Amanda glared at her boss, ignoring Reichmann. “You almost got us killed.”
“Oh, stop behaving like a princess, Amanda. You are expendable. We are all expendable. This is what we do, this is who we are. We protect Prince Henry.”
“Protect him from what? The truth?”
Yarborough turned, waved her away. “Grow up, Amanda. Stop being so naïve. There is no such thing as the truth. There are only shades of lies.”
Amanda stared at her back for a few seconds before turning and marching back toward Cam, now most of the way across the parking lot himself.
She leaned into him, whispering. “I’m sorry. I had no idea the Consortium was involved in all of this.”
“Is it the Consortium, or just Yarborough?”
“I don’t know. I reckon Yarborough could be acting on her own, controlling what Babinaux and the council members know. She never allows me to speak privately with him.”
“Either way, it makes no sense. Don’t they want us to prove the Prince Henry legend is true?”
She gritted her teeth. “Apparently it’s not that simple.”
Reichmann cleared his throat impatiently. Cam returned to the Subaru and, carrying a large brown canvas messenger bag containing maps, the lantern packed in its box and the results of their research, he moved toward the dark sedans, feigning fatigue. In addition to Reichmann and Yarborough, the three sedans contained four black-clad henchman—one of whom Cam recognized as the muscular operative whose car they stole in Newport—and an angular, olive-skinned man with a long, thin face. Perhaps a decade older than Cam, he wore a black clerical shirt with a white collar, black pleated pants and a well-tailored Italian-cut blue blazer. Probably the Vatican scholar Cam had guessed they would employ, though he looked more like an international banker. The Newport operative edged closer, studying Cam. His face was pocked and his eyes steady and serene—other than his muscular build he looked like an overage alter boy with acne.
“You must be Mr. Thorne. I must say, you have been a thorn in our side,” Reichmann grinned, his white teeth shining with saliva even as his steel blue eyes narrowed. “Unfortunately, this is no laughing matter.” He motioned to the Newport operative. “Senor Salazar, por favor.”
Salazar lunged at Cam, spun him around by the left shoulder and locked him in an arm bar before he even saw him coming. His shoulder, already injured from the Forsberg attack, screamed in pain as the messenger bag slid slowly down his arm to the ground. He began to resist but relaxed when Salazar tightened his grip and he felt the tendons begin to rip from the bone. “Okay, okay,” he murmured, fighting to keep his eyes from watering. A second ruffian searched his pockets and patted him down. He removed Cam’s TracFone and Swiss army knife, then nodded to Reichmann.
Cam sniffed. “What, you think I’m going to take you all down with a corkscrew?” He reached down with his free arm and grabbed the messenger bag.
Reichmann ignored him and turned to Yarborough. “Please lead the way.”
As the group lumbered its way to the main building containing the gift shop and ticket office, the priest carefully stepping around the mud puddles, Salazar squeezed against Cam. “Your shoulder hurting?” he whispered not unkindly, his breath mint-scented.
Cam nodded slightly. Lightning-like, Salazar released Cam’s left arm and twisted his right behind his back instead. “I hope that’s better.”
“Thanks.” It came out automatically, before he could swallow it. The man was a killer, probably just playing the good cop to Reichmann’s bad.
Yarborough must have made arrangements by telephone; she slid an envelope across the counter and the woman at the ticket desk quickly escorted them into a private room with eight folding chairs set around a rectangular banquet table. Two men guarded the door while Salazar and another stood in front of the room’s two windows. Reichmann dropped into a chair at the head of the table, exhaled loudly through his mouth and dabbed his forehead with a handkerchief. Yarborough sat to his left, the unnamed priest to his right. Reichmann motioned for Cam and Amanda to sit; they did so at the far end of the table, Amanda at the foot.
Reichmann spoke, his thickly-accented words now accompanied by a soft rain pebbling against the roof. “We understand that you may have solved the Prince Henry puzzle.” A statement, not a question. Cam did not respond. Amanda continued to glare at Yarborough. Reichmann continued. “As you know, Mrs. Yarborough is probably the leading authority on all things relating to Prince Henry Sinclair.” The Vatican scholar sat slouched in his chair, buffing his fingernails with an emery board, his body language conveying boredom and disdain. Cam didn’t buy it—behind his drooping eyelids the scholar’s gaze was alert and attentive. “Father Balducci has traveled here from Rome to add his considerable knowledge and experience to our group.” Balducci sniffed an acknowledgement as Reichmann dropped both hands, palms down, onto the laminated wood table. “Now, please share with us what you have learned.”
“First I want proof my cousin is okay.”
Reichmann nodded. “I am a man of my word. Feel free to phone him. But quickly.”
Cam dialed the TracFone. Brandon answered on the first ring. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” he slurred. “I think so.”
Cam exhaled. “Good. I’ll call you later. We’re with Reichmann and his men--”
“That is enough, Mr. Thorne,” Reichmann interrupted, motioning for one of the henchman to end the call. “Now I expect you to honor your side of the agreement.”
Cam placed the messenger bag on an empty chair and pulled out a roadmap of New England. He spun it so it faced Reichmann and took a deep breath. Reichmann, Balducci and Yarborough were the three-judge panel, the four henchmen the executioners. Not much pressure.
Using a red pen, he marked the important sites around New England. “Here’s the Westford Knight, here’s the Boat Stone, here’s the Newport Tower, here’s Spirit Pond, here’s the Tyngsboro Map Stone….”
He addressed his presentation to Yarborough. The others would defer to her judgment as to whether the sites he chose were appropriate. She stared at the map, glowering but eventually huffed her assent. “Continue.”
He turned to Father Balducci and detailed their conclusions regarding the Templars’ rejection of Church dogma and worship of the Sacred Feminine. “But you know all this already. Just like you know Prince Henry is part of the Jesus bloodline.”
Balducci shrugged, feigning continued boredom. But he had shifted forward in his seat and was pulling at his eyebrow rather than using the emery board. In his body language class in law school Cam had learned that self-touching was often an unconscious sign of discomfort or insecurity. The last thing the Church wanted was stories of the Jesus heir being persecuted by the Church, fleeing the continent to escape the Pope and his agents.
Cam continued. “They left lots of clues, most of them carved in stone. Some were clues revealing who they were and what they believed: the Hooked X, for example, symbolized the union of Jesus and Mary Magdalene and the resulting birth of the baby Sarah. Other carvings served multiple purposes: The Westford Knight was an effigy to a fallen knight but was also part of a larger mapping system. And, of course, the Newport Tower was their primary marker, their prime meridian, as well as being a baptistery and—”
Yarborough cut him off. “You are insulting us, Mr. Thorne. We have been studying these artifacts for decades. We have no need for a lecture from an amateur like you.”
His ears burned; he took a deep breath, nodded and continued. “As I was saying, these sites served multiple purposes, were significant on multiple levels. That’s the way the Templars operated.” He turned to Reichmann—the Legions of Jesus operative, as a member of a quasi-secret society, would appreciate the clandestine methods of the Templars. His henchman Salazar also leaned in to listen. “So we also started looking for some kind of pattern, some kind of secret message embedded in the placement of all these sites.” He paused for effect. “Some kind of coded map t
hat might lead us to a buried treasure.”
Though Yarborough remained impassive, Father Balducci studied Cam intently, his index finger now rubbing his cheek. The bloodline comment had hit a nerve. Reichmann, smelling treasure, hung on every word. “The problem, of course, is that so many of the sites have been destroyed over the years.” He addressed Yarborough, knowing she would concur. “For every artifact or carving or rune stone that we’ve found,” he said, gesturing toward the map, “there must be a dozen others that have faded away or been bulldozed or remain buried in the forests. It’s like trying to do a crossword puzzle with most of the clues missing. That’s why the stone holes became so important.”
Yarborough did not want to reveal her ignorance but her curiosity won out. “Explain what you mean by stone holes.”
Cam summarized the rounded, triangular-shaped holes found in boulders. “Usually these boulders are in prominent spots, at the tops of hills or at bends in rivers or along ridge lines. Places where they’d be easy to find again. We found a bunch of them.” He picked up the red pen and marked them on the map.
Yarborough challenged him. “I’ve inspected the Tyngsboro Map Stone a half-dozen times. There’s no such hole.”
Amanda responded before Cam had a chance. “Perhaps it did not occur to you to examine the missing chunk of the boulder.” She triumphantly slid a photo of the stone hole onto the table. “We have found that the secrets of Prince Henry and his expedition reveal themselves only to those worthy of possessing the knowledge. It is a self-selecting group.”
Yarborough’s round face blushed and her nostrils flared at the barb. She stared at the photo but resisted the urge to inspect it more carefully. Cam turned to hide his smile. He didn’t begrudge Amanda her jab but there was no reason to further antagonize their captors. “We also found one at Spirit Pond, right near where the Rune Stones were found, and at the top of a big hill near where the Boat Stone was found.” Amanda dropped two more photos on the table as he spoke. “There’s probably hundreds of others out there, just waiting to be discovered. I bet there’s one right here at America’s Stonehenge, though we haven’t had a chance to check it out yet.”
“And these holes are part of this treasure map?” Reichmann asked, his lips and teeth wet with enthusiasm.
They were intrigued and Cam wanted to give them a little extra time to chew on the hook. “Again, when we first found them we didn’t see any real pattern. Then Amanda suggested we needed to start thinking like medievalists. Or more accurately, medievalists in a cabal. One of the things we learned was that the Templars were the ones who brought the game of chess to Europe.”
He paused while Yarborough and Reichmann turned to Father Balducci, who took a deep breath and lifted his chin slightly in a grudging sign of assent. Cam continued. “And the Newport Tower reminded me of a rook piece in a chess set.”
Amanda pulled more photographic evidence from their bag. “The Templars and the Masons have a long history of utilizing the black and white chessboard pattern, probably inspired by the floor design of the Temple of Solomon.” Again Balducci titled his chin.
“So, we had a knight and a rook and a chessboard.” Cam waited for their full attention. “Then we learned that the bishop piece in chess used to be a medieval ship. The Church insisted on replacing the boat with the bishop when the game became popular in Europe.”
This time Father Balducci cleared his throat. “I was not aware of this … assertion.”
Amanda, for the fourth time, dropped evidence on the table—a copy of a page from the history of chess book. Cam had learned early in his law career the importance of documentary evidence. There was something about seeing a point validated in writing that juries found overwhelmingly compelling.
Father Balducci pulled the page to him with a single finger, as if handling it might soil his soul. His eyes moved back and forth across the page. “I suppose it is possible,” he sniffed, sitting back.
“And of course,” Cam said, “we have a medieval sailing ship on the Boat Stone. So now we have three pieces on our chess board.”
Cam pulled out the larger map Amanda had illustrated in the library. He unfolded it slowly, knowing all eyes were glued to it, smelling Yarborough’s ashy breath as she leaned in closer. “So we started playing chess with these sites. The rook moves vertically, the knight moves in an L-shape, the bishop moves diagonally.” Using a pencil, he traced the red lines Amanda had highlighted.
“They intersect right here,” Reichmann breathed. “This must be where the treasure is buried, yes?”
Cam and Amanda exchanged a quick, knowing glance. This was the key moment. They had convinced Reichmann, but what about Yarborough and Father Balducci? In the end, Reichmann’s opinion didn’t really matter. Cam made an instant decision, guided by his gut. He smiled. “Wait, there’s more.”
* * *
Beatrice Yarborough studied the young man as his finger traced the lines on the map. Handsome in that American boy-next-door type of way, despite the goatee. And obviously intelligent. His Rex Deus blood, though diluted by a series of ill-conceived marriages, coursed strong through his veins.
She had always known that it would take a person of the Rex Deus bloodline, the keepers of the true teachings of Jesus, to decipher the mysteries and puzzles left 600 years earlier by Prince Henry. Sinclair would have been careful to guard his secrets, to preserve them for his royal descendants rather than allow some commoner to ferret them out. The chess piece movement pattern was exactly the type of coded message a Templar leader would employ. Somehow Thorne had deciphered it. And he was telling the truth—his chess movement theory matched exactly what his cousin Brandon had revealed under truth serum.
The problem, of course, was that Thorne’s story was all too credible, all too believable; it was up to her to prevent it from being told. At her suggestion, Reichmann and his Legions of Jesus cohorts had arranged for a high-ranking Vatican official to contact Babinaux and inform him that Amanda and Thorne were engaged in a campaign to embarrass and undermine the Church. The message had been well-received, especially in light of Thorne’s history as a rogue lawyer whose strong anti-Church sentiments had resulted in his suspension from the practice of law. Babinaux had been unwilling to abandon Amanda completely but he did refrain from sending a team out to assist her. Instead he ordered Beatrice to closely monitor the situation. Little did he realize that she had already won Reichmann’s confidence by feeding him information and was herself at the center of the Legions of Jesus’ operation. So much for the Consortium’s attempt to put her out to pasture.
But back to Thorne. Like his story, he himself was credible, his research solid, his conclusions reasonable and well-founded. But he hadn’t followed the evidence to its inevitable ending point. She didn’t give a damn if Thorne and Amanda destroyed the Catholic Church. But she would not allow them to besmirch the reputation of Prince Henry. The olive-skinned Father Balducci had turned ashen listening to Thorne, as if a dark cloud had seeped from his soul to his cheeks. He, too, knew Thorne was on the verge of discovering the true secret of Prince Henry’s journey. Unless he was stopped.
Thorne’s words, echoing inside her brain, brought her back to the present. “Wait, there’s more,” he had said.
She looked up; he was waiting for her attention before continuing.
“We were pretty sure we had solved the puzzle,” he said. “Something was hidden at America’s Stonehenge, something that Prince Henry wanted his followers to find. At first we thought the hidden secrets were ancient knowledge, knowledge of navigation and astronomy and geography and the seasons that would allow the explorers to survive in the New World. Then we realized the site also validated their Templar spiritual beliefs, ancient beliefs that focused on the Sacred Feminine and Venus worship.”
She resisted the urge to nod. Thorne’s theory made perfect sense—it would be just like Prince Henry, a Renaissance man centuries before his time, to have an appreciation of nature and the sciences a
nd spirituality. He was not some glory seeker or treasure hunter; he and his knights were trying to improve the lot of his lieges. He would have wanted to lead his flock back to this important site. But she could not concede the point. Instead, she challenged the solicitor. “Your theory has a major flaw. There are no stones at America’s Stonehenge aligned to identify or predict the Venus cycles.”
Amanda responded. “That’s not an accurate statement. Nobody has bothered to look for any Venus alignments. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any.”
Beatrice dismissed the point with a sniff, even though the girl was correct—modern astronomers, not being attuned to the ancient Venus observations, were far more interested in lunar and solar cycles. It hadn’t occurred to them to check for Venus alignments.
Thorne began to expound on the Venus worship history. She waved at him impatiently to continue. “Yes, we know all this. Get to the point.”
“Well, as you know, we are in Salem, New Hampshire right now. Did you know that Salem is the Phoenician god of the evening, symbolized by Venus as the evening star? Could it be just a coincidence that the site that validated all the Templars’ Venus worship beliefs is located in a place named after Venus?”
This was an interesting revelation. Fascinating, in fact. Place names often carried hidden, ancient meanings and clues. But, again, she resisted the urge to nod. “This is hardly compelling evidence, Mr. Thorne. There is also a Salem in the state of Oregon. Did Prince Henry travel to the Pacific Northwest as well?”
Thorne took a deep breath. “I agree, the evidence so far is not overwhelming. But when we saw this next thing, we knew for sure. We knew we had solved the puzzle. We knew that America’s Stonehenge contained the true secret Prince Henry wanted his followers to learn.” He nodded to Amanda, who slid another photo image across the table. “This is an aerial view of America’s Stonehenge, taken from the Google Earth website.”
Cabal of The Westford Knight: Templars at the Newport Tower (Book #1 in the Templars in America Series) Page 29
