock of sparrows took flight—Willum had installed bird feeders near the perimeter of the entire compound, the birds providing a low-tech but fail-safe intruder-alert system.
The irrigation pipe terminated at a rectangle of darkened sand about the size of a tennis court that had been marked out and tilled. The smell of poultry droppings replaced the smell of Clarisse. From what Willum could see, nothing was growing. “Glad I’m not a huge fan of salad.”
She cuffed him playfully. “We’re just starting out. Give us some time.” She pulled a magnifying glass from her pocket. “Besides, I didn’t bring you down here to show you my black thumb.” She kicked up a small clod of soil with her sneaker. “This is one of the areas we added the sulfuric acid. Which, by the way, should be part of any well-balanced diet.”
He smiled, appreciative of her wit. “The plants won’t absorb it, don’t worry.”
“That’s not what we’re worried about.” She crouched and, using the magnifying glass, directed the sunlight onto the clod of earth she had kicked up. “I don’t even need to use the glass—what I’m going to show you happens just from the sun heating the soil. But this will make it faster.” She held the glass for fifteen seconds, using her free hand to shield her face.<
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Suddenly the clod of earth began to smoke. Clarisse scampered to Willum’s side. “Watch carefully.”
After a few seconds the clod burst into a blaze of light before quickly burning out. “Huh?” Willum said. “That shouldn’t happen.” He moved closer. Nothing remained of the soil clod. Somehow it had vaporized.
Amanda grinned as Cam and Astarte, clad in bathing suits and flip-flops, raced out the door of their hotel room. “It’s my turn to push the elevator button,” Cam shouted as he chased the giggling girl down the hall. Amanda had been concerned that it might be difficult for the two of them to bond—after all, what did Cam know about tea parties and Barbie dolls and ponytails? Most fathers had the benefit of bonding with their children from birth; Cam had only known Astarte for a few days when they decided to take in the young orphan. But he worked hard to find intersecting points in their lives. And Amanda made a point—like now—of allowing the two of them to spend time together without her.
Ironically, and unexpectedly, Amanda was the cause of much of the tension in their new family. She had been raised by a mother who viewed herself as nothing more than a chattel for whatever man happened to take an interest in her—and was treated accordingly. As a result, Amanda had little patience for male chauvinists or sexists or curmudgeons. She had moved to Boston largely because of its progressive attitudes, had fallen for Cam largely because he treated her as an intellectual and physical equal, had become enthralled with the Templars largely because they secretly believed God was equal parts woman and man, and had been anxious to foster-parent Astarte largely because she believed the bright child would shatter whatever glass ceiling the world might erect to impede her. Instead she found herself with a nine-year-old daughter inexplicably bound to a Mormon religion that viewed women, in some kind of cruel irony, as little more than chattel.
How had this happened? She wanted to scream.
She dead-bolted the hotel door. Expos hat guy had been hanging around the hotel lobby when they returned from horseback riding. Cam could take care of himself but she’d never be able to concentrate with the door unlocked. And she wanted to dive full-body into the Tucson lead artifacts mystery.
Cam’s translation of the inscriptions on the artifacts mentioned interaction with a people called the Toltecs. She knew the Toltecs were the predecessors to the Aztecs, but she didn’t know if the dates matched up with the inscriptions on the artifacts. A quick internet search revealed that they did: The Toltecs thrived in the AD 800-1100 era, ruling much of what we now call Mexico. So it was entirely possible, even likely, that any Europeans making their way from the Gulf of Mexico to southern Arizona would have encountered the Toltecs; in fact, it would have been almost impossible not to. Like the Aztec, the Toltecs worshiped as their primary god a feathered, serpent-like male known as Quetzalcoatl. The legend of Quetzalcoatl, which was passed on by the Toltecs to both the Aztec and the Mayans, told of a great priest-king who, to avoid ensnaring his people in a long war, chose to banish himself. He departed on a raft, promising to return one day via the eastern sea. Because of his selflessness the Toltecs elevated Quetzalcoatl to the status of their greatest god. What Amanda found especially intriguing about Quetzalcoatl was that, like the god Glooscap whom Astarte had told them about, Quetzalcoatl featured white skin and a long beard, attributes that would—or at least should—have been unknown to the people of Mesoamerica at that time. Amanda found a number of images that portrayed him with a long, Semitic-looking, nose. In many cases, but for his feathers and serpentine appendages, Quetzalcoatl looked like something out of an illustrated book about King Arthur. A mural of him—fair-skinned and surrounded by many dark-skinned natives—which hung in the Mexican Presidential Palace was particularly striking:
MURAL OF QUETZALCOATL NATIONAL PALACE, MEXICO CITY
The mural image matched a carving in the wall of a temple appropriately called “The Temple of the Bearded White God” in the Yucatan Peninsula. Not only did the carving clearly show a beard, but the profile also portrayed a classic Semitic nose.
TEMPLE CARVING OF BEARDED WHITE GOD CHICHEN ITZA, MEXICO
Amanda continued her research. Apparently when the Spanish conquistadors first arrived in Mexico in the 16th century, the Aztecs welcomed Cortés, believing the white-skinned, bearded Spaniard to be their returning, long-awaited god Quetzalcoatl.
She reread Cam’s summary of the inscriptions on the artifacts. After the French Jews had been in America for about a hundred years, one of their leaders, named Israel III, freed the Toltec peoples from bondage, apparently to avoid a costly war—later he was ostracized by his people for doing so. Clearly Israel III was fair-skinned, and most likely as a Jew he was bearded as well. After having freed the Toltecs, he would have been revered by the native peoples. And could the banishment of Israel III have included him being sent away by raft or small boat? A striking number of similarities existed here. Amanda looked again at the image of Quetzalcoatl in the National Palace mural. Was Israel III the historical inspiration for the priest-king Quetzalcoatl?
Willum and Clarisse entered the saucer. Now he had two mysteries to chew on: Had the Templars hidden a treasure chest in the Arizona foothills? And what was up with the vaporizing desert soil?
Though the mid-afternoon temperature outside approached eighty, the dome remained cave-cool. Willum had put down a carpet and filled the space with some basic furniture—no telling how many years he would be here. But it was still a cave, and Clarisse’s voice echoed off the walls as she spoke. “I suck at science so I can’t help you with the vaporization problem.” She always seemed to sense what he was thinking. “But I might be able to help with the Templar stuff; I’ve been doing a lot of reading about them.” She pinched his ass. “Did you know they were celibate?”
“I’ll pass on that, thanks. And they didn’t bathe. I’ll pass on that part of it also.”
“Maybe the celibacy thing wasn’t their choice; maybe it had to do with not bathing.”
He smiled. “Good point. And they were also religious. Celibate, smelly and sanctimonious—tough way to go through life.”
She turned toward him. “From what I’ve read the Templars were not religious in the way we think of it today. They didn’t subscribe to the woman-is-the-root-of-all-evil doctrine that the Church preached back then. They may have seen things differently. May have actually worshipped Mother Nature—what they called the Sacred Feminine.”
“Really?” He hadn’t known that. He stepped toward her. Again, that intoxicating scent. “Nobody worships the Sacred Feminine more than I do. I pray to her as often as I can.”
Clarisse smiled. She had straight, cotton-white teeth and an olive-tinged complexion which made her look healthy no matter what the season. And she had kept her dancer’s figure. He breathed her in as she widened her eyes, brushed the back of her hand against his cheek and shook her dark thick hair out of its hair elastic. She put her lips against his ear. “Do you get down on your knees when you pray?”
Clarisse turned away from Willum’s low-pitched snoring. A mattress on the floor of a saucer-shaped cavern in the desert was hardly the fairy-tale castle of her childhood fantasies. But it was a hell of a lot better than her previous life teaching runny-nosed six-year-olds how to plie and pirouette, only to come home to find her slob of a husband asleep on the couch in front of the TV. When she finally left him, her Mormon parents—who had helped arrange the marriage when she was only seventeen—almost disowned her, the bonds of parenthood only barely holding under the weight of the shame of divorce.
Some women may not have found Willum attractive, but she liked big, burly men. And he kept himself clean and well-groomed. Plus he made her laugh. Her only criticism was that he lacked ambition. He had brains and common sense and even charisma. And more to the point, he controlled this compound and a small army of followers devoted to him. In the coming Armageddon, Willum could emerge as a Moses-like figure in the deserts of the southwest. Could she take on the wife-like role of
Zipporah? Or if not Willum’s wife, perhaps a sister-like advisor in the mold of Miriam? Either way she would be considered royalty.
But only if she could first push Willum to become that modern-day Moses.
Willum normally did not allow Clarisse to cook or perform other domestic tasks for him, but by the time he woke from his post-coital nap she had already put a fresh salad and a couple of cold beers on the table. Through the open door to the saucer he could see her at the grill, flipping burgers. The aroma of beef fat and charcoal wafted over him—somehow Clarisse seemed to know exactly what he craved.
She turned and smiled. “Nice nap?”
“Yes. Thanks. And thanks for making lunch.” He looked at his watch. “Or maybe it’s dinner. Whatever, thanks.”
She shrugged. “Once in a while the king should not have to cook his own meal in his castle. So my pleasure.”
“How did you know I’d want a burger and a beer?”
She grinned. “Um, let’s see. You just had sex. And you’re a guy. Not that hard to figure out.”
He smiled. “And the salad?”
“Actually, what you really want is potato chips. But you know if you want me to keep having sex with you, you need to maintain some of that manly figure of yours.”
He patted his belly and smiled. “Wow, you’re pretty good at this.”
She brought the burgers in and clicked her Corona against his. “And I also know you want to go to that lecture in Tucson. And after that you’ll no doubt go to your lab and try to figure out the vaporizing soil mystery. So eat up, and then I’ll be on my way.”
Cam was pleased to see a large crowd gathering in the high school auditorium that the Tucson Historical Society secured for his lecture. He had been a bit surprised to receive the invitation to speak—Amanda’s and his research on the Knights Templar and other early explorations of America didn’t in any way involve Arizona or its history. When he accepted the invitation, he was concerned that only a few people would turn out for the event. But ten minutes before his talk more than half of the hundred or so seats had filled. And with his discovery of earlier today, he had some exciting—and locally relevant—information to share.
Powdered Gold: Templars and the American Ark of the Covenant (Templars in America Series Book 3) Page 4
